Theory as History. Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation BRILL. Jairus Banaji LEIDEN BOSTON 2010 ''685'

Transcription

1 Theory as History Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation By Jairus Banaji ''685' BRILL LEIDEN BOSTON 2010

2 Contents Foreword Marcel van der Linden Acknowledgements xi xvii Chapter One Introduction: Themes in Historical Materialism Questions of theory A Marxist characterisation of'asiatic'regimes From the Asiatic to the tributary mode: Marx, Haldon and beyond Ruler and ruling class: configurations of the tributary mode ' Some general conclusions 41 Chapter Two Modes of Production in a Materialist Conception of History The retreat into historical formalism Produktionsweise as labour-process' and 'epoch of production' Levels of abstraction in historical materialism Wage-labour as abstract determination and determinate abstraction Serf-owning capital The defining role of the laws of motion The failure of abstraction in vulgar Marxism Reading history backwards Slavery and the world-market 'Slavery' The nascent world-market 71

3 viii Contents 2.6. Feudal production The estate Peculiarities of the 'second serfdom' Commodity-feudalism as the pure form Modes of production as objects of long duration Two brief conclusions Simple-commodity production: a 'determination of form' The peasant mode of production The simple-commodity producer as wage-slave 95 Chapter Three Historical Arguments for a 'Logic of Deployment' in 'Precapitalist' Agriculture Part I Part II Part III Ill Chapter Four Workers Before Capitalism 117 Chapter Five The Fictions of Free Labour: Contract, Coercion and so-called Unfree Labour Premises: the elusive reality of consent A Marxism of liberal mystifications? Forms of exploitation based on wage-labour 'Free contract' in Sartre's Critique Summary 153 Chapter Six Agrarian History and the Labour-Organisation of Byzantine Large Estates Introduction A historiography of abstractions Rural stratification: geouchountes, ktetores and ergatai The case for permanent labour Restructuring in the later empire The new estates The labour-organisation of sixth-century estates Conclusion 177

4 Contents ix Chapter Seven Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages: What Kind of Transition? (A Discussion of Chris Wickham's magnum opus) Introduction: Marxist uncertainties Background to the late empire Unresolved issues The reshaping of relations of production The legacy of the colonate Slavery and the post-roman labour-force _ The legacy of direct management What happened to the aristocracy? Final comments: Wickham and modes of production 210 Chapter Eight Aristocracies, Peasantries and the Framing of the Early Middle Ages Introduction Aristocracies The agrarian watershed of the seventh century Critique of Wickham The East: vulnerability 240 Chapter Nine Islam, the Mediterranean and the Rise of Capitalism Historiographies of capital Towards a Marxist theory of commercial capitalism From corporate capitalism to the earliest capitalist forms of association The Arab trade-empire From Genoa to Portugal Company-capitalism and the advance system Concluding note: merchant-capitalism and labour 273 Chapter Ten Capitalist Domination and the Small Peasantry: The Deccan Districts in the Late Nineteenth Century The'subordination of labour to capital' Commodity-expansion in the Deccan districts, Structure of capital in the Deccan 292

5 x Contents 'Interest' as surplus-value: increasing formal subsumption of labour into capital The big peasantry of the Deccan Peasant-differentiation The stage of evolution of capitalism in the nineteenth-century Deccan 324 Chapter Eleven Trajectories of Accumulation or 'Transitions' to Capitalism? 333 Chapter Twelve Modes of Production: A Synthesis Marxists and feudalism The tributary mode Periodising capitalism Articulation? 359 Publications of Jairus Banaji 361 References 365 General Index 393