Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-7pwfn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T04:06:28.359Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Communist manifesto, 150 years later

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Antonio Gilman
Antonio Gilman*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, California State University, Northridge CA 91330, USA
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Communist manifesto does not have much to say about the pre-capitalist societies most archaeologists deal with, and still less about the primitive societies that interest most prehistorians. (Nothing from the Manifesto makes its way, for example, into the useful compendium brought together by Godelier (1973).) Much of what Marx and Engels had to say directly about antiquity consists of unpublished sketches and passing references, and even the systematic treatment of The origins of the family, private property and the state (1884) must be considered provisional: the changes that reading Morgan (1877) had on the discussions of the Formen (1857–58) and the Anti-Dühring (1878) can only suggest that the accumulation of positive evidence in the course of a century and a half of archaeological research would have caused Marx and Engels to revise substantially every one of their specific claims.

Keywords

MarxEngelsCommunists1848

Information

Type
Special section: A celebration of 1848
Information
Antiquity , Volume 72 , Issue 278 , December 1998, pp. 910 - 913
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, R. McC. 1966. The evolution of urban society. Chicago (IL): Aldine.Google Scholar
Bender, B. 1991. The roots of inequality, in: Miller, D., Rowlands, M. & Tilley, C. (ed.), Domination and resistance: 83–95. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Bernbeck, R. 1995. Lasting alliances and emerging competition: economic developments in early Mesopotamia, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 14: 1–25.Google Scholar
Childe, V.G. 1936(1951). Man makes himself. New York (NY): Mentor.Google Scholar
De Marrais, E., Castillo, L.J. & Earle, T. 1996. Ideology, materialization, and power strategies, Current Anthropology 37(1): 15–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earle, T. 1991. Property rights and the evolution of’chiefdoms, in Earle, T. (ed.), Chiefdoms: power, economy, and ideology: 71–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Earle, T. 1997. How chiefs come to power: the political economy in prehistory. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engels, F. 1888 (1998). Preface to the English edition of 1888, in The communist manifesto: a modern edition: 81–7. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Fairfield, R.P. (ed.). 1961. The Federalist Papers. New York (NY): Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Finley, M.I. 1973. The ancient economy. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Flannery, K.V. 1986. Guild Naquitz: archaic foraging and early agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico. Orlando (FL): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Frank, A.G. 1993. Bronze Age world system cycles, Current Anthropology 34: 383–429.Google Scholar
Gilman, A. 1984. Explaining the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution, in Spriggs, M. (ed.), Marxist perspectives in archaeology: 115–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Godelier, M. (ed.). 1973. Sur les sociétés précapitalistes: textes choisis de Marx, Engels, Lénine. Paris: Editions Sociales.Google Scholar
Haas, J. 1982. The evolution of the prehistoric state. New York (NY): Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. 1998. Introduction, in The communist manifesto: a modern edition: 3–29. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Hunt, R.C. & Gilman, A. (ed.). 1998. Property in economic context. Lanham (MD): University Press of America.Google Scholar
Keene, A.S. 1983. Biology, behavior, and borrowing: a critical examination of optimal foraging theory in archaeology, in Moore, J.A. & Keene, A.S. (ed.), Archaeological hammers and theories: 137–55. New York (NY): Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, K. & Engels, F. 1848 (1998). The communist manifesto: a modern edition. London: Verso.Google Scholar
MgGuire, R.H. 1992. A Marxist archaeology. San Diego (CA): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, L. 1877. Ancient society, or, researches in the lines of human progress from savagery through barbarism to civilisation. Chicago (IL): C.H. Kerr.Google Scholar
Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C.M., & Pearson, H.W. (ed.). 1957. Trade and markets in the early empires. Glencoe: Free Press.Google Scholar
Sherratt, A. 1993. What would a Bronze Age world system look like? Relations between temperate Europe and the Mediterranean in later prehistory, Journal of European Archaeology 1(2): 1–57.Google Scholar
Sherratt, A. 1997. Climatic cycles and behavioural revolutions: the emergence of modern humans and the beginning of farming, Antiquity 71: 271–87.Google Scholar
Veblen, T. 1934. The theory of the leisure class. New York (NY): The Modern Library.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, I. 1974. The modern world system. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar