Appendix: A Short Note on Karl Marx, Max Weber and Arnold Toynbee 1 Societies as Sequence of Modes of Production (Marx) In terms of historical events, the teaching of Karl Marx became most influential. Understood or misunderstood, it turned into (to use his own words) a material force in many parts of the world. Thus Marxism does not deserve our attention merely as an alternative perception but also as a social phenomenon, an object of our observation. Four basic assumptions distinguish the Marxist school from all others. First, that the main driving force in history is the class struggle between those who exploit and those who are exploited; this in turn presupposes that economic considerations combined with the division of labour are the most important type of motivation for human action. Second, that with the exception of the earliest (prehistorical) stage of development, which can be described as primitive communism, the whole history of mankind can be divided up according to the main positions and fronts in the class struggle, which in their turn alter with the changes in the main type of means of production and type of ownership, thus constituting the sequence of social formations. Third, that the above-mentioned mode of human relationships will be brought to an end and replaced by a more harmonious relationship in the future. Fourth, that this will happen as a result of conscious action by that class which bears the brunt of the most recent type of exploitation, and that it will happen under the ideological leadership of its vanguard, that is, of those who have got the ‘right understanding’ of the laws of history. Even if presented in this simplified form, it cannot go unnoticed that this type of reasoning does not exclude thought and valuations from its scheme. The focus, however, is on work and especially on the appropriation of its product. Thus the sequence of individual social formations does not take into account the cultural change, the change in human thought as an independent variable. The successive transition from one social formation to the other are viewed in terms of a dialectical interplay of productive forces and modes of production, in which the contrasting dominant ideologies are considered rather as epiphenomena, as false consciousness, though the latter’s possible feedback impact on real processes is acknowledged. One has only to remember Marx’s dictum that when ideas had taken hold of the masses, ideas too were material forces. Karl Marx drew his idea of the sequence of socio-economic formations (slave-holding, feudal, capitalist) from the study of the Ancient Greek and Roman societies and of West European history. But he was well aware of the limited applicability of this scheme to the other parts of the world. This was, in particular, the case with Asia, for which Marx conceived of a specific, rather non-dialectical category. Marx’s Asiatic mode of production became a disturbing element in his system. A great debate on this issue was initiated by Soviet Communist theoreticians in the mid-1920s. Eventually, after the experts’ so-called Leningrad discussion in 1931, the Asiatic or Oriental mode of production was, under Stalin’s aegis, dismissed as a concept hampering 250 Marx, Weber, Toynbee 251 the struggle of colonial nations for freedom; therefore the idea of the sequence of slave-holding and feudal formations was extended to China, India and the Middle East.1 After Stalin’s death, however, the idea of the Asiatic mode of production was resus- citated and, under the name of Oriental despotism (sponsored especially by Wittfogel, a participant in the great discussion of the topic), made headway for a short while.2 Meanwhile it was suggested that this type of social formation cropped up in most societies outside Europe; accordingly the need has been voiced to find a more generic, rather than geographical term, such as, for instance, Chesneaux’s ‘formation despotico- villageoise’.3 Yet this does not help our understanding of the pattern of socio-economic develop- ment outside Europe. Since Marx’s days our knowledge of the non-European past has increased tremendously and we have become much better acquainted with the dynamics of those societies. Until further refinements can be made, the Marxian social formations (modes of production) remain an incomplete schematic outline on the map of social configurations. This issue is closely related to the basic premise of Marxian ontology, namely that human consciousness is a function of human beings, that is, that the type of thought is derivative from the type of material existence, which in turn is understood mainly in economic terms. Of Marx’s many statements to this effect, perhaps the following one in The German Ideology is concise and explicit enough to serve as an illustration: The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness is directly interwoven with the material activity and the material relationships of men; it is the language of actual life. Conceiving, thinking, and the intellectual relationships of men appear here as the direct result of their material behaviour. The same applies to intellectual production as manifested in a people’s language of politics, law, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc., but these are real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the relationships corresponding to these up to their highest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else except conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process.4 If there is any material substance relevant to the development of human thought, it should, in my opinion, be sought in the sphere of biology, or even deeper, in bio- chemistry, rather than in the sphere of the production processes as such. It is the human brain and its interplay with the natural and social environment which together, in the last instance, give rise to a particular economic organization and level of technology. Marx seems to have got close to this idea, but he preferred to stick to his production-oriented paradigm: Darwin has interested us in the history of nature’s Technology, i.e., in the forma- tion of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not such a history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter? Technology discloses man’s mode of dealing with nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them.5 252 Appendix Instead of coming to a halt at the level of production, it may be worth our while to delve further and look into the biologists’ findings and suggestions concerning the origins of human values.6 For those who do not like to see the human spirit treated as too detached from matter, this might be a more viable alternative to the economic determinism that has become a widely acceptable part of the Marxian heritage, a part shared by Marxists and non-Marxists alike. 2 Societies as complex structures (Max Weber) The philosophizing bent in the construction of global categories stands in contrast to the soberly inductive work of Max Weber. Unlike Marx, Weber did not devise global categories. He took the socio-economic categories, such as capitalism and feudalism, for granted, yet, in contrast to Marx, he did not treat them as stages in the historical sequence of formations, but as generic, classificatory concepts (in his words ‘ideal types’) applicable, with the help of further differentiating epithets, to various historical periods and countries. Furthermore, in his quest for precision, Weber conceived many more taxonomic concepts, such as patriarchalism, patrimonialism, gerontocracy and bureau- cracy; in his concrete analyses, none of these terms could claim the kind of pivotal role in categorization allotted to the key Marxian concepts. Weber’s scholarly quest focused, to borrow Andreski’s words, on ‘inductive generalizations and explanations’; he looked for ‘the causes, necessary conditions, antecedents and effects of social changes and continuities’.7 No wonder that any analyst inspired by Marx’s grand design, who nevertheless seriously wanted to come to grips with empirical reality, had sooner or later to turn to Max Weber for more reliable guidance to the complexities of human thought and action.8 With Weber’s help many of them, as I witnessed in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, realized the fallacy of economic determinism and began to lend more weight to ideas as independent variables. Weber’s insights are no less salutary for those who, while studying socio-cultural aspects of history, forget about their tangible components of social life. Indeed Weber’s work is a source of inspiration for all those who are interested in bridging the gulf between the two distinct lines of investigation for which the names of Marx and, on the other side, Toynbee represent the respective paradigms. Max Weber was above all intrigued by the staggering contrast between, on the one hand, the epochal breakthrough which in Western Europe created a modern industrial society with all its corollaries in politics and culture and, on the other hand, the rather monotonous rhythm of the other parts of the world with their endlessly repeated shifts between various recurrent types of domination and economic interaction, which he conceived of as patrimonialism, feudalism, despotism, bureaucracy, predatory capital- ism, and so on.