¹⁰⁶ Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 396Google Scholaret seq.; cf. also Wittfogel 1960 passim.

¹⁰⁷ Lenin, , SW, X, p. 181; cf. also pp. 239 et seq.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Ibid. pp. 236, 237, 241.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid. p. 242.

¹¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹¹ Ibid. p. 236.

¹¹² One night three Chinese delegates—the leading Kuomintang spokesman, the topranking Communist representative, Chang Kuo-t'ao, and an official of a railroad workers' trade union—were invited to see Lenin in the Kremlin. The questions the Bolshevik leader asked expressed his primary concern in the establishment of a national united front in China (personal communication from Mr. Chang in Hong Kong in January 1958). Lenin did not attend the conference, obviously because of his deteriorating health. “Beginning with the winter of 1921 he frequently had to stay away from work” (Lenin, Vladimir I., A Political Biography. Prepared by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute. [New York: International Publishers, 1943], p. 265).Google Scholar

¹¹³ Der Ferne Osten: Der Erste Kongress der Kommunistischen und revolutionaren Organizationen des Femen Ostens (Moskau: 1922Google Scholar; Hamburg: Verlag des Kommunistischen Internationale, 1922), pp. 44, cf. also pp. 46, 50, 125.

¹¹⁴ Ibid. p. 126.

¹¹⁵ Bukharin, Nikolai, Historical Materialism (New York: International Publishers, 1934) (hereafter cited as Bukharin 1934), p. 123.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ Bukharin, 1934, p. 121Google Scholar, italics in original. This passage appears in his Historical Materialism (Teoria istoricheskogo materialisma, written in 1919).Google Scholar But in substance his argument had already been made in 1915 in bis book, Imperialism and World Economy (see Bukharin, , Imperialismus und Weltwirtschaft, with a foreword by Lenin dated December 1915 (Vienna-Berlin: 1929), pp. 17Google Scholaret seq.). In his Historical Materialism Bukharin rejected Mechnikov's view. In this context he claimed that Plekhanov had criticised Mechnikov for “over-estimating ‘geography.’” Bukhara's statement is misleading. We recall that Plekhanov, while objecting to certain idealistic elements in Mechnikov's position, had praised his geographical approach, which led “to the same conclusions the Marxists came to” (see above).

¹¹⁷ Stalin, J., Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1952–1955), 13 vols., vol. viii, p. 374.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Ibid., IX, p. 244; cf. also pp. 245, 291 et seq., 294 et seq.

¹¹⁹ Ibid. IX, p. 229, cf. p. 244.

¹²⁰ International Press Correspondence (English Edition) (Vienna-London: 1921–1938) (hereafter cited as Inprecor), year 1928, p. 1761.Google Scholar

¹²¹ In 1960 Boris Nicolaevsky told me that during bis last visit to the West (in 1936) Bukharin had expressed a growing interest in the “Asiatic” problem.

¹²² Diskussia ob Aziatskom Sposobe Proizvodstva (Discussion of the Asiatic Mode of Production) (Moscow-Leningrad: 1931)Google Scholar, passim; cf. Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 402et seq.Google Scholar

¹²³ Stalin, Joseph, “Dialectical and Historical Materialism,” Chap. IV of History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) Short Course (New York: International Publishers, 1939), p. 118, italics in original.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ Ibid. p. 131.

¹²⁵ Wittfogel, 1957, p. 408.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Osnovy Marksistskoj Filosofi (Moscow: 1960), p. 455.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ Ibid.

¹²⁸ Ibid.

¹²⁹ Ibid. p. 375.

¹³⁰ Ibid. p. 392, passim.

¹³¹ Ibid. p. 418.

¹³² To simplify the presentation I here follow the general usage and render feng-chien as “feudal.” However, I place the term in quotation marks to indicate that I believe it to be unsatisfactory even for the feng-chien system of Chou China, which quite clearly was a variant of the service land of Oriental despotism and not a fief associated with conditional and contractual feudal services.

¹³³ Kung-po, Ch'en, The Communist Movement in China (An essay written in 1924) (Columbia Un., East Asian Institute Series No. 7, 1960), pp. 106–110.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ Ibid. pp. 117, 120. Cf. Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an Tang Wu Nien Lai chi Chu-chengchih Chang (The Political Programme of the Chinese Communist Party During the Last Five Years) (Canton: 1926), pp. 13, 19.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Hsiang-tao Chou-pao, Nos. 9, 10 and 11, 1923, 11 8, pp. 74–76, 11 15, pp. 82–84; 11 22, pp. 89–92.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Ibid. no. 1, 1922, September [no day specified), p. 4.

¹³⁷ Tu-hsiu, Ch'en, “The Bourgeois Revolution and the Revolutionary Bourgeoisie,” Hsiang-tao Chou-pao, No. 22, 04 25, 1923, p. 162.Google Scholar

¹³⁸ Lenin, , SW, X, p. 236.Google Scholar

¹³⁹ In this and the two preceding instances I have italicised the key word “patriarchal.”

¹⁴⁰ According to the Stalin-Bukharin group, merchant capital was an increasingly important, but still secondary, force.

¹⁴¹ Inprecor 1926, p. 649.Google Scholar

¹⁴² Inprecor 1927, p. 230.Google Scholar

¹⁴³ Inprecor 1927, p. 649.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁴ Inprecor 1927, p. 232.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ Tse-tung, Mao, “Chung-kuo ko chieh-chi ti fen-hsi” (“An analysis of classes in China”), Chung-kuo Nung-min, No. 2, 02 1, 1926.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁶ Tse-tung, Mao, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1954–) (hereafter cited as Mao, SW), 4 vols., I, p. 15.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁷ Hsiang-tao Chou-pao, No. 191, 03 12, 1927, p. 2065.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁸ Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chi (Chin-ch'a-chi ed., no place: 1947), Hsü-pien, I, p. 33; cf. Mao, SW, I, p. 54.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁹ Ch'en Tu-hsiu, who was demoted because of his “opportunism,” had been faithfully upholding the “feudal” interpretation of China. On May 6, 1927, the Fifth Congress of the CCP, headed by Ch'en, adopted a resolution on the agrarian question, which spoke of China's “feudal” relations, the “semi-feudal methods of exploitation,” “the remnants of feudal relations and patriarchal power,” the “feudalpatriarchal exploitation,” etc. (Chinese Correspondence, Wuhan, Vol. 2, No. 8, 05 15, 1927, pp. 26Google Scholaret seq.). The last public utterances of the Ch'en-directed party emphatically underlined China's feudal or semi-feudal conditions (see Hsiang-tao Chou-pao, No. 201, 07 18, 1927, pp. 2214–2217).Google Scholar

¹⁵⁰ See Hsiang-tao Chou-pao, No. 18, 01 24, 1923, p. 147.Google Scholar

¹⁵¹ In October 1928 Trotsky, who was then in exile in Alma-Ata, stated that the Comintern leaders had withheld the political resolution of the Chinese November Plenum, because they were embarrassed by its combined opportunism and adventurism: They “not only did not publish it, but did not even quote from it” (Trotsky, Leon, Problems of the Chinese Revolution [New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1932], p. 216Google Scholar). But there was a confidential version of the resolution which “was published in a special Documentation, accessible to very few, printed by the Chinese Sun Yat-sen University (No. 10)” (ibid.). Trotsky's statement is not completely correct. Excerpts from this resolution were published in Inprecor 1928, pp. 121Google Scholaret seq. But the selection was slanted, and the full text of the resolution, like the text of other resolutions of the November Conference, was indeed withheld. In The China Quarterly, No. 2, pp. 32Google Scholaret seq., I published the passage of the Resolution on Discipline that ordered Mao's demotion.

¹⁵² Mif, P., Kitaiskai Revolhitsia (Moscow: 1932).Google Scholar

¹⁵³ Inprecor 1928, p. 1459.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁴ Inprecor 1928, pp. 1416et seq.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁵ Inprecor 1928, 1249.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁶ See above, note 120.

¹⁵⁷ “Resolution on the Land Question” in Resolutions of the Sixth National Congress of the VCP, 09 1928, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁸ See an earlier section of this article, The China Quarterly, No. 11, pp. 2–10.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁹ See Awdijew, W. I., Geschichte des alien Orients (Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag, 1953), pp. 461 and 476.Google ScholarAwdijew, 's History of the OrientGoogle Scholar, which in its sections on China and on other Eastern civilisations describes the significance of government-managed water works, was used as a government-approved university textbook during Stalin's last years. See also Sbang Yuen's textbook on Chinese history, prepared under the guidance of the CCP, which frequently refers to hydraulic works and their relation to the prosperity and decline of dynastic rule (Yüeh, Shang, Chung-kuo Li-shih Kang-yao [An Outline of Chinese History] [Peking: People's Publishing House, 1954], pp. 16, 37, 45, 62, 66, 73, 116, 124, 168, 182Google Scholaret seq., 199, 209, 240 et seq., 270, 294).

¹⁶⁰ See Mao's statement of 1939: In traditional “feudal” China “a self-sufficient natural economy occupied the dominant position. The peasants produced not only agricultural products, but most of the handicraft articles they needed” (Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chi (Ta-chung ed., no place: 11 1947 [3rd printing]), p. 157Google Scholar; cf. Mao, , SW, III, p. 74).Google Scholar

¹⁶¹ “Resolution on the Land Question,” p. 7.Google Scholar

¹⁶² Ibid. p. 1.

¹⁶³ Ibid. p. 2.

¹⁶⁴ Ibid. p. 4. Anyone interested in the recent attempts to portray imperial China as a “gentry society,” will benefit from a critical study of these and other Communist formulations about the prominence of the “gentry” in traditional China.

¹⁶⁵ See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 408et seq.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁶ Instead of “egalitarian classless communist society,” the official edition has “classless primitive communes” (Mao, , SW, III, p. 73Google Scholar). We reproduce Mao's wording as given in the earliest version at hand. Where the text in the official edition differs from Mao's Selected Works we give the new wording in a footnote. Where the texts are identical, we accept the official translation unless we disagree with its meaning. When this is the case, we indicate the difference in a footnote.

¹⁶⁷ “4,000 years” (Mao, , SW, III, p. 73).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁸ “primitive communes” (ibid.).

¹⁶⁹ Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chi (Ta-chung ed.), p. 156.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁰ Ibid. p. 157.

¹⁷¹ Ibid. p. 158. In the official edition Mao raised the rates to “40, 50, 60, 70, or even 80 per cent, or more of the crops” (Mao, , SW, III, p. 74).Google Scholar

¹⁷² “previous to the Ch'in dynasty” (ibid. p. 75).

¹⁷³ Chu-hou. The official English edition has “prince” (Mao, , SW, III, p. 75), which is closer to the Chinese meaning than the translation “feudal lord” given in most of the traditional sinological writings.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁴ Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chi (Ta-chung ed.), p. 158.Google Scholar The notion that in Chou times the chu-hou had absolute power within their territories harmonises with Maspero's statement that the socio-political order of these territories was not feudal. This factual statement contradicts Mao's interpretative claim concerning the feudal character of Chou society.

¹⁷⁵ Official translation: “the mainstay” (Mao, , SW, III, p. 75).Google Scholar

¹⁷⁶ Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chi (Ta-chung ed.), p. 158.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁷ Mao, , SW, III, p. 80.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁸ “the foundation of the self-sufficing” (ibid. p. 80).

¹⁷⁹ In the official edition the word “feudal” is omitted (ibid.).

¹⁸⁰ Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chi (Ta-chung ed.), p. 165; italics added.Google Scholar

¹⁸¹ Ibid. p. 159; cf. Mao, , SW, III, p. 76.Google Scholar

¹⁸² Mao, , SW III, p. 74.Google Scholar The official translation has “she remained sluggish.”

¹⁸³ Ibid. p. 77.

¹⁸⁴ Tse-tung, Mao, Hsüan-chi (Ta-chung ed.), p. 161.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁵ Mao, , SW, III, p. 77; italics added.Google Scholar