Marx’s Expositions on the Oriental Society

Marx’s vision on the historical development of the economically and culturally relatively backward Oriental society and its entry into communism.

Oriental society has two meanings: first, it refers to the countries of the East corresponding to the Western society in geographical location, mainly Russia, China and India, second, in contrast to Western capitalist countries, it refers to those economically, politically and culturally relatively backward countries of the East. The countries of the East implemented common or state property in the land economically, self-sufficient rural commune system in social structure, and Oriental despotism politically. This uniqueness, which was different from the countries of the West, aroused Marx’s continued attention and thinking. Since the 1850s, Marx talked about the question of Oriental society in The British Rule in India and his Economic Manuscripts as well as his letters to Engels and others. Marx held that no private property in land was “the real key, even to the Oriental Heaven”. From the 1870s to the early 1880s, Marx studied the question of Oriental society with a world-historical perspective in the Anthropological Notebooks (or The Chronological Notes) as well as in his expositions on the path of the Russian Revolution and the fate of the Russian rural commune, forming a series of expositions of the Oriental society.

Marx’s expositions on the Oriental society chiefly includes the following:

On the question of the Asiatic mode of production. In the 1850s and 1860s, due to the lack of material evidence, Marx could only infer the early human society from the relics of the “rural commune” in India, Germania, Russia, etc., and put forth the concept of Asiatic mode of production: “In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society.” After reading Morgan’s Ancient Society, Marx recognized that “the kin community with indivisible property in land and common agriculture” was the primary formation of human society, and rural commune had a dualism of public ownership and private ownership, was in transition from a society based on communal property to one based on private property, and that rural commune in Asia was always the final term or last period of the archaic formation. Marx pointed out that in those places outside Asia, rural communes were “the product of spontaneous rather than being imported ready-made from Asia”; therefore, the Asiatic mode of production had a universal nature, not only in Asia, but also in Europe; everywhere else this institution was of spontaneous growth and marked a necessary phase of development of free peoples.

On the question of Caudine Forks. Russian intellectuals once repeatedly consulted Marx and Engels on “whether it was possible for the traditional Russian rural commune to directly transition to a socialist society”. In his 1877 Letter to the Editorial Board of Otechestvenniye Zapiski [Notes on the Fatherland] as well as his 1881 Reply to V.I. Zasulich, which Marx repeatedly pondered over and revised four times, Marx emphasized: first, that his “historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe” was not a historico-philosophic theory of a general path of development, and that a nation, if it is in different historic surroundings, will have a different path of development. Second, to the question whether Russian society could transition to a new formation without passing through the Caudine Forks [i.e., undergo humiliation in defeat] of the capitalist system, Marx’s answer was: “If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime.” “The commune is the fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia. But in order that it might function as such, the harmful influences assailing it on all sides must first be eliminated, and it must then be assured the normal conditions for spontaneous development.” Although later generations have various understandings of this, one thing is certain: the countries of the East—this was the conviction of Marx and Engels—can and should pursue a path of development different from the West, one that can both minimize the suffering caused by the capitalist system and maximize social progress and improvement of people’s lives.

Marx’s expositions on the Oriental society, although limited by historical conditions and unable to provide concrete guidance on the socialist path of development of future Eastern countries, shows that the countries of the East must independently pursue a path of development that suits their own national conditions, and thus has fundamental methodological guiding significance.