Tributary mode of production

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> IMO, *all class societies* were and are tributaries
> and Feudalism was one of them but wasn't the most
> tributary of all, therefore it was not a
> differentiating quality of the system.
>
> JP

I was a little rushed at work today and couldn't get into more detail on
this, but I was referring to the technical term some Marxist scholars use
as an alternative to feudalism. I recommend John Haldon's "The State and
the Tributary Mode of Production" in particular, although Samir Amin seems
to have coined the term. It is an attempt to find a more general category
than feudalism, which is obviously hard-wired to the European experience.

Here's a bit from Haldon's book:

As far as concerns feudalism, the chief characteristics consist in the
following key, differentiating propositions: (1) that the extraction of
rent, in the political economy sense of feudal rent, under whatever
institutional or organizational guise it appears (whether tax, rent or
tribute) is fundamental; (2) that the extraction of feudal rent as the
general form of exploitation of pre-capitalist autarkic peasantries does
not depend on those peasantries being tenants of a landlord in a legalistic
sense, but that non-economic coercion is the basis for appropriation of
surplus by a ruling class or its agents; and (3) that the relationship
between rulers and ruled is exploitative and contradictory in respect of
control over the means of production.

Now, as has recently been forcefully pointed out, this fundamental class
structure 'corresponds to and is determined by that level of productive
forces which roughly speaking emerged with the Neolithic revolution, and
comprises field cultivation based on organic energy plus hand implements,
capable of sustained surplus production as well as reproduction of the
peasant family'. In its historical specificities, the feudal mode is
represented in social formations where these conditions and production
relations dominate. But at the same time, each society develops its own
particular institutional practices and ideological forms through which
those relations are lived, founded on pre-given cultural traditions; and
the states which arise, or are imposed upon, parts or all of such cultural
formations will be correspondingly different in their forms and in their
ideological and legitimating practices.

It is important to recognize, however, that the word 'feudal' continues to
be employed by Marxist historians and social scientists in this sense
because it is a historically-determined, inherited and convenient label.
Reluctance to accept its wider application by some historical materialist
thinkers and by most non-Marxists is clearly bound up with a (mostly)
Eurocentric historiographical semantics, which hankers after a
historically-specific correspondence between a technical term and the
categories to which it is applied. 'Feudalism' is still a term which
invokes particular historical societies. And alternatives have proved
difficult to agree upon or find acceptance.

As I have already suggested, there is a viable alternative, embodied in the
'tribute-paying' mode outlined by Samir Amin, although it has to be
redefined somewhat. Wickham has already pointed to this possibility and,
without wishing to enter a major new debate at this point, it will be
worthwhile making a few comments on this. According to Wickham, Amin's
'tributary' mode (or 'tribute-paying mode') was intended to replace the
defunct 'Asiatic' mode. In fact, Amin argues that the feudal mode itself
represents merely a developed form of this mode, so that the tributary mode
can be seen as 'the most widespread form' of pre-capitalist class society,
and that which, as a rule, always succeeds the primitive communal mode. It
is the tribute-paying mode which 'when it assumes an advanced form, almost
always tends to become feudal - that is, the ruling class ousts the
community from dominium eminens of the soil'. The feudal mode, for Amin,
appears as a 'borderline' or 'peripheral' case of the tributary mode,
marked out by the specific nature of the degradation of the community in
respect of its control over the land, and consequently its means of
subsistence and reproduction.

In fact, this is a somewhat artificial distinction, since based upon a
legalistic differentiation between peasant and landlord control over the
means of production. In both of his modes, tributary and feudal, the
essential process of surplus appropriation is the same, as is the economic
relationship (however defined juridically) between producers and means of
production. Once more, in Amin's words:

"The tribute-paying mode of production is marked by the separation of
society into two main classes: the peasantry, organized in communities, and
the ruling class, which monopolizes the functions of the given society's
political organization and exacts a tribute (not in commodity form) from
the rural communities."

And further:

"Characteristic of this [i.e. tribute-paying] mode is the contradiction
between the continued existence of the community and the negation of the
community by the state; and also, as a result of this, the confusion of the
higher class that appropriates the surplus with the class that is dominant
politically. This circumstance makes it impossible to reduce production
relations to legal property relations, and compels us to see production
relations in their full, original significance as social relations arising
from the organization of production."

This description in no way contradicts the standard, traditional historical
materialist definition of feudal relations of production at the basic level
of mode of surplus appropriation and mode of combination of direct
producers with means of production. What varies between Amin's tributary
and feudal modes is simply the degree of control exercised by the ruling
class, or the state or state class over the community. So that, while this
certainly affects the rate of exploitation, it does not affect the actual
nature of the mode of surplus appropriation.


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org