Yes, I heard Kevin Anderson of "News and Letters" and author of "Lenin and
Hegel" speak on the notebooks and their importance at a Socialist Scholars
Conference a couple of years ago. The talk was provocatively titled "Marx
as Multiculturalist." It whetted my appetite for their publication.
Kevin stressed that the Marx of the notebooks is nothing like caricature of
him that we get from some post-Colonialists, etc. I suspect that their
publication will provide a missing link to Lenin's writings on the colonial
world, which can by no stretch of the imagination be interpreted as a
mandate for the "civilizing" mission of Western Europe.
Louis Proyect
At 12:14 PM 10/30/97 -0600, you wrote:
>In the last two years of his life Marx was engaged in an intensive study
>of pre-industrial cultures coming under colonial rule. The first
>comprehensive collection of his so-called "ethnological notebooks" will be
>published next year by Yale, under the title "Property and Patriarchy."
>The editor is David Smith, a sociologist at the University of Kansas.
>Smith, who recently lectured here about this, finds that Marx frequently
>expressed his dismay at the social destruction underway, and his sense
>that something valuable was being wiped out by European civilization.
>According to Smith, Marx was especially impressed by the gender equality
>he found in tribal societies. This text will represent Marx's most mature
>thinking on colonialism. Smith's editing project is huge, since
>apparently Marx composed these notes rather chaotically in six languages.
>I think this may be a very important resource from an historical and
>political standpoint, and may require us to revise our thinking about what
>a "marxist" position is on this subject.
>
>
