The Origin Of Capitalism Analysis

In The Origin of Capitalism, Ellen Wood addresses misconceptions about the origin of Capitalism. In addition to challenging the naturalization of Capitalism, she draws attention to specific social forms and the particular ways in which Capitalism departs from them. Wood reviews John Locks’s Second Treatise of Government, which brings a new and revolutionary attitude towards property by turning the acquisition of property into a moral calling and associating it with dignity. She sees Locke as a prophet of Capitalism, arguing that Locke’s doctrine led to value added becoming a strong argument for expansion and annexation. Specifically, it is in the fifth chapter that Locke discusses property. Locke begins with the original condition of nature, in which the creation of property is through the labor of one's body and the work of one's hands. Labor is, for Locke, the source of all value and our title to ownership. Human labor, not nature is the source of property and of acquisition. Moreover, by the end of that chapter, there is the creation of a sophisticated market economy with various inequalities of wealth and property, within the state of nature. With a series of shifts, Locke neutralizes the radical discourses of property of his time; although natural law clearly has democratic implications, Locke, in effect, excludes people from the system by restricting the rights of commoners.

Firstly, Wood starts off her argument by rejecting the Commercialization model of Capitalism, which is that markets had always existed—the transition to the capitalist market is a change in quantity rather than quality. She disputes the idea that Capitalism is a kind of natural human progress. The distinctive characteristic of the c...

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...political, social institutions. Commerce, Locke argues, is reliable and open. Hence, it is no surprise that Locke addressed not so much to the philosophers, but to the English common men. He tried to resonate with the people of his time and place by writing in their everyday language and by common sense.

Locke’s emphasis on the importance of the creation of exchange value as the basis of property is an important rupture from preceding theorizations of property. It exemplifies a change in philosophy of property law that is important to Capitalism. Indeed, the very definition of Capitalism is “a system in which goods and services, down to the most basic necessities of life, are produced for profitable exchange” (Wood 2). Noteworthy is that a century after Locke's Second Treatise, his ideas are expressed and developed by in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.