Karl Marx, anthropologist PDF
Preview Karl Marx, anthropologist
Karl Marx, Anthropologist Karl Marx, Anthropologist Thomas C. Patterson Oxford • New York First published in 2009 by Berg Editorial offices: 1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AW, UK 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA © Thomas C. Patterson 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Patterson, Thomas Carl. Karl Marx, anthropologist / Thomas C. Patterson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-511-9 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 1-84520-511-1 (pbk.) ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-509-6 (cloth) ISBN-10: 1-84520-509-X (cloth) 1. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. 2. Anthropologists—Germany—Biography. 3. Anthropology—History. 4. Anthropology—Philosophy. I. Title. GN21.M2575P38 2009 301.092—dc22 [B] 2009000314 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 184520 509 6 (Cloth) ISBN 978 184520 511 9 (Paper) Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan Printed in the UK by the MPG Books Group www.bergpublishers.com For Friends, Colleagues, and Students Contents Preface ix Chronology xi Introduction 1 Polemics, Caveats, and Standpoints 3 Organization of the Book 5 1 The Enlightenment and Anthropology 9 Early Enlightenment Thought 10 The New Anthropology of the Enlightenment 15 The Institutionalization of Anthropology 23 2 Marx’s Anthropology 39 What are Human Beings? 41 History 51 Truth and Praxis 57 3 Human Natural Beings 65 Charles Darwin and the Development of Modern Evolutionary Theory 67 Human Natural Beings: Bodies That Walk, Talk, Make Tools, and Have Culture 74 Marx on the Naturalization of Social Inequality 87 4 History, Culture, and Social Formation 91 Marx’s Historical-Dialectical Conceptual Framework 93 Pre-Capitalist Societies: Limited, Local, and Vital 105 5 Capitalism and the Anthropology of the Modern World 117 The Transition to Capitalism and its Development 119 The Articulation of Modes of Production 128 Property, Power, and Capitalist States 138 viii • Contents 6 Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century 145 Social Relations and the Formation of Social Individuals 147 Anthropology: “The Study of People in Crisis by People in Crisis” 158 Notes 173 Bibliography 181 Index 219 Preface This book is an exploration of a form of social theory that has a long history of suppression in the United States. The high points of this were undoubtedly the Palmer Raids of the 1920s and the McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities of the 1950s, although the antipathy of the vast majority of academics to anything but mainstream social thought in the decades that followed has been only slightly less deadening. The red-baiting of scholars who saw Marx only through the lens of anti-communism has gradually been replaced by scholars who assert that Marx is really passé, especially after the dismantling of the Soviet Union. While the sentiments underlying such statements are often conveyed by rolled eyes or knee- jerk red-baiting, they are as often backed up by claims that one or another of the latest fads in social theory provide the bases for more textured analyses of what has happened during the last twenty years or even by declarations that history is over since the whole world is now, or should be, on the road to capitalism. What rarely happens, however, is any direct engagement and extended dialogue with what Marx actually said. More common are statements that rely on what someone claimed Marx said or that engage with the commentators on Marx, sympathetic or otherwise, rather than Marx himself. My goal is to engage directly with Marx’s works rather than those of subsequent writers in the Marxist tradition. Nevertheless, I am acutely aware of the difficulty of disengaging from the arguments and insights of subsequent commentators on Marx’s views, both sympathetic and otherwise, since my own thoughts and actions were shaped in part in the same intellectual and social milieu in which they wrote and were read. Keeping in mind Marx’s quip that he was not a Marxist, the book is Marxian rather than Marxist. Hence, it is not a book about Marxism and anthropology or Marxist anthropology; several of those have already been written. While Maurice Godelier’s (1973/1977) Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, Ángel Palerm’s (1980) Antropología y marxismo, Marc Abélès’s (1976) Anthropologie et Marxisme, and Randall McGuire’s (1992) A Marxist Archaeology are a few that come immediately to mind, there are others as well. My first direct acquaintance with Marx’s writing occurred in 1959 in an intro- ductory course in Western civilization with a selection from The Communist Manifesto. Two years later in Peru, I realized that broadly leftist newspaper writers in Peru provided accounts that better fit with my perceptions than those of their more mainstream contemporaries, and that they gave me a clearer and deeper understanding of what was happening there at the time. Over the next five years in ix x • Preface Peru, I would occasionally buy at a kiosk in Lima and read pamphlets containing articles Marx had written about capitalism. I also purchased the English-language edition of his Pre-capitalist Economic Formations shortly after it arrived in a Lima bookstore. The latter provided the inspiration and means for beginning to think in new ways about the societies, past and present, that were the object of inquiry for anthropologists. At various times from the late 1960s or early 1970s onward, I participated rather regularly in reading groups or university courses variously concerned with the writings of Marx, Engels, or their successors. These groups ranged from ones composed entirely of political activists through those with mixtures of activists, anthropologists, and students from different universities to courses and seminars with student and occasionally other faculty participants. Writing is a social rather than a solitary venture for me. I read passages to friends over the telephone and share drafts of manuscripts with them, hoping they have time to comment on them and feeling exceedingly appreciative when they do. I also try out ideas in courses to see if they are expressed clearly in ways that students can understand and use constructively to build and refine their own views. Since I have been doing this for quite a few years at this point in my life, the list of people, living and dead, who have helped me clarify my own ideas is a long one. Instead of attempting to list all of them, and undoubtedly missing a few in the process, let me mention just a few: Karen Spalding and Richard Lee who have been there almost since the beginning; Christine Gailey, John Gledhill, Karen Brodkin, Bob Paynter, Peter Gran, and Kathy Walker who have regularly helped me clarify my ideas and prose since the 1980s; Edna Bonacich, Joseph Childers, Stephen Cullenberg, Michael Kearney, and Juliet McMullin who have helped me to look at Marx through different lenses since I arrived at UCR in 2000; and, most of all, Wendy Ashmore—my colleague, friend, and wife—who sets high standards and has provided instantaneous feedback, constructive criticism, happiness, and contentment for more than a decade.
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