Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 00:02:18 -0700
From: Lisa Rogers <eqwq.lrogers-AT-state.ut.us>
Subject:  "stages of civilization"


From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Wittfogel's *Oriental Despotism*
... A very interesting work that addresses the kind of societies 
that Marx had referred to as being under the "Asiatic mode of 
production," characterized by hydraulic agricultural systems in arid 
climatic regions administered by very powerful centralized
bureaucracies. [snip]  [It] throws a wrench in the vulgarly
progressivist  marxist-(leninist) schema of the inevitable and
unavoidable stages of  civilization, that is,
slavery-feudalism-capitalism-socialism-communism.  Feudalism properly
speaking applied only to western Europe and Japan.  (Africa I'm not
sure about--anyone want to supply some info?) 
[snip]
Wittfogel is definitely of the anti-Engels camp (he says *Origin  of
the Family...* is especially mistaken)...
***

Hi again, Alex.  I hope I qnswered your previous questions about
anthropology as well as I could.  I don't recall any loose threads,
come to think of it, I probably went on and on long after you were
actively participating in the Engles OFPPS thread and its
descendants.

I haven't read Wittfogel, but I have a few comments of my own.

Modern anthropology does offer a rather different take on categories
of societal types.  It's not my best area, but I feel safe in saying
that "slavery" for instance is not one of them.  In order of degree
of hierarchy, centralization of power or social stratification it
goes something like tribe, kingdom, empire.

The quantity of slave-holding I haven't seen used in general societal
classificatory schemes.  I suspect that the 19th century schemes,
Engels' OFPPS for instance, therefore Morgan, were fixated rather
narrowly on Greek and Roman models of civilization.  Give 'em a break
for available knowledge and all that, but in the larger reality there
was much more variety and less unilineality in social forms and
changes.  

For Africa in particular, there were large areas that were not part
of 'State' societies, and so may not come into a classification of
"civilization".  They were farmers and herders over much of that
enormous continent, organized genealogically, with lineages often
acting like corporations.  Membership or marriage into a lineage
conferred land _use_ rights, and hereditary use-rights are similar to
those in feudalism [which actually did offer the serfs more economic
security in that way than capitalism did.]

But the agricultural peoples of Africa [and other places] were
generally not subject to a state, with extreme class divisions and
standing armies and such.  Exactly where is the line between
hereditary chiefships and kings, I am not sure.  Perhaps when
soldiering becomes a lifetime career option.

There were also major states that were neither feudal nor "Asiatic",
yet should surely be counted among "Civilization", both in Africa and
in the Americas.  That includes the three successively larger
kingdoms and empires of West Africa, Mali, Ghana and Songhay [not
corresponding to the borders of any modern countries], as well as
possibly the Maya, Inca and Axtec.


I'm curious about Wittfogel's criticism of OFPPS, as I'm still
engaged in thinking about that.  One of my critiques is that Engels'
[and Marx and Morgan] offer no reason for men becoming the owners of
property, and not women, and thereby becoming dominant by controlling
the means of subsistence.  Also, Engels' doesn't show that in fact
men do produce the means of subsistence in non-state societies. 
There is a lot of evidence against that, actually.

I don't think he even mentions a reason why men became owners _of_
women themselves.  There is also no discussion of matrilineal
societies such as those in Africa which I find interesting.  But I
posted a bit about matri/patrilineality before, so I'll not go on.

Seeya,
Lisa



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