ABSTRACT
In the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Karl Marx placed the “Asiatic mode of production” unambiguously at the head of a progressive series of epochs. Commodity production was unknown to the commune, but the state could come in, expropriate the commune’s surplus products, and circulate them as commodities. A careful study of Asiatic, particularly Indian, forms of communal property would indicate that the disintegration of different forms of primitive communal ownership gives rise to diverse forms of property. “Asiatic” and “Oriental” did not replace “primitive” but simply showed that the primitive form of ownership and mode of production were to be found not just in Russia but also in the East. As village communities came to be recognized as the universal primitive formation and Lewis Morgan discovered the nature of the clan and its relation to the tribe, “the inner organization of this primitive Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form”.
