John Breuilly, Introduction

The three texts published here were written in the mid-1970s….

Here I explain how these came about.

Back in 1974, I was teaching on a Modern Politics and History degree at Manchester. This involved modern historians from the History Department and members of POLSIS, the politics department. There was some concern that the academics from the two departments did not communicate with each other but taught their respective courses quite separately.

It was suggested that one way to address this problem would be to organise joint seminars on subjects of shared concern. The running was made by Terry Ranger of the History department. His initiative, which turned out to be a one-off achievement, took the form of organising three seminars discussing two recently published books by Perry Anderson: Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the Absolute State. In each seminar, Mike Evans of POLSIS considered questions of Marxist theory and method involved in the particular historical problems under consideration. He was then followed by an historian. In the second seminar, Ian Kershaw (best known now as an historian of the Third Reich, especially his biography of Hitler, but, at the time, a lecturer in medieval economic history) criticised Anderson’s arguments about the feudal mode of production and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. So, the first two seminars were devoted to the slimmer, first volume. I was the historian tasked subjecting the whole of the Lineages book to critique in the third seminar. What is more, Ranger invited Anderson to attend that seminar. (Mischievously, Ranger did not introduce us to each other before the seminar began and challenged me to recognise Anderson – whom I had never met before – from how he listened to my critique! It was obvious who he was within about 30 seconds.) We had a very good discussion.

The surviving texts are now published:

John Breuilly, “Critique of P. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State”

Theodor Shanin, “The Marxism(s) of Our Time”

Michael Evans, “Some Notes on Perry Anderson”