The capitalist mode as an analytical problem

The central core of the Marxian political economy is a general theory of the development and functioning of the productive forces, a theory that serves as a lever for prying open the secrets of social structure, its class composition, its organizational forms. The theory must illumine, moreover, not just the particular social formation but also the general movement among social formations, including, of course, the rise of modern capitalism and its development under the pressure of definite forces or laws of motion, some of which may be operative within more than one social formation, some of which will be peculiar to particular formations, for instance, to capitalism itself.

Were we to come at our mode in strict chronological sequence, then, we would come to it by examining its emergence from its historical predecessor, in the case of capitalism, Western feudalism; and the transition from feudalism to capitalism is one of the subjects to which Marxian scholars have made signal contributions, not to mention Marx's own indispensable leads for inquiry into the phenomenon. Hic et nunc, however, we can pay only passing attention to this fascinating subject and offer only a quick summary statement of the movement from feudalism to capitalism in order to help us to locate (so to speak) the main feature of capitalism that must always excite the historian's imagination, the remarkable industrial accumulation that, succeeding the transition, excelled in the pace and scope of its development anything previously experienced.