Despite their many disagreements when it comes to the subject of capitalism, Marxist and market-liberal perspectives seem to agree about one thing: the economic structures of capitalist market society have made direct violence against the person not only superfluous, but economically counterproductive. Heide Gerstenberger's Market and Violence does not contest the thesis that there has been, in many places, a decline in the use of violence in the pursuit of profit. But it demolishes the assumption that this can be put down to the evolution of economic rationality.
By means of a deep engagement with the concrete historical reality of capitalist economies, Gerstenberger establishes that, wherever capitalism has been tamed, this has been achieved only by a combination of energetic social contestation and political intervention. First published in German in 2018, the present English-language edition makes a sweeping history of capitalist violence by one of the preeminent theorists of capitalist society working today available to a wider readership.
Winner of the 2023 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.
Publication date: December 12, 2023
Preliminary Observations to Market and Violence
1 On Direct Violence in Pitiless Conditions
2 Armed World Trade
Robbery and regulations
Overseas Trade Monopolies
Just Another Commodity
First Theoretical Remark: On Merchants and Capitalists
3 Historical Preconditions for Capitalist Accumulation in Metropolitan Capitalist Countries
Competition Set Free
The Pacification of Transport Routes
The Capital of Industrial Capitalism
The Liberation of Wage Labour from Coercive Political Power
Servitude, Slavery, Free and Unfree Wage Labour in the United States
Second Theoretical Remark: The Political Economy of Capitalist Labour
4 Appropriation Abroad
Forced Trade
Territorial Sovereignty
Fiscal Exploitation
Tributes, Poll Taxes and Labour Services
Limits to Taxation
Settlement and Expulsion
Excursus: Justifications
Practices of Settlement
Teaching a Lesson
Making Indigenous People into ‘Natives’
Third Theoretical Remark: Capitalist Colonial Rule
Labour under Coercive Colonial Power
Fourth Theoretical Remark: Colonial State Violence
5 The World at War
The Burdens of the ‘Great War’ on African Shoulders
The War of the Others
6 The Domestication of Industrial Capitalism in the Metropolitan Capitalist States
England
USA
France
Germany
Fifth Theoretical Remark: The Functioning of Domesticated Capitalism and Its Vulnerability
7 Domesticated Capitalism in Globalised Competition
Preconditions of Globalisation
Decisions
The Political End to the ‘Trente Glorieuses’
8 Market and Violence in Globalised Capitalism
Sixth Theoretical Remark: Unbounded Exploitation
Forced Sex Work
Basic Patterns of Labour Exploitation in Globalised Capitalism
The Boundless Exploitation of ‘Foreigners’
Seventh Theoretical Remark: States and Their Margins
Unbounded Exploitation ‘Offshore’
Unbounded ‘Inshore’ Exploitation in Non-metropolitan Capitalist Countries
Eighth Theoretical Remark: Class Analysis?
The Political Geography of Poison
Unbounding the World of Commodities
Commercialised Force of Arms
Physical Nature, Production and Violence
Ninth Theoretical Remark: PostColonial States as a Theoretical Challenge
On the New Political Economy of Violent Criminality
Tenth Theoretical Remark: Violent Criminality in Global Capitalism
Concluding Remarks on Market and Violence
Postscript
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
“Gerstenberger’s book is sure to become an influential and controversial point of reference in a good many contemporary debates, both empirical and theoretical, about capitalism and its history.”
—Peter Hallward, Radical Philosophy
“Market and Violence contributes voluminous empirical evidence to the claim that coercive labour relations are compatible with capitalism.”
—Stephen Campbell, Anthro Theory Commons
“Gerstenberger’s book delivers contemporary and historical evidence that Marx’s description of violence contained in 'primitive accumulation' is not a thing of the past, but [...] an essential element of our contemporary finance-driven capitalism.”
—Christian Lotz, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
