Sociologist: Some people argue that capital punishment for theft was an essential part of the labor discipline of British capitalism  Critics of such a view argue that more people were executed for theft in preindustrial England than were executed in England after industrialization
But such a criticism overlooks the fact that industrialization and capitalism are two very different social phenomena, and that the latter predated the former by several centuries
It is an attempt to undermine the criticism cited against the claim that capital punishment for theft was an essential part of the labor discipline of British capitalism.