Four Ways of Viewing Modernity: A Critical Reading of Ellen Meiksins Wood’s Origin of Capitalism

This article represents a critical reading of Ellen Meiksins Wood’s book The Origin of Capitalism. In the first part of the article, I present Wood’s thesis concerning the historical origin of capitalism and its political implications. In the second part of the article, I discuss Wood’s distinction between two types of modernity, a French democratic modernity and an English capitalist modernity, analyzing the limits of Wood’s critique of postmodernism and extending the debate concerning modernity in such a way as to include the Conservative critique of modernity articulated in the wake of the French Revolution. Finally, I discuss the relevance of Wood’s book for the key issues facing contemporary civilization, and the limits of her political project.