Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production

Book: Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. By Barry Hindess, Paul Q. Hirst. Routledge and K. Paul, 1975

Review at http://www.jstor.org/pss/656819

Contents

Introduction 1

• 1 Theoretical abstraction and concrete analysis 1
• 2 Can there be a general theory of modes of production? 5
• 3 The concept of mode of production 9

One Primitive communism, politics and the state 21

• 1 The concepts of necessary- and surplus-labour 23
• 2 Politics and the state 28
• 3 The primitive communist mode of production 41

Two The ancient mode of production 79

• 1 The concept of the ancient mode of production 82
• 2 Social conflict in the ancient world 91
• 3 Trade and commodity production in the ancient world 98

Three Slavery 109

• 1 The nature of slavery as an institution 109
• 2 Is slavery a form of political domination? 113
• 3 Is there a 'slave mode of production'? 125
• 4 The concept of the slave mode of production and the analysis of slave systems 148

Four The 'Asiatic' mode of production 178

• 1 Questions of method 178
• 2 The theory of rent 183
• 3 Is there a mode of production which corresponds to the tax/rent couple? 193
• 4 The 'stasis' of the Asiatic mode of production -- Asia has no history 201
• 5 Wittfogel and 'hydraulic' society 207

Five The feudal mode of production 221

• 1 Feudal rent and the feudal mode of production 221
• 2 The concept of feudal mode of production 233
• 3 The relations of production and the forces of production 242
• 4 Variant forms of the feudal mode of production 255

Six The transition from feudalism to capitalism 260

• 1 Balibar's conception of manufacture as a transitional mode of production 262
• 2 Teleological causality and material causality in the analysis of transition 271
• 3 The transition from feudalism to capitalism 287

Conclusion 308

• Concepts and history 308
• The object of history 309
• Althusser's proposal for a 'science of history' 313
• Concepts and the concrete