Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 11:57:24 +0700 From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (donna jones) Subject: Ethnology/Manuscripts Upon Alex Trotter's advice, I have begun reading the Ethnological Notebooks, edited by Lawerence Krader. There is also a more direct introduction to those notebooks by Cyril Levitt in D Banerjee Marxian Theory and the Third World. Here are some themes discussed therein: (1) the critique of positivist evolutionism including as implicit in Marx himself. Levitt concludes that these notebooks allow us to understand the relationship between natural and social laws of history and to confront the often contradictory treatment in Marx himself. (I believe that such comparison is also at the heart of the Marxist philosopher of science Richard A Miller's Fact and Method, but I have not yet read Miller). (2) the importance of Fourier's critique of civilization as being commenced with private property in land and monogamy. Marx's express interest in Fourier's brilliance is noted by Engels in a late footnote in Origins, I believe. I suppose that since the abolition of (private) capitalism has not yet meant communism, the question of the broader project of the abolition of civilization has to be considered. Of the anti-civilization theorists, Freddi Perlman is the only one I have read; his critique of nationalism is only ignored at some peril (especially by us third world nationalist types), and his against history, against leviathan is an unforgettable read, I believe. Marx's anti-civilizational interests come out in some of his late letters to Zasulich. (3) Marx's own return to the themes of the Manuscripts. This is what Alex has already called our attention to, and to which I reacted critically. However, Alex is undoubtedly right. Of course, the Notebooks are free of Marx's early philosophical anthropology, but the concern with the man/woman relationship is re-asserted--this time with a deep understanding of its historic variability and a deep critique of its ethnocentric treatment by many ethnologists. (4) Marx anticipated many of our postmodern critiques of ethnocentricism, especially see his critical treatment of Maine. (5)Krader also raises the question of the differences between Marx and Engels on Morgan. Alex is undoubtedly right: the project that has begun and departed from this combination of Marx's early and late writings is one of the most interesting, inspiring and fully humanist developments in (post-)Marxist thought. I look forward to reading Pierre Clastres. d jones ------------------
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