Interesting essay on the possibility that the industrial revolution began in Britain a century or so earlier than originally thought.
I have to agree with you here, the change in employment noted during the 1600s does not mean that the industrial revolution started earlier, only that the pre-conditions for the industrial revolution were taking shape.
An industrial society is able to use heat energy, derived from fossil fuels, to do work as scale. The first workable steam engines were not invented until the early 1700s: https://www.lianeon.org/p/the-engines-of-progress
The question is, why was the steam engine invented in Britain and not elsewhere, like the Netherlands, which also had many of the pre-conditions of an industrial society?
I think the way to think about it is you need commerical societies for capitalism to take root. Song China and the Italian city states were pre-capitalist commercial societies. I note that China, despite having been a commercial society who used fossil fuels, never had an industrial revolution. The reason was they never development capitalism. Capitalism is tied into your third key to progress, decentralized elite power. The invention of capitalism created a whole new category of elites with different priorities than the old extractive elites, in that they *created* wealth from which they extracted a profit. The pie the old elite could draw on was fixed by the population size (agriculural output creates so many calories per person and so grows with population). The pie from which capitalists drew grew on a per capita basis, and so faster than the pie of the old elite. FOr example, during the Napoleonic Wars, Britain with 1/4 the population of France would as the war progressed have far more war potential (in that they could pay for large armies in Spain, Austria and Prussia) whom France had to fight using their own resources, which were inferior to those of the British.
What metric are you using to define Song China as a "commercial society?"
I think that Song China departs greatly from the Commercial societies that I identified. For example, Song China had an urbanization rate of around 3%, while the Dutch Republic was at least ten times that.
A shift from a flat to rising trend in per capita GDP.
For example, China shows no such rising trend, see Figure 2 in this paper (link). Just as per cap GDP in Britain began to rise from its previous relatively flat period over 1400-1650, this did not happen in China.
So, by your definition, all capitalist economies deliver a rising trend in per capita GDP, and none of them do not? If a capitalist economy stops growing, then it is no longer capitalist, even if none of its other characteristics change?
That seems very odd to me.
Most researchers consider capitalism to be an economic system with certain characteristics. They do not build economic growth into the definition of capitalism or the metric used to identify it.
Using that metric, the Soviet Union was a capitalist economy...
No. Capitalists accumulate capital. That capital has usually been real or productive capital, what Marxists call the means of production.
But it can be financial capital. This is indicated when market capitalization relative to GDP rises out of it's long term range.
Yes the Soviet Union practiced state capitalism. The government was communist, and the ideology claimed that the period of state capitalism would naturally end when the "state withered away", which never happened.. Clearly it was a cult, a con, or both.
Now I am really confused as to your argument. You said that the metric for identifying capitalism is "A shift from a flat to rising trend in per capita GDP," correct?
Now you are saying that capitalism is about the accumulation of capital...
What metric do you use to determine whether there is a sufficient accumulation of capital for a society to be defined as capitalist?
You also said "The invention of capitalism created a whole new category of elites" This suggests that capitalism came before capitalists...
I am having really have a hard time following your proposed causality.
A metric for identifying something is not the same thing as a definition of that thing.
A capitalist is a capital accumulator. Capital applied to labor increases productivity of the workers employed by the capitalist. That is, output per person goes up for those workers. Once you have *enough* people using increased amounts of capital to produce more, it will start to show up in the aggregate statistics, as increased GDP per capita. Before this time there was capitalist economic activity going in, it simply was not (yet) extensive enough to be detected in the aggregate statistics.
In a commercial society, business generates excess profit over that needed to keep the business running. What do you do with that? In a country in which merchants had a lowly status like China, you might use your profits to purchase land and so become a higher status landowner, or, if you had an academically talented son, you might purchase education to give him a chance to enter the higher status mandarin class. In 15th cent Italy you might become a big shot by being a patron of the arts (hence the Renaissance). In medieval Europe you might donate to a religious building project and so have prestige conferred on you by the Church.
Yes, I believe that moveable type, combined with the proper ink and press counts as manufacturing. That is an excellent example of manufacturing that came long before the Industrial Revolution. And not surprisingly the early book manufacturing industry was centered in Northern Italy (a Commercial society).
This is support for my contention that capitalism began to make a real impact on the British economy in the last third of the 17th century as suggested by the rise in per capita GDP at that time. I attributed that to the evolution of a new "social scaleup technology" that awarded prestige to those who accumulated capital (capitalists) because such people created new forms of taxable economic activity that served the monarch's war interests. Three centuries Edward III, has created the "Order of the Garter" to assign prestige to those with *demonstrated* effectiveness in battle, as opposed to inherited privilege. Doing this aided his war interests.
In both cases a top elite elevated the status of a lesser in order for them to achieve greater prestige as a monarch. In the capitalist case, late 16th century and early 17th cent monarchs created a monster whose power two centuries later, had grown to the point where they could (and did) strip them of power.
Interesting essay on the possibility that the industrial revolution began in Britain a century or so earlier than originally thought.
I have to agree with you here, the change in employment noted during the 1600s does not mean that the industrial revolution started earlier, only that the pre-conditions for the industrial revolution were taking shape.
An industrial society is able to use heat energy, derived from fossil fuels, to do work as scale. The first workable steam engines were not invented until the early 1700s: https://www.lianeon.org/p/the-engines-of-progress
The question is, why was the steam engine invented in Britain and not elsewhere, like the Netherlands, which also had many of the pre-conditions of an industrial society?
I think the way to think about it is you need commerical societies for capitalism to take root. Song China and the Italian city states were pre-capitalist commercial societies. I note that China, despite having been a commercial society who used fossil fuels, never had an industrial revolution. The reason was they never development capitalism. Capitalism is tied into your third key to progress, decentralized elite power. The invention of capitalism created a whole new category of elites with different priorities than the old extractive elites, in that they *created* wealth from which they extracted a profit. The pie the old elite could draw on was fixed by the population size (agriculural output creates so many calories per person and so grows with population). The pie from which capitalists drew grew on a per capita basis, and so faster than the pie of the old elite. FOr example, during the Napoleonic Wars, Britain with 1/4 the population of France would as the war progressed have far more war potential (in that they could pay for large armies in Spain, Austria and Prussia) whom France had to fight using their own resources, which were inferior to those of the British.
What metric are you using to define Song China as a "commercial society?"
I think that Song China departs greatly from the Commercial societies that I identified. For example, Song China had an urbanization rate of around 3%, while the Dutch Republic was at least ten times that.
What metric do you use to distinguish "Commercial societies" from "capitalism?"
A shift from a flat to rising trend in per capita GDP.
For example, China shows no such rising trend, see Figure 2 in this paper (link). Just as per cap GDP in Britain began to rise from its previous relatively flat period over 1400-1650, this did not happen in China.
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/regional-variation-gdp-head-within-china-1080-1850-implications-great-divergence
So, by your definition, all capitalist economies deliver a rising trend in per capita GDP, and none of them do not? If a capitalist economy stops growing, then it is no longer capitalist, even if none of its other characteristics change?
That seems very odd to me.
Most researchers consider capitalism to be an economic system with certain characteristics. They do not build economic growth into the definition of capitalism or the metric used to identify it.
Using that metric, the Soviet Union was a capitalist economy...
No. Capitalists accumulate capital. That capital has usually been real or productive capital, what Marxists call the means of production.
But it can be financial capital. This is indicated when market capitalization relative to GDP rises out of it's long term range.
Yes the Soviet Union practiced state capitalism. The government was communist, and the ideology claimed that the period of state capitalism would naturally end when the "state withered away", which never happened.. Clearly it was a cult, a con, or both.
Now I am really confused as to your argument. You said that the metric for identifying capitalism is "A shift from a flat to rising trend in per capita GDP," correct?
Now you are saying that capitalism is about the accumulation of capital...
What metric do you use to determine whether there is a sufficient accumulation of capital for a society to be defined as capitalist?
You also said "The invention of capitalism created a whole new category of elites" This suggests that capitalism came before capitalists...
I am having really have a hard time following your proposed causality.
A metric for identifying something is not the same thing as a definition of that thing.
A capitalist is a capital accumulator. Capital applied to labor increases productivity of the workers employed by the capitalist. That is, output per person goes up for those workers. Once you have *enough* people using increased amounts of capital to produce more, it will start to show up in the aggregate statistics, as increased GDP per capita. Before this time there was capitalist economic activity going in, it simply was not (yet) extensive enough to be detected in the aggregate statistics.
In a commercial society, business generates excess profit over that needed to keep the business running. What do you do with that? In a country in which merchants had a lowly status like China, you might use your profits to purchase land and so become a higher status landowner, or, if you had an academically talented son, you might purchase education to give him a chance to enter the higher status mandarin class. In 15th cent Italy you might become a big shot by being a patron of the arts (hence the Renaissance). In medieval Europe you might donate to a religious building project and so have prestige conferred on you by the Church.
Does movable type count? ;) Mass production of books in the 15th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press
Thanks for the comment.
Yes, I believe that moveable type, combined with the proper ink and press counts as manufacturing. That is an excellent example of manufacturing that came long before the Industrial Revolution. And not surprisingly the early book manufacturing industry was centered in Northern Italy (a Commercial society).
This is support for my contention that capitalism began to make a real impact on the British economy in the last third of the 17th century as suggested by the rise in per capita GDP at that time. I attributed that to the evolution of a new "social scaleup technology" that awarded prestige to those who accumulated capital (capitalists) because such people created new forms of taxable economic activity that served the monarch's war interests. Three centuries Edward III, has created the "Order of the Garter" to assign prestige to those with *demonstrated* effectiveness in battle, as opposed to inherited privilege. Doing this aided his war interests.
In both cases a top elite elevated the status of a lesser in order for them to achieve greater prestige as a monarch. In the capitalist case, late 16th century and early 17th cent monarchs created a monster whose power two centuries later, had grown to the point where they could (and did) strip them of power.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-cultural-evolution-works#:~:text=Sometime%20before%201670,discernable%20economic%20growth.