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Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement
Robert Biel's Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement traces the history of Eurocentric -- and anti-Eurocentric -- currents in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, arguing that this distortion was key to the development and spread of revisionism, and ultimately to the failures of the communist project, in the 20th century.
A work of intellectual history, Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement explores the relationship between Eurocentrism, alienation, and racism, while tracing the different ideas about imperialism, colonialism, "progress", and non-European peoples as they were grappled with by revolutionaries in both the colonized and colonizing nations. Teasing out racist errors and anti-racist insights within this history, Biel reveals a century-long struggle to assert the centrality of the most exploited within the struggle against capitalism.
The roles of key figures in the Marxist-Leninist canon -- Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao -- within this struggle are explored, as are those of others whose work may be less familiar to some readers, such as Sultan Galiev, Lamine Senghor, Lin Biao, R.P. Dutt, Samir Amin, and others.
Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement was written in the context of the declining British Maoist movement of the late 1980s. As Robert Biel explains in his preface to this new edition, "The work responded to a strong sense that the important task was to construct a Marxist theory of political economy which could reflect the real relationships in the contemporary world system. That was the constructive task but, before we could attempt it, we also had to conduct a negative task -- one of demolition: to identify and remove the blockage that stood in our way. This blockage was the thing we identified as Eurocentrism, a trend which imprisoned theory in an economistic and mechanical framework, denying the real dynamics of history in which the world outside the major European powers has always played such a major role, and does so still in the form of the liberation movements against all forms of oppression and neo-colonialism.
"On the basis of the research conducted in the current book, I felt I was in a position to begin the constructive task, reflected in my book The New Imperialism (2000). In this book, I sought to show that the superficial consolidation of world capitalism (then still in a somewhat triumphalist phase) was premised on an intensification of capitalism’s fundamental contradictions -- on the destruction of human resources and the physical environment—and that the different forms of alienation highlighted by Marx are still fully present, and more specifically, that the global order remains profoundly racist. In my most recent book, The Entropy of Capitalism (2012), I have described a system now beginning to unravel under the force of these contradictions. In this sense, Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement forms the beginning of a trilogy, the more destructive and explicitly polemical part, aiming to clear the terrain."
In pursuit of this "destructive", anti-racist and anti-colonial goal, Biel has made an important contribution to understanding the development of Marxist thought in the 19th and 20th centuries, with strategic implications for our current revolutionary project: "Declining capitalism seems locked in a death-embrace with the symptoms of its own decay.
A work of intellectual history, Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement explores the relationship between Eurocentrism, alienation, and racism, while tracing the different ideas about imperialism, colonialism, "progress", and non-European peoples as they were grappled with by revolutionaries in both the colonized and colonizing nations. Teasing out racist errors and anti-racist insights within this history, Biel reveals a century-long struggle to assert the centrality of the most exploited within the struggle against capitalism.
The roles of key figures in the Marxist-Leninist canon -- Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao -- within this struggle are explored, as are those of others whose work may be less familiar to some readers, such as Sultan Galiev, Lamine Senghor, Lin Biao, R.P. Dutt, Samir Amin, and others.
Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement was written in the context of the declining British Maoist movement of the late 1980s. As Robert Biel explains in his preface to this new edition, "The work responded to a strong sense that the important task was to construct a Marxist theory of political economy which could reflect the real relationships in the contemporary world system. That was the constructive task but, before we could attempt it, we also had to conduct a negative task -- one of demolition: to identify and remove the blockage that stood in our way. This blockage was the thing we identified as Eurocentrism, a trend which imprisoned theory in an economistic and mechanical framework, denying the real dynamics of history in which the world outside the major European powers has always played such a major role, and does so still in the form of the liberation movements against all forms of oppression and neo-colonialism.
"On the basis of the research conducted in the current book, I felt I was in a position to begin the constructive task, reflected in my book The New Imperialism (2000). In this book, I sought to show that the superficial consolidation of world capitalism (then still in a somewhat triumphalist phase) was premised on an intensification of capitalism’s fundamental contradictions -- on the destruction of human resources and the physical environment—and that the different forms of alienation highlighted by Marx are still fully present, and more specifically, that the global order remains profoundly racist. In my most recent book, The Entropy of Capitalism (2012), I have described a system now beginning to unravel under the force of these contradictions. In this sense, Eurocentrism and the Communist Movement forms the beginning of a trilogy, the more destructive and explicitly polemical part, aiming to clear the terrain."
In pursuit of this "destructive", anti-racist and anti-colonial goal, Biel has made an important contribution to understanding the development of Marxist thought in the 19th and 20th centuries, with strategic implications for our current revolutionary project: "Declining capitalism seems locked in a death-embrace with the symptoms of its own decay.
257 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 18, 2019
leans a bit more maoist than expected but genuinely a good read. i dont know anyone who wouldnt benefit from reading this. id say its a must read for long time communists.
May 3, 2019
A quick and concise critique on the way eurocentrism has manifested in Marxist and Marxist-Leninist movements in the 1800s and 1900s, from the works of Marx and Engels, to Lenin and the USSR, to Mao and China, to communist groups in Western countries. The critique is interesting as it does not hold back on criticism, even while it upholds Marxism as a fundamentally correct ideology. Overall an interesting and informative book if you are interested in the quirks of communism and its internal debates, and the ideas of some of its lesser-known figures; however it is rather abstract and seems based more on the theories of various people rather than on actual movements and concrete practices.
October 6, 2019
Extraordinary. A historical survey, arguing about the eurocentic deviation within the communist movement, from Marx and Engels, through Soviet orthodoxy, and western social chauvinism, but also arguing that Marxism contains the tools necessary for overcoming that weakness.
August 26, 2018
Fantastic book. I first learned about this book through the writings of J. Moufawad-Paul. It was particularly affecting to read this book on the very week that Samir Amin passed away given how much of Biel's study defers to Amin's own project of applying to contemporary capitalism an anti-Eurocentric analysis. In a fairly accessible style that non-academics will find approachable, Biel provides a useful definition of Eurocentrism both as a form of intellectual chauvinism but also in analysis that affects liberal as well as Marxist projects.
At his sharpest, Biel views Eurocentrism as a fundamental constraint on historical materialism, reducing history to series of unilinear stages and a schema that 1) is modeled on European and U.S. capitalism and, 2) ignores the fact that capitalist development comes into the world dripping with the blood of slavery, genocide, and colonialist violence. But the most compelling part of Biel's book is found in the title; deconstructing the communist movement's own Eurocentrism. Here is is careful not to fall into the liberal trap that rejects Marxism and communist tout court on the belief that class conflict is an import of Europe. Rather, Eurocentrism manifests in communist discourses precisely in its own tendency to adopt the unilinear stages of development model from liberalism. Thus, communism on the global periphery is only seen as a response to industrialization and the rise of an advance industrial working class within the Third World.
Additionally, classic Marxism has adhered to the destructive idea that the liberation of the global South depends entirely on the struggles of industrial workers in the global North. The latter view marginalizes and erases entirely the deep and long histories of anti-colonial struggles in the South because it simply cannot see Third World struggles against imperialism as anti-capitalist resistance. Biel expands upon the analysis of anti-imperial struggle as the primary contradiction of anti-capitalist struggle (for a moment, the conceptual centerpiece of Marxist-Leninist anti-revisionism, Maoism). Such a position, Biel argues, exemplifies communist thought untethered to Eurocentric chauvinism. Biel goes on to critically examine Mao's own betrayal of this anti-Eurocentrism, notably, in a failure to examine the relationship between racism, nationalism, and imperialism. Thus, Biel does us an enormous favor in drawing out the connections between Eurocentric conceptual frameworks and a materialist understanding of racism in terms of national identity and imperialism.
The book should be required reading for radicals seeking to gain some clarity at the precise moment where a neo-fascist U.S. government confuses so many with its racist-nationalist gestures against globalization.
At his sharpest, Biel views Eurocentrism as a fundamental constraint on historical materialism, reducing history to series of unilinear stages and a schema that 1) is modeled on European and U.S. capitalism and, 2) ignores the fact that capitalist development comes into the world dripping with the blood of slavery, genocide, and colonialist violence. But the most compelling part of Biel's book is found in the title; deconstructing the communist movement's own Eurocentrism. Here is is careful not to fall into the liberal trap that rejects Marxism and communist tout court on the belief that class conflict is an import of Europe. Rather, Eurocentrism manifests in communist discourses precisely in its own tendency to adopt the unilinear stages of development model from liberalism. Thus, communism on the global periphery is only seen as a response to industrialization and the rise of an advance industrial working class within the Third World.
Additionally, classic Marxism has adhered to the destructive idea that the liberation of the global South depends entirely on the struggles of industrial workers in the global North. The latter view marginalizes and erases entirely the deep and long histories of anti-colonial struggles in the South because it simply cannot see Third World struggles against imperialism as anti-capitalist resistance. Biel expands upon the analysis of anti-imperial struggle as the primary contradiction of anti-capitalist struggle (for a moment, the conceptual centerpiece of Marxist-Leninist anti-revisionism, Maoism). Such a position, Biel argues, exemplifies communist thought untethered to Eurocentric chauvinism. Biel goes on to critically examine Mao's own betrayal of this anti-Eurocentrism, notably, in a failure to examine the relationship between racism, nationalism, and imperialism. Thus, Biel does us an enormous favor in drawing out the connections between Eurocentric conceptual frameworks and a materialist understanding of racism in terms of national identity and imperialism.
The book should be required reading for radicals seeking to gain some clarity at the precise moment where a neo-fascist U.S. government confuses so many with its racist-nationalist gestures against globalization.
June 16, 2020
has good points but excruciatingly boring. mechanically applies dialectics then goes on about the mechanical nature of eurocentrism. not wrong but could provide a better alternative in its writing. most of its problems come from its nature as a movement text, with little more than a cursory view of its subjects of discussion, never spending more than a page or two on a single work. gets stronger near the end but the beginning is tedious.
read False Nationalism, False Internationalism for a more practically-oriented view of the same or read Indigenous and Black authors (Robinson, Mignolo, etc) for critiques of Eurocentrism instead.
read False Nationalism, False Internationalism for a more practically-oriented view of the same or read Indigenous and Black authors (Robinson, Mignolo, etc) for critiques of Eurocentrism instead.
July 8, 2017
Honestly, every single Marxist should read this, imo.
August 24, 2022
Sehr wichtiges Buch, das jeder Marxist gelesen haben sollte. Aber mit erheblichen begrifflichen und methodologischen Schwächen.
Ein Problem ist, dass Biel sehr richtig feststellt, dass nationale Bewegungen und Klassenkampf keine Widerprüche sind, dass sie letztlich aus einer Quelle, der Ausbeutung, fließen. Nur kann er das begrifflich nicht kohärent erfassen, denn er benutzt zwei sich widerpsrechende methodologische Ansätze, zwei Sätze von Theorien. Einmal sieht er, dass Ideologien Ausdruck bestimmter Praxen sind, ein andernmal sagt er, dass Ideologie autonom ist (nicht tendentiell oder teilweise autonom, wie das Engels sagt, sondern ganz autonom). Dass geht dann auch in eine ganze Reihe von Problemen über: Entfremdung ist ein ganz zentrales Problem, das er mit der Frage der Ideologie verknüpft, aber er benutzt ganz unbedarft den idealistischen Begriff vom Garrungswesen, den Marx ja nicht ohne Grund abgelegt hat. Dann gehen in der Kritik der Stadientheorie und ihres Begriffs der Entwicklung moralische und historische Faktoren kreuz über quer, so dass letztlich gar kein objektiver Begriff der progressiven Seite des Kapitalismus mehr übrig bleibt, bzw. dies auf bürgerliche Demokratie und Menschrechte (also Überbauphänomene) reduziert wird.
Zentral ist auch das Problem, dass Biel zwar richtig sagt, dass der Eurozentrismus zum mechanischen Denken führt, dies aber nicht aus dem Klassencharakter der Ideologie und Praxis ableitet (freilich vermittelt durch den Imperialismus), sondern direkt aus der Ideologie selbst. Gleichzeitig kritisiert er an anderer Stelle sehr richtig einen Denker dafür, dass er *aufgrund seines Klassenstandpunktes* in anti-dialektisches und damit eurozentristisches Denken verfällt, bemerkt aber nicht, dass er damit gerade selbst seine eigene Theorie vertiefen müsste.
Also das geht so durch den ganzen Text. Es fehlt einfach an begrifflicher Gründlichkeit, so dass die Kategorien tendentiell von organischen in diskrete zerfallen. Aber die Elemente der organischen Theorie sind alle da, er bekommt sie nur nicht zusammen. Mit anderen Worten kann man sagen, dass das Buch selbst noch vom Eurozentrismus geprägt ist, womit freilich die zentrale Theorie nur gestärkt wird.
Trotzdem, gerade für deutschen Leser, die international durch besondere Provinzialität und Chauvinismus auffallen, ist das n sehr wichtiges Buch.
Ein Problem ist, dass Biel sehr richtig feststellt, dass nationale Bewegungen und Klassenkampf keine Widerprüche sind, dass sie letztlich aus einer Quelle, der Ausbeutung, fließen. Nur kann er das begrifflich nicht kohärent erfassen, denn er benutzt zwei sich widerpsrechende methodologische Ansätze, zwei Sätze von Theorien. Einmal sieht er, dass Ideologien Ausdruck bestimmter Praxen sind, ein andernmal sagt er, dass Ideologie autonom ist (nicht tendentiell oder teilweise autonom, wie das Engels sagt, sondern ganz autonom). Dass geht dann auch in eine ganze Reihe von Problemen über: Entfremdung ist ein ganz zentrales Problem, das er mit der Frage der Ideologie verknüpft, aber er benutzt ganz unbedarft den idealistischen Begriff vom Garrungswesen, den Marx ja nicht ohne Grund abgelegt hat. Dann gehen in der Kritik der Stadientheorie und ihres Begriffs der Entwicklung moralische und historische Faktoren kreuz über quer, so dass letztlich gar kein objektiver Begriff der progressiven Seite des Kapitalismus mehr übrig bleibt, bzw. dies auf bürgerliche Demokratie und Menschrechte (also Überbauphänomene) reduziert wird.
Zentral ist auch das Problem, dass Biel zwar richtig sagt, dass der Eurozentrismus zum mechanischen Denken führt, dies aber nicht aus dem Klassencharakter der Ideologie und Praxis ableitet (freilich vermittelt durch den Imperialismus), sondern direkt aus der Ideologie selbst. Gleichzeitig kritisiert er an anderer Stelle sehr richtig einen Denker dafür, dass er *aufgrund seines Klassenstandpunktes* in anti-dialektisches und damit eurozentristisches Denken verfällt, bemerkt aber nicht, dass er damit gerade selbst seine eigene Theorie vertiefen müsste.
Also das geht so durch den ganzen Text. Es fehlt einfach an begrifflicher Gründlichkeit, so dass die Kategorien tendentiell von organischen in diskrete zerfallen. Aber die Elemente der organischen Theorie sind alle da, er bekommt sie nur nicht zusammen. Mit anderen Worten kann man sagen, dass das Buch selbst noch vom Eurozentrismus geprägt ist, womit freilich die zentrale Theorie nur gestärkt wird.
Trotzdem, gerade für deutschen Leser, die international durch besondere Provinzialität und Chauvinismus auffallen, ist das n sehr wichtiges Buch.
December 10, 2024
In his pamphlet "Critique of the Gotha Program" Karl Marx wrote "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges." He is arguing that a communist society will not simply be created out of nothing. It will be created on top of capitalist society. This concept can also be extend communist individuals. A person who is born in Europe is going to have a eurocentric world view simply by cultural osmosis alone and this can be especially dangerous to someone who is a believer in emancipatory politics.
Robert Biel gives an extremely illuminating history of the European communist movement and it's inability to center imperialism and colonialism, how eurocentrism stagnated the movement. This is a must read for any socialist, especially those that live in western countries.
Robert Biel gives an extremely illuminating history of the European communist movement and it's inability to center imperialism and colonialism, how eurocentrism stagnated the movement. This is a must read for any socialist, especially those that live in western countries.
June 19, 2024
Biel broadly outlines how, from the inception of Marxism, Eurocentric ideas have limited its revolutionary capacity. He argues the philosophical method developed by Marx and Engels is indispensable for socialist revolution, and has been developed by many in the global south towards this end. In his closing words, i think he could have been ore specific when giving examples of Indigenous resistance to capitalism and how the communist movement can be put to use and grown by and through these struggles. His narrative and arguments are incredibly compelling and i recommend to all, especially those seeking to practice Marxism in the imperial core.
January 7, 2025
Absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to know where the future of liberation, communist, and decolonial movements is going to draw from.
Very sound and well-reasoned critiques of the policies, line struggles, etc., of various major communist organizations and parties throughout the 20th century. Also an important contextualization of Marx, Engels, and other early communist theorists acceptance (to some degree at least) of ‘the white man’s burden’, or failure to recognize and debunk the argument of industrial communism ‘civilizing’ colonized nations globally.
Very sound and well-reasoned critiques of the policies, line struggles, etc., of various major communist organizations and parties throughout the 20th century. Also an important contextualization of Marx, Engels, and other early communist theorists acceptance (to some degree at least) of ‘the white man’s burden’, or failure to recognize and debunk the argument of industrial communism ‘civilizing’ colonized nations globally.
February 9, 2024
I can not recommend this enough for anyone serious about how Communism went wrong, and wanting to fix the mistakes of the past, to ensure our future. It completely opened my eyes to biases I didn’t even know existed, and made me hungry for more.
June 9, 2021
While it might be worth as introduction on the issue, I found it far too superficial & mechanistic in its understanding of dialectics, it discusses cases of eurocentrism, and also discusses counters to it, but it sadly never engages with either too much, which is natural as it was just a movement document, but greatly hampered my enjoyment from it. Still, I think it's certaintly valuable as introduction to the problematic, but no more. Also the comments on the georgian affair of Stalin, with Stalin somehow backing the anti-eurocentric trend of Lenin is just ridiculous, but that's just a sentence or two in the book.
Books which are far more interesting on this topic are 'False Nationalism, False Imperialism' and I'd recommend everyone to read that instead, I think it's more valuable and more interesting in its discussions, as it actually engages with the problematic head-on and doesn't get bogged down in sloganeering.
Books which are far more interesting on this topic are 'False Nationalism, False Imperialism' and I'd recommend everyone to read that instead, I think it's more valuable and more interesting in its discussions, as it actually engages with the problematic head-on and doesn't get bogged down in sloganeering.
August 16, 2015
My review has been published here:
http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/revie...
http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/revie...
July 16, 2017
A tour de force!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews