Asiatic mode of production and " retro-gradualism"

I'm actually interested in discussing the Asiatic mode. Perry Anderson picks it apart quite well.

As MacNair argued contra Banaji, there does seem to be *some* directionality to history - productive forces continue to develop over the "long" (though quite short in in terms of the life of the planet) haul.

Bordiga put it that the agricultural revolution - land to peasants in the form of property, it's slow or fast accumulation and concomitant dispossession WAS the capitalist revolution. Thus, we would indeed have to view the 20th century as the *generalization of the imperatives of capitalists accumulation across the globe* rather than close calls for it's overthrow.

True I think their were some, but in those periods, the hope was tied to the gamble that the new and emerging working classes could take power against and suppress the rule of the bourgeoisie.

Another author who touches on this is Arno Mayer in his "Persistence of the Old Regime" which argues that WWI-II were very much linked (of course they were) and signaled the sort of death of the aristocratic classes in Europe. If he's correct, then it means we do have to seriously adjust how long aristocratic or backwards forces can cling to life into and through the 20th century outside of Europe.

Thailand is an interesting case; even today something like 40% of the labor force is involved in agriculture. And while 60 years ago most of that chunk (and even more of the total labor force) were involved in rice cultivation, to a great deal the country has struggled with coup after coup, as the declining royalty and factions of capitalists; emerging gangster-military-capitalists, immigrant chinese entrepreneurs, outdo themselves to crush angry peasant and worker revolts on behalf of US "development" aid.

This stuff poses a lot of questions; questions of "development" (what does it mean, labor productivity?) questions of what the proper "form" of resistance to capitalism is (is the "party form" to be rejected, when it's basis was assumed to be the working classes, when most instances of it's existence in the 20th century was largely connected to peasant revolts)? Further, what is the role for peasants in the struggle against capitalism; do they not merely see themselves clinging to a past doomed to erasure? Are their material interests; interests as peasants, not merely to get more land, out compete, become the one or few "petty" proprietors to make it big?

Thailand is an interesting case; even today something like 40% of the labor force is involved in agriculture. And while 60 years ago most of that chunk (and even more of the total labor force) were involved in rice cultivation, to a great deal the country has struggled with coup after coup, as the declining royalty and factions of capitalists; emerging gangster-military-capitalists, immigrant chinese entrepreneurs, outdo themselves to crush angry peasant and worker revolts on behalf of US "development" aid.

Could you perhaps elaborate on this and provide if possible online resources for more examination.

Some of it i don't recognise.

"the declining royalty" In what way is it declining? Certainly not in popularity with most Thais...Even the King's late lamented pet dog was the subject of a popular feature-length cartoon movie.

"immigrant" chinese entrepreneurs. Long ago i was told that behind every successful Thai business was a chinese and that is probably still true, but is it now appropriate to call them "immigrants" as for all practical matters they have been more or less assimilated and integrated now or is another more recent section being referred to?

Two points...wasn't the out-doing one another not "to crush" but to bribe farmers. Are the "revolts" being referred to the red and yellow shirt protest movements?

What are those links with US Aid?

US AID helped, through the OPS to fund and train Thai Police in the late fifties and sixties. There's a text I just began on the topic, but I believe that Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit mention it in their very useful "A History of Thailand." The text I just picked up from the library is " United States National Security Policy and Aid to the Thailand Police". Certainly Thailand was an important U.S. proxy throughout the wars in Southeast Asia.

I'm referring in general to the 20th century, which is when various groups of chinese merchant families jockeyed for positions of power and capital accumulation, whether competing with European colonial capitalists, or eventual military bureaucrats who would work jointly with Chinese capitalists. You're right to point out that they've assimilated a great deal at this point, but it is never the less a source of tension over the 20th century with Phibun (iirc) calling them the "Jews of the east" after the 1932 coup, in a bid to push for the construction of "Thai Production for Thai Consumption" or national development.

Farmers: I think the general trend, in capitalists history is to turn serfs into peasants, grant them land, but the land itself, though a pressure valve in some contexts, is always a promise with diminishing returns; it poses a challenge to accumulation and centralization where peasants an produce their own necessities, but where they can be enticed into producing for the market in a boom, they can then be ran off the land in a bad economic climate (having forsaken subsistence practices). Of course they fight for the rights to land. I'm not clear on details but that's my general understanding of the Student-Peasant-Worker revolt in the 70's.

And here we get to the problem again - What is capitalists development? What role does class struggle play in that development? What role do peasants specifically play? It seems to me that they cannot lead a socialist revolution. It seems to me they are often ignorant, spiritual, (in a often used, much maligned word "backwards"). I don't like to call people stupid, but I like being dishonest less. This ties into your point that people revere the king. They do. He promulgates a "self-sufficiency" ideology that is cunningly nationalist and neoliberal at once. It appeals to peasants and small business people alike.

Benedict Anderson argued that the Red/Yellow shirt conflict was significantly influenced by Chinese ethnic dimensions in Bankok politics. I may have to re-read the essay, it's here: https://newleftreview.org/II/97/benedict-anderson-riddles-of-yellow-and-red

I actually have a paper due on Wednesday for an Economic Development class, and I really want to hone in on 60's and 70's economic policy and activity. If you have any sources please send them my way. About the bribery, I think that's a more recent phenomenon? Of course, like I said, I want to look more closely at policy in the 60's and 70's re peasants, and I want to try and see if and where there was a sort of transition out of subsistence agriculture toward market driven, more concentrated, capital intensive cultivation.

I had not heard of this before.

But I have myself speculated before that Stalinist Russia was more like industrial serfdom than bourgeois state capitalism.

As with the classic German model provided by Lenin and Trotsky as a model for the Bolshevik one.

A critical feature of capitalism, and thus all capitalisms?; according to Karl was the ‘freedom’ of the wage labourer to sell their labour power as a commodity on the market.

That was not completely the case in Stalinist ‘state capitalism’; any more than it was in the serf system that preceded it as a major part of the previous Russian economic system etc.

Thus maybe it wasn’t so much the workers state degenerating but Russian and ‘Asiatic’ state capitalism progressing along its own intrinsic trajectory within the material conditions of its own socio-economic/ ‘cultural’ level of development blah blah?

Under the Tsarist system the landowners used to rent out their serfs to industrial capitalists, mainly in mining etc and in part due to the seasonal nature of much of agricultural production.

Bukharin on state capitalism-serfdom.

Under State capitalism the workers became the white slaves of the capitalist State. They were deprived of the right to strike; they were mobilized and militarized; everyone who raised his voice against the war was hauled before the courts and sentenced as a traitor. In many countries the workers were deprived of all freedom of movement, being forbidden to transfer from one enterprise to another. ' Free' wage workers were reduced to serfdom; they were doomed to perish on the battlefields, not on behalf of their own cause but on behalf of that of their enemies. They were doomed to work themselves to death, not for their own sake or for that of their comrades or their children, but for the sake of their oppressors.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/04.htm

Eritrea comes to mind as a contemporary example with indefinite conscription and forced labour, the main reason for all the Eritrean refugees.

By law, each Eritrean is compelled to serve 18 months in national service starting at age 18 but in practice conscripts serve indefinitely, many for over a decade. One 14-year-old refugee said, “The military does not have an end, it is for life.” While most young Eritreans begin military training for the last year of high school, children as young as 15 are sometimes conscripted. Desertions and refusals to report became more common in 2014.

Conscripts receive inadequate pay to support family members, a financial plight exacerbated by food-price inflation in 2014. Conscripts are also subject to military discipline and are harshly treated throughout their long service. Perceived infractions result in incarceration and in physical abuse often amounting to torture. The length of incarceration and type of physical abuse inflicted is at the whim of military commanders and jailers. Female conscripts are frequently sexually abused by commanders.

While some conscripts work in civil service jobs at conscript pay, others are used as forced labor on construction sites and government-owned farms. The Eritrean construction industry is a government monopoly that uses forced conscript labor. In 2013, Human Rights Watch found that several hundred conscripts had been used by state-owned Segen Construction Co. to build infrastructure at the Bisha mine, Eritrea’s only operating mineral mine. Bisha is majority-owned by Nevsun Resources, a Canadian mining company. Nevsun has expressed “regret if certain employees of Segen were conscripts” during the mine’s construction, but insists there are no ongoing abuses. Segen remains a contractor at Bisha. Able-bodied men older than 50 have been forced to perform militia duty several times a week without pay since 2012. They are used as armed guards and as labor on public workprojects, prompting some to flee.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/eritrea#e9af5a

So what's the mode of production here?

We'd have to step back and reflect on a lot more than a generalized system of conscriptive militarism to determine the mode of production. A quick check on Wiki says that in 2004 80% of the laboring population were involved in agriculture. I think the world avg. is around 20-25% and the the developed is like 12% or something? I often think there is a parallel between Absolutism and declining feudalism with contemporary bureaucratic-militarist-nationalist states (Bonapartism).

In terms of "dead ends" I disagree with OP. They can be developmental, and still be dead ends in terms of social relations, which eventually have to give way to capitalist relations. But I think we're dealing with pretty long spans of time. Thailand for example has never had a democracy in terms comparable to the US for example. It keeps suffering coups. My own suspicion is that it's because the bourgeoisie do not really need/want a parliamentary form of government which would subject them much more to the will of voters. So they are ok to align themselves with whichever military clique they think they can "maintain" stability, or in a word, imperatives of accumulation.

Asiatic mode of production (AMoP) has been widely discussed in the Turkish left since early 1960s. Traditional turkish left, following the early Comintern confusion, tended to consider Kemalism as a progressive force. Kemalist regime abolished caliphate and monarchy in the 1920s and established a semi-secular republic. However, the new republic was built on an ethnic genocide (Armenian genocide) and preserved the former Ottoman military elites' privileges. This led some to conclude that Kemalism, instead of being progressive, was actually an AMoP remnant, not representing the interests of any social class that belonged to the civil society but instead serving the military state bureaucracy.

Those who developed this thesis added that in Turkey, the main progressive force was actually islamic, conservative and provincial petty-bourgeoisie, which was supposedly "suppressed" by the kemalist bureaucracy and the state. Many who developed this theory btw 60s and 90s celebrated the rise of AKP and Erdogan as a progressive development; they claimed that "finally" the bourgeoisie was coming to power etc.

I think this search for "progressive," liberal forces outside of the state is a product of old frontism sickness. This particular mindset especially belongs to the third world left. Seeking to find allies, many leftists are oriented towards petty bourgeoisie. This lack of confidence towards the working class is typical of the third world intelligentsia. In 60s working class in the third world was still relatively smaller and inexperienced, hence was not strong enough to serve as the fodder for the aspiring leninist/leftist intellectuals' political aims. They needed more established allies and, if a secular westernizing bureaucracy happened to be in power, they also needed a legitimate marxist-ish excuse to overthrow them in the name of democractic-liberal reforms.

I think, a better concept that can help to understand the 20th century statist regimes is state-capitalism. Beginning from early 20th century, many third world states lacked strong and confident bourgeoisie classes but they still required modern armies and capitalist infrastructure to compete in imperialism game. State capitalism, while being totally illiberal, was a perfect solution for this paradoxical situation. It could help to utilize the remnants of the former dominant classes or strata for imperialist militarist goals. So without liberal bourgeois political methods, capitalism could still develop perfectly fine - in fact better since liberal market competition could be avoided and social democratic or other sorts of parties which the state had to negotiate could be crushed or better, forced to join in the capitalist-militarist administration...

am not a Marxist. I do not believe that the development of science and technology is always good. For example, the rapid development of science and technology in the conditions of capitalist competition led to a rise in killings in war, the destruction of entire countries and the environmental crisis.

Marxists don't believe that tech devt is inherently good, indeed they point out the irrationality of such developments using exactly the example you made. See for example the Frankfurt School's arguments about the eclipse if reason. The application of reason, science and technology in production can be similarly applied to the extermination of Jews and other unwanted peoples.

That's an odd claim to make.