Mode of Production: The Final Horizon of Practice and Theory

by Henry Heller, Peter Kulchyski

Overview

Mode of Production: The Final Horizon of Practice and Theory re-invigorates the Marxist concept ‘mode of production’ by showing how it continues to have a central place in understanding the broad sweep of human history, while also offering crucial resources to inform social justice activism today. Drawing on recent materialist theory and newer insights from historical and anthropological scholarship, the book discusses the three modes of production that existed, the conflicts between them, the importance of Indigenous struggles to socialism, and explicates a materialist contemporary cultural politics. The book offers a pathway for activism and theory through the wide range of contemporary hegemonies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789004745216
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	09/18/2025
Series:	Historical Materialism Book , #361
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Henry Heller is Professor of Early Modern and Modern History at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. His many publications include The Cold War and The New Imperialism: A Global History, 1945-2005 (Monthly Review Press, 2006) and The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism: The Ongoing Debate (Pluto Press, 2011).

Peter Kulchyski, Ph.D. (1988), is Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. His publications include Report of an Inquiry into an Injustice (UManitobaP, 2018), Aboriginal Rights are not Human Rights (ARP, 2014) and Like the Sound of a Drum (UManitobaP, 2005).

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

1 Concerning a Concept
 1 An Ancient Trail through the Forest of Thought
 2 Mode of Production in the History of Theory
 3 Mode of Production in the Contemporary Theoretical Moment
 4 Three Modes of Production: Prefatory Description
 5 Final Thoughts for a First Chapter
 6 Source Note

2 Capitalism
 1 The Capitalist Relation
 2 Origins and Primitive Accumulation
 3 Value
 4 The World Market
 5 Uneven Development
 6 Phases of Capitalism
 7 Merchant Capitalism
 8 State and Church
 9 Gender
 10 The Politics of Uneven Development
 11 Colonialism
 12 Resistance
 13 Revolution
 14 Industrial Revolution and Development of the Working Class
 15 Free Labour
 16 Monopoly Capitalism
 17 Revolution in Russia
 18 Actually Existing Socialism
 19 Fascism and War
 20 U.S. Hegemony and the Cold War
 21 Neoliberalism
 22 Source Note

3 The Tributary Mode of Production
 1 The Tributary Mode and Capitalism
 2 Neolithic Inheritances
 3 Asiatic Mode of Production
 4 The Other Transition
 5 The Mediaeval Period
 6 Late Mediaeval Crisis
 7 Early Modern Feudalism
 8 Slavery
 9 The State and the Tributary Mode
 10 The Tributary Mode: Critique
 11 Source Note

4 The Bush Mode of Production
 1 Introduction
 2 The Civilised/Savage Dichotomy
 3 Features of the Bush Mode of Production I: Egalitarianism
 4 Features of the Bush Mode of Production II: Communism
 5 Features of the Bush Mode of Production III: Nomadism
 6 Features of the Bush Mode of Production IV: Affluence
 7 Features of the Bush Mode of Production V: Expressive Culture and Spirituality
 8 The Global History of the Bush Mode of Production
 9 Bush History and Bush Culture: A Few Comments
 10 Conclusion
 11 Source Note

5 Mode of Production and Materialist Cultural Politics
 1 Introduction
 2 Spatial Logics I: Capitalism
 3 Spatial Logics II: Tributary
 4 Spatial Logics III: Bush
 5 Temporal Logics I: Capitalism
 6 Temporal Logic II: Tributary
 7 Temporal Logic III: Bush
 8 The Logic of Subjectivity across Three Modes of Production
 9 Ways of Knowing
 10 Conclusion
 11 Source Note

6 Mode of Production Now
 1 Capitalist Crises and Socialist Possibilities
 2 There Is No Outside?
 3 Totality and Totalisation
 4 Totalisation, Colonialism, and Mode of Production
 5 The Bifurcated Colonial Subject
 6 Totalization in the Capitalist World
 7 Identities and Modes of Production
 8 Ecology and the Anthropocene
 9 Egalitarianism and Effluence: The Socialism to Come
 10 Source Note

References
Index