Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars

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South Asia and the Asiatic Mode of production:

Some conceptual and empirical problems

Hassan N. Gardezi

To cite this article: Hassan N. Gardezi (1979) South Asia and the Asiatic Mode of production:
Some conceptual and empirical problems, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 11:4, 40-44, DOI:
10.1080/14672715.1979.10424020

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.1979.10424020

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South Asia and the Asiatic Mode oCProduction:
Some Conceptual and Empirical Problems
by Hassan N.Gardezi
The resurgence of dialectical sociology has stimulated a
renewed interest in the investigation of political and economic
developments in third world countries with the aid of Marxist
paradigms. In this connection a substantial volume of literature
has been produced recently, mostly by western scholars, on
Marx's definition of the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) or
its related genre, such as Oriental Despotism.! Hopefully the
revival of this interest will open up lines of investigation hitherto
ignored or inadequately developed. At the same time numerous
difficulties arise on the theoretical, empirical and ideological
levels when one attempts to explain the dynamics of change in
countries and regions of South Asia with the above mentioned
concepts in mind.
In his universalistic conception of social change, as set
forth in his earlier works such as The German Ideology and The
Communist Manifesto, Marx implied a schema of transforma-
tion of society from a primitive stage of communalism to a
chronological succession ofstages termed ancient society. feud-
alism, capitalism and finally socialism. 2 The key to the under-
standing of these sucessive transitions lies in the relations of
production and ensuing class struggle, the content and form of
which is accompanied by-and dialectically related to-the
historically specific modes of production. Until the early 1850s
Marx consistently adhered to this schema, drawing heavily on
evidence derived from Europe and from other parts of the world
known to European ethnologists. But from this period onwards
when he began a serious study of Asiatic societies, particularly
India, he found himself confronted with certain exceptional
developments which could not be fitted into his earlier schema.
Indian society appeared to him to have lain in a state of stagna-
tion for as long as one could trace its history. 3 In order to
acommodate the particularity of this and similar other situations
in Asia in his theory of society, Marx employed the term Asiatic
Mode of Production and its less refined version Oriental Des-
potism. Ever since, the two concepts have gone through a
checkered history of use and misuse, often in an atmosphere of
charged partisan debates.
What Marx meant by the Asiatic Mode of Production has
been put together by various authorities, with some difference
of emphasis and interpretations, from a wide range of his writ-
ings in the form of letters, dispatches to the New York Daily
40
Tribune, and substantive works on pre-capitalist and capitalist
modes of production. Nevertheless there seems to be some
agreement on the main features of AMP which can be outlined
with some risk of oversimplification as follows. 4
To begin with, Marx notes a "legal absence of property"
under the Asiatic Mode of Production." Land is possessed
communally by numerous particular tribal or village com-
munities on the basis of heredity. Above these communities is
poised the "all embracing unity" of the centralized state, per-
sonified by the king (despot) which appears as "the higher or
sole proprietor.Y" The surplus value of the direct producers is
expropriated by the state or the king through mechanisms which
are extra-economic, i.e. not determined by market forces. The
surplus of the individual producers is surrendered to the state in
"the form of tribute etc., as well as of common labour for the
exaltation of the unity, partly of the real despot, partly of the
imagined clan-being, the god. "7
This set of property relations has significant bearing on the
nature of the class structure. As correctly maintained by Krader
the production of surplus value and its "expropriation by an-
other hand" points to the fact that" Asiatic Mode of Production
existed in connection with a political, class-divided society.t'"
However while we can identify the state with its overright in
land, peasants as holders of land communally, and propertyless
slaves as constituting at least three classes under the Asiatic
Mode, this does not amount to the conclusion that Marx saw
these as self-conscious classes or assigned any importance to
class struggle as a factor in the transformation of the Asiatic
society. The state, rather than the feudal lords or slave masters,
is the principal owner of the surplus product and Marx does not
anywhere in his writings propose a class conflict between the
state and the producers of the surplus under the Asiatic Mode of
Production.
The Asiatic state in the Marxist model stands in an interest-
ing qualitative relationship to the direct producers. It levies
heavy taxes and makes the peasantry support great armies.
Apart from these levies, executed through the village headman,
the state does not interfere in the internal matters of the village
communities. Neither do the villages have any communication
with the state authority. 9 On the other hand the Asiatic state
performs the important economic function of providing and
maintaining public works (irrigation and communication sys-
tems), and thus aids the realization of the productive function of
the local communities. 10
The village community system is self-sustaining, "based
on possession in common. of the land, on the blending of
agriculture and handicrafts, and on an unalterable division of
labour. . . . The chief part of the products is destined for direct
use by the community itself, and does not take the form of a
commodity.... " II Marx repeatedly stresses the changeless-
ness of these communities because of their self-sustaining
character.
While there is little commodity production in the village,
manufacture and trade in the cities are limited by the state
monopoly of surplus, which inhibits the development of a free
market and a trading class. "Cities in the proper sense arise by
the side of these villages only where the location is particularly
favourable to external trade, or where the head of state and his
satraps exchange their revenue (the surplus product) against
labour, which they expend as labour funds. " I 2
While this characterization of the AMP opened up pos-
sibilities of viewing world history in a multilinear perspective, it
has posed many problems for Marxist orthodoxy and engen-
dered charges of ethnocentrism reflected in Marx's writings on
Asia. Yet when one looks at the social history of South Asia and
the present state of its political economy in the framework of the
above categories, some very crucial lines of investigation come
to light. This is probably the reason why the concept AMP does
not quietly wither away. There is no doubt about the fact that
Marx relies on European social theorists and historians almost
exclusively to substantiate the conceptual and empirical founda-
tions of AMP, 13 and in this sense he is Eurocentric with all the
problems implicated in an outsider's perspective. The charge of
ethnocentrism has perhaps more to do with his denunciatory
tone with respect to a way of life, i.e. the Indian village com-
munity system, which was taken advantage of for exploitative
purposes by .local despots and Asian conquerers as much as by
the colonial masters.
Today we have access to much more reliable research into
India's past, particularly by Indian historians themselves, than
was the case in Marx's time. This research does not entirely
support the substantive content and related assumptions of a
number of elements in the concept AMP.14 On the basis of
Asian experience to date we also know that the impact of
Western capitalism has failed to produce certain developments
envisaged by Marx. Socialist revolutions have taken place in
some Asiatic countries before their pre-capitalist formations
were substantially subverted and replaced by capitalism, while
certain other countries continue to exist in a mixed state of
dependent capitalism and feudalism. The significance of the
concept AMP lies not in the close fit between theory and reality,
but in the nature of the questions that arise from it.
With respect to South Asia, Marx started out to explain
why there was so little that changed in the political economy of
the region over centuries of its history. Contemporary historians
have qualified this relative changelessness since the transforma-
tion of the indigenous and Aryan tribes into peasant villages and
the rise of the centralized state in North India around the 6th
century B.C. 15 For Marx the explanation of this stagnation is to
be found in the specific elements of the AMP, particularly those
relating to the absence of private property in land and negligible
importance of the role played by classes and class struggle.
Sawer points out that this lack of importance assigned to "the
development of self-conscious classes and class struggle" is
anomalous because according to Marx's social theory "the
history of all hitherto-existing society is the history of class
struggles." 16 Does this mean that Marx was placing some
societies beyond the pale of history as is also suggested by his
remark about India not having a history of its own'i!?
On the theroretical point, one cannot resolve the anomaly
by adhering to a literal and mechanical interpretation of what
Marx has to say about the significance of class and class struggle
in human history. No other Marxist writer has clarified this
point better than one of the astute African revolutionary-
theoreticians, Amilcar Cabral. Reviewing the revolutionary po-
tential of the Third World socio-economic formations, Cabral
explains the role of class struggle as follows: 18
Those who affirm-in our case correctly-that the
motive force of history is the class struggle would certainly
agree to a revision ofthis affirmation to make it more precise
and give it even widerfield ofapplication ifthey had a better
knowledge of the essential characteristics of certain col-
onized peoples . . . . In fact in the general evolution of
humanity and ofeach of the peoples of which it is composed,
classes appear neither as a generalized phenomenon
throughout the totality of these groups, nor as a finished,
perfect, uniform and spontaneous whole . . . . the socio-
economic phenomenon' .class" is created and develops as a
function of at leqst two essential and interdependent var-
iables-the level of productive forces and the pattern of
ownership of the means of production ... classes them-
selves, class struggle and their subsequent definition, are the
result ofthe development ofthe productive forces in conjunc-
tion with the pattern ofownership ofproduction. It therefore
seems correct to conclude that the level of productive forces,
the essential determining element in the content and form of
class struggle is the true and permanent motive force of
history. (emphasis mine)
Cabral goes on to say that by accepting this conclusion we
will not find ourselves in a position of denying any human
groups the existence of their history while at the same time
affirming the existence of history' 'even after the disappearance
of class struggle' or of classes themselves." 19
In the same article Cabral points out that the development
of the level of the productive forces and the pattern of ownership
of the means of production' 'takes place slowly, gradually and
unevenly . . . on a strictly internal level the rhythm of the
process may vary, but it remains continuous and progressive."
, ,Appearance of classes and class conflict between them" is the
result of "qualitative jumps" in this gradual development once
"a certain degree of accumulation is reached. "20
Now if we look at the history of the Indian sub-continent in
this light, we can clearly see developments taking place, how-
soever "slowly, gradually and unevenly" in the pattern of
41
ownership and the level of productive forces. Of course one
cannot look for these developments very fruitfully in what might
be called "court histories" and the impressionistic works of
chroniclers alone.
Kosambi for instance traces the history of Ancient India to
pre-Mauryan times when land was tribai territory and its use and
possession governed by tribal custom. 2 1 With the rise of the
central state and later the Mauryan Empire (3rd century B.C.)
the tribal authority over land passed to the king-emperor and his
janapada (district) magistrates. However, in this period "there
could be no question of landlordism nor feudal practices. "22
However during this long period of the Mauryan Empire
covering almost two centuries up to 180 B.C., Indian society
was not standing still, and by no means was it a society without
classes, i.e. with a king at the top of the state power with his
functionaries, and a more or less undifferentiated mass of direct
producers. A new element in the mode of production under the
centralized state was the village community. As pointed out by
Krader, initially this village community "set in motion new
productive forces .... In its internal evolution it generated
commodity exchange between the communities . . . it created
surplus production, surplus value extracted by the agencies of
the state in the form of involuntary drafts of labor. "i3
Although the role of the state in the execution of public
works and their maintenance is commented upon in the litera-
ture on AMP, Iittleis said about the coercive power used by the
state to organize large bodies of laborers, not only to build
public works but also royal monuments and defense walls.
Under the Mauryas there was definitely a class basis in the
organization and exploitation of this labor force. Historian
Thapar gives the following account of the relations of produc-
tion at the time: 24
The majority ofthe population were agriculturalists and
lived in villages. The distinction between king and state
becoming increasingly blurred, the idea that the land was
owned by the king was not seriously challenged . . . . The
clearing and settlement of new areas was organized by the
government, large bodies ofSudras being deported from the
overpopulated areas . . . . Doubtless the hundred and fifty
thousand people deported from Kalinga were to clear waste
land and establish new settlements. These settlers were de-
nied arms, their sole work being cultivation, and government
took their surplus crops. The Sudra helot had come into
being under state control, to make large scale slavery un-
necessary for food production. But in fact there was little to
choose between the status of a Sudra and that of the slave
although legally the Sudra was not a slave. Members of the
other castes and occupations moved into the settlements
voluntarily once it became economically feasible to do so.
(emphasis mine)
Tracing the origin of castes in the tribal society Kosambi speaks
of Sudras as .. helots who belonged to the tribe or clan group as a
whole ... without the membership rights of the tribe proper as
granted to three' upper castes (Kshatriya, Brahamana, Vaisya)
who were properly recognized as Aryan and full members ofthe
tribe. "25 The significance of this caste system for later Indian
42
society was that "Chattle slavery in the sense of classical
European (specifically Graeco-Roman) antiquity was never to be
of any size and importance in the means and relations of produc-
tion in India. The expropriable surplus could always be pro-
duced by the Sudra. The development of caste foreshadowed a
general class society beyond the exclusiveness of the tribe. "26 It
should also be noted that the labor of the Sudra not only pro-
vided the bulk of the state revenue, but also fed the priestly caste
of Brahman and the warrior caste of Kshatriya. The general
observation of the royal ownership of land should not be permit-
ted to obscure the class interests of the latter two castes. The
Brahman through his control of religion and codification of
religious obligations, jatidharma, and the Kshatriya by his
control of the arms, exercised considerable coercion to expro-
priate the surplus value from the direct producers, either as state
functionaries or local chiefs.
Although the economy was largely agrarian at this time
there was considerable commodity production in progress. The
evidence of a'<highly developed" commodity production can
be traced back to the 6th and 7th centuries B.C. through the
discovery of precisely minted coins of silver and other metals in
the northern kingdoms.?? By Ashoka's time trade, commerce
and commodity production had also emerged in district towns
and trading ports on international routes. Artisans organized in
kinship and caste-based guilds, not of course a favorable condi-
tion for an ultimate emergence of a free trading class. Another
limitation on such commodity production and trade was that
inasmuch as the state collected the bulk of agricultural and
industrial produce in kind as revenue, it engaged itself in trade to
the detriment of the private merchant. 28
Thus we see that although certain broad features of what is
known as the Asiatic Mode of Production had emerged during
the early centuries of the rise of the central state in India, this
mode of production was not as static as is implied in a literal and
exaggerated version of the concept. It is also true that the
developments in the level of the productive forces were not
always cumulative, but uneven and at times regressive. In order
to understand the causes of these variations, both positive and
negative, one must look into the specific internal and external
contradictions in the means of production and the relations of
production.
The vast and highly centralized Mauryan Empire, taxing
the forces of production to the utmost, contained the seeds of its
own destruction and eventually fell apart by 180 B.C. The
Brahmanic orthodoxy and the rigid caste stratification were not
successfully challenged. Strict state control and increasing state
monopoly of trade and commerce ultimately drove urban craft
production to self-sufficient villages. The criterion of personal
loyalty to the emperor was too brittle to sustain a durable
administrative structure.
The next five centuries in the sub-continent saw the decline
of the central state power and the rise of regional kingdoms.
During this period there was once again an opening up of contact
with many foreign peoples through trade, conquest and settle-
ment. While the village economy remained geared to subsist-
ence production, probably with some relaxation of the amount
of revenue surrendered to the prevailing authority, the urban
economy expanded significantly as a result of freedom from
strict state controls and taxation. Artisan guilds continued to
grow and prosper. In addition workers' cooperatives were or-
ganized around particular crafts and industries which could now
contract large scale building and production and strive for ex-
cellence. Some of the great works of sculpture and architecture
in the south and northwest of the subcontinent date back to this
period and many were undertaken as donations to temples and
monasteries. The coinage of the period improved in quality and
circulation. In short this was one of the earliest outbursts of
mercantile activity, albeit in a pre-capitalist context.
In this background once again a powerful dynasty, the
Gupta kings, emerged in the North and ruled from the 4th to the
6th centuries A.D. The first two centuries of this period are
significant for the unprecedented prosperity of the upper classes
through a system of beneficence which conferred upon them
grants of land and property. In the midst of this upper class
prosperity flowered much of the Indian classical knowledge of
literature, philosophy, law, mathematics, astrology and fine
arts, including the art of love. This is also the period which has
aroused considerable controversy with regard to the use of the
term South Asian feudalism for the emergent social structure.
The process began in the Gupta period with the proliferation of
royal grants of land, agrahara, free from taxation. To begin
with prominent brahmans constituted the main recipients of
such grants but later these became more common and the sphere
of recipients expanded to the members of the royal families,
local chiefs, temples and even state officials in lieu of salary or
meritorious services. 29 In due course the process resulted in the
creation of a powerful land-owning class in parts of the sub-
continent, many of whom engaged in subinfeudation of their
own. 30 Whether these grants were acts of generosity. or made in
quest of divine salvation, or only pragmatic devices to maintain
a semblance of royal control over vast domains, the result was
an irreversible erosion of central authority. A king could now
claim ownership of all land in theory and technically terminate a
grant, but the real power and ownership over large areas of land
had passed into the hands of intermediary Brahmans and local
chiefs. Sharma notes specifically that in later times the' 'right to
punish all offenses against family, property and person" was
made over to the grantees; "the donor not only abandoned his
revenues but also the right to govern the inhabitants of the
villages that were granted .... and in some cases there were
. 'grants of apparently settled villages made to the Brahmans by
the big feudatories in central India, in which residents, includ-
ing the cultivators and artisans, were expressly asked by their
respective rulers not only to pay the customary taxes to the
donees, but also to obey their commands. . ." 3\
Thus new class relations appropriate to a feudal economic
order surfaced and matured as time went by. From among the
upper castes emerged a land owning aristocracy which from
now on became a force which all subsequent rulers and con-
querors had to deal with. Sudras who were treated as the com-
mon helots of the upper castes were increasingly transformed
into peasants. Local intermediaries with direct interest in the
exploitation of rural resources extended forced labor to all
classes of subjects, thus worsening the conditions of peasants.
The present day institutions of begar, unpaid labor demanded
by the landlord from his tenants, batai, or the share of tenant's
crop expropriated, and debt-bondage, became characteristics of
this emerging feudalism. The self-sufficiency of the village,
however, does not seem to have been broken, becausethe
cultivators had to depend on each other for most of their needs
without the intervention of cash. The needs of the village for
tools and artifacts were not only met by artisan sub-castes, but as
described in the classical statements of Marx on the Indian
village, each family produced some of its own needs such as
yarn and cloth.
It should be pointed out here that many writers on AMP
continue to insist that the term feudalism should not be used for
variations in the relations of production in South Asia prior to,
or even after the British conquest when permanent titles in land
were created. 32 The reason is that Marx's multilinear schema of
societal change does not provide for the existence of feudalism
outside Europe. Marian Sawer, who has extensively scanned
Marxist writings on AMP in a recent work on the subject,
sketches the following summary of Marx's multilinear schema
of history as fully developed in his Grundrisse.P
Primitive Agricultural Community
I
Roman
I
].
A static
I
~Sl' avomc
I
I .
Germanu:
I
Slavery AMP_ _ ~euaaliSJ Feudalism
- -- I .... I
AMP --Capitalism
I
Socialism
According to this schema feudalism alone leads directly to
capitalism through its internal contradiction. The rise of feu-
dalism is exclusively a European phenomenon, not to be found
in Asia. On the other hand the Asiatic Mode of Production is
nonprogressive, and will only change to higher levels of the
development of productive forces under the impact of Western
capitalism.
Why then do some of the Eastern historians continue to use
the concept of feudalism with respect to their history? Sawer in
one place in her work suggests that this is due to "the rising
mood of nationalism in the East. " According to her, ., instead of
taking Marx's model of Oriental society and giving it a positive
rather than a negative evaluation as an alternative, non-Western
way forward into industrialism and socialism, non-European
Marxists impose a European pattern on their own history. If
class struggle was the dynamic factor which was to bring about
the desired transition to socialism in Europe, then equivalent
classes and forms of class struggle had to be discovered in
Asia. "34
This is not true, at least in the case of South Asian Marxist
historians and their recent works, which incidentally Sawer
ignores completely in her above mentioned study. It would be
more true to say that a class appraisal of South Asian history
through the ages does not permit the application of a thoroughly
sterilized concept of AMP. The closest the historical reality of
43
South Asia comes to the Marxist model of AMP is during the
period of early central states up to the second century B.C.
Between the 2nd and 13th centuries there emerge patterns of
ownership of land and relations of production which are more
characteristic of a feudal mode of production than anything else.
At the same time, historically, and in different parts of India
elements of the AMP have survived into recent times in different
combinations. 35
From the 13th century onward under the Sultanate and
Mughal rule various attempts were made by the central au-
thorities to destroy the power of intermediary and regional
overlords and gain direct access to the surplus value of the
peasant's labor through a state bureaucracy along the lines of the
Ashokan Empire. The success of these measures was, however,
short-lived and confined to the high-points of Muslim rule; for
example, under the Sultan Alauddin Khilji (1292-1316) or the
Mughal Emperor Akbar (1556-1605). It is true that the Mughals
generally succeeded in eliminating the hereditary rights in land
of their Mansabdars and Jagirdars, but they also spent most of
their time and resources in campaigns against resurgent chiefs
and overlords until the empire fell apart.
In conclusion, recent historical findings show that as the
mode of production changed over time in South Asia, it did not
change uniformly in all parts of the. region, neither was the
change complete from one mode of production to the other.
Elements of the old mode of production survived into the new.
The analytic utility of the concept AMP, or for that matter of
feudalism and capitalism, lies in exposing the old contradictions
as well as the new ones. If any of these concepts helps to expose
the contradictions in a given soco-economic whole, we should
'*
not hesitate to apply it with an open mind and in a self-correcting
scientific tradition.
Notes
I. Two most recent full-length works are: Lawrence Krader. The Asiatic
Mode ofProductiOil: Sources. Development and Critique 111 the Writillgs ofKarl
Marx, (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum and Cornp., 1(75). and Marian
Sawer, Marxism and the Asiatic Mode of Production (The Hague: Martinus
Nrjhatf. 1(77).
1. Whether Marx intended this succession of stages to be taken as
connected in a unilinear evolutionary sequence is beside the point here. As we
shall see his later writings present a multilinear view of historical progress.
Sawer , op cit, 90. believes that there was an ambivalence in Marx and Engels
between a unilinear and multilinear perception of hisroncal progress. Hobs-
bawm points out that even in his early works the nonon ofstages is not based on a
unilinear conception by Marx. See: E.J. Hobsbawm, "Introduction." in Karl
Marll. Pre-capitalist Economic Formations, J. Cohen (trans.) (London.Lawr-
ence and Wishart. 1964) 18.
J. .. However changing the political aspect of India' s past must appear,
its social condition has remained unaltered since its remotest antiquity. until the
first deceniurn of the 19th century. The hand loom and the spinning-wheel.
producing their regular myriads of spinners and weavers. were the pivots of the
structure of that society. ." wrote Marx in a dispatch 10 the New York Daily
Tribune. 25 June. 1853. See: Karl Marx. "The British Rule in India." in
Shlorno Avineri (ed.), Karl Marx Oil Colonialism and Modernization, (New
York: Anchor Books. 1(69) 91.
4. Among a number of attempts to elucidate the specific elements of
AMP arc Krader. op cit, and Perry Anderson. Lineages of the Absolutist State,
(London: NLB. 1(74). two fairly exhaustive commentaries.
5. Karl Marx. Pre-capitalist Economic Formations, 70: see also Marx to
Engels. 2 June. 1853. in Kurl Marx on Coloniulism and Modernization, 449-5 I.
In this leiter Marx describes "absence of property in land" as the "basic
44
phenomenon in the East." which he adds "is the real key even to the oriental
heaven. ..
6. Kar! Marx. Pre-capitalist Economic Formations. 69-71.
7. Karl Marx. Grundrisse, Martin Nicholaus (trans.} (New York: Ran-
dom House. 1976) 473.
8. Lawrence Krader. op cit. 183.
9. Quoting from a House of Commons Comminee report Marx says
about the Indian village. "The inhabitants give themselves no trouble about the
breaking up and division of kingdoms; while village remains entire. they care
not to what power it is transferred. or to what sovereign il devolves; its internal
economy remains unchanged ... He further adds. "These idyllic republics which
guard jealously only the boundaries of their villages against the neighboring
village. still exist in a fairly perfect fonn in the northwestern pacts of India.
which were recent English accessions. I do not think anyone could imagine a
more solid foundation for stagnant Asiatic despotism .... " See: Marx to
Engels. 14 June. 1853. in Karl Marx 011 Colonialism and Modernization, 456.
10. Karl Marx. Pre-capitalist Economic Formations, 70-71.
II Karl Marx. Capital: A Critique ofPoliti cui Economy, New York: The
Modern Library. 1906.392.
13. Almost all major works on Marx's theory of social change have
discussed the European antecedents of his thought. A notable example is Perry
Anderson. Lineages of the Absolutist State. 397-549.
14. See for instance: D.O. Kosarnbi, An lntrodurtion to the Indian Historv
(Bombay: Popular Book Depot. 1(56); D.O. Kosambi, The Culture und Civil!-
tution of Ancient India in Historical Outline (London: Routlege and Kegan
Paul. 1965); R.S. Sharma. Indian Feudalism: c. J()()·12()() (Calcutta: Calcutta
University Press, 1(65); Romila Thapar, A History of India. Vol. I (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin Books. 1(76).
IS. Kosambis analysis of Indian civilization is an interesting expose of
how old and new exist side by side. See his The Culture and Civilization of
Ancien! Indiu ..
16. Marian Sawer. op cit, 52-53.
17. In a July 12. 1853 article. Marx wrote •. "Indian society has no history
at II. at least no known history. What we call its history is but the history of the
successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that
unresisting and unchanging society ." See: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. On
Colonialism (New York. International Publishers. 1(72) 81.
18 AmilcarCabraL "The Weapon of Theory ,'. in Revolution in Guinea:
Selected texts (New York: Monthly Review Press) 93-95.
II). Ibid. 95-96. 20. Ibid. 93-94.
11. D.O. Kosarnbi. The Culture and Civiltzution ofAncient India.
71-165.
n. D.O. Kosarnbi, An Introduction to the Stud» ofIndial/ Historv, 215.
23. Lawrence Krader, op cit. 21)2. •
24. Romila Thapar. op cit. 76-77.
15. D.O. Kosarnbi. The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India ... It
should be noted that Marx in his writings does mention the caste division
otsociety. However such references generally are in the textual context of
division of labor.
26. Ibid. S6. 27 Ibid. 125.
18. D.O. Kosarnbi. An lntroduction to the Study ojlndiun Historv, 206.
29. Some recent published and unpublished research indicates that agru-
hum grants can be traced IV the Maurya period and were perhaps quite common
then. However. it..is the total context of these grants which makes the Gupta
period more sigruticant tor an appraisal of Asiatic feudalism. The beneficiaries
of the Mauryan courts were more thoroughly at the mercy of the king. and were
watched closely by an army of spies for their loyalty to the reigning monarch.
Thus they did not develop into a more or less independent feudal aristocracy
with strong property rights and close economic and personal relationship with
the cultivators. For a recent comprehensive discussion offeudalism as a mode of
production and its specific European and non-European expressions see John
Critchley. Feudalism (London: George Allen & Unwin. 1(78).
30. For a detailed study of this process sec: R.S. Sharma. op cit.
31. Ibid. 3.
32. For example see Ramkrishna Mukherjee. The Rise and Full of East
India Company (New York: Monthly Review Press. 1975).
33. Marian Sawer, op cit. 207.
34. Ibid,76
35. For example the village communes of Tamil Nadu in South India. See
Kathleen Gough Aberle. Dravidian Kinship and Modes ofProduction. Publica-
tion No. 115. Indian Council of Social Science Research. 1978.