When I read Robert Brenner’s article, I rubbed my eyes in wonderment.footnote1 It was a long time since I had last looked at the debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism in which I participated along with Maurice Dobb and others some thirty years ago (recently re-issued in expanded form under the title The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, nlb 1976, cited in what follows from this edition). I certainly had no recollection whatever of having presented what Brenner calls a neo-Smithian account of the origins of capitalism (the growth of trade gives rise to increased division of labour, rising labour productivity, and a smooth transition to a self-generating process of capital expansion). Could it be that my memory had completely failed me, or was Brenner making it all up out of an apparently fertile imagination?