Agony towards Capitalism from Below

Abstract

Up until now I have used the concepts of capitalism from above and capitalism from below without defining them clearly, but we have now reached the stage where they have to be explained carefully. Before reaching the capitalist stage, countries tend to experience what can loosely be called feudalism, and their capitalism will be of the ‘from above’ or ‘from below’ kind, depending on whether they have transformed from feudalism to capitalism, or whether their capitalism has grown out a situation where there is no feudalism. Prussia is the archetypal former case, and the United States the latter. The conspicuous exception is Britain. As explained earlier, Meiji Japan can be regarded as having been born from the transition from Tokugawa feudalism to the capitalism from above of the Meiji period.