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The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests | |
|---|---|
 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | G. E. M. de Ste. Croix |
| Publisher | Duckworth Books (United Kingdom) Cornell University Press (United States) |
| First published | 1981 London (United Kingdom) Ithaca, New York (United States) |
| Type | Book |
| ISBN | 0-8014-1442-3 (hardcover) 0-8014-9597-0 (paperback) |
| Source | https://archive.org/details/classstruggleina0000dest |
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests is a book by British ancient historian G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, first published in 1981 by Duckworth Books in Britain and Cornell University Press in the United States. The seminal work attempts to provide a historical materialist analysis of Ancient Greece.
To Margaret
Preface
The main text of this book is intended not only for ancient historians and Classical scholars but also in particular for historians of other periods, sociologists, political theorists, and students of Marx, as well as for 'the general reader'. The use of Greek text and of anything in Latin beyond very brief quotations is reserved for the Notes and Appendices.
As far as I am aware, it is the first book in English, or in any other language I can read, which begins by explaining the central features of Marx's historical method and defining the concepts and categories involved, and then proceeds to demonstrate how these instruments of analysis may be used in practice to explain the main events, processes, institutions and ideas that prevailed at various times over a long period of history – here, the thirteen or fourteen hundred years of my 'ancient Greek world' (for which see I.ii below). This arrangement involves rather frequent cross-referencing. Some of those who are interested primarily in the methodology and the more 'theoretical', synchronic treatment of concepts and institutions (contained mainly in Part One) may wish for specific references to those passages that are of most concern to themselves, occurring either in other sections of Part One or in the more diachronic treatment in Part Two. Similarly, practising historians whose interests are confined to a limited part of the whole period will sometimes need references to a particular 'theoretical' portion in Part One that is specially relevant. (This will, I think, be clear to anyone who compares II.iv with V.ii-iii, for instance, I.iii with IV.ii, or III.iv with Appendix II and IV.iii.)
The book originated in the J.H. Gray Lectures for 1972/73 (three in number), which I delivered at Cambridge University in February 1973 at the invitation of the Board of the Faculty of Classics. I am particularly grateful to J. S. Morrison, President of Wolfson College, then Chairman of the Faculty, and to M. I. (now Sir Moses) Finley, Professor of Ancient History, for their kindness to me and the trouble they took to make the experiences a delightful one for me and to ensure a large audience at all three lectures.
The J. H. Gray lectures were founded by the Rev. Canon Joseph Henry ('Joey') Gray, M.A. (Cantab.), J.P., born on 26 July 1856, Fellow and Classical Lecturer of Queens' College Cambridge for no fewer than 52 years before his death on 23 March 1932, at the age of 75. His devotion to his College (of which he wrote and published a history), to the Anglican Church, and to Freemasonry (he became Provincial Grand Master of Cambridgeshire in 1914) was equalled only by his athletic interests, in rowing, cricket, and above all Rugby football. From 1895 until his death he was President of the Cambridge University Rugby Football Club; and when that club, in appreciation of his presidency, presented him with a sum of no less than £1,000, he used the money to endow a special lectureship in Classics at Cambridge – 'thus making the gladiators of the football field into patrons of the humaner letters', to quote the admiring and affectionate obituary in The Dial (Queens' College Magazine) no.71, Easter Term 1932. The obituary refers to Gray's 'vigorous Conservative politics' and characterises him as 'an almost perfect incarnation of John Bull in cap and gown'. I am afraid he would have disapproved strongly of my lectures, and of this book; but I am comforted by another passage in the same obituary which speaks of his 'hearty goodwill to all men, even to individual socialists and foreigners'.
This book represents of course a very considerable expansion of the lectures, and it incorporates, almost in their entirety, two other papers, given in 1974: a lecture on 'Karl Marx and the history of Classical antiquity', to the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in London on 21 March 1974, published in an expanded form in Arethusa 8 (1975) 7–41 (here cited as 'KMHCA'); and another lecture, on 'Early Christian attitudes to property and slavery', delivered to the Conference of the Ecclesiastical History Society at York on 25 July 1974, also subsequently expanded and published, in Studies in Church History 12 (1975) 1–38 (here cited as 'ECAPS'). Parts of this book have also been delivered in lecture form at various universities, not only in this country but also in Poland (in June 1977), at Warsaw; and in the Netherlands (in April-May 1978), at Amsterdam, Groningen and Leiden. I have many friends to thank for their kindness to me during my visits to those cities, in particular Professors Iza Bieżuńska-Małowist of the University of Warsaw and Jan-Maarten Bremer of the University of Amsterdam.
I had intended to publish the Gray Lectures almost in their original form, with little more than references added. However, the comments received from most of those to whom I showed drafts convinced me that owing to the extreme ignorance of Marx's thought which prevails throughout most of the West, especially perhaps among ancient historians (in the English-speaking world at least as much as anywhere), I would have to write the book on an altogether different scale. As I did so my opinions developed, and I often changed my mind.
Friends and colleagues have given me some useful criticisms of the many successive drafts of chapters of this book. I have thanked them individually but now refrain from doing so again, because most of them are not Marxists and might not be happy at finding themselves named here, and partly because I do not wish to debar them from being asked to write reviews, as usually happens to those to whom an author makes a general acknowledgment.
I have incorporated very many essential brief references (especially to source material) in the text itself, placing them as far as possible at the ends of sentences. This, I believe, is preferable, in a work not intended primarily for scholars, to the use of footnotes, since the eye travels much more easily over a short passage in brackets than down to the foot of the page and back again. (Longer notes, intended principally for scholars, will be found at the end of the book.) I give this as a reply to those friends who, out of sheer Oxonian conservatism, have objected to the abbreviation of titles by initial letters – e.g. 'Jones, LRE', for A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284-602 – while themselves habitually using such abbreviations for various categories of references, including periodicals, collections of inscriptions and papyri, and so forth, e.g. JRS, CIL, ILS, PSI, BGU. For me, the only alternatives still allowing the use of references in the actual text itself would have been to abbreviate with date or serial number, e.g. 'Jones, 1964' or 'Jones (1)'; but initial letters are as a rule far more likely to convey the necessary information to a reader who already either knows of the existence of the work in question or has looked it up in my bibliography (pp. - below), where all abbreviations are explained. I should perhaps add that titles abbreviated by initials represent books when italicised, articles when not.
My reading for this book, while concentrated above all on the ancient sources and the writings of Marx, has necessarily been very wide; but there are some 'obvious' works which I have refrained from citing – in particular, books which are specifically philosophical in character and which concern themselves primarily with abstract concepts rather than with the actual historical 'events, processes, institutions and ideas' (cf. above) that are the subject-matter of the practising historian. One example is G. A. Cohen's book, Karl Marx's Theory of History, A Defence, based on much greater philosophical expertise than I can command, but which I find congenial; another is the massive work in three volumes by Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution, which seems to me to have been vastly overpraised, however accurately it may delineate some of the disastrous developments of Marx's thought by many of his followers.
In an interview printed in The Guardian on 22 September 1970 the released Nazi war criminal Albert Speer said that in the Third Reich 'Each Minister was responsible for his own department, and for that only. Your conscience was quiet if you were educated to see things only in your field; this was convenient for everybody.' Our educational system also tends to produce people who 'see things only in their field'. One of the techniques contributing to this is the strict separation of 'ancient history' from the contemporary world. This book, on the contrary, is an attempt to see the ancient Greek world in very close relation with our own and is inspired by the belief that we can learn much about each by careful study of the other.
The dedication of this book expresses the greatest of all my debts: to my wife, in particular for the perfect good-humour and patience with which she accepted my concentration on it for some years, to the neglect of almost everything else. I also wish to record my gratitude to my son Julian for his valuable assistance in correcting the proofs, and to Colin Haycraft for agreeing to publish the book and accomplishing the task with all possible tact and efficiency.
SEPTEMBER 1980
G.E.M.S.C.