Abstract
The text sets out from a fourfold concept of Eurocentrism developed in postcolonial studies and global history. Against this backdrop, it traces the treatment of non-Western societies throughout Marx’s work. His 1853 articles on India are shown to be Eurocentric in every respect. They are partially based on a travel narrative by François Bernier. Bernier’s text is analysed in some detail as one of Marx’s sources. Marx’s treatment of the 1857–1859 Indian rebellions also displays Eurocentric features. His writings on British colonialism, in Ireland, however, begin to break with the Eurocentric mould. The Marxian critique of political economy, in contrast, teems with Orientalist motifs. Marx’s late work is quite different in this respect: in the excerpts from his reading that he made from 1879 on, as well as in his discussions with the Russian Social Revolutionaries, he breaks with Eurocentrism. The development of Marx’s thought shows that the hasty dismissal of him often observed in postcolonial studies is not carefully thought out. Yet the fact remains that Marxists who attempt to think global capitalism, historical progress and contingent development have something to learn from postcolonial studies.
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Notes
- 1.
Herrschaftskritisch, a term popularized by the Frankfurt school, means critical of all forms of domination, based on class, race, gender, etc. (translator’s note).
- 2.
I finished writing this essay late in 2009. Although two abridged translations of it have been published since then (see Lindner, 2010a, 2010b), the present full-length, slightly modified version of the text can appear only now [in 2011]. In spring 2010, Kevin Anderson published a study of the matters discussed here (see Anderson, 2010), so that the assertions made above must be qualified: in English, at least, there now exists a systematic study. Kevin Anderson shares my thesis as to the growing precision and complexity of Marx’s thinking about non-European societies. However, he mobilizes a very narrow conception of Eurocentrism, basically reducing it to the third dimension in the schema I present below. He fails, consequently, to problematize certain facets of Marx’s argument in their context, as I do here. I shall come back to this.
- 3.
Following Conrad and Randeria (2002: 24), I take ‘postcolonial studies’ to be a discourse that is primarily concerned with ‘thematizing the continued existence and ongoing influence of a multitude of the normative relations and consequences of colonial domination’. Postcolonial theory thus bears centrally on an ‘epistemic dimension… consisting in the deconstruction and elimination of fundamental presuppositions of colonial discourse’ (ibid.: 25). The prefix ‘post’ accordingly designates less an ‘after’ than a ‘beyond’ colonialism.
- 4.
I thank Lotte Arndt and Urs Lindner, among others, for helpful suggestions and comments.
- 5.
In the present context (contrast the market for real estate in advanced capitalism), the decisive criterion for private ownership of land is its alienability. Crucial here is the economic aspect of ownership (disposability/appropriation), not the juridical elaboration of it.
- 6.
- 7.
Full clarification of the question as to how Marx used Bernier as a source must await publication of MEGA IV/11, which will contain the excerpt from Bernier’s travel account found in Notebook XXI of Marx’s London notebooks. It is, however, unlikely that Marx commented on this excerpt as heavily as he did, say, on his 1879 excerpt from Kovalevsky, since Marx’s excerpts generally hewed very closely to his sources in the early 1850s, as is indicated by the excerpts published in MEGA IV/9 and IV/12 (I thank Claudia Reichel for this reference). Indeed, we have to do, in the case of these often quite extensive excerpts, with information sources that reveal very little about the excerpter’s theoretical positions. Against this backdrop, it seems to me fairly safe to compare the source with the end product derived from it (Marx’s 1853 texts on India) without making a detour through the excerpts.
- 8.
Marx expressly quotes this passage in his June 1853 letter to Engels, underscoring the words ‘sole proprietor of all the land in the empire’ and ‘capital city’ (Marx, 1853a: 333).
- 9.
In this context, it should be emphasized that Bernier is the anonymous author of ‘the first writing in which the term “race” appears in its modern sense’ (Poliakov, 1971: 143; see also Bernier, 1684). To be sure, this text was little read in its day, and should be taken, not as a manifesto that gained widespread acceptance (see Boulle, 2003: 20), but, rather, as symptomatic of the modern racist discourse which, nascent in the seventeenth century, begins to argue in terms of human beings’ abiding physical traits. The essay’s significance as an expression of Bernier’s essentialistic-hierarchical thinking, which is everywhere apparent in his travel account as well, should nevertheless not be underestimated. It should also be pointed out how firmly ‘racist distinctions between people are based on the sexual exploitation of women’ (Dorlin, 2006: 213): their ‘beauty’ is one of Bernier’s central classificatory criteria (see Bernier, 1699: 404–405).
- 10.
He considers slavery to be a ‘matter of labour relations and property relations’ (Weiner, 1982: 157; in the same vein, Nimtz, 2003: ix) and also an outmoded economic system (this is especially clear in his texts on the American Civil War, for example Marx 1861a and 1861b; for a general discussion, see Anderson, 2010: 79–114; on Marx’s later analysis of the interrelation between slavery and the capitalist mode of production, see Hall, 1980: 32–34). Furthermore, Marx identifies the slave relation as the reason for the widespread nineteenth-century notion that slaves ‘were inefficient, refractory, and mentally retarded’ (Backhaus, 1974: 93). It should also be emphasized in this context that Marx later mocks modern theories of race when he has occasion to discuss them (see Marx, 1870a: 446–449; 1880/81a, 1880/81b, 1880/81c: 324 and 335), although he spares Bernier such mockery.
- 11.
A comprehensive anti-authoritarian approach to colonialism would bring out not just its economic, but also its epistemic dimension. Such a perspective must take into account the fact that the subjection and exploitation of a large part of the world by the West constituted a decisive intellectual, moral and epistemological project with respect to not only its motives, but also its effects (notions of cultural superiority that paved the way for, grounded, and legitimized colonialism; the idea of a ‘civilizing mission’; construction of a colonized ‘Other’; and the like) (see Bancel & Blanchard, 2005). Marx is far from envisaging colonialism as a complex project with moral, economic, intellectual, social and cultural implications—notwithstanding the fact that analysing the connection between knowledge and power is one important objective of his critique of political economy. In MS as well, there would appear to be many misunderstandings on this score. Thus, Kevin Anderson rejects Said’s analysis of Orientalism on the grounds that ‘literary and cultural expressions are seen as constitutive of economically based social structures like imperialism’ (Anderson, 2010: 257). This interpretation would appear to be based less on an unbiased reading than on economistic presuppositions. Said is, rather, concerned to ‘establish the close relations between Western texts and representations and the contents of Western studies with the institutions and techniques of the colonial power centers’ (Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2005: 33), even if he does find it difficult to show concretely ‘how Orientalism in fact consolidated violent colonial appropriation’ (ibid.: 45). In subsequent works, Said addresses this set of problems (see Said, 1993).
- 12.
Naqvi (1972: 393–402) and O’Leary (1989: 262–267) contend that Marx, in preparing his articles on India, read Bernier’s travel account and other sources selectively, and could have derived much more accurate, realistic knowledge of precolonial India’s social structure from them if he had read them more scrupulously and without bias. These problematizations can most assuredly not be dismissed out of hand. I nevertheless think it questionable, given the tenor of the discourse in Marx’s sources, which are classically Eurocentric in the sense specified in Said’s critique of Orientalism, that a more conscientious approach to the source material would have led to fundamentally different conclusions. Decisive here is the powerfully influential image of Asian societies painted by Bernier and others, one that Marx was not alone in adopting, as I have already noted. Only if we ignore the social—that is, the overall Orientalist—context is it possible, in my view, to lay the main blame for Marx’s ‘Asiatic conception’ on his misinterpretation of his sources.
- 13.
In Engels’s texts about the British troops’ advance on cities held by the rebels, this perspective tips over into unabashed Orientalism; strategic and military considerations are interwoven with a stereotypical presentation of the Indian insurgents that conjures up notions of wholesale Western superiority (see Engels, 1857, 25,26,27,28,29,30,1858g).
- 14.
Kevin Anderson (2010: 64–76) convincingly argues that a comparative investigation of political influences on the periphery of the Western European metropolis may already be found in Marx’s discussion of the 1863 Polish uprising. It nevertheless seems to me that the Irish case reveals more about the shift in Marx’s thinking, inasmuch as Poland was not colonized, but was ‘merely’ subjected to Russian, Prussian and Austrian domination after what are called the partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1795.
- 15.
It may at first glance strange to associate Marx’s break with Eurocentrism with Ireland, a country which, geographically, at any rate, is part of Western Europe. However, as a result of the English colonization of the country (1541–1922), Ireland found itself in a situation structurally comparable to India’s: they were both non-capitalist societies under the colonial yoke of an (early) capitalist society. The Irish economy was heavily oriented towards the English market, or functionally integrated into English colonial expansion, and Ireland ranked, in this period, as one of the most backward regions of Europe (see Maurer, 1998: 130–131 and 147–156). It was not least for this reason that parallels were quite commonly drawn between Ireland and India. Engels too discerned certain structural similarities. In an 1869 letter, he emphasized ‘that, in Anno 1600, common ownership of land still existed IN FULL FORCE’ (Engels, 1869: 388). And, in 1888, he appended a note to the revised English edition of the Communist Manifesto proclaiming that Georg Maurer had shown common land ownership ‘to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and by and by village communities were found to be, or to have been the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland’ (Marx & Engels, 1888: 482, note).
- 16.
- 17.
If only for this reason, discussion of the final period of Marx’s intellectual trajectory has to rely much more heavily on his correspondence and Nachlass, that is, on material not intended for publication. This material can of course not be read in the same way as texts that have been repeatedly revised with a view to publication, such as Capital, volume one. What follows may sometimes create the impression that unpublished notes are being treated as if they were published texts; but such an approach is justified by the fact that a fairly uniform overall tendency seems to be discernible in all the remarks in the Nachlass relevant to the question of Eurocentrism. This impression is, if anything, strengthened by the political conclusions that Marx draws on this basis in his debate with the Russian social revolutionaries (Sect. 6.2). Moreover, Marx’s characteristic mobilization of theoretical studies in political texts (reminiscent of his treatment of Bernier in his 1853 India articles) is observable in this context too and indicates that his fundamental concern here was to further develop his position.
- 18.
Said rightly situates Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron in the rising Orientalist tradition of the last third of the eighteenth century, which generally studied ‘the Orient’ from a scientific standpoint, without losing sight of the basic objective of co-opting it (see Said, 1978: 22). Thus, Anquetil-Duperron is also a dubious source, although he made a significant contribution to the expansion of Middle Eastern and Asian studies, helping to introduce the study of Avestan and Sanskrit into the discipline in the mid-eighteenth century (see ibid.: 51 and 76–77) and to ground the ‘tradition that claimed its legitimacy from the peculiarly compelling fact of residence in, actual existential contact with, the Orient’ (ibid.: 156). He may be ranged, on Said’s witness, among the French ‘jackasses’, although, in the final analysis, he ‘arrived at an approximate understanding’ of property relations, thanks, not least, to his linguistic competence: ‘He argued that the idea of the absence of the rights of private property in Asia was a fiction employed by colonialists who favoured the confiscation of native estates’ (Sawer, 1977: 23). Thanks to his surer grasp of historical reality, among other reasons, Anquetil-Duperron ultimately rejected the Western conception of ‘oriental despotism’ (see Valensi, 2008a).
- 19.
Marx wrote these notebooks in a mix of English and German. The translator has relied on this extract, taking over as is Marx’s English, or the English in the passages he cites, and translating his German (translator’s note).
- 20.
What we said earlier about Ireland holds for Russia and comparisons of Russian with India: the Czarist Empire was a pre-capitalist society of a markedly rural stamp, which, albeit never colonized, developed along colonial lines. ‘Russia… industrialized only very slowly, though with increasing speed after 1890.… In many respects, Russia should be compared with China and with territories in the European colonial empires, rather than with western Europe’ (Bayly, 2004: 177).
- 21.
Marx’s letters to the Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich, from which the passages we have been citing are in the main drawn, stand in a close relation to his studies of land ownership. Marx thus not only mentions Morgan and Maine, but also conceives of communist property as ‘a higher form of the archaic type of property’ (Marx, 1881a: 362). In this connection, he refers to a statement of Morgan’s, cited above, to the effect that the primitive community’s collective property is revived in a more developed form of society (see ibid.: 386). Wada (1983: 67) has also noted the influence that Kovalevsky’s positions had on Marx’s letters.
- 22.
The importance of these continuities is considerably diminished, first, by the fact that Marx entertains the possibility that indigenous developments can overcome despotism. Thus, he has come a great distance from his previous assumption that only exogenous factors (colonialism) can put an end to them. Second, central components of the ‘Asiatic conception’ have crumbled: ‘Marx treated the period between primitive society and capitalism as a formation with many types; that is to say, he no longer distinguished between the Asiatic Mode of Production, the social formation of Antiquity, and feudalism [as he does in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy; K.L.], but, rather, considered them to be types of a formation that was preceded by many different variants of primitive society…. The inadequate conception of an “Asiatic” (or Oriental) mode of production based on the absence of private land ownership had given way to the insight that there were, “the primitive from of society” from “India to Ireland” subsumed many different forms of social structure grounded on “village communities with common possession of the land”, as Engels affirms in the sole note correcting the Communist Manifesto’ (Brentjes, 1983: 19 quoting Marx & Engels, 1888: 482, note; quotation corrected). Third, Marx’s political perspective changes. Symptomatic here is the idea that communist forces should seek a point of departure in rural communes, that is, the very structures that he perceived as obstacles to development in 1853.
- 23.
Harry Harootunian, a historian of East Asia, provides a recent example of a polemic of this kind by way of his reply to the abridged English translation of the present essay (see Lindner, 2010a). According to Harootunian, the call for a dialogue between MS and PS is motivated, above all, by a quest for academic recognition, not by theoretical considerations (see Harootunian, 2010: 39). Harootunian, for his part, defends the view that Marx’s economic critique already contains a differential concept of temporality or history, so that we need only read him closely and work this concept out in order to develop a theory critical of Eurocentrism (see ibid.: 40–44). A position of this kind, according to which we do not need to go to the trouble of setting different anti-authoritarian discourses in relation to each other (a position that, in principle, Kevin Anderson, 2010 also takes), makes MS a sterile, fundamentally orthodox, intellectually narrow-minded enterprise.
- 24.
For example, there has been no discussion as yet of the role played by the late Marx’s discussion of world history. In this connection, we will have to examine, first and foremost, the Chronological Excerpts. This manuscript, several hundred pages long, is to be published in MEGA IV/29. (The Chinese and Russian translations of it have been largely ignored in the West, or are inaccessible for linguistic reasons.) My preliminary examination of one section of the transcription of these excerpts has strengthened my impression that Marx was at pains, in this draft of a history of political and economic developments on a world scale, to decentre his analysis, tailoring it to specific local conditions.
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Lindner, K. (2022). Marx’s Eurocentrism: Postcolonial Studies and Marx Scholarship. In: Marx, Marxism and the Question of Eurocentrism. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81823-4_1
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