ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author endeavours to tackle the issues on the basis of Marxist theory of modes of production. Marx describes the mode of production as the structural interconnectedness of a certain social system of class domination and exploitation. Ownership as an economic relationship is the control over the means of production in the sense of having the power to dispose of the surplus obtained. A common characteristic of pre-capitalist modes of production is the non-homology of economic ownership and possession of the means of production. The money-begetting slave mode of production is thus a production process bearing monetary form. The chapter focuses on the pre-capitalist financial schemes, which developed from the period of the Roman Empire up through the High Middle Ages, and examines the extent to which their historical evolution and transformation shaped them into adaptable bearers of capitalist relations of production and exploitation.
