This
article by Alan Woods deals with barbarism and the development of human
society. In post-modern writing, history appears as an essentially
meaningless and inexplicable series of random events or accidents.
It is governed by no laws that we can comprehend. A variation on this
theme is the idea, now very popular in some academic circles that there
is no such thing as higher and lower forms of social development and
culture. This denial of progress in history is characteristic of the
psychology of the bourgeoisie in the phase of capitalist decline.
Henry Ford is reported to have said "history is bunk". For those of
you who are not familiar with the intricacies of American slang, the
word bunk signifies nonsense - and non-sense signifies something which
has no meaning. This not very elegant phrase adequately expresses an
opinion that has gathered strength in recent years. The illustrious
founder of the Ford motor company further refined his definition of
history when he described it as "
just one damn thing after another", which is one way of looking at it.
The same idea is expressed rather more elegantly (but no less
erroneously) by the supporters of the post-modernist craze that some
people seem to regard as valid philosophy. Actually, this idea is not
new. It was expressed long ago by the great English historian Edward
Gibbon, the author of
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
In the celebrated phrase of Edward Gibbon, history is "little more than
the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."
(Gibbon, vol. 1, p. 69)
History appears here as an essentially meaningless and inexplicable series of random events or
accidents.
It is governed by no laws that we can comprehend. To try to understand
it would therefore be a pointless exercise. A variation on this theme is
the idea, now very popular in some academic circles that there is no
such thing as higher and lower forms of social development and culture.
They claim that there is no such thing as "progress" which they consider
to be an old fashioned idea left over from the 19th century, when it
was popularised by Victorian Liberals, Fabian socialists and - Karl
Marx.
This denial of progress in history is characteristic of the psychology of the bourgeoisie in the phase of capitalist decline.
It
is a faithful reflection of the fact that, under capitalism progress
has indeed reached its limits and threatens to go into reverse. The
bourgeoisie and its intellectual representatives are, quite naturally,
unwilling to accept this fact. Moreover, they are organically incapable
of recognising it. Lenin once observed that a man on the edge of a cliff
does not reason. However, they are dimly aware of the real situation,
and try to find some kind of a justification for the impasse of their
system by denying the possibility of progress altogether!
So far has this idea sunk into consciousness that it has even been
carried into the realm of non-human evolution. Even such a brilliant
thinker as Stephen Jay Gould, whose dialectical theory of
punctuated equilibria
transformed the way that evolution is perceived, argued that it is
wrong to speak of progress from lower to higher in evolution, so that
microbes must be placed on the same level as human beings. In one sense
it is correct that all living things are related (the human genome has
conclusively proved this). Man is not a special creation of the
Almighty, but the product of evolution. Nor is it correct to see
evolution as a kind of grand design, the aim of which was to create
beings like ourselves (teleology - from the Greek
telos,
meaning an end). However, in rejecting an incorrect idea, it is not
necessary to go to the other extreme, leading to new errors.
It is not a question of accepting some kind of preordained plan either related to Divine intervention or some kind of
teleology
but it is clear that the laws of evolution inherent in nature do in
fact determine the development from simple forms of life to more complex
forms. The earliest forms of life already contain within them the
embryo of all future developments. It is possible to explain the
development of eyes, legs and other organs without recourse to any
preordained plan. At a certain stage we get the development of a central
nervous system and a brain. Finally with
homo sapiens, we arrive at human consciousness.
Matter becomes conscious of itself. There has been no more important revolution since the development of organic matter (life) from inorganic matter.
To please our critics, we should perhaps add the phrase
from our point of view.
Doubtless the microbes, if they were able to have a point of view,
would probably raise serious objections. But we are human beings and
must necessarily see things through human eyes. And we do assert that
evolution does in fact represent a development of simple life forms to
more complex and versatile ones - in other words
progress from lower to higher forms of life. To object to such a formulation seems to be somewhat pointless, not scientific but merely
scholastic.
In saying this, of course, no offence is intended to the microbes, who
after all have been around for a lot longer than us, and if the
capitalist system is not overthrown, may yet have the last laugh.
Culture and imperialism
If, in order not to offend microbes and other species, one is not
allowed to refer to higher and lower forms of life, then still less -
according to the latest fashion - can one be permitted to assert that
the barbarians represent a lower form of social and cultural development
than slavery - let alone capitalism. To argue that the barbarians
possessed their own culture is not to say a great deal. From the time
the first humans produced stone tools it is correct to say that every
period has had its own culture. That these cultures have not been
sufficiently appreciated until recently is certainly true. The bourgeois
have always had a tendency to exaggerate the achievements of some
cultures and to denigrate others. Behind this lies the vested interests
of those who seek to enslave, dominate and exploit other peoples, and to
disguise this oppression and exploitation under the hypocritical mantel
of cultural superiority.
Under this banner, the Christians of northern Spain (true descendants
of the barbarian Goths, by the way) destroyed the irrigation systems
and the wonderful culture of Islamic Al-Andaluz, and went on to destroy
the rich and flourishing cultures of the Aztecs and Incas. Under the
same banner, the British, French and Dutch colonialists systematically
enslaved the peoples of Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Not content with
reducing these peoples to the worst kind of slavery, they were robbed
not only of their land but of their souls. The Christian missionaries
finished off the job started by the soldiers and slave-drivers, robbing
the people of their cultural identity.
All this is perfectly true, and it is necessary to treat the culture
of every people with the respect and affection it deserves. Every
period, every people, has added something to the great treasure-house of
human culture that is our collective heritage. But does this signify
that one culture is as good as any other? Does it mean that one cannot
assert that between the earliest stone axes (some of which show a
remarkable degree of aesthetic sense) and Michelangelo's statue of
David, no artistic progress is discernable? In a word, is it not
possible to speak about progress in human history?
In logic, there is a well-known method that reduces an argument to
absurdity by carrying it to its extreme. We see something similar to
this in certain modern trends in anthropology, history and sociology. It
is a well-known fact that science under capitalism becomes less and
less scientific, the closer it gets to society. The so-called social
sciences are not really sciences at all, but ill-concealed attempts to
justify capitalism, or at least to discredit Marxism (which boils down
to the same thing). This was certainly true of the past, when so-called
anthropologists did their best to justify the enslavement of so-called
backward races by denigrating their culture. But matters are not much
better now when certain schools attempt to bend the stick the other way.
It is quite true that the imperialists have deliberately downplayed
or even denied the culture of "backward peoples" in Africa, Asia and so
forth. The English pro-imperialist poet Kipling (author of
The Jungle Book)
called them "lesser breeds without the law". This cultural imperialism
was undoubtedly an attempt to justify the colonial enslavement of
millions of people. It is also true that all the most barbarous and
inhuman actions of the past pale in insignificance with the horrors
inflicted on the human race by our allegedly civilized capitalist system
and its counterpart, imperialism.
It is a terrible paradox that the more humanity develops its
productive capacity, the more spectacular the advances of science and
technology, the greater the suffering, starvation, oppression and misery
of the majority of the world's population. This fact has been
recognised by even supporters of the present system. But they do nothing
to rectify it. Nor can they, since they refuse to recognise that the
reason for the present impasse in which human society finds itself is
the very system they defend. But it is not only the bourgeois who refuse
to draw the necessary conclusions. The same is true of many who
consider themselves left-wing and radical. There are some well-meaning
people, for example, who maintain that the source of all our troubles is
the growth of science, technique and industry, and that it would be a
good thing if we were to go back to a pre-capitalist mode of existence!
The Victorians had a very one-sided view of history, which they saw
as a kind of triumphal march, an unstoppable march upwards towards
progress and enlightenment - led, of course, by English capitalism. This
idea also served as a convenient justification for imperialism and
colonialism. The "civilized" British went to India and Africa, armed
with the Bible (and also a number of warships, cannon and high-powered
rifles) to introduce the ignorant natives to the joys of western
culture. Those who showed a lack of enthusiasm for the refinements of
British (and also Belgian, Dutch, French and German) culture were
rapidly "educated" by bullets and bayonets.
Nowadays the bourgeois is in a quite different frame of mind. Faced
with growing evidence of the global crisis of capitalism, they are
plunged into a mood of uncertainty, pessimism and dread for the future.
The old songs about the inevitability of human progress seem to be quite
out of tune with the harsh reality of the times. The very word
"progress" calls forth a cynical sneer. And this is no accident. People
are beginning to grasp the fact that in the first decade of the 21st
century, progress has indeed come to a full stop. But this merely
reflects the impasse of capitalism, which has long ago exhausted its
potential for progress and become a monstrous obstacle in the path of
human advance. To this extent -
and only to this extent - one can say that it is impossible to talk about progress.
This is not the first time we have seen such a tendency. In the long
period of decline that preceded the fall of the Roman Empire, it seemed
to many that the end of the world was approaching. This idea was
particularly strong in Christianity where it forms the entire content of
the
Book of Revelation (the Apocalypse). People were really
convinced that the world was coming to an end. In fact, what was coming
to an end was only a particular kind of socio-economic system - the
slave system that had reached its limits and was unable to develop the
productive forces as it had done in the past.
A similar phenomenon can be observed in the later Middle Ages, when
the self-same idea was in vogue: the end of the world. Masses of people
joined the flagellant sects that travelled through Europe, whipping and
torturing themselves to expiate the sins of mankind in preparation for
the Day of Judgement. Here again, what was coming to an end was not the
world but the feudal system that had outlived its usefulness and was
eventually overthrown by the rising bourgeoisie.
However, the fact that a particular socio-economic form has outlived
its historical usefulness and become a reactionary obstacle to the
advance of the human race does not mean that progress is a meaningless
concept. It does not mean that there has been no progress in the past
(including under capitalism), or that there cannot be progress in the
future - once capitalism is abolished. Thus, an idea that seems at first
sight to be eminently reasonable turns out to be a disguised defence of
capitalism against socialism.
To make even the smallest concession
to such an idea would be to abandon a consistent revolutionary position
and fall into a reactionary one.
Historical materialism
Society is constantly changing. History attempts to catalogue these
changes and tries to explain them. But what are the laws that govern
historical change? Do such laws even exist? If they do not, then human
history would be entirely incomprehensible, as both Gibbon and Henry
Ford believed. However, Marxists do not approach history in this manner.
Just as the evolution of life has inherent laws that can be explained,
and were explained, first by Darwin and in more recent times by the
rapid advances in the study of genetics, so the evolution of human
society has its own inherent laws that were explained by Marx and
Engels.
Those who deny the existence of any laws governing human social
development invariably approach history from a subjective and moralistic
standpoint. Like Gibbon (but without his extraordinary talent) they
shake their heads at the unending spectacle of senseless violence, the
"inhumanity of man against man" (and woman) and so on and so forth. In
place of a scientific view of history we get a
parson's view. However, what is required is not a moral sermon but
a rational insight.
Above and beyond the isolated facts, it is necessary to discern broad
tendencies, the transitions from one social system to another, and to
work out the fundamental motor forces that determine these transitions.
By applying the method of dialectical materialism to history, it is
immediately obvious that human history has its own laws, and that,
consequently, it is possible to understand it as a process. The rise and
fall of different socio-economic formations can be explained
scientifically in terms of their ability or inability to develop the
means of production, and thereby to push forward the horizons of human
culture, and increase the domination of humankind over nature.
Marxism maintains that the development of human society over millions
of years represents progress, but that this has never taken place in a
straight line, as the Victorians (who had a vulgar and undialectical
view of evolution) wrongly imagined. The basic premise of historical
materialism is that the ultimate source of human development is the
development of the productive forces. This is a most important
conclusion because this alone can permit us to arrive at a scientific
conception of history.
Before Marx and Engels history was seen by most people as a series of
unconnected events or, to use a philosophical term "accidents". There
was no general explanation of this, history had no inner lawfulness.
Once one accepts this point of view, the only motor force of historical
events is the role of individuals - "great men" (or women). In other
words, we are left with an idealist and subjectivist view of the
historical process. This was the standpoint of the utopian socialists,
who, despite their colossal insights and penetrating criticism of the
existing social order, failed to understand the fundamental laws of
historical development. For them, socialism was just a "good idea",
something that could therefore have been thought of a thousand years
ago, or tomorrow morning. Had it been invented a thousand years ago,
humankind would have been spared a lot of trouble!
It was Marx and Engels who for the first time explained that, at
bottom, all human development depends on the development of productive
forces, and thus placed the study of history on a scientific basis.
Because the first condition for science is that we are able to look
beyond the particular and arrive at general laws. For instance, the
early Christians were communists (although their communism was of the
utopian kind, based on consumption, not production). Their early
experiments in communism led nowhere, and could lead nowhere, because
the development of the productive forces at that time did not permit the
development of real communism.
In the recent period it has become fashionable also in some "left"
intellectual circles to deny the existence of progress in history. In
part, these tendencies represent a healthy reaction against the kind of
cultural imperialism and "eurocentricity" that I referred to earlier.
One human culture is said to be equally as valid as any other. In this
way, the European progressive intellectual feels that he or she has in
some way "compensated" for the systematic rape and pillage perpetrated
against the peoples of the former colonies by our forefathers - plunder
which, of course, continues to the present day although under different
disguises.
The intentions of these people may be laudable, but their premises
are completely wrong. In the first place, it is rather cold comfort for
the millions of oppressed and exploited people of Asia, Africa and Latin
America to learn that their ancient cultures have now been rediscovered
by European intellectuals and are held in high esteem by the latter.
What is necessary is not symbolic gestures and terminological radicalism
but a genuine struggle against imperialism and capitalism on a world
scale. However, in order that this struggle should be successful, it
must be placed on a firm basis. The prior condition for success is a
relentless fight for Marxist theory. It is of course necessary to put
the record straight and fight against all kinds of racist and
imperialist prejudices. But in fighting against an incorrect idea it is
necessary to guard against going too far, since a correct idea when
pushed to extremes turns into its opposite.
Human history is not an uninterrupted line towards progress.
Alongside the line of ascent, there is a line of descent. There have
been periods in history when, for different reasons, society has been
thrown back, progress interrupted, and civilisation and culture
undermined. This was the case in Europe after the fall of the Roman
Empire, in the period known at least in the English language as the Dark
Ages. Recently, there has been a tendency on the part of some academics
to rewrite history so as to present the barbarians in a more favourable
light. This is not "more scientific" or "more objective" but simply
childish.
How not to present the question
Recently British TV's Channel Four began a three part series called
Barbarians, presented by Richard Rudgley, anthropologist and author of
Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age.
Having watched the second part of the series on the Angles and Saxons,
the Germanic tribes that invaded the British Isles, I have been able to
form a pretty good idea of Rudgley's central thesis. He argues that they
left behind a society more civilised than the one they conquered. "The
Roman Empire's reliance on slavery was replaced by a fairer society
where workmanship and craft skills were encouraged and valued," Rudgley
argues.
People generally believe that the Roman legacy to Britain was a
civilised society later brutalised by the barbarian tribes that invaded
during the Dark Ages. Not so, says Rudgley: "In my journey to understand
the Dark Ages, I am finding that many of the things I value have their
roots - not in Roman civilisation - but in the world the barbarians
built in the ruins of the Roman Empire."
Rudgley has made an astounding discovery:
the Saxons knew how to build ships
- and fast ones, at that. He argues that the barbarians brought truly
vast talents and crafts to these shores. He says: "Their skills were
immense. You have only to look at some of the metalwork, woodwork and
jewellery from the period." But the Romans knew how to build not just
ships, but roads, aqueducts, cities and a lot besides. Rudgley overlooks
the trifling detail that these things were destroyed or allowed to fall
into neglect by the barbarians, and that this led to a catastrophic
disruption of trade and a steep drop in the development of the
productive forces and culture, which was thrown back for a thousand
years.
He quotes approvingly the words of expert sword-maker Hector Cole,
who says: "The Saxon swordsmiths were specialists. They were making
structured blades 600 years before the Japanese." There is no doubt
about this. All the barbarian tribes of this period were experts at
making war and proved it by slicing through the Roman defences like a
hot knife through butter. The Romans of the late Empire even began to
imitate some of the military skills of the barbarians, adopting the
short bow perfected by the Huns. But none of this in any way proves that
the barbarians were on a comparable level of development to the Romans,
and much less a superior one.
Rudgley explains that the sea crossings by which the Angles and
Saxons entered Britain were not a mass invasion led by warriors but
small groups of peaceful migrants looking for new settlements. Here he
gets two things hopelessly mixed up. There is no doubt that the
barbarians were looking for territory upon which to settle. The reasons
for the mass movements of the peoples in the fifth century are probably
varied. One theory is that a change of climate that raised the sea level
on the coastal areas of what is now the Netherlands and north Germany,
making these lands uninhabitable. A more traditional view is that they
were under the pressure of other tribes migrating from the East. In all
probability, it was a combination of these factors and others. In
general the causes of such mass migration can be placed under the
heading of historical accident. What is important is the results they
produced in history. And this is just what is under dispute.
The initial contacts between the Romans and barbarians were not
necessarily of a violent character. There was considerable trade along
the eastern frontier for centuries, which led to a progressive
Romanisation of those tribes living in proximity to the Empire. Many
became mercenaries and served in the Roman legions. Alaric, the Gothic
leader who was the first to enter Rome, was not only a former soldier of
Rome but a Christian (albeit of the Arian kind). It is also fairly
certain that the first Saxons to enter Britain were peaceful traders,
mercenaries and settlers. This is indicated by the tradition that they
were invited into Britain by the Romanised British "king" Vortigern,
after the departure of the Roman legions.
But at this point, Rudgley's analysis begins to break down. He has
entirely missed the point about trade between civilized nations and
barbarians, which was invariably connected with piracy, spying and war.
The barbarian traders would take careful note of the strengths and
weaknesses of the nations with which they were in contact. If there were
signs of weakness, the "peaceful" commercial relations would be
followed up by armed bands in search of plunder and conquest. It is
sufficient to read the Old Testament to see that this was precisely the
relation between the pastoral-nomadic Israeli tribes and the ancient
Canaanites, who, as civilised urban peoples, stood on a higher level of
development.
The assertion that the Romans stood on a higher cultural level than
the barbarians can easily be demonstrated by the following fact.
Although the barbarians succeeded in conquering the Romans, they
themselves were fairly quickly absorbed, and even lost their own
language and ended up speaking a dialect of Latin. Thus, the Franks, who
gave their name to modern France, were a Germanic tribe speaking a
language related to modern German. The same thing happened to the
Germanic tribes that invaded Spain and Italy.
The one glaring exception to this rule appears to be the fact that
the Angles and Saxons who invaded Britain were not absorbed by the more
advanced Celtic Romano-Britons. The English language is basically a
Germanic language (with a later admixture of Norman French from the 11th
century on). In fact, the number of words of Celtic origin in the
English language is insignificant, whereas there is a very large number
of Arabic words in the Spanish language. The reason for this is that the
Arabs in Spain stood on a far higher cultural level than the Spanish
speaking Christians who conquered them. The only conceivable explanation
is that the Anglo-Saxon barbarians (whom Mr Rudgley regards as very
nice peaceful people) must have pursued a policy of genocide against the
Celtic people whose lands they seized in bloody wars of conquest.
Sentimentality or science?
We can therefore lay down a firm rule:
an invading people whose
culture stands at a lower level than the people conquered by it will be
eventually absorbed by the culture of the conquered, and not vice-versa.
It may be objected that this occurred because the numbers of the
invaders were relatively small. But this does not stand up to
examination. In the first place, as Rudgley himself argues, very large
numbers were involved in these vast migrations - whole peoples in fact.
Secondly, there are many other historical examples that prove the
opposite.
The Mongols who invaded India and established the Mogul dynasty that
lasted until the British conquered India were completely absorbed into
the more advanced Indian way of life. Exactly the same thing happened in
China. However, when the British conquered India, they were not
absorbed by the native culture but on the contrary, as Marx explains,
completely shattered the old Indian society that had endured for
thousands of years. How was this possible? Only because Britain, where
the capitalist system was developing rapidly,
stood on a higher level of development than India.
Of course, it is possible to say that before the coming of the
British, the Indians had a very high level of cultural development.
Although the European conquerors looked down on the Indians as at least
semi-barbarians, nothing could be further from the truth. On the basis
of the very ancient Asiatic mode of production, Indian culture reached
prodigious levels. Their achievements in the fields of art, sculptures,
architecture, music and poetry were so brilliant that they even aroused
the admiration of the more cultured representatives of the British
Empire.
It is equally possible to deplore the supposedly civilized British
for the extremely brutal way in which they crushed the Indians through a
combination of trickery, lies, murders and massacres. That is all true,
but it entirely misses the point. The real question that must be asked
is this:
why were the British not absorbed by the Indian culture as the Mongols had been?
After all, in this case, it is true that the numbers of British who
settled in India were insignificant when compared to the multi-millioned
masses of this vast subcontinent. Yet after two hundred years, it was
the Indians who learned English, and not vice-versa.
Today, half a century after the departure of the British, English is still the official language of India and remains the
lingua franca
of all educated Indians and Pakistanis. How is this to be explained?
Only by the fact that capitalism represents a higher level of
development than either feudalism or the Asiatic mode of production.
That is the decisive fact. To complain about this, protest against
"cultural imperialism" and so on may have a certain value in the field
of agitation (there is absolutely no doubt about the truly
barbarous conduct of the imperialists in general). But from a scientific point of view, such comments do not get us very far.
To approach human history from a
sentimental point of view
is worse than useless. History knows no morality and operates according
to different laws altogether. The task of any person who wishes to
understand history is first of all to leave aside all moralistic
elements, since there can be no supra-historical morality - no "morality
in general" - but only particular moralities that pertain to particular
historical periods and definite socio-economic formations and have no
relevance outside them.
From a scientific point of view, therefore, it makes no sense to
compare the moral standards of the conduct, say, of the Romans and
barbarians, the British and the Indians, the Mongols and the Chinese.
Barbarous and inhuman practices have existed in every period of history,
so if we take that as a yardstick to judge the human race, one would
have to draw the most pessimistic conclusions (many have done so). As a
matter of fact, one could argue that the greater the degree of
development, the greater the capacity to inflict terrible suffering on a
large number of people. The state of the world in the first decade of
the 21st century would seem to confirm this gloomy assessment of human
history.
Some people have drawn the conclusion that perhaps the problem is
that there has been too much development, too much progress, too much
civilisation. Would we not be happier living in a simple agricultural
environment - run, of course, on strictly ecological lines - tilling our
own fields (without tractors), making our own clothes, baking our own
bread, and so on? That is to say, would we not be better if we returned
to - barbarism?
Given the terrible state of society and the world under capitalism,
we can readily understand that there are people who want to somehow
escape from an unpleasant reality and put the clock back to a golden
age. The trouble is that such an age never existed. Those (usually
middle-class) people who talk grandly about the wonders of life in the
good old days of agricultural communes have no idea of how tough life
was in those times. Let us quote from the manuscript of a medieval monk
who, unlike our modern New Age fanatics, knew what life under feudalism
was really like. This is an extract from a medieval author, a monk
called Aelfric, who wrote a book to teach Latin conversation at
Winchester:
Master: What do you do, ploughman, how do you do your work?
Pupil: Sir, I work very hard. I go out at dawn to drive the oxen to
the field, and yoke them to the plough. However hard the winter, I
dare not stay at home for fear of my lord; and having yoked the oxen
and made the ploughshare and coulter fast to the plough, every day I
have to plough an acre or more.
M: Do you have anyone with you?
P: I have a boy to drive the oxen with the goad, and he is now hoarse with cold and shouting.
M: What other work do you have to do in the day?
P: A great deal more. I have to fill the oxen's bin with hay, and give them water, and carry the dung outside.
M: And is it hard work?
P: Yes, it is hard work, because I am not free.
A couple of weeks of backbreaking and soul-destroying toil of this
sort would surely provide a guaranteed cure for the illusions of the
most die-hard romantic! What a pity we cannot order a brief trip on a
time-machine for this purpose.
What is barbarism?
The word "barbarism" is used in different contexts for different
things. It can even have the force of a simple insult, when we refer to
the barbaric behaviour of certain over-enthusiastic football fans. To
the ancient Greeks (who first coined the word) it meant simply "one who
does not speak the language" (i.e. Greek). But to Marxists, it usually
signifies the stage between primitive communism and early class society,
when classes begin to form and with them the state. Barbarism is a
transitional phase, in which the old commune is already in a state of
decay and in which classes and the state are in the process of
formation.
Like all other human societies (including savagery, the phase of
hunter-gathering societies based on primitive communism, which produced
the marvellous cave art of France and northern Spain), the barbarians
certainly had a culture, and were capable of producing very fine and
sophisticated objects of art. Their techniques of warfare show that they
were also capable of extraordinary feats of organisation, and this was
shown when they defeated the Roman legions. The Romans even began to
copy some of the barbarians' military tactics, and introduced the short
bow, perfected by the Huns and other tribes for shooting from horseback.
The period of barbarism represents a very large slice of human
history, and is divided into several more or less distinct periods. In
general, it is characterised by the transition from the hunter-gathering
mode of production to pastoralism and agriculture, that is, from
Palaeolithic savagery, passing through Neolithic barbarism to the higher
barbarism of the Bronze Age, which stands at the threshold of
civilization. The decisive turning-point was what Gordon Childe called
the Neolithic revolution, which represented a great leap forward in the
development of human productive capacity, and therefore of culture. This
is what Childe has to say:
"Our debt to preliterate barbarism is heavy. Every single cultivated
food plant of any importance has been discovered by some nameless
barbarian society." (G. Childe,
What Happened in History,
p. 64)
Here is the embryo out of which grew the towns and cities, writing,
industry and everything else that laid the basis for which we call
civilization. The roots of civilization are to be found precisely in
barbarism, and still more so, in slavery. The development of barbarism
ends up in slavery or else in what Marx called the Asiatic mode of
production.
It would be incorrect to deny the contribution of barbarian peoples
to human development. They played a role, and a vital one, at a certain
stage. They possessed a culture, and an advanced one for the time in
which they lived. But history does not stand still. The further
development of the productive forces led to new socio-economic forms
that stood on a qualitatively higher level. Our modern civilization
(such as it is) derives from the colossal conquests of Egypt,
Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, and even more, from Greece and Rome.
While not denying the existence of barbarian culture, Marxists have
no hesitation in affirming that the latter was historically superseded
by the cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome that grew out of barbarism,
overtook and replaced it. To deny this fact would be to fly in the face
of the facts.
The role of slavery
If we look at the entire process of human history and prehistory, the
first thing that strikes us is the extraordinary slowness with which
our species developed. The gradual evolution of human or humanoid
creatures away from the condition of animals and towards a genuinely
human condition took place over millions of years. For the first period
that we call savagery, characterised by an extremely low development of
the means of production, the production of stone tools, and a
hunter-gatherer mode of existence, the line of development remains
virtually flat for a very long period. It begins to accelerate precisely
in the period known as barbarism (particularly with the Neolithic
revolution) when the first stable communities became towns (such as
Jericho, which dates from about 7,000 BC).
However, the really explosive growth occurs with Egypt, Mesopotamia,
the Indus Valley (and also China), Persia, Greece and Rome. In other
words, the development of class society coincides with a massive upturn
in the productive forces, and as a result, of human culture, which
reached unprecedented heights. This is not the place to mention all the
discoveries made by, say the Greeks and Romans. There is a celebrated
scene in the Monty Python film
The Life of Brian, where a
rather over-enthusiastic "freedom fighter" asks the rhetorical question:
"What have the Romans ever done for us?" To his great annoyance, he got
a long list of answers. We should not make the same mistake as this
fictional character!
But, it may be objected, Greece and Rome stood on the basis of
slavery, which is an abhorrent and inhuman institution. The marvellous
achievements of ancient Athens were all predicated on slavery. Its
democracy - probably the most advanced in the world to date - was the
democracy of a minority of free citizens. The majority - the slaves -
had no rights at all. I recently received a letter, which compares slave
society unfavourably to barbarism. I reproduce an extract:
"Actually primitive societies are the least barbaric in world
history. For instance, their wars were/are mostly ritual with almost no
victims. The barbarism of nazism and the Balkan wars is a typical
feature of capitalism, just like feudalism or slave society had their
typical barbaric features. The most barbarous facts in history are all
in one way or another consequences of class society."
The above lines pose the question of war not in a materialist but in a
moralistic
sense. War has always been barbaric. It is about killing people in the
most efficient manner. One can readily agree that the wars of primitive
societies killed a lot fewer people than modern wars. That is to a great
extent because the development of science and technique have led to a
perfection of human productivity, not only in industry and agriculture,
but also on the battlefield. Engels explains in
Anti-Dühring how
the history of warfare can only be understood in terms of the
development of the means of production. The Romans were a lot more
efficient at killing people than the barbarians (at least in the period
of ascent of Roman power), and we are incomparably more efficient than
the Romans in this sphere, and many others besides.
Marxists cannot look at history from the point of view of morality.
Apart from anything else, there is no such thing as a supra-historical
morality. Every society has its own morality, religion, culture, etc,
which correspond to a given level of development, and, at least in the
period we call civilization, also to the interests of a particular
class. Whether a particular war was good, bad or indifferent cannot be
ascertained from the point of view of the number of victims, and much
less from an abstract moral standpoint. We may strongly disapprove of
wars in general, but one thing cannot be denied: throughout the whole
course of human history, all serious questions have ultimately been
settled in this way. That goes both for the conflicts between nations
(wars) and also the conflicts between classes (revolutions).
Nor can our attitude towards a particular type of society and its
culture be determined by moralistic considerations. From the standpoint
of historical materialism it is a matter of complete indifference that
some barbarians (including, it seems, my own ancestors, the ancient
Celts) were head-hunters who burned people alive inside large wicker
statues to celebrate midsummer's day. That is no more reason to condemn
them than the fact that they also produced fine jewellery and declaimed
poetry can be used to praise them. What determines whether a given
socio-economic formation is historically progressive or not is first and
foremost its ability to develop the productive forces - the real
material basis upon which all human culture arises and develops.
The reason why human development was so painfully slow for such a
long period of time was precisely the very low level of development of
the productive forces. The real development begins already in the phase
of barbarism, as explained above. This was a progressive development in
its day, but was overtaken, negated and superseded by a higher form that
was slavery. Old Hegel, that wonderfully profound thinker, writes: "It
was not so much
from slavery as
through slavery that humanity was emancipated." (
Lectures on the Philosophy of History, p. 407)
The Romans utilised brute force to subjugate other peoples, sold
entire cities into slavery, slaughtered thousands of prisoners of war
for amusement in the public circus, and introduced such refined methods
of execution as crucifixion. Yes, all that is perfectly true. And yet,
when we come to consider where all our modern civilization, our culture,
our literature, our architecture, our medicine, our science, our
philosophy, even in many cases our language, comes from, the answer is -
from Greece and Rome.
It is not a difficult task to read out a long list of the crimes of
the Romans (or the feudal lords or the modern day capitalists). It is
even possible to compare them unfavourably, at least in some respects,
to the barbarian tribes against which they were more or less constantly
at war. This is not new. In fact, you can read numerous passages in the
writings of the Roman historian Tacitus who does precisely that. But it
does not carry us a single step forward in our understanding of history.
Only by consistently applying the method of historical materialism is
this possible.
The rise and fall of Rome
Although the labour of the individual slave was not very productive
(slaves must be compelled to work), the aggregate of large numbers of
slaves, as in the mines and
latifundia (large scale
agricultural units) in Rome in the last period of the Republic and the
Empire, produced a considerable surplus. At the height of the Empire,
slaves were plentiful and cheap and the wars of Rome were basically
slave hunts on a massive scale. But at a certain stage this system
reached its limits and then entered into a lengthy period of decline.
The beginnings of a crisis in Rome can already be observed in the
latter period of the Republic, a period characterised by acute social
and political upheavals and class war. From the earliest beginnings
there was a violent struggle between rich and poor in Rome. There are
detailed accounts in the writings of Livy and others of the struggles
between Plebeians and Patricians, which ended in an uneasy compromise.
At a later period, when Rome had already made herself mistress of the
Mediterranean by the defeat of her most powerful rival Carthage, we saw
what was in effect a struggle for the division of the spoils.
Tiberius Gracchus demanded that the wealth of Rome be divided up
among its free citizens. His aim was to make Italy a republic of small
farmers and not slaves, but he was defeated by the nobles and
slave-holders. This was a disaster for Rome in the long run. The ruined
peasantry - the backbone of the Republic and its army - drifted to Rome
where they constituted a
lumpen-proletariat, a non-productive
class, living off dole from the state. Although resentful of the rich,
they nevertheless shared a common interest in the exploitation of the
slaves - the only really productive class in the period of the Republic
and the Empire.
The great slave rising under Spartacus was a glorious episode in the
history of antiquity. The echoes of this titanic uprising reverberates
down the centuries and is still a source of inspiration. The spectacle
of these most downtrodden people rising up with arms in hand and
inflicting defeat after defeat on the armies of the world's greatest
power is one of the most incredible events in history. Had they
succeeded in overthrowing the Roman state, the course of history would
have been significantly altered.
Of course, it is not possible to say exactly what the outcome would
have been. Undoubtedly the slaves would have been freed. Given the level
of development of the productive forces, the general tendency could
only have been in the direction of some kind of feudalism. But at least
humanity would have been spared the horrors of the Dark Ages, and it is
likely that economic and cultural development would have proceeded more
quickly.
The basic reason why Spartacus failed in the end was the fact that
the slaves did not link up with the proletariat in the towns. So long as
the latter continued to support the state, the victory of the slaves
was impossible. But the Roman proletariat, unlike the modern
proletariat, was not a productive but a purely parasitical class, living
off the labour of the slaves and dependent on their masters. The
failure of the Roman revolution is rooted in this fact.
Marx and Engels point out that the class struggle eventually ends either in the total victory of one of the classes,
or else in the common ruin of the contending classes.
The fate of Roman society is the clearest example of the latter case.
The defeat of the slaves led straight to the ruin of the Roman state. In
the absence of a free peasantry, the state was obliged to rely on a
mercenary army to fight its wars. The deadlock in the class struggle
produced a situation similar to the more modern phenomenon of
Bonapartism. The Roman equivalent is what we call Caesarism.
The Roman legionnaire was no longer loyal to the Republic but to his
commander - the man who guaranteed his pay, his loot and a plot of land
when he retired. The last period of the Republic is characterised by an
intensification of the struggle between the classes, in which neither
side is able to win a decisive victory. As a result, the state (which
Lenin described as "armed bodies of men") began to acquire increasing
independence, to raise itself above society and to appear as the final
arbiter in the continuing power struggles in Rome.
A whole series of military adventurers appears: Marius, Crassus,
Pompey, and lastly Julius Caesar, a general of brilliance, a clever
politician and a shrewd businessman, who in effect put an end to the
Republic whilst paying lip-service to it. His prestige boosted by his
military triumphs in Gaul, Spain and Britain, he began to concentrate
all power in his hands. Although he was assassinated by a conservative
faction which wished to preserve the Republic, the old regime was
doomed.
In his play
Julius Caesar, Shakespeare says of Brutus: "This
was the noblest Roman of them all." Certainly, Brutus and the other
conspirators who killed Caesar did not lack personal courage, and their
motives may or not have been noble. But they were hopeless utopians. The
republic that they tried to defend had been a rotten corpse for a long
time. After Brutus and the others were defeated by the triumvirate, the
Republic was formally recognised, and this pretence was kept up by the
first Emperor, Augustus. The very title "Emperor" (
imperator in
Latin) is a military title, invented to avoid the title of king that
was so offensive to republican ears. But a king he was, in all but name.
The forms of the old Republic survived for a long time after that.
But they were just that - hollow forms with no real content, an empty
husk that in the end could be blown away by the wind. The Senate was
devoid of all real power and authority. Julius Caesar had shocked
respectable public opinion by making a Gaul a member of the senate.
Caligula considerably improved upon this by making his horse a senator.
Nobody saw anything wrong with this, or if they did they kept their
mouths firmly shut.
The emperors continued to "consult" the senate, and even contrived
not to laugh out loud when so doing. In the last period of the Empire,
when, as a result of the decline of production, corruption and looting,
the finances were in a lamentable state, wealthy Romans were regularly
"promoted" to the rank of senator in order to extract extra taxes from
them. One such reluctant legislator was said by some Roman humorist to
have been "banished into the senate".
It often happens in history that outworn institutions can survive
long after their reason to exist has disappeared. They drag out a
miserable existence like a decrepit old man who clings onto life, until
they are swept away by a revolution. The decline of the Roman empire
lasted for nearly four centuries. This was not an uninterrupted process.
There were periods of recovery and even brilliance, but the general
line was downwards.
In periods like this, there is a general sense of malaise. The
predominant mood is one of scepticism, lack of faith and pessimism in
the future. The old traditions, morality and religion - things that act
as a powerful cement holding society together - lose their credibility.
In place of the old religion, people seek out new gods. In its period of
decline, Rome was inundated with a plague of religious sects from the
east. Christianity was only one of these, and although ultimately
successful, had to contend with numerous rivals, such as the cult of
Mithras.
When people feel that the world in which they live is tottering, that
they have lost all control over their existence, that their lives and
destinies are determined by unseen forces, then mystical and irrational
tendencies get the upper hand. People believe that the end of the world
is nigh. The early Christians believed this fervently, but many others
suspected it. In point of fact what was coming to an end was not the
world but only a particular form of society - slave society. The success
of Christianity was rooted in the fact that it connected with this
general mood. The world was evil and sinful. It was necessary to turn
one's back on the world and all its works and look forward to another
life after death.
In fact, these ideas were already foreshadowed by philosophical
tendencies in Rome. When men and women lose all hope in existing
society, they have two options: either to try to arrive at a rational
understanding of what is happening in order to fight to change society,
or else to turn their back on society altogether. In the period of
decline, Roman philosophy was dominated by subjectivism - stoicism and
scepticism. Proceeding from a different angle, Epicurus taught people to
seek happiness and learn to live without fear. It is a sublime
philosophy, but in the given context, could only appeal to the more
intelligent sections of the privileged classes. Finally, the
Neo-Platonist philosophy of Plotinus verges on overt mysticism and
superstition, eventually providing a philosophical justification for
Christianity.
By the time the barbarians invaded, the whole structure was on the
verge of collapse, not only economically, but morally and spiritually.
No wonder the barbarians were welcomed as liberators by the slaves and
poorer sections of society. They merely completed a job that had been
well prepared in advance.
The barbarian attacks were an historical accident that served to express an historical necessity.
Why the barbarians triumphed
How was it possible for a highly developed culture to be so easily
overcome by a more backward and primitive one? The seeds of Rome's
destruction were sown long before the barbarian invasions. The basic
contradiction of the slave economy is that it was, paradoxically, based
on
a low productivity of labour. Slave labour is only
productive when it is employed on massive scale. The prior condition for
this is an ample supply of slaves at a low cost. Since slaves breed
very slowly in captivity, the only way a sufficient supply of slaves can
be guaranteed is through continuous warfare. Once the Empire had
reached the limits of its expansion under Hadrian, this became
increasingly difficult.
Once the Empire reached its limits and the contradictions inherent in
slavery began to assert themselves, Rome entered into a long period of
decline that lasted more than four hundred years, until it was
eventually overrun by the barbarians. The mass migrations that brought
about the collapse of the Empire were a common phenomenon among nomadic
pastoral peoples in antiquity and occurred for a variety of reasons -
pressure on pasture land as a result of population growth, climate
changes, etc.
In this case, the more settled peoples of the western steppes and
eastern Europe were driven from their lands by pressure from more
backward nomadic tribes living to the east, the Hsiung-nu, better known
to us as the Huns. Did these barbarians possess a culture? Yes, they
possessed a kind of culture, as every people from the dawn of history
had a culture. The Huns had no knowledge of agriculture, but their horde
was a formidable fighting machine. Their cavalry had no equal in the
world at that time. It was said of them that their country was the back
of a horse.
However, unfortunately for Europe, the Huns in the fourth century
came up against a more advanced culture, a civilization that knew the
art of building, lived in towns and cities, and possessed a disciplined
army - China. The fighting prowess of these dreaded warriors from the
Mongolian steppes was no match for the civilized Chinese, who built the
Great Wall - a formidable engineering feat - to keep them out.
Defeated by the Chinese, the Huns turned westwards, leaving behind
them a trail of appalling destruction and devastation. Passing through
what is now Russia, they clashed with the Goths in present-day Romania
in 355 AD. Although the Gothic tribes stood on a higher level of
development than the Huns, they were cut to pieces and forced to flee
westwards. The survivors - some 80,000 desperate men, women and children
on primitive wagons - came up against the frontiers of the Roman Empire
at a time when the decline of slave society had reached a point where
its capacity to defend itself was severely weakened. The Visigoths
(western Goths), who stood on a lower level of development than the
Romans, nevertheless defeated them. The Roman historian Ammianus
Marcellinus described this clash of two alien worlds as "the most
disastrous Roman defeat since Cannae." (
Ammianus, xxxi, 13)
With remarkable swiftness most of the towns were laid waste and
abandoned. It is true that this process did not start with the
barbarians. The decay of the slave economy, the monstrously oppressive
nature of the Empire with its bloated bureaucracy and predatory tax
farmers, was already undermining the whole system. There was a steady
drift to the countryside where the basis was already being laid for the
development of a different mode of production - feudalism. The
barbarians merely delivered the
coup de grâce to a rotten and moribund system. The whole edifice was tottering, and they merely gave it a last and violent push.
The seemingly impregnable Roman line along the Danube and Rhine
buckled and collapsed. At a certain stage different barbarian tribes,
including the Huns, converged in a united onslaught against Rome. The
Gothic chieftain Alaric (who, incidentally was an Arian Christian and a
former Roman mercenary) led 40,000 Goths, Huns and freed slaves across
the Julian Alps and eight years later sacked Rome itself. Although
Alaric, who seems to have been a relatively enlightened person, tried to
spare the citizens of Rome, he could not control the Huns and freed
slaves, who gave themselves up to murder, plunder and rape. Priceless
pieces of sculpture were destroyed and works of art were melted down for
their precious metals. This was only the beginning. In the following
centuries, successive waves of barbarians swept out of the east:
Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Alans, Lombards, Suevi, Alemanni, Burgundians,
Franks, Thuringians, Frisians, Heruli, Gepidae, Angles, Saxons, Jutes,
Huns and Magyars, pushed their way into Europe. The all-powerful and
eternal Empire was reduced to ashes.
Was civilization thrown back?
Is it correct to say that the overthrow of the Roman Empire by the
barbarians threw human civilization back? Despite the recent noisy
campaign by the "Friends of Barbarism Society", there can be no doubt
about this, and it can easily be demonstrated with facts and figures.
The
immediate effect of the barbarian onslaught was to wipe out
civilization and throw society and human thought back for a thousand
years.
The productive forces suffered a violent interruption. The cities
were destroyed or abandoned as people fled to the land in search of
food. As even our old friend Rudgley is forced to admit: "The only
architectural remains left by the Huns are the ashes of the cities that
they burned." And not just the Huns. The first act of the Goths was to
burn the city of Mainz to the ground. Why did they do this? Why did they
not simply occupy it? The answer is related to the backward stage of
economic development of the invaders. They were an agricultural people
and knew nothing of towns and cities. The barbarians in general were
hostile to the towns and their inhabitants (a psychology that is quite
common among peasants in all periods).
St. Jerome describes the results of this devastation when he writes:
"That in those desert countries nothing was left except the sky and the
earth; that after the destruction of the cities and the extirpation of
the human race, the land was overgrown with thick forests and
inextricable brambles; and that universal desolation, announced by the
prophet Zephaniah, was accomplished in the scarcity of the beasts, the
birds and even of the fish." (Quoted in Gibbon,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 3, p. 49)
These lines were written 20 years after the death of Valens the
emperor, when the barbarian invasions started. They describe the state
of affairs in Jerome's native province, Pannonia (present-day Hungary)
where successive waves of invaders caused death and destruction on an
unimaginable scale. In the end, Pannonia was completely depopulated and
later occupied by the Huns and finally the present day population of
Magyars. This process of devastation, rape and pillage was to continue
for centuries, leaving behind a terrible heritage of backwardness - in
fact, of
barbarism - which we call the Dark Ages. Let us give just one quote:
"The Dark Ages were stark in every dimension. Famines and plagues,
culminating in the Black Death and its recurring pandemics, repeatedly
thinned the population. Rickets affected the survivors. Extraordinary
climatic changes brought storms and floods, which turned into major
disasters because the empire's drainage system, like most of the
imperial infrastructure, was no longer functioning. It says much about
the Middle Ages that in the year 1500, after a thousand years of
neglect, the roads built by the Romans were still the best on the
continent. Most of the others were in such a state of disrepair that
they were unusable; so were all European harbours until the eighteenth
century, when commerce again began to stir. Among the lost arts was
bricklaying; in all of Germany, England, Holland, and Scandinavia,
virtually no stone buildings, except cathedrals, were raised for ten
centuries. The serfs' basic agricultural tools were picks, forks, rakes,
scythes, and balanced sickles. Because there was very little iron,
there were no wheeled ploughshares with moldboards. The lack of ploughs
was not a major problem in the south, where farmers could pulverise the
light Mediterranean soils, but the heavier earth in northern Europe had
to be sliced, moved and turned by hand. Although horses and oxen were
available, they were of limited use. The horse collar, harness, and
stirrup did not exist until about 900 AD. Therefore tandem hitching was
impossible. Peasants laboured harder, sweated more, and collapsed from
exhaustion more often than their animals." (William Manchester,
A World Lit Only by Fire, pp. 5-6)
The rise of the feudal system following the collapse of Rome was
accompanied by a long period of cultural stagnation in all Europe to the
west of the Pyrenees. With the exception of two inventions: the water
wheel and windmills, there were no real inventions for about over a 1000
years.
In other words, there was a complete eclipse of culture.
This was a result of the collapse of the productive forces, upon which
culture ultimately depends. Failure to understand this makes a
scientific understanding of history completely impossible.
Human thought, art, science and culture was reduced to the most
primitive level, and only experienced a relative recovery when the ideas
of the Greeks and Romans were introduced into medieval Europe - by the
Arabs. True, the knot of history was retied again in the period we call
the Renaissance. The slow recovery of trade led to the rise of the
bourgeoisie and a revival of the towns, notably in Flanders, Holland and
northern Italy. But it is an actual fact that civilization was thrown
back for a thousand years. That is what we mean by a descending line in
history. And let nobody imagine that such a thing cannot recur.
Socialism or barbarism
The whole of human history consists precisely in the struggle of
humankind to raise itself above the animal level. This long struggle
began seven million years ago, when our remote humanoid ancestors first
stood upright and were able to free their hands for manual labour. The
production of the first stone scrapers and hand axes was the beginning
of a process whereby men and women made themselves human through labour.
Ever since then, successive phases of social development have arisen on
the basis of changes in the development of the productive force of
labour - that is to say, of our power over nature.
For most of human history, this process has been painfully slow, as the
Economist remarked on the eve of the new millennium:
"For nearly all of human history, economic advance has been so slow
as to be imperceptible within the span of a lifetime. For century after
century, the annual rate of economic growth was, to one place of
decimals, zero. When growth did happen it was so slow as to be invisible
to contemporaries - and even in retrospect it appears not as rising
living standards (which is what growth means today), merely as a gentle
rise in population. Down the millennia, progress, for all but a tiny
elite, amounted to this: it slowly became possible for more people to
live, at the meanest level of subsistence." (
The Economist, December 31, 1999)
The relation between the development of human culture and the
productive forces was already clear to that great genius of antiquity,
Aristotle, who explained in his book
The Metaphysics that "
man begins to philosophise when the means of life are provided,"
and added that the reason why astronomy and mathematics were discovered
in Egypt is that the priest caste did not have to work. This is a
purely materialist understanding of history. It is the complete answer
to all the nonsense of the utopians who imagine that life would be
splendid if only we could "go back to nature" - that is, go back to an
animal level of existence.
The possibility of real socialism depends on the development of the
means of production to a level far in excess of even the most developed
capitalist societies, like the USA, Germany or Japan. This was explained
by Marx even before he wrote the
Communist Manifesto. In the
German Ideology he
wrote that "where want is generalised all the old crap revives." And by
"all the old crap" he meant class oppression, inequality and
exploitation. The reason why the October Revolution degenerated into
Stalinism was that it remained isolated in a backward country where the
material conditions for building socialism were absent.
Despite the fact that capitalism is the most exploitative and
oppressive system that has ever existed; despite the fact that, in
Marx's words, "Capital came onto the stage of history dripping blood
from every pore," it nevertheless represented a colossal leap forward in
the development of the productive forces - and therefore of our power
over nature. The development of industry, agriculture, science and
technology has transformed the planet and laid the basis for a complete
revolution that for the first time will make us free human beings.
We have emerged from savagery, barbarism, slavery and feudalism, and
each of these stages represented a definite stage in the development of
the productive forces and culture. The bud disappears when the flower
blossoms and we may consider that as a negation, one thing contradicting
the other. But in point of fact, these are necessary stages, and must
be taken in their unity. It is absurd to deny the historical role of
barbarism, or any other stage of human development. But history moves
on.
Every phase of human development has its roots in all previous
development. This is true both of human evolution and social
development. We have evolved from lower species and are genetically
related to even the most primitive life forms, as the human genome has
conclusively proved. We are separated from our nearest living relatives
the chimpanzees by a genetic difference of less than two percent. But
that very small percentage represents a tremendous qualitative leap.
In the same way, the development of capitalism has now laid the basis for a new and qualitatively higher (yes,
higher)
stage of human development, which we call socialism. The present crisis
on a world scale is nothing but a reflection of the fact that the
development of the productive forces is coming into conflict with the
straitjacket of private ownership and the nation state. Capitalism has
long ago ceased to play any progressive role, and has become a monstrous
obstacle to further development. This obstacle bust be removed if
humanity is to go forward. And if it is not removed in time, a terrible
threat hangs over the heads of the human race.
The embryo of a new society is already maturing within the womb of
the old. The elements of a workers' democracy already exist in the form
of the workers' organisations, the shop stewards committees, the trade
unions, the co-operatives etc. In the period that opens up, there will
be a life and death struggle - a struggle of those elements of the new
society to be born, and an equally fierce resistance on the part of the
old order to prevent this from happening.
At a certain stage this conflict - which can already be seen in
outline in the general strikes in Europe, the revolutionary movements in
Argentina and other Latin American countries, and the revolt of the
youth everywhere - will reach a critical point. No ruling class in
history has ever given up its power and privileges without a ferocious
struggle. The crisis of capitalism represents not just an economic
crisis that threatens the jobs and living standards of millions of
people throughout the world. It also threatens the very basis of a
civilised existence - insofar as this exists. It threatens to throw
humankind back on all fronts. If the proletariat - the only genuinely
revolutionary class - does not succeed in overthrowing the rule of the
banks and monopolies, the stage will be set for a collapse of culture
and even a return to barbarism.
In fact, for most people in the West (and not only in the West) the
most obvious and painful manifestations of the crisis of capitalism are
not economic but those phenomena that affect their personal lives at the
most sensitive and emotional points: the breakdown of the family, the
epidemic of crime and violence, the collapse of the old values and
morality with nothing to put in their place, the constant outbreak of
wars - all of this gives rise to a sense of instability, a lack of faith
in the present or the future. These are the symptoms of the impasse of
capitalism, which in the last analysis (but only in the last analysis)
is a result of the revolt of the productive forces against the
straitjacket of private property and the nation state.
It was Marx who pointed out that there were two possibilities before the human race:
socialism or barbarism.
The formal democracy, which the workers of Europe and the USA regard as
something normal is actually a very fragile structure that will not
survive an open showdown between the classes. The "cultured" bourgeoisie
will not hesitate to move in the direction of dictatorship in the
future. And beneath the thin layer of culture and modern civilization,
there are forces that resemble barbarism at its worst. The recent events
in the Balkans are a stark reminder of this. Civilized norms can easily
break down and the demons of a long-forgotten past can overwhelm even
the most civilized nation. Yes, indeed, history knows a descending line
as well as an ascending one!
The question is therefore posed in the starkest terms: in the coming
period, either the working class will take into its hands the running of
society, replacing the decrepit capitalist system with a new social
order based on the harmonious and rational planning of the productive
forces and the conscious control of men and women over their own lives
and destinies, or else we will be faced with a most frightful spectacle
of social, economic and cultural collapse.
For thousands of years culture has been the monopoly of a privileged
minority, while the great majority of humanity was excluded from
knowledge, science, art and government. Even now, this remains the case.
Despite all our pretensions we are not really civilized. Our world does
not merit the name. It is a barbaric world, inhabited by people who
have yet to overcome a barbarous past. Life remains a harsh and
unrelenting struggle to exist for the great majority of the planet, not
only in the underdeveloped world but in the developed capitalist
countries.
However, historical materialism does not incline us to draw
pessimistic conclusions, but on the contrary. The general tendency of
human history has been in the direction of ever greater development of
our productive and cultural potential. The great achievements of the
last hundred years have for the first time created a situation where all
the problems facing humankind can easily be solved. The potential for a
classless society already exists on a world scale. What is necessary is
to bring about a rational and harmonious planning of the productive
forces in order that this immense, practically infinite, potential can
be realised.
On the basis of a real revolution in production, it would be possible
to achieve such a level of abundance that men and women would no longer
have to worry about their everyday necessities. The humiliating
concerns and fears that fill every thinking hour of men and women now
will disappear. For the first time, free human beings will be masters of
their destinies. For the first time they will be really human. Only
then will the real history of the human race begin.