Capitalism has no necessary correspondence with any particular political or legal form

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

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects to Hall’s broader anti-reductionist Marxism and to debates on capitalist democracy; Lenin’s ‘best possible political shell’ quote is a classic economic-thought reference.
• DEFINE: Defines ‘laws of tendency’ as historically sedimented preferred combinations countermandable by counteracting tendencies, not a priori necessities.

Related

• Capitalism can arise on very different political foundations without a necessary correspondence (similarity 0.97)
• Capitalism correlates only tendentially with parliamentary democracy, never necessarily. (similarity 0.96)
• Capitalism has no necessary political form but tends toward parliamentary democracy (similarity 0.93)
• Capitalism has no necessary correspondence with parliamentary democracy (similarity 0.93)
• Capital is neither a pure theory nor a national history but something else. (similarity 0.78)