ABSTRACT
Karl Marx’s earliest reference to the Asiatic mode of production in his 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy has led to disagreement over how this concept should be understood, and exactly what type of socioeconomic formation it represents. Marx repeatedly pointed out that in China the small peasant economy was closely integrated with household handicraft production. Agriculture and handicraft production were closely linked, creating a high degree of self-sufficiency. The bulk of their production was geared toward satisfying their own immediate needs and ensuring their reproduction, though surplus production and surplus labor were transferred in the form of tax and corvee to the despotic state and the exploiting classes. In 1859 Marx proposed in his Preface a schema for delineating the different stages of social development: “the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production”.
