AUT: Re: Re: Asiatic mode of production

["Cercle social" <cerclesocial@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I continued my search about AMP. It's définition itself is somewhat
unprecise, because Marx only quoted a few remarks about it.
A resume has been proposed by Alvin W. Gouldner in his book  "The Two
Marxisms. Contradictions and Anomalies in the Development of Theory"
(http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Marx/2marxtoc.htm) (see below for
this six points defnition), and particulary in chapter 11 (State and Class
in Marxism).

A discussion about AMP raised in the sixties. In USSR, it was desclaimed as
non-marxist, notably because Stalin didn't use it (but Lenin very sometimes
do).Apparently, they feared exactly what Wittfogel raised - even its own
theory was linked to hydraulic energy control : the idea that State could be
a dominant class - a very dangerous idea in USSR. But after, some russian
ideologs used AMP as an argument against China, because Marx, in his texts
about Asia, sometimes quotes it as stagnant so... China couldn't build
socialism.

A little more seriously, at the same time, some (pro-USSR)ethnologists
around Maurice Godelier tried to construct the concept of AMP with the
quotes of Marx about Asia, and used it in ethnology. They were still very
defiant with any attempt to use it for modern societies, as they clearly
feeled it will be anti-sovietic.

More recently, and from another point of view, it seeùms that Jacques
Camatte developped an analysis on state in capitalism, as a genralisation of
PMA. I'm now searching for the texts where he wrote this.

Nico

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Alvin W. Gouldner definition :

(1) The Asiatic Mode of Production was defined as a social formation
comparable to feudalism or slavery, but uniquely characterized by the
state-sovereign's control over the mode of production; this rested partly on

(2) the state's control over the building and maintenance of large-scale
irrigation systems needed in arid climates, and the state's

(3) legal monopoly or title to the land, making it the ultimate landlord
which

(4) gave the state unusual control over the local economy's surplus product,

(5) although local communes retained communal possession and traditional
rights in the land and its fruits, and individual persons possessed land
only in their capacity as commune members;

(6) the communes are enclosed, quasi-isolated communities, based on an
almost self-sufficient combination of agriculture and craft industries.







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