Critique Of Historical Materialism And Social Anthropology

Social anthropology has been one of the humanities. Its development can be interpreted by Kuhn's paradigm theory. Different views can be incorporated and expounded by this paradigm which can also be applied to natural science. According to this theory, the development of science undergo the following stages such as sub-science, science, abnormality, crisis and revolution. For this reason, the development of the theory of social anthropology is the process that its paradigm shapes and changes.Socil Darwinism not only serves anthropology as science but becomes its paradigm theory as well. Because the princeples and contents of Darwinism, "common origin" , "evollution" , "natural selection" , "survival of the fittest" , are widely applied to the life of man in society and have a long and magnitude impact on them and their culture. Social Darwinism was based on early liberalism of western capitalism. While this vogue was substituted, people wavered from their belief in Darwinism. Once individualism and historicalism originated in the West, Social Darwinism have been criticized and assaulted sharply by people inside and outside of the area of anthropology. When the voice of such critique become stronger, the paradigm theory in anthropology arise crisis in people's belief, which also show its revolution will arrive. Furthermore, Marx's historical materialism which also criticizes Darwinism would accelerate the course of its substitution. Marx created the theory of social critique or social philosophy as the intercourse between his theory and social anthropology. The reason that this intercourse is possible is that Marx's theory of social critique, such contents as politics ideas, right ideas especially his analysis and criticism on ancient society struture and the origin of country and cultivation is shared by the social anthropologist. Theory of social critique is one of the important part of Marx's historical materialism,which form two perspectives with critique of political economy in Marx's historical materialism. Social critique was never given up in all Marx's theory life, and it had ever discover by his critique of political economy. However, it was undiscovered by Marx's ethnological notebooks. Applying to Althusser's " lecture symptomale " ,we can interpret and understand the key contents of Marx's ethnological notebook, and by this way, we can understand how Marx criticized Social Darwinism with his theory of social critique. Social anthropology made progress by criticism of historical materialism and some of its views were absorbed by Marx in his theory.The paradism theory of social anthropology is based on the principles of biology. It analyses society with concept and idea used in biology. According to social Darwinism, it seemed that social relation,social organism and its development are just the expression of the idea of biology. However, social Darwinism is mistaken and can never be effective in methodology. Actually, it is just the expression of the mechanical materialism and idealism, and is also opposite to the principle of Marx's theory of social critique. The famous formula that "all life of society are practical in essence" , shows that the priciple of Marx's theory of social critique is the application of the priciple of practice that develops in Marx's practice materialism and can be seen in daily life. For this reason, it is the priciple of practice that Marx serve as the root to applied to criticize Social Darwinism. For Marx, all social relations are the product of the practice activity. All man's conscious, culture and idea are rooted in practice, and the history of nature and human beings are unified by practice. Basing his theory on practice, Marx could not only absorb the essence of anthropology into his theory but also point out its weakness. While Social Darwinism embody the world point of view and the methodology of capitalists class, it cannot step out of the principles of biology. It would inevitably embody the ideological tendency such as ethnocentrism, the monism of history, positive and subjective deduction. Althoug Marx regarded Darwin's theory of evolution as one of the natural science basis for his history interpretation, he had been keeping alert on Darwinism. Marx's theory would be distorted and tarnished if someone have no differenence between historical materialism and Darwinism's vulgarized evolution. Marx pointed out that ethnocentrism was illusory and deceivable with his world perspective, and denounced that the monism of history was mechanical and superficial with his history dialectics. At last, Marx's methodology , the social totalism is of great...