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ECONOMIC HISTORY AND THE THEORY OF PRIMITIVE SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes and critiques Marxist and non-Marxist economic history, in which primitive societies are treated as devoid of history and development. The dissertation argues that in both Marxist and non-Marxist historical writing, the treatment of primitive societies as lacking an historical dynamic is linked to the use of various kinds of essentialist and teleological discourses. Chapter I is a critical presentation of the forms of writing, such as historical narrative and realism, employed by historians and social scientists who produce these discourses. This chapter begins to present the concepts of an anti-essentialist Marxist discourse, as developed by Althusser, Hindess and Hirst, and Resnick and Wolff, in contradistinction to essentialist and teleological discourses. Chapter I argues that an anti-essentialist Marxism, with the concepts of class and over-determination as its entry point, can produce concepts of primitive history and development. Chapter II continues the presentation of basic concepts, such as necessary and surplus labor, fundamental and subsumed class processes and positions, social formation, overdetermination, transition, and development, that comprise an anti-essentialist Marxist discourse. Chapter III reviews and critiques the Marxist concept of primitive communism frequently used to analyze the socio-economic structure of primitive societies. Chapter III shows how most writing on primitive communism treats primitive communism as a signifier for the absence of history and development, as a discursive representation of the concept of historical origins and/or ends, and as a social scientific type in which "primitivism" is the central defining characteristic. These treatments, exemplified in the works of Anderson, Godelier, Hindess and Hirst, Leacock, Rey, and others, make problematic the theorization of primitive history and development. By contrast, Marx's treatment of "pre-capitalist forms of the commune" in the Grundrisse provides the basis for an alternative formulation of primitive communism produced with the concepts primitive communal fundamental and subsumed class processes and non-class processes and overdetermination. Through the use of these concepts, Marx's presentation in the Grundrisse can be read as a demonstration of how an anti-essentialist Marxism theorizes history and socio-economic development in primitive societies.
Subject Area
Economic history
Recommended Citation
AMARIGLIO, JACK LEON, "ECONOMIC HISTORY AND THE THEORY OF PRIMITIVE SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT" (1984). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8410254.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8410254