Rethinking Late Antiquity: A Materialist Debate Between Chris Wickham and Perry Anderson

Abstract

Late Antiquity, as a historical period and an economic mode - in the historical materialist tradition - is notoriously challenging to pin down. This article evaluates two contrasting interpretations by leading twentieth-century historians in the Marxist tradition: Chris Wickham’s interpretation of Late Antiquity as a distinct economic mode and Perry Anderson’s more traditional Marxist analysis. Wickham’s focus on the tax-based model and his rejection of teleology are studied, as well as Anderson’s emphasis on the proto-feudal characteristics of Late Antiquity. The article argues for a synthesis of both arguments and provides a more nuanced understanding of the period’s transformative economic developments.