Pre-capitalist Modes of Production

362 Pages·1975·56.24 MB·English

by  Barry Hindess and Paul Q. Hirst

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£3.75 net
ISBN 0 7100 8169 3. Printed in Great Britain. For copyright reasons
this book may not be sold, issued on loan, or otherwise disposed of,
except in its original paper cover.
Pre-capital i t m
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of p ! action
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Barry Hindess
Department of Sociology
University of Liverpool
Paul Q. Hirsh
Department of Politics and Sociology
Birkbeck CoHege, University of London
Routledge & Kevan Paul
London, Henley and Boston
First published in /975
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street
London WCIE 7DD
Broadway House, Newton Road
Henley-on-Thames
Oxon RG9 ZEN and
9 Park Street
Boston, Mass. 02108, USA
Reprinted and ffrst published
os o paperback in /977
S@tie /0 et aetétaeay
and printed in Great Brz|'f ai'n by
Redwood Burn Limited
Trowbridge and Fisher
© Barry Hindess, Paul Q. Hirst /975
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism
ISBN 0 7100 8/68 5 (C)
ISBN 0 7/00 8169 3 (P)
.I
Contents
Inr roducntm 1
1 Theoretical abstraction and concrete analysis I
2 Can there be a general theory of modes of
production? 5
3 The concept of mode of production 9
One Primfrive comrrzunism, politics and the slate 21
I The concepts of necessary- and surplus-labour 23
2 Politics and the state 28
3 The primitive communist mode of production 41
Two The ancient mode ofproducrion 79
I The concept of the ancient mode of production 82
2 Social conflict in the ancient world 91
3 Trade and commodity production in the ancient
world 98
Three Slavery 109
1 The nature of slavery as an institution 109
2 Is slavery a form of political domination? 113
3 Is there a 'slave mode of production 125
4 The concept of|'.' the slave mode of production and
the analysis of slave systems 148
Four The 'Asiatic' mode of production 1'78
1 Questions of method 178
2 The theory of rent 183
3 Is there a mode of production which corresponds
to the tax/rent couple? 193
vi Contents
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4 The 'stasis' of the Asiatic mode of production
Asia has no history 201
5 Wittfogel and 'hydraulic' society 207
Five The feudal mode ofproductfon 221
l Feudal rent and the feudal mode of production 221
2 The concept of feudal mode of production 233
3 The relations of production and the forces of
production 242
4 Variant forms of the feudal mode of production 255
Six The transition from feudalism to capitalism 260
1 Balibar's conception of manufacture as a
transitional mode of production 262
2 Teleological causality and material causality in
the analysis of transition 271
3 The transition from feudalism to capitalism 287
Conclusion 308
Concepts and history 308
The object of history I 309
Althusser's proposal for a 'science of history' 313
Concepts and the concrete 320
Notes 324
Bibliography 342
Index 349
Introduction
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 pro-
..-.
duction, of necessary-labour and surplusdahour, of politics and the
state, and so on are derived from Capital and from other works of
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Marxist theory. The aim of the analysis is to raise the conceptualisa-
tion 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 produc-
tion 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-evolu-
tionary form, will appear controversial to both Marxists and non-
Marxists.
1 Theoretical abstraction and concrete analysis
This book is a work of theory. Its approach is abstract and theoretical
and it is concerned to determine the theoretical status and validity of
certain specific concepts. There are two points here and it is essential
that they be clearly distinguished. To say that our approach is abstract
and theoretical is to say first that it consists in the application of the
concepts of a determinate problematic, that of the Marxist theory of
modes of production, to definite problems posed within it. All con-
cepts are abstract in a very specific sense: they are defined by the
place which they occupy and the function which they perform within
a determinate field of concepts, a problematic. Concepts are formed
and have their existence within knowledge. They are not reducible
to or derivable from any set of 'given', 'real' conditions. The concept
2 Introduction
of the feudal mode of production, for example, is not the product of a
generalisation from a specific set of historically 'given' feudal societies
nor is it a Weberian 'ideal~type', a construction based on the deliber-
ate and one-sided accentuation of certain 'real' conditions in accord-
ance with the idiosyncratic values and interests of the investigator.
On the contrary, the concept of the feudal, or any other, mode of
production is the product of theoretical work. Its theoretical status
and validity can be determined only within the Held of concepts which
specify the general definition of mode of production. It is a valid
concept if it is a possible mode of production, if it is constructed
according to the concepts of the Marxist theory of modes of produc-
tion.
It will be apparent from these remarks that we are completely
opposed to the theoretical empiricism which characterises the
academic social sciences and history. In these disciplines scientific
knowledge is alleged to be reducible to 'given' facts, either to the
'given' real conditions or to the 'given' experiences of human subjects.
Science, therefore, begins with the careful observation and collection
of facts: it ends with their correlation. Knowledge is a construction
based on empirically given elements and the empirically observed
correlations between them. One of the most influential methodologi-
cal orientations in the academic social sciences, for example, is
characterised by the deliberate use of observationally defined
empirical categories and the determination of relations between
categories by means of empirical research. This means that observed
'facts' are analysed according to more or less systematic sorting
procedures based essentially on John Stuart Mill's methods of agree-
ment and difference in order to determine empirically valid relation-
ships or causal laws. This positivistic and statistical empiricism has
been subjected to a brilliant and devastating critique by David and
Judith Willer in their book Sy.s'l'emaFilc Errrpiricfsm' Critique of a
Pseudo-Science.
Empiricism represents knowledge as constructed out of 'given'
elements, the elements of experience, the "facts" of history, etc.1
Unfortunately for these positions facts are never 'given' to knowledge.
They are always the product of definite practices, theoretical or
ideological, conducted under definite real conditions. To pretend
otherwise, to represent certain elements of knowledge as given in the
real, is to denegate the central role of scientific practice, of experi-
mentation and of explicit theoretical construction and argument, in
the production of scientific knowledge. Facts are never given, they
Introduction 3
are always produced. The facts of the sciences are products of scien-
tihc practices. In the academic social sciences and history and also,
it must be admitted, in the bulk of Marxist scholarship dealing with
pre-capitalist societies the situation is quite different. The latter tends
to be historical and descriptive in orientation and to treat the brief
indications of, say, feudal or slave production in the works of Marx
and Engels as more or less adequate descriptions of the structure of
particular historical societies? The theoretical problem of the validity
of the concept of a particular mode of production thus tends to be
reduced to the empiricist problem of the correspondence between the
concept and the "facts" of history. For example, the problem of the
validity of the conception of the 'Asiatic' mode of production tends
to be discussed in terms of the 'facts' of Indian or Chinese history.
The empiricism of the academic social sciences and of much
Marxist scholarship has serious theoretical effects. In so far as certain
facts are represented as 'given' in the real or as 'given' by history they
must fall below the level of theoretical determination: they cannot be
the product of an explicit theoretical practice. The ernpiricisrn of
these disciplines therefore ensures that these 't`acts' are ideological
constructs and that their "theories" are, at best, sophisticated theo-
retical ideology.
In contrast to the empiricist practice of theoretical ideologies, the
sciences proceed through the explicit theoretical construction of their
concepts and the theoretical definition of their objects. This book is a
work of' Marxist scientific theory. It must be judged in terms of that
theory, in terms of the field of concepts and forms of proof specific
to its problematic. We attempt to construct the concepts of certain
pre-capitalist modes of production and, in the case of the 'Asiatic'
mode of production, to prove that there can be no such concept
within the Marxist theory of modes of production. Our constructions
and our arguments are theoretical and they can only be evaluated in
-
theoretical terms in terms, that is to say, of their rigour and theo-
retical coherence. They cannot be refuted by any empiricist recourse
to the supposed 'facts' of history.
To say that our approach is abstract and theoretical, then, is to say
that we proceed by means of explicit theoretical argument and explicit
theoretical construction and that we work with theoretical forms of
proof and demonstration. All theoretical practice involves theoretical
abstraction: it is a process that takes place entirely within knowledge.
In this sense Lenin's investigations of a concrete social formation and
-
of specific concrete conjunctures in, say, The Development of
4 Introduction
Capitalism in Russia and The .Agrarian Programme of Social Demo-
cracy in the First Russian Revolution - are works of theoretical abstrac-
tion. They are no less theoretical and no less abstract than Marx's
Capital which investigates the concept of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction and uses particular social formations merely as the source of
illustrations. The Marxist analysis of a concrete situation is always a
work of theoretical abstraction.
There is, however, a second sense in which our approach is abstract.
It is the sense in which the abstraction of Capita! differs from that of
The Development of Cap ftal fsnz .in Russia. Both are works of theo-
retical abstraction but they have different theoretical. objects: one
investigates the concept of a particular mode of production and the
other investigates the conditions of a determinate concrete social
formation. Scientific practice involves both the construction and
investigation of abstract, general concepts and the investigation of
particular real conditions: the latter is always misrepresented in
empiricist conceptions of knowledge as the application of concepts
to particular "given" phenomena. In fact, as we have argued, nothing
is ever 'given' to knowledge. What empiricism represents as given is
always the product of a definite theoretical or ideological practice.
The abstract general concepts of Marxist theory - the concepts of
the various modes of production and of their conditions of existence,
the concept of social formation, and so on - are means for the produc-
tion of knowledge of concrete social formations and of concrete con-
junctures. It is these general concepts that provide the means for the
determination and theoretical definition of particular current situa-
tions and which determine the criteria of the construction and valida-
tion of the concept of particular social formations. The general
concept of, say, the capitalist mode of production is not confined in
its application to any particular social formation. It is not a descrip-
tion. of a particular structure of social relations but a means for the
analysis of social relations. Concrete conditions are not given' to
theory in order to validate or to refute its general concepts. On the
contrary, it is the general concepts that make possible the analysis of
the concrete.
This book is abstract and general, then, in the sense that its object
is to determine the theoretical status of certain abstract general con-
cepts within the Marxist theory of modes of production. It is abstract
in the sense that it makes no attempt to analyse particular concrete
social formations. If we do not investigate the specific conditions of
the class struggles of the present situation in, say, the societies of