Asiatic mode of production

The Asiatic mode of production was essentially ancient socialism - a kind of communist empire (not in the sense of modern imperialism). Marx and Engels initially believed it was a kind of feudalism, but later in life corrected themselves.

The Infrared meme that the ancient empires were socialist justifies that socialism is successful and traditional, inherent to human nature as a social being. It also reveals that the actual qualifying factor of "socialism" is not bourgeois democracy, not the personal wealth of the king, but the direction of the constant cycle of investment, into productive, common ends, rather than unproductive, private ones. (This is also why "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is really socialist.)

Historical theory

Communist villages vs. elite accumulation

Marx and Engels noted that Indian villages retained a communist organization at the village level, no matter which empire came and went above them. The higher empire extracted a little surplus value via rent, but was unable to fully enslave the people to the primitive accumulation of capital. Villages were naturally communist around the world, such as the French medieval communes, or the Russian mir, but in the West, they were wracked by frequent barbaric conquests resulting in their enslavement, called "serfdom" (serf = Latin servus = slave). Feudalism only began in Europe after the people had been stripped of their rightfully owned means of production - proletarianized, subject to primitive accumulation.

Gangsta King vs the bureaucrats

Some of the Asiatic rulers even represented the productive forces and in this sense were communists. They used extracted rents productively, essentially as the "common funds" described by Karl Marx in The Critique of the Gotha Program. It was actually the bureaucrats - tax collectors and privileged public officials - who were always parasitic and conspired to overthrow good leaders.

This is the actual basis of the rudimentary, instinctual peasant saying, "Good tsar, bad boyars." Though naive, it was essentially correct. Ironically, Western academoids, being "educated" so they think they know better, deride the peasants as "naive monarchists", and attribute their support for Lenin and Stalin to this "naivete".

The bureaucrat's interest in becoming a capitalist was studied by Mao as the material basis of revisionism. Many Hoxhaists also consider corrupt "high managerial personnel" under socialism as aspiring "embryonic capitalists". The Asiatic empires reveal that this phenomenon is nothing new.

Monarchism and the king's riches

"But the king was rich!" they object. (Ex: Incas.)

A leader being bestowed with great wealth (or sexual status) does not per se contradict ancient socialism if the people wanted to bestow him this as a reward for his great leadership.

But it is true that in future higher-stage communism, the state ceases to be political and dissolves into a mere function of society, exercised by all the masses. So if past empires were socialist, why did they not have some kind of democracy?

Monarchy was inevitable at that stage in historical development. How could scattered villages realistically communicate and integrate into one economic plan? How could people occupied by labor consider the correct path of economic development? Material poverty restricted this function to a political class. It was out of this political class, out of the corruption of inheriting the king's wealth, that parasitism was generated.

Thus, the king's private wealth was not the result of un-socialist parasitism, but the cause of it.

Pride of birth trails out into penury and the weaknesses of interbreeding. The way is opened for pride of wealth and accomplishment. Enter the nouveaux riches, riding to power as the Harkonnens did, on the backs of the ancient regime.

- Leto II, God Emperor of Dune, p. 380

Negation of ancient socialism

Even after centuries of slowly extracting wealth from their people, the parasites were unable to become capitalists, because they could not proletarianize their own people. They had to conquer other peoples first.

So it was in Rome:

• first import conquered slaves,
• then the wealthy accumulate land and property,
• then more slaves replace the free workforce,
• then the free men become wage-slaves.

Examples

The Indus Valley Civilization of 3000-2000 BC was a communist empire: egalitarian with strong public infrastructure (including running water and toilets).

The Incan Empire was communistic, as it demanded the same amount of labor from every able-bodied person, the Incan mita. This surplus was almost entirely used for the common funds. The leader was bestowed with great wealth, but this is possible under socialism as a reward for a popular hero; it only contradicts socialism if his wealth grew infinitely, like the parasite that is capital.

Mughal Emperor Akbar is an example of a heroic leader.

The Iroquois Confederation was considered communist by Marx. The confederation of villages in the American northeast was actually more prosperous than many of the white proletarians nearby, until the Iroquois sided with the British in the American Revolution and consequently were ransacked (expropriated) by Patriots.

Shrek

Haz: "Shrek was a freehold peasant living in an Asiatic mode of production... He was always cool with whoever the emperor was — didn't want to get involved in politics. But Lord Farquaad wanted to end the Asiatic mode of production and institute private property and eliminate freehold peasants like Shrek and all these fairy-tale creatures... gather them in one place to be slaves and laborers. And that violated the social contract."

See also

• Mongol Modernity#How Asian Empires Were Socialist
• Gangsta King
• Narodniks
• Ottoman Empire
• Qing Dynasty