ABSTRACT
The original unity between the worker and the conditions of production has two main forms: the Asiatic communal system and small-scale agriculture based on the family in one form or another. Karl Marx’s approach to modes of production and the progress of society in general is to treat the pastoral age as “the beginning point of true development”. Marx located the “true origin” of human society in the pastoral period. But Marx “hypothesized” that the earliest pastoral society originated in Asia, and for this reason he called the earliest mode of production in history “Asiatic”. To attribute the origin of pastoral society to Asia was initially a bold hypothesis, and subsequent research during Marx’s lifetime by Morgan and others was to prove him right. As Marx himself recognized, slavery is not exclusive to “antiquity” but can be found to exist to varying degrees both within the period of tribal ownership predating “ancient ownership” and in the subsequent medieval and modern periods.
