The “force of commerce,” capitalism, and the common good in early American history

• Main Author: Simon Middleton
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Société d'Etudes Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 2020-12-01
• Series: XVII-XVIII
• Subjects: commerce; capitalism; happiness; public good; Marx; Smith
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/1718/4666
• ISSN: 0291-3798; 2117-590X

The following reviews the debate regarding the connection between commerce, improvement, wealth creation, and public happiness from the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries through to the modern day. From the beginning, I argued, commentators were divided between optimists who celebrated the profitable and humanitarian possibilities of a commerce and civil society, and more critical voices which decried the self-interested at the heart of commerce which justified anti-social and dehumanizing processes from enclosure, colonization, exploitation of labor to the point of enslaving and trading in human subjects. By the 1840s these contrasting positions had generated a debate between advocates and critics of capitalism and its relationship to the public good. Given the contemporary and existential threats of climate emergency and the global pandemic this debate clearly remains vital, and the paper considers, briefly, recent historiography concerning the history of capitalism and early America, its relationship to Marx and his critique of classical political economy, and the extent to which it offers an effective challenge to capitalist ethics and their social effects. It finishes with a discussion of recent, critical work on Marx and proposes that renewing and reimagining our engagement with Smith and Marx might lead to new and productive research directions in the future.