Egypt, the world's first command economy

[Dimentio]

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/economy/index.html

Basically, grain was redistributed to the population (I have read somewhere that it was illegal to be fat in Egypt), and the economy was centrally or regionally planned dependent on what level something was done in. In the beginning, everything belonged to the state, but at the end, the system relied very much on the more and more private ownership of land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at

Not socialist, and not egalitarian, but at least the people did not have to be undernourished, and archeological remains show that ordinary people in Egypt had almost the same standard of life as those belonging to the elite.

In short, much like "actually existing Socialism".

[Dimentio]

It should be noted that when Egypt was founded in 3100 BC, within ten generations the population would have increased from 600 000 to 10 million.

[Queercommie Girl]

It's similar to the system Ancient China had millennia later, except in Ancient Egypt there were massive numbers of slaves (Egypt being a slavery society), whereas in feudal China, there were very few.

[Dimentio]

Iseul: That is largely a myth. It was first in the New Kingdom that slavery was introduced to Egypt, and it was mostly prisoners of war.

Egypt during the Old and Middle Kingdoms utilised commissioned labour.

[Kiev Communard]

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/economy/index.html

Basically, grain was redistributed to the population (I have read somewhere that it was illegal to be fat in Egypt), and the economy was centrally or regionally planned dependent on what level something was done in. In the beginning, everything belonged to the state, but at the end, the system relied very much on the more and more private ownership of land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at

Not socialist, and not egalitarian, but at least the people did not have to be undernourished, and archeological remains show that ordinary people in Egypt had almost the same standard of life as those belonging to the elite.

In short, much like "actually existing Socialism".

The so-called "palace economy", of which the Old and Middle Kingdoms of Egypt are principal examples, could be characterized as "command" ones, just as the economy of Inca polity, in a sense that there was some sort of centralized rent requisitioning by the ruling class organized as the State apparatus from the immediate producers (serf-labourers, as they are called in Egyptology), but these economies lacked any kind of centralized planning (apart from some preliminary attempts by the immensely bureaucratized Third Dynasty of Ur in 2113-1998 BCE in Mesopotamia) and were governed not by the needs for rapid accumulation of capital stock, but for the fulfilling of the consumption needs of the ruling class.

You are right, though, on the inapplicability of the idea of "slave mode of production" to the Ancient Eastern social formations, as not a single one of these societies was based on the mass labour of the chattel slaves, instead using the surplus labour of the helot-like tenants ("royal servants" in Persian Empire, "serf-labourers" in Ancient Egypt, temple helots in Babylonia, etc.) as the basis for local class societies. The slave society of classical antiquity was likely just as uncommon type of development of class society (even parts of Ancient Greece itself, for instance, Lacedaemon (Sparta), post-Minoan Crete, or Thessaly, were using basically "Eastern" kind of exploitation, not the slave-based ones), as that of "actually existing socialism" (bureaucratic collectivism) in 20th century.

[Queercommie Girl]

The so-called "palace economy", of which the Old and Middle Kingdoms of Egypt are principal examples, could be characterized as "command" ones, just as the economy of Inca polity, in a sense that there was some sort of centralized rent requisitioning by the ruling class organized as the State apparatus from the immediate producers (serf-labourers, as they are called in Egyptology), but these economies lacked any kind of centralized planning (apart from some preliminary attempts by the immensely bureaucratized Third Dynasty of Ur in 2113-1998 BCE in Mesopotamia) and were governed not by the needs for rapid accumulation of capital stock, but for the fulfilling of the consumption needs of the ruling class.

You are right, though, on the inapplicability of the idea of "slave mode of production" to the Ancient Eastern social formations, as not a single one of these societies was based on the mass labour of the chattel slaves, instead using the surplus labour of the helot-like tenants ("royal servants" in Persian Empire, "serf-labourers" in Ancient Egypt, temple helots in Babylonia, etc.) as the basis for local class societies. The slave society of classical antiquity was likely just as uncommon type of development of class society (even parts of Ancient Greece itself, for instance, Lacedaemon (Sparta), post-Minoan Crete, or Thessaly, were using basically "Eastern" kind of exploitation, not the slave-based ones), as that of "actually existing socialism" (bureaucratic collectivism) in 20th century.

The Shang Dynasty in China (c. 1600 - 1000 BCE) did actually employ mass slave labour, but the number of slaves was significantly reduced as the Western Zhou Dynasty replaced the Shang in 1046 BCE. That was the beginning of the slavery-feudalism transition in China.

What Marx called "eastern" literally referred to the native cultures of North Africa and the Middle East, and do not directly apply to East Asia. East Asian class societies actually had more formal similarities with those of Europe, as a result of "parallel evolution" (e.g. like fishes and whales). Japanese feudalism is similar to European feudalism in many ways for instance, despite the lack of direct contact in ancient times.

[Kiev Communard]

The Shang Dynasty in China (c. 1600 - 1000 BCE) did actually employ mass slave labour, but the number of slaves was significantly reduced as the Western Zhou Dynasty replaced the Shang in 1046 BCE. That was the beginning of the slavery-feudalism transition in China.

What Marx called "eastern" literally referred to the native cultures of North Africa and the Middle East, and do not directly apply to East Asia. East Asian class societies actually had more formal similarities with those of Europe, as a result of "parallel evolution" (e.g. like fishes and whales). Japanese feudalism is similar to European feudalism in many ways for instance, despite the lack of direct contact in ancient times.

Well, there were, for instance, important similarities between Athenian-style chattel slavery and Carthaginian social formation, but the main line of development in Ancient World tended towards modes of class exploitation based on the centralized redistribution of the surplus product among members of the ruling class that was intrinsically connected with its State's bodies of coercion. As for Shang - Zhou transition, the Soviet scholars, for instance, held a view that its importance was exaggerated in Chinese Maoist historiography, instead pointing to the Eastern Han (23 - 220 CE) and especially Three Kingdoms (220 - 280 CE) period as the temporal limits of "slavery - feudalism" transition, while believing that full-fledged slave society in Ancient China came about only in the Warring Kingdoms to Qin period (even though I no more agree with this variant as with Maoist one, I have simply used this example to demonstrate that even within orthodox Marxist-Leninist paradigm of historical science there were, and still are, numerous disagreements on the exact course of societal development worldwide).

[Queercommie Girl]

Well, there were, for instance, important similarities between Athenian-style chattel slavery and Carthaginian social formation, but the main line of development in Ancient World tended towards modes of class exploitation based on the centralized redistribution of the surplus product among members of the ruling class that was intrinsically connected with its State's bodies of coercion. As for Shang - Zhou transition, the Soviet scholars, for instance, held a view that its importance was exaggerated in Chinese Maoist historiography, instead pointing to the Eastern Han (23 - 220 CE) and especially Three Kingdoms (220 - 280 CE) period as the temporal limits of "slavery - feudalism" transition, while believing that full-fledged slave society in Ancient China came about only in the Warring Kingdoms to Qin period (even though I no more agree with this variant as with Maoist one, I have simply used this example to demonstrate that even within orthodox Marxist-Leninist paradigm of historical science there were, and still are, numerous disagreements on the exact course of societal development worldwide).

Maoist historiography has much more physical evidence to support it. The number of human sacrifices decreased dramatically as the Zhou replaced the Shang. Zhou slavery is to Shang slavery what keynesian capitalism is to neoliberal capitalism.

To talk about a Chinese slavery society during the Qin and Han is ridiculous, as the archaeological evidence is clearly lacking.

Chinese feudalism was formally established by the late Warring States era, and Emperor Qin Shihuang, the First Emperor of China, was also China's first feudal dictator.

Soviet scholars in Stalinist USSR generally know much less about Chinese history than they do about Western history, and some tend to assume an ethnocentric perspective, even if it's largely implicit, when using Marxist histriographical analysis to examine non-Western cultures.

It's better to leave the study and analysis of China's own history to the Chinese ourselves.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Iseul: That is largely a myth. It was first in the New Kingdom that slavery was introduced to Egypt, and it was mostly prisoners of war.

Egypt during the Old and Middle Kingdoms utilised commissioned labour.

But all these pre-feudal modes of production, slave or non-slave, shared one thing: they were all petty commodity modes of production.

Generally speaking, history moved from primitive communism to various types of petty commodity production to generalized commodity production (including the FSU).

[Dimentio]

But all these pre-feudal modes of production, slave or non-slave, shared one thing: they were all petty commodity modes of production.

Generally speaking, history moved from primitive communism to various types of petty commodity production to generalized commodity production (including the FSU).

The only exception would be the grain surplus.

On a regional level, there existed state-operated dye factories, beer factories and chariot factories, which all were specialised.

[Kiev Communard]

The only exception would be the grain surplus.

On a regional level, there existed state-operated dye factories, beer factories and chariot factories, which all were specialised.

Well, they were not "factories" in the modern sense, they were small- to middle-scale workshops operated by the serf-labourers specializing in relevant crafts, and, as Soviet Egyptologist Yuri Perepyolkin mentions, usually beholden to the household of some local lord / nomarch, who usually had both his own private estates and the property entrusted to him by virtue of being head of local state apparatus and temple hierarchy (usually chief priest of local god).

[Kiev Communard]

But all these pre-feudal modes of production, slave or non-slave, shared one thing: they were all petty commodity modes of production.

Generally speaking, history moved from primitive communism to various types of petty commodity production to generalized commodity production (including the FSU).

Generally speaking, you are right. But, just as bureaucratic collectivism of "Soviet"-type societies ended up converting itself to capitalism due to both subjective and objective reasons, the slave mode of production of antiquity was being converted to some kind of Ancient East-style tributary mode of production during Dominate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominate) period of Late Roman Empire (enserfment of previously free agricultural tenants, so-called coloni, and even urban artisans, the creation of basically caste-like military, with sons of the soldiers being forced to follow in their footsteps, the dispossession of not only small, but even middle landowners (curiali, who were intrinsically connected with the polis-type municipal organization, etc.), so that the relatively temporal and unstable character of these specific social formations are quite remarkable, as opposed to relative stability of, respectively, capitalist and tributary modes of production.

[Kiev Communard]

Maoist historiography has much more physical evidence to support it. The number of human sacrifices decreased dramatically as the Zhou replaced the Shang. Zhou slavery is to Shang slavery what keynesian capitalism is to neoliberal capitalism.

The Khitans of Liao Dynasty (911-1125 CE) frequently engaged in slave trade and prisoners' sacrifices,and the Jurchen that conquered the North China after them followed their example, but I think you will agree that this doesn't make North Chinese society of 10th to 12th century CE slave-based.


To talk about a Chinese slavery society during the Qin and Han is ridiculous, as the archaeological evidence is clearly lacking.

No, the evidence, especially documented one, of use of slave labour both by the state and private owners in that periods are quite extensive, especially for Qin and Western Han (206 BCE - 23 CE) periods. Wang Mang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Mang) also seems to resort to wide use of slave labour for his building and agricultural projects, and his edict limiting the number of private slaves is quite telling.


Chinese feudalism was formally established by the late Warring States era, and Emperor Qin Shihuang, the First Emperor of China, was also China's first feudal dictator.

The widely existing evidence of massive dispossession and enslavement of the mass of peasantry during his reign, as well as the Qin government's substitution of military / mercantile-based elite for the "traditional" proto-feudal aristocracy, seem to contradict this thesis.


Soviet scholars in Stalinist USSR generally know much less about Chinese history than they do about Western history, and some tend to assume an ethnocentric perspective, even if it's largely implicit, when using Marxist historiographical analysis to examine non-Western cultures.

It's better to leave the study and analysis of China's own history to the Chinese ourselves.


The problem is that: A) Maoist scholars were also hamstrung by Eurocentric categories / approaches imposed upon them by the narrow understanding of Marxist historiographical analysis, including the very notion of universal, worldwide "transition from chattel slavery (always Athenian / Roman Empire-style) to feudalism (always modeled on post-11th century West European society)"; B) in your last phrase the very "ethnocentric perspective" you decry ironically expresses itself.

[Queercommie Girl]

.
The Khitans of Liao Dynasty (911-1125 CE) frequently engaged in slave trade and prisoners' sacrifices,and the Jurchen that conquered the North China after them followed their example, but I think you will agree that this doesn't make North Chinese society of 10th to 12th century CE slave-based.


These were occasional instances, nothing like the systematic use of slaves during the Shang Dynasty.



No, the evidence, especially documented one, of use of slave labour both by the state and private owners in that periods are quite extensive, especially for Qin and Western Han (206 BCE - 23 CE) periods. Wang Mang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Mang) also seems to resort to wide use of slave labour for his building and agricultural projects, and his edict limiting the number of private slaves is quite telling.


Ridiculous. You obviously don't know the background of Wang Mang's usurpation. Wang Mang utilised slavery precisely because he reverted China back to the ancient Western Zhou system to fit in with his obsessive Confucian fundamentalist ideology. Wang Mang's Xin Dynasty was a radical break with the system that was already in place in China during much of the Qin and Western Han. The old slavery system could no longer fit with China's much more advanced productive force during the Han, which is why Wang Mang's crazy experiment fell apart so quickly.

If anything, Wang Mang actually proves that the Western Zhou Dynasty was a slavery society.



The widely existing evidence of massive dispossession and enslavement of the mass of peasantry during his reign, as well as the Qin government's substitution of military / mercantile-based elite for the "traditional" proto-feudal aristocracy, seem to contradict this thesis.


Where did you get that from? Even Western scholars like Chris Harman recognise that the Qin utilised a centralised system of administrators and warriors, based on the productive base of the small farmers, to crush the old aristocratic classes with their massive numbers of slaves.

You've got it the wrong way around. Your idea is ridiculous, because it seems to suggest that society could "progress" from feudalism to slavery, rather than the other way around. Objectively slavery is intrinsically inferior to feudalism.



The problem is that: A) Maoist scholars were also hamstrung by Eurocentric categories / approaches imposed upon them by the narrow understanding of Marxist historiographical analysis, including the very notion of universal, worldwide "transition from chattel slavery (always Athenian / Roman Empire-style) to feudalism (always modeled on post-11th century West European society)";


You don't know enough about Maoist historiography to comment, frankly.

As I said before, while Maoists and other Chinese Marxists recognise that the categories of "slavery" and "feudalism" are generally universal, the specific kinds of slavery and feudalism in ancient China and ancient Europe were very different.

No historian in China ever models Chinese feudalism on post-11th century Western European society, that's an absurd comment. Chinese feudalism was fundamentally different from European feudalism because it was a kind of bureaucratic landlordism, rather than the kind of aristocratic feudalism Europe and Japan had. But it was still feudal because the economic base was firmly based on landlordism.

Also, it's utterly ridiculous to assume that just because two cultures never had any contact with each other, then their social evolutionary courses must have been wildly different. Such a view is clearly cultural essentialist non-sense rather than real scientific historical materialism. Historical materialism would imply that parallel evolution should be the norm, because similar physical conditions would tend to produce similar socio-economic conditions in society.



B) in your last phrase the very "ethnocentric perspective" you decry ironically expresses itself.

How is it "ethnocentric" when I'm simply advocating people to take charge of their own historical and cultural heritage rather than just handing everything over to the control of white colonialists and Soviet social imperialists? :rolleyes:

[Dimentio]

Well, they were not "factories" in the modern sense, they were small- to middle-scale workshops operated by the serf-labourers specializing in relevant crafts, and, as Soviet Egyptologist Yuri Perepyolkin mentions, usually beholden to the household of some local lord / nomarch, who usually had both his own private estates and the property entrusted to him by virtue of being head of local state apparatus and temple hierarchy (usually chief priest of local god).

In cities, the bureaucrats had established large operations where staff produced beer, chariots and specialised tools. That did not mean that small localised autarchical units did not exist, only that there was large-scale operations on-going.

[Kiev Communard]

In cities, the bureaucrats had established large operations where staff produced beer, chariots and specialised tools. That did not mean that small localised autarchical units did not exist, only that there was large-scale operations on-going.

Well, these Pharaoh-owned production units were rather an exception to general rule and functioned mostly to provide for the needs of the army. Besides, their role was not big up until the New Kingdom, so for the most time frame of Ancient Egyptian history small-scale artisans' production oriented towards the needs of nobles' estates and temples predominated.

[Kiev Communard]

These were occasional instances, nothing like the systematic use of slaves during the Shang Dynasty.



Ridiculous. You obviously don't know the background of Wang Mang's usurpation. Wang Mang utilised slavery precisely because he reverted China back to the ancient Western Zhou system to fit in with his obsessive Confucian fundamentalist ideology. Wang Mang's Xin Dynasty was a radical break with the system that was already in place in China during much of the Qin and Western Han. The old slavery system could no longer fit with China's much more advanced productive force during the Han, which is why Wang Mang's crazy experiment fell apart so quickly.

If anything, Wang Mang actually proves that the Western Zhou Dynasty was a slavery society.



Where did you get that from? Even Western scholars like Chris Harman recognise that the Qin utilised a centralised system of administrators and warriors, based on the productive base of the small farmers, to crush the old aristocratic classes with their massive numbers of slaves.

You've got it the wrong way around. Your idea is ridiculous, because it seems to suggest that society could "progress" from feudalism to slavery, rather than the other way around. Objectively slavery is intrinsically inferior to feudalism.



You don't know enough about Maoist historiography to comment, frankly.

As I said before, while Maoists and other Chinese Marxists recognise that the categories of "slavery" and "feudalism" are generally universal, the specific kinds of slavery and feudalism in ancient China and ancient Europe were very different.

No historian in China ever models Chinese feudalism on post-11th century Western European society, that's an absurd comment. Chinese feudalism was fundamentally different from European feudalism because it was a kind of bureaucratic landlordism, rather than the kind of aristocratic feudalism Europe and Japan had. But it was still feudal because the economic base was firmly based on landlordism.

Also, it's utterly ridiculous to assume that just because two cultures never had any contact with each other, then their social evolutionary courses must have been wildly different. Such a view is clearly cultural essentialist non-sense rather than real scientific historical materialism. Historical materialism would imply that parallel evolution should be the norm, because similar physical conditions would tend to produce similar socio-economic conditions in society.



How is it "ethnocentric" when I'm simply advocating people to take charge of their own historical and cultural heritage rather than just handing everything over to the control of white colonialists and Soviet social imperialists? :rolleyes:


Iseul, as we are here discussing rather serious historical issue, I would like that you refrain from making personal attacks against my humble person and not use such biased terms as "ridiculous" or "absurd". Actually, while I have MA's degree in International Relations, my principal sphere of interests is in global history, including the Chinese one. I've researched quite a handful of different sources on Chinese history, including Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian , and read several books by the historians of various schools and countries of origins, so that I have some preliminary knowledge of the subject. The extensive rebuttal of your comments will follow later, as I am currently somewhat busy with my home affairs.

[Queercommie Girl]

I wasn't trying to be "personal", it was just a heated argument.

I look forward to the debate on this matter from a serious and non-personal perspective.

[Rafiq]

Of coarse. When people start to inject doces of Socialism, large success is inevitable.

Socialism is really just common sense. That's what we should start calling it, Common sense. because even if Marx&Engels never existed, somewhere along the lines we'd still have it.

[Astarte]

In the ancient world there have always been essentially two poles, "Asiatic Despotism", featuring a large and extensive bureaucracy as part of the state apparatus (Wittfogel speculated the large bureaucracy was necessary essentially for the maintaining of irrigation canals - hence the term "hydraulic" society), and more de-centralized city states in which power was based on landed private property (many of the Greek city states and Rome).

Egypt it seems was the most centrally controlled of all the ancient economies. Though, in ancient China every part of the economy flowed through the Emperor as well. Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand History" describe the fall of the Qin dynasty and the rise of the Han. Every Imperial title granted to a follower of the first Han Emperor also received a fiefdom with so many households on it.

I believe Wittfogel says that when Rome became an Empire it more and more took on the bureaucratic superstructure of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian provinces it took.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Speaking of ancient Egypte, it has the oldest documentated stike and therefor the oldest labour action ever around 1170 B.C.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/542285

[Tim Finnegan]

In the ancient world there have always been essentially two poles, "Asiatic Despotism", featuring a large and extensive bureaucracy as part of the state apparatus (Wittfogel speculated the large bureaucracy was necessary essentially for the maintaining of irrigation canals - hence the term "hydraulic" society), and more de-centralized city states in which power was based on landed private property (many of the Greek city states and Rome).
If we ignore China, perhaps, which fits comfortably into neither camp.

[Astarte]

If we ignore China, perhaps, which fits comfortably into neither camp.

China fits almost archetypically well into the camp of "asiatic" despotism.

[Tim Finnegan]

China fits almost archetypically well into the camp of "asiatic" despotism.
I disagree; the concept of "Asiatic despotism" is based on the Mesopotamian and Persian states (and through Greek records of somewhat questionable accuracy), a society which was structured significantly differed from Imperial China. For example, an "oriental despotism" assumes a single ruling priest-noble class, all power stemming from the "sun-king" and descending through various appointed vassals, which was not present for much of Imperial Chinese history. Instead, we find two conflicting "noble" classes, a feudal aristocracy and a bureaucracy-gentry, neither quite the same as the "Asiatic" nobility claimed of Mesopotamia, which produced a constant shifting in the centre of power between regional aristocracies, centralised bureaucracies and the imperial monarchy.

[Astarte]

I disagree; the concept of "Asiatic despotism" is based on the Mesopotamian and Persian states (and through Greek records of somewhat questionable accuracy), a society which was structured significantly differed from Imperial China.


For example, an "oriental despotism" assumes a single ruling priest-noble class, all power stemming from the "sun-king" and descending through various appointed vassals, which was not present for much of Imperial Chinese history.

We need to be clear as to how we are defining "Asiatic Despotism". I mean a few things:
1. An Authoritarian ruling bureaucracy, with a centralized authority many times, but not always under the rule of one King, Empeor, Ensi, Priest-King, Pharaoh, Despot, etc...
2. This authoritarian bureaucracy draws labor power from the population mainly in the form of the a state corvee, usually to dig irrigation canals to support a large and growing population, or public works such as Temple complexes in Egypt , or enormous projects like the Sui Dynasty's "Grand Canal".
3. The ruling bureaucracy sees private accumulation as a threat representing the formation of pockets of power outside of the control of the centralized state and hence tries to control most aspects of the economy through various means.

I would say that the priest-kings of Mesopotamia generally had less centralized authority than the Emperors of China as there was much more "commerce" and trade unregulated by the state. I think the real gray area in terms of Asiatic Despotism are actually peoples like the early Sumerians and Hittites.


Instead, we find two conflicting "noble" classes, a feudal aristocracy and a bureaucracy-gentry, neither quite the same as the "Asiatic" nobility claimed of Mesopotamia, which produced a constant shifting in the centre of power between regional aristocracies, centralised bureaucracies and the imperial monarchy.

This has happened in many, many Asiatic Despotisms. Even Pharaonic Egypt. During each of the three intermediate periods power shifted to regional "Kings" (for example Thebes). I do not think what you are describing as two conflicting classes actually were two different classes, but rather different caste milieu of the same ruling class; potential-King provincials vs. urban enthroned Kings

I do not think you are familiar with the building on this theory that has been done since Marx, namely by one Karl Wittfogel (who was a member of the Frankfurt School and Sinologist) who wrote a book called "Oriental Despotism; a Comparative Study of Total Power".

[Tim Finnegan]

I do not think you are familiar with the building on this theory that has been done since Marx, namely by one Karl Wittfogel (who was a member of the Frankfurt School and Sinologist) who wrote a book called "Oriental Despotism; a Comparative Study of Total Power".
Hm, you may be right. I'll try to look into Wittfogel's work if I get a chance.

[Queercommie Girl]

Karl Wittfogel was originally a Marxist, but he left Marxism and became a reactionary anti-communist and "Cold Warrior" after WWII, not only rejecting Stalin and Mao completely, but also completely rejecting Leninism in general.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Wittfogel

Karl August Wittfogel (1896 - 1988) was a German-American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-American) playwright (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playwright), historian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historian), and sinologist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinologist). Originally a Marxist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist) and an active member of the Communist Party of Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Germany), after the Second World War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_World_War) Wittfogel was an equally fierce anticommunist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticommunist).

He left Germany for England and then the United States. Wittfogel's belief in the Soviet Union was destroyed with the Hitler-Stalin alliance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact), and he began to hate the totalitarian, "asiatic" nature of Russian and Chinese Communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communism) from Lenin to Mao. He turned against his old comrades and denounced some of them, as well as American scholars such as Owen Lattimore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Lattimore), at the McCarran Committee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran_Committee) hearings in 1951. He came to believe that the state-owned economies of the Soviet bloc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_bloc) inevitably led to despotic governments even more oppressive than those of "traditional Asia" and that those regimes were the greatest threat to the future of all mankind.

For all the problems of Stalinism, to draw a simple parallel between modern Stalinism and ancient "Asiatic Mode of Production" is certainly over-simplistic, and anyone who thinks the Stalinist system of deformed worker's states is worse than Western private capitalism is obviously mistaken.

In ancient China's case, there were a lot of evidence for the development of commerce from the Song Dynasty onwards. But of course for socialists there is no reason at all to think that a more privately commercialised socio-economic system is better than a more tightly controlled and centralised one.

Wittfogel died more than 20 years ago, and a lot of his views are simply out of date. For a good objective account of ancient Chinese history unclouded by ideological considerations, I would suggest Jacques Gernet. Chris Harman used Gernet as a source for ancient Chinese history a lot in his A People's History of the World.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Chinese-Civilization-Jacques-Gernet/dp/0521497817

Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilisation

The famous British Sinologist and Historian of Science Joseph Needham was also very critical of Wittfogel's views.

[Kiev Communard]

Iseul, I haven't ignored our previous discussion in this thread, it is that I have a lot things to do now. I will post the separate thread on the problems of Chinese history in this sub-forum later, and I hope we will have some time to debate.

With best regards,

Kiev Communard.

[Queercommie Girl]

Instead, we find two conflicting "noble" classes, a feudal aristocracy and a bureaucracy-gentry, neither quite the same as the "Asiatic" nobility claimed of Mesopotamia, which produced a constant shifting in the centre of power between regional aristocracies, centralised bureaucracies and the imperial monarchy.


The scholar-official class was technically speaking not a "noble class", since it was not based on any kind of aristocratic or caste structure, but (in principle at least) purely based on the civil service examination system and meritocracy. In theory even the lowest of beggars and social outcasts could become great scholar-officials. Admiral Zheng He who explored the coast of Africa nearly a century before the Europeans did was originally a prisoner of war and a Muslim eunuch.

In practice of course, due to economic constraints, most scholar-officials came from the landlord class. But whereas the feudal aristocracy was represented by the big landlords, the scholar-official class was largely represented by medium and small landlords, and therefore it was relatively more progressive. (Similar to how the Democratic Party is relatively more progressive than the Republican Party in the US)

In strict Marxist terms, both scholar-officials and feudal aristocrats belonged to the landlord class in the economic sense.