The relevance of these observations for the subject matter of this book is simply this: As the reader will have already understood, it will be argued here that the “mode of production” we see around us, the manner in which labor processes are organized and carried out, is the “product” of the social relations we know as capitalist.  But the shape of our society, the shape of any given society, is not an instantaneous creation of “laws” which generate that society on the spot and before our eyes.  Every society is a moment in the historical process, and can be grasped only as part of that process.  Capitalism, a social form, when it exists in time, space, population, and history, weaves a web of myriad threads; the conditions of its existence form a complex network each of which presupposes many others.  It is because of this solid and tangible existence, this concrete form produced by history, no part of which may be changed by artificial suppositions without doing violence to its true mode of existence--it is precisely because of this that it appears as “natural,” “inevitable,” and “eternal.”  And it is only in this sense, as a fabric woven over centuries, that we may say that capitalism “produced” the present capitalist mode of production.  This is a far cry from a ready-made formula which enables us to “deduce” from a given state of technology a given mode of social organization (15).