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Marx and Modernization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Shlomo Avineri
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Extract

Marx had a specific theory about the nature of non-European societies, and this theory determined his views on the conditions and possibilities of industrialization and modernization in non-Western countries. Yet this theory is hardly known, though it is extremely interesting and sometimes contradicts the more sweeping and general claims made on behalf of Marxism as a universal philosophy of history. Marx elaborated his views on the nature of the non-European world in numerous articles and letters, discussed it in Capital and the Critique of Political Economy, and based his conclusions on a mass of economic, historical, and sociological data. This theory is worthwhile studying both for those who are interested in Marx and for those studying modernization: it has its own difficulties, but it sheds an intriguing light on some of Marx's best insights into historical development and may help to correct some of the current models of modernization.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 1969 , pp. 172 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1969

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References

* This article was prepared for delivery at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington-Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C., September 2–7, 1968.

1 Lichtheim, George, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (London, 1961), pp. 33–50Google Scholar. Also Bober, M. M., Karl Marx's Interpretation of History (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 3–6Google Scholar, where Marx's famous Introduction to The Critique of Political Economy is broken up into 15 propositions which the author then proceeds to verify individually. See also Meyer, Alfred G., Marxism: The Unity of Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 74–102Google Scholar; Mayo, Henry B., Introduction to Marxist Theory (New York, 1960), pp. 63–91Google Scholar.

2 Marx to the Editorial Board of Otechestvenniye Zapiski, November, 1877, in Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Correspondence (Moscow, n.d.), p. 377Google Scholar.

3 Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, “On the Inscrutability of History”, Encounter (11, 1966), p. 11Google Scholar.

4 Black, Cyril E., “Revolution, Modernization and Communism”, in Black, Cyril E. and Thornton, Thomas P. (eds.), Communism and Revolution (Princeton, 1964), p. 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This contrasts neatly with Marx's own statement in his 1872 Amsterdam Speech where in discussing the transition to socialism he says: “We know that one has to take into consideration the institutions, mores and traditions of the different countries”. Quoted in Gerth, Hans (ed.), The First International: Minutes of the Hague Congress of 1872 (Madison, 1958), p. 236Google Scholar. See also Ward, Robert G. and Rustow, Dankwart A., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, 1964), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Rostow, Walt W., The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, 1960), p. 146Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 157.

7 Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar. A similar total absence of a reference to Marx can be seen in Shils, Edward, Political Development in the New States (The Hague, 1966)Google Scholar.

8 Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, 1958), esp. pp. 301ff.Google Scholar A similar picture emerges from Apter's, David E.The Politics of Modernization (Chicago, 1965)Google Scholar.

9 Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1965), p. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Pye, Lucian W., Aspects of Political Development (Boston, 1966), p. 57Google Scholar.

11 Scalapino, Robert A., “Environment and Foreign Contribution: Japan”, in Ward and Rustow, op. cit., p. 64Google Scholar.

12 Ulyanovsky, R. A., “Agrarian Reforms in the Countries of the Near and Middle East, India and Southeast Asia”, in Thornton, Thomas P., The Third World in Soviet Perspective (Princeton, 1964), p. 211Google Scholar.

13 Potekhin, I.I., “Land Relationships in the Countries of Africa”, in Thornton, , op cit., p. 236Google Scholar.

14 See Sutton, F.X., “Social Theory and Comparative Politics”, in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David E. (eds.), Comparative Politics: A Reader (New York, 1963), p. 71Google Scholar. Also Apter, , op. cit., pp. 43ffGoogle Scholar; Parsons, Talcott, “Some Reflections on the Institutional Framework of Economic Development”, in Bonne, Alfred (ed.), The Challenge of Development (Jerusalem, 1958), pp. 111–112Google Scholar.

15 Marx-Engels, , Selected Works (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 36–38Google Scholar.

16 For further discussion of the centrality of Marx's argument about the universalizing tendencies of capitalism, see my The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 150–174CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Pye, and Verba, (eds.) Political Culture and Political Development, p. 19Google Scholar: Dankwart Rustow, “The Modernity of Tradition”, ibid., pp. 197ff; and Verba, “Conclusion”, ibid., pp. 502ff.

18 The following account is based on The Poverty of Philosophy (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 153–156; Capital (Moscow, n.d.), I, 713ff. See also Marx's programmatic letter to Engels of July 27, 1854, in Marx-Engels, , Selected Correspondence, pp. 105–108Google Scholar.

18 Hegel's, Philosophy of Right, trans. Knox, T. M. (Oxford, 1942), para. 157Google Scholar: “Civil society—an association of members as self-sustaining individuals, in a university which, because of their self-subsistence, is only abstract. Their association is brought about by their needs, by the legal system—the means to security of persons and property—and by an external organization for attaining their particular and common interests”.

20 Marx, to Engels, , 06 2, 1853, Selected Correspondence, p. 98Google Scholar.

21 Veliz, Claudio, Obstacles to Change in Latin America (London, 1965), pp. 2–4Google Scholar.

22 Selected Works, I, 37–38: “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid development of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization…. Just as it has made the country dependent on the town, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West”.

23 “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, Selected Works, I, 363.

24 The main texts on which the following is based are: Capital, III, 328–329Google Scholar; “The British Rule in India” and “Future Results of British Rule in India”, New York Daily Tribune, June 25 and August 8, 1853, respectively (Selected Works, I, pp. 345–358); “Chinese Affairs”, Die Presse, July 7, 1862; the correspondence between Marx, and Engels, of 05 and 06, 1853 (Selected Correspondence, pp. 95–104)Google Scholar. Consult, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, ed. Hobsbawm, E. (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

25 There are, however, exceptions, most notably Wittfogel, Karl A., Oriental Despotism (New Haven, 1957)Google Scholar; Lichtheim, George, “Marx and the Asiatic Mode of Production”, St. Antony's Papers (London; 1963), XIV, 86–112Google Scholar; Strachey, John, The End of Empire (London, 1959)Google Scholar; Sinai, I. R., The Challenge of Modernization (London, 1964)Google Scholar; Kiernan, Victor, “Marx and India”, The Socialist Register (London, 1967), pp. 121–158Google Scholar. Cf. also my Introduction to the comprehensive edition of Karl Marx an Colonialism and Modernization (Garden City, 1968), pp. 1–28Google Scholar.

26 It can be easily shown that Marx derived the basic characteristics of his description of Asian societies from the chapter on “The Oriental World” in Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history. See Hegel, G. W. F., The Philosophy of History, trans. Sibree, J., ed. Friedrich, C.J. (New York, 1956), pp. 105–106, 116, 139Google Scholar.

27 Selected Works, I, 350–351.

28 Marx, Karl & Engels, Frederick, The German Ideology (London, 1965), pp. 75–76Google Scholar; Marx, to Engels, , 10 8, 1858 (Selected Correspondence, p. 134)Google Scholar. In this letter Marx voices his fear that the European proletarian revolution may be crushed by the dead weight of the not yet modernized Oriental society.

29 Capital, III, 328–329: “The obstacles presented by the internal solidity and organization of pre-capitalist national models of production to the corrosive influence of commerce are strikingly illustrated in the intercourse of the English with India and China. The broad basis of the mode of production is formed here by the unity of the small-scale agriculture and home industry, to which in India we should add the form of village communities built upon the common ownership of land, which, incidentally, was the original form in China as well. In India the English lost no time in exercising their direct political and economic power as rulers and landlords to disrupt these small economic communities. English commerce exerted a revolutionary influence on these communities…. And even so, this work of dissolution proceeds very gradually. And still more so in China, where it is not reinforced by direct political power”.

30 In The Northern Star, January 22, 1848, Engels says: “The conquest of Algeria is an important and fortunate fact for the progress of civilization”. In the Deutsche Briisseler Zeitung of January 23, 1848, he writes: “In America we have witnessed the conquest of Mexico and rejoiced in it. It is progress that a country which has been till now exclusively preoccupied with itself … should be forcibly pushed into the movement of history. It is in the interest of its own development to be put in the future under the protective hegemony of the United States”. A similar argument is made by Engels for Russian expansion into Central Asia in a letter to Marx of May 23, 1851 (Marx-Engels, , Briefwechsel [Berlin, Dietz, 1949], I, 241)Google Scholar: “Russian rule, with all its vulgarity, with all its Slavonic faith, is still civilizing with respect to the Black and Caspian Seas and for Central Asia, for Bashkirs and Tartars”. Some not very perceptive Marxist writers have seen such statements as “a setback from which Marxism has not yet fully recovered”. See Davis, Horace B., “Nations, Colonies and Social Classes: The Position of Marx and Engels”, Science and Society, XXIX (1965), 31Google Scholar.

31 Selected Works, I, 353–354. Cf. also ibid., 351: “England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution”. In the terms of the current literature on modernization Marx credits England in India for bringing about what Geertz would call “the integrative revolution” and what Organski calls the first and second stages of political development. See Geertz, Clifford, Old Societies and New States (Glencoe, 1963), pp. 105–157Google Scholar; Organski, A. F. K., The Stages of Political Development (New York, 1965)Google Scholar.

32 Engels to Kautsky, September 12, 1882, quoted in Marx-Engels, , On Colonialism (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 306–307Google Scholar.

33 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs, 1966), pp. 67–75Google Scholar.

34 The German Ideology, p. 208. Also Engels', article, “Der Status Quo in Deutschland”, in Marx-Engels, , Werke (Berlin, 1959), IV, 40–57Google Scholar.

35 “Persia-China”, New York Daily Tribune, June 5, 1857.