Some Aspects of the Social Development of the Ancient Orient

Abstract

The work presently under way on a four-volume history of world culture, Culture and Mankind [Kul'tura i chelovechestvo], is doubtless a task worthy of Soviet social science. Investigation and confirmation of the major concepts with respect to the development of human culture during epochs such as the pre-class, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, and socialist societies are certainly timely. Specialists who work on problems of the history of the ancient East inevitably encounter problems such as that of evaluating the Eastern commune. They must also deal with the antagonistic division of labor, the forms of slavery in the ancient East, and categories of ethnos. There is an abundant literature on these problems, which have also been touched upon in a number of writings by the present author. (1) The final conclusion drawn in my studies, with respect to the manner in which the mode of production came into being in the societies of the ancient East, was the assertion that these latter were, in terms of social ...