1 | Page The Being and Becoming of Capitalism 1 Alexander Anievas & Kerem Nişancıoğlu We thank the contributors to this forum for posing a number of insightful and challenging questions concerning our analysis of the origins of capitalism and the ‘rise of the West’ in How the West Came to Rule (HWCR). In this short reply, we focus on what we take to be the four most significant points raised by them: (1) the place of ‘superstructural’ factors in our account and within the broader theory of uneven and combined development (UCD); (2) our conception of causality and how it relates to comparative methods; (3) the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ challenge that our work presents to Eurocentric explanations of the rise of capitalism, and; (4) the question of how we might overcome Eurocentrism in our strategies to transcendence capitalism. Salyga and Valadbaygi’s piece focuses on the relationship between ‘superstructural’ factors and the UCD approach, asking: ‘…what role should be accredited to the super-structural elements within the uneven and combined development thesis, and to what degree is the latter capable of productively incorporating cultural manifestations of the studied modes of production?’. It should be clear from our analysis that we reject any orthodox conception of Marx’s basis/superstructure (Basis/Überbau) metaphor as a causal model by which the economic basis somehow functionally explains the superstructure, even if the latter can condition and influence the former. Indeed, the model of causality 1 We would like to thank Andreas Bieler and Adam Morton for organizing this forum.