183

Stages in Social Devel opment

Joan Simon
(Secretary, History Group of the Communist Party)
W
HY is the establishment of stages in
social development important? Perhaps
this general question should be put before
surveying the recent discussion in Marxism Today
and summarising the day's debate on the subject
organised by the editorial board and the History
Group of the Communist Party, at Marx House on
March 18th last.
What is at issue here is both the nature and suc-
cession of different forms of society, including ways
in which the transition from one to another takes
placein other words, the movement and direction
of human history. This is, of course, a very large
subject indeed, and the historical materialist approach
can hardly be summarised in a sentence. But Lenin,
as usual, managed briefly to express the essence of
the matter. Pre-Marxist historiography,
"at best provided an accumulation of raw facts,
collected at random, and a depiction of certain sides
of the historical process. By examining the ensemble
of all the opposing tendencies, by reducing them to
precisely definable conditions of life and production
of the various classes of society, by discarding sub-
jectivism and arbitrariness in the choice of various
'leading' ideas or in their interpretation, and by
disclosing that all ideas and all the various tenden-
cies, without exception, have their roots in the
condition of the material forces of production,
Marxism points the way to an all-embracing and
comprehensive study of the process of the rise,
development, and decline of social-economic
formations" (The Teachings of Karl Marx, Little
Lenin Library, p. 24).
Marx and Engels themselves consistently empha-
sised that historical materialism is a scientific ap-
proach to generalisation from the facts. They were,
therefore, well aware of the immense amount of
historical research needed before the picture of
successive social formations could be filled out.
"Our conception of history is, above all, a guide to
study, not a lever for construction after the manner
of the Hegelians," wrote Engels in a letter in 1890.
"All history must be studied afresh, the conditions
of existence of the different formations of society
must be individually examined before the attempt
is made to deduce from them the political, civil-
legal, aesthetic, philosophic, religious etc. notions
corresponding to them. Only a little has been done
here up to now because only a few people have got
down to it seriously" {Selected Correspondence,
p. 473).
During the present century, particularly in recent
decades, there has been a wide development of
historical research, ranging from anthropological
and archaeological studies to the present day. In
particular, much material has been brought to light
by historians working under new conditions in the
U.S.S.R., China, eastern Europe, India, Africa,
among them a greatly increased number of Marxist
historians. The close examination of diflferent forms
of society, the study of branches of history afresh,
has raised new questions about the process of rise,
development and decline of societies in history; in
particular, about the successive stages in this process
in the history of class society, after the disintegration
of primitive communalism.
This succession has usually been defined in terms
of a sentence taken from Marx's preface to the
Critique of Political Economy (1859) in which he
ends an exposition of the historical materialist
approach with the words:
"In broad outline we can designate the Asiatic,
the ancient, the feudal and the modern bourgeois
methods (i.e. modes) of production as so many
epochs in the progress of the economic formation of
society. The bourgeois relations of production are
the last antagonistic form of the social process of
production" (Kerr ed. p. 13).
The category "Asiatic" suggests a regional form,
though one of major importance, so it is by no means
clear that Marx is here designating successive stages
to be found universally. Nevertheless, this is the
impression of the Marxist viewpoint given in the
Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism (1961) sum-
marised in the phrase: "Mankind as a whole has
passed through four formations^primitive-com-
munal, slave, feudal and capitaMst" (p. 154). Marx' s
"Asiatic mode" is, however, omitted here. (This,
it may be noted, was also the case in the Short History
of the C.P.S.U. (1939) where, in the section on
historical materialism, the examples cited are that
from disintegrating primitive communalism slavery
(the "ancient mode") emerged, that feudalism is
replaced by capitalism (p. 110).)
The "Asiatic Mode"
Robin Jardine drew attention to this divergence
in the contribution that opened the discussion in
these pages (July 1961), when he also raised the
question as to whether the "ancient mode" has been
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a universal stage in the history of socio-economic
development; whether, for instance, there was an
epoch of slavery in India and China. Discussion
has tended to centre around these questions. One
contributor remained unconvinced that there was
any point at issue, dismissing all queries as fanciful
speculations, but his firm reassertion of the "Marxist
view" overcame the divergence between Marxist
sources only by incorrectly equating Marx's "Asiatic
mode" with the stage of barbarism preceding class
society (Sid Douglas, December 1961). On the other
hand. Professor PuUeybank, professor of Chinese
at Cambridge, noting that Chinese and Japanese
Marxist historians have dropped the "Asiatic mode",
suggested that whether or not there have been uni-
versal stages is a "pseudo-problem"; implying that
the very large questions involved in drawing com-
parisons and connections between the development
of different civilisations cannot usefully be approached
in this way. All this raises important points.
It would probably be true to say that, so far as the
majority of Marxist historians are concerned, the
"Asiatic mode" has long since tacitly dropped out
of use.^ More recently the "ancient mode" or
slavery has come openly into question. At the
International Congress of Historical Sciences held
at Stockholm in 1960, Academician Zhukov made
clear that Marxist historians in the Soviet Union no
longer regard slavery as a universal stage; for in-
stance, it has not been found to have been the pre-
dominant mode of production in Russia at any time,
nor among the Germanic peoples. Was the first
civilisation to emerge in India, in the Indus river
valley (2500-1500 B.C.) a slave society? Dev Raj
Chanana, in Slavery in Ancient India (1960), only
advances "with a certain amount of reserve" the
hypothesis that "slave labour could have existed
both in the country and towns of the Indus civilisa-
tion". Evidence from literary sources bears witness to
various forms of slavery in India at later periods, but
not, he suggests, to an epoch of slavery comparable
with that of the classical period in Greece or Rome.
In general, historians have found forms of chattel
slavery nearly everywhere in pre-capitalist societies,
but the existence of slaves by no means implies that
slavery was the predominant mode of production.
There was, of course, a marked degree of slavery in
America in the modern age, but this does not deter-
mine classification as a slave society since the pre-
dominant productive relations were developing
capitalist relations. A similar position probably
existed in many parts of the world in antiquity, with
slaves in domestic work, agriculture, perhaps even
crafts, within the framework of other predominating
productive relations. There is no evidence that the
peoples of Africa passed through an epoch of
slavery. On the other hand, Chinese Marxist histori-
ans agreed that "China has gone through an epoch
of slavery and that the remains of slavery lasted for
a long time after the collapse of slave society";
though it would seem that there is wide disagree-
ment on the dating of this epoch, some placing it
before the eleventh century B.C., others putting its
lower limit in the period 770-206 B.C., and a third
view holding that it lasted up to and during the Wei
period, A.D. 220-265.^
What does all this add up to ? The "Asiatic mode"
has dropped out, and only in certain areas has
slavery been shown to be important enough to form
the basis of the economy. There remains, then, the
basic succession of social-economic formations:
primitive communalismfeudalismcapitalism. In
practice this means that "feudalism", having become
a sort of residuary legatee, now stretches over a vast
expansefrom primitive societies up to the triumph
of capitalism, which in some countries is in this
century, and from China to West Africa, perhaps
even to Mexico. In addition, where investigations of
primitive societies have indicated the existence of a
social division of labour the feudal stage has been
pushed back into what had previously been regarded
as the "primitive communal" stage.
Obviously a socio-economic stage which covers
both Ruanda-Urundi today and France in 1788,
both China in 1900 and Norman England, is in
danger of losing any kind of specific character likely
to assist analysis; rather, analysis can only remain
extremely general unless some sub-divisions are
arrived at. This is the problem that has, as it were,
come into being, no one having deliberately set out
to extend "feudalism". It is a problem which has
not hitherto been systematically tackled by Marxists
but is now a subject for discussion among historians
in many different countries. This was the main
question discussed at the meeting held on March 18th.
Marx's Approach
Preliminary material prepared by members of the
History Group, besides making some of the points
already made, also outlined in more detail Marx' s
own approach, which was anything but schematic
^ An exception is Namboodiripad, The National
Question in Kerala (1952), where an evolution of feudalism
from the "Asiatic mode" is suggested.
^ These points are taken from an article summarising
recent discussions published in Collection for Discussion
of the Periodisation of Ancient Chinese History (1957, in
Chinese), and translated into German in the G.D.R.
journal, Zeitschrift filr Geschichtswissenschaft (1962).
Professor PuUeybank, noting the complexities involved
in assessing slavery in China, adds that Japanese Marxist
historians have concluded that there was an epoch of
slavery in Japan "during the millennium following the
founding of the Ch'in empire in 221 B.C." and discerned
the transition to feudalism during the Sung period from
A.D. 960.
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and dogmatic. The phrase quoted from the preface
of the Critique should, for instance, be put in
context if it is to be properly understood. In the
introduction to this work (unpublished during his
lifetime) Marx does this, in the course of arguing
against the bourgeois political economists who
assume that capitalist productive relations are
eternal.
"Whenever . . . we speak of production, we always
have in mind production at a certain stage of social
development. Hence, it might seem that in order to
speak of production at all, we must either trace the
historical process of development through its various
phases, or declare at the outset that we are dealing
with a certain historical period, as e.g. with modern
capitalistic production."
Nevertheless, Marx continues, certain elements in
production are common to all epochs, in that no
production is conceivable without them; there is
also, of course, a general uniformity in conditions
of production in so far as "the subject, mankind,
and the object, nature, remain the same". All stages
of production, therefore, "have certain landmarks in
common, common purposes". What marks the
specific characteristics of a particular stage "are the
points of departure from the general and common"
(pp. 268-269). After developing these points, Marx
concludes:
"Bourgeois society is but a form resulting from
the development of antagonistic elements, some
relations belonging to earlier forms of society are
frequently to be found in it but in a crippled state
or as a travesty of their former self, as e.g. communal
property. . . . The last form always considers its
predecessors as stages leading up to itself and per-
ceives them always one-sidedly, since it is very
seldom and only under certain conditions th.it it is
capable of self-criticism. . . . Bourgeois political
economy first came to understand the feudal, the
ancient and the oriental societies when self-criticism
of bourgeois society had commenced" (p. 301).
In the published preface Marx turns this analysis
round of give the same stages preceding the developed
form of capitalism he is analysing due weight in their
own right. But that he himself did not regard this as
a copmlete picture is made clear by a comment in
the text of the Critique:
"A closer study of the Asiatic, especially of Indian
forms of communal ownership, would show how
from the different forms of primitive communism
different forms of dissolution . . . developed"
(p. 29 n).
This comment is probably related to other notes
Marx made when preparing this work (which were
published in German in 1939 but have not yet been
translated). Here he tentatively distinguishes varieties
of the basic form of economy emerging from different
forms of communal or tribal organisatione.g., in
addition to the Asiatic (or oriental), the ancient (or
slave), the Germanic, and possibly the Slavonic
each tending to produce a somewhat different form
of the social division of labour: e.g., the separation
of town and country in the "ancient mode", the
failure to separate agriculture and crafts in the
Indian village community leading to a closed circuit
and inability to draw off the surplus except for
marginal purposes. It was this last point, the specific
nature of what he called the "village system"
within Asiatic empires that underlay Marx's differen-
tiation of the "Asiatic mode".
Present trends in Marxist historiography, there-
fore, do not run counter to Marx but rather pursue
lines upon which he himself had begun to embark.
If there have been any un-Marxist trends these lie in a
too rigid and dogmatic use of a single sentence as
comprising the whole of the Marxist approach.
Earlier Forms
In this connection it was underlined in discussion
that one of the main dangers, when attempting to
assess earlier forms of social development, is to look
at them through the eyes of the present, in terms of
conditions proper to the class struggle in capitalist
society and the nature of the transition to socialism.
As Marx and Engels always stressed, it is only in the
modern capitalist era that the class struggle is nar-
rowed down to the point where two great classes
confront each other; capitalist productive relations
must be overthrown before socialist relations can be
established. Before this epoch, however, there are
often a variety of classes and class antagonisms on
the basis of a variety of forms of ownership and
exploitation, and new productive relations can grow
within the old framework; i.e., capitalist relations of
production develop within feudal society, which
implies in turn a gradual and perhaps very lengthy
disintegration of feudalism.
It is, then, obviously incorrect to see the transition
from one earlier stage of social development to
another in terms of a straightforward clash in which
the old ruling class is ousted by a new ruling class,
already fully fledged, which forthwith assumes
undisputed control of the state. There are no
historical grounds for conceiving of slave-owners
ousted in straight conflict with feudal lords, nor for
that matter feudal lords deposed single-handed by
the urban bourgeoisie. The same considerations
extend to the realm of ideology. To regard new ideas
which come to the forefront and play an important
role as essentially the ideology of the rising exploiting
class is to fly in the face of the historical record. In
sixteenth-century Europe, for instance, Protestant
ideas were primarily the property of the old exploited
class, the peasantry and poorer artisans, and came
to the forefront as an expression of the tension of
the times and general sharpening of various aspects
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of class Struggle. Only as the new exploiting class
takes form and takes over does this ideology become
transformed into a new ruling ideology. (There is a
parallel in the early history of Christianity in the
ancient world.)
The bourgeois revolution in England may serve
as an example. If the work of Maurice Dobb and
Christopher Hill has shown anything it is the com-
plexity of the developments leading up to this, in
particular, changing productive relations and class-
differentiation, but also the role of the state and the
development and interplay of religious ideas. There
had been trade and towns for centuries (as of course
already in the ancient world) but though merchant
wealth and influence grew, it did not necessarily find
an outlet in industry; the merchant class was, to a
considerable extent, parasitic on the ruling order and
feudal society remained rooted in the land. It was, in
fact, changing relations of production in agriculture,
spreading through the countryside, that were deci-
sive, that determined the possibility of a break-
through to which the towns only contributed; while
so far as industry was concerned it was the upthrust
of the petty commodity producer that counted most
in the development of capitalist relationswhat
Marx called the "really revolutionary way". Feudal
powers had, to a considerable extent, become central-
ised in the state, the monarchy, which had taken over
many of the functions of the old feudal ruling class;
hence the revolution was directed against the mon-
archy and the chief of these powers curbed or
removed, clearing the way for the development of
capitalist productive relations. But there remained a
long formative period before the industrial bour-
geoisie came to maturity and to power.
Productive Relations
All this helps to get earlier stages of class society
into perspective. Then productive relations in agri-
culture were also decisive, towns and trade usually
marginal ("trading nations, properly so called, exist
in the ancient world only in its interstices". Capital,
I, 51), and the role of centralised states in maintain-
ing old forms of social organisation often important.
A variety of forms of ownership and exploitation
often coexisted. How, in these circumstances, can the
stage of socio-economic development be defined?
The key, as Robert Browning stressed (Marxism
Today, October 1961) is not the proportion of the
population engaged in particular branches of pro-
duction, but rather "the productive relations in those
branches of production where high surplus values are
produced". This marks the predominant form of
production which largely determines the whole
complex of social institutions; it is the basis on which
there arises a whole superstructure of political, legal
and cultural forms. The way in which the surplus is
appropriated has the closest bearing on the nature
and rate of social development.
Technological advance is, of course, of primary
importance. But the existence of certain tools does
not necessarily bear witness to a particular level of
social organisation, as Gordon Childe was always
careful to point out. The discovery and use of iron
made possible a great extension of the area under
cultivationin Africa and Asia for instanceby
comparison with the Bronze Age when cultivation
was confined to narrow strips and developed most
highly in fertile river valleys. But new methods of
production and social organisation did not develop
universally on similar lines. Iron tools could, how-
ever, in favourable circumstances make for a high
development of agricultural production and the
increase of the surplus. These were the factors of
importance to economic and social development, i.e.,
not the mere existence and use of the tools but the
ways in which they could be and were put to use in
the productive process.
Historical Materialism
To begin at the beginning, the historical materialist
approach distinguishes production, which is the
basic activity of human beings, as the foundation of
all human societies. At a primitive stage of social and
technological development men engage in production
in common, having equal access to the means of
production. This is the stage of primitive communal-
ism which Engels, very much on the lines adopted by
L. H. Morgan, divided into a lower stage of
"savagery" (in turn sub-divided into a lower, middle
and higher) and a more advanced stage of "bar-
barism" (with a similar triple sub-division). Engels
defines the primitive stages of humanity as those
when men appropriated finished natural products
and acquired knowledge of cattle raising, agriculture
and new methods of increasing the productivity of
nature by human agency (Origin of the Family (1884),
ch. 1).
Class society, the social division of labour, arises
when a section of society gains control over the basic
means of production and so over those engaged in
production and the product. Men now stand in
different relations to the means of production and so
in different relations to each other, relations of
dominance and dependency. These find expression
in the fact that the surplus available from production
is appropriated, in kind or in money, by the exploit-
ing class, either directly or through a state apparatus.
There are, as Marx suggested, a variety of ways
in which the process of disintegration of primitive
communalism may take place, just as there are vary-
ing forms of primitive society. The point emphasised
in discussion was how relatively easy it is for old
bonds to be loosened once production reaches a
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certain level and a surplus becomes available, and
for a primitive form of class society to emerge. For
instance, a priesthood can gain special rights, elders
can gain domination over juniors, clan chieftains can
turn landlord. With the social division of labour,
customthe oldest and strongest bond of primitive
societiesgives place to differing rights and obliga-
tions enforced by new forms of government. It is not
profitable to push back the frontiers of feudalism
too far, wherever any form of social division of
labour is found, for this is to deprive the term of all
meaning. But as soon as the social division of
labour comprises exploitation of a dependent class
of producers this marks the first stage of class society.
What form does this exploitation take? At this
stage society is still predominantly agrarian, economic
life is relatively regionalised and localised (though
this does not exclude some trade and towns or even
some form of money), technology is relatively back-
ward. The basic form of exploitation Is that of tillers
of the soil by those who have succeeded in getting
the community's rights over the land it tills vested in
themselves, or are in a position to draw off the
surplus, though this is not to say that there are not
free commoners or peasant proprietors as well.
These are the characteristics of feudalism but as yet
in a relatively embryonic form so that the earliest
stage of class society may, perhaps, best be called
"proto-feudal".
Development of Class Society
From this first stage of class society there are
various directions of development, depending on
internal conditions, external factors, natural re-
sources. These may favour, for instance, a highly
centralised appropriation of the surplus by a priestly
order, appropriation by rising cities or other ruling
groups, implying centralised forms of organisation
and the early rise of forms of state power. Marx, for
instance, emphasised the importance of certain
physical resources, noting that "it is the necessity of
bringing a natural force under the control of society,
of economising, of appropriating or subduing it on a
large scale by the work of man' s hand, that first
plays the decisive part in the history of industry".
As examples of resulting social relations he cited
Egypt and India, noting that the need to predict "the
rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian astronomy
and with it the domination of the priests, as directors
of agriculture", while "one of the material bases of
the power of the state over the small disconnected
producing organisms in India was the regulation of
the water supply" {Capital, I, pp. 521-523).
The creation of a strong centralised state super-
imposed on a society with a low general level of
economic development, and perhaps persisting forms
of clan organisation, is likely to have a crystallising
and arresting effect. For instance, the central govern-
ment in China controlled public works but other-
wise, a few larger towns excepted, the whole empire
"was resolved into villages"; this made for the
retention of old forms of production unchanged, a
tendency reinforced by the fact that state taxes were
payable in kind {Selected Corr. p. 70). Here, then,
Marx is ascribing the stability of despotic forms of
rule predominantly to a form of the division of
labour, dependent in part on such physical features
as large tracts of fertile land, which remained rela-
tively constant, the methods of extracting the surplus
being such as to consolidate old rather than develop
new productive relations. Once, of course, there is a
strong state power the accumulation of merchant
wealth and its flow into industry or agriculture can
be checked, ways being found of siphoning back the
surplus and maintaining the traditional balance.
The Problem of Arrested Development
This is the key problem that engaged Marx and
must concern all Marxist historianswhy develop-
ment in the Orient, for so long so far in advance of
the rest of the world, was arrested; why the full
chain of development: earlier societiesfeudalism
capitalism, was only completed in Europe. Here it
was noted that Gordon Childe, broaching the
question from the angle of pre-history, suggested the
following factors: (a) natural unevenness of histori-
cal development, i.e., that only in certain regions are
there the conditions for an initial development of
civilisation; {b) the interaction between cultures
drawn together by trade, communications, etc.;
(c) the "leapfrogging" whereby formerly backward
societies which escape the crisis and breakdown of
older, more advanced, systems take over from them
at a potentially higher level.
An example Childe developed is that of Europe,
profiting from the early development of a metallur-
gical industry in nearby Egypt and Mesopotamia
"where alone the economic and social preconditions
for the initial foundation of a metallurgical industry
existed". That they could make use of the products of
this, and develop the mining of ore for a guaranteed
market, exempted Europeans "from paying the
heavy price of starting such an industry from
scratch" in terms of the rigid class distinctions and
despotic rule of Egypt of the Pharaohs, which
eventually fettered development and ended in break-
down ("The Bronze Age", Past and Present, No. 12,
19571.
The fact that any more elaborate society (before
the industrial capitalist), when it collapses, tends to
lapse into a feudal form also suggests that this is the
most primitive form of class society^temples decay,
trade and towns deteriorate, leaving a set-up of a
feudal type. On the other hand, where slavery
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develops as the basic form of productive relations in
the classical world it is on the foundation of a
relatively high level of development; for instance, of
trade and of crafts, with the existence of a monetary
system and a system of usury. The process in
Europe was aided by a variety of special conditions;
for instance, there were in close proximity to Greece
other societies at a much lower level from which
slaves could be obtained. Hence the use-value of
their labour power was increased by the mere fact
of transporting them to an area of more advanced
technology, and since they were brought across the
sea to a land encircled by mountains escape was not
easy. This is one of the main contributory factors in
ensuring that a high surplus value can be obtained
(otherwise slaves must be chained, which is a
hindrance, or well treated which is expensive);
while the other is that the general technical level of
production should be relatively high. Here is the
decisive reason for rejecting the view that slavery is
the first stage of class society to develop. On the
contrary, slavery develops within the framework of
proto-feudal relations, and only in particular condi-
tions becomes the predominant mode of production.
Vv'hen it collapses, society lapses into a feudal form
if at a potentially higher level of development.
Turning to Africa, it was noted that there are
traceable forms of vassalage developing directly out
of clan or tribal society, side by side with continuing
primitive forms of organisation and government. As
elsewhere in the ancient world, commodity produc-
tion was restricted, there were neither a reservoir of
detribalised labour nor the techniques of using it.
Early feudal type states were very stable, lasting from
800 to 900 years, with an economy sufficiently
developed to support a quite complex social system
including an embryonic civil service and army.
There was, however, a notable absence of free urban
communities. Moreover, forms of landholding and
relations of dominance and dependency differed so
greatly from those in feudal Europe that it does not
seem useful to apply the same term to them.
To take another point, it was suggested that it is
possible to particularise developments during the
breakdown of primitive communalism after the
agrarian revolution. First, there is the consolidation
of forms of clan society based on kinship which cover
some inequalities but can remain very stable over
long periods, especially in out of the way conditions,
e.g., Scotland. Second, the breakdown of clan society
in the aspect that has been called the Heroic Age
which often acts as a bridge to the establishment of
feudal relations at a relatively high level. This is
found at times of migration and new settlement, an
essential condition being that tribal peoples are in a
position to plunder and learn from older and
richer societies; as, for instance, in the Greek
Homeric period and the period when the Germanic
tribes invested Rome and swept across Western
Europe^while it is possible that such a stage can be
discerned in Africa, when the Polynesians broke out
over the Pacific and so on.
The Road to Feudalism
This was the direct road to feudalism as it was
traversed in parts of Europe after the collapse of the
Roman Empire. There was a whole variety of
factors contributing to continued advance in
Europe, towards a developed form of feudalism,
which is often typifiedthough with much too much
emphasis on purely legal formsby Norman
England. Precisely because this is the connotation
of feudalism it is difficult to apply the term without
much qualification to the Chinese Empire or to
Africa. This is now the main problem, with which
presumably Marx was preoccupied when he postu-
lated several variations in the basic form of economy
that emerges from disintegrating communal societies
of different types. On these fronts a plea was made
for rehabilitation of Marx's "Asiatic mode"or
even several modesto enable a separation out of
widely differing regional variations. At the same time
it is essential to keep clear the basic common factors
in such formations even though they may exhibit
many secondary variations; or, to put it another
way, the transition from communal society to the
first stage of class society is fundamentally the same
transition though it may take place in x number of
ways.
This is why it may be useful to postulate the
development of a single basic stage of class society,
calling this perhaps "proto-feudal". From this
regional variations may develop exhibiting essen-
tially the same basic form of exploitation but in
which the creation and drawing off of the surplus
diiTers, implying differing superstructures and rates
of development.
* * *
These were some of the viewspoints advanced
which should be considered as such; there was no
question of formulating a series of conclusions on
which all those present agreed. The aim was rather
to define a general approach to the problem, sup-
ported by evidence from various fields, which could
serve as a contribution to the discussion here and
the basis for further more specialised discussions in
the future. Some of the points will be more fully
developed in later articles, since this is only a digest
from the record of a detailed exchange of views. It is
also hoped that material from discussions in other
countries will become available, for the important
and interesting questions at issue can only be satis-
factorily hammered out as a result of international
study and discussion.
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189
The Week of Marxist Thought
in Fr ance
Phyl Gr iffi th-Hentges
D
URING the past few months political life
in France has been galvanised into action
unprecedented for many years. The central
problems wereand indeed remainthe situa-
tion in Algeria, the danger of fascism created
by the O.A.S., and the fight to restore democracy.
The atmosphere became particularly tense in
February (a million Parisians attended the funeral
of the eight anti-fascists brutally killed at a big
anti-O.A.S. demonstration) and tension slackened
only when the cease-fire was signed between de
Gaulle and the Provisional Government of the
Algerian Republic.
m the middle cf il.is period the Week of
Marxist Thought was organised in Paris (Decem-
ber 7th-14th) around the j;eiicral theme:
"Humanism and Dialectics". This crystallised an
upsurge of intellectual reflection provmg the need
for a discussion of the philosophical problems of
the day associated with the increasing political
activity of the working class and the people as
a whole.
It showed the attraction that Marxism holds
not only for the working class, but for large
numbers of intellectuals and professional people
doctors, schoolteachers, technicianswho, un-
decided as to their future in present-day France,
seek a new way forward.
The result was that 6,000 students and intellec-
tuals gathered on the first day to hear Roger
Garaudy and Jean Pierre Vigier debate with Jean
Paul Sartre and Jean Hyppolite. Never had the
halls of the Mutualite, traditional meeting house
in the Latin Quarter, seen such crowds. There
were students on the stairs, in the corridors, in
annexeswherever they could hear the over-flow
loudspeakers, and it was a long time before the
queues in the street gave up the idea of getting in.
These young people, reputed by some to be twist-
crazy, turbulent hoodlums, listened to two hours
of debate on the dialectics of nature in total
silence.
In all, some 20,000 people attended the various
conferences during this Week, organised by the
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Marxistes
(C.E.R.M.) together with the Paris District Com-
mittee of the French Communist Party and the
Union of Communist Students.
There were five big meetings which took the
form of a debate between Marxists and non-
Marxists :
Are dialectics merely a law governing history
or also a natural law?
The historian and his time;
Humanism and Cinema;
Humanism and the human being;
Conduct of revolt and militant action.
At the final meeting at the Mutualite, Roger
Garaudy, director of the C.E.R.M. and member of
the political bureau of the Communist Party,
summed up the results of the Week, and Waldeck
Rochet, deputy general secretary of the Party con-
cluded on the theme: The Communist Party and
Culture.
At the same time., the big debates were accom-
panied by forty-odd study circles for students at
which Marxist university professors led the dis-
cussion on various subjects connected with the
university programmes. Here the aim was neither
a debate nor a purely university course, but rather
to give the students a Marxist orientation on a
given subject and to discuss questions of method.
The wide range of these study circles can be
judged by taking a few of the subjects at random:
The ethics of Kant and Marx;
Can a Marxist understand Pascal?
The role of the state budget;
Phenomenology and praxis;
The role of nucleic acids in heredity;
Pavlov's theory applied to obstetrics;
Mayakovsky;
The class struggle in ancient Greece and Rome;
The crisis of colonialism and problems of under-
developed countries.
The organisers decided to draw in to the work
of the Week not only intellectuals but a much
wider general public, and for this they sought the
help of rUniversite Nouvelle, already well known
for its courses on Marxism. Three conferences
were held at which the teachers of I'Universite
Nouvelle answered questions arising from the big
debates, explaining the basic principles of Marxism
in history, science and philosophy.
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