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Understanding History: Marxist Essays
How did capitalism arise? Why and when did this exploitative system exhaust its potential to advance civilization? Why revolutionary change is fundamental to human progress. Notes, index. Now with enlarged type.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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About the author
George Novack
47 books22 followersLeftist political activist and Marxist theoretician.
He attended Harvard University, earning a B.A. in 1926, and an M.A. in 1927. He was on a successful track in the publishing business, when the beginning of the Great Depression radicalized him. He joined the Trotskyist Communist League of America in 1933 and was a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1940 to 1973.
In 1937-40 Novack served as the secretary of the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky. This body initiated the celebrated 1937 Dewey Commission that inquired into the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow show trials, and found the Moscow trials to have been a complete frame-up.
George Novack was not one of the 18 SWP leaders imprisoned in World War II under the Smith Act, but he played a major role in the defense campaign.
Novack produced a number of books on various aspects of Marxism: An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism, America's Revolutionary Heritage, Democracy and Revolution, Empiricism and Its Evolution, Humanism and Socialism, The Origins of Materialism, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, Revolutionary Dynamics of Women's Liberation, and Understanding History, Marxist Essays.
He attended Harvard University, earning a B.A. in 1926, and an M.A. in 1927. He was on a successful track in the publishing business, when the beginning of the Great Depression radicalized him. He joined the Trotskyist Communist League of America in 1933 and was a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1940 to 1973.
In 1937-40 Novack served as the secretary of the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky. This body initiated the celebrated 1937 Dewey Commission that inquired into the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow show trials, and found the Moscow trials to have been a complete frame-up.
George Novack was not one of the 18 SWP leaders imprisoned in World War II under the Smith Act, but he played a major role in the defense campaign.
Novack produced a number of books on various aspects of Marxism: An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism, America's Revolutionary Heritage, Democracy and Revolution, Empiricism and Its Evolution, Humanism and Socialism, The Origins of Materialism, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, Revolutionary Dynamics of Women's Liberation, and Understanding History, Marxist Essays.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 1, 2025
Novack's presentation on the law of uneven and combined development is essential for understanding the more general law of dialectics, the interpenetration of opposites. Marx employed the law of uneven and combined development. That is clear from Capital. Lenin understood it. That is clear from his Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and The Development of Capitalism in Russia. Trotsky was situated at a point in history, after the failed 1905 revolution, when a greater understanding of the law was required for formulating a program to aid the proletariat in overcoming the contradictory characteristics of its situation under the rule of a weak bourgeoisie propped up by the necrotic regime of absolutists. His Results and Prospects and History of the Russian Revolution were products of his deep dive into the dialectics of revolution on the boundary between three competing social forces; feudal, bourgeois, and socialist. I have read all of these titles except The History of the Russian Revolution which remains on the shelf, dog-eared and half finished, but will be moved up in priority on my reading queue as a consequence of the importance given to the work by this book.
Novack combines the lessons of these works to give the law of uneven and combined development, for the first time, a dedicated comprehensive explanation and he accomplishes this in a concise and approachable way. The examples he uses are incredibly helpful for understanding how it is that the developing mode of production stagnated for hundreds of years in some areas while at the same time ripping primitive societies out of the stone age abruptly, telescoping social development and causing some societies to skip over every intermediate stage between the stone axe and the airplane.
"The Stone age ended before 3,500 B.C. in Mesopotamia, about 1600 B.C. in Denmark, 1492 in America, and not until 1800 in New Zealand." More recent examples are also offered.
But Novack's essays are much more than the law of uneven and combined development. They offer insights into how categories which serve to delineate stages of social development are dialectical and transitional in nature; heuristics for gaining clarity in what has come and what is yet to be accomplished.
"The dialectic is 'the algebra of revolution' and evolution. That is to say, it formulates certain necessary aspects, relations or tendencies of reality in a general form, extracted from specific conditions. Before its abstract algebraic qualities can be converted into definite, 'arithmetic' quantities, they have to be applied to the substance of a particular reality. In every new case and at every successive stage of development, specific analysis is necessary of the actual relations and tendencies in their connection and continual interaction. The dialectical formulas are abstract but the 'truth is concrete.'"
Novack's collection of essays offer the necessary tools for developing a mode of thought that is capable of accurately discerning the political and economic character of historical developments. Novack also highlights some examples of non-dialectical thinking with respect to transitional forms of political and economic relations that results in erroneous political conclusions. These postmortems serve as excellent contrast to dialectical thinking via negativa.
This book has been transformative of my own thinking, and I consider it to be critically essential for all workers but particularly those newly conscious of class politics. I cannot recommend it enough.
Novack combines the lessons of these works to give the law of uneven and combined development, for the first time, a dedicated comprehensive explanation and he accomplishes this in a concise and approachable way. The examples he uses are incredibly helpful for understanding how it is that the developing mode of production stagnated for hundreds of years in some areas while at the same time ripping primitive societies out of the stone age abruptly, telescoping social development and causing some societies to skip over every intermediate stage between the stone axe and the airplane.
"The Stone age ended before 3,500 B.C. in Mesopotamia, about 1600 B.C. in Denmark, 1492 in America, and not until 1800 in New Zealand." More recent examples are also offered.
But Novack's essays are much more than the law of uneven and combined development. They offer insights into how categories which serve to delineate stages of social development are dialectical and transitional in nature; heuristics for gaining clarity in what has come and what is yet to be accomplished.
"The dialectic is 'the algebra of revolution' and evolution. That is to say, it formulates certain necessary aspects, relations or tendencies of reality in a general form, extracted from specific conditions. Before its abstract algebraic qualities can be converted into definite, 'arithmetic' quantities, they have to be applied to the substance of a particular reality. In every new case and at every successive stage of development, specific analysis is necessary of the actual relations and tendencies in their connection and continual interaction. The dialectical formulas are abstract but the 'truth is concrete.'"
Novack's collection of essays offer the necessary tools for developing a mode of thought that is capable of accurately discerning the political and economic character of historical developments. Novack also highlights some examples of non-dialectical thinking with respect to transitional forms of political and economic relations that results in erroneous political conclusions. These postmortems serve as excellent contrast to dialectical thinking via negativa.
This book has been transformative of my own thinking, and I consider it to be critically essential for all workers but particularly those newly conscious of class politics. I cannot recommend it enough.
July 2, 2019
An essential collection of essays by George Novack, intended to divulge the historic materialism laws of development and to have an enlightening discussion with a set of questions asked by some comrades of the Mexican section.
Granted, some of the evolutionary lines are firmly stuck into the ones outlined by Engels in "The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State" for the western European path to civilization; and that certain concepts about the reach of American civilizations (such as Inca and Mayas) as pre-capitalist modes of production felt somewhat mechanical. But what interest us the most is the understanding of the dialectic laws of society evolution through history.
The Spanish translation (very rare to find) has an appendix -missing in the English one, where the late comrade Nahuel Moreno explains the application of the uneven and combined development law to the colonization process of the countries nowadays known as Latin America.
Very enlightening read.
Granted, some of the evolutionary lines are firmly stuck into the ones outlined by Engels in "The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State" for the western European path to civilization; and that certain concepts about the reach of American civilizations (such as Inca and Mayas) as pre-capitalist modes of production felt somewhat mechanical. But what interest us the most is the understanding of the dialectic laws of society evolution through history.
The Spanish translation (very rare to find) has an appendix -missing in the English one, where the late comrade Nahuel Moreno explains the application of the uneven and combined development law to the colonization process of the countries nowadays known as Latin America.
Very enlightening read.
November 1, 2025
The best-seller ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Israeli-American historian Yuval Noah Harari first tells you that history has no meaning, no logical progression, but then, after a few chapters he tells you that capitalism is the ultimate system, and the United States the ultimate country, supporting uncritically even the nuclear bombing of Japan!
This wonderful book, which I have just reread for the first time in years, first off is honest about the author’s revolutionary views. It contains some introductory essays on the materialist concept of history, as well as some more advanced chapters. One former chapter has now been taken out and can be found as part of the new book Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History.
But for anyone seriously interested in studying Marxism, I recommend this entire book, even though you may not fully understand the chapters on uneven and combined development (or hybrid formations) in history without further reading.
Everyone is familiar to some extent with uneven development, and a popular and useful book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies put forward a geographical determinist view of the reasons for it. It makes some good points but is oversimplified.
Combined development flows from uneven development: capitalism, for example, did not develop all at once. It appears first with many feudal leftovers—some of which still exist to one degree or another, like the monarchies of Europe.
To follow Novack’s writings on these questions, since he relies primarily on examples from Soviet and American history, a few books are essential. On the Soviet Union, Trotsky’s two most important books, History of the Russian Revolution and The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? are most cited by Novack.
On the United States, I would recommend America's Revolutionary Heritage edited by, and largely written by Novack, containing essays on key aspects of American history from the time of the Indians through the development of monopoly capitalism and the Spanish-American War.
Novack in this volume also discusses development in Latin America, especially Brazil, which I don’t know much about, but the place to start is probably Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.
There are two essays which deal in part with Cuba, which escaped major Stalinist deformation and remains the one revolutionary government in power. For the third essay that deals partly with the role played by Fidel Castro, I would recommend Che Guevara’s Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58and Armando Hart’s Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58: A Participant's Account. For the issues of Stalinist influence, which Novack touches on in the last essay in the book, I would recommend Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation and ‘Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro.
Novack puts forward the view, which I disagree with, that the law (it can just as well be called a fact) of uneven and combined development is closely associated with Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. It’s not essential to the book, but if one wishes to explore it, read The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects as well as a critique, Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today.
This wonderful book, which I have just reread for the first time in years, first off is honest about the author’s revolutionary views. It contains some introductory essays on the materialist concept of history, as well as some more advanced chapters. One former chapter has now been taken out and can be found as part of the new book Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History.
But for anyone seriously interested in studying Marxism, I recommend this entire book, even though you may not fully understand the chapters on uneven and combined development (or hybrid formations) in history without further reading.
Everyone is familiar to some extent with uneven development, and a popular and useful book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies put forward a geographical determinist view of the reasons for it. It makes some good points but is oversimplified.
Combined development flows from uneven development: capitalism, for example, did not develop all at once. It appears first with many feudal leftovers—some of which still exist to one degree or another, like the monarchies of Europe.
To follow Novack’s writings on these questions, since he relies primarily on examples from Soviet and American history, a few books are essential. On the Soviet Union, Trotsky’s two most important books, History of the Russian Revolution and The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? are most cited by Novack.
On the United States, I would recommend America's Revolutionary Heritage edited by, and largely written by Novack, containing essays on key aspects of American history from the time of the Indians through the development of monopoly capitalism and the Spanish-American War.
Novack in this volume also discusses development in Latin America, especially Brazil, which I don’t know much about, but the place to start is probably Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.
There are two essays which deal in part with Cuba, which escaped major Stalinist deformation and remains the one revolutionary government in power. For the third essay that deals partly with the role played by Fidel Castro, I would recommend Che Guevara’s Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58and Armando Hart’s Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58: A Participant's Account. For the issues of Stalinist influence, which Novack touches on in the last essay in the book, I would recommend Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation and ‘Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro.
Novack puts forward the view, which I disagree with, that the law (it can just as well be called a fact) of uneven and combined development is closely associated with Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. It’s not essential to the book, but if one wishes to explore it, read The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects as well as a critique, Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today.
November 23, 2025
there were elements I agreed with in this, but didn't feel like they were particularly cutting observations
a lot of the rest of it I didn't find super clear - thought the unequal development section had been a little bit superseded by later developments, but easy to say with an additional 50 years of history to look back at
a lot of the rest of it I didn't find super clear - thought the unequal development section had been a little bit superseded by later developments, but easy to say with an additional 50 years of history to look back at
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews