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...

What is the specificity of the human race within nature? How is its history to be explained? What impact do material realities, natural and man-made, have on human beings? What role does thought, in all its dimensions, play in the production of social relations? How are the human sciences to be advanced today? These are among the crucial questions confronted by Godelier in this key book of contemporary social theory. Its point of departure lies in a fact and a hypothesis. The fact: in contrast to other social animals, human beings do not just live in society; they produce society in order to...