A Marxist Archaeology RANDALL H. McGUIRE Binghamton University State University of New York Binghamton, New York With a New Prologue by the Author PERCHERON PRESS A Division of Eliot Werner Publications, Inc. Clinton Comers, New YorkPROLOGUE TO THE PERCHERON PRESS EDITION | wrote in the preface to A Marxist Archaeology that I was convinced I had com- pleted the book ata moment that was both too late and too early—too late after the fall of the Soviet “Empire” and a decade of conservatism had blinded people to Socialist ideal, and t00 early before the end of history was revealed to be a sim- mering mirage and the promises of capitalism the delight of few and the ruin of many. Ten years later the moment may be too late but itis no longer too early. AS 1 write this prologue, the United States is still reeling from the destruction of the World Trade Center and the triumph of capitalism has not vanguished all of its foes. Its also clear that in China the promise of capitalism has been realized in @ dictatorship every bit as oppressive as that of Chairman Mao but without the secu rity ofthe socialist regime. In the lands of the former Soviet Union, the rich have gotten fewer and wealthier and the poor more numerous and poorer. Inthe United States predictions that the boom of the 1990s would never end have been refuted by the cyclical ratty of capitalism that Marx described, ‘Ten years after the original publication ofthis book, archacologsts may still ask ‘why we should seriously consider Marxism at this time, The two answers to that question remain the same as they did in 1992. The first answer addresses the place of Marx's thought atthe davm of the twenty-first century and the second addresses the value of Marxism forthe study of archaeology. I will briefly comment on both answers inthis prologue ané I will use this prologue to react to some of the cities of the book and update some ofits themes. The volume itself remains the lengthy answer tothe second question MARXISM AT THE DAWN OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Many scholars today claim we live in a postindustrial world that is fundamentally different from the capitalism that Marx described. 1 would argue that the modern world fits Marx's analysis of capitalism better than the world of the second half of the twentieth century or perhaps even Marx’s own world‘The twenty-first century begins with a world more industrial than it has ever been in its history. Industrial production, however measured, exists at higher lev- cls today than in the past. Whether we speak of the number of people employed in industry, or the number of goods produced, or the distribution of factories around the world, there are more, We may speak of specific cities or even nations as be ing postindustrial, that is, as having changed from economies based on industrial Production to economies based on service, information, or whatever. Perhaps we should not be surprised thatthe scholars who view the world this way tend to come from these places, but in no real objective sense is the world postindustria For much of the second half of the twentieth century, capitalism in the core states of the U.S. and Europe did not fit all of Marx's expectations. In the United States profits increased even as the real wages of the working class rose. Since the late 1970s, however, capitalism has come to look much more like the world of Marx. Workers’ real wages peaked in 1973 and even with the boom of the 1990s they did not recover to these levels—but the level of profits did. The rich do get richer while the poor get poorer. The movement of industrial production out ofthe core states has not resulted in a postindustrial world, but instead in a world like Marx’s with capitalist classes that derive their wealth from the sweat of an impov- crished working class that cannot afford the fruits of its own labor. What has changed is the scale ofthese relations with the classes no longer living in different neighborhoods of London, but on different sides of the world, ‘One of the weaknesses of Marx’s analysis was that he did not adequately con- sider imperialism and colonialism. He wrote in a world in which capitalism domi- ‘nated, but it did so through wage labor in the eure states and other forms of labor ‘organization in the peripheries. Marx fixed his gaze on the capitalist labor rela- tions of the core and gave little attention to other labor forms on the periphery, ie, in the colonies. Today wage labor isthe dominant form of labor relations in viru. ally the entire world, Derek Sayer (1987-ix) commented, “Marx's thought lives in so far as it is inter- preted anew by others in light oftheir changing needs.” With this in mind we need to realize that not all of the ways that Marx's thought has been interpreted have been good or desirable, Indeed, some interpretations of Marx's thought have been loathsome, oppressive, pemicious, and despicable. As Klejn (1993) has noted, a Marxist praxis does not guarantee a desirable outcome and it can restrict creative scholarship when applied in a dogmatic way. 1 agree with Sayer that we must remake Marx to fit our time, but 1 would add that we must also remake him to correct the errors and excesses of many of his past interpreters. My answer of how to do this lies in escaping a totalitarian notion of Marxism, by which I mean a notion that in capitalism class exploitation is the source of all exploitation and that a Marxist analysis of class thus accounts for all exploitation. T would argue instead that class exploitation is fundamental in capi- talism and thus an essential component of any analysis of exploitation, but that there also exist other forms of exploitation based on such social factors as gender and race. These different forms of exploitation do not exist independently of each other and people do not experience one without the other. Thus a Marxist analysis of class is one entry point to the study of exploitation that ean allow us to look at the dialectic between these different forms of exploitation, but it is not the only approach to such an analysis and it benefits from other approaches based on gender ‘and race. It was this reserve and relativism on my part that disturbed the critics of the book. CRITIQUES OF A MARXIST ARCHAEOLOGY Predictably the critiques of the book came from two directions. Some reviewers rejected the book as not being a true Marxist work and processual critics expressed concer that the book was not scientific enough in its approach. It is perhaps para- doxical that both of these sets of reviewers had the same core problem with the book. ‘The most severe critics were themselves Marxists. Timothy Taylor (1993) be- ‘moaned the pluralism of the book and argued that it is unclear ifthe work is in fact Marxist. In a Spanish review of the work, Antonio Gilman (1993:7) declared that the only thing “red” about tie book is its cover (“Aparte de su cubierta poco hay de rojo en este libro”) and in a subsequent critique in Antiquity he dismissed the work as relativistic and romantic (Gilman 1998:911-912). For both of these ar- chaeologists Marxism is a single coherent theory of society that provides a rigor- ‘ous methodology for getting atthe “truth” of the past. At best these critics would propel debate into the arcane realms of what Marx really said or did not say; at worst they propose that there can only be one approved interpretation of Marx ‘The power of Marxism for social analysis, critique, and action is that Marx can be read in different ways and his basic and profound insights about society have pro- ‘vided people with tools that they can fit tothe needs of their own times. We have also seen where debates over the correct or approved interpretation of Marx can lead. On this road lies the transformation of Marxism into an oppressive state ide- ‘ology, dogma, and Stalin (Kiejn 1993), Both Marxist and processualist critics lamented the lack of @ materialist, scien- tific approach in A Marxist Archaeology. Elizabeth Brumtfiel (1994) found much ‘of use in the book but disagreed with its abandonment of positivism. In a Spanish review Luis F. Bate and Francisco Noceté (1994) took the epistemology of the ‘volume to task for being idealist. In both cases the critics failed to understand a realist philosophy of science, the dialectic asa relational concept, and Marxism as, ‘theory of intemal relations. They see the world in terms of oppositions —materi- alist versus idealist, objective knowledge versus relativism, oF consciousness ver- sus experience, From the position of a Hegelian dialectic and a realist philosophy ‘of science, these oppositions are false, Realism accepts that there is a real world