Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies [Paperback]

"Marx at the Margins" is a title supposed to work two ways. It is a substantial analysis and review of Marx's writings, familiar and yet unpublished, about nations and races, but it is also an attempt to revive parts of Marx's analysis which are often seen as marginal or irrelevant to his overall thought, but which author Kevin B. Anderson argues actually were a very central concern of his. Since Anderson is working on a forthcoming scientific publication of Marx's "ethnological notebooks", which have never yet been published in full in any language, he is in a good position to expand on the nature and background of Marx's writings on non-Western nations and their histories. Additionally, the book covers the way in which Marx discussed the intersection between race and class, notably in the case of his journalism on the American Civil War but also in the context of Ireland (as the Irish were effectively not considered 'white').

Anderson traces the way in which themes of alternative routes to development, anti-colonial resistance and the negative results of imperialism on the workers of the imperial country became increasingly important in Marx's writings over time. Much has been written about the (in)famous writings of Marx and Engels on the colonies and 'lesser nations' in the 1840s and 1850s, in particular Marx's journalism on India, but Anderson emphasizes how this was only their viewpoint during this period and how they became ever more critical of imperialism and ever less convinced of capitalism's progressive power outside the Western world as time went on. This has been pointed out by various commentators on Marx already, but given the pervasive influence of the Communist Manifesto and the 1850s journalism on the way Marx and Engels are perceived as always seeing imperialism as progressive historically (while always recognizing its massive damage), it can't hurt to underline this again. Anderson also goes into more detail into the writings on the American Civil War, which are interesting and somewhat overlooked; important is the way Marx sees the position of the 'poor whites' as being maintained artificially by holding down the blacks, and notes the impossibility thereby of the 'poor whites' emancipating themselves on the basis of oppressing another. He compares it to the position of the plebeians in Rome.

Unfortunately, here as elsewhere Anderson makes a ridiculous amount of 'hineininterpretierung' about the supposed major differences between Marx and Engels, since he follows Dunayevskaya's school of interpretation on this point. In fact, as has been pointed out by many critics such as the excellent J.D. Hunley, there are no significant differences of opinion between Marx and Engels, although being different people they certainly had differences of style and emphasis. It is absurd, as Anderson does, to demand that when Engels for example writes that Marx was planning to write a book on Morgan's anthropology (like he ended up doing himself eventually), Engels should provide evidence for this! The two gentlemen saw each other literally every day once Engels moved to London, and discussed their views in depth; if there were any major differences in viewpoint one would surely think they would have noticed! Moreover, Anderson like many other critics of Engels are perfectly happy to believe him at his word when he graciously gives Marx more credit than he deserved, such as when he claimed Marx really wrote most of the Manifesto - Anderson approvingly quotes this, while in fact we know that the Manifesto was based itself on a major draft along the same themes, one that Engels had written. This ridiculous idea of "Marx's Marxism" versus "Engels' Marxism", where anyone can take aspects of Marxist writing they don't like and shove the blame off onto poor Engels, really needs to go away.

That said, Anderson has much interesting to say about the way in which Marx (and Engels) shifted position throughout their writings, from a viewpoint of capitalism as highly murderous but still basically progressive, and thereby imperialism also, to a severe skepticism about the progressive potential of either and an increasing belief in the possibility of multilinear development. It is important to point out that Anderson describes their way of thinking here, and points to many interesting notes and commentaries that are not yet known even to most scholars of their writing, but that he does not defend the correctness of Marx's thought on these topics as such. This is good, because while Anderson makes an intriguing case for seeing the 'Asiatic mode of production' in the late Marx as a concept of multilinear development rather than one of stasis, we know that Marx and Engels got much of the basic empirical patterns of Asian history in particularly entirely wrong. Moreover, even if in their time a door was still open to socialism on the basis of pre-capitalist patterns, surely such is no longer possible today, when capitalist relations have pervaded virtually every nook and cranny of the world's production. In that sense, we may actually be closer to the situation described in their early writings than in their later one. But Marx and Engels' writings on subjects as nation, race, and gender are indeed important and Anderson is surely right in emphasizing what a central role they came to play in their thought. This is all the more significant because of the persistent power of these categories today, as well as the debate on imperialism vs nationalism in left-wing thought. This book is therefore important reading for anyone interested in Marxism.