The Bourgeois and the Savage

Alfonso Maurizio IaconoTranslated byLeigh-Anne Wendy Mazzoncini

A Marxian Critique of the Image of the Isolated Individual in Defoe, Turgot and Smith

MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms

Series EditorsMarcello MustoYork University

Toronto, ON, Canada

Terrell CarverUniversity of Bristol

Bristol, UK

The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Wherever the critiqueof capitalism re-emerges, there is an intellectual and political demand fornew, critical engagements with Marxism. The peer-reviewed series Marx,Engels and Marxisms (edited by Marcello Musto & Terrell Carver, withBabak Amini and Kohei Saito as Assistant Editors) publishes monographs,edited volumes, critical editions, reprints of old texts, as well as transla-tions of books already published in other languages. Our volumes comefrom a wide range of political perspectives, subject matters, academicdisciplines and geographical areas, producing an eclectic and informativecollection that appeals to a diverse and international audience. Our mainareas of focus include: the oeuvre of Marx and Engels, Marxist authorsand traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, labour and social move-ments, Marxist analyses of contemporary issues, and reception of Marxismin the world.

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AlfonsoMaurizio Iacono

The Bourgeoisand the Savage

AMarxian Critique of the Image of the IsolatedIndividual in Defoe, Turgot and Smith

Alfonso Maurizio IaconoUniversity of PisaPisa, Italy

Translated byLeigh-Anne Wendy MazzonciniMontuolo, Lucca, Italy

ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic)Marx, Engels, and MarxismsISBN 978-3-030-39507-0 ISBN 978-3-030-39508-7 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39508-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to SpringerNature Switzerland AG 2020This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by thePublisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rightsof translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction onmicrofilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage andretrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodologynow known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that suchnames are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free forgeneral use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neitherthe publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, withrespect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have beenmade. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published mapsand institutional affiliations.

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To Vincenzo Iacono and Pina Sanfilippoin memory

Titles Published

1. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, A Political History of the Editionsof Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts, 2014.

2. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, Marx and Engels’s “German Ideol-ogy” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the “Feuerbach chap-ter,” 2014.

3. Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The History and Theory of Fetishism,2015.

4. Paresh Chattopadhyay, Marx’s Associated Mode of Production: ACritique of Marxism, 2016.

5. Domenico Losurdo, Class Struggle: A Political and PhilosophicalHistory, 2016.

6. Frederick Harry Pitts, Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways toRead Marx, 2017.

7. Ranabir Samaddar, Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age, 2017.8. George Comninel, Alienation and Emancipation in the Work of

Karl Marx, 2018.9. Jean-Numa Ducange & Razmig Keucheyan (Eds.), The End of the

Democratic State: Nicos Poulantzas, a Marxism for the 21st Century,2018.

10. Robert Ware, Marx on Emancipation and the Socialist Transition:Retrieving Marx for the Future, 2018.

11. Xavier LaFrance & Charles Post (Eds.), Case Studies in the Originsof Capitalism, 2018.

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viii TITLES PUBLISHED

12. John Gregson, Marxism, Ethics, and Politics: The Work of AlasdairMacIntyre, 2018.

13. Vladimir Puzone & Luis Felipe Miguel (Eds.), The Brazilian Leftin the 21st Century: Conflict and Conciliation in Peripheral Capi-talism, 2019.

14. James Muldoon & Gaard Kets (Eds.), The German Revolution andPolitical Theory, 2019.

15. Michael Brie, Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution andMetaphysics of Domination, 2019.

16. August H. Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism: Comparative Real-Time Political Analysis, 2019.

17. Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello and Mauricio de Souza Saba-dini (Eds.), Financial Speculation and Fictitious Profits: A MarxistAnalysis, 2019.

18. Shaibal Gupta, Marcello Musto & Babak Amini (Eds), Karl Marx’sLife, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicente-nary, 2019.

19. Igor Shoikhedbrod, Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Re-thinking Justice, Legality, and Rights, 2019.

20. Juan Pablo Rodríguez, Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile:The Possibility of Social Critique, 2019.

21. Kaan Kangal, Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature, 2020.22. Victor Wallis, Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories, 2020.

Titles Forthcoming

Antonio Oliva, Ivan Novara & Angel Oliva (Eds.), Marx and Contempo-rary Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Real Abstraction

Jean-Numa Ducange, Jules Guesde: The Birth of Socialism and Marxismin France

Terrell Carver, Engels before MarxKevin B. Anderson, Kieran Durkin & Heather Brown (Eds.), Raya

Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Gender, and the Dialec-tics of Liberation

Vesa Oittinen, Marx’s Russian DimensionGiuseppe Vacca, Alternative Modernities: Antonio Gramsci’s Twentieth

CenturyKohei Saito (Ed.), Reexamining Engels’s Legacy in the 21st CenturyFrancesco Biagi, Henri Lefebvre’s Critical Theory of SpaceParesh Chattopadhyay, Socialism in Marx’s Capital: Towards a

De-alienated WorldKolja Lindner, Marx, Marxism and the Question of EurocentrismGianfranco Ragona & Monica Quirico, Borderline Socialism: Self-

organisation and Anti-capitalismRyuji Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx: New Materialism, Cri-

tique of Political Economy, and the Concept of MetabolismMarcello Mustè, Marxism and Philosophy of Praxis: An Italian Perspective

from Labriola to GramsciStefano Petrucciani, The Ideas of Karl Marx: A Critical Introduction

ix

x TITLES FORTHCOMING

Jean-Numa Ducange & Elisa Marcobelli (Eds.), Selected Writings of JeanJaures: On Socialism, Pacifism and Marxism

Jeong Seongjin, Korean Capitalism in the 21st Century: Marxist Analysisand Alternatives

Marco Di Maggio, The Rise and Fall of Communist Parties in France andItaly

George C. Comninel, The Feudal Foundations of Modern EuropeJames Steinhoff, Critiquing the New Autonomy of Immaterial Labour: A

Marxist Study of Work in the Artificial Intelligence IndustrySpencer A. Leonard, Marx, the India Question, and the Crisis of Cos-

mopolitanismJoe Collins, Applying Marx’s Capital to the 21st centuryTsuyoshi Yuki, Socialism, Markets and the Critique of Money: The Theory

of “Labour Note”Levy del Aguila Marchena, Communism, Political Power and Personal

Freedom in MarxSatoshi Matsui, Normative Theories of Liberalism and Socialism: Marxist

Analysis of ValuesShannon Brincat, Dialectical Dialogues in Contemporary World Politics: A

Meeting of Traditions in Global Comparative PhilosophyFrancesca Antonini, Reassessing Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: Dictatorship,

State, and RevolutionV Geetha, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in

IndiaXavier Vigna, A Political History of Factories in France: The Workers’ In-

subordination of 1968Atila Melegh, Anti-Migrant Populism in Eastern Europe and

Hungary: A Marxist Analysis

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Gloria e Sandra Borghini, Giacomo Brucciani,Mauro Buccheri, Enrico Campo, Giovani Campolo, Michelle Chen, Pas-cale David, Vincenzo Letta, Leigh-Anne Mazzoncini, Francesco March-esi, Luca Mori, Marcello Musto, Gianni Paoletti, Rebecca Roberts andViktoria Tchernichova.

xi

Contents

1 Introduction 1Bibliography 14

2 Robinson Crusoe’s Adventure on the Island:From the Isolated Economy to Political Supremacy 152.1 The Problem Concerning Robinson’s Survival

on the Island 152.2 Robinson’s Encounter with Friday 24Bibliography 37

3 An Attempt to Explain the Theory of Value: Turgot’sSimplification 393.1 The Determination of Value and the Assessment

of Individual Resources 393.2 The Concept of Progress: The Issue Related to Historical

Circumstances 55Bibliography 67

4 The ‘Rude State of Society’ and the Reason for Abundance:Adam Smith’s Model 694.1 ‘Common Stock’ as a Concept of Difference 694.2 ‘The Rude Stage of Society’ Like a Group of Isolated

Individuals 87

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4.3 Individuals and the Structure of Non-intentionalRelationships 100

4.4 Conclusion 110Bibliography 121

5 Political Philosophy on ‘The Gift’: Sahlins’s Interpretation 1235.1 Sahlins’s Thesis 1235.2 Mauss and Hobbes 1255.3 Hobbes and Durkheim 1275.4 Political Economy and Durkheim 1295.5 Durkheim and Mauss 1325.6 Final Comment 135Bibliography 139

Author Index 141

Subject Index 145

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Contents

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

The book Tristes tropiques1 (1955; A World on the Wane) by ClaudeLévi-Strauss is considered to be a turning point in the Philosophicaldebate. In this book, released in 1955, the anthropologist is forced toquestion himself and his culture in a very serious way while working inthe field.2 He begins to ask questions about habits, culture and culturaland political history that led him to learn about the other; he wondersabove all about that aspect of the problem that disappears in the historyof consciousness, that is, on the fact that the study of the other, theknowledge of the other, has almost always occurred on the terrain of theconquest of the other, on the terrain of colonialism. Hence, this is thedecisive point, even if, from a historical-philosophical aspect, it is not anovelty. It would be sufficient enough to name Montaigne, who is thefirst of a list of modern philosophers who, by comparing the customs andhabits of non-Western cultures, critically reflects upon Western customsand cultures. But it is perhaps with Tristes tropiques that for the first timeanthropology as field research and also as an epistemological reflectionon the knowledge of the other, takes an interest in disciplines that areexternal to anthropology itself, i.e. it begins to acquire an interest bothin the field of historiography, and in the field of historical-philosophical

© The Author(s) 2020A. M. Iacono, The Bourgeois and the Savage, Marx, Engels,and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39508-7_1

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2 A. M. IACONO

reflection, building premises for an effective theoretical interactionbetween these different perspectives.3

As Michèle Duchet4 had already pointed out, the eighteenth centuryrepresented an important turning point in the way of relating to the other.This change refers to some theoretical elements that had developed inthe fifteenth and in the sixteenth century that now began to be system-atized by contributing to the change. When considering the organizationof the ways in which the other is characterized, a very significant elementof the eighteenth-century definition of the modern western identity isgiven by the fact that the spatial differences in the eighteenth centuryare assimilated to the temporal differences. Time devours space througha procedure that Lévi-Strauss had in his time called ‘false evolutionism’.5

The contrasted path, which goes from the discovery of America to theEnlightenment and beyond, has been effectively summarized by AnthonyPagden in terms of a far-reaching change in the way of understandinghuman societies. This change is marked by the passage from a descrip-tion of cultures based on a concept of human nature considered constantin time and space to a broader anthropological and historical relativism.Pagden says, ‘it begins with a fact, the discovery of the American man, andends with a simple proposition: that for the historian of cultures—whohad inherited from the theologians that project which in the nineteenthcentury became “anthropology”—spatial differences were comparable totemporal differences’.6

Consequently, it was a Jesuit who took on the task of carrying out thischange which would then be acquired by the Enlightenment tradition.Joseph-François Lafitau may be considered as the true founding father ofmodern comparativism. He lived for a long period among the Iroquoisand the Urons in North America and upon his return to Europe, he wroteand published in 17247 a book entitled: Moeurs des sauvages américainscomparées aux moeurs des premiers temps. (Customs of the American Indi-ans Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times.)

Lafitau writes in the preparation stage of the work:

I have not limited myself to learning the characteristics of the Indian andinforming myself about their customs and practices, I have sought in thesepractices and customs, vestiges of the most remote antiquity. I have readcarefully [the works] of the earliest writers who treated the customs, lawsand usages of the peoples of whom they had some knowledge. I havemade a comparison of these customs with each other. I confess that, if

1 INTRODUCTION 3

the ancient authors have given me information on which to base happyconjectures about the Indians, the customs of the Indians have given meinformation on the basis of which I can understand more easily and explainmore readily, any things in the ancient authors.8

There is no doubt that this statement represents a real methodologicalmanifesto. However Lafitau, in affirming the comparative method, is sup-ported by his convictions as a Jesuit: starting from his field research duringhis stay among the American Indians, he started looking for confirmationof the biblical theses. Lafitau presumes that American savages are the tes-timony of European savages, just as they must have lived before the ageof the ancient Greeks. The point was precisely this: even the Greeks hadbeen savages, so it was possible to make a comparison. But what couldlegitimize a comparison between the American savages and the Europeaninhabitants of primordial times, from which, as mentioned, the ancientGreeks would then have descended? Simply the assimilation of spatial dif-ferences from temporal differences. In this perspective, the American sav-ages are primitives, they are still men of the early times, men who findthemselves, so to speak, behind the evolutionary scale that others havealready crossed. The American savages are comparable with the Europeanmen of primordial times precisely because in reality, even though froma chronological point of view they are contemporary to Europeans likeLafitau, from a historical point of view they are not: in this respect theybelong to the time of those who lived in Europe in the times that pre-ceded the birth of ancient Greece. As claimed by the contemporary histo-rian, Reinhardt Koselleck, ‘the American savages represent the conditionof contemporaneity of the non-contemporaries ’.9

Lafitau’s work, despite having been the object of heavy irony byVoltaire10 and de Pauw,11 actually became one of the decisive sources forall Enlightenment philosophers, from Voltaire himself to the Scots, AdamSmith and Adam Ferguson.12 Turgot, a leading figure in the FrenchEnlightenment, wrote:

The people which were the first to acquire a little more knowledge quicklybecame superior to its neighbours; and each step in its progress made thenext one easier. Thus the development of one nation accelerated from day today, while others stayed in their state of mediocrity, immobilized by particularcircumstances, and others remained in a state of barbarism. A glance over theearth puts before our eyes, even today, the whole history of the human race,showing us traces of all the steps and monuments of all the stages through