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Beyond market dependence: The origins of capitalism in Catalonia
Author(s) -
Moreno Zacarés Javier
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of agrarian change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.63
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1471-0366
pISSN - 1471-0358
DOI - 10.1111/joac.12263
Subject(s) - capitalism , catalan , agrarian society , marxist philosophy , politics , agency (philosophy) , period (music) , subjectivity , sociology , transition (genetics) , peasant , political economy , political science , law , social science , agriculture , history , philosophy , humanities , epistemology , aesthetics , archaeology , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
Buried in the footnotes of his famous 1976 essay, Robert Brenner left the remark that Catalonia had experienced an agrarian transition to capitalism in parallel to England. This important claim has been completely forgotten by his followers of the political Marxist tradition, who since then have developed his views on the origins of capitalism. Building on the specialist literature, this article revisits the question of the Catalan transition through the prism of political Marxism and teases out its implications. In particular, it argues that the Catalan case illustrates the centrality of agency and subjectivity in the process of capitalist change. Contrary to Brenner's claim, this paper will argue that pre‐capitalist social property relations persisted in agriculture throughout the period of transition. Instead, the region's capitalist breakthrough was prompted by sociocultural struggles in its 18th‐century proto‐industry.