How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (65 page)

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Authors: Rodney Stark

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BOOK: How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity
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Chapter 6: Freedom and Capitalism

 

1.

For this comparison, I am indebted to Colin Morris [1972] 2000: 4.

2.

Julius Caesar
, act 1, scene 2.

3.

For this section and certain sections that follow, I draw on my own research and writing for
The Victory of Reason
. See Stark, 2005.

4.

Saint Augustine,
De libero arbitrio
bk. 3: ch.1, translated and quoted in Kehr, 1916: 602.

5.

Saint Augustine,
The City of God
, bk. 5, ch. 9.

6.

Aquinas,
Summa Contra Gentiles
, bk. 3, cap. 113.

7.

Henry, 1927.

8.

Donald, 1997.

9.

U.S. State Department,
2013 Trafficking in Persons Report
, June 19, 2013.

10.

Finley, 1980: 67.

11.

Bensch, 1998: 231.

12.

Fogel, 1989: 25.

13.

Bloch, 1961, 1975; Davis, 1966.

14.

In Bonnassie, 1991: 6.

15.

Duby, 1974: 32.

16.

For a summary of these views, see Bonnassie, 1991; Dockès, 1982.

17.

Lopez, 1979: 138.

18.

Conrade and Meyer, 1958; Easterlin, 1961; Fogel and Engerman, 1974; Stark, 2003a.

19.

Bloch, 1975: 13.

20.

Bonnassie, 1991: 30.

21.

Bloch, 1975: 14.

22.

In Bonnassie, 1991: 54.

23.

Smaragde,
Via Regia
, my translation.

24.

Bloch, 1975: 11.

25.

Bloch 1975: 30.

26.

Lopez, 1952: 353.

27.

Stark, 2003.

28.

Berman, 2008; Stark, 2003.

29.

Benedict, 1946.

30.

Finley, 1973: 28.

31.

Lewis, 1990; Watt, 1961, 1965.

32.

In Gordon, 1989: 19.

33.

Lopez, 1976: 99.

34.

Lopez, 1967: 129. Venice was populated with an abundance of families who had legitimate claims to noble status but who no longer had rural estates to support them with rents; they therefore had seized the opportunity to engage in commerce.

35.

Wickham, 1989: 90.

36.

Waley, 1988: 35.

37.

Lane, 1973: 95–101; Nicholas, 1997: 248–55.

38.

Bairoch, 1988.

39.

Epstein, 1996: 14.

40.

Greif, 1994: 280.

41.

Greif, 1994: 282.

42.

Waley, 1988.

43.

Russell, 1972a; Chandler, 1987.

44.

Braudel, 1977: 66–67.

45.

For this section and sections that follow, I draw on my own research and writing for
The Victory of Reason
. See Stark, 2005.

46.

Some authors, however, actually remark that “everyone knows” what capitalism is—see, e.g., Rosenberg and Birdzell, 1986: vi.

47.

The orthodox Marxist definition is plain and simple: capitalism exists where the actual producers are wage laborers who do not own their tools, and these, as well as the raw materials and finished products, are owned by their employer. (See Sombart, 1902, as well as Hilton, 1952.) Taken seriously, this definition would make capitalists out of all owners of small craft shops such as potteries and metal smithies in ancient times. That seems especially odd since Marxists cling to their belief that capitalism first appeared during (and caused) the Industrial Revolution, a necessary assumption for those who accept Marx’s theory of social change wherein all history rests on changes in modes of production. Thus, Marxists condemn all “talk about capitalism before the end of the eighteenth century” (Braudel, vol. 2, 1979: 238), equating capitalism with “the modern industrial system” (Gerschenkron, 1970: 4). But for those of us who associate capitalism with particular kinds of firms and markets, the Marxist definition is not useful.

48.

Stark, 2005: 56.

49.

For all of his fulminating about “wage slavery,” Marx opened his study
Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations
with the statement that “one of the historic conditions for capital is free labour.”

50.

1 Timothy 6:10.

51.

Little, 1978: 38.

52.

Baldwin, 1959: 15.

53.

Mumford, 1967: 266.

54.

Hayes, 1917; Herlihy, 1957; Ozment, 1975.

55.

Little, 1978: 62.

56.

Gilchrist, 1969; Russell, 1958, 1972a.

57.

Little, 1978: 93.

58.

Dawson, 1957: 63.

59.

Duby, 1974: 218.

60.

Little, 1978: 65.

61.

Ibid.

62.

Fryde, 1963: 441–43.

63.

de Roover, 1948: 9.

64.

Collins, 1986: 47, 55, 52.

65.

Duby, 1974: 91.

66.

Gimpel, 1976: 47.

67.

Mumford, 1967: 1:272.

68.

Dawson, 1957; Hickey, 1987; King, 1999; Mayr-Harting, 1993; Stark, 2003.

69.

Collins, 1986: 54.

70.

Ch. 40,
The Daily Manual Labor
.

71.

Hilton, 1985: 3.

72.

That interest could be charged of foreigners explains the role of Jews as money lenders in Christian societies, a role Christians in need of funds sometimes imposed on them. Historians usually ignore another consequence: medieval Christians with money to lend often masqueraded as Jews. See Nelson, 1969: 11; Little, 1978: 56–57.

73.

Nelson, 1969: 9.

74.

Olsen, 1969: 53.

75.

In his
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
, quoted in de Roover, 1958: 422.

76.

Little, 1978: 181.

77.

Gilchrist, 1969; Little, 1978; Raftus, 1958.

78.

Gilchrist, 1969: 67.

79.

Hunt and Murray, 1999: 73.

80.

Dempsey, 1943: 155, 160.

81.

de Roover, 1946: 154.

82.

Little, 1978: 181.

83.

Southern, 1970b: 40.

84.

Rodinson, 1978: 139.

85.

Maxime Rodinson suggests that Islam did not reconsider its economic rules because the elite held commerce in contempt and because state interference so limited and distorted the economy that nothing like the pressure for theological change that built up in Europe ever developed in Islam. Indeed, the elite no doubt favored
keeping their creditors in potential religious jeopardy and having a “legitimate” basis for settling their debts by usurpation. In any event, even today banks exist in Islamic societies only by means of extremely cumbersome “workarounds” of the absolute prohibition of usury, which remains defined as any compensation given in return for a loan. A frequent modern solution to the prohibition of interest involves banks going into business partnership with those to whom they advance commercial loans. This allows loans to be repaid for no more than the sum borrowed, while the reward for lending (the “interest”) comes from shared profits. Another ploy is to charge extensive fees for servicing loans. Even so, the huge fortunes produced by petroleum have mostly taken refuge in Western investments, rather than to finance domestic economic development. See Rodinson, 1978.

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