----- Original Message ----- From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <j.bendien@wolmail.nl> Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 6:25 PM Subject: Marx's eurocentrism Hi Jerry, As regards Marx's alleged eurocentrism: I think he was to an extent necessarily "eurocentric", because: - the knowledge he could have of other parts of the world was limited, and he was often not in any position to verify the biases in the literature he had access to. - he was limited or at least influenced by the science and ideology of his own time, and sometimes subject to certain clear prejudices (e.g. his reference to "dirty Mexicans" etc.) - he lived in Europe and as far as I know never even travelled outside Europe except Algeria as an old man. For all that, Marx was careful himself to qualify his views. Thus, for example, in an unpublished letter in late 1878 to Nikolai Mikhailovskii he objects that "...my critic...feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself..." (Shanin, 1983:136). Let us also not forget that Marx helped to found the first International, i.e. his orientation was internationalist, whatever his mistakes might have been. It was rather latter-day "Marxists" who tried to cast Marx's thought into a general historico-philosophical system, not to say dogma, which explained life, the universe and everything, often without doing any serious research. This was what Marx objected to when he wrote sardonically to Lafargue that "all I know is that I'm not a Marxist". I think Marx's wish was for other people to develop his approach - the materialist conception of history - further, and in this sense he "welcomed every serious scientific criticism", as he wrote in the Preface to Capital Volume 1. Just like Capital, historical materialism wasn't a finished doctrine, but an invitation to further thought, political action and research. So I have some sympathy for Andre Gunder Frank's views, because a lot of "Marxism" by my way of thinking has nothing in common with Marx's own intentions, it's more a kind of religion, or a sentimental attachment to a world view. In some ways, you have to "abandon Marxism to be able to return to Marx". However, Frank of course goes further than that. You can acknowledge Marx had his limits, did not know everything, and had mistaken views about other societies. It is another thing to abandon core concepts of Marx's approach (for example, Frank doesn't accept the validity of the concept of a "mode of production" as such anymore). I would be much more reluctant to do that, even without Frank's wide-ranging knowledge, as I think Marx offers very fruitful hypotheses, a very rich heuristic, and I don't think his basic propositions about historical development have been disproved; to the contrary, he has made the most powerful contribution to the social sciences, so that it is impossible to ignore his influence. To his credit, Ernest Mandel, whom I studied, made a great effort to break through Euro-centrism and the dreary old Marxist-Leninist dogmatic culture, for example in his book Marxist Economic Theory in which he tried to show the promise of Marx's theory in explaining world history, inviting other researchers to develop the ideas further. That's the kind of "open Marxism" that we need more of. Be that as it may, Mandel told me himself in all modesty, he knew "most of subjects". And his Marxist rationalism was in fact often not as open as it could have been, as he was very concerned to defend basic Marxist propositions (almost to the letter) and maintain the "theoretical coherence" of the Marxist "system" - an orthodoxy which has its pitfalls. Which really raises the question of how "open" or "closed" one should be, what to keep and what to discard ? On this there will probably always be different views, and oscillations between dilletantism and dogmatism. But one thing is clear to me: for Marx it was a matter of conscientious, painstaking scientific research of social reality, on the basis of certain hypotheses, which might be modified by the results of that research. It is in that spirit that Makoto Itoh also writes in his book "Political Economy of Socialism" that historical materialism is not a finished doctrine, but open to modification. Regards Jurriaan
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