ORIENTAL DESPOTISM

Karl Wittfogel

Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1957, 556 pgs., index, bibliography, notes.

Reviewer comment:
This is Dr. Wittfogel's Comparative Study of total power. He titles the book "Oriental Despotism" because early examples existed in Asia (Orient including the Near East) and "Despotism" a form of political economy ruled by an all powerful sovereign and controlled by a sizeable bureaucracy. In this he coins the concept and term 'Hydraulic Society' to denote those, beginning with ancient types, of society based on control of water sources and uses, such as ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China and others.

Dr. Wittfogel was a "Marxist' in the context of believing Marx's basic economic theories. He found the early Marx mentioning an "Oriental - Asian - form of early political-economic systems but this concept was not only abandoned but denounced by later interpreters of 'Marxism' including Lenin. The author's objectives included exposure of this contradiction to Marx's categories of societies in history. The 'official' Marxist divisions in history are: Slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism.
Chapter 9 is devoted to his attack on Marx, Engles and Lenin for their "abandonment" of the concept of Oriental Despotism. He continues his critique and opposition on to Stalin. Dr. Wittfogel's adamant belief in this and his desire to prove them wrong is the main purpose of the book. For us, today, the concepts dissected in the book apply to China today.

The societies that Dr. Whittfogel describes were command economies in which the ruling palace/temple elite established wage and price controls. Money was the standard of value for the allocation of assets including labor. But his ultimate objective is not only to reinstate this 'Oriental Despotism' as an early social- economic- political reality but to expand the concept of an 'hydraulic' basic to a 'similar' form of modern industrial based bureaucratic 'totalitarianism' as practiced by the Communist regimes in the USSR and other similar societies.
Dr. Wittfogel continually uses the term 'state', a modern Western abstract secular term that replaced the religious concept of 'the Great Chain of Being" in the 1400's.

Granted that today, since we have adopted and understand our 'the state' as the source of legitimacy for ruling in society, we observe that the form of the political structure of these ancient societies is analogous, but we should remember that for the members of those societies they did not have that concept and did not believe such a thing existed. Instead, they did believe totally in their 'creation myth, how the world and humanity were created by the gods.

His historical treatment expands from the pure 'hydraulic' form to others, such as the Inca, that were 'despotic' and functioned by control of a powerful bureaucracy. In the 20th Century such a rule by a despot controlling a bureaucracy has reached a 'totalitarian' form not achieved by the ancient 'hydraulic societies'. His 'target' is the example of communist societies, especially the Soviet Union and China. Socialism in practice has become an 'Oriental Despotism'.

Dr. Wittfogel published his study based on massive research up to 1957. What we are witnessing today far exceeds the 'totalitarian' capabilities that technology of that time enabled a ruler to achieve and which exists today. In his book Shield of Achilles Dr. Philip Babbitt terms two current variations ' managerial state' and 'mercantilist state'. But those appellations are drawn from much less 'totalitarian' examples than are being achieved in China and are desired by other ruling bureaucracies.

Several of his significant statements are worth citing here. In Chapter 10, page 441 he writes: "Man is an ideological animal; he acts in accordance with his innermost conviction; and this is true whether religious or secular issues are at stake. A comprehensive philosophical and political creed, such as Communism, provides its adherents with a map of the world, an arsenal of operational directives (a 'guide to action') a flag, and a powerful political myth. It inspires those who hold it with supreme confidence and paralyzes those among their enemies who are impressed by it"
The book, when it was published, was an important refutation of Communism and its example in Soviet Russia and China. To show that the fundamental 'total power' characteristic of modern industrial bureaucratic management systems is similar to that created in ancient hydraulic societies he describes its development in Soviet Russia and China. It is even more important today because it also is a general description of government (ruler) seeking and maintaining total power in the form of a managerial bureaucracy which constitutes an 'elite' class that purports to rule for the benefit of the society over which it has control. Thus the student reader should be thinking that today the term 'hydraulic' is limiting and not strictly applicable - better today to think 'industrial' and even 'high tech' as it is acquiring all the power characteristics of Dr. Whittfogel's 'hydraulic' examples.

Shortcomings: For a study of political economy Dr. Wittfogel, remarkably, does not include a study of the role of 'money' and its existence as credit in the ancient hydraulic societies. Much more knowledge of society in ancient Mesopotamia has be learned by the study of the cuneiform records since Dr. Whittfogel wrote - the conclusion today is that the people lived a 'happy life' and enjoyed daily activities very similar to people today, despite living in a society that was the kind of 'hydraulic despotism' that Dr. Wittfogel describes.

Here I list the chapter and the subchapter titles which provide a clear sense of the topics included in the book. And I include a list of related references.

Chapter 1 - The Natural Setting of Hydraulic Society
--A. Changing Man in Changing Nature

--B. The Historical Place of Hydraulic Society

--C. The Natural Setting.
---1 Historical Conditions Being Equal, A Major Natural Difference the Possible Cause of Decisive Institutional Differences
---2. Several Natural Factors Essential to Farming
---3. Some Essential Factors Defy Compensating Actions; Others Respond More Readily
---4. The Specific Qualities of Water

--D. Must the Hydraulic Potential Be Actualized?
---1. An Open Historical Situation - but Recognizable Patterns of Response
---2. The Recognized Advantages of Irrigation Agriculture
----a. I .... then...
----b. Arid, Semiarid, and Humid Areas; Hypothetical Patters of Interaction and Growth

Chapter 2 - Hydraulic Economy - a Managerial and Genuinely Political Economy
--A. Division of Labor in Hydraulic Agriculture

---1. Preparatory and Protective Operations Separated from farming Proper
----a. Large-Scale Preparatory Operations (Purpose: Irrigation)
----b. Large-scale Protective Operations (Purpose: Flood Control)
---2. Cooperation
----a. Dimension
----b. Integration
---c. Leadership
---d. Hydraulic Leadership- Political Leadership

--B. Heavy Water Water Works and Heavy Industry

--C. Calendar Making and Astronomy - Important Functions of the Hydraulic Regime

--D. Further Construction Activities Customary in Hydraulic Societies
---1. Nonagranian Hydraulic Works
----a. Aqueducts and Reservoirs Providing Drinking Water
----b. Navigation Canals
---2. Large Non-Hydraulic Constructions
----a. Huge Defense Structures
----b. Roads
----c. Palaces, Capital Cities and Tombs
----d. Temples

--E. The Masters of Hydraulic Society - Great Builders
---1. The Aesthetic Aspect
----a. Uneven Conspicuousness
----b. The Monumental Style
----c. The Institutional Meaning

--F. The Bulk of All Large Non-constructional Industrial Enterprises Managed also by Hydraulic Governments
---1. A Comparative View
---2. The Power of the Hydraulic State over Labor Greater Than That of Capitalist Enterprises

--G. A Genuine and Specific Type of Managerial Regime

Chapter 3 - A State Stronger than Society
A. Nongovernmental Forces Competing with the State for Social Leadership

B. The Organizational Power of the Hydraulic State
1. The Great Builders of Hydraulic Society - Great Organizers
2. Fundamentals of Effective Organization: Counting and Record Keeping
3. Organizational and Hydraulic Management
a. The Organizational Task Inherent in Large Constructions, Hydraulic and Otherwise
b. Hydraulic Management
4. The Organization of Quick Locomotion and Intelligence
5. The Organizational Pattern of Warfare in Hydraulic Society
a. Monopolization and Coordination
b. Training and Morale
c. Organization of Supplies
d. Planned Warfare and Military Theory
e. Numbers
f. Percentages

C. The Acquisitive Power of the Hydraulic State
1. Organizational and Bureaucratic Prerequisites
2. Labor on the Public Fields and/or the Land Tax
3. Universality and Weight of the Hydraulic Tax Claim
4. Confiscation

D. Hydraulic Property- Weak Property
1. Four Ways of Weakening Private Property
2. Hydraulic Laws of Inheritance: the Principle
3. The Application
4. The Effect
a. On Regulated Villages
b. On Holders of Small Private Property
c. On Holders of Large Private Property
5. Pertinent Western Developments
a. The Democratic City States of Ancient Greece
b. The United States after the War of Independence
c. A Spectacular Contrast: the Strength of Landed Property in Late Feudal; and post-feudal Europe
6. Different Social Forces Opposed to Proprietary Perpetuities
a. Small and Mobile Property
b. The States of Feudal and Post-feudal Europe
c. Hydraulic Absolutism Succeeded Where the States of Occidental Feudalism and Absolutism Failed
7. The Organizational Impotence of Hydraulic Property Holders

E. The Hydraulic Regime Attaches to itself the Country's Dominant Religion
1. Sole, Dominant, and Secondary Religions
2. Religious Authority attached to the Hydraulic State
a. The Hydraulic Regime - Occasionally (quasi) Hierocratic
b. The Hydraulic Regime - Frequently Theocratic
c. Agrarian Despotism Always Keeps the Dominant Religion Integrated in Its Power System
d. The Changing Position of the Dominant Priesthood in Hydraulic Society

F. Three Functional Aspects, but a Single System of Total Power

Chapter 4 - Despotic Power - Total and Not Benevolent
A. Total Power
a. Absence of Effective Constitutional Checks
b. Absence of Effective Social Checks
a. No Independent Centers of Authority Capable of Checking the Power of the Hydraulic Regime
b. The So-called Right of Rebellion
c. Election of the Despot - No Remedy
d. Intragovernmental Influence: Absolutism and Autocracy
3. Laws of Nature and Patterns of Culture - No Effective Checks Either

B. The Beggars' Democracy
1. The Managerial Variant of the Law of Changing Administrative Returns
a. Hydraulic Agriculture: The Law of Increasing Administrative Returns
b. The Law of Balanced Administrative Returns
c. The Law of Diminishing Administrative Returns
d. Ideal Curve and Reality of Changing Returns Nonhydraulic Spheres of Political Economy
2. The Power Variant of the Law of Changing Administrative Returns
a. Imperative and Worth-while Efforts
b. The Forbidding Cost of Total Social Control in a Semimanagerial Society
c. Total Social Control Not Necessary for the Perpetuation of Agromanagerial Despotism
3. Sectors of Individual Freedom in Hydraulic Society
a. Limitations of Managerial Control
b. Limitations of Thought Control
4. Groups Enjoying Varying Degrees of Autonomy
a. Less Independence than Frequently Assumed
i. The Family
ii. The Village
iii. The Guilds
iv. Secondary Religions
b. Genuine Elements of Freedom Nevertheless Present
5. Conclusion
a. Politically Irrelevant Freedoms
b. A Beggar's Democracy

C. Hydraulic Despotism - Benevolent Despotism?
1. Total Power - for the Benefit of the People?
2. The Claim and the Reality
a. Operational Necessity Not to be Confused with Benevolence
b. The Rationality Coefficient of Hydraulic Regime
c. Whose Rationality Coefficient?
3. The Rulers' Rationality Optimum Prevails
a. Necessity and Choice in the Policy of the Hydraulic Regime
b. The Rulers' Managerial Optimum
c. The Rulers' Consumptive Optimum
d. The Rulers' Judicial Optimum
4. "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"
5. The Rulers' Publicity Optimum
6. The Two-fold Function of the Benevolence Myth
a. It Stresses the Long-range Interest of the Despotic Regime
b. It Weakens Potential Opposition
c. The Presence of Good Sovereigns and Just Officials Fails to Upset the Prevailing Trend
7. Hydraulic Despotism: Benevolent in Form, Oppressive in Content

Chapter 5 - Total Terror - Total Submission - Total Loneliness
A. Autonomous Man under Total Power

B. Terror Essential for Maintaining the Ruler's Rationality Optimum
1. The Need
2. Its Official Recognition: "Punishment Is the King"
3. The Morphology of Violence
a. Integrated versus Fragmented Patterns of Violence.
b. Controlled versus Uncontrolled Violence

C. The Terror of Hydraulic Despotism
1. Its Physical Aspects
2. Its Psychological Aspects
a. Unpredictability
b. Lenin "... power not limited by any laws"
c. Lawless Terror and Terror by Law
3. "Government by Flogging"
a. Terror in Managerial Procedures
b. Terror in Fiscal Procedures
c. Terror in Judicial Procedures
d. Western Correspondences Note worthy for Their Temporary Strength and Their Limitations
4. Varying Configurations of Terror in the Hydraulic World
a. Relatively Lenient Developments
b. Average and Excessive Developments

D. Total Submission
1. Man's Response to the Threat of Total Terror
a. The Postulate of Common Sense and the Virtue of Good Citizenship: Obedience
2. Preparation for Total Obedience: Disciplinary Education
3. The Great Symbol of Total Submission: Prostration

E. Total Loneliness
1. Loneliness Created by Fear
a. The Ruler: Trust No One!
b. The Official: Eternal Suspicion
c. The Commoner: the Fear of Being Trapped by Involvement
2. The Alienation Potential of Total Power
3. Every-day Adjustments
4. Total Loneliness in the Hour of Doom

Chapter 6 - The Core, the Margin, and the Submargin of Hydraulic Societies
A. Preliminary Stock-taking in the Middle of the Journey
1. Some Basic Results
2. Three Problems Deserving
Further Investigation
3. Problems of Hydraulic Density

B. Hydraulic core Areas
1. How Continuous Is the Hydraulic System of a Given Hydraulic Area?
2. How Great Is the Economic and Political Weight of a Given Hydraulic Economy?
3. How Strong Is the Second Major Element of Hydraulic Operation: Flood Control?
4. Compact and Loose Hydraulic Societies
5. The Great Agromanagerial Empires - Usually Loose Hydraulic Societies
6. Degrees of Hydraulic Density and degrees of Bureaucratic density
a. The Principle
b. Changing Bureaucratic Density of a Hydraulic Territory
7. Hydraulically Concerned and Hydraulically Unconcerned Masters of Hydraulic Society
8. Periods of Agromanagerial Adjustment, Degeneration, and Restoration
9. The Staying Power of Deteriorated Agromanagerial Hydraulic Societies.

C. The Margin of the Hydraulic World
1. Varying Operational and Bureaucratic Density Patterns in Marginal Areas of the Hydraulic World
2. The Growth of Proprietary Forces
3. The Institutional Staying Power of Marginal Oriental Despotisms
a. Bureaucratic Interests Favoring the Reproduction of the Despotic Order
b. Late Byzantium: Marasmus rather the Creative Transformation
c. The Extraordinary Staying Power of Tsarist Bureaucracy
d. Ottoman Turkey
e. Diversified Final Evolutions
4. Marginal Agrarian Despotisms Containing Conspicuous Hydraulic Elements
a. The Liao Empire
b. Maya Society
5. "Loose 2" or "Marginal 1"?
6. Fragmenting Patterns of Inheritance and a Government-Dependent Dominant Religion
7. Location, Genesis, and Institutional Vulnerability of Marginal Agrarian Despotisms
a. Location
b. Genesis
c. Institutional Vulnerability

D. The Submarginal Zone of the Hydraulic World
1. The Phenomenon
2. Cases
a. Protohistorical Greece
b. Early Rome
c. Japan
d. Pre-Mongol (Kievan) Russia
3. Comment

E. Societies Which Cross the Institutional Divide
1. Nonagricultural Peoples adopting and transmitting Power: Devices of Agrarian Despotisms
a. Such Devices Not Necessary for, but Compatible with, Nomadic Pastoralism
b. The Brittleness of Orientally Despotic Power at the Pastoral Fringe of the Hydraulic World
2. Agricultural Civilizations Crossing the Institutional Divide
a. Greece
b. Rome i. The Rise of a Hellenistic Version of Oriental Despotism
ii. The Fall of Agromanagerial Despotism in Western Rome
c. Europe after 476
i. Unsuccessful Attempts to Rule Absolutely
ii. The "unparalleled" Case of the Doomsday Book
d. Spain
i. Oriental Conquest
ii. The Reconquista
e. The Introduction of Oriental Despotism into Russia

F. Structure and Change in the Density Patterns of the Oriental World
1. Structure
a. Density Subtypes of Hydraulic Society
b. Differing Frequencies of Occurrence
c. Decreasing Importance of Hydraulic Economy Proper
2. Capacity for Social Change

Chapter 7 - Patterns of Proprietary Complexity in Hydraulic Society
A. The Human Relation Called "Property"

B. Objects of Property Rights

C. The Potential Scope of Proprietary Rights

D. Three Major Complexity Patterns in Hydraulic Civilizations
1. Simple, Semicomplex, and Complex Patterns of Property
2. Supplementary Remarks
a. "Simple I" and "Simple II"
b. Proprietary Complexity and Hydraulic Density

E. Nonspecific and Specific Aspects in the Proprietary Conditions of Tribal Hydraulic Societies
1. Nonspecific Aspects
2. Specific Aspects
3. Simple I ...

F. Patterns of Property in State-centered Simple Hydraulic Societies
1. Statehood versus Primitive Government
2. Steps in the Professionalizating of Government
a. Chagga Chieftainship and the State of Ancient Hawaii
b. Proprietary consequences
3. Simple Patterns of Property in Land, Industry and Commerce
4. Variants of Simple Patterns of Hydraulic Property and Society
a. Hawaii
b. Inca Peru
c. Pharaonic Egypt
d. Ancient China
e. Sumer
5. Origins of Bureaucratic Capitalism
6. The Hydraulic Sponge

G. Semicomplex Patterns of Hydraulic Property and Society
1. Occurrences
a. Pre-Conquest Mesoamerican
b. India, China, and Near East
c. Byzantium and Russia
2. How Powerful Could the Representatives of Private Mobile and Active Property become in Semicomplex Hydraulic Societies?
a. Miscellaneous Developments
b. Hindu India
c. Ancient Mesopotamia
d. Conclusions

H. Complex Patterns of Property in Hydraulic Society
1. Hydraulic Landlordism, Past and Present
2. Government-controlled Private Land in Hydraulic Society
a. Type of Government-controlled Land
i. Government-managed Land
ii. Government-regulated Land
iii. Government -assigned Land
b. Private Land
i. Definitions
ii. Origins
c. Types of Landownership
i. Peasant Landownership
ii. Bureaucratic Landlordism
iii. Other Social Groups
iv. Absentee landlordism (The General trend)
v. Absentee Landlordism (Traditional Russia)
iv. Borderline Cases of Regulated and Private Land Tenure
d. The Extent of Private Landownership in Various Subtypes of Hydraulic Society
i. Simple Hydraulic Societies
ii. Semicomplex Hydraulic Societies
iii. Complex Patterns of Hydraulic Property and Society
3. How Free Is Private Landed Properly in Hydraulic Society?
a. Despotically Imposed versus Democratically Established Restrictions of Private property
b. Restrictions Imposed upon the Freedom to Enjoy, to Use, to Transfer, and to Organize

I. The Effect of Private Property on Hydraulic Society

Chapter 8 - Classes in Hydraulic Society
A. The Need for a New Sociology of Class

B. Class Structure in Hydraulic Society
1. The Key Criterion: Relation to the State Apparatus
2. The Multiple Conditioning of Social Subsections

C. The Rulers 1. The men of the Apparatus
a. The Basic Vertical Structure
i. The Ruler and the Court
ii. The Ranking Officials
iii. The Underlings
b. Horizontal Developments
i. Satraps
ii. Subordinate Princes, Curacas, Rajas
iii. Gradations of Power in Modern Totalitarian States
2. Subclasses Attached to the Men of the Apparatus
a. Attachment Based on Kinship
i. The Ruling House
ii. The Bureaucratic Gentry
iii. The Relatives of Civil Underlings and Rank-and-File Soldiers
b. Attachment Based on Semi. Quasi, or pre-Official Status
i. Secular Semi-officials (Commercial and Fiscal Agents)
ii. Religious Quasi-officials (Functionaries of the Dominant Religion)
iii. Persons Occupying a Pre-official Status (Trainees and Degree-holding Candidates for Office)
iv. A Comparative Note (Professional Ideologists in the USSR)
c. Subdivided but Still and Entity

D. The Ruled
1. Property-based Subsections of Commoners
2. Slaves

E. Modifications of Class Structure That Occur in Conquest Societies
1. Conquest Involving the Formation of Stratified Societies (Primary Conquest)
2 .Conquest Involving the Further Differentiation of Stratified Societies (Secondary Conquest)
3. Class Modifications in Hydraulic Conquest Dynasties
a. The Chinese Did Not Always Absorb Their Conquerors
b. Devices for Preserving the Conquerors' Hegemony
c. Duplications of Class

F. Many Social Antagonisms but Little Class Struggle
1. Social Antagonism and Class Struggle
2. Paralysis of Class Struggle by Total Power

G. Antagonism Between Members and Different Subsections of Commoners

H. The "People" versus the Men of the Apparatus

I. Social Conflicts within the ruling Class
1. Ranking Officials versus Underlings
2. Bureaucratic Competition
a. Patterns of Competition Different in Different Societies
b. Bureaucratic Competition in Hydraulic Society
3. Civil versus Military Officials
a. The Autocrat and the Army
b. Civil versus Military Officials
4. The Bureaucratic Activists versus the Bureaucratic Gentry
5. Conflicts between the Autocrat and Other Members of the Ruling Class
a. The Autocrat versus His Relatives
i. Blood Relatives
ii. Affinals
b. The Autocrat versus the Ranking Officials
i. Once More the Problem of Autocracy
ii. Human (Social) Relations expressed through Institutional Arrangements
6. Autocratic methods of Controlling the Bureaucratic Personnel
a. The Ruler's Control over a Hereditary Officialdom (a Bureaucratic nobility)
b. Autocratic Means for weakening or Destroying the Self-perpetuating Quality of the Ranking Officials.
i. Priests
ii. Commoners (General Observations
iii. Commoners: Social Effects and Limitations of the Chinese Examination System
iv. Eunuchs: The principal
v. Eunuchs: a Few Historical Facts
vi. The Despot's Personal Agency No Incipient Party
vii. The Tribal Nobles of Conquest Dynasties
viii. Slaves
7. "Regular" Officials, Control groups, and the People

J. Social Promotion
1. Reservoirs and Mainsprings of Social Promotion
2. Criteria for Social Promotion (Aptitudes 'plus' .... )
3. Social Promotion on a Slave Plantation

K. The Total Ruling Class - a Monopoly Bureaucracy
1. The Ruling Class of Hydraulic Society and the Upper Classes in Other Stratified Societies.
2. Authoritarian Bodies Do Not Necessarily Exert Total Power
3. Monopoly versus Competition in Social Leadership
4. Monopoly of Social Leadership Appears in Oriental Despotism as Monopoly of Bureaucratic Organization ("Monopoly Bureaucracy")

Chapter 9 - The Rise and Fall of the Theory of the Asiatic Mode of Production
A. Old and New Constructs of a Unilinear Development Disregard Hydraulic Society
1. 19th-Century Unilinealists
2. Negative Criticisms
3. A Theoretical Vacuum
4. The Spread of a "Marxist-Leninist" neo-unilinealism
5. The need for a Reexamination of Marx', Engles', and Lenin's Views on the "Asiatic System" and Oriental Despotism
B. Marx, Engels, and Lenin Accept the Asiatic Concept
1. Marx Follows His Classical Predecessors with Regard to the Institutional Structure and the Development Position of the Orient
2. Marx' Asiatic Interpretation of India, China, and Post-Mongol Russia
a. India ("Asiatic Society" ... )
b. China ("Oriental Despotism" and Private Peasant Landholding)
c. Russia ("Oriental Despotism" ... Perpetuated)
3. Marx Warns against Confusing the State-controlled Agrarian Order of Asia with Slavery or Serfdom
4. "General Slavery"
5. For many Years Lenin Also upheld the Asiatic Concept
a. "Asiatic Despotism," a Totality of Traits "with Special Economic, Political, and Sociological Characteristics"
b. Lenin Elaborates Marx' Semi-Asiatic Interpretation of Tsarist Russia
c. Lenin holds the Term "Feudal" Unsuited to traditional Russia
C. Retreat from Truth
1. Marx
a. Marx "Mystifies" the Character of the Ruling Class
b. Further Retrogressions
2. Engles
a. Asiatic Society -- Yes! (Engles' Basic Attitude)
b. Asiatic Society -- Yes and No! (The Anti-Dhuring)
c. Asiatic Society -- No! (The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State)
d. Retrogressive Trends in a Supposedly Progressive Position
i. Marx Defends Scientific Objectivity against All Extraneous Considerations.
ii. Marx' and Engles' "Sin Against Science"
iii. From Progressive to Reactionary Utopianism
3. Lenin
a. Lenin Cripples Marx' Crippled Version of the Asiatic Concept
i. Consistent Disregard of the Managerial Aspect of Oriental Despotism
ii. A Confused Presentation of Russia's Ruling Class
b. A Power-Strategist' Treatment of Truth
c. The Threat of the Asiatic Restoration (1906-07)
d. Further Oscillations (1907 - 14)
e. Full Retreat (1916-19)
i. Lenin's Imperialism (1916)
ii. State and Revolution (1917)
iii. Lenin's Lecture on the State (1919)
f. Lenin's Last Period: the Specter of the Asiatchina Reemerges
4. Stalin
a. The old Guard Objects
b. A Half-hearted Criticism of the Theory of Oriental Society
i. The Leningrad Discussion (1931)
ii. The Significance of the 1931 Discussion
c. Ideological Twilight
d. Stalin "Edits" Marx
e. Delayed Reaction in the Anglo-Saxon World
f. The rout of the Notorious Theory of the Asiatic Mode of Production.
D. Three Forms of the Blackout of the Theory of the Asiatic Mode of Production

Chapter 10 - The Oriental Society in Transition
A. Basic Concepts of Social Type and Elements of Society
1. Social Types
a. Essential, Specific, and Nonspecific Elements of Society
b. Pre-industrial Stratified Societies
i. Pastoral Society
ii. Several Types of Ancient Societies
iii. Feudal Society
iv. Unwieldy Hydraulic Society
v. Residual Stratified Pre-industrial Societies
2. Social Changes
a. Forms
b. Values

B. Hydraulic Society in Transition
1. Four Aspects of the Self-perpetuation of Hydraulic Society
a. The Potential for Institutional and Cultural Growth
b. Stagnation, Epigonism, and Retrogression
c. The Staying -Power of Hydraulic Society
d. Societal Change Dependent on External Influence
2. Recent Patterns of External Influence
a. Patterns of Interrelation
b. The Influencing Side
c. Institutional Differences in the Target Societies
3. Societal Results
a. Russia
b. Colonized Hydraulic Countries
c. Semidependent ("Semicolonial ") Countries
d. A New Developmental Force arises: Soviet Communism
4. Hydraulic Society at the Crossroads
a. The Developmental Issue Underlying the Bolshevik Revolution
b. The USSR - Russia's Asiatic Restoration"
c. Communist China - the Product of a Genuine "Asiatic Restoration"?

C. Wither Asia"

D. Wither Western Society - Wither mankind?

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