Abstract
The Marxist social historian Witold Kula (1916-1988) demonstrated more thoroughly than any other scholar that the changes in the conditions of agricultural production also changed ‘historical time’. Kula describes the period between 1770 and 1880 as a transition zone in which an acceleration of historical time occurs because it does not yet correspond to experience. The historical process bursts open the old European continuum of experience, and the first category in which the temporal difference between experience and expectation is conceptualized is the term ‘progress’. He does not, however, consider this transition from the feudal to the capitalist movement pattern to be fluent. According to Kula, capitalism in most countries did not develop out of the feudal economy or as a consequence of gradual changes within the system, but developed above it as an autonomous system in the form of a superstructure.
