The Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-90-04-23008-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 40, 336 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 680 g

Reihe: Historical Materialism Book Series

Ellen Meiksins Wood is a leading contemporary political theorist who has elaborated an innovative approach to the history of political thought, the ‘social history of political theory’. She has been described as the founder, together with the historian Robert Brenner, of ‘Political Marxism’, a distinct version of historical materialism which has inspired a research program that spans a number of academic disciplines. Organized thematically, this Reader brings together selections from Wood’s groundbreaking scholarship, published over three decades, providing an overview of her original interpretations of capitalism, precapitalist societies, the state, political theory, democracy, citizenship, liberalism, civil society, the Enlightenment, globalization, imperialism, and socialism.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in the history and theories of capitalism, socialism, imperialism, Marxism, liberalism, social classes, democracy, civil society, and citizenship.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Meiksins Wood, Ellen

Patriquin, Larry

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Geschichte der Politikwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The ‘Method’ of Ellen Meiksins Wood

1. Capitalism
The ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ in capitalism
Class-power and state-power
Feudalism and private property
Capitalism as the privatisation of political power
The localisation of class-struggle
England vs. the dominant model of capitalism
The bourgeois paradigm
Begging the question
Opportunity or imperative?
The commercialisation-model
Marx on the transition
Towns and trade
Agrarian capitalism
Market-dependent producers
A different kind of market-dependence?
Competitive markets

2. Precapitalist Societies
Class and state in China and Rome
Rome and the empire of private property
The city-states of Florence and Venice
Master and slave vs. landlord and peasant
Free producers and slaves
Slavery and the ‘decline’ of the Roman Empire
The ‘logic’ of slavery vs. the logic of capitalism
The ‘slave-mode of production’
Agricultural slavery and the peasant-citizen
The nexus of freedom and slavery in democratic Athens

3. The State in Historical Perspective
Class and state in ancient society
The emergence of the polis in ancient Athens
The ‘essence’ of the polis
Class in the democratic polis
Village and state, town and country, in democratic Athens
The rise and fall of Rome
The culture of property: the Roman law
From imperial Rome to ‘feudalism’
Absolutism and the modern state
The idea of the state
The peculiarities of the English state
Contrasting states: France vs. England

4. Social and Political Thought
The social history of political theory
Political theory in history: an overview
Plato
The Greek concept of freedom
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
John Locke
Revolution and tradition, c. 1640–1790

5. Democracy, Citizenship, Liberalism, and Civil Society
Labour and democracy, ancient and modern
From ancient to modern conceptions of citizenship
Capitalism and democratic citizenship
The American redefinition of democracy
A democracy devoid of social content
From democracy to liberalism
Capitalism and ‘liberal democracy’
Liberal democracy and capitalist hegemony
The idea of ‘civil society’
The civil-society argument
‘Civil society’ and the devaluation of democracy

6. The Enlightenment, Postmodernism, and the Post-‘New Left’
Modernity vs. capitalism: France vs. England
From modernity to postmodernity
Modernity and the non-history of capitalism
Themes of the postmodern left
Enlightenment vs. capitalism: Condorcet vs. Locke
Enlightenment-universalism
The periodisation of the Western left
Left-intellectuals and contemporary capitalism

7. Globalisation and Imperialism
Globalisation and the nation-state
Nation-states, classes, and universal capitalism
The indispensable state
Precapitalist imperialism
The classic age of imperialism
Globalisation and war
Globalisation and imperial hegemony
The contradictions of capitalist imperialism

8. Socialism
The end of the welfare-state ‘compact’
There are no social democrats now
Market-dependence vs. market-enablement
Left-strategies of market-enablement
The political implications of competition
The working class and the struggle for socialism
Class-conflict and the socialist project
Socialism and democracy
The state in classless societies
Liberalism vs. democracy
‘Universal human goods’
The self-emancipation of the working class
The socialist movement
Democracy as an economic mechanism

Bibliography of Works by Ellen Meiksins Wood, 1970–2012

References

Index

Leseproben

Preface

Edited readers are becoming more important for both students and academics. Readers are ideal for those who are unable or unwilling to peruse thousands of pages of an author’s output – and who would not know where to begin, even if they had the time. With the publication of eleven books (two co-authored) and dozens of articles, the writings of Ellen Meiksins Wood have reached a point where an edited collection is needed. This reader serves as an overview of her ideas; it will be helpful especially for those just beginning to encounter her works.
Like similar texts, the excerpts are presented in thematic, rather than chronological, order. Unlike many readers, however, I have refrained from the common practice of incorporating whole chapters or entire articles from the author. This approach seems to me to defeat the purpose of a reader. At the same time, I have avoided, for the most part, cutting the original texts into small fragments, which would have given the work a ‘prison-notebooks’ feel. I have tried to strike a middle-ground, in effect incorporating Wood’s ‘greatest hits’, consisting of pieces both long and (relatively) short. The result, I believe, is a showcase for Wood’s groundbreaking scholarship, with important insights on every page. Those making use of this collection are obviously free to skip through the text, though I recommend that it be read from start to finish, as the material in the opening chapters on capitalism, precapitalist societies, and the state informs, in important ways, the theoretical arguments developed in later chapters.
In the chapters, sections are taken from a variety of Wood’s texts. Even when they are excerpted from the same book or article, however, the sections reprinted here often do not follow consecutively in the original works, so readers should assume the presence of an ellipsis before each sub-title. When excerpts do not begin at the start (or finish at the end) of a paragraph (as found in the original publication), these excerpts are preceded (or followed) by an ellipsis. Ellipses have also been used occasionally to remove sections of material, either large or small, though they have been employed typically to eliminate phrases such as ‘in the previous chapter’, ‘as we have seen’, and so on. Editorial interjections are made inside square-brackets. If information has been placed in square-brackets in the original works, ‘– EMW’ appears before the closing bracket.
Small changes were made to Wood’s footnotes for consistency of style and to update information on cited works noted as forthcoming in the original publications. A few discursive notes were left out. One footnote was added in brackets, a brief explanation of the phrase ‘New “True” Socialism’. I have also made slight changes to some sub-titles and added sub-titles when there were none in the original publications (for example, where Roman numerals were used in place of sub-titles).
Some of the excerpts are from books co-authored with Neal Wood. However, in the case of Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory, the preface (p. x) indicates that while ‘both of us have criticised and amended each other’s works’, Chapters Two and Four, from which material is included here, were written by Ellen Meiksins Wood. The other book is A Trumpet of Sedition, from which I have used a small excerpt on John Locke.
The ‘Bibliography of Works by Ellen Meiksins Wood, 1970–2012’, found at the end of the reader, does not include translations (which have appeared in more than a dozen languages), though it does include a few works (in German and French) which have not yet been published in English. A number of the entries in the bibliography are reprints of earlier works, some expanded and further developed, others reproduced ‘as is’. Many of the articles have been incorporated, typically with revisions, into Wood’s books (see the relevant acknowledgements-pages of these books for further details).

Über Autor(innen)

Patriquin, Larry
Larry Patriquin is Associate Professor of Social Welfare and Social Development, Nipissing University. He is the author of Inventing Tax Rage and Agrarian Capitalism and Poor Relief in England, 1500-1860.

Meiksins Wood, Ellen
Ellen Meiksins Wood is Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science, York University. She is the author of numerous books, including Democracy against Capitalism, The Origin of Capitalism, Citizens to Lords and, most recently, Liberty and Property.

Ellen Meiksins Wood is Professor Emerita in the Department of Political Science, York University. She is the author of numerous books, including Democracy against Capitalism, The Origin of Capitalism, Citizens to Lords and, most recently, Liberty and Property.

Larry Patriquin is Associate Professor of Social Welfare and Social Development, Nipissing University. He is the author of Inventing Tax Rage and Agrarian Capitalism and Poor Relief in England, 1500-1860.