Although the charge against Marx that he was Eurocentric is not really correct, he did not fully grasp why the issue of Eurocentrism arises at all. Further, his view of world history is very limited and suffers the reductionist limits of historical materialism. Marx was ‘just one more sucker’ for Darwinism, and could not properly assess the fact/value question in the clear ‘idealist’ factors of the history of philosophy, art, and religion. Because of the confusions of the generation of Hegel, Marx perpetrated the monumental blunder of pitting materialism against idealism, where the two remain forever Janus-faced in the study of man, nature and his anthropology.
To be fair, Marx was not even aware of the discovery of Sumer (as far as I can tell) and lived just before or at the onset of the explosion of archaeological research that has transformed our view of world history. Yet Marx is still the de facto cult standard for world history, the exclusion of almost all other views is a species of theocratic domination.
The place of religion in the evolution of civilization is that of the history of superstition and his views bids fair to make the simple issue of the path to Buddhist enlightenment a reactionary trash heap, with a good chance of getting liquidated.
We need a new way to study world history on the way to socialism. I might suggest the chronology/model of the ‘eonic effect’ ( a new periodization of world history) as a tool to prepare for that.
The issue of Eurocentrism is resolved in that model by showing how
Europe is an example of the ‘Frontier Effect’ in the evolution of world civilization. As globalization proceeds, the issue will become less troubling, perhaps. The issue of imperialism is not resolved here as such: a mysterious macro factor seeds immense cultural energy, but it is men who distort that and inflict the abuse of the gifts of nature for conquest and domination. Man has almost completely wrecked his own passage to civilization.
Marx always gets a break from his cult followers in the endless defense of his erroneous perspective against all other views which are denigrated as ideology. But it is clear at this point that the Marxist foundation is too crippled for a sane path to socialism. This is in part the result of Bolshevism/Stalinism. But a new left cannot simply close ranks on Marxism and its disastrous successors: best to start from scratch.
Critics of Marx have accused him of imposing a European model of historical development on the rest of the world. But the real Marx rejected Eurocentric thinking and developed a sophisticated view of world history in all its diversity and complexity.
Marx always gets a break from his cult followers in the endless defense against all other views which are denigrated as ideology. But it is clear at this point that the Marxist foundation is too crippled for a sane path to socialism.
1848+: The End(s) of History 