Capitalist and Precapitalist Societies

Abstract

What is capitalism? The failure to address this deceptively simple question, perhaps more than anything, has been responsible for generating a number of flawed interpretations of English poor relief. I suggest that most historians of social welfare have an inadequate conception of capitalism which leads them to ignore some of the crucial distinctions between this economic form and previous, peasant-based societies. Capitalism is generally absent in narratives of the transition from ‘past to present’, replaced by expressions such as ‘modernity’ or ‘industrialization’ (E. Wood, 1991, 1994). Capitalism, as a social system, tends to go unexplored, while exploitation, which permeates stratified communities, barely receives comment. A few writers, notably Karl Polanyi, have focused their attention on capitalism, yet there are problems with these approaches as well. Given my argument that one must come to terms with capitalism in order to comprehend the history of support to the English poor, it is necessary, then, to draw out the main features of this mode of production.