Marxist Historiography

The new state was conceived based on an original idea, rooted only in the local tradition. This is an example of spontaneous state making. The ruler reigned over «the entire Wallachian land» and, for the fi rst time in the East, emerged a national idea similar to the Western territorial one, on which the modern states are founded [...] Thus, on the dawn of modernity, Wallachians came out with the idea of the modern state 1 .

Karl Marx is one of the nineteenth century's most influential philosophers of history. He, besides history, was a philosopher of sociology, economics and political economy. He advocated joining and strengthening an intellectual working class movement the destiny of which, he predicted, was to overthrow capitalism as a socio-political and economic system and replace it with a more humane system that could deliver people while discouraging sheer inequities and disparities. He believed his writings would provide this movement with a theoretical insight and make it stronger. There is no denying that he often emphasized that the movement is propelled by circumstances and will accomplish its mission of universal human emancipation. He created differences with others on the basis of not only his interpretation of history but also on the nature of political-activism and ideological fervour engendered by his amalgam of ideology and history. Marx was the one whose intellectual endeavours and achievements, in economics, social theory and history, deserves to be called 'philosophical' exposition in the most honorific sense of this term. He interpreted human past in a way that unfolds materialistic aspect of

Raphael Samuel Marxism is often discussed, both by its partisans and its critics, as though it was a closed system which, once elaborated, could be said to exist more or less independently of historical time.* Marx and Engels' own texts are given a privileged status, and even when there is a radical departure from them, it will usually be presented in the guise of a rediscovery rather than as something which is new. Fundamentalists are concerned to reaffirm the consistency of Marxism, to purge it of alien accretions, and to proclaim the finality of its rupture with other modes of thought. Revisionists are no less eager to give their arguments the trappings of orthodoxy, and will justify the widest departures from the revolutionary spirit of Marx and Engels by reference to chapter and verse. Enemies of Marxism are even more concerned to prove that Marxism is a totality, and will ransack the obscurest texts to demonstrate its monolithic character. In recent years there has been a vigorous debate amongst Marxists on fundamental questions of theory but the debate has turned largely on the epistemological status of Marxist concepts, rather than their historical or political determinations; it has been marked by a Leavis-like attention

The notion of 'socialist patriotism' represents one point of departure of this essay. Throughout the majority of the reign of the communist parties in Eastern Europe, the concept served as a ready-made propaganda tool to fi ght and subdue political opponents, drawing on various patriotic and nationalist feelings and attitudes. 1 However, despite the reservations the notion begets among the current students of the period I am convinced that in a certain time-period the notion of 'socialist patriotism' stood for more than mere political propaganda. As a part of an ambitious project of socialist nation-building its prospects did not always seem as dismal as we tend to think today. The fi rst half of the 1960s was probably the most optimistic time in Soviet history, the era of bold Khrushchevist integration projects that – in the upcoming modernisation leap driven by the scientifi c-technological revolution, overall progress, sweeping urbanisation, and cultural blossoming – should have led to a new stage of economic, social, and political unifi cation and national blending, a 'new historical community of people'. As some scholars argue, it was to be a decisive step in the creation of the Soviet nation as a mixture of all constituent nations and ethnicities under the leadership of Russians. 2 The possible early creation of such a nation was understood as a utopian project and challenged even in the USSR, especially in its western parts. Yet, some of the optimism spilled over to the satellite countries of East-Central Europe, where it found rather incompatible but not altogether hostile conditions. The complicated relationship between the politically promoted and ideologically driven concept of socialist patriotism and the historical studies of nation-building in East-Central Europe is at the centre of the present essay. It starts with a short overview of the ambiguous relationship of radical socialist movements and communist parties in the region to national or nationality question until the end of WWII that foreshadowed the even more complicated development during the communist parties' dictatorial rule. The majority of the essay concentrates on the period between 1956 and 1970. Even though the arguments involved are drawn from the broader geographical area of East-Central Europe, in detail the story concentrates primarily on the examples of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The coun-tries' diverging confi gurations of the offi cial communist politics and the developing Marxist historical nation-building studies at that time provide interesting material for comparison.

This paper considers the importance of examples from India in the text of Marx’s Capital. In tracking Marx’s preoccupations, it is possible to show the relevance, especially for today, of his critique in a global frame, as political economy pivots and returns to its sources. Along the way, countering misreading and mistranslation, it becomes possible to see why studies of the agrarian, trading route and subaltern histories of capital in relation to the subcontinent, as well as of market spaces and early commercial exchange in Asia, are crucial for rethinking Marxist approaches to urbanism today. Targeting the archetypal corporate entity of his time, and its ideological supporters, the themes of tribute, exoticism, animals and the slave trade restore a reading practice that owes as much to Marx’s biography as to any one Marxist mode of analysis. The idea of a postcolonial, vegetarian or saffron Marx is not on the cards—since Asia is not simply a place to which Marx goes—but a more careful and at
the same time experimental reading can perhaps restore enthusiasm for the critique of political economy and provide ways of teaching old texts that remain relevant, and by remaining relevant, indicate what is to be done.

Everything Jack Lindsay wrote was about the past or saturated with historical consciousness. Plebeian experiences, rebellion, revolution, and progressive expectations predominate. It is therefore natural to think of him as a Marxist historian. He himself identified as one, and was a regular attender of the meetings of the Communist Party's Historians' Group, the members which made substantial contributions to British and to Marxist historiography.

Yet on closer examination, Lindsay turns out to have been an unusual sort of historian and an unusual sort of Marxist. A relatively small proportion of his prodigious output qualifies as straightforward 'history’. Instead, there is historical fiction, biography, cultural criticism, and documentation of customs and beliefs. Lindsay’s historical practice stemmed from positions that that largely predated his conversion to Communism. Marxism does not constitute the whole of Lindsay’s philosophy of history, but rather is the keystone of a still broader conception ( “my dialectic”) which owed much to poetry, mysticism and philosophical Idealism.

Includes Lukács' book Literature and Democracy (1947) in full, along with five supplementary essays and lectures published between 1946 and 1948; with introduction, annotations, and biographical and historical glossary.  These appear for the first time in English; many have not been translated even into German; several pieces are "occasional" works published only in pamphlets or other ephemeral form.

The paper traces the development of Soviet studies on ancient slavery from their beginnings after the October Revolution until Perestroika in the 1980s. It shows how these studies, while
closely dependent on the political directives of the Marxist-Leninist authorities, slowly moved
from initial sociological generalizations to specialised research. Further development was however hampered by an orthodoxy which became ever more rigid, notwithstanding efforts of some
historians to create more space for debate. The contribution ends with a retrospective from a post-Soviet point of view, mustering the results and reflecting on the standstill already before Perestroika. A postscript addresses the works of the Soviet ancient historian M.E. Sergeenko, illustrating the possibility of doing research without Marxism, neither opposing nor embracing it.
Keywords: USSR, historiography, ancient slavery, Marxism, E.M. Štaerman, M.E. Sergeenko.
(пер. с нем.: Heinen H. 2010: Aufstieg und Niedergang der sowjetischen Sklavereiforschung: Eine Studie zur Verbindung von Politik und Wissenschaft // Antike Sklaverei: Rückblick und Ausblick. Neie Beiträge zur Forschungsgeschichte und zur Erschließung der archäologischen Zeugnisse / H. Heinen (Hrsg.) (Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei. Bd 38). Stuttgart. S. 95–138; итал. пер.: Heinen H. Ascesa e declino della ricerca sovietica sulla schiavitù: uno studio sul rapporto tra politica e scienza // Rivista storica italiana. 2010. 122. 2. P. 735–783).

Edited version of published paper presented at 'Is Black and Red Dead?' Conference, Centre for the Study of Social and Global and Justice (CSSGJ) University of Nottingham, 7-8 September, 2009

https://socialhistoryportal.org/news/articles/110943

Prominent Marxist historian, revolutionary, poet and a litterateur from Assam - Dr Amalendu Guha - passed away at the age of 91 in the wee hours of 7 May 2015. His passing away is a huge loss for the world of historical scholarship in India. It is not an exaggeration to describe him as a pioneer of modern history of Assam and among the tallest of Indian historians of 20th century. In this article Bonojit Hussain and Mayur Chetia offers their last tribute to this lifelong communist, people's history and life-affirming poet.

This article examines the force and limitations of genealogy in order to develop a practice of counter-history that is capable of both overcoming its inherent problems and providing a more trenchant mode of critico-historical engagement. Using Foucault’s well-known essay on Nietzsche as its methodological centerpiece, it begins by elucidating the latter’s powerful contribution to the historical analysis of values, while also foregrounding the quasi-naturalized morality of genealogy that structures it. Against this backdrop, it examines Foucault’s symptomatological distinction between two opposed and normativized conceptions of origin in Nietzsche—Herkunft and Ursprung—in order to both explicate Foucault’s unique appropriation of Nietzschean genealogy and demonstrate its limits through the striking fact that this originary textual symptom of “properly Nietzschean” genealogy does not actually exist in the text. The remainder of the article draws on certain genealogical resources while challenging the historical order undergirding them in order to propose an alternative logic of history that takes into account its constitutive multidimensionality and the multiplicity of agencies at work in any conjuncture. It dismantles, in this way, the very framework that renders historical origins possible, as well as streamlined moral narratives of genealogical inversion, thereby parting ways with the moralities of genealogy in favor of the politicization of values.

Beginning with a consideration of the abandonment of the social in recent photography, - a collective without content, or individual amidst the mass - this essay examines the representation of the anti-capitalist crowd by three photographers: Joel Sternfeld, Allan Sekula and Chris Marker. Drawing on work in social history (EP Thompson, Christopher Hill, Paul Gilroy, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker) on the multitude and the commons the paper examines the demonisation of the crowd, by gentleman as many-headed monster from above as a monster. In contrast it also looks at alternative ideas of the multitude, or motley crew, figured from below. The essay is a contribution to debates on capitalism and the so-called primitive accumulation, from a cultural-materialist perspective.
Published in: Third Text, Vol. 23, Issue 4, July, 2009, 447–464

Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960), prominent astronomer and world-renowned socialist theorist, stood at the nexus of the revolutions in politics, science and the arts of the early twentieth century. His astronomy was uniquely visual and highly innovative, while his politics were radical. Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society collects essays on Pannekoek and his contemporaries at the crossroads of political history, the history of science and art history.

Este ensayo analiza las grandes transformaciones de la historiografía contemporánea a partir de la obra de Eric Hobsbawm, fallecido en octubre de 2012 a los 95 años; unos cambios que son escudriñados a la luz del auge y la crisis del marxismo como método de análisis y herramienta de transformación sociopolítica en el siglo XX. Tras considerar la derrota de la historia narrativa y el intento de construir una historia global con un enfoque universal hasta los años 70, el artículo concluye con un balance del pesimismo tardío de Hobsbawm ante la historia neodescriptiva y relativista en boga en las últimas décadas, que para él constituyen una «gran era de mitología histórica», al calor de las políticas de la identidad actualmente en boga.

В статье исследуются научные и интеллектуальные достоинства центральной части марксизма - исторического материализма. Автор подробно показывает, что в методологии исторического материализма и его подходе к исследованию общества оказались весьма ценные находки, удачные и продуктивные методы, которые будут весьма полезны обществоведу, а равно теоретизирующему или стремящемуся к широким аналогиям историку. Даются подробные объяснения этому феномену, а так же вскрываются ограничения имеющейся модели истмата, устаревшие и неподтвержденные историей идеи. Дается очерк истории западного марксизма определяется своего рода парадоксом: его значение растет по мере того, как он растворяется в других теориях. Поскольку он стал как бы частью общего интеллектуального достояния,  можно говорить, образно выражаясь, о генетическом дрейфе исторического материализма и марксизма, который, несмотря ни на что, оказывается живым учением. Словом, исторический материализм при творческом к нему отношении по-прежнему остается значимым интеллектуальным резервом.

از مارك ویگلی خواسته بودند میراث فكری تافوری را ارزیابی كند. او در مقاله‌ی پیشِ رو این خواسته را به شیوه‌ای تافوری‌وار اجابت كرده است. ویگلی بر خلاف رسم معمول مدیحه‌سرایی از استادان متوفی، كه از قضا در ایران رایج است، همان شیوه‌ای را پیش می‌گیرد كه مشخصه‌ی نثر تافوری است. او با پیروی از «اصل تضاد»ی كه قصد روشن‌كردن جایگاهش را در اندیشه‌ی تافوری دارد، متن را به هزارتویی بدل مي‌كند كه افكار و اندیشه‌های تافوری را به هم می‌دوزد و خواننده را در گردابی از تناقض‌ها گرفتار می‌كند. ویگلی بدین طریق همان هدفی را محقق می‌كند كه تافوری برایش جنگید: مبارزه با كالایی‌شدن و مصرف نقد/تاریخ.

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* ویگلی، مارک. «تاریخ پساگزارانه». ترجمهٔ محمد نخعی. در: همشهری معماری، ش۳۴ (فروردین و اردیبهشت ۱۳۹۶)، ص۷۱-۷۵.

این مقاله ترجمه‌ای است از:
Wigley, Mark. "Post-Operative History." ANY: Architecture New York, no. 25/26 (2000): 47-53.

One of the most remarkable qualities of the Universal History of the USSR Academy of Sciences is in the size and organic which outlines the societies and cultures of the peoples that the Greeks and Romans called barbarians. It is not just the amount of information and pages devoted to this topic but also the effort to conceive this matter in its relative autonomy, as a prerequisite to study the link between the story of the barbaric society and the history of the great civilizations of slavery.

This course introduces students to recent debates in social theory and historiography. This semester we will particularly focus on i. theories related to the making of historical and contemporary capitalism; ii. world history and everyday in the contemporary context of global capitalism; iii.rethinking the area studies specifically with its new global reach; iv.new theories of fascism, we'll consider fascism not as a lived historical specifity but as an abstract political concept related to the commodity form, as formulated by Marx, i.e. fascism as the subsumption of the economic and the political.

Ένας συγκριτικός, ελεύθερος εργοβιογραφικός περίπατος για τρεις κορυφαίους Έλληνες διανοούμενους του ελληνικού σοσιαλισμού, των οποίων η ποικιλότροπα αλληλοδιαπλεκόμενη ζωή και  συγγραφική παραγωγή τους υπήρξε αδιαχώριστα συνδεδεμένη με τη θεμελίωση της ελληνικής μαρξιστικής σκέψης.

Το κείμενο παρουσιάστηκε αρχικά ως προφορική ανακοίνωση σε ημερίδα της Επιτροπής Ποντιακών Μελετών αφιερωμένη στο Γεώργιο Σκληρό (Κωνσταντινίδη) την 1η Δεκεμβρίου 2019.

Доклад был представлен в конце года, когда уместно предложить аудитории некоторые спорные положения. The author defines the concept of the absolutization of the research paradigm, which means Marxism. It provides a substantiation of the connection between absolutization and unification of the historical narrative. It justifies the susceptibility of the absolutized paradigm to the external conjuncture and shows the connection between absolutization and semi-autonomy of Soviet science. He considers the consequences expressed in the decline of Soviet historiography.

O prof. David Parker  foi membro do Grupo de História do PCGB e é ativo no Socialist History Group ( sucedâneo do Grupo). Sua obra discute a questão do Estado absolutista.
Parker organizou "Ideology, Absolutism and the English Revolution", onde fez a seleção dos debates no interior do Grupo de História entre 1948 e 1956. Portanto , continua na tradição de entender o absolutismo e a transição do feudalismo para o capitalismo.

Fourth classes about Historiography in 2015-2016 Academic course "Prácticas de la Monarquía Hispánica", II year of History career, Universidad de Alcalá (Madrid, Spain).
I lecture: Origen of Historiography.
II lecture: Annales.
III lecture: Marxist School.
IV lecture: Microhistory.
V lecture: Latest trends.

Since Georges Duby's seminal study of the Maconnais in the late 1950s, historians have vigorously debated the nature, chronology and pace of the changes that transformed Carolingian Europe into high medieval Europe. Did it all come about due to a sudden rupture and discontinuity in political and social structures around the year 1000 - a feudal revolution no less? Or was it all a more gradual process, with deep continuities running between the ninth and early twelfth centuries? Yet recent trends in historiography, including but not limited to the medieval centuries, have been marked by increased scepticism on the importance of political and social structures as historical forces, and a retreat from "grand narratives." How has this impacted the 'feudal revolution' debate? This review essay examines this question by focusing on the two most significant contributions to this debate since Thomas Bisson made it widely known to Anglophone scholarship in a seminal article in the Past and Present Journal in 1994 - Bisson's own magnum opus "The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship and the Origins of European Government" (2008) and "Reframing the Feudal Revolution: Political and Social Transformation between Marne and Moselle, c.800 - 1100" (2013) by Charles West.

This article analyzes Jean-Paul Sartre’s contribution to designing a biographical
method in keeping with the demands of Marxism. Sartre criticized Marxists for their
pan-objectivism, which reduces subjectivity and man’s specific nature to epiphenomena. His contribution lies in grasping the genesis of individuality in order to incorporate it into the historical movement. The progressive-regressive method restores this two-fold nature: social and unique, universal and singular. Yet the success of Sartre’s contribution at the cost of a tension with the hypothesis that anthropologically underpins
Marxism: man’s social nature.

Key words: Sartre, Marxism, biography, individuality, progressive-regressive method, project.

আমরা বলছি শোনো: চারটি লেখা একত্রে…
২০০৮. "ইতিহাসের উলট কল: কৃষিতে প্রত্যাবর্তন." আমরা বলছি শোনো. ২:১. মার্চ- মে'০৮. (৩৪-৩৫ পাতা)
২০০৮. "নেশন স্টেটের খোয়াব: একটি লাইভ টক শো". আমরা বলছি শোনো. ২:২ . জুলাই- অগস্ট'০৮ (২-৪ পাতা).
২০০৮. "এই ওম চেয়েছিলো বুঝি?" ২:৩. আমরা বলছি শোনো. ২:৩. নভেম্বর- ডিসেম্বর'০৮ (৬১ পাতা)
২০০৯. "বি-কল্প-নার দিকে" আমরা বলছি শোনো. ২:৪. জুন-অক্টোবর'০৯ .(৪৯-৫২ পাতা)

ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes the construction of the socialist historiographical paradigm in the study of the pre-Roman peoples of Western Iberia. It focuses on the three key issues of this tendency: gens system, agrarian collectivism and social banditry. It delves specially on the work of Joaquín Costa as pioneer reference in later 19th century. His reinterpretation of these peoples from a socio-economic and class struggle perspective is analyzed in its ideological and methodological context. Secondly, the paper reviews the evolution of this perspective and its transcendence in some of the most
important historiographical debates of the 20th century, through its revisions and depolitization during the francoist period and its marxist revitalization in the 60-70’s to its refutation from the 1980 decade.
KEYWORDS: Marxism, pre-Roman Iberia, historiography, Joaquín Costa.

RESUMEN: Se analiza la construcción del paradigma historiográfico socialista en el estudio de los pueblos prerromanos del Occidente de Iberia. El estudio se centra en los tres temas clave de esta tendencia: sistema gentilicio, colectivismo agrario y bandolerismo social. Profundiza especialmente en la obra de Joaquín Costa como referente pionero a finales del siglo XIX. Se analiza su reinterpretación de estas sociedades en términos socioeconómicos y de lucha de clases en su contexto ideológico y metodológico. En segundo lugar se rastrea la evolución de esta perspectiva y su trascendencia en los más fundamentales debates historiográficos del siglo XX, pasando por sus relecturas y despolitización en el período franquista y su revitalización marxista en los años 60-70 hasta su refutación desde la década de los 80.
PALABRAS CLAVE: Marxismo, Iberia prerromana, historiografía, Joaquín Costa.

The recent emergence of global anti-capitalist and anti-war movements have created a space within which Marxism can flourish in a way as it has not been able to for a generation. This book shows that by disassociating Marxism from the legacy of Stalinism, Marxist historiography need not retreat before the criticisms from theorists and historians. It also shows that, once rid of this incubus, Marx's theory of history can be shown to be sophisticated, powerful and vibrant. The book argues that Marxism offers a unique basis to carry out a historical research, one that differentiates it from the twin failures of the traditional empiricist and the post-modernist approaches to historiography. It outlines Marx and Engels' theory of history and some of their attempts to actualise that approach in their historical studies. The book also offers a critical survey of debates on the application of Marx's concepts of 'mode of production' and 'relations of production' in an attempt to periodise history. Marxist debates on the perennial issue of structure and agency are considered in the book. Finally, the book discusses competing Marxist attempts to periodise the contemporary post-modern conjuncture, paying attention to the suggestion that the post-modern world is one that is characterised by the defeat of the socialist alternative to capitalism.

Shortly after a push to promote China's 1950 Marriage Law in 1953, scholars from the Chinese Music Research Institute on a collection trip to a small locality in northern China encountered a large number of folksongs about extramarital affairs. They interpreted this as evidence of the need for marriage reform. The folksong lyrics highlighted controversial aspects of the Marriage Law by espousing one of the law's central tenets – free love – while also expressing women's desires to leave their husbands. In this article, I explore how the researchers placed the song lyrics in a liminal moral-temporal category between “feudal” arranged marriage and the new marriage system before declaring the songs to be relics of the victimization of women in a “feudal” past. I argue that additional light-hearted elements complicate the researchers’ conclusion and suggest that when the promotion of social agendas in the 1940s and 1950s cast songs about illicit affairs as morally ambiguous, Chinese scholars chose to ascribe the songs’ “roots” to other groups or to the “feudal” past of the people they sought to praise and/or transform.

在 1953 年贯彻 1950 年《中华人民共和国婚姻法》的过程中，一批来自中央音乐学院中国音乐研究所的研究员到山西省河曲县搜集民歌时，遇到了大量关于婚外情的民间歌曲而将其解释为需要婚姻改革的证据。搜集的歌词突出了《婚姻法》的有争议的方面，拥护了《婚姻法》的中心原则之一：自由恋爱，可也同时表达了女性离开丈夫的愿望。本篇文章探讨研究人员如何将歌词放在“封建”婚姻与新婚姻制度之间的阈限道德时空类别中，然后才声称歌曲是妇女在过去的“封建”时代深受伤害的遗留物。作者认为歌词当中附加的幽默元素使研究人员的结论复杂化，并且表明，当 20 世纪 40 年代和 50 年代促进社会变革的议程使得关于“打伙计”的民歌被型塑为道德上模棱两可的时候，当时的中国学者选择将民歌之“根”归于本地老百姓“封建”的过去或者归于其他群体的影响，而这些老百姓是他们旨在歌颂和/或变革的。

O artigo de Dave Renton faz uma apresentação do trabalho de Dona Torr,histórica militante comunista britânica e mentora intelectual do Grupo de História do Partido Comunista da Grã-Bretanha.
Renton apresenta as contribuições de Torr (sua tia-avó).

El presente trabajo pretende señalar la importancia de investigar acerca del desarrollo del materialismo histórico en el período de crisis de la modernidad. Así, en primer lugar se expone su importancia y las diversas aportaciones que este estudio realizaría a nuestros conocimientos. A continuación explicamos los criterios metodológicos y teóricos que un trabajo de esta índole habría de seguir para conducir a un resultado satisfactorio. Por último, se reflexiona acerca de las implicaciones que un estudio de estas características puede tener fuera del mundo científico.