The Despotism of Concepts: Wittfogel and Marx on China

¹ Wittfogel, Karl A., “The Marxist View of China” (Part 1), The China Quarterly, No. 11 (07–09 1962), pp. 1–20.

² Ibid. p. 1.

³ Ibid. p. 4.

⁴ Ibid. pp. 8–10.

⁵ New York Daily Tribune, 06 14, 1853, p. 4.

⁶ See particularly “The British Rule in India” in Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), I, pp. 345–351.

⁷ Marx, , “Revolution in China and Europe,” loc. cit.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ See the reprint of Li's translation of Marx's article, and his comments on it, published under the title “Ma-k'o-ssu ti Chung-kuo min-tsu ko-ming-kuan” (“Marx's Views on the Chinese National Revolution”) in Li Ta-chao Hsüan-chi (The Selected Writings of Li Ta-chao) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1959), pp. 545–555

¹⁰ Ibid. pp. 553–555.

¹¹ The citations made here from the New York Daily Tribune are taken from the original newspaper texts. Most of the articles are also available in Torr, Dona, Marx on China (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1951). The only article that did not appear in the New York Daily Tribune was published in 1862 in the Vienna newspaper Die Presse. See Marx, and Engels, , Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1961), Vol. XV; also Ma-k'o-ssu En-ke-ssu lun Chung-kuo (Marx and Engels on China) (Peking: Jen-min Ch'u-pan-she, 1957), pp. 514–516.

¹² Marx, Karl, “Trade with China,” New York Dotty Tribune, 12 3, 1859, p. 8.

¹³ Marx, Karl, Capital (New York: Modern Library), I, p. 367, footnote.

¹⁴ Ibid. p. 564.

¹⁵ Marx, , “Trade with China,” loc. cit.; Wittfogel, , loc. cit., p. 6.

¹⁶ Letter of Marx, to Engels, , 06 2, 1853.Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), p. 99.

¹⁷ Capital, I, p. 392. “Oriental despotism” is also specifically identified with communal landownership by Engels in Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science (New York: International Publishers, no date), p. 184.

¹⁸ In a footnote in the first volume of Capital, wrote, Marx: “Japan, with its purely feudal organisation of landed property and its developed petite culture, gives a much truer picture of the European middle ages than all our history books.…” Capital, I, p. 789.

¹⁹ Wittfogel, , loc. cit., p. 6.

²⁰ Ibid. p. 5.

²¹ This is one of Marx's most basic and explicit theoretical formulations. See, for example, Marx, Karl, “Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,”Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Works (Moscow: 1958), I, p. 363.

²² Letter from Karl Marx to the editors of Otechestvenniye Zapiski (11 1877), Selected Correspondence, p. 379.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Marx, Karl, New York Daily Tribune, 09 25, 1858, p. 4.

²⁵ Marx, , New York Daily Tribune, 04 10, 1857, p. 4.

²⁶ Marx, , New York Daily Tribune, 06 2, 1857, p. 4.

²⁷ Marx, , “The New Chinese War,” New York Daily Tribune, 10 18, 1859, p. 6.

²⁸ Marx, , New York Daily Tribune, 03 25, 1857, p. 5.

²⁹ The articles by Marx dealing with China were translated into Chinese and published in Peking in 1950. See the reprint of 1957 entitled Ma-k'o-ssu En-ke-ssu lun Chung-kuo (Marx and Engels on China), op. cit.

³⁰ Engels, F., “Persia-China,” New York Daily Tribune, 06 5, 1857, p. 6.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Wittfogel, , loc. cit., pp. 4 and 8.

³³ Mare, , New York Daily Tribune, 10 5, 1858, p. 4. See also “The New Chinese War,” New York Daily Tribune, 10 15, 1859, p. 4; and “Trade with China,” New York Daily Tribune, 12 3, 1859, p. 8.

³⁴ Letter of Marx, to Engels, (10 8, 1858), Selected Correspondence, pp. 134–135.

³⁵ Marx, , Capital (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962), III, p. 328.

³⁶ Marx, , “Revolution in China and Europe,” loc. cit.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Marx, , “Persia-china,” loc. cit.

³⁹ In a letter of October 8, 1858, to Engels, Marx wrote: “We cannot deny that bourgeois society has experienced its sixteenth century a second time—a sixteenth century which will, I hope, sound the death knell of bourgeois society just as the first one thrust it into existence. The specific task of bourgeois society is the establishment of a world market, at least in outline, and of production based upon this world market. As the world is round, this seems to have been completed by the colonisation of California and Australia and the opening up of China and Japan. The difficult question for us is this: on the Continent the revolution is imminent and will immediately assume a socialist character. Is it not bound to be crushed in this little corner, considering that in a far greater territory the movement of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant?” Selected Correspondence, p. 134.

⁴⁰ Letter of Engels, to Sorge, F. A. (11 10, 1894), Selected Correspondence, p. 558.

⁴¹ For some of Marx's varying views on this question, see the letters of Marx on Russia in Blackstock, Paul and Hoselitz, Bert (editors), The Russian Menace to Europe (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952), pp. 203–226. See also Marx's letter to Sorge, F. A. (09 27, 1877), Selected Correspondence, pp. 374–375.

⁴² Marx, , “Chinesisches” (07 7, 1862) in Marx, and Engels, , Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1961), Vol. 15, pp. 514–516. For a Chinese translation of this article see “Chung-kuo Shih-chien” (“Matters Chinese”), Ma-k'o-ssu En-ke-ssu lun Chung-kuo, op. cit., pp. 137–140.

⁴³ Letter of Marx, to Engels, (12 10, 1869), Selected Correspondence, p. 280.

⁴⁴ Marx, , “Letter on the Russian Village Commune” (1881), in Blackstock, and Hoselitz, , p. 219.