THE
ECONOMIC
WEEKLY
November 2, 1957
Book Review
The Basis of Despotism
Oriental Despotism—A Comparative Study of Total Power by K a r l A Wittfogel. Yale University Press,
1957. Pp XDC + 556. Price $7.50 or Ra 37.50.
D D Kosambi
THE
contents of this Impressive,
beautifully printed and well got
up publication w i t h its usual paraphernalia of current American scholarship leave very much to be desired.
Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this book (and
many others like i t ) Is the profoundly meaningless terminology,
such as the following; hydraulic
civilization; agromanagerial society;'
agrobureaucratic and agrodespotic
regimes. One can understand the
function of the fluid in the working
of a hydraulic press, a hydraulic lift,
or a hydraulic ram. How it operates
in a 'hydraulic' society—apart from
the fact that human life cannot
exist without water, and that water
is not uniformly distributed upon
the earth's surface—Is not made
clear by all the pseudo-scientific
verbiage of the initial chapter. The
one clear statement is that hydraulic states sadly damage the rights
of private property—the ultimate
and unforgivable sin.
'Oriental
despotism', as if it were plague or
cholera,
succeeded
in Infecting
Rome without benefit of hydraulics.
The whole performance Is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, the more surprising because
semantics Is so fashionable in the
U S A .
The word 'Oriental' Is sometimes
used as synonymous w i t h 'Asiatic',
though frequent references to Egypt,
Mexico, and Peru
show that the
geographic limits are not essential.
Nero and Caligula were certainly
more powerful and more despotic
than any oriental despot; but neither
they nor Tiberius, w i t h his unspeakable vice and cruelty appear In the
book. Our present author goes so far
also as hydraulic-oriental despotism.
It was, apparently, Introduced by
Augustus in Rome, much in the
same way as smallpox was introduced by the Spaniards Into America, and syphilis by the Portuguese
into India. There is no discussion
of one undisputably Oriental book
which praised despots provided they
did not follow the wrong cult,, and
which gained tremendous autllority
as well as circulation In the West
—the Old Testament.
The author, so we are told, experienced the despotism of absolute
total power at first hand in one of
Hitler's concentration camps. Yet t
there is no analysis of that particular experience. On pages 143 to
149, we find that terror and torture
are prominent features of oriental
despotism.
" I t was left to the
masters of the Communist apparatus state to reverse the humanizing trend and to reintroduce the
systematic infliction of physical pain
for the purpose of extracting 'confessions' " (p 147). Was there no
torture w o r t h the mention in any
of the Nazi judicial procedure and"
'confessions' obtained in Fascist
I t a l y and Germany, or for that
matter third degree methods employed elsewhere (including the 'benign'
rule of the British in India)? The
reason for this rather lopsided emphasis is very simple. The clear and
imminent danger against which the
book warns is that of Communism.
Apparently, Communism is the most
dangerous form of Oriental despotism and total power. Marx, even
more Engels and Lenin, (so the
author tells us) used all their intellectual power to disguise the fact
that they were really introducing
Oriental despotism into the West.
It is, therefore, not surprising that
the Chinese, in t r y i n g to introduce
Western civilization, mistakenly
adopted the Soviet system which
was really their own Oriental despotism imposed upon .Russia by
Lenin! Nehru's India seems (to the
author) naively ambivalent. This
means that the evil present in the
communist danger has not sufficiently impressed itself upon the
Indian mind.
The author has hardly considered
the monsoon worth mentioning as
fundamental in Indian 'hydraulic'
society; or, for that matter, caste—
which all foreigners from the classical period to the present day seem
to regard as a peculiar and very important feature of Indian society.
Thana Is mentioned twice but only
because of a worthless fourth century Nepali legend about its merchant guild.
Sopara is, in the
author's geography, "one of several
1417
settlements located on the coast of
Thana, south of modern Bombay".
The Manigramam, the Shreni, or
the Vira-Vanunja trading caste In
India, and the gigantic and really
powerful Hong merchants' organisations in China are not allowed to
disturb the reader's consciousness
The Arthaahustra Is quoted (without understanding) several times,
but nothing whatever has been said
of the benign rule of Ashoka, just
after the Arthashastra, Why this
sudden reversal of despotism in thai
brief interval of not more than 50
years, without any corresponding
change in Indian hydraulics? Why
is no mention made of the Chinese
travellers' emphatic account that
under the Guptas (4-5th centuries)
and Harsha (early 7th century)
penal legislation was extremely
mild, labour was not dragooned and
no torture used in the examinations
of witnesses? In a study of 'Oriental despotism', why is it essential
to omit periods when the rule struck
all observers as being singularly
kindly and unoppressive not only in
form, but In fact? How does it
happen that the laws of the Koman
.Twelve Tables and the first A the
hian code were far more draconlc
thnn under such 'despots', if not
because of the right of private property first showing its teeth and
claws?
On page 141, we find the following: "Lenin defined the dictatorship
of the proletariat—which he held to
be the heart of the Soviet regime
as 'a power not limited by any
laws'. L i k e other utterances of
Lenin, this formula combines an
impressive half-truth w i t h important fallacies." The half-truths and
fallacies derive only from Professor
Wittfogel. Lenin was first defining
dictatorship as such and not merely that of the proletariat. Dictatorship is precisely rule not bounded
by law; and this definition goes back
to the days of the Roman republic
when, In times of emergency, the
people and senate agreed to set up
a dictator whose orders would be
obeyed for a specified period without
question as to their legality. Such
dictatorship cannot possibly be
THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY
written off as Oriental infection of
the t r u l y unhydraulle Roman mind.
Similarly, on page 447: "The
Second Industrial Revolution, which
we are now experiencing, is perpetuating the principle of a m u l t i centered
society
through large
bureaucratized complexes that mutually—and laterally—check each
other: most importantly ( B i g Government, Big Business, Big A g r i culture, and B i g Labour, But the
destruction of one major nongovernmental complex may bring about
the downfall of others. Under Fascism and National Socialism, the
liquidation of Big Labour so strengthened Big Government that eventually B i g Business and B i g A g r i culture were also threatened. A n d
in Soviet Russia the liquidation of
Big Business and Big Agriculture
quickly enabled
Big Government
to subdue labour." This might ralfle
a dangerous question: the responsibility of Big Business and B i g
Agriculture in helping fascism suppress B i g Labour, The author hastens to bypass it in a footnote: "Moscow's role in Hitler's rise to power
is a similarly neglected Issue". No
mention of Thyssen or Krupp; nor
of the unfailing Western support of
Hitler almost to the beginning of
World War I I .
It is depressing to note that H i t ler, after all, has scored a victory
if a graduate of his concentration
camps imbibed enough of the
'master-race' philosophy to damn
so widespread a social phenomenon aa 'Oriental'. This parallels
the extraordinarily weak hold upon
the ideal of pure liberty that the
Greeks themselves manifested during their brief period of glory. They
might deride the Persians for not
having tasted the Joy of sweet
liberty, but the book fails to mention what the Athenians did to ruin
the freedom of Melos, and what
happened to the liberty of Plataea
at Greek hands, in the Peloponnesian War. Mllitiades, a private
citizen of free Athens who had led
his side to victory against the Persians at Marathon, was also the
tyrant of the Chersonese; this did
not diminish 'Byron's poetic admiration for both Mllitiades and liberty.
Pausanlas, field commander In the
Persian war, missed a coup d'etat
against his own state. He starved
to death in an unroofed sanctuary
at Sparta, ringed in by the very
men whom he had led in defence
of the liberty of which he then tried
November 2, 1957
to deprive them. The Athenian
naval commander in the same war,
Themistocles, had similar designs
at Athens, but escaped in time to
serve the Persian despot as provincial governor, without any further
qualms about the loss of his ineffable liberty.
What is the tap-root of despotism?
Marx noted that the Asian states
performed a considerable economic
function In development and control of irrigation; but that the solid
foundation of Asiatic despotism
was furnished by the passive, unresisting stratum of producers In
the virtually self-contained, stagnant villages, whose produce did not
become a commodity t i l l It reached
the hands of the state. There is
no esoteric doctrine here about hydraulics and 'statism'. It might be
suggested that the passive, unresisting stratum of Indian peasants in
L a t i n America has something to do.
w i t h the constant resurgence of
tyrannical dictator-presidents like
TruJillo. If such a despot has any
other prop, it Is neither the water
supply, nor communist Instigation,
but some foreign company capitalized in the land of free enterprise
and liberty for the stockholders.
"The history of hydraulic society",
says Wlttfogel on p 329. "suggests
that the class struggle, far from
being a chronic disease o f . a l l mankind, is the luxury of multtcentered
and open .societies". This is the
same sort of nonsense that derides
socialism because it Is supposed to
deprive the workers of their most
precious possession, the right to
strike, which Is far more important
than a living wage or control of
the state. Yet, the painful maxim,
"Better the tyranny of one than the
tyranny of the many", goes far
back Into Greek antiquity. Despotism is clear evidence of some acute
internal struggle. By formal outward submission to the absolute
authority of the state, or of a despot—raised, if necessary, to the level
of a cult—a particular class can
effectively disguise its own need for,
and benefit from, the despotism.
The Roman senatorial and equestrian orders were based on the possession of wealth.
The citizen
whose property assessment fell below the requisite level would lose
the privileged status at the next
census. In the last days of the Republic, the greed of these classes
in extracting wealth from the provinces had attained Intolerable
1419
lengths.
Cicero's oration against
Verres shows how a patrician could
strip a province unhindered. The
case was won by the provincials,
without restitution of the loot or
punishment for Verres. That model
lover of liberty, Brutus, tanned
money to a tributary Asian king at.
48 per cent annually compound
Interest. He asked Cicero to call
out thu nearest Roman army, to
collect payment on the debt. The
emperors, w i t h their paid civil service of freemen and slavey, at least
restricted the robbery to loss in
tolerable limits; they held the balance of power between looter and
looted. The progressive deification
of the Roman emperors had its
basis in the need to minimize the
use of force, always a costly propositi onf during expropriation. The
last remnants of Republican pretence were dropped by the emperor
Diocletian because the structure of
the state no longer corresponded to
'such fictions. The 'Roman' legions
ha-d to be recruited primarily from
barbarians near the frontiers. The
Italian heartland whose free, smallholding, peasant citizenry had been'
eaten up by the latifundta of the
patricians could supply neither soldiers nor officers.
What makes despotism Inevitable is not Orientalism, nor hydraulics, but. the particular type of production : how much surplus Is
forcibly expropriated by the state
for its own use and that, of the
class it mainly serves. Despotism
would have no function in a primitive tribal society; but should a
tribe reach a certain level of development, a cruel
despot like the
Zulu Chaka
seems
a natural
phenomenon. Even so, his cruelties as reported by unsympathetic
foreigners who wanted to justify
intervention and conquest do not
match the cold, treacherous malice
of the Roman Republic towards
any opposition, nor the Spartan
massacre of Nikias and about
7,000 Athenian
prisoners of war
after the battle of Syracuse. Not
the insidious vilencss of Orientals,
but the need to industrialize at all
costs in the face of a uniformly
hostile environment explains the
stresses set up in the first state to
be ruled by a Communist party—
the USSR. On the other hand, the
despotisms that many lamented
under fascism were engendered by
the unrestrained exercise of the
rights of private property.