Liberalism, as an capitalist ideology birthed from a Western European context, can also not be universalized. But an additional detail is that by the time liberalism was formally developed as an ideology during the Enlightenment, Western Europe had already begun colonizing the world. So, liberalism isn’t just designed to reproduce capitalism with Western European characteristics but capitalism with Western European colonizing and imperializing characteristics.
I think multiple books I've read lately touch on this. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View discusses the origin of Capitalism specifically in the English countryside and how you can see the evolution in social relations reflected in the records of the evolving superstructure. As Wood points out, when you examine Agrarian Capitalist English land speculators and Feudal French land speculators in the same time period, they operate completely differently. The French speculator is trying to find or invent ancient land deeds and titles to allow the aristocracy to coerce more money out of the peasantry (because every mode of production before Capitalism has relied on increasing the ruler's coercive powers rather than systematically increasing production). The English speculator is examining the land on the basis of its cultivation (or lack thereof) and comparing it to the market in Southern England, to charge tenants the highest possible rates (due to Agrarian Capitalism separating people from the means of their own reproduction, and thus imposing the necessity to increase productivity in order to compete with other tenants).
This ideological preoccupation with land and cultivation is then immediately used as justification to steal land from everyone around the globe. "These savages aren't making some parasite like me a shitload of money by working every square inch of the land as efficiently as possible. Really we're doing them a favor by taking it away from them."
Agreed on all counts.
I think multiple books I've read lately touch on this. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View discusses the origin of Capitalism specifically in the English countryside and how you can see the evolution in social relations reflected in the records of the evolving superstructure. As Wood points out, when you examine Agrarian Capitalist English land speculators and Feudal French land speculators in the same time period, they operate completely differently. The French speculator is trying to find or invent ancient land deeds and titles to allow the aristocracy to coerce more money out of the peasantry (because every mode of production before Capitalism has relied on increasing the ruler's coercive powers rather than systematically increasing production). The English speculator is examining the land on the basis of its cultivation (or lack thereof) and comparing it to the market in Southern England, to charge tenants the highest possible rates (due to Agrarian Capitalism separating people from the means of their own reproduction, and thus imposing the necessity to increase productivity in order to compete with other tenants).
This ideological preoccupation with land and cultivation is then immediately used as justification to steal land from everyone around the globe. "These savages aren't making some parasite like me a shitload of money by working every square inch of the land as efficiently as possible. Really we're doing them a favor by taking it away from them."