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In search of a Marxist Perspective on Pre-Colonial Tropical Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Robin Law
Robin Law
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Type
Review Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 1978 , pp. 441 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 See e.g. the recent review article by Legassick, Martin, ‘Perspectives on African “Underdevelopment”’, J. Afr. Hist. XVII (1976), 435–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See esp. Frank, A. G., Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (Harmondsworth, 1973)Google Scholar; for a critique, see Hopkins, A. G., ‘On importing André Gunder Frank into Africa’, African Economic History Review, 11, 1 (1975), 13–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Frank's classification of the social formations established by European settlers in Latin America in the sixteenth century as capitalist, on the grounds of their integration into the international market, takes relations of exchange rather than (as in orthodox Marxism) relations of production as the decisive criterion: he has been criticized on these grounds by other Marxists, e.g. by Novack, George, Understanding History: Marxist essays (New York, 1972), 155Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that a parallel controversy over the relative importance of exchange and production relations, on this occasion with reference to Russian history, occurred between Trotsky and Pokrovsky in the 1920s: see Trotsky, Leon, ‘On the special features of Russia's historical development’, in 1905 (Harmondsworth, 1973), esp. 349–51.Google Scholar

4 Held at the University of Illinois, 20–1 May 1977.

5 Meillassoux, Claude, Anthropologie économique des Gouro de Côte d'Ivoire (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar

6 See esp. Althusser, Louis and Balibar, Étienne, Reading Capital (London, 1970).Google Scholar

7 They do not discuss the ‘Germanic’ form of society, presented by Marx as the precursor of feudal society in the section of his Grundrisse of 1857–8 which deals with pre-capitalist social formations: see Marx, Karl, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Nicolaus, Martin (Harmondsworth, 1973), 471–514Google Scholar, this section of the Grundrisse has also been published separately, as Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, ed. Hobsbawm, E. J. (London, 1964).Google Scholar

8 Suret-Canale, Jean, ‘Les sociétés traditionelles en Afrique tropicale et le concept de mode de production asiatique’, La Pensée, CXVII (1964), 19–42.Google Scholar

9 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, ‘Recherches sur un mode de production africain’, La Pensée, CXIV (1969), 61–78Google Scholar; published in English in Klein, M. A. and Johnson, G. W. (eds.), Perspectives on the African Past (Boston, 1972), 33–51Google Scholar, and now also in Seddon, , Relations of Production, 261–88.Google Scholar

10 Terray, Emmanuel, ‘Long-distance exchange and the formation of the state: the case of the Abron kingdom of Gyaman’, Economy & Society, III, 3 (1974), 315–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Meillassoux, Claude (ed.), L'Esclavage en Afrique précoloniale: dix-sept études (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar

12 For a comprehensive demolition of Marx's ‘Asiatic mode of production’ on grounds of historical inaccuracy, see Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974), 462–549Google Scholar. For a recent defence of Marx's analysis of Asiatic societies, see Melotti, Umberto, Marx and the Third World (London, 1977CrossRefGoogle Scholar; originally published in Italian in 1972).

13 Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, 321.

14 See esp. the long review article by Asad, Talal and Wolpe, Harold, ‘Concepts of modes of production’, Economy & Societ, v, 4 (1976), 470–506.Google Scholar

15 Hindess, Barry and Hirst, Paul Q., Mode of Production and Social Formation: an auto-critique of ‘Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production’ (London: MacMillan, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Godelier, Maurice, Rationality and Irrationality in Economics (London: New Left Books, 1972Google Scholar), originally published as Rationalité et irrationalité en économie (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar; id., Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 1977)Google Scholar, originally published as Horizon, , trajets marxistes en anthropologie (Paris, 1973).Google Scholar

17 Meillassoux, Claude, ‘The social organization of the peasantry: the economic basis of kinship’, first published in J. Peasant Stud. 1, 1 (1974)Google Scholar; Dupré, Georges and Rey, Pierre Philippe, ‘Reflections on the relevance of a theory of the history of exchange’, first published in English in Economy & Society, 11, 2 (1973).Google Scholar

18 Meillassoux, Claude, ‘Essai d'interprétation du phénomène économique dans les sociétés traditionelles d'autosubsistance’, Cah. Ét. Afr. IV (1960), 38–67.Google Scholar

19 Godelier, Maurice, ‘La notion de mode de production asiatique et les schémas marxistes d'évolution des sociétés’, first published in Cah. C.E.R.M., 1964Google Scholar. Like Suret-Canale (above, n. 8), Godelier believed that the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ could be applied to some of the societies of tropical Africa.

20 Cf. above, n. 9.

21 Taken from de Sardan's book, Systémes des relations économiques et sociales chez les Wogo (Paris, 1969).Google Scholar

22 Terray, Emmanuel, Marxism and ‘Primitive’ Societies: two studies (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972Google Scholar), originally published as Le Marxisme devant les sociétés ‘primitives’ (Paris, 1969).Google Scholar

23 Bloch, Maurice (ed.), Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology (London: Malaby Press, 1975).Google Scholar

24 Meillassoux, Claude, ‘On the mode of production of the hunting band’, in Alexandre, Pierre (ed.), French Perspectives in African Studies (Oxford, 1973), 187–203Google Scholar; id., ‘From reproduction to production: a Marxist approach to economic anthropology’, Economy & Society, 1, 1 (1972), 93–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Cf. above, n. 10.

26 Rey, P. P., ‘The lineage mode of production’, Critique of Anthropology, 111 (1975), 27–79Google Scholar. This is largely a critique of Terray's critique of Meillassoux's study of the Guro.

27 For this contrast, see esp. Blackburn, Robin (ed.), Ideology in Social Science: readings in critical social theory (London, 1972)Google Scholar. It is also reflected to some extent in the introduction to Relations of Production.

28 Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, 55.

29 Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, 87–8.

30 Mode of Production and Social Formation, 74. The editorial introduction to Relations of Production, 36–41, also refers to an impending ‘crisis in Marxist economic anthropology’, but mainly with reference to the supposed tension between the ‘holistic’ approach of Marxism and the academic compartmentalization which, for example, assigns the study of capitalist and pre-capitalist societies to different disciplines.

31 There is also some ambiguity about the relationship between the concepts of ‘mode of production’ and ‘social formation’. For some (e.g. Hindess and Hirst) ‘mode of production’ refers purely to an economic structure, and ‘social formation’ to the combination of a particular mode of production with the corresponding political and ideological superstructures; for others (e.g. Godelier and Terray) ‘mode of production’ includes both the economic base and the corresponding superstructures, and ‘social formation’ refers to a concrete historical society in which more than one ‘mode of production’ may operate, though it is assumed that one mode will be dominant.

32 Meillassoux, , Anthropologie économique des Gouro, 89.Google Scholar

33 Marxism, Terray and ‘Primitive’ Societies, 97–162Google Scholar. Rey, ‘The lineage mode of Production’, argues that the mode of production operative in agriculture (the ‘lineage Mode’) can be shown to be dominant in Guro society.

34 Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, 9 (definition of a mode of production); 54, 61 (critique of Terray). Godelier likewise alleges that Terray ‘replaces Marxism by a vulgar economism’: in Bloch, , Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology, 17–18.Google Scholar

35 Terray, , ‘Classes and class consciousness in the Abron kingdom of Gyaman’, in Bloch, Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology, 89–90.Google Scholar

36 Mode of Production and Social Formation, 46–62.

37 Banaji, Jairus, ‘Modes of production in a materialist conception of history’, Capital & Class, 111 (1977), 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Anderson, , Lineages of the Absolutist State, 403–4.Google Scholar

39 E.g. in the classic formulation in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859).

40 See The German Ideology, in Marx, and Engels, , Collected Works, vol. 5 (London, 1976), 32–5Google Scholar; Grundrisse, trans. Nicolaus, , 471–514.Google Scholar

41 Capital, vol. i (Moscow, 1965), 179–80.Google Scholar

42 Capital, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1966), 791.Google Scholar

43 The Poverty of Philosophy, in Marx, and Engels, , Collected Works, vol. 6 (London, 1976), 183.Google Scholar

44 Althusser, and Balibar, , Reading Capital, 233–47.Google Scholar

45 Cf. e.g. Hindess, and Hirst, , Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, 10–11Google Scholar; Marxism, Terray and ‘Primitive’ Societies, 98.Google Scholar

46 See esp. the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

47 Capital, vol. 3, 884.

48 In the Grundrisse (trans. Nicolaus, 109) Marx notes as a question requiring clarification: ‘Dialectic of the concepts productive force (means of production) and relation of production, a dialectic whose boundaries are to be determined, and which does not suspend the real difference’.

49 First used by Engels apparently in Anti-Dühring, published in 1878, and popularized especially by Althusser.

50 Mode of Production and Social Formation, 5.

51 The distinction originates in an aside in Capital, vol. i, 82, n. 2; it has been elaborated, again, especially by Althusser.

52 See the Preface to the First Edition of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884). Hindess, and Hirst, , Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, 58–9Google Scholar, condemn this as ‘an impudent and fanciful play on the term production’.

53 E.g. in ‘From reproduction to production’.

54 Cf. Relations of Production, 11.

55 For example, Coquery-Vidrovitch's ‘African mode of production’, in which the position of the ruling class is based upon control of long-distance trade, is criticized by Terray, ‘Long-distance exchange and the formation of the state’, on the grounds (supported by a quotation from Marx) that the relations of production must be basic, and the relations of distribution derived from these. (Cf. also above, n. 3.)

56 ‘From reproduction to production’, 96–8.

57 In fact, the idea of the ancient classical and Germanic social formations as regional variants is already clear in The German Ideology, in Collected Works, vol. 5, 89. Marx's repudiation of the interpretation of his reconstruction of western European history as a universally applicable schema is also explicit, e.g. in his letter to the Editorial Board of the ‘Otechestvenniye Zapiski’, Nov. 1877, in Marx, and Engels, , Selected Correspondence (Moscow, 1975). 291–4Google Scholar

58 The German Ideology, in Collected Works, vol. 5, 37.

59 Engels, , Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (Moscow, 1973), 59Google Scholar

60 E.g. in Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, XIX.

61 Cf. the critique of Althusser in Hindess, and Hirst, , Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, 313–20.Google Scholar

62 Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, 1–5, 320–3.

63 As pointed out by Asad and Wolpe, ‘Concepts of modes of production’; and partially admitted by Hindess, and Hirst, , Mode of Production and Social Formation, 39–40.Google Scholar

64 Croce, Benedetto, Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx (London, 1914; reprinted 1966), 12.Google Scholar

65 The claim in Relations of Production, 11, that Goody in his earlier book Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa (1971) ‘draw[s] explicitly upon Marxist concepts in the discussion and analysis of particular pre-capitalist formations’ is, to say the least, misleading.

66 Production and Reproduction, 64, 118.

67 In Bloch, , Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology, 15.Google Scholar