The Peculiarity of Capitalism: An Attempt to Pose the Problem

Abstract

Feudalism transformed itself into the society which was again unitary: agriculture came to be a “branch of industry” (Marx) in it. In terms of our abstract models such a society is one where the new sub-society has subordinated the old one, imposing the principle of maximization of investments as the leading principle of the economic behaviour for economic activity at large. This ideal type of capitalist society will be called in our abstract terms a directional unitary society; in the case where the old sub-economy won, it could be called a cyclic unitary society.