A Criticism of Umberto Melotti's Distortion of Chinese History in His Book Marx and the Third World (Ganquan, 1989)

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The Asiatic Mode of Production and AncientChinese Society: A Criticism of Umberto Melotti'sDistortion of Chinese History in His Book "Marxand the Third World"

Lin Ganquan

To cite this article: Lin Ganquan (1989) The Asiatic Mode of Production and Ancient ChineseSociety: A Criticism of Umberto Melotti's Distortion of Chinese History in His Book "Marx andthe Third World", Chinese Law & Government, 22:2, 47-70

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LIN GANQUAN

The Asiatic Mode of Production and Ancient Chinese Society: A Criticism of Umberto Melottis Distortion of Chinese History in His Book Marx and the Third World*

Since the decade of the 1920s, the debate over the issue of the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) has drawn the attention of many scholars in China and abroad. In the debate, it is noteworthy that many Western scholars have treated China as an important case of the AMP. Some of them, either out of their reactionary stance against the Chinese Revolution or out of a lack of understanding of Chinese history and reality, have expressed distorted views. For instance, Karl Wittfogel, a traitor to the international communist movement, used the argument of the AMP to attack the Chinese Revolution in his book Oriental Despotism (1957), as well as in his other works. The fact that Chinese academic circles have not appropriately denounced Wittfogels argument indicates the inadequacy of our work. Other Western scholars, despite their different political opinions from Wittfogels, have also expressed distorted views about Chinese history and reality. Professor Um- berto Melotti of Italys Milan Art Institute is a case in point. In his influential work on the AMP, Mum and the Third World (1972), he claims that China is a typical case of Asiatic Society. He maliciously attacks the Chinese socialist system as bureaucratic collec-

*Lin Ganquan, Yaxiya shengchan fangshi yu Zhongguo gudai shehui-jian- ping Wengbeituo Meiluoti Makesi yu disanshijie dui Zhongguo lishi dewaiqu, Zhongguoshi yunjiu (Studies in Chinese history) 3 (1981): 13346. Translated by Van Young.

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48 CHINESE LAW AND GOVERNMENT

tivism rooted in the AMP. Despite some interesting and noteworthy points made in his work, we cannot accept the basic views in Melottis book.

The main purpose of the following article is to discuss the relationship between the AMP and ancient Chinese society. In doing so, however, I will also contend against Melotti on several issues.

1. The definition of the AMP and its key argument

There are several different ways to understand the concept of the AMP discussed by Marx: (1) the AMP as referring to primitive society or the primitive commune; (2) the AMP as a transitional period between primitive society [classless society] and class- society; (3) the AMP as a succeeding socioeconomicexistence following primitive society, separated from either slave society or feudal society; (4) the AMP as a slave society in oriental form; (5) the AMP as a mixture of slave society and feudal society; (6) the AMP as a feudal society in oriental form; (7) the AMP as an assumption made by Marx in his early years, but denied later. Each of the above arguments can claim evidence in support of its view in Mans and Engels own writings. Consequently, we have to consider two basic issues carefully: the first is whether Mam and Engels were consistent in their views of the AMP in their latter years; the second is whether the contenders evidence from M a n and Engels works can be appropriately applied to the AMP. If we do not de- contextualize Mam and Engels isolated words and sentences from their theory of socioeconomic existence, and if we do some historical investigation into the AMP, then we may arrive at some mutually agreeable points and get the issue resolved.

One commonly shared point in the AMP debate is that Marx and Engels views on the AMP went through a process of development. They wrote in The Communist Manifesto of 1874: Until now, every history of society is a history of class struggle. Later, however, Engels added a note at the end of the sentence in the 1888 English edition:

That is, all written history. In 1847, the prehistory of society, the social organization existing prior to recorded history, was all but unknown. Since then, Haxthausen discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved it to be a social foundation from

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THE ASUTIC MODE OF PRODUCTION 49

which all Teutonic races started history, and the above village communities were found to be, or to have been the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organization of this primitive Communistic Society was laid bare, in its typical from, by Morgans crowning discovery of the true nature and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of these primeval communities society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes1

The above passage fully illustrated the gradual process of learn- ing by Marx and Engels in regard to the history of primitive society. The passage is also critical to the understanding of the historical background of the AMP proposed by M a n as well as M a d s original concept of the AMP.

M a n and Engels had not formed the concept of the AMP by the decade of the 1840s when they started to form the theory of historical materialism. In The German Ideology they pointed out that the tribal system is the first ownership system in human history. They also believed that during this period the slavery latent in the family had already been established, and the social structure is, therefore, limited to an extension of the family: patriarchal chieftains, below them the members of the tribe, and finally, slaves.2 From the 1850s to the 187Os, Marx and Engels studied the communes of India, Russia, and Germany. From that study, they arrived at the conclusion that the communal village with public landownership is the original social existence from India to Ireland. Based on this conclusion, they created the concept of the AMP.

In his manuscript, Critique of Political Economy, written during 1857-58, Marx analyzed three types of ownership systems: Asiatic, classical antiquity, and Germanic. He also pointed out that although these ownership systems existed in the order of historical periods, they nevertheless all share a common characteristic-the laborer treats the means of production or reproduction as his own p r ~ p e r t y . ~ In other words, there is a natural harmony between labor and means of production (referring mainly to land). There- fore, the attachment between labor and land is created because of tribal membership. With natural as well as economic differences between tribes, however, the three ownership sys terns mentioned above varied a great deal. Under the AMP, the land belongs to the commune; the individual is merely a user. There is no private land-

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ownership. In classical antiquity, state property and private property coexist together. Citizenship is a prerequisite for property ownership. In the Germanic ownership system, private property is the foundation of society. Public property is only supplementary to private property. The commune existed only among individuals and their lands. Marx believed that under the Romans and Ger- mans, the primitive social order was destroyed because of the development of slavery and serf systems. In some Asian countries, however, the commune system survived because slavery here does not destroy working conditions, nor does it change its nature. Marx labeled this mode of production-which was based on primitive communes-as the Asiatic Mode of Production. Marx pointed out in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy of 1859: In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of ~ociety.~

When Marx initiated the concept of the AMP, he treated it as a primitive social order. It is different from the primitive communal (tribal) society that we commonly understand today. As a form of ownership, the AMP is a tribal public system in nature. Because of this nature, Marx and Engels labeled it primitive society. Nevertheless, Marx and Engels did not think the AMP was a classless society without exploitation and oppression. Under the AMP, there existed a relationship between the exploited and the ex- ploiters as well as the despotic monarchies living on the surplus labor of the commune. In Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, Marx clearly pointed out that under the AMP, the individual never becomes an owner but only a possessor; he is basically himself the property, the slave of the person who embodies the unity of the comm~nity.~

In The Preparation of Materials for Anti-Diihring of 1877, Engels wrote, In self-established communities, equality did not exist, or only to a very limited degree for full members of individual communities, which in any case were saddled with slavery.6

In 1877, Morgan completed Ancient Society. Upon finishing reading this book, Marx and Engels changed their views a great deal about the history of primitive society. For instance, Marx ini- tially believed that the earliest form of social organization was the product of evolution from family into tribes. Only then did he learn that the tribe was the primitive and spontaneously developed

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THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION 51

form of human association, on the basis of blood relationship, and that out of the first incipient loosening of tribal bonds, the many and various forms of family were afterwards de~eloped.~ Another example is that Marx originally did not have a separate treatment of communes with different natures and different types. He made a generalization that all communal landownership systems were public ownership systems. However, in his draft reply to V. E. Zasulich, during the period between the end of February and the beginning of March 1881, Marx pointed out that the view which lumped all primitive communes together was incorrect, and that [primitive communes] form a series of social groups, which differ in character and age and denote successive evolutionary phases. Marx analyzed the dual characteristic-public ownership and private ownership-of the village commune and pointed out that [the commune] is transitional between a society based on communal property and a society based on private property.@

Because of their more profound understanding of the history of ancient society, by then Marx and Engels no longer treated the AMP as a primitive social existence in human history. Prior to the existence of the AMP, there was a primitive communal society ex- emplified by tribal communes. In this tribal commune period, there was no class, nor was there oppression and exploitation. Therefore the sentence until now, all history of society is a history of class struggle in The Communist Manifesto is not correct, and this is why Engels later felt necessary to add some corrections to it.

Marx passed away in January 1883. From March to May 1884, Engels wrote The Origins of Family, Private Property and the State. He viewed his action as to some degree carrying out Marxs will. In this brilliant work, he scientifically analyzed the history of early human development. He also revealed the process in which the primitive commune system disintegrated, as well as the formation of class society out of private property. He also claimed the historical unavoidability of the disappearance of the state with the total victory of classless communist society. He wrote: slavery was the first form of exploitation peculiar to the world of antiquity; it was followed by serfdom in the Middle Ages, and by wage labor in modern times. These are the three great forms of servitude, characteristic of the three great epochs of civili~ation.~

By this time, the founding fathers of Marxism had developed the theory of socioeconomic formations into a complete theoreti-

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cal system. Marx did not have time to verify the order of the development of socioeconomic formations in precapitalist society during his lifetime. This task was completed by Engels after Marxs death. This order is known as primitive tribal society-slavery-feudal societyaapitalist society.

It should be pointed out that although Marx and Engels no longer treated the AMP as the original social formation after the 188Os, they did not abandon an important point made earlier-that some oriental countries (including Russia) had long preserved the communal structure as well as communal landownership. Further- more, they still occasionally referred to communal landownership as primitive communal ownership in their writings. For instance, in his second draft reply to Zasulich, Marx wrote, by the way, Russian communal ownership is the most modern form of classical types. The latter means the classical type had experienced a process of evolution. (In the third draft Marx crossed off this sentence.) In his letter to Kautsky dated February 16,1884, Engels wrote about the Java commune, primitive communism there provides the best and the broadest foundation for exploitation and the despotic system today, as in India or Russia.l0 Of course, Marx and Engels did not mean that Russia or Java were still in the stage of primitive communal society by the time of their writing. They merely meant that in these places communal landownership was still characterized by faint traces of primitive communism. Mea- sured by our standard today, however, this kind of view is not scientific. Though the situation in Java is not clear, in the case of Russia, according to Marxs letter to Zasulich, the village commune was characterized by dual ownership-public and private ownership. Even without considering the superstructure of despotism, the Russian case, based on its ownership system, still cannot simply be regarded as primitive communism.

Due to the lack of analytical reading of Marx and Engels works, some people in the AMP debate have lumped the AMP as a special social economic order together with the AMP as an ownership system. As a result, they either denied the AMP as a class society, or treated the AMP as a special social formation that never changed. This constitutes an important reason why the debate has not been resolved for a long time.

The issue of ownership is crucial in determining the mode of production. Form of ownership, however, is different from mode

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THE ASLQTIC MODE OF PRODUCTION 53

of production. For instance, state ownership is a form of ownership, but it can exist in a variety of social formations of different nature. Communal ownership can be found in both tribal communes as well as in the village commune. The former is a mode of production in primitive communal society. The latter is a mode of production in the transitional period between primitive communal society and private ownership society. In some states, this communal ownership can be preserved over a long period of time even in a class society. Despite the fact that Marx and Engels believed that the Asiatic ownership system is the foundation of the AMP, they nevertheless differentiated between these two concepts. Among Marx and Engels works, only in The Preface to the Critique of Political Economy and the first chapter of volume 1 of Capital is there a direct mention of the Asiatic Mode of Production and the ancient Asiatic mode of production. Even in these two places, the Asiatic mode of production is referred to as a specific socioeconomic formation. The Asiatic ownership system so frequently mentioned by Marx and Engels therefore cannot be treated as a synonym for the AMP. In most cases, Marx and Engels meant property ownership in their discussion of the AMP. The AMP as a specific socioeconomic existence, however, is much more complicated than just the form of public property ownership. As mentioned before, when Marx and Engels formulated the concept of the AMP in the 185Os, they had pointed out the close association of slavery and exploitation with the communities characterized by this type of mode of production and this form of public ownership. Later on, in his The Workers Movement in the United States, Engels further clarified the point: In Asiatic and classical antiquity, the predominant form of class oppression was slavery, that is to say, not so much the expropriation of the masses from the land as the appropriation of their persons.l In the AMP debate, some people only quoted Marx and Engels discussion of the Asiatic ownership as primitive communism; others emphasized Marx and Engels belief that the form of class oppression under the AMP is slavery. These opinions resulted in endless disagree- ment. If we can separate the two concepts-the Asiatic ownership form and the Asiatic Mode of Production-this argument will then come to a solution.

In addition to separate analysis of the AMP and the Asiatic form of ownership, Marx and Engels also frequently touched on

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characteristics of Asian society. For instance, they commented on the persistence of the village commune and the communal landownership form, and the close tie between agriculture and hand- icraft industry, as well as the rule of despotism. We cannot treat those remarks as their explanation of the AMP. Nor can we arrive at the conclusion that the various Asian countries continue to remain in the AMP from the ancient period. M a n and Engels simply did not exclude the possibility of a continued existence of some characteristics of the Asiatic property ownership form and the Asiatic mode of production in feudal society. Despite the fact that Marx never clearly expressed any opinion on the possibility of the existence of a feudal society in Indian history, in his analysis of the land taxation in feudal society in the third volume of Capital, Marx did take India as an example:

The direct producer in this case is by our assumption in posses- sion of his own means of production, the objective conditions of labor needed for the realization of his labor and the production of his means of subsistence; he pursues his agriculture independent- ly, as well as the rural-domestic industry associated with it. The independence is not abolished when, as in India for example, these small peasants form a more or less natural community, since what is at issue here is independence vis-his the nominal landlord.12

This passage has obviously associated the village commune system with the land taxation system in feudal society. Let us examine how Lenin treated this issue. He acknowledged the continued existence of some characteristics of the Asiatic Mode of Production in Russia. He denied, however, that Russia was an Asiatic society. He insisted that Tsarist Russia was a feudal society based on serfdom. In The Land Policy of the Socialist Democratic Party in the First Russian Revolution, Lenin wrote: Without a clearing away of the medieval agrarian relationships and regulations, partly feudal and partly Asiatic, there can be no bourgeois revolution in agriculture.13 There is no doubt that Lenin put the Asiatic landownership form into the category of medieval.

2. The AMP and ancient Chinese society

What are the basic characteristics of the AMP according to Marx? Since the publication of Magyars The Study of Chinese Village

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Economy in 1928, many different scholars have expressed a variety of views. In Mum and the Third WorZd, Melotti wrote:

There are three basic features in Marxs conception of Asiatic society. First, there is no private ownership of land; in the last resort, at least, it belongs to the state. Second, the foundation is a system of village communes, each one made self-sufficient through a close combination of agriculture and cottage crafts. Third, the central power plays a commanding role.14

This view is quite representative. It is debatable to what extent these characteristics mentioned

by Melotti could be found in the historical reality of various countries in the Orient. Considering the situation in China, it is said that if some characteristics of the A M P ever existed in Chinese history, it was in the slave society of the Western Zhou.

The most basic level of social organization in the Zhou was yi, Zi, or shu-she. In The Book of Rites-KingZy Rule, it is said:

The settling of people requires measuring land in order to ad- minister yili, and to settle people on it. The ruler should measure the land, and then people can cultivate and live on their land. Only in this way can the ruler and people live up to each others satisfaction.

Further, In Er-ya-Shi-yan, it is explained: li is equivalent to yi. In The Book of Lord Shang-Rewards and Punishments, it is said: King Wu enfeoffed various lords, and every fighting soldier got his share of land in the countryside (Zi and shu-shi). Yi, Zi, and Shu-shi are all village commune organizations here. In The Book of Ancient Zhou-Da-ju-jie, it is stated:

The unit below cities is yi , below yi is xiang, below xiang is lu [twenty-five families]. Such a society enables everyone to help each other in time of human and natural disaster and to aid each other in time of death and funeral. Five families form a unit of wu and elect their respected leader; ten families form a bigger unit of shi and elect their elder; twenty-five families form a still bigger unit of lu and select the most respectable man as their leader. Lu is also the unit to carry out moral education. People eat together in observance of thrift; communicate with each other as a common practice; and farm together with cooperation. Each man and

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woman marries; and upon death people can be next to each other in the public burial ground. Thus people will love each other. Animals will be abundant; houses will be well kept; and people will live happily. Every dung should be provided with a doctor and all the various herbal medicines. Every herb should be tested as a cure for disease. Let the diligent take care of orphans and the virtuous educate our children. Appoint experts on burial ceremony to conduct funerals properly and have people attend them. Use scholars to revive rituals and to compose music; train commoners to fight as soldiers; and conduct archery to develop solidarity. Let people hunt and farm together and train to act in concert.

This passage provides not only information about the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, but also a vivid picture of the bucolic life in village communes. These village communes were generally formed by a number of individual families. [Under the village commune system,] the urban area is divided into li oE twenty-five families, and the rural area is divided into a four Equal Field System of thirty-two fa mi lie^."'^ The commune landownership form is the well-field system. In Zhou Rites-Land Offi- cials-xiao-si-tu it is mentioned that land should be divided according to the well-field system: nine people form one unit, and four units form one yi. When King Tengwen sent Bizhan to Men- cius to inquire about the well-field system, Mencius replied:

When people die or move, their families cannot leave the land. The families in one unit pin] should take care of each other and help each other in daily life, in sickness and in defense. They then will become good neighbors. One square mile will form a unit, and each unit has nine hundred mu, among which, one hundred mu is public land, and the other eight hundred mu is distributed to eight families. They cultivate the public land first before they farm their own.16

The private land here referred to is the land assigned to peasants. The public land is the land of the village commune. The assigned land goes through periodic redistribution. He Xiu made a note in Xuangong 15 to the Sprhg and Autumn Annals:

The sages invented the well-field system to distribute land according to families. One married couple is given one hundred mu of land. The Sikong (title) is to supervise the equal distribution of

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THE ASL4TIC MODE OF PRODUCTION 57

good and bad land. The best land is farmed every year; the second- rate land is farmed every other year; the bad land is farmed every other two years. In this way nobody will have all the good land to himself or suffer from the bad land in total. To secure a balanced agriculture, the land therefore needs to be redistributed every three years.

This case fits well into the characteristics of the AMP described by Marx: the individual has no property but only possessions; the community is properly speaking the real proprietor-hence property only as communal property in land.

Marx wrote that the property ownership formation based on the form of public landownership can express itself in a variety of ways.

For instance, as is the case in most Asiatic fundamental forms, it is quite compatible with the fact that the integrating entity which stands above all these small communities may appear as the supe- rior or sole proprietor, and the real communities therefore only as hereditary pos~essors.~

The well-field system of the Western Zhou has dual characteristics with its property ownership form: the communal landownership of the village commune and the state landownership of the feudal lords. In The Book of Poetry--Bei-shan, it is recorded that in all the world, there is no land which is not the kings land. This remark is a clear reflection of the state ownership of the slaveowners land. This characteristic of the property ownership of the AMP determined that

part of the communes surplus labor belongs to the higher community, which ultimately appears as a person. This surplus-labor is rendered both as tribute, etc., and as common labor for the glory of the whole community, partly in the form of the glorifica- tion of the real despot, partly of the imagined tribal entity, the

Part of the surplus labor of the peasants of Western Zhou was thus appropriated by the ultimate personification of the collec- tivity through the means of Jitien (land registration). In Guo- yu-Zhouyu, it was recorded that when the Zhou King Xuan- wang took the throne, he neglected the ceremony for receiving his thousand-mu land (jiZi). His adviser Guowen tried to persuade him not to neglect the ceremony becausejitien was crucial to the

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58 CHINESE LAW AND G01/ERNMENT

tributary grain for the worship of heaven and the tax revenue for the state. This tributary grain is for the imagined tribal entity, the God; and the tax revenue is to satisfy the need of the real despot-the feudal lords.

If the saying in all the world, there is no land which is not the kings land reflected the lack of private landownership in Western Zhou, the Zhou king was then no less than the ultimate owner of land. Likewise, the saying that throughout the land all are subjects of the king indicates the Zhou kings ownership of his subjects. Not only did the members of the commune not own their land, to some degree they were the property and slaves of the despotic king. Not much difference exists between this kind of slavery system and other forms of class oppression. The oppression of the Zhou feudal system expressed itself in the form of live human burials. Similar to the Shang dynasty, there existed live human burials in the Western Zhou. The majority of the human burials were slaves, although some were not slaves. This live burial system continued to exist among the slaveowners and royal families until the time of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. Despite some opposition, Qinmugong used live burials of good people ( s d i a n g ) in the state of Qin. This case indicates that in ancient China wives and children were only slaves of the father in the family, and the citizens only slaves of the king in the state.

It is based on the general characteristics of the AMP that we consider Marx and Engels AMP theory applicable to the Western Zhou period. The social reality of Western Zhou, of course, is much more complicated than what Marx and Engels discussed. In the following, I will compare the AMP discussed by Marx with the society of Western Zhou.

First, Marx and Engels believed that climate and territorial conditions, especially the vast tracts of deserts, extending from the Sahara, through Arabia, Persia, India, and Tartary, to the most elevated Asiatic highlands, made artificial irrigation by canals and waterworks the basis of oriental agriculture.20 This view was distorted by Wittfogel t o create the theory of oriental hydraulic society. Despite the close connection between irrigation and agricultural development in ancient China, irrigation was nevertheless not highly developed in the time of Western Zhou. Only during the periods of the Warring States and the Qin-Han period, in which the village commune had disintegrated, did irrigation be-

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come highly developed. Second, M a n and Engels believed that whereas classical anti-

quity produced a slave labor system in the West, the ancient Orient produced a family slave system in the East. Besides a highly developed family slave system (family slaves were formed on the basis of family production), the Western Zhou also had a fair number of working slaves similar to that of the slave labor system of classical antiquity. For instance, according to the record of Dakeding: Enfeoff you the land of lin, enfeoff you the land of bei, and enfeoff you the xin tribal land of yun with slaves. In this case these slaves were gifts received together with the land. Obviously, they were not family slaves.

Third, in Re-Capitalist Economic Formations, Marx misunder- stood the family as the most basic social unit in human society. In this book, he believed that the first form of landed property has a naturally evolved community as its first prerequisite: the family, the family extended into a tribe, or created by the inter-marriage of families, or a combination of tribes.21 Later, however, in his draft reply to Zasulich, Marx changed his own point of view. He pointed out that the agricultural commune is the first social organization of free human beings not held together by ties of kinship.22 Marxs latter view is no doubt correct. Many village communes of the Western Zhou had kept solid blood ties because of the patriarchal clan system. The following passage illustrates the way in which the class relationship was disguised in the form of the patriarchal clan system:

[In building the state,] the son of the heaven enfeoffs the feudal lords; the feudal lords in turn redistribute their fiefs, officials maintain their families through their sons, and generals take in their brothers. The commoners in every profession have built blood ties, and hierachical rank is distinguished everywhere.23

Fourth, Marx and Engels emphasized oriental despotism as the superstructure of the AMP. This is different from the aristocratic republic of Western classical antiquity. In spite of its despotic rule, the Western Zhou slave state nevertheless preserved some primitive form of democracy among its aristocrats and free citizens. One example is that the citizens of the Spring and Autumn period were allowed to discuss politics. The people of the Zhou state viewed

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their rulers in two ways: on the one hand, the ruler of the state represents heaven; he is the hope of his people. People love their ruler as their parents, respect him as the moon and sun, worship him as god and heaven, and fear him as thunder and storm. On the other hand, if the ruler leaves people in poverty and gives heaven no tribute, then the people will be in despair and rise in revoIu tion.u

It is not surprising that part of Marx and Engels definition of the AMP does not concur with the historical reality of ancient China. Quite to the contrary, it would be a surprise if it did. In re- searching Chinese ancient society, we can neither explain Chinese history solely according to M a n and Engels discussion of China, nor can we ignore Marx and Engels teachings just because their words do not accord exactly with the Chinese situation.

One view expressed in the AMP debate believes that China re- mained as an Asiatic society with a special class structure until it was invaded by the Western colonial powers. For instance, in Man and the Third World, Melotti wrote:

Until the last century the typical structure of Asiatic society survived more or less unchanged, having at its base the self-sufficient production of isolated village communities and at its summit a despotic power that exploited them while performing, with vary- ing degrees of efficiency at different times, the essential functions of water control. In theory all the land, or at any rate most of it, belonged to the State, and in practice the State bureaucrats were the beneficiaries and constitute the actual exploiting class.=

We should not expect a non-Chinese Sinologist such as Melotti to have a thorough understanding of Chinese history. However, Melottis above view is certainly a serious distortion of Chinese history.

The nature of Chinese society in the period before the Opium War of 1849 is an issue long since resolved during the debate on Chinese social history in the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. The assumption that Chinese society was a feudal society, not an Asiatic society, has been proven true through the revolutionary practice of the Chinese people in the last century. The foundation of the AMP is the village commune and its communal land property ownership form. This village commune and the communal land-

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ownership form, practiced in the form of the equal-field system, had disintegrated as early as the Spring and Autumn and Warring State periods. It is therefore wrong to claim that China maintained the AMP in the original form until the last century. There are three basic forms of landownership in Chinese feudal society: first, feudal landlord landownership; second, self-sufficient peasants small landholding; and third, feudal state landownership. Among these three landownership forms, landlord landownership is predominant. Similar to the small landholdings, this landlord landownership is a form of private landownership. Consequently, it has nothing to do with the AMP. Although the feudal state landownership system could be seen as something inherited from the AMP to some extent, it is difficult to define it as public property because the village commune and the commune landownership system had disintegrated. This point is evidenced in a description of the office of the Shaofu (Treasurer of the Imperial Household), who managed state lands in the period of Qin and Han, in The History of the Han-the Hundred OffKials. The Shaofu is charged with the duty of collecting tax from mountains and water for public usage. In The Book of Han OffKials, Ying Sao defined the Shaofu position as the following: Shao means small, therefore, the position is called shao-fu. The ruler collects the land tax for public usage, but collects taxes from mountains and waters for his private expense. Furthermore, with the exception of rebellion, under which circumstances the landowners abandoned their land, which became the public land,% the state landownership form did not have an important function in the national economy. The pattern of landownership development in Chinese feudal society is that more and more land became concentrated in the hands of the landlord class. Aristocrats, bureaucrats, and landlords often em- bezzled land from the state besides taking land from peasants.

The system of despotic centralized power of Chinese feudal society is often utilized by Western scholars to prove that China is an Asiatic society. Melotti does exactly this. However, there is no correlation between despotic centralization of power and the AMP. Despotism could be the political system of both slave society and feudal society. Engels wrote, Oriental despotism was all based on public ~ w n e r s h i p . ~ ~ And where the ancient communes have continued to exist, they have for thousands of years formed the basis of the cruelest form of state, Oriental despotism, from In-

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62 CHINESE LAW AND GOKERNMENT

dia to Russia.28 Quite to the contrary, the bases of the Chinese feudal despotic centralized power system is not public ownership and the village commune. Rather, the despotic centralized feudal state of China originating in the Qin was created under the historical conditions in which the village commune had disintegrated and private ownership had completely taken over its place. The political history of Chinese feudal society proved that the despotic state apparatus built upon the landlord-tenant feudal production mode was much stronger than that which was built upon the Asiatic mode of production.

Melotti denied the existence of class conflict in Chinese history between slaveowner and slaves, and between feudal landlord and tenant farmers. He believed that in a typical Asiatic society such as China, the real oppressing class is the collective bureaucracy. As this collective bureaucracy took over some social functions [such as the management of hydraulic irrigation projects], it has, therefore, a tremendous stability and historical continuity. Based on such historical analysis, Melotti maliciously attacks contem- porary China as a country built upon the AMP and characterized by a collective bureaucracy. His view of Chinese history is so distorted that it is not worth our time to reason with it. However, it is important to point out that his analysis of the class relationship in Chinese history is also very wrong. There was no special bureaucratic class in either Chinas slave society or in her feudal society. In the slave societies of Shang and Zhou, the aristocracy of the slaveowners was hereditary in nature. This aristocracy was the ex- ploiter as well as the ruler. It is very difficult for ordinary citizens and slaves to climb over the social ladder into the ruling class. Dur- ing the Warring States period, the newly rising landlord class re- placed the aristocracy of the slaveowners. They abolished the old hereditary system and established a complete state and local bureaucracy. From the time of Qin and Han to the time of Ming and Qing, the development of the rank-and-file bureaucracy went hand in hand with the development of the despotic, centralized feudal power structure of the state. It is no doubt that the ruling foundation of such a landlord class state is much broader than that of the slave state. Regardless of their social origin, the rank and file bureaucrats in various feudal dynasties were no more than the governing tools for the landlord class. To protect the centralized feudal system, some bureaucrats occasionally eliminated a local

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magnate. This elimination, however, does not change the nature of their being the instruments in the hands of the landlord class. From the perspective of class oppression of the peasants, the un- lawful gains made by the rank-and-file bureaucrats was part of the surplus labor taken away by the landlord class from peasants. Melotti stated in his book: Under Oriental despotism, the privi- leged have not appropriated land or men, but a public function: it is as representatives of the state-sole proprietor of the land-that they demand rent. He also quoted Marx in support of his argument:

If there are no private landowners but it is the state, as in Asia, which confronts them directly simultaneously as landowner and sovereign, then rent and tax coincide, or rather there does not exist any tax distinct from this form of ground-rent. Under this con- dition, the relationship of dependence does not need to possess any stronger form, either politically or economically, than that which is common to all subjection to this state.

But history went in the opposite direction. In Chinese feudal society, small landholding peasants usually had to pay taxes to the feudal state, with the exception of the state-granted land and the equal-field system, which combined the land tax and corvke. Fur- thermore, in feudal society, the land tax, rent, and private loans were customarily separated for tenant farmers. The landlord class owned many farmhands as well as the land. Often, peasants were more attached to the landlord class than to the state, to which they related as subjects to ruler. In many cases, landlords without offi- cial positions often shifted the burden of the taxation to the shoulders of their tenant farmers. Even when the feudal state reduced taxation and corvke, peasants still did not benefit much. The political commentators in history claimed that peasants had to turn in half of their harvest when the state claimed only 1 per- cent tax.30 Also, the landlords pocketed ten times more than the state in the process of taxation.31 These comments suggest that under normal conditions the landlord class took a much larger pro- portion of profit from the surplus labor of the peasants than the state in the process of redistribution. Melotti denied the cruel exploitation and oppression of the peasant by the landlord class in ancient Chinese society and attributed the exploiting class and beneficiaries to the bureaucracy of the feudal state. His view is

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so ridiculous to anyone with a basic knowledge of Chinese history. There are other ridiculous arguments in Melottis book, such as

the claim that the AMP does not have the capability of producing its own mode of production; that it was not possible for an Asiatic society such as China to produce capitalism; and that the Chinese Asiatic mode of production might have continued to exist for many centuries to come without the invasion of imperialism, etc. In this essay, I will not comment on each of these theories due to space limitations. However, I must point out that it is a shame for such a self-professed believer in Marxism and a concerned author of the historical fate of the Third World to make such an argument. Let us take a look at the critique of Melotti by Malcolm Caldwell in the foreword to the English edition of Mum and the Third World. Caldwell wrote that among those Westerners who are self-professed believers in Marxism, the strain of Eurocentricism has a peculiar vigor. As expressed in his comment on the Chinese revolution, Professor Melotti, too, is not immune from this after all understandable temptation. By extolling Western technology as the ultimate guarantee of the future of real revolution, Melotti proves that he, too, could not break through this illusion, ingrained over generations, that the world revolves around the white rich nations-their actions, initiatives, decisions, and directions. Caldwell continues: Asian revolutionaries can perhaps now afford to indulge in the luxury of some amusement at these evidences of incorrigible intellectual residues of the centuries when the West prevailed with such effortless and unquestioned su- periority. This sincere criticism is worth serious consideration by Professor Melotti.

3. The universality and diversity of historical development

The debate over the AMP indicates that a large gap exists between Chinese scholars and scholars abroad over Marxs theory on social economic formations. In his book, Melotti summarizes this difference as the opposition between the unilinear view and the multilinear view.

It should be noted that past historical research had a tendency to simplify and dogmatize the five production modes in China and abroad. This tendency of dogmatism has seriously hindered the healthy development of the historical field. More than a century

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has passed since the time when Engels wrote his book The Origin of Family, Private Properfy and the State. During these one hundred years, there have been many new discoveries and fresh research in the field of archaeology, in the studies of nationality, and in history. These new discoveries provide us with rich and valuable materials for our understanding of the pattern of sociohistorical development. Along with these discoveries, the question of how to use these discoveries has become a serious issue in our research. However, it is inappropriate simply to use the argument of unilinear or multilinear as the summary and illustration of this issue. Both unilinear and multilinear views can be interpreted in many different ways. The multilinear view, for instance, can be interpreted as a denial of the universality of historical development for various countries and nationalities. This universality, acciden- tally, just happens to be one of the most basic points of view of Marxism upon which we must insist. Lenin pointed out:

Materialism provided an absolutely objective criterion by singling out production relations as the structure of society, and by making it possible to apply to these relations the general scientific criterion of recurrence whose applicability to sociology the sub- jectivists denied?2

The multilinear view, therefore, cannot reflect this repetitive pattern in the social system. On the other hand, this universality should not deny the richness and versatility of the individual states and nationalities in their national history. As Lenin stated, while the development of world history as a whole follows general laws, it is by no means precluded, but, on the contrary, presumed, that certain periods of development may display peculiarities in either the form or the sequence of this de~e lopmen t . ~~ The unilinear view can easily be misinterpreted as an absolute uniformity that ig- nores the diversity of individual national histories.

According to Melottis multilinear theory, China, India, Egypt, and other countries all fall into the category of Asiatic society, and Russia belongs to semi-Asiatic society. None of them, therefore, went through the stages of slave and feudal society. Conse- quently, in world history, only ancient Greece and Rome went through the stage of slave society. This opinion is nothing new but a reflection of the dogmatic attitude toward the theory of five pro-

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duction modes. And it will not lead to the discovery of the patterns of sociohistorical development. When some scholars are able to break through the influence of dogmatism, others remain confined to it.

Marx and Engels treated ancient Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe as the models for slave society and feudal society. They did not, however, confine slave society solely to ancient Greece and Rome, or feudal society solely to medieval Europe. Otherwise, they would not have defined the economic law of motion of modern society [as] the natural law of its movement.34 Marx wrote:

The relations of production in their totality constitute what are called the social relations, society, and, especially, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar, distinctive character. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois society are such totalities of production relations, each of which at the same time denotes a special stage of development in the history of mankind?

Ancient society in the above passage refers to slave society. Marx declared that as in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, slavery or serfdom forms the broad basis of social production.36 Engels also pointed out many times that the slave system is the major form of class oppression in ancient class society. If both Marx and Engels believed that slave, feudal, and bourgeois societies were all particular stages of human historical development, how can we say that they deny the universality of slave and feudal society?

Two assumptions are made in claiming slave and feudal society to be universal patterns of historical development. First, both slave and feudal society are temporary stages in the process of evolution of human society from lower to higher stages.

Every stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face of the new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its own womb, it loses its validity and j~stification.~~

Second, slave and feudal societies are not isolated individual phenomena. They are repetitive and regular historical systems in world history. Engels once pointed out: In ancient times the working people were the slaves of their owners, just as they still

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are in many backward countries and even in the southern part of the United States. In the Middle Ages they were the serfs of the landowning nobility, just as they still are in Hungary, Poland, and Russia.38 Of course the repetitiveness of slave and feudal society is not a monolithic model without diversity. Furthermore, these two societies cannot be taken as the necessary stages of social development for every country and nationality without exception.

This does not prevent the same economic basis-the same in its major conditions-from displaying endless variations and grada- tions in its appearance, as the result of innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural conditions, racial relations, historical influences acting from outside, e t ~ . ~

Due to differences in historical conditions, some countries and nationalities did skip the slave or feudal system.

There are two opposite directions in the study of the history of slave and feudal society. One method is to treat ancient Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe as the only model of historical development, and subject the histories of other nations to that model, or to disqualify those nations upon the slightest difference with the Greek, Roman and European models. The other method is to rec- ognize the general characteristics of slave and feudal society that are mutually shared among different nations and nationalities, despite their historical diversity. We approve of the latter method. The development of human history, of course, cannot be said to be multilinear. On the other hand, all societies have developed their own variations.

For a long time, some simplistic and dogmatic interpretations of M a d s theory of socioeconomic conditions have led to an incorrect understanding of slave and feudal society: In slave society the number of slaves must be a majority in the population; and in feudal society the existence of the feudal lord is a crucial qualification. According to this formula, it is possible that there has never been a slave society in history. And feudal society only existed in very few states. Thus it is difficult to claim the common patterns of development of human society. Naturally, Chinese slave society is different from that of ancient Greece and Rome; Chinese feudal society is different from that of medieval Europe. If we must put China into the shoes of Europe, then we would find neither slave society nor

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feudal society in Chinese history. On the other hand, in post-Qin- Han China, the form of landlord landownership and feudal tenant taxation became highly developed. How can we deny it as a form of feudal society? How can we confuse it with the Asiatic Mode of Production? Some contend that feudal society existed in Japan but not in China. Such an opinion does not have a firm foundation, as the various systems in Japanese feudal society were deeply in- fluenced by China, notwithstanding the difference between Japa- nese feudal society and that of medieval Europe.

Marx wrote, It is not the articles produced, but how they are produced, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epoch^."^^ Furthermore,

whatever the social form of production, laborers and means of production always remain factors of it. But in a state of separation from each other either of these factors can be such only potential- ly. For production to go on at all they must unite. The specific manner in which this union is accomplished distinguishes the different economic epochs of the structure of society from one another:

From these two passages, it is clear that the method and form by which the means of production are integrated with labor is the most important criterion in our judgment of the nature of social economic existence. If in its national history the basic characteristics of the slave and feudal production mode are apparent and predominant, that nation, then, should not be disqualified from having slave or feudal society in its history just because it had a different experience from ancient Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe.

One other issue is whether primitive society could develop directly into feudal society, [instead of] into slave society. The slave system and the feudal system are two closely related forms of exploitation. As Marx stated:

Where man himself is captured together with the land as an organic accessory of it, he is captured as one of the conditions of production and thus slavery and serfdom arise, which soon debase and modify the original forms of all communities, and themselves become their foundation$2

In this passage Marx assumed that both slavery and feudal society could directly arise from primitive tribal communes. Engels also

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stated, it is certain that serfdom and bondage are not a peculiarly medieval-feudal form; we find them everywhere or nearly everywhere where conquerors have the land cultivated for them by the old-inhabitants-e.g., very early in Thes~a ly . ~~ Two questions are to be considered here. First, the feudal system discussed by M a n and Engels in the above passages refers to the original or primitive form of serfdom resulting from tribal warfare. It is only the precur- sor, not the medieval form of, medieval feudal serfdom. Engels wrote that this primitive serfdom misled me and many other people about servitude in the Middle Ages; one was much inclined to base it simply on conquest, this made everything so neat and easy. Here Engels implied that there was a difference between this kind of primitive feudal society and the medieval feudal society. In another place, Engels regarded the German feudal system from the ninth to eleventh century as the continuation of old Germanic slavery.44 Here, this old Germanic slavery refers to the Germanic primitive slave system. Second, the existence of slavery does not necessarily lead to slave society; nor does the existence of serfdom lead to feudal society. Wherever primitive communes disintegrated, there was an equal probability of producing feudalism as well as slavery. However, a higher level of production was required to form a feudal society than to create a slave society. Therefore, from either the perspective of chronology or from the historical experience of most countries in the world, slave society always preceded feudal society.

The development of human history has its commonly shared patterns. These patterns, however, are expressed in the form of diversified historical development of individual nations and nationalities. Marxism has guided us to see the way to an all-embracing and comprehensive study of the process of the rise, development, and decline of socioeconomic sys te rn~.~~ It will enable us to find common patterns in the complexities of historical development. It is our duty to use Marxist theory as our guide in our search for patterns and diversity of historical development.

Notes

1. Selected Works of Mam and Engels (Chinese ed., hereafter abbreviated as

2. Complete Works of Mam and Engels (Chinese ed., hereafter abbreviated as Selected Works), 1251.

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70 CHINESE U W AND GOVEWMENT

Complete Works), 3:Z. 3. Complete Work, 46: part 1, p. 4%. 4. Selected Wotks, 283. 5. Complete Works, 46, part 1, p. 493. 6. Ibid., 20:66fM9. 7. Ibid., vol. 23, Preface to the Third Edition of Capital, p. 390. 8. Selected Work, 19432,448,450. 9. Ibid., 4172.

10. Complete Works, 36: 112 11. Selected Wmks, 4258-59. 12. Complete Works, 25890-91. 13. Complete Works of Lenin, 13:255. 14. Umberto Melotti, Manc and the Third World, Chinese trans. (Commercial

15. Jine, In Semh ofAncient Rim&: The Study of IT 16. Mencius-King Tengwen. 17. Complete Works, 46: part 1, p. 481. 18. Ibid, p. 473. 19. Ibid. 20. Selected Works, 264. 21. Complete Works, 46: part 1, p. 472. 22. Ibid., 19449. 23. Zwzhuun, Henggong Year 3 [The author has made a mistake about the

year: it should be Henggong Year 21. 24. Ibid., Xianggong Year 14. 25. Melotti, Manc and the Third World. 26. Three Kingdoms: The Book of Wei-Biography of Sima Lang. 27. Complete Works, 20581. 28. Selected Works, 3220. 29. Complete Works, 25891. 30. Xunyu, The Book of Hun, vol. 8. 31. The Works of Luruangong, vol. 22. 32. Complete Works of Lenin, 1:120. 33. Selected Works of Lenin, 4690. 34. Selected Works, 2208. 35. Ibid., 4:213. 36. Complete Works, 25:940. 37. Selected Works, 4212-13. 38. Ibid., 1:212. 39. Complete Works, 25:892. 40. Ibid., 23204. 41. Ibid., 2444. 42. Ibid., 46: part 1, pp. 49&91. 43. Ibid., 35: 13 1. 44. Ibid., p. 125. 45. Complete Works of Lenin, 21~38.

Press, 1981) [English edition, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 19721.

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Documents

A Criticism of Umberto Melotti's Distortion of Chinese History in His Book Marx and the Third World (Ganquan, 1989)