Historian Michael Sonenscher discusses the historical origins of capitalism, exploring its connection to war finance and the division of labor. The conversation dives into Rousseau's separation of professions, Adam Smith's division of labor, Marx's views on communism, Hegel's concept of civil society, and critiques of the division of labor within capitalism.
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Capitalism's Origins
"Capitalism" emerged in late 18th- and early 19th-century France, initially focusing on war finance and public debt.
It later evolved to encompass the division of labor, compounding economic and social divisions.
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Early Capitalism and War Finance
Early capitalism aimed to fund wars by leveraging private wealth through investment in public debt.
This approach, viewed as a property theory, drew criticism due to its association with war, empire, and perceived negative consequences.
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Division of Labor vs. Capitalism
The critique of "capitalism" often targets the division of labor, not capital itself.
Rousseau's "separation of professions" mirrors Smith's "division of labor" concept, highlighting interdependence in modern societies.
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What exactly is capitalism? How has the meaning of capitalism changed over time? And what’s at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of it? In Capitalism: The Story Behind the Word(Princeton UP, 2022), Michael Sonenscher examines the history behind the concept and pieces together the range of subjects bound up with the word. Sonenscher shows that many of our received ideas fail to pick up the work that the idea of capitalism is doing for us, without us even realizing it.
“Capitalism” was first coined in France in the early nineteenth century. It began as a fusion of two distinct sets of ideas. The first involved thinking about public debt and war finance. The second involved thinking about the division of labour. Sonenscher shows that thinking about the first has changed radically over time. Funding welfare has been added to funding warfare, bringing many new questions in its wake. Thinking about the second set of ideas has offered far less room for manoeuvre. The division of labour is still the division of labour and the debates and discussions that it once generated have now been largely forgotten. By exploring what lay behind the earlier distinction before it collapsed and was eroded by the passage of time, Sonenscher shows why the present range of received ideas limits our political options and the types of reform we might wish for.
Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College, University of Cambridge. His books include Sans-Culottes and Before the Deluge (both Princeton UP).
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.
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