¹ Marx used this formula to characterize what he considered the stimulating confusion in the ideas of Ricardo (Marx, Karl, Theorien über den Mehrwert, 3 vols., Stuttgart, 1921, in, p. 94).Google Scholar

² See Wittfogel, Karl A., Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, New Haven, Conn., 1957, pp. 372ft.Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Wittfogel 1957).

³ Engels saw the classes of medieval Europe emerge not from the “swamp” of the decaying slaveholding society of antiquity, but from a barbarian tribal “gens” society, which, avoiding any elaborate system of slavery, advanced directly toward medieval society wim its relatively mild form of servitude (Engels, Friedrich, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats, Stuttgart, 1921, pp. 160–62).Google Scholar See also Marx, Karl, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Qkonomie, Berlin, 1953, pp. 382LGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as Marx 1953); cf. Wittfogel, 1957, p. 416Google Scholar, note d.

⁴ In 1846 Engels praised this sequence as far superior to Hegel's four Weltreiche, “to say nothing of the post-Hegelian constructs” (Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Werke-Schriften-Briefe, Marx-Engels-[Lenin] Institute, Berlin-Moscow, 1927, 1, 4, p. 450Google Scholar [hereafter cited as MEGA]; cf. also p. 413). For instances of Marx's and Engels' use of Fourier's categories, see Wittfogel, 1957, p. 385Google Scholar, note d.

⁵ MEGA, 1, 7, p. 302.

⁶ Ibid., p. 342.

⁷ Ibid., pp. 302f.

⁸ Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lasalle, ed. by Mehring, Franz, 4 vols., Stuttgart, 1902, 11, p. 231.Google Scholar

⁹ Ibid., p. 248; cf. p. 251.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 250.

¹¹ MEGA, III, 1, p. 206. For Engels, Russia's civilizing quality was due largely to its “more developed bourgeois elements” (ibid., p. 207).

¹² Cf. Engels, Karl Marx-Friedrich, Revolution und Konterrevolution in Deutschland, Berlin, 1953, p. 81.Google Scholar This series of articles, which appeared in the New York Daily Tribune from September 1851 to December 1852 under the name of Marx, was actually written by Engels (MEGA, in, 1, pp. 241f., 244, 259f., and passim). The above-cited juxtaposition of the “civilized West” and the “barbarian East” was dated February 1852.

¹³ See Wittfogel, 1957, p. 373Google Scholar, note b.

¹⁴ MEGA, III, 1, pp. 169, 177, 180, 184.

¹⁵ Engels, who was then living in Manchester, and Marx, who was living in London, met frequently and sometimes were together for weeks at a time: ca. November 5–15, 1851; December 20, 1851, to January 4, 1852; April 11–13, 1852; ca. May 26 to June 26, 1852; ca. December 23, 1852, to January 10, 1853; and ca. April 30 to May 16, 1853 (Karl Marx Chronic seines Lebens in Einzeldaten, Marx-Engels-Lenin, Institute, Moscow, 1934, pp. 114–39Google Scholar [hereafter cited as KMCL]).

¹⁶ The article was sent to the New York Daily Tribune by Marx, but again was written by Engels (Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Gesammelte Schrijten 1852 bis 1862, ed. by Rjasanoff, N., 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1920, 1, p. 475Google Scholar [hereafter cited as Marx and Engels 1920]).

¹⁷ New York, Daily Tribune, April 21, 1853.

¹⁸ Engels', letter of May (ca. 18th) 1853 (MEGA, III, 1, pp. 471f.).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 477.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 480; italics added.

²¹ Ibid. Engels'; argument suggests his familiarity with the pertinent ideas of at least one classical economist, Richard Jones, whom Marx had studied as early as June 1851 (KMCL, p. 107). In a pioneer work on Asiatic society written in 1831, Jones pointed to the significance of “that great tract of sandy desert” that stretches across the “old world.” His list of these desert areas begins with the Sahara, Egypt, Syria, Persia, India, and ends with “Tartary” and northernmost China. It concludes with the sentence: “This soil can be made fruitful only by irrigation” (Jones, Richard, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and on the Sources of Taxation, London, 1831, pp. 119ff.).Google Scholar

²² New York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853; italics added.

²³ MEGA, III, 1, p. 486; italics in original.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 487; italics added.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ New York Daily Tribune, August 5, 1853.

²⁷ Ibid., August 8, 1853.

²⁸ Marx's, article was published in the New York Daily Tribune, September 9, 1854 (Marx and Engels 1920, 11, p. 417).Google Scholar This politically irrelevant form of self-government, which is typical of Oriental society, I have called a “Beggars’ Democracy” (Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 125f).Google Scholar

²⁹ Marx, and Engels, 1920, II, p. 231.Google Scholar

³⁰ MEGA, III, 2, p. 109.

³¹ Cf. KMCL, p. 159.

³² MEGA, III, 2, p. 183.

³³ This is the case in the first edition (1923–1948) and in the second (1955–1958). Cf. also Rubel, Maximilien, Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Karl Marx, Paris, 1956, p. 131.Google Scholar

³⁴ The Free Press, April 1, 1857.

³⁵ Marx used this term as connoting not the private slavery of antiquity, but a system nof state-imposed political slavery. In 1857–1858 in the first draft of Das Kapital, he referred to the traditional Eastern pattern of subordination as “the general slavery of the Orient” (Marx, 1953, p. 395Google Scholar; cf. Wittfogel, 1957, p. 377).Google Scholar

³⁶ The Free Press, February 4, 1857.

³⁷ Ibid., February 4 and 18, 1857.

³⁸ Ibid., February 25 and April 1, 1857.

³⁹ Ibid., February 25, 1857.

⁴⁰ For mis concept and its application to Russia, see Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 173ff., 219ff.Google Scholar

⁴¹ The idea of a service state was outlined by Kliuchevsky and conceptualized by Sumner (see Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 220ff.).Google Scholar

⁴² Because of the growing interest in Russia's Orientalization, I have elaborated this point in the third printing of Oriental Despotism (New Haven, Conn., 1959), p. 220, note y-bis.

⁴³ Marx, Karl, Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, 3 vols., Hamburg, 1919, 1, p. 323Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Marx 1919).

⁴⁴ Engels, Friedrich, “Soziales aus Russland (Volksstaat, 1875),” in Internationales aus den Volksstaat (1871–75), Berlin, 1894, p. 56Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Engels 1894); italics in original.

⁴⁵ See Engels, Friedrich, Herrn Eugen Diihrings Umwalzung der Wissenschajt. Dialektik der Natur, 1873–1882, Moscow, 1935, p. 9.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid., 185.

⁴⁷ Engels, Karl Marx-Friedrich, Ausgewahlte Briefe, Berlin, 1953, p. 367Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Marx-Engels 1953).

⁴⁸ Marx-Engels Archiv, Zeitschrift de Marx-Engels-Instituts, ed. by Rjazanov, D., 1, Frankfurt, 1927, pp. 324, 333.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 324.

⁵⁰ Marx-Engels, 1953, p. 437.Google Scholar Manifestly Engels did not abandon his multilinear view of development or the concept of Asiatic society when he wrote The Origin of the Family in 1884. For further evidence on mis point, see Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 383ff., 398.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Marx, 1919, III, 2, p. 259.Google Scholar

⁵² Engels, 1894, pp. 68f.Google Scholar

⁵³ Kotow, W. N., Eindringen und Verbreitung der Ideen von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels in Russland, Berlin, 1956, p. 16.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 31.

⁵⁵ Engels, 1894, p. 68.Google Scholar In 1893 Engels, expected every Russian visitor to question him on this letter ( “A. Voden, Talks with Engels,” Reminiscences of Marx and Engels, Moscow, n.d., p. 329).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Plekhanov, G., The Development of the Monist View of History, Moscow, 1956, pp. 2986.Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Plekhanov 1956).

⁵⁷ Lenin, Vladimir Ilych, Sochinenia, 4th ed., 35 vols., Moscow, 1941–1950, X, p. 58Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Lenin, S).

⁵⁸ In 1889 a resume and excerpts were published by N. Ziber in the magazine Slovo. A full translation by V. J. Yakovenko appeared in 1904.

⁵⁹ Trush, M., “Lenin's Abstract of Marx's and Engels'; Correspondence,” Kommunist (Moscow), No. 2 (1960), p. 50Google Scholar; italics in original. Professor Leonard Schapiro of London kindly drew my attention to this passage, which shows that Lenin, if he was not familiar with it earlier, at least by 1913 knew Marx's most precise formulation concerning the managerial functions of the Asiatic state (see Wittfogel, 1957, p. 389).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ An illuminating study of his discussion of Russia's Oriental despotism has been made by Baron, Samuel H. in “Plekhanov's Russia: The Impact of the West upon an ‘Oriental’ Society,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XIX, No. 3 (June 1958), pp. 388–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶¹ See Plekhanov's 1894 Preface to Engels', “Soziales aus Russland,” in Plekhanov, G., Sochinenia, IX, Moscow, 1923, pp. 30f.Google Scholar; idem, 1956, pp. 361ff.

⁶² Plekhanov, G. V., “On the Agrarian Question in Russia,” Dnevnik Sotsial-Demo-krata (Diary of a Social Democrat), No. 5 (March 1906), p. 12Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Plekhanov 1906).

⁶³ Ibid., p. 14.

⁶⁴ Plekhanov, in Protokoly Obydinitelnago Syezda Rossyskoi Sotsialdemokraticheskoi Rabochei Partii (Protocols of the Unification Congress of the R.S.D.R.P, held in Stockholm in 1906), Moscow, 1907, p. 116Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Protocols).

⁶⁵ Plekhanov, 1906, p. 14.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ According to Plekhanov (ibid., p. 12), these conditions were increasingly undermined in nineteenth-century Russia.

⁶⁷ Ibid., p. 17.

⁶⁸ Protocols, p. 90.

⁶⁹ Parvus called “the Russian state system … an Asiatic kind of absolutism supported by an army of the European type” (Parvus, , “War and Revolution, II: The Fall of Autocracy,” Isbra, No. 61, March 5, 1904).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Trotzki, L., Die Russische Revolution 1905, Berlin, 1923, pp. 18Google Scholar and 38 (hereafter cited as Trotsky 1923).

⁷¹ Lenin, V. I., Selected Works, 12 vols., New York, 1943, XI, p. 418Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Lenin, SW).

⁷² Ibid., p. 19.

⁷³ Lenin, W. I., Sämtliche Werke, Wien-Berlin (later Moscow-Leningrad) 25 vols., IV, 1, p. 74Google Scholar, cf. pp. 14, 65, 197, 212; IV, 2, pp. 16, 67, 155f. (hereafter cited as Lenin, SWG).

⁷⁴ Ibid., IV, 1, p. 212. In this and many other instances, the Comintern translators mislead the reader by frequently rendering krepostnichestvo as “feudalism,” instead of “bondage” or “serfdom” (cf. Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 378LGoogle Scholar and note i).

⁷⁵ Lenin, , SWG, 1, 1, p. 14Google Scholar; IV, 2, pp. 155f.

⁷⁶ Ibid., IV, 2, p. 149, note.

⁷⁷ Ibid., V, p. 32.

⁷⁸ Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 394f.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Lenin, , SWG, XVII, p. 548.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Engels, 1894, p. 49.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Marx-Engels, 1953, p. 460.Google Scholar

⁸² For this concept, see Wittfogel, 1957, p. 419.Google Scholar

⁸³ New York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853; italics in original.

⁸⁴ Engels, 1894, p. 67Google Scholar; cf. also Engels', “The Foreign Policy of Russian Czarism” (1890), in Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The Russian Menace to Europe, Glencoe, Ill., 1952, p. 51.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ MEGA, III, 2, pp. 448 and 453.

⁸⁶ Marx, Karl, Herr Vogt, Berlin, 1953, p. 144.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Engels, 1894 [1875], pp. 58ft.Google Scholar; Marx, [1876], MEGA, III, 4, p. 435.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Engels 1894, pp. 57f., 59f.

⁸⁹ Marx's letter to Sorge, September 27, 1877 (Marx-Engels, 1953, p. 363)Google Scholar; Marx's letter to Engels, , September 24, 1878 (MEGA, III, 4, p. 484).Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Ausgewàhlte Schrijten, 2 vols., Berlin, 1958, 1, p. 18Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Marx and Engels 1958). The idea that die Western socialist revolution might accomplish such a development in die Russian countryside had already been expressed by Engels in his 1875 article (Engels, 1894, pp. 57f.).Google Scholar

⁹¹ Engels, 1894, p. 72.Google Scholar

⁹² Ibid., pp. 66, 72.

⁹³ Wolfe, Bertram D., Three Who Made a Revolution, New York, 1948, pp. 20f.Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Wolfe 1948); cf. also pp. 161, 366; Seton-Watson, Hugh, The Decline of Imperial Russia, New York, 1952, pp. 12f.Google Scholar; idem, From Lenin to Malenkov, New York, 1953, pp. 6f.; Haimson, Leopold H., The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism, Cambridge, Mass., 1955, pp. 4f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Treadgold, Donald W., Lenin and His Rivals, New York, 1955, pp. 5, 15Google Scholar; Schapiro, Leonard, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, Cambridge, Mass., 1955, pp. 3, 7, 9Google Scholar; Moorehead, Alan, The Russian Revolution, New York, 1958, pp. 10f.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Marcuse, Herbert, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis, New York, 1958, p. 1Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Marcuse 1958).

⁹⁵ Ibid., p. 145.

⁹⁶ Ibid., p. 3.

⁹⁷ Ibid., pp. 3f.

⁹⁸ Ibid., p. 35; cf. pp. 29, 44.

⁹⁹ Ibid., pp. 20ff.

¹⁰⁰ Marx, and Engels, 1958, 11, pp. 18f. and 25.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Marcuse, 1958, pp. 7, 27ff.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Stalin, J., Works, 13 vols., Moscow, 1952–1955, VI, pp. 73f.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ See Lenin's perspective of the coming Western proletarian revolution of August 1901 (Lenin, , SWG, IV, 1, pp. 204ff.)Google Scholar, his opinion that the Western European comrades were combating the reformists better than were the Russian socialists (ibid., IV, 2, pp. 70f.; cf. also pp. 155, 264), and his respectful remarks about the German Social Democrats in 1906 (ibid., VIII, p. 91, notes 314 and 318f.). In 1917 Lenin stated retrospectively mat, although in 1903 imperialism already existed, it did not as yet appear in the arguments of the Party (ibid., XX, 1, p. 369).

¹⁰⁴ See piekhanov's Preface to Engels' “Soziales aus Russland” (Plekhanov, , Sochinenia, IX, p. 32)Google Scholar; cf. also Lenin, , SW, 1, pp. 371ff. (1897)Google Scholar, p. 396 (1899).

¹⁰⁵ For the details of this development, see Wolfe, 1948, pp. 148ff.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Lenin, , SWG, IV, 2, pp. 159fGoogle Scholar; 170, 250ff.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., IV, 2, pp. 155f.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., VIII, p. 382; cf. pp. 81, 110f., 466.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid., VIII, p. 573.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., IV, 2, pp. 264, 267, 280, 284f.; VI, p. 24.

¹¹¹ Ibid., VI, pp. 380f., 412f., 416, 418, 423, 427.

¹¹² Ibid., VII, p. 249.

¹¹³ Lenin, , S, x, p. 58.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Ibid., X, p. 75.

¹¹⁵ Trotsky, Leon, Stalin, ed. and tr. by Malamuth, Charles, New York and London, 1951, p. 430Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Trotsky 1941). According to Trotsky, die preface to Trotsky's pamphlet “Until die Ninth of January,” in which Parvus expressed these ideas, “entered permanently into the history of the Russian Revolution” (ibid., pp. 429f). Cf. Lenin's, respectful reference to this preface in April 1905Google Scholar (Lenin, , SWG, VII, p. 265).Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ parvus, “Preface to Trotsky's ‘Until the Ninth of January,’” dated München, January 31, 1905 (Trotsky, N., Do deviatavo yanvarya, Geneva, 1905), pp. VIf.Google Scholar; cf. Trotsky, 1941, pp. 430f.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Trotsky, 1923, p. 38.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Ibid., p. 231.

¹¹⁹ Ibid.

¹²⁰ Lenin, , SWG, VIII, p. 80.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Protocols, p. 116.

¹²² Ibid., p. 45.

¹²³ Ibid. See Wolfe, 1948, pp. 365f.Google Scholar; Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 392ff.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ For an analysis of Lenin's erratic argument, see Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 391–94.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ Lenin, , SW, III, p. 240.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Ibid., p. 260.

¹²⁷ Ibid., p. 238.

¹²⁸ Lenin's 1906 rejection of the bureaucracy probably also included the police. In 1916–1917, without referring to his earlier argument on the restoration but in conformity with Marx's 1871 comment on the Paris Commune, Lenin expressly listed the police among the institutions that should not be present in the aimed-for revolutionary state. While Lenin's proposals for establishing popular control over the state were as unrealistic as were those of Marx and Engels, they did underline the critical importance of popular control. In 1876–1878 Engels emphasized this point in his Anti-Diihring, which Marx read before its publication: the ineffectively controlled government, instead of being the “servant” of society, becomes its “master” (Engels, 1935, p. 183).Google Scholar

¹²⁹ Lenin, , SWG, XXI, p. 468Google Scholar; SW, VII, p. 8.

¹³⁰ Lenin, , SW, XI, p. 646.Google Scholar

¹³¹ Diskussia ob Aziatskom Sposobe Proizvodstva (Discussion of the Asiatic Mode of Production), Moscow and Leningrad, 1931, p. 89.

¹³² Stalin, J., Problems of Leninism, Moscow, 1953, p. 745.Google Scholar

¹³³ Bochenski, J. M., Die Dogmatischen Grundlagen der Sowjetischen Philosophie, Dordrecht, 1959, pp. 37, 44f.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ According to Trotsky, the Soviet bureaucracy, being neither homogeneous nor secure, was not yet a ruling class (Trotsky, Leon, The Revolution Betrayed, New York, 1937, pp. 139f.).Google Scholar After having temporarily played a progressive role (ibid., p. 275), it became increasingly reactionary (The Case of Leon Trotsky: Report of Hearings on the Charges Made Against Him in the Moscow Trials, by the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry, New York, 1937, p. 440). Deutscher follows Trotsky part of the way in maintaining that the Soviet bureaucracy, being neither unified nor secure, was only a “privileged and ruling minority” (Deutscher, Isaac, Heretics and Renegades, London, 1955, p. 203)Google Scholar, but he insists that its special privileges “coincided with a broader national interest” (ibid., p. 204). “The primitive magic of Stalinism,” he writes, despite its nauseating features, had a definitely progressive function (ibid., pp. 213f.); and “the economic progress made during the Stalin era” should make possible “a gradual democratic evolution” (Deutscher, Isaac, Russia: What Next?, New York, 1953, p. 221).Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Marcuse uses his own type of dialectical argument; yet his conclusions closely approach those of the Neo-Trotskyites. He calls the Soviet bureaucracy “a separate class,” but avoids calling it a ruling class—it is neither homogeneous nor secure (Marcuse, 1958, p. III)Google Scholar and it “represents the social interest in a hypostatized form” (ibid., p. 118). Soviet theory has a “magic” quality; it thus assumes “a new rationality” (ibid., p. 90); eventually “technical progress will overtake the repressive restrictions imposed at earlier stages” (ibid., p. 188).

¹³⁶ See Wittfogel, 1957, p. 440.Google Scholar Cf. also idem, “A Stronger Oriental Despotism” (the editors'; title; I would have preferred “Beyond Oriental Despotism”), China Quarterly I, No. 1 (January-March 1960), pp. 29ff.

¹³⁷ Lenin's argument runs as follows: “Socialism is better than capitalism, but capitalism is better than medievalism, small production, and a bureaucracy connected with the dispersed character of the small producers” (Lenin, , S, XXXII, p. 329Google Scholar; italics added). The economic root of this bureaucracy was “the fragmented and dispersed character of small production, its poverty, lack of culture, absence of roads, illiteracy, absence of exchange between agriculture and industry, the absence of connection and interaction between them” (Lenin, , SW, IX, pp. 187f.Google Scholar; italics in original).

¹³⁸ In his last book, Trotsky still spoke of the Russian peasantry as “dispersed over the surface of an immense country”; and after a description of the futile character of the peasant revolutions in old China, which represented nothing but “hopeless rotations” in an unchanging society, he concluded: “Such was the basis of ancient Asiatic, including ancient Russian, history” (Trotsky, 1941, p. 425).Google Scholar But when he referred to Lenin's thesis that without the aid of the proletarian revolution in the West restoration was unavoidable in Russia, he added: “He was not mistaken: the Stalinist bureaucracy is nothing else than the first stage of bourgeois restoration” (ibid., p. 429; italics added).