From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Mon May 19 2003 - 21:22:15 EDT
> >The way to go forward with this would be to examine a particular historical >case in some detail. I'm not suggesting that we necessarily do that >(we are all time-limited and have our own interests), but methodologically >that would be the next thing to do. > >-Ian. Hi Ian, perhaps one important case is the one described by Peter Kriedte in Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists (Cambrige, 1983). Kriedte describes how with the increase of the pressure of demand, merchant capitalists began to prise open the guild structures of mfg and artisanal production. Whenever the merchant capitalists found it impossible to build up a production apparatus in the towns unhampered by the guild restrictions, they moved production to the countryside and expanded there on a large scale in a process Kriedte has dubbed proto-industrialization. Perhaps we see here the capital mobility and investment, as well as competition in a nascent world market, that allows for the law of value to begin to regulate production and exchange? Yours, Rakesh
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