Marx, Marxists, and Economic

Anthropology

JUSTIN A. ELARDO
Economics, Ohio State University;
e-mail: Elardo.1@osu.edu

Abstract
In the 1960s, as a result of the substantivist/formalist debate, economic anthropology became a
recognizable field. Thereafter, Marxian thought became prominent in the field. While Marxian ideas
provided an alternative methodology, they were not new to economic anthropology. This article seeks
to clarify the relationship between economic anthropology and Marxian political economy while also
drawing attention to an area of Marxian theory not commonly explored by heterodox economists.

JEL classification: B14, B24, B25, B31, B49

Keywords: Marxism; economic anthropology; methodology

1. Introduction

Anthropology and Marxist political economy share an important epistemological

characteristic: both fields have a common scope of inquiry. Anthropology and political
economy can be categorized as both “holistic” and “interdisciplinary” (Clammer 1985: 7,
9). From the standpoint of anthropology, any and all human societies are composed of
“culture, kinship [relations], political systems, systems of belief, and economic arrange-
ments” (Clammer 1985: 7). Similarly, while striving to understand human interaction by
evaluating a wide variety of phenomena, political economy evaluates “non-economic
factors such as political and social institutions, morality, and ideology in determining
economic events” (e.g., Riddell, Shackelford, and Stamos 1991: 37). Not surprisingly,
“over the century since Marx’s death, anthropology and Marxism . . . have gotten along
better than one might expect” (Donham 1999: 4).
However, being holistic and interdisciplinary does not mean that both fields share
the same theoretical point of departure. While economic organization is the focal point
of studying political economy, the same principle does not hold for anthropology.
Culture, kinship, symbols, political institutions, and religion represent just a few of the

Author’s Note: The author wishes to thank the RRPE reviewers for their comments as well as editing
suggestions. The author also wishes to thank Robert Elardo and Nicole Iroz for their assistance in the editing
process. Responsibility for any errors in the article rests solely with the author.
Review of Radical Political Economics, Volume 39, No. 3, Summer 2007, 416-422
DOI: 10.1177/0486613407305292
© 2007 Union for Radical Political Economics

416
 Elardo / Marx, Marxists, and Economic Anthropology 417

many theoretical points of departure for anthropologists. Still, some anthropologists

have asserted that “the issue for anthropology is to discover the principles that might ani-
mate economic organization at every level” (Hart 2000: 1017). These anthropologists
can be classified as economic anthropologists, and they constitute the main subject
matter of this article.
This article has two themes. First, the article explores the evolution of Marxian ideas
as they have been developed throughout the history of economic anthropology. In doing
so, the following principles are accepted: (1) Marxian theory represents a “science of
man” (Godelier 1977: 7), an effort at the unification of the social sciences with histori-
cal materialism forming the foundation of the analysis, and (2) the application of
Marxian theory is a sufficient, although not necessary, condition for the study of political
economy.
Second, this article argues that economic anthropology and political economy essen-
tially occupy the same theoretical space. “Economic anthropology (and economics or
political economy) is made possible by our historical experience of industrial capitalism.
. . . The history of precapitalist economies can reveal elements of the basic categories
of economic life” (Hart 1983: 108). Furthermore, Marx’s method and his efforts to apply
his method point to the need for a type of economic anthropology. Therefore, for het-
erodox political economists, the exploration of Marxian ideas in economic anthropology
represents an important investigation.

2. The Formalist/Substantivist Debate1

No discussion of the history of economic anthropology would be complete without a

discussion of the formalist/substantivist debate. While lacking a theoretical resolution, the
epistemological features of the debate stimulated the interest of Marxian theorists.
Initially stimulated by Polanyi (1968) during the late 1950s with his paper “The
Economy as an Instituted Process,” the substantivists’2 main thrust was that formal tech-
niques used to study capitalist economies are not applicable to the study of noncapitalist
economies. According to the substantivists, while the formal model appears to generate a
universal method, it has entirely too many limitations.
The substantivists preferred an alternative approach where the “meaning of economic
derives from man’s dependence for his living upon nature” such that “his natural and social
environment” fulfills “the means of material satisfaction” (Polanyi 1968: 122). Markets are
often the exception to the rule, requiring that the theorist understand the nature of the “eco-
nomic” and “noneconomic” institutions (Polanyi 1968: 123). Under some circumstances,
the economy may be embedded in “kinship relations, whereas in other places religious
institutions may organize the economy” (Wilk 1996).
The formalists3 adamantly disagreed with the substantivists, linking their argument to
the “culture explains everything camp” (Wilk 1996: 9). Emphasizing the individual, the

1. This overview of the formalist/substantivist debate is not comprehensive. Rather, it is intended to be an

outline of the general propositions of the debate. For more extensive summaries, see Wilk (1996) and Elardo
(2003).
2. See Elardo and Campbell (2006) for a formal, substantivist critique of the formalist model.
3. The five main formalists were Edward LeClair Jr., Harold Schneider, Scott Cook, Robbins Burling, and
Frank Cancian.
418 Review of Radical Political Economics / Summer 2007

formalists employed the neoclassical rational choice model, claiming that the model had
universality implications; “general maximization theory could be applied in any case”
(LeClair and Schneider 1968: 8).

3. The Reappearance of Marxism and its

Relationship to the Great Debate

The debate ended with both sides methodologically uncompromising and unable to
reach consensus. In the aftermath, Marxists,4 particularly the French Marxist school,5 came
to dominate the field (Isaac 1993: 229). Given the materialist origins of the substantivist
argument, many reasonably gravitated toward Marxian thought. Less obvious, “Scott Cook
and some of the other formalists” became Marxists (Isaac 1993: 229). Clearly, Marxian
thought offered the formalists and the substantivists a solution to their methodological
predicament.
Neither the formalist nor the substantivist arguments were acceptable to the French
Marxists. The French Marxists correctly identify the formal approach as operating within
the context of “liberal economics” or the “historical and political attempt . . . to demon-
strate that economics is ruled by ‘natural’ and ‘universal’ laws” (Meillassoux 1972: 93).
By association, “the formalist arguments of the economists thus turn out to be both an
apology for the market economy and an ethnocentric prejudice in favor of their own
economic system” (Godelier 1988: 185). The same general Marxian criticisms of liberal
economics also apply to formalism.
The French Marxists readily acknowledge that their criticism of the formalists echoes
that of the substantivists. They argue, however, that they do not owe an intellectual debt of
gratitude to the substantivists because the ideas developed by “Polanyi and his associates”
were not “original” (Godelier 1988: 179). Marx foresaw the substantivist argument. While
the substantivists were borrowing from Marx’s materialist focus, limitations in the sub-
stantive method demonstrated that they were not Marxists. The substantivist “typology
limits itself to recording and classifying visible aspects of the functioning of different eco-
nomic and social systems by means of superficial and mixed categories” (Godelier 1977:
21–22). As a result, the substantivists did not “set out to discover the reasons why the
process of production of material means is ‘lodged’ within these . . . relations” (Godelier
1988: 193). Therefore, with respect to social relations, “he [Polanyi] is unable to discover
their origin nor their organic relationship” (Meillassoux 1972: 96).
For the French Marxists, overcoming the substantivists’ weak form of materialism
meant that “there is no question of returning to Marx” (Godelier 1977: 2). “In adopting
Marx’s materialism as the epistemological horizon of critical work in the social sciences,
we shall arrive at a position where the distinction and differences between anthropology
and history disappear” (Godelier 1977: 2). The French Marxists, and arguably all Marxists,
desire to overcome the categorization of the social sciences into narrowly defined disci-
plines. Marx’s method provides a basis from which this desire may be fulfilled.

4. Hart (1983) has compiled a comprehensive selection of Marxian contributions to economic anthropol-
ogy, while Bloch (1985) provides a detailed discussion of Marxism and anthropology.
5. The French Marxists included Claude Meillassoux, Maurice Godelier, Emmanuel Terray, Pierre-Philippe
Rey, and Georges Dupre.
 Elardo / Marx, Marxists, and Economic Anthropology 419

4. Marx the Economic Anthropologist

Marx begins his depiction of the method of political economy by criticizing bourgeois
economics for failing to properly develop the “underlying, general relations” of which the
larger whole is composed (Marx 1993: 100). While the bourgeois economist correctly
begins his analysis by looking at the population, he or she incorrectly takes the population
as given. Instead, the population and all other underlying characteristics must be under-
stood in their actual “concrete” form (Marx 1993: 101). To determine the “concrete,” how-
ever, requires an acceptance of the population and all subcategories as abstractions to be
studied. As Marx notes, the strength of early political economists such as Smith lies in the
ability to “begin with the living whole, with population, nation” and “conclude by discov-
ering through analysis a small number of determinant, abstract, general relations such as
division of labour, money, value, etc.” (Marx 1993: 100). The concrete then “is concrete
because it is the concentration of many determinations” (Marx 1993: 101).
How then is the concrete identified?

The simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, more-
over a population producing in specific relations; as well as a certain kind of family, or
commune, or state, etc. It can never exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation
within an already given, concrete, living whole. (Marx 1993: 101)

It is through the “specific relations” that the door to identifying the “concrete” is opened
(Marx 1993: 101). The path to identifying the “determinant, abstract, general relations,”
which support the derivation of the concrete, requires that each epoch of human history be
clearly understood. Each epoch contains unique characteristics. The impact those charac-
teristics have on an abstraction clarifies the actual role of the abstraction within the
specific economic system and shapes the changes of that abstraction across epochs.
Discussing labor, Marx provides a depiction of how studying history identifies an abstrac-
tion and clarifies that abstraction within the scope of specific historic relations. For Marx,
labor is the one constant that exists in all social formations. It is necessary for human
survival throughout all epochs. Consequently, labor represents the ultimate abstraction,
achieving its sharpest clarity when seen in the most advanced capitalist economies.
Describing labor in a capitalist system, Marx says, “As a rule, the most general abstrac-
tions arise only in the midst of the richest concrete development, where one thing appears
as common to many, to all” (Marx 1993: 104). For example, in capitalism, the great major-
ity of people are easily interchangeable wage laborers. Wage labor as a social relation,
although specific to capitalism, creates the appearance of being omnipresent not only in
capitalism but also throughout human history. The result is that labor easily loses uniqueness
within capitalist social relations. The solution then is to identify “the specific character of
labour” (Marx 1993: 105).
The following quotation helps clarify the importance of Marx’s argument regarding
the “the specific character of labour”: “this example of labour shows strikingly how even
the most abstract categories, despite their validity—precisely because of their abstractness—
for all epochs, are nevertheless, in the specific character of this abstraction, themselves
likewise a product of historic relations, and possess their full validity only for and within
these relations” (Marx 1993: 105). While human beings engaged in the act of labor are a
420 Review of Radical Political Economics / Summer 2007

feature of all societies, labor does not have the same “character” across all societies.
Consequently, abstract features of human history must be studied within the context of the
existing society and as a by-product of the historic process itself.
Marx’s materialism seems to prompt the need to study history and economic anthro-
pology.6 This is made clear in The German Ideology7 when Marx and Engels (1998)
describe the different precapitalist “stages of development in the division of labour”8 (Marx
and Engels 1998: 38). Marx and Engels studied these “stages” in an effort to further elab-
orate on the specificity of social relations. The depiction of “stages” clearly represents an
example of the merger of economic anthropology and history.
In sum, Marx’s methodology seems inherently predisposed to anthropological queries
and specifically calls for economic anthropology. Unfortunately, there has been a divide.
Marxian political economists have historically focused their attention on the study of
capitalism while anthropologists developed their own epistemological techniques from
which to study precapitalist social relations. Marx’s method of viewing political economy
and economic anthropology as separate but contiguous spotlights the separation of
Marxism and economic anthropology as patently flawed.

5. Marxian Economic Anthropology in the Late Twentieth Century

Returning to late-twentieth-century Marxian thought in economic anthropology, one

finds an eclectic array of applications of Marx’s method. The following short literature
survey is intended to introduce heterodox economists to some of the many different inter-
pretations and applications of Marx’s method in economic anthropology.

5.1 The Economic Anthropology of the French Marxists

For the French Marxists, the application of Marx’s method initiated two distinct paths.
On one hand, theorists such as Meillassoux (1972) adopt an Althusserian position and
begin to study precapitalist societies from the vantage point of Marx’s (1990) analysis as
it appeared in Capital. One fundamental conclusion that they draw is the notion of
“kinship as an ideology” (Meillassoux 1972: 99) such that kinship is designed to “mask”
(Bloch 1985: 167) the inherent class nature of precapitalist societies. On the contrary,
while Godelier (1988) explores the implications of Marx’s method as it relates to formal
economic theory, particularly the substantivist/formalist debate, Godelier also challenges
the depiction of kinship as presented by his French contemporaries. For Godelier, while
kinship does hide exploitative elements of precapitalist societies, for the members of these

6. Beyond The German Ideology and the Grundrisse, Marx’s work demonstrates substantial anthropologi-
cal inquiries in The Ethnological Notebooks of Marx as compiled by Krader (1972); Pre-capitalist Economic
Formations (Marx 1972) and Capital (Marx 1990) also house insights.
7. These principles also appear as part of the “Method of Political Economy” in the Grundrisse (Marx
1993).
8. Bloch (1985: 24) correctly describes the “history of mankind” in The German Ideology as “patchy and
in some respects inconsistent,” while in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels
(1973) attempts to develop a more complete picture.
 Elardo / Marx, Marxists, and Economic Anthropology 421

societies, kinship is more than a “mask”; it is a “genuine fundamental experience” to be

taken at face value (Bloch 1985: 167).

5.2 The “New” Economic Anthropology

The French Marxists do not operate beyond critique. Clammer (1985) and others pro-
pose several criticisms of the French Marxists, their most pertinent criticism being that the
French Marxists are too narrow in their focus. For the new economic anthropologists, the
French Marxists do not adequately address the more macro-oriented impact of capitalism
and colonialism on precapitalist societies. Although the French Marxists identify this
issue, they fail to recognize the degree of variability that will arise between the wide array
of indigenous social arrangements and existing, perhaps neocolonial, capitalist states. As
a result, the new economic anthropologists suggest that economic anthropology must be
transformed into a “dimension of political economy” (Clammer 1985: 11).

5.3 Donham’s Alternative

In the 1990s, Donham (1999) developed an alternative strand of Marxian economic

anthropology, holding “anthropology and Marxism together—in tension” (Donham 1999:
4). For Donham, the most significant concept that anthropology can glean from Marxism
is dialectical materialism. In turn, traditional Marxism needs to look to anthropology for a
better understanding of culture. Furthermore, Donham also seeks to “escape” the all too
common “they” and “us” typology in favor of accepting the idea that “they are us” and “we
are them” (Donham 1999: 15). Given the duality of Marx’s method by recognizing the
importance of studying “them” based on an understanding “us” as “them,” Donham
appears to have closely aligned himself with Marx.

6. Conclusion

A central theme of this short article has been to argue that Marx’s “vision is . . . a
marvelously unifying force” (Hobsbawn 1972: 16) such that any notion of distinguishing
“Marx the economist from Marx the sociologist” or even Marx the economic anthropolo-
gist would be “contrary to Marx’s method” (Hobsbawn 1972: 16). The strength of this
claim becomes evident in that economic anthropology seems to have a prominent role in
the execution of Marx’s method. If the goal is to understand human history and the arrival
and functioning of capitalism, then all past precapitalist, and present noncapitalist,
economic systems must be understood. However, Marx’s work in the area of economic
anthropology was clearly underdeveloped and incomplete. It has been left to the descen-
dants of Marx to fill in the blanks.
The result has been that Marxian economic anthropology has had a significant theo-
retical revival during the past forty years. While this revival has generated considerable
debate, it has also potentially provided invaluable information as to the past, present, and
future development of capitalism. For contemporary Marxian political economists, this
last point represents the most important conclusion that can be taken from this article.
422 Review of Radical Political Economics / Summer 2007

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Justin A. Elardo earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Utah in 2003, prior to joining Ohio
State University as a senior lecturer in 2004. His dissertation, as well as much of his subsequent research, has
focused on economic anthropology and its relationship with heterodox political economy. In addition to eco-
nomic anthropology, he has also taught and conducted research in the areas of political economy, economic
history, and the history of economic thought.