Late Imperial China
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So ALB, did Chinese landlords pay wages to the peasants working on their estates? I assume then that the peasants did not pay rent, only taxes to the Government?
The surplus value (as this was not capitalism) produced by the peasants I suppose was simply consumed?
Confusedius. đ
I donât know. I am not China expert and donât claim to be. All I can do is to refer you to that article by the SWPer that you found (which I thought was very informative). He says;
âChinese landlords were much smaller scale than their European counterparts, relations with their tenants were also very different. Because of the constant division of land, larger holdings tended to be fragmented. So, Kang Chao suggests, tenants must often have rented from more than one landlord, giving them a degree of independence from each. In some places tenancies could be bought and sold without the approval of the landowner. The relative strength of the tenantsâ position is indicated by the high levels of rent default.
Payment of rent was essentially the only obligation of the tenant to the landlord. Labour obligations were to the state in the form of the periodic corvĂ©eâcompulsory public labour performed outside the crucial sowing and harvesting seasons. It was the landowner, however, who was responsible for paying the land tax.â
He also wrote:
âThe 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.â
Got it!
The tenant farmer (peasant) cultivates the land owned by the landlord and gives some of it as rent, consuming the rest. The landlord still has the better deal, because he gets his land cultivated, then half given to him in rent, and he does no work.
This beats serfdom, because under serfdom he owns but can’t evict the serf. Plus he gets no rent.
But as a scholar-gentry landlord, he can evict, he gets rent, and has no obligation to the peasant.
Is this right?
Plus, he gets his government salary as a mandarin.
OK. And not all peasants were on gentry estates but had their own land. But these would have been responsible for their taxes. Like, I assume, Chiang Kai-shek’s parents, whose house was pulled down for non-payment of taxes.
He also wrote;
âLand was not state owned, but neither was it dominated by a landed aristocracy on the scale of feudal Europe. Chinese landlords were always subordinate to a state bureaucracy that constantly sought to limit the size of landholdings and hence the landlordsâ political power.â
And;
âWhile a disproportionate number of state officials came from the wealthier sections of society, the bureaucracy developed its own interests often in conflict with those of private landlords. A series of measures were adopted to limit the power of private landholders and to insulate officials from any specific landed interests. The most obvious of these was the abolition of primogeniture.â
He is called Simon Gilbert and his article can be found here;
Another shorter article by him here.As I said he seems to know his stuff:
Thanks.
Hundred of historians, sociologists and anthropologist have proven that Marx was totally correct, and they have proven that there was a different mode of production different to European feudalism, and they have also proven that Feudalism was not a wide world spread economic system, both system laid down the foundation for the emerging of capitalism.
Marx and Engels were two hundred years ahead  of the modern Anthropologists, that is the reason why I have always said that Marx was anthropologist instead of a philosopher, and the original economist was not Marx, it was Engels, as well Marx was a real anarchist, he advocated for a stateless world society
The Marxist Humanists can say whatever they want about Engels, Origin of the Family and the State, but his book showed that there was a society where peoples lived without the need of a state, without classes and living under customs.
The USA was not a feudal country, it was a capitalist country since the very beginning, that is the reason why it developed so fast and it had a large economic expansion, and the Spanish, French and Portuguese empires did not establish a carbon copy of their mode of production in continental Latin Americas and the Caribbean islands.
That Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and Mao said that feudalism was a universal system, does not prove anything, because Lenin knew about the precapitalist mode of production, and he preferred to continue using the term feudalism, as well, Stalin knew the real definition of socialism and he preferred state capitalism, that others groups followed the same mistakes, many of them did not know the whole body of ideas of Marx, and most of them were following instructions from Russia, China or Albania
Yet Marx dismissed Chinese civilisation as barbarism and superstition. He appreciated capitalism and Europe, but despised the people and lands the Europeans colonised for capitalism. Millennia of their history and achievements was as nothing to him. For him, capitalism shocked the barbarous, stupid and ignorant into civilisation.
He views Europe’s Middle Ages in the same way.
Where did Marx say that?  You have that mistaken opinion of Marx and supposedly you are a member of a Marxist organization, something is strange. I do not know how you answered the question for potential members of the Socialist Party, there must be an ideological decline. I have heard  the same things from a bunch of stinky  right-wingers, even more, I have not heard the same thing from Bakunians
Marx is right in his analysis of social dynamics, not in everything. The questionnaire did not demand I deify him.
Signed,
Stinky right wing ideological decliner.
Yet Marx dismissed Chinese civilisation as barbarism and superstition. He appreciated capitalism and Europe, but despised the people and lands the Europeans colonised for capitalism. Millennia of their history and achievements was as nothing to him. For him, capitalism shocked the barbarous, stupid and ignorant into civilisation.
I do not think you have read Marx Ethnological notebooks, and you have not read  Engels Origin of the Family and Private Property, because both books show a different perception of Marx and Engels about pre-capitalist society, even more, Lenin who knew about the precapitalists society did not have that type of perception, and the MH who studied Marx ethnological notebooks did not have that perception either . The socialist party is based on three basic pillars of Marxian analysis, and they have said  that without Marx they would  have created their own concept of socialism, but that without them it would have taken a longer period of  time  because the job is already done by them
You have that mistaken opinion of Marx and supposedly you are a member of a Marxist organization, something is strange. I do not know how you answered the question for potential members of the Socialist Party, there must be an ideological decline. I have heard  the same things from a bunch of stinky  right-wingers, even more, I have not heard the same thing from Bakunians
I wouldn’t describe the WSM/SPGB as a “Marxist” organisation. Influenced by Marx certainly but not a “Marxist organisation” as such. We stand on our own two feet and are not dependent on Marx. There are many points on which we strongly disagree with Marx such as his concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat or his support for certain nationalist movements. I agree with Thomas that some of Marx’s comments on pre-capitalist societies were decidedly questionable although, to be fair, he did change his attitude somewhat in later life. See this https://kevin-anderson.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/anderson-article-marx-late-writings.pdf
It is NOT a requirement that applicants to membership of the SPGB should agree with everything Marx wrote or indeed should even have read Marx, so I am not quite sure what you are going on about , I think it is unhealthy to put Marx on pedestal as if he was beyond reproach.  Socialists are not supposed to go along with the Great Man theory of History and that applies to Marx as well
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