Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism

This is a difficult book to summarize and I am far from being qualified to critique it. The amount of historical research involved in the book is phenomenal (at least from my perspective) and he has done much to periodize these gigantic historical formations. The most important attribute, I suppose, is the method of study itself. He doesn't really have any grand conclusions--in fact he basically ends the book by saying that it is just a prologue to the Lineages book. There is a sort of assertion about the slave mode of production that he makes early on, but it is really just a hypothetical observation that he makes. He basically claims that the slave mode of production--as it existed in Classical Greek civilization and was perfected during Roman Antiquity--has a significant cultural effect. Because work is denigrated (as being something only the lower classes do) and the intensification of labor is usually accomplished by making slaves work harder or getting more of them, the impetus to create labor saving technology is never developed in these time periods. Though he doesn't really spend a lot of energy proving this (although it is always difficult to prove a negative) the assertion is a thumbnail of what the book (and likely the sequal) seems to argue: that there are discernible social and historical forces that cause events to unfold in a particular way. I don't know exactly how to critique this from a historiographic perspective, but the titles of the two books (Lineages and Passages) indicate the most likely critique I can think of: it is a linear narrative of history that proports to explain things in terms of sequential causality. However, as problematic as this might be for some pomo chaos-theory inspired historians, I think it is still an important thing to do. For one thing, most of the time, it seems to work. Certainly there were probably a number of countervailing forces that he doesn't take into account in his sweeping version of history, but he at least draws a broad portrait--both temporally and spatially--of how these societies unfolded.

And he is certainly more rigorous in his descriptions of causality than Marshall McLuhan--who, though I was reading him for the other field, ended up being an interesting foil for the discussion Anderson is having. Unlike McLuhan who basically has two different categories (literate and non-literate) that explain virtually every difference in any society, Anderson is much more careful in considering the determining forces of history, often showing the contradictions that emerge the larger you extend your observation. He is also extremely concerned with particularities and explaining the divergences between different historical developments--calling northern and south eastern europe "control" cases in the study of these historical development. He then goes on to carefully consider why the "far North" (i.e. Scandinavia, esp. Sweden) developed into feudalism despite being left out of the Roman empire and why the area "south of the Danube" (i.e. the balkens, etc.) didn't ever fully develop into feudal economies despite the fact that they were central to late Roman expansion. A good summary of most of the book is available at various places in the last chapters--though he never engages in a total summary--but he is roughly arguing that, in just about every case, there are historical limits to any cobination of social and economic forces (or in the more Marxian terminology, to any mode of production). It would seem that the rather trite cliche "what doesn't kill you will make you stronger" is often reversed for the development of these societies, the new saying being, "what makes you stronger will eventually kill you." This seems to be what he inevitably argues about any conjuncture:

Greek civilization develops into the first radical democracy, where virtually everyone has equal voice--except that the only way this somewhat classless society is able to exist is that it is based on slave labor. In other words, there is actually a large, disenfranchised majority that serves as the sort of class boundary that allows for Greek democracy to flourish. However, the radically democratic structures don't travel well so as Greece tries to expand, there is no way to keep the geographically defined democracy and the empire all at once. Hence there are internal limits to the development of this mode of production. These are overcome by the Roman Empire, but only for a while: and so on and so forth. In the east, there is the same story: the area "south of the danube" is able to survive the fall of Roman Empire, and repelling most of the invaders that helped precipitate its fall. But by doing so, it actually ends up hindering its own development because it is never forced to give up its antiquated (and liminal) mode of production. Hence all it really does is stave off the collapse for a millinea or so--and to create a situation where the collapse is far more total and debilitating than the seemingly creative destruction of the Roman synthesis with its Germanic invaders.

This points to another key theme in the book. Rooted in what seems to be a sort of enlightenment conception of the progress of civilization (despite its starts and stops, failures and success), Anderson seems to argue that there are a set of necessary stages in the course of development and that the test case of proper development is still Western Europe. Furthermore, he seems to believe--probably very much like Marx--that there is a necessary destruction of antiquated modes of production in order to move forward. I don't think he isn't on solid ground here--and couldn't critique him for it historically either way--but I do note that this is a fairly popular interpretation of the course of historical development. It is also the sort of rallying cry of the neoliberals who have little concern for forms of life or cultural heritage (except when they are "ours") and believe strongly that the rest of the world should simply strive to imitate us or quit complaining. This is probably not entirely borne out by Anderson's analysis--and to be sure he is much more interested in the particularities and combinations of social forces that lead to various historical developments than the sort of "democracy and capitalism for everyone" that has been promoted for the past century or so. He just seems to set the stage for that type of reading by assuming a sort of propriety to feudal development. Perhaps some of this will be nuanced in the next book, but for now, I am just noting this similarity.

Another note: along with the stuff on McLuhan I also read some James Carey articles about Harold Innis. I don't know enough about Innis to properly give a set of thoughts on him, but I have read enough to know that I am interested in including some more sustained readings of his work in the larger version of the field statements. He was McLuhan's mentor, but had a much broader understnding of the role of communication in society. He seems to precede people like Mattelart in looking past the medium and considering communication in general and, more importantly, the way that institutions and power relations constrain the development of those media. He is still similar to McLuhan, however, in his discussion of the bias of communication. The distinction between spatially binding and temporally binding media is most commonly referred to. Basically, the temporally binding media tends to not travel as well--either because it is on a bulky substance or it is part of an oral culture that can't guarantee unaltered transmission--so the focus is on the lineage of the history of the society. Thus the binding tends to be a sort of deep cultural heritage, concerned with its continuity through history. The opposite, it would seem, is true of the spatially binding media, which travel better and tend to encourage and enable geographical expansion at the expense of historical perspective. I think these are helpful distinctions if they aren't understood essentially and would like to look into them for the fields.