A limitation of the medium (i.e. history is too complex and particular to be distilled into one book or one series)?
Pretty much yeah, its really a huge topic (the entirety of world history) and not possible to even fully research, much less distill. There’s tons of really good marxist histories and general materialist histories; but they tend to be more specific. The broadest book I’ve seen is Broodbanks The Making of the Middle Sea which only covers the mediterranean from its formation to the onset of the classical era. It isn’t a Marxist text, but imo the text itself is the best demonstration of all history being the history of class struggle
Regarding Dawn of Everything, how do you feel it sidesteps a marxist account? I haven’t read it yet myself, but what I’ve heard about their takes on prehistory have fallen generally in line with what a marxist analysis gets you (i.e. extremely diverse and complex societies until the urban monocultures begin swallowing them up)
Pretty much yeah, its really a huge topic (the entirety of world history) and not possible to even fully research, much less distill. There’s tons of really good marxist histories and general materialist histories; but they tend to be more specific. The broadest book I’ve seen is Broodbanks The Making of the Middle Sea which only covers the mediterranean from its formation to the onset of the classical era. It isn’t a Marxist text, but imo the text itself is the best demonstration of all history being the history of class struggle
Regarding Dawn of Everything, how do you feel it sidesteps a marxist account? I haven’t read it yet myself, but what I’ve heard about their takes on prehistory have fallen generally in line with what a marxist analysis gets you (i.e. extremely diverse and complex societies until the urban monocultures begin swallowing them up)