File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 133


Date: Thu, 05 Feb 1998 15:00:28 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-TH: The racism of 18th century social science


The "4 stage" theory of history was widely accepted in 17th and 18th
century Europe. I alluded to Lord Kames and William Robertson the other
day, but these two are just the tip of the iceberg. For the whole story, I
recommend Ronald L. Meek's "Social Science and the Ignoble Savage"
(Cambidge, 1976). Meek might be known to many of you for his book on the
labor theory of value published by Monthly Review press. "Social Science
and the Ignoble Savage" is essential reading for those who are trying to
come to grips with the Eurocentric character of much of Marx and Engels'
writings.

Meek makes a very important point. Central to the writings of 17th and 18th
century social science was a belief that American Indians were the prime
example of the 'first' or 'earliest' stage of human social development.
Unlike those like Rousseau who made the case for a 'noble savage,' these
historians and philosophers thought that American Indians represented the
worst humanity had to offer. Since American Indian society was on the
lowest stage of human development, its disappearance would represent
progress. John Locke was one such thinker and his justifications for
British colonialism are well-known.

Just to refresh your memory on the 4-stages, Adam Smith gave lectures at
the University of Glasgow that described them as 1) the Age of Hunters, 2)
the Age of Shepherds, 3) the Age of Agriculture, 4) the Age of Commerce. He
described stage one:

"If we should suppose 10 or 12 persons of different sexes settled in an
uninhabited island, the first method they would fall upon for their
sustenance would be to support themselves by the wild fruits and wild
animals which the country afforded. Their sole business would be hunting
the wild beasts or catching the fishes. The pulling of a wild fruit can
hardly be called an employment. The only thing among them which deserved
the appellation of a business would be the chase. This is the age of hunters."

You can practically see the austere, pleasure-hating Scotsman spitting out
the words "can hardly be called an employment."

Another stagist was the French philosopher Cornelius de Pauw who wrote
something called "Recherches Philosphiques sur les Américains" in 1768.
Meek comments that the book was filled with bizarre speculations about the
habitants of the New World, which he thought included cannibals, albinos,
giants and hermaphrodites. Perhaps de Pauw was anticipating 1998 Manhattan,
who knows? Much more disturbing and outrageous was his claim that the
inhospitable climate of the continent explained the ignobility of the
indigenous peoples. He writes:

"I return here to that great principle of which I have already made use,
and say it is not only natural but also necessary that there should be, as
between savages located in such similar climates, as many resemblances as
there possibly are between the Tunguses [Siberians] and the Canadians.
Equally barbarous, equally living by hunting and fishing in countries which
are cold, infertile, and covered with forests, what disproportion would one
expect? Where people feel the same needs, where the means of satisfying
them are the same, where the atmospheric influences are so similar, can the
manners be contradictory, and can the ideas vary?"

This is called objectification and it was essential to the task of creating
racial myths of superiority so as to allow Western Europe to dominate and
exploit the rest of the globe.

There were some attempts at critical thought during this depressingly
Eurocentric period, even from men who operated within the general framework
of the 4-stage theory. One was the German Johann Gottfried von Herder who
wrote "Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menscheit." He tried to
distance himself from the crude "progressivism" of people like Smith and de
Pauw and even edged toward a version of "combined and uneven development."
Referring to the actors in the first stage of history, he wrote in 1791:

"they vary with almost every region, and for the most part run into each
other in such a manner, that this mode of classification is very difficult
to apply with accuracy. The Greenlander, who strikes the whale, pursues the
reindeer, and kills the seal, is occupied both in hunting and fishing; yet
in a very different manner from that, in which the Negro fishes, or the
Araucoan hunts on the deserts of the Andes, the Bedouin and the Mungal, the
Laplander and the Peruvian, are shepherds: but how greatly do they differ
from each another, whole one pastures his camels, another his horses, the
third his reindeer, and the last his pacoes and llamas. The merchants of
England differ not more from those of China, than the husbandmen of Whidah
from the husbandmen of Japan."

And even more revealingly, he speculates whether the higher stage of
agriculture is really any sort of advance at all:

"Generally speaking, no mode of life has effected so much alteration in the
minds of men, as agriculture, combined with the enclosure of land. While it
produced arts and trades, villages and towns, and, in consequence,
government and laws; it necessarily paved the way for that frightful
despotism, which, from confining every man to his field, gradually
proceeded to prescribe to him, what alone he should do on it, what alone it
should be. The ground now ceased to belong to man, but man became the
appertance of the ground."

It would take sustained field research to break down the racist views
contained in de Pauw and dozens of other bourgeois ideologists. Instead of
viewing the American Indian as an object, it would be necessary to view him
or her as a subject. Lewis Morgan was a pioneer in this respect. What
Morgan did not give up was the notion that the various stages of history
represented upward progress. Commenting on Morgan's contributions, Thomas
Patterson states in "Western Civilization", a new Monthly Review title:

"Lewis Henry Morgan, who was mainly concerned with the development of human
society, saw the evolutionary succession from savagery through barbarism to
civilization as a generalization about human history. Not only did human
society develop in this manner, but it could not have developed otherwise.
Progress--the movement from one stage to the next--was the result of
technological innovations that transformed the modes of subsistence and the
social institutions that were inextricably linked to them. But while Morgan
believed that progress was ultimately inevitable and beneficial, he also
thought that the rise of civilization had destroyed something valuable: the
values of those and present-day peoples who knew neither private property
nor the profit motive."

Patterson characterizes Marx and Engels as critics of civilization and
groups them with Freud and Nietzsche, while making his identification with
socialism clear nonetheless. What he does not address, however, is the
exact difference between the views of someone like Morgan and Engels _up
until the consolidation of the modern capitalist system_. Where Engels
differs from Morgan in "Origins of the Family, Private Property and the
State" is on the question of what comes after capitalism, namely socialism.
That Morgan and Engels share the presuppositions of 17th and 18th century
historians and philosophers on the question of progress is indisputable.
What is open to question is whether this heritage should be accepted in an
uncritical manner. In our critique of the postmodernists and Vandana Shiva,
it is imperative that we not end up in the enemy camp. If the only
yardstick of progress is advances in the mode of production, then Marxism
will inevitably fail to distinguish itself from the bourgeoisie which has
developed this to a science.

Louis Proyect




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