The case for Agrarian capitalism: A response to albritton

Abstract

Albritton finds Brenner's designation ‘agrarian capitalism’ inappropriate for early English agriculture, as the law of value and the commodification of labour are undeveloped. But Brenner is not theorising a ‘full‐blown’ capitalism. His theory traces a process of transition, by which new rules for social reproduction and a new capitalist logic unfolded gradually. Albritton's evidence, moreover, actually supports Brenner's thesis. Charges of class reductionism misconstrue Brenner's efforts to overcome the tendency to dichotomise society into political and economic spheres. Brenner's theory provides what the bourgeois paradigm does not: a logical explanation of how market dependency and capitalist classes emerged.