"This book situates the development of radical English political thought within the context of the specific nature of agrarian capitalism and the struggles that ensued around the nature of the state during the revolutionary decade of the 1640s. In the context of the emerging conceptions of the state and property - with attendant notions of accumulation, labor, and the common good - groups such as Levellers and Diggers developed distinctive forms of radical political thought not because they were progressive, forward thinkers, but because they were the most significant challengers of the newly constituted forms of political and economic power." "Drawing on recent reexaminations of the nature of agrarian capitalism and modernity in the early modern period, Geoff Kennedy argues that any interpretation of the political theory of this period must relate to the changing nature of social property relations and state power. The radical nature of early modern English political thought is therefore cast-in terms of its oppositional relationship to these novel forms of property and state power, rather than being conceived of as a formal break from discursive conventions."--BOOK JACKET.

Investigates the resistance of agriculture to wage labor and other forms of capitalism, finding a reason in the uncontrollable natural and technical features of the industry. Mann (sociology, U. of New Orleans) examines the persistence of family farming in South America, the replacement of slavery by share cropping rather than wage labor in the southern US, an d other examples. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

In 1992, a trade war nearly developed between the French and the Americans over the French government's rape seed subsidy. The US responded with threats of slapping heafty duties on French vin blanc. Each year promises yet another round of arguments, threats, and economic repisals. In The Failure of Agrarian Capitalism, Dutch economist Niek Koning examines the economic origins of such forms of intervention. He scrutinizes attempts to reform farming policy in the latest round of GATT talks; and provides an incisive and comparative analysis of the agrarian politics in England, Germany, the Netherlands and the US from 1846-1919. He places an astute emphasis on legislation and argues that this period was crucial in robbing the agricultural sector of a market-oriented autonomy, eventually spawning the seeds of this conflict.

The world-shaking forced evictions of English peasants during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are treated by most historians as largely a 'Tudor myth'. For them, the peasantry disappeared much later through fair means thanks to industrialisation and trade. Centred on close scrutiny of the royal commission of 1517 – 'England's Second Domesday' – this book overturns these accounts. It demonstrates, unequivocally, that capitalism carved fundamental and irreversible breaches into the English countryside between 1400 and 1620. It began, grew and thrived on widespread illegal clearances of rural people and their culture by the English ruling class, long before the British industrial revolution.

This book asks how we are to understand the relationship between capitalism and the environment, capitalism and food, and capitalism and social resistance. These questions come together to form a study of food regimes and the means by which capitalism organises both the environment and people to provision its distinctive system of ever-expanding consumption with food. Political Ecology, Food Regimes, and Food Sovereignty explores whether there are environmental limits to capitalism and its economic growth by addressing the ongoing and inter-linked crises of food, fossil fuels, and finance. It also considers its political limits, as the globally burgeoning ‘precariat’, peasants and indigenous people resist the further commodification of their livelihoods. This book draws from the field of Political Ecology to approach new ways of analysing capitalism, the environment and resistance, and also to propose new solutions to the current agro-ecological-economic crisis. It will be of particular interest to students and academics of Environmental Sociology, Human Geography, and Environmental Geography.

An important examination of the foundational American ideal of economic equality—and how we lost it. Winner of the Missouri Conference on History Book Award for 2021 The United States has some of the highest levels of both wealth and income inequality in the world. Although modern-day Americans are increasingly concerned about this growing inequality, many nonetheless believe that the country was founded on a person's right to acquire and control property. But in The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600–1870, Daniel R. Mandell argues that, in fact, the United States was originally deeply influenced by the belief that maintaining a "rough" or relative equality of wealth is essential to the cultivation of a successful republican government. Mandell explores the origins and evolution of this ideal. He shows how, during the Revolutionary War, concerns about economic equality helped drive wage and price controls, while after its end Americans sought ways to maintain their beloved "rough" equality against the danger of individuals amassing excessive wealth. He also examines how, after 1800, this tradition was increasingly marginalized by the growth of the liberal ideal of individual property ownership without limits. This politically evenhanded book takes a sweeping, detailed view of economic, social, and cultural developments up to the time of Reconstruction, when Congress refused to redistribute plantation lands to the former slaves who had worked it, insisting instead that they required only civil and political rights. Informing current discussions about the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States, The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America is surprising and enlightening.