1. In particular, I am concerned with necessary theory, which is notably lacking in Hobsbawm’s treatment; for example he speaks of general prediction of the collapse of the tsarist empire ‘since the 1870s’, but does not attempt any general explanation except general war-weariness (Hobsbawm, 1994, pp. 55–60).
2. Kennedy, 1989, p. 191; Bairoch, 1981, 1991. ‘Peripheral’ is used here not in terms of certain formations’ importance to capital as a whole, which was basic, but in the sense of distribution of global power and control of their inhabitants over their own lives.
3. Mandel, 1978, p. 27. It is necessary to assume a degree of familiarity with such basic Marxist concepts as ‘organic composition of capital’.
4. On this see Mandel, 1978, pp. 25–8.
5. Further on this, and on the implications of multiple forms of surplus labour — including women’s domestic work — for the labour theory of value, see Post, 1996, pp. 137–44, 207–18.