SIDNEY HOOK
· ... [W]e must not forget that these idyllic village-communi–
ties , inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the
solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the
human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the
unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional
rules , depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies....
· . . We must not forget that these little communities were con–
taminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they sub–
jugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man
the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-de–
veloping social state into never-changing natural destiny... .
· . . England , it is true , in causing a social revolution in Hin–
dustan , was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid
in its manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question.
The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny without a fun–
damental revolution in the social state of Asia?
If
not , whatever
may have been the crimes of England, it was the unconscious
tool of history in bringing about that revolution.!
207
As usual Marx overstates his case. Right about the pervasive
effects of the mode of economic production on a culture , he ignored
the reciprocal influence of a number of other irreducible factors on
the alleged economic base , although giving lip acknowledgment to
their presence . The man who said that the workers had no father–
land disbelieved the evidence of his own century, and died before the
intensifying nationalisms (as well as the economic conflicts) of the
early twentieth century led to what more fittingly can be called the
Second Fall of Man , World War I , than any other historical event.
Marx ignored all the psychological forces of pride, tradition, cultural
autonomy that may lead people to resist modernization and West–
ernization. One may wonder if the fetish of national independence
was worth the nine million lives lost in consequences of the depar–
ture of the British Raj , and cite the complaints of the Sikhs, Mos–
lems, Sinhalese, Tamil minority ethnic groups today, that they are
less safe in their lives and prosperity since the British left. It would
still not serve as a justification for imperial rule imposed on a people
that does not want it . Perhaps the best answer to Marx's tribute to
1.
Karl Marx ,
New York Daily Tribune,
June 25 , 1953. From
The Collected Works of
Marx
&
Engels,
Volume 12 (London and Moscow : Lawrence and Wishart).
