Critique: Why Capitalism’s Origins Matter

Source: jacobin
Authors: ByArron Reza Merat
URL: https://jacobin.com/2026/05/review-costa-transition-feudalism-capitalism

What the article reports

Arron Reza Merat reviews Matthew Costa's Mother of Capital: How Rent Gave Birth to Modernity, a book defending the "Brenner thesis" that capitalism emerged from the particular social-property relations of medieval England rather than from trade, demography, or cultural individualism. The review summarises Costa's argument — that competitive leasing replaced tributary rent after the Black Death — and briefly engages with rival theories (Malthusian/demographic, commercialisation, "technofeudalism"). It closes with qualified praise alongside some philosophical criticism of Costa's hard social constructivism.

Factual accuracy — Solid

The review's verifiable claims are broadly accurate. Robert Brenner's essay "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe" was indeed published in Past & Present (1976), and the summary of its argument is fair to the published record. Alan Macfarlane's Origins of English Individualism is correctly attributed. Kett's Rebellion (1549), the Levellers and Diggers, and the Glorious Revolution are placed in the right centuries. The France/England agricultural productivity comparison — "France responded to the Black Death with an absolute monarchy that saw agricultural yields rise by 20 percent from 1600 to 1800, England gave birth to capitalism, which doubled its productivity over the same period" — is presented as Costa's claim, not verified independently, which is appropriate attribution but leaves a major empirical assertion unreferenced to any primary or secondary source the reader could check. The characterisation of Rodney Hilton's emphasis on "peasant resistance" is consistent with his known work. One minor imprecision: the review says Brenner published the essay "fifty years ago," which is accurate relative to 2026. No outright factual errors are detectable.

Framing — Sympathetic

1. Opening characterisation of Costa. Describing him as "a mandarin at New South Wales's treasury" is an unusual, slightly ironic word choice that signals insider wink to readers familiar with left critique of technocracy — it is neither neutral nor fully pejorative, but it steers tone before the argument is laid out.

2. "Compelling answer." The lead sentence calls Costa's synthesis "a compelling answer" — an evaluative claim presented in the reviewer's own voice before the review has made any analytical case for it.

3. Technofeudalism framing. The review dismisses technofeudal theorists (Varoufakis, Dean, Kotkin, Durand) with "little explanatory value" and "rather muddled category" — characterisations offered as near-fact, not as one position among contested scholarly views. Kotkin in particular is a conservative; his inclusion alongside left-wing theorists is not flagged, which flattens the politics of the debate.

4. "Obviously." The sentence "Obviously, one doesn't need Costa's book to observe that rent and landlordism were rampant under capitalism" deploys rhetorical obviousness to close off a contested point without engagement.

5. Closing sentence. "There was nothing inevitable about the rise of capitalism, and perhaps also that there is nothing necessary about its continued existence" — an unattributed political inference by the reviewer that moves from historiography to present-day advocacy without flagging it as the reviewer's own normative view.

Source balance

Ratio: Zero external voices are quoted in support of rival frameworks; all named scholars are either enlisted as precursors to Costa or briskly rebutted. No critic of the Brenner thesis from outside the Marxist tradition (e.g., neo-institutionalists, Pomeranz/world-systems theorists, Guy Bois) is quoted or engaged. The effective supportive-to-critical ratio is roughly 2:0 for the Brenner/Costa position, with rivals appearing only as foils.

Omissions

1. The Brenner Debate's critics. The original 1985 Past & Present debate drew substantial responses from Guy Bois, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, and Patricia Croot and David Parker, among others. Their objections — that Brenner's model cannot explain capitalism's spread beyond England — go entirely unmentioned, giving readers no basis to assess how contested the thesis remains.

2. World-systems / Wallerstein alternative. Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory offers a major rival explanation (capitalism as a product of Atlantic trade and colonial extraction) that has wide currency. Its omission is material.

3. Colonial dimension. The review notes in passing that capitalism "would become global through commerce and colonialism" but immediately drops the thread. Costa is said to leave continental Europe "conspicuously unexamined" — the reviewer flags this gap but doesn't press it, which understates how much the England-centric frame struggles to account for the Atlantic economy.

4. Productivity statistics sourced. The claim about French vs. English agricultural yield growth (20% vs. doubling, 1600–1800) is attributed only to Costa. Readers have no way to assess its basis.

5. Jacobin's editorial position. The outlet is a self-described socialist magazine. For a review that concludes capitalism may not be "necessary," this context is relevant to calibrate framing and is not disclosed in the piece itself (though it is encoded in the outlet's branding).

What it does well

• Intellectual honesty about Costa's limits. The reviewer genuinely criticises the book — "his own arguments rely on some uninterrogated assumptions" about "hard social constructivism" — rather than offering uncritical advocacy. This is a meaningful qualification in a sympathetic venue.
• Clear exposition of a complex debate. The précis of the Brenner thesis — "Out of a feudal system of coercive extraction of peasants' economic surplus by nobles and the crown, a new class of tenant farmers emerged" — is accurate and accessible without being reductive.
• Signals the book's contingency argument fairly. "Capitalism's radical contingency is therefore a major theme" is a genuine and accurate summary of what distinguishes the Brenner/Costa position from teleological alternatives.
• Flags the book's own admitted gap. Noting that the continental European process "goes conspicuously unexamined in Mother of Capital" is a real critical observation, even if the reviewer moves past it quickly.
• Engages the King Horn literary example. Walking through the medieval romance illustrates the book's method concretely: "rent is not understood as a burden but perversely as an honor granted by a lord."

Rating

Overall: 6/10 — A readable, intellectually engaged book review that is honest about the book's limits but frames a contested historiographical debate almost entirely from within one scholarly tradition, with rival positions appearing only as straw targets.