Sven Beckert

As I was finishing this book I checked the price of cotton: about 60-cents a pound. 60-cents! Then I looked up an advertisement for a new suit in a discount circular dropped on my front door: $150. I’m guessing at the most one pound of cotton made its way into that suit. After the cotton was picked, wound into thread, loomed into fabric, cut and sewn into that suit, all the profit along the way, so little was left for the cotton picker. Almost all of the work — including the picking — may be automated. Not the design, although with scale of production the cost of design is minimal. Much higher, I understand, are the subsidies which make Texas cotton the most sought-after in the world. I learned this from another work: “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy” by Pietra Rivoli. In this work we are taken back in time to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the conversion of manual labour to industrial production. I found this so instructive. How war capitalism shaped the spread of industrial production, and how the model of slave labour in one corner of the world drove manufacturers to alter the production globally. Not only was cotton produced in the American South profitable, it was fabulously profitable and corrosive to the societies it touched directly and indirectly. But slavery did not end with Appomattox. As we know, capital finds a way to find the weakest in society — and in societies that may not be our own — and harness them for markets: the rich Western markets, or the hungry markets for knock-off merch flowing through Italian ports and guided by organized crime into European and world markets (See Roberto Saviano’s great “Gomorrah: A Personal Journey Into The Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System.”) This book tells as much about how oligopolies of trade and trade policies favour capital first and labour last. And how England weaponized global trade.… (mere)

Сразу и не скажешь, почему именно хлопок решили выдвинуть на авансцену истории как осевой объект развития человека. Целый ряд товаров породил крупные рынки: сахар, резина, табак, индиго. Однако лишь хлопок имел две трудоемкие стадии производства: в поле и на фабрике. И лишь он создал промышленный пролетариат в Европе и огромные новые рынки для европейских производителей. Только он привел к подъему крупных предприятий и взрывному росту одновременно и рабского, и наемного труда. Хлопок дает ключ к пониманию и современного мира, и долгой истории глобализации. Сосредоточившись на одном товаре — хлопке, мы можем увидеть неочевидные на первый взгляд связи между людьми и местами. Эта биография одного продукта служит проводником в один из самых значимых вопросов истории: истории капитализма.… (mere)

The author tells the story of cotton cultivation and manufacturing through history as the market for cotton became a global network with massive impacts on people around the world. The significance of the cotton market was more profound than I had imagined and was much more globally connected as well. Sven Beckert tells the story of this interconnectivity by explaining what is happening in every corner of the world. When he does this within the same paragraph, the book can become confusing. The book is nevertheless very readable.

The book provides essential lessons for people interested in the history of capitalism, slavery, colonialism, business, and international trade.… (mere)