ABSTRACT
The recent renewal of the seminal controversy of the 1950s on the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism' has so far provoked relatively little resonance from Marxist historians in Britain. The urban economy, trade and the circulation of commodities for him were not factors external to the feudal system, necessarily making for the transition to capitalism; they were on the contrary decisively determined and limited through it. For Wallerstein as for Brenner it is the uneven economic development of the societies of early modern Europe, which form the starting-point. Dobb's explanation of the origins of capitalism can only indirectly is traced to his analysis of the contradictions within the feudal system. In a characteristic way, however, his explanation mirrors his view of the limited growth potential of agrarian and craft-industrial production under the feudal system. Capitalism thus originates for Dobb as a genuine process of proto-capitalist development.
