Marxim Today V

252

M A R X I S M T O D A Y , A U G U S I 1 9 6 2

Soviet Textbook

Mo st Western textbooks on internat ional law look

to the past and refuse to face up to the really impor

tant issues of today. It is most revealing that in many

large volumes on the subject no mention is made at

all of the Soviet Un ion o r its attitude to interna tional

law.

It is a great pleasure, therefore, to see the new

English edition of

  International Law,

  a textbook for

use in law schools, published by the Soviet Academy

of Sciences and translated by Dennis Ogden.

The book natural ly deals with many matters of

detail from Russian experiences and history, and that

is useful in

  itself.

More important for the English reader, however,

is the Marxist approach to the subject the authors

reveal.

After dealing with the conception and sources of

international law and its relationship to national

law, the book probes such subjects as the history of

international law, population, territory, treaties,

international organisations, peaceful settlement of

disputes, and the laws and customs of war.

Any suggest ion that war has become so b arbaro us

that the rules of international law are absolete must

be resisted.

The Soviet Union continually shows that such

laws exist and can be vindicated and extended. As a

result of this, and the world peace movement, a

world opinion is ripening in which they can be made

stronger, more positive and more effective.

They must be seen as helping to maintain inter

national peace and security, and this book fills a

useful gap in the literature on international law

available in this country.

Discussion contributions on:

S t a g e s of S o c i a l D e v e l o p m e n t

B.  R. Mann

ART of the qual i ty of greatness which dis

t inguished the founders of his tor ical mater ia l

ism was their eagerness constant ly to improve

their knowledge of precise historical facts, to study

them in the closest possible detail , to gain a deeper

insight into the complexity of social phenomena,

always to ascend from the par t icular to the

general and posi t ively to discourage any tendency

to draw conclusions from general pr inciples ,

unsupported by detai led evidence. They would

naturally expect their modern followers not to

cling to barren formulae, but to grasp hold of all

the wealth of new knowledge gained since their

deaths by archaeological , h is tor ical and anthro

pological research with the same eagerness as they

themselves would have done.

Among the most significant extensions of

our knowledge is the expansion of the t ime-

span of hu ma n exis tence. W hen M arx and

Engels first examined the development of societies

it was generally held that this span exceeded the

biblical 4,000 years but little, three-quarters of it

being taken up by the period of civihsation

bel ieved to centre around the Mediterranean. Of

the depths of history of Asiatic and African civili

sat ions vir tual ly nothing was known rel iably.

Archaeological excavat ion had not even begun.

Boucher de Per thes ' discovery of the ant iqui ty of

man-made tools did not f ind academic recogni t ion

until 1859, and even an encyclopaedia of 1906 still

descr ibes him as a "French author and archaeolo

gist who advocated extreme views on the antiquity

of man"

By the t ime Mo rgan p ubl ished  Ancient Society

the human l i fespan already appeared much longer ,

around 100,000 years ,  5 000  years, more or less,

being attributed to civilisation. Today we must at

least double the latter figure and allow a million

years or two for the entire period of human exist

ence. It would be quite futile to maintain that such

a drastic revision of our times cale can have no

influence on our conclusions. In particular, it

means that the per iods designated "savagery" and

"barbarism" by Morgan have receded into an

extremely remote past and can have little or no

bearing on any living nation.

Some contributors to this discussion have been

worried over the length of time during which

feudal ism is now thought by many to have pre

vailed in most parts of the world except northern

Europe. In view of the great expansion of the total

per iod of human exis tence there is , however , no

reason to see anything very remarkable in this ;

if in Asia or Africa feudalism has existed for

several thousand years, this will represent an even

more minute fraction of the total lifespan of

humanity than the millennium or so assigned to it

in Europe by 19th century scholars .

M A R X I S M l O D A Y , A U G U S T 1 9 6 2

253

Marx already indicated in   Capital  (vol. 1, p.

325), though very briefly, that

"Peasant agriculture on a small scale, and the

carrying on of independent handicrafts, which

together form the basis of the feudal mode of pro

duction, and after its dissolution continue side by

side with the capitalist mode, also form the econo mic

foundation of the classical communities at their

best, after the primitive form of ownership of land

in common had disappeared, and before slavery had

seized production in earnest."

If we follow up this thou ght of M arx 's in the

light of modern knowledge, the slave societies of

Greece and Rome appear more and more as

except ional excrescences, a temporary complica

tion and distortion of basically feudal relations

due to specific historical conditions.

Engels ' observat ion that s lavery accompanies

all other forms of exploitation (with, of course,

varying degrees of attenuation) will then be seen

as very significant for the analysis of historical

processes. To day it is abu nd antl y clear that

capitalism does not exclude slavery: not only have

we seen it practised in its most revolting form in

Hitler Germany, in essence it is the basis of the

colonial system, and, in the period of rising

capitalism, "the turning of Africa into a warren

for the commercial hunt ing of blackskins" was

one of the "chief momenta of pr imit ive accumula

t ion"

  Capital,

  vol. 1, p. 775).

Slavery in frica

The se cons ideratio ns will be found of mo st par

t icular importance for the destruct ion of the

imperial is t myth of "pr im it ive" Afr ica w hich

stands so prominent ly in the way of our recogni

tion of the fund am ental significance of the African

question for the world advance to socialism. I

would like to pay tribute here to those writers on

African subjects who have helped to destroy part

of that myth. In particular, Basil Davidson in his

latest book

  Mother Africa

  ha s effectively dispo sed

of the illusion that the slave trade was conducted

exclusively by white men who pounced on the

unsuspect ing "savages" to take them away. In

fact, as the sources clearly reveal (e.g. the failure

of Master lohn Hawkins to make a business out

of this sort of proceedings), the slaves had to be

purchased by way of regular commerce from the

African merchants . Slave raiding by whites on the

continent itself was the rare exception, not the

rule , and s laves procured in this way, being "con

traband", were difficult to dispose of.

This throws quite a difl^erent light on the state

of development of African society and the sig

nificance of s lavery in Africa at different times.

For the ancient period, all we can say with cer

ta inty is that s laves were among the exports f rom

tropical Afr ica both overland and overseas some

2,000 to 3,000 years ago. We do not know how

intermittent the trade was, or how deeply it pene

trated into the interior in that distant past, much

less have we any basis for asserting that there

existed a full-blown  sysiciu  of slave society com

parable to Greece or Rome.

Although there are indications that the slave

trade cont inued alongside the t rade in commodi

ties into the early capitalist era, it seems only in

the latter period, when the demand for slaves for

the capi ta l is t plantat ions of America became

insistent, that slaves were exported in truly vast

num bers . This cou ld not but affect social a nd

economic condi t ions in Afr ica . From the 17th

century onward our sources show that s laves

formed at all events a considerable proportion of

the labour forces, in handicrafts as well as in

agricul ture , but mainly in porterage. In some

African states all subjects of a king were auto

matically regarded as his slaves. P aym ent of

tribute was often demanded in the form of slaves.

Th e "pro duc t ion" of s laves for sale beca me a

regular industry and put a .sharp brake on the

development of home industr ies in favour of over

seas imports .

Nevertheless, we will seek in vain here for any

but superficial parallels with ancient Greece or

Rome. The crucial point is that the t rade was

organised for the capitalist world market, that, to

quote Marx again, it "signalled the rosy dawn of

the era of capi ta l is t product ion". Fai lure to recog

nise this has been responsible for a great deal of

misco nception abo ut Africa, an d it is high time

spirit of Marx, and resist attempts to reduce

Marxism to a dead le t ter .

From Feudalism to Capitalism

Eric Hobsbawm

O

F the various stages of historical develop

ment l is ted by Marx in the Preface to   The

Critique of Political Economy   — the

"Asiat ic , ancient , the feudal and the modern

bourgeois" modes of product ion, the feudal and

the capitalist have been accepted without serious

question, while the existence, or the universality

of the other two has been queried or denied.

On the other hand the problem of the transi

tion from feudalism to capitalism has probably