ABSTRACT
The Asiatic mode of production is the crystallization of Karl Marx’s Asiatic theory and the epitome of his successful search for the route travelled by early civilization. Marx’s method—using the existing vestiges of the rural communes to construct a prototype of primitive society—is identical to that of Haxthausen and Maurer. As the economic category of rural communes, it had a long existence extending from the last stage of primitive society to the beginning of capitalist society. In an agricultural society in which landed property was “the dominant relation of production in society”, the centralized claim to the ownership of land subject to the whims of the supreme ruler could determine the future of the national economy and the people’s livelihood. Originally, the “Asiatic or Indian forms of property” was a geographic reference to collective ownership in the Asian rural commune, of which the Indian commune is most typical.
