A Marxist History of the World - Neil Faulkner

353 Pages·2021·14.11 MB·English

A Marxist History of the World

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Counterfire

Series Editor: Neil Faulkner

Counterfire is a socialist organisation which campaigns against capitalism, war, and
injustice. It organises nationally, locally, and through its website and print publications,
operating as part of broader mass movements, for a society based on democracy,
equality, and human need.
Counterfire stands in the revolutionary Marxist tradition, believing that radical
change can come only through the mass action of ordinary people. To find out more,
visit www.counterfire.org
This series aims to present radical perspectives on history, society, and current
affairs to a general audience of trade unionists, students, and other activists. The best
measure of its success will be the degree to which it inspires readers to be active in
the struggle to change the world.

Also available:

How a Century of War Changed the Lives of Women
Lindsey German

Forthcoming:

The Second World War:
A Marxist History
Chris Bambery

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A Marxist History of the World

From Neanderthals to Neoliberals

Neil Faulkner

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First published 2013 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Copyright © Neil Faulkner 2013

The right of Neil Faulkner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 3215 4 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3214 7 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 8496 4863 9 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 8496 4865 3 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 8496 4864 6 EPUB eBook

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to
conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and
Edwards Bros in the United States of America

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Contents

Introduction: Why History Matters
ix

1 Hunters and Farmers
1

c. 2.5 million–3000 bc

The Hominid Revolution
2

The Hunting Revolution
4

The Agricultural Revolution
7

The Origins of War and Religion
9

The Rise of the Specialists
12

2 The First Class Societies
15

c. 3000–1000 bc

The First Ruling Class
16

The Spread of Civilisation
18

Crisis in the Bronze Age
21

How History Works
23

Men of Iron
25

3 Ancient Empires
28

c. 1000–30 bc

Persia: the Achaemenid Empire
29

India: the Mauryan Empire
31

China: the Qin Empire
33

The Greek Democratic Revolution
36

The Macedonian Empire
38

Roman Military Imperialism
41

The Roman Revolution
43

4 The End of Antiquity
46

c. 30 bc–ad 650

The Crisis of Late Antiquity
47

Huns, Goths, Germans, and Romans
50

Mother-Goddesses and Power-Deities
52

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
54

Arabs, Persians, and Byzantines
57

5 The Medieval World
60

c. ad 650–1500

The Abbasid Revolution
61

Hindus, Buddhists, and the Gupta Empire
63

Chinese History’s Revolving Door
66

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A MArxist History oF tHe World

Africa: Cattle-Herders, Ironmasters, and Trading States
68

New World Empires: Maya, Aztec, and Inca
70

6 European Feudalism
74

c. ad 650–1500

The Cycles and Arrows of Time
75

The Peculiarity of Europe
77

The Rise of Western Feudalism
79

Crusade and Jihad
81

Lord, Burgher, and Peasant in Medieval Europe
83

The Class Struggle in Medieval Europe
85

The New Monarchies
87

The New Colonialism
89

7 The First Wave of Bourgeois Revolutions
92

1517–1775

The Reformation
93

The Counter-Reformation
96

The Dutch Revolution
99

The Thirty Years War
101

The Causes of the English Revolution
104

Revolution and Civil War
107

The Army, the Levellers, and the Commonwealth
109

Colonies, Slavery, and Racism
111

Wars of Empire
114

8 The Second Wave of Bourgeois Revolutions
117

1775–1815

The Enlightenment
118

The American Revolution
121

The Storming of the Bastille
124

The Jacobin Dictatorship
126

From Thermidor to Napoleon
129

9 The Rise of Industrial Capitalism
132

c. 1750–1850

The Industrial Revolution
133

The Chartists and the Origins of the Labour Movement
135

The 1848 Revolutions
138

What is Marxism?
141

What is Capitalism
143

The Making of the Working Class
146

10 The Age of Blood and Iron
149

1848–1896

The Indian Mutiny
150

The Italian Risorgimento
152

The American Civil War
154

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coNteNts vii

Japan’s Meiji Restoration
157

The Unification of Germany
159

The Paris Commune
162

The Long Depression, 1873−96
165

11 Imperialism and War
168

1873–1918

The Scramble for Africa
169

The Rape of China
172

What is Imperialism?
174

The 1905 Revolution: Russia’s Great Dress Rehearsal
177

The Ottoman Empire and the 1908 ‘Young Turk’ Revolution
179

1914: Descent into Barbarism
182

Reform or Revolution?
185

The First World War
188

12 The Revolutionary Wave
191

1917–1928

1917: The February Revolution
192

Dual Power: The Mechanics of Revolution
195

February to October: The Rhythms of Revolution
197

1917: The October Insurrection
200

1918: How the War Ended
202

The German Revolution
205

Italy’s ‘Two Red Years’
208

World Revolution
209

The First Chinese Revolution
212

Revolts Against Colonialism
214

Stalinism: The Bitter Fruit of Revolutionary Defeat
217

13 The Great Depression and the Rise of Fascism
220

1929–1939

The Roaring Twenties
221

The Hungry Thirties
224

1933: The Nazi Seizure of Power
226

State Capitalism in Russia
229

1936: The French General Strike and Factory Occupations
233

The Spanish Civil War
235

The Causes of the Second World War
238

14 World War and Cold War
242

1939–1967

The Second World War: Imperialism
243

The Second World War: Barbarism
246

The Second World War: Resistance
248

The Cold War
250

The Great Boom
253

Maoist China
255

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A MArxist History oF tHe World

End of Empire?
258

Oil, Zionism, and Western Imperialism
261

1956: Hungary and Suez
263

Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution
266

15 The New World Disorder
269

1968–present

The Vietnam War
270

1968
273

1968–75: The Workers’ Revolt
275

The Long Recession, 1973–92
278

What is Neoliberalism?
281

1989: The Fall of Stalinism
284

9/11, the War on Terror, and the New Imperialism
287

The 2008 Crash: From Bubble to Black Hole
290

The Second Great Depression
292

Conclusion: Making the Future
296

The Wealth of the World
296

The Beast
297

Revolution in the Twenty-First Century?
301

Whose Apocalypse?
302

Timeline
304

Sources
332
Bibliographical Notes
333
Select Bibliography
338

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Introduction: Why History Matters

History is a weapon. How we understand the past affects how we act in the
present. Because of this, history is political and contested.
All knowledge of the present – of its crises, wars, and revolutions – is
necessarily historical. We can no more make sense of our own world without
reference to the past than we can manufacture a computer without reference
to the accumulated knowledge of many decades. Our rulers know this, and
because they have a vested interest in defending their own property and
power, they use their control of education and the mass media to present
a sanitised view of history. They stress continuity and tradition, obedience
and conformity, nationalism and empire. They purposefully underplay
exploitation, the violence of the ruling class, and the struggles of the oppressed.
Their version of history has become more dominant over the last 30
years. Past empires, such as the Roman and the British, have been held up
as models of civilisation by ‘neo-conservative’ supporters of imperialist wars
today. Medieval Europe has been reinterpreted as an exemplar of the ‘new
classical’ economics favoured by millionaire bankers. Attempts to construct
grand narratives of history – that is, to explain the past, so that we can
understand the present, and act to change the future – have been disparaged by
fashionable postmodernist theorists who argue that history has no structure,
pattern, or meaning. The effect of these ideas is to disable us intellectually and
render us politically inert. Do nothing, is the message, because war promotes
democracy, there is no alternative to the market, and history cannot be shaped
by conscious human action.
This book stands in a different tradition. It is encapsulated in something the
revolutionary thinker and activist Karl Marx wrote in a political pamphlet
published in 1852: ‘Men [and women] make their own history, but not of
their own free will, and not under circumstances of their own choosing.’ The
course of history, in other words, is not predetermined; things can move in a
different direction according to what people do. Nor is history shaped only
by politicians and generals; the implication is that if ordinary people organise
themselves and act collectively, they too can shape history.

This book has its origin in a series first published in weekly instalments on
the Counterfire website (www.counterfire.org). It has been extensively revised
for book-format publication. This introduction has been added, as has a
rather longer conclusion. The short weekly web chapters have been grouped
together as the sections of longer book chapters, and each chapter has been
given a short introduction. A bibliography has been added so that readers

ix

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x
A MArxist History oF tHe World

can check my sources and search for further reading, and so has a timeline
to help readers keep their bearings through the narrative.
The reorganisation and editing of the original web series should make this
a book that can be read cover to cover, but it does not have to be read that
way. It should work equally well as a volume of short analytical essays on
key historical topics which can be accessed when needed. Either way, it is
first and foremost a book for activists – for people who want to understand
the past as a guide to action in the present.

Many changes are due to the following people, all of whom took time and
trouble to read the text, in whole or in part, and offer invaluable critical
comment: William Alderson, Dominic Alexander, David Castle, Lindsey
German, Elaine Graham-Leigh, Jackie Mulhallen, John Rees, Alex Snowdon,
Alastair Stephens, Fran Trafford, and Vernon Trafford. Needless to say, I
have sometimes proved stubborn and rejected their advice, so the final result
is entirely my own.
A common criticism was that I have neglected certain places and periods;
that the book suffers from Eurocentrism, even Anglocentrism. This criticism
is justified. I have done my best to correct it, but I have succeeded only in
part. The reason is simple and obvious: I am a British-based archaeologist
and historian with uneven expertise. Like all generalists, I can never wholly
escape the constraints of my training, experience, and reading, and must
therefore seek the indulgence and forbearance of readers who are neither
British nor European.
Even on the ground I have covered, I suspect I leave a trail of errors and
misunderstandings – inviting denunciation by diverse cohorts of specialists.
That, too, is the inevitable fate of the generalist. There is only one defence.
Would correcting the errors and misunderstandings invalidate the main
arguments? If so, the project fails. If not – if the Marxist approach provides
a convincing explanation of the main events and developments of human
history irrespective of misconstrued details – then the project succeeds.
Hopefully, though, it will achieve something more: it will persuade some
that, since humans make their own history, such that the future is determined
by what each of us does, they need to get active. For, as Marx himself put it:
‘The philosophers have merely interpreted the world; the point is to change it.’

Neil Faulkner
December 2012

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1
Hunters and Farmers

c. 2.5 million–3000 bc

The cutting-edge of technology for two million years:
an Acheulian handaxe.

1

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2
A MArxisT HisTory of THe World

Our story begins with a rapid survey of a vast span of time from about
2.5 million years ago to about 3000 bc. During this period, as a product
of biological, cultural, and social evolution, four radical transformations
took place. First, in East Africa, 2.5 million years ago, some apes evolved
into the earliest hominids – animals that walked upright and whose hands
were henceforward free to fashion tools. Second, about 200,000 years ago,
again in Africa, certain hominids evolved into modern humans, creatures
with larger brains and a greater capacity for tool-making, collective labour,
social organisation, and cultural adaptation to different environments.
Third, about 10,000 years ago, under the impact of climate change and food
shortages, some communities made the transition from hunting and gathering
to farming. Fourth, about 6,000 years ago, new techniques of land reclamation
and intensive farming allowed some communities in favoured locations to
increase their output substantially by moving from hoe-based cultivation to
plough-based agriculture.
I call these transitions revolutions to signal the fact that they were relatively
abrupt: moments in history when the steady drip-drip of evolutionary
development suddenly tipped over into qualitative change – from walking
on all fours to walking on two legs; from a hominid of limited intellect to
one of exceptional ability; from a way of life based on foraging or hunting
for food to one based on producing it; and from hoe-based to plough-based
farming. By the end of this period, around 3000 bc, farming was supplying
human societies with agricultural surpluses sufficient to support religion, war,
and groups of specialists. From among the latter, who usurped control of the
surplus, the first classes of exploiters would emerge.

The Hominid revolution

A new form of ape roamed the Afar Depression of Ethiopia 3.2 million years
ago: Australopithecus afarensis (‘southern ape of Afar’). Anthropologists
recovered 47 fossil bones of one of these ‘australopithecines’ in 1974, some 40
per cent of a complete skeleton. From the slight, gracile form, they assumed
she was female and dubbed her ‘Lucy’, but she may in fact have been male.
Lucy stood just 1.1 m tall, weighed around 29 kg, and was probably about
20 years old when she died. With short legs, long arms, and a small brain case,
Lucy would have looked rather like a modern chimpanzee. But there was a
crucial difference: she walked upright. The shape of her pelvis and legs, and
the knee joint of another member of the species found a short distance away,
proved this beyond reasonable doubt.
Lucy was probably one of a small foraging group that moved around
gathering fruit, nuts, seeds, eggs, and other foodstuffs. As climate change
reduced the forests and created savannah, natural selection had favoured
a species able to range over greater distances in search of food. But Lucy’s
bipedalism (walking on two legs) had revolutionary implications. It freed
the hands and arms for tool-making and other forms of labour. This in turn
encouraged natural selection in favour of larger brain capacity. A powerful

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HunTers And fArMers 3

dynamic of evolutionary change was set in motion: hand and brain, labour
and intellect, skill and thought began an explosive interaction – one which
culminated in modern humans.
We do not know whether Lucy made tools. None was found in association
with her remains or with those of her companions. But 2.5 million years
ago Lucy’s descendants certainly did. Choppers made from crudely chipped
pebbles represent the archaeological imprint of a new family of species defined
by tool-making behaviour: the hominids. Tools embody conceptual thought,
forward planning, and manual dexterity. They reveal the use of intellect and
skill to modify nature in order to exploit its resources more efficiently. Other
animals simply take it as it comes.
The hominids, like the australopithecines before them, evolved in Africa,
and for about 1.5 million years that is where they largely remained. Although
1.8-million-year-old fossil remains have been found in Georgia, near the Black
Sea, these appear to represent only a brief foray into Western Asia. Not until
about a million years ago did a species of early human, Homo erectus, migrate
from Africa to colonise much of South and East Asia. Later again, a more
developed hominid, Homo heidelbergensis, settled in much of Western Asia
and Europe. But these populations were tiny and unstable.
Hominids are creatures of the Ice Age epoch which began 2.5 million years
ago. Ice Age climate is dynamic, shifting between cold glacials and relatively
warm interglacials. We are currently in an interglacial, but 20,000 years ago
much of Northern Europe and North America was in the middle of a glacial
and covered by ice-sheets up to 4 km thick, with winters lasting nine months,
and temperatures below –20°C for weeks on end. The early hominids were
not adapted to the cold, so they migrated north in warm periods and moved
south again when the glaciers advanced. They first arrived in Britain, for
example, at least 700,000 years ago, but then retreated and returned at least
eight times. Britain was probably occupied for only about 20 per cent of its
Old Stone Age (c. 700,000−10,000 years ago).
Homo heidelbergensis seems to have inhabited coastal or estuarine regions,
where animal resources were rich and varied. The standard tool was either
an ‘Acheulian’ handaxe − essentially a chopper − or a ‘Clactonian’ flake
− a cutter. These general-purpose tools were mass-produced as needed.
Excavations at Boxgrove in England recovered 300 handaxes and much
associated flint-knapping debris dating to around 500,000 years ago. They
had been used to butcher horse, deer, and rhinoceros on what was then a
savannah-like coastal plain.
During the last glaciation, however, there was no wholesale retreat. Homo
neanderthalensis was a cold-adapted hominid that evolved out of Homo
heidelbergensis in Europe and Western Asia about 200,000 years ago.
Neanderthal adaptation was a matter of both biological evolution and new
technology. With large heads, big noses, prominent brows, low foreheads, little
chin development, and short, squat, powerfully built bodies, the Neanderthal
was designed to survive winters with average temperatures as low as –10°C.
But culture was more important, and this was linked to brain power.

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4
A MArxisT HisTory of THe World

Hominid brains had been getting bigger. Selection for this characteristic
was a serious matter. Brain tissue is more expensive than other kinds: the
brain accounts for only about 2 per cent of our body weight but no less
than 20 per cent of food-energy consumption. It is also high-risk. Humans
are adapted for walking upright, which requires a narrow pelvis, yet have a
large brain-case, which imposes a strain on the woman’s pelvis in childbirth;
the result is slow, painful, and sometimes dangerous birth trauma. But the
advantages are considerable. Large brains enable modern humans to create
and sustain complex social relationships with, typically, about 150 others.
Humans are not just social animals, but social animals to an extreme degree,
with brains especially enlarged and sophisticated for this purpose.
Sociability confers enormous evolutionary benefits. Hominid hunter-
gatherer bands were probably very small – perhaps 30 or 40 people. But
they would have had links with other groups, perhaps half a dozen of similar
size, with whom they shared mates, resources, labour, information, and ideas.
Sociability, cooperation, and culture are closely related, and achieving them
requires high levels of intelligence: in biological terms, brain tissue.
The Neanderthals were certainly clever. The ‘Mousterian’ tool-kit of the
classic Neanderthals contained a range of specialised points, knives, and
scrapers – as many as 63 different types according to one famous study of
archaeological finds from south-western France. Intelligent, networked, and
well equipped, the Neanderthals were superbly adapted to Ice Age extremes,
building shelters, making clothes, and organising themselves for large-scale
hunting on the frozen plains. Lynford in England is a hunting site dating from
60,000 years ago. Here, archaeologists found Neanderthal tools associated
with the bones, tusks, and teeth of mammoths.
But natural organisms are conservative in relation to their evolutionary
perfection. The Neanderthals, in adapting so well to the cold, had entered
a biological cul-de-sac. Meanwhile, in Africa, the crucible of species, a new
type of super-hominid had evolved out of the ancient erectus line. Such was
its creativity, collective organisation, and cultural adaptability that, migrating
from Africa 85,000 years ago, it spread rapidly across the world and eventually
colonised its remotest corners. This new species was Homo sapiens – modern
humans – and it was destined to out-compete all other hominids and drive
them to extinction.
The Hominid Revolution, which began around 2.5 million years ago, had
culminated in a species whose further progress would be determined not by
biological evolution, but by intelligence, culture, social organisation, and
planned collective labour.

The Hunting revolution

Somewhere in Africa, 200,000 years ago, lived a woman who is the common
ancestor of every human being on earth today. She is the primeval progenitor
of the entire species Homo sapiens – modern humans. We know her as ‘African

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