La prehistoria del modo tributario de producción

Abstract

The paper discusses some analythical implications of Haldon's 1proposals concerning the concept of «tributary mode of production» as a general historical cathegory describing the predominant form of social relations in pre-capitalist social formations. Since we assume this thesis, individual processes of emergence of «pristine» tributary social formations must be seen as particular cases of a general event: the origin of class society. That event has raised not attention in general controversy in despite of its evident centrality for Social Theory. The paper presents the outline of a general, theoretical framework in order to tackle the problem, through the discussion of the concept of «Neolithic Revolution», understood in social terms. The main conclusion of such discussion is that the tributary mode of production didn't proceed directly from «primitive communism». Archeology and Anthropology show us a rich variety of social forms in wich we can recognize «kin-ordered forms of surplus extraction», that is, pre-classist forms of exploitation. This discussion leads us finaly to propose the convenience of recovering concepts such as «germanic society» and «asiatic community» to account for this variety.