Transition to capitalism, Epstein argues, should also be placed in the context of complex political, social and technological changes that led to the undermining of feudalism and development of capitalist forces of production. In the essay summarized here Epstein argues that the Dobb/Epstein framework is inadequate to analyze the temporal and spatial dimensions of capitalist transition in Western Europe. Hilton was enormously influential in pre-1968 Marxist debate in extending Maurice Dobb’s thesis that the ‘class struggle’ between the serfs/peasants and the feudal lords was the ‘prime mover’ in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. He was a founding member of the Historians’ Group of the British Communist Party, and the editor of Past and Present during 1942-68. Rodney Hilton’s name is synonymous with the ‘prime mover’ thesis. The reader may observe the theoretical differences and resonances with Terence Byres’ paper summarized in this broadsheet.

Epstein’s paper provides substantial insights into the historical complexity of the transition to capitalism in agriculture, and argues that the contradiction between the rate of development of productive forces in agriculture and the institutional constraints of the feudal political economy was the primary one leading to the capitalist transition. This is a summary of a paper by Stephan Epstein presented in 2006, which critiqued the Maurice Dobb/Rodney Hilton thesis that a class struggle between serfs/peasants and feudal lords led to the transition to capitalism.

Bond Men Made Free by R.H. Hilton