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  1. Sep 2021
    1. On the other hand, land in England had for a long time been unusually concentrated, with big landlords holding an unusually large proportion of land. This concentrated landownership meant that English landlords were able to use their property in new and distinctive ways. What they lacked in “extra-economic” powers of surplus extraction they more than made up for by their increasing “economic” powers.

      England played a huge role in the rise of agrarian capitalism. Landlords in possession of large portions of land would rent it out to farmers/workers. They were paying for access to the means of production, reproduction, and labor. They themselves didn't own any of it. They were competing against each other to accumulate more produce in order to keep up with economic rents and maximize profits (market imperatives).

    2. Once we recognize just how distinctive these social relations and processes are, how different they are from other social forms which have dominated most of human history, it becomes clear that more is required to explain the emergence of this distinctive social form than the question-begging assumption that it has always existed in embryo, just needing to be liberated from unnatural constraints

      The author, Ellen Wood, defines pre-capitalist economies as one where the producers/workers own the means to production, reproduction, and labor while appropriators seized surplus from them to increase their own wealth. This social relation is not present in capitalism which is governed by market imperatives and the notion that everything is a commodity. This has lead Ellen to question whether capitalism has "always existed in the embryo", if it's intrinsic to us as human beings.