ABSTRACT
Karl A. Wittfogel is perhaps the best known exponent of the theory of oriental despotism or ‘hydraulic society’ which he traces to Marx and to the writings of Enlightenment and nineteenth-century social and political thinkers, particularly Montesquieu and J. S. Mill. Throughout his career, Wittfogel, like Plekhanov, interpreted Marx’s materialism as a form of geographical or ecological determinism, in which the forces of production determining a society’s social and political organization are themselves determined by climate, soil, hydrography, etc. It is this aspect of Wittfogel’s early, Marxist theorizing which is criticized by G. Lewin. Lewin, however, gives the impression that Wittfogel’s interpretation of historical materialism as a kind of mechanistic determinism, albeit of an ecological bent, represented a sharp deviation from Marxist orthodoxy. Wittfogel’s 1935 article on ancient China which is perhaps an exception to his willingness to classify and explain societies by reference to environmental differences.
