Marxism and Anthropology

by Maurice Bloch

This book examines the uses made of anthropology by Marx and Engels, and the uses made of Marxism by anthropologists. Looking at the writings of Marx and Engels on primitive societies, the book evaluates their views in the light of present knowledge and draws attention to inconsistencies in their analysis of pre-capitalist societies. These inconsistencies can be traced to the influence of contemporary anthropologists who regarded primitive societies as classless. As Marxist theory was built around the idea of class, without this concept the conventional Marxist analysis foundered.
First published in 1983.

Genres: Anthropology, Social Science, Sociology

190 pages, Hardcover

First published January 13, 1983

Reviews

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Misleading title: more a synthesis of marx theory (an ok one) than it's relation to anthropology.

[Lily Bronski · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent (if abbreviated) history of the entanglements and repulsions between Marxism and anthropology and the factors that determined this; balanced and thoughtful. My one gripe is that he represents ideology and hegemony as derived primarily instrumentally (via a vaguely teleological and unclear causality), rather than as originating organically from material and social conditions of existence and the reproduction in the collective consciousness of patterns as they exist. This drives a lot of his conclusions about the need to represent "primitive" societies as classed, which I think is certainly not necessary and probably not desirable. But this is a view held very pervasively, so it's hard to fault him too greatly for that, and his argument as a whole is persuasive and important.

[Hamad Abdulsamad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just wish that this book can be re-written to include all the discussions from the 80s till this moment.