The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States. (book reviews)

"Britain may even be the most thoroughly capitalist culture in Europe" (p. 19). This single sentence encapsulates the original, provocative, and often brilliant argument at the heart of Ellen Meiksins Wood's new book.

In advancing this claim, Meiksins Wood challenges a powerful and influential school of thought that portrays Britain as an incompletely capitalist society whose legacy of aristocratic agrarianism explains that nation's relative decline over the past century. The latter thesis has been developed most fully in Marxist quarters by Perry Anderson in a series of ...

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