The Paths of History

Igor M. Diakonoff, Geoffrey Hosking0-521-64348-1

This is a broad and ambitious study of the entire history of humanity that takes as its point of departure Marx’s theory of social evolution. Professor Diakonoff’s theory of world history differs from Marx’s in a number of ways. First, he has expanded Marx’s five stages of development to eight. Second, he denies that social evolution necessarily implies progress and shows how “each progress is simultaneously a regress,” and third, he demonstrates that the transition from one stage to another is not necessarily marked by social conflict and that sometimes this is achieved peacefully and gracefully. As the book moves through these various stages, the reader is drawn into a remarkable and thought-provoking study of the process of the history of the human race that focuses on the wide range of factors (economic, social, military-technological, and socio-pyschological) that have influenced our development from palaeolithic times to the present day.

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Table of contents :
EEn……Page 1
Contents……Page 7
Foreword……Page 9
Preface……Page 13
Introduction……Page 15
1 – First Phase (Primitive)……Page 24
2 – Second Phase (Primitive Communal)……Page 27
3 – Third Phase (Early Antiquity)……Page 35
4 – Fourth Phase (Imperial Antiquity)……Page 51
5 – Fifth Phase (the Middle Ages)……Page 70
6 – Sixth Phase (the Stable Absolutist Post-Medieval Phase)……Page 158
7 – Seventh Phase (Capitalist)……Page 207
8 – Eighth Phase (Post-Capitalist)……Page 338
Index……Page 353