A Conversation with Jairus Banaji on A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism
#en #ua #article #history #theory
Jairus Banaji is one of the most original Marxist historians.
In A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism, Banaji intervenes in the classic Marxist debate on the transition to capitalism. His argument should be read as a challenge to Political Marxism (Brenner/Wood, I've already written about them and Chibber here), which located the origins of capitalism primarily in the transformation of agrarian class relations in England. Banaji shifts the focus to commercial capital and its long history.

For Banaji, merchants were not merely intermediaries moving goods between markets. In many medieval and early modern contexts, they directly shaped production through credit, debt, advances, putting-out systems, and other forms of labour subordination. This makes the history of capitalism less a story of one English or European breakthrough than a much broader and uneven process, stretching across Afro-Eurasia.

Commons is publishing the first part of Histories of Capitalism Reading Group's conversation with Banaji on his book.

Українською тут.