Asiatic Mode Of Production Research Articles

The Asiatic Mode of Production in China, edited by Timothy Brook

<i>The Asiatic Mode of Production in China</i>, edited by Timothy Brook

Exploitation in the model of capitalism and in the Asiatic mode of production

Exploitation in the model of capitalism and in the Asiatic mode of production

The Asiatic Mode of Production in China.

The Asiatic Mode of Production in China.

The Asiatic mode of production in China

The Asiatic mode of production in China

An Inquiry into Marx's Concept of the AMP

More and more attention has been paid to Marx's concept of the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) in theoretical circles in China and abroad in recent decades, as more and more of Marx's manuscripts and correspondence have been published and more problems in socialist society have been exposed. This is so because the AMP deals with the possibility of achieving socialism in underdeveloped countries, whose historical experience is drastically different from that of typical models in Western Europe. The AMP is also a clue to the understanding of Marx's view of history.

The Asiatic Mode of Production and Ancient Chinese Society: A Criticism of Umberto Melotti's Distortion of Chinese History in His Book "Marx and the Third World"

Since the decade of the 1920s, the debate over the issue of the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) has drawn the attention of many scholars in China and abroad. In the debate, it is noteworthy that many Western scholars have treated China as an important case of the AMP. Some of them, either out of their reactionary stance against the Chinese Revolution or out of a lack of understanding of Chinese history and reality, have expressed distorted views. For instance, Karl Wittfogel, a traitor to the international communist movement, used the argument of the AMP to attack the Chinese Revolution in his book Oriental Despotism (1957), as well as in his other works. The fact that Chinese academic circles have not appropriately denounced Wittfogel's argument indicates the inadequacy of our work. Other Western scholars, despite their different political opinions from Wittfogel's, have also expressed distorted views about Chinese history and reality. Professor Umberto Melotti of Italy's Milan Art Institute is a case i...

The Asiatic Mode of Production in History as Viewed by Political Economy in Its Broad Sense

Political economy exists in two senses: one is political economy in a narrow sense, or that which is specifically devoted to the capitalist mode of production; the other is political economy in a broad sense, that is, "as the science of the conditions and forms under which the various human societies have produced and exchanged and have always correspondingly distributed their products."1 Marx was the creator of political economy in the broad sense. To make an overall critique of bourgeois economics, "it was not enough to be acquainted with the capitalist form of production, exchange and distribution. The forms preceding it or still existing alongside it in less developed countries had also to be examined and compared, at least in their main features."2 This was why Marx, while examining the capitalist mode of production, also carefully examined the various precapitalist modes of production. In addition to writing the results of his examination of the different precapitalist modes of production into relevant chapters of his most important work—Capital—Marx mainly included them in his A Critique of Political Economy, in the section entitled "Precapitalist Economic Formations." This latter work has now been translated and published in China in part 1, volume 46, of the Chinese edition of The Complete Works of Marx and Engels. Of all Marx's works, this is one of utmost importance.

The Debates over the Asiatic Mode of Production in Soviet Russia, China, and Japan

The Debates over the Asiatic Mode of Production in Soviet Russia, China, and Japan

The Debates over the Asiatic Mode of Production in Soviet Russia, China, and Japan

The Debates over the Asiatic Mode of Production in Soviet Russia, China, and Japan

A review of the controversy around the Asiatic Mode of Production

(1988). A review of the controversy around the Asiatic Mode of Production. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 207-219.

Mode of Production in Medieval Iran

This essay has two purposes. One is to compare the agrarian mode of production in Iran during the 7th through 12th centuries with the mode of production in European feudalism, searching for clues as to why Europe--but not Iran--developed a capitalist mode of production. The second, accompanying purpose is to evaluate the theory of the Asiatic Mode of Production, a theory developed mainly within the Marxist tradition, in the context of medieval Iran.A few Persian writers of the 1960s and 1970s dealt with the question of why non-European societies failed to experience a transition to capitalism, but their writings were not convincing. If the transformation from a feudal mode to a capitalist mode is due to feudal evolution, then a rigorous comparative approach is necessary in order to see why such an evolution took place in one society and not in another.

Marx's concept of the Asiatic mode of production: a genetic analysis∗

Marx's concept ‘Asiatic mode of production’ doesn't conceptualize production in Asia, which Marx knew very little about and never attempted to theorize, but the hypothetical remote ancestry of modern bourgeois production, which he knew a lot about and spent a lifetime theorizing. In Marx's writings from 1857/8 onwards, the AMP figures as the aboriginal, primitively communal mode of production much as in his writings before that date the family, tribe, or clan figure as the aboriginal, primitively communal social formation. Its putative charactenistics derive, less from Marx's examination of its actual structure, than from his retro-spective rational reconstruction, out of the ‘categories’ of the capitalist mode of production and the logic of dialectical development, of a schema which would embrace ‘all’ modes of production in a single progressive (though not straightforwardly successive) system of the economic formation of society.

The Fall and Rise of the Asiatic Mode of Production

The Fall and Rise of the Asiatic Mode of Production

Contradictions in the Capitalist Development of Egypt: A Review Essay

Two theses underpin the most widely held conception of capitalist development in the Afro-Asian third world. First, Afro-Asian societies varied greatly on the eve of the European conquest, but none had embarked on a transformative process which by itself would have culminated in capitalism. Either these societies were still in a primitive stage of development or else they were caught in the impasse of the notorious "Asiatic mode of production." Second, the very dynamism of the capital accumulation process which followed on Europe's introduction of capitalist relations in the third world progressively effaced the specificities (i.e., particular origins and conditions) of the local scene.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Struggles over water, Struggles over meaning: cattle, water and the state in Botswana

IntroductionIn a recent paper on ‘The state and social processes in Africa’, Lonsdale (1981) convincingly demonstrates the poverty of assuming that any one ‘grand theory’ is able to explain the complex relations among state, social process and class struggle and other equally complex social phenomena. Images of the state as parasitic (as in formulations of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’), as an epiphenomenon of property relations or as a neutral mediator, individually fail to grasp the complexity of states' organization and action (Jessop, 1977), yet each clearly evokes an important dimension of that complexity. The fact of political and economic domination has to be dealt with but equally the often contradictory quality of state power reflects the fact that the mediating institutions and ideologies between dominating and dominated are the objects and arenas for competition and struggle among different social groups and categories. The recognition that one has to deal analytically not with a monolithic entity but a set of institutions that are subject to being ‘redefined, added to and patched’ (Lonsdale, 1981: 2) is important. The challenge, then, is to devise analytical means that capture such processes and allow us to unravel the dynamic of contradictions rather than merely note their pervasive character.

The Concept of Asiatic Mode of Production: Its Relevance to Indian History

The Concept of Asiatic Mode of Production: Its Relevance to Indian History

The asiatic mode of production: Problems of conceptualising state and economy

The tendency on the part of Kosambi, Joshi and Alavi to characterise pre-colonial India as predominantly feudal can be appreciated in the context of a critique of colonialism. The problem of the transformation of the AMP has been left largely unanswered by Marx who vacillates between two accounts of this question. In the New York Daily Tribune articles the AMP is perceived as inherently static and it is this statism that legitimates the colonial intervention. By contrast, in the Grundrisse and Capital I, a more dynamic view is expressed in which the AMP gives way to other modes. Marx's primary thesis provides an indirect justification of colonialism and imperialism, but that justification cannot be upheld if it is established that the prevailing mode in the immediate pre-British India era was feudal rather than Asiatic. By claiming a feudal heritage, Kosambi, Joshi and Alavi can maintain a position in line with Marxist analysis while rejecting Marx's legitimation of imperialism. If, however, it can be established that the AMP does have an inherent dynamic then the defence of the feudal view is weakened. Arguably, the maintenance of massive standing armies — which consumed two thirds of the surplus product but were essential for the reproduction of the mode —constitute the location of such a dynamic. The point at which the maintenance of armies becomes prohibitive is the point at which the mode must start to disintegrate since its reproduction can no longer be guaranteed. In the case of the AMP, unlike the capitalist mode of production, there are no offsetting factors.

The Asiatic Mode of Production: Science and Politics. Edited by A. M. Bailey and J. R. Llobera. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. xi, 363 pp. Bibliography, Index. $18.50.

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The Social Evolution of Indonesia: The Asiatic Mode of Production and its Legacy. By Fritjof Tichelman. Translated from the Dutch by Jean Sanders. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. Pp. xvi, 301. Acknowledgement, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. - Lombok: Conquest, Colonization and Underdevelopment, 1870–1940. By Alfons Van Der Kraan. Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd., 1980. Published for the Asian Studies

The Social Evolution of Indonesia: The Asiatic Mode of Production and its Legacy. By Fritjof Tichelman. Translated from the Dutch by Jean Sanders. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. Pp. xvi, 301. Acknowledgement, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. - Lombok: Conquest, Colonization and Underdevelopment, 1870–1940. By Alfons Van Der Kraan. Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd., 1980. Published for the Asian Studies

Some Theoretical and Methodological Observations About the Inca Empire and the Asiatic Mode of Production

Some Theoretical and Methodological Observations About the Inca Empire and the Asiatic Mode of Production