Property and Progress

Résumé du livre

Key texts on the origins of capitalism brought together for the first time. In writing these celebrated essays Robert Brenner had an electric impact on the debate regarding the transition from feudalism to capitalism. His epochal 1976 essay inPast and Presentlaunched what became known as the "Brenner debate." His 2007 lecture at the British Academy was an elegant synthesis of his views and has generated a new discussion. The magnitude of Brenner's contribution to the world of ideas cannot be underestimated. This series of brilliant essays represent what is probably the most powerful single contribution from a materialist viewpoint to historical thought of the past half century. Property and Progressbrings these texts together in a single volume for the first time. Intellectually audacious and academically rigorous, they vary in range, offering novel perspectives on the nature of pre-capitalist and capitalist societies, socio-economic evolution in the medieval and early modern period through to the industrial revolution and a provocative comparison between England and the Yangtze Delta in China.