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The Marxist View of China (Part 1)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

Marx's interpretation of China enriched his concept of a completely Asiatic society. While dealing with England's relation to the Far East, he became aware that in imperial China, unlike in other oriental countries, land was privately held. His analysis of this seeming exception to the rule is unsatisfactory, but it is indicative of his socio-historical position. He continued to view China as a major case of “Asiatic production” even after he learned that there communal landed property had long been abolished.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1962

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References

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41 Arbeiten der Kaiserlich russischen Gesandtschaft zu Peking über China, sein Volk, seine Religion, seine Institutionen, socialen Verhältnisse, Erster Band (Berlin: 1858).Google Scholar The first essay, “Über das Grundeigentum in China von J. Sacharoff,” is presented in pp. 143.Google Scholar For references to irrigation canals as an essential part of China's traditional agriculture see Sacharoff, , 1858, pp. 6, 13, 39Google Scholar; for a description of the old communal land system see op. cit., pp. 5 et seq.; for later attempts to reinstitute this system see op. cit., pp. 15 et seq.; for the ultimate establishment of private land-ownership, which, according to the author, had prevailed during the preceding thousand years, see op. cit., pp. 20 et seq.

42 Manuscript of Das Kapital, Volume III, NM, 282.Google Scholar For help in deciphering this sentence I am indebted to Dr. W. Blumenberg of the Amsterdam International Institute of Social History, which possesses the bulk of Marx's and Engels' manuscripts.

43 Marx, , DK III, 1, p. 318.Google Scholar

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57 See Wittfogel, 1957, pp. 16Google Scholaret seq., 414 et seq.

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60 Ibid. p. 81.

61 Plechanow, G. W., Kunst und Litteratur, trans, by Harhammer, Joseph (Berlin: Dietz, 1955) (hereafter cited as Plekhanov 1955), p. 574 Russia, of course, was no river valley despotism.Google Scholar

62 Plekhanov, G., Selected Philosophical Works, 5 vols. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, no date), I, pp. 441Google Scholaret seq. In a speech he made a few months after the publication of the just-cited article he criticised certain eager and well-meaning writers who viewed Russia as “a kind of European China, whose economic structure has nothing in common with that of Western Europe.” They overlooked that “the old economic foundations of Russia are now undergoing a process of complete disintegration” (Ibid. pp. 451, 453).

63 Plekhanov 1890/91, pp. 440 et seq.

64 Ibid. p. 447.

65 Plechanow, G., “Zu Hegel's Sechzigstem Todestag,” Die Neue Zeit, X (1892), p. 240.Google Scholar

66 Ibid. pp. 241 et seq.

67 Kautsky, 1935, p. 283.Google Scholar

68 Ibid. p. 301.

69 Plekhanov, G., The Development of the Monist View of History (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), p. 199.Google Scholar

70 Ibid. p. 160.

71 Plekhanov, 1955, p. 690.Google Scholar Following Marx and Engels, Plekhanov considered the Crimean War and the Emancipation of the serfs the starting point in Russia's economic “European” development.

72 Lenin, V. J., Sochinenia, 4th ed., 35 vols. (Moscow: 19411950) (hereafter cited as Lenin, S.), X, p. 58.Google Scholar

73 Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, 3 vols. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960), I, pp. 160, 299.Google Scholar

74 For occasional references to the issue see ibid. I, p. 235; idem, Samtliche Werke, 25 vols. (Vienna-Berlin, later Moscow-Leningrad: 1930 et seq.) (hereafter cited as Lenin, SWG), III, pp. 44, 164.Google Scholar

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77 Ibid. IV, 1, p. 65.

78 Lenin, W. I., Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 19561960), X, p. 173, note.Google Scholar

79 Plekhanov, G. V., Dnevnik Sotsial-Demokrata (Diary of a Social Democrat), No. 5, 03 1906, p. 12 (hereafter cited as Plekhanov 1906).Google Scholar

80 Ibid. pp. 12 et seq. In the context of his argument, which is historically faulty, Plekhanov referred to the account of these actions given by the anarchist geographer Reclus, who, he believed, had based himself on Sakharov. Plekhanov's assumption is not confirmed by Reclus' bibliography, but it suggests that Plekhanov knew Sakharov's account of Chinese land tenure, which we mentioned above.

81 Plekhanov, 1906, p. 14.Google Scholar

82 Cf. Marx's thesis that Peter “generalised” the policy of Tatarised Muscovy (Marx, Karl, “Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century,” The Free Press, 02 25 and 04 1, 1857).Google Scholar

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84 Ibid. p. 17.

86 Protokoly Obyedinitelnago Syezda Rossyskoi Sotsialdemokraticheskoi Rabochei Partii (Protocols of the Unification Congress of the R.S.D.R.P. held in Stockholm, 1906), Moscow, 1907, p. 44.Google Scholar

87 Ibid. p. 43.

88 Ibid. p. 44.

89 Ibid. p. 116.

90 Lenin, , Werke, X, p. 332.Google Scholar

91 Occasionally Lenin referred to Martynov's usage (SW, III, p. 241Google Scholar), but generally he gave no such warning.

92 Lenin, , SW, IV, p. 303.Google Scholar

93 Ibid. IV, p. 300.

94 Ibid. IV, pp. 305 et seq.

95 Ibid. IV, p. 308.

96 Ibid. IV, p. 308, italics in original

97 Ibid. IV, p. 306, italics added.

98 Ibid. IV, p. 307, italics added.

99 Lenin, V. I., The National Liberation Movement in the East (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957), p. 53.Google Scholar

100 Ibid. pp. 59 et seq.

101 Ibid. p. 76.

102 Ibid. p. 73.

103 Lenin, , S, XXXVIII, p. 306.Google Scholar

104 Ibid. XXXVIII, p. 306.

105 Trush, M., “Lenin's Abstract of Marx's and Engels' Correspondence,” Kommunist (Moscow), No. 2, 1960, p. 50.Google Scholar