ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Venice remained a capitalist social formation until the very last days of her existence, despite the fact that her prominence in European economy and politics had been losing ground since the sixteenth century, as capitalist social relations spread throughout Western Europe and new economic and military powers emerged. From the late sixteenth century, as Venetian commercial supremacy was challenged by new competitors, a restructuring of the Venetian economy took place based on the rapid growth of the manufacturing and financial spheres. The main strategy of the Ottomans, up until the decline of their empire in the eighteenth century and after, was the expansion of its territory. With the new economic, military and political picture that was being shaped in Europe from the end of the fifteenth century, Venice and the other cities of the Italian peninsula lost ground to the European North. Crises are conjunctural suspensions of the conditions for unimpeded reproduction of aggregate social capital.
