More on Marx and traditional societies

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This proposition of the linear progression from feudal societies to
capitalism to socialism in an "upward and onward" manner was
scrutinized by a participant in an interesting panel on "The Marxist
Method" at the Socialist Scholars Conference this weekend. (This
conference was generally a waste of time except for this panel and a
terrific one on "postmodernity" featuring Ellen Meiksins Wood, Harry
Magdoff and Doug Henwood. Postmodernism got a good pasting.)

In the "Marxist Method" session, Kevin Anderson spoke about Marx
and "postcolonialism". He is a member of News and Letters, a cult
around deceased Trotskyist Raya Dumskaynevatenaski (or something
like that). Oddly enough, a number of bright people are members of
this group. Whether they get brighter or dimmer after joining is
another question entirely. Kevin is also the author of the newly
published "Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism." This book details
Lenin's preoccupation in the early part of WWI with Hegel's work. It
argues for tipping the scale more in the direction of something called
materialist idealism which they believe makes Marx more of a
Hegelian than is ordinarily recognized.

At the panel Kevin stated that attacks on Marx by postcolonialists like
Edward Said is unwarranted. They tend to see only one side of Marx,
the side that applauds the uprooting of traditional social relations.
There is another side of Marx on this question, however, one that
points to the tendency of capitalism to undermine and actually worsen
conditions. Specifically, in Marx's writings on India, people like Said
focus exclusively on those passages in the beginning of the essay that
seem like a paean to capitalism. You know: railroads, a free press,
universal education, etc. But if you read further in Marx's essay, he is
clear that capitalism was also worsening the lives of Indians by
making them subservient to England. Marx's writings, not
surprisingly, according to Kevin, should be seen in the dialectical
fashion that they were intended since the phenomenon they were
analyzing--capitalism--is highly contradictory.

Finally, Kevin brought news of an important new book containing
Marx's incidental writings on ethnology. Apparently, Marx was a keen
observer of precapitalist societies, including the American Indian, and
did not call for a replacement universally of social relations in these
societies with one based on commodity production. This new book is
supposed to radically alter our perception of Marx. We shall see.


Louis


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