The Concept of the Asian Mode of Production and the Marxist Model of Social Development

Abstract

According to Marx, the Asian mode of production characterizes a society in which the individual village communes are subject to the authority of a minority. This minority expresses the unity, actual or false, of all these individual communes. How did the Asian mode of production arise? In Anti-DUhring, Engels advanced the hypothesis that the rights of a minority associated with its social functions (religious, tribal, etc.) are transformed into a right of exploitation. The special advantages enjoyed by this minority by way of compensation for services rendered to society become compulsory and no longer require compensation - i.e., they become exploitative. The communes are often deprived of property in the land, in favor of the king as a personification of the higher society. Thus, exploitation of man by man exists without private property in land. The process of establishment of a class of exploiters is accelerated, if natural conditions demand, in the production of material goods, the cooperation of ind...