According to Steve, this reading of history that Maureen criticized is something of an ideological weapon for further development of the market in China. I hope Steve won't mind my importing one of his PEN-L posts here:
>Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 10:48:10 -1000
>From: Stephen E Philion <philion at hawaii.edu>
>To: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu
>Subject: [PEN-L:11714] [PEN-L] Re: taking stock
>
>James Blaut wrote:
>
>>>Steve, I do know that Chinese historians have been arguing
>for a long time that China was evolving toward capitalism more or less
>parallel to Europe in earlier times. See, for instance, Fu Chu-Fu and Li
>Ching-neng. (1956). THE SPROUTS OF CAPITALIST FACTORS WITHIN CHINA'S
>FEUDAL SOCIETY. Western Washington University Program in East Asia Studies,
>Occasional Paper No. 7; and C. Tung. (1979). AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF CHINA.
>Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co.<<<
>
>Steve writes:
>Yes, it is a familiar argument, the 'sprouts' argument, it's very popular
>in China now because it is used to discuss Capitalist development (or
>'evolution as it were') without having to touch on the messy role of class
>struggle in the process...unless of course it is struggle between
>something vaguely called "China" and imperialism...
>
>Steve
Rakesh wrote:
>So while Marx did not provide a teleological
>explanation for the emergence of capitalism, he was able to turn his
>critique of bourgeois Robinsonades, of rugged individualism, of the
>individual under capitalism free to amass wealth through means uncontrolled
>by the society into a sweeping historical critique of the bourgeoisie's
>precursors--the so called Oriental despot, the basileus and slave taker of
>ancient Greece, the rex and imperator of ancient Rome, the feudal lord of
>medieval Europe, none of whom yet achieved the clear expression of an
>ideology to justify and excuse this anti human and anti social conduct,
>this pro individual and anti social ideology and morality, this morality of
>immorality, this ethic of unethical conduct. Marx's critical anatomy of the
>(Robinsonade) man is thus key to the anatomy of the ape (previous
>historical ruling classes) in which we can now see the progressive tearing
>loose of the individual from social being.
>
>See discussion in Lawrence Krader "Social Evolution and Social Revolution"
>Dialectical Anthropology, vol 1, no 2 (2/1976)
I hope to check out Krader ASAP. I don't think that a refusal of a teleological explanation equals a denial of social evolution (or history) either (a la Foucauldian discontinuities); in fact, precisely the opposite is the case, that is, a teleological explanation makes it difficult to understand the historical character of evolution (social or biological). That said, a problem of focusing on the 'West' is that it allows us to narrate this story of what you call 'the progressive tearing loose of the individual from social being' too neatly, in such a way that we tend to get pulled right back into a teleological mode.
Yoshie