Page 66 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 66
Ideology in the 20th Century: studies of literary and social discourses and practices
object (the relation of the anthropologists, who positions himself outside
and above the observed people) reflects itself in the object of observation
(the relation of the people, who exert supremacy over the Earth). His epis-
temology defines the highest ‘ethnical period’ and at the same time an-
nounces itself as the expression of it.
In the 20th century, the anthropological discourse revised this stance,
but Morgans work had a great impact beyond the disciplinary bounda-
ries. Especially Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels read it closely. Marx not-
ed his remarks on it, but did not succeed to write a text on it anymore,5
but Engels reacted to it with his book The Origin of the Family, Private
Property, and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan
(1884). In the preface to the first edition, he declares his work to be
66 a slight substitute for what my departed friend no longer had the time to do.
But I have the critical notes which he made to his extensive extracts from
Morgan, and as far as possible I reproduce them here (Engels 2000, 4).
He explains that it was “the American Indians, among whom Marx,
as he often said, found the key to the understanding of our own primitive
age” (Engels 36). Scholars argue whether Engels really conveyed the ide-
as Marx developed while reading Morgan. Some are convinced he did (cf.
Herrmann 1984, 19) others take a different view. In his essay Karl Marx
and the Iroquois the poet Franklin Rosemont states that Marx was not in-
terested in the Iroquois out of nostalgic interest for the past but rather in
search of new possible ways to social justice. Rosemont claims that Marx
did not adopt
the so-called ‘unilinear’ evolutionary plan usually attributed to Morgan—a
plan which, after its uncritical endorsement by Engels in The Origin of the
Family, has remained ever since a fixture of ‘Marxist’ orthodoxy. Evidence
scattered throughout the Notebooks suggests, rather, that Marx had
grown markedly skeptical of fixed categories in attempts at historical re-
construction, and that he continued to affirm the multilinear character of
human social development that he had advanced as far back as the Grun-
drisse in the 1850s” (Rosemont 11).
This ‘plan’ is still visible in the present-day ‘epistemological scale’, crit-
icized by Castro-Gómez in the quotation above. However, this is not
the only reason why the scholars in the field of decolonial studies reject
Marxism. Such a ‘unilinear’ scale can be implemented only by impos-
5 These notes were transcribed and edited by Lawrence Krader, who published them
under the title The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (1974).
object (the relation of the anthropologists, who positions himself outside
and above the observed people) reflects itself in the object of observation
(the relation of the people, who exert supremacy over the Earth). His epis-
temology defines the highest ‘ethnical period’ and at the same time an-
nounces itself as the expression of it.
In the 20th century, the anthropological discourse revised this stance,
but Morgans work had a great impact beyond the disciplinary bounda-
ries. Especially Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels read it closely. Marx not-
ed his remarks on it, but did not succeed to write a text on it anymore,5
but Engels reacted to it with his book The Origin of the Family, Private
Property, and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan
(1884). In the preface to the first edition, he declares his work to be
66 a slight substitute for what my departed friend no longer had the time to do.
But I have the critical notes which he made to his extensive extracts from
Morgan, and as far as possible I reproduce them here (Engels 2000, 4).
He explains that it was “the American Indians, among whom Marx,
as he often said, found the key to the understanding of our own primitive
age” (Engels 36). Scholars argue whether Engels really conveyed the ide-
as Marx developed while reading Morgan. Some are convinced he did (cf.
Herrmann 1984, 19) others take a different view. In his essay Karl Marx
and the Iroquois the poet Franklin Rosemont states that Marx was not in-
terested in the Iroquois out of nostalgic interest for the past but rather in
search of new possible ways to social justice. Rosemont claims that Marx
did not adopt
the so-called ‘unilinear’ evolutionary plan usually attributed to Morgan—a
plan which, after its uncritical endorsement by Engels in The Origin of the
Family, has remained ever since a fixture of ‘Marxist’ orthodoxy. Evidence
scattered throughout the Notebooks suggests, rather, that Marx had
grown markedly skeptical of fixed categories in attempts at historical re-
construction, and that he continued to affirm the multilinear character of
human social development that he had advanced as far back as the Grun-
drisse in the 1850s” (Rosemont 11).
This ‘plan’ is still visible in the present-day ‘epistemological scale’, crit-
icized by Castro-Gómez in the quotation above. However, this is not
the only reason why the scholars in the field of decolonial studies reject
Marxism. Such a ‘unilinear’ scale can be implemented only by impos-
5 These notes were transcribed and edited by Lawrence Krader, who published them
under the title The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (1974).
