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This paper discusses the significance of the concept of a social formation for historical materialism. It argues that the concept is wrongly thought to be associated uniquely with the writings of Louis Althusser and with structuralist Marxism. It can be found in the writings of Marx himself, as well as those of Lenin, and is central to an adequate understanding of classical Marxism. To illustrate its importance the paper shows how the concept may be used to shed new light on the debate around the transition from feudalism to capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En este texto, partimos de las definiciones del modo de producción capitalista y de formación social capitalista para discutir la esfera de la expropiación y la esfera de reproducción social. En esencia, ambas esferas se abordarán como constitutivas del capitalismo, y no como vestigios/supervivencias de otros modos de producción, aunque sea esa una realidad a contemplar al analizarse las formaciones sociales. Combinaremos teorías clásicas del capitalismo con enfoques centrados en la fase neoliberal del capitalismo, desarrollados en el campo de los estudios sobre el mundo del trabajo y en el campo de los estudios feministas. Se trata de presentar una reflexión respaldada por pesquisa bibliográfica, con el objetivo de delinear un esquema analítico para el análisis de las formaciones sociales capitalistas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is to investigate the intricate relationship between gender inequality and limited access to fundamental agricultural resources such as land, seeds, fertilizer, credit, technology, and training, along with the ultimate impact on rural women's empowerment. Gender disparities in access to the agricultural modes of production are recognizing as an essential impediment to rural women's empowerment in Pakistan. The cross-sectional survey was conducted in research. A multistage sampling technique was used to take the sample from this study. The total sample size was 180 respondents. Data was collected through an Interview schedule by using a questionnaire. The statistical tool for social sciences, SPSS, was used to analyze the data. The data indicate that more than half women in the Gujranwala district of Pakistan do not have access to agricultural modes of production. Policy interventions should be prioritized by giving women fair access to land, seed, fertilizer, financing, technology, and training, as well as fighting against discriminatory practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining digital labor platforms that connect customers with gig workers, we attempt to solve the puzzle concerning why these labor platforms, such as ride-hailing companies and food delivery companies, continue to suffer weak profitability even though they promise a more efficient way to mobilize and utilize the platform's labor force. Stylized facts on the profitability of the top ten global labor platforms and a descriptive analysis of their cost structures are presented. We further argue that the modes of production and competition inherent in digital labor platforms are critical to this profitability puzzle because they determine the upper limit of surplus value extraction in production and the heavy financial burden of profit generation for labor platforms. JEL Classification: P12, E24, D40 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: This interview discusses the expansion of the camel caravan trade between roughly the sixth and sixteenth centuries. Wheeled transportation—used in West Asia during the Roman and Sasanid periods—basically disappeared around 500 CE, when camel caravans took over the transport business. Since the domestication of camels in Southern Arabia, sometime between 4000 and 3000 bce, and its adaptation over centuries to carrying loads in the sparsely vegetated desert, the network of camel caravan activity gradually extended way beyond its original center. The caravan system increasingly expanded into many areas of West and Central Asia, North Africa, North India, North-West China, and, to some extent, even parts of “Islamicate” Europe (Andalusia and Sicily). Indeed, camel caravans became the most extensive network of overland transportation the world had seen before the rise of railroad transportation. Originality: In this interview, Richard W. Bulliet discusses how camel caravans replaced wheeled transport in the “Middle East” and how the caravan system restructured many facets of socio-economic and political life in the Arid Zone between approximately 500 and 1500 ce. Conclusion: The depth of this restructuring, he argues, can be compared to changes in the mode of production commonly observed by economic historians elsewhere, including those associated with the rise of mercantile capitalism

This article historicizes the political-historiographical reflection of Luis Vitale on the predominant feudal or capitalist economic regime in the Latin American social formation and, therefore, it addresses the question of the bourgeois-democratic or socialist character of the continental revolution. Based on specialized bibliography and a documentary corpus from his personal and party archive, the regional phenomenon and the links with Latin American intellectuals who contributed to the thesis of colonial and contemporary continental capitalism are highlighted. Within this framework, the contributions of socioeconomic historians and Marxist intellectuals from the current Latin American Trotskyist who intervened in those discussions and with whom he dialogued between the fifties and seventies are deepened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Economics & Political Sciences Academic Researches / Uluslararası Ekonomi ve Siyaset Bilimleri Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi is the property of Journal of Economics & Political Sciences Academic Researches and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper draws on Fredric Jameson’s triple model of cultural critique in order to unmask the political unconscious underlying John Milton’s Samson Agonistes. First, the play is treated as a work of fiction wherein the discrimination and oppression against political dissenters are symbolically resolved. Second, it is argued that the text exemplifies the playwright’s ideologeme of double tyranny, which he proposed to account for the predicament of the English people in the English Civil War. Third, the generic hybridity of Samson Agonistes is emblematic of the evolution of several modes of production (each including not just economic but cultural and scientific dimensions) and class struggle in the mid-seventeenth century. The analysis of the textual, social, and historical horizons of interpretation paved the way for decoding the latent repressed desires and sociohistorical conflicts that permeate Milton’s play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: This interview discusses the expansion of the camel caravan trade between roughly the sixth and sixteenth centuries. Wheeled transportation—used in West Asia during the Roman and Sasanid periods—basically disappeared around 500 CE, when camel caravans took over the transport business. Since the domestication of camels in Southern Arabia, sometime between 4000 and 3000 BCE, and its adaptation over centuries to carrying loads in the sparsely vegetated desert, the network of camel caravan activity gradually extended way beyond its original center. The caravan system increasingly expanded into many areas of West and Central Asia, North Africa, North India, North-West China, and, to some extent, even parts of “Islamicate” Europe (Andalusia and Sicily). Indeed, camel caravans became the most extensive network of overland transportation the world had seen before the rise of railroad transportation. Originality: In this interview, Richard W. Bulliet discusses how camel caravans replaced wheeled transport in the “Middle East” and how the caravan system restructured many facets of socio-economic and political life in the Arid Zone between approximately 500 and 1500 CE. Conclusion: The depth of this restructuring, he argues, can be compared to changes in the mode of production commonly observed by economic historians elsewhere, including those associated with the rise of mercantile capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Música, Artes Visuales y Artes Escénicas is the property of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of International Journal of Economics & Political Sciences Academic Researches / Uluslararası Ekonomi ve Siyaset Bilimleri Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi is the property of Journal of Economics & Political Sciences Academic Researches and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Alternative multimedia collectives in the Philippines advocate for social change on behalf of the marginalized sectors of society by producing, distributing, and exhibiting social advocacy cinema and other audiovisual productions. They creatively utilize film in various forms as a tool for social advocacy by adhering to the theory and praxis of alternative cinema that counters the dominant ideology, hegemony, and culture of mainstream media and commercial filmmaking. Anchored in the framework of small-scale, collective, and political filmmaking, this paper examines the mode of production of alternative multimedia collectives such as Kodao Productions, Tudla Productions, Mayday Multimedia, Film Weekly, Southern Tagalog Exposure, and The Breakaway Media, to name a few, that emerged and active between 2000 to 2019, or from Estrada to Duterte regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Soochow University Philosophy & Social Sciences Edition is the property of Soochow University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In previous decades, different Marxist intellectuals examined a common set of indicators and highlighted more or less the same characteristics of Philippine society but proposed very different ways of categorizing it. Since then, new data on these indicators have accumulated--much of it still largely overlooked. Using this evidence, I ask whether those attributes of Philippine society, which led various intellectuals to advance their categorizations have remained unchanged. I show that data on the indicators these scholars cited no longer indicate what they indicated in the past, prompting us to reevaluate the continuing validity of their proposed categorizations. In the closing section, I draw on recent contributions to suggest how we might begin to develop more updated ways of grasping the character of Philippine society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim to investigate the aesthetic dimensions of Marx’s theory through the lens of Ranciére’s conception of “the sensible”. To this aim, we begin with the generic idea of the production and the alienated senses in Marx’s early writings to see how his idea is linked with the idea of “distribution of the sensible”. Then, in the light of the idea of “re-distribution of the sensible”, try to explain the political and emancipatory potential of the body in Marx’s mature critique of political economy in Capital and the Grundrisse. The paper shows how reading Marx’s theory of the senses through Ranciére’s can help in unveiling the aesthetic nature of the “mode of production”, specifically, in understanding “the mode of production” as a relation between the economic forces and the senses which, in turn, can turn into other forces. In this paper, the word “aesthetic” is used in the specific sense of sensuous perception.

Copyright of Mülkiye Dergisi is the property of Mulkiye Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article develops a critical analysis of the work and thought of Moishe Postone. First, I highlight his main contributions to the understanding of the mode of production of capital, the way the categories of value and abstract labour shape the labour process, and the ongoing reconstitution of socially necessary labour time. Second, I expose his contradictory proposal to free workers from capital, while considering Cuban socialist experience in the agrarian sector as starting point for the critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lutas Sociais is the property of Nucleo de Estudos de Ideolgias e Lutas Sociais (NEILS) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Jairus Banaji associates the concept of a social formation (involving modal combination, or the articulation of modes of production) with "vulgar Marxism." This includes both the Marxism of the Second International and the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser. Banaji is critical of those Marxists who employ the concept because in his view they are insufficiently sensitive to the complexities of history. His reasons for thinking this may be subjected to an immanent critique. Such a critique attempts to show that, given an argument's starting assumptions, a different (perhaps even the opposite) conclusion from that which is drawn by its author is possible. Applying this idea to the work of Banaji, it can be demonstrated that his rejection of the concept of a social formation is not required by his own theoretical assumptions and that endorsement of the concept is consistent with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I reply to my interlocutors' questions concerning Le matérialisme politique de Louis Althusser. I address the debate about the continuity or discontinuity of Althusser's path by clarifying the ontological status of modes of production. I then situate the main figures of communism in Althusser's work with regards to the distinction between transition and revolution. Finally, I question whether the Althusserian attempt to revive historical materialism can contribute to a communist strategy without resorting to the construction of a new historical myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I analyse how Bruschi's Le matérialisme politique de Louis Althusser redefines the idea of revolution through the conceptualisation of the over- and under-determination of class struggle and a reconstruction of the Marxist topic around the fundamental concepts of the modes of production and the ideological State apparatuses. I then question the possibility of the strategy of communism to bypass the necessity to « mythologise » the course of history and the tension between the idea of a communism « already there » in the emancipatory actions of the masses and communism as a mode of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I show how Bruschi's Le matérialisme politique de Louis Althusser offers, against all attempts conjure up a self-generating general theory of history, a reconstruction of Althusser's work that shows how its systematicity relies upon the unfinished, incomplete and provisional character of scientific research, always subject to constant rectification. I then claim that, from the conceptualisation of the reproduction of the mode of production as dependent upon the singularity of the conjuncture, to the theorisation of the encounter as the source of historical necessity, this constant reworking is crucial to Althusser's ability to grasp the reality of class struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Actas de Diseño is the property of Facultad de Diseno y Comunicacion, Fundacion Universidad de Palermo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper argues that two single‐factor accounts of exploitation are inadequate and instead defends a two‐factor account. Purely distributive accounts of exploitation, which equate exploitation with unfair transaction, make exploitation pervasive and cannot deliver the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. Recent, non‐distributive alternatives, which make unfairness unnecessary for exploitation, largely avoid these problems, but their arguments for the non‐necessity of unfairness are unconvincing. This paper defends a two factor account according to which A exploits B iff A gains unfairly from B and either A believes that the gains he receives in the transaction wrong B, or A is culpably unaware that the gains he receives in the transaction wrong B. This account avoids the problems of non‐distributive approaches and also delivers the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article raises the question of the heuristic potential of the theory of socioeconomic formations. The author tries to challenge the opinion shared by many researchers that this theory was an exclusively ideological product aimed at justifying the political regime that prevailed in the USSR. Behind dogmatic template-like judgments the lively discussions aimed at elucidating the universal laws of social development were hidden. The results of these discussions do not lose their relevance today as many scientists are discussing again the prospects of a post-capitalist society. The theory of socioeconomic formations is aimed at finding relevant criteria for highlighting the historical stages of social development within the framework of a materialistic understanding of history. As such a criterion, the prevailing forms of ownership, historical types of technology, and the specifics of relations of production are proposed. At the same time, the article substantiates that each of these criteria had produced many problems. Thus, the traditional Eurocentric scheme for changing the prevailing forms of ownership was poorly coordinated with the social processes taking place in the East. The technical and technological criterion turned out to be extremely difficult in terms of identifying the qualitative stages of scientific and technological development. The emphasis on the specifics relations of production led to poorly consistent conclusions that there was a fundamental difference between Soviet socialism and Western industrial capitalism. The article attempts to discard obsolete dogmatic and ideological constructions from the theory of social formations. At the same time, it proposes using such a criterion for highlighting social formations as the prevailing sources of consumer values (natural processes, controlled natural processes, labor, and creativity). This criterion allows to connect qualitatively a quantitative technical and technological criterion with political and legal phenomena, such as prevailing forms of ownership, systems of relations of power, exploitation and exclusion, etc., into a single causal scheme. An attempt was made to redefine social formations (pre-class, class-class, class, personalist), based on the corresponding prevailing sources of consumer values. The conclusion is made that the historical forms of socialism and capitalism are different modifications of the class socioeconomic formation (based on labor as the predominant source of consumer values). The emergence of a personalistic socioeconomic formation based on creativity as the main source of consumer values is an extremely controversial process. This formation will have its internal logic and contradictions; therefore, the categories characterizing it should not be confused with the categories of a class socioeconomic formation that is gradually fading into the past.

Arocha's (2021) article provides readers with an insightful perspective on how we can understand human behavior based on the concrete individual with a final cause rather than on aggregate data. The concrete individual, however, is not concrete in itself, but dependent on the concrete meaning of a final cause. But the sources of a final cause cannot be addressed by Arocha's methods on their own. This makes Arocha's methods incomplete for the study of the concrete individual he suggests. We propose that this lack of completion results from Arocha's taken-for-granted concrete individual. The final cause is only concrete in specific historical relations shaped by a Marxist mode of production; the corresponding individual is therefore also only concrete in specific historical relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article briefly outlines the properties of Italian quality film (and partly media) celebrity, as compared to the Hollywood template. Italian quality film celebrity is rooted in a different mode of production, which relies less on market performance and much more on a set of mediators, bestowing quality on a limited number of performers. This mode of production consequently underlines characteristics other than the private lives and personality privileged in discourse across the Atlantic, and relieves actors and actresses of the burden of self-promotion. Accordingly, their presence within the social media arena is reduced, associated with few of them working across different media, and with their being mostly elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has long been a tension in Fredric Jameson's work regarding the extent to which it is possible or warranted to develop transhistorical categories for literary interpretation across of the whole of the capitalist mode of production. In my contribution to this symposium, I take up the problem of how Jameson's Allegory and Ideology participates in such questions in its consideration of periodisation and narrativisation through the particular construction of allegory, from the early modern age to our financial present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in Australian screen scholarship has been focused on expanding the limitations of our national cinema discourse. Terms like Deb Verhoeven's 'Industry 3' or Ben Goldsmith's 'outward-looking Australian cinema', and the discourse of 'transnationality' more generally, exemplify a contemporary tendency that seeks out new conceptual foundations from which to analyse Australian film as interrelated with international industrial contexts. US film historian Janet Staiger has proposed one potentially fruitful alternative conceptual schema. Staiger argues that the concept of 'film practices' offers a way to carry out the historiographical grouping of film texts without recourse to categories of nationality or transnationality. In this article, I examine the analytical possibilities of the film practice schema in the Australian context. I focus on the Australian production firm Kennedy Miller Mitchell, which I identify as operating within the contemporary classical Hollywood cinema practice. Scholars have previously encountered conceptual deficiencies in grouping the work of this firm under prevailing terms of national cinema discourse. I show how the application of the film practice schema can make better sense of Kennedy Miller Mitchell's place in the Australian and international screen industries, and I assess some of the advantages and disadvantages of this approach for future scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of PRAKSIS is the property of PRAKSIS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Hacettepe Law Review is the property of Hacettepe Law Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay analyses the concept of "historical process" formulated by Karl Marx in the work Formen, die der capitaleistischen Produktion vorhergehen. Marx emphasizes the way in which a real historical process can be revealed only when certain conditions arise which will be fully realized only in the capitalist mode of production. These conditions will lead to the emergence of the employee and modern individualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the primary socio-economic formations of premodern Japan were formed in the Bronze Age via processes of ancient globalisation across Eurasia. Multi-crop cereal agriculture combining rice, millet, wheat and barley with a minor contribution from domesticated animals spread from Bronze Age Korea to Japan at the beginning of the first millennium BC. This agricultural system gradually expanded through the archipelago while engendering new economic niches centred on trade, raiding and specialised fishing. From the fifth century AD the horse became widely used for warfare, transport and overseas trade. While alluvial rice farming provided staple finance for the early state, it is argued here that the concept of the ‘maritime mode of production’ better explains economic processes in the nonstate spaces of Japan until the early seventeenth century. Despite this diversity in socio-economic formations, the post-Bronze Age globalisation of food in Japan appears to have been delayed compared to many other regions of Eurasia and to have been less impacted by elite consumption. Further research is required to confirm this suggestion and the essay outlines several areas where archaeological research could contribute to debates over the ‘Great Divergence’ and the economic development of the modern world.

This article seeks to frame neoliberalism's relation to the welfare state. At issue are competing views regarding the size and organization of the welfare state. The article presents a new theoretical framework that distinguishes between modes of production and financing of the welfare estate. The framework helps understand both comparative country welfare states and the goals of the neoliberal attempt to refashion the welfare state. The article then explores the political economy strategy behind the neoliberal campaign. It argues neoliberalism seeks to politically discredit the traditional welfare state and change the economic structure so that the latter becomes unviable. Economists have been active agents in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that bush people deserve greater attention in revolutionary thought and action, both for the strategic value of their struggles against extraction at capital's periphery and the emancipatory social values they continue to embody. But bush struggles cannot be borrowed for other purposes: the agenda of bush people for respect and cultural survival must respected in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay examines the complex relationship between methodology and historiographic research in Marx's works. In particular, fundamental texts such as the Introduction to the Critique of political economy were considered and, especially, the Grundrisse; in the latter, particular attention was paid to Formen, die der Kapitalistischen Vorhergehn. The authors attempt to reconstruct the deep bonds that link the theme of continuity / discontinuity typical of historical processes with another considerably important theme, that of the abstract-concrete opposition proper to methodological reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the transformation of "market socialism" into a New Socio-Economic Formation (NSEF) goes beyond a phenomenon located in China. It is about a new economy that the historical process is drawing in and out of the process of financialization, imperialist aggressiveness, the emergence / spreading of new productive and technological paradigms and the new and superior forms of planning being developed and executed in large in China. To this new economy - which develops in the wake of the transition process and change of the dominant mode of production (MP) - we call it the New Theory of Projection, inspired by the Economics of Projection developed by Ignacio Rangel in the late 1950s. of departure is the historical materialism of Marx and Engels plus any existing theoretical collection elaborated over time by the field of economic heterodoxy. This is a demand that history places on economists, since economic science itself changes and changes with the MP, which in turn is constantly changing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The validity and implication of the Asiatic mode of production [AMP] has become one of the most controversial issues in Marxist theory since Marx mentioned this concept. A huge space for understanding and misunderstanding is bequeathed by Marx's oeuvre because he never systematically elaborated on it in his published work. Based on a close reading of Marx's texts and their contemporary interpretations, this paper argues for the possibility of understanding the mode of production in terms of property relations by clarifying the two-fold character of property; demonstrating the validity of the AMP by decomposing historical modes of production into two dimensions; clarifying its implications and locating its historical geography by distinguishing it from other modes of production, pointing out its significance for anti-capitalism and anti-privatisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyze the Brazilian social formation, and for that, it is necessary to cover the mode of production category, based on Marxist thought, considering that the transition from feudalism to capitalism is a major topic for this school of thought. Our interest is to highlight slavery as a characteristic of the constitution of capitalism in Brazil, which impels us to study the consequences of this particularity, since slavery lasted for almost four hundred years, producing changes in the forms of production and accumulation of wealth. As the capitalist traits started giving their first signs, the elites guaranteed a complete abandonment of the black population in post-abolition, which had produced all wealth until then. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first of two articles that investigate Marx's method of successive abstractions, an approach that merges dialectical sensibilities with scientific procedures. This first article explains Marx's techniques of concept construction and use of constants and variables in his comparative analysis of modes of production. The second article applies the method of successive abstractions to a historical-materialist sociology of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews changes in knowledge and thinking about labour and employment issues in India, on the basis of the author's experience over the last 50 years. It examines six issues: employment deficits; the mode of production; labour institutions and labour market segmentation; wages; the quality of work; and poverty and inequality. In each case there is a brief overview of the history of research into and perceptions of these issues, followed by comments on some key outstanding questions today. The article then draws on the views of some leading participants in the Indian Society of Labour Economics to identify the highest priorities for research and policy in the coming years, concluding that the central issue is the quantity and quality of employment, and the social and economic processes that drive employment patterns, but that new approaches need to be developed if India's employment problems are to be adequately addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to review the use of "mode of production" and "social formation" in Karl Marx's work, taking into account the differences with the way these are now commonly used. It is discussed here, the ideas that associate mode of production with a theoretical-abstract object and social formation with an historical and concrete one. This interpretation usually restricts the use of "modes of production" to a correspondence between relations of production and productive forces, as the economic basis of society. Whereas, such vision understands economic-social formations as articulation of modes of production. Throughout the present article, this canonized reading will be contrasted with Marx's work, with the aim of revaluing his contributions on the 200th anniversary of his birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the long‐running debate on the transition from farm‐based livelihoods to capitalism in the context of labour migration. Tracing the historic evolution of modes of production in the peripheral Mithilanchal region of the Eastern Gangetic Plains, it notes how the economic processes which are today driving the peasantry into the labour force through migration are not directly connected to the process of capitalist accumulation in the diverse locales where labour is employed, as is somtimes implied in the research on classic situations of "accumulation by dispossession". The entry of the peasantry into the surplus labour pool is instead linked firstly, with a complex convergence of internal changes within a non‐capitalist feudal mode of production on an economic, cultural and political level, and secondly, with the stresses brought about in the wake of expanding capitalist markets. The paper notes however that migrant labour still generates substantial profits for capitalism with a sharing of surplus between the latter, and landlord‐money lenders. It argues that the relationship between modes of production in this context, is neither functional nor coincidental, and is linked instead with larger – at times opportunistic – class alliances which have evolved to fit the current political‐economic conjuncture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]