Burns-Capitalism, Modernity and The Nation State. A Critique of Hannes Lacher

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Capitalism, modernity and the nation state: A critique of Hannes Lacher

Tony Burns
Capital & Class 2010 34: 235
DOI: 10.1177/0309816810365522
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DOI: 10.1177/0309816810365522
A critique of http://c&c.sagepub.com
Hannes Lacher
Tony Burns
University of Nottingham, UK
Abstract
This article is a critique of the views of Hannes Lacher, and in particular those
expounded in his Beyond Globalization: Capitalism, Territoriality and the
International Relations of Modernity (2006), which was intended as a contribution
to the historical materialist approach to international relations. Three core issues
are addressed: namely (1) Lacher’s understanding of historical materialism; (2)
his understanding of the connection between capitalism and the nation state;
and (3) his view of the relationship between the capitalism and ‘modernity’. In
all three cases, I argue that Lacher’s views differ significantly from those of Marx
and Marxism.
Keywords
Marx, Marxism, political economy, IPE, international relations
Introduction
Hannes Lacher’s Beyond Globalization: Capitalism, Territoriality and the International
Relations of Modernity (2006) is a significant work, and one that raises a number of
important issues for students of Marxism who have an interest in questions of interna-
tional relations. Whilst reading it, my attitude throughout was ambivalent. On the one
hand, I found it immensely stimulating. It encourages the reader to think about certain
issues which, until taking up the book, she or he might not have thought about at all.
On the other hand, I found myself in fundamental disagreement with a number of the
book’s central theses. It is for that reason that I have decided to write a critique of it.
Doing so was an opportunity, for which I am grateful to Hannes Lacher, to clarify my
own thoughts about the issues he raises by engaging with what he says about them.
Corresponding author:
Tony Burns
Email: tony.burns@nottingham.ac.uk

236 Capital & Class 34(2)
Since my response is critical, I should say at the outset that this critique is in no way
intended to be a personal one. I have never met Hannes Lacher. Nor is it overtly politi-
cal. I am not a polemicist for any political party. It is intended primarily as an intellec-
tual critique; although I am of course aware that no criticism is entirely without political
implications.
Beyond Globalization examines the relationship that exists between historical materialism
and international relations, a proper understanding of each of which, in Lacher’s view, is
a necessary precondition for a proper understanding of the other. Indeed, Lacher considers
his book to be a contribution to the development of a ‘historical materialist theory of
international relations’, (pp. 109; x, 16, 22, 25) or to a ‘historical materialist theory of
IR/IPE’ (p. 14). More specifically, his book has three main themes. The first of these has
to do with the methodological approach one ought to employ when writing about history
generally, and about the history of international relations in particular. The second,
encapsulated in the book’s title, has to do with the relationship that exists between
capitalism and the nation state, or between capitalism and what Lacher refers to as
‘territoriality’. The third, also given in the book’s title, has to do with the relationship
between capitalism and ‘modernity’. I shall discuss these three themes in turn in
Sections 1–3. The final section of this paper, which discusses whether capitalism could
have existed in the ancient world, is an elaboration of the argument of Section 3.
1. Methodology: Marxism and historical materialism

So far as its methodology is concerned, Beyond Globalization has a great deal to say about
our understanding of historical materialism, of Marxism, and of the relationship between
the two. Until very recently, there was a consensus that, if they are not synonymous in
meaning, the terms ‘historical materialism’ and ‘Marxism’ are nevertheless very closely
related to one another. Given the conventional use of these expressions, it would have
been most unusual, throughout the greater part of the 20th century, to find someone who
claimed to be a Marxist but denied that s/he was a historical materialist. It would also have
been unusual to find someone who claimed to be a historical materialist but who never-
theless rejected Marxism. However, times are changing. Randall D. Germain, for example,
has argued recently that ‘if historical materialism (or “critical” political economy) is to take
seriously the question of subjectivity, then it must range wider and deeper than Marxist
historiography allows’ (Germain, 2007: 129). Germain insists that we should not ‘conflate
historical materialism with its Marxist variant’, because if we do, we run the risk of
‘obscuring or ignoring the many contributions of pre-, post- and non-Marxist historical
materialists’ (Germain, 2007: 129). It must be conceded, then, that at least some recent
commentators have sought to drive a wedge between historical materialism and Marxism,
and to develop a non-Marxist version of historical materialism.
At first sight, it is not clear to a reader who is unfamiliar with Lacher’s work whether
Lacher’s intention is to advocate a Marxist or a non-Marxist version of historical materi-
alism. It may well be that Lacher considers himself to be a Marxist. However, it is arguable
that what he actually offers his readers is a non-Marxist version of historical materialism
for students of international relations. In place of Marxism, Lacher proposes a ‘revised
historical materialist framework’ (p. x) or ‘historical materialist approach’, which can deal
with questions of international relations ‘in a non-economistic and non-reductionist

Burns 237
way’ (pp. 16; 22). Throughout, Lacher has a tendency to associate not just one form of
Marxism, but Marxism in general, with an approach to historical explanation that is
both reductionist and determinist. These are things Lacher himself rejects. Consequently,
he feels compelled to reject Marxism, as he understands it. At least, that is the impression
I had on reading his book.
It is, of course, a commonplace that in the history of Marxism there has been a debate
between those who have adopted a scientistic or deterministic reading of Marx and those
who are of a more humanistic persuasion. However, those on the left who have in the past
rejected determinism and reductionism have usually been both Marxists and historical
materialists. What they have not done is what I think Lacher attempts to do in his book,
which is to associate determinism and reductionism with Marxism; to associate the rejection
of determinism and reductionism with a revised form of historical materialism; and to
conclude that if we reject determinism and reductionism, then we must also reject Marxism,
whilst at the same time embracing this revised version of historical materialism.
Modes of production and social formations

One reason for thinking that Lacher’s proposed revision of historical materialism is incom-
patible with Marxism is Lacher’s repudiation of the concept of a mode of production—a
concept central to both Marxism and historical materialism, as these are traditionally
understood. At one point, Lacher claims that what is required today is a ‘fundamental revi-
sion of the Marxist model of historical development as a necessary and pre-determined
succession of stages leading by necessity to capitalism’ (p. 31). For Marxists, this claim is in
itself unexceptionable, although it might be argued that such a revision has already taken
place, and that the effort to provide such a revision has been central to the development of
Marxism since at least the 1920s. There have been and still are many non-determinist and
non-reductionist Marxists who would agree with Lacher’s views on this issue. However,
more questionably, Lacher also claims that such a theoretical revision must first ‘question
the base/superstructure model of social change’, and that, further, this in turn ‘necessitates
the reconsideration of the central Marxist concept of the ‘mode of production’ (pp. 31; 32,
77). It is clear from these remarks that Lacher’s proposed reconsideration of the value of the
notion of a mode of production for a revised historical materialism leads in effect to the
abandonment of this concept, together with ‘the “base/superstructure” model’ with which
it is traditionally associated. Lacher thinks, wrongly in my view, that it is only by rejecting
these theoretical categories entirely that it is possible for historical materialism to over-
come the ‘pitfalls of economic determinism’ (p. 59) and hence also, by implication, the
(alleged) pitfalls of Marxism.
As Lacher acknowledges, the methodology underpinning Beyond Globalization owes
a lot to the ‘political Marxism’ of Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood (pp. 16, 38,
43, 46, 60, 64–70). Lacher claims elsewhere that both Brenner and Meiksins Wood have
offered ‘conceptualizations’ of Marxism which have ‘overcome the base/superstructure
model’ (Lacher, 2002: 150). In fact, though, neither Brenner nor Meiksins Wood go as
far as does Lacher in assessing the explanatory value of the notion of a mode of production.
Brenner, for example, has praised the work of Maurice Dobb precisely because it emphasises
the importance of ‘the Marxist idea of the mode of production’. According to Brenner,
Dobb’s ‘central contribution’ in his Studies in the Development of Capitalism was that,
‘through developing the mode of production conception in relation to the long-run

trends of the European feudal economy’, Dobb was ‘able to lay bare its inherent develop-
mental tendencies or laws of motion’ (Brenner, 1978: 121).1 Similarly, Meiksins Wood
has stated that ‘to insist on the social constitution of the economy’ (as Lacher also does
in his book) is not to deny that the mode of production is the ‘most operative concept of
historical materialism’ (Meiksins Wood, 2000c: 25). It is arguable that it is precisely their
retention of the concept of a mode of production that allows both Brenner and Meiksins
Wood to claim that their approach to historical explanation is authentically Marxist. But
there is some doubt as to whether the same could be said of Lacher’s revised version of
historical materialism.
Lacher appears to think that anyone who employs the concept of a mode of produc-
tion when seeking to understand the historical events taking place in a particular society
at a particular time must be an economic determinist or a reductionist. However, it is
one thing to maintain, as does Lacher that the concept of a mode of production is not
sufficient for the understanding of historical events (which usually have a number of
causes, some of which are evidently not economic); but it is quite another to claim, as
Lacher also appears to do, that this concept is not necessary for the understanding of those
events. A non-reductionist but nevertheless Marxist version of historical materialism
would argue, against Lacher, that although employment of the concept of a mode of
production is not a sufficient condition for the development of an adequate approach to
historical explanation, it is at least a necessary one.
Not surprisingly, given his rejection of the notion of a mode of production, Lacher
does not employ the associated notion of a social formation. The concept of a social
formation is a useful one because it helps Marxists to better understand the dynamics
of historical development by supplementing, rather than replacing, the notion of a
mode of production. The point of using this concept is to get away from the idea that
a particular society is a homogeneous entity that contains just one mode of produc-
tion, and a simple class structure associated with it. A social formation, by definition,
contains more than one mode of production, and for this reason, has a complex class
structure. Thus, in a particular social formation at a particular time there can be no
such thing as the ruling class. Rather, the ‘ruling bloc’ in that social formation will
contain more than one superior class. Moreover, it will almost certainly be the case
that there will be conflicts of interest between these superior classes (e.g. in England
between manufacturing capital and finance capital), in addition to conflicts of inter-
est between the ruling bloc as a whole and the various subordinate classes in a given
social formation.
If we operate with the concept of a social formation, then it would be inaccurate to
talk, as Lacher does about the ‘Marxist notion of history’, by which presumably he means
the history of any particular social formation, as involving a ‘succession of “modes of
production”’ (p. 32). Or at least, it would be necessary to explain very carefully what that
is supposed to mean so as to avoid possible misunderstanding. When he makes this
remark, Lacher seems to be attributing to Marxism the following three views: (1) that a
particular social formation at a particular time has an economic system which is associ-
ated with just one mode of production; (2) that the same social formation at a later time,
or in a later historical epoch, possesses an economic system which is also associated with
just one mode of production, albeit a different one (for example, a capitalist rather than
a feudal one); and (3) that there is some historical necessity or inevitability about the

Burns 239
transition from one historical epoch to another which is to be associated with the internal
dynamics of the earlier of these two modes of production.
The notion of a social formation helps to avoid the assumption of economic deter-
minism/historical inevitabilism by helping historical materialism to better understand
what is meant by the important notion of relative autonomy. At one point, Lacher writes
that the ‘challenge for historical materialism is to develop a conceptual vocabulary that
allows us to combine in thought the very effective autonomy of the political and the
economic in capitalism’ (p. 38). Again, this is fair enough. However, Lacher appears to
think that it is possible for us to do this, and indeed that it is necessary for us to do this,
without employing either the category of a mode of production or that of a social formation.
For those historical materialists who are Marxists, each of these notions is necessary for a
proper understanding of the notion of relative autonomy.
One of the paradoxes of the methodological approach Lacher adopts in his book, and
which he recommends to his readers, is that although he objects to orthodox Marxism’s
understanding of Marx’s views on history, nevertheless, by driving a wedge between the
notions of Marxism and historical materialism as he does, Lacher ends up by inadvertently
reinforcing the authority of the very reading of Marx he wishes to criticize. From Lacher’s
point of view, if one wishes to adopt a non-reductionist and non-determinist historical
materialist approach to the study of international relations, then one has to reject not just
one particular reading of Marx, but Marx and Marxism altogether.
Consider what Lacher says about capitalism. In his view, although the concept of
capitalism is an important one for a revised historical materialism, it would nevertheless
be a mistake to think of capitalism in economic terms as being a mode of production.
Lacher says that capitalism is ‘best understood not as a distinctive type of economy that
determines social organisation at large, but as a societal disposition of power that gives
rise to, inter alia, an insulated “economic realm”’ (p. 35; also 76, 96). What Lacher seems
to have in mind here is that there is more to capitalism than the fact that it is an economic
system or a mode of production, and more to any capitalist society than the fact that the
social relations within it are dominated by that mode of production. Again, this is
unexceptionable. However, it is arguable that Lacher goes too far when developing this
line of reasoning. Rather than simply pointing out that there is more to a capitalist society
than the fact that it is associated with a particular mode of production (or that it is
‘capitalist’ in a purely economic sense), Lacher’s revised historical materialism maintains
that capitalism should not be associated with a particular mode of production at all. In
going so far, Lacher parts company with Marxism.
2. Capitalism and territoriality: Marxism and the nation state

The second theme of Beyond Globalization goes beyond questions of methodology and
moves directly to the core subject matter of the book, which is the study of international
relations from the point of view of a revised historical materialism. As is indicated by the
book’s title, the focus here is on the relationship that exists between capitalism and
‘territoriality’. When Lacher employs the concept of territoriality, what he has in mind is
the fact that from at least the mid-17th century (if not before) until very recently, the basic
unit of concern for theorists of international relations, especially those writing from the
standpoint of Marxism, has been the nation state. For Lacher, in the context of the history

of Western Europe, to explore the relationship between capitalism and territoriality is to

ask oneself what the connection is between the emergence and development of capitalism
and the emergence and development of the nation state—and hence, of a system of inter-
national relations that is based on the nation state. More specifically, it is to ask whether this
relationship is a necessary relationship (and therefore a causal relationship, in the non-
Humean sense in which Lacher understands the notion of causality), or whether it is a
contingent relationship (pp. 105, 101, 79, 61–62). In Lacher’s view, a great deal turns on
how we answer this question. For if the relationship is a contingent one, as Lacher himself
argues (pp. 59–60), then it follows that the occurrence of those two great historical events—
the emergence of capitalism and the emergence of the nation state in Western Europe—are
not causally connected at all as Marxists have, in his view, always supposed them to be.
Now, this question can be posed in different ways. For example, we might ask whether
the nation state could exist without capitalism. Or, turning the question around, we
might ask whether capitalism could exist without the nation state. If these two formulations
are posed in universalist terms, as Lacher himself poses them, then in his opinion the
answer to each of them is ‘yes’. Lacher argues that the answer to the first formulation is
‘yes’ because the absolutist state in France (and Europe more generally) in the 17th and
18th centuries were nation states which existed in societies that were not yet capitalist.
And the answer to the second formulation is also ‘yes’ because today, there is evidence
that the nation state is being transcended, while capitalism still remains and looks like it
will continue to remain for some time to come. It is for these reasons that Lacher maintains
that the connection between capitalism and the nation state is nothing like as strong as
some Marxists have in the past supposed it to be. That is to say, in his view, it is a con-
tingent and not a necessary connection.
So far as the first formulation of this question is concerned, Lacher asserts that ‘the
central argument’ of his book is that, setting England aside as an exceptional case
(pp. 70, 79, 92–3), in the rest of Western Europe ‘the exclusive territoriality of political
authority that prevails in capitalist modernity was not itself a product of the emergence
of capitalist social relations’ (pp. 119). Indeed, in a manner analogous to Weber’s critique
of Marx’s (alleged) view of the relationship that existed in the 16th century between
capitalism and Protestantism, Lacher argues that the reverse was in fact the case. In his
opinion, it was only in the 19th century that ‘capitalism was “transposed” from England
to continental Europe by a series of “revolutions from above” or “passive revolutions”’
(p. 93). Capitalism was, Lacher maintains, then ‘imposed on non-capitalist societies by
pre-capitalist “state classes” for geo-political purposes’ (p. 93). Lacher considers this to be
a reason for rejecting the traditional Marxist understanding of the relationship between
capitalism and territoriality and hence, also, the Marxist version of historical materialism.
For, as we have seen, in his opinion the Marxist view is that it is the emergence of capitalism
that was the cause and the emergence of the nation state that was the effect; whereas
according to Lacher, the evidence provided by the case of France and Western Europe
generally indicates that this view is mistaken. Indeed, according to Lacher, it is the very
opposite of the truth.
One possible response to this would be to argue that it was precisely because the French
absolutist state in, for example, the 18th century was locked into an international system
that brought it into conflict with England—a society coming increasingly to be dominated
by the capitalist mode of production, in one form or another—that it adopted policies that

Burns 241
assisted the development of capitalism within its own borders. In short, as far as the French
case is concerned, what Lacher considers to be the cause of the development of capitalism
‘at home’—namely, the activity of the French absolutist state—might itself, if viewed from
within a broader perspective, be thought of as being not a cause but an effect. It may be
considered to be one of the effects of the emergence and development of capitalism, not
in France, but elsewhere within a world ‘system’ with which France was inextricably
interlinked. More specifically, it might be thought of as being an effect of the develop-
ment of capitalism in England. Whatever its limitations in other areas might be (especially
its understanding of capitalism as a market phenomenon), this is one of the most impor-
tant insights of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory, something of which Lacher
is generally too dismissive (pp. 12–13, 52, 62, 68).
If we focus on the second formulation of this question—namely, ‘can capitalism exist
without the nation state?—and if we ask this question not in universalist terms, but
specifically in relation to a particular historical location and time period (say, Western
Europe from the 17th through to the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century),
then it is not so clear that Lacher is right to claim that it should be answered in the
affirmative. For at that particular stage in the history of Western Europe, it might be
suggested that there was then a close connection between the emergence and development
of capitalism and the activities of nation states. As Lacher himself concedes in a passage cited
above, it is arguable that capitalism could not then have come into existence in these societies
without the assistance of nation states, the policy of which was to promote the internal
development of capitalism for what Lacher refers to as ‘geo-political’ reasons.
Lacher maintains that from the time of Marx himself onwards, if they have thought
about it at all, Marxists have usually (if not always) misunderstood the relationship
between capitalism and territoriality. One reason for this is that they have made the
erroneous assumption, without providing any argument or evidence to support it, that
the connection between capitalism and the nation state is necessary rather than contingent.
Thus, for example, at one point Lacher cites a remark of Marx and Engels from The
German Ideology that transnational civil society ‘must assert itself in its external relations
as nationality, and internally must organize itself as State’ (p. 49). According to Lacher,
the question as to why ‘capitalist civil society must take political shape as a system of
national, territorial states’ is one that conspicuously ‘not answered’ or even addressed by
Marx and Engels, nor by later Marxists (p. 49).
Lacher suggests that this issue is a theoretical blind spot for Marx, and later for
Marxism. He maintains, for example, that even in the works of 20th-century Marxists
like Bukharin and Lenin, who with their theories of imperialism focused explicitly on
questions of international relations, ‘the depth of questions asked’ was ‘limited’ because
‘the nation-state as a social form’ was simply ‘taken as given’ (p. 51). Lacher claims that
neither Marx and Engels, nor these later Marxists, had any good reason for leaping as
they did to ‘the conclusion that political power needs to be organized by multiple and
competing centres of territorially organized sovereignty’ (p. 59). According to Lacher,
then, when Marxist theoreticians have speculated about international relations in the
past, the vast majority if not all of them ‘failed’ (p. 173) to even conceive of a capitalist
system of international relations within which the nation state might not be the primary
focus of attention. They have made the mistake of simply assuming a priori that there
could be no capitalism without the nation state. This is an assumption which is brought

into question by globalisation, which has raised the possibility of a new form of politics
generally, and a new form of international politics in particular, neither of which in
Lacher’s view is necessarily associated with the nation state.
There are two possible responses to this argument. The first of these is that, as the
recent history of Europe has demonstrated, although it is indeed wrong to assume that the
connection between capitalism and the nation state is a necessary one, in the universalist
sense of that term, nevertheless it is not surprising that Marxist theoreticians in the past
should have made this (alleged) ‘mistake’. For after all, at the time in which they were
writing, the nation state was in fact the dominant political form, both domestically and in
the sphere of international relations. Ironically, this is a point Lacher himself concedes
when he acknowledges that, given the historical circumstances within which they were
writing, the ‘failure’ (p. 173) by Marxists in the 19th and early 20th centuries to conceive
of any form of politics independently of the nation state was in fact ‘completely justifiable’
(p. 173). It might be suggested, however, that something that is justifiable, or the occur-
rence of which is understandable given the historical circumstances within which it took
place, could not properly speaking be said to be a ‘failure’ at all, and that the very notion
of a ‘justifiable failure’ in this context is a contradiction in terms.
The second response to Lacher’s argument is to reply that Lacher is wrong when he
suggests that Marxist theoreticians have in the past, somewhat thoughtlessly, simply
‘taken as given’ that in the modern era dominated by capitalism the nation state not only
is but also must be the basic unit of political activity generally and, in particular, the main
actor within the sphere of (capitalist) international relations.
Take, for example, the views expressed by Lenin, Bukharin and Kautsky in connection
with this issue in their polemic over Kautsky’s theory of ‘ultra-imperialism’ at the beginning
of the last century (Kautsky, 1970: 41–46). As Ernest Mandel notes (Mandel, 1975b:
332–333), Kautsky’s notion of ultra-imperialism is usually associated with the parallel
notions of a world state and of global governance. It is evident from his book that Lacher
has a great deal of sympathy for Kautsky’s ideas, and considers them to have consider-
able practical relevance for our understanding of capitalism today (pp. 14, 52, 57, 105–
06, 158, 162, 173). However, setting aside the respective merits of the arguments on
either side of this particular debate, it is obvious to anyone familiar with it that, contrary
to Lacher’s view, all of the contributors involved were able to conceive of a form of capitalist
politics not associated with the nation state. It would not, of course, have been possible
for Lenin and Bukharin to reject something, in this particular case Kautsky’s idea of
a world state, if they had had no conception of it, or if they had been blind to the
theoretical possibility that it might come into existence. But it follows from this that the
relationship between capitalism and the nation state could not be said to have been a
theoretical blind spot for Marxists at that time.
It is not true, then, that Marxist theoreticians in the early 20th century simply took
the existence of the nation state and the necessity of its relationship to capitalism for
granted, or ‘as a given,’ without ever seriously thinking or theorising about it. Kautsky did
not do this, and both Lenin and Bukharin argued against Kautsky’s idea of ultra-
imperialism, and of a world state associated with it, on empirical as well as theoretical
grounds. Their criticisms of Kautsky’s theory were based on reasoned argument and an
appeal to relevant historical evidence. As Lacher himself appears to concede (p. 158),2
they objected to Kautsky’s theory because in their view, the conflict-ridden nature of

Burns 243
capitalism, and of its historical development, is such that a form of peaceful international
politics of the kind envisaged then by Kautsky, and also today by Lacher, is not a practical
possibility in any capitalist society, or in a world dominated by capitalists and the capitalist
mode of production.3
A similar argument might also be made in the case of Marxism in the later 20th century.
For example, in the late-1960s and throughout the 1970s, there was a debate between
Marxist theoreticians about the relationship between the nation state and contemporary
capitalism, or what Ernest Mandel referred to at the time as ‘late capitalism’ (Mandel,
1975; Mandel, 1968; Mandel, 1967; see also Braunmuhl, 1978; Murray, 1971; Poulantzas,
1979; Rowthorn, 1971; Warren, 1971). This debate addressed the issue of the continued
relevance of the nation state as a political unit given the extent of the ‘international
centralization and concentration of capital’ (Mandel, 1975b: 316, 326–39), or of what
some commentators today would refer to as economic globalisation. For example,
Mandel argued in 1975 that in Western Europe, because of ‘the international centralisation
of capital’, it is clear that ‘contemporary forces of production are bursting through the
framework of the nation state’ (Mandel, 1975b: 316, 342). Lacher is aware of the
existence of this debate and is familiar with the views of some of the contributors to it,
although he appears not to have engaged with the work of Mandel, whose name is not
in his index. More important, though, is the fact that Lacher does not sufficiently
appreciate the extent to which the arguments presented by the contributors to this
debate count against one of the central theses of his book, namely his claim that Marxist
theoreticians have in the past not sufficiently explored the relationship between capitalism
and the nation state, and have simply taken it for granted that this relationship is a necessary
one. The writings of the contributors to this debate indicate quite clearly that this is not
the case. Mandel in particular spent some time discussing this very issue in the context
of the rise and development of a nascent ‘super-state’ within the European Union. One
could also make this same point in relation to the debate around the issue of the interna-
tionalisation of capital and the nation state that took place within the pages of Capital &
Class in the early 1990s (Lambert, 1991; McMichael and Myhre, 1991; Picciotto, 1991a;
Pitelis, 1991; Pooley, 1991; Ruccio, Resnick and Wolff, 1991; for later contributions see
also Picciotto, 1991b; Holloway, 1994; Bonefeld and Holloway, 1996; and Burnham,
1996). Although Lacher’s book was published in 2006, none of the works associated
with this debate are listed in his bibliography.4, 5
3. Capitalism and modernity

The third theme of Lacher’s book is the relationship between capitalism and modernity.
Following Marx, Lacher claims that the concept of capitalism is an ‘epochal concept’
(pp. ix, 35). An important question here, however, is whether his understanding of that
expression is the same as that of Marx. Lacher’s views on this subject are ambiguous. They
can be summarized by the assertion that ‘capitalism is a peculiarly modern phenomenon’
(my formulation), the meaning of which is also ambiguous. In particular, there are two
problems associated with this assertion that need to be addressed if its meaning is to be
clarified. The first is that it is not clear whether the term ‘capitalism’ in this expression is
supposed to be referring to a mode of production, on the one hand, or to a particular type
of social formation on the other. The second is that at first sight, it is also not clear whether

Lacher would hold that this assertion is a contingent truth (as Marx thought) or a necessary
one. I shall discuss these two problems in turn.
What is allegedly modern: Capitalism as a mode of production, or as a

social formation?
So far as the first problem is concerned, I shall follow Marx’s analysis in Capital (Marx,
1974b: 879–80). Marx’s understanding of capitalism, understood as a mode of production,
is essentialist. One plausible reading of Marx attributes to him the view that the concept
of ‘capitalism’, in this sense, can be defined by reference to four characteristic features,
numbered 1–4 below, each of which is a necessary condition, and all four of which
together constitute the one and only sufficient condition for establishing whether or not a
particular mode of production is ‘capitalist’. (I shall consider an alternative reading below.)
The four features Marx associates with the capitalist mode of production are: (1) the
production of commodities for a market; (2) by means of free wage-labour; (3) so as to
produce surplus value/profit for the employers of that labour; (4) in a situation where
there is competition between individual ‘capitals’ or capitalists, and hence also a compulsion
for technological innovation which is associated with a continuous process of capital
accumulation. It should be noted that there is nothing in the above definition which
suggests that capitalist production, understood by reference to these four features, could
only take place in a capitalist social formation, that is to say in a capitalist society.
If, however, we are talking about the notion of capitalism as it applies not to a particular
mode of production, but to an entire social formation within which the capitalist mode
of production has become dominant, then it is necessary for us to add one further condition
to the four listed above, namely (5) the presence of generalised commodity production
for a market, i.e. a situation in which the capitalist mode of production has extended so
far as to become economically dominant in a particular social formation at a particular
time, in comparison with other modes of production. Once this fifth condition has been
satisfied, it then becomes appropriate to characterise any given social formation as being
‘capitalist’, even if the capitalist mode of production is not the only mode of production
associated with it.
Now, Lacher claims that capitalism is a modern phenomenon, and suggests to his
readers that this is Marx’s view also. But if we consider this claim in the light of the above
conceptual distinction between two different ways of thinking about capitalism, either as
a mode of production or as a social formation, what are we to make of it? Does Lacher
think (and is he also attributing to Marx) the view that the capitalist mode of production
first emerged in the modern era? Or does Lacher think (and is he also attributing this to
Marx) the view that the first capitalist social formations came into existence in the modern
era? Since Lacher does not himself distinguish between a mode of production and a
social formation, it is difficult to evaluate what he is claiming for himself and what view
he is attributing to Marx.
So far as Marx’s views on this subject are concerned, in Volume 1 of Capital, Marx
states that ‘the first beginnings of capitalist production’ developed in Europe around the
Mediterranean ‘as early as the 14th or 15th century’, although the emergence of the
‘capitalistic era’ proper, that is to say the period within which the first capitalist social
formations emerged, might be located somewhat later, in ‘the 16th century’ (Marx,
1974a: 669). It should be noted that Marx does not characterise either the capitalist

Burns 245
mode of production or capitalist society as being ‘modern’ in these passages. Moreover,

it would be difficult to support the claim that Marx thought that the capitalist mode of
production, in particular, is a modern phenomenon, given his assertion that capitalist
relations of production, based on the important principle of ‘free wage-labour’, existed
in Western Europe as early as the 14th century. Indeed, if we take Marx’s remarks liter-
ally, then they suggest that, in his view, capitalism in this particular sense should not be
thought of as being a modern phenomenon at all, precisely because capitalist relations
of production first emerged, in the interstices of the feudal social formations of Western
Europe, in the late-medieval period.
On the other hand, the suggestion that Marx thought that the first capitalist social
formations came into existence in the 16th century, and that this period might legiti-
mately be characterised as the modern or at least the ‘early modern’ era, has more to be
said for it. Indeed, it is arguable that Marx’s suggestion that capitalism represents a ‘new
epoch’ in the process of production (Marx, 1974a: 166–67), and in the history of human
society, ought only to be associated with the claim that the first capitalist social formations
emerged in the modern era. On this view, then, it would be wrong to suggest that the
fundamental relation of production associated with the capitalist mode of production,
that of free wage-labour, only came into existence at this time. This is acknowledged by
Marx in the passage cited above. But it is also implicit in what Marx says elsewhere about
this subject.
It is helpful at this point to clarify Marx’s understanding of the concept of a ‘commodity’,
and hence also the first of the four characteristic features of the capitalist mode of
production outlined above. Marx employs this term in two different senses: a broad
sense and a narrow sense. In the broad sense of the term, a commodity is anything that
is produced for exchange in a market, and it does not matter who produces it. So in this
sense, commodities could, for example, be produced by slaves in the ancient world, or by
serfs in medieval society. Commodities in this broad sense, then, are not by any means
produced only by free wage-labour, and they are not necessarily associated with the
capitalist mode of production. This understanding of the concept of a commodity is
implicit in Marx’s assertion that the preconditions for the existence of ‘capital’, in the
sense in which he is primarily interested in Capital Volume 1 (i. e. manufacturing capital),
‘are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities’, that is to
say, with commerce and trade (Marx, 1974a: 167). On this view, then, as de Brunhoff
has noted, ‘commodities’ for Marx are ‘not particular to any particular form of production’
(de Brunhoff, 1973: 125).
However, Marx also employs the term ‘commodity’ in a narrower sense. And when he
does so, he evidently has in mind the idea that a ‘commodity’, in this sense of the term,
is something that can only be produced by free wage-labour in conditions that are associ-
ated with the capitalist mode of production. For example, at one point Marx states that
‘definite historical conditions are necessary that a product may become a commodity’, and
that this ‘can only happen with production of a very specific kind’, namely ‘capitalist
production’ (Marx, 1974a: 166). Moreover, according to Marx, this form of production
and of capital ‘can spring into life only when the owner of the means of production and
subsistence meets in the market with the free labourer selling his labour-power’ (Marx,
1974a: 167). It is the concept of a commodity, understood in this narrow sense, that
Marx subjects to theoretical analysis in the opening chapter of the first volume of Capital.

It should be emphasised that that although Marx does associate commodities in this
second sense of the term specifically with the capitalist mode of production, nevertheless
he also accepted that the production of commodities in this particular sense (by free
wage-labour) can take place in pre-capitalist social formations. He acknowledges that it
can occur in societies where ‘the great mass of the objects produced are intended for the
immediate requirements of their producers’, and are in consequence not ‘turned into
commodities’ (Marx, 1974a: 166). Marx concedes, then, that the production of com-
modities by free wage-labour can occur in societies where ‘social production is not yet by
a long way dominated in its length and breadth by exchange-value’ (Marx, 1974a: 166).
In short, it can occur in ‘pre-capitalist’ social formations within which condition 5 in the
definition of the concept of ‘capitalism’ presented earlier has not been satisfied.
Paradoxical though it might seem, a logical implication of these remarks is that in
Marx’s view, the capitalist production of commodities, understood in this narrow sense,
can take place in societies that are not capitalist societies. For example, as I have noted,
Marx was of the opinion that this occurred in feudal society in Western Europe in the
late Middle Ages. The apparent logical contradiction associated with Marx’s view that
capitalist production can take place in a non-capitalist or in a pre-capitalist society is
removed once the distinction between the concept of a mode of production and that of
a social formation has been made, and once it has been appreciated that the capitalist
mode of production can coexist, in a subordinate position, alongside the dominant
feudal mode of production in a feudal social formation. Consequently, capitalism in this
sense could in principle be found (and Marx indicates was in fact found) in pre-modern
societies, such as those that existed in Western Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Although Ellen Meiksins Wood has objected to this reading of Marx (Meiksins Wood,
2002a: 15, 35, 41; Meiksins Wood, 2000b: 11; Meiksins Wood, 2000d: 56; Meiksins
Wood, 2000e: 115; Meiksins Wood, 2000f: 149–49, 171), there are in fact numerous
passages in Capital and the Grundrisse which indicate that Marx thought not only that
capitalist production could take place, but also that it did in fact take place, ‘intermittently’,
‘locally’ or ‘sporadically’ in the ‘interstices’ or ‘pores’ of the pre-capitalist or pre-modern
societies of Western Europe in the late medieval period (Marx, 1973: 108, 256, 276–77,
469, 495, 505–6, 511, 858–59). In my view, therefore, both Meiksins Wood and Lacher,
who shares her views on this subject, are wrong to suggest that Marx thought that
capitalism, that is to say the capitalist mode of production, came into existence only in
the modern era.
Is capitalism necessarily a modern phenomenon?

I turn now to consider the second of the two reasons for thinking that Lacher’s suggestion
that ‘capitalism is a peculiarly modern phenomenon’ is ambiguous in meaning. As indi-
cated earlier, this has to do with the logical status of this assertion. Here there are two
possibilities. The first is that it is a contingent truth. The second is that it is a tautology,
and therefore true as a matter of logical necessity, in virtue of the definition of the con-
cept of capitalism. Those who hold to the first of these possibilities do not deny that
capitalism, that is to say the emergence of the first capitalist social formation, occurred
in Western Europe in the (early) modern era, specifically of course in England, when the
economic system of English society came to be dominated by the capitalist mode of pro-
duction in agriculture. In their view, however, although the assertion that capitalism in
this sense is a modern phenomenon happens to be true, it is not a necessary truth. It is
Burns 247
just a contingent fact about capitalism that it happened to emerge when and where it
did. From this standpoint, the temporal location of capitalism is an accidental feature of
it rather than an essential characteristic that ought to be incorporated into the definition
of its concept.
Lacher, however, opts for the second of these two possibilities by incorporating a time
reference into his understanding of the concept of capitalism. According to him, it is not
an empirical claim but a matter of definition, having to do with the essential nature of
capitalism, that no society or mode of production situated either before or after the
modern era could, strictly speaking, be said to be ‘capitalist’. For Lacher, anyone who
characterises social relations of production in an earlier historical epoch as being capitalist
is guilty either of historical anachronism, or of a basic misunderstanding of the meaning
of the concept of capitalism, or both. In Lacher’s opinion, therefore, there is a necessary
connection between the concept of capitalism and that of modernity. Capitalism is
essentially a modern phenomenon.
For example, at one point Lacher observes, with evident disapproval, that according
to Max Weber, ‘capitalism was not even specific to the modern period’ (p. 22). He notes,
critically, that in Weber’s view ‘capitalism’ could be found in ‘ancient Greece as well
as China’ (p. 22). In contrast, by emphasising the epochal or historical character of
Marx’s theoretical categories, Lacher suggests that Marx’s position with respect to this
issue is fundamentally different from that of Weber. In Lacher’s opinion, then, unlike
Weber, Marx held the view that capitalism is ‘epochal’ in the sense that it is ‘specific to the
modern period’. From this standpoint, it would be both logically absurd and historically
anachronistic for anyone to talk, as Weber does, about the actuality (or even the possibility)
of capitalist relations of production existing in ancient Greece or China.
In my opinion, however, given Marx’s understanding of the concept of capitalism,
there is no logical reason why capitalist production relations could not in principle have
existed in ancient Greece or in China, even though in Marx’s view they did not in fact do
so. So far as this issue is concerned, there is in principle no difference between the case of
ancient Greece or China, on the one hand, and that of European society in the late
Middle Ages on the other. With respect to the question of whether capitalism could
possibly have existed in ancient Greece, then, it is arguable that Marx actually agreed
with Max Weber, despite having an understanding of the nature of capitalism which in
other respects of course (notably in its emphasis on the principle of free wage-labour and
its focus on production relations rather than market or exchange relations) was funda-
mentally different from that of Weber.
This reading of Marx is, I think, confirmed by what Marx has to say about the
existence of capitalism in Western Europe in the late medieval period. I suggested earlier
that there is some doubt about the claim that Marx thought that capitalism (i.e. the
capitalist mode of production) emerged only in the modern era, given that he states
explicitly that capitalist relations of production existed in Europe in the 14th and 15th
centuries. But it follows from this, of course, that for Marx there is no logical reason why
capitalist relations of production could not have existed in feudal society at that time.
What Marx accepted was an empirical actuality, he could hardly also have declared to be
a logical impossibility. According to this reading of Marx, then, whether or not capitalist
relations of production do in fact exist in any given social formation at any given moment
in its history is a matter for historical research and empirical investigation and not, as
Lacher appears at times to suggest it is, a matter of a priori reasoning.
It is clear from the analysis presented above that even if Marx did think that capitalism
(i.e. capitalist society) was in fact a modern phenomenon, this should not be taken as
implying that he must also have thought that there were some logical necessity about
this, or that he must have thought capitalism essentially a modern phenomenon. Marx’s
remarks about the origins of capitalism are entirely consistent with the view that it is a
matter of contingent historical fact that capitalism just happened to emerge when it did
in Europe, rather than earlier or later.
Lacher’s suggestion that capitalism is essentially a modern phenomenon does not, and
indeed could not, given that Lacher does not distinguish between a mode of production
and a social formation, allow for the possibility that there might be at least some capital-
ist relations of production in a society which, overall, should be characterised as being
pre-modern rather than modern. Thus, for example, if it is accepted (as surely it should
be) that the feudal society in Europe in the medieval period was indeed a pre-modern
society; and if it is also accepted, as Lacher erroneously suggests, that for Marx capitalism
is necessarily a modern phenomenon; then the conclusion that ineluctably follows is that
in Marx’s opinion, there could have been no capitalist relations of production at all in
Western Europe in the late-medieval period. Hence it could not possibly be correct to
attribute to Marx the view that nascent capitalism (i.e. the emergence of the capitalist
mode of production at this time) was even one of the possible causes of the dissolution of
feudal society and of the transition from feudalism to capitalism (i.e. the emergence of
the first capitalist social formation), a transition which first occurred in England over the
course of the 16th and 17th centuries.
From Lacher’s point of view, given his erroneous belief that for Marx capitalism is
essentially a modern phenomenon, such an interpretation of Marx’s views regarding the
origins and development of capitalism in Western Europe is beset by two logical difficulties.
First, that those (including Marx) who maintain that capitalism can exist in a pre-modern
society must be contradicting themselves, since by implication they are claiming that
capitalism is both a modern and a pre-modern phenomenon. Second, that those (including
Marx) who hold this view are presenting a circular argument. Lacher seems to be of the
opinion, possibly following Ellen Meiksins Wood, that such people are claiming that
capitalism was the cause of itself. Lacher apparently endorses Meiksins Wood’s claim that
those who argue in this way are assuming ‘the prior existence of capitalism in order to
explain its coming into being’ (Meiksins Wood, 2002a: 4; also 42, 51; Lacher, 2002: 158).
It is clear, however, that these alleged logical difficulties are more apparent than real, and
that they are removed once the distinction between capitalism as a mode of production
and capitalism as a social formation has been made. The possibility of this distinction’s
being made seems not to have occurred to Lacher, and so the question of the desirability
of making it is not an issue for him. This issue has, however, been discussed by Meiksins
Wood, who has argued, in my view wrongly, that the concept of a social formation is
a structuralist (i.e. Althusserian) imposition on Marxism which is of little value for
historical materialism (Meiksins Wood, 2000d: 50–51, 53–59; Burns, 2009).
One undesirable implication of the suggestion that for Marx capitalism is essentially
a modern phenomenon, although Lacher seems not to be aware of it, is that it involves
attributing to Marx the view that the transition from feudalism to capitalism in England,
for example, must have occurred not by a process of slow evolution over time, but ‘all at
once’ and in a revolutionary manner. Such a view seems to me to have more in common

Burns 249
with the thinking of T. S. Kuhn on ‘scientific revolutions’, with Michel Foucault’s

‘archaeology of knowledge’, or (ironically) with the structuralist Marxism of Louis
Althusser (Kuhn, 1962; Foucault, 1968; Althusser, 1970), than it does with any plausible
reading of Marx, or of the history of Western Europe in the early modern period.
Lacher claims that ‘at the heart of the reconstitution of IR/IPE as a genuinely social
science able to recognize the historicity of its object is the conceptualization and theoriza-
tion of modernity’ (p. 61). It follows from this that Lacher either has to interpret Marx as
a theorist of modernity or, alternatively, that he has to conclude that Marx should not in
fact be associated with his own ‘reconstituted’ IPE. I suggested earlier that there are reasons
for thinking that the logic of Lacher’s argument leads in the direction of the latter option.
In fact, though, somewhat implausibly, Lacher attempts to argue in favour of the former.
Thus, for example, at one point he claims that Marx offered a ‘theory’ of ‘what later came
to be called “modernity”’ (p. 11). For the reasons given above, this claim seems to me to be
problematic. Indeed, I think it is not Marx but Lacher himself who is interested in
theorising about the problems of ‘modernity’. Against Lacher, it might be argued that what
Marx actually offers in Capital is not a theory of modernity but a theory of capitalism, or,
more specifically, of the capitalist mode of production.
Marx’s theoretical analysis of the capitalist mode of production might indeed be said
to be modern, in the sense that it only came into being in the 19th century; but as we
have seen, that is not the same as saying that the real entity to which this theory refers is
also a peculiarly modern phenomenon, let alone that it is necessarily modern. If it is
conceded that Marx’s theory is about capitalism, understood as a mode of production;
and if it is also conceded that a reference to modernity is not an element in Marx’s defini-
tion of the concept of the capitalist mode of production; then there is no reason to accept
Lacher’s erroneous claim that Marx’s theory is a theory of modernity.
Lacher claims that some Marxists recently (he does not say who they are) have
embraced the term ‘modernity’ whilst seeking to show ‘that all those phenomena usually
associated with modernity have their basis in capitalism, thus effectively conflating the
two categories’ (p. ix). And elsewhere he makes the even stronger claim that this is true
of Marxism generally, including presumably of Marx himself. Lacher argues that ‘in the
Marxist tradition’, the notion of capitalism encompasses much the same phenomena as the
category of modernity covers’ (p. 101). However, this alleged ‘equation of capitalism and
modernity’ by Marxists ‘can’ he argues, ‘no longer be maintained’ (p. 101). Lacher insists
that ‘modernity and capitalism can no longer be considered synonymous’ as, in his view,
‘Marxists tend to do’ (p. x).
Lacher’s reason for thinking that Marxists conflate the meaning of the terms ‘capitalism’
and ‘modernity’ is because, in his opinion, Marxists claim that there is an empirically
observable causal connection, discoverable by historical investigation, between the
phenomena that are associated with capitalism and those that are associated with moder-
nity, the former being the causes of the latter. Marxists have a tendency to collect ‘all the
things that are usually designated “modern” and then declare confidently that they all
emanate from capital’ (p. 105). However, Lacher’s argument at this point is based on a
non sequitur. For even if it were true that Marxists did as a matter of fact do the things
that Lacher says that they do, i.e. maintain that all things modern have been brought
into being by capitalism, it would not follow that they must have conflated the meaning
of these two concepts. It might be possible to observe empirically that as a matter of fact,

two things always go together. However, even if one did observe such a connection, it
would not necessarily follow that one ought to conclude that they are not two things at
all, but rather one and the same thing. To claim that capitalism is the cause of all things
modern—in short, of modernity—is not necessarily to identify capitalism with the
thing(s) of which it is alleged to be the cause. It is simply to maintain (rightly or wrongly)
that the thing(s) in question would not have existed, or come into being, had it not been
for the prior emergence of capitalism.
Lacher is right to think that to conflate two categories is to assume that they have the
same meaning. I would conflate the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘modernity’ if what I meant
when I used the one term were the same as what I meant when I used the other. In the
terminology of Gottlöb Frege, I would conflate the two terms if I thought that they had
the same ‘sense’. If, however, I think that the two categories or terms in question have
quite different senses, but the same ‘reference’, then it would be inappropriate to claim
that I have conflated them (Frege, 1977: 56–78). For example, according to Frege the
expressions ‘morning star’ and ‘evening star’ mean different things because they have
different senses, even though they actually refer to one and the same thing, namely the
planet Venus. But just because I insist on using either the one expression or the other to
refer to the same thing on different occasions, depending on the circumstances, that does
not mean that I am confused as to their meaning, or that I must have conflated the
meanings of these two different expressions. Similarly, it might be argued, for example,
that the expression ‘capitalist state’ and the expression ‘modern state’, when used in the
context of European history in the early modern period, also mean different things or
have different senses, even though they too refer to the same thing or things, namely the
newly emergent nation state. Here, also, therefore, just because on different occasions I
might use either the one expression or the other to refer to a particular nation state,
depending on the circumstances, that does not imply that I must have conflated the
meaning of these two expressions.
Somewhat ironically, then, my conclusion is that it is not Marx or Marxism generally
but Lacher himself who erroneously conflates the concepts of capitalism and modernity.
And it is not Marx or Marxism generally but Lacher himself who thinks that the theory
of capitalism developed in Capital is a theory of modernity. In objecting to this alleged
conflation of capitalism and modernity, Lacher thinks that he is criticising the views of
Marx and of Marxism. In fact, however, he is criticising a doctrine which is his own
creation and which he has wrongly attributed to Marx and to Marxism.
4. Could capitalism have existed in the ancient world?

I have argued that Lacher is wrong to claim that for Marx capitalism is essentially a
modern phenomenon. The more sensible suggestion that for Marx and Marxism the
connection between the notion of capitalism and that of modernity is a contingent
rather than a necessary one might perhaps be illustrated by reference to the example of
classical Athens. In this section, I shall argue that research carried out by ancient histo-
rians in the last few decades has cast at least some doubt, not only on Lacher’s under-
standing of the relationship between capitalism and modernity, but also on Marx’s view
that capitalist relations of production, and hence also the capitalist mode of production,

Burns 251
existed nowhere in Europe before the 14th century (de Sainte-Croix, 1982; Finley,
1985; Meiksins Wood, 1988).
The issue here is the following: could capitalism, that is to say the capitalist mode of
production, possibly have existed in the ancient world? In order to fully appreciate the
significance of this question, it is necessary to say more about the definition of the
concept of capitalism presented earlier. When discussing this concept, Marx attached
particular importance to the second condition in his definition, which refers to the
presence or absence of ‘free wage-labour’. A crucially important question, however, is
whether Marx considered this to be a necessary condition for the existence of the capitalist
mode of production only or, alternatively, whether he considered it to be both a necessary
and a sufficient condition.
With respect to this issue, there are times when Marx appears to take the view that
that the presence or absence of free wage-labour is not just one criterion amongst others,
but the most important, indeed the decisive, criterion for establishing whether a particular
form of production in a particular society at a particular time is or is not ‘capitalist’. Thus
for example, as we have seen, Marx states that the historical conditions for the existence
of the type of capital in which he is interested (not money capital or financial capital, but
specifically manufacturing capital) ‘are by no means given with the mere circulation of
money and commodities’, that is to say, with commerce and trade. Rather, this form of
capital ‘can spring into life only when the owner of the means of production and subsis-
tence meets in the market with the free labourer selling his labour-power’. And this ‘one
historical condition’, Marx insists, ‘comprises a world’s history’ (Marx, 1974a: 167,
emphasis added). And elsewhere in the same text, Marx states that ‘capital presupposes
wage labour, and wage labour presupposes capital. One is a necessary condition to the
existence of the other; they mutually call each other into existence’ (Marx, 1974a: 542).
These remarks seem to imply that in Marx’s view, the existence or non-existence of ‘free
wage-labour’ is indeed the decisive (and perhaps the only) criterion for those seeking to
establish the presence or absence of capitalist production relations, and hence also of the
capitalist mode of production in any society.
With respect to this particular issue, then, there is evidence from Marx’s writings to
support Ernesto Laclau’s claim (made when he was a Marxist in the early 1970s) that for
Marx, the ‘fundamental economic relationship of capitalism is constituted by the free
labourer’s sale of his labour power’ (Laclau, 1971: 25). In Marx’s economic theory, as
Laclau then understood it, it is the ‘wage relation’ and it alone that constitutes the very
‘essence of capitalism’ (Laclau, 1971: 25). It is true that in the passages cited in the preceding
paragraph, Marx does not state explicitly that the existence of wage labour is a sufficient
condition for the existence of (manufacturing) capital. However, his assertion that capital
and wage labour ‘mutually call each other into existence’ suggests that this is indeed what
Marx thought, some of the time at least.
Given that Marx does occasionally suggest that the decisive criterion for establishing
the existence of the capitalist mode of production in any given society at a given time is
the presence or absence of free wage-labour, it would seem to follow that if it could be
established that in classical Athens there existed social relations of production based on
this principle, then this would be at least prima facie evidence for the existence of capital-
ism in Athenian society.

Of course, if it could be shown that at least some free wage-labourers existed in Athens;
and if, further, it could be established on these grounds that capitalist production relations
also existed there; it would nevertheless also have to be accepted that these production
relations existed alongside both those production relations associated with slavery and
those production relations entered into by workers who were neither wage-labourers nor
slaves. This last category includes Athenian citizens, working either in the city or in the
surrounding countryside, who were compelled to work for a living (although not, of
course, for a wage); the former in manufacturing as independent artisans, and the latter
on the land as an independent peasantry. This would not, therefore, imply that the soci-
ety of classical Athens was a capitalist society. Rather, it would imply that although it was
undeniably a slave society, it was not uniformly or homogeneously a slave society. On this
view, Athenian society is best thought of as a social formation, associated with more than
one mode of production, within which slavery was in some important sense dominant,
but which also contained relations of production of a different kind, at least some of
which can, arguably, be associated with the capitalist mode of production.
We have seen that Marx himself did not think about Athenian society in this way. In
his opinion, capitalist production relations, properly so-called, came into existence only
in the late-medieval period. Nonetheless, a number of ancient historians writing in the
20th century have argued that at least some ‘free wage-labour’, in the specific sense in
which Marx uses the term, did in fact exist in classical Athens. This suggestion has been
made by G. E. M. de Sainte-Croix and Ellen Meiksins Wood (both of whom are or were
Marxists), and by Moses Finley (who was not).
Sainte-Croix has argued that the economy of ancient Athens was a ‘slave economy’.
However, he did not argue in this way because he thought that free wage-labour in
Marx’s sense was entirely absent there. Rather, he held this view because he thought that,
although it did exist, nevertheless ‘free wage labour, which plays the essential part in
capitalist production, was relatively unimportant in antiquity’ (de Sainte-Croix, 1982: 113;
also 133, 179, 203–04). The cautious wording of Sainte-Croix’s judgment regarding the
significance of ‘free wage-labour’ in classical Athens indicates that he might perhaps have
been willing to concede that, provided the necessary provisos are made, it is arguable that
capitalist relations of production were indeed present in the ancient world.
Ellen Meiksins Wood has gone further than this and criticised Saint-Croix for not
attaching sufficient importance to the existence of ‘free wage-labour’ in ancient Greece.
As Wood herself puts it, it is ‘more than probable that hired labour, at least regular hired
work as distinct from casual or seasonal wage-labour among free men, was relatively rare
in Athens’ (Meiksins Wood, 1988: 71). Nevertheless, Wood continues, ‘the very evidence
Sainte-Croix produces indicates that it was not as unimportant to the Attic economy as
he suggests’ (Meiksins Wood, 1988: 71).
A similar view can also be found in the work of Moses Finley. It is true that the broad
thrust of Finley’s work on the ancient economy is to downplay the significance of ‘free
wage-labour’ and of the manufacture of commodities by such labourers to be sold in a
market for profit by their employers in the ancient world (Finley, 1985: 47, 49, 66,
73–75, 79–80, 150–51, 185–86, 190–96). However, like Sainte-Croix and Wood,
Finley does accept (albeit somewhat grudgingly) that there was at least some economic
activity of this kind in classical antiquity, even if those involved in it were ‘marginal figures’
in the ancient economy (Finley, 1985: 73).

Burns 253
For anybody who argues along these lines, there is a very big difference between
asserting (correctly—Sainte Croix, Wood and Finley) that capitalist production relations,
as indicated by the presence of free wage-labour, existed in the ancient world, but that
they were ‘relatively unimportant’ (Sainte-Croix), or that they were ‘relatively rare’
(Meiksins Wood), on the one hand; and asserting (incorrectly—Marx) that they did not
exist at all, or (even more incorrectly—Lacher) that they could not possibly have existed
there because capitalism is essentially a modern phenomenon.
The significance of this discussion of the economic system of classical Athens, for
present purposes, is that if Sainte-Croix, Wood and Finley are right about the existence
of ‘free wage labour’ in Athenian society; and if the existence of this kind of labour is
indeed, as Laclau maintains (and as Marx himself occasionally suggests) a sufficient
condition for establishing the presence of the capitalist mode of production in any
given society at a given time; then it is far from obvious that Lacher is right to suggest
that the capitalist mode of production could not possibly have existed in pre-modern
societies, including those of the ancient world, because capitalism is essentially a
modern phenomenon. It is not at all clear that it would be absurd (either logically
or historically) to claim, for example, not only that capitalism could have existed in
classical Athens, but that it did in fact exist there. The latter claim cannot be dismissed
out of hand as an a priori impossibility. Rather, it needs to be refuted by a reasoned
argument based on an appeal, not only to considerations of logic, but also to relevant
empirical (historical) evidence.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my colleagues in the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice at the School of
Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. I would particularly like to thank
those associated with the centre’s Marxism Reading Group, especially Andreas Bieler, Chris
Hesketh, Oli Harrison, Jennifer Martinez, Adam Morton and Andrew Robinson.
Endnotes
1. According to Alex Callinicos (Callinicos, 2004b: xlvii), ‘such a preoccupation with modes of
production and their laws of motion is a common feature of Brenner and other younger
Marxist historians’.
2. See also the more recent discussion in Teschke & Lacher, 2007, p. 576, where again this point
is conceded.
3. This point is restated more recently in Callinicos, 2004a, p. 430.
4. Lacher also ignores Bieler and Morton, 2003; and Meiksins Wood, 2002b.
5. For a more recent response to Lacher’s critique of the way in which the relationship between
capitalism and the nation state has been theorised by Marxists, see Callinicos, 2007: 538–40,
together with the reply to it in Teschke & Lacher, 2007. For some surprisingly uncritical reflec-
tions by Callinicos on the earlier work of Lacher, see Callinicos, 2004a: 430.
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Author biography
Tony Burns is co-director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice in the
School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. He has published
in journals such as Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis; Historical
Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory; and Imprints: Egalitarian Theory and
Practice. He is co-editor (with Ian Fraser) of The Hegel-Marx Connection (2000).

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1. Methodology: Marxism and historical materialism

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Modes of production and social formations

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2. Capitalism and territoriality: Marxism and the nation state

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of Western Europe, to explore the relationship between capitalism and territoriality is to

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3. Capitalism and modernity

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What is allegedly modern: Capitalism as a mode of production, or as a

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mode of production or capitalist society as being ‘modern’ in these passages. Moreover,

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Is capitalism necessarily a modern phenomenon?

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with the thinking of T. S. Kuhn on ‘scientific revolutions’, with Michel Foucault’s

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4. Could capitalism have existed in the ancient world?

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