ABSTRACT
Larger working parties are in the main just so many ways the domestic mode of production realizes itself. In any event, there are indications of underproduction from many parts of the primitive world, and the first task of the essay is to give some sense of the evidence. This chapter provides a description of the principal aspects of the domestic mode of production (DMP), with a view fixed to the implications of this mode for the character of the economic performance. A preliminary understanding is that the three elements of the DMP so far identified—small labor force differentiated essentially by sex, simple technology, and finite production objectives—are systematically interrelated. On pain of engaging internal and external contradictions, revolution and war, or at least continuous sedition, the customary economic targets of the DMP have to be held within certain limits, these inferior to the overall capacity of the society, and wasteful particularly of the labor-power of more effective households.
