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The Myth of the Asiatic Restoration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Norman Levine
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Extract

Marx's writings on Asia do not bulk large in the corpus of work he published in his lifetime: several articles for Charles Dana's Daily Tribune; scattered references in his Critique of Political Economy, Capital, and Theories of Surplus Value; and (more precise and analytic than the aforementioned) the statements in the Grundrisse. Obviously, his overriding interest lay in the description of capitalist society in western Europe. Nevertheless, what he studied about Asia significantly affected his understanding of capitalism, communism, and dialectical naturalism. Though he never wrote in an extended manner on Asia, the Orient was implicitly present in, and had profound influence on, his western-centered scholarly work. It is impossible to grasp the central meaning of communism and the dialectic without comprehending Marx's attitude toward Asiatic history. Failure to correctly appreciate Marx's writing on Asia has led many scholars to distortions in their evaluations of Marx and their projections about a communist society. Karl Wittfogel is a case in point; because he misconstrued what Marx thought of Asia, he was led to make invalid judgments about the nature of communism and the course of communist revolution in the twentieth century.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , November 1977 , pp. 73 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1977

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References

1 I use the term dialectical naturalism because it accentuates the role of human praxis in the evolution of society. The phrase dialectical materialism carries connotations of objective social forces, social groups, economic tendencies; I wish to bring back to attention the labor power of the species, subjective energy. For a fuller description of my term, see my book The Tragic Deception: Marx contra Engels, Santa Barbara: Clio Press, 1975Google Scholar.

2 New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1964.

3 In Easton, Loyd D. & Guddat, Kurt H. (eds. and trans.), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York: Doubleday, 1967), p. 87Google Scholar.

4 “Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of the State” in ibid., p. 177.

5 “Alienated Labor” in Manuscripts of 1844; see Bottomore, T. B. (ed. and trans.), Karl Marx: Early Writings (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), pp. 129–30Google Scholar.

6 See Herodotus's The Persian Wars, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, and Hegel's The Philosophy of History.

7 I acknowledge the kind support of the American Philosophical Society, which enabled me to spend summer 1972 in Amsterdam at the International Institute of Social History, which possesses all of the Marx exzerpte; I was able to copy the complete bibliographical listings—title, author, and publication date—of the books Marx read.

8 Exzerpte vol. B. 16, pp. 51–66.

9 Note 4 above, p. 117.

10 [Orig. pub. 1832], R. Rascal (ed.), New York: International Publishers, 1947.

11 London: John Murray, 1831; exzerpte vol. B. 58, pp. 71–81.

12 Dickinson, ([full title India: Its Government under a Bureaucracy] London: Saunders & Stanford, 1853)Google Scholar, Raffles (London: Black, Parbury & Allen, 1817), Wilks (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orne, 1810), Royle (London: Allen & Co., 1840); exzerpte vol. B. 64, pp. 8–11.

13 Murray (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1832), Campbell (London: John Murray, 1853), Chapman (London: George Woodfall & Son, 1851), Patton (London: J. Debrett, 1801); exzerpte vol. B. 65, pp. 3–40.

14 Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1866; exzerpte vol. B. 138, pp. 16–41.

15 Morgan [orig. pub. 1877] (New York: World Publishing, 1969), Money (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1861), Phear (London: Macmillan, 1880), Maine (London: John Murray, 1875); exzerpte vol. 162, pp. 4–194.

16 London: Longman, Green & Co., 1870; exzerpte vol. 168, pp. 3–10.

17 Mexico [orig. full pub. 1843] (London: Dent, 1962)Google Scholar, Peru [orig. pub. 1847] (New York: Random House, 1959); exzerpte vol. B. 50, pp. 35–48Google Scholar.

18 London: Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, 1817.

19 [Orig. pub. 1848], New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1965.

20 I gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Russell Sage Foundation, which enabled me to spend summer 1974 at the British Museum in London. I was fortunate to find still in existence there all the works listed above—practically all the sources on Asia Marx himself consulted.

21 Note 13 above.

22 Note 12 above, pp. 26–27.

23 Note 13 above, p. 329.

24 Note 12 above.

25 Note 13 above, p. 175.

26 Jones (n. 11 above), pp. 136–41; Raffles (n. 12 above), p. 146.

27 Note 12 above, p. 117.

28 Ibid., p. 177.

29 Modern India (London: John Murray, 1852), p. 87Google Scholar.

30 Note 12 above, p. 34.

31 Note 13 above, p. 330.

32 Ibid., p. 407.

33 Note 12 above, p. 112.

34 (Author unknown), Opinions of the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone (London: Parbury, Allen & Co., 1831), p. 25Google Scholar.

35 Note 13 above, p. 330.

36 Note 12 above, p. 117.

37 Note 29 above, p. 83.

38 Note 12 above, p. 146.

39 See the articles he wrote for the New York Daily Tribune in 1853: “The British Rule in India” (June 25), and “The Future Results of British Rule in India” (Aug 8); they appear in Avineri, Shlomo (ed.), Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (New York: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 88–95, 132–39Google Scholar.

40 Note 18 above, I, passim.

41 Note 19 above.

42 Note 17 above.

43 London: John Murray, 1833.

44 [Orig. written 1914–1920], Gerth, H. H. & Mills, C. Wright (trans, and eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958), pp. 196–97Google Scholar.

45 [Orig. pub. 1916], Gerth, H. H. (trans. and ed.), The Religion of China, Glencoe IL: Free Press, 1951Google Scholar; [orig. pub. 1916–1917], Gerth, H. H. & Martindale, Don (trans. and eds.), The Religion of India, Glencoe: Free Press, 1958Google Scholar.

46 Nicolaus, Martin (trans.), Grundrisse (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 471–515Google Scholar.

47 Ibid., pp. 472–73.

48 Ibid., p. 484.

49 Ibid., p. 486.

50 Moore, Samuel & Aveling, Edward (trans.), Capital (New York: International Publishers, 1967), I, p. 357Google Scholar.

51 Grundrisse, p. 473.

52 On the nature and extent of the India debate, consult: Davis, H. W. C., The Age of Grey and Peel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 276–86Google Scholar; Spear, Percival, India: A Modern History (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1961), pp. 259–66Google Scholar; Trevelyan, G. M., British History in the 19th Century and After (New York: David McKay, 1962), pp. 309–19Google Scholar; Roberts, P. E., History of British India (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952), pp. 359–68Google Scholar.

53 Note 15 above.

54 Note 15 above, p. xix.

55 Note 15 above, p. 77.

56 Note 15 above.

57 Note 14 above.

58 See: Lubbock (n. 16 above); Maine (n. 15 above); Morgan (n. 15 above).

59 For an excellent discussion of Marx's anthropological studies, see Krader, Lawrence, The Ethnological Notebooks of Marx, The Hague: Von Gorcum, 1973. Krader has performed an interesting service to Marx scholarship by translating the Marx exzerpte on Morgan, Phear, Maine, and Lubbock. Anyone who has tried to decipher Marx's handwriting will appreciate the painstaking effort involvedGoogle Scholar.

60 Exzerpte vol. B. 152, pp. 5–98.

61 Exzerpte vol. B. 162, pp. 162–99. Marx's studies in Asian anthropology had significant impact on his understanding of dialectical naturalism. It was only after 1850 that his second form of dialectical naturalism was clearly outlined. The examples of India, Greece, Rome, and Germany showed him societies that varied in their internal structure. Each produced the means of its subsistence within, and dissolved historically in a separate and unique fashion in that structure. For Marx, each society was a unique temporal, economic category, functioning in time through the interchange of endogenous and exogenous forces.

Economic formation, societies, were unique totalities of differing structures. Every society contained dialectical contradictions between form and content. Therefore, every society displayed a different historical rhythm. There were no general macroscopic laws governing the development of all societies. Rather, deriving from the dialectical contradiction of form and content, there were specific, microcosmic laws within each socioeconomic structure—operative and applicable only to that given economic category. History was therefore a multilinear process.

Marx found the multilinear concept clearly expressed in the works of Wilks (n. 12 above) and Patton (n. 13 above). Both men affirmed that the absence or presence of private property was sufficient reason for the divergent historical evolution of East and West. Maine (n. 15 above) stated the same thesis, but Marx read the book in 1880, too late for it to have any influence on his historical thought. Patton and Wilks, which he read in 1853, influenced his understanding of dialectical naturalism. He did not believe in a deterministic, macrocosmic law of social evolution. Later, his second formulation of the law of dialectical naturalism was based on the perception that different economic formations progressed dissimilarly in time because their internal structures varied.

It is to Wittfogel's credit that he understood Marx to be a multilinearist; despite his misunderstanding Marx's views on Asia and the nature of communism, he did have a good grasp of Marx's view of historical evolution. Shlomo Avineri, on the other hand, had a good grasp of the nature of communism, clearly perceiving the persistence of Marx's early humanism; but he had a poor grasp of Marx's view of history, picturing him as an economic determinist. See his The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1968Google Scholar.

62 Exzerpte vol. B. 168, pp. 3–10.

63 Note 15 above.

64 Exzerpte vol. B. 162, pp. 102–30.

65 Exzerpte vol. B. 162, pp. 115–204.

66 Exzerpte vol. B. 162, p. 157.

67 Marx's scholarship during the 1880 period sheds new light on his letters to Vera Zazulich, a Russian Populist who had written to Marx asking his opinion about the destiny of the Russian mir. When Marx answered that the mir—if the Tzar were overthrown—could act as the basis for socialism in Russia, he was merely drawing on the knowledge he had gained from his anthropological studies. Concerned predominantly with forms of ownership, Marx advised Zazulich that since clan collectivism and village collectivism had formed the basis for social organization in the past, there was no reason to doubt, given the proper political configuration, that village collectivism could be the basis for a socialized society in Russia. Marx was not arguing for the preservation of the mir as a normal condition for humanity, and that Russian agrarian collectivism could act as a center for the total collectivization of Russian society. In any event, there was absolutely no reason to categorically destroy the mir. See Marx-Engels, , Werke (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1969), vol. 19, pp. 385–405Google Scholar.

68 Note 4 above, pp. 184–85.

69 Ibid., p. 186.

70 Ibid., p. 183.

71 Ibid., p. 185.