subroza

Richard Thurnwald, who taught in the United States from 1931 to 1936. He is frequently credited with the turn from evolutionary, colonial anthropology. However, as Rohrbacher 2024 has shown, Thurnwald was closer to Nazi policies and racial theory than scholars have admitted. He is frequently closely grouped with the anthropologists, Franz Boas and Edward Sapir – both of whom are frequently invoked as the starting point of anti-colonial, evolutionary anthropology. In part, this is a result of the fact that he communicated contradictory views of Nazism to his American and German colleagues. Writing to the dean of the University of Berlin in 1936, he wrote: 

I fought in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie and in Sociologus against thoroughly contaminated marxistic-talmudistic sociology as it was represented by a group of especially Frankfurter Jews in Germany that also held others under their spell. At that time, I presented an alternative American non-Jewish dominated sociology whose research was more realistic and based on facts than was the Jewified (verjudet) German sociology.

His political philosophy is at best pragmatically ambivalent. It is all the more troubling, therefore, that Thurnwald became an essential theoretical foundation and inspiration of radical anthropology. This is part of the story of how ‘Marxist’ anthropology and history was re-fashioned on the grounds of anti-socialist (often Nazi) political philosophy. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology (2009) explains the anti-Marxist and anti-evolutionary perspective of Thurnwald’s milieu: 

Evolutionism did not play any significant role in late nineteenth-century German-speaking anthropology. Evolutionist works were rejected by most scholars, not so much because of any scientific disagreement with Morgan’s Ancient Society, but rather for political reasons. Morgan’s favourable reception by Marx and Engels, at a time of political emancipation for the labour movement, led to a strongly negative reaction from mainstream anthropology, which mostly favoured bourgeois and related political options. 

Despite Thurnwald’s anti-Marxism and support for the ethnology of colonialism, his 1932 Primitive Economics proved essential for Karl Polanyi’s socialist categorization of economic history. This has caused years of confusion, as anthropologists take turns accusing their colleagues and predecessors of abusing imperial theories of social evolution while continuing to propagate and promote theories of cultural evolution grounded in the support of colonial capitalism. In Germany, this problem was diagnosed by Rosa Luxemburg as the central problem at the heart of the much cited but much confused “Meyer-Bücher Debate” and the political fracture in the SPD between nationalist reform supporters of colonial expansion (Bernstein) and internationalist revolution advocates for global solidarity (Luxemburg). In the 1930s, anthropologists continued to debate if and how the societies and cultures of the colonial world should accommodate the extension of global capitalism. Thurnwald’s theories represent the historicist and German nationalist bourgeoisie theory of colonialism. This model, broadly supportive of cultural diversity, is fundamentally opposed to the rigid theory of British colonial evolutionary theory and natural law. Instead, it is dedicated to the relativist, social foundation of national identity which is first and foremost found in the expression of the Volk – the national “people.” Therefore, it resists the theory of Marxist class-war as well as the liberal theory of property and the natural foundation of economic life. As Thurnwald’s own work clearly shows, he was not an anti-evolutionary thinker. He was an anti-Marxist intellectual who sought to explain technological and cultural evolution within the framework of separate national identities. For a description of the major conflicts in anthropology in the 19th and early 20th century, see 100 Years of Anthropology. 

Let us briefly look at what major theories were inherited from Thurnwald’s work. From Thurnwald, Polanyi took the idea of (1) reciprocity, (2) redistribution, and (3) autarchy. Much of this work is in line with the framework provided a generation earlier by Ernst Grosse (1862-1927). Sahlins’ influential categorizations of pre-capitalist exchange can also be seen in Thurnwald’s contrastive categorization of “primitive” “distribution” : homogenous and stratified (i.e. Polynesian feasting). The ambivalent cultural evolution model did not renounce the evolutionary framework of sociology but instead sought to foreground the psychological and ethnological factors of progress. Thus, Thurnwald provides a vague and broad categorization of the stages of social evolution: 

1. Hunters, Collectors, Early Agriculture
   1. Homogenous Separate: Hunter / Collector
   2. Homogenous Combined: Hunter-Collectors
   3. Graded: Agriculture
      1. Low [Melanesia]
      2. High [Polynesia]) 

2. Herdsmen
   1. Homogeneous Separate: Herdsman
   2. Homogenous Combined: Herdsman-Hunters
   3. Ethnically Stratified
      1. High [Tuareg]
      2. Low [Khosa]
   4. Socially Graded: Herdsman-Craftsmen-Agricultural population 

3. Feudal States
   1. Low: Maori 
   2. Middle: Bakitara
   3. High: Sumeria 

4. The Manor and Family
   1. East [The New Kingdom (i.e. Ramses III)]
   2. West: [Greece-Rome, German Gauls]

This paradigm is utilized by Polanyi in order to categorize economic history and the model has shaped the works of his students’ investigation. For instance, Sahlins’ “Big-men” and “Chiefs,” centered on the primary contradiction of Melanesian / Polynesian “graded” societies (see Godelier’s and Earle’s work for two Marxist attempts to use these categories). Today, scholars in the tradition of Polanyi still use the basic framework and arguments established by Thrunwald and incorporated in Polanyi’ “substantivism.” In Classics, Thurnwald pre-figures M.I. Finley’s basic model of ancient Classical history. Greece transitions from the centralized palace society of the Near East, based on the manor (palace), to the society of the West, founded on the family (oikos). In Greece, this transition is marked by the transition from the Mycenaean to the Homeric and Classical world. In Rome, the Republic, based on the familia transitions back to the palace economy of the Roman Empire. Slavery, furthermore, is what made the Greek oikos and Roman familia possible. Timothy Earle’s work on Bronze Age Economics is likewise deeply embedded to the Thurnwald model, developing his contrast of staple and exchange goods in order to contrast hierarchical early states (i.e. Hawaii / Incas).