Surplus approach, Historical Materialism, and precapitalist economies: Some open questions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13133/2037-3643/18998Keywords:
surplus approach, Historical Materialism, mode of production, anthropology, archaeology, agencyAbstract
In the classical economists’ surplus approach retrieved by Sraffa (1951; 1960) and Garegnani ([1960] 2024), institutions regulate the material basis of society and, in particular, the extraction and distribution of the social surplus. In this regard, classical theory provides a material anchor, alternative to neoclassical New Institutional Economics, to anthropological, archaeological and historical studies of precapitalist economies. Expunged of any teleological meaning, Marx’s Historical Materialism (HM) is a natural source of inspiration for this interdisciplinary perspective. The nature and dynamics of Marx’s notion of modes of production (MOP) are not, however, firmly defined and have been the object of over-complicated doctrinal disputes among Marxists. Since I am unable to provide a comprehensive overview of these debates, I will limit myself to a few aspects that seem to me to be most central or that best convey the issue. The question of MOP dynamics is the most relevant and complex. All in all, the most mature Marx leaves us a very flexible reading of HM as a method of connecting economic, social, and institutional history that can be broadly shared by non-Marxists.
References
Althusser L. (1969), For Marx, London: Allen Lan.
Althusser L. and Balibar E. (1970), Reading Capital, London: New Left Books.
Anderson P. (1974), Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, London: New Left Books.
Anderson P. (1980), Arguments within English Marxism, London: New Left Books/Verso.
Banaji J. (2010), Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation, Leiden: Brill.
Bellino E. (2015), “Sraffa’s price equations in light of Garegnani and Pasinetti: The ‘core’ of Surplus Theories and the ‘Natural’ Relations of an Economic System”, Papers in Political Economy, 69, pp. 15-44.
Bernstein H. (2013), “Historical Materialism and Agrarian History”, Journal of Agrarian Change, 13(2), pp. 310-329.
Binford L.R. (1962), “Archaeology as Anthropology”, American Antiquity. 28(2), pp. 217-225
Brass T. (2012), “Jairus Banaji’s Mode of Production: Eviscerating Marxism, Essentialising Capitalism”, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 42(4), pp. 707-716.
Brenner R. (1977), “The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism”, New Left Review, 104 (July-August), pp. 25-92.
Brenner R. (1978), “Dobb on the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2(2), pp. 121-140.
Burns T. (2022), Marxism and the Concept of a Social Formation: An Immanent Critique of the Views of Jairus Banaji”, Science & Society, 86(1), pp. 38-65.
Campling L. (2013), “Debating Modes of Production and Forms of Exploitation: Introduction to the Symposium on Jairus Banaji’s Theory as History”, Historical Materialism, 21(4), pp. 3-10.
Carneiro R.L. (1988), “The Circumscription Theory – Challenge and Response”, American Behavioral Scientist, 31(4), pp. 497-511.
Cesaratto S. (2007), “The Classical ‘Surplus’ Approach and the Theory of the Welfare State and Public Pensions”, in Chiodi G. and Ditta L. (eds.), Sraffa or An Alternative Economics (pp. 93-113), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cesaratto S. (2023a), “Preliminary Notes on the Economic Analysis of the Graeco-Roman Economies in a Surplus Approach Perspective”, Quaderni DEPS, no. 897, Siena: Dipartimento di Economia Politica e Statistica, University of Siena. Available online.
Cesaratto S. (2023b), “Preliminary Notes on the Marxist Debates on ‘Historical Forms of Social Production’ in a Surplus Approach Perspective”, Quaderni DEPS, no. 898, Siena: Dipartimento di Economia Politica e Statistica, University of Siena. Available online.
Cesaratto S. (2024a), “Surplus approach and institutions: where Sraffa meets Polanyi”, Journal of Economic Issues, 58(3), pp. 989-1011.
Cesaratto S. (2024b), “Three approaches to institutions in economic analysis: Polanyi, North and the surplus approach’s third way”, Economia Politica, 41, pp. 267-293.
Cesaratto S. (2024c), “Agency, functionalism, and all that. A Sraffian view”, Journal of Philosophical Economics, 17 (annual issue), pp. 48-84.
Cesaratto S. (2024d), “Morality and Alternative Economic Theories in Ancient History Studies”, art. bzaf003, published 22 June, doi.org/10.1093/cpe/bzaf003.
Cesaratto S. and Di Bucchianico S. (2021a), “The Surplus Approach, Polanyi and Institutions in Economic Anthropology and Archaeology”, Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 55(1), pp. 185-216 (special issue “Marshall Sahlins’s Stone Age Economics, a Semicentenary Estimate”).
Cesaratto S. and Di Bucchianico S. (2021b), “The Surplus Approach, Institutions, and Economic Formations”, Contributions to Political Economy, 40(1), pp. 26-52.
Childe V.G. (1942), What Happened in History, London: Pelican Book.
Cohen G.A. ([1978] 2000), Karl Marx’s Theory of History. A Defence, expanded edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Costello S.K. (2016a), “What is Processual Archaeology?”, in Shafer-Elliott C. (ed.), The Five-Minute Archaeologist (pp. 147-150), Sheffield: Equinox Publishing. Available online.
Costello S.K. (2016b), “What is Post-Processual Archaeology?”, in Shafer-Elliott C. (ed.), The Five-Minute Archaeologist (pp. 151-153), Sheffield: Equinox Publishing. Available online.
Crawford M. ([1970] 1982), “Money and Exchange in the Roman World”, Journal of Roman Studies, 60, pp. 40-48.
Dawkins R. (1989), The Selfish gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Ste. Croix G.E.M. (1981), The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests, London: Duckworth.
Dorman P. (1991), “Marxism, Methodological Individualism and the New Institutional Economics: Further Considerations”, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 147(2), pp. 364-374.
Earle T.K. and Preucel R.W. (1987), “Processual Archaeology and the Radical Critique” (with comments and reply), Current Anthropology, 28(4), pp. 501-538.
Elster J. (1982), “Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory: The Case for Methodological Individualism”, Theory and Society, 11(4), pp. 453-482.
Elster J. (1985), Making Sense of Marx, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Engels F. ([1878] 1947), Anti-Dühring. Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, Moscow, Progress Publishers (originally published Leipzig 1878); quotations from the PDF available online (last access 23 June 2025).
Engels F. ([1886] 1946), Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Moscow, Progress Publishers; quotations from the PDF available online (last access 23 June 2025).
Engels F. ([1890] 1972), Letter by Engels to J. Bloch, in Historical Materialism (Marx, Engels, Lenin), Moscow, Progress Publishers, pp. 294-296. Available online (last access 23 June 2025).
Finley M. (1973), The Ancient Economy, London: Chatto and Windus.
Frangipane M. (2018), “From a Subsistence Economy to the Production of Wealth in Ancient Formative Societies: A Political Economy Perspective”, Economia Politica, 35(3), pp. 677-689.
Garegnani P. ([1960] 2024), Il capitale nelle teorie della distribuzione, Milano: Giuffré; english translation in Garegnani P. (2024), Capital Theory, the Surplus Approach, and Effective Demand - An Alternative Framework for the Analysis of Value, Distribution and Output Levels, edited by R. Ciccone, Cham: Springer.
Garegnani P. (1984), “Value and Distribution in the Classical Economists and Marx”, Oxford Economic Papers, 36(2), pp. 291-325.
Garegnani P. (2018), “On the Labour Theory of Value in Marx and in the Marxist Tradition”, Review of Political Economy, 30(4), pp. 618-642.
Ginzburg A. (2016), “Sraffa and Social Analysis: Some Methodological Aspects”, Situations, 6, pp. 53-87 (original Italian version in Pivetti M. (ed.) (2000), Piero Sraffa: Contributi per una bibliografia intellettuale (pp. 109-141), Roma: Carocci).
Groot M. and Lentjes D. (2013), “Studying Subsistence and Surplus Production”, in Groot M., Lentjes D. and Zeiler J. (eds.), Barely Surviving or More Than Enough? The Environmental Archaeology of Subsistence, Specialisation and Surplus Food Production (pp. 7-27), Leiden, Sidestone.
Haldon J. (1993), The State and the Tributary Mode of Production, New York: Verso.
Heijdra B.J. and Lowenberg A.D. (1991), “Marxism, Methodological Individualism, and the New Institutional Economics: Reply to Peter Dorman”, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 147(2), pp. 375-378.
Heijdra B.J., Lowenberg A.D. and Mallick R.J. (1988), “Marxism, Methodological Individualism and the New Institutional Economics”, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 144(2), pp. 296-317.
Hindess B. and Hirst P.Q. (1975), Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, London: Routledge.
Hodder I. (1992), Theory and Practice in Archaeology, London: Routledge.
Hopkins K. (1980), “Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 B.C.–A.D. 400)”, Journal of Roman Studies, 70, pp. 101-125.
Hudson M. (2018), “Origins of Money and Interest: Palatial Credit, not Barter”, in Battilossi S., Cassis Y., Yago K. (eds.), Handbook of the History of Money and Currency (pp. 45-66), Berlin: Springer.
Knafo S. and Teschke, B. (2020), “Political Marxism and the Rules of Reproduction of Capitalism: A Historicist Critique”, Historical Materialism, 29(3), pp. 54-83.
Krul M. (2018), The New Institutionalist Economic History of Douglass C. North: A Critical Interpretation. Cham: Springer.
Le Donne A. (2022), “Economic Theory and Philosophical Anthropology: Marx, Gramsci, Sraffa and the Study of Human Nature”, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 29(6), pp. 1111-1124.
Liverani M. (2011), Antico Oriente. Storia, società, economia, Bari: Laterza, (english translation The Ancient Near East. History, Society and Economy, London: Routledge, 2014).
Lowenberg A.D. (1990), “Neoclassical Economics as a Theory of Politics and Institutions”, Cato Journal, 9(3), pp. 619-639.
Maffeo V. (2000), “Astrazioni generali e astrazioni determinate: alcune considerazioni sul metodo dell’economia politica”, in Pivetti M. (ed.), Piero Sraffa: Contributi per una bibliografia intellettuale (pp. 143-160), Roma: Carocci,.
Mandel E. ([1967] 1971), La formazione del pensiero economico di Karl Marx. Dal 1843 alla redazione del Capitale, Bari: Laterza (original edition Paris: Maspero, 1967).
Marx K. ([1847] 1955), The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, Progress Publishers (first published Paris and Brussels, 1847); quotations from the PDF available online (last access 23 June 2025).
Marx K. ([1852] 1937), The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Moscow, Progress Publishers; quotations from the PDF available online (last access 23 June 2025).
Marx K. ([1857-58] 1973), Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, New York: Penguin Books.
Marx K. ([1859] 1977), “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Moscow, Progress Publisher: quotations from the document available online (last access 23 June 2025).
Marx K. ([1867] 1974), Capital - A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, vol. I, London, Lawrence & Wishart.
Marx K. ([1894] 1974), Capital - A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production [Engels’ 1887 edition], Vol. III, London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Meek R.L. (1976), Social Science and the Ignoble Savage, London: Cambridge University Press.
Murray S.C. and Bernard S. (eds.) (2024), Models, Methods, and Morality. Assessing Modern Approaches to the Greco-Roman Economy, Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies, Cham: Springer.
Nakassis D., Parkinson W.A. and Galaty M.L. (2011), “Redistribution in Aegean Palatial Societies. Redistributive Economies from a Theoretical and Cross-Cultural Perspective”, American Journal of Archaeology, 115 (2), pp. 177-184.
North D.C. (1981), Structure and Change in Economic History, New York: W.W. Norton.
Ogilvie S. (2007), “‘Whatever is, is right’? Economic Institutions in Pre‐industrial Europe”, Economic History Review, 60, pp. 649-684.
Petri F. (2024), “What remains valid of the first chapter of Marx’s Capital”, Centro Sraffa Working Papers, no. 65, May, Roma: Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione “Piero Sraffa”. Available online.
Pinkusfeld C., Crespo E. and Mazat N. (2022), “A Critical Assessment of Conventional Marxist Models for Industrial Revolution and Some Proposals for a Demand Led Growth Alternative Approach”, UFRJ – Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, mimeo.
Polanyi K. (1957), “The Economy as an Instituted Process”, in Polanyi K., Arensberg C. and Pearson H. (eds), Trade and Market in the Early Empires (pp. 243-270), Glencoe (Illinois): The Free Press.
Popper K. ([1957] 1986), The Poverty of Historicism, London: ARK Paperbacks.
Rawls J. (1971), A Theory of Justice, Cambridge (MA): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Rioux S. (2013), “The Fiction of Economic Coercion: Political Marxism and the Separation of Theory and History”, Historical Materialism, 21(4), pp. 92-128.
Roncaglia A. (1991), “The Sraffian Schools”, Review of Political Economy, 3(2), pp. 187-219.
Rosenberg N. (1965), “Adam Smith on the Division of Labour: Two Views or One?”, Economica, 32(126), pp. 127-139.
Rosenswig R.M. (2012), “Materialism, Mode of Production, and a Millennium of Change in Southern Mexico”, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 19(1), pp. 1-48.
Rosenswig R.M. (2017), “The Tributary Mode of Production and Justifying Ideologies: Evaluating the Wolf-Trigger Hypothesis”, in Rosenswig R.M. and Cunningham J.J. (eds.), Modes of Production and Archaeology, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, pp. 148-167.
Rosenswig R.M. and Cunningham J.J. (2017), “Introducing Modes of Production and Archaeology”, in Rosenswig R.M. and Cunningham J.J. (eds.), Modes of Production and Archaeology (pp. 1-28), Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Runciman W.G. (2007), “Introduction”, in Wickham C. (ed.), Marxist History-writing for the Twenty-first Century (, pp. 1-14), Oxford: Oxford University Pres.
Saitta D.J. (1994), “Agency, Class, and Archaeological Interpretation”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 13(3), pp. 201-227.
Saitta D.J. (1995), “The Archaeology of V. Gordon Childe: Contemporary Perspectives”, American Antiquity, 60(3), pp. 556-557.
Sraffa P. (1951), Introduction, in Ricardo D., On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. I (edited by P. Sraffa, with the collaboration of M. Dobb), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sraffa P. (1960), Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stedman Jones G.S. (2007), “Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: A Theory of History or a Theory of Communism?”, in Wickham C. (ed.), Marxist History-writing for the Twenty-first Century (pp. 113-157), Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Sweezy P., Dobb M., Takahahsi H.K., Hilton R. and Hill C. (1963), The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism - A Symposium, New York: Science and Society (originally published Fore Publications, London, 1954). Available online.
Taccola S. (2020), Categorie marxiste e storiografia del mondo antico: “Critica” e “storia” in un dibattito italiano degli anni Settanta, Tesi di perfezionamento, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Academic year 2019-2020; published by Manifestolibri, Rome, 2022.
Tarrit F. (2006), “Brief History, Scope, and Peculiarities of ‘Analytical Marxism’”, Review of Radical Political Economics, 38(4), pp. 595-618.
Tarrit F. (2015), “G.A. Cohen and Marxism”, Analyse & Kritik, 37(1-2), pp. 71-96.
Taylor M. (1986), “Elster’s Marx”, Inquiry, 29(1-4), pp. 3-10,
Tedesco P. (2023), “Jairus Banaji’s Work Has Transformed Our Understanding of the Origins of Capitalism”, Jacobin, 13 July. Available online. (last access 23 June 2025).
Temin P. (2013) The Roman Market Economy, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Therborn G. (1976), Science, Class, and Society: On the Formation of Sociology and Historical Materialism, London: New Left Books.
Thompson E. (1978), The Poverty of Theory, London: Merlin Press.
Trigger B. (1993), “Marxism in Contemporary Western Archaeology”, in Schiffer M.B. (ed.), Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. V (pp. 159-200), Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Veneziani R. (2012), “Analytical Marxism, Journal of Economic Surveys”, 26, pp. 649-673.
Viglietti C. (2018), “Economy”, in Bettini M. and Short W.M. (eds), The World through Roman Eyes: Anthropological Approaches to Ancient Culture (pp. 216-248), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vlassopoulos K. (2015), “Recent Studies on Ancient Slavery”, Polifemo’s Recent Studies, 2, pp. 83-106.
Wickham C. (1984), “The Other Transition: from the Ancient World to Feudalism”, Past & Present, 103, pp. 3-36.
Wickham C. (1985), “The Uniqueness of the East”, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 12(2-3), pp. 166-196.
Wickham C. (2005), Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wickham C. (2007), “Memories of Underdevelopment: What has Marxism Done for Medieval history, and What can it still do?”, in Wickham C. (ed.), Marxist History-writing for the Twenty-first Century (pp. 32-48), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wickham C. (2008), “Productive Forces and the Economic Logic of the Feudal Mode of Production”, Historical Materialism, 16, pp. 3-22.
Wickham C. (2021), “How Did the Feudal Economy Work? The Economic Logic of Medioeval Societies”, Past and Present, 251(May), pp. 2-40.
Wilson D.S. and Gowdy J.M. (2015), “Human Ultrasociality and the Invisible Hand: Foundational Developments in Evolutionary Science Alter a Foundational Concept in Economics”, Journal of Bioeconomics, 17, pp. 37-52.
Wilson E.O. and Wilson D.S. (2008), “Evolution ‘for the Good of the Group’”, American Scientist, 96(5), pp. 380-389.
Wisman J.D. (2023), “Why Ideology Exists”, Journal of Economic Issues, 57(1), pp. 200-217.
Wolf E. ([1982] 2010), Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ylikoski P.K. (2017), “Methodological Individualism”, in McIntyre L. and Rosenberg A. (eds), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science (pp. 135-146), New, York: Routledge.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Sergio Cesaratto
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
