Comparisons Within a Single Social Formation: A Critical Appreciation of Perry Anderson's Lineages of the Absolutist State

Abstract

Perry Anderson's Lineages of the Absolutist State uses a comparative and narrative historical method to reconceive the social dynamic of late feudalism. Anderson explains differences in economic development among European countries by comparing class dynamics within a single social formation: the absolutist state. This article makes explicit the factorial analysis implicit in Anderson's case studies, and highlights the ways in which Lineages overcomes the logical flaws in much previous work. Anderson's inability to explain why some absolutist states ended in bourgeois revolutions exposes the ultimate limitations of Marxian categories for explaining the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Anderson fails to take full advantage of the analytical possibilities opened by his reconceptualization of absolutism. His schema allows for complexity within absolutism. This article concludes by showing that such complexity can be understood better in terms of a double dynamic of elite and class conflict rather than with just the class categories employed by Anderson.