The Historical Foundations of a Feudal Mode of Production

In one sense at least the very concept of a Feudal Mode of Production is entirely fictive. For Marx the Feudal Mode of production was interesting and worthy of study primarily as a dialectical antithesis to the consuming passion of his life: the Capitalist Mode of Production. Marx himself never anywhere attempted a systematic exploration of either the philosophical logic or the historical foundations of the Feudal Mode of Production. Marxist scholars interested in pre-capitalist modes of production writing during the last hundred years or so have attempted to elucidate the characteristics of the Feudal Mode of Production as sketchily outlined by Marx, but in most cases, at least in the European context, the result has been a barren exercise in philosophy or epistemology rather than an examination of the empirical foundations of a Feudal Mode of Production in historical phenomena. The same is true, I believe, of all other pre-capitalist or non-capitalist modes of production. The Feudal Mode of Production cannot be studied in Marx's works except as the antithesis of capitalism. To isolate what he wrote about the Feudal Mode of Production from its context within his discussions of capitalism is to derive a concept of the former which is barren and lifeless.