Abstract

By digging through the stratigraphy of the history of ideas we can find within and beyond Marxism an 'aleatory current' that values the role of chance in history. Using this perspective, the book builds a case for a historical materialism that is stripped of all teleology. Starting in the ancient Mediterranean with Epicurus, it traces the history of conceiving history as plural up to Marxism and modern science. It shows that concrete historical 'worlds' such as ancient Mesoamerica and Eurasia cannot be reduced to a single template. Affirming the potentiality of a future non-capitalist 'world', it invalidates any 'end of history' thesis.