AbstractMapping productivist logic derived from the history of capitalism onto the rest of the world blocks the view of alternative systems, and their internal logic. Theories of the capitalist state can capture neither the nature of the non‐capitalist states nor those states’ social and economic relations. Our alternative formulation of the Ottoman state disassociates class, property, and distribution from the sphere of production and associates them with the state. Thereby, Ottoman history sheds its petrified cloak and the Ottoman state comes to life; motion, change and class conflict are things Ottoman once ag