This book is the result of a research project begun
by the author in 1958 with the aim of answering two
questions: First, what is the rationality of the
economic systems that appear and disappear throughout
history--in other words, what is their hidden logic and
the underlying necessity for them to exist, or to have
existed? Second, what are the conditions for a rational
understanding of these systems--in other words, for a
fully developed comparative economic science? The field
of investigation opened up by these two questions is
vast, touching on the foundations of social reality and
on how to understand them. The author, being a Marxist,
sought the answers, as he writes, 'not in philosophy or
by philosophical means, but in and through examining the
knowledge accumulated by the sciences.' The stages of
his journey from philosophy to economics and then to
anthropology are indicated by the divisions of his book.
Godelier rejects, at the outset, any attempt to tackle
the question of rationality or irrationality of economic
science and of economic realities from the angle of an a
priori idea, a speculative definition of what is
rational. Such an approach can yield only, he feels, an
ideological result. Rather, he treats the appearance and
disappearance of social and economic systems in history
as being governed by a necessity 'wholly internal to the
concrete structures of social life. |
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