estados primitivos y la reproduccion de las relaciones de produccion-algunos problemas de analisis...

7/28/2019 Estados Primitivos y La Reproduccion de Las Relaciones de Produccion-Algunos Problemas de Analisis Marxista Ant

1/14

http://coa.sagepub.com/Critique of Anthropology

http://coa.sagepub.com/content/5/2/21.citationThe online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0308275X8500500203

1985 5: 21Critique of AnthropologyTalal Asad

Some Problems in Marxist AnthropologyPrimitive Sta Tes and the Reproduction of Production Rela Tions :

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Critique of AnthropologyAdditional services and information for

http://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

What is This?

- Sep 1, 1985Version of Record>>

by guest on February 10, 2013coa.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/content/5/2/21.citationhttp://coa.sagepub.com/content/5/2/21.citationhttp://coa.sagepub.com/content/5/2/21.citationhttp://www.sagepublications.com/http://www.sagepublications.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://coa.sagepub.com/content/5/2/21.full.pdfhttp://coa.sagepub.com/content/5/2/21.full.pdfhttp://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://coa.sagepub.com/content/5/2/21.full.pdfhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://www.sagepublications.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/content/5/2/21.citationhttp://coa.sagepub.com/


2/14

21

PRIMITIVE STA TES

AND THE REPRODUCTIONOFPRODUCTION RELA TIONSSome Problems in Marxist

Anthropology

TalalAsad -- University of Hull

Classical theories of the state have typically been formulated in terms of the

problem of social order and its continuity. Pre-occupation with thisproblem is of course not confined to anthropology, but it gained addedimpetus from the writings of British structural-functionalism. Thus in theinfluential Introduction toAfrican Political Systems ( 1940), an analyticaldistinction was made between two groups of society as follows:

One group, which we refer to as GroupA, consists of those societies which havecentralized authority, administrative machinery, and judicial institutions - inshort, a government -And in which cleavages of wealth, privilege, and status

correspond to the distribution of power and authority. (...)

The other group, which we refer to as Group B, consists of those societieswhich lack centralized authority, administrative machinery, and constitutedjudicial institutions - in short which lack government - and in which there areno sharp divisions ofrank, status, or wealth. (...) Those who consider that a stateshould be defined by the presence of governmental institutions will regard thefirst as primitive states and the second group as stateless societies.

(p. 5)

Now it is well-known that the securing of social order (i.e. the control ofviolence and the achievement of integration) in these two kinds of societywas attributed (a) to the governmental regulation of rights and obligationsvested in the different levels of the social hierarchy in primitive states, and(b) to the principle of conflict and cohesion between homologous lineagesegments in stateless societies. Not quite so well-known is the fact that theIntroduction took up briefly the question of the relevance of the economyto an understanding of the political structure, but was very unclear aboutthe position it was taking. The reason for this, of course, was that althoughthe notion of the political system was explicitly defined, the concept ofthe economy was not. Thus on the one hand it argued that It is obvious,however, that mere differences in modes of livelihood do not determine

differences in political structure.And on the other hand that In a generalsense, modes of livelihood (...) determine the dominant values of the

http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/


3/14

22

peoples and strongly influence their social organizations, including theirpolitical systems. One aspect of this lack of clarity was that the relevance ofa concept of class for the analysis of the structure and development of pre-capitalist states was at once explicitly denied, and at the same timeimplicitly conceded:

MostAfrican societies belong to an economic order very different from ours.Theirs is mainly a subsistence economy with a rudimentary differentiation ofproductive labour and with no machinery for the accumulation of wealth in theform of commercial or industrial capital. If wealth is accumulated it takes theform of consumpting goods and amenities or is used for the support ofadditional dependents. Hence it tends to be rapidly dissipated again and doesnot give rise to permanent class divisions. Distinctions of rank, status, or

occupation operate independently of differences of wealth.Economic privileges, such rights to tax, tribute and labour, are both the

main reward ofpolitical power

and an essential means of

maintainingit in the

political systems of (primitive states).( 1940:8)

By and large subsequent British anthropologists accepted the negativeconclusion about necessary connections between the polity and the

economy and directed their efforts at the refinement of theAfrican PoliticalSvstems typology.Increasingly, under the influence ofAmerican politicalscience, they came to be preoccupied with the definition and identificationof a distinctive object of enquiry: the political. Problems connected with

the nature of leadership, the process of decision-making, the socialorganization of factions, virtually displaced such interests as there hadearlier been in the socio-economic pre-conditions and effects of politicalstructures. It was suggested by adherents of this tendency that an action-centred sociology was the only way of avoiding the closed-systemassumptions of British functionalism. Thus American political sciencecombined with the British tradition of intensive anthropological field workto produce PoliticalAnthropology - the study of power conflicts as aprocess in which the political field is continuously being re-defined fromone moment to the next. In such a perspective the political is

typicallyidentified as the activity of subjects who compete to determine and

implement public goals - i.e. as a kind of conscious behaviour rather than astructure of non-subjective conditions. The economic is thus seen merelyas one of the supports or rewards of effective power within such a field.

Concepts of non-subjective economic pressures, of class and of statestructures are typically avoided2

However, inAmerica, where the new PoliticalAnthropology alsoflourished (indeed where it is now centred), problems concerning therelationship of political structures to the economic organization of societywere far from being displaced. Here the work of cultural evolutionists,influenced by Steward, and that of the Polanyi school of institutional



4/14

23

economics, have both encouraged, though in different ways, theformulation of such problems. Thus Fried and Sahlins (who have drawn onboth these anthropological traditions) have elaborated in some of theirwritings a range of questions about the connection of the form of the politywith that of the economy, questions which are virtually without parallel inBritish

anthropology today.Virtually, but not quite. For in Britain it is an explicitly Marxistanthropology that has been centrally engaged with precisely these

questions.And it is to the way in which some of these questions have beenaddressed in recent Marxist anthropology that the remainder of this paperis devoted. I must stress that in what follows it is not my aim to provide asurvey of the contributions made by Marxist anthropologists towards anunderstanding of the political economic structures of primitive societies.My concern is with questions that are at once narrower and more precisethan that.

I begin with a quotation from Morton Frieds The Evolution of PoliticalSociety ( 1967) which will serve as the initial statement of the question Iwant to discuss:

It is the task of maintaining general social order that stands at the heart of thedevelopment ofthe state.And at the heart of the problem of maintaining generalorder is the need to defend the central order of stratification - the differentiation

of categories of population in terms of access to basic resources. Undoubtedly, asalready indicated, one means of doing this is to indoctrinate all members ofsociety with the belief that the social order is right or good or simply inevitable.

But there has never been a state which survived on this basis alone. Every stateknown to history has had a physical apparatus for removmg or otherwise dealingwith those who failed to get the message.(pp. 230-1 )

In other words, the state is necessary to a class society in the way it deploysphysical force and performs ideological functions to ensure the continuityof hierarchical order.

Fried does not mention Marx at all in his book, and has two very minorreferences to Engels, and yet this statement is, of course, very close to the

Marxist view of the state as an instrument for the maintenance of classexploitation. Close but not identical, for the notion of differential access tobasic resources by social strata is not the same as the Marxist concept ofclass exploitation. Thus although Engels, in The Origin of the Family, laidgreat emphasis on the creation of repressive institutions controlled by thecentral authorities in theAthenian state, his discussion of the developmentof private property, the growth of slavery and the impoverishment of mostfreemen, is based on a distinctive conception of the appropriation ofsurplus by the propertied class from the producers.According to Marxism,the state

emergesnot

merelyto defend a certain order of

stratification,but

in order to maintain a given structure of class relations, which is defined in



5/14

24

the final analysis by the dominant relations of production through whichsurplus product is extracted and then distributed.

However, there is an ambiguity in this view of the origin of the state,deriving from a dual sense in which the concept of class is employed - i.e.classes in the sense of agents of production (as defined by determinaterelations

of production),and in the sense ofsocio-economic strata

enjoyingdifferential privileges, powers and interests within a given social formation.These two senses of class are ofcourse related, but their precise articulationhas never been adequately theorised since Marx first began to do so forbourgeois society in the famous unfinished last chapter of Capital, volumethree. Recent attempts to theorise this problem, by Poulantzas forexample, are not without serious flaws.3

This twofold sense of class is connected with another duality, one which

anthropologists dealing with the origin of the state have not sufficientlyanalysed. For Marxism has a dual view of the state: (a) as the instrument

for maintaining and re-enforcing given production relations - necessarybut logically distinct from the latter; and (b) as the pre-condition forconstituting and reproducing given production relations - hence logically apart of the latter.

Wittfogels work on Oriental Despotism of course revolved around thisambiguity regarding the relations of the ruling class (exploiting class) toother classes in the social formation (mode ofproduction) - as subsequentdiscussions about the Asiatic Mode of Production and/or HydraulicSociety revealed. Thus sometimes the origin of the paradigmaticAsiatic

statewas

representedas

the consequence ofa

certain form of exploitativerelations, and sometimes as their pre-conditon.4It was in this context thatFrench Marxist historians and anthropologists first proposed the conceptof anAfrican Mode of Production.In their argument thatAfrican States,and the ruling classes which controlled them, emerged on the basis of long-distance trade rather than agricultural production, the implication clearlywas that the state was not essential to production relations, because therelations between rulers and ruled were essentially non-exploitative. Classprivilege and power were supported by the state, but the state was not anecessary pre-condition of the relations of production. The question of the

origin of the state was thus framed in terms of the way in which theprivileged accumulation of wealth led gradually to the development ofinstitutions for the elaboration of privilege and the protection of wealth.

According to this view, the distinction between royal and non-royallineages was essentially political and ideological in a superstructuralsense. It might serve to legitimate and enforce an unequal access to basicresources, but it did not determine the relations of production, and so wasnot logically a part of the relevant mode of production, or logicallynecessary to its reproduction.

In two interesting articles, the first entitled Long-distance exchangeandthe formation of the State: the case of theAbron kingdom of Gyaman



6/14

25

( 1974)6, and the second Class and Class Consciousness in theAbron

Kingdom of Gyaman ( 1976), Terray has criticised this view and arguedthat the state in WestAfrica was indeed necessary to the reproduction ofproduction relations in terms of which the exploiting class (ruling class)established its dominance.Although his discussion is focussed on the

Abron

kingdom,the

logicof state

formationin the latter is

presentedas

being applicable to other social formations in WestAfrica, such as theAshanti.

Terray maintains that although theAbron aristocracy participated inlong-distance trade, their acquisition of surplus flowed primarily from theownership of large numbers of slaves who were put to work in gold-mines -and who also cultivated for their masters and laboured as porters to

transport their goods. Free peasant subjects, on the other hand, cultivatedtheir lineage lands and paid an insignificant tribute to their rulers. Inaddition to supplying them with fighting men when needed. It was thus,Terray argues, control of production (based on slave relations) and not ofexchange (which was in any case largely in the hands of Dyula traders) thatsecured for the aristocracy its political power and wealth - i.e. its positionas the ruling class. This argument for the priority of production over

exchange is certainly in line with the method of orthodox Marxist politicaleconomy, but it is elaborated in a way that raises a number of interestingproblems.

In spite of the payment of tribute to theAbron, the free cultivatingmajority are represented in their relationship to the latter not as producers

to non-producers, but as ruled to rulers. It is only the slave minority, largelyworking in the lucrative gold-mines owned by the aristocracy, whose classposition is described in terms of the producers/non-producers couple andthe ruled/rulers couple at the same time.According to Terray, thisdistinction constituted the basis of two modes of production (the lineagemode and the slave mode) existing within the social formation, andarticulated at the level of the state, which ensured that the first was

subordinate to the second. But the remarkable thing is that the two modesof production are not logically on a par. There is clearly an importantdifference in the mode of surplus extraction from slave labour and fromfree labour, but the owner/non-owner couple in such a context does notdefine the presence or absence of surplus extraction, it merely defines oneof the conditions in which that extraction takes place. The slaves whoworked in the gold-mines were owned by theAbron king, as were theirmeans of production and everything they produced.And as Terraysuggests, they could certainly be made to work harder, and in moredangerous conditions, that free labourers. But the free lineage subjectsalso yielded part of their harvest, together with part of the gold theyextracted, to the king although he did not own them, or their land, or their

means of production. In addition, they supplied the necessary manpowerfor the raids that secured forhim a most profitable commodity - i.e. slaves



7/14

26

(for slaves were not only productively employed but also, and moreimportantly, sold abroad). However, it was not simply the acquisition ofthese different kinds of tributary products and services that in themselvesconstituted a relation of production, but the way in which they defined theconditions for the continuous but uneven extraction of surplus from the

producers. Terray doesnot deal at all with

agriculturalconditions

amongthe free subjects, but the presence of debt bondage and of market relationswithin Gyaman to which he does refer in passing, indicates that there were

important economic pressures which made themselves unevenly felt overtime on lineage-based cultivators subject to the direct and indirectextraction of surplus. It is the totality of the social conditions defining these

pressures that can be represented as production relations binding the rulersto their subjects. To analyse production relations in this sense it is therefore

necessary not only to examine the development of the pressures that

generate surplus over time, but also to describe the uneven strugglebetween classes and fractions of classes to intensify or resist such pressures.

The reason that Terray does not consider the production relations offree subjects in this way is connected with his interesting attempt to analysethe way in which theAbron state constitutes the political and ideologicalpre-conditions for the establishment and reproduction of the dominantrelations of production - i.e. of slave labour - an analysis which he thinksfacilitates our understanding of its origin:

In fact it is possible to consider theAbron orAshanti States as in many waysexisting as machines destined to create and reproduce the material and social

conditions for the exploitation of captives. The central place occupied bycaptivity in these societies allows us straightaway to understand why thearistocracies in power were first and foremost military aristocracies.As is

known, inAshanti as in Gyaman, the structure ofthe State closely followed thatof the army, and the subdivisions of the first closely corresponded to thedifferent sections of the second; among the obligations binding vassals to the

sovereign features first of all the duty of assistance in time ofwar; and among the

rights reserved by the aristocracy to itself was first of all that oforganising captiveraids and of deciding on peace and war: now a number of captives were

prisoners of war; these formed the most important part of the booty gained bythe conquerors, and the rules of sharing this booty favoured the kings and thechiefs. On the ideological level, major themes of the ritual and religious activityof the state were the exaltation of the great deeds of the past, and the quest for the

support ofancestors and supernatural powers in view of conflicts to come; and itwas seen above that iftheAsantehene discouraged his subjects from engaging intrade, this was especially to preserve their warhke spirit.(1974:331-2)

In a recent article Precolonial Gold Mining and the State in theAkan

Region: with a Critique of the Terray Hypothesis,8 Raymond Dumettmakes a careful evaluation of the relevant historical evidence and

concludes that Terray seriously under-emphasizes the importance ofAkan state administrative organization, land tenure relationships and



8/14

27

taxation. (p. 64) The view that slave production in gold mining was thecrucial source of income for the state, Dumett insists, finds virtually no

support in the available literature: traditional gold mining was carried out

mainly by free family labour with slaves used as an adjunct to the kin-

based, labour unit. (loc. cit.)

Dumetts empirical critiqueis

important,but it does not address itself

directly to the theoretical problem concerning the necessity of theAbronstate in the maintenance and reproduction of slave production. For even ifslave labour used in gold mining was not historically as important in the

way that Terray describes, there is historical evidence for the existence, inWestAfrica, of slave labour used in the cultivation of royal and chieflyestates.9 In any case, our interest here is not in determining the

comparative value of royal incomes from slave production, but in

examining the thesis that the state was a pre-conditon for the existence and

reproduction ofproduction relations on which class exploitation was based

in Gyaman. Let us therefore set aside for the moment Dumetts objectionsand examine the logic of Terrays argument.

Since this argument is developed in the context of the debate about the

implications of long-distance trade for the emergence of the state, Terraywrites: In the light of these data, how should the specific effects of long-distance trade be characterised? In our view, its real role consisted in theintroduction of slave type relations of production into social formationsdominated until then by the kin-based mode of production, accompaniedin mature cases by simple domestic slavery; and that it was in their turn

slave relations which evoked the formation of a state as the pre-conditionof their functioning and reproduction. (1974:339) Yet surely all that is

necessary for the functioning and reproduction of these relations is the

replenishment of the supply of slaves, and their effective control in thelabour process. Renewal of the supply can take place through exchange,and their control can be secured through coercive arrangements which donot depend on political centralization. Terray, however, insists that the

military apparatus of a centralized state was essential for reproductionbecause given the occasional nature of trade in captives, no state couldallow itself to rely on trade alone to obtain such an indispensable resourcefor itself ( 1974:332). Yet he does not explain why the commercial supplyof slaves could not meet the demand, nor why the gap between such supplyand demand became critical for production. In other words, he does not

appear to have considered carefully the question as to how theAbron statecan be said to be a necessary pre-condition for the functioning andreproduction of slave relationsof production ifthe latter were already wellestablished before the formation of the state. It is after all part of Terraysargument that long-distance Mandingo traders had introduced and

promoted slave relations of production in the area prior to its political

centralization. What drove the exploiters ofslave labour as a class (for suchthere already was by definition) to create the military state for acquiring



9/14

28

their slaves directly? What is missing here is a discussion of the implicitsuggestion that there was a crisis in the traditional mode of reproductionwhich led the exploiting class to create the state as its solution. Myargument is not that there must have been such a crisis, but that theexistence of such a crisis must be historically demonstrated if the

proposition that slave relations...

evoked the formation of a state as thepre-condition of their functioning and reproduction is to be given anysense. Terray may have correctly identified the origin of the surplusappropriated byAbron slave-owners in the sphere of production asopposed to exchange - as he claims - but what he has not done is to showthat the formation of the Abron state was necessarily determined by themode in which that surplus was extracted (i.e. through slave labour).Andthis is something that cannot be shown if the relevant political-ideologicalconditions are conceptualized as part of the definition of the relations ofproduction between exploiting and exploited classes, and at the same timeas the necessary solution to a crisis in their reproduction, as Terray does.

I have argued above that the problem ofthe reproduction ofproductionrelations should not be seen in a functionalist manner as a mechanical

process but rather in terms of the unequal struggle within a complex ofpolitical, economic, ideological conditions over the appropriation of thesocial product. The crisis produced by such struggles over historical timemay make the creation of new conditions necessary of they are to besolved. The establishment of particular institutions constitutinghistorically determinate states can be seen as attempted solutions to

intractible crises. However, it does not follow that their establishment is anecessary consequence of such a crisis, or even that such a crisis is a

necessary cause of their establishment. My point is simply that if newly-established centralized institutions are to be represented as the necessaryconditions ofexistence of given production relations this must not be donein a functionalist manner (i.e. as an inter-locking system of cause andeffect), but in terms of the unequal political options that offer themselveswithin a context of class struggle.

The difficulty with Terrays functionalist conceptions can be clearlyidentified in his treatment ofAbron religious ideology. Thus Terrayassumes that the religious doctrines and cults of theAbron are bothnecessary to and effective in reproducing slave relations of production,neither more nor less. That is to say, the ideological function of the state isviewed as a form of psychological conditioning - the inculcation of martialvirtues essential to military activity, which in turn is essential to theprocurement of slaves on which the social order of Gyaman society isultimately based. This is a view fully worthy of the functionalist Radcliffe-Brown, but it raises some important questions for a historical materialist.Quite apart from the problem discussed above as to whether the military

activities of the state are indeed necessary for the procurement of theneeded supply of slaves (and hence the question as to whether religious



10/14

29

activity of the state is essential to the acquisition of slaves through debt

bondage or purchase) there are also difficulties that arise from theassimilation of the notion of doctrines to that of indoctrination. Thus what

grounds do we have for accepting that the ideological definitions of the

ruling classes necessarily created the desired motives and pre-dispositions

among subjectswithin subordinate classes? More

concretely,what is the

reason for assuming that (a) the support of ancestors and supernaturalpowers was crucial for effective military activity, and (b) that such supportcould only be sought in conflicts aimed at the procurement of slaves?

Surely, whenever there was conflict over the appropriation of tributarygoods and servicesbetween the free lineage producers and theAbron rulingclass, a conflict issuing in moral or legal argument, there must have been

citlturally characteristicways in which such arguments could be expressed.Religious doctrines and cults that were basic to concepts of social moralityand political obligation (asAkan doctrines and cults were)O must have

formed part of such a language of possible argument. The fact that thesereligious concepts implied a hierarchy of powers and functions, that a

language of argument employing them could not be revolutionary (asTerray might say, given his pre-occupation with true class consciousness)is beside the point. They could be the ideological means of moral and

political dispute - precisely because and to the extent that they were shared

by rulers and ruled alike. It is therefore a mistake to representAbron

religious doctrines and cults as an instrument used actively by the state to

shape the passive minds of its subjects.&dquo;In his

paperon Class and Class Consciousness in theAbron

Kingdom,Terray devotes a great deal of attentionto the question of class conflict, but

largely in terms of the conditions preventing the development of politicallyorganised class action (and so of revolutionary class consciousness) withinthe lineage mode of production. Since the tribute relation between the free

Kulango cultivators and theAbron aristocracy is excluded by definitionfrom the concept of a lineage mode of production (becauseexploiting/exploited classes can only be intrinsic to that mode) the

question of the political-ideological conditions of tribute payment to the

aristocracy is not taken up. The reader is merely told that the tribute was

extremely light because the rulers depended on their peasant subjects forvital military support, and that they derived most of their income from the

products of slave labour. However, I have suggested above that althoughthe tribute may have been light, it must be viewed as part ofthe developingconditions that defined the relations of production of the lineage based

cultivators, logically on a par with slave relations of production - andindeed economically inseparable from them.12 If this is accepted, then thequestion that arises is this: in what way and to what extent does the

ideology of the social formation serve as a pre-condition for the extraction

of surplus within thesetwo sets of

productionrelations? There is no

material for answering this question empirically in Terrays two papers, but



11/14

30

my point has been that in this context ideology should not be seen as aform of psychological conditioning which maintains given exploitativerelations mechanically and thus ensures their reproduction over time.Instead, it must be seen as one of the conditions in terms of which the

complex struggle for the appropriation ofthe social product takes place, forit is the

totalityof these conditions which determines whether and in what

way reproduction actually takes place. Such a view ofproduction relations,and ofreproduction, is clearly quite differentfrom the one that is central to

Terrays analysis, according to which exploitation exists only when theexploiting class is in a position to dictate its conditions to the exploitedclass and to determine the amount of surplus which it appropriates.( 1976:88)

The concept of a struggle over the appropriation of the social productwithin developing historical conditions is of course central to Marxs

analysis of capitalist relations of production, and has also been developedmost effectively by Marxist historians analysing the changing conditions offeudal production relations in medieval Europe.&dquo; Unfortunately Marxistanthropologists have been extremely slow to incorporate this concept intotheir analyses of pre-capitalist social formations. In this respect Terraysneglect is by no means unique among Marxist anthropologists. One

consequence of this has been the re-enforcement of the old prejudice thatnon-European social formations were intrinsically stable, that theirtransformation always depended on factors external to the mode ofproduction, because the mode of production determined a fixed and

enduring social-political structure. It is this that leds Terrayto

write: ...we

understand why class contradictions inherent in the lineage mode of

production cannot lead to revolution, or to the overthrowing of one classby another, to the seizure of power by one class to the detriment of another,and hence to a transformation of social relations. (1976:97). Thus the

emergence of the state as a revolutionary event, produced within and yetnecessary to a given mode of production becomes impossible to theorise.

And the problem of the origin of the state tends to resolve itself into thetask of identifying a typical contingent historical act by which a new, re-integrated, functional order is founded.

However, for historical materialism the problem of the origin of thestate cannot be framed in terms of the founding act of a new order -whether this is seen as the decisive application of force (conquest from,outside, thc seizure of power from inside) or as the effective securing ofconsent (by honest persuasion, by trickery and deception). The difficultyhere lies not in locating the precise moment of such an act (because it oftenoccurs very gradually), but in the fact that what needs to be explained byhistorical materialism in such transformations is generally taken for

granted- the precise historical conditions which make a particular

structure of centralized political institutions first possible and thennecessary as the form ofexistence of a developing class society.Although it



12/14

31

is obvious that class exploitation can exist without centralized politicalinstitutions (as I argued nearly a decade ago in my re-analysis of Swatpolitical organization), 15 their presence nevertheless signals two things: (a)the possibility of an intensification of surplus extraction, whether directlythrough a bureaucratic apparatus or indirectly through a hierarchy ofclasses, and (b) the possibility of a re-definition of the centrally structured

political, economic, ideological circumstances within which there takesplace a struggle over the appropriation of the social product. The problemfor historical materialism is therefore to determine in each case what are

the conditions of such intensification and re-definition, what makes themfirst possible, then necessary and eventually problematic, and thus to

analyse the options open to contending classes at each phase of theirstruggle to consolidate or alter these conditions within the total socialformation. Information for such an analysis may be very difficult to obtainbut that is no reason for making a methodological principle out of our

ignorance.A generalized theory of the origin of the state cannot beprovided by historical materialism because the necessary pre-conditionsand consequences of all forms of class exploitation and class strugglecannot be determined in an a priori manner. In other words both forms ofthe dual Marxist view of the state (on which theories of origin such as

Terrays have been based) seem to me unacceptable. The state is not a

necessary pre-condition of relations of exploitation and of theirreproduction - because such relations can exist without a centralizedpolitical order. Equally, the state is not necessarily the instrument ofabsolute ruling class power - because in defining a set of administrative,legal, financial, etc. institutions it forms part of the structured conditions ofsocial life of all classes and part also of the means of their mutual struggle,however unequal the conditions and means may actually be at any givenmoment.

NOTES

I F or example M G Smith On Segmentary Lineage Systems in Journal of the Roval

anthropological Institute Vol 86, 1956, J Middleton&D Taite, (eds),Iribes

W ithout Rulers

I ondon 1958 P ( I oydThe Political Structure ofAfrican Kingdoms an E xploratory Model

i

n

Political Sy stems and the Distribution of Power (A S A Monographs 2), I ondon, 1965 It is

significant that one of the most outstanding British studies in this field, M G Smiths

Government in Zazzau (1960) which deals with political changes in a WestAfrican kingdomover a period of one hundred and fifty years, pays virtually no attention to socio-economic

conditions I his neglect is deliberate and based on an explicit theoretical claim Government

and society are quite distinct systems although they are inter-related, and we shall gain very little

indeed by undertaking to analyse the governmental changes of Zazzau within the wider

framework of social change (pp 295-6)

2 See, for example Introduction to M J Swartz, V W I urner,A Tuden (eds.), Political

anthropology Chicago, 1966, and F G Bailey, Stratagems and Spoils Socialanthropology ofPolitics Oxford, 1969



13/14

32

3. See the review article by T.J. Johnson on Poulantzas and Carchedi in: Economy andSociety, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1977.

4. Cf.A.M. Bailey and J.R. Llobera, KarlA. Wittfogel and theAsiaticMode ofProduction:a Reappraisal, in: The Sociological Review, Vol. 27, No. 3, 1979.

5. See C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Recherches sur un mode de production africain in:C.E.R.M., Sur le mode de production asiatique, Paris, 1974.

6. First published in: Economy and Society

,

Vol. 3, No. 3, 1974.

7. In: M. Bloch, (ed.) MarxistAnalyses and SocialAnthropology

,

London, 1976.

8. In: Dalton, (ed.), Research in EconomicAnthropology,

Vol. 2, 1979.

9. See the useful survey by Robin Law, Slaves, Trade, and Taxes: the Material Basis ofPolitical Power in Precolonial West Africa, in: Dalton (ed.), Research in Economic

Anthropology, Vol. 1, 1978.

10. On the religious moral-political doctrines of theAshanti, see K.A. Busias article in D.Forde (ed.),African Worlds TheAshanti, like theAbron, were of Akan origin, although theirtraditional cosmology differed from that of otherAkan groups.

11. In describingAbron religious concepts as part of a language of argument I am not, ofcourse, trying to characterise the essential form of their religion but a possible mode of their

religious discourse. Noram I saying that all disputes employing such a language were essentiallydisputes over surplus. My concern is simply to question the way in which analyses such as

Terrays represent religious ideology as a form of psychological imprinting necessary for a givenstructure of economic exploitation.

12. Terray regards the tributes as light in comparison with the quantity of surplusextracted from slave labour. But the crucial question, surely, is whether it was easy or difficultfor free labour to respond to the states demands - and here the answer must vary according totime and place. Thus writing of theAshanti, I. Wilks observes that the shortage ofmoney withinthe rural economy left the villager highly exposed in the matter ofdebt. Numerous cases are onrecord from the nineteenth century of fines imposed upon villagers by central governmentcourts, which were fixed at levels appropriate to the wealthy citizens ofthe towns but not to therural producer. (...) In such circumstances payment of the fine became the responsibility of the

transgressors lineage, which was frequently obligated either to sell or mortgage(awowa) some ofits land and, commonly, people. In this way lineage property became alienated to wealthyfunctionaries and entrepreneurs in the towns... (The Golden Stool and the Elephant Tail;An

Essay on Wealth inAsante, in: G. Dalton (ed.), Research in EconomicAnthropology, Vol. 2,1979, pp. 29-30). If these conditions are relevant to Gyaman (and Terray explicitly assumes a

parallel between crucial conditions inAshanti and Gyaman) then the economic subjection ofthe free cultivators cannot be summed up simply in terms of the formal definition of tribute -nor can slave relations of production be analysed in complete isolation from this economic

subjection.13. See for example R. Hilton (ed.), The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism,

London, 1976, and especially Hiltons own contributions in this volume; also G. Duby, TheRural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, London, 1968; R. Hilton, Bond MenMade Free, London, 1973; W. Kula,An Economic theory of the Feudal System London, 1976.

14. In part, the precise form of this kind of statement is a consequence of importingLeninist conceptions of class conflict, which were developed in the context of revolutionarysocialist politics in twentieth century Europe, into problems of the analysis of pre-capitalistsocieties where they are irrelevant.

15. In Market Model, Class Structure and Consent: a Reconsideration of Swat Political

Organization,Man, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1972. The class relations I discussed in this article were quite

different from those that have pre-occupied analysts ofthe so-called lineage mode ofproductionin which relations of exploitation are postulated on the basis of distinctions between elders and



14/14

33

juniors, and between men and women On the whole Marxist anthropologists have tended toassume that pre-state societies can sustain class relations of the latter kind only, i.e. that classrelations between socially differentiated populations based on principles other than age and sex

presuppose the existence of a state which can perform the necessary coercive and ideologicalfunctions, although ranking and other forms of social distinction do not. This traditionalassumption regarding the joint emergence of class society and the state seems to me

questionable

estados primitivos y la reproduccion de las relaciones de produccion-algunos problemas de analisis...

Documents