Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T03:23:34.237Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Karl Marx's Contribution To Historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Eric J. Hobsbawm
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The 19th century, that age of bourgeois civilisation, has several major intellectual achievements to its credit, but the academic discipline of history which grew up in that period, is not one of them. Indeed, in all except the techniques of research, it marked a distinct step back from the often ill-documented, speculative and excessively general essays in which those who witnessed the most profoundly revolutionary era—the age of the French and Industrial Revolutions—attempted to comprehend the transformation of human societies. Academic history, as inspired by the teaching and example of Leopold von Ranke and published in the specialist journals which developed in the latter part of the century, was correct in opposing generalisation insufficiently supported by fact, or backed by unreliable fact. On the other hand it concentrated all its efforts on the task of establishing “the facts” and thus contributed little to history except a set of empirical criteria for evaluating certain kinds of documentary evidence (e.g. manuscript records of events involving the conscious decisions of influential individuals) and the ancillary techniques necessary for this purpose.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 16 , Issue 64 , December 1968 , pp. 37 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 "One Hundred Years after Ranke," in Studies in Historiography, London, 1966.

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, XI edition, article "History."

3 Enciclopedia Italiana, article "Storiografia."

4 Indeed, for several years after 1950 they mounted a fairly successful counter-offensive, encouraged by the favourable climate of the cold war, but also perhaps by the inability of the innovators to consolidate their unexpectedly rapid advance.

5 Cf. George Lichtheim, Marxism in Modern Farnce, 1966.

6 15 February 1968.

7 J. Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy, 1893, p. 367.

8 These remarks were to give rise to one of the earliest penetrations of what is undoubtedly a Marxist influence into orthodox historiography, namely the fa mous theme on which Sombart, Weber, Troeltsch and others were to play va riations. The debate is still far from exhausted.

9 One must agree with L. Althusser that his discussion of the "superstructu ral" levels remained much sketchier and inconclusive than that of the "basis."

10 It need hardly be said that the "basis" consists not of technology or economics, but of "the totality of these relations of production," i.e. social organisation in its broadest sense as applied to a given level of the material forces of production.

11 Obviously the use of this term does not imply any similarity with the process of biological evolution.

12 There are historical reasons for this rebellion against the "evolutionary" aspect of Marxism, e.g. the rejection — for political reasons — of the Kautskyan orthodoxies, but we are not here concerned with these.

13 "Marx to Engels," 7.8.1866, Werke, t. 31, p. 248.

14 In the sense in which Lévi-Strauss speaks of kinship systems (or other social devices) as a "coordinated ensemble, the function of which is to insure the permanency of the social group" (Sol Tax ed., Anthropology Today, 1962, p. 343).

15 "It remains true… even for a properly revitalized version of functional analysis, that its explanatory form is rather limited; in particular, it does not provide an explanation of why a particular item i rather than some functional equivalent of it, ocurs in system s." Carl Hempel, in L. Gross ed., Symposium on Social Theory, 1959.

16 As Lévi-Strauss puts it, writing of kinship models "If no exetrnal factor were affecting this mechanism, it would work indefinitely, and the social structure would remain static. This is not the case, however; hence the need to introduce into the theoretical model new elements to account for the diachronic changes of the structure." Loc. cit., p. 343.

17 "Il est clair, toutefois, que c'est la nature de ce concept de ‘combinaison' qui fonde l'affirmation… que le marxisme n'est pas un historicisme: puisque le concept marxiste de l'histoire repose sur le principe de la variation des formes de cette "combinaison." Cf. Lire le Capital, t. II, p. 153.

18 R. Bastide ed., Sens et usage du terme structure dans les sciences sociales et humaines, 1962, p. 143.

19 "On voit par là que certains rapports de production supposent comme con dition de leur propre existence, l'existence d'une superstructure juridico-politique et idéologique, et pourquoi cette superstructure est nécessairement spécifique… On voit aussi que certains autres rapports de production n'appellent pas de superstructure politique, mais seulement une superstructure idéologique (les sociétés sans classes). On voit enfin que la nature des rapports de production considérés, non seulement appelle ou n'appelle pas telle ou telle forme de superstructure, mais fixe également le degré d'efficace délégué à tel ou tel niveau de la totalité sociale." Loc. cit., p. 153.

20 These may, of course, be described, if we find this useful, as different combinations of a given number of elements.

21 One may add that it is doubtful whether they can be simply classified as "conflicts," though insofar as we concentrate our attention on social systems as systems of relation between people, they may normally be expected to take the form of conflict between individuals and groups or, more metaphorically, between value-systems, roles, etc.

22 Whether the state is the only institution which as this function, has been a question that much preoccupied Marxists like Gramsci, but need not concern us here.

23 G. Lichtheim (Marxism, 1961, p. 152) rightly points out that class anta gonism plays only a subordinate part in Marx's model of the break-up of ancient Roman society. The view that this must have been due to "slave revolts" has no basis in Marx.

24 As Worsley, summarising work along these lines put it "change within a system must either cumulate towards structural change of the system, or be coped with by some sort of cathartic mechanism," "The Analysis of Rebellion and Revolution in Modern British Social Anthropology," Science and Society, XXV, 1, 1961, p. 37. Ritualisation in social relations makes sense as such a symbolic-acting out of tensions which might be otherwise intolerable.

25 Cf. the great quantity of research and discussion on oriental societies, de riving from a very small number of pages in Marx, of which some of the most important — those in the Grundrisse — were not available until 15 years ago.

26 E.g. in the field of pre-history, the work of the late V. Gordon Childe, perhaps the most original historical mind in the English-speaking countries to apply Marxism to the past.

27 Compare, for instance, the approaches of Dr. Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery, 1964, a valuable and illuminating pioneer work, and Prof. Eugène Genovese, to the problem of American slave societies and the abolition of slavery.

28 This is particularly obvious in fields such as the theory of economic growth as applied to specific societies, and the theories of "modernisation" in political science and sociology.

29 The discussion of the political impact of capitalist development on pre-industrial societies, and more generally, of the "prehistory" of modern social movements and revolutions, is a good example.