ABSTRACT
This book is a work of Marxist theory. Its object is to investigate the various pre-capitalist modes of production briefly indicated in the works of Marx and Engels and to examine the conditions of the transition from one mode of production to another. The fundamental concepts used in these investigations - the concepts of mode of production, of necessary-labour and surplus-labour, of politics and the state, and so on - are derived from Capital and from other works of Marxist theory. The aim of the analysis is to raise the conceptualisation of these modes of production and of transition to a more rigorous level. For each of the modes of production discussed in the book we attempt either to construct a general concept of that mode of production or else to show that such a general concept cannot be produced. Some of our conclusions, for example, that there is no ‘Asiatic’ mode of production, that the feudal mode of production requires neither serfdom nor seignorial power, and that the transition between one mode of production and another must be conceived in a non-evolutionary form, will appear controversial to both Marxists and non-Marxists.
