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Oriental Society in Transition With Special Reference to Pre-Communist and Communist China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Karl A. Wittfogel
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Extract

The present analysis presupposes that in the flow of history there is recognizable societal structure (cultural type) and recognizable societal change (development). It also recognizes the theoretical and practical significance of major societal types, societies—operational units whose peculiarity is determined by the interaction of a number of essential technical, organizational, and social elements. Some of these essential elements are not necessarily specific: they may be compatible with several types of society. But they may become specific through their magnitude or the institutional setting in which they function. For instance, though slaves were present in many societies, in only a few did the institution of slavery become an essential feature. And serfs (peasants attached to the soil or to the village) were present in several societies: they appeared in oriental civilizations long before they were conspicuous in Greek antiquity or in the European and Japanese Middle Ages. But they were essential mainly in feudal societies and in the “helotage” society of Sparta. Similar diversities in compatability characterize corvee labor, irrigation economy, and commercial and industrial capitalism.

Type
Special Number on Chinese History and Society
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , August 1955 , pp. 469 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1955

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References

1 In the field of social anthropology, this assumption has recently been restated with new arguments, especially by Julian H. Steward. See his “Cultural Causality and Law: A Trial Formulation of the Development of Early Civilizations,” American Anthropologist 51.1 (1949), 1–27Google Scholar; and his “Evolution and Process,” in Anthropology Today; An Encyclopedic Inventory, ed. Kroeber, A. L. (Chicago, 1953), 313–326Google Scholar. See also Symposium on Irrigation Civilizations, ed. Steward, to be published in the near future by the Social Science Office of the Pan American Union.

2 See Wittfogel, Karl A., “The Developmental Position of Hydraulic Society,”Google Scholar in the above-cited Symposium; and Oriental Society and Oriental Despotism (MSS, hereafter OSOD), ch. 10.

3 For a discussion of seeming exceptions, see OSOD, ch. 6.

4 Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy (London, 1909), 20.Google Scholar

5 For this formula, see Milukow, Paul, Skizzen Russischer Kulturgeschichte (Leipzig, 1898), 1. 111.Google Scholar

6 See Wittfogel, Karl A., “The Ruling Bureaucracy of Oriental Despotism: A Phenomenon that Paralyzed Marx,” Review of Politics, 15.3 (1953), 350–359.Google Scholar

7 Wittfogel, Karl A. and Chia-sheng, Feng, History of Chinese Society, Liao (Philadelphia and New York, 1949), 5f.Google Scholar

8 Wittfogel, and Feng, , 15.Google Scholar

9 See Taylor, George E., The Reconstruction Movement in China (London, 1936), 13.Google Scholar

10 Engels, Friedrich, “Der deutsche Bauernkrieg,” in Marx. Engels. Lenin. Stalin. Zur deutschen Geschichte (Berlin, 1953), 1:264.Google Scholar

11 Chou En-lai's speech of Sept. 23, 1954, (Jen-min jib-pao, 09 24, 1954)Google Scholar

12 Loc. cit.

13 Chung-kuo ch'ing-nien pao (Chinese Youth Journal) (Peiping), 09 1, 1954Google Scholar

14 Man, Karl, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (Rohentwurf) 1857–1858 (Moscow, 1939), 395.Google Scholar

15 Mill, , Principles of Political Economy, 949.Google Scholar