Marx Asiatic Mode of Production Oriental Despotism True Socialism

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521
C OMPARATIVE
SOCIOLOGY
brill.com/coso
Marx, the “Asiatic Mode of Production,” and

“Oriental Despotism” as “True” Socialism
Dmitry Shlapentokh
Indiana University South Bend, USA
dshlapen@iusb.edu
Abstract
Marx believed that socialist revolution, i.e., the end of the private ownership of the
“means of production”, would make the state weak in the long run: the state would
“wither away”. He also believed that the despotic state is related to Oriental despo-
tism, marked by general ossification. Here Marx followed the views of his contempo-
raries. The socialist revolutions in Russia and China demonstrate that Marx was wrong:
the end of private ownership of the “means of production” creates a state similar to
Oriental despotism, but it is a quite dynamic and economically viable regime. The
ussr’s collapse was due to Gorbachev alone; at the same time, totalitarian socialist
China would become an economic and geopolitical global force in the future.
Keywords
Marx – socialism – Oriental despotism – China – the USSR
1 Introduction
It would, of course, be wrong to assert that the role of the state was ignored
in Marxist, as well as the entire body of Western, thought. Still, the state, and
even more so, despotic, overpowerful states, which emerge as not the agent
of particular classes or groups, not as the government “for the people and by
the people,” but as the absolute master of society, have had quite bad pub-
licity in Western thought. As a matter of fact, power as rough, coercive force,
rather than “discursive” manipulation, is either ignored as peculiar ideological
obscenity, or seen as a sort of prehistoric monster which, similar to the T-Rex,
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15691330-12341505

Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM
via University of New South Wales
490 Shlapentokh
while horrific in its appearance, demonstrated its clear inability to adjust to a

changing environment and therefore inevitably and, of course, justly became
extinct. Marx’s vision of the overpowerful despotic state was usually associated
in his and his followers’ narratives, with the “Asiatic mode of production” and
related notion of “Oriental despotism.” Here the state was the ultimate owner,
in control of the “means of production” (land and related irrigation systems)
and implicitly the people themselves. Regardless of their social rank, they were
powerless. Marx clearly followed this paradigm, firmly embedded in Western
thought. In Marx’s view, the overpowerful state of the Orient was related to
economic and related political degradation. While Marx’s observation was
right in the context of his time, he was wrong in the long run. Not only did two
of the best examples of socialist regimes – i.e., the ussr and China – become
states with clear features of Oriental despotism, but they also became states
which engaged in rapid economic and scientific development. They have been
able to achieve this not despite their “Oriental” feature, the absolute power
of the state, but because of it. Still, Soviet/Russian elite’s deep attachment
to the West, either directly or indirectly, prevented their fully embracing the
“Oriental” tradition and this led to the total demise of both socio-economic
systems and the Russian state as it had been known for centuries. At the same
time, China’s embrace of its heritage of Oriental despotism has ensured not
just its survival, but speedy economic and technological progress and global
mastery in the future.
2 Oriental Despotism as the Case: Western Thought and Marx’s View

of “Oriental Despotism”
A discussion of the historical and cultural context is essential to understanding

Marx’s view of Oriental despotism and the Asian mode of production.
To understand Marx’s view on “Oriental despotism” and related “Asian mode
of production,” one shall remember that Marx’s views were informed not just
by what he saw around him throughout most of the 19th century, but also by
a long intellectual pedigree, starting with antiquity. The equation of absolute
power of the Oriental rulers with political, economic and military weakness
could be traced back to ancient Greece, where Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist,
explained the Greek victory over Persia as the result of Greek freedom and Per-
sian despotism. “The idea of a dynamic, progressing, participatory polity in
the West as opposed to a static, unchanging, despotic polity in the East goes
back to the self-perception of the Greeks vis-à-vis the Persians.” (Fogel, 1988.)
It is true that throughout the Middle Ages and early Modern era, Europeans
had marveled at exotic China, and were terrified by the rising power of the

Marx, the “Asiatic Mode of Production,” and “Oriental Despotism” 491
Ottoman empire. Still, with the rise of European powers and their increasing
assertiveness in dealing with the non-European world, the old paradigm had
reemerged. According to it, European might and related economic rise became
firmly embedded in the notion of individual rights and private property as one
of the essential aspects of European civilization. In this context, “liberty” in its
holistic meaning and the state, restrained by the laws and rights, were firmly
entrenched; whereas “despotism” and collaterally, the “despotic state” not only
acquired negative connotations, but became clearly equated with backward-
ness, economic stagnation or decline and ultimately military weakness. In
dealing with “Oriental despotism,” European intellectuals would of course face
their own socio-economic and political reality. Indeed, in early modern states
in Europe, one could see not just authoritarian but even totalitarian features.
Still, European rulers of that time were not truly totalitarian despots. Indeed, if
one were to look at Hobbes’ Leviathan, one could see that the power was limit-
ed by its goal: it want to save people from themselves, from “omnia bella contra
omnes,” (the war of everyone against everyone) and secure the individuals’ per-
sonal safety and property rights. Leviathan, in a certain way, internally limited
itself and it provided the template for early Western European monarchies,
which clearly juxtaposed themselves from Oriental despots who had no limits
to their power. It was not just Hobbes who noted the limits of the European
absolute rulers. Machiavelli, for example, noted that rulers could do actually
whatever they wanted, but they should not impinge on their subjects’ property
rights. One could note here that early modern Europe produced the first trea-
tises on socialist societies. In these designs, private property disappeared and
the state emerged as truly totalitarian. In fact, it even regulated the subjects’
sexual lives, with the vigor of totalitarian eugenics. “The life of the citizens is
based on communism and what we should now call eugenics … There is no
being strictly regulated for the general good of the state.” (Gardner, 1923) Still,
one should remember that these treatises were mostly seen as peculiar science
fiction, but not as plans for action. Marx, while acknowledging their contribu-
tion in the development of socialist doctrine, does not take them seriously and
dubbed them “utopian socialists.” With the rise of the 18th century, the disdain
for “Oriental despots” increased markedly. This was due to European powers’
global positions. Indeed, in early modern Europe, the elite might present the
subjects of the Oriental despot as living in appalling conditions, plainly be-
cause they had no protection against an overpowerful state. Still, the members
of the same European elite could well envy and fear the military might of some
Asian or Eurasian despots as, for example, was the case with the Ottoman em-
pire. By the late 18th and early 19th century, this fascination with the Orient as
a place of indestructible power was over. The Ottomans were in decline; Persia,
another example of Oriental despotism, (Abrahamian, 1975) was clearly weak,
Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

492 Shlapentokh
and European colonial expansion was in full swing. This complete discarding
of the Orient and countries of Oriental despotism did not mean that they were
not fascinating to Europeans as exotic artifacts in a distant land. There was,
for example, great interest in China in 18th-century France. Still, even in this
image, absolute power was out of the equation. In the French narrative, the
Chinese empire was ruled not by a ruler with absolute power, but by a benign
“philosopher king” with deep moral restrictions. This image was related not
so much with what China really was, but with the French philosophers of the
Enlightenment’s plan for France: a king with limited power and top bureau-
cratic appointments based on merit, not aristocratic pedigree. By the begin-
ning of the 19th century, the Orient in general and “Oriental despotism” had
been squarely placed in the box of both economic and military weakness and
ossified stagnation. (Curtis, 1997, 2009)
3 Orient/Oriental Despotism and Marx’s Formative Years
Both the intellectual and geopolitical milieu had provided Marx with feedback
for his view of “Oriental despotism.” The intellectual milieu was quite impor-
tant, and Hegel stands here as one of Marx’s major intellectual mentors. Hegel
influenced Marx in many ways. One could state that Marx’s major divisions of
human history on several stages was borrowed from Hegel, who himself was
influenced by the historiosophic trends of the preceding century. In Hegel’s
view, the Spirit of global history strove for freedom and in this process out-
grew its old forms, and finally reached its present conditions of freedom. In
dealing with world history, Hegel tackled Oriental despotism. He relocated it
to the very beginning of human history, when the Spirit was not free at all,
plainly because it was only one person – the Oriental despot – who was free.
In its wandering, the Spirit abandoned the Oriental forms in the same way that
the grown up man forsakes the clothing of the infant. Still, in the Orient, the
despotic form survived, and mummified, in a way, and this was what makes
the Oriental implicitly backward and weak in comparison to the West. Thus,
Hegel and similar intellectuals who convinced Marx that Oriental despotism
belonged either to the early stage of human civilization, or allocated it to a
special geographic area, where it was ossified and was unable to develop, and
from this perspective could not stand against the dynamic West. The view that
the West was dynamic and the Orient was stagnant was shared by an array of
intellectuals “from Hegel and Weber.” (Karl, 2005)
It was not just intellectuals like Hegel who had strongly influenced Marx’s
vision of Oriental despotism. He was also strongly influenced by geopolitical

reality. It showed that Oriental despotism and related “Asiatic mode of produc-
tion” was inferior to the capitalist West. And here, Marx’s approach to India
and China was quite important, albeit one needs to remember that Marx’s
view of Oriental despotism and the Asiatic mode of production had not fully
developed, (Lichtheim, 1963) and he did not produce a single work in which
he elaborated on the subject. Still, Marx’s observations, scattered among his
voluminous writings, make it possible to reconstruct his views on the subject.
(Sawer, 1977; Viktkin, 1981)
4 Marx’s View on India and China as an Example of the Inferiority of

Oriental Despotism
For Hegel, the inferiority of the Orient and its despotic power was mostly re-
lated to the fact that the subjects of “Oriental despots” were “not free.” And this
was mostly related to the realm of moral judgments. And this usually did not
bother Marx much in his historical research. Superiority of one of the modes
of production and the society based on it was not related to an improvement
in morality, whatever the term could mean, but the fact that new modes of
production and new societies based on it created more advanced “productive
forces” and took the essential steps toward the final triumph of classless, highly
developed society – Communism. In historical development, as it was visual-
ized, morality, especially as a sort of abstract category, played the same role, or
actually no role, as in the biological world. It would be meaningless to assert, in
Marx’s view, the advance of mammals and rise of humans as the rise of more
“moral” species over others. Marx would most likely have mocked the idea that
the slaughter of innocent animals, who trusted their shepherds, for meat is im-
moral. The advance of capitalism should be praised, not because capitalism was
more “moral” than preceding modes of production and societies. Marx him-
self made it clear that capitalism is absolutely cynical and capitalists believed
that there should be no restraints whatsoever in pursuit of profits. Marx, who
lived in England, witnessed personally the horrible conditions of English work-
ers, whose life expectancy was the same as those who lived during the “Black
Death,” the Eurasian pandemic which killed almost a third of the global popu-
lation. He was also aware of slavery, which continued to exist in the usa. Still,
Marx hailed the advent of capitalism, for it unleashed productive forces un-
known to previous formations, and produced the industrial proletariat, which
would finally crush capitalism and, through a bloody revolution, take over
“the means of production,” creating a socialist society and finally a communist
society. Capitalism and its brutality was thus essential for ultimate progress.

494 Shlapentokh
From this perspective, Marx approached India, a fine example of “Asian

mode of production,” and Oriental despotism.
“Oriental despotism” was an ossified socio-economic system; at least this
was the case in Asia. It could not be changed in a way similar to those in the
West. It could be changed only by outside forces and from this perspective,
Marx approached the British rule in India. (O’Leary, 1989)
By the time of Marx’s maturity, India was fully under British control and
was widely used as a source of revenue and a market for British goods. British
authorities also tried to introduce in India the elements of capitalism, destroy-
ing the communal ownership of the land. All of this led to catastrophic results
for the Indian population. The cottage industry in Indian villages could not
compete with cheap British imports and, as Marx noted, the field of Bengal be-
came covered by the bones of Indian weavers. Indeed, famines similar to those
in Ireland became an essential aspect of life in British India. Each cost millions
of lives. Still, it did not bother Marx. The human toll was the essential price of
demolishing the outmoded mode of production. It was needed for economic
and social progress and was as inevitable as the Irish potato famine. (Aviner,
1967) The notion outraged even some Marxists, or at least Marx sympathizers.
(Currie, 1984)
Thus, Western capitalism was not only an unstoppable juggernaut which
destroyed other economies of much less advanced societies, but also an un-
stoppable military force. Indeed, capitalism’s productivity and related dynam-
ics were related in Marx’s mind with military superiority and how Oriental des-
pots and their unworkable economic arrangements were inferior in confront-
ing the advanced West. And here, Marx was implicitly informed by the British
conquest of India and, possibly even more, the Opium Wars with China. Here,
Marx saw how a few British ships had devastated China’s coastline and com-
pelled China to sign a humiliating peace treaty. Thus, all of this military mi-
lieu and what Marx saw around him, formed his views on the “Asian mode of
production.”
5 Marx’s Vision of “Oriental Despotism” and the “Asian Mode of

Production”
Historians noted that Marx did not elaborate much on “Oriental despotism”
and the “Asian mode of production.” And one could assume this was due to
a simple reason. “Oriental despotism” was either placed in the distant past,
and irrelevant to the modern capitalism in the West or, in another interpreta-
tion, it was located outside the West – the place of economic and technological

vitality. In the latter case, “Oriental despotism” was destined to collapse as the
result of direct confrontation with technologically and militarily advances of
the West. Still, one could define Marx’s approach to the phenomenon. Taking
as an example both India and China, as well as the Oriental civilizations of
the ancient Orient, Marx regarded the “Asian mode of production” as a soci-
ety without private property on major commodities and “means of produc-
tion” – land. While the land could be used by peasant communes, it was the
absolute ruler who was the ultimate proprietor of the land and implicitly the
people whom he could use for any grand public work, whether it was canal
building, wall construction, etc. Some observers, both contemporaries of Marx
(e.g. Bakunin) and those who lived after him (e.g. Karl Wittfogel, whom we
will discuss later) stated that arrangements clearly indicated the design of so-
cialist society and Marx would have seen this clearly. One could also add here
that those whom Marx dubbed “utopian socialists” demonstrated clearly the
direct connection: the end of private property would immediately lead to des-
potic ossification of the state. Still, this was not the case. Marx was fed by the
Western intellectual traditions and by what he saw in both Europe and out-
side it. His vision of the state was also conditioned by the major tenet of his
philosophy.
In Marx’s view, the state, while acquiring a certain level of independence
from society, was still deeply connected with the society or, to be precise, with
the ruling elite which controlled the “means of production.” Thus, the major
role of the state was to protect the elite, and employed violence achieve this
goal. Violence and a strong bureaucracy was needed because of the nature of
a class-divided society; at least this was the case in European capitalism. The
ferocity of the capitalist state was due to the fact that its capitalists, a small
minority, should rule over the majority – the workers. It was this isolation of
the capitalist elite that predicated the repressive, controlling nature of the
capitalist state in Western Europe. The story would be absolutely different in
the case of a socialist revolution and workers’ control over the “means of pro-
duction.” At that point, a strong state would not be needed to deal with the
minority, e.g. representatives of the defeated and “expropriated” capitalists,
criminals, etc. The state could be quite weak, and in the process of the develop-
ment of the socialist society and its transition to communism, the state would
“wither away.” Not only would the state be useless as a repressive institution,
but also in many other capacities. Marx did not see much of a role for the state
as promoter of economic development, or even organizers of economic activi-
ties. Everything, Marx implied, would be done at the grass-roots level, in a fully
developed and self-controlled and self-organized civic society. Marx saw an
example of such a society in the Paris Commune of 1871.

496 Shlapentokh
The profound anti-statism of Marx’s reasoning was thus squarely placed in

the context of European tradition, especially those which emerged by the end
of the Middle Ages. European superiority relative to non-European states was
connected to the notions of some rights, especially property rights. Even the
Hobbesian state was, despite its totalitarian streak, designed primarily for the
protection of individuals against each other and this anti-statist trend had in-
creased in the 18th and 19th centuries. The anti-statist trend firmly connected
the idea of the West, and Marxism was seen here as a Western phenomenon,
with revolutionary traditions. Conversely strong and even more so, despotic
states, even in charge of the means of production, were connected not with so-
cialism but either with an economically or politically marginal Orient, or with
anti-Socialist intellectual and political trends. This anti-statist trend could well
be traced in the thoughts of Russian Marxists.
6 Russian Marxists and the Anti-statist Trend
Marx was, in a way, perplexed by Russia. On one hand, Russia, with elements of
Oriental despotism, should be economically and implicitly a military backwa-
ter. Still, Russia was a permanent threat for the European revolutionary move-
ment, and Europe in toto, while Marx provided no direct explanation as to
why this was the case. Still, one could assume that Marx believed that a tsarist
Oriental despotism was so successful in maintaining its military might, plainly
because it was able to accept some elements of Western technology, and socio-
political organization. In itself, tsarist despotism and Russia in general could
not produce anything viable. Tsardom plainly was a parasite, living off the
more advanced West. Marx was also reluctant to embrace Russian communes
as the nucleus of the future socialist society, despite the desire of indigenous
Russian socialists, known as Populists, to see Marx’s unreserved blessing of the
commune.1 For Marx, both tsarist Oriental despotism and the peasant com-
mune were not separate entities as Populists believed, but an organic whole.
Russian Social-Democrats – and they included Bolsheviks, with Lenin as lead-
er – severed their ties with the Populists, whose illusions Lenin mocked – fully
embraced Marxism with its anti-statist drive. In their minds, the strong state
and especially those states which had the features of Oriental despotism, and
1 One might state that Russian scholars were interested in the study of Oriental despotism
early on. Maksim M. Kovalesvsky (1851-1916), the leading Russian sociologist, was among
them. (Krader, Kovaleskii, 1975)

this was the case with tsardom, was clearly connected, not with socialist revo-
lution and related socio-economic progress, but with reaction.2
Consequently, Lenin believed that victory of the workers, the very begin-
ning of the socialist transformation, would lead to a dramatic decline in the
state’s power. Lenin made his views clear in State and Revolution, which he
composed on the eve of the Bolshevik takeover. The Russian Revolution and
Civil War were marked by a dramatic rise of the state’s power of Bolsheviks,
and related terror. Still, quite a few Bolsheviks regarded the phenomenon as
a temporary one, and assumed that after the victory of the coming worldwide
revolution, the Soviet state would reduce its control over society and would
wither away. The beginning of nep (New Economic Policy) led to legitimiza-
tion of private property, trade and money-making and related decline in the
Bolshevik government’s engagement in the economic and, in a way, social life
of society. This instilled Bolshevism’s enemies with the hope that the Russian
Revolution would follow the path of other major and classical revolutions,
such as the French Revolution. Any similarities between the two revolutions
should inevitably lead to a Russian “Thermidor,” in which Bolsheviks, with
their authoritarian/totalitarian propensities, would collapse and be replaced
by a bourgeois regime. It was assumed here that even the bourgeoisie’s dicta-
torship of the Bonapartist type would be less intrusive into the economic and
private lives of the individual. A Russian “Thermidor” would not just reaffirm
Russia’s belonging to the West, with its clear anti-statism, but also reaffirm that
the Western anti-statist approach was the global mainstream.
While dealing with this anti-statist model, one should note the groups of
émigré intellectuals known as “Eurasianists.” According to them, Russia be-
longed neither to the West nor even Slavdom, but constituted a civilization in
its own right. It was based, in their view, on “symbiosis,” the blending of Slavs
and Asians, mostly of Turkic origin. The Eurasianists’ views on Russian history
were also telling. They saw Russian history not in the context of the Western
paradigm, e.g. the French Revolution, but in the context of the Mongol empire.
Still, even the Eurasianists’ approach did not fully “Orientalize” the Russian
historical experience, Bolshevik Revolution and socialist regime. Mongols, in
their reading, had brought to Russia the following benefits. First, the Mongols
unified the Northern Eurasian space, the future Russian Federation and the
ussr, and instilled the residents of this space with a sense of tolerance toward
every race, creed and religion. In addition, the Mongols created an “ideocratic
state.” Here, people lived not for their own economic interests, but toward a
2 George V. Plekhanov (1856-1918), the father of Russian Marxism, fully embraced these views.
(Baron, 1995)

498 Shlapentokh
sublime goal, which transcended not just the interests of concrete individuals,
but the state itself. In this reading, the role of the state as a regulating, con-
trolling entity and its role in technological and economic development was
ignored. As a matter of fact, the technological and economic aspects of the
state were subordinated to the sublime “ideocratic” goal. Thus, even among
Eurasianists, the truly “Oriental” aspect of the regime, at least in its potenti-
ality, was ignored. And neither émigrés nor Soviet intellectuals were able to
understand the true template for the ussr’s transformation – the “Asiatic mode
of production” and related Oriental despotism. One should note that Western
observers were also unable to see the “Asiatic mode of production”/“Oriental
despotism” as the template for Stalin’s transformation and, even more so, to
understand that both the ussr and later, Red China, owed their success to the
“Asiatic mode of production”/“Oriental despotism.”
7 Stalinist ussr and the “Oriental Mode of Production”: Stalinist

Russia as Ancient China
By 1929/1930, the nep was over, and Stalin launched the totalitarian transfor-
mation of Soviet society. Private businesses were liquidated in the cities, and
Russian peasants lost their individual plots and were driven to collective farms.
This collectivization had led to mass starvation. Millions were also sent to
camps (gulag), where they were used as slaves, purely and simply, for various
occupations, ranging from digging canals to cutting timber. Later, in the 1930s,
Stalin engaged in wholesale purges, which struck against the Party, military,
and the Secret Police itself. At the same time, the 1920s and 1930s were marked
by rapid industrialization, elimination of illiteracy, and broad social mobility,
in which thousands of workers and peasants, many of them of minority origin,
not only received education, but were promoted to the highest echelons of
power, managerial and scientific establishments. Finally, Stalin’s ussr was able
to face the onslaught of Nazi Germany, or actually, all of Europe, the resources
of which Nazi Germany used. The Soviet victory in wwii had led not just to the
ussr’s control of a good part of Eastern and Central Europe, but provided the
incentive for revolution in China. By 1949, there were two major socialist states.
The very fact that China and the ussr followed different trajectories could
well raise the question about their similarities. The notions of difference and
similarity clearly depend on criteria. In popular postmodernism – and it could
exist in the mind of the scholar even if he does not completely recognize it
– the most important difference is in ideology. And indeed, as the ussr and
China split in the future, both leaders in Beijing and Moscow would accuse

each other of a departure from what they proclaimed to be true Marxism. It is

also true that political events in both countries had their idiosyncratic features.
Yet this is the case with all historical events: while some aspects of different
historical events, e.g. the French and Russian Revolutions, could be surpris-
ingly similar, they still followed different trajectories and, in any case, never
duplicated each other to the dot. The same could be said about Red China and
the ussr. Still, if one would employ Marxist analysis, i.e., look at both states’
socio-economic structure, he would see that both Maoist China and the ussr
were essentially the same. In both states, the central authority was in posses-
sion of the “means of production” and there were practically no private busi-
nesses; in fact, any private (not fully controlled by the state) activity, such as
selling potatoes at the market, was truly marginalized.
While both Russia and China and foreign observers watched the unfolding
events in both countries, the real assessment of the Soviet and related Chinese
experience had emerged only in the late 1950s through the 1970s, after both
Stalin’s and Mao’s deaths, and when events, quickly receding in history, could
be watched from a distance. Indeed, one could remember here Hegel’s famous
expression that the “owl of Minerva flies only at twilight,” i.e., the meaning of
events can only be understood retrospectively, when the events become the
past. Still, most Western observers failed to understand the nature of the re-
gime and how “Oriental despotism” became the template which helped the
ussr to become a superpower with a developed economy and science, and
how the same arrangements would help China to forge its way to superpower
position in the future.
While Western observers paid attention to both the ussr and China, the
interest in the ussr was still much greater, due to the country’s superpower
position and its role as the major enemy of the West, with the usa as its leader.
At the same time, the assessment of the ussr provided insight into the views
of a considerable number of Western intellectuals on China.
The Western intellectuals were quite divided in their visions of the two so-
cialist states. During the first and most tense period of the Cold War, from 1946
to the early 1960s, conservative intellectuals dominated the discourse. While
their influence would decline sharply in the future – at least this would be
the case in academia – they would not disappear from sight, and continued to
influence government and conservative think tanks.
The conservative intellectuals often employed a historiographic framework
to understand the ussr’s reality, especially its formative period, Stalin’s era. For
some, Stalinist Russia cold be squarely placed in the country’s national his-
tory. In their reading, Stalin just followed the path of Russian autocrats such as
Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. The very fact that Stalin himself either

500 Shlapentokh
implicitly or explicitly compared himself to these personalities makes these

comparisons easy, and seems to be adequate. Still, a problem exists. It goes
without saying that both Ivan and Peter were stern autocrats. Both were quite
cruel. Still, neither of them were able to move good segments of their subjects
for grand construction projects. There were also restraints, albeit weak, even
in the case of Ivan, on what an autocrat could do with the property of the
elite. It is true that Ivan confiscated the land of the elite. Still, he needed to
invent some quasi-judicial justification for his actions. For example, Ivan ac-
cused quite a few nobles of treason, executed them and confiscated their land.
He usually was not able to take land without at least these bogus justifications,
especially if the land was not analogous to European fiefdoms (pomest’e),
land given for service to the state, but was a patrimony (votchina), which the
owner owned regardless of service. The limits increased by the time of Peter
the Great, who could not take land or other property without any judicial, or
at least formal, justification. It is true that Peter put thousands of peasants to
work for the state, such as building St. Petersburg, but he could not do this
with a large part of the population. Neither Ivan nor Peter could be compared
to Stalin in the space of socio-economic engineering and rapid industrial-
ization. While elements of both Ivan and Peter’s policies could be found in
Stalin’s and later Mao’s policy, neither of them could provide the template to
understand the policy of both leaders and the meaning of their regime. While
many Western and Soviet intellectuals – mostly émigrés, for the intellectual
life in the ussr was strictly controlled – tried to find analogies for the Soviet
regime in Russian history, some of them ventured outside of the Soviet/tsarist
Russian border. The French Revolution, the predominant explanatory model
for much of Russian/Soviet history from approximately the late 19th century
to the 1930s, lost its popularity. There was no Russian “Thermidor,” which im-
plied the restoration of private property as the major institution of society. The
French Revolution model also implied the decline in the state’s strong power
and emergence of Western capitalist democracy as the end result of the evo-
lutionary/revolutionary process. None of this had happened in the ussr. All
of this made the French Revolution irrelevant for understanding the present
realities in the ussr and even less in China.
At best, the French Revolution was used as a model to explain the origins of
the Soviet regime. Roman history became a more popular model for explaining
its decline. Brezhnev’s ussr was seen, in this narrative, as the Roman empire in
decline. China had emerged here as its more vigorous rival, which would play
the role of the new Huns. The collapse of the ussr, in Roman empire fashion,
was framed in the context of the Soviet Union/China rivalry in border clashes.
Still, even the “Roman” model does not provide adequate explanation. The

Roman emperors, possibly with only a few exceptions, were not interested in
economic regulation of any sort. The most appropriate, and more relevant to
our narrative, is the “Oriental model.”
8 “Oriental Model” and the Condemnation of Soviet and Chinese Regimes
While most Soviet/Russian intellectuals and their Western counterparts tried

to explain the Soviet regime in the context either of Russian native history or
Western history, some tried to find analogies in the East. “Eurasianists” were
among the most prominent “Easterners.” Still, their model – little known in
the ussr until almost the end of the regime – could not provide a template for
understanding the socio-economic development in the ussr, for the Mongols,
while maintaining control over conquered lands, were not concerned with
control over “means of production” and even less with economic planning.
The most appropriate became the “Asiatic mode of production” and related
“Oriental despotism.” The similarity between Oriental despotism in the an-
cient East, especially China, had apparently emerged in the minds of some
Russian/Soviet intellectuals by the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the nep
– the development of which so nicely fit the “Thermidorian model” – was put
to an end, and the state engaged in direct control over “means of production”
and reinstated the commune in a peculiar form of “collective farms,” under
the absolute control of the overpowerful state. It was also the time of dra-
matic state engagement in socio-economic engineering, ranging from indus-
trial projects to canal building. Coercive or plainly slave labor of millions of
convicts was broadly used, regardless of the huge cost in human lives and suf-
fering. The analogy with Oriental despotism apparently became clear in the
minds of some Russian/Soviet intellectuals. Stalin did not look as much like
Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great, but as an Egyptian pharaoh or, even more
so, the First Emperor of Qin. Of course, the increasing censorship made pub-
lic comparisons of this type absolutely impossible. Still, the presence of these
images in the minds of Russian/Soviet intellectuals could be seen by indirect
evidence. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the “Asian mode of production”
popped up as one of the hottest topics, which successfully competed with in-
terest in the French Revolution and implicitly, the “Thermidorian” scenario.
One might note that interest in the “Asiatic mode of production” was originally
related to its applicability to the study of Chinese history. (Telushkina, 2016)
By the late 1920s and early 1930s, censorship increased considerably.
Consequently, the discussion on the “Asiatic mode of production” was present-
ed as a purely academic discussion. Scholars were divided into basically two

502 Shlapentokh
groups. Some regarded the “Asiatic mode of production” as one of the stages
in the development of humanity, whereas the others saw it as a peculiar socio-
economic phenomenon. While discussions seemed like abstract discourse,
they were implicitly related to what emerged in the ussr. And the discussion
was soon put to an end by the authorities. (Fogel, 1988; Dunn, 2012; Sawer, 1979;
Luehrmann, 2005.)
By 1938, at the height of the Purge, when the analogy between Stalinist/
ussr and brutal Oriental despotism became too clear, Stalin finally put to
rest any attempt to discuss the Asian mode of production and related notions
of Oriental despotism. “In 1938, Stalin published Dialectical and Historical
Materialism. This signified that the Russian path had been totally integrated
into the grand historical narrative framework of universal history, and that
the attempt to use the amp to interpret Russian experience and formulate a
particularistic Oriental view of history had been completely smothered by the
vicious politics of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (cpsu). Stalin as-
serted that ‘five main types of relations of production are known to history:
primitive communal, slave, feudal, capitalist and socialist.’”(Chenglin, 2014) In
this model, the Asiatic mode of production has no place. “A ‘unique amp’ in
addition to these five relationships definitely did not exist.” (Chenglin, 2014;
Mehdi, 1988)3
Why did this happen? One could argue that Soviet authorities were loath
to see the ussr as being compared to ancient Chinese despots. Still, Stalin was
not at all against being compared, at least implicitly, with Ivan the Terrible,
who was sadistically cruel, and had quite bad press in Russian and especially
Western historiography. The problem was not that Oriental despots were cruel,
but because they were placed in the Orient. Russian/Soviet rulers could well
rail against the West, which had attacked Russia throughout the country’s his-
tory and did not understand the richness and specificity of Russian culture.
Still, when Russians, and this was especially the case since the 18th century,
approached Asia, the Russian elite often looked at it almost in the same way
as Europeans: it was an exotic and peculiar place. Still, it was hardly a model
3 One might add that Soviet intellectuals resumed their interest in the Asiatic Mode of
Production in the 1960s and the interest was implicitly due to Nikita Krushchev’s attack
against Stalin and the intellectual “thaw’ which provided the opportunity for some Russian
intellectuals to cautiously criticize not just Stalin but the entire system. One should also re-
member that it was a time when Russian dissidents, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, wrote
their underground treatises which presented the Soviet regime as brutal and despotic. And
while Solzhenitsyn did not compare Stalinist ussr with Oriental despotism, the analogies
were clear for Soviet intellectuals who were used to reading between the lines. And this anal-
ogy clearly stimulated their interest in the study of the Asiatic mode of production.

to follow. As a matter of fact, the Russian elite looked at the East in a simi-
lar way to that of Europeans, or Westerners in general, looked at Russia. Even
when Russian nationalists deal with their own history and culture, they usu-
ally regard the West as targets of their barbs, the point of departure. As Vadim
Tsymburskii, post-Soviet Russian intellectual, noted, even Russian foreign pol-
icy in Asia was informed by Russians’ relationship with Europe. Asia, including
China, was backward and essentially marginal. It was to be attached to Russia/
the ussr or to the West, either Europe or, later, the usa. Still, even in affiliation
with Russia/the ussr, the East actually affiliated themselves with the West, for
the ussr via Marxism inherited the best achievements of Western civilization.
This explicit or implicit Westernism, which in latent form existed even in the
minds of Russian/Soviet nationalists, explained Soviet leaders’ appeal to his-
torical role models. Consequently, Stalin, while identifying himself with Ivan
the Terrible, Peter the Great and even Napoleon, had never identified himself
with Oriental rulers, and this was understood well by Soviet ideologists. It was
thus Westernism, either implicit or explicit, which conditioned the minds of
Russian intellectuals and led to their vision of the Orient and the strong power
of Oriental rulers, as nothing but a symbol of backwardness and stagnation –
and here they, of course, followed Marx – and this would have crucial implica-
tions for the future. While Russian/Soviet intellectuals had never applied the
Oriental model to explain Soviet realities – at least this was the case since the
1930s – Western observers had done so. They applied the Oriental model to ex-
plain both the emergence of strong power in the ussr and Communist China.
9 Karl Wittfogel and Orient Despotism as True Socialism
The most important figure here was Karl Wittfogel, German communist, who
apparently had started to work on the Asian mode of production in the late
1920s/early 1930s. (Maimann, 1980)
Later, he became disenchanted with Marxism and moved to the right. In
the late 1950s he published his seminal work on Oriental despotism. (Wittfo-
gel, 1957) Here he stated that what Marx described as Oriental despotism was
actually the template for the creation of socialist societies, both in Russia and
China.
In 1957, Wittfogel put forward in his Oriental Despotism: A Comparative

Study of Total Power a ‘Hydraulic Society-Oriental Despotism’ theory
which had great influence internationally. Wittfogel had spent a long
time studying Marx’s theory of the amp; he not only quotes copiously

504 Shlapentokh
from Marx and others but also carefully distinguishes between the views
of Marx, Engels and Lenin and notes ‘reversions.’ In his view, the amp
was a hydraulic society in which the needs of water conservancy and
irrigation and hydraulic agricultural organization shaped Oriental des-
potism. Suffering from forcible despotic repression, Oriental society had
no freedom but only ‘total terror,’ ‘total submission,’ and ‘total loneliness.’
Wittfogel hoped, by analyzing the relationship between the amp and
hydraulic society, to discover a real ‘Asiatic restoration’ in China and the
Soviet Union and attack their socialist systems.
chenglin, 2014
According to Tu Chenglin, a researcher from Guangzhou University, Wittfogel

slandered not just Red China and the ussr, but also all post-colonial nations in
Asia, Africa and Latin America. “A third wave of debate on the amp took place
in the late 1950s and early 1960s after the founding of the People’s Republic
against the background of burgeoning postwar national and democratic
movements and the search for a new path of social development by the newly
independent nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America, freed from their colo-
nial shackles. As the Cold War situation took hold worldwide, some Western
anti-Communist thinkers such as Karl A. Wittfogel, a German-American
scholar, exploited and distorted Marx’s theory of the amp, defending Western
colonial invasion and declaring that the revolutions that had taken place in
the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere represented an ‘Asiatic Restoration.’”
(Chenglin, 2014)
While Chenglin saw no analogues between Red China and the ussr and
Oriental despotism, the analogues between the socio-economic and political
arrangements in all of these societies were clear. And Wittfogel was right in
making this comparison. Indeed, Wittfogel noted that the socio-economic and
political arrangements in Red China and the ussr were a perfect fit for the
similar arrangements in the ancient Orient. “There was no private property
in land, all land ownership being concentrated in the hands of the supreme
ruler, taxes and rents were indistinguishable, and there was no hereditary ar-
istocracy, only collectors of revenue removable at the ruler’s will. This form of
society constituted the basis for what came to be called Oriental Despotism,
the subject of a famous book by Karl Wittfogel.” (Pearce, 2018.)
In Wittfogel’s narrative, Oriental despots were not so much benign Confu-
cian autocrats, stern but conscientious fathers who thought of the ultimate
benefit to their children (subjects), but more like the First emperor of Qin, who
based his ideology on “legalists” such as Shang Yang, Li Si and Han Fei, who all

proclaimed that power of the autocrat had no limits. Therefore, Oriental des-
potism led to “political slavery.” (Wittfogel, 1969.)
Wittfogel also stated that Marx should have seen clearly that control of the
“means of production” would immediately ossify the social and political struc-
ture, and bring unbridled despotism which bred absolute submission and ab-
solute alienation of the ruler from the subjects, and where the state has no
other legitimacy as itself. In Wittfogel’s view, Marx was not able to see the po-
litical implications of the end of private property because of “Marx’s ‘paralysis’
before the ‘bureaucratic implications of the Asiatic concept’.” (Bailey, Llobera,
1979.)
While following Marx in his disdain and hatred of Oriental despots, and
fully equating them with socialism, Wittfogel tried to explain the reason for
its emergence in the Orient, particularly in China. He provided the following
explanation: Oriental despotism emerged from the necessity to maintain ir-
rigation. Still, while accepting the economic rationale for the rise of Oriental
despotism, Wittfogel’s emphasis was on its negative consequences. Its major
output was terror, death and slavery. He actually implied that Oriental soci-
ety could have been much better without Oriental despots. It might suffer in
the process of dismantling of the system; still, in the long run, it would be in
much better shape without an overpowerful state. And here, Wittfogel, sur-
prisingly enough, was quite close to Marx, who, as was noted before, deeply
despised Oriental despotism and believed that European expansion was fully
historically justifiable, for they had destroyed outdated economic and politi-
cal models, and ultimately brought about Western capitalism, with its private
propery and comparatively weak state. In Wittfogel’s view, the tradition of
Oriental despotism was not erased from China’s historical narrative, and this
explained why Communist China emerged. At the same time, Oriental despots
and the “Asiatic mode of production” became not just a socio-economic and
political category, but a peculiar ideological virus which could be transmitted
from one place to another. According to Wittfogel, the Mongols, who occu-
pied China, had transmitted it to Russia. It shaped Russian culture long before
the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Revolution plainly reinforced it. It was the
reason why the regime in the ussr and China became so similar. Indeed, in
this narrative, the ussr had not influenced China; on the contrary, China had
influenced Russia. And the Mongols, much praised by Eurasianists, transmit-
ted to Russia not a benign spirituality of “ideocracy,” but the tradition of total
enslavement and perpetual terror. Wittfogel’s views on “Oriental despotism”
could be well connected with the views of other historians and political scien-
tists, who saw in both the ussr and China nothing but terroristic, oppressive

506 Shlapentokh
states. Marxism played here either the crucial role – in this case, the despotic
state was the product of utopian dreams to create the ideal society – or rein-
forced the Oriental tradition of Russia’s and China’s political culture.
10 Wittfogel in Ideological Context: Appraisal and Condemnation
Wittfogel published his magnum opus during the time of the Cold War, and,
like other seminal works which blasted the socialist regime (such as Alexander
Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, which would be known in the West in
the future), Wittfogel’s work was not just an academic study. It was not surpris-
ing that the equating of socialist ussr and Red China with Oriental despotism
made him famous. He also was the object of fierce criticism. “Karl Wittfogel
has been described as ‘the most controversial writer on Asia in the twentieth
century and one of the most controversial figures in the history of Marxism
and the Communist movement.’” (Bailey, Llobera, 1979.) He was also called a
“renegade.” (Bailey, Llobera, 1979.) At the same time, for conservative histori-
ans in the usa, “particularly in the 1950s and early 1960s,” Wittfogel was abso-
lutely right, for he had discovered that “Asiatic despotism was alive and well in
Soviet and Chinese bureaucratism.” (Karl, 2005.)
With the rise of the anti-Soviet Left in the 1970s, the American Cold War war-
riors of the 1950s and 1960s received new allies. This was, for example, the case
with Wu Dakun, Chinese political economist who discussed the Italian Marxist
Umberto Melotti’s 1972 work, Marx and the Third World. “The author, political
economist Wu Dakun, agreed with Melotti that the technological stimulation
of productive forces was the only key to and relevant measure of development
(as against Mao’s emphasis on transforming the relations of production) and
that Soviet bureaucraticism – named ‘semi-Asiatic’ – and historically continu-
ous Chinese statism – full-fledged ‘Asiatic’ – were to blame for stifling these
forces. Wu Dakun’s basic redefinition of the amp emphasized, in a version of
Karl Wittfogel’s long-despised caricature, the Oriental despotic nature of bu-
reaucratism particular to China, the transformation of which would lead to the
long-suppressed flourishing of rural production and the re-orientation of the
primordial dialectic onto a new path.” (Karl, 2005.)
Other Chinese observers followed suit and implicitly confirmed the valid-
ity of Wittfogel’s analysis. For example, “historian Ke Changii proclaimed that
Maoist-inspired communes in fact represented the resurrection of primitive
amp communal society, long deemed to have hampered agrarian productivity
and hindered the primitive accumulation of capital and thus the transition of
China from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist order.”(Karl, 2005; Jakšic,1990.)

Finally, some on the Left (using the term broadly) – and they were the domi-
nant intellectual milieu – tried to, if not discard Wittfogel’s findings completely,
at least to sanitize them, making them “politically correct,” so to speak. In their
view, the focus of Wittfogel was not the notion of absolute power as the major
characteristic of Oriental despotism and the related Asiatic mode of produc-
tion, but the notion of multiple variations of the historical process, with an
anti-capitalist tinge. The Asiatic mode of production was plainly the discourse
model which stood “against totalizing theory of capitalism.” (Karl, 2005.) It was
not centered on despotism but rather on “a theory of colonial difference and
historical unevenness.” (Karl, 2005.) Actually, what was defined pejoratively as
the Asiatic mode of production benefited societies in Asia, Africa and Latin
America, for they did not develop full-fledged capitalism. (Bratkiewicz, 1988.)
It was implied here that this facilitated their transition to socialism. There
was nothing wrong with the Asiatic mode of production, and Marx himself
changed his view on the “Asiatic mode of production” as an essential char-
acteristic of Asian societies doomed to stagnation. (Shiozawa, 1966.) In the
context of this narrative, the Asian mode of production and related Oriental
despotism was just a “wrong” Eurocentric label by which Western capitalists
wanted to subjugate and control non-Europeans. This theory fit well with the
popular anti-colonialist postmodernism of Edward Said. In this narrative, the
study of the Asian mode of production is related not with the study of Stalinist
ussr or Mao’s China but with the Third World. (Tannenbaum, 1993.) And it was
also related with the study of agrarian history, without any relevance to politi-
cal organization which particular agrarian make-up entails. (Bernstein, 2013.)
Finally, there were those who believed that Wittfogel’s views were problematic
because, while standing against Marxist dogma, he himself became dogmatic.
(Vidal-Naquet, 1964.)
11 Oriental Despotism and Appraisal of Socialist Regime
Thus, the approach to Wittfogel – and implicitly to socialist regimes – could

be roughly divided into two groups. Some plainly ignored slave labor, millions
starving to death or killed, and simply dealt with the regime’s achievements.
Other observers followed the opposite avenue. While dealing with abuses
of the regimes and horrific human cost, they were blind to anything positive
which a despotic state brought about. There no were discussions on speedy
industrial development, eliminating illiteracy, and social mobility. This was
the case with those who were usually called “revisionists.” They approached
the Soviet, and implicitly Chinese, experience differently from conservative

508 Shlapentokh
historians. One should note here that “revisionists” had dominated academia
in the 1960s and 1970s, and marginalized the more conservative intellectu-
als. “Revisionists” admitted the great socio-economic progress in the ussr:
the rapid industrial development, cultural uplifting of millions, social mobil-
ity and the great progress in science. Still, the despotic state had disappeared
from their narrative almost completely. They implied that the Soviet state was
democratic and in a way weak, as it should be according to Marx, and all of
the ussr’s achievements could well be explained by the democratic nature
of the state. In their view, the Soviet, and explicitly the Chinese, state was as
democratic and weak as Western states. Some, like Tzvetan Todorov and Julia
Kristeva, both influential Bulgarian expatriates who spent most of their lives
in France, believed that even the Cultural Revolution was not so much related
to Mao’s striving for absolute control as to fighting against bureaucratic devia-
tion of the state. As a matter of fact, Kristeva was known for “her Maoist sym-
pathies” and “she and her husband had been official guests in Mao’s China.”
(Kenarov, 2018) And while conservative historians and political scientists saw
in the strong state only blood, enslavement and general misery – and here,
they paradoxically, also followed the Marxist template – the liberal/radical his-
torians and political scientists saw just the achievements and ferocious power
of the state, and the horrific consequences of this power for millions was ig-
nored. Thus, while conservative intellectuals saw in the strong state only nega-
tive consequences, as was the case with Marx, the liberals/Leftist intellectuals
did not see this state at all.
In both narratives, the state, in its dialectical and contradictory functions,
falls from the equations and disappears from the screen. Still, a closer look at
the work of the despotic, strong state in the ussr clearly shows that the coun-
try’s achievements were clearly connected with the strong/despotic state and
the suffering of millions was the cost of these achievements.
12 Strong/despotic State and the Achievements of the Socialist

Regime
“Revisionists” credited the ussr with rapid industrialization. Still, the speed of
the industrial transformation – essential for the country’s readiness to face the
hostile West – would have been impossible without mass coercion, depriva-
tion and the death of millions. Ignoring the human cost in speeding up socio-
economic and technological progress, the Soviet state had followed Marx in
one important way. Marx, as was already noted, was hardly a man who engaged

in moralization. He implicitly condoned not just the suffering caused by the

transition of medieval, feudal Europe to capitalist modernity, but also was
ready to condone European colonial expansion and related death and misery
of millions. For him, it was the essential price for the transition to a higher level
of technological development and related higher levels of socio-economic or-
ganization. Still, while Marx saw no role for the state in this socio-economic
and technological development, the Soviet leaders openly proclaimed the
crucial role of the state in the transformation. “Revisionists” often noted the
social mobility in the ussr, where the workers and peasants could quickly be
promoted and reach top positions in the state apparatus, industry and science.
This upward mobility was, as they implied, absolutely impossible in the mod-
ern West. Consequently, they proclaimed that this social mobility demonstrat-
ed clearly that the ussr was much more democratic than the modern West.
Still, they failed to see the same phenomenon in “Oriental despotic” states. This
phenomenon of despotic democratization, so to speak, could be well seen in
ancient Egypt, where, if one were to trust the Bible, a Hebrew slave could be
made the right hand of the Pharaoh, if he displayed an unusual gift for proph-
ecy. The same model could be seen in ancient China, where the emperor could
transform a pig herder into his prime minister. Thus, the strong/despotic state
brought about both destruction and creativity and could be quite dynamic;
both elements are tightly connected with each other, and were as inseparable
as Siamese twins. And in the long run, the despotic state could bring about
more benefit to society than harm. In any case, the despotic state could be a
dramatic force for socio-economic and technological progress. This was ab-
solutely missed by Marx, due to the fact that he was the product of the 19th-
century Western political culture. Consequently, he saw in the state, especially
the strong state, nothing but a source of degradation and misery. At the same
time, Marx’s views would have different implications for both the ussr and
China and bring about absolutely different results.
13 Approach to the State in Post-Stalinist ussr and Post-Mao China
Both Soviet and Chinese leaders were proponents of the strong state. Still,
there was a crucial difference between the Soviet/Russian and Chinese elite.
While the Russian elite had a strong nationalistic streak – mostly in the form
of “National-Bolshevism” – it also had a strong pro-Western trend. Those who
saw in the modern West, mostly the usa, the model to follow were implicitly
and explicitly anti-Marxist. For many of them, Marxism was a utopian creed

510 Shlapentokh
which prevented Russia from joining the West, the civilization to which had
Russia belonged since the 18th century. Still, while rejecting Marxism, these
groups of intellectuals had actually followed Marx in one important aspect: all
of them were anti-statist. For all of them, the strong state was the force which
prevented the ussr from following in the footsteps of the usa, seen in this con-
text as an almost ideal, dynamic society, with high standards of living. The way
to achieve this goal was simple: Soviets/Russians should reduce the power of
the state, or plainly destroy it. Here, the anti-Marxists/anti-Communists, curi-
ously enough, followed Marx and pre-revolutionary Lenin, who believed that
as a result of the Revolution, the state would “wither away.” It was these people
who supported Gorbachev, and with devastating results for the country: the
mighty ussr fell apart with astonishing speed, without any chance for restora-
tion. Watching the collapse of the ussr, Western observers saw in this process
the vindication of their Weltanschauung. They asserted that the ussr was an
artificial utopia. Their vision of the state was also incorporated into this pic-
ture. They implied here that the collapse of the ussr not only demonstrated
the unworkability of the socialist paradigm, but damnation of the strong state;
a strong state has not place in the modern world. It is a remnant of either the
distant past or sort of a temporal zigzag in the historical process. They also
asserted that with the end of the state, with its controlling and directing func-
tion, post-Soviet Russia would be a prosperous society. However, this hardly
happened. The collapse of the state had led not just to an increase in crime and
other asocial processes, but to a precipitous economic decline, and spread of
poverty. The Western observers, of course, saw mostly positive aspects in post-
Soviet Russia. Mass crime and unbridled corruption were either marginalized
or plainly ignored. Moreover, the precipitous economic decline and closed fac-
tories were seen as signs of progress. The reasoning here was as follows: most
Soviet/Russian factories worked for the defense industry, and were absolutely
useless. Finally, the industry was part of the economy of the past. Advanced
countries of the West and, most notably, the usa had abandoned this reliance
on industry a long time earlier. The very fact that the usa’s major industrial
centers, such as Detroit, appeared to be ghost towns – in the future, President
Trump would compare the empty hulks of the factories to “tombstones” which
covered the usa – plainly indicated that the usa had moved to other, more
advanced forms of economic performance. It is a “service” economy, based
on financial transactions and similar matters as well as “knowledge produc-
tion.” By the time of Putin’s advent, the views changed in the West. Serious
problems had been discovered, and Senator McCain contemptuously called
Russia nothing but a “gas station.” Still, this sudden downgrading of Russian

economic performance was mostly due to Putin’s more assertive foreign policy.
While Putin was able to improve Russian economic performance, he was not
able to restore the ussr’s economic strength and vitality, mostly because his
role was not to undo Gorbachev’s and Yeltsin’s destructive policies, but mostly
to preserve them. The role of the state in Russia’s socio-economic life con-
tinued to be limited and in the process of decline. While the vast majority of
Western observers regarded the usa and Russia as absolutely different, their
socio-economic makeups and modes of production are essentially the same.
Consequently, their global economic standing will, most likely, decline, not
just relatively but possibly in absolute terms. The story was quite different with
post-Mao China. While Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s Russian elite had discarded
the role of the state, and here, in their peculiar anti-Marxism belief, they actu-
ally followed Marx, who believed that the state should be weak and be just a
tool in the hand of the ruling elite, China’s elite had followed quite a different
approach. Its major difference from the Soviets was a much stronger stress on
China’s specificity and, implicitly, selective approach to the West.
14 China’s Special Road
Chinese scholars, both Marxist and non-Marxist, had been interested in the
Asiatic mode of production since at least the 1930s. (Luo, 2003.) After the 1978
reforms and loosening of state control over intellectual life, the interest in the
Asian mode of production resumed in the 1980s. Chinese scholars emphasized
that Marx’s interest in the Asian mode of production indicated that Marx was
not actually universalist, and believed in a specific path for Asian societies,
including China. (Brook, 1989.) As time progressed, the discussion on the na-
ture of the Asian mode of production continued, (Zhougfeng, 2011.) and later,
discussion on Wittfogel emerged. Most scholars residing in Red China view
Wittfogel quite negatively. The view of Tu Chenglin needs to be quoted in full
for further analysis. He noted that interest in the Asiatic mode of production
could be marked by several waves, and actually slandered Red China, the ussr,
and the post-colonial countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa. Still, that
was not the only problem with Wittfogel and a score of other Western intel-
lectuals, in his view. They attack the Orient, including China, plainly because
Oriental, non-Western civilization in general, follow their own path of histori-
cal development, and do not regard the Western path as universally applicable.
And this approach implied that Chinese scholars shall develop their vision of
Chinese history and how it is related to the country’s traditions. In the context

512 Shlapentokh
of this narrative, Marxism lost its universal applicability and China, together
with other non-Western countries, shall develop its own variation on Marxism
which could well be quite different from Western Marxism. As was already
noted, Chenglin blasted Wittfogel for creating a negative image of Red China
and the related Oriental Mode of Production (amp).
“In addition, since the agenda of the amp was also relevant to such key is-
sues as the laws of historical development, changes in social forms, the char-
acteristics of Oriental society and the legitimacy of Oriental revolution, it was
urgently imperative for the People’s Republic to build a theoretical system that
conformed to its social and historical features as well as a ‘sinicized’ discourse
system corresponding to its traditional culture.” (Chenglin, 2014.) The quota-
tion needs more detailed analysis. The author lambasted Wittfogel for his at-
tempt to discredit post-colonial countries, especially Communist China. At the
same time, as it was implied here, Wittfogel’s critique of Communist China
was directly related to Eurocentric visions of history. It universalized historical
process and its proponents assumed that all countries and civilizations should
follow in Western footsteps. This was the wrong assumption. The Western path
is not universally applicable, and Marx and Russian revolutionaries under-
stood this.
According to Chenglin, Marx’s view on the uniformity of the historical pro-
cess was contradictory. On one hand, he seemed to believe that the historical
process is uniform, and that Western Europe provided a template for all other
civilizations. On the other hand, however, Marx held an absolutely different
idea: the European model is a pattern applicable to just the West. For Russia,
the historical pattern would be absolutely different, and Marx made this clear
in his letter to one of the leading Russian journals.
Responding to ‘Karl Marx before the Tribunal of M. Shukovsky,’ an article

by Mikhailovsky, carried in the journal in October 1877, Marx wrote ‘A
Letter to Editor of Otecestvenniye Zapisky’ in November 1877, in which he
clearly stated that the ‘historical inevitability’ of the genesis and course
of capitalism in Western Europe was limited ‘to the countries of Western
Europe,’ and opposed any attempt ‘to metamorphose my historical
sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-
philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path].’ He disagreed
with anyone who said that the marche generale was ‘imposed by fate upon
every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself,
in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will
ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers

of social labour, the most complete development of man. But I beg his
pardon. (He is both honouring and shaming me too much.)’
chenglin, 2014
Thus, in Chenglin’s view, Marx either never entertained the idea of uniformity
of the historical process, or he changed his view radically by the end of his life.
Marx here implicitly embraced the view, widespread in the 19th century, that
a universalist vision of history – the view dominant in the preceding century –
was a myth. Russians were among those who embraced these views. One could
note here that Nikolai Y. Danilevsky (1822-1885), Marx’s contemporary, strongly
believed in the incompatibility of Russia and the West, and elaborated on the
subject in his major work, Russia and Europe. (Danilevsky, 2013.) One might
also add that Danilevsky was in a way the precursor of Arnold J. Toynbee and
Oswald Spengler.
In Chenglin’s view, Marx clearly became closer to Danilevsky and the
Populists (Narodniki) than to the universalist Hegel, philosophers of the
Enlightenment and, of course, Wittfogel, who flatly discarded the validity of
non-European historical paths.
In explaining that the social development path shown in Capital was

‘limited to countries of Western Europe,’ Marx appears to be siding with
the views of the Russian Narodniks, but in fact this represents a dramatic
change in his views on the East. He had begun to realize that Oriental so-
ciety had its own natural pecularities that differed from those of Western
society.
chenglin, 2014
Thus, Marx had de-universalized world history, and fully recognized the par-
ticularly Russian path to socialism. For example, he fully accepted the views
of Populists (Narodniki), the homegrown Russian socialists, who believed in
Russian peasant communes as building blocks for future socialist Russia. It was
accepting Russia’s specificity that stimulated Marx to study Russia. (Chenglin,
2014.) In the author’s view, the conflict between George Plekhanov, the first
Russian Marxist, and Vladimir Lenin, the future founder of the Soviet state,
was nothing but the conflict between universalism, represented by Plekanov,
and anti-universalism, represented by Lenin, who fully understood the pecu-
larity of Russian history and, as Tu Chenglin implied, Lenin was right in both
the interpretation of Marx and his plan for the application of Marxism to
Russia. (Chenglin, 2014.) While in Russia, the country’s specificity matters, the

514 Shlapentokh
same can be said about China. And from here, one should revisit Tu Chenglin’s
attack against Wittfogel. He was not just condemned for presenting both pre-
revolutionary and post-revolutionary China as a country ruled by ferocious
brutes, unable to achieve anything, but Wittfogel’s problem was much deeper
and, in a way, represented the problem of many Westerners. They are unable to
understand Chinese civilization in Western procrustean framework.4
One might state here that this praise of cultural specificity and condemna-
tion of Western capitalist universalism is hardly unique, and Chinese intellec-
tuals, including those who are institutionalized and whose views invariably
represent this or that segment of officialdom, are themselves peculiar univer-
salists, for they represent the view of the majority of Western scholars who deal
with non-Western societies. As a matter of fact, multiculturism is a mantra in
American universities. Still, the political context is important. Western “mul-
ticulturalists” do not praise despotic and, if heeded, brutish states. Their ver-
sion of alternative paths is still embedded in their Western experience. Their
intention is not to discard democracy, but simply to emphasize either transi-
tion to “true” democracy of grass-roots Gemeinschaft – if one would remember
Ferdinand Tönnies’ definition – or Western democracy in the context of the
specific Chinese variation of “multiculturalism.” Still, in Chenglin’s narrative,
“multiculturalism” as it relates to Marxism has an absolutely different context.
Marxism, fully embedded in the country’s historical legacy, became fully
Chinicized, with the paramount power of strong totalitarian state as its major
framework. Marxism, in its peculiar Chinese interpretation, provided addi-
tional and, quite important, ideological justification for this regime and its
totalitarian and, if needed, brutish manifestation. At the same time, both in
the present and in the past, the nature of this state might mislead unsuspect-
ing foreigners. Walking through the Forbidden City or summer residences of
Chinese emperors, one could be amazed by the serene peacefulness of the
image. The palaces’ names are related to harmony, tranquility and justice. One
could also note that Beijing’s city police are not armed, and from this perspec-
tive quite different from American police. The huge National Museum also
underlines the actual peacefulness of Chinese civilization. The display of daz-
zling artifacts provides no information about endless uprisings and collaps-
ing dynasties. Even the images from the Revolutionary Era does not elaborate
4 As Tu Chenglin implied, Wittfogel would have contributed to the scholarly discourse if he
had looked at China – both in the past and the present – in the context of China’s civilization,
with its own particular matrix; one should note that some Chinese, while criticizing Wittfo-
gel for various mistakes, still praise him for underlining the specificity of Chinese civilization.
(Wei-ming, 1979)

much on whom the Red Chinese fought. There was no elaboration on the
Nationalists, who were Communist China’s bitter enemies. The enemy, in this
narrative, could only be external and for this reason the big picture of Japanese
atrocities are placed on the wall. China, in this narrative, was always peace-
ful, harmonious, and harmony united both the ruled and rulers. Still, under a
coating of peaceful Confucianism – in its ancient and modernized “Marxized”
form5 – one could easily detect the omnipresent and, if needed, brutal state.
It firmly relies on its thousand-year-old traditions, its self-centered culture in
which the despotic, all-embracing state was the essential element. And this
was the state which employed indiscriminate violence when its stability was at
stake, and when it had a resource to deal with internal threats.
15 Tiannanmen Square versus Perestroika
Why did the ussr collapse whereas China is a success? Post-factum social sci-
entists, especially those in the West, tried to find deep-seated roots in the col-
lapse of the ussr, and what they regarded as “poor economic performance”
was a major reason. One shall note here that the ussr’s economy was not in
such dire straits as would herald a collapse. Actually, the opposite was the case.
According to New Directions in the Soviet Economy: Studies, parts 1-4, “ in ag-
gregate factor productivity in the reconstruction period alone must have been
about twice as large as estimated for 1940-1950.” (U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1966) The quoted author also noted that “There are also signs of a bet-
ter structural balance within industrial growth.” (U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1966.) Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet Union’s
economy grew approximately 4% per year. (Höhmann, 1984) At the same time,
the Soviets became really efficient, and this “permitted them to show a good
performance in terms of the familiar basic ‘success indicators’: the quantity
of output, percentage reductions in cost, and percentage increase in labour
productivity.” (Höhmann, 1984)
One shall remember that 3% or so gdp during present-day U.S. economic
expansion is regarded as an almost stellar performance. One should also re-
member that almost all U.S. statistics include in “growth” what is usually called
“services.” Soviet statistics had never done this. They might inflate the actual
numbers of produced cars and machines, tons of metal or coal. They might
5 The present-day Chinese leadership implicitly tried to imitate Imperial Confucian bureau-
cracy or, at least, find its arrangements justification for the way they ruled the country. (Bell,
Ash, Nathan and Zhang, 2015)

516 Shlapentokh
ignore qualitative dimensions of the products, e.g. quality of machines. Still,

they had never counted transfer of funds from one bank to another or increas-
ing the number of Party officials or bureaucrats in gosplan as contributing to
the nation’s gnp. It was always measured by tons, meters, numbers. If one were
to use “Soviet” measurements, the current U.S. gnp would be much smaller,
and even this is achieved by the infusion of huge amounts of cash made out
of “thin air”; the practice could hardly proceed for a long time without leading
to deep economic crisis, with unpredictable social repercussions. In any case,
the ussr was not on the brink of collapse, and its economic performance was
quite good. The drabness of the average Soviet’s life and consistent shortages
of basic commodities was due not so much to the actual poor performance of
the Soviet economy, but to its priorities. It was not only that defense, empire-
building/maintenance took considerable resources, but the general direction
of the Soviet economy. The Soviet economy was oriented to what was called
“group A” – the production of machines, power plants, mines, factories – all of
these, while enriching the state/society in the long run, did not improve the
life of the average consumer. It was the economy which was mostly oriented to
save, rather than to spend.
While the Soviet economy was not in dire straits, Gorbachev and his
Western-oriented and liberal advisers believed that the Soviet economy would
develop much better if the state released its iron grip over society, and would
simultaneously encourage private initiatives. The weakening of state-control-
ling/repressive power was a key aspect in the program. The result was a disas-
ter. The Soviet economy started a speedy decline with the specter of starvation
emerging in the minds of many Soviets by the end of Gorbachev’s rule. The
very fabric of Soviet society started to disintegrate, and crime spread by leaps
and bounds. Soon the ussr ceased to exist. The calamitous economic and so-
cietal conditions in early post-Soviet Russia induced U.S. social scientists to
deduce them from the late Soviet era. In this reading, the decline had started
long before Gorbachev, and had plainly sped up during the era of Perestroika.
Actually, it was Perestroika, with its desire to follow the West, most notably in
slackening state power and encouraging privatization, which engendered the
collapse and created a convenient – in the context of the Fukuyamian vision
of history – illusion that economic collapse could be traced back to the Soviet
past. While the Soviet elite followed the Western template, the story was differ-
ent with the Chinese elite. One shall remember here that while most Western
pundits professed post-Soviet Russia’s economic rise after accepting a market
economy and democracy, their vision of China was usually bleak, especially
after the bloody Tiannanmen Square massacre. As a matter of fact, libraries
of books have been published in the West in which China’s future has been

predicted in a most gloomy way, unless it would follow the road of democratic
capitalism.6 Still, people in Beijing followed their own road.
The members of the elite asserted the paramount role of the strong and, if
needed, despotic state, not just as the guarantee of the basic order, but also as
the major engine of socio-economic and technological progress. In their view,
it was modified “Oriental despotism,” with all of its shortcomings and inevi-
table side effects, which could actually suit the needs of society in the long
run much better than a weak state, and private control over the economy’s
command heights. And if the paramount role of the state and collaterally,
public order, was in danger, the state could act with no restraints, as events in
Tiananmen Square in 1989 demonstrated clearly. One should remember that
massacre took place at a time when socialist totalitarian regimes were collaps-
ing all over Eastern Europe, Francis Fukuyama published his famous essay and
Gorbachev’s Perestroika was in full swing.
One, of course, could raise the question: why didn’t Chinese leaders follow
the example of Soviet/Russian leaders? One could provide a variety of expla-
nations. One of these could be cultural. As was already noted, Russian modern
intellectual tradition has a strong pro-Western trend. Here, the West, in the
holistic meaning of the word, was the role model. Even for Russian nationalists
or Soviet/Russian “National Bolsheviks,” the West had always been the point of
departure and the object of their intellectual barbs. Their passionate engaging
with the West, even quite critical, was the indication of a peculiar love/hate
relationship with the West. These pro-Western liberals, albeit not all of them,
have a strong anti-statist view, and this tradition can be traced back to the 19th
century.7
One, of course, notes that a similar trend could be found in China. Still,
China’s broad interaction with the West had started much later than in Russia,
and the Chinese monarchy had not tried to provide itself with even a Western
veneer until the very end. The self-centeredness of Chinese civilization was
much stronger than that of the Russian civilization. For centuries, observers
believed that it was this self-centeredness which was the prime reason for
China’s economic and geopolitical decline, and China’s inability to deal with
external threats. Still, the story was different in the 1980s and early 1990s. At
that time, Eastern European socialist societies and finally the ussr collapsed.
For the Russian elite, the Western capitalist democracies looked like the only
6 Among the most recent books which present the Chinese future in a rather bleak way, see
Nicholas R. Lardy, The State Strikes Back, Peterson Institute for International Economics,
2019.
7 Present-day conservative Russian intellectuals bemoaned this tradition. (Voevodina, 2017)

518 Shlapentokh
options for historical progress. They believed in the final affirmation of Western
capitalism and they followed the anti-statist trend, presented well in the fa-
mous essay by Francis Fukuyama on the “end of history.” The essay made him
famous overnight, and helped him to a spectacular academic career. While
Eastern Europeans and the ussr/Russians intellectuals were mesmerized by
Western pundits and slavishly followed their recipes to the letter, Chinese elite
did not follow the common trend and here, the historical self-centeredness of
their civilization and critical, selective view of the ideas coming from outside,
played a crucial role. They embraced Marxism, not in its original anti-statist
modification, but as a peculiar legitimization of “Oriental despotism” and
“Asiatic mode of production,” the potentialities of which Marx, as a man of the
19th-century West, was not able to see. The post-Mao state did not diminish its
power and continued to be involved in the economic and social development
of China.
What is the result of the almost two generations of the post-Mao era? Criti-
cism could even come from those who are on the left of the political spectrum.
Some of them could be Marxist, and profess “democratic,” “true” Marxism. Still,
China’s unstoppable economic development, lackluster performance of Pu-
tin’s Russia and deep disappointment in Eastern Europe with the result of the
Western-inspired transformation, validated China’s interpretation of Marxism,
in which control over the “commanding heights” of the economy goes along
with the strong state tradition, deeply connected with thousands of years of
native history.
16 Conclusion
While advocating the end of private property on “means of production,” Marx

and most of those who followed him in both Europe and Russia, visualized the
weak state. As a matter of fact, Marx believed that after the socialist revolution,
the state would “wither away.” Marx was aware of “Oriental despotism,” and
related “Asiatic mode of production.” Still, not only did Marx not relate those
states with socialism, but with any socio-economic or technological progress.
In his view, these states and their modes of production would be destroyed at
all costs by the more vibrant, capitalist West. Still, the experience of the ussr
and later, Red China, demonstrated that these states not only could produce
tremendous destruction, but also could be a powerful dynamic force which
would speed socio-economic and technological transformation. This destruc-
tive/constructive role of the strong state was ignored by the Soviet/Russian
elite in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and this led to collapse, both of the state

and society, and to a sharp economic decline, from which Russia is unlikely
to recover. At the same time, the very fact that post-Mao China had preserved
the essential framework of “Oriental despotism” and related “Asiatic mode of
production,” i.e., the control over the “commanding heights of the economy,”
has ensured China’s quick rise to global prominence.
References
Books and Book Chapters

Baron, Samuel H., Plekhanov in Russian History and Soviet Historiography, Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995.
Brook, Timothy, Editor, The Asiatic Mode of Production in China, M.E. Sharp, 1989.
Curtis, Michael, Orientalism and Islam: European thinkers on Oriental despotism in the
Middle East and India, Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Curtis, Michael, “The Asiatic mode of production and Oriental Despotism” in Marxism:
the Inner Dialogues, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997.
Danilevsky, Nikolai Y., Rossiia i Evropa. Tbilisi: Tbilisi State University, 2013.
Dunn, Stephen P. The Fall and Rise of the Asiatic Mode of Production, London: Routledge,
2012.
Gardner, Edmund Garratt, Tommasu Campanella and his Poetry. Oxford: At the
Clarendon Press, 1923.
Krader, Lawrence and M.M. Kovaleskii, The Asiatic Mode of Production: Sources,
Development and Critique in the Writings of Karl Marx, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975.
Lardy, Nicholas R., The State Strikes Back, Peterson Institute for International
Economics, 2019.
O’Leary, Brendan, The Asiatic Mode of Production: Oriental Despotism, Historical
Materialism, and Indian History (Explorations in Social Structures), Blackwell
Publications, 1989.
Sawer, M., Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production (Studies in
Social History), Springer, 1977.
Wittfogel, Karl August, Oriental Despotism: a Comparative Study of Total Power, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.
Articles
Abrahamian, Ervand, “European feudalism and middle eastern despotisms,” Science
and Society, Vol. 39, Issue 2, April 1975.
Aviner, Shlomo, “The non-European world in Marx’s philosophy of history,” The
Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, pp. 22-27, 1967.

520 Shlapentokh
Bailey, Anne M. and Joseph R. Llobera, “Karl A. Wittfogel and the Asiatic mode of pro-
duction: a reappraisal,” Sociological Review, Vol. 27, 1979, p. 547.
Bell, Daniel A., Timothy Garton Ash, Andrew J. Nathan and Taisu Zhang, “Is the China
model better than democracy? Meritocracy could avoid the pitfalls of American-
style politics – at least in theory,” Foreign Policy, 19 October 2015.
Bernstein, Henry, “Historical materialism and agrarian history,” Journal of Agrarian
Change, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2013.
Bratkiewicz, Jaroslaw, “Od krytyki orientalnego despotyzmu do teorii ‘Azjatyckiego’,
sposobu produkcji” (from a critique of Oriental despotism to a theory of the “Asiatic”
mode of production), Studia Nauk Politycznych, Issue 3, 1988.
Chenglin, Tu, “The Asiatic mode of production in world history perspective: from a
universal to a particularistic view of history,” Social Sciences in China, Vol. 35, No. 2,
2014, p. 17.
Currie, Kate, “The Asiatic mode of production: problems of conceptualizing state and
economy,” Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 8, Issue 4, April 1984.
Fogel, Joshua A., “The debates over the Asiatic mode of production in the Soviet Union,
China and Japan,” The American Historical Review, vol. 93, no. 1.
Höhmann, Hans-Hermann, “The Soviet economy on the eve of the 12th Five-Year Plan,”
Bundesinstitut für Ostwissenschaftliche und Internationale Studien, 1984, p. 5.
Jakšic, Miomir, “Exploitation in the model of capitalism in the Asiatic mode of produc-
tion,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 2, Issue 20, 1990.
Karl, Rebecca E., “The Asiatic mode of production: national and imperial formations,”
Historian, vol. 5, 2005.
Kenarov, Dimiter, “Was the philosopher Julia Kristeva a Cold War collaborator?” The
New Yorker, 5 September 2018.
Lechtheim, G., “Marx and the ‘Asiatic mode of production’,” St. Antony’s Papers, vol. 74,
1963, pp. 86-112.
Luehrmann, Sonja, “Russian colonialism and the Asiatic mode of production: (Post-)
Soviet ethnography goes to Alaska,” Slavic Review, vol. 64, Issue 4, 2005.
Luo, Xinhui, “Dushu zazhi yu shehuishi da lunzhan,” (The ‘Reading Journal’ and the
social history debate), Shixueshi Yanjiu (Journal of Historiography), Issue 2, 2003.
Maimann, Helene, “‘Asiatische produktionsweise’: zur Geschichte einer Kontroverse,”
Wiener Beiträge zur Geschichte der Neuzeit, Vol. 7, 1980.
Mehdi, Mahboob, “A review of the controversy around the Asiatic mode of produc-
tion,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 18, May 1988.
Pearce, Brian, “Marxism and the Asiatic mode of production,” Revolutionary History,
Vol. 8, No. 2, 2002. Quoted from https://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/pearce/2002/
xx/asiaticmode.html, 21 February 2018.
Sawer, Marian, “The Soviet discussion of the Asiatic mode of production,” Survey, Vol.
24, Issue 3, 1979.

Shiozawa, Kimo, “Marx’s view of Asian society and his ‘Asiatic mode of production’,”
The Developing Economies, vol. 4, Issue 3, September 1966.
Tannenbaum, Nicola, “Galactic politics, the Asiatic mode of production and peasant-
states: southeast Asian pre-modern politics,” The Australian Journal of Anthropology,
Vol. 4, Issue 1, 1993.
Telushkina, O.V., “Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskie otnosheniia v Kitae s tochki zreniia
sovetskoi istoricheskoi nauki vtoroi poloviny 20-kh godov xx veka,” Uchenye Zapiski
Kazansko Universiteta Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, Vol. 156, Issue 3, 2016.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, “Karl Wittfogel and the concept of the mode of Asiatic produc-
tion,” Annales: Economics, Societies, Civilizations, Vol. 19, Issue 3, 1964.
Vitkin, M., “The Asiatic mode of production,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 8,
Spring 1981.
Voevodina, Tat’iana, “Aleksandr III u Steny Placha,” Zavtra, 20 November 2017.
Wei-ming, “A note on Wittfogel’s science of society,” Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 11, Issue
4, October 1979.
Wittfogel, Karl August, “Results and problems of the study of Oriental despotism,”
Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 28, Issue 2, May 1969.
Zhougfeng, Li, “Ya xi ya shengchan fangshi’ de shehui xingzhi yu Zhongguo wenming
qiyuan de lujing wenti” (The social nature of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ and
the origin of Chinese civilization: the question of road), Lishi Yanjiu (Historical
Research), Issue 2, 2011.
Miscellaneous Publications
New Directions in the Soviet Economy: Studies, parts 1-4, U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1966.


Marx Asiatic Mode of Production Oriental Despotism True Socialism

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Marx Asiatic Mode of Production Oriental Despotism True Socialism

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

Marx, the “Asiatic Mode of Production,” and

Marx – socialism – Oriental despotism – China – the USSR

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15691330-12341505

while horrific in its appearance, demonstrated its clear inability to adjust to a

2 Oriental Despotism as the Case: Western Thought and Marx’s View

A discussion of the historical and cultural context is essential to understanding

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

3 Orient/Oriental Despotism and Marx’s Formative Years

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

4 Marx’s View on India and China as an Example of the Inferiority of

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

From this perspective, Marx approached India, a fine example of “Asian

5 Marx’s Vision of “Oriental Despotism” and the “Asian Mode of

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

The profound anti-statism of Marx’s reasoning was thus squarely placed in

6 Russian Marxists and the Anti-statist Trend

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

7 Stalinist ussr and the “Oriental Mode of Production”: Stalinist

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

each other of a departure from what they proclaimed to be true Marxism. It is

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

implicitly or explicitly compared himself to these personalities makes these

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

8 “Oriental Model” and the Condemnation of Soviet and Chinese Regimes

While most Soviet/Russian intellectuals and their Western counterparts tried

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

9 Karl Wittfogel and Orient Despotism as True Socialism

In 1957, Wittfogel put forward in his Oriental Despotism: A Comparative

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

According to Tu Chenglin, a researcher from Guangzhou University, Wittfogel

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

10 Wittfogel in Ideological Context: Appraisal and Condemnation

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

11 Oriental Despotism and Appraisal of Socialist Regime

Thus, the approach to Wittfogel – and implicitly to socialist regimes – could

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

12 Strong/despotic State and the Achievements of the Socialist

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

in moralization. He implicitly condoned not just the suffering caused by the

13 Approach to the State in Post-Stalinist ussr and Post-Mao China

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

14 China’s Special Road

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

Responding to ‘Karl Marx before the Tribunal of M. Shukovsky,’ an article

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

In explaining that the social development path shown in Capital was

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

15 Tiannanmen Square versus Perestroika

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

ignore qualitative dimensions of the products, e.g. quality of machines. Still,

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM

While advocating the end of private property on “means of production,” Marx

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521

Books and Book Chapters

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 489-521 Downloaded from Brill.com11/14/2020 10:08:07PM