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The Pristine Culture of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood

The Pristine Culture of Capitalism

A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States

A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States

A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States

By Ellen Meiksins Wood

By Ellen Meiksins Wood

By Ellen Meiksins Wood

By Ellen Meiksins Wood

By Ellen Meiksins Wood

By Ellen Meiksins Wood

Best Seller

Part of Verso World History Series

Part of Verso World History Series

Paperback $26.95

Nov 03, 2015 | ISBN 9781784781033

Paperback $19.95

Dec 17, 1991 | ISBN 9780860915720

Ebook $9.99

Nov 03, 2015 | ISBN 9781784781958

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    The Pristine Culture of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood
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      Dec 17, 1991 | ISBN 9780860915720

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    About The Pristine Culture of Capitalism

    A historical essay on old regimes and modern states

    In this lively and wide-ranging book, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitomized bourgeois modernity, especially the emergence of a “modern” state and political culture in Continental Europe, signaled the persistence of pre-capitalist social property relations. Conversely, the absence of a “modern” state and political discourse in England testified to the presence of a well-developed capitalism. The fundamental flaws in the British economy are not just the symptoms of arrested development but the contradictions of the capitalist system itself. Britain today, Wood maintains, is the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe.

    About The Pristine Culture of Capitalism

    Capitalism was born in England, yet the dominant Western conceptions of modernity have come from elsewhere, notably from France, the historical model of “bourgeois” society. In this lively and wide-ranging book, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitomized bourgeois modernity, especially the emergence of a “modern” state and political culture in Continental Europe, signalled the persistence of precapitalist social property relations. Conversely, the absence of a “modern” state and political discourse in England testified to the presence of a well-developed capitalism. The fundamental flaws in the British economy are not just the symptoms of arrested development but the contradictions of the capitalist system itself. Britain today, Wood maintains, is the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe.

    Weaving together economic and political history with the history of ideas, Wood ranges across a broad spectrum of current debates, from the “Nairn–Anderson theses” to the contribution of J.C.D. Clark and Alan Macfarlane, and over a wide variety of topics: the development of British capitalism and French absolutism; the state, the nation and their symbolic representations; revolution and tradition; the cultural patterns of English speech, urbanism, ruralism and the landscape garden; ideas of sovereignty, democracy, property and progress.

    This book will be as interesting and provocative to observers of contemporary capitalism as to historians of early modern Europe or Western political thought.

    About The Pristine Culture of Capitalism

    A historical essay on old regimes and modern states

    In this lively and wide-ranging book, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that what is supposed to have epitomized bourgeois modernity, especially the emergence of a “modern” state and political culture in Continental Europe, signaled the persistence of pre-capitalist social property relations. Conversely, the absence of a “modern” state and political discourse in England testified to the presence of a well-developed capitalism. The fundamental flaws in the British economy are not just the symptoms of arrested development but the contradictions of the capitalist system itself. Britain today, Wood maintains, is the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe.

    Also by Ellen Meiksins Wood

    Democracy Against Capitalism
    Liberty and Property
    Citizens to Lords
    Empire of Capital
    The Retreat From Class
    See all books by Ellen Meiksins Wood

    Also by Ellen Meiksins Wood

    Democracy Against Capitalism
    Peasant-Citizen and Slave
    Liberty and Property
    Citizens to Lords
    Empire of Capital
    See all books by Ellen Meiksins Wood

    Also by Ellen Meiksins Wood

    Democracy Against Capitalism
    Liberty and Property
    Citizens to Lords
    Empire of Capital
    The Retreat From Class
    See all books by Ellen Meiksins Wood

    Product Details

    Category: Politics | History | Economics | Management

    Paperback | $26.95
    Published by Verso
    Nov 03, 2015 | 212 Pages | ISBN 9781784781033

    Category: Politics | History | Economics | Management

    Paperback | $19.95
    Published by Verso
    Dec 17, 1991 | 212 Pages | 6-1/10 x 9-1/5 | ISBN 9780860915720

    Category: Politics | History | Economics | Management

    Ebook | $9.99
    Published by Verso
    Nov 03, 2015 | 212 Pages | ISBN 9781784781958

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    Praise

    “A breath of fresh air … This book made me think about, and rethink, seventeenth-century English history more than any I have read in decades … a pleasure to read.”
    —Christopher Hill

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