Revolution in the Development of Capitalism

Mark Gould’s Revolution in the Development of Capitalism: The Coming of the English Revolution offers a reinterpretation of seventeenth-century England by situating its upheavals within a rigorous sociological framework. Combining functional, structural, and developmental theory, Gould examines how the English social order—rooted in a stage of “manufacture” in both agriculture and industry, regulated by patrimonial politics, and infused with a rationalizing value orientation—generated the internal tensions that made revolution possible. Against the backdrop of abstract propositions designed to explain revolutionary dynamics across societies, Gould constructs a model of England as a “manufacturing social formation,” showing how its distinctive economic and political constraints created the conditions for rebellion. The book is thus at once a detailed analysis of a particular historical conjuncture and a contribution to a more general theory of revolutionary change.

The heart of the study is Gould’s account of the English Revolutions from 1640 to 1649. Through careful empirical analysis, he traces three substages of the conflict, demonstrating how they embodied the very variables predicted by his general theory of political disorder. He then places this historical moment in a broader stage-sequence model of social development, arguing that the seventeenth-century upheavals created political conditions that enabled the transition from manufacture to machine capitalism and the extraction of relative surplus value. Along the way, Gould engages with Marx, Weber, Parsons, and Piaget, critiques world-systems theory, and reflects on the methodological challenges of linking theory with historical sources. Ambitious in scope yet attentive to empirical detail, this book will appeal to sociologists, historians, and political theorists interested in how revolutions arise, how they transform societies, and how England’s upheavals reshaped the trajectory of modern capitalism.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.