From Marx to Wittfogel: Leftist Intellectual Resources Against Totalitarianism—Preface to Oriental Despotism and Oriental Society by Ishii Tomoaki

从马克思到魏特夫：反对极权主义的左派思想资源---石井知章《东方专制主义与东方社会》序 [1]

Qin Hui (秦晖)

【Editor’s Note: Ishii Tomoaki's work examines leftist intellectual resistance to totalitarianism, tracing ideas from Marx to Wittfogel. In the West, opposition to despotism aligns naturally with leftist thought, but in the Soviet Union and China, authoritarian regimes claimed to represent the proletariat, branding liberal democracy as right-wing. Wittfogel, once a Marxist, later criticized state-controlled economies, developing his theory of "Oriental Despotism" based on centralized irrigation systems. His work was dismissed in Soviet-aligned circles but remains valuable for its critique of state ownership as a means of control. Marx's theory of the "Asiatic Mode of Production" linked communal land ownership to despotism, challenging Stalinist orthodoxy that idealized state control. While some historians argue that Wittfogel oversimplified, his opposition to authoritarianism remains influential. Ishii’s scholarship highlights these debates, showing that the early left, unlike today’s cultural left, was deeply engaged in anti-despotic struggles, offering insights still relevant in analyzing authoritarianism today.】

Opposition to Despotism from the Left

Professor Ishii Tomoaki (石井知章) is a renowned Japanese theorist and historian of the labor movement, as well as a scholar who opposes totalitarian systems and staunchly supports liberal democracy. In Europe and Japan, such a stance is perfectly natural (consider Poland’s Solidarity movement, or its allied intellectual group Committee for the Defense of the Workers), but in countries like the Soviet Union and China, totalitarian regimes have long claimed to represent the “workers’ party” carrying out the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” while liberal democracy is branded a “rightist” position allegedly hostile to “the working class.” In the United States, major labor unions—such as the AFL-CIO—historically leaned toward anti-communism and have had distant relations with leftist intellectual circles. During the recent U.S. election, for instance, many blue-collar workers backed the “right-wing” Trump. Meanwhile, in postwar America, the mainstream left among intellectuals shifted to a “cultural left,” whose primary focus turned from class politics to identity politics. This cultural left often pays less attention to the working class and organized labor, instead championing multiculturalism and postcolonial discourses—especially issues involving LGBTQ communities, women, immigrants, and ethnic minorities.

Against this backdrop, any critique of the “Orient” (even if the term is merely symbolic, reflecting phenomena once found in the West, too) is swiftly denounced as “colonial mentality,” while attacks on the “West” or “white people” are assumed to carry inherent political correctness. Hence, even Karl Marx has been accused of “Western bias” for proposing the concepts of the “Asiatic Mode of Production” and “Oriental Despotism.” Karl August Wittfogel (卡尔·魏特夫), a onetime Marxist persecuted by both Stalinism and Nazism who later fled to the United States, was likewise shunned by mainstream “academic leftists” in America for his “Oriental Despotism” theory. Since he was not a formally credentialed “Sinologist,” he was held in contempt by so-called “purely academic” circles, and because he exposed instances of Soviet infiltration during the McCarthy era, he was labeled a Cold War zealot. For many, “the Cold War” was purely a struggle between “capitalism” and “socialism,” as if there had never been a battle between democracy and totalitarianism. Thus, anyone branded with a “Cold War mentality” is automatically rendered “politically incorrect,” a “lapdog of capital,” to be excommunicated—often by people who, in truth, have little interest in real labor-management conflicts.

Yet the European left from Marx’s era up to Wittfogel’s early years had deeper ties with workers’ movements and had suffered under despotic and totalitarian regimes. Compared with the present-day American academic left, which seems only to oppose “capitalism” while being blind to tyranny, the European left offered a far richer body of resources for resisting despotism and totalitarianism. Indeed, many Chinese liberals identified today as “rightists” trace their earliest liberal ideas back to the writings of these older European leftists.

The Core of the “Asiatic Theory” Lies Not in “Asia” but in the “Communal System”

Marx’s theories of the “Asiatic State” and “Asiatic Mode of Production” were closely linked to his notion of the “communal system.” In the nineteenth century, the conventional wisdom among progressive thinkers since the Enlightenment—whether Rousseau, Hegel, Maine, Mill, Tönnies, Durkheim, Marx, Lafargue, Kautsky, or Plekhanov—held that ancient or “traditional” societies were characterized by rigid, compulsory, and hierarchical “collectives,” whereas modernity entailed the awakening of individuality, personal rights, and free contractual association. As Marx put it, “The further back one goes in history, the less the individual appears as independent and the more he belongs to a larger whole.” These “wholes” evolved step by step: initially, “purely natural families” that expanded into “clans,” whose interactions and mergers produced yet broader communal units. Or, in another formulation, “naturally formed communities” comprised families that grew into “tribes” and then “confederations of tribes,” eventually merging into “a unified totality transcending all smaller communities,” the “Asiatic State.” Within these communal or “unified” structures that stifled individuality, the individual was merely “a component of a narrow group,” belonging to “the community as its property.” It was from all individuals’ dependence on the community that they came to depend on the “father of the community.” This, Marx argued, was the source of “Asiatic Despotism.” [2]

With limited empirical data in his time, Marx drew these conclusions primarily from his commitment to the value of individual freedom: the further society advances, the more independent the individual becomes; the more backward the age, the more the individual is subsumed by collective authority. The extreme form of this backwardness was “Asiatic Despotism.” This is less a factual judgment than a value-based or logical inference.

On the basis of then-available history and anthropology, Marx portrayed “Asiatic States” as primitive social formations in which private ownership did not exist—particularly no private land ownership. Land was, in his description, “state-owned” or “communal.” On that basis, the ruling class established a brutally despotic system and a “universal slavery.”

Under the later official Soviet framework of “five modes of production,” however, this depiction became a serious problem: Stalinist orthodoxy held that private ownership was the root of all evil, while “common” or “state” ownership was the ultimate good. “Despotism” and “slavery” could only stem from “private ownership.” A situation without private property or featuring exclusively “public” or “communal” land was glorified as an ideal form of equality—either as the “communism” of the future or as the “primitive society” of humanity’s earliest era, described (after the rediscovery of Morgan’s anthropology) as “classless,” “without oppression,” a “primitive democracy” or “primitive communism.” Marx’s “Asia,” however, tied “public ownership” and “communal systems” to a terrifying “despotic state” and “universal slavery.” Where would that fit in the “five modes of production”? If one called it a “primitive society,” it clearly featured exploitation and oppression. If one labeled it a “slave society,” it apparently had no private ownership. And Marx had explicitly placed it at the very beginning, before what later became designated as “primitive society,” not after it as “phase two.”

The “Asiatic Theory” and Contemporary Politics

More crucially, the notion of a state without private ownership, yet defined by “despotism” and enslavement, readily evokes present-day parallels. Indeed, members of the Marxist generation active in Russia when Plekhano v and others were struggling against Tsarist despotism used this notion to attack the “communal state” of their day. Before the agrarian reforms of 1861 and 1907, centralized Tsarist Russia was organized around the “communal ownership of land.” The state not only distributed “communal land shares” to former serfs but occasionally enforced “communal cultivation.” In that system, “commune,” “serfdom,” and Tsarist autocracy were inextricably intertwined. [3] Following the 1861 serf emancipation and subsequent moves toward land privatization, Russia’s opposition movements diverged: Populists denounced land privatization and lauded the “commune” as something good, whereas Russian Marxists took the opposite stance. They accused the Tsar of “driving peasants into ‘collective cultivation’ at bayonet point and with the knout,” argued that “the peasantry has divided into two classes: exploiting communes and exploited individuals,” and declared that “the communal system grows ever more harmful to the peasant.” They made support for independent peasants’ freedom to withdraw from the commune the first element of the proletarian party’s land program, calling populists who idealized the peasant commune and rejected capitalism apologists for “Asiatic despotism”—reactionary “police populists” seeking “a reconstituted imperial absolutism on an ancient Chinese or Peruvian communist foundation.” [4]

At that time, the “Asiatic Despotism” thesis actively participated in anti-despotic struggles. Academic debates over the (then non-existent) “five modes” were not yet relevant, so this rhetoric served as a potent weapon for Marxists fighting autocracy. From Plekhanov and Lenin’s early writings to the pioneering Marxist historian Mikhail Pokrovsky, such rhetoric was widely used.

Once in power, however, the Bolsheviks erected an even more draconian “communal state” and imposed an official historiography of “five modes of production,” which demonized private property as the sole source of exploitation and oppression. The right to leave the commune became taboo, and the sin of the populists shifted from supporting “communal despotism” to upholding “petty-bourgeois freedom.” Discussions of the “Asiatic Mode of Production” thus grew delicate and dangerous. Under Stalin, debate on this topic triggered repeated purges, costing many their lives. In China, where the theory had been castigated as “Trotskyist” in the social history debates of the Republican era (though Trotsky himself never actually endorsed it), numerous scholars suffered after 1949. My own graduate adviser, Professor Zhao Lisheng (赵俪生), was persecuted during the Anti-Rightist Campaign partly because he had written about the “Asiatic Mode of Production.” He later recounted the official reasoning: “Today’s political line places class struggle above all else: the landlord is deemed the root of all evils, so how dare you emphasize [and condemn] state ownership rather than [condemn] landlord ownership?” [5]

Because Russians generally identified with Europe, they could openly reject the “Asiatic” label. But in China—located in Asia—authorities disliked the heavily negative connotation of “Asiatic Mode of Production.” They saw it not only as “Trotskyist heresy” but also as tainted with “colonialist Western prejudice” (even though Marx meant “Asiatic” in a universal historical sense, not as a literal geographic reference). Consequently, in China “Asiatic Mode of Production” became a longstanding academic taboo.

If Marx’s case aroused controversy, the theory of Karl August Wittfogel (卡尔·魏特夫) was outright forbidden. Like Marx, Wittfogel was a German Jew. As a Marxist, he had served on the central committee of the German Communist Party and had published Sinological articles in the Comintern’s journals, participating in debates on “Asiatic States.” Even then, his views were unwelcome to the Soviet authorities. Later, Stalin intervened in the internal struggles of the German Communist Party, expelling Wittfogel and others. When the Nazis rose to power, Wittfogel—both a Marxist and a Jew—was swiftly persecuted. The Nazis had not yet implemented their “final solution,” so Wittfogel managed to escape Europe, ultimately reaching the United States, where he continued his Chinese studies. Expanding on Marx’s “Asiatic State,” he proposed a hydraulic-origin thesis of despotic states arising from irrigation systems in large riverine farming regions of the “Orient.”

“Tartar Origins” or “Irrigation Origins”?

This theory differs from Marx’s in certain ways. Though Marx did sometimes suggest that irrigation-based agriculture gave rise to despotism (an idea in Western thought predating him), he stressed that inadequate exchange relations explained how the communal system controlled individuals—making “Asiatic Modes” a universal early phenomenon (one that disappeared in Europe but persisted in Asia). The case of Russia, with little tradition of large-scale irrigation, frequently featured in Marxist accounts as an “Asiatic Despotism” from Marx himself (see the work Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century [6], which Ishii Tomoaki (石井知章) has translated into Japanese) through Plekhano v and Pokrovsky. They traced Tsarist Russia’s “Asiatic” despotism to nomadic empires—“Tartar origins”—rather than agricultural “hydraulic origins.”

Early in his career, Wittfogel studied Khitan-Liao history, so perhaps he was also influenced by a “Tartar origin” perspective. Yet eventually he refrained from highlighting that factor and instead placed irrigation front and center in his thesis of “hydraulic despotism.” Why so? In my view, this illustrates his leftist leanings. By the twentieth century, Western—especially German—authorities often invoked the “Yellow Peril” trope, rooted in fears of invasion by nomadic tribes such as the Huns and Mongols. Leftists and Marxists, anxious to separate themselves from the “Yellow Peril” narrative, minimized talk of “Tartar origins” in discussions of Oriental despotism and emphasized irrigation. In fact, the nomadic cultures of Inner Asia practiced tribal aristocracy, and their despotic states—like the Khitan system Wittfogel had once studied and the Mongol administrative structures later introduced into Russia—were strongly influenced by the Chinese model. Hence, many Comintern Sinologists of the twentieth century, including Magyari and Varga, championed a hydraulic explanation for Oriental despotism. Afterward, when Soviet authorities condemned such views as “politically incorrect,” these scholars fell silent or reversed course. Only Wittfogel, by then an émigré to the West, carried this tradition forward.

What is the significance of this hydraulic thesis? As an explanation for the actual origin of China’s “Qin system,” it is unquestionably outdated. Yet seen as a reflection of a “leftist anti-despotism” tradition—and a logical warning about how “eliminating private ownership” can spawn totalitarianism—this theory was deeply relevant to the self-proclaimed socialist states of Wittfogel’s era. That, of course, is why the Soviet-type regimes suppressed his ideas politically rather than merely criticizing them academically.

In fact, the “hydraulic origins” theory can be said to “beautify” Oriental despotism.

Oriental studies were still developing in Marx’s day, so he relied heavily on secondhand sources. Wittfogel, writing later, conducted more extensive research on Asia and personally invested far more effort than Marx. However, from our current vantage point, both the “rural commune” foundation of imperial power and “centralized irrigation” as the root of state despotism are problematic.

First, Marx’s linking of “collective structures that stifle individual freedom” to the oppression of liberty is fundamentally accurate—this view was widely shared by liberal and leftist thinkers in the nineteenth century. Marx also observed that these communities, which create relations of “domination and subjection” detached from exchange, might be “naturally formed or political” [7]. The first category comprises smaller blood- or territory-based communities; the second refers to large centralized structures, including the “Asiatic (or Oriental) Despotic State.” Both can curtail personal freedom, but how do they interact with each other? Marx seemed to see them as part of a single hierarchical order, believing that “state ownership of land” and “village communes” are features of Oriental Despotism. In ancient China, however, local kinship and neighborhood communities frequently alarmed imperial rulers, who feared they might inspire autonomy and undermine central control. The autocratic state preferred to monopolize “organizational resources” by breaking up communal ties and reducing the populace to “atomized” subjects. Imperial administrative units—household registers, neighborhood wards, and collective liability systems—supplanted spontaneously formed lineages or village communities. From the Qin and Han eras’ forced household divisions (disallowing extended-family living) to the elimination of lineage halls and seizure of clan properties during the Communist land reform around 1949, one observes consistent efforts to break up smaller natural communities.

In Tsarist Russia, the mir (commune) was indeed exploited by imperial authorities as an instrument of centralized autocracy. But after the 1861 serf reform, it could also function autonomously, and its resistance to the Stolypin agrarian reforms significantly contributed to the empire’s collapse. When the Bolsheviks seized power, they realized that the mir—independent of official village soviets—posed obstacles to state “dictatorship.” They enforced total collectivization by eliminating the traditional commune in favor of local soviets. Comparing collectivization in China and the Soviet Union, it appears that mir farmers in Russia, possessing organizational resources, resisted state coercion more effectively, whereas in China, with more atomized peasants, authorities found it far easier to impose People’s Communes. [8]

Thus, empirically speaking, Marx’s assumption that “village communes, state ownership of land, and despotic states” necessarily coincide does not match Chinese imperial reality. Indeed, the Roman imperial system of “paterfamilias” intervened in personal property more extensively than the Qin and Han systems, in which spouses or children each owned their separate property. [9] True, in Qin and Han times, wives and children had personal estates vis-à-vis the husband or father; but as far as the “state” was concerned, none of them had any standing. One could call it “state ownership of land,” but that system was, in fact, sustained by the absence of a communal structure.

Wittfogel, in turn, traced “Oriental Despotism” chiefly to water management and central power. Yet in China, official condemnation of Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism led to two large-scale conferences on “critiquing Wittfogel” in Beijing and Shanghai (in 1990 and 1994), generating more than a hundred “organized” essays. Nineteen prominent historians were selected, and fifteen essays were compiled, along with a preface and other notes, to produce the volume A Critique of Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism. [10]

Strikingly, the contributing authors did not dispute the existence of powerful autocratic authority in ancient China or the “ancient Orient.” Some argued that despotic regimes existed not only in China but also elsewhere, contending that Wittfogel’s emphasis on “Oriental” despotism sprang from Western bias. [11] Most, however, directed their main critiques toward Wittfogel’s “Hydraulic Society” thesis:

They first pointed out that China’s monsoonal climate differs from the arid zones of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Middle East, where desert conditions demand irrigation-based oasis farming. Northern China largely practiced dry farming, which was dependent on rainfall; in the south, abundant precipitation enabled paddy cultivation.
Second, in the Xia, Shang, and Zhou eras—when royal authority was taking shape—there were no large-scale state-run irrigation projects. The Qin and Han periods built major irrigation canals like the Zhengguo Canal and Dujiangyan, but those predated imperial unification. After unification, especially from the Han onward, these large works were less common. Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing all retained absolute monarchies, but not because of “irrigation.”
Third, the waterworks undertaken by autocrats often served grain transport or imperial mausoleums, sometimes diverting water and barring local irrigation, even harming agriculture. Officials frequently built canals for official shipping or personal profit, restricting farmland irrigation along the way. Much of the transport infrastructure primarily served political or military logistics, not commerce, and conferred little agricultural benefit.
Fourth, from the Tang and Song onward, the government retreated from water management, leaving local communities to handle irrigation distribution and water-rights disputes independently, with only minimal official intervention.

None of the essays denied the presence of “despotic rule” in ancient China or “the Orient.” Yet, by highlighting the state’s lack of responsibility in irrigation, they inadvertently sounded more like they were accusing Wittfogel of “beautifying” rather than “denigrating” the Qin system of imperial power. Wittfogel’s model implies a somewhat “public-spirited” emperor, a figure akin to the legendary Yu the Great, who attained the throne by taming floods. Chinese scholars, however, note that stories of Yu controlling the waters emerged only in the Warring States period or later—Confucius never mentioned flood control by Yu. The Analects only says, “Yu and Ji tilled the land themselves and thus gained all under Heaven.” [12] In short, these Chinese critics are arguing, “Even without managing water, emperors could still be despotic.” Wittfogel’s account of a water-taming monarch is overly flattering. Their depiction of the ancient rulers is that they neglected waterworks, exploited the populace, and built personal amusements—providing no service while extorting revenues.

Such critiques, meant to refute Wittfogel’s alleged insult to China, often end up suggesting that he actually painted too rosy a picture of the Qin-era monarchy rather than slandering it. To Western critics who insist Wittfogel’s “Oriental Despotism” reflects “Western prejudice” and “Cold War thinking,” these Chinese rejoinders effectively say: Not so! Wittfogel gave too much credit to the monarchy. Far from exaggerating Chinese autocracy, he understated it—“they were bandits, not benefactors!” And for those Western Sinologists who claim that certain dynasties (the Song or the Ming, for instance) were not truly despotic, these critiques respond: “All dynasties from Qin to Qing were despotic, same as your societies used to be. Don’t forget your own feudal and monarchical past!” Meanwhile, some fault Wittfogel for retaining archaic Marxist proclivities, but Chinese scholars retort that his discussion of “hydraulic works” actually goes “against Marxism” since Marxism sees public ownership as virtuous. By underscoring that ancient China’s emperors seldom performed real public-service irrigation or did so poorly, if at all, they reveal a system that was “despotic without even being hydraulic.”

Hence, from an empirical standpoint, the gist of these critiques is: “We had autocracy, no doubt, but it wasn’t from building irrigation. The rulers simply wanted power and did little for the people.” For example, the two most influential treatises advocating the Qin system, The Book of Lord Shang (商君书) and Han Feizi (韩非子), never once mention waterworks. Their guiding principle is “strengthening the state while weakening the people”—through harsh laws, continuous warfare, stifling commerce, and compelling peasants to farm and fight. Rulers were primarily militarists. If anything, as Yan Fu (严复) noted, it was a brand of “militarism” reminiscent of pre–World War I Germany and Japan.

Why did Wittfogel insist on a “hydraulic state”? Apart from his reliance on Marxist precedents, he—and likewise Marx, Montesquieu, and others who shared similar ideas—was likely influenced by a distinctly Western tradition of “contractual rule”: that any government, even a despotic one, requires some quid pro quo to justify its existence. Bismarck, the strongman of Wittfogel’s Germany, both upheld Prussian Junker autocracy and instituted the beginnings of a “welfare state.” The rationale was: if rulers do not provide public services (irrigation or social security), why would the governed submit?

But if one reads The Book of Lord Shang, it is obvious the Qin system never subscribed to that view: “When government does what the people detest, the people are weak; when government does what the people enjoy, the people are strong. A weak people means a strong government; a strong people means a weak government.” [20] The logic is that meeting people’s needs emboldens them, weakening authority, so the ruler must do the opposite to keep them fearful and the regime powerful.

Wittfogel, poor man, could never fathom that brand of tyrannical reasoning. Mao Zedong (毛泽东), however, grasped it from youth. In a high school composition, Mao praised Shang Yang (商鞅) as “the foremost statesman among the four thousand years of Chinese history!” [21]

Thus, to call “Oriental Despotism” a system that fosters irrigation for its people is inaccurate—at least in China’s case. My adviser Zhao Lisheng (赵俪生), who once championed the “Asiatic Mode of Production” but was persecuted for it, also concluded that the Xia, Shang, and Zhou—often deemed most “Asiatic”—were not real “hydraulic societies.” [22] Marx’s link between “village communes,” “state land ownership,” and the despotic monarchy is likewise unconvincing for imperial China. Chinese spouses and children held separate property claims, yet such private holdings were unprotected—destroyed not by self-sufficient communities but by a centralized state that could expropriate at will. Moving from “small-scale private farming” to “large-scale public ownership” was just one short step.

How Should the Left Regard “State Ownership Under Imperial Rule”?

Even if Wittfogel’s “hydraulic origins” thesis fails to explain the rise of Oriental autocracy in China, his research is hardly worthless. Indeed, Oriental Despotism devotes only a small portion to the “hydraulic origin” concept. Much of the book discusses the mechanisms by which so-called “Oriental Despotism” (however it began) and its subsequent “revivals” have operated—from Tsarist Russia, the Qin system, and ancient Korea to Stalin, Mao, and the Kim dynasty. Their lineage, transformation, and continuities warrant study, no matter whether “irrigation” played a role in their initial formation. Critics who insist on dismissing Wittfogel’s entire body of work just because they dispute the “irrigation origin” part seem akin to someone who trashes a book on “steam engine structure” solely because it attributes the invention to Watt rather than Newcomen—ignoring the insightful analysis of how the steam engine functions.

More importantly, from the perspective of Marx and Wittfogel as thinkers rather than historians, their condemnation of “Oriental Despotism” highlights that “exploitation and oppression” do not exist solely where private property is found; authoritarian “state ownership” can create horrifying “universal slavery.” As Zhao Lisheng observed, such a barbaric system of “state ownership” maybe even darker than a regime of “landlord ownership.” In the era before Marx encountered Morgan’s work, he viewed societies that lacked private ownership but featured “universal slavery” under state despotism as the most primitive and brutal stage in humanity’s evolutionary sequence—before the “ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois” phases. [23] After Marx’s death, Engels embraced Morgan’s ideas about “primitive society,” but there is no evidence Marx ever accepted them. In any event, the notion of an “objective law” of linear social development has long fallen out of favor. We need not judge Marx’s statements as historical claims.

Why, then, did Marx—on the basis of scant data—classify “despotic state ownership” as the most backward and barbaric stage of social evolution? Obviously, this was a value judgment, not just a historical analysis. Nineteenth-century Marxists prized individual freedom and despised the “communal straitjacket,” including how state ownership undermined personal property rights. Plekhano v called it “the communal exploitation of individuals.” This perspective led them to categorize “despotic state ownership” in the “Orient” or “Asia” as a savage baseline.

Marx was, of course, a master at criticizing the “capitalist private ownership” he believed must eventually yield to a “union of free individuals,” transcending capitalist alienation under a system of liberty and democracy. For him, authoritarian state ownership had nothing in common with that vision—indeed, they were diametric opposites. Nor was his critique confined to “Asia.” In eighteenth-century France, the Physiocrats, who advocated free markets, were (from Marx’s standpoint) more progressive than the Mercantilists, who favored heavier state control; likewise, classical political economy in the nineteenth century was more advanced than the statist Historical School. A fortiori, any system of “full state ownership” devoid of private property—what Plekhano v disparaged as “renewed imperial autocracy on a communist foundation, like ancient China or Peru”—had to be the most retrograde and barbaric of all.

Thus, Marx’s critique of the “Asiatic Mode of Production” or “ancient Oriental Despotism” is fundamentally a critique of “autocratic state ownership.” This argument has little to do with historical specifics, geographical prejudice, or the kind of “Orientalism” Edward Said denounced. Indeed, during China’s earlier debates, some clarified that Marx’s term “Asiatic Mode of Production” “refers to the earliest socioeconomic formation in human history… It is a universal phase experienced by all civilized peoples at their historical dawn. ‘Asiatic’ here is by no means a geographic designation… This is a descriptor distilled from a rigorous study of world history. Marx applies it as a generalized label for an initial stage common to all developed civilizations, not confined to Asia or the East, let alone regions beyond Europe.” [24] The only error in that otherwise astute explanation is conflating Marx’s notion of an original “despotic state ownership” with what we now call “primitive society.” In Marx’s time, Morgan’s version of “primitive society” had not yet been introduced—or at least Marx had not endorsed it.

In Capital Volume 1, Marx asserts that “in the history of all civilized nations, this primitive form of labor is universal,” and in the second edition of 1873, he adds a footnote explaining that “it is ridiculous to suppose that naturally formed communal ownership [25] is a peculiarity of the Slavs or merely of the Russians. This primitive form is found among Romans, Germans, and Celts and remains widespread in India… Indeed, a thorough study of Asiatic—particularly Indian—communal ownership shows how different forms of its dissolution emerge. The prototypes of Roman and German private property can be derived from India’s manifold communal forms.” [26]

As early as 1859’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the same footnote appears in the main text under the heading “the original form of communal labor natural to all civilized nations.” [27] To Marx, the disappearance of communal customary practice was a hallmark of Europe’s transition from the Middle Ages to capitalism. His logic extended further back to antiquity: if medieval Europe was already more despotic than modern capitalist Europe, then it followed that earlier eras must have been more despotic still—not the egalitarian societies Morgan later proposed.

Can “Historical Taxonomies” Disprove Marx and Wittfogel?

In truth, different conceptual frameworks can yield different historical “typologies.” One need not rely on a single evolutionary sequence of “social development stages.” People can be classified by race, wealth, ideology, or religion—each category is valid for its own purpose. Nobel Prize-winning economist John R. Hicks once labeled both Pharaonic Egypt and the Soviet Union “command economies” as opposed to “market economies,” while Rostovtzeff considered ancient Rome “capitalist,” and Finley regarded Rome as more akin to a “natural economy.” Such categories simply highlight distinct analytical angles rather than describing everything comprehensively. Hicks did not mean that ancient Egypt was communist, nor did Rostovtzeff imply that Rome had a stock market.

Hence, attacking Marx from a purely “historical classification” standpoint misses the point. The prominent Marxist historian Perry Anderson similarly dismissed Wittfogel and, by extension, criticized Marx—though he did not accuse Marx of racism as Edward Said did. In Anderson’s assessment, Marx’s historical analysis of Asia was naive or “regressive” compared to earlier Europeans: “In the tradition of European reflection on Asia, Marx and Engels lagged behind their predecessors. Jones was more aware of political differences in the East, Hegel better grasped caste in India, and Montesquieu offered a subtler understanding of Asiatic religion and legal structures. None of them, unlike Marx, casually lumped Russia with ‘the Orient’—and all of them displayed greater knowledge of China.” [28]

Carrying that into his discussion of Wittfogel, Anderson dismisses Oriental Despotism as a “jumble lacking historical consciousness,” lumping together “the Roman Empire, Tsarist Russia, the Hopi of Arizona, Song Dynasty China, the Shagan peoples of East Africa, Mamluk-ruled Egypt, the Inca Empire of Peru, the Ottoman Empire of Turkey, Sumerian Mesopotamia, and, for good measure, Byzantium, Babylon, Persia, and Hawaii.” [29]

From the vantage point of professional historiography, Anderson is justified. Indeed, Anderson is a more accomplished historian than either Marx or Wittfogel. Yet, as a theorist—as a “leftist” thinker—one might note that Wittfogel preserves more of Marx’s spirit of anti-despotism and pro-democracy than Anderson does. Ironically, it is Anderson who retains traces of “Spencerian residuals” in his grand historical schema.

Anderson admits Wittfogel’s expansions on Marx’s emphasis on individuality and opposition to communal constraints did magnify certain factual errors—folding a vast array of different eras and societies into a single category of “imperial state ownership.” Yet, from Marx to Plekhano v and onward, many Marxists, particularly those who had experienced living under despotic regimes, tended to do precisely that. Plekhano v, for example, not only lumped “ancient Chinese empires” with the Inca Empire as “renewed imperial autocracy on a communist foundation” but also labeled any “land nationalization under a police state” as the “economic mainstay of all Oriental autocratic states,” treating the Tsarist communal system as the “Muscovite version” of that. He even likened Lenin—who had advocated state ownership of land—to the Northern Song official Wang Anshi, implying Lenin was a “Russian Wang Anshi.” [30]

From Marx, Plekhano v, and Wittfogel onward, one idea is consistent: while “capitalist private ownership” may be flawed, “imperial state ownership” is worse. Those who wish to refute them must produce at least one example—no matter how singular—showing that “imperial state ownership” was actually more advanced than capitalist private property and something Marxists should embrace rather than condemn. Neither Lenin nor Mao managed to provide that. Even though they each built their own versions of “imperial state ownership,” they insisted on rationalizing it as some form of “democracy,” no matter how far-fetched. Meanwhile, Anderson’s listing of “the Roman Empire, Tsarist Russia, the Hopi of Arizona…” etc. fails to demonstrate that any of these polities were superior to capitalist private property—so there is no reason for a Marxist to champion them.

Of course, Lenin and Mao understood perfectly well how oppressive “imperial state ownership” can be. Before Stolypin’s reforms, Lenin raged against the Tsarist “nationalization” of land and the institution of “village communes,” just as Plekhano v did. Only after Stolypin’s “unfair dismemberment of the commune” provoked peasant unrest did Lenin sense a revolutionary opportunity, pivoting to support the Tsarist communal model. Before taking power, the Chinese Communist Party similarly denounced the Chinese Nationalist Party’s one-party regime, labeling its state-owned sectors “bureaucratic capital,” one of the “three great mountains” oppressing the Chinese people. They celebrated private enterprise as “national capital” or “national industry.” [31] And they were not wrong to do so. But once the CCP seized power, “bureaucratic capital” was simply rebranded as “public ownership,” morphing from a cardinal evil to a cardinal virtue, while the expropriation of private capital became “socialist transformation.”

All this shows that Wittfogel’s critique of state ownership and economic control under “Oriental Despotism” meshes well with classic leftist “political correctness,” upholding the spirit of Marx’s aversion to autocracy. Clearly, the pursuit of universal values like freedom and democracy does not derive solely from the “right.” Wittfogel’s historical “errors,” after all, amount to claiming that “Oriental despotism” emerged to serve irrigation needs—whereas, at least in China, the monarchy did not bother much with that. “For two thousand years, the law was the Qin law; they were all great bandits,” as Tan Sitong (谭嗣同) famously declared. Wittfogel, in effect, “beautified” rather than maligned Oriental absolutism. But we should not be too harsh. He at least upheld the leftist tradition of opposing autocracy—much more so than the so-called “leftists” who defend it. As for his anti-communism, that is understandable. Stalin and the Stalinists within the German Communist Party persecuted him first; his stance was a reaction. Are we to believe that once the “local tyrant” sets your house ablaze, you must remain loyal and never light a lamp of your own? Even without such personal experience, people can see that the “communism” of North Korea’s Kim family bans nearly all Marxist works except “Juche Thought.” So, an American “anti-communist Marxist” is hardly surprising.

Professor Ishii Tomoaki’s (石井知章) efforts to compile and analyze this lineage of anti-totalitarian thought—from Marx to Wittfogel—are thus of immense value. He has not only addressed Wittfogel’s principal work, Oriental Despotism [32], but also written about Wittfogel’s preface to Marx’s Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century [33] and examined his intellectual journey through the Wittfogel archives at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University [34]. With the forthcoming Chinese translation of his book, Professor Ishii offers us a deeper appreciation for the legacy of anti-despotic leftist thought spanning Marx, Plekhano v, and Wittfogel. It is a most significant contribution.

[1] Ishii Tomoaki, Oriental Despotism and Oriental Society (石井知章《东方专制主义与东方社会》), Bowden Books, New York, 2024. Japanese original: Ishii Tomoaki, K.A. Wittfogel’s Theory of Oriental Society (石井知章：『K・A・ウィットフォーゲルの東洋的社会論』), Shakai Hyoronsha, 2008.
[2] Refer to Marx and Engels Collected Works (中文第一版) Vol. 46, Part I, containing Marx’s manuscripts from 1857–1858.
[3] See Jin Yan and Qin Hui, The Rural Commune, Reform, and Revolution: Village Traditions and Russia’s Path to Modernity (金雁、秦晖：《农村公社、改革与革命：村社传统与俄国现代化之路》), Oriental Publishing, 2013.
[4] G. V. Plekhanov, Our Differences (普列汉诺夫：《我们的意见分歧》), People’s Publishing House, 1955, pp. 77, 40, 242, 258.
[5] Zhao Lisheng, Academic Autobiography (《赵俪生学术自传》), in Collected Works of Zhao Lisheng (《赵俪生文集》), Vol. 5, Lanzhou University Press, 2002, p. 43.
[6] Known in Chinese translation as Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century (《十八世纪外交史内幕》).
[7] Marx and Engels Collected Works, Chinese edition, Vol. 46, Part I, People’s Publishing House, 1979, p. 105.
[8] Qin Hui, Ten Essays on Tradition: Institutions, Culture, and Transformation in Native Society (《传统十论：本土社会的制度、文化及其变革》), Shanxi People’s Publishing House, 2019 (expanded edition), pp. 267–288.
[9] Qin Hui, Lectures on Qin and Han History (《秦汉史讲义》), Shanxi People’s Publishing House, 2024, pp. 129–149.
[10] Li Zude and Chen Qineng, eds., A Critique of Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism (《评魏特夫的<东方专制主义>》), China Social Sciences Press, 1997, p. 4.
[11] Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Verso, 1979.
[12] Li Zude and Chen Qineng, eds., A Critique of Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism, China Social Sciences Press, 1997, p. 42.
[13] Ibid., p. 155.
[14] Ibid., p. 156.
[15] Ibid., p. 112.
[16] Ibid., p. 42.
[17] Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Verso, 1979.
[18] Frederick W. Mote, “The Growth of Chinese Despotism: A Critique of Wittfogel’s Theory of Oriental Despotism as Applied to China,” Oriens Extremus 8, no. 1 (1961): 1–41; Timothy Brook, The Chinese State in Ming Society, Routledge, 2004, p. 192.
[19] Xia Mingfang, The “Dual Aspect” of Civilization—Disaster and History Intertwined (《文明的“双相”——灾害与历史的缠绕》), Guangxi Normal University Press, 2020, p. 179.
[20] Book of Lord Shang (《商君书·弱民第二十》).
[21] On Having the Wood Moved to Establish Trust (《商鞅徙木立信论》), in Early Manuscripts of Mao Zedong (《毛泽东早期文稿》), Hunan Press, 1995 (2nd ed.), pp. 1–2.
[22] Zhao Lisheng, An Outline of China’s Land System History (《中国土地制度史论要》), in Collected Works of Zhao Lisheng, Vol. 2, Lanzhou University Press, 2002, pp. 21–22.
[23] Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 13, People’s Publishing House, 1959, p. 9.
[24] Liao Xuesheng, “How to Understand Marx’s Asiatic Mode of Production?” (廖学盛：《怎样理解马克思说的“亚细亚生产方式”？》), World History (《世界历史》), 1979, no. 2.
[25] In Chinese translation, this phrase was rendered as “原始的公社所有制,” though some discovered that the original German is closer to “naturally formed communal ownership.”
[26] Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 94–95.
[27] Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 22.
[28] Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Chinese translation Juedui Zhuyi Guojia de Xipu (《绝对主义国家的系谱》), trans. Liu Beicheng, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2016, p. 367.
[29] Ibid., p. 403.
[30] Lenin, “Revision of the Agrarian Program of the Workers’ Party,” Collected Works of Lenin, 2nd Chinese ed., Vol. 12, pp. 226n, 414–415, citing Plekhano v.
[31] See Chen Boda, China’s Four Big Families (《中国四大家族》), People’s Publishing House, 1964.
[32] Ishii Tomoaki, On the Paradigm Shift in Chinese Revolution Theory: K.A. Wittfogel’s ‘Asiatic Restoration’ (石井知章：『中国革命論のパラダイム転換 K・A・ウィットフォーゲルの「アジア的復古」をめぐり』), Shakai Hyoronsha, 2012.
[33] Karl Marx, Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century (《一八世紀の秘密外交史》), with a preface by Karl August Wittfogel (カール・アウグスト・ウィットフォーゲル序), ed. and trans. by Ishii Tomoaki and Fukumoto Katsukiyo (石井知章、福本勝清編訳), Hakusuisha, 2023.
[34] Ishii Tomoaki, K.A. Wittfogel’s Theory of Oriental Society (『K・A・ウィットフォーゲルの東洋的社会論』), Shakai Hyoronsha, 2008.

This translation is authorized by the original author and Bouden House， the publisher， and undertaken by the China Thought Express editorial team. The original text can be found on Amazon by searching for the book with the title: 石井知章:《东方专制主义与东方社会》published by Bowden House, New York.

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