ABSTRACT
Many commentators, including the authors of An Outline History of World Antiquity, think that the phrase “primitive communities” refers specifically to the ancient Asiatic mode of production (AMP). In expounding the system of Asiatic rural communal ownership represented by India, Karl Marx often mentioned the domination of the despotic government and the supreme property rights of the despot. A careful study of Asiatic, particularly Indian, forms of common property would indicate that the disintegration of different forms of primitive communal ownership gives rise to diverse forms of property. In the 1850s, Marx mentioned the AMP, Oriental society, the Asiatic formation, Asiatic society, and Asiatic communal ownership in the introduction to the Grundrisse and the Preface to the Critique, but without once adding on the word “ancient”. Although the preservation of communal social organization is an important characteristic of Indian and Asiatic society, Marx’s Indian rural commune was not the primitive commune: it was at most the remnant of primitive society.
