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A Marxist History of the World Faulkner T02521 00 pre 1 06/03/2013 09:48 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 Faulkner T02521 00 pre 2 06/03/2013 09:48 A Marxist History of the World From Neanderthals to Neoliberals Neil Faulkner Faulkner T02521 00 pre 3 06/03/2013 09:48 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 Faulkner T02521 00 pre 4 06/03/2013 09:48 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 Faulkner T02521 00 pre 5 06/03/2013 09:48 vi 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 Faulkner T02521 00 pre 6 06/03/2013 09:48 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 Faulkner T02521 00 pre 7 06/03/2013 09:48 viii 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 Faulkner T02521 00 pre 8 06/03/2013 09:48 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 Faulkner T02521 00 pre 9 06/03/2013 09:48 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 Faulkner T02521 00 pre 10 06/03/2013 09:48 1 Hunters and Farmers c. 2.5 million–3000 bc The cutting-edge of technology for two million years: an Acheulian handaxe. 1 Faulkner T02521 01 text 1 06/03/2013 09:48 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 Faulkner T02521 01 text 2 06/03/2013 09:48 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. Faulkner T02521 01 text 3 06/03/2013 09:48 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 Faulkner T02521 01 text 4 06/03/2013 09:48

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