Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 30.04.2026
In this article I used some notes of the Scholar Taimur Rahman notes. G.W.F. Hegel used before Marx and Engels the concept “Asiatic mode of production,” However Marx used Hegel philosophical descriptions of the “Oriental World” but turned Hegel idealism to historical materialism.
Hegel analyzed China and India—in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, focusing on what he perceived as a fundamental “standstill” in their development. Hegel’s concept of the Oriental countries was that these countries were the earliest phase of history, characterized by an “eternal standstill”. He argued that Asian societies had not experienced true historical change or development, existing in a state of nature rather than participating in the development of the “World Spirit”.
He defined Asian political structures as despotic, where the ruler holds absolute power over all subjects. There was no private ownership of property. The “Oriental countries, for Hegel, were without the concept of individual freedom or rights. Only the despot was free. The society was a collection of autonomous, self-sustaining village communities that were relatively isolated, but dependent on a central power for major public works, especially irrigation. Every family got a certain plot according to its working power and they lost the land if they failed to achieve the target.
Marx and Engels were influenced by Hegel’s observations, incorporating them into the historical materialism theory in the 1850s to describe a specific, pre-capitalist mode of production that differed from European feudalism. The countries included in the category of Asiatic mode of production were among others: India, China and Egypt. The first reference to oriental despotism can be found in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Marx writes:
“Either, as in Greece, the res publica was the real private concern, the real content of the citizens and the private man was slave, that is, the political state as political was the true and sole content of the citizen’s life and will; or, as in Asiatic despotism, the political state was nothing but the private will of a single individual, and the political state, like the material state, was slave. What distinguishes the modern state from these states in which a substantial unity between people and state obtained is not that the various moments of the constitution are formed into particular actuality, as Hegel would have it, but rather that the constitution itself has been formed into a particular actuality alongside the real life of the people, the political state has become the constitution of the rest of the state.[i]
The thrust of the above passage is that while the bourgeois state is very different from the states of ancient Greece or Asia, Hegel’s view that the bourgeois state has resolved the conflict between private interests and the general interest was wrong. This passage may lend the impression that the young Marx subscribed to the conventional 18th century notion of oriental despotism, however in a letter written to Arnold Ruge in the same year:
“Marx rejected Montesquieu’s distinction between European monarchies and Asiatic despotism. He wrote, ‘The monarchical principle in general is the despised, the despicable, the dehumanised man; and Montesquieu was quite wrong to allege that it is honour [Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois]. He gets out of the difficulty by distinguishing between monarchy, despotism and tyranny. But those are names for one and the same concept, and at most they denote differences in customs though the principle remains the same’. It is quite clear from this letter that Marx rejected the conventional view of 18th century oriental despotism, especially as elaborated by Montesquieu.” [ii]
“In the Grundrisse Marx distinguished the Asiatic, Ancient and Germanic forms of pre-capitalist property. For example, he wrote, ‘In the Asiatic form the individual has no property but only possession; the real proprietor, proper, is the commune– hence property only as communal property in land’ (Marx 1858a). Similarly, ‘Amidst oriental despotism and the property lessness which seems legally to exist there, this clan or communal property exists in fact as the foundation, created mostly by a combination of manufactures and agriculture within the small commune, which thus becomes altogether self-sustaining, and contains all the conditions of production and reproduction within itself. A part of their surplus labour belongs to the higher community, which exists ultimately as a person and this surplus labour takes the form of tribute’ Regarding public works in Asia Marx says, ‘The communal conditions of real appropriation through labour, aqueducts, very important among the Asiatic peoples; means of communication etc. then appear as the work of the higher unity– of the despotic regime hovering over the little communes’ Therefore, we find in the Grundrisse all the features of the Asiatic system as described by Marx in his articles on India [iii]
In Capital Volume 3, published posthumously by Engels, Marx comments on India and China that:
“The broad basis of the mode of production here is formed by the unity of small-scale agriculture and home industry, to which in India we should add the form of village communities built upon the common ownership of land, which, incidentally, was the original form in China as well.[iv]
Marx wrote: “Should the direct producers not be confronted by a private landowner, but rather, as in Asia, under direct subordination to a state which stands over them as their landlord and simultaneously as sovereign, then rent and taxes coincide, or rather, there exists no tax which differs from this form of ground-rent. Under such circumstances, there need exist no stronger political or economic pressure than that common to all subjection to that state. The state is then the supreme lord. Sovereignty here consists in the ownership of land concentrated on a national scale. But, on the other hand, no private ownership of land exists, although there is both private and common possession and use of land“[v].
Thus, Marx and Engels emphasized the absence of private land ownership, and self-sufficient village communities. The state extracts surplus directly from villages, often for large-scale public works like irrigation. They also accepted the description of the centralized bureaucratic, often despotic state.
Kovalevsky had argued that India had become feudal under Mogul rule. He stated:
“Of all the four factors usually, though unjustly, acknowledged by medieval historians to be the sole aspects of German-Roman feudalism, three – the beneficial systems, farming out and commendation – may be said to exist in India conquered by the Muslims. Only of patrimonial justice, at least, so far as the civil code is concerned, it is possible to say that it was absent in the empire of the Great Mogul” [vi]
Marx’s comments on this mistaken view of India:
“On the grounds that the ‘beneficial system’, ‘farming out’ (the latter, though, is by no means purely feudal – the proof – Rome) and commendation occur in India, Kovalevsky sees here feudalism in the West European sense. But Kovalevsky forgets about serfdom which is absent in India and which is of the greatest importance. As to the individual role of protection (cf. Palgrave) not only of the bonded but also of the free peasants by the feudals (who functioned as vogts), this was in India of little importance, with the exception of the wakufs. The idealization of the Land (Boden-Poesie) characteristic of Germano-Roman feudalism (see Maurer) is as of little interest to India as it is to Rome. In India land is nowhere so noble in the sense of being, for instance, inalienable for the benefit of those outside the nobility. However, Kovalevsky himself sees the basic difference – the absence of patrimonial justice where civil law is concerned in the Empire of the Grand Mogul”[vii]
The ruling class derives its surplus by collecting taxes from these self-sufficient villages, rather than through private property exploitation. Marx noted that these societies, though highly developed in some ways, and in some times lacked inherent mechanisms for moving toward capitalism, often requiring external influence to break their self-sustaining nature. The Stalinists did not recognize this mode of production that was similar to the Stalinist state. They had a very schematic concept of history where each society goes through the same stages: Slave society, Feudalism, Capitalism and socialism.
Up to a certain point these Asiatic states had an advantage over Feudalism, one of the most striking examples is the role of the Asian mode of production in the development of European Feudalism. The Arab states had a more developed mode of production than Europe until the 14 Century, due to the centralized state. The crusaders who attacked the Orient, brought with them on their way back to Europe the better technology which helped the urban center to develop.
Contrary to the false idea that the Crusaders brought superior technology to the East, historical evidence suggests that Europeans largely adopted and brought back higher technologies and knowledge from the more advanced Levant and Islamic world. Europeans adopted Eastern technologies such as the magnetic compass, the astrolabe, and refined rudders, which were vital for the later Age of Exploration.
The Islamic world had adopted paper-making from China centuries earlier. The Crusaders’ contact with these regions accelerated the transfer of this technology, which revolutionized the production of books and academic materials in Europe. The Crusaders witnessed superior knowledge of medicine, bathing, and hygiene in the East, leading to the creation of better hospitals and medical care in Western Europe.
Exposure to Arabic numerals, algebra, and the concept of zero—crucial for accounting and engineering—aided European intellectual growth. Crusaders introduced to Europe new goods, including new textiles, spices, and fruits. The West learned to produce higher-quality textiles and dyes. Thus, the Crusades were a crucial turning point for Western Europe because they enabled the transfer of Eastern advancements in science, engineering, and agriculture, setting the stage for the later Renaissance. The fact that the Asiatic mode of production existed at the same time that Europe was Feudalism is confirmation of the law of uneven and combined development.
Endnotes:
[i] Marx Remark to § 279] Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ from marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/ch02.htm#003
[ii] Marx to Arnold Ruge, May 1843’ from marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_05.htm
[iii] Marx Grundrisse’ from Marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch09.htm#p471
[iv] Marx Capital 3, Ch. 201894
[v] Marx : “Capital III’ from marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/index.htm1894, Ch. 47
[vi]O’Leary (1989) The Asiatic Mode of Production: Oriental Despotism, Historical Materialism, and Indian History, Basil Blackwell
[vii] Ibid P 127