Social structuring in pre-capitalism "may look as an anomaly to a contemporary eye. But it is an anomaly only because we tend to take such notions as national space, nation, class and citizen as given, as the 'natural' way of social existence. Once one poses the question on the conditions and prerequisites that made these notions come to existence, i.e. once one poses the historicity of such notions, the pre-capitalist categories cease to be anomalies. The coming into age of an enlarged identity: the nation, has not done away with the need to exclude others, it only redefined otherness on grounds that look "natural to contemporary eyes, belonging to a common culture or speaking a common language, thus excluding 'others' from the right to compete for jobs and opportunities within the national space.

The non-dominance of capitalism on social formations imposes severe restrictions that prevent carrying a final assault on many forms of pre-capitalist social organisation.

— Isam al-Khafaji, Tormented Births: Passages to Modernity in Europe and the Middle East, 2004, p. 110