THE WORLD SINCE 1492 Sites & Forms of Three Political-Economies
The Manor of Late Christendom	Plantations of the Americas in 17th 19th Centuries	Factories in Industrial Capitalism
(i) The work site (or site of production) is also a household (or domestic unit).	(i) The site of production (or work site) is also a domestic site.	(i) The site of production and household are physically separate.
(ii) The male head of household is the master. Laborers are family members and family members are laborers--economic and kin ties are not separate. Relations between masters and servants can be violent, but they are not economic, for there are reciprocal (if hierarchical and asymmetrical) ties. For example, peasants produce subsistence goods, while local lords of the manor provide security from raids as well as justice in the case of disputes. On the manor, there is not an economic rationality (of profit-maximization) behind decisions about employment: the master cannot layoff a family member when profits are down.	(ii) The owner may be absent (typical  for the Caribbean) or in residence (typical for the southern U.S.). Generally, an overseer and assistants violently enforce work discipline; most work is done by slaves.  Slaves live in separate "barracks" near the 'great house," and the residential buildings are surrounded by the work fields. There are no reciprocal ties between masters and slaves. The laborer (the enslaved human being) is commodity: decisions about him/her are characteristically made on an economic basis. (For example: which is cheaper, to provide extra food for low-productivity, pregnant women, and thereby low births, or to pay for the importation of new slaves?) By early 1700s, positions in system of production are raced--which is to say "class," as a rule, is fixed by race.	(ii) The owner may or may not be the manager and/or the foreman. Neither managers nor owners have a social or familial tie to workers. Labor time is a commodity: it is sold by the worker and bought by the company. Decisions about use of labor time are made on an economic basis.
(iii) On the manor, there is not an economic rationality behind decisions about 'what to produce?' What must be produced is determined largely by the  subsistence needs of households and the manor as a whole. Because it is basically a subsistence unit, the manor must produce a great variety of things.	(iii) The plantation produces commodities for the metropole. It is rarely self-sustaining. It generally produces a single, luxury crop (this is called monocrop agriculture). Examples of plantation products include sugar, tobacco and cotton. Life-sustaining (or subsistence) crops are produced only when costs of imported food and slaves are high.	(iii) The factory produces commodities, for domestic and foreign markets. It is not a self-sustaining unit.
(iv) Exchanges within the manor are in kind, rather than in money. There is no wage. Taxes too are in-kind, so the lords do not accumulate wealth in a form that allows for much involvement in long distance trade.	(iv) The most important exchanges in the plantation system are for money: money is paid for the enslaved humans (though not to them), and money is paid for the products they make. On the plantation, we find a careful accounting of costs and benefits. (Note that there can be no such accounting without a common quantitative measure of all goods and services, that is without money.	(iv) Almost all transactions are for money.