Producción y consumo

Abstract

This paper proposes opening up a reflection on and discussion about the theoretical and methodological understandings of economic cycles in Marxist archaeology today. Productive processes, the basic element in proposals made from the perspective of historical materialism, have been understood traditionally from two different points of view. On one hand they have been developed mechanically, and on the other they have been isolated from the economic (and consequently the social) contexts from which they are taken, being considered as representing the nuclear and basic element of the economic cycle.

In opposition to this proposal, which is more extended and contextualized in the framework of present day archaeology and lithic analysis, a new understanding is proposed: the understanding of productive processes as an element closely related to consumption processes, as it is not possible to study them independently. So it becomes necessary to carry out an integral study. The Consumption Mode (MC) has been one of the least developed of Marxist categories in socio-economic analysis. By means of this proposal we aim to recover this category in order to complete our interpretations to their full potential. A Production Mode cannot be understood without an analysis of the Consumption Mode and vice-versa. The dual dynamics formed by them will be a basic tool for the creation of an archaeological economic theory. The concrete application of this theoretical and methodological proposal can only be reached by means of functional analysis methodology. In this sense, form-function relation analysis allows us to establish criteria for the recognition of relations of social production and relations of social consumption. The generation of methodological categories is then the starting point for our research.