Apakah kapitalisme lahir akibat revolusi industri atau justru hasil dari revolusi borjuis di Prancis? apakah kapitalisme muncul dari daerah perkotaan? apakah kapitalisme telah ada sejak manusia ada dan kemudian menunjukkan wujudnya ketika terjadi peningkatan skala perdagangan komersial?
Historian and political thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that theories of “postmodern” fragmentation, “difference,” and con-tingency can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subject it to critique. In this book she sets out to renew the critical program of historical materialism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in original and imaginative ways…