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Marxism and the Sociology of Civilizations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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The 150th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx takes place in a setting which differs fundamentally from that in which his critical theses were worked out. These theses, from his “juvenilia” to Das Kapital—in turn celebrating its centenary—and the foundation of the International, changed the destiny of the world, of its peoples, States and nations. One is readily aware of the modifications in historical, economic, and political conditions, buffeted by revolutions and confrontation. But it is with difficulty that specialists—whether of theory or practice—take cognizance of other dimensions of this difference, which we consider to be fundamental to, and constitutive of, the very formulation of the theoretical problem which forms the subject of our study. Finally, however, the nationalitarian phenomenon asserts itself, day after day, as an objectively central factor in the multiform dialectics of revolutions, of evolutions, of counter-revolutions, and of apparent stagnation. Here a geographical thread is added to the historical one. But this new element is not, as some would wish it, a topographical one. The aim of the geographical dimension, or rather that of historical geography, is not to accommodate the geopolitical analysis of the contemporary world, but to serve as a framework for the emergence on the sociological level of a key concept, that of civilization, which seems to us to be necessary in order to determine the general theoretical pattern of the evolutionary process of human societies in this time of ours, the second half of the twentieth century.
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- Copyright © 1968 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
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1 This explains the blossoming of unknown or misunderstood works on social ist humanism, and particularly Marxist humanism, in many countries (Mexico, Argentine, India, Indonesia etc.). No trace of this (except one text out of ‘35, by L. S. Senghor) in the interesting book Socialist Humanism, edited by Erich Fromm, Allen Lane, Penguin Press, London 1967.
For the relationship between war and civilization, cf. the interesting contrast established by B. H. Liddell-Hart between Sun Tzu (4th century B.C.) and Clausewitz, entirely favourable to the former, in Strategy, the Indirect Approach, Faber, new ed., London 1967; and Sun Tzu: The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, London 1963:
"What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy… Thus, those skilled in war subdue the enemy's army without battle. They capture his cities without assaulting them and overthrow his state without protracted operations" (pp. 77-99).
2 Articles on "Ethnology" (J. Beattle) and "Social Anthropology" (John L. Fisher), in A Dictionary of the Social Sciences, Julius Gould & William L. Kolb eds.; Tavistock Publications, 1964, pp. 245-7, 644-6; and Paul Mercier: Histoire de l'anthropologie, P.U.F., Paris, 1967; etc.
3 On these last authors, see: Les origines de l'exogamie et du totémisme, Gallimard, Paris, 1963, which marks the renewal of contemporary Marxist eth nology.
4 Social Evolution, Watts, London, 1951, p. 161.
5 Retained in the latest edition (1963), vol. V, 824-31.
6 Notably in Kulturgeschichte als Kultursoziologie, Piper & Co., München, 1950.
7 This dimension, an unexpected one for Europeans, is clearly illuminated in all recent works on the history of national movements and on the culture of the principal Afro-Asian countries.
8 Introduced by J. W. Powell, director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, in Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1880, p. 80.
9 In his Introduction to F. Ortiz, Contrapuento cubano del tabaco y del azucar, La Habana, 1940.
10 On Marxism and the theoretical problems of the nation, cf. the excellent thesis of S. F. Bloom: The World of Nations, a Study of the National Implica tions in the Work of Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1960. A recent conference of the Marxist Studies and Research Centre of Paris on "The idea of civilization" (Nov. 1965) is based on the following assertion: "The idea of ‘civilization' has not been elaborated in classic works on Marxist thought (…). There, where one expected to find it, is the concept of ‘nation' in its place." (Jean Boulier-Fraissinet). But this neglect is not ascribed to the nucleus of civilization where the thought of Marxian then classic Marxist are elaborated.
11 Notably in Antonio Gramsci's Letteratura e vita nazionale, Einaudi, Torino, 1954; and the interesting issue on: "Prassi rivoluzionaria e storicismo in Gramsci," Critica Marxista, Quaderno No. 3, Roma, 1967.
12 As exemplified by Paul H. Lazarsfeld, William H. Sewell, Harold L. Wi lensky, eds.: The Uses of Sociology, Basic Books, New York, 1967.
13 Accompanied by the "Grand Theory" of Talcott Parsons…
14 R. Aron, Les étapes de la pensée sociologique, Gallimard, Paris, 1967, pp. 497-583; E. Fleischmann, "De Weber a Nietzsche," Archives Européennes de Sociologie, V (1964), No. 2, pp. 190-238.
15 For Brazil I would mention particularly the remarkable special issue published under the direction of Celso Furtado of the journal Les Temps Modernes, devoted to this subject (XXIII, Oct. 1967, No. 257, pp. 577-760).
16 Respectively: Georges Gurvitch, Traité de sociologie, P.U.F., Paris, 2 vols, 1960; J. Gould & W. L. Kolb, op. cit.; T. B. Bottomore, Sociology, a Guide to Problems and Literature, Allen & Unwin, London, 1962; International Sociol ogical Association: Annual Report 1966, Geneva, 1967.
17 Armand Cuvillier. Manuel de sociologie, P.U.F., Paris, fourth ed., 1960, ii) 666-86.
18 An excellent study in Traité, ii/315-30, which links up with the whole work of R. Bastide. Cf. also the Contributions à la sociologie de la connaissance, published under his direction, Anthropos, Paris, 1967.
19 India is the only country in the colonial world that Marx—and also M. Weber—mention in a few scattered works. Concerning India, a sociologist devotes a general manual to centering its sociological problems on the United States (H. T. Muzumdar, The Grammar of Sociology, Man in Society, Asia Publ. House, London, 1966)…
20 "Note sur la notion de civilisation," L'Année Sociologique, XII (1909-12), pp. 46-50.
21 A Study of History, 12 vols., Oxford University Press, London, 1934-56. In his recent Change and Habit, the Challenge of Our Time, Oxford University Press, London, 1966, the author lists the civilizations as being being between 15 and 30 in number, depending on the criteria adopted (p. 69).
22 Cambridge University Press, London. Out of seven parts, in several volumes, the following have already appeared: I, II, III, IV-A, IV-B. The author gives us the theoretical basis of his work in: "The Past in China's Present," The Centennial Review, IV (1960), 2, pp. 145-78; No. 3, pp. 281-308. Cf. also Raghavan Iyer, ed.: The Glass Curtain between Asia and Europe, Oxford University Press, London, 1965. Also the precursory essay of Chang Tung-sun: "A Chinese Phil osopher's Theory of Knowledge," The Yenching Journal of Social Studies, I (1939), No. 2. The integrationism of the Right is well expressed by General Golberi de Couto o Silva, one of the principal theoreticians of the military highschool of Brazil, who bases himself on T. S. Eliot ("If, tomorrow, Asia were to be con verted to Christianity, that would not mean that it was converted into part of Europe") and the Lusitanian ideology of Coimbra: "the west as ideal, the west as proposition, the west as programme (…), that current of ideals, propelled by history, that source of all creative energy (…): science as an instrument of action; democracy as a formula of political organization; Christianity as the highest ethical model of social life." After Islam, the Moors and the Turks, and then Stalin's Russia, it is "the China of Mao (wohich) by relying vigorously, on the one hand upon a surprising degree of accelerated technological and scientific progress, and on the other hand upon an enormous demographic potential gath ered together under a totalitarian system, has made of it the standard-bearer of a fulminating counter-offensive and a principal arm against the west, already so shaken (by Marxism) in its fundamental beliefs." (Geopolitica do Brasil, ed. José Olympio, Rio-de-Janeiro, 1967, 226-34. It would be impossible to express better the deepest thoughts of a whole spectrum of key European thinkers—from Right to Left.
23 Cf. in particular the numerous single articles by C. Cahen; Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in the Modern World, McGill University Press, Montreal, 1960, in which one finds Marxist elements; M. Rodinson, Islam et Capitallsme, Le Seuil, Paris, 1967.
24 Particularly those of Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, McGill University Press, Montreal, 1963; those of Jacques Berque and Jean-Paul Charnay and others: L'ambiguïté dans la culture arabe, Anthropos, Paris, 1967; Mohi Eddi Çaber, Al-taghayyor al hadârî wa tanmiyat al-mougtama (The transformation of civilization and the development of society), A.S.F.E.C., Sir el- Layân, 1962; Abdallah Laroui, L'idéologie arabe contemporaine, Maspéro, Paris, 1967; etc.
25 T. B. Bottomore, op. cit., pp. 125-6. Several comprehensive works, partic ularly : M. Mauss, "Civilisation. Le mot et l'idée," Semaine du Centre de la Synthèse, Paris, 1930, pp. 31-106; A. L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology, XXXXVII (1952), No. 1.
26 "The non-communist manifesto of W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth (1960) is concerned with five ‘stages,' which really oppose a purely nominal antithesis to the Marxist ‘stages.' The five stages in fact concern one transition only, and not, as the Marxist quintet does, the whole history of the race." (Ernest Gellner: Thought and Change, The Univ. of Chicago Press/Weiden feld & Nicolson, Chicago-London, 1964, pp. 129-30, No. 1).
27 M. Rodinson, Mahomet, 2nd ed., Le Seuil, Paris, 1968.
28 André Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, P.U.F., 8th. ed., Paris, 1960, pp. 768-70.
29 "The approach to the study of human affairs in the time-dimension is neces sarily genetic, and its form of expression is therefore necessarily narrative (…). In comparing and analysing a number of parallel life-streams, we must take care still to keep them all moving. If we mentally arrest their movement in order to study them ‘in cross-section,' we shall be denaturing them and consequently distorting our view of them. Life does not stand still. It has to be studied on the run." (Change and Habit, pp. 88-9). Strong words, which, on this point, meet up with the Marxist method.
30 In his recent book, Anthropologie politique, P.U.F., Paris, 1968: "All human societies produce political, and are all permeable to historical fluid. For the same reasons.'' (p. 230).
31 Islam et capitalisme, p. 15.
32 The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, New York, 1959, pp. 143-164.
33 Cf. amongst others, in the case of Africa, G. Balandier, Sociologie actuelle de l'Afrique noire, P.U.F., Paris, 1955; Melville J. Herskovits, The Human Factor in Changing Africa, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1962; etc.
34 History and Society, N. Mackenzie ed., A Guide to the Social Sciences, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1966, pp. 33-53 (49).
35 Cf. our "Esquisse d'une typologie des formations nationales dans les Trois Continents," Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, XLII (1967), pp. 49-57.
36 M. Rodinson, "L'Egypte nassérienne au miroir marxiste," Les Temps Mo dernes, No. 203, April 1963, pp. 1859-87. The same remark, on a theoretical level, in Georg Lukács, C. Wright Mills, Maurice de Gandillac, and others.
37 K. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis No. 2, in Marx-Engels, Œuvres Philosophiques, Editions sociales, Paris 1968, pp. 61. The word Diesseitigkeit must be understood as "on the side of," rooted in the idea of "here below." One reads with interest the recent attempt of Jean-Jacques Goblot: "Pour une approche théorique des ‘faits des civilisation"', La Pensée, No. 133, June 1967, pp. 3-24; No. 134, August 1967, pp. 3-34; No. 136, Dec. 1967, pp. 65-88.
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