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Mode of Production. The Final Horizon of Practice and Theory

Buy hardcover (Brill)
Published Nov 2025

Henry Heller and Peter Kulchyski

Authors: Henry Heller and Peter Kulchyski
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.

Biographical Note

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).

Readership

The book is accessible to a general audience, primarily geared toward undergraduate students, while also presenting theoretical and historical arguments that will appeal to postgraduate readers.

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