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Marx and the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. By kevin b. anderson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. 336 pp. $66.00 (cloth); $22.50 (paper and e-book). Marxs writings and Marxism have had a tumultuous fate in West- ern academia. Scholars revered Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s, when social history was booming, but since the 1980s, they reproach Marx- ism from a number of different perspectives. We could explain the shift in attitudes toward Marxism in reference to an array of social causes, including the shift from a fordist to a neo-liberal mode of capitalism, which instigated a crisis in and the eventual fall of the Soviet bloc, the emergence of market capitalism in China, a dynamic increase in the growth rates of various non-European nation-states, and a global defeat of leftist politics. In the wake of this defeat, numerous theories attempted to replace Marxism as theories for the left, including post- structuralism, cultural studies, subaltern studies, postcolonialism. Post- structuralists rebuked Marxist epistemology, contending that Marx- ists were wedded to positivistic notions of science, and postcolonial theorists claimed that Marxism used the scientific model to promote a Eurocentric mode of development. Influenced by Maoism, postcolo- nial theorists contended that Marxists failed to grasp the particularities of Third World and colonial development. These were scholars who originated from or studied countries on the margins of the global capi- talist system, and they argued that Marx presupposed a unilinear model of growth, which implied that Third World nations had to follow the model of their European counterparts. Among other things, such critics allude to Marxs inability to analyze adequately Third World nation- alism and anticolonialism, because both of these phenomena involve taking seriously non-Western conditions. Recently Marxist scholars have responded to charges of Eurocentri- cism,1 but Kevin B. Andersons Marx at the Margins makes a unique contribution by bringing to readers attention a vast array of recently published works by Marx in which he discusses non-Western societ- ies and addresses questions of ethnicity and colonialism. At issue here is particularly to what extent Marx advocated a unilinear model of history. In other words, the question is: Did Marx believe that all regions of the world had to pass through the same stages of develop-

1 See Arif Dirliks essay, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Critical Inquiry 20, no. 2 (1994): 328356, and Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations and Literatures (London: Verso, 1994).

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ment, theorized in terms of modes of production, such as slave, feudal, capitalist, and socialist? Another characteristic of the unilinear model is that Marx valued the capitalist mode of production more highly than previous modes and believed that the various societies of the world had to pass through the capitalist mode of production before creating socialism. Andersons book is divided into an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. The first chapter offers a new look at Marxs writings on the European impact on India, Indonesia, and China. Chapter 2 deals with national emancipation and revolution in Russia and Poland. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss race, class, and slavery in the Civil War in the United States and nationalism, class, and the labor movement in Ireland, respectively. Chapter 5 examines how Marxs writings in the Grundrisse and Capital provide a theoretical foundation for the histori- cal writings discussed in the other chapters, and chapter 6 provides us with a study of Marxs last writings on non-Western and precapitalist societies. Taken as a whole, the various chapters of the book mobilize a vast array of sources, some of which were only recently made available, to argue that Marx neither held that all nations had to pass through the same stages nor believed that countries had to pass through capitalism in order to realize socialism. The two points are of course related but not mutually entailing. In other words, from a Marxist perspective, the first claim, namely, that all countries must pass through the same stages, implies the second, namely, that all nations must experience capitalism before realizing socialism. However, the second does not imply the first, because it is possible that a country becomes capitalist through a logic imposed from the outside, such as through imperialism. In other words, from this perspective, without this external force it would be possible for some countries not to undergo capitalism, but then socialism would also not be an issue. At one level, even without looking at new sources, it is clear that Marx did not believe that all countries had a uniform path of growth. After all, the reason he developed an Asiatic mode of production was precisely to show that social organization in Asia was different from what existed in Europe and in other parts of the world. Moreover, the Asiatic mode of production had the characteristic of reproducing itself and being resistant to capitalist development. How- ever, on the standard interpretation of Marxism, imperialist nations, while motivated primarily by profit, had the unintended consequence of breaking Asia out of stagnation and catapulting them into the world of capitalist development, which was the condition for their becom- ing free. In other words, on the usual narrative, imperialism must be

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seen in a partially positive light, a type of necessary evil on the path to development, a stepping stone on the way to socialism. The novelty of Andersons book is precisely that it questions the above interpretation of Marx and contends that Marx allowed for not only multiple paths in the past, but also multiple paths toward social- ism. Here Marx is presented as a humanist for whom socialism provides a moral framework from which to evaluate the potential of various social systems. Moreover, Marx spent much of his later life researching the histories of places around the world to expand his sense of the pos- sible. The Marx that emerges from this book is not one who grafts an already existing theory onto history, but one who creatively combines rigorous social theory and meticulous empirical research to promote revolutionary political action. In chapter 1, Colonial Encounters in the 1850s: The European Impact on India, Indonesia, and China, Anderson confronts Edward Saids famous criticism of Marx as Eurocentric and offers an alterna- tive reading. In his enormously influential Orientalism 2 Said based his judgment on an article that Marx wrote in 1853, The British Rule in India, which was Marxs first major publication on a non-Western society. Said took Marx to task for judging that the British destruc- tion of previous communities was a precondition for real social revo- lution. Anderson concedes that there are elements of Eurocentrism in Marxs above-mentioned text, and in particular two problematic ideas: (1) that the various countries are destined to follow the path of Europe, namely capitalist development, and (2) that Britain repre- sented a higher civilization. These two points are interrelated, since if one accepts a grand developmental narrative of history and places capi- talism above non-Western modes of production, then one would have to conclude that capitalist culture is also more advanced than that of precapitalist societies. Anderson contends that Marx reworked his ideas about the non- Western world in other writings published shortly after British Rule in India. He argues that although Chinese (and Indian) walls continue to be battered down by what Marx sill evidently considered to be the progressive effects of world trade and even colonial conquest, people from within non-Western societies are now credited with the poten- tial of throwing off the English yoke altogether and self-starting the regeneration of their societies and cultures. This regeneration would not, however, any more than the struggle of the Western classes, be
2

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978).

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aimed at a return to the precapitalist past. It would retain the achieve- ments of capitalist modernity (p. 24). This is a crucial passage, since it shows that on Andersons reading, Marx has a multilinear vision not only of various societies precapitalist pasts, but also of their path to a postcapitalist future. His vision is not relativist, since socialism, as a goal that stems from the logic of human emancipation remains the telos of history and it is possible to draw on different resources to attain this goal. Moreover, because these pre- or noncapitalist countries have come into contact with the capitalist world, it is possible for them to imagine a path that retains the achieve- ments of capitalist modernity, while at the same time creating a society that moves beyond it. In a number of non-Western countries, such as China, Japan, and India, intellectuals often expressed this desire to retain the achieve- ments of capitalism while surpassing it. Many Maoists clung to this hope as they combated imperialism and what they called semi-feudal- ism, while hoping to find a path to socialism. However, Anderson must answer the question of whether there is basis in Marxs mature theoret- ical work to make such claims. He attempts to respond to this question in chapter 5, From the Grundrisse to Capital: Multilinear Themes. In support of a new multilinear interpretation of Marx, Ander- son reexamines the somewhat understudied French edition of Marx, which was the last edition that Marx personally prepared for pub- lication (p. 173). At issue here is the difference between Marx and Engels, which Marxists have been discussing for a number of decades.3 Anderson provides textual evidence to suggest that the French edition was less linear than the German and English editions, many of which were edited by Engels. For example, a famous passage in the preface to the 1867 German edition of Capital reads, The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future (p. 177, italics in the original). This passage suggests a grand narrative of development, which Marxs critics never grow tired

3 For example, in the 1970s Japanese scholar Marxists, such as Mochizuki Seiji, con- trasted Marx and Engels in order to develop what he claimed was Marxs original theory of civil society. See Mochizuki Seiji, [A Study of Marxs Theory of History] (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1973). Mochizuki stresses that Marxs use of concepts such as the Asiatic mode of production showed that he had a multilinear model of develop- ment, but he nonetheless stresses that capitalism and civil society are the conditions for the possibility of socialism. A number of scholars have written about the difference between Marx and Engels in English. See for example, Christopher J. Arthur, ed., Engels Today: Centenary Appreciation (London: Macmillan, 1996).

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of criticizing. However, Anderson points out that in the French edi- tion, the passage read, The country that is more developed industri- ally only shows, to those that follow it on the industrial path, the image of its future (p. 178, italics in the original). Notice that in the French version, he excluded countries, such as India and Russia, which had not yet embarked on the industrial path. Anderson argues that this is because he had come into contact with Russian revolutionaries who had read Capital and asked Marx whether Russia had to pass through the same stages as had England (p. 180). As is well known, Marx wrote to Vera Zasulich and other Russian revolutionaries saying that Rus- sians could draw on their particular forms of community and possibly bypass capitalism. Anderson has made a major contribution to Marxist scholarship by pointing out the extent to which Marx did not develop a universal the- ory of history. This is important because even today there are Marxists who discuss Marxs historical materialism as a universal theory of his- tory. However, more controversially, Anderson also argues that when Marx rejected a stage theory of history, he also gave up the idea that socialism must develop out of the contradictions of capitalism. This is a point that most Marxists today would not accept, and Anderson has perhaps saved for a later work how one could square the claim that some countries could possibly avoid capitalism and develop socialism with his theory in Capital about how socialism becomes a possibility as relative-surplus-value, large-scale industry, and a host of other changes emerge. Anderson suggests that multilinear history implies multiple paths to socialism and hence must face the question of whether these socialisms are qualitatively similar and whether they have a social basis. By claiming that noncapitalist countries that confront capitalism can retain the achievements of capitalism while surpassing it, Anderson has perhaps separated social and intellectual mediation because here achievements of capitalism include the humanist ideals, such as free- dom and equality, which are not present in previous societies. But one must ask what was or is the social base of these ideas in countries that encounter capitalism from the outside. Moreover, while it is impor- tant to note multiple paths in a precapitalist world, in a world of capi- talist expansion, regions with lower levels of productivity that attempt to define alternative paths will inevitably be confronted by capitalist competition. Once they face capitalist competition, they will be forced to mimic aspects of capitalist factory organization, if not reproduce another form of capitalism. This is arguably what happened in the case of the Soviet Union and Communist China, and today there are few places, if any, around the world that are not capitalist. So perhaps the

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task for the future is, in addition to finding resources on the outside of capitalism, to discover political possibilities to negate or rather to sublate (aufheben) capitalism from within. Andersons book is impor- tant precisely because it forces us to ask whether uneven development could lead to a different future and thus hopefully will open a new field of research in the study of Marx and capital.4 It should definitely be required reading for people who are interested in Marxism, critics of Eurocentrism, and the possibility of a future beyond capitalism. viren murthy University of Ottawa

Reforming the World: The Creation of Americas Moral Empire. By ian tyrrell. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010. 336 pp. $35.00 (cloth and e-book). Princeton University Presss latest addition to its America in the World series provides further evidence of the depth and reach of U.S. culture beyond its own borders and of how the myriad experiences of Americans abroad impacted domestic policy and culture in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. In Reforming the World, Ian Tyrrell, preeminent scholar in the field of transnational U.S. his- tory, argues that while pundits and policy makers might easily debate the current realities of U.S. empire in terms of economy and politics, the nations export of Protestant morals indeed shaped the course of Americas cultural expansion and its formal imperial designs from 1880 to 1930. The careers and actions of American moral reformers, a cohort that included missionaries, fundraisers, and temperance advo- cates, created important nexuses at which American Protestant evan- gelical culture intersected with colonialism, the growing hegemony of capitalism, and the politics of race and anti-imperialism both at home and abroad. Tyrrells emphasis on informal networks of moral reform- ers that transcended national and colonial borders and cultures and attempted to create a global moral order rooted in Protestant values, forces scholars of both U.S. empire and religion in America to rethink the connections between the two.

4 For another recent attempt to tackle this issue, see Harry Harootunian, Who Needs Postcolonialism? A Reply to Linder, Radical Philosophy 164 (NovemberDecember 2010): 3844.