This essay proposes to abandon the architectural metaphor of base/superstructure that has come to inform historical materialism since Marx and reconstruct a Marxian theory of social formation around the notion of 'exchange' (Verkher). With different degrees of dominance, different historical social formations are composed of four modes of exchange (reciprocity/gift exchange, redistribution/plunder, commodity exchange, and X) and their corresponding institutional forms. A discussion of the capital-nation-state as a particularly modern form of articulation of commodity exchange, reciprocity, and redistribution is followed by a proposal for a world republic as a regulative idea.
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