Marx held that capitalism both preserves and absorbs pre-capitalist modes of production.

Evidence

Laclau puts the essential argument in a strong form: “The pre-capitalist character of the dominant relations of production in Latin America was not only not incompatible with production for the world market, but was actually intensified by the expansion of the latter.” Marx, in a passage less well known than The Communist Manifesto “scenario” quoted earlier, spoke of the fact that “the circuit of industrial capital … crosses the commodity circulation of the most diverse modes of social production.… No matter whether commodities are the output of production based on slavery, of peasants … of state enterprise … or of half-savage hunting tribes … they come face to face with the monies and commodities in which industrial capital presents itself.… The character of the process of production from which they originate is immaterial.… They must be reproduced and to this extent the capitalist mode of production is conditional on modes of production lying outside of its own stage of development” (Marx 1956: 109). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 610

Categorization

• DEFINE: This ‘conservation-dissolution’ idea — capitalism subordinating alongside preserving non-capitalist modes — is central to Hall’s later articulation theory.
• XREF: Connects directly to the conservative-dissolution reading that grounds racialized labor regimes and the classic debate over whether exploitation requires ‘free’ wage labor — echoes in the Capitalism-Section.