Ellen Meiksins Wood
Biographic Data
| ID | 217669 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ellen Meiksins Wood |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ellen Meiksins |
| FAMILY NAME | Wood |
| SIGNATURE | WOOD E M |
| AFFILIATIONS | York University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 73 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 435 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Necessity of a Universal Project
In this excerpt from Ellen Meiksins Wood's In Defense of History, Wood appraises the state of postmodern thought in the late twentieth century. "Today's postmodernism," Wood writes, "for all of its apparently defeatist pessimism, is still rooted in the 'Golden Age of Capitalism.' It's time to leave that legacy behind and face today's realities
Demos Versus “We, the People”: Freedom and Democracy Ancient and Modern
Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism
It is becoming increasingly obvious that liberalism as a type of political theory and the institutions and processes associated with liberal politics are in trouble. On the one hand, it is hard to see how traditional liberal politics can continue much longer given the developing decay within modern liberal societies-poverty in the midst of plenty, citizen apathy and disgust, debilitating urban life, counter-productive military adventures, and so …
Agrarne początki kapitalizmu
Tekst przedstawia podstawowe założenia i tezy „marksizmu politycznego”. Autorka wykazuje, jak i dlaczego początki kapitalizmu należy wiązać w pierwszej kolejności z wsią i rolnictwem, a dopiero w drugiej z miastem i handlem. Podporządkowanie procesów produkcji żywności imperatywom kapitalizmu stanowi o rewolucjonizującym charakterze kapitalizmu, gdyż przekształceniu ulegają w ten sposób procesy odpowiedzialne za samą reprodukcję społeczeństwa, a …
Od możliwości do imperatywu: Historia rynku
Autorka pokazuje w swoim artykule, że historia kapitalistycznego rynku nierozerwalnie wiąże się z bezprecedensowym w historii użyciem siły i przemocy. Takie konsekwentne spojrzenie na rynek pozwala inaczej interpretować przejście z porządku feudalnego do kapitalistycznego. Autorka wskazuje, że nie było ono „wyzwoleniem” spod feudalnych okowów, ale przeciwnie – wiązało się z podporządkowaniem rynkowym imperatywom produkcji kapitalistycznej, które …
The Uses and Abuses of 'Civil Society'
The modem concept of 'civil society', its association with the specific property relations of capitalism, is a variation on an old theme. The very particular modem conception of 'civil society' is something quite distinct from earlier notions of 'society'. The concept of 'civil society' is being mobilized to serve many varied purposes that it is impossible to isolate a single school of thought associated with it; but some common dominant themes h…
Britain versus France: How Many Sonderwegs
The Ellen Meiksins Wood Reader
Capitalism The 'economic' and the 'political' in capitalism Class-power and state-power Feudalism and private property Capitalism as the privatisation of political power The localisation of class-struggle England vs. the dominant model of capitalism The bourgeois paradigm Begging the question Opportunity or imperative? The commercialisation-model Marx on the transition Towns and trade Agrarian capitalism Market-dependent producers A different kin…
The Ellen Meiksins Wood reader
Le Marxisme politique et ses débats
E. M. Wood, one of the main figures of political Marxism, is interviewed by Frédérick-Guillaume Dufour and Jonathan Martineau and discusses the different directions of her work. The main questions she is asked concern : her relationship to Marx ; her specific approach to history and how it differs from other Marx-inspired types of analysis ; the situation of contemporary capitalism ; the dead ends of intellectual debates in recent years and the c…
A Reply to Critics
Ellen Wood replies here to the symposium on her book, Empire of Capital, by laying out her views on the specificity of capitalism and capitalist imperialism, the relation between global capital and territorial states, the problematic concepts of 'globalisation' and 'financialisation', and how our understanding of capitalism affects our conceptions of oppositional struggle
Logics of Power: A Conversation with David Harvey
Empire of Capital
Class, race, and capitalism
Users who downloaded this article also downloaded: Chris Rhomberg, (2005),Class, Race, and Urban Politics: the 1920s Ku Klux Klan Movement in the United States, Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 17 pp. 3-34 Richard Sennett, (2001),The legibility of class, Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 14 pp. 327-332 Gerardo Renique, (2001),Anti-Chinese racism, nationalism and state formation in postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920s–1930s, Political Powe…
Imperialismo do EUA: Hegemonia Econômica E Poder Militar
Antes da última guerra no Iraque, alguém que acusasse os Estados Unidos de imperialismo provavelmente se depararia com a objeção de que os EUA não ocupam territórios coloniais em nenhuma parte do mundo. Agora, diante da ocupação ostensiva do Iraque, de repente tudo parece ter mudado
New' Imperialism? On Globalisation and Nation States
O que é (anti)capitalismo
Os integrantes dos movimentos anticapitalistas são freqüentemente criticados por saberem apenas contra o que lutam e não a favor do que lutam. Acredito que o contrário seja verdade: a maioria sabe perfeitamente a favor do que luta - por exemplo, por justiça social, paz, democracia e um meio ambiente sustentável - mas tem menos claro contra o quê, especificamente, precisa lutar para alcançar esses objetivos. Mais precisamente, as pessoas nem sempr…
Infinite War
Landlords and Peasants, Masters and Slaves: Class Relations in Greek and Roman Antiquity
The Question of Market Dependence
Capitalism is a system of social-property relations in which survival and social reproduction are dependent on the market; a system that is, therefore, driven by the imperatives of competition and a relentless drive to improve the forces of production. This article explores the nature of that market dependence and the specific historical conditions in which it emerged. In debate with Robert Brenner's recent article in this journal (vol.1, no.2) a…
The Origin of Capitalism
As origens agrárias do capitalismo
Umas das concepções mais arraigadas da cultura ocidental é aquela que associa o capitalismo às cidades
Horizontal Relations: A Note on Brenner's Heresy
One fundamental assumption seems to underlie – explicitly or implicitly – every critique of Brenner I have seen: that there can be no such thing as a Marxist theory of competition, the ‘horizontal’ relation among many capitals, that does not presuppose the ‘vertical’ class relation between capital and living labour. To start (if not also to end) with the relation between capital and living labour is the only way to establish one's Marxist credent…
Round table on the future of the left
Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Information Revolution
From the Publisher: Are the new technologies of the information age reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential of democracy, and altering the course of history itself? Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies. Not a day goes by that we don't see a news clip, hear a radio report, or read an article herald…
Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism
Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that with the collapse of Communism the theoretical project of Marxism and its critique of capitalism is more timely and important than ever. Current intellectual fashions of the left which emphasise 'post-modern' fragmentation, 'difference', contingency and the 'politics of identity' can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subject the capitalist system to critique. In this book she sets out to renew th…
The Retreat from Class: For a New True Socialism
Modernity, postmodernity or capitalism
This article challenges the currently fashionable periodization of history since the eighteenth century into two major phases, 'modernity' and 'postmodernity'. Questioning the conception of 'modernity' itself, Wood emphasizes the specificity of capitalism in opposition to other aspects of modernity with which it is conventionally associated, and argues that if we are now witnessing an epochal shift, it is not a transition from 'modernity' to 'pos…
The Politics of Theory and the Concept of Class: E.P. Thompson and His Critics
E.P. Thompson has always worked from the premise that theory has implications for practice. The definition of class which begins his ground-breaking study, The Making of the English Working Class, with its emphasis on class as an active process and an historical relationship, was certainly formulated to vindicate class against social scientists and historians who deny its existence; but it was also intended to counter both intellectual traditions…
The Question of Market Dependence
Capitalism is a system of social-property relations in which survival and social reproduction are dependent on the market; a system that is, therefore, driven by the imperatives of competition and a relentless drive to improve the forces of production. This article explores the nature of that market dependence and the specific historical conditions in which it emerged. In debate with Robert Brenner's recent article in this journal (vol.1, no.2) a…
Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy
Logics of Power: A Conversation with David Harvey
The Origins of Capitalism
From Opportunity to Imperative: The History of the Market
Just about every definition of the "market" in the dictionary connotes an opportunity: as a concrete locale or institution, a market is a place where opportunities exist to buy and sell; as an abstraction, a market is the possibility of sale. Goods "find a market," and we say there is a market for a service or commodity when there is a demand for it, which means it can and will be sold. Markets are opened to those who want to sell. The market rep…
Landlords and Peasants, Masters and Slaves: Class Relations in Greek and Roman Antiquity
For a Zapatista Style Postmodernist Perspective; Marxism and Postmodernism: A Reply to Roger Burbach; On Hobsbawm's Pessimism: A Reply to Justin Rosenberg
The left is on the brink of collapse. It has very little influence in the arena of mass politics while fewer and fewer people are interested in Marxist journals, books, and intellectual discourses. In 1982 Michael Ryan, in a book written to find common ground between Marxism and postmodernism, noted that "millions have been killed because they were Marxists; no one will be obliged to die because s/he is a deconstructionist."This article can also …
Capitalism, Merchants and Bourgeois Revolution: Reflections on the Brenner Debate and its Sequel
The “Brenner Debate” launched by Past and Present in 1976 was about “agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe”. Robert Brenner's recent book, Merchants and Revolution , has opened a new front in the debate by introducing merchants and “commercial change” into the equation. Although the book's massive Postscript carefully situates Brenner's analysis of commercial development in the context of his earlier account o…
A Reply to Critics
Ellen Wood replies here to the symposium on her book, Empire of Capital, by laying out her views on the specificity of capitalism and capitalist imperialism, the relation between global capital and territorial states, the problematic concepts of 'globalisation' and 'financialisation', and how our understanding of capitalism affects our conceptions of oppositional struggle
The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism
One of the most well established conventions of Western culture is the association of capitalism with cities. Capitalism is supposed to have been born and bred in the city. But more than that, the implication is that any city—with its characteristic practices of trade and commerce—is by its very nature potentially capitalist from the start, and only extraneous obstacles have stood in the way of any urban civilization giving rise to capitalism. On…
Unhappy Families: Global Capitalism in a World of Nation-States
Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
Eras of Power: An Exchange; Class Compacts, the Welfare State, and Epochal Shifts: An Exchange; Reply
During the past few years a strong challenge has been mounted in the pages of Monthly Review to the argument—prevalent on the left as well as the right—that globalization and technological change have combined to bring us into a new era. Ellen Meiksins Wood captured the gist of the emerging MR position in an essay entitled "Modernity, Postmodernity, or Capitalism" in which she asserts that there has been no historic rupture, no epochal shift, to …
Back to Marx
Let me start with a provocative claim, which is contrary to all the conventional wisdom. The claim I want to make is that this historical moment, the one we're living in now, is the best not the worst, the most not the least appropriate moment to bring back Marx. I'll even claim that this is the moment when Marx should and can come fully into his own for the first time—not excluding the historical moment when he actually lived.This article can al…
Em defesa da História: O Marxismo E a Agenda Pós-Moderna
Durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial, Oswald Spengler escreveu seu famoso e detestável livro O declínio do Ocidente, anunciando O fim da civilização ocidental e de seus valores dominantes. Os vínculos e tradições que uniram a sociedade estavam se decompondo, enquanto os laços cotidianos de solidariedade se desagregavam, juntamente com a unidade de pensamento e cultura. Como qualquer outra civilização que tivesse vivido seu ciclo natural, o Ocidente …
O que é (anti)capitalismo
Os integrantes dos movimentos anticapitalistas são freqüentemente criticados por saberem apenas contra o que lutam e não a favor do que lutam. Acredito que o contrário seja verdade: a maioria sabe perfeitamente a favor do que luta - por exemplo, por justiça social, paz, democracia e um meio ambiente sustentável - mas tem menos claro contra o quê, especificamente, precisa lutar para alcançar esses objetivos. Mais precisamente, as pessoas nem sempr…
Horizontal Relations: A Note on Brenner's Heresy
One fundamental assumption seems to underlie – explicitly or implicitly – every critique of Brenner I have seen: that there can be no such thing as a Marxist theory of competition, the ‘horizontal’ relation among many capitals, that does not presuppose the ‘vertical’ class relation between capital and living labour. To start (if not also to end) with the relation between capital and living labour is the only way to establish one's Marxist credent…
Capitalism, Globalization, and Epochal Shifts: An Exchange
Ellen Meiksins Wood wants to know what is epochal about the shift in capitalism wrought by the new technologies (Monthly Review July/August 1996). Capitalism, she maintains, is still capitalism and is still bent on "extracting more value from labor"—only now, "the logic of the old mass production economy" can be "diversified and extended," reaching "whole new sectors" and affecting "types of workers more or less untouched before."This article can…
Labor, The State, and Class Struggle
After a long period of sustained attack by governments of various stripes, a steady deterioration of working and living standards, and declines in membership and militancy, there are encouraging signs that organized labor is moving again. This may come as a surprise to many, not least on the left, who have long since written off the labor movement as an oppositional force; and it may begin to challenge some of the most widespread assumptions abou…
Issues of Class and Culture: An Interview with Aijaz Ahmad
Question: In your book In Theory: Classes,Nations, Literatures you observe that American literary theory in the last two decades has been remarkably devoid of influences from the major work in Marxist political economy that has been done in the United States, not least by Monthly Review and its publishing house. Why is this significant? Why does literary theory need Marxist political economy
Modernity, Postmodernity, or Capitalism
Since about the early 1970s, we are supposed to have been living in a new historical epoch. That epoch has been described in various ways. Some accounts emphasize cultural changes ("postmodernism"), while others focus more on economic transformations, changes in production and marketing, or in corporate and financial organization ("late capitalism," "multinational capitalism," "post-Fordisrn," "flexible accumulation," and so on). These descriptio…
What is the Postmodern Agenda? An Introduction
During the First World War, Oswald Spengler wrote his famous and distasteful book, The Decline of the West, proclaiming that Western civilization and its dominant values were coming to an end. The bonds and traditions that had held society together were decomposing, the solidarities of life disintegrating, together with the unity of thought and culture. Like every other civilization which had gone through its natural cycle, he argued, the West ha…
Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism
Class ideology and ancient political theory: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in social context
Class Ideology & Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Social Context
Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Social Context
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Social Context. By E. M. Wood & N. Wood. (Oxford: Blackwell 1979. Pp. 288. Price £10.50) Stephen R. L. Clark Stephen R. L. Clark Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 30, Issue 120, July 1980, Pages 276–278, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219265 Published: 01 July 19…
Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Social Context
The Separation of the Economic and the Political in Capitalism
The intention of Marxism is to provide a theoretical foundation for interpreting the world in order to change it. This is not an empty slogan. It has—or ought to have—a very precise meaning. It means that Marxism seeks a particular kind of knowledge, one which is uniquely capable
The Politics of Theory and the Concept of Class: E.P. Thompson and His Critics
E.P. Thompson has always worked from the premise that theory has implications for practice. The definition of class which begins his ground-breaking study, The Making of the English Working Class, with its emphasis on class as an active process and an historical relationship, was certainly formulated to vindicate class against social scientists and historians who deny its existence; but it was also intended to counter both intellectual traditions…
Marxism and the Course of History
There was a time, not very long ago, when one of the most serious and frequent criticisms levelled against Marxism was that it subscribed to a mechanical and simplistic view of history according to which all societies were predestined to go through a single, inexorable sequence of stages
Beyond Class? A Reply to Chantal Mouffe
In her article, Working Class Hegemony and the Struggle for Socialism, Chantal Mouffe calls for a redefinition of the socialist project. The traditional Marxist argument that the working class must be the hegemonic force within any socialist movement should, she contends, be reexamined and discarded
The Retreat from Class: For a New True Socialism
Socrates and Democracy: A Reply to Gregory Vlastos
Capitalism and Human Emancipation
Let me say something, first, about Isaac Deutscher, not just in some ritual tribute for the occasion but because it seems appropriate to what I am going to say in my lecture and the spirit in which I intend to say it. I did not know Isaac Deutscher
Rational Choice Marxism: Is the Game Worth the Candle
Some time ago, in the pages of the New Left Review, a claim was made on behalf of ‘rational-choice Marxism’ as ‘a fully fledged paradigm, which deserves to take its place beside the two other constellations of theory currently discernible within the broad spectrum ofprogressive social thought—namely, post-structuralism
Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy
"Oligarchic "Democracy
For sheer bloody-minded greed and unscrupulous acquisitiveness, the Romans had no equal in the ancient world, and they would have had little to learn on that score from modern "possessive individualism." To someone who does not take the predatory impulses of contemporary capitalism and modern imperialism for granted as a universal law of nature—and maybe even for those who do—this insatiable rapacity is the most striking thing about the ancient R…
Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy
Letters
Explaining Everything or Nothing
Alan Carling accuses me of ‘everythingism’—that is, of believing that ‘you need a complete explanation of something before you can have any explanation of something.’ Do I really? I thought I was stating a rather more modest requirement, namely that a ‘paradigm’ like rcm, which claims to
The pristine culture of capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States
Custom Against Capitalism
The appeal to history in the justification of capitalism has always required a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, we are obliged to accept that capitalist modernization thoroughly transformed the world to the unambiguous benefit of humanity. On the other hand, we must concede that in this
The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States
From Opportunity to Imperative: The History of the Market
Just about every definition of the "market" in the dictionary connotes an opportunity: as a concrete locale or institution, a market is a place where opportunities exist to buy and sell; as an abstraction, a market is the possibility of sale. Goods "find a market," and we say there is a market for a service or commodity when there is a demand for it, which means it can and will be sold. Markets are opened to those who want to sell. The market rep…
The separation of the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ in capitalism
The original intention of historical materialism was to provide a theoretical foundation for interpreting the world in order to change it. This was not an empty slogan. It had a very precise meaning. It meant that Marxism sought a particular kind of knowledge, uniquely capable of illuminating the principles of historical movement and, at least implicitly, the points at which political action could most effectively intervene. This is not to say th…
Rational Choice Marxism: Is the Game Worth the Candle?
Some time ago, in the pages of the New Left Review, a claim was made on behalf of ‘rational choice Marxism’ as ‘a fully fledged paradigm, which deserves to take its place beside the two other constellations of theory currently discernible within the broad spectrum of progressive social thought — namely, post-structuralism and critical theory’ (see above, pp. 61–2). More than that: ‘it is now only within the rational choice context that some of th…
Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism
Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that with the collapse of Communism the theoretical project of Marxism and its critique of capitalism is more timely and important than ever. Current intellectual fashions of the left which emphasise 'post-modern' fragmentation, 'difference', contingency and the 'politics of identity' can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subject the capitalist system to critique. In this book she sets out to renew th…
Political science (54 works) · Law (43 works) · Sociology (43 works) · Politics (36 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (32 works) · Capitalism (29 works) · History (28 works) · Philosophy (24 works) · Economics (23 works) · Epistemology (20 works)