Capitalism can arise on very different political foundations without a necessary correspondence

Evidence

Other approaches recognize that there may well be “tendential combinations”: combinations which, while not prescribed in the fully determinist sense, are the “preferred” combinations, sedimented and solidified by real historical development over time. Thus, as is clear from, say, the Latin American case, there is no “necessary correspondence” between the development of a form of capitalism and the political forms of parliamentary democracy. Capitalism can arise on very different political foundations. Engels himself showed how capitalism can also harness and adapt very different legal systems to its functions. This does not prevent us from arguing that the advent of capitalism has frequently (tendentially) been accompanied by the formation of bourgeois parliamentary democratic regimes: or even from accepting Lenin’s percipient observation that parliamentary democracy provides “the ‘best possible’ political shell for capitalism.” We must, however, see these “combinations” as historically specific, rather than specified a priori: as “laws of tendency”—which can be countermanded by “counteracting tendencies.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 624

Categorization

• DEFINE: Hall clarifies ‘laws of tendency’ as historically sedimented combinations subject to counteracting tendencies, distinct from deterministic laws.