File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-08-17.000, message 182


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



     ------------------

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005