William West's Reviews > A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium

I was inspired to read this book by the revelation of just how ignorant I was of world history pre-1895 (blame it on the cinematic foundations of my education). I was also intrigued with it following my recent reading of Zinn's history of the American people. And I must say, it proved a priceless source of information. I had, however, a lot of problems with the book, despite its undeniably splendid passages.



For one thing, the very ambition of the project gives way to certain ludicrousies. How is one to write a complete history of the world's oppressed in one volume? I would be more forgiving of this trap had the author acknowledged the inherent narrativizing simplifications of the historian, as Zinn does while attending to a vastly more modest project. Instead, Harmon offers the “suppressed Marxist truth of all human history!” He connects the parts for us to Know How and Why It Was. To question him would be silly or counter-revolutionary. (Harmon is a prominent member of the Trotskyist Socialism Worker's Party of Britain.) To question his interpretation of Marxism would be to miss-understand Marxism.



And how does Harmon tackle the task of writing the “suppressed” history of the “people of the world”? By writing a populist version of typically imperialist histories; by which I mean he writes a Euro centric history of the oppressed. We follow, basically, the development of the working class in Europe, and later North America with brief, obligatory, mentions of the development of class society in Asia, the Muslim world, and Latin America. After the rise of Greece, there's a 3-5 page chapter on Africa. No mention on Oceania whatsoever.



There's also the problem that a good third of this tome, which is sub-titled “From the Stone-Age to the New Millennium”, is devoted to the twentieth century. Harmon's explanation is that human civilization has changed more in the past one hundred or so years than the rest of history combined. I find this claim spacious and (despite the use of the following term as an accusation by many- such as Harmon- who call themselves “Trotskyists”) characteristic of “vulgar-Marxism” (as opposed to thoughtful Marxism). That everything that matters or ever has mattered can be explained within the parameters of the contemporary working class experience- as if such experience too is not just a “symptom” of the gestations of history- and therefore worthy of more time and attention than the history that conditioned it.



Having said that, the sections on pre-capitalist society are, by far, the best. Indeed, there are some truly great chapters. What I enjoyed the most were Harmon's histories of the rise of the major religions- they manage to remain both entirely materialist and profoundly humane. He relates how the masses of people centuries or millennia ago faced conditions so desperate that they had to turn to the hope of a better world than the one they lived in, and what particular conditions drove them to choose some religions over others, even if that meant entire masses choosing religions that differed from those of their upbringing. The newly urbanized Roman subjects attracted to the monotheism of the Judeo-tradition because it meant worshiping only one deity instead of many- a God who looked down on humanity as a mass, like an urban mass, instead of a Sprite that expected the individual to attend to its one particular role in nature. And the “apostles” and rulers who recognized these tendencies of the masses, and through appeal and guile institutionalized the religions.



Sadly, Harmon is as narrow in his interpretation of the history of capitalist society as he is empathetic and panoramic in his take on certain passages of pre-capitalist society. He incorrectly equates the economic system of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist Soviet bloc with the state capitalism of nationalist bourgeoisie tendencies such as the Arab Baathist movement. What is worse, he simplistically denounces both as “bad”. What start as “revolutions”- be they in the form of the rise of the Bolshevik Party in 1917 or the rebellion of the Iranian masses against the Shaw, devolve into “counter-revolution” as soon as they take any turn that Harmon does not agree with, and Harmon makes no effort to understand the cultural history of each country once he is writing about the period of “global capitalism”- as if the development of global capitalism meant that all national and cultural traits and traditions had ceased to be relevant.



Fortunately, Harmon's conclusion is about the future- and it is a stirring statement about the questions humanity must face itself with if it wants to survive. Even this, however, is indicative of the author's tendency to reduce humanity entire into a simplistic “us.”