Late Imperial China
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https://www.marxists.org/archive/pearce/2002/xx/asiaticmode.html
Adam Buick has already mentioned part of what has been said in this article, and it clarifies many of the question raised in this thread. Some groups in the Soviet Union rejected the concept of the Asiatic Mode of Production, therefore, Mao Tse Tung and the Maoists continued using the concept of Chinese Feudalism. Maoism was very popular in the third world ( including his theory of the three worlds) and the concept of Feudalism was also applied to those countries
I deliberately used the the word “Stalinist” to describe the theory that there was no such thing as the Asiatic Mode of Production and that pre-capitalist societies all over the world were feudalism. This was never the view of the second generation of those in the Marxist tradition such as Kautsky and Plekhanov and… before 1917 Lenin.
This article argues that Lenin not only accepted the AMP but even argued that the social system under Tsarism had aspects of it:
https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv14n2/asiatic.htm
It is true that, once in power and needing the support of revolutionaries in Asia to come to the rescue of the Bolshevik regime, he was a bit embarrassed about associating “Asiatic” with backwardness.
Come to think of it, so should we as well as for associating “oriental” with “despotism”. We need a better term. But whatever it is it can’t be “feudalism”.
The Stalinists also associated AMP with Trotskyism
Thanks Robbo. And he calls me arrogant! Fortunately, ours is not a Bolshevik party, and I don’t have to please any tribunal of commissars. That is not the answer we expect!
Marcos is not a member of the WSM so you have no need to worry about appearing before a tribunal of commissars LOL
In Latin America they are also reconsidering the concept of Feudalism and accepting the concept of Asiatic Mode of Production and that it existed in the Aztec society, and they are not afraid of using the word despotic
I don’t mind the word “despotism”. It’s the suggestion that this is only “oriental” that seems unfair as there are and have been plenty of Occidental despots !
Thanks Robbo. And he calls me arrogant! Fortunately, ours is not a Bolshevik party, and I don’t have to please any tribunal of commissars. That is not the answer we expect!
Marcos is not a member of the WSM so you have no need to worry about appearing before a tribunal of commissars LOL
You should tell him that when I was a member of the WSM I was a full-time worker for the organization and that I was one of the members who spread in Latin America the whole socialist case, and that the WSM was unknown before that, even more. there is a member in the same country where you are living now that I called him on several occasions to encourage him to continue because he was very lonely. His son is living in England and I called him too. The Socialist Party/WSM was also known by members of the Socialist Party of Venezuela, and the Communist Party of Cuba who participated in the discussion forums and they had literature from the WSM, Anarchists, Trotskyists, and Stalinists also received literatures
You should tell him that when I was a member of the WSM I was a full-time worker for the organization and that I was one of the members who spread in Latin America the whole socialist case, and that the WSM was unknown before that, even more. there is a member in the same country where you are living now that I called him on several occasions to encourage him to continue because he was very lonely. His son is living in England and I called him too. The Socialist Party/WSM was also known by members of the Socialist Party of Venezuela, and the Communist Party of Cuba who participated in the discussion forums and they had literature from the WSM, Anarchists, Trotskyists, and Stalinists also received literatures
All commendable work, I agree. Pity you go and spoil it all by your attitude towards comrades in the WSM which is decidedly less than commendable. I still haven’t forgotten your outrageous comments about SPGB comrades who supported the Lancaster branch resolution. Its those sort of tactless comments that drive people away from, rather than attract them to, the Party. And now you are doing it again. You are not going to “win friends and influence people” this way…
“I still haven’t forgotten your outrageous comments about SPGB comrades who supported the Lancaster branch resolution.”
Notwithstanding Marcos’ alleged “outrageous comments”, the SPGB comrades had the good sense to overturn that ill-conceived Lancaster branch resolution on feminism at this year’s Conference.
Forum rulesYour use of the forums indicates your agreement to abide by these rules, to abide by the decisions of the moderators in interpreting and enforcing these rules.1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.To respond to Alan’s interjection of “what about the workers?”, whatever we call these pre-capitalist societies — whether feudalism, AMP or whatever — they are all based on the exploitation of the direct producers. What these produce over and above what is required to meet their immediate subsistence needs is taken from them in one way or another and used to maintain a privileged, ruling class. Before any such society can be classified how precisely this surplus labour is extracted and used needs to be established empirically.
As Marx put it:
”The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers — a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity — which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis — the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances.” (Capital, vol III, ch 47, section on labour rent)
I rest my case. I think it has been proven with sufficient evidence that there was a mode of production different to the European Feudalism known as the Asiatic Mode of production. We must point out also that in the time of Marx and Engels many words had different meanings, and the word despotism did not have the same connotation as our days, like the word dictatorship taken from the Roman legal system which meant Government
A Trotskyist site, but an interesting analysis of Imperial China.
That’s good and could even be the last word as far as we’re concerned as the author clearly knows more about Chinese history and society than all of us put together !
Anyway, whatever Chinese society was it wasn’t feudal as the landlord class wasn’t the ruling class. According to the author, it was the state bureaucracy that was:
”The bureaucratic state is best understood not as an instrument of the rule of a private landowning class, but as a ruling class in its own right.”
It is probably not without significance that the Trotskyist site concerned is that of the SWP which was ahead of the other Trotskyist groups in recognising that Russia was state capitalist with a bureaucratic ruling class. As we did too.
All those Trotskyists groups are basing their information on what Trotsky wrote on china, his main concern was Joseph Stalin but he did not know the reality as well as Mao Tse Tung and Enver Hoxha, and all of them thought that China was a feudal society before the revolution, and there was another organization known as COUSML who also wrote a lot about China. The one who really knew that Russia was state capitalist was Natalia Sedovia who was the wife of Leon Trotsky that is the reason why they expelled her from the Fourth International, she was also a friend of Raya Dunayevskaya and CLR James. What the author said was already known by other Maoist organization, he has not written anything new, and China in the old days before the emerge of Ten Hsiao Ping they wrote many pamphlets about the history of China and the different peasant revolt which took place in China. China Books and Periodicals was the best source of information on China. The actual leadership of China has removed everything that was written before, even more, they are not printing the Five volumes of Mao Tse Tung anymore, as well in Russia they are not printing the works of Lenin any more. I donated all my books on China to a Maoist organization and even for them, it was difficult to be obtained. There was a Maoist organization composed of women only who had a lot of information about China, and there were thousands of Maoist organization in Latin America who had a lot of information about China, more than all the Trotskyist groups, and then the movement split with the emerge of the Albania tendency. Right now the best source of information on China is MIA, and there is no need to have the printed books because they had DVD and hard drives, that is the reason why I gave them away
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