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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

A critique of the Marxist theory of social evolution with particular reference to Erik Molnar's A Magyar nep ostortenete

Hamori-Torok, Charles January 1960 (has links)
This paper intends to show the application of the Marxist theory of social evolution to the reconstruction of Magyar proto-history and it examines critically this application. E. Molnar, a Hungarian Marxist proto-historian, published a book under the title A Magyar Nep Ostortenete (proto-History of the Magyar People). This work is shown to represent a Marxist response to the ideological importance of proto-historical studies in Hungary. The argument developed in this paper is as follows: 1. The study of proto-history has been important in Hungary scientifically as well as ideologically. Molnar's attempted reconstruction of Magyar proto-history is a most important Marxist response to the scientific and ideological importance of Hungarian proto-historical studies. 2. The application of this Marxist theory of social evolution makes for bad anthropological theory. Molnar is forced by his Marxist persuasion to look for traces of proto-Communistic social organization in the proto-history of the Magyars, and his attempt to do so results in the formulation of some hypotheses that are not borne out by available evidence. 3. American anthropology is not a unified, and codified set of officially endorsed theories as Molnar implies. Even among American evolutionist anthropologists one finds significant differences in approach and emphasis. At the same time, some aspects of American evolutionist anthropology are seen as capable of providing better ways of approaching the problem of proto-historical reconstruction than Molnar's own Marxist doctrine. Molnar's argument is presented in some detail in this paper. His arguments are outlined and commented upon. His linguistic, physical anthropological, archeological and ethnographic material is discussed and interpreted, and his dependence upon Engels and Soviet anthropologists is indicated. The final conclusion of the paper is that the Marxist theory of social evolution as interpreted by Molnar is based on a set of a priori laws which are not validated by the available evidence. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

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