Asiatic Mode of Production

A particular mode of production in human history. This mode of production took the natural economy as its basis, rural communes as its basic form of social organization, and was characterized by patrilineal blood ties and state despotism.
The Asiatic mode of production is a concept that was first proposed by Marx. It is a concept formed by Marx in the process of studying Oriental societies (especially Asian societies), and occupies an important place in Marx’s theory of the periodization of human social history. The proposal, development, and maturation of the Asiatic mode of production has undergone an extremely complicated process. It evolved continuously throughout Marx’s works, implying the deepening of Marx’s knowledge of Oriental societies.
In the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, Marx developed his thought of Asian society, identified what had previously been understood as a local social formation unique to society as the starting point of all civilization, and distinguished between Asiatic, ancient, and Germanic forms of communal property. Marx formally put forth the concept of the “Asiatic mode of production” in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy of 1859: “In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society.” The core connotation of the Asiatic mode of production is the rural commune with communal ownership of land, a particular form of communal property in the land in the primitive society that existed after human society entered class society, at the “initial stage” of social development. The ties of men under the Asiatic mode of production rested chiefly on kinship rather than on relations of production and exchange, and were characterized by strong personal dependence. In Capital, Vol. 1, Marx said: “In the ancient Asiatic, Greek and Roman modes of production, we find that the conversion of products into commodities, and therefore the conversion of people into producers of commodities, holds a subordinate place, which, however, increases in importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution… Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. But they are founded either on the immature development of human individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites it with its fellowmen in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjection.” After the 1870s, Marx and Engels no longer used the term.
The most important characteristic of the Asiatic mode of production was public property, which included of two forms: full public property and the coexistence of public and private property. In the section “Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations” of the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, Marx pointed out that in most fundamental Asiatic forms, the land was owned in common by the commune and was divided it to its members for cultivation; as the highest or sole proprietor of land and soil, the despot was poised above all the communities, and obtained the surplus-produce in the form of tribute and was in charge of public affairs, such as irrigation, communication, etc.; within each commune, basically a self-sustaining economy, handicrafts and agriculture were combined, hence the Asiatic form was inevitably the most solid and long-lasting. The forms of property in the purely communal consanguineous kin community and the mixed communal-private local commune tended more towards the formation of a small group organization, so that the Asiatic mode of production took the form of kin community.
The theory of the Asiatic mode of production has profoundly revealed the features of the “state-owned land, rural commune and despotic state” in Oriental societies, the foundation that constituted the ancient Oriental social structure. The Asiatic mode of production has led to a super-stability of the social structure of Asian countries. The characteristics of this super-stability lie in closure, balance, centralism as well as unitary nationalization. The Oriental culture which arose on the basis of the Asiatic mode of production bears distinct features consistent with it, i.e., the cosmological outlook of the unity of man and nature, the closed and intuitive nature of the mode of thinking, the ethical and hierarchical nature of interpersonal relations, and the frugal and unpretentious mode of life. As a product of agricultural civilization, the Asiatic mode of production had many aspects that were difficult to harmonize with industrialization. As a mode of production preceding the ancient, feudal and bourgeois mode of production, the Asiatic mode of production was a primitive and low-level mode of production from the point of view of the productive forces.
The theory of Asiatic mode of production is the core of Marx’s theory of development of Oriental societies, which is of high theoretical value and practical significance. The study of the Asiatic mode of production is helpful in understanding the history and current situation of Asian countries, including China, in understanding their mode of production in history as well as comparing it with the mode of production in Western Europe, which has great significance for reference and inspiration for China in the process of modernization.