By Alan Woods
Henry Ford is reported to have said "history is bunk". For those of you who are not familiar with the intricacies of American slang, the word bunk signifies nonsense - and non-sense signifies something which has no meaning. This not very elegant phrase adequately expresses an opinion that has gathered strength in recent years. The illustrious founder of the Ford motor company further refined his definition of history when he described it as "just one damn thing after another", which is one way of looking at it.
The same idea is expressed rather more elegantly (but no less erroneously) by the supporters of the post-modernist craze that some people seem to regard as valid philosophy. Actually, this idea is not new. It was expressed long ago by the great English historian Edward Gibbon, the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In the celebrated phrase of Edward Gibbon, history is "little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." (Gibbon, vol. 1, p. 69)
History appears here as an essentially meaningless and inexplicable series of random events or accidents. It is governed by no laws that we can comprehend. To try to understand it would therefore be a pointless exercise. A variation on this theme is the idea, now very popular in some academic circles that there is no such thing as higher and lower forms of social development and culture. They claim that there is no such thing as "progress" which they consider to be an old fashioned idea left over from the 19th century, when it was popularised by Victorian Liberals, Fabian socialists and - Karl Marx.
This denial of progress in history is characteristic of the psychology of the bourgeoisie in the phase of capitalist decline. It is a faithful reflection of the fact that, under capitalism progress has indeed reached its limits and threatens to go into reverse. The bourgeoisie and its intellectual representatives are, quite naturally, unwilling to accept this fact. Moreover, they are organically incapable of recognising it. Lenin once observed that a man on the edge of a cliff does not reason. However, they are dimly aware of the real situation, and try to find some kind of a justification for the impasse of their system by denying the possibility of progress altogether!
So far has this idea sunk into consciousness that it has even been carried into the realm of non-human evolution. Even such a brilliant thinker as Stephen Jay Gould, whose dialectical theory of punctuated equilibria transformed the way that evolution is perceived, argued that it is wrong to speak of progress from lower to higher in evolution, so that microbes must be placed on the same level as human beings. In one sense it is correct that all living things are related (the human genome has conclusively proved this). Man is not a special creation of the Almighty, but the product of evolution. Nor is it correct to see evolution as a kind of grand design, the aim of which was to create beings like ourselves (teleology - from the Greek telos, meaning an end). However, in rejecting an incorrect idea, it is not necessary to go to the other extreme, leading to new errors.
It is not a question of accepting some kind of preordained plan either related to Divine intervention or some kind of teleology but it is clear that the laws of evolution inherent in nature do in fact determine the development from simple forms of life to more complex forms. The earliest forms of life already contain within them the embryo of all future developments. It is possible to explain the development of eyes, legs and other organs without recourse to any preordained plan. At a certain stage we get the development of a central nervous system and a brain. Finally with homo sapiens, we arrive at human consciousness. Matter becomes conscious of itself. There has been no more important revolution since the development of organic matter (life) from inorganic matter.
To please our critics, we should perhaps add the phrase from our point of view. Doubtless the microbes, if they were able to have a point of view, would probably raise serious objections. But we are human beings and must necessarily see things through human eyes. And we do assert that evolution does in fact represent a development of simple life forms to more complex and versatile ones - in other words progress from lower to higher forms of life. To object to such a formulation seems to be somewhat pointless, not scientific but merely scholastic. In saying this, of course, no offence is intended to the microbes, who after all have been around for a lot longer than us, and if the capitalist system is not overthrown, may yet have the last laugh.
Culture and imperialism
If, in order not to offend microbes and other species, one is not allowed to refer to higher and lower forms of life, then still less - according to the latest fashion - can one be permitted to assert that the barbarians represent a lower form of social and cultural development than slavery - let alone capitalism. To argue that the barbarians possessed their own culture is not to say a great deal. From the time the first humans produced stone tools it is correct to say that every period has had its own culture. That these cultures have not been sufficiently appreciated until recently is certainly true. The bourgeois have always had a tendency to exaggerate the achievements of some cultures and to denigrate others. Behind this lies the vested interests of those who seek to enslave, dominate and exploit other peoples, and to disguise this oppression and exploitation under the hypocritical mantel of cultural superiority.
Under this banner, the Christians of northern Spain (true descendants of the barbarian Goths, by the way) destroyed the irrigation systems and the wonderful culture of Islamic Al-Andaluz, and went on to destroy the rich and flourishing cultures of the Aztecs and Incas. Under the same banner, the British, French and Dutch colonialists systematically enslaved the peoples of Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Not content with reducing these peoples to the worst kind of slavery, they were robbed not only of their land but of their souls. The Christian missionaries finished off the job started by the soldiers and slave-drivers, robbing the people of their cultural identity.
All this is perfectly true, and it is necessary to treat the culture of every people with the respect and affection it deserves. Every period, every people, has added something to the great treasure-house of human culture that is our collective heritage. But does this signify that one culture is as good as any other? Does it mean that one cannot assert that between the earliest stone axes (some of which show a remarkable degree of aesthetic sense) and Michelangelo's statue of David, no artistic progress is discernable? In a word, is it not possible to speak about progress in human history?
In logic, there is a well-known method that reduces an argument to absurdity by carrying it to its extreme. We see something similar to this in certain modern trends in anthropology, history and sociology. It is a well-known fact that science under capitalism becomes less and less scientific, the closer it gets to society. The so-called social sciences are not really sciences at all, but ill-concealed attempts to justify capitalism, or at least to discredit Marxism (which boils down to the same thing). This was certainly true of the past, when so-called anthropologists did their best to justify the enslavement of so-called backward races by denigrating their culture. But matters are not much better now when certain schools attempt to bend the stick the other way.
It is quite true that the imperialists have deliberately downplayed or even denied the culture of "backward peoples" in Africa, Asia and so forth. The English pro-imperialist poet Kipling (author of The Jungle Book) called them "lesser breeds without the law". This cultural imperialism was undoubtedly an attempt to justify the colonial enslavement of millions of people. It is also true that all the most barbarous and inhuman actions of the past pale in insignificance with the horrors inflicted on the human race by our allegedly civilized capitalist system and its counterpart, imperialism.
It is a terrible paradox that the more humanity develops its productive capacity, the more spectacular the advances of science and technology, the greater the suffering, starvation, oppression and misery of the majority of the world's population. This fact has been recognised by even supporters of the present system. But they do nothing to rectify it. Nor can they, since they refuse to recognise that the reason for the present impasse in which human society finds itself is the very system they defend. But it is not only the bourgeois who refuse to draw the necessary conclusions. The same is true of many who consider themselves left-wing and radical. There are some well-meaning people, for example, who maintain that the source of all our troubles is the growth of science, technique and industry, and that it would be a good thing if we were to go back to a pre-capitalist mode of existence!
The Victorians had a very one-sided view of history, which they saw as a kind of triumphal march, an unstoppable march upwards towards progress and enlightenment - led, of course, by English capitalism. This idea also served as a convenient justification for imperialism and colonialism. The "civilized" British went to India and Africa, armed with the Bible (and also a number of warships, cannon and high-powered rifles) to introduce the ignorant natives to the joys of western culture. Those who showed a lack of enthusiasm for the refinements of British (and also Belgian, Dutch, French and German) culture were rapidly "educated" by bullets and bayonets.
Nowadays the bourgeois is in a quite different frame of mind. Faced with growing evidence of the global crisis of capitalism, they are plunged into a mood of uncertainty, pessimism and dread for the future. The old songs about the inevitability of human progress seem to be quite out of tune with the harsh reality of the times. The very word "progress" calls forth a cynical sneer. And this is no accident. People are beginning to grasp the fact that in the first decade of the 21st century, progress has indeed come to a full stop. But this merely reflects the impasse of capitalism, which has long ago exhausted its potential for progress and become a monstrous obstacle in the path of human advance. To this extent - and only to this extent - one can say that it is impossible to talk about progress.
This is not the first time we have seen such a tendency. In the long period of decline that preceded the fall of the Roman Empire, it seemed to many that the end of the world was approaching. This idea was particularly strong in Christianity where it forms the entire content of the Book of Revelation (the Apocalypse). People were really convinced that the world was coming to an end. In fact, what was coming to an end was only a particular kind of socio-economic system - the slave system that had reached its limits and was unable to develop the productive forces as it had done in the past.
A similar phenomenon can be observed in the later Middle Ages, when the self-same idea was in vogue: the end of the world. Masses of people joined the flagellant sects that travelled through Europe, whipping and torturing themselves to expiate the sins of mankind in preparation for the Day of Judgement. Here again, what was coming to an end was not the world but the feudal system that had outlived its usefulness and was eventually overthrown by the rising bourgeoisie.
However, the fact that a particular socio-economic form has outlived its historical usefulness and become a reactionary obstacle to the advance of the human race does not mean that progress is a meaningless concept. It does not mean that there has been no progress in the past (including under capitalism), or that there cannot be progress in the future - once capitalism is abolished. Thus, an idea that seems at first sight to be eminently reasonable turns out to be a disguised defence of capitalism against socialism. To make even the smallest concession to such an idea would be to abandon a consistent revolutionary position and fall into a reactionary one.
Historical materialism
Society is constantly changing. History attempts to catalogue these changes and tries to explain them. But what are the laws that govern historical change? Do such laws even exist? If they do not, then human history would be entirely incomprehensible, as both Gibbon and Henry Ford believed. However, Marxists do not approach history in this manner. Just as the evolution of life has inherent laws that can be explained, and were explained, first by Darwin and in more recent times by the rapid advances in the study of genetics, so the evolution of human society has its own inherent laws that were explained by Marx and Engels.
Those who deny the existence of any laws governing human social development invariably approach history from a subjective and moralistic standpoint. Like Gibbon (but without his extraordinary talent) they shake their heads at the unending spectacle of senseless violence, the "inhumanity of man against man" (and woman) and so on and so forth. In place of a scientific view of history we get a parson's view. However, what is required is not a moral sermon but a rational insight. Above and beyond the isolated facts, it is necessary to discern broad tendencies, the transitions from one social system to another, and to work out the fundamental motor forces that determine these transitions.
By applying the method of dialectical materialism to history, it is immediately obvious that human history has its own laws, and that, consequently, it is possible to understand it as a process. The rise and fall of different socio-economic formations can be explained scientifically in terms of their ability or inability to develop the means of production, and thereby to push forward the horizons of human culture, and increase the domination of humankind over nature.
Marxism maintains that the development of human society over millions of years represents progress, but that this has never taken place in a straight line, as the Victorians (who had a vulgar and undialectical view of evolution) wrongly imagined. The basic premise of historical materialism is that the ultimate source of human development is the development of the productive forces. This is a most important conclusion because this alone can permit us to arrive at a scientific conception of history.
Before Marx and Engels history was seen by most people as a series of unconnected events or, to use a philosophical term "accidents". There was no general explanation of this, history had no inner lawfulness. Once one accepts this point of view, the only motor force of historical events is the role of individuals - "great men" (or women). In other words, we are left with an idealist and subjectivist view of the historical process. This was the standpoint of the utopian socialists, who, despite their colossal insights and penetrating criticism of the existing social order, failed to understand the fundamental laws of historical development. For them, socialism was just a "good idea", something that could therefore have been thought of a thousand years ago, or tomorrow morning. Had it been invented a thousand years ago, humankind would have been spared a lot of trouble!
It was Marx and Engels who for the first time explained that, at bottom, all human development depends on the development of productive forces, and thus placed the study of history on a scientific basis. Because the first condition for science is that we are able to look beyond the particular and arrive at general laws. For instance, the early Christians were communists (although their communism was of the utopian kind, based on consumption, not production). Their early experiments in communism led nowhere, and could lead nowhere, because the development of the productive forces at that time did not permit the development of real communism.
In the recent period it has become fashionable also in some "left" intellectual circles to deny the existence of progress in history. In part, these tendencies represent a healthy reaction against the kind of cultural imperialism and "eurocentricity" that I referred to earlier. One human culture is said to be equally as valid as any other. In this way, the European progressive intellectual feels that he or she has in some way "compensated" for the systematic rape and pillage perpetrated against the peoples of the former colonies by our forefathers - plunder which, of course, continues to the present day although under different disguises.
The intentions of these people may be laudable, but their premises are completely wrong. In the first place, it is rather cold comfort for the millions of oppressed and exploited people of Asia, Africa and Latin America to learn that their ancient cultures have now been rediscovered by European intellectuals and are held in high esteem by the latter. What is necessary is not symbolic gestures and terminological radicalism but a genuine struggle against imperialism and capitalism on a world scale. However, in order that this struggle should be successful, it must be placed on a firm basis. The prior condition for success is a relentless fight for Marxist theory. It is of course necessary to put the record straight and fight against all kinds of racist and imperialist prejudices. But in fighting against an incorrect idea it is necessary to guard against going too far, since a correct idea when pushed to extremes turns into its opposite.
Human history is not an uninterrupted line towards progress. Alongside the line of ascent, there is a line of descent. There have been periods in history when, for different reasons, society has been thrown back, progress interrupted, and civilisation and culture undermined. This was the case in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, in the period known at least in the English language as the Dark Ages. Recently, there has been a tendency on the part of some academics to rewrite history so as to present the barbarians in a more favourable light. This is not "more scientific" or "more objective" but simply childish.
How not to present the question
Recently British TV's Channel Four began a three part series called Barbarians, presented by Richard Rudgley, anthropologist and author of Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age. Having watched the second part of the series on the Angles and Saxons, the Germanic tribes that invaded the British Isles, I have been able to form a pretty good idea of Rudgley's central thesis. He argues that they left behind a society more civilised than the one they conquered. "The Roman Empire's reliance on slavery was replaced by a fairer society where workmanship and craft skills were encouraged and valued," Rudgley argues.
People generally believe that the Roman legacy to Britain was a civilised society later brutalised by the barbarian tribes that invaded during the Dark Ages. Not so, says Rudgley: "In my journey to understand the Dark Ages, I am finding that many of the things I value have their roots - not in Roman civilisation - but in the world the barbarians built in the ruins of the Roman Empire."
Rudgley has made an astounding discovery: the Saxons knew how to build ships - and fast ones, at that. He argues that the barbarians brought truly vast talents and crafts to these shores. He says: "Their skills were immense. You have only to look at some of the metalwork, woodwork and jewellery from the period." But the Romans knew how to build not just ships, but roads, aqueducts, cities and a lot besides. Rudgley overlooks the trifling detail that these things were destroyed or allowed to fall into neglect by the barbarians, and that this led to a catastrophic disruption of trade and a steep drop in the development of the productive forces and culture, which was thrown back for a thousand years.
He quotes approvingly the words of expert sword-maker Hector Cole, who says: "The Saxon swordsmiths were specialists. They were making structured blades 600 years before the Japanese." There is no doubt about this. All the barbarian tribes of this period were experts at making war and proved it by slicing through the Roman defences like a hot knife through butter. The Romans of the late Empire even began to imitate some of the military skills of the barbarians, adopting the short bow perfected by the Huns. But none of this in any way proves that the barbarians were on a comparable level of development to the Romans, and much less a superior one.
Rudgley explains that the sea crossings by which the Angles and Saxons entered Britain were not a mass invasion led by warriors but small groups of peaceful migrants looking for new settlements. Here he gets two things hopelessly mixed up. There is no doubt that the barbarians were looking for territory upon which to settle. The reasons for the mass movements of the peoples in the fifth century are probably varied. One theory is that a change of climate that raised the sea level on the coastal areas of what is now the Netherlands and north Germany, making these lands uninhabitable. A more traditional view is that they were under the pressure of other tribes migrating from the East. In all probability, it was a combination of these factors and others. In general the causes of such mass migration can be placed under the heading of historical accident. What is important is the results they produced in history. And this is just what is under dispute.
The initial contacts between the Romans and barbarians were not necessarily of a violent character. There was considerable trade along the eastern frontier for centuries, which led to a progressive Romanisation of those tribes living in proximity to the Empire. Many became mercenaries and served in the Roman legions. Alaric, the Gothic leader who was the first to enter Rome, was not only a former soldier of Rome but a Christian (albeit of the Arian kind). It is also fairly certain that the first Saxons to enter Britain were peaceful traders, mercenaries and settlers. This is indicated by the tradition that they were invited into Britain by the Romanised British "king" Vortigern, after the departure of the Roman legions.
But at this point, Rudgley's analysis begins to break down. He has entirely missed the point about trade between civilized nations and barbarians, which was invariably connected with piracy, spying and war. The barbarian traders would take careful note of the strengths and weaknesses of the nations with which they were in contact. If there were signs of weakness, the "peaceful" commercial relations would be followed up by armed bands in search of plunder and conquest. It is sufficient to read the Old Testament to see that this was precisely the relation between the pastoral-nomadic Israeli tribes and the ancient Canaanites, who, as civilised urban peoples, stood on a higher level of development.
The assertion that the Romans stood on a higher cultural level than the barbarians can easily be demonstrated by the following fact. Although the barbarians succeeded in conquering the Romans, they themselves were fairly quickly absorbed, and even lost their own language and ended up speaking a dialect of Latin. Thus, the Franks, who gave their name to modern France, were a Germanic tribe speaking a language related to modern German. The same thing happened to the Germanic tribes that invaded Spain and Italy.
The one glaring exception to this rule appears to be the fact that the Angles and Saxons who invaded Britain were not absorbed by the more advanced Celtic Romano-Britons. The English language is basically a Germanic language (with a later admixture of Norman French from the 11th century on). In fact, the number of words of Celtic origin in the English language is insignificant, whereas there is a very large number of Arabic words in the Spanish language. The reason for this is that the Arabs in Spain stood on a far higher cultural level than the Spanish speaking Christians who conquered them. The only conceivable explanation is that the Anglo-Saxon barbarians (whom Mr Rudgley regards as very nice peaceful people) must have pursued a policy of genocide against the Celtic people whose lands they seized in bloody wars of conquest.
Sentimentality or science?
We can therefore lay down a firm rule: an invading people whose culture stands at a lower level than the people conquered by it will be eventually absorbed by the culture of the conquered, and not vice-versa. It may be objected that this occurred because the numbers of the invaders were relatively small. But this does not stand up to examination. In the first place, as Rudgley himself argues, very large numbers were involved in these vast migrations - whole peoples in fact. Secondly, there are many other historical examples that prove the opposite.
The Mongols who invaded India and established the Mogul dynasty that lasted until the British conquered India were completely absorbed into the more advanced Indian way of life. Exactly the same thing happened in China. However, when the British conquered India, they were not absorbed by the native culture but on the contrary, as Marx explains, completely shattered the old Indian society that had endured for thousands of years. How was this possible? Only because Britain, where the capitalist system was developing rapidly, stood on a higher level of development than India.
Of course, it is possible to say that before the coming of the British, the Indians had a very high level of cultural development. Although the European conquerors looked down on the Indians as at least semi-barbarians, nothing could be further from the truth. On the basis of the very ancient Asiatic mode of production, Indian culture reached prodigious levels. Their achievements in the fields of art, sculptures, architecture, music and poetry were so brilliant that they even aroused the admiration of the more cultured representatives of the British Empire.
It is equally possible to deplore the supposedly civilized British for the extremely brutal way in which they crushed the Indians through a combination of trickery, lies, murders and massacres. That is all true, but it entirely misses the point. The real question that must be asked is this: why were the British not absorbed by the Indian culture as the Mongols had been? After all, in this case, it is true that the numbers of British who settled in India were insignificant when compared to the multi-millioned masses of this vast subcontinent. Yet after two hundred years, it was the Indians who learned English, and not vice-versa.
Today, half a century after the departure of the British, English is still the official language of India and remains the lingua franca of all educated Indians and Pakistanis. How is this to be explained? Only by the fact that capitalism represents a higher level of development than either feudalism or the Asiatic mode of production. That is the decisive fact. To complain about this, protest against "cultural imperialism" and so on may have a certain value in the field of agitation (there is absolutely no doubt about the truly barbarous conduct of the imperialists in general). But from a scientific point of view, such comments do not get us very far.
To approach human history from a sentimental point of view is worse than useless. History knows no morality and operates according to different laws altogether. The task of any person who wishes to understand history is first of all to leave aside all moralistic elements, since there can be no supra-historical morality - no "morality in general" - but only particular moralities that pertain to particular historical periods and definite socio-economic formations and have no relevance outside them.
From a scientific point of view, therefore, it makes no sense to compare the moral standards of the conduct, say, of the Romans and barbarians, the British and the Indians, the Mongols and the Chinese. Barbarous and inhuman practices have existed in every period of history, so if we take that as a yardstick to judge the human race, one would have to draw the most pessimistic conclusions (many have done so). As a matter of fact, one could argue that the greater the degree of development, the greater the capacity to inflict terrible suffering on a large number of people. The state of the world in the first decade of the 21st century would seem to confirm this gloomy assessment of human history.
Some people have drawn the conclusion that perhaps the problem is that there has been too much development, too much progress, too much civilisation. Would we not be happier living in a simple agricultural environment - run, of course, on strictly ecological lines - tilling our own fields (without tractors), making our own clothes, baking our own bread, and so on? That is to say, would we not be better if we returned to - barbarism?
Given the terrible state of society and the world under capitalism, we can readily understand that there are people who want to somehow escape from an unpleasant reality and put the clock back to a golden age. The trouble is that such an age never existed. Those (usually middle-class) people who talk grandly about the wonders of life in the good old days of agricultural communes have no idea of how tough life was in those times. Let us quote from the manuscript of a medieval monk who, unlike our modern New Age fanatics, knew what life under feudalism was really like. This is an extract from a medieval author, a monk called Aelfric, who wrote a book to teach Latin conversation at Winchester:
Master: What do you do, ploughman, how do you do your work?
Pupil: Sir, I work very hard. I go out at dawn to drive the oxen to the field, and yoke them to the plough. However hard the winter, I dare not stay at home for fear of my lord; and having yoked the oxen and made the ploughshare and coulter fast to the plough, every day I have to plough an acre or more.
M: Do you have anyone with you?
P: I have a boy to drive the oxen with the goad, and he is now hoarse with cold and shouting.
M: What other work do you have to do in the day?
P: A great deal more. I have to fill the oxen's bin with hay, and give them water, and carry the dung outside.
M: And is it hard work?
P: Yes, it is hard work, because I am not free.
A couple of weeks of backbreaking and soul-destroying toil of this sort would surely provide a guaranteed cure for the illusions of the most die-hard romantic! What a pity we cannot order a brief trip on a time-machine for this purpose.
London,
July 17, 2002
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