ABSTRACT
We have no doubt that this book will appear to many people, historians and others, to be a contradictory enterprise. How can a book about pre-capitalist modes of production be abstract and antihistorical? Surely, the sole value of the concepts of the pre-capitalist modes of production is to serve as tools or research devices for the investigation of concrete historical societies? What purpose do these concepts have if they are not used as guides to historical research?
