In fact, as the example of Axial period shows, we find a pure 'stage' of something that is independent of its economic arrangements. The enigma of the Axial Age resolves itself into the need for a larger generalization, since its uniqueness as a period, indeed, a stage, suggests that it is only one in a series. With that insight we rapidly solve the puzzle of 'stages' as we move backwards and forwards from the Axial interval, suddenly to discover that a series of Axial intervals, the birth of civilization (so-called), the Axial period proper, and the rise of modernity, fall into a sequential pattern of emergent acceleration. We have the clue to the rise of the modern, and an equal clue to where the Marxist analysis is off the mark. Our stages are real, as temporal phases of acceleration, but have no intrinsic content, or defining label. That is, there is one field of civilization, or Civilization differentiated as 'civilizations' (it comes to the same thing), and the stages are an 'intensification' of their inherent processes, cultural, religious, political. We must examine the content transformed in each case empirically. All at once, the simplicity of the situation is brought home by the comprehensive nature and visibility of this set of transitions, dubbed the 'eonic sequence'. The puzzle of capitalism confused with modernity clarifies at once. The economic stream, already semi-capitalist, enters the transitional zone and period interval, and we see a correlated transformation we call the 'industrial revolution', and the onset of modern capitalism. The revolutionary transformation of economic systems that we see in the modern transition has been confused with the transition itself. In fact, the question of capitalism has no intrinsic connection to modernity, for the very simple reason that it is present, in primitive forms, across the whole of history in the form of 'market behaviors' and 'market systems' (always present whatever the state of social interventionism cast out by the very late Adam Smith). Thus the issue of Marx can be simply restated very simply as a challenge to the question of markets and human rights, in the emergence of laissez-faire systems in the context of overall modernity. Nothing could be simpler in principle, nor as vexacious in practice, since the triggering process is one thing, the outcome highly rooted in its own circumstance, and not easily changed. The need to differentiate economic systems from the 'eonic system' lies in the fact that markets are omnipresent, and spread to all places at all times, while the eonic sequence is a localized intermittent sequence of isolated effects.

But in essence the point is clear, as noted already: as the forms of economic development emerge across world history, their actuality is independent of the eonic sequence itself, and thus require the deliberation of economic reasoning in each context where they occur. The notion of 'free markets' is thus an abstraction of later theorists who attempt to apply a canon of policy concepts to the prior stream of semi-capitalist perhaps semi-mercantilist or 'what have you' behaviors. All this means is that the outcome as capitalism that we see in modern times is distinct from the stage of modernity itself, logically speaking, notwithstanding its center-stage claim on the title of modern social systems. 

The question of theory then suddenly jumps to a new and different mode: that of the progression of accelerations or transitions so mysteriously present along a selective mainline of universal cultural history. 

It seems as if, so far from being a stage of history, the capitalist phase of modern history is a relatively contingent aspect of that modernity, suddenly amplified in the process of modernization and technological discovery, but not in and of itself an intrinsic stage of anything. We have simply restated a Marxist thesis in another form: we are not required to posit an inevitable stage of economic existence on the grounds that is connected to the larger eonic sequence of emerging civilization. There may be solid grounds for embracing a capitalist brand of economic organization, but that is not the point. There is no inherent historical inevitability to its appearance. And in fact its appearance is actually a relatively arbitrary set of variants decided on by historically given agents, often ideological agents at heart. There is hardly any way around this fact. Would we define modernity in terms of one capitalist system, as opposed to any number of easily conceived variants? What are we talking about? 

It is almost as if Marx had been saying: we see the modern transition suddenly frozen in place and left incomplete as it is captured by the forms of a particular stage of 'capitalist' economic formation. There must be a completed form of modernity itself that is realizable as post-capitalist. That may be true or not, but we can see that the basic point is clear: the dynamics of world history we have found is compatible with multiple alternate forms of economic organization. Especially important to grasp is that the self-organization, so-called, visible in economic prosperity generation is a sui generis process. It only explains itself, and is not the right rubric of explanation/theory required to understand the larger dynamics of Civilization. Once we become familiar with this kind of analysis the point is almost obvious. And yet versions of the notion of economic self-organization have tended to sow tares across the board in all areas of social analysis, indeed, including the biological, notably the brand of evolutionism that emerged from the Darwinian phase. The idea, seen a figure such as Hayek, that social institutions in the manner of 'self-organization' in relation to economic systems, is certainly false. The evolution of social organizations springs from many sources, the generative action of the eonic sequence claiming by far the largest component of that action. And its relationship to economic systems is not intrinsic. 

Top