The beginnings of English political economy (1911)

Abstract

In 1911 Hilferding published in Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany edited by Karl Kautsky, an article titled “The Early Days of English Political Economy” in which he sought to clarify the genesis of theoretical political economy in England. Using the materialist method of analysis, he researched the history of the economic thought of the period in which capitalism developed in its rudimentary form of merchant capital. Thus, he constructed his arguments considering that mercantilist ideas could be explained by means of the historical conditions in which they arose. Hilferding concluded that the emergence of mercantilism, which coincides with the stage of primitive accumulation and the beginnings of capitalism, was at the same time the beginning of modern political economy. In this work we make available to the Spanish readers a translation Hilferding’s article. Furthermore, in the presentation
we review the influence of Karl Marx and Richard Jones on Hilferding’s article and offer a brief overview of mercantilist literature.