Property and Progress: Where Adam Smith Went Wrong

During the first half of the twentieth century there was widespread agreement as to whether the way to understand the historical emergence of economic development in the West was through the theoretical lens provided by Adam Smith. This chapter critiques Smith's view of the transition through which the pre-capitalist social property relations were transformed into capitalist property relations – a transition that is believed to have been mistakenly attributed by Smith to the expansion of trade. It is argued instead that the rise of capitalist social property relations in England, which led to economic development, was instead catalyzed by the growth of specialization, investment, and the rising labour productivity in agriculture. In addition, it is argued that industrial and economic development were caused by the separation of the manufacturing from the peasantry.

Marxism and Historiography: Perspectives on Roman History

Marxism has slowly declined in recent literature on the economic and social history of the ancient world. If one happens to run into the name of Marx or the term Marxism, it is generally within the context of polemical remark. In spite of recurrent attempts to resuscitate it as an ideal foil for anti-Communist polemic, Marxism made its final exit from the field of ancient historical studies in the 1960s, when new Marxist and Marxist-inspired historiography came to the fore. This chapter discusses the changing role of Marxism in Italian history-writing. It focuses on the historians who claim themselves as Marxists, and those who employ Marxist categories and draw on Marxist theory yet refuse to be defined as Marxists. The chapter examines the debates of the different groups on the historiographic phase marked by the circulation of Marxist concepts, analytical tools, and models outside the strictly Marxist milieu. One of the most striking aspects of this phase is the existence of a trend for the formation of research groups that shared not only an affinity or ideological adherence to Marxism, but also an interest in historical theory and a similar orientation in cultural politics. These interdisciplinary approaches stimulated the confluence of individual competences in group projects aimed at singling out new topics and developing investigational strategies. This historiographic phase also reflected a sense of community, a refusal of traditional academic hierarchies, a wish to keep individualism in check, and the rejection of erudite isolation. In Italy, these forms of association served as a means for ethical and political self-representation of cultural hegemony.

Introduction

There have been claims that the Marxist approaches to the history are no longer tenable. This idea that Marx has lost such relevance to historiography is due to the failure of his prophesies, including the three particular assumptions: the anti-universalism, the neglect of cultural representation and discourses, and the success of capitalism. Anti-universalism claims that no history can ever be written, except from the historian's own point of view and the interests and values which come with it. In the case of Marx, whose main interest in history is the discovery of the path of man to communism, any claim to universal validity made him compromised from the outset by the local provenance of his and Engel's experience of capitalism and the intensity of their disapproval. The second assumption is Marx's neglect of cultural representations and discourses. By neglecting the sufferings and aspirations of the people who were the victims of capitalist exploitation, Marx missed the opportunity to give his moral denunciation of capitalism added perlocutionary force. The third assumption is the success of capitalism in beating the Marxists. On this view, Marx failed to allow the possibility that when the time came for the capitalist and socialist modes of production to compete directly with one another, it would be the capitalist modes of production that would be stronger between the two. Nevertheless, despite the failure of some of the Marxist prophesies and theories, it is nonetheless significant in the writing of history, which needs explanation. Marxism still has much to offer in the structural analysis of the development of history.

Marxist Historiography Today

This chapter discusses Marxist historiography in the present times. In the interpretation of the world nowadays, there has been a rise in the so-called anti-Rankean reaction in history, of which Marxism is an important but not always fully acknowledged element. This movement challenged the positivist belief that the objective structure of reality was self-explanatory, and that all that was needed was to apply the methodology of science to it and explain why things happened the way they did. This movement also brought together history with the social sciences, therefore turning it into part of a generalizing discipline capable of explaining transformations of human society in the course of its past. This new perspective on the past is a return to ‘total history’, in which the focus is not merely on the ‘history of everything’ but history as an indivisible web wherein all human activities are interconnected.

Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: A Theory of History or a Theory of Communism?

This chapter examines the aim of Marx's theory and whether he succeeded in establishing what he was set out to prove. In 1883, at the graveside of Marx, Engels wrote of Marx's achievement as the discovery of ‘laws’ of history. Engel's depiction of Marx has been followed by Marx's disciples and opponents. After the First World War, Marx's writings were subjected to distorted views and interpretations that turned Marx into a remote and opaque figure. In the 1950s, attempts to capture the true thoughts of Marx were made. These attempts disclosed his difficulty in applying a socially determinist approach to the explanation of the republicanism and the constitutional character of the struggle between the elected president and the elected assembly. His basic assumption of the ‘forces of production’ as a means for the proletariat to advance and the bourgeoisie to rescind failed to interpret the transition from Second Empire to Third Republic. Forced to abandon this evolutionary scenario of capitalist development, Marx developed his Critique of Political Economy, wherein his prime objective was not to construct a theory of history, but to discover the path of man to communism.

The Drama of Revolution and Reaction: Marxist History and the Twentieth Century

Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte was written not as a history but as an insight to the present – as a piece of contemporary political analysis. The The Eighteenth Brumaire aims to explain the political turmoil of 1848 to 1849 that ended in Napoleon's coup d' état. It was part of the first genre of historical writing to take as its object the most important political episodes of the century. The The Eighteenth Brumaire seeks to make sense of some contemporary event by constructing a narrative of it informed by the Marxist theory of history. This chapter considers specific cases of the dynamics of revolution, including the processes through which revolution is prevented and reaction institutionalized. It also discusses Marxist interpretations of the twentieth century, with emphasis on the Marxist thesis proposed by Perry Anderson, Eric Hobshawn, and Francis Fukuyama. Within the framework of Marxist historiography, the chapter measures how Marx's theory of history confronts the present as a historical problem.

Marxism and Its Others

This chapter is written from the perspective of a historian trying to comprehend the complexities of the nineteenth-century societies and to use those conceptual theories that would define the many layers of the social, cultural, and political world. In the absence of Marxism, there has been a tendency to lose interest in the large-scale changes and to resort to micro-histories. A return to Marx is therefore needed to understand how change occurs in the relation between key categories of difference. And while Marx may not have full answers to the questions on the logic of capital and class antagonisms, he nevertheless initiated questions on agency and change. The focus of the chapter is on the United Kingdom and its empire from 1828 to 1833. This was a period when political citizenship and forms of rule at home and across the empire were reassessed; when the forms of conservative aristocratic rule in Britain and the colonies were ruptured; and when the new vision of the nation and the empire was introduced. In all of the places ruled by the UK, emphasis is placed on Ireland, Britain, Jamaica, and India, including Westminster, which is the seat of the British government. Each of the cases is dealt with extensively, with stress on ethnicity, class, race, and gender. All of these cases are examined within the framework of Marxism, wherein the salience of the theory is measured on its capacity to address issues of differences.

Memories of Underdevelopment: What Has Marxism Done for Medieval History, and What Can It Still Do?

This chapter examines the medieval history of Europe within the context of Marxism, discussing the changes in class conflicts and their role in determining the socio-economic developments of European countries. It determines the historical contributions Marxism has made to medieval history and the future challenges it has to face. The chapter focuses on Marxist medieval history, which was dominated by the three strands of production in agrarian and feudal societies: slave plantations, peasant farming, and wage labour.