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Winner of the 2011 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.
The essays collected here straddle four decades of work in both historiography and Marxist theory, combining source-based historical work in a wide range of languages with sophisticated discussion of Marx's categories. Key themes include the distinctions that are crucial to restoring complexity to the Marxist notion of a 'mode of production'; the emergence of medieval relations of production; the origins of capitalism; the dichotomy between free and unfree labour; and essays in agrarian history that range widely from Byzantine Egypt to 19th-century colonialism. The essays demonstrate the importance of reintegrating theory with history and of bringing history back into historical materialism. An introductory chapter ties the collection together and shows how historical materialists can develop an alternative to Marx's 'Asiatic mode of production'.
The essays collected here straddle four decades of work in both historiography and Marxist theory, combining source-based historical work in a wide range of languages with sophisticated discussion of Marx's categories. Key themes include the distinctions that are crucial to restoring complexity to the Marxist notion of a 'mode of production'; the emergence of medieval relations of production; the origins of capitalism; the dichotomy between free and unfree labour; and essays in agrarian history that range widely from Byzantine Egypt to 19th-century colonialism. The essays demonstrate the importance of reintegrating theory with history and of bringing history back into historical materialism. An introductory chapter ties the collection together and shows how historical materialists can develop an alternative to Marx's 'Asiatic mode of production'.
Price: $174.00
Pages: 408
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Historical Materialism Book Series
Publication Date:
22 March 2010
ISBN: 9789004183681
Format: Hardcover
Winner of the 2011 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.
"Banaji’s seemingly idiosyncratic but in fact highly sophisticated and original approach to historical analysis provides, I think, not only a welcome stimulus and a challenge for scholars today, but also will give them plenty to think about for many years to come" – Marcel van der Linden
"Banaji’s Theory as History provides an incisive analysis of pre-capitalist modes of production, demonstrating that no aspect of human history is irrelevant to the present. [...] It is not the Marxist method that has been at fault, but the dominance of non-Marxist theory and method in the minds of Marxists. One final lesson therefore that Banaji may bring the reader is on the profundity of Marx’s observation that the thoughts of the ruling class are ruling thoughts. Banaji’s analysis is an immensely useful signpost on the road away from the dominance of those thoughts in our own minds." – Counterfire [www.counterfire.org]
"The great merit of this volume is that it establishes an approach for [the debates about the nature and origin of capitalism] that is deeply theoretical, but at the same time refreshingly unhampered by the kind of doctrinaire attachment to a perceived (and often misread) orthodoxy that plagued so much of “historical materialism” for the past century. It is scholarly, without being purely academic... Banaji’s book deserves to be read and debated as one of the starting points for a new wave of Marxist historiography, still in the process of liberating itself from the ghost of its formalist past." – Pepijn Brandon, International Socialism
"Banaji’s seemingly idiosyncratic but in fact highly sophisticated and original approach to historical analysis provides, I think, not only a welcome stimulus and a challenge for scholars today, but also will give them plenty to think about for many years to come" – Marcel van der Linden
"Banaji’s Theory as History provides an incisive analysis of pre-capitalist modes of production, demonstrating that no aspect of human history is irrelevant to the present. [...] It is not the Marxist method that has been at fault, but the dominance of non-Marxist theory and method in the minds of Marxists. One final lesson therefore that Banaji may bring the reader is on the profundity of Marx’s observation that the thoughts of the ruling class are ruling thoughts. Banaji’s analysis is an immensely useful signpost on the road away from the dominance of those thoughts in our own minds." – Counterfire [www.counterfire.org]
"The great merit of this volume is that it establishes an approach for [the debates about the nature and origin of capitalism] that is deeply theoretical, but at the same time refreshingly unhampered by the kind of doctrinaire attachment to a perceived (and often misread) orthodoxy that plagued so much of “historical materialism” for the past century. It is scholarly, without being purely academic... Banaji’s book deserves to be read and debated as one of the starting points for a new wave of Marxist historiography, still in the process of liberating itself from the ghost of its formalist past." – Pepijn Brandon, International Socialism
Jairus Banaji spent most of his academic life at Oxford. He has been a Research Associate in the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, for the past several years. He is the author of Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007).