Theory of non capitalist economic systems

Abstract

Today it is not possible to avoid acknowledging that the elaboration of the theory of production mode articulation implies an examination to the non-capitalist production modes so attentive as that to which Karl Marx submitted the capitalist production mode. It is with the purpose of answering to this theoretical requisite that one has considered to be worth while to reveal to the Portuguese-speaking reader an important text, dated from 1924, by A. V. Tchaianov, a rural socio-economist. In that text Tchaianov calls our attention not only to the need of building a theory for each non-capitalist system but also, at the end, to the fundamental importance of approaching theoretically what he calls «the problem of the coexistence of different economic systems» and one tends, today, to consider as the «theory of the articulation of production modes». Besides, mainly through B. Kerblay, Tchaianov's life and work, forgotten for many years, came recently back to the first line of actuality in the rural studies domain.