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The Despotism of Concepts: Wittfogel and Marx on China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Maurice Meisner
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Extract

Despite his claim to have advanced beyond Marxism and arrived at an entirely new conception of the nature of traditional non-Western societies, it is somewhat surprising to learn that Professor Karl Wittfogel still feels the need to seek the testimony of no less an “authority” on Asia than Karl Marx. In a recent article in this journal Professor Wittfogel has once again examined the canons of Marxism in order to find support for the theory of “Oriental despotism.” In this case the articles that Marx and Engels wrote on China during the 1850s have been rescued from obscurity and presented as major canonical texts in the evolution of the doctrine of “Oriental despotism.”

Type
On the Frontiers
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 16 , December 1963 , pp. 99 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1963

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References

1 Wittfogel, Karl A., “The Marxist View of China” (Part 1), The China Quarterly, No. 11 (07–09 1962), pp. 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid. p. 1.

3 Ibid. p. 4.

4 Ibid. pp. 8–10.

5 New York Daily Tribune, 06 14, 1853, p. 4.Google Scholar

6 See particularly “The British Rule in India” in Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), I, pp. 345–351.Google Scholar

7 Marx, , “Revolution in China and Europe,” loc. cit.Google Scholar

8 Ibid.

9 See the reprint of Li's translation of Marx's article, and his comments on it, published under the title “Ma-k'o-ssu ti Chung-kuo min-tsu ko-ming-kuan” (“Marx's Views on the Chinese National Revolution”) in Li Ta-chao Hsüan-chi (The Selected Writings of Li Ta-chao) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1959), pp. 545–555Google Scholar

10 Ibid. pp. 553–555.

11 The citations made here from the New York Daily Tribune are taken from the original newspaper texts. Most of the articles are also available in Torr, Dona, Marx on China (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1951).Google Scholar The only article that did not appear in the New York Daily Tribune was published in 1862 in the Vienna newspaper Die Presse. See Marx, and Engels, , Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1961), Vol. XVGoogle Scholar; also Ma-k'o-ssu En-ke-ssu lun Chung-kuo (Marx and Engels on China) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1957), pp. 514–516.Google Scholar

12 Marx, Karl, “Trade with China,” New York Dotty Tribune, 12 3, 1859, p. 8.Google Scholar

13 Marx, Karl, Capital (New York: Modern Library), I, p. 367, footnote.Google Scholar

14 Ibid. p. 564.

15 Marx, , “Trade with China,” loc. cit.Google Scholar; Wittfogel, , loc. cit., p. 6.Google Scholar

16 Letter of Marx, to Engels, , 06 2, 1853.Google ScholarMarx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), p. 99.Google Scholar

17 Capital, I, p. 392.Google Scholar “Oriental despotism” is also specifically identified with communal landownership by Engels in Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science (New York: International Publishers, no date), p. 184.Google Scholar

18 In a footnote in the first volume of Capital, wrote, Marx: “Japan, with its purely feudal organisation of landed property and its developed petite culture, gives a much truer picture of the European middle ages than all our history books.…” Capital, I, p. 789.Google Scholar

19 Wittfogel, , loc. cit., p. 6.Google Scholar

20 Ibid. p. 5.

21 This is one of Marx's most basic and explicit theoretical formulations. See, for example, Marx, Karl, “Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,”Google ScholarMarx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Works (Moscow: 1958), I, p. 363.Google Scholar

22 Letter from Karl Marx to the editors of Otechestvenniye Zapiski (11 1877)Google Scholar, Selected Correspondence, p. 379.Google Scholar

23 Ibid.

24 Marx, Karl, New York Daily Tribune, 09 25, 1858, p. 4.Google Scholar

25 Marx, , New York Daily Tribune, 04 10, 1857, p. 4.Google Scholar

26 Marx, , New York Daily Tribune, 06 2, 1857, p. 4.Google Scholar

27 Marx, , “The New Chinese War,” New York Daily Tribune, 10 18, 1859, p. 6.Google Scholar

28 Marx, , New York Daily Tribune, 03 25, 1857, p. 5.Google Scholar

29 The articles by Marx dealing with China were translated into Chinese and published in Peking in 1950. See the reprint of 1957 entitled Ma-k'o-ssu En-ke-ssu lun Chung-kuo (Marx and Engels on China), op. cit.

30 Engels, F., “Persia-China,” New York Daily Tribune, 06 5, 1857, p. 6.Google Scholar

31 Ibid.

32 Wittfogel, , loc. cit., pp. 4 and 8.Google Scholar

33 Mare, , New York Daily Tribune, 10 5, 1858, p. 4.Google Scholar See also “The New Chinese War,” New York Daily Tribune, 10 15, 1859, p. 4Google Scholar; and “Trade with China,” New York Daily Tribune, 12 3, 1859, p. 8.Google Scholar

34 Letter of Marx, to Engels, (10 8, 1858)Google Scholar, Selected Correspondence, pp. 134–135.Google Scholar

35 Marx, , Capital (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962), III, p. 328.Google Scholar

36 Marx, , “Revolution in China and Europe,” loc. cit.Google Scholar

37 Ibid.

38 Marx, , “Persia-china,” loc. cit.Google Scholar

39 In a letter of October 8, 1858, to Engels, Marx wrote: “We cannot deny that bourgeois society has experienced its sixteenth century a second time—a sixteenth century which will, I hope, sound the death knell of bourgeois society just as the first one thrust it into existence. The specific task of bourgeois society is the establishment of a world market, at least in outline, and of production based upon this world market. As the world is round, this seems to have been completed by the colonisation of California and Australia and the opening up of China and Japan. The difficult question for us is this: on the Continent the revolution is imminent and will immediately assume a socialist character. Is it not bound to be crushed in this little corner, considering that in a far greater territory the movement of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant?” Selected Correspondence, p. 134.Google Scholar

40 Letter of Engels, to Sorge, F. A. (11 10, 1894)Google Scholar, Selected Correspondence, p. 558.Google Scholar

41 For some of Marx's varying views on this question, see the letters of Marx on Russia in Blackstock, Paul and Hoselitz, Bert (editors), The Russian Menace to Europe (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952), pp. 203–226.Google Scholar See also Marx's letter to Sorge, F. A. (09 27, 1877)Google Scholar, Selected Correspondence, pp. 374–375.Google Scholar

42 Marx, , “Chinesisches” (07 7, 1862)Google Scholar in Marx, and Engels, , Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1961), Vol. 15, pp. 514–516.Google Scholar For a Chinese translation of this article see “Chung-kuo Shih-chien” (“Matters Chinese”), Ma-k'o-ssu En-ke-ssu lun Chung-kuo, op. cit., pp. 137–140.Google Scholar

43 Letter of Marx, to Engels, (12 10, 1869)Google Scholar, Selected Correspondence, p. 280.Google Scholar

44 Marx, , “Letter on the Russian Village Commune” (1881)Google Scholar, in Blackstock, and Hoselitz, , p. 219.Google Scholar