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The Fate of Marxist Democrats in Leninist Party States: China's Debate on the Asiatic Mode ofProductionAuthor(s): John A. RappSource: Theory and Society, Vol. 16, No. 5 (Sep., 1987), pp. 709-740Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657680 .

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709

The fate of Marxist democrats in Leninist party states

China's debate on the Asiatic Mode of Production

JOHN A. RAPP

Department of Government and International Relations. Beloit College

In China from 1979 to 1982, intellectuals debated a theoretical issue long

neglected or erased from Stalinist-influenced Marxist-Leninism,the ques-tion of the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP). Though confined mostlyto the historical profession, unlike the simultaneous and more publicizeddebates on humanism and alienation, the Chinese AMP debate had im-

portant political implications. In this article I examine the thought of a

minority groupin the Chinese Communist party (CCP) who tried to justi-

fy political reform, and even democratization, by resurrectingthe AMP.

I arguethat the brief history of the contemporaryChinese debate overtheAMP reflects both the common and potentially diverging nterestsof frac-

tions of the Leninist state elite. Such a statist approach to analyzing poli-tics in a Leninist Party-stateis needed first given the failure of the justly

maligned "totalitarian" model to explain the growing change and diver-

gence within and betweenCommunist systems. A new approachis needed

second due to the failure of other models, such as "pluralist" conceptsborrowed from studies of non-Leninist states, to explain the overriding

state interest that has proven to make change in Communist systems so

painfully slow, difficult, and uneven. In the context of this article, the

totalitarian model is largelyunable to explain the past and perhaps future

rise of Chinese intellectuals, based on inner-Partysupport, who use the

AMP concept to call for political reform. At the same time, pluralist-

inspired models would be unable to explain the overriding common in-

terests of all fractions of the state elite that have led to the periodic silenc-

ing of the debate over the AMP.

In China, the presentsituation can be viewed as one in which a new coali-

tion of state elites came to dominate the mainstream of the CCP under

Deng Xiaoping. This coalition formed after an extremelack of social co-hesion had led elements to defect to Deng's side from the previous main-

Theory and Society 16: 709- 740 (1987)? Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands



710

streamcoalition led by Mao Zedong. Dominant, though not predominant

in Deng's new coalition were "remunerative"elites - those who favoredmaterial incentives as a way to maintain social control and enlist popular

support for the regime. Deng's new coalition differed radically from the

mainstream under the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (GPCR)of 1966-1976, when elites favoring ideological and coercive incentives

were dominant in Mao's ruling coalition.2

Tohelp legitimize Deng's economic reformpolicies, the pro-remunerativeelements within

Deng'snew coalition also enlisted the

supportof intellec-

tuals who had suffered under the chaos and despotism of the GPCR.

Based on their powerful memories of repression,and perhaps due to their

lack of authorityor high position within the state,these allied intellectuals

took advantage of the opening the new coalition provided by calling for

political reform leading toward democratization. The new mainstream

coalition has tolerated such intellectual calls for political reform in order

to assurea strongclimate for foreigninvestment and to assure its own sub-

ject populations of the permanence of its remunerativepolicies (e.g., that

private plots in agriculture,factory-level management outside of day-to-

day Partycontrol, and privateenterprise generallywould not soon be criti-

cized as "bourgeois" tendencies). Other anti-mainstream and wavering

mainstream elements of the state elite, however,favor coercive and ideo-

logical incentives as a means to ensure social compliance. They also fear

a loss of social control from the side effects of remunerativepolicies. Such

side effects include inflation, increase in black market activity, and espe-

cially agitation by students and other potentially anti-statist groups sup-

posedly corrupted by decadent "bourgeois" influences brought in with

foreign investment. When the more conservative elite fractions treaten to

remove their support from the economic policies of the mainstreamcoali-

tion, the coalition tends to reinin and suppresstheir intellectual allies who

call for political reform.3

The AMP debate arose in China in 1979preciselywhen intellectuals tried

to exploit openings in official ideology. Before we can fully analyze the

political implications of the AMP debate, we need to examine the largercontext of Marxist ideology and Chinese politics in which it occurred.

Historical background

Beginning in 1978,the newrulingcoalition headed by Deng Xiaoping per-

mitted intellectual attacks against vestiges of "feudalism" in contem-



711

porary China. By 1979, the criticism of the GPCR as a "feudal-fascist"

episodehad

spread beyondDemocracy Wall activists to become part of

official orthodoxy. This emergingofficial CCP line specifically criticized

the feudal vestiges from China's past that were continuing to inhibit

modernization in the post-Mao era. As partof the drive to modernize Chi-

na and overcome such backwardness,the Partyalso began a general policy

of "emancipationof thought" in the intellectual sphere.The mainstream

rulingcoalition unleashedthe anti-feudal critiquein ordersimultaneously

to denounce the excesses of the GPCR, answerpotential charges of "tak-

ing the capitalist road" by remaining Maoist critics, and defend the need

for the Four Modernizations policy within Marxist-Leninism.The attack

on "feudalism" was combined with official sanction on a largerscale for

a return to the classics of Marx, Engels, and Lenin as a basis of legitimacy

for the reform policies of the dominant coalition.

As partof this new anti-feudal line, Deng Xiaoping himself made a speechin August 1980 to an enlarged meeting of the Politburo. In his speech,

Deng referredto the "alienation" of the Party and state from the masses,

especially as reflected in problems of "bureaucracy,overconcentrationof

power, patriarchalmethods, life tenure in leading posts and privileges of

various kinds." He especially criticized officials who were "assumingthe

airs of a mandarin," "suppressing democracy,"and "being arbitraryand

despotic." The problemsof a "partriarchal"bureaucracyand overconcen-

tration of power Deng traced not only to Stalinism, but to "the influence

of feudal autocracy in China's own history." In summing up the case for

a new socialist legal system and for structuralreform, including "mass su-

pervision" of cadresthrough free criticism and evenrights of replacementand recall, Deng clearly linkedthe problems of the GPCR to a continuinginfluence of China's imperial despotism:

The appetite for personal privilege shows that there are still lingering feudal in-

fleunces. From old China we inheriteda strong tradition of feudal autocracyand

a weak tradition of democratic legality.4

In retrospect one can see that Deng's speech, not published until 1986,providedthe legitimacy for the Partydemocratswho in 1983promotedthe

Marxistconcepts of alienation and humanism as a justification for politi-cal reform. But more importantly,this speech also helped to justify a new

turn in the AMP debate arising in historical circlesin 1979.By 1981,some

intellectuals inside the Partylinked to higher Party patrons used the AMP

debate to suggest a fargreaterdegreeof despotism inherited from the pastthan the term "feudalism" alone previously implied. Though such scho-



712

lars wereamong the minority in the historicalprofession, they had enoughinfluence and

supportfrom

higher Partyechelons to make their views

heard and to make clear the political implications of the AMP. In other

words,these "reform" ntelluctuals, in resurrecting he AMP, implied that

since China possessed a deeper despotic heritage from its imperial pastthan previously acknowledged, structuralpolitical reform, in addition to

economic reform,should now become an urgenttask of socialist moderni-

zation. When economic reform became urgent enough to requirethe ac-

tive support of intellectuals, such oblique calls for political reform could

be tolerated by the remunerative elements dominant in the ruling coali-

tion. When the policies of the remunerative coalition seemed to lead to

loss of state autonomy and social control, those intellectuals calling for

political reform could find themselves in deep trouble.At these times, top

leaderstryingto salvagethe remunerative-dominantpolicies against resis-

tance from coercive and ideological elites easily cast aside the reform in-

tellectuals as scapegoats. Thus, the courageous Party democrats who be-

gan to call for political reform after 1978, evenat times when the political

climate seemed hospitable, stood to lose theirParty standing and end their

academic careers.

Among Chinese historians the orthodox Marxist categories of "primitive

communal," "ancient" (slave), and "feudal" modes of production had

long been an impediment. Once it had become legitimate to examine the

despotic aspects of China'sprerevolutionaryepoch, the limitations of the

old and all-encompassing "feudal" category became evermore apparent

to historians. The great differences between the decentralized and down-

wardly diffused political power in Westernand Japanese feudalism andthe centralized bureaucratic state of imperial China by any standard

stretch the limits of the notion of a "feudal" mode of production.

After all, if differences within a mode of production appear to outstrip

differences among societies of different modes, then it would seem that

the utility of the category - even for dedicated historical materialists -

would start to erode. In such an atmosphere of heightened awarenessof

problems in the "feudal" mode Chinese historians resurrectedthe AMP,

the fourth Marxistcategory of pre-socialistmodes of production that hadbeen mentioned most famously in Marx's "Preface"to his Critiqueof Po-

litical Economy.5

Yetmost Chinese historians who referred o the AMP did so only in a be-

lated response to the developments in foreign Marxist historical scholar-

ship of the "second" debate on the AMP in the Soviet Union, EasternEu-

rope, and the Westthat began in the early 1960s and extended to the early



713

seventies. As long as they limited their use of the AMP to the Soviet and

EasternEuropean approaches, i.e., viewing the AMP as a long-dead vari-ant of primitive communism, ancient "slave society," or feudalism, the

Chinese historians posed no threatto the autonomy of the Leninist Party-state. Thus at first the leading Party conservatives, such as the Politburo

ideologist Hu Qiaomu, did not respond to the AMP debate.

The latent political implications of the AMP concept, however,eventuallyrevealed a divergence of interests between the mainstream of the reform

coalition and certaindemocraticallyminded intellectuals within that coa-

lition. Individuals in the latter group, including many in the Party

democracy camp associated with the Institute of Marxist-Leninism-Mao

Zedong Thought of the ChineseAcademyof Social Sciences, extendedthe

use of the AMP concept beyondthe historical profession. Thereafter,par-

ticipants in all sides of the debate recognizedthe politically chargedaspectof the AMP, a concept that depicted a centralized state ruling over an

amalgam of independent, self-sufficient rural communes.

In fact, a leading party democrat in a conversation with me claimed that

Chinese authorities eventually quashed the debate out of their fear that

intellectuals favoring the AMP held a hidden anti-communal and anti-

collectivization agenda. A keytenet of Marx's own definition of the AMP

(see below) was the state as supreme landowner, with the right to grantand remove ndividual possession and control over the agriculturalsurplus

product. Such a state would seem highly reminiscent of the policy empha-sis of the waveringmainstream of "conservative"elements in China'scon-

temporary state elite. They favor the state's monopoly of the surplus ofcollectivized agricultural production through the purchase of grain.

The Party democrats denounced "malicious" use of the AMP by anti-

communists like KarlWittfogel. Nevertheless they made the existence ofa centralized, despotic state central to their definition of the AMP. Theythenutilized theirversion of the AMP in expandeddefinitions of the "feu-dal" (fengjian) mode to imply the continuing negative influence of the

despotic state tradition on contemporary Chinese society.

That is, if the problem of China'sfengjian past was the problem of direct

oppression by a centralized, despotic state rather than simply the oppres-sion of a landlord or patriarchalexploiting class, then the already legiti-mated condemnation of fengjian survivals in the socialist epoch would

include, indeed focus on, structuralproblemswith the socialist state itself.

Thus, individuals in the AMP debate who pointed out the existence of a



714

despotic state in the imperial epoch and by implication in the present,

helped Party democrats in other political spheres.

As historians started to extend the debate, the AMP concept appeared as

an immediate threatto the legitimacyandinterests of anti-mainstream and

waveringmainstream elements of the ruling elite. Those anti-mainstream

elites who opposed the decentralization of power and the separation of

Party and economy from state adminstration (perhaps including any re-

maining "Maoists" or "radicals," to use the terms of EdwardFriedman

and Dorothy Solinger) felt threatened by the concept of a despotic state

rulingover a society of self-sufficient rural communes. Waveringelements

of the mainstream coalition linked to the central planning apparatus or

military and public security units (Friedman's "Stalinists" or Solinger's"bureaucrats"6)also felt threatened by the description of a centralized,

bureaucratic,coercive state. Both the anti-mainstream and waveringmain-

stream elites feared that if the AMP debate were allowed to change the

prevailingideological orthodoxy in the direction of significantly greater

democracy,it might threaten to narrowthe entireruling elite's autonomy

from the subject population. Whether their fears were well-founded or

not, at a minimum, the AMP issue could thus threaten to break up the

tacit cooperation of all elite fractions.

But why not simply limit the debate to a more narrowlyfocused academic

debate ratherthan quash it entirely? Once the issue was raised, even for

scholarly purposes, its political implications struck directly at wavering

mainstream or "conservative"elements who opposed Deng Xiaoping's at-

tempts to separate the Party from day-to-day governmental and factory

managment. Thus the AMP's small role as part of the "emancipation of

thought" campaign designed to enlist intellectual support for moderniza-

tion was soon outweighed by its heavy political implications. In 1982Hu

Qiaomu and other higher echelon conservatives put an end to the first

stage of the debate,just as they silenced the reformintellecutalswho wrote

on "Marxist humanism" and "socialist alienation" in 1983.

A renewedAMP debate surfaced from late 1985to the fall of 1986, whena wider section of the ruling coalition started to recognize the limits to

economic reformwithout political and structuralchange. After the back-

lash overthe studentdemonstrations of December 1986,however,political

reformefforts ended. The new conservativeswing in China may represent

the shift to a new mainstream coalition less willing to pursue economic

reform through remunerativeincentives. With the rise of that coalition

and the fall of leading party reformers, the AMP advocates have again

fallen silent.



715

This, in brief, was the course of the AMP debate in China from 1978 to

1987. Before examiningin more detail the latent theory of the state of theChinese "Aziatchiki"(to use the Soviet label), we should briefly examine

the development of the AMP concept in Marxist theory.

The history of the AMP in Marxist thought

The AMP in the original works of Marx and Engels

In the orthodox view of Marxist-Leninism n the Soviet Union and China,

Marx and Engels supposedly believed that only threepre-capitalistmodes

of production existed in all societies. These were the primitivecommunal,

ancient (slave), and feudal modes. Yet Marx explicitly listed the Asiatic

Mode of Production as one of four pre-capitalistmodes in the "Preface"

to his Critique of Political Economy:

In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of

production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation

of society.7

With the publication of the Grundrisse,8 t became nearly impossible for

Marxist intellectuals to ignore or downplay Marx'sconcept of the AMP,9

although where and when the AMP applies is still subject to debate. The

characteristicsof the AMP mentioned by Marx in the Grundrisse (with

possible contradictory elements in parentheses) include:

1. Lack of private ownership of land

2. Isolated, self-sufficient village communities in which agriculture is mixed

with handicraft and commodity production

3. A centralized, despotic state as sole landowner based on combining groundrent and tax (or alternatively,stateas masking realcommunal ownershipof land)and as unifier of isolated communities (whether necessary and real or mythicaland parasitical). Thus, the stateappearing as a directinstrumentof exploitation,

or a ruling class in itself

4. The state carrying out large-scale irrigation and other hydraulicand publicworks projects (again, whethernecessary or only taking credit for work of lower

communities)

5. The stagnation of essentially administrative, rentier cities

6. A cyclical, stagnant development of AMP societies10



716

Marx and Engels had little to say about the AMP in their later works. In

The Origins of Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Engelsneglected to mention the AMP; indeed, he incorporated India and Asia

as a whole into either the ancient (slave) or feudal mode."IMarx and En-

gels's lapses perhapsallowedlater Marxists to downplayor dropthe AMP.

Early Marxist debates

The AMP alsofigured

in debatesamong

Russian socialists before 1917.

The prominent Russian Social Democrat Georgy Plekhanov, in opposingLenin's 1906proposals for land nationalization, raised the spectre of an

"Asiatic restoration" in Russia after the revolution.12In defending his

proposals, Lenin did not deny the "Asiatic"qualities in Russia's past or

the legitimacy of the AMP as a concept; he responded only that Russia

at the turn of the century was under a capitalist mode of production.

Nevertheless, at earlier and later points in his career,Lenin warned of the

Asiatic qualities of both Russiancapitalism and the bureaucraticappara-tus of the socialist state.13

The 'first" debate on the AMP

In February 1931, a meeting to discuss the AMP was called in Moscow

in order to settle a debate that had been simmeringamong Soviet histori-

ans from 1925. Incuded in this debate were intellectuals who insisted on

applying the AMP to specific Asian societies. Although some of these in-

dividuals were allowedcontinuing political legitimacy,the AMP waslarge-

ly rejected, and advocates of the AMP in the Soviet Union were put on

the defensive. The term was relegated to the Oriental variants of slavery

or feudalism by leading Soviet and Soviet-influenced historians such as

Kovalev,Struve,and Yolk.4Stalin had from the late twenties downplayed

the AMP in favoringan explanation of the "feudal" character of Chinese

society. From 1931,his unilinear schema of universal development from

primitivecommunism to feudalismto capitalismwaslinkedto his politicalcareer. By 1938 and the publication of Stalin's essay Dialectical and

Historical Materialism,the unilinear schema had completely won out, and

the AMP was rejected as un-Marxist.15

The "second" debate

From the end of the "first" debate in 1931 until the late 1950s,KarlWitt-



717

fogel's later anti-communist writings led the way in making use of the

AMP. Most famously in his OrientalDespotism (1957), Wittfogel claimedto have found a basic similaritybetween ancient "hydraulic"societies, es-

pecially in Russia and China, and modern communist "totalitarianism."

Such similarity was mostly based on both systems' use of "total terror"

as a means to support the domination of a bureaucraticruling class over

a society with little or no interveningprivate propertiedclasses or institu-

tions. The centralized state in both systems was based on huge irrigationand other public works projects.16He charged that Marx, Engels, Lenin,and Stalin deliberately dropped the AMP wheneverthey found that the

concept could be used against them by adversaries who suggested the

despotic tendencies of Marxist socialism.17

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, a "second" debate on the AMP

began in Marxist intellectual circles in Europe and later in the Soviet Un-

ion.18Five factors were instrumental in the revival of the AMP debate.

First, even among those clinging to a Stalinist unilinear scheme denyingthe AMP, after Wittfogel's work and Marx's Grundrisse werewidely dis-

seminated it became difficult to ignore Marx's own views on the subject.

Second, after Khrushchev's secret 1956anti-Stalin speech became known

in the West, Marxist intellectuals also revived the AMP concept as partof a largerMarxistargumentfor political liberalization. Third,some scho-

lars have also seen a possible anti-Chinese bias in the debate, at least

among EasternEuropeanadvocates of the AMP. By emphasizingthe stag-nation of "Asiatic"societies, these advocates could support the U.S.S.R.

in the Sino-Soviet split.19Ironically, this is similar to the factor often cit-

ed for the rejection of the AMP by Stalin and leading CCP figures in thetwenties and thirties - their fear that the AMP would help justify the

"progressive"qualities of Westernimperialism in leading Asia out of its

"stagnation," and thus tend to delegitimize the progressivepotential of

Asian revolutions.20

A fourth factor in the rise of the second AMP debatewas the need of Third

World intellectuals to justify the revolutionary potential of underdevel-

oped countries in terms outside of the Soviet version of Marxist-Leninistorthodoxy. The desire to avoid Stalinist orthodoxy seems to havebeen the

goal of the Italian Marxist Umberto Melotti's Marx and the Third World

(1972). Melotti uses the AMP to criticize modern "bureaucraticcollectiv-ism."

A final factor suggests that the AMP debate could have arisen in part asa wayfor Marxists to explain away Stalin'styranny.If the AMP emanatedfrom

uniqueelements of

Russian political culture, then Stalin's crimes



718

would not delegitimize the entire Marxist-Leninist model of revolution.

For example, Louis Althusser seems to claim that Stalin's despotism wasrelatednot to flaws in the Marxisttheory of the socialist state, but to "sur-

vivals" of "older elements" of pre-revolutionary superstructures and

ideologies.21One should immediately point out, however,that the Chi-

nese reformers did not use the AMP to "explain"Mao's crimes.

For all these reasons, beginning with the Hungarian Sinologist Ferenc

Tokei's lecturein Parisin the summerof 1960,French and EasternEurope-

an Marxists resurrected he AMP. Theirargumentswereeventuallyechoedby Soviet historians from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. In this debate,

the AMP wasmostly viewed as only a variantstage betweenprimitivecom-

munal and slavesociety. Formost, the AMP did not representan indepen-

dent path in a different direction out of primitivecommunal society, i.e.,

it was not part of a multilinear path to communist development.22

Not until the late 1960s and early 1970s did critics suggest that Marx in-

cluded the AMP as part of a multilinear way of thinking. In his work of

the early 1970s, Umberto Melotti outlined a multilinear schema that

viewedAMP societies as undergoing a unique path of historical develop-

ment. Melotti claimed that most of the French, Soviet, and EasternEuro-

pean writings in the second debate did no more than add a sixth stage to

the unilinear scheme.23

Melotti's workinfluenced the Chinese historians in their own resurrection

of the AMP. Wu Dakun, the leader of the Chinese Aziatchiki, organized

the translation of and wrote the introduction to the Chinese edition of

Melotti's Marx and the Third World.Other Chinese historians followed

Melotti's criticism of the unilinear scheme of five modes of production

and his advocacy of a multilinear scheme.24

Melotti claimed that China was the best example of the AMP. But more

importantly,he found the Chineseversionof the AMP to be a unique path

of development, not a case of "Asiaticstagnation." Melotti did not pres-

ent a positive assessment of the Chinese revolution, however. He saw

parallelsbetweenthe AMP in China and Russia and "bureaucraticcollec-

tivism" in the PRC and U.S.S.R. Nevertheless, Melotti viewed both AMP

and "bureaucratic collectivist" societies as existing at a crossroad be-

tween revolution and reaction.25Thus, using Melotti to reintroduce the

AMP into Chinese Marxismimplied an argumentfor both political liber-

alization and delegitimization of the Chinese revolution. Either implica-

tion posed great dangers for the careers of the Chinese Aziatchiki.



719

Most Chinese historians thereforerejectedor avoided Melotti's use of the

AMP as an overtdescription

of China.Nevertheless,

the reformminorityof Chinese scholars did follow Melotti to suggest that the AMP was useful

in some waysto explainthe centralizationof political authority in the mod-

ern era in China. Regardlessof the differences among Chinese historians,

the questions raised in the second debate,especially as re-shapedby Melot-

ti, became the core of the Chinese discussions.

Political sensitivity of the AMP

Because the AMP dispute was linkedto Cold Waranti-communism in the

writings of KarlWittfogel, it retainedpowerful political implications for

Marxist intellectuals. Marx and Engels in their polemics with the anar-

chists of the nineteenth century, Wittfogel claimed, "sinned againstscience" when they dropped the AMP and "Oriental Despotism." Theydid so, he charged,to evade the the criticism of the anarchists that a Marx-

ist "managerial state" would lead to a bureaucraticdespotism. Likewise,

Wittfogel contended, Lenin vacillated in his opinions on the concept.

Although Lenin utilized the AMP when it suggested the corruption and

oppression of Russia's past, he ignored or rejected the AMP when his

rivals used the concept to warn of dangers of a new despotism based on

a new bureaucratic state apparatus. Increasingly,many democratic Marx-

ist intellectuals on their own saw an obvious resemblance between the

AMP and Marxist-Leninistregimes,evenas they attemptedto "recapture"the AMP concept from Wittfogel's anti-communist use of it.26

Even more fundamentally, as Alvin Gouldner pointed out, the AMP maydemonstrate a basic contradiction or anomaly in Marx's theory of the

state. In the AMP, "far from being dependent on classes controlling the

dominant means of production, the state itself controls these and other

classes are dependent on it."27 Thus, Marxist historians who use the

AMP implicitly raise the possibility that the rulers of a LeninistPartystate

could dominate and exploit directly as a bureaucratic class.

On a more general level, as Ernest Gellner recently described, the AMP

weakens the idea of a universal and inevitable progress toward com-munism:

[TheAMP] impairs,perhaps destroys,the unity of human history by postulatinga sideline of historical development that perhaps leads nowhere and ends in stag-nation ... more subtly and significantly, it undermines the univocal economic

theory of evil, which makes political domination a consequence of exploitation

and class antagonism.



720

The AMP contradicts both state socialism as the solution for the evil of

exploitation and the Marxistexpectation that the statewill disappear withthe end of class antagonism. By eliminating the prioruniversalevil of eco-

nomic exploitation and class domination, it follows that the idea of

despotism in the AMP also "cannotbe exorcisedbythe canonical methods

thatorthodoxyspecifies." ThusGellnercontendsthattheAMP contradicts

the fundamental premises of Marxism:

... there is indeed no room for the AMP in a Marxism that requires the state

to be endogenously generatedby class conflict, nor in one that is to give us faith

in the state'seventual disappearance under conditions of classlessness. In other

words, the very notion of the AMP contradicts both the story of the Fall and

the hope of Salvation.28

Wheneverthe AMP debate was revived n a socialist state, therefore,peo-

ple who saw validity in the AMP had first to demonstrate their loyalty

to Marxism as a guiding ideology and show their support for the legitima-

cy of the Leninist party-state.They did so first by denouncing Wittfogel

anddenying

that the AMP wasan anti-Marxistconcept. Second theytried

to deny that the AMP applied either to the period immediately preceding

the revolution or to a "backward"or "stagnant" society "liberated"by

imperialism. And finally, the Aziatchiki attempted to protect their posi-

tion (and their careers)by denying that the AMP applied to modern so-

cialist societies.29

Having thus demonstratedtheir orthodoxy and reliability,the Aziatchiki

could then raise the AMP issue as a more tacit warning of future

dangers.30Orthey could use the AMP to imply a greaterinheritancethan

previously believed from a despotic past. Consequently, the issue inevita-

bly became politically sensitive everywhereit was raised.

The AMP debate in China

The Grundrissewas published in Chinese in 1979 as part of Volume 46

of the Collected Worksof Marx and Engels.31Thus, the AMP conceptwas relegitimized by the Grundrisseand made available for use by dissi-

dent intellectuals in much the same waythat it was after the "second" de-

bate in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the West.32In 1980 the

Democracy Wall activist WangXizhe did not hesitate to make use of the

concept, though only in passing. Likewise, Lin Xiling, a 1950s critic of

Mao and the Chinese Party state, upon her release from prison after the

GPCR, wrote a letter of protestto Deng Xiaoping in which she also men-



721

tioned the legacy of the AMP forthe despotism of the Maoist era,a legacy

that she suggested may have survived into the contemporary period.33Wangand Lin perhaps based their referencesto the AMP on articles first

appearing in Chinese university journals in 1978 and 1979 and reflected

in articles in national journals in 1979 and 1980.34

As the debate intensified among Party-connected intellectuals, a majorconference was called in Tianjin in April of 1981to discuss the AMP. As

reflected in the summary of the conference in the third issue of Zhong-

guoshiyanjiu (Studiesin Chinese

History)in

1981,the

meetingwas domi-

natedbythose who favoredusing the AMP, although the majorityof scho-

lars would limit its use to a unilinear framework. Though at one pointlabeled the "comrades in opposition," the minority of reform-minded

scholars, i.e.,those who viewedthe AMP as a separatemode of productionwithin a multilinear schema, seemed more than able to hold their own.

These "opposition" figures were well representedin the summary of the

views expressedat the conference and in the speeches printed in the jour-nal.35The authors of the summary expressedthe hope for a second con-

ference on the AMP in the near future, as well as for an "Association of

AMP Studies," hopes that to date have nevermaterialized. Some of their

other wishes, for the incorporation of the AMP into Marxist studies, for

a non-politicized academic discussion of the AMP, and for a study of for-

eign scholarship on the AMP, were dashed shortly after the conference

itself, although they were briefly revived in 1985-1986.

The national journal Lishi yanjiu (Historical Studies) printed articles in

1980 and 1982 that represented only traditional Stalinist-inspired view-

points on the AMP. The only political reformer or academic "opposition"

figure representedin the journal was Wu Dakun in 1982. Even then, his

article did not justify the Marxist use of the AMP, except by hints and

implications, but rather,denounced KarlWitfogel's concept of "Oriental

Despotism."36 For the most part, from 1982to 1986, the AMP was onlymentioned in its Stalinist or neo-Stalinist guise. The debate as a whole

came to a halt with the beginning of the conservative intellectual tide

linked to Hu Qiaomu ana Deng Liqun that culminated in the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign of 1983.

In the Chinese AMP debate,the major schools of thought arethe majorityconservatives and minority reformers.The majority conservativesincludeall those intellectualsrelatedto anti-mainstream and waveringmainstreamelite fractions. These intellectuals have tried to remain loyal to a Stalinistuniversalunilinearpath of developmentin all societies. Although the con-



722

servatives hold diverse views, they all tend to agree either that the AMP

at most representsa variation of an earlierprecapitalistmode of produc-tion beyond which China long ago progressed, or that Marx and Engelsabandoned the AMP concept in the 1870s after they readLewisMorgan'swork on primitive society.

The minority reformers include the genuine multilinear advocates, the

"opposition" figuresrelated to the Partydemocratsamong the intellectual

allies of the remunerative raction of the mainstream coalition. Also with-

in theminority, however,

are intellectuals who believe that the AMP

representsa unique variant of a unilinear path of development, i.e., that

not all societies must pass through the exact Western European path.These latterfigures,whom we will label "unilinearnon-universalists," are

cautious intellectuals who attemptedto legitimize the AMP while protect-

ing themselves against a future backlash.37

Lin Ganquan has offered one of the most skillful analyses of the majorityconservative camp. His article in the journal issue of speeches from the

Tianjinconference was chiefly a denunciation of Melotti. Similarto other

conservative arguments, Lin claims that Marx and Engels in their early

writingsonly intendedthe AMP to representan economic category within

the primitive communal mode, and that they changed their views after

reading Morgan in the 1870s and after studying the survival of primitivecommunal forms in Russia.38After that time they supposedly only spokeof "Asiatic forms" as a transitional category of class society between the

primitive and slave modes of production. Though Lin recognizes that

primitive communal features linked to "Asiatic forms" did survive for a

longer period in China and Russiathan in the West,he insists that any link

of the AMP to China ended with the rise of private landlords at the end

of the WesternZhou dynasty and the beginning of the centralized Qin

(221-206 B.C.)and FormerHan (202 B.C. - 9 A.D.) dynasties. Thus he

takes advantage of Melotti's failure to distinguish between the decentral-

ized, diffused political powerunder the late WesternZhou and the highly

centralized bureaucraticempiresof later dynasties (a weakness in Melot-

ti's argumentcorrectedby Hu Zhongda - see below), therebydismissingany attempts of Chinese historians to apply the AMP and its legacy of

despotism to the recent imperial epoch.

Lin also denies that Marx and Lenin intended to include Russiaunder the

Czars in the AMP category, eventhough they recognized survivalsof the

primitivecommunes there.In both China and Russia, such primitivecom-

munal survivals within imperial systems of government failed to change



723

both societies' basic "feudal" nature. Though Lin recognizes that state

ownership of land was a minor component of landownership

in China's

feudal period, he claims that it was heavily outweighed by feudal landlord

and independent small peasant ownership. No matter how enlarged the

centralizeddespotic state and its "armyof bureaucrats"became from the

Qin and Han to the Ming and Qing dynasties, for Lin "everyrankingoffi-

cial of the court in everydynasty was only a tool of landlord class regard-less of his backgroundor nature."Thus, there was no despotic staterulingin its own interests. If certain individual officials occasionally seemed to

act against particular local landlords, they did so to preservethe overall

social orderand did not change the officials' nature as a "tool of the ruling

landlord class." No matter whether it was early Chinese dynasties under

slavesociety or later "feudal"dynasties, "none of them existedas a 'collec-

tive bureaucracy"'rulingas a class in itself, as Melotti mistakenlysuggest-

ed. Although Melotti correctly noted the highly centralizednature of po-

litical power in Chinese feudal society of the late imperial period, Lin

asserts, "there was no necessary relationship between despotic centraliza-

tion of power as a political system and the AMP. [Despotism] could be

built on a slave mode of production. It could also be built on a feudal modeof production."39

Lin recognizesthat different societies with common modes of productioncontained important and major variations worth investigatingin orderto

overcome the "dogmatism" of simple categories. Nevertheless, Lin be-

lieves that any new,less dogmatic analysis should not lead Marxist histori-

ans to underestimate the weight of landlord exploitation versus state ex-

ploitation in Chinese history, nor to challenge the universality of theunilinear scheme of history and the five basic modes of production as

clearly intended by Marx and Engels.

Unlike many scholars in the conservative camp who ignore most of the

argumentsof the second debate in the West(thus remainingloyal to Stalin

and his elimination of the concept in the late 1930s) Lin argues againstother conservatives that the AMP could not be equated with any one pre-

capitalist mode of production. Instead, Lin claims, the AMP representedan early economic, as opposed to historical, category of Marx. Lin likely

argues in such a manner to take into account the inadequacy of pre-Grundrisse conservative arguments. In other words, he probably recog-nizes the need to makethe conservativeposition as a whole moreinternally

consistent, as well as the need to take congnizance of the political realityof the centralized bureaucracyof imperial China.



724

In Lin's shrewddefense of universalunilinearity,we clearly see the dilem-

ma of those Chinese intellectuals who recognize the fact of centralizationof power in imperial China yet who insist on rejecting the AMP and re-

maining loyal to a basically unrevised "feudal" label for the whole post-WesternZhou period. As the self-professed upholdersof orthodox histori-

cal and dialectical materialism, such intellectuals are forced to separatea political superstructure the centralized,bureaucraticstate) from an eco-

nomic base (landlord ownership), a clear Marxist heresy. Lin Ganquan

goes to the point of finding similar superstructuresequally compatiblewith different modes of

productionin China, while vastly different super-

structures wereequally compatible with the "feudal" societies in China,

Japan, and the West.

Some intellectuals within the minority camp managed to hedge their bets

by also basingthemselveson the orthodox Stalinistposition that the AMP

was only a variant of the "Asiatic"communes that existedpriorto the rise

of the ancient (slave) mode of production. Following conservatives such

as Lin they also argue that "remnants" of those communes could exist

past slavery into feudalism. These "moderates" among the reformers,

however, emphasize much more the uniqueness of these "Asiatic" sur-

vivals than do the conservative Chinese intellectuals and their counter-

parts in the Soviet Union, especially regardingthe strengthof the Asiatic

centralized,authoritarian state.Thus, I contend that the moderateswithin

the minority camp are arguing for a non-universal path of development

within a unilinear schema.40Bowing to Stalinist orthodoxy, the moder-

ates' non-universality, like Melotti's, applies only to the pre-communist

epoch - all societies will still reach the final stage of history. These are

cautious academics trying to expand the legitimacy of the AMP debate

in the field of history, while trying to protect their careersagainst future

political attack. Nevertheless, they do attempt to allow for a unique Chi-

nese variant of feudalism that might have more despotic tendencies and

might be different from the WesternEuropean formula in which feudal

societies inevitably passed to capitalism.

According to true reformers among the "comrades in opposition," theAMP representeda unique oriental class society. Because they implied the

historical existence of a Chinese despotic state ruling in its own interest,

they came into direct conflict with the interests of higher Party leaders.

While all individuals denounced Wittfogel's use of the concept as "mali-

cious" and "traitorous,"41only the conservatives denounce Melotti in

similar terms. Reformers try to accept the partial legitimacy of Melotti



725

by treating him as a member of the progressivecamp - in Mao's terms,

asfalling

within the category of non-antagonistic contradictions among

the people. The reformers could label Melotti in such a fashion because

he still upholds the universalityof socialism and communism as the ulti-

mate end to all paths of development.

In contrast, the majority unilinear conservativecamp tries to delegitimize

Melotti's ideas. Lin Ganquan denounces Melotti for "distorting"Chinese

history and for "maliciously attacking contemporary China as a country

built upon the AMP and characterizedby a collective bureaucracy."Lin

finds "Melotti's absurditynot worth our ink to criticize," though he used

a whole article'sworthof ink to do just that. He especially criticizes Melot-

ti for his supposedly Europocentricargumentthat China as an AMP soci-

ety had little or no possibility to develop capitalism on its own, i.e., for

the argumentthat AMP societies werestagnant and only advanced due to

the impact of Westernimperialism.42

On the other hand, the conservatives' opponents only criticize Melotti in

a one-sentence call for a "clarification" of his views within a critical aca-demic debate. In such a debate, they would be able to incorporate large

parts of Melotti's analysis. The leader of the multilinear section of the

minority.WuDakun, who in 1980openly admittedthe influence of Melotti

and led the team that translated Melotti's work into Chinese, never once

criticized him, and in 1982 still quoted him for a factual reference to

Marx.43Wu wants to maintain the link between the AMP and state au-

tonomy, the most importantissue upon which ther reformscholarsagreed.

The Chinese "opposition" on multilinearity and state autonomy

As we have seen, some of the scholars in the Chinese debate try to stake

out a middle ground that would legitimize the AMP as a description of

unique societies, yet remain within Stalinist or neo-Stalinist bounds of or-

thodoxy in finding such societies to pass through all the pre-capitalist

phases of development. While we have given them the label "unilinearnon-universalists" to distinguish them from the more genuine mul-

tilinear school in China, some AMP adherents in the latter school them-

selves try to retain a link to the unilinear scheme that had so long been

part of Chinese orthodoxy.

The leader of the multilinear school, Wu Dakun, attempts to retain such

a link by dividing the AMP into two stages, ancient oriental society (thus



726

linked to slavery)and the Asiatic feudal (fengjian) system. Using these di-

visions, Wu claims legitimacy for his version of the AMP in the thoughtof Mao Zedong. Though Mao, Wu points out, often referredto China's

fengjian past, he always emphasized the patriarchal clan authority that

led to a Chinese pattern of familial exploitation on top of class exploita-tion under feudalism.44By dividing the AMP into two stages, Wu is also

able to deny the characteristic of "stagnation"often ascribedto AMP so-

cieties. Thus he remainsloyal to the notion of a progressiveChinese revolu-

tion and avoids the danger of the AMP justifying imperialism as the

progressiveforce in Asia.

At the same time, Wu finds differences between Chinesefengjian societyand WesternEuropean society along lines that incorporate some of the

classic characteristicsof the AMP. First, in the imperial epoch before the

Western impact, China combined private and state land ownership

through tax and corvee obligations of the peasant to the state. Second,

the state controlled not only land and water resourcesthrough hydraulic

and other projects, but also the most important small commodity enter-

prises, as in its monopolies on salt and iron. Such a view leads directly

to a pictureof a Chinesefengjian society containing a much more central-

ized and authoritarian state than the decentralizedpolitical authority of

Westernfeudalism. Third, Wu finds that land could be bought and sold

inthefengjian system,thus beginningthe firsthistoricalform of capitalism

listed by Marx in Capital. Fourth, the remnantsof primitivecommunism

and slaverysurvived infengjian society through the patriarchalclan sys-

tem. Fifth, Chinese cities lacked a bourgeoisie and were dominated by

landlords and bureaucrats. Sixth, Chinese fengjian society existed in asmall peasant economy linking agriculture and handicrafts, with com-

modity production limited to luxury production for the consumption of

bureaucratsand landlords.45

By positing these basic characteristicsof Chinesefengjian society, Wu is

able to use the AMP without implying the stagnation or inherent un-

revolutionaryquality of Asian society, an implication for which Lin Gan-

quan severelycriticized Melotti and implicitly, the Chinese reformers.46Wu could explain that although China had failed to develop capitalism

and developed slowly in comparison to the West,it neverthelesscontained

the seeds of capitalism before the Western impact (again, avoiding the

criticismof the conservativesagainst Melotti). By the same token, Wu de-

nies that China was without grounds for future development and change,

including socialist revolution.

Most important,Wu uses his redefinition of China's

fengjian societyto



727

incorporate the AMP as a way to explain the tension in Chinese history

between the central government and the landlords, a situation difficult ifnot impossible to understandby use of the unilinearcategory of the feudal

mode of production. Wu's work is important as a piece of historical

scholarshipin addition to its contributions to Marxisttheory. Throughout

Chinese history, in the progressionof many dynasties, small peasants were

periodically squeezed to the point of rebellion as taxes increased on both

their land and the land of non-official gentry,while the bureaucraticoffi-

cials' lands became increasingly tax exempt.47Yet as Chinese history un-

folded, privateand

ownershipincreased at the

expenseof state

ownership,a change Wu claims was in the direction of capitalism. This change in land

ownership, combined with peasant rebellions and changes in the state tax

system, demonstratethat Chinese society was far from static or unchang-

ing, directly refuting Wittfogel's analysis.

Wu asks for further study of China'sAMP aspects in order to aid in Chi-

na's modernization. He leaveslargelyunstated, however,what the remain-

ing vestiges of the AMP were,other than vestiges of the village commune

among some minority nationalities. In light of his application of the AMP

to the history of Han Chinese Wu clearly has other despotic vestiges in

mind. Though he would not spell out the nature of that continuing

despotism under socialism, Wu does suggest that the AMP had relevance

to "the study of contemporary world economy," but he claims that that

study would be more appropriateto "another subject" which he "would

not talk about here." As the leading exponent of the multilinear view of

the AMP, Wu Dakun is perhaps more restrainedthan other reformersin

utilizing the AMP concept to warn of the continuing despotic features of

the socialist state.48

The boldest exponent of the "opposition" view of th AMP is Hu Zhongdaof the University of Inner Mongolia. Perhaps not coincidentally, this re-

gion was hard hit by the extreme state oppression of the GPCR.49Hu spe-

cifically criticizesthe unilinear scheme of five modes of production, argu-

ing for the AMP as a separate "social existence." He arguesthat not only

did the AMP diverge from WesternEuropean-style feudalism, but that

slaveryand feudalism themselves were not chronological stages but sepa-ratepaths out of primitive society. Thus there was no single,universalpathof development, but rather many unique paths, though all followed the

formula of pre-class - class - classless society.

All pre-capitalist class societies shared the characteristics of simplemechanical development (i.e., ironage hand labor), agricultureas the chief



728

production form combined with family handicraft industry,and land tax-

ation as the major form of oppression. Ancient, feudal, andAsiatic modeswere all different forms of "slavery"defined in the large sense, that is,methods of direct expropriationof surplus labor by the oppressing class.

Although Hu recognizes the fact that Engels may havedropped the AMP

in later writings and Lenin at times defined Russia and China as fallingunder an enlargeddefinition of "feudalism," he believes that Marxists in

the contemporary era do not have to deny the unique qualities of an

Asiatic path to development. Hu recognizes that Chinese society in theWesternZhou Dynasty and Spring and Autumn Period contained quali-ties resembling WesternEuropean feudalism and had aspects of a slave

system in parts of the Han Dynasty. Nevertheless,beginning with the Qinand Han dynasties, Hu claims that China had a different, and for the most

part far more developed, system than WesternEuropean feudalism. In

stressingthe unique nature of the Chinese state from the Qin to the Qing,he not only gives a much-needed counterweight to long-standing Marxist

orthodoxyon ancient Chinese

history,but

surpasses manyWestern

Sinologists, such as Tokei and Melotti, who failed to distinguish properlybetween pre- and post-Qin history.

For Hu the differences between the Chinese imperial period and Western

feudalism center on the existence in China of a large, centralized state

standing as the "higher unity" above a system of peasant ownership of

land. Landlords existedat the local level, but the centralizedcollective rul-

ing powertook the place of serfdom perse, presumablythrough state taxes

and corvee labor. China's self-sufficient agriculturalsystem retained fea-

tures of the primitivecommunes throughsuchunique entities as the single-

surname clan villages. Thus, like Wu Dakun, Hu tries to finesse the point

that the conservatives used against the reformers and that WesternSinolo-

gists raisedagainst Wittfogel - the private ownership of land in imperial

China and the existence of a landlord class50 - by implying the identity

of landlords and patriarchal clan leaders. Hu claims that in China state

interests dominate private class interests. He suggests that clan leaders

acted as agents of the state on the local level rather than as independent

exploiters. But downplaying the significance of privatepropertymore ex-

plicitly than Wu, Hu Zhongda highlights directexploitation by a central-

ized despotic state. Hu's work offers an extremelycreative attempt to ex-

amine the destructive autonomy of the socialist state using Marxist tools

and principles.

He argues for the existence of direct state exploitation in imperial China



729

by pointing out that China's monarchical systemallowed for the monopo-

ly of the surplus products and surplus labor by an "autocraticcollective

ruling class" (zhuanzhi junzhu weishoude tongzhi jituan he boxue jieji- literally "ruling clique and exploiting class headed by an autocratic

monarchl')51Ratherthan follow the orthodox Marxist-Leninisttheory of

the state, i.e., the state as protectingand disguising exploitation by a domi-

nant economic class, Hu suggests that the Chinese imperialstate itself had

a dominant position in a collective ruling class of landlords, administra-

tors, and the monarchy. So the state did not just protect and disguise ex-

ploitation, but rather,exploited its subjects directly.

Despite some vacillations on retainingthe label of feudalism, Hu acceptsthe AMP as a useful concept in explaining the real differences between

China's centralized absolutist monarchy and the decentralized politics of

Westernfeudalism. He specifically notes that Marx neverapplied the con-

cept of feudalism in the strict senseto ancient or nineteenth-centuryorien-

tal society. Hu vacillates on whether to call this unique oriental variant

a "separatesocial existence" or a separatemode of production. Neverthe-

less in his article he does issue a clear rejection of the unilinear five modesof production schema and expressthe hope for continuing free academic

debate on the AMP issue.52

By 1982-1983, such hopes were quietly repressed by high Party leaders.

Unlike the contemporaneous debate over humanism and alienation, the

AMP disputes never surfaced in the popular press. The AMP debate was

ended by higher echelon leaders such as Hu Qiaomu shortly after the

Zhongguoshi yanjiu issue was published.

In the first conservative backlash, lasting until late 1984, the multilinear

AMP advocates were largely silenced. At the same time, the "unilinear

non-universalists" retreated o a viewprepared n advance by theirvacilla-

tions on multilinearity, a view positing a distinctive Chinese variation of

feudalism.

The last stage of the AMP debate, 1985-1987

In 1982the small advantagesthe mainstreamrulingelite got fromallowingthe AMP debate wereoutweighed by perceivedthreats to state autonomyfrom other partsof the elite, and the AMP debate was forcibly ended. One

might be tempted to speculate that revived use of the AMP in Leninist

Party-states may be too esoteric to appeal in the short run to more than



730

a narrowband of intellectuals. The reformimplications of such a debate

can alwaysbe silenced by perceptive state elites long before the AMP at-tracts a wider base of adherents. Yet when China's Marxist democrats re-

cently found themselves in a position publicly to reassertthemselves from

March to December of 1986, the AMP was quickly resurrected.The lack

of association of any high party leader with open opposition to the AMP

no doubt helped (compared to Hu Qiaomu's public role in the denuncia-

tion of "Marxist humanism" and "socialist alienation").

Partydemocrat sources indicate that

earlyin 1986,the

prospectsof

politi-cal reform improved greatly with the loss of influence of Deng Liqun

(whose gradual fall from grace and from his position of Chief of the

Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee began with the

debacle of the Spiritual Pollution Campaign) and chief Party ideologist

and Politburo memberHu Qiaomu. The eclipse of these two leading con-

servativessupposedly occurredwhen theircall to denounce leading reform

intellectuals and artists was rejected by higher party leaders, including

Deng Xiaoping himself.53 Reportedly, wavering mainstream and anti-

mainstream fractions were ordered to cease their attempts to limit eco-

nomic and especially political reform and to cooperate with the main-

stream remunerativeprogramof widened intellectual emancipation. This

program, organized under the slogan of a new "One Hundred Flowers,"

was started n late Springand earlySummer 1986as a preludeand continu-

ing adjunctto the buildup for new moves towardpolitical reformthat were

announced at the sixth plenum of the Twelfth Central Committee in Sep-

tember.As part of the new political reformmovement, a portion of Deng

Xiaoping's August 1980 remarksto an enlarged meeting of the Politburowas republishedin Beijing Review.54This speech, mentioned earlier,had

providedthe justification for the early political reform efforts of China's

Party democrats, including the minority AMP advocates.

The early move toward political reform in 1980 had been blunted by the

"anti-bourgeois iberalization"drivein 1981and the "anti-SpiritualPollu-

tion Campaign"of 1983. Even with the revivalof urban economic reform

in late 1984 and early 1985, Deng's 1980 speech was not yet used as agroundworkfor political reform.Onlyafterthe (temporary)removal from

power or diminished influence of key conservatives, and the realization

that economic reformwas foundering against both the poor business cli-

mate in 1985 and foreign and domestic suspicion, was political reform

reactivated.Once again, Deng's 1980speech legitimized the AMP debate.

The preludeto political reformin the "New One HundredFlowers"open-



731

ing reachedthe Chinese historical profession in mid-1985. In that year,the

editors of Lishi yanjiu convened a conference on Academic Freedom inBeijing. There, leading conservatives, including Lin Ganquan (probably

under pressurefrom reform leaders at the top of the CCP hierarchy),ex-

pressed support for a new expansion of freedom and equality in academic

debate. In fact, one author of the summary of the conference suggested

that Lishiyanjiu should not strivefor unity on every ssue and should loos-

en its editorial restrictionsto allow for more purelyacademic discussions,

which would include heterodox views.55

Parhapsin response,articlesappearedin late 1985that analyzedthe nature

of the centralized bureaucracy of imperial China, highlighted the in-

fluence of "feudalism" on Nazi Germany,and questioned the universalityof slave society both in historical fact and Marxist theory.56

In February1986 an article on Plekhanov by SamuelBaron, who had visit-

ed China in April of 1985, and an analysis of Baron's studies of Plek-

hanov by Chen Qineng, also appeared.57Partydemocrats began to resur-

rect Plekhanov's legacy (the idea of an "Asiatic"heritage) as preparationfor political reform of the LeninistParty-state.They also began to reexam-

ine the ideas of Nikolai Bukarin and Rosa Luxemburg.

The AMP reappearedin the first 1986 issue of Lishi yanjiu, ending that

journal's conservative ideological monopoly. The individual responsiblefor this breakthroughwas none other than Hu Zhongda, the most daringof the AMP advocates at the 1981Tianjin conference, who returnedwith

an article criticizing the orthodox five mode view. In this article, Hu doesnot emphasize the AMP, but instead echoes the late 1970sview of certain

Soviet Aziatchiki who advocated the existence of a single precapitalist

stage,a viewthat preserveduniversalitywhile allowingmutlilinearpathsto

capitalism.58Though legitimizing the Chinese path to socialism within

the universalpath to communism, the Soviet-inspiredformula allowedthe

AMP to resurface as a despotic remnant of feudalism or as a temporarynon-universal variation that could continue to influence succeeding

stages, just as elements of slavery and feudalism coexisted in differentdegrees in pre-capitalist societies and into capitalism. Cautiously, Hu

refers to his earlier work of the 1980s, including his Tianjin article, as still

guiding his thought.59

By far the most extraordinaryreappearanceof the AMP is proferred by

Wang Miandan in the third 1985 issue of Makesi zhuyi yanjiu (Marxist

Studies)published bythe partydemocrat-controlledInstitute of Marxism-



732

Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Wang clearly views the AMP as a fun-

damental unabandoned tenet of Marx and as a real historicalentity.

Though he views the AMP as a survival of primitive communal forms into

class society, Wang emphasizes development and change within this mode.

He explicitly denies the stagnation or backwardness of former AMP socie-

ties that underwent socialist revolution. Most important, he finds the

"most outstanding characteristic" of the AMP to include:

... a state representedby individual rulers at the highest levels [who carry out]

a supereconomic concentrated rule over every individual in society. [Thus] the

major revelation [of the AMP] is the [characteristicof] absolute inherited special

ownership privileges of the state over the basic productive means and the state's

control over the majority of surplus profits [including]the utilization and distri-

bution of these profits. [Thestateunderthe AMP also possesses] a near-mythicalabsolute control of the thought of its members and equally absolute blind loyalty

from all members of society towards its highest ruler....

Wang specifically uses the term "Oriental Despotism" to refer to the state

under the AMP, though he denies that the AMP had a geographical limita-

tion to Asia either inactuality

orin the thought of Marx. Although he

denies the backwardness of former AMP societies now under socialist rule,

Wang stresses the impossibility of skipping or leaping stages in the revolu-

tionary process. He also denies that the AMP and Oriental Despotism can

be equated with state socialism either in Marx's eyes or in reality. Yet, in

the boldest Chinese statement on the AMP to date, Wang clearly suggests

the continuing legacy of the AMP for countries that passed through such

a stage on the route to socialism:

From whichever point of view we examine this [question], we can accept with

confidence thatMarxnevertreated his studyof theAMP asananalysisof socialist

revolution, [but] in treating the AMP this way we cannot deny the implication

of Marx's AMP toward the understandingof some very important phenomenain socialism. Quitethe contrary,this concept has a verysignificant realistic mean-

ing, and on this point we must have a specific detailed explanation... Here I only

want to point out that because the construction of socialist revolution has been

realized in some countries of Europe and Asia which have similar legacies of

Oriental Despotism, the AMP discussed by Marx, and the AMP characteristics

more or less reflectedin those countries in their effort to build socialism, are notstrange phenomena. We cannot overlook this important point .. this is a very

important task in order to secure a socialism defined by Marx [as leading] to a

higher social stage....60

From December 1986 to 1987, however, political reform came to a crashing

halt following student demonstrations at major Chinese universities. In

the conservative backlash, the ultimate protector and patron of the party

democrats, CCP general secretary Hu Yaobang, was forced to resign from



733

his post. Deng Liqunand Hu Qiaomu returnedto influence in the ideolog-

ical sphere and managed to have a conservative installed as propaganda

chief to replace Zhu Houze, who had encouraged intellectuals to pursue

political reform. A new campaign against "bourgeois liberalization,"

similarin tone to the conservative-dominatedcampaigns of 1981and 1983,

accompanied the revivalof conservative influence. In a broader threat to

economic reform, (and in an ironic counterpoint to the AMP), ominous

articles have recently appeared in the party-controlled press calling for a

new stresson grain production in agriculture.This step could be interpret-ed as a threatto ruralcommodity production promoted bythe responsibli-

ty system. Intellectuals all over China, most possessing strong memories

of the "Anti-RightistMovement"of 1957 that sought to root out the "poi-sonous weeds" of the first "One Hundred Flowers"campaign, have fallen

silent on the issue of political reform. As a result of the ebb of the reform

high tide of 1986and the emergenceof a new,virulent conservativestream,

the AMP debate has once again been aborted.

Conclusion: possible lessons of the AMP debate

For a brief moment the AMP seemed alive and well in China as a force

for political reform and democratization. As one scholar concluded con-

cerning the recent Soviet AMP debate,61perhaps an implicit "peacefulcoexistence" of all sides on the AMP issue for a moment started to form

in China, in which Aziatchiki could arguefor multilinearpaths to develop-ment within a single, universalpre-capitaliststage of history. Though this

was a retreat from the height of the 1981articles, the leadersof the revivedChinese AMP debate in 1985-1986 remainedahead of their Soviet coun-

terparts.As long as the fortunes of political reform wereon the upswing,it seemed that the Chinese AMP advocates would only grow bolder.

The immediate factors in the revival of the Chinese AMP debate mightbe related to the need of China's mainstream state elite coalition to main-

tain the viability of its remunerative-dominantpolicy mix. To do so, the

Dengist mainstream must demonstrate China'scontinuing openness to theoutside world. In the ideological context, this was perhaps reflected in the

need to avoiddenunciation by "progressive riends"in the West.But, more

important, in the domestic context, mainstream state factions trying to

legitimize economic reformprobably felt the need to enlist the active sup-

port of some scholars with intellectual emancipation and political reform.

In the present atmosphere, however, a new consensus that economic



734

modernization can be achieved without political reform seems to be

emerging. This consensus may have arisen when key elements of Deng'srulingcoalition defected to a newmainstream dominated by coercive frac-

tions, led by State ChairmanPengZhen. The members of this mainstream

seem to agreethat the short-term threats to stateautonomy and social con-

trol representedby the student demonstrations outweigh the economic

pressures hreateningthe growingsocial surplusat the disposal of the state

elite as a whole. Indeed, in the present campaign against "bourgeois liber-

alization," the party democrats who tried to justify political reform are

beingblamed for the student demonstrations. Far from

growing bolder,the Chinese Aziatichiki have been forced into silence.

Nevertheless,one fact temperspessimism about the long-term fortunes of

political reform and the AMP debate in China. At least for a moment,

political reform was linked to economic modernization by some of the

highest leaders of China's Leninist Party-state.If the bad investment cli-

matein China and negative foreign opinion continue to threateneconomic

growth and social stability, the remunerativeelements in the mainstream

ruling coalition led by Premier Zhao Ziyang may be able to hold their

ground on the need for at least some economic reform. In the very long

run, if economic stagnation causes enough ruling state elites to revivethe

link betweeneconomic modernization andpolitical reform(probablyafter

the death or retirementof keyconservativeleaders), intellectualswill begin

again to call discreetly for political reform. At this point, the AMP and

its latent alternativeMarxist theory of the state will again become availa-

ble for use by cautiously courageous Chinese intellectuals.

Notes

1. I would like to express my appreciationto the Univesity of Wisconsin and Beloit College

for their generous research support. I also want to thank M. Crawford Young, Booth

Fowler,and especially EdwardFriedman, for theircomments and criticism on the larger

work from which the present essayis derived, "Despotism and LeninistStateAutonomy:

the Chinese AMP Debates in Compartive Perspective"(Ph.D. dissertation, University

of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Political Science). I am also greteful to Brantly

Womack for his comments on an early draft of this paper at the Midwest Conference

on Asian Affairs in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois on October 5, 1986. Finally, I would

like to thank VanYoungfor his translation assistance and Anita Andrew for her advice

and support. Of course, I am solely responsible for the content and shortcomings of

this article.

2. The remunerative,coercive and ideological social compliance model is derived from

Amitai Etzioni. See hisA ComparativeAnalysis of Complex Organizations, (New York:

FreePress, 1964).Etzioni's model was firstapplied to ChinabyG. W. Skinner and Edwin



735

Winckler in "Compliance Succession in Rural Communist China," Journal of Asian

Studies 24(1) (November 1964):3- 43; 24(2) (February1965):195 228; and 24(3) (May

1965):363 399. Herein I superimposea statistparadigmon a simple version of Etzioni's

model, an approach with which none of these scholars would necessarily agree. The

"mainstream"and "anti-mainstream" abels areborrowedfrom analyses of Japan'srul-

ing Liberal Democratic Party.

3. The idea of intellectuals going beyond the goals of their party sponsor is derived from

Merle Goldman (though I employ a three-line analysis of Chinese politics rather than

her two lines of liberals and radicals). See Goldman, China's Intellectuals: Advise and

Dissent, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), passim.

4. See Deng Xiaoping, "Reforming [the] LeadershipSystem," Beijing Review 29(32) (Au-

gust 11, 1986):15-19.5. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, Werke,41 vols., Berlin, 1956, 13: 7ff, translated in

Selected Worksof Marx and Engels, (Moscow, 1935), 1:361ff, Reprintedin Karl Marx:

Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),

388- 391.

6. See Edward Friedman, "Three Leninist Paths Within a Socialist Conundrum," and

Dorothy Solinger, "Commerce:The PettyPrivate Sector and the ThreeLines in the Early

1980's,"in Three Visions of Chinese Socialism, ed. Dorothy Solinger, (Boulder,Colora-

do: Westview Press, 1984), chapters two and four respectively.

7. Marx, "Preface," in McLellan, 390.

8. Marx, Karl, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Okonomie (Rohenwurf) (Founda-tions of the Critique of Political Economy), (1957-58), English edition trans. Martin

Nicolaus, (New York:Vintage Books, 1973). For the first English translation of the sec-

tion knownas theFormen, seePre-CapitalistEconomicFormations, ed. EricHobsbawm,

(New York: International Publishers, 1964).

9. Though finding the AMP concept in the Grundrisseto be limited and incomplete, Alvin

Gouldner argued that the AMP was neverthelessa crucial concept that may have been

glossed over by Marx and Engels due to its nature as an anomaly in their primary para-

digm of the state. See Alvin Gouldner, The TwoMarxisms: Contradictions andA noma-

lies in the Development of Theory, (New York:Seabury, 1980), 11,"State and Class in

Marxism," 324-354.10. Derivedin part from PerryAnderson's similar list in his Lineages of the Absolute State,

(London: New Left Books, 1974), "[ResearchNote on] the 'Asiatic Mode of Produc-

tion,'" 483;also seeUmberto Melotti, Marxand the Third World,edited with a foreword

by Malcolm Caldwell, (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1972), 54;

and Gouldner, 326- 327. On the contradictions and vacillations in Marx on the nature

of the AMP, see Anderson, 482 - 483, and KateCurrie, "The Asiatic Mode of Produc-

tion: Problems of Conceptualizing State and Economy," DialecticalAnthropology 8(4)

(April 1984):251-268.

11. In Marx and Engels, Collected Works,21:177-178. Engels also referred to the feudal

mode as applicableto Asia in his On the American LabourMovement (1887),in Collect-

ed Works21:387.Gouldner, however,noted that in Anti-Dihring, Engels perhaps tried

to laythe groundworkfor reintegrating he AMP into the "primaryparadigm"of Marx-

ism. That is, without referring o the AMP,Engels, ina limitedandcontradictoryfashion,

triedto providean explanation for the origin of rulingelites not only from the dominant

economic class in a given mode of production, but in the (prior) formation of the state

itself. See Gouldner, 328-333, citing Engels, Herr Eugen Dihring's Revolution in

Science (Anti-Dihring), edited by C. P. Dutt, (New York: International Publishers,

1939), 197ff.



736

12. Georgy Plekhanov, "The Land Question," in Dnievnik Sotsial-Demokrata (Geneva),no. 5 (March 1906):14,16-17, cited in Melotti, 136-137; 198, n. 29. Also cited in Anne

M. Baileyand J. R. Llobera, "TheAsiatic Mode of Production: An Annotated Bibliog-

raphy," Critique of anthropology 2 (Autumn 1974):95-103; 4 and 5 (Autumn

1975):165-176; and KarlWittfogel, Oriental Despotism, (New Haven: YaleUniversity

Press, 1957), 391-393.

13. For his view of Russia as failing under the capitalist mode, see V. I. Lenin, Collected

Works,(London: Lawrence& Wishart, 1960-1970),10:280, 331- 332. Cited in Melotti,

137, 198,note 30; and Bailey and Llobera, "TheAMP," 168-169. See Lenin's TWoTac-

tics of Social Democracy, (1905) in Collected Works9:56, 59, for his description of the

"Asiatic"qualitiesof Russiancapitalistdevelopment. For Lenin'sconcerns of the "Asiat-

ic" qualities of the new socialist bureaucracy n the last years of his life, see CollectedWorks32:349-351; 33:161, 463, 476, 481, 487; and 36:595-596.

14. See Melotti, 9-10; Bailey and Llobera, 174-176; and Wittfogel, 402-406.

15. For Stalin's essay, see B. Franklin, The Essential Stalin: Major Writings1905-1952,

(London: Croom Helm, 1973). See chapter two of my dissertation for a more complete

discussion of the "first" Soviet debate. Also see Marian Sawer,"The Soviet Discussion

of the AMP," Survey (London) 24(3) (Summer 1979):108-127.

16. An oft-noted problemin Wittfogel's analysis is that he combines manydifferent societies

with varyingdegrees of irrigation needs into his "hydraulic" heory. Although the need

for irrigation might be a factor leading to a highly centralizedstate, the state for its own

interests may promote centralized as opposed to local or regional irrigation projects.Other "hydraulic"works, such as China's GrandCanal, seem even more clearly to repre-

sent examples of projects needed mostly not by the ruralagricultural villages but by the

state itself - i.e., for bringing grain into the capital to support a huge administrative

class. Wittfogel's "hydraulictheory," based on a conservative, functionalist view of the

state, thus differs from the underlying statist paradigm of this essay.

17. See Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, chapter 9, "The Rise and Fall of the Theory of the

Asiatic Mode of Production," 369-412. Also seehis "TheRulingBureaucracyof Orien-

tal Despotism: A Phenomenon that Paralzyed Marx," Review of Politics

XV(3):350- 359. Ernest Gellner ("Soviets Against Wittfogel" Theoryand Society 14(3)

(May 1985):341- 370) agrees with modern Soviet critics on the implausibility of Witt-

fogel's charge that Marx and Engels were "Stalinists-by-anticipation," though Gellner

does recognize the contradictions latent in the AMP for the orthodox Marxist theory

of the state.Other criticsof Wittfogel would neverthelessagreethat Marxistdescriptions

of universal "slave"and "feudal" epochs are inadequate at best, and at worst lead to

serious distortions.

18. From the 6th Congress of the CCP in 1928to the death of Mao, the CCP never wavered

from support for Stalin'sunilinear line. A few Chinese Marxists,however,at some points

did take tacit exception to that line, especially during the "Controversyon Social Histo-

ry" in the 1930sand among intellectuals opposed to Mao's Great Leap Forwardin the

late 1950s and early 1960s.ForChinese Marxist accounts touching upon the AMP from

the 1920s to 1949,see BenjaminSchwartz,"A MarxistControversyon China," Far East-

ern Quarterly13(2) (February 1954):143153; Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History: Ori-

gins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919-1937, (Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 1979);G. L. Ulmen, The Science of Society: Towardan

Understanding of the Life and Workof KarlAugust Wittfogel, (The Hague: Mouton

Publishers, 1978):549-550; 584; and finally, Germaine Hosten, "State and Revolution

in China and Japan:MarxistPerspectiveson the Nation-State Revolution in Asia" (Har-

vard University, Ph.D. dissertation, 1985), chapter five, "The Controversy on Chinese



737

Social History." I am gratefulto Prof. Hosten for sending me this chapter.For the period

of 1949-1980, see Ulmen, 584-587; and Tian Renlong, "A Precis of the Discussions

on the ProblemsConcerningthe AMP sincethe Foundingof the PRC (with anAppendixon the List of Theses)," Zhongguoshi yanjiu (Studies in Chinese History)

1981(3):147-159.

19. See for example, Gouldner, 326, 343-344; Marian Sawer,Marxism and the Question

of the Asiatic Mode of Production, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977);and Stuart

R. Schram and H6elne Carrered'Encausse, Marxism and Asia: An Introduction with

Readings, (London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 1969),93. The laterauthors particu-

larly criticize the Hungarian Sinologist Ferenc Tokei in this regard. However, there

perhapsis room for a kinderview of Tokeiin light of the relativelyrecentEnglishtransla-

tion of hisearly

AMPessays

in which heappears

torecognize

the lesson thatmodernsocialism must be based on democratic representation n real,not rubber-stamp,soviets.

See Tokei, Essays on the Asiatic Mode of Production, (Budapest: Akad6miai Kiad6,

1979), 61. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that Tokei uses the anti-Chinese aspects of

his version of the AMP, along with his denunciations of Wittfogel and Djilas, to provehis Leninist credentials while at the same time building an opening of legitimacy for

the AMP as part of a liberation of Marxist thought.20. This factor is emphasized particularly by many WesternMarxist observersunwilling to

grant Wittfogel's thesis that it was fear of parallelswith the socialist "managerial"state

that led Stalin to denounce the AMP. In China, Wu Dakun also claims that it was fear

of justifying imperialismin Asia that led to the Soviet and Chinese rejectionof the AMP.More interestingly, Wu also notes that some Japanese intellectuals in the 1930s made

use of the AMP to justify the "progressivenature"of the Japanese occupation of China

in the Second WorldWar.See Wu Dakun, "The AMP in History as Viewed by Political

Economy in Its Broad Sense," Zhongguoshi yanjiu 3 (1981):18-29. Translatedin Su

Shaozhi, WuDakun, Ru Xin, and Cheng Renqian(editors), Marxism in China (Nottin-gham, U.K.: Spokesman, 1983), 53-77.

21. Althusser, "Contradiction and Overdetermination:Notes for an Investigation," in For

Marx, translatedbyBen Brewster, New York:Pantheon, 1969),87-128. Forthe critique

of WesternMarxist use of the AMP as an apologia for Stalinism, see Gouldner, 344;

also see his article, "Stalinism: A Study of Internal Colonialism," Telos, Winter1977 (78:5) 48.

22. Tokei's lecture was not published until 1966. See his Sur le mode de production asia-

tique, (Budapest: Akad6miai Kiad6, 1966), translated into English in slightly revised

form in the 1979book of essays cited above. For the second debate in the Soviet Union,see for exampleSamuel H. Baron, "Marx'sGrundrisseand the Asiatic Mode of Produc-

tion," Survey (London) 21(1-2) (Winter-Spring 1975):128-147. Also see Ernest Gell-

ner,"Soviets against Wittfogel," and "ARussianMarxistPhilosophy of History," The-

ory and Society 9 (1980):757-777. For the anti-Chinese aspects of the Soviet AMP

debate, see Gilbert Rozman, "The Ch'ing and Its Legacy: Social Change," Chapter 11

of Soviet Studies of Premodern China:Assessments of Recent Scholars, ed. G. Rozman,

(Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1984), 149-164; and

idem, "Soviet Reinterpretationsof Chinese Social History: The Search for the Originsof Maoism," Journal of Asian Studies XXXIV(l) (November 1974):49-72.

23. See Melotti, Marx and the Third World, 5-27.

24. Wureportsthat he was inspiredby the 1974English edition of Melotti's book to examine

the AMP issue, and indeed, to begin work with colleagues on the Chinese translationof Melotti. See Wu, "On SeveralQuestions in the Study of the AMP," Xueshu yanjiu

(Academic Research) 1(1980):11-18, note 2.



738

25. Melotti, 105-113, 141-151.

26. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, 387-400.27. Gouldner, "State and Class in Marxism," 327-328, chapter 11of The TwoMarxisms.

28. Ernest Gellner, "Soviets against Wittfogel," 347-348, 352, 359.

29. Even WesternMarxists had to watch their step. For example, Melotti's link of the AMP

to modern "bureaucraticcollectivism" was often criticized as "deviationist" by fellow

Marxists. See Kate Currie, "Review of Melotti, U.: Marx and the Third World," The

Journal of Peasant Studies 5(4) (1979):519;and idem, "The AMP: Problems of Concep-

tualizing State and Economy," 264. Of course, not all Marxists who defend Marx, En-

gels, and Lenin on the AMP do so for political reasons.

30. For example, though Tokei views the AMP as a transition phase from pre-class to class

society, with definite overtones of bureaucratic class domination, he denies that theAMP could be applied directly to socialist society. On the one hand, Tokei denounces

Wittfogel and Djilas (Essays on the AMP 58), yet on the other suggests the AMP as

a warning for socialism (61).

31. Although the Formen was translated into Chinese as earlyas the 1940s,it was not readilyavailable to a wider Chinese audience until the translation of the entire Grundrisse in

the late 1970s.

32. The "Marxist dissidents" Djilas, Kuronand Modzelewski, Szeleni, and Bahro all made

use of the AMP to attack the exploitative stateclass imposed on manyEasternEuropean

societies bythe Soviet Union. See Sawer,"The Soviet Discussion of the AMP," 125-126.

33. Wang Zixhe, "Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution," translated in On Socialist

Democracy and theLegal System: TheLi YizheDebates, ed. Anita Chan, StanleyRosen,

and Jonathan Unger, (Armonk, New York:M. E. Sharpe, 1985), 177-260, Lin Xilling,

"Letter to Deng Xiaoping" (June 1980), Guang jiaojing (Wide Angle), Hong Kong,

9-10 (September and October, 1983), translated in Chinese Law and Government

XVII(4) (Winter 1984-85): 5-91. Lin, however,pointed to the stagnation and back-

wardness of the Chinese revolution due to the AMP legacy, thus inadvertently opening

herself up to charges of aiding Soviet denunciation of the CCP. In fact, she herself

praised the "Titoist" alternative to Stalinism.

34. Fora bibliographyof the articles from 1978 to 1981,see Tian Renlong, "APrecis of the

Discussions on the Problems Concerning the AMP," 159.

35. Pang Zhuoheng et al., "Summaryof the Symposium on the AMP," Zhongguo shiyan-

jiu 1981(3):3-17.

36. See WuDakun, "CriticizingKarlWittfogel's OrientalDespotism," Lishiyanjiu (Histor-

ical Studies - hereafter LSYJ) 1982(4): 27-36, translated in revised form in Social

Sciences in China 1983, 4(2) (June 1983):213-225.

37. Although as we will see below, even many mutilinear advocates tried to protect them-

selves against future criticism by vacillating to some degree on the AMP issue.

38. See Teodor Shanin, Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the Peripheries of

Capitalism, (NewYork:

MonthlyReview Press, 1984), for a WesternMarxist opinion

that Marx's acceptance of Russian communal survivals was completely consistent with

a multilinear view of the AMP.

39. Lin Ganquan, "TheAMP and Ancient Chinese Society: A Criticismof Umberto Melot-

ti's Distortion of Chinese History in His 'Marx and the Third World,"' Shijie lishi

(World History) (Beijing), hereafter SJLS, 1981(3):133-146.

40. The leader of the reform intellectuals on the AMP issue, Wu Dakun, while remaining

within the multinear camp, suggested something similar to this at the 1981conference.

He claimed that multilinearity should not be equated with "plurality" (duoyuanlun)

of development, and that his analysis still fell within the "monism" (yiyanlun) of the

Marxist universal schema of history. See Tian Renlong summary, 153.



739

41. For example, see Pang Zhuoheng et al., 28.

42. Lin, "The AMP and the Society of Ancient China," 140, 141.Lin exaggeratedMelotti's

ethnocentrism. After all, the point of Melotti's book was to justify revolution in the

Third Worldagainst Marx'sseeming requirementfor revolutiononly in advanced indus-

trial countries.

43. See note 24. Forhis later referenceto Melotti, see "CriticizingKarlA. Wittfogel's Orien-

talDespotism, "214, 220, 225, note 8. Wuis a Professor of Political Economy at Chinese

People's University in Beijing. Interestinglyenough, Wu heard Wittfogel lecture on his

"hydraulic"theory in 1947 while studying at the University of Washington.

44. Wu Dakun, "TheAMP in History," in Marxism in China, 53- 77; citing Mao, "Report

on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan," Selected Works of Mao'

Zedong (Beijing: Foreigh Languages Press, 1975), I, 44, 146.

45. Wu, "The AMP in History," 68-69.

46. Lin, 142.

47. For a WesternSinologist's description of the tensions between landlord and state in-

terests in imperial China, see Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy:

Variations on a Theme, edited by Arthur M. Wright,translatedby H. M. Wright, (New

Haven: YaleUniversityPress, 1964). As noted above, both Tokei and Melotti utilize the

AMP concept to integrateMarxist approaches with Sinologists' findings on the impor-

tance of Chinese bureaucracy.

48. Wu, "The AMP in History," 69-76. Wu's caution on the AMP is perhaps similar to

the caution of theleading party

democrats Su Shaozhi and YuGuangyuan

on the issue

of alienation compared to Wang Ruoshui.

49. Hu Zhongda, "On the Asiatic Mode of Production with a Criticism of the Theory of

Five Modes of Production," Zhongguo shi yanjiu 1981(3) (September):30-43.

50. For example, Lin Ganquan, 140-145, and Maurice Meisner, "The Despotism of Con-

cepts: Wittfogel and Marx on China," China Quarterly 16 (October-December

1963):99- 111.Hu (32) even uses Marx's same few referencesto China that Meisnercriti-

cized Wittfogel for using. The gist of Meisner'scriticism was that Marxneversaid China

lacked private property, as he also never equated China with India. Yetboth Meisner

(104) and Perry Anderson (548-549) recognized the need to go beyond the label of

feudalism in describing China. This is exactly what Hu attempted to do, while usingthe AMP concept as a cloak of legitimacy. In this he was similar to Tokei (62- 78), who

claimed that imperial China was the best example of the AMP and who used the AMP

concept to explain the strength of the central government against the local landlord

"quasi-" or "pseudo-feudal" intereststhroughout much of Chinese history. Still, as we

saw above, Hu surpassedTokei in distinguishing between preand post-Qin Chinese his-

tory.

51. Pang et al. summary of Tianjin conference, 6.

52. Hu, "On the AMP," 39, 44.

53. See for example Lo Ping, "Notes on a Northern Journey," Cheng Ming 104 (June 1,

1986), 6-10, in FBIS: China, June 12, 1986, W6-W14. For the short-lived political re-form movement of 1986, see James R. Schiffman, "China RevivesPolitical Reform De-

bate to Reinforce Gains on Economic Front," The Asian WallStreet Journal Weekly,September 8, 1986: 2.

54. Deng Xiaoping, "Reforming [the] Leadership System."

53. See "AdvocatingAcademic Freedom and Promoting Historical Science: A Forum At-

tended by Historians in Beijing," ed. Chen Wangguiand WangHe, LSYJ 1985(2):3-8.56. Wu Shouzhi, "The Essence and Important Function of Centralized State Power in the

Feudal Autocratic System of China," Shehui zhanxian (Social Science Front), 8(2)



740

(1985):117-125; Wu Youfa, "The Revivalof Feudal Influences and the Rise of German

Fascism,"SJLS 1985:9

(September):47-52;Jin

Jingfang,"Marxism on the Scientific

Concept of Slave Society and the Periodization of Ancient Chinese history," Shehui

zhanxian 8(1) (1985):112-118; and Chen Weisheng, "On SeveralProblems Concerningthe Existence of the Slave System," SJLS 1986(2) (February):49-57.

57. Baron, "Plekhanov,InternationalSocialism, and the Revolutionof 1905," SJLS 1986(2)

(February):24 36; Chen, "The famous American Plekhanov expert Professor Baron,"

SJLS 1986(2):37-39.58. The leading Soviet example of this cautious view can be seen in YuriSemenov, "The

Theory of Socio-Economic Formations and WorldHistory," in Soviet and WesternAn-

thropology, ed. Ernest Gellner, (New York:Columbia University Press, 1980):29-58.

For an analysis of Semenov'sviews, see Gellner, "ARussian Marxist Philosophy of His-tory" and Rapp, "Despotism and Leninist State Autonomy," chapter 2.

59. Hu, "FurtherCriticism of the Five Modes of Production Theory," LSYJ 1986(1):33 51.

60. WangMiandan, "An Inquiry into Marx's Concept of the AMP - Critical Comments

from a Theoretical Standpoint," Makesi zhuyiyanjiu (MarxistStudies) 3(1985):75 86.

61. Baron, "Marx's Grundrisse and the AMP," 146-147.

1987 the fate of marxist democrats in leninist party states： china's debate on the asiatic...

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