rr gy Marx's concept of the Asiatic mode of production: @ genetic analysis* Heinz Lubasz Abstract ‘Marx's concept ‘Asiatic mode of production’ doesn't conceptualize production in Asia, which Mare knew very litte about and never axtempted to theorize, but the hypothetical zemote ancestzy of modern bourgeois production, which he knew a lor about and spent a lifetime theorising. In Marx's writings from 1857/8 onwerds, the AMP figures as the aboriginal, primitively communal mode of production muchas in his ings before that date the family, tribe, or clan figure as the aboriginal, primicively communal social formation, ts putative cheracteristics derive, less from Marx's examination of its actual structure, than from his reuro- spective rational reconstruction, out ofthe ‘categories’ af che capitalise ‘mode of production and the logie of dialectical development, ofa schema Which would embrace ‘al? modes of production in a single progressive (though not steaightforwatdly successive) system of the ecoromie formation of society Nothing in Marx's writings addresses the non-European world more directly than does his concept of the Asiatic mode of production, Certainly it has been at the centre of Marxist debates concerning Asia — and much of the rest of the non-European World — for more than a hundred years.! ‘These debates have ranged from issues of immediate and vital political significance — strategies of revolution, directions of social and economic develop- quent — to broad questions concerning the interpretation of world history and the study of economic anthropology. aAt times these debates bave, to be sure, descended to the level of political mud slinging and Marxological pedantry, But, one way ot another, the oncept of the Asiatic mode of production has mattered greatly — hhas mattered enough, for example, to be banned by Stalin from Public discussion in the Soviet Union for twenty-five years, Hence ‘here is bitter irony in the fact that this concept now turns out to Beonomy and Society Volume 13 Number 4 November 1984 (© RKP 1984 0308—5147/84/1304~-0000 $1,50Ne Bey pos beorso of he Aste made predution 487 pe fundamentally flawed, Today we know, thanks to 4 mast of Bfoaxist and nonMarxist research and analysis, what the concept of Asiatic mode of production is empirically untenable and se onticrlly indefensible And yet, because it is always possible Oy say — rightly — that empirical evidence is not by itself EGncktsive, and because it is alvays, posible, given sufficient EGgenty, to introduce theoretical modifications, the concept stil ine rits adherents I therefore present a different kind of critique, IniSthe hope thar the ghost of this profoundly misleading concept ity at last be laid to rest. By means of what one might oul Tietic analysis? I attempt to go to the root of the concept, by Beccing how it was conceived in the first place and then developed, {yeh analysis shows that the concept ‘Asiatic mode of production” Soesn't conceptualize what it seems to, but something else instead. t is a pseudo-concept. ‘What the concept ‘Asiatic mode of production’ conceptualizes js not Asian society, which Marx knew very litte about and never Netempted to theorize, but the hypothetical origins of modern pourgeois society, which Marx knew a lot about and spent a life- time theorizing. ‘Marx's overriding purpose was to create a new theory of history, not as such, butas an overwhelming, objective ‘demonstr~ ation” of the force of his argument against modem, bourgeois society, The whole schematic view of history which he devised was ‘ded by this polemical intent. And his polemical incent was to SSrove’ that modern bourgeois society — or, to give it its other ‘Marxian name, the capitalist mode of production ~ was bound to yield to communist society. Capital, and the capitalist mode of production with it, was — so Marx maintained — a transitory’ phenomenon end ‘not ~ as the classical political economists Ehought ~ the perennial core of man’s economic society operating ‘at last in accortlance with its etemal natural laws, Marx therefore most urgently wanted to show that capital was no ‘natural’ thing, but a social form or relation; that it was no perennial or ubiqui- tous phenomenon, but a historically specific form which, as it had come into being, so it would pass away — to give place to the next hhigher (and final) stage in the systematic historical process of the economic formation of society. Given this overriding, polemical Durpose, Marx set out to construct what | think is best understood 2s & systematic argument in the form of a systematic theory of history. He conceived of the bourgeois society of bis mic-nine- teentli-century, western European present as at once 2 mode of production, a form of domination, and a system of social conflict. Tn order to demonstrate that it was, in all these respects, a transitory reality, he devised a view of the whole of past history as488 Heloe Luboee a systematic and progressive sequence of modes of production, forms of domination, and systems of social conflict; a sequence ‘of stages or epochs in the economic conformation of socie (skonomische Gesellschaftsformation)* which was bound, all along, to lead to the present stage — and beyond it. Thus the whole systematic sequence of historical formations devised by Marx served no other purpose then to demonstrate the force of his argument Tt was the sole purpose of the concept of the Asiatic mode of production to serve as the starting point of that whole fateful process. In general terms Marx's schematic presentation of the course of history is widely familiar, But it is not generally realized that two versions of this scheme are to be found in his writings.* ‘The first, which informs the writings from The German ideology (1845/6) to The Communist Manifesto (1848), reads: primitive communism, ancient society, feudal society, modern bourgeois society, The second, which informs the writings from the Grund risse (1857/8) to Capital, vol. 1 (1867), reads: Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production. In these later writings, the Asiatic mode of production takes the place which in the earlicr writings had been occupied by the primitive com- munism of the family, Each represents the stage of intial con tions from which, once the primitive (naturwnebsig) forms, relations and activities which characterize them have been torn apart, the systematic formative process begins which culminates in the modern bourgeois form of society or — as the case may be = in the capitalist mode of production, The formal characteristics Marx ascribes to the Asiatic mode of production.are the same as those he ascribes to the family: primitive (naturwachsig) unity of form, of relations, and of activities. Just as the family has unity of form’ thanks to the accidents of birth, so the ‘Asiatic’ communal entity (Gemeinwesen)® has unity of form thanks to the accidents of location, Just as the family is not systematically differentiated into parts or organs, so is the land of Asia an ‘indifferent’ (not systematically differentiated) unity of city and countryside. If the family has only a spontaneous, accidental division of labour, so does the ‘Asiatic’ mode of production; and in both the social nature of labour is immediate, and directly perceptible (‘trans parent’), In the primitive communism of the family, those who work ate at the same time the proprietors of what they work on, be it land or the raw materials of domestic industry. ‘The same holds true of the ‘Asiatic’ formation, And in neither form of ptimitively communal production is agricultural labour systemati- tally differentiated from domestic industry. In its principal features, therefore, the Asiatic mode of production is the equiva _:ehibwolpodion ‘srpinshic athe? os pol ‘ade asel revoting ean gales cnet sry fot ‘Nor schematic xedaree to beso “Fak ll bere cone ist tee ation of he 9 stat ofthe suction The silent for.FS nacally ele! ae on sof intial suchrigh fees have been too colnin's ke 1 characteris are the sane sg) unity hasunity command 1 the acciders » differentiated different’ (ect nteyside. te “of hibout, © oth the social ptibte Ceacs ys those who ghey: work oa, ry. The same ther form of nur systerat its princips] the equi | dari’ concept of the Ante mode of production 469 lent of the family: it is primitive communism. (Both, of courss, Sie Gistinguished from. the systematic — fully articulated, deliberately instituted, consciously controlled ~ commun'sn! © the putative fueure precisely by their lack of system: in primitive te Pernisrn, forms, relations and activities are merely mature ‘ouchsig, that is, spontancous and a watcer of accident) Cre ee scmage in Marx's manuscript on the Theories of Sample Value (1862/3) which states the whole matter sn a nuty shell: ‘The original unity between labourer and conditions of labour oe wakes two main forms: the Asiatic communal entity, {primitive [maturwacbsg) communism) and the smal Zam Seenead (with which domestic industry is linked) in one form te another, Both arc infantile forms (Kinderformen} and equally Hitle suited to developing labour as social Iabout and the productive power of social labour, Henee the neces of Separation, sundering (Zerredsung, iteraly: teazing apart, the opposition between labour and property (meaning property i Specs saitions of production). The most extreme form of this Suesdting, in which atthe same time the produetive forces of labour are most powerfully developed, is that of capital. Te i$ Shion the macerial basis which iterates, and via the reveli- cay che working cass and the whole society undergoes, that the original unity can be restored.” ‘One could hardly ask for a more straightforward statement of the Bat of Marx's schematic vision of history, even though there is 20 Explicit veference tothe social formations ox the modes ‘of produc SP ere penveen the primiively communist stage and the capitalist. The initial conditions — here the alimporra relation CPP epoar to the conditions of labour ~ ere primitivaly unitary ord. ne wacty ineapable of development. The orginal uniy rest be aoey Sounder nee two poles which stand in oppesition One the cre then, and only. then, docs that process of diferencia Orne cticulation begin which for Marx is synonymors WI development. ‘The forms which, precede this sundering are primitively. unitary. The forms which sueceed it 2 by contrast, Uieagonistic. And they are, progressively so: ths ‘the capitalist sag ite. most extreme form of the sandering of Ce original inity into opposites, But the most extreme for of disunity is ar he laste ie creates the conditions which make possible the aa aa ieee the orginal unity — of a higher level The original tunity is that of the primitive communism of the Asiatic mode of production. ‘The family is mentioned in the ‘quoted passage a5 an Pguivalent form, But, in contrast to what was the case in Marx’s ee{ 480 Heine Lutwse Giller writings, the family with its farmstead no longer represents did he the hypothetical initial stage in the process of histovical develop. togethe men It is now seen rather as the one institution of modern j The bourgeois society in which the unity of labour and the conditions primiti f labour still survive. The mantie of the primitive family as the exclusi pypothetial initial stage in the process of historical development been 3 ss assed from the family to the Asiatic mode of production. Germa And the Asiatic mode of produetion wears that mantle precisely munisn as the new incarnation of primitive communism, | Urform ‘The important point here ~ 2 point to which we shall return sriiki that the formal nature of the defining characteristics of primitive communism was known to Marx a priort: for, that the al conditions of a process of development are characterized} by a primitive unity of form, relations and activities, isa central | Postulate of dialectical logic. To the extent, therefore, that Marx Sonceptualized the Asiatic mode of production as primitive Communism, the formal characteristics which he ascribed to that mode of production derive, not from any examination and | comm ahalysis of socio-economic life in Asia, but from dialectical logic: vagant they are a priori. But, of course, the concept of the Asiatic node | thesis | | | of Production is no purely formal concept. it has specific content, were Gist content, I suggest, was largely derived by Marx from the distinc defining features —"the’ categories, as he called then of the proper capitalist mode of prod latter, thoug! iatic mode of production — the institu: || "yIke tional forms, the socio-economic relations, and the patterns of at firs activity ~ he derived from the categories of the capitalist mode of 3 the cs production as he conceived it. Having so very little knowledge of the © Asia as he did made it all the easier for Mare to impose upon the Clarity few data he did have the shape called for by dialectical logic and | but wi the content suggested by the categories of mid-nineteenth-century, to me the win European capitalism, The real Asia is all but absent, What ‘| back | the concept ‘Asiatic mode of production’ conceptualizes is not the t Asia 1 mrodeeghomic life of ancient Asia, but the hypothetical roots of condi ™modern bourgeois society | lived : \} and § . idea Hero¢ Before 1 go on to enlarge on that claim, I must pause to deal with classi the Presumably specifically Asiatic character of the Asiatic mode from) gaproduction, After all, Marx did locate primitive commune ea, prong Tah and he did bring Oriental despotism into his teen ot slight pn. questions therefore arise, (1) why should Mars have heataied infor! Primitive communism as specifically Asiatic? and (2) how and why Marx’ |— EN ——————————— ars concept of the Alte mode of prodton together in a single concept? Sete int answer to the frst question is that Marx believed primitive communism to have been originally, bue by no Mee Prclusiely, Asiatic. Marx thought primitive commun been 2 more ot less world-wide phenomenon, the cra thesis that the ea were to be conceptualized in terms of Roman an thought about antiquity was couched in such terms: the Orient with his hypothesis about primi dlid_he bring Oriental despotism and primitive communism Gomnanic, Celtic, Slavic and other variants, The primitive come eran ot Asia was in his eyes simply the aboriginal form, the Urform from whose structure one could desive later pater of Ufo a and of private ownership. ‘This was not an unreasonable hypothesis, since the origins of civilization itself and, with ft the Derinnings of history, were in his day traced t0 the grest ve! 2 Pefiys Asia (Hgypt for this purpose being included with Asia), Tare tase atea stretching from the Nile to the lands berween the ‘Tigris and the Buphrates and beyond, to the valleys of the Indus, the Ganges, andthe ‘Yellow River ~ this was thought to have been. EES, alization, To suppose the earliest forms of settled teimmunal life to have emerged in Asia was therefore no extray agunt hypothesis ~ less extravagant, at any rate, than the hypo st settled relations between land and people \d German legal Yecawtions between property and possession, individual privace ; propery ans communal ownership! But even in respect of the picter, Marx wis no. maverick: much nineteenth-century European a “The answer to the second question is less straightforward. For at fist glance itis indeed pudzling how Marc could have linked the satabiished European common-place about the despotism of ive communism. Clarity on this point depends on our grasping, not what otters: ba hse Man Kianself specifically understood ‘Oriental despotism to mean, The idea thar Asia was ruled by powerful despots goce Dadevee the Greeits, who saw the powerful barbarian empites of ie Minor as 2 constant threat to their independence, and the Condition of slavery in which the subjects of the Oriental despots fived as 2 constant threat to their own ideal of limited governsncnt ING free citizenship. There is little doubt that Marx imbibed this area of Oriental despotism from his reading of Aeschylus, Herodotus, Isocrates and Aristotle, along with the rest of his srerviest education, So, no doubt, did the earlier European writers, Casa cdin and. Harrington to Montesquieu and Hegel, whe pronounced on the subject, even if each of them sayt it igntly different light and with an admixture of additional Information ot. speculation. It has recently been suggests itera ies about Oriental despotism need to be seen in theSENEEEsee is Heine Lise Manes se Tae Of the whole European tradition of thought about Asia? tion 1 as though Marx, hed first absorbed that tradition and then either icriga advanced beyond it or fallen behind it, I know of no evidence, In: direct or inlect, to suggest that Matx came by his partes; primi Be eae ee Oriental despotism in anything like this way, My must ‘Own guess is that he formed his more detailed notion of Oriental to. se despotism by reflection on Aristotle, whose Policies and Nex primi machaean Ethics he re-read with care in the 1850s, Marx’s two conce deualed references to Oriental despotism ~ in the article on "The natuer Beitish Rule in India’ (1853) and in the section of the Granthine them: Known as, ‘PreCapitalist. Economic Formations" indivi (1857/8) — make it plain that what he has in mind is the al, | they commanding will of the despot visd-vis bis will-less subjects — a behes biceise reflection of the Aristotelian view. In classical Greek, defini Sespotes isthe teem for a master preeminentiy of slaves, Avotele betw. Specifies the relation of master and slave by saying that @ slave fs Marx ‘Pmeone who, having no will of his own, is in all thi igs subject to the { the will of a master, a despotes.? Itis precisely on this view of the gener Marx fastens: the relation between will and will: affori between someone who, having individual personality and whic! {apable of action, and someone who, lacking both finall ' personality and will, is capable only of activity; between perso oes who commands and the slave who obeys, beyo: This comes out very clearly in “The British Rule in India’, where volun Constrasts the way in which artificial irrigation was carried act cj out in Italy and Flanders with the way it was carried out in | is Ms italy and Flanders, says Marx, such works were the distin Tonat °F (Private enterprise’ riven to ‘voluntary cooperation’ im | Thus, the result of deliberate action undertaken by | despe individuals having will and capable, therefore, both of enterprise Th ana,ct wolumtary cooperation. In the Orient, by conteer, pace ment Works were carried out at the behest of the cereal government, It is : bectuse ‘civilization was too low and the terror] oxen tion. {0 call inco life voluntary association’. 1 cannot doubt that what | overt ho inhabined eh tation’ being ‘too low" was that the people“ emer (inhabited the communal villages had not yet developed into subje IIfledged individual Petsons with a will of their own. In the mean consequently, of private enterprise and voluntary co- prod, on the part of the villagers, ‘an economical function 1 econ: Cepaved upon all Asistic Governments’ the hance providing muct public works’, (In my view it is this commitment of Marx's to the + from ce that in Asia the population had noe yet developed individual i Basti Petsonality and will which was responsible for’ his actually oper? Suppressing a piece of information which, as we shail see, he had at his disposal at the tim itAS 465 ein Lobe tare concent ofthe Atle made of proueton t about Asia,* tion that in Asia the communes, too, undertook works of artificial td then either irrigation). no evidence, ABest British Rule in India’ there is as yet no menten of his particular primitive communism or of the Asiatic mode of production, We L this way. My Pust therefore turn to the ‘Pre-Capitalist ‘Economic Formations i on of Oriental to see how Matx links Oriental despotism specifically with L ics and Nico- primitive communism"! It was ttue 4 priori, so far as Marx was | s. Marx’s two Poncerned, that people who lived in conditions ‘of the most neatly : ticle on “The Sanarwticbsig of primitive communisms had not Yet detached 1 he Grundrisse Themselves from the communel ‘lump’, had not yet become _ Formations’ qndividuals, and thus lacked will. Whatever non-routine activities ind is the all- they performed must, therefore, have been performed at the s subjects — a Drea of someone who did have will. And that someone WA by sical Greck, ae cineir master; the Oriental despot. The Connery, aves. Aristotle between Oriental despotism and primitive communiins jg made by : that a stave is Manx on this very point. ‘The corollary of ‘Oriental despotism is : ings subject to “the general slavery of the Bast’: the human being is in completely | s view of the general terms a slave: the slave of the ‘material conditions which t will and will aerert fie sustenance, the slave of the commmural en/iy within | ersonality and | Which he lives almost like a bee within a hive, and the slave, i lacking both iA slave lacks individual finally, of the despot who rules over al ivity; between personality and will, He is therefore incapable of deliberate action } . Beyond routine activity, incapable, of initiate, enterprise; | india’, where Pefottary cooperation. very Oriental’s nonroutine 260° an ' mn was eartied Seer sour at the command of the master, the despotes ‘That : auried out in arenes tion of the ‘general’ slavery of the Hast, ip, ome acks were the is Mare’ notice particular slavery of ancient Greece end Tom pperation’ — in ‘Thus, in Marx’s thinking, do primitive communis ‘and Oriental & ndertaken by despotism go hand-in-hand, i | of enterprise "The systematic place of despotism in Marx's scheme of develop- \ rontrast, such ment lies, like that of primitive communism itself, acthe beginning | | government, Ttis simply the first in a systematic sequenst of forms of domina i xctent too vast Non. Like the other pre-capitalist forms of dominntin, is an ubt that what chert form of domination, a, political form. Only the l iat the people {emergence of capitalism do the relations of domination and jeveloped into Subjestion between the — at feast nomial 7 Rep ors of the own. In the means of production and the population directly engaged iP voluntary co- production cease to be overtly poles form, and become yoy ee Prodectie” Bue these capitalist economic Suton still very Seo ee Tt domination and subjection, 0 deseent much relations Of “Grima despot and the geet Se ofthe From those ote ar the power ofthe capi his actually operation among workess, Marx says, D4 0) of asain et see, he had at by no. means haphazardly: ‘The Powe’ lof conan, Asati n of providing ( the informa- { and Egyptian kings ot Etruscan theocrats “Marx's to the ped individualgy He tse Y pase to the capitalist, be he mw the vase af joinestock, companies, a We then, we wish 1 an individual capizalis or, as collective capitalist,” laeate the Asiatic mode of prodton Mahon the systematic framework of Mean theory, our best the nieveseary stinkish as Mace hint alvays did bene the atevessary and the contingent, In the systemat sequence of| imenles of prochiction sensu stricta, it s primitive communist Which is 4 necessary clement. ‘That its Urform is Asiatic is an sccilent of history and eouraphy, In the systematic sequence of Rrtins of slontination which is interlocked with te systematic jhpreteh ot tales of production, i i despotism whe ee Ianto CetHeUE. That its Urfor is Oriental is an seeder ef ator ant geugraphy. Distinguishing. the necessary from the Santaytent in this way seems to me to clarify much in the concept ‘at the Asiatic mite uf production that has bntherso been snurky erage. lftculies remain. tn one place Manx epak of fhe state ay being a mere instrument of class domination, the see re lasses thus teing its precondition; in another pice, # We Ihave seen, he speaks of a classless society — primitive com: fumisur which, having no classes, has no need of class domine fin. aml vet dacs have a state, Phiinly such a state is no inst iment of chiss domination, In ane place Marx asserts that the state X metely part a the supersirueture which arses on society's base, us ccotionnie structure; in another place he el ims, as we have seen, tht the Griental state performed economie functions so vial ee NHL iigation ‘works ~~ that the whole economie suuctute of SSE coro’ tinetion if they were not performed, Phinly such wan ge he mere part of the iperstcucture. ‘These are diftialties which remain ao matter how one reads Marx, for the simple reason that they re ineradicably there in the texts, yer eannot be re. voneited one with the uther, They ace, it seems to me, simply the anatenided byproducts of an unremitting endeavour eo theorize iwuulern Irourgcois suciety in such a way as to demonstrate that it % the upshot of the whole of past history. Marx wants to show that modern bourgeois society asa mode of production, aa form ot lamination, wu? as a system of social conflict is the sequel to all the antecedent historical formations as eacd anal themselves mules of prexluction, forms of domination, and — with tele exception of primitive communism — systems of social coi, This was an incredibly ambitious project, which Marx tad ; from divergent perspectives on different occasions over the span of 4 whole litetime, If in his several and divergent attempts todo al this Marx doesn't always succeed, and if his various solutions don't all add up, we shouldn't be surprised.imc - ranmell emvmen —————_ 00 tho Astetle mode of production a yous cance of ha sel made of redat 86 3 Go theorization of any actually Asian patterns of social, cemnonn’ BP political life is to be found anywhere in Marx's writings. wards the end of his life, he did, to be sure, study and try (© ‘Thalyze one of the surviving forms of primitive ‘communism ~ the aesne peasant commune, the Russian mir. But thes oo Semparable study and analysis of any Asian formation, ‘And even Che attempted analysis of the mir was rentadyey patchy, tnonclusive, and he left it unfinished. The genesis of ‘Marx’s inccept of an Asiatic mode of production has therefore 10 be Sought, not in the anslyzed presentations ~ there are none ~ & soe litele Marx Knew about Asia, but in the theoretical prossss wnSugh which he formulated his notion of primitive communism Bor that notion, together with his idea of Oriental despotism, i what he read into his scant information about Asia ‘Tt is worth observing, parenthetically, that though Marx knew rather more about the other two pre-capitalist formations, the ancient and the feudal, he never examined say ‘of them in decal Brie Hobsbawm. once noted very justly that Marx. was “not concemed .,. with the internal “dynamics of pre-capitalist systems except in so far as they explain the preconditions of capitalism." He tnight have added that this doesn't mean that Marx picked on only those features of the pre-capitalist systems which pointed towards capitalism, but rather the reverse: that he read into he pre-capitalist. systems those features which he derived from Capitalisin. After all, on Marx’s own view, nothing whatever in primitive communism pointed cowards capitalism. Marx's sk. #8 Pettaw it; was to show why, in light of the conditions required for the emergence of capitalism, primitive communism we, infantile form unsuited to developing labour #5 social labour of, With it, the wemendous productive power of social aboot, Noshing in it pointed to capitalism, And bat perception Wt of course available to him only by looking at primitive ‘communism Fm the light of the categories of the caprealist mode of produeron Comparable things might be said of the other pre-capitalist forma- Toe tA Claude Meilassoux has succinetly put its ‘It was not Marx's intention to analyse the pre-capitalist, formations from Within, bur eather to discover thelr distinctive feamures and their suiccestion, In doing this, his method was to take he basic institu- Tena act feutares of capita as i existed in his time and ©” to trace their past evolution." AAT have Already suggested, Marx’ chief theoretical tools for doing this were two: dialect ‘al logic and retrospective reconstse= tion, Speaking very schematically indeed, one may SY chat dia~ — |aE HeneLabenr | Mane lectical logic provided the general form of each of the modes of are d Produetion and the overall pattcen of the sequence of modes, (amil While recrospective reconstruction meant setting out from the geogrs principal features or categories of the capitalist mode of produe- Activi ton {as Marx analysed it) and reconstructing the pre-capitalist. | mena modes in terms of these categories, Marx himself,éin the well, forme known introduction to the Grundrisse, spelled out the rationale from for this procedure of rational reconstruction, and it will be useful | the sti to remind ourselves of what he said there: } ie Bourgeois society [wrote Marx] is the most developed and the | ruptar ‘most fully articulated (mannigfaltigste] historical organization crucial of production, The categories which express its relations, the and th comprehension of its structure, also afford insight into the “At | tions which nae relations of production ofall the social forma ine! tions which have passed away, [formations] with whose | sysceni Wweeckage and fragments it [bourgeois society] has built icself | furthe: pp, whose remnants — partly stil! unintegrated — survive within | ficatio it (while what in them were] no more than anticipations [of | version later forms) have developed into fullledged significations. The | anothe ape Byes he human being i a key to the anatomy of the with d ape. By contrast, what in the lower ordets of animals isthe anti- ileeady {bation of a higher form can only be grasped once the higher culmin {otm is already known, Similar, bourgeois economy supplies as beir the key to the ancient, ete." tion w ‘That, I think, is as clear a statement of the theoretical basis of! that fit {aiinal reconstruction as one could wish for. How far the analogy * aetiviti Petween the evolution of species and the history of society is rire contro! {i how far it may be misleading, is an important question, but + Gontral fone we need nor take up in the present context. Nor do we need despot: {0 take up the related question, raised by lring Fetscher and develo} Comelius Castoriadis among others,"” whether it males sense to | where conceive of earlier forms of socio-economic life as moder of begin. Production at all. For our purposes it is enough to know what Patti Marx's procedure was, | ceptual wr iavplly, Marx left no comparable statement of his eoncep- in some Homearstletical ogi. In very cough outline, however, oxe may the rad opie are i a8 follows. Dialectical logic is, among other things, a ‘condit togte of development, I is a way of formulating the inital exe, 4 must ron Po Subleet-substance’s structure, the path of its develop. nediun TAane ftom lower forms to higher, and ofthe modes (modifestions) mediatj fioush which it pases in that process of development to ies fect elation form. The initial conditions are naturwhcbsig: that is, they make capital coe roniely organic whole whose internal structure is sponta: enly in ‘cous, Ron-systematic, haphazard, contingent, Relations within it hbour | eeegreenest cence ‘Mars concept of the Alatle mode of production “7 are determined by the accidents of birth and consanguinity | Gamily, clan, tribe) or by the accidents of settlement (locaton, geography, climate) — in short, by purely natural factors, ‘Ketivites are similarly determined by the accidents of nacure: old men and women may perform different activities from those pet formed by the young, females may perform different activities from males, and the weak may perform different activities from the strong, But these differences are differences rooted in nature. ‘There is no systematic differentiation at all, or else it is at avery tow level indeed, Systematic differentiation begins with the great rupture or sundering which creates a difference ~ for Marx erucially the separation of labour from the conditions of labour, and the systematic division of labour itself. ANAT that point, systematic development begins: the proces of 7 increasingly intensified differentiation, and of the articulation of = Systematic — as opposed to a naturwucbsig ~ structure, The further path of development, through subsequent modes or mod fications, cannot here be univocally reconstructed, because Marx's versions of it vary with his perspective ftom one occasion * another, Bur it need not detain us here, since we are concerned With the initial conditions only. Suffice it to sey — 98 We have already noted — that Marx regards the process a5 having culminated, to date, in the bourgeois or capitalist formation, and as being destined ~ at least conditionally ~ to reach its comple: tion with the restoration of he original nity ata higher level At that final stage, community is not naturwtcbsig but systematic: 1 activities are, so far as natural needs perinit, under the conscicns | Contcol of the community itself, instead of being subject to the Gomination either of nature, or of imagined gods, o of tl Gespots individual or collective, At that point bis partculor development will have come to a close and, as Manx s8ys soe here with besutfal epdimism, ‘real, buman bistory can at last gin, Putting both of these theoretical tools to work, Marx Or ceptuatized the central feature of the Asiatic mode of proeuctioe in something like the following way. Bourgeois soc86) is based on the radi ine ene {Of about from the means of production (OF sos Titus of labour’), Since labour and the means of prods e eet nE Suche together if production is to orcur At ay & medium or mediator must exist which brings te oi hat Taediating role is performed by capital — by the alr Telatlon” bewween labour and ee tmuans of production, In pre Capitalist formations, capital doesn't exist by definite (or exis only in preliminary, ‘antedeluvian’ forms), while the separ the Tabour Rom the means of production has not yet ret0aS 48 Heine Lobare extreme degree which it reaches under capitalism. Thus in pre= capitalist formations generally, labour still has diteet access to the means of production in one way or another, under various forms of property and under various degrees of constraint But in the first formation, that of the initial conditions, labour and the means of production have not become separated at all, and no constraint is required to bring them together. The labour of the communal entity and the land on which that labour works are virtually one, Marx had it on the authority of the seventeenth- century physician and writer, Francois Bernier, that in India there was no concept of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’.!® And he had it on the authority of a British parliamentary report that in India villages existed which had retained their communal role of life unchanged since remote antiquity,'? His reading of Bernier suggested to Marx that there was in India no private property; and on the strength of this, plus his information ebout the communal nature of village life in India, Marx concluded that, if property in the villages ‘wasn't private, it must be communal. By this he didn't mean that any explicit concept or institution of property rights existed, of course; but he did mean that the land as a whole was directly available to the community as a whole. He thus readily assumed some sort of primitive communism to have existed in Indian villages from time immemorial; he also assumed that this was the prevailing pattern in India and, indeed, in Asia as a whole. And he assumed all this, so far as 1 can see, precisely because primitive communism was what he expected to find, For he simply ignored information to the effect that in some parts of India ‘private’ Property did exist}? he ignored — though he faithfully reported them ~ the current debates in Parliament about the nature and Variety of Indian forms of land-holding;* and he ignored what he had read, to the effect that the absence of private property in land had not been established in India until the coming of the Muslim conquerors.’ Besides, he didn’t inquire into forms of tenure in China of Persia or Viemnam, and he didn’t attempt to distinguish ‘among different epochs of Indian history. He had some ‘evidence’ that the allimportant capitalist category ~ the relation of labour to the means of production ~ conformed in Asia to the dialectical postulate of « naturwucbsig, primitive unity of form, Since his Concern was not with Asia but with the remote antecedents of the ‘capitalist mode of production, that was enough, 4 Mare himself actually used the term ‘Asiatic mode of production’ only once, It occurs in the well-known statement that ‘In broad Poe eee eetesate bem. Thus in ps aval ret access tke -ettee various fr taint A ditions hte € separated at ber. ‘he bbs: sti shat labour was ‘ef the seventeen f2shat in India dex 1 be had it on te Toot in India villas offife unchanget sggested to Mir. he steengihat oo eatute of silye oivey i the wig stuln’t mean tht “ahs existed y assured Tegin this was de avavhole, Ande » fecnuse primitive besinply iguored 1 tna ‘private fost, reported oat the nature and Bo igneced whathe lind zo the Muslim oof tenure in 3 to distinguish ‘evidence’ seiation af labour ate te sialeetical ¥ foro, Since his araccedents of the sic uf production’ cot that “In broad Mori's concopt of the Asiatic mode of production 400 outline, Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated progressive stages of the exononie Formation of society. That is all Marx says about it in that place. ‘To find out what the term might mean, one has in fact to ecour Marx's writings for the one newspaper article, the occasional paragraph, the brief passage, the phrase or sentence here and there Fven footnotes become important! Needless to say, no clear picture ever emerges from sich a process of collation: the termi: hology varies, there are shifts in perspective, details change, And because the term ‘Asiatic mode of production’ never recurs, it is in the end impossible ro say firmly chat what Marx meant by it was definitely X or Y. The whole topic is a paradise for devotees of textual exegesis (from whose company I cannot, alas, exclude myself — for obvious reasons!) {in the hope of putting an end to this ultimately fruicless exercise, { suggest that we look at the whole subject in a different Way. I” suggest that, instead of gathering all the scattered comments on Asia or India together and in that way assembling ‘Marx's ‘meaning’, we leave them all exactly where they are, and Took at them ia the context in which they occur, This turns out to be quite an illuminating procedure. For it makes one thing very cleat: all of Marx's remarks about Asia are — much like his remarks about Greece and Rome and Germanic Europe — incidental remarks; and what they are incidental to is his abiding preoccupation with bourgeois society. It would be tedious to take Up literally every such remark, and superfluous as well, Bus if we take a look at each of che four principal occasions on which Marx makes more ot less substantial statements about Asia (or at least about India), we shall find that in every case the statements about ‘Asia ate what one might call auxiliary statements whose purpose is to help Marx make & point about the capitalist, not the Asiatic, mode of production “The four occasions in question are the following: (1) the news paper article on "The British Rule in India’ (1853),"* which tums ‘out to have been a salvo in 2 longstanding quarrel with the ‘American economist, H.C. Carey, about the nature of capitalism in igeneral and about the consequences of British preeminence — Britain the workshop of the world! — for economic development in the rest of the world; (2) the section of the Grundrisse (1857/8) entitled ‘Pre-Capitalist Formations’, in which Marx was trying t0 work out, for his own benefit, the nature of the capitalist relation between labour and the conditions of labour; (3) the sections in Theories of Surplus Value (1862/3)* and the third volume of Capital (1864/7)%7 devoted to an analysis of capitalist ground- rent and, with it, the classification of the specific nature of470 Hee Lobase capitalist surplus-extraction; and, finally, (4) chapter 12 of the first volume of Capital (1867)%, which treats the capitalist division of labour in society and in manufacture, All but the first of these ate concerned with one or another of the central categories of the capitalist mode of production, References within them to pre-capitalist modes serve the sole purpose of identifying, by contrast with them, the historical specificity of the capitalist mode, It thus becomes plain, simply by ‘leaving’ each of Marx's statements about Asia in its original place, that this concept of the Asiatic mode of production — whatever precisely it may have been — was simply an auxiliary device used by Marx to help him theorise the capitalist mode of production, ‘The first of Marx's statements about Asia, however, deals not one of the capitalist categories, but with the nature of the impact of British capitalism on India, As we learn from a letter” he wrote to Engels just after he had finished the article on ‘The British Rule in India’, Marx's axgument was intended as an attack on the views of H.C. Carey. These views were apparently largely supported by The New York Daily Tribune, the very newspaper for which Marx was then writing; and it evidently pleased him enormously to have composed a veiled attack on the paper's editorial policy. Carey believed that the consequences of industrial capitalism upon society at large were intrinsically beneficent and its impact pacific, but that the excessive concentration of capitalist industrialism in Britain tended to retard and distort its development in other parts of the world. It was against this argu- ment of Carey’s that Marx was thundering in “The British Rule in India’, ‘Rubbish’, Marx was in effect saying to Carey (and the editors of the Tribune): ‘Look at the British impact on India. What you find is that British industrial capitalism alone has managed to do what centuries of stagnation in India could never accomplish: it is destroying the structures and patterns which have Kept India socially and economically in the doldrums for tuntold ages; it is thus bringing about “the only socia? revolution ever heard of in Asin” and, by means precisely of a centralizing imperialism, is establishing a dynamic division of labour which places “the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal”. It is by such brutal means, my dear Carey, that capitalist industrialism unintentionally carries out its revolutionary mis- sion ~ not theough a samby-pamby distribution of its so-called blessings!” Recall the peroration of Marx’s article: England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest of interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The tetrorapt of thi gestion is, c ental revolt iy have be al of histo mas this pe ‘ex when he alhsis of 1 toed him siding. thi ssuly incaps sekwew it wi My point 4 sihis. Marx een until supation Ehges, of t ogress an Ts only t jtern = ‘Aan prog sapitalise i ‘wy Dut s wis precis seotrast 'a as shat wterly in capable o} for water, for the fa wrote the friend En sas the, ental g providec This ' alow wailabl informa could n betwee! becaust so suri virwall——————————— ars’ concept ofthe Asatie made of produetion an question is, an mankind fulfilits destiny without a funda- seatal revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever nay have been the crimes of England she was the ‘unconscious tool of history in bringing about the revolution. It was this polemical argument, I suggest, that mattered most £0 Mave when he weote ‘The British Rule in India, not an adequate Mls of the Asiatic mode of production. Which is why’ he ‘loved himself to turn communes apparently engaged in providing themselves with artificial irigation into communes prteny incapable of doing anything of the kind. it wasn’t true, and he knew it wasn’t true, but it suited his argument. ‘My point about the communes, to whieh I have alzeady referred, is thet Marx wanted to show how completely stagnant India had been tunel che coming of British capital, He argued that this total stagnation was due to the absence, in the Indian communal Millages, of the systematic division of labour which alone made for progress and ~ in due course — for the transformation of society. Tints only by ‘blowing up’ its ‘economical basis’ could this village pattern ~ the basis of India's/Asia's economy — be destroyed and Ksian_ progress secured, ‘The brutal and destructive impact, of Capitalse incustrialism was tius demonstrated as against Carey's Giew; but so was Marx’s conviction that this brutal destructiveness wwas precisely the vehicle of real progress. In order to present the Contrast between capitalist dynamism and pre-capitalist stagnation nas sharp 2 light as possible, Marx made the Indian villages utterly incapable of any form of enterprise ~ in particular, in Capable of providing even for theic owa most basic need, the need fervacer. That, at any rate is the only explanation Lean think of for the fact that, thotigh Marx had available to him, at the time he {wrote the article, information supplied a day or two earlier by his Friend Engels, to the effect that the provision of artificial irrigation Was the concern ‘either of the communes, the provinees or the Central government’, Marx asserted that central government alone provided for waterworks. ‘his seems to me an interesting example of how Marx could allow his preconceptions to dominate even the information available to him — to the point not only of ignoring certain information, but in effect ‘demonstrating’ that this information could not possibly be sound. (For thatis the effect of his contrast between the enterprising West and the unenterprising East). And because the diserepancy between Engels’ statement and Marx's is so striking on this one point, while in all other respects Marx frtually copies Engels’ report, { present the two texts.an Hone Lubare In a letter dated Manchester, 6 June 1853 in the evening, Engels reported as follows: How comes it that the Orientals don’t manage to attain to property in land, not even to feudal property? I believe the climate is responsible, together with the condition of the terrain, especially the vast tracts of desert, extending from the Sahara, through Arabia, Persia, India and Tartary, to the most elevated Asiatic highlands, Artificial irrigation is here the fundamental pre-condition for agriculture, and this is the concern either of the communes, the provinces of the central goverment. More- over, government in the Orient has but three departments: Finance (the plunder of the interior), War (the plunder of the interior and the exterior), and Public Works, concerned with reproduction, This report could not have reached Marx earlier than Tuesday, 7 June, and probably did not reach him until Wednesday, 8 June. Its contents could therefore hardly have slipped his mind before he sat down to compose his article, which was finished by Friday, the 10th, In any case, the internal evidence makes it perfectly clear that Marx had Engels' letter before him on the desk as he wrote, This is what Marx wrote: ‘There have been in Asia, generally, from immemorial times, but three departments of Government: that of Finance, ot the plunder of the interior; that of War, or the plunder of the exteriors and, finally, the department of Public Works. Climate and territorial conditions, especially the vast tracts of desert, extending from the Sahara, through Arabia, Persia, India and ‘Tartary, to the most elevated Asiatic highlands, constituted artificial irrigation by canals and waterworks the basis of Oriental agriculture, As in Egypt and India, inundations sre used for fertilizing the soil in Mesopotamia, Persia, etc.; advantage is taken of a high level for feeding itrigative canals. ‘This prime necessity of an economical and common use of water, which, in the Occident, drove private enterprise to Voluntary association, as in Flanders and italy, necessitated in the Orient where civilization was too low and the territorial extent too vast to call into life voluntary association, the inter- ference of the centralizing power of Government, Hence an ‘economical function devolved upon all Asiatic Governments, the function of providing public works. It was, to be sure, ‘only’ a newspaper article, and Marx could not have foreseen that this occasional piece would have the tremendous Sota leo Ale know it set “isa warningepi® iandrisse is fle ‘se sketch ef an’ ‘alin the light of = 1e4B/9, ‘The sgl 8 ig Mara recon si Having wat 1849 ‘of bourgei pi +iodamentall 2 eh sth capital piel shions of laut Th our was sov fo syand_ the inspen 3 bring Tabou and ‘310 be proditon set of capitals wel ea. is il resup posites! ‘ellis reaton con conditions of ab ss do the conti mance, ete) com ‘n of capiti Tt sxonditionsof cp ‘answer inthe sect cede capiast pr Fis answer wok | al and nitions zoluction in2 sc ‘athe allsimporan pur become sun facinating seth i + minted by che t ‘ategory in tas ation of ebour afer another; and communist, ancien raturwtebsg unit gimitive comm cecupy ne more t anempt 16 conee conditions es suc = the sitar covalle ie Mare’s eonceot ofthe Aatatle made of reduction an Su net impact we know it subsequently to have lad. All the same, it may secve a8 a warning against taking all of Marx's dicta at face-value, ‘the Grandrisse is a different kind of work altogether, Itis @ first tentative sketch of Matx’s new conception of the capitalist system revised in the light of his experience, his studies and reflection after 1848/9. The single most important shift which this text cacy qeeotds is Marx's reconeeptualization of the nature of cepital itself, Hving until 1849 conceived of capital as real assets in the form of bourgeois private property, he now conceived of capital ss fundamentally a relation, That telation was the mediating role Scc=n Which capital played once labour had become severed from the fos eonditions of labour, The separation of labour from the conditions ft of labour was now for Marx the sine qua non of capitalist produc tion; and the indispensable need for a mediating power which inust bring labour and the conditions of labour together if there was to be production at all was, on his new view, the basis of the power of capital as well as the secret of its mode of operation. ‘Given this new idea, the question now srose for him: how do the presnppositions/preconditions (die Vormussetaungen) for the capitalist relation come into being? How, that is, do labour and the conditions of labour come to be torn one from the other, and how do the conditions of labour (land, raw materials, tools, sustenance, etc.) come to confront free individual labourers in the form of expital? It was these questions about the presuppositions! preconditions of capitalist production waich Marx tried tentatively fo answer in the section of the Grundrisse entitled ‘Forms which precede capitalist production’. His answer took the form — as we might expect ~ of a dia- lectical and rational reconstruction of the basic conditions of production in a succession of pre-capitalist formations, leading up to the allimportant point at which labour and the conditions of POLES plabour become sundered one from the other. It is an inspired and ‘ 4 fascinating sketch in which the empirical content is almost entirely dominated by the requirements of theory. That is to say that the : category in terms of which the analysis is carried out is that of the relation of labour to the conditions of labour in one formation after another; and the familiar sequence of formations ~ primitive ‘communist, ancient and feudal — sets out from the conditions of iaturwhchsig ‘unity which dialectic calls for. Asintic forms of primitive communism (other forms of it are also mentioned) Seeupy no more than a page ot so out of forty. There is elearly no atzempt to conceptualize specifically Asian conditions, or Asian Conditions as such; the relations among the phenomene mentioned srithe unitary commune with its unmediated collective possessionam Heine Lubsse ‘of the land; the despot who ‘reflects’, in his unitary power, the ‘unity of the commune, and ‘appears’ as the real proprietor of what the commune merely possesses; the ‘closed circle’ of production- consumption in the self-sustaining villages and the irrigation systems etc, which ‘appear’ as the work of the ‘higher unity’ or entity — all these phenomena are related to one another by a logic which is not thei own but that of Marx's schema; and the whole is directly geared to the answer required to account for the preconditions for capitalist production. . One feature of this account is, however, of great interest in respect of that most fateful of Marx's hypotheses about the Asiatic mode of production, its unchanging nature or — as he calls it here ~ its tenaciousness. For, in addition to the unity of agri- culture and manual manufacture [sic] (ue., the absence of a systematic division of labour, the lack of differentiation between town and countryside, the closed economy of the village), Marx offers a further explanation for Asiatic immobility, and one he seems to regard as fundamental, The crucial clue to the unchanging nature of Asian society is that there is no individua~ tion: ‘the individual does not become independent vis’-vis the community’, It is this factor which, in the end, is taken to dis- tinguish the Asiatic from the other forms of primitive communism and, a fortiori, from the later pre-capitalist formations. Why in one form of primitive communal life the individual does become independent vis-t-vis the community while in another he doesn’t, remains a mystery, Although this notion occurs also in his ethno~ logical notebooks*! and in the drafts of his letter to Vera Zassulich,” and clearly plays a decisive role in his thinking, Marx never grounds it theoretically, ‘This seems to me a significant defect, and one with an important consequence for the hypothesis of the immobility of the Asiatic mode of production. [tis significant because it points to a central deficiency in Marxian theory, namely, to the absence of any theory of causation. As a rule, Marx doesn't need one: as a rule, he deals with change internal to a given system, and he deals with such change in terms of processes of development, But he docs need one wien he deals with change from one system to another, since such change is plainly not intra-systemic, and cannot be dealt in tetmns of process, But though he needs one, he doesn’t have one. Consequently the crucial ‘tearing apart’ or sundering of the prccapitlst unity of labour andthe conditions of labour remains ‘unexplained, How did it happen and why? We ae not told. imilarly, the equally crucial sundering of the original unity of individual and community, the individual’s becoming independent vist-vis the community, remains unexplained. aes | exesconcen Why doe because it: the Asiati | other fore | sone. Th Perhaps it ~ namely fact — ev 5 conld no | change. 2 this supp | say why 1 another ' is, of dation sustain labour. relevant leads tc inMarx One ac person: Af in capit need the ¢ tana ro and in t Mar fou for tani dis co} ap anSaipan “cee Marx's concept ofthe Asiatic mode of prodvetion a8 Why does this matter in the present context? I believe it matters because it shows that Mars gives no grounds for bis assertion that the Asiatic form of primitive communism remains static while other forms of primitive communism change, And he can give none, ‘The assertion remains an assertion and nothing more Perhaps it was prompted by what Marx took to be a matter of Fact ~ namely, that Asia simply was static, Butno such bare matter of fact — even if it were fact — could count as an explanation, And it could not possibly establish the inability of Asian society to change. Marx doesn’t give any theoretically grounded account of this supposed inability, doesn’t give any explanation for it, cannot say why one integrally unitary social form disintegrates while another integrally unitary form fails to disintegrate, (The problem is, of course, the same, whether we consider the individual in relation to the community, or the closed economy of the self- sustaining village, or the unity of agricultural and manufacturing Tabour. All that matters is why in the one primitive system the relevant rupture occurs while in the other it doesn’t.) All of which Ieads to the conclusion that there is no theoretical force whatever in Marx's assertion that the Asiatic mode of production is stagnant. One accepts that assertion — if one does so at all — only on Marx's personal authority, not on the strength of his theory. If in the Grundrisse ‘Asia's’ primitive communism stands in for the — negative — initial conditions for the capitalist relation of production, the ‘Asian’ state stands in for the — positive — initial conditions for the capitalist mode of surplus extraction in the Theories of Surplus Value and in Capital, volume 3. Once again Marx constcuets « schema for successive stages in order to identify the distinetive preconditions for the historical specificity of & capitalist category, Here that category is surplus profit. Marx needed to account in terms of bis theory for the fact that part of the capitalist farmer's profit went to the landowner, Plainly the landowner was deriving profit from the process of capitalist production twice over, since it was the capitalist farmer’s capital and not the landowner’s which performed capital's mediating role in bringing labour and the conditions of labour together, And Marx was dissatisfied wich the Ricardian theory. In due course he found the answer to his problem in the concept of the more or less forcible extraction of a surplus from the producing population. All land rent is the product of surplus labour and always has been. The distinctively capitalist mode of appropriating this surplus is the covert appropriation of surplus value. ‘The pre-capitalist mode of appropriating it is the overt appropriation of surplus product, and/or of surplus labour in the form of services. How is this surplus — whatever its form — extracted from thea ——~ 7 a6 Heinz Lubesz guar yit tH immediate producers? In pre-capitalist formations it is extracted stowage! under varying degrees of duress by those who dominate the “cenit working population, in right of an enforced claim to superior title - *#esifie rei to the land: Iandowners claim to own as true property the land =jeloud® which peasants own as mere possession, And they can secure that {anatie" claim thanks to the prevailing form — varying from one pre- m4," 3 capitalist formation to another — of the now all-important re tains lation of domination-and-subjection. The simplest form of this type gan pi! of surplus-extraction and the most direct is — of course! —the ‘Sigg faa of Asiatic. For in Asia it is the state as sovereign and as the single Jandowner (at lease ‘nominally') which collects the surplus, In later pre-capitalist formations this surplus may be collected (a) by the individual lord, as rent and (b) by the collective lord — the ruling class — as tax, In Asia, however, where there is no individual propery for anyone except the despot, it is the stace in its dual capacity as landlord and as sovereign which collects the surplus. Hence in Asia ‘tent and tax coincide, or,, rather, chere exists no tax as distinct fiom this form of ground-rent’, ‘Once again, conditions in Asia are theorized in terms of the she fi of 60 logic laid down by dialectic and by the particular capitalise {2 wesdad category under consideration, not in terms of theit own ‘logic’. feconory fl 1 And, once again, conditions in Asia are theorized only with a view eile fo to formulating the historical specificity — as Marx claims it to be He — of the capitalist mode of production. His ‘historical’ sketch of ‘the fs volun successive pre-capitalist formations simply serves to ‘demonstrate’ en bei to vat that his conception of capitalist ground-rent as, in effect, extorted, ‘eh th we 20 and as extorted from the direct producers, not ftom the capitalist 4 sear in mole farmer, has its essential roots in all past epochs of the economic tae i as eet conformation of society, while only ts form is new: under eapital, — usenims the extortion is hidden from view, because what is transferred ise Neeagin th value, which is invisible, whereas the taking of part of the product > Asie in pre-capitalist forms is visible, as is the performance of forced ss jaewe labour. scald 0 In this context, once again, Marx’s genealogy of formations socal by 1 points to an interesting problem of a general Kind. This is the * Seetipn the problem of the basis of the property claim in ‘Asian’ conditions, gaye where private property is presumed not to exist, The ruler in Asia, af etl cannot claim property in all the land on any basis other than Ba the on conquest, And Marx acknowledges this in a footnote. But if this is wellinown 6 so, what becomes of Marx’s constant and crucial assertion that ‘entitis which forms of domination arise from the economic base of society? probe a How does the implied (and furtively acknowledged) right of the meng conquest here advanced square with the assertion advanced else- ig, where, that the Asiatic village commune is the foundation of ccondtons Oriental despotism? As I read Marx, he is aware of the problem, ivson ofYa Marc's concent ofthe Asltie moda of produetion an and tries to wriggle out of it in the following oft-quoted passage: ‘The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the immediate producers determines the relation of domination-and-subjection as it grows directly out of produc: tion and, for its parz, reacts back upon it [production] as its determinant? For my own part, I can make no sense of the proposition that the combined form of tax/rent which the ‘state in Asia’ cxacts, determines the relation of despot to subjects, Marx himself, after all, has just said — in the preceding paragraph — that it lies in the nature of Asiatic domination (the landlord:state) that here the economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the immediate producers is the distinctive one in which rent and tax coincide. But if the form of domination determines the form of surplus-extraction, then the form of surplus-extraetion doesn’t determine the form of domination. If, however, itis the case that the form of domination in Asia is the determining factor (rooted in the ‘right’ of conquest or some other political ‘right’), then ‘Marx's thesis that despotism rests upon the village-commune type of economy falls to the ground. In which case there is no point in laying the blame for Oriental despotism on its principal vietims. In the first volume of Capital there are several references, all of them brief, to various features of the Asiatic mode of production with which we are by now familiar, though in some cases they appear in modified form. All of them are used to highlight, by means of contrast, one or another aspect of the capitalist mode of production as a historically specific formation. So, for example, wwe meet again the equivalence: naturwitebsig communal property = Asiaticfespecially Indian form = patriarchal family farmstead with domestic manufacture” It is used to contrast, directly socialized ot associated [vergeselescbafter] labour with labour associated by means of, and under the aegis of, capital. We also meet again the primitive community into which the individual is totally integrated, the power of Asiatic kings, and the importance of artificial irrigation works. But the one passage of any length, and with any derail, is the well-known one about ‘the age-old, small Indian communal entities which in part still continue to exist’ and whose ‘simple productive organism’ is said to ‘provide the key to the secret of the unchangeability of Asiatic societies’.®* ‘This passage serves to highlight, by way of contrast, the connection under capitalist conditions between the division of labour in society and the division of labour in manufacture. The point Marx is here478 Heinz Lobos concerned to establish is that in the capitalist mode of production the social division of labour is anarchic — there is unlimited com- petition, a war of each against all — while the division of labour in ‘manufacture is despotic — under the absolute command of capital, In earlier social formations, he gocs on to say, there existed, by contrast, an authoritative and regular social division of labour, while the division of labour in manufacture was either completely non-existent or else existed only to a minimal extent or was merely sporadic and a matter of accident, not system. He then cites the Indian communities as an example of the primordial, simple organism of production, in which the mechanism of the community exhibits a regular [planmassig] division of labour, while the division of labour in manufacturing is impossible, It is impossible inasmuch as the blacksmith’s or the carpenter’s ete. market remains unchanged and, at the most, depending on the size of the village, there are two or three blacksmiths, potters, etc,, instead of one. ‘Thereafter Marx cites the (medieval) guilds as preventing the systematic division of labour in manufacture. His conclusion is that, while the social division of labour occurs in ‘the most varied economic conformations of society, the industrial [literally: ‘manufactural’ — mansefaktermasig) division of labour is an entirely specific creation of the capitalist mode of production’, ‘There is surely no need for me to elaborate on the fact that here, yet again, the Asiatic mode of production, scen in the context in which Marx refers to it, is conceptualized in terms of a ‘logic’ (i.e. a set of relations) which is not its own. The concept of the Asiatic ‘mode of production can once again be seen to conceptualize, not the socio-economic life of Asia, but one of the antecedents of the capitalist mode of production. This is not to say, of course, that communal villages, despotic rulers, irrigation works, state taxation, and a ‘manufactural’ division of labour other than the capitalist fone, were never to be found anywhere in Asia. It is only to say that Mare never attempred — was not concerned to attempt ~ to discover how these institutions were actually related among them- selves, ot with other institutions and patterns of Asian life; that he never attempted to discover at what period or periods, or in what parts of Asia, these institutions existed; and that he never attempted to discover, either, which of them ~ if any ~ was the key to the unchangeability of Asian societies, or whether Asian societies were in fact incapable of changing, The fact— which we can readily accept — that mid-nineteenth century western European capitalism did not arise in Asia is not exactly tanta- cee ail to che til ia, ‘tain cesit o She ase a det ve cor ‘ota in, ard Non’ ew t -seingeresing Tae fish Agzie cm sie of casei foie Secs, Somers al fe padi Si day fat! 0 eum fe weg ssi Tet peti ‘apr Ait sant alt ‘com Tuy: BhFE Mares concent of tho Asatle mode af production a9 mount to the ‘fact’ that Asia knew no social change and had no social history. 5 ‘The main result of the analysis I've presented is that what Marx calls ‘the Asiatic mode of production’ is, to his mind, the oldest variety of the aboriginal economic conformation of society, primitive communism. Once we recognize that the ‘Asiatic mode Bf production’ is simply the earliest variety of primitive com- munism, and that it is this primitive communism as sucb which is, in Marx's view, the earliest historical socio-economic formation, three intecesting consequences follow. “The first is that Marx thought of the Asiatic as the only variety of primitive communism which did not disintegrate, and was in capable of changing, He posited a whole range of, contingent Conditions and contingent historical developments — ‘more lively historical movernent’ he called it in the Grundrisse — as having brought about the dissolution of primitive communism in other parts of the world, As I have already pointed out, this means that fe has no theoretical or systematically cogent grounds for his assertion that the Asiatic variety alone fails to disintegrate. The posited ‘unchangesbility of Asian societies’ therefore is and Remains an unsubstantiated claim and nothing more, even in terms of the logic of Mars’s own theory of the sequence of modes of production. Sccondly, the paradox propounded some years ago by Daniel ‘Thorner is now dissolved. Thorner pointed out that it was para doxical for Marx to caim both that the Asiatic mode of production was the first in a series of such modes and that it Bidn’t change, since, if it didn’t change, that must surely be the end of any process of development. Since Marx speaks at several places** of ‘the dissolution of the historical Urform, primitive Pommunism, it is perfectly clear that no such paradox arises once tne recognizes that the Asiatic mode is merely one type of primitive comraunism among others. The third consequence of recognizing that ‘Asiatic mode of production’ stands for ‘primitive communism’ is @ little more Important, in the light of the whole history of debates about the ‘Asiatic mode of production since Marx. It is this: there is no warrant whatever for the systematic distinction that has Jong been nade between two lines of social development out of primitive Communism, the first one ~ supposedly applicable to ‘progressive’ Burope — reading (1) primitive communism (2) ancient mode (3) feudal mode (4) bourgeois mode (5) socialism or comsvunism;480 olnz Lubesx while the second one reads: (1) primitive communism (2) Asiatic mode (3) full stop, and is supposed to apply to ‘stagnant’ Asia.?” ‘The associated thesis, that Burope alone is on the road to socialism, which for so long caused so much grief in the non-European ‘world, has no validity. For itis the Asiatic mode itself which is for ‘Marx the prime instance of that primitive communism which, after 1848, he located not in the family or in the prehistoric conditions of hunters and gatherers, but at the threshold of civilization, in the earliest settlements. European and Asiatic formations have a *\Mel common root, not in pre-historic primitive communism, but inthe Ssvwort historical primitive communism of Asia, and especially of India, -anngut ‘There is, in principle, no reason at all for the segregation ab initio utubib (1 of Asia from Europe. (That there is no warrant, either, in Marx’s hat, on Sh theory, for a somehow ‘necessary’ immobility in the Asiatic form 2 (197) alone of all the forms of primitive communism, we have already a seen.) My conclusion is not, of course, that one should now devise new versions of the Marxian scheme of progressive stages or epochs in the economic conformation of society. That scheme, as Thope to have made clear, was never anything more (though that Saw “an was much) than a hypothetical series of antecedents of the iia capitalist mode of production, a scheme whose shape and logic _sranit were dictated by the formal requirements of a dialectical con- —“tiw i ceptualization of process and the substantive requirements of the Marxian categories of the capitalist mode of production. In the nature of the case, such a scheme can shed some light on the capitalist mode of production; and it certainly offers valuable clues to Marx's ways of conceptualizing capitalist production. If ‘ways can be found of making a Marxian mode of analysis applic- able to non-capitalist socio-economic systems — based on a thorough grasp of the empirical material and a painstaking analysis Heo es of the specific logic of each such non-capitalist system — much 1 Avi will no doubt have been gtined.®® But a scheme which is so iL ints directly geared as Marx’s is, to the institutions and relations of |, ‘W/3 capitalism, cannot possibly offer any but the most marginal and misleading ‘insights’ into systems which have a ‘logic’ of their own. Certainly Marx's concept of the Asiatic mode of production, in which Asis in general and India in particular simply serve as pegs ‘on which to hang the hypothesis about primitive communism, tells us little of value about Asia or, by extension, about the rest of the boa non-European would, tna Heinz Lubasz ss Department of History, inet University of Essex, peas Wivenhoe Patk, tom Colchester CO4 35Qat ae eras conaapt of the Aslate mode of predustion aa +A first version of this paper was presented to the Mack Centennial Seminar held at the University of Burdwan, India, in March 1983, The present, rmach revised, vetsion is to appear in @ volume edited by Diprendra Manerjee, Marxian Theory aud the Third World, and co be published by Sage Publications. 1 am most grateful to Professor Banerjee for permission to leet appear there. Notes 1, For & brief introduction to these debates, see d’Bnewsse and Sehram (1969). A eonspectus of Soviet debates is given by Dunn (1982). 2, From among the lange number of severe cxticisms, all of them offered by writers sympetretic to Marsian theory asa whole, oné may mention Chandra (1983), Habib (1963), and Thornes (1968), emong those dealing with india in parcicula, on an empirieal bas. On the sheoreticel side one may mention Anderson (1974), Hindess and Hirst (1975), esp. ch. 4 A much gentler critique isto be found in Krades (1973), 304~17 4. Simply # proses, mich wed by Marz and ging bat. 0 Aigo, of analyzing things by clscovering their genesis and trcing their development. ts Che Atistode, Policies 1252 3 24. 2, 4.1 vtanslate this term 'econornic conformation of society” rather then the bore usual “economie formation of society" in order eo make cleat ~ as the farailiae translation doesn't ~ that Mare is here speaking of a form, not & process of forming eT have attempted to distinguish these wo versions systematically in a Paper arsiting publication: Lubstz (1982). ©, GlMane is not always consistent in hie use of the term Gemeinwesen, Gemeinschaft, and Gemeinde, al of which mean community of some sort Buc he generally uses Gemeizacsen in connection with primitive communism, Pointing to the utterly minimal, nondliberate, unardculated natwre of 1 Gommunity in such primitive conditions, To translate it as ‘commune’, as usual, is misleading 7. Macx ‘and Engels (1956 ff), 26.3, 414-5, My translation, tere and {throughout &. "By Andervon (1978) and Uy Day and Lobe (981) inthe ino 9. Sce espccally Politics 1285 «21-22, 10. vines (1968), 83—9. 11, fm Marx (1953), 375-415. English translations: Marx (3965), and) Mare (1979), 471-315. 12, Marx and Engels (1956 ff), 23, 383. 13, Barly in 1881, Marx vote thive deaf ofa letter to the Russian revolu- lonist, Vera Zassuich, in reply £0 an inguity from her whether the assertion Df Mane’s Russian followers, that the mir wes a doomed insticution, correctly teflecced his own views, ‘These drafts aie extzemely pitch and repetitions, Contsin varying notions which ave incompatible wth ane mother, and cleat fepresent an attempt by Marx, at short notice, to sey something coherent bout the visbiity of the nny None of them was finished; the lever Marx finally sent was very brief inéeed, and eontained no analysis ofthe mir. What jg seiking about these dra(t is tae (1) they refer speefieally toa Slvic, oe ©] Aaa ro print communis (2) a as cane fi ths development of che mir in the fact that, © some degre the individual i peesant family, in. wocking for its ovm account, has detached itself from the Eommunitys bac Marx sees also (3) tha the ‘dualism’ ofthis pattern containsrr - oa Holinz Luboe to possibilities: one for development, one for destruction — and so he hedges this bets, (4) The conditions which, he says, would have to obtain if the mrir were to become the basis of the revival of Russian society, are extra- ordinary, and depend entirely on external citcumstances: protection of the ‘mir feom the forces vending to destroy its acquisition by the mir af the tech nology and resources available in the capitalist society which it its comtemporary; oF even a Russian revolution Which would have to precede economic and social development in ander to create conditions in which the ‘mir could Nourish! — None of these speculations have much relevance to the Asiatic forms of primitive communism; and even taken together they make Rot even the rudiments of a now, coherent theory. ‘The claims recently advanced, on the strength of these drafts, by Shanin (1981) strike me a fanciful and irresponsible, 14, fn the Introduction to Marx (1973), 43, 15. Meillassoux (1980), 192. 16. Mar (1953), 25-6, 17, In Fetscher (1976) and Castoridis (1976—7). 1B, Anderson (1974), 473, ni. 19. Avineri (1968), 88, 1,2, 20. Marx and linge's (1956 ff), 28, 269. 21. Avineri (1968), 261—3; ef, Marx and Engels (1956 ff), 28, 269. 22, Marx and fingels (1956 ff), 28, 269. 23. Marx and Engels (1986 ff), 13, 9. 24. See note 10, above, 25. See note I, above, 26. Marx and Lagels (1956 f,), 26.3, ch, 24: Richard Jones. 27. Marx and ngels (1956 if.) 25, section six: Transformation of surplus pprofie inco ground-rene, 28, Mars and Engels (1956 ff), 23, ch, 12. 29. “I have continued this concealed war against Carey in my fist article on India, in which che destruction of native industry by England is presented as being svoulusionary’. Marx and Engels (1956 ff), 28, 266, 30. Mare and Engels (1956 ff.), 28, 255-61, at p. 259. 31. See Krader (1972). 32. See nate 13, above. 12791 OF Uh zion of thi (0956 £6, 13H 92a, sally Oriental £9, for exar stssand Mt A Thesame vie ences t Nira, Rou icredEacaus 1969) atedge & Tider ting N8, farn C Mughal fred Bauess, Baer Peoptalise hckedge EMng es Mack's eoneat ofthe Atle made of production 483 dissolution of the primitively communal forin will be found ac Marx and tinge (1956 (6), 13, 21n; 25, 92 n.30(@ restatement of the precoding); and ‘bid, 354 n.24, which includes the phrase, ‘after conrmanal property, ouginally Oriental in for, has dissolved’ Sree or example, Lichtheim (1963), who rejoices in ths disinc¥ion, and iHindess and Hirst (1975), who protest agaist it UE. The sume view bs expresied by Meillussoux (1980), 193, References Anderson, Resey 2970, Lineage of eAbteliaia ace, New ttc Book. ‘estou Pat, ‘aes Som {3960 ey Kar Mae by Cotenshim ond Moternzdion Doubleday. 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