Benjamin Zachariah, Lutz Raphael, Brigitta Bernet (Eds.) Have Marxian ideas been relevant or influential in the writing and interpretation of history? What are the Marxist legacies that are now re- emerging in present-day histories? This volume is an attempt at relearning what the “discipline” of history once knew – whether one considered oneself a Marxist, a non-Marxist or an anti-Marxist. Benjamin Zachariah, University of Trier; Lutz Raphael, University of Trier; Brigitta Bernet, University of Basel. } } *Prices in US$ apply to orders placed in the Americas only. Prices in £ apply to orders placed in Great Britain only. Prices in € represent the retail prices valid in Germany (unless otherwise indicated). Prices are subject to change without notice. Prices do not include postage and handling if applicable. Free shipping for non-business customers when ordering books at De Gruyter Online. RRP: Recommended Retail Price. Order now! [email protected] degruyter.com What’s Left of Marxism Historiography and the Possibilities of Thinking with Marxian Themes and Concepts Edited by Benjamin Zachariah, Lutz Raphael & Brigitta Bernet ISBN 978-3-11-067762-1 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067774-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067779-9 ISSN 2625-0055 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020939086 Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Debojit Thakur (based on an anonymous portrait of Karl Marx by an unknown artist). Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com The Politics of Historical Thinking Historical thinkinghas apolitics that shapes its ends. While at least twogener- ations of scholars have been guided into their workinglives with this axiom as central to their profession, it is somewhat of aparadoxthat historiographyisso often nowadays seen as amatter of intellectual choicesoperating outside the im- perativesofquotidian politics,evenifthe higher realms of ideological inclina- tions or historiographical traditions can be seen to have playedarole. The pol- itics of historical thinking, if acknowledgedatall, is seen to belong to the realms of nonprofessional ways of the instrumentalisation of the past. This series seeks to centre the politics inherent in historical thinking,profes- sional and non-professional, promotedbystates,political organisations, ‘nation- alities’ or interest groups,and to explore the links between political (re‐)educa- tion, historiographyand mobilisation or (sectarian?) identity formation. We hope to bring into focus the politics inherent in historical thinking,professional, pub- lic or amateur,across the world today. Editorial Board: Brigitta Bernet, University of Trier Lutz Raphael, University of Trier Benjamin Zachariah,UniversityofTrier AdvisoryBoard: Caroline Arni, University of Basel Amar Baadj, University of Bonn Berber Bevernage, University of Ghent Federico Finchelstein, New School for Social Research, New York Kavita Philip, University of California Irvine Ilaria Porciani, University of Bologna Dhruv Raina, Jawaharlal Nehru University,New Delhi Jakob Tanner,University of Zürich https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110677744-001 TableofContents Benjamin Zachariah, Lutz Raphael, BrigittaBernet Introduction 1 Part One: Marxism and the Intellectual Production of History Jakob Tanner Smoke from the Volcanoes of Marxism? 19 Brigitta Bernet The Postwar Marxist Milieu of Microhistory Heterodoxy,Activismand the Formation of aCritical Historiographical Perspective 37 Benjamin Zachariah Antonio Gramsci’sMoment of Arrival in India 65 KavitaPhilip The Science Problem in Marxism 89 Part Two: Marxism and the Pre-Modern Worlds of the Near East and North Africa Mohammed Maraqten Marxist Historiography and the Ancient Near East The Impact of Marxist Writings on the Historical Interpretation of the Ancient Near East in Retrospect 121 Amar S. Baadj MamūdIsmāīland his Historical-Materialist Approachtothe Historyofthe Medieval Islamic World 147 X TableofContents Part Three: Marxism and the Beginnings of Western Capitalism Nasser Mohajer and Kaveh Yazdani Reading Marxinthe Divergence Debate 173 JorgeGrespan The Renewal of Marxist Historiography through the Study of Enslavement The Case of Brazil 241 Part Four: Marxism and the Study of the ContemporaryWorld Lutz Raphael Farewell to Class? Languages of Class, Industrial Relations and ClassStructures in Western Europe sincethe 1970s 265 Matthias Middell Marxand Today’sGlobal History 291 Preben Kaarsholm Marx, Globalisation and the Reserve Army of Labour 309 Biographical Notes 323 Index 327 Kavita Philip The ScienceProblem in Marxism On aloose sheet of paper,sometime between 1873 and 1882, Friedrich Engels scribbled some notes about alate-eighteenth-century shift in the meaning of sci- entific materialism: At the end of the last century,after the French materialists whowerepredominantlyme- chanical, the need became evident for an encyclopaedic comprehensive treatment of the entirenatural scienceofthe old Newton-Linnaeus school, and twomen of the greatest ge- nius undertook this,Saint Simon (uncompleted) and Hegel.i In the aftermath of the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries,the eighteenth century Enlightenmentand the Industrial Revolution, previous understandingsofthe natural and physical worlds had been over- turned. Engels continued, referringtoanongoing late nineteenth century scien- tific conversation: “Today, whenthe new outlook on nature is completeinits basic features,the sameneed makes itself felt,and attemptsare being made in this direction.”d HereEngels was identifying the still-incomplete task of inte- gratingall of revolutionary discoveries in naturaland physical sciences, and of connectingthese, in turn, with social,economic, and philosophical investiga- tions. This ‘new outlook on nature’ was emerging in scientific contexts, which Engels avidlystudied. On manyother sheets of paper like this one, contemporary scientificfindingsweredescribed, debated and summarised with as much detail and attention as we find in Engels’smore well-known investigations of the work- ing classes or of political economic theory.Noclear conclusion nor anyintegrat- ed vision for apolitical economyofscience emergesinthese sheets, however. They weretranscribed, decades later,simplylabelled ‘Notes,’ and appended to other excerpts and notes on ‘Heat,’‘Electricity,’‘Natural Science and the Spirit World’ and ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from ApetoMan.’ To- gether with an appendix containing previouslyunpublished ‘Notes to Anti- Dühring,’ these constituted fragmented chapters of the rather abstruse book known as TheDialectics of Nature. Friedrich Engels, TheDialectics of Nature (New York: International Publishers, 1940), 178–179. These notes appear in aparagraph titled “The classification of sciences,” in ChapterVII, “Notes.” Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 179. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110677744-007 90 KavitaPhilip This chapter suggests that we payclose attention to this vast,untapped vein of scientific studyinthe work of Karl Marx and Engels. Aproblem immediately arises, however,asweattempt to formulate the question of science in Marxism. Ahistorical models of science, tied to assumptions of deterministic social models of transition, and technocratic histories of technique,tied to Promethean sys- tems of extraction and labour-control, have shaped the moredeterministic and scientistic strands of Marxism. The political economic analysis of science and technology as ahistorical form of knowledge,however,has not been asignifi- cant part of mainstream humanist legacies in Marxism. Thisisthe ‘science prob- lem’ thatthis chapter sets out to address.e In order to bringMarxist science backinto focus, we have not onlysome understudied and fragmentary texts,such as TheDialectics of Nature and Marx’sscientific notebooks,but also arich historical record of the ways in which these fragments inspired shifts in scientific practice and planning.Marxist humanistshavenot considered the lab, the scientificconference, technological objects, infrastructure, or logistics as sites of Marxist theorising.But small, scat- tered groups of Marxist scientists have,atdifferent periods in the twentieth cen- tury,beenintrigued by Engels’sradical approach to the practice of science. Al- though they are largely neglectedincultural and economic history,these ‘red scientists’ are wellknown in the history of science,and theirwork still circulates globallyinscience- and technology-oriented activist networks.Wewill draw on their history to understand both the mechanistic dead-ends and the potentially dynamic futures of radical anti-capitalist science. The call for anew,non-mechanical materialism, rooted in anew under- standing of nature,but going beyond the dialectics of GeorgWilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 –1831) and the industrial optimism of Henri de Saint Simon (1760 –1825), was critical to Marx and Engels’swork from their earliest collabo- ration in the early1840s. Marx’sscientific excerpt notebooks,contemporaneous with his unfinishedwork on the second and third volumes of Capital,havethus far been the interest onlyofscholars of archival marginalia. The meaning of these notes has remained cryptic to humanist interpreters of the Marxist legacy. Today, with Marx’sextensive notes on science being prepared for publication in