The Asiatic Mode of Production Problems of Conceptualising State and Economy英文电子书.pdfVIP

251 THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION: PROBLEMS OF CONCEPTUALISING STATE AND ECONOMY Kate Currie Until very recently, the legacy of the kindled resulting in a proliferation of theore- Leningrad Conference of 1931 [ 1] has had tical [4] and substantive debate, discussion unfortunate implications for the analysis of and analysis. It is with this theoretical debate complex pre-capitalist social formations. Un- that I am in this article primarily concerned, der the auspices of Stalin, this Conference and particularly as it relates to the conceptu- concluded by rejecting the validity of the alisation of the AMP. Asiatic mode of production (hereafter the As I have indicated, the renewed interest in AMP) as a useful starting point for the anal- Marxs work on the AMP has not emerged in a ysis of the Chinese and, by implication, other theoretical vacuum but in an ongoing socio- post-tribal pre-capitalist social formations. economic context. Coinciding with the gener- From the early thirties through the mid-six- al interest in complex pre-capitalist societies, ties, China and other social formations hither- there has emerged a more specific concern to conceptualised by Marx in terms of the with conditions of production in existence in AMP were subsumed as variants of the feudal Mughal, British and Independent India. It is mode of production. During this period there generally accepted that no single dominant emerged a