Origins of Capitalism 
Mintz, Sweetness and Power
Select a passage or passages and decide to what extent these selections describe significant characteristics of:
• commodities
• elements
• factors
Hacienda ••••••• wage peonage •••••••••• power
"The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation."
"It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."
KARL MARX, 1848
How was sugar the favored child of capitalism?
Key question to consider about capitalism.
Sources
• commodities -- commercial prducts, part of copmmodification or the transformation of relationships, formerly untainted by commerce, into commercial relationships, relationships of exchange, of buying and selling. From French commodieux or medieval Latin commodiosus, based on Latin commodus ‘convenient.’
• elements -- fundamental contributing quality, an essential characteristic, or a basic building block without which there is no structure or argument. From Latin elementum ‘principle, rudiment,’ translating Greek stoikheion ‘step, component part.’
• factors -- a contributing circumstance, circumstantial evidence, fact, or result that causes an outcome to be characterized by certain features or qualities. From the Latin word meaning "does," from fact- ‘done,’ late 15th cent.: from Latin factum, neuter past participle of facere ‘do.’ "
- a gene that determines a hereditary characteristic
- a business agent; a merchant buying and selling on commission
- a quantity that when multiplied with another produces a given number or expression.
Date: 21 February 2008
