Any good Marxist historical revisionists aside from Zinn?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 1:10 pm

By historical revisionism, I mean 'look at history from a new perspective'. Not 'deny that certain facts existed' or 'rewrite history to fit your ideology'.

I mean, A People's History of the United States is a good starting point, but a few things in it made me cringe. ... not the 'Jackson is a genocidal slaveholder' stuff, but the fact that a lot of the historical perspectives he gives are inversions rather than the 'there are no heroes in the war between Spain and Montezuma' perspective that I feel is closer to the truth.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 1:48 pm

Well, there's A People's History of the World and The Making of the English Working Class, though whether or not they're any good is a matter of debate.

[/edit] Wikipedia has a list under Further Reading.

Taishan · Post by **Taishan** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 4:32 pm

A friend recommended A People's History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks but I couldn't get past the first 100 pages or so. I'm not adverse to a different perspective on history or acknowledgement of the 'unnamed' contributions to history but this guy seemed to have a huge axe to grind for no good reason. It maybe that I was not his target audience and so his preaching annoyed me whilst I was trying to choir. Also his 'conclusions' seemed to be nothing more than agreements with previous thinkers/writers on the subject so other than a more modern font and writing style, I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 12:41 am

Taishan wrote:this guy seemed to have a huge axe to grind for no good reason.

This is generally a problem with history. The standard works glorify the victors, and a lot of people think they're all enlightened because they glorify the losers instead.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:08 am

The Assassination of Julius Caesar casts Caesar's story in the mold of class warfare, Caesar being merely the most dramatic of a line of popular reformers murdered for trying to loosen the aristocracy's grip on the economy. It's well worth reading.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:26 am

Chamomile wrote:This is generally a problem with history. The standard works glorify the victors, and a lot of people think they're all enlightened because they glorify the losers instead.

Eh, it's not just that. Some historical figures just rub me the wrong way.

Andrew Johnson and Jackson for example inspire a level of vitriol in me that no other U.S. President does, even though there were eviller ones out there. The life and times of Joseph Stalin cause my lower lip to curl up in a way that Hitler and Pol Pot don't, even though they were worse men. Robespierre is not as bad of a person as Napoleon Bonaparte, yet the latter gets a 'meh' reaction from me while just looking at a picture of the former causes my hackles to rise. Etc. etc.

I can't explain it, it's not rational. I'm just saying, maybe that's what happened to those guys. I mean, Paul Johnson is a guy who went out of his way to find good in George W. Bush of all people, but still finds the time to go into weird rants about Calhoun (who is a douchebag, don't get me wrong) and most non-Jefferson antebellum Democrats. Very odd.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 2:29 pm

Which is funny, because Napolean, despite some clear cut issues, is probably one of the best things to happen to France and Europe in the long run.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:34 pm

If you're in the mood for a different perspective, you might do better with specialist histories - those tracing a single commodity, invention, or profession. If you read histories on rum, sugar, salt, and cod for example, you get a very different picture of the "triangle trade."

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:44 pm

So why does feminism, especially 2nd wave stuff, overlap so much with Marxist conflict theories? Not that I'm using it to critique Marxism or feminism (I am about || shy of being a communist), I'm just wondering what's the connection besides generalized conflict theory -- especially since racial and LGBT studies more-or-less don't seem to be involved as much in it.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:28 pm

Marxist historical materialism is a particularly good fit for feminism in a way that it simply isn't for the gender queer people. There have always been women, so getting access to historical trends to feed into your model of ongoing conflict and synthesis is not hard at all. But our modern gender roles are less than a hundred years old - so going to "queer history" to do Marxist historical analysis on basically involves you having to make everything up.

I mean fuck, Latin doesn't even have a word for "homosexual". Men fuck other men sometimes, but they just don't even have a word for being actually gay. They simply did not divide things up like that.

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:34 pm

First-wave feminism was about suffrage and rights, second-wave feminism is about recognizing male-centered power structures and how they affect women personally. A recent example would be laws restricting access to birth control and abortion, penalizing behaviors in women that are pregnant or might be pregnant, and assigning criminal penalities to women who suffered miscarriage or stillbirth under certain circumstances. Most of the Marxist-leaning feminism stuff comes across as a the transition from first-wave (property rights, voting rights, etc.) to second-wave (gender discrimination, reproductive health rights, etc.), because it argues for a kind of universal equality that cuts across gender lines - all people can vote, all people can own and inherit property, all people have the right to work, etc.

Which is, let us admit, fairly high-concept stuff that gets blown around at meetings but doesn't often quite make it to practice without lots of time and effort. It's also a reflection of the old school where when you pigeon-hole a class of people into a certain role, they sometimes require extreme measures to "break out" - and that's where the revolutionary jargon can really sink in.