ABSTRACT
Karl Marx formulated the concept of the Asiatic mode of production (AMP) while investigating precapitalist property in land, particularly common property. In his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, he arranges the modes of production in a series of successive stages, “epochs marking progress in the economic development of society,” beginning with the Asiatic. Whenever Marx discusses the AMP, he frequently mentions the “isolation” and “stagnation” of the agricultural community. In contrast, the agricultural community only appeared during the transitional period between the collapse of primitive society and the beginning of class society. Reviewing all of Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ references to the AMP, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that Marx proposed the concept on the basis of materials concerning not the primitive community, but the agricultural community. Marx describes collective ownership in the agricultural community, where the individual only “possesses” the land that he cultivates under a system of “collective ownership/private cultivation”.
