It is, perhaps, too simple to treat all Aziatchiki as proponents of a stagnant Asiatic society. Madjar did hold that the AMP lasted in China until modern times. After that, he claimed, the basic contradiction within the agrarian system was the conflict between the peasantry and the landlords, and the absence of private land ownership was no longer the reality in the orient today (Madjar, p. 79). Since Madjar defined the AMP in terms of the absence of private ownership of land, the appearance of private land ownership could therefore be seen as the end of the AMP. Madjar seemed to believe that this situation was a product of Western intrusion. But he also stressed that of all the four modes of production Marx listed in his preface to the Critique of Political Economy, none existed in pure form. "In actual historical reality, each of these formations existed in endless variations and
g rad atio n s. W ithin each of these form ations there w ere rem nants of p revious form ations and embryos of future formations" (Madjar, p. 59, em p h asis m ine). A read er m ight be p a rd o n e d for w on d erin g here w hether M adjar w as suggesting that the AMP could have developed in to "fu tu re fo rm atio n s" even w ith o u t the influence of W estern capitalism .
For Kokin and Papaian, how ever, Marx w as w rong in his view th at the A siatic society w as stag n an t and one w hich continuously rep ro d u ced itself in the sam e form (Kokin and Papaian, p. 87). Kokin and P apaian denied that societies in Asia — . India or China — w ere stagnant. They arg u ed th at these societies d id develop their com m erce, agriculture, handicraft, etc, though slowly. W hat did not change w as the basic m ode of production (Kokin and Papaian, p. 88). But M arx never denied that there had been changes in Asiatic society (especially the changes of dynasties). He treated the AMP as stagnant only because he believed th at the mode of production there never changed. Kokin and Papaian w ere therefore only repeating w hat Marx said about Indian society.
W ittfogel w as inclined to believe that the AMP in China grew out of an earlier real feudal order. The social an d econom ic system of C hina w ent th ro u g h several stages before it becam e stagnant. As a result, the AMP, in the eyes of W ittfogel, w as a social and economic stage higher th an feudalism . W ittfogel's periodization has m ade one im p o rtan t contribution, i.e. his m odel suggested that a unique social form ation w ith o u t parallel in European history existed in China after the collapse of feudal-like social order there. W hether or not this social
Chapter 4, the First Discussion 115
form ation could be defined as the AMP or a m odified AMP or any other type of social form ation is quite another question.
From the above Aziatchiki, we find that except for Madjar, no one really follow ed Marx on the question of stagnant Asiatic society. The m ost obvious difficulty w as that M arx's concept of stagnant Asiatic society could h ard ly in terp ret the trem en d o u s social, political and economic changes that has taken place since C hina's Zhou-Qin period.
The claim of an absence of private property is not borne out by historical fact: according to historical records, privatization of land began long before the Qin unified China (221 BC). But Marx had been far from sim ple-m inded about the "absence" of private land in the AMP. H e stressed in the Grundrisse that this was an absence in the "legal" sense. Indeed, while historical records show ed privatization in ancient C hina, the extent to w hich this p riv ate land w as legally g u a ra n te e d , an d p riv ate p ro p e rty free from g o v ern m en t control, rem ains open for discussion. Another problem lies in the nature of the state u n d e r the AMP. Marx used the term "despotism " and W ittfogel "b u reau cratic governm ent". C om m unist historians usually attacked these term s on the grounds that they did not reflect the economic base of the society. This m ay be correct, but only on the assum ption of the claim s of h isto rical m aterialism . The tension th u s is the tension betw een M arx's historical m aterialism and his theory of the AMP.
The contribution of the Aziatchiki to the first Chinese discussion lay in their attem pts to create a M arxist in terp retatio n of C hinese history in line not w ith conventional M arxism, b u t w ith their theory of the AMP, new ly "discovered" and attributed to Marx. Their effort, h o w ev er, failed to w in the su p p o rt from m ost of the C hinese
historians. Apart from political and ideological interference, the theory itself was, as we have seen, rendered inapplicable by its own faults.