In Studies on Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production British and Argentinian historians analyse the Asiatic, Germanic, peasant, slave, feudal, and tributary modes of production by exploring historical processes and diverse problems of Marxist theory. The emergence of feudal relations, the origin of the medieval craftsman, the functioning of the law of value and the conditions for historical change are some of the problems analysed. The studies treat an array of pre-capitalist social formations: Chris Wickham works on medieval Iceland and Norway, John Haldon on Byzantium, Carlos García Mac Gaw on the Roman Empire, Andrea Zingarelli on ancient Egypt, Carlos Astarita and Laura da Graca on medieval León and Castile, and Octavio Colombo on the Castilian later Middle Ages. Contributors include: Chris Wickham, John Haldon, Carlos Astarita, Carlos García Mac Gaw, Octavio Colombo, Laura da Graca, and Andrea Zingarelli.

First published in 1975, this book investigates the various pre-capitalist modes of production briefly indicated in the works of Marx and Engels, and gives an examination of the conditions of the transition from one mode of production to another. The fundamental concepts used in these investigations, including those of mode of production, of necessary labour and surpass labour, of politics and state, are derived from Capital and from other works of Marxist theory. The primary aim of the analysis is to raise the conceptualisation of pre-capitalist modes of production and of transition to a more rigorous level. This book will appear controversial to both Marxists and non-Marxists alike.

In Marx’s Experiments and Microscopes: Modes of Production, Religion, and the Method of Successive Abstractions, Paul B. Paolucci examines how Marx brought conventional scientific practice together with dialectical reason to produce his unique approach to sociological research. Though scholars often interpret his work through either a dialectical framework or as an aspirant scientific contender, less common are demonstrations of how Marx brought these two forms of inquiry together in ways as familiar to the conventional scientist as they are to the experienced Marxian scholar. The book elaborates on how Marx used a method successive abstractions in his study of modes of production as well as how to apply that method to studies in political economy and the sociology of religion.

In this groundbreaking critique of both traditional and Marxist notions of feudalism and of the pre-capitalist state, John Haldon considers the configuration of state and social relations in medieval Europe and Mughal India as well as in Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. He argues that a Marxist reading of the pre-capitalist state can take account of the autonomy of power relations and avoid economic reductionism while still focusing on the forms of tribute which sustained the ruling power. Haldon explores the conflicts to which these gave rise and shows the Ottoman state elite, often held to be a clear example of independence from underlying social relations, to be deeply enmeshed in economic relationships and the extraction of tribute. Haldon argues that feudalism was the specifically European form of a much more widely diffused tributary mode, whose characteristic social relations and structural constraints can be seen at work in the Byzantine, Ottoman and Mughal empires as well. While acknowledging the range of ideological and cultural variation within and between these examples of the tributary mode, Haldon denies the thesis that such “superstructural” variations themselves yielded fundamentally contrasting social relations.

This book examines why Marxist philosophy will continue to be a central point of reference well beyond postmodernism and the Anthropocene.

This is an excerpt, concentrating on Marxian economics, from the 4-volume dictionary of economics, a reference book which aims to define the subject of economics today. 1300 subject entries in the complete work cover the broad themes of economic theory.

What form does social inequality take without classes? How does the ecology of an area, in particular the Zaire basin, interact with social organization? What forms of production existed in different areas? What were the effects of mercantile capitalism on tribal production? These questions and more are tackled with a view to increasing our understanding of industrial development in precolonial Africa.