Sketch for a periodization of the stages and phases of the capitalist mode of production

Abstract

This article concerns the debate about the periodization of the modes of production and its application for the periodization of the capitalist mode of production. The raised question concerns at what level of abstraction can we periodizise the social evolution: at the level of the mode of production or at that of social formation. Our basic position is that a mode of production is unchangeable. There are some fundamental interior characteristics which can not be altered; otherwise we are referring to another, different, mode of production. Ιn addition, we argue that the periodization must be done at the level of social formation. The historical evolution of every national formation is able of illustrating the specific characteristics of its demarche. These differentiations can explain why the British society is as capitalistic as the French society but, at the same time, so different from it. Ιn fact there is nο clear mode of production but a coarticulation of modes of production with one of them being the dominant one. Every formation there is conditioned by a different articulation of particular economic, political and ideological characteristics.
According this view we can periodize the historical evolution of the formations which exhibit capitalistic presence in the following stages: a) the stage of the primitive accumulation of capital; b) the liberal stage, with the specific importance of the process of the transition from the liberal to the monopolistic stage; c) the monopolistic stage which is divided in two phases : I) the phase of the enlarged reproduction of Imperialism and II) the phase of the attempt to exit from the crisis. Of course, every formation does not present exactly the same characteristics in every phase. We use these terms in an ideolotypical way, as instruments for a better understanding of the historical evolution. From this point of view it is easy and clear to understand what occurs in the modem era as far as the mythology of the so-called globalization is concerned.