Social Formation and Mode of Production: Peripheral Capitalism, Non-capitalist Relations, and Forms of Labor in Contemporary Capitalism

The debate on how to theorize the coexistence of several relations of production, forms of labor, and various modes of production in a given society has a longer history in Marxism. In the 1970s, a lively debate emerged between various schools of thought, from French Marxist anthropologists Emmanuel Terray and Pierre-Philippe Rey, to Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi and finally to South African Marxist Harold Wolpe (to name just a few) on how to conceptualize the transition to capitalism in former colonies, and how to understand the persistence of non-capitalist relations of production in those societies. One of the questions explored was to what extent these non-capitalist relations of production remain independent from capitalism, if they are dependent on capitalism for its reproduction, or if they are reconfigured and intentionally recreated by capitalist social actors in order to provide for less costly forms of social reproduction. Following these debates, the contemporary relevance of these debates for the concepts of informal labor, petty commodity production, and other forms of labor that do not resemble wage labor and involve the majority of the population in a considerable number of countries should be apparent. These earlier debates can be useful in the analysis of the interpenetration of different systems of labor in contemporary capitalism.