ABSTRACT
The five-stage theory has been so consistently applied to the “four modes of production” in the Preface that the theory has come to be regarded as Karl Marx’s own, and therefore unassailable. Capitalism is a certain stage in the development of property relations corresponding to a stage in the development of the forces of production. To investigate the historical process of capitalism’s emergence, Marx had to study the various modes of production that generated capitalism. Marx describes and sequences these modes of production in relation to their distance from pure capitalism in its ideal form, rather than limiting his study of them to the concrete forms or actual chronological sequence in which they appeared in history. To reveal the laws governing the developmental process of precapitalist production and the social formations appropriate to it, Marx in the Grundrisse focused on the formation of modern private property.
