Nikolaeva U.G. (2021). Pre-market (pre-capitalist) economic relations: new life in the era of globalization and the potential of Marxist research methodology. Problems in Political Economy, № 4 (28): 65-87. DOI: https: ...

Abstract

The article is focused on the methodological issues of the study of pre-market (pre-capitalist) economic relations, the justification of the high heuristic potential of Marxist methodology in the study of archaic as well as modern peripheral and semi-peripheral societies, in which an active re-animation of archaic economic relations is indicated. The main approaches to pre-market economies are briefly characterized, and the key theoretical problems of applicability of historical materialism principles to pre-capitalist stages, embeddedness of economy in social institutions (K.Polanyi), nature of power-property (L.S.Vasiliev) and state violence in  “Asiatic” types of societies are analyzed. The author emphasizes the outstanding contribution of the contemporary Russian historian, Marxist, ethnologist and methodologist Y.I. Semenov to the development of the history and theory of pre-market (pre-capitalist) economies, to the development of the global-formational approach, to the study of socio-economic development of Russia in the 20th and 21st centuries. The paper reveals the main points of his concept of transdetermination in pre-capitalist societies, theories of politarism and neopolitarism, and substantiates their importance for understanding the archaization of economy and revival of pre-capitalist relations in the symbiotic patterns in the peripheral-capitalist model of development.