The Emergence of Capitalism

In the book written jointly by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 'Anti-Oedipus' - the first volume of their larger work entitled: 'Capitalisme et schizophrénie' - a project of 'universal history' is outlined. The authors show that history is a process of continual deterritorialization, which is controlled and regulated to some extent by a series of 'social machines', such as the primitive territorial machine, the despotic machine, and the civilized machine of capitalism. The last of the three machines functions through abstract axiomatization of the market, rather than ritualized codification of social phenomena. This mode of functioning of capitalism results in treating deterritorialization as a desirable process to which capitalism in fact manages to acquire, a privileged place in history.