/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2193790
>Were Marx and Engels cooking or cooked?
cooked in this instance. by their own admission. they eventually moved away from the concept, with Engels in particular revising his views later in life.
>Was it just feudalism with chinese characteristics?
Not exactly. The model didn't fit neatly into feudalism, but rather it tried to explain the unique social and economic formations in places like India or China.
>Was it orientalist?
it has been criticized for being orientalist, as it generalized and simplified Asian societies based on Western frameworks.
>Is hydraulic despotism real?
There is some debate. It describes societies where centralized authority controls large-scale irrigation. While it may apply to certain historical states, it's overly deterministic and doesn't capture all forms of governance. Also if you just mean ruling classes privatizing and/or controlling clean freshwater sources, that will be a problem as climate change gets worse.
>What do you think about the tributary mode of production model?
that involves the extraction of surplus through tribute, right? it can be a useful concept for analyzing pre-capitalist societies. It highlights social relations of dominance and exploitation without fitting into a strict economic system like feudalism or slavery. It might be useful but needs more refinement to address diverse historical contexts.

yeah they were just being a lil racist with that one

>>2193817
>>2193809
>>2193790
Marx said his historical method is particular to western europe?

>>2193828
then why even speak of an asiatic mode of production?

they did not sufficiently develop a theory of "asiatic mode of production", and when they coined it they didnt know enough about the history and economics of those regions so it was a vulgarization. but it was based on an actual, distinct form of bureaucratic-distributism.

think of something like "state-capitalism" if "capitalist" was a high tier bureaucratic position appointed by either the sovereign directly, or regional administrators. now change it so that the economy is primarily agricultural and agricultural products are collected in kind, and there is no generalized commodity production, but there are important sectors of the economy based on commodity manufacture, extraction, and trade. much of that is owned by families, trade companies, etc, and taxed by the state. not ENTIRELY unlike european feudalism/manorialism, but crucial distinction is that whereas the medieval european system was based on personal relationships of obligation in the form of patriarchal right between various tiers of landed families (e.g., tax base -> country manor <->> baron <->> duke <->> king), in this imperial-distributive mode, the obligations didnt go both ways in an interpersonal sense, only in the abstract "social contract" sense that the state is the sovereign but its sovereignty is only maintained by its recognition as legitimate. e.g., tax base (collected and managed by local -> regional -> imperial officials) –→ imperial state, "directly" in the sense that taxes the state collects go only to the state (thru degrees of seperation in the form of official bureaucracy or essentially deputized local rulers). the state, represented by the person of the emperor but including their family, advisors, powerful people they owe favors, etc., is then able to use the tax base as they wish.

this has some distinct advantages and disadvantages over the medieval european feudal/manorial MoP. an obvious advantage is that there are a lot more resources available to a central authority, and the bureaucracy/other means that make its collection possible also allow for more focused and intentional deployment of those resources. under good circumstances and leadership, this allows for huge public works, strong militaries, patronage of science and arts, etc. the disadvantage is that this centralized apparatus, though very powerful when its working properly, can only bend so far before it breaks. the euro medieval feudal model was much weaker at the best of times, but the staggering of obligation and rights meant that when things went wrong, it didnt necessarily lead to an entire system collapse. if theres a famine or plague in one duchy, the same rights and sovereignty over their land that the duke fiercely defends also mean that they shoulder the blame and get the biggest hit to legitimacy – its your duchy, its not the kings fault, and if the king or the other dukes or independent trade companies have to bail you out, you and your descendents owe a lot of favors. the stability advantage is that this mean the rest of the "country" under that king doesnt have to be effected much at all if things go wrong in one duchy. if you compare that to the "asiatic" mode of production, a regional governor is an office appointed by the emperor, hes an arm of the state. if theres a famine in his province, it is a failure of the state, and the same concentration of power and resources that in good times allows for the distribution of food throughout the empire is now directly hit by the famine and its felt all over the place. this can quickly spiral out of control, because the empires finances to be balanced, but where do you take it from? if you take it from the religious establishment youre angering people who will be taken seriously if they say the divine has turned on you. if you take it from the military, a lot of soldiers are going to be angry at a time where theres already hardship. if things start to spiral, the state itself starts to look potentially up for grabs, and can lead to disastrous civil war or at the very least extreme factionalization and corruption that degrades the same collection-distribution mechanisms that justify the states existence in the first place.

im summarizing/simplifying the work of Jairus Banaji, a marxist historian who developed and clarified the "asiatic" mode of production. see attached PDF, the asiatic mode of production stuff is actually covered in the Introduction chapter.

>>2193809
first image made me think of these quotes from Roy Bhaskar.


>“In its most general sense, dialectic has come to signify any more or less intricate process of conceptual or social (and sometimes natural) conflict, interconnection and change, in which the generation, interpenetration and clash of oppositions, leading to their transcendence in a fuller or more adequate mode of thought or form of life (or being), plays a key role. But as we shall see, dialectical processes and configurations are not always sublatory (i.e. supercessive), let alone preservative. Nor are they necessarily characterised by opposition or antagonism, rather than mere connection, separation or juxtaposition. Nor, finally, are they invariably, or even typically, triadic in form.” (p.3)

>Hegel's “cognitive triumphalism” [was] a conduit directly connecting his older contemporary Pierre de Laplace to Lenin and thence diamat and the erstwhile command economies of the omniscient party states’ (p.15).


>Bhaskar, R. (2008) Dialectic. The Pulse of Freedom. London and New York. Routledge.

>>2193832
Because Russian peasant communes made Russians Asiatic.

>>2193790
It's just that at the time, linear models of evolution were in vogue for everything. History, biology, etc. The marxist analysis can be generalised to make it non-deterministic and non-linear.

I honestly doubt most precapitalist MOPs really existed in the way Marx thought, besides maybe feudalism. Most ancient societies were amalgamations of different production organizations and surplus extraction methods. Central planing, slavery and other forms of forced labor, commodity production and intercommunal production for use existed alongside each other in most ancient societies. The capitalist MOP, where one form of production reigns supreme, is a historical anomaly.

Marx didn’t spend any time in Asia or Africa and that crippled his analysis

>>2193790
Modes of production are overemphasized by learning Marxists who want to have something comfortable to latch onto. They simply answer the question of "which relations of production create the ruling class at this time and place?". The relations of production that created the ruling class in China before the fall of Qing were founded on leasing land to peasants, i.e. feudalism.

>>2193835
That just sounds like feudalism but more formalized.