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Results and Problems of the Study of Oriental Despotism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Karl A. Wittfogel
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Extract

Periodic gatherings of Orientalists are fully meaningful only when they serve as forums for the discussion of important developments in the major fields of their professional concern: Oriental languages, literature and ideas, history and institutions. Having worked for decades in the latter fields with China as a starting point and the comparison of institutions as a central target, I would like to discuss here some of the problems connected with the power structure that Montesquieu, the men of the Enlightenment, and Marx and Engels called “Oriental despotism.”

For a variety of reasons, there has been a growing interest in the institutional conditions of the “Orient.” Hence any significant change in the interpretation of these conditions is bound to affect a growing number of Orientalists—and of social scientists who, although not Orientalists, deal with Oriental institutions.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , February 1969 , pp. 357 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1969

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References

1 See Wittfogel, Karl A., Oriental Despotism (New Haven, 1957), pp. 402 ffGoogle Scholar. Hereafter cited as OD.

2 See Hobsbawm, E. J., Introduction to Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (New York, 1964), p. 63.Google Scholar

3 See Parain, Charles, “Le Mode de production asiatique: une étape nouvelle dans une discussion fondamentale,” in La Pensée, April 1964, p. 4.Google Scholar

4 Diskussia ob Aziatskom Sposobe Proizvodstva [Discussion of the Asiatic Mode of Production], (Moscow and Leningrad, 1931), p. 34. Hereafter cited as DASP.

5 Ibid., p. 87 (cf. OD, p. 403).

6 Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (Moscow, 1939). Hereafter cited as Marx, Grundrisse. The above-mentioned publication, Pre-Capitalist Economic Foundations, to which Hobsbawm wrote the Introduction, reproduces only 40 pages of the 947 pages of the text. These 40 pages appeared in English 25 years after the publication of the Grundrisse!

7 La Pensée, April 1964, p. 71. (“Bibliographical Summary,” prepared by Joan Chesneaux.) Cf. also p. 35 (Jean Chesneaux). In the version of Tokei's 1962 lecture, issued by the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches marxistes, the “reprendre” sentence has been omitted.

8 For the oscillation in Lenin's then attitude, see OD, pp. 391–94.

9 N. Rjasanoff, Karl Marx über Russlands Vorherrschaft in Europa, Supplement to Die Neue Zeit, 27, part 1, no. 5, 1909, p. 10.

10 Lenin, V. I., Collected Works (Moscow, 1964), 21, p. 82Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Lenin, CW.

11 A German translation of the “Revelations” has been published in the Karl Marx Ausgabe, ed. Lieber, H. J., in Vol. III, 2, (Stuttgart, 1960), pp. 727 ff.Google Scholar

12 Marx, Karl, “British Rule in India,” in New York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853. Hereafter cited as NYDT.Google Scholar

13 Marx, Karl, Das Kapital, Vol. IGoogle Scholar, in Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich, Werke (Berlin, 1957) 23. p. 537Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as MEW

14 Ibid., p. 193. Cf. NYDT, June 25, 1853.

15 MEW, 23, p. 537

16 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 429.

17 NYDT, June 25, 1853.

18 MEW, 23, p. 345.

19 For Weber's pertinent statements and their critical evaluation see Wittfogel, “Class Structure and Total Power in Oriental Despotism” in Contemporary China (Hong Kong, 1958/59), pp. 4 f.

20 See OD, p. 11.

21 Ibid., pp. 407 f.

22 See Wittfogel, “The Marxist View of China,” China Quarterly, 1962, pp. 158 f.

23 MEW, 25, p. 346.

24 See OD, p. 388.

25 Ibid., pp. 173 ff.

26 Marx suggested this idea in “The Future of the British Rule in India” (NYDT, July 22, 1853) by presenting as “the worst feature” of the Indian village system “the dissolution of society into stereotype and disconnected atoms.”

27 Bodin, Jean, The Six Bookes of Commonweale [1604], (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 84 ff., 88 ff., 197 ff., 204 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Montesquieu, De l'Esprit des Lois, Book II, 4 and 5.

29 OD, p. 301.

30 Ibid., pp. 363 f.

31 Max Weber discussed this phenomenon in his China study. Wittfogel correlated the increasing tendency toward regionalism with the increasing size of the agro-managerial countries; Franz Michael analyzed it for imperial China with special reference to the gentry.

32 See Wittfogel, , “A Stronger Oriental Despotism,” China Quarterly, 1960, p. 32.Google Scholar

33 For this concept see Montesquieu, De l'Esprit des Lois, Book. III, 10 and passim.

34 Ibid., Book XVII.

35 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 395.

36 London Free Press, February 4, 18, 25, April 1, 1857.

37 Lenin, CW, 4, p. 377.

38 Ibid., 6, p. 139 (The Agrarian Programme of Russian Social Democracy).

39 Ibid., p. 368 (To the Rural Poor).

40 Ibid., p. 370.

41 Engels, Friedrich, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (Moscow, 1935), p. 143.Google Scholar