The Society of Classical Antiquity: The Modernization of History and Historical Analogies

The question of the possibility of recurrence in history and of the validity of historical analogies is intimately associated with the entire problem of the course of the process of world history. Marxism, while recognizing the progressive and forward-moving character of social development, at the same time does not accept the conception of uninterrupted evolution ascending in a straight line. Lenin commented on the inevitable "cases of retrogression and circular movement" (1), and this in itself presumes the possibility of recurrence at different stages of historical development, and justifies attempts to discover certain historical analogies. In a number of cases, such comparisons, by revealing similarities and differences among phenomena and processes, help us to attain a deeper understanding of the regularity involved. "In order to conduct this critique of the capitalist economy comprehensively," wrote Engels, "it did not suffice to know about the capitalist form of production, exchange, and distribut...