Notes on Anthropology and Marxism. Assumptions and notions about historical development in some productions of Marx and Engels

Abstract

In this paper we propose to investigate the assumptions and conceptions on historical development that underpin some of the productions of Marx and Engels; highlighting the place occupied in these works by their observations and analysis of different processes and dimensions that shape the societies of the so-called "Third World". To this endwe will make use of the contextual reading and the detailed examination of different Marxist authors, determined to reconstruct the transformations, turns and contradictions of the conceptual scheme proper to the national and peripheral context in marxian works. We seek to point out some coordinates on the ups and downs of Marx and Engels' ethnocentrism and modernism, and the implications that this has had on the anthropological level assumed by their productions, especially with respect to the conception of multilinear social development.