Essays On Historical Materialism

by John Ed. Rees

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these papers are good but there are a couple that are quite simply tosh. The weakest are the ones that designed to be methodological, and for different reasons. Harman's attacks on postmodern-influenced and liberal historians is crude and weak – which is a shame because his targets (Schama, Figes, Patrick Joyce) are worthy of much more nuanced criticism. Weakest perhaps are some of the attacks on postmodern approaches – not because I want to defend these approaches, too many of them obscure the kinds of reactionary politics contributors are attacking, but because there is a tendency in many of the essays (Harman, German, and O'Brien) to reify Marx (and Engels) – not his methods, but his findings. It seems strange that practitioners of scientific socialism should be so unwilling to subject their foundational findings to critique. It seems at times that the quest of Marxist historians should be to find evidence to prove the truth of Marx's work, not to subject it to critique and development – this looks to me like a failure to subject the science to sceptical analysis. Then the sectarianism doesn't help – the claim on p 149 that Trotsky's 'History of the Russian Revolution' is ""probably the greatest work of Marxist history"" is hard to treat seriously: to be sure it is a major and important piece, but the greatest!

There are, however, some exceptionally good papers – Mike Haynes defence of Marxist historiography of the Russian Revolution is solid and rigorous (and makes me look forward to reading his edited collection of essays about attacks on the notion of revolution), and Brian Manning's discussion of the place of workers and of 'labour' in the English revolution is a useful foil to those who would read it through eyes of the state and the revolutions leaders. Alongside that, Callinicos (who I often disagree with) is sharp, insightful, and mostly right, while John Rees argument that the separation of Marxist analysis in universities has isolated it from struggle and risks making it more conservative is a useful reminder (that we shouldn't need) that as Marxists in higher education we need to keep active links with workers and others in struggle. Despite these good points – more frustrating than useful.