i.e., it needs markets. Conquered neighboring states that are immediately emptied by the sword do not provide the market that such a victor nation seeks. It is enough now if the conquered nation is ruled and supervised and even better if it can be made a relatively prosperous province able to keep buying the products of the oppressor nation.
Such was the situation in Greece at the time of Alexander, and in Spain at the time of Abderrahman. But history written by the bourgeoisie cannot look in the direction of changes in production. It concentrates on wars from the point of view of individuals—in particular, the will, ability, and intelligence of the individual. For the bourgeoisie, Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon are the crucial factors. For us what is crucial in the final analysis, besides the state, is which class has control of production in a society. Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon are only instruments of a class in society, even though they may be intelligent, brave, able, and exalted by their class.
Among the city-states of Greece, we know Sparta as an example of a state based on autocracy and aristocracy. We shall take Sparta as the thesis and the city-state of Athens, based on democracy, as the antithesis. Even though these city-states were formed from the same nation, they were for many years in a state of conflict, enmity, and war. It was during this period of continual conflict that the Macedonian empire arose under the leadership of King Philip, an aristocrat. But his son, Alexander, was educated by the greatest philosopher of the Greek era, Aristotle of Athens. Alexander united Sparta and Athens, aristocracy and democracy in one kingdom, forming the synthesis. Alexander the Great had the desire to unite East and West, an even more advanced synthesis. However, this attempt at a national and cultural fusion of East and West had only begun when he died at a young age.
Caesar was faced by two conflicts. Internally, conflict and great enmity raged between the patricians (aristocrats) and the plebeians (the poor) of the Roman republic. Externally, there was conflict between the Romans and the foreign barbarians.
[43] Alexander first settled the conflicts within Greece, and only then went abroad to settle those with foreign nations. Caesar acted in reverse. First he dealt with the foreigners around the Roman republic from the Mediterranean up to England and Germany; only then did he come home with his experienced forces, cross the Rubicon, and proceed to settle the conflict within the republic of Rome itself. He came from the aristocratic class (thesis); he adopted the philosophy of democracy and led the plebeians (antithesis). Finally, he destroyed his enemies, the aristocratic parties of Sulla and Pompey, with the aim of establishing his empire, which took the form of the synthesis.72 Caesar was killed by his enemies when he was on the point of becoming emperor, but even though he was physically destroyed, his spirit lived on in the synthesis of the Roman Empire.
Like Caesar, Napoleon first settled the conflicts of France with its neighbors. Only after securing power and popularity by virtue of his victories did he come back to deal with the internal conflicts between the Jacobin-proletariat alliance on the left and the bourgeois-aristocracy on the right. It was by destroying these two opponents that Napoleon, who in his youth had been a Jacobin, was finally able to establish the Napoleonic empire as the synthesis.
But it is not always easy to achieve a synthesis, nor does it, once gained through struggle, have eternal life. Normally the synthesis, once achieved, eventually becomes the thesis that gives rise to another antithesis and so the process continues.
With the destruction of the city-republic of Thebes, Alexander completed the subjugation of his entire nation. The empire he established by the sword naturally gave rise to rebellions and other attempts by nations to free themselves from this enforced synthesis. Caesar and Napoleon waded through oceans of blood to establish their empires, both of which were brought to an end by the rebellions of the oppressed nations within them.
Hannibal was such a statesman as is rarely born in a century, and it can be said that as a commander he has never been bettered and seldom equalled. He was a commander with a will of steel and a brilliant mind; he was always in the vanguard when attacking and in the rear when retreating. He could withstand extreme heat and cold, he lived as a soldier, and he was loved, praised, and idolized by his army as well as being supported by a wealthy state. But despite all this he was defeated by his enemies, the Roman commanders, his inferiors in every way.
[44] Bourgeois historians do not sufficiently analyze the situation in Carthage with regard to production, food, trade, etc., compared with that in the city of Rome which was long besieged by Hannibal. We do know that at the end of the war the Roman ships were stronger than those of Carthage and that Roman society at that time was almost one of equality, while the wealthy state of Carthage had a far less developed society.
All the world, friend or foe, acknowledged the glory of the Islamic empire in Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Granada, Seville, and Cordoba were the center of the Western world’s attention at that time, just as London, Paris, and Berlin are today. The great thinkers—such as Ibn Rasjid, known in Europe by the name Averroes, who was comparable to Aristotle in Greek times—were magnets attracting the attention of philosophers and students of Western Europe. In agriculture, irrigation, and manufacture, this empire had no equal. Historians write of it as an isolated event and do not deal with its entirety, explaining its rise and fall. In describing the wars and the defeat of the Islamic empire by Christianity, historians should compare the two sides with regard to forces of production, society, and politics. They should ask such questions as whether Islamic society was static and frozen (and, if so, why) and whether Islamic society was split in two by a huge gap that gave rise to contradictions and even conflict between two groups, the rich and the poor. These questions are not even asked, let alone answered, by bourgeois historians. They pay too much attention to military policies and to a few individual leaders. Or they treat the culture without an accompanying analysis of its moving force: the system of production and the social and political systems.
What we need is a complete rewriting of the history of Greece, Rome, Arabia, and other great nations. We must have a history of society, of classes and their leaders in politics, military development, and culture, backed up with technological, sociological, and cultural data.
[45] The Sakutra Ocean: even big steam ships are tossed about by its waves!73 Our ancestors, who made the pilgrimage to Mecca to fulfill the obligations of their religion, still remember the dangers of this ocean. Their small sailing boats plunged through waves as high as mountains as they struggled in their need to visit the holy land. Who knows whether it was trade or the desire to travel that attracted our earliest ancestors here in tiny boats thrown about by the waves like grains of rice in boiling water . . . to the south . . . to Madagascar.74
India . . . caste . . . conflict between Hinduism and Islam. Just think of the Hindu temples: they are covered with sculpture inside and out, on the walls and around the roof. Symbols of the variety of human emotions, the sculptures represent courage, satisfaction, truth, sadness, and admiration, and there are even sculptures of people stabbing themselves. In general they are pessimistic, hopeless, and confused, representing the dissension and the divisions between and among more than three thousand castes. Listen to the modern Hindu songs: they seem sweet only to the singers themselves; as for me they have always seemed only to shout of arrogance, saying there is no caste higher than the Waisya caste, which is higher even than the Himalayan mountains. The Waisya was a trading caste, which has now become capitalist-bourgeois. The songs of the Hindu sailors and workers are simpler, more in accord with their oppressed spirit. The scourge of caste in India will not be eradicated by laws alone, but will vanish only when those laws are accompanied by changes in the economic, political, and social systems, and only when the hundred million untouchables and members of the Sudra and Pariah castes arise under the leadership of the workers and peasants and revolutionary intellectuals. And if the bourgeois, priestly, and aristocratic castes of India resist openly or covertly, then the Indian revolution will make the French and Russian revolutions look like child’s play.
Finally, Sabang, Indonesia.75 On the coast,
