Asian production method

The term Asian mode of production appears in the correspondence of Marx with Engels , as well as in some articles, for example, British Dominion in India. As a defining feature of this formation, Marx indicated the absence of private ownership of land ^[1] .

According to more recent studies by authors who adhere to the formation approach to history , many societies on different continents have passed through this formation. . Some Russian historians have proposed their own alternative names for this concept: Yu. I. Semenov in his works uses the term political method of production ^[2] , A. T. Droban - state-communal system ^[3] , L. S. Vasiliev - state method production ^[4] .

Marx and Engels on the Asian mode of production

According to the interpretation of the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels adopted in the USSR under Stalin , at the stage of civilization, society alternately passes through slave-owning (classical antique), feudal and bourgeois formations with the prospect of a transition to a socialist one . However, in the work “Forms Prior to Capitalist Production,” which is a section of the “Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1859,” Marx also distinguished Asian production relations , which made it possible to speak of a special Asian (archaic) socio-economic formation that preceded slave-owning in ancient Eastern societies.

For the first time, the concept of the Asian mode of production was used in the correspondence of Marx and Engels in 1853 (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., Vol. 28, pp. 174-267) and in Marx's article “British Dominion in India” (ibid., vol. 9, pp. 130–36). In the preface to the work “ On the Critique of Political Economy ” (1859) (ibid., Vol. 13, pp. 1–167), Karl Marx directly states that “... Asian, antique, feudal and modern, bourgeois methods of production can be described as progressive era of economic social formation. " The characterization of certain aspects of the Asian mode of production is also found in subsequent works by the founders of Marxism (in Capital and Anti-Dühring ). New archaeological discoveries and studies summarizing the ideas of the primitive communal system and antiquity (primarily Lewis Henry Morgan ) caused the further development of the concept of the Asian mode of production. Moreover, over time, the views of Marx somewhat transformed. In a later period of his activity (1870-1880), he ceased to mention the Asian mode of production in his works.

Karl Wittfogel's study

In 1957, the fundamental study “ Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power ” was published. Its author was a German-American historian, formerly a Marxist and active communist - Karl August Wittfogel . Based on the concept of the Asian mode of production, introduced by Marx, Wittfogel analyzed the historical oriental despotism and pointed out a common feature for the latter - the great importance of irrigation for farming. Wittfogel called such social systems “irrigation empires” ( hydraulic hydraulic empire ). All such systems, according to Wittfogel, have common characteristics ^[5] :

• lack of private ownership of land;
• the absolute power of a state bureaucracy controlled from the center;
• abolition of market competition and private property. Lack of social classes;
• the absolute power of the ruler who heads the bureaucratic system.

Turning to the present, Wittfogel expresses the similarity of the “irrigation empires” of the past with the political systems in the USSR and Nazi Germany ^[5] . Wittfogel concludes that not socialism was built in the USSR, but a modern version of eastern despotism based on the Asian mode of production ^[5] .

Discussions in the Soviet Union

First discussion

In the 1920s and 1930s, the first discussion about the TSA broke out in the Soviet Union: individual Soviet historians, being within the framework of the East-West dichotomy , they tried to explain the uniqueness of the Asian mode of production, which existed only among eastern societies, as opposed to the classical slave-owning system established in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome , and therefore defended the non-linearity and multivariance of the historical process ( L.I. Magyar , V. . V. Lominadze , E. S. Varga ). This discussion (1925-1931) was caused both by the growth of the national liberation movement in the countries of Asia and Africa, and by the desire of the Soviet government / CPSU (b) to export the proletarian revolution to the East. The interest in this topic among Marxist theorists was also stimulated by the special attitude of Marx towards the East. .

They were opposed by proponents of a single-line Marxist interpretation of history, which expanded the initial geographical area of ​​analysis of production relations and concluded that there was a similar mode of production not only in the initial periods of development of eastern societies, but also among humanity as a whole, which gave reason to consider it universal (for example , it was observed in Critic-Mycenaean society , in Rome of the period of kings and the early Republic, among the civilizations of Mesoamerica ); on the other hand, such eastern societies as Ancient Egypt of the New Kingdom period or the Persian Empire of the Achaemenids came close to the formation of classical slaveholding societies during the period of large-scale aggressive campaigns. In this case, the Asian mode of production was presented as an evolutionary link between primitive communism and the slave system.

A characteristic feature of the first discussion was that among its participants there were few professional orientalists ^{[Note. 1]} . Therefore, the discussions of the 1920s were poor in specific historical facts and were based on a very narrow oriental base. .

After the discussion, proponents of recognition of the concept of TSA were sharply criticized ^{[Note. 2]} , and in official Soviet science a five-membered pattern of formations was established , consisting in a successive change of five formations : the primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist, the initial stage of which is socialism . By the number of formations, the scheme received the colloquial name "five-membered". In this scheme, the concept of TSA was not used at all: all the ancient eastern societies were attributed to the slave-owning stage, and all medieval societies to feudalism ^{[Note. 3] [6]} . The Five-Member, attributed to Soviet propaganda by Marx , continued to be the dominant scheme of Soviet historical science throughout the entire existence of the USSR.

An important step in silencing the TSA was the position of one of the most prominent Soviet orientalists - Egyptologist and Assyriologist Vasily Vasilyevich Struve . There is an opinion that it is Struve who owns the “five-member” (1933).

Second discussion

According to Yu. I. Semenov , in 1957, in the “Scientific Notes of the Krasnoyarsk Pedagogical Institute,” he published an article which, for the first time after the first discussion, refuted the established view of the society of the Ancient East as slave-owning. A broad discussion, he notes, has unfolded again since 1964 ^[7] .

The second discussion of the Asian mode of production (ASP) (1957-1971) was caused by the growth of the anti-colonial movement after World War II , the publication of some unknown works by Marx and the revival of social and cultural life after the 20th Congress of the CPSU (See Khrushchev Thaw ). During the discussion, several rationales for the concept of TSA were put forward. Ultimately, the discussion resulted in a discussion of pressing problems of the theory of the historical process, such as the concepts of Western authors, which emphasized the similarities between ASP and socialism of the Soviet model ( Karl Wittfogel , Roger Garaudy ), the views of A. Ya. Gurevich on the “personal” character of the pre-capitalist societies and others. During this period, the problem of TSA was discussed at the Moscow Discussion ( 1965 ), in which prominent historians of the USSR , France ( Maurice Godelier , Jean Sure-Canal ), Hungary and Germany took part .

After the removal of Khrushchev (and especially after the “ Prague Spring ” of 1968), the discussion was gradually phased out. However, the discussion of the issues raised did not stop, and therefore we can say that the third discussion (1971-1991) consisted of a “semi-underground” period during the years of “stagnation” ^[8] and a period of active exchange of views during the years of “perestroika” ^{[9] [ 10] [11]} . Many different points of view were expressed about the features of the evolution of East societies ^[12] .

The final stage

In the early 1990s, with the weakening of censorship and the elimination of the ideological dictate of the CPSU, many authors in the USSR began to speak openly about the great importance of the concept of TSA for understanding the nature of socialism and the history of Russia as a whole ( Shafarevich 1977; Afanasyev 1989; Vasiliev 1989; Nureyev 1990 and others .). For example, A. V. Zhuravel recalls that by the beginning of the 1980s, starting from Marx’s legacy, he came to the conclusion that Soviet society was not socialist and described it as an Asian mode of production established on a new technological basis ^[13] . It is believed that the discussion of the Asian mode of production in the USSR led to new interpretations of the history of primitiveness and the formation of civilization .

The views of Russian historians before and after perestroika

During the discussion on the Asian mode of production, new formation patterns were formed that were different from the five formation patterns. In some concepts of formations there are six: between primitive and slavery, researchers have the “Asian (political) way of production” ( Yu. I. Semenov and others). In other, more popular schemes, there are four formations: instead of slavery and feudalism, there is a “large feudal formation” ( Yu. M. Kobishchanov ) ^[14] , a single pre-capitalist formation is a class-class society ( V. P. Ilyushechkin ) or “ second formation ”( L. E. Grinin ). In addition to single-line formation formations, multilinear appeared, fixing, for example, differences in the development of Western civilization and non-Western societies. A multi-linear approach to world history is most consistently advocated by L. S. Vasiliev , A. V. Korotaev and N. N. Kradin ^[15] . True, at the same time, they, like A. I. Fursov , already go beyond the framework of Marxist theory itself.

By the mid-1990s we can talk about the scientific death of the five-membered scheme of formations . Even its main defenders in the last decades of the XX century. recognized her failure. V.N. Nikiforov in October 1990, shortly before his death, at a conference on the features of the historical development of the East, publicly admitted that the four-stage concepts of Yu. M. Kobishchanov or V.P. Ilyushechkin more adequately reflect the course of the historical process.

At the same time, the departure from the traditional “five-membered” did not entail an automatic recognition of the Asian mode of production, the reality of which remains a subject of controversy to this day. .

The views of foreign historians

The French anti-critic I. Garlan refers to the slave formation only society with the classical type of slavery; he considers other forms of exploitation of direct producers (helots, royal people, etc.) to be evidence of the existence of an “Asian” formation ^[16] .

Opinion M. Voslensky

A prominent researcher of the Soviet political system M. S. Voslensky pointed out that the main feature of the TSA, the total state, is a characteristic part of all socialist teachings ^[17] . Voslensky believes that Marx has already noticed the connection between TSA and socialism . The author bases this conclusion on the idea expressed by Marx about the possibility of coming to socialism in Russia on the basis of a rural community ^[17] . According to Voslensky, Lenin hid the opinion of Marx on the Asian form of production, not wanting to recognize the existence in ancient times of a social system based on the total power of the bureaucracy ^[18] .

According to Voslensky, it was the similarity of the political system of the USSR with the Asian mode of production that caused the latter to be deleted from the social formations in the USSR ^[19]  .

Opinion of A. Tarasov

Among modern Marxists, there is also the opinion expressed by Alexander Tarasov :

Marx himself, as you know, decided at the end of his life to reconsider his views on the “Asian mode of production”, suspecting that there was no separate “Asian” mode of production. Death did not allow him to complete this work. Meanwhile, Marx was right in his suspicion. Today we have enough empirical data to define both “Asian” and “antique” methods of production as one mode of production: large-scale non-machine (home) production.

- Superetatism and socialism. To the problem statement

• Palace Economy
• Polymer production method
• Irrigation theory
• Socialism as a phenomenon of world history
• Administrative command system

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