Karl Wittfogel

["Ricardo Duchesne" <rduchesn@xxxxxxxx>]

Some weeks ago I mentioned Karl Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism
as a work worth consulting to counter the growing hegemony of
neoclassical economics and its festive re-evaluation of Imperial
China as a society of relatively unrestricted  markets. Before we
talk about those markets,  one ought to think about the massive
use of  collective manpower  for hydraulic maintenance and
expansion. This, without fear of Wittfogel's later associations with
the anti-Communist hysteria of the Cold War years. I concur with
various  criticisms directed primarily  at Wittfogel's argument that
strong states  which by their nature were incapable of allowing or
promoting trade and private property emerged  in Asian societies in
response to the functional need to undertake massive hydraulic
works. But I think scholars have the bad habit of rejecting in toto
too many classic interpretations the moment they discover a  flaw
or two. Not only are big theories out, but specialists cannot help
distorting them by reshaping  them into grids called "models". Take
it all or leave it.

But I rather follow in the footsteps of  Ernest Mandel (1971) who,
even as he recognizes  Wittfogel's flaws, appreciates his
contribution to the advancement of the concept Asiatic Mode of
Production. Not the anti-Eurocentrics but Stalin prohited any
discussion of this concept  on the supreme grounds  it could not
be fitted into the traditional four stages. Thanks to Wittfogel the
discussion was revived, allowing Mandel later to clarify much of the
issues, by realizing that the "fundamental characteristics" of the
Asiatic Mode need not all be accepted (a mode which today  I
would prefer to call  "hydraulic" even more than the current Marxist
terms of "Tributary or "State"), characteristics which Marx had
already listed in his Grundrisse before Wittfogel's research.

Let me list these traits below and state which are still valid.

1. There is an absence of private property in land. (Incorrect for
Imperial China, Mogul India.)

2. Tribal village communities retain an essential cohesive force,
through their close union with agriculture and craft industry, despite
conquest and consolidation of states above them. (Mandel has # 2
here as two separate traits, 2 and 3, so that the following # 3 below
is his #4): (Does not apply to the advanced societies of Asia which
Marx had in mind).

3. "For geographical and climatic reasons, however, the prosperity
of agriculture in these regions requires impressive hydraulic works:
'Artificial irrigation is here the first condition of agriculture'. This
irrigation requires nearly everywhere a central authority to regulate
it and to undertake large-scale works" (Still a very valuable idea
worth further research)

4. Therefore, these are societies in which a powerful state
manages to concentrate most of the surplus product, and in which
stratification depends on access to this suplus, the 'internal logic'
of which favors stability in the relations of production as the best
way to gain control over this surplus. (True, but I would say the
'internal logic' was affected by point #3).

5. The consequence of this concentration of the wealth and power
of society in the hands of state officials is that the accumulation of
capital is "retarded" (Mandel's term). Hence, while it is "undeniable
that under the Ming dynasty China experienced - like India at the
height of the Mogul period - an expansion of luxury production and
private trade that brought the country to the threshold of
manufacturing and commercial capitalism...this treshold was not
crossed" (Mandel, 124). (This #5 is not listed as a trait by Mandel
but is an argument he soon makes after his list, as a historical
feature distinguishing Asia from Europe). (True, but we need to
avoid idea the state was anti-capitalist.)

Now, I think Mandel is to the point when he criticizes people like
Godelier for using just trait #2 as the key defining one,  allowing
themselves the application of this concept to a whole range of
societies, specifically societies in transition from classless (where
village community production prevailed) to class society (as
conquerors placed themselves above the villages). Marx never
intended this concept to apply to such societies; he was instead
thinking of "Indian and Chinese society as they were when
European industrial capital encountered them in the eighteenth
century" (Mandel, 127).

If you sum up Mandel's analysis, the message is clear: we don't
even have to accept point #1 re the absence of property and how
this may have curtailed capitalist accumulation. No, Mandel, and
many others, as I keep finding, were aware China could have, in
the long run, cultivated industrial capitalism; it is just that Europe
took-off  first. Mandel, however, puts more emphasis than I would
on those traits relating to the class character and the functional
role of the hydraulic state. My interest is more on the hydraulic
nature of this state, the eco-environmental aspects affecting
China's hydraulic state, how they conditioned the internal logic of
this society. To close with Plekhanov, "If these two types [classical
and the Oriental] differed considerably from each other, their chief
distinctive features were evolved under the influence of the
geographical environment" (cited by Mandel, 122)