A Marxist History of the World - from Neanderthals to
Neoliberals
by Neil Faulkner
Pluto Press
Pbck ₤18
Anyone attempting to write a history of the world is, one
might think, either a fool or a Hercules, but Faulkner is neither. He takes the
reader on a heady gallop through the epochs, dynasties and empires of history,
providing often illuminating insights and valuable aid to comprehending history
as an interconnected process. For those looking for a broad grasp of human
history in one volume this may be your book. He explains why certain societies
or systems were successful or not, how one supplanted another, and how
geography, social and economic relations influenced that process.
Sadly, once he reaches the 20th century his Trotskyist
blinkers are firmly in place. Predictably, post 1917, the communist parties in
the various countries of the world, with their ,Stalinist dogma‘, are the
reason for the collapse of the world revolutionary movement. He is at one with
right wing historians in quoting Orwell as the authority on the Spanish Civil
War, and writes (p. 237) that the PCE played ,an actively counter-revolutionary
role‘ in that struggle. The clear implication: without the ,treachery‘ of the
CP, there would have been a glorious outcome. In Portugal, too, (p. 278) it
wasn‘t Soares and his mis-named ,Socialist Party‘ that frustrated the
revolution with the help of the CIA and
funding from West German social democracy, but the communists again. I find this
treatment of the Portuguese party‘s forty years‘ heroic struggle against
fascism a wilful travesty. In the Arab world his analysis is the same: ‘The old Arab Communist Parties, following the
Stalinist line, led their supporters to defeat by subordinating working-class
movements to treacherous bourgeois-nationalist leaders.’ (p.289)
Allende, the former Chilean president, who was a convinced
Marxist is described as a ‘left-reformist’ (p. 276) The Polish Solidarnosc movement
is described as ‘a workers‘ revolutionary movement’ (p. 248), ignoring the fact
that Walensa and his cohorts were motivated more by a reactionary
Catholic-nationalism and certainly not by a vision of a democratic workers‘
state.
He describes how on 9
November 1989 ,hundreds and thousands converged on the Berlin
Wall...and began to tear it down‘. No they didn‘t - a few West Berliners,
tanked up with alcohol, sat astride the Wall and began chipping at it, but East
Germans were more interested in their new freedom to travel to the West, not
with dismantling the Wall.
The Soviet system was of course ‘state capitalist’. How the
Trotskyists square a Marxist understanding of capitalism and the Soviet
economic system takes some mental acrobatics. There was much wrong, but as far
as I know, no individuals were salting away vast profits in Swiss bank accounts
and no class lived off profits. Call it state socialism if you like or even bureaucratic
socialism, but capitalism, no.
Despite covering up to 2012, Faulkner completely ignores the
Latin American revolutions and the transformation of that whole sub-continent,
surely a watershed moment of modern history?
The author‘s style is readable and clear, but it does at
times feel more like an evangelical lecture than a joint enterprise of
discovery with the reader. Faulkner concludes his tome with the predictable
mantra of how to achieve world revolution in three easy stages, an appeal that
only undermines any credentials he may claim as a disinterested historian.
END
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