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Civilization Barbarism and the Marxist view of History

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis is that history is not a meaningless sequence of accidents, as bourgeois and postmodern thought claims, but a law-governed process driven by the development of the productive forces. Alan Woods argues that the concept of progress is not a Victorian prejudice but a scientific necessity for understanding history — and that the current fashion for denying progress, relativising all cultures as equally valid, and romanticising pre-capitalist societies is a symptom of capitalist decline, not a progressive insight. The article insists that the barbarian invasions which destroyed the Roman Empire represent a real historical regression — a thousand-year setback for civilisation — and that this proves the possibility of a descending line in history. The political conclusion is stark: either the working class seizes power and builds socialism, or capitalism will drag humanity into a new barbarism.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in classical historical materialism as developed by Marx and Engels. Woods draws on:

  • The primacy of the productive forces: The ability of a socio-economic formation to develop the means of production is the decisive criterion for judging whether it is historically progressive or reactionary. This is applied rigorously to slavery, barbarism, feudalism and capitalism.
  • Engels' theory of the state: The Roman state is analysed as an "armed body of men" that, in its decline, became a Bonapartist/Caesarist force raised above society — a parallel drawn explicitly.
  • The dialectic of progress and regression: Woods rejects both the vulgar Victorian idea of linear progress and the postmodern denial of progress altogether. History has ascending and descending lines; the Dark Ages are presented as a real, measurable regression in productive forces, urban life, and culture.
  • Marx's "socialism or barbarism": The article explicitly invokes Rosa Luxemburg's formulation, though it is Marx who is credited with posing the choice. The argument is that barbarism is not a metaphor but a concrete historical possibility, as demonstrated by the fall of Rome.
  • The critique of moralism in history: A consistent thread is the rejection of moralistic judgments as a substitute for materialist analysis. Woods insists that history "knows no morality" and that the progressive character of a social system must be judged by its capacity to develop the productive forces, not by the number of its victims.

The article sits firmly in the orthodox Marxist tradition, drawing on Engels' Anti-Dühring, Marx's German Ideology, and the classical Marxist analysis of ancient society (Morgan, Engels' Origin of the Family). It is explicitly polemical against postmodern relativism, cultural imperialism apologetics, and romantic anti-capitalism.

Conjunctural Relevance

Though published in 2005, the article's argument is directly aimed at the conjuncture of capitalist decline that has only deepened since:

  • The crisis of bourgeois ideology: Woods identifies the denial of historical progress as a symptom of a ruling class that has exhausted its progressive role. This diagnosis applies with greater force to the post-2008 period, where the dominant mood across Western intellectual culture is one of pessimism, apocalypticism, and a retreat from grand narratives.
  • The return of barbarism as a political reality: The article references the Balkan wars as a warning. Since 2005, the list has grown: the rise of far-right movements across Europe, the resurgence of open great-power conflict (Ukraine, Gaza), the breakdown of democratic norms in the US and elsewhere, and the growing threat of ecological collapse. These are not merely "crises" but the concrete form of the descending line Woods describes.
  • The romanticisation of pre-capitalist societies: Woods' critique of those who would "return to nature" or idealise pre-colonial cultures has become more relevant as strands of the environmental movement and decolonial theory have adopted positions that are, in practice, hostile to industrial civilisation and the development of the productive forces. The article is a sharp warning that such positions, however well-intentioned, lead to a reactionary dead end.
  • The impasse of reformism: The article's implicit argument — that the working class must take power or face barbarism — speaks directly to the failure of social democratic and reformist strategies in the face of neoliberal capitalism's structural crisis.

Where the Argument Continues

This article is a broad theoretical statement. The argument continues in several directions within the IDOM corpus:

  • Alan Woods' The History of Philosophy series (marxist.com): A multi-part series that develops the materialist conception of history in greater depth, tracing the relationship between philosophy and class society from ancient Greece to the present.
  • Articles on the fall of Rome and the transition to feudalism: IDOM has published several pieces that examine the decline of the Roman Empire in more detail, including the role of the slave mode of production and the class struggles of the period.
  • Against the Stream episodes on the crisis of capitalism: The podcast regularly returns to the theme of "socialism or barbarism" in the context of current events — war, economic crisis, climate change — applying the same framework to concrete conjunctures.
  • The Marxist analysis of postmodernism: Woods has written extensively on postmodernism as the ideology of capitalist decline, most notably in The Marxist Critique of Postmodernism and related articles.
  • The question of the "Asiatic mode of production": The article touches on this concept in passing; it is developed further in other IDOM texts on the history of India, China, and the Middle East.

Connections

  • Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: The foundational text for the Marxist analysis of barbarism, savagery, and the rise of class society.
  • Engels, Anti-Dühring: The source for the materialist analysis of warfare and the development of the means of production.
  • Marx, The German Ideology: The passage Woods quotes — "where want is generalised all the old crap revives" — is central to the argument about the material preconditions for socialism.
  • V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History: A key archaeological source for the Marxist analysis of the Neolithic revolution and the transition to civilisation.
  • Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet: The classic formulation of "socialism or barbarism" in the context of the First World War.
  • Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution: For the analysis of Bonapartism and Caesarism as forms of the state in periods of class deadlock.
  • William Manchester, A World Lit Only by Fire: Quoted extensively for its description of the material regression of the Dark Ages.

Key Quotes

  1. "This denial of progress in history is characteristic of the psychology of the bourgeoisie in the phase of capitalist decline. It is a faithful reflection of the fact that, under capitalism progress has indeed reached its limits and threatens to go into reverse."

  2. "Marxism maintains that the development of human society over millions of years represents progress, but that this has never taken place in a straight line, as the Victorians (who had a vulgar and undialectical view of evolution) wrongly imagined."

  3. "The immediate effect of the barbarian onslaught was to wipe out civilization and throw society and human thought back for a thousand years."

  4. "To approach human history from a sentimental point of view is worse than useless. History knows no morality and operates according to different laws altogether."

  5. "The basic premise of historical materialism is that the ultimate source of human development is the development of the productive forces. This is a most important conclusion because this alone can permit us to arrive at a scientific conception of history."

  6. "It was Marx who pointed out that there were two possibilities before the human race: socialism or barbarism. ... The question is therefore posed in the starkest terms: in the coming period, either the working class will take into its hands the running of society ... or else we will be faced with a most frightful spectacle of social, economic and cultural collapse."