The View of Asiatic Society in Marx’s Theory of World History

In the view of Asiatic society prevalent in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, “Asia” did not refer simply to Asia in a geographical sense; it also carried a distinct value orientation, namely that Asiatic society was a stagnant society diametrically opposed to the European model of developmental society. This society was based on the despotic monarch and the patriarchal clan community and possessed none of the values that included capitalism, democracy, revolution, and so forth. Within this basic framework, from the 18th to the 19th century, the core of the view of Asiatic society was the theory of the Asiatic despotic state with state ownership of land, but as European values changed, the content of the view of Asiatic society also shifted. Initially, in the 18th century, the so-called “view of Asiatic society” was formed against the background of the European intellectual discourse on “barbaric Asiatic despotism.” Consequently, this view of society generally held that the characteristic of Asiatic society lay in the despotic state’s ownership of all land (the absence of large-scale private land ownership), thereby contrasting it with European landed aristocracy (private land ownership). By the early 19th century, the core of the view of Asiatic society was the bourgeois view of Asia, which held that the characteristic of Asiatic society lay in the absence of a bourgeois class and the absence of civil society. By the late 19th century, the prevailing view was that the foundation of the Asiatic despotic state was the Asiatic patriarchal clan community.

在18—19世纪欧洲流行的亚细亚社会观中，“亚细亚”不单纯指地理意义上的亚洲，同时还具有鲜明的价值指向，即亚细亚社会是与欧洲式发展社会完全相反的停滞社会。这一社会以专制君主和父系家长制共同体为基础，并不具备包括资本主义、民主主义、革命等因素在内的价值。在这一基本框架之下，从18世纪到19世纪，亚细亚社会观的核心是土地国有制的亚细亚专制国家论，但随着欧洲价值观的变迁，亚细亚社会观的内涵也有所变化。起初，在18世纪，所谓“亚细亚社会观”的形成，其背景是欧洲思想界有关“野蛮的亚细亚专制”的说法。由此，这种社会观普遍认为，亚细亚社会的特征在于专制国家对土地的所有（缺乏大面积土地私有制），并以此与欧洲的土地贵族制（土地私有制）形成对比。到了19世纪前期，亚细亚社会观的核心是资产阶级亚细亚观，即认为亚细亚社会特征在于没有市民阶级，没有市民社会。而到了19世纪后期，普遍的观点则是亚细亚专制国家的基础是亚细亚父系家长制共同体。

Generally speaking, Marx’s view of Asiatic society shared the same basic framework as the view of Asiatic society prevalent in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1853, the British Parliament made the final revision to the Charter of the East India Company. That same year, on the question of India, Marx published eight articles in succession in the New-York Daily Tribune. From these articles it can be seen that Marx at that time described India as a society based on the despotic system of ancient communes (Indian village communities), which had neither private land ownership nor history, and was a stagnant society. For India to break its stagnation and achieve modernization, it could not rely on itself but could only rely on British capitalism as an external factor. Therefore, he believed that British colonization of India was fulfilling a dual mission: “one destructive, the other regenerating — the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia.” [1]1 Karl Marx, “The Future Results of British Rule in India,” *New-York Daily Tribune*, August 8, 1853. From this it can be seen that, before he formally began studying Asiatic society in the 1850s, the basic framework of Marx’s view of Asiatic society was a hybrid product of the 18th-century European view of Asiatic society and the early 19th-century European view of Asiatic society. Centered on the latter, on the one hand it emphasized state ownership of land, holding that Asiatic society was a society under the rule of a despotic state lacking large-scale private land ownership; on the other hand, Asiatic peasants were regarded as self-sufficient small producers combining agriculture and handicrafts, essentially possessing the same character as small peasants in the European feudal era.

一般而言，马克思的亚细亚社会观与18—19世纪流行于欧洲的亚细亚社会观具有共同的基本框架。1853年，英国议会对《东印度公司宪章》进行了最终修订。同年，围绕印度问题，马克思在《纽约先驱论坛报》上相继发表了8篇文章。通过这些文章可以看出，当时马克思将印度描述为以古老公社（印度村社）的专制制度为基础的社会，它既没有土地私有制，也没有历史，而是一个停滞的社会。印度要想打破停滞、实现现代化，不可能依靠自身，只能依靠作为外因的英国资本主义。因此，他认为英国对印度的殖民是在完成一项双重使命，“一个是破坏的使命，即消灭旧的亚洲式的社会；另一个是重建的使命，即在亚洲为西方式的社会奠定物质基础”。由此可知，在19世纪50年代正式开始研究亚细亚社会之前，马克思有关亚细亚社会的基本框架是由18世纪欧洲亚细亚社会观和19世纪前期欧洲亚细亚社会观混杂在一起的产物。以后者为中心，一方面表现为强调土地国有制，认为亚细亚社会是专制国家统治下的缺少大面积土地私有制的社会；另一方面，亚细亚农民被视为农业和手工业相结合的自给性的小生产者，基本上与欧洲封建时代的小农具有同样的性质。

In the “Forms Which Precede Capitalist Production” section of the Grundrisse (hereinafter referred to as the Grundrisse), Marx did not follow the basic framework of the view of Asiatic society formed in his study of India around 1853, but instead established a new framework. He pointed out that the “Asiatic form of property” had three characteristics: First, the individual’s dependence on the community. “The community is the substance, and the individual is merely the accident, or the individual is merely the purely naturally formed component of the community.” [2]2 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie* (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1953), p. 376. Second, public ownership of land. “In the Asiatic form (at least, the predominant form), there is no individual property, only individual possession; the commune is the actual real proprietor; so that property exists only as communal land property.” [3]3 Ibid., p. 377. Third, the combination of agriculture and handicrafts within the community (intra-community division of labor). “The sphere of production is limited to self-sufficiency, and agriculture and handicrafts are combined.” [4]4 Ibid., p. 378. Thus, the basic framework of the view of Asiatic society established in the Grundrisse is structurally manifested as a community that, relying on the combination of agriculture and handicrafts within the community (intra-community division of labor), practices public ownership of land — that is, the Asiatic commune and the despotic state that rules over it. In essence, Marx adopted in the Grundrisse the same framework as the late 19th-century European view of Asiatic society. However, within the two major factors of this framework of the view of Asiatic society — the “Asiatic despotic state” and the “community combining agriculture and handicrafts with public ownership of land” — Marx’s research focus shifted to the latter. Moreover, in defining the nature of the Asiatic commune, he no longer placed emphasis on the combination of agriculture and handicrafts within the community, but instead took land ownership as the focus, defining the content of the Asiatic mode of production.

在《政治经济学批判大纲》（以下简称《大纲》）的《资本主义生产以前的各种形式》中，马克思并未沿用1853年前后印度研究中形成的亚细亚社会观基本框架，而是确立了新的框架。他指出，“亚细亚社会的所有制形式”具有三方面特征：第一，个体对共同体的依附。“共同体是实体，而个人则只不过是实体的偶然因素，或者是实体的纯粹自然形成的组成部分。”第二，土地公有制。“在亚细亚的（至少是占优势的）形式中，不存在个人所有，只有个人占有；公社是真正的实际所有者；所以，财产只是作为公共的土地财产而存在。”第三，农业和手工业在共同体内部结合（共同体内部分工）。“生产的范围限于自给自足，农业和手工业结合在一起。”由此可见，《大纲》中确立的亚细亚社会观基本框架，其结构表现为依靠农业和手工业在共同体内部结合（共同体内部分工），实行土地公有制的共同体，即亚细亚共同体及其实行统治的专制国家。本质而言，马克思在《大纲》中采用了与19世纪后期欧洲亚细亚社会观相同的框架。但在这一亚细亚社会观框架中的“亚细亚专制国家”和“农工相结合、土地公有制的共同体”两大因素中，马克思的研究重点转向后者，并且在对亚细亚共同体性质的界定上，不再将重点置于农业和手工业在共同体内的结合，而是以土地所有制为重点，界定了亚细亚生产方式的内涵。

From this point onward, the basic framework of the view of Asiatic society established by Marx in the Grundrisse became the fundamental guideline for his study of Asiatic society. For example, in his late drafts of the letter to Vera Zasulich (1881), the concept of the “agricultural commune” as the final stage of the primitive commune was not only a product influenced by M. M. Kovalevsky’s *Communal Landownership: The Causes, Course, and Consequences of Its Dissolution*, Volume 1 (1879), but also, in a certain sense, the conceptual completion of the Asiatic commune in the Grundrisse.

自此之后，马克思在《大纲》中确立起的亚细亚社会观基本框架成为他研究亚细亚社会的根本遵循。例如，在他晚年的《给维·伊·查苏利奇的复信草稿》（1881年）中，作为原始共同体最后阶段的“农业公社”概念不仅是马·柯瓦列夫斯基的《公社土地占有制，其解体的原因、进程和结果》第一卷（1879年）影响下的产物，在一定意义上也是《大纲》中亚细亚共同体的概念化完成。

After the Grundrisse, in the 1859 Preface to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*, Marx, based on different modes of material production, proposed the sequence of socio-economic formation evolution: “Asiatic mode of production — ancient mode of production — feudal mode of production — modern bourgeois mode of production.” [5]5 Karl Marx, “Preface to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*,” in *Marx-Engels Collected Works*, vol. 29 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987), p. 263. The “Asiatic mode of production,” as the starting point of this evolutionary sequence, was incorporated by him into the schema of world historical development and endowed with universal significance. This formed a sharp contrast with Marx’s understanding around 1853. At that time, he regarded Asiatic society as a regionally specific society existing in Asia, completely different from Western Europe, which did not represent the general path of human societal development, and he did not incorporate it into his schema of world historical development. The shift in Marx’s understanding of Asiatic society from particularity to universality in the 1850s was, in terms of its cause, closely related to the basic framework of the “view of Asiatic society” he established in the Grundrisse. Although this framework was born out of the basic framework of the view of Asiatic society then prevalent in Europe, he reset it in the course of studying the problem of the formation of capital. In order to break free from Eurocentrism, Marx no longer examined Asiatic society based on European historical experience, but instead returned to Asiatic society itself, attempting to incorporate the trajectory of Asiatic societal development into the schema of world history. It is in this sense that the Grundrisse became an important text in which Marx promoted the entry of Asiatic society into world history.

在《大纲》之后，马克思在1859年《〈政治经济学批判〉序言》中，基于不同的物质资料生产方式，提出了“亚细亚的生产方式—古希腊罗马的生产方式—封建的生产方式—现代资产阶级的生产方式”的社会经济形态演进历程。作为这一演进历程开端的“亚细亚的生产方式”被他纳入了世界历史发展图示之中，赋予了普遍性的意义。这与1853年前后马克思的认识形成鲜明对比。当时，他将亚细亚社会视为一种与西欧完全不同、在亚洲存在的地域性的特殊社会，不代表人类社会的一般性发展道路，并未将其纳入他的世界历史发展图示之中。19世纪50年代马克思对亚细亚社会认识由特殊性到普遍性的转变，究其原因，与他在《大纲》中确立的“亚细亚社会观”的基本框架密切相关。这一框架虽然脱胎于当时欧洲普遍流行的亚细亚社会观基本框架，但他在研究资本形成问题时对其进行了重置。马克思为了摆脱欧洲中心论，不再依据欧洲历史经验审视亚细亚社会，而是回到亚细亚社会本身，试图将亚细亚社会发展轨迹纳入世界历史图示。正是在这一意义上，《大纲》成为马克思推动亚细亚社会进入世界历史的重要文本。

(The author is a tenured associate professor at the School of Marxism, Beijing Institute of Technology.)

（作者系北京理工大学马克思主义学院长聘副教授）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧