Western perceptions of Oriental history have usually combined images of despots presiding over bloody slaughter with harems overpopulated with sensuous concubines. Karl Marx's theory of an "Asiatic mode of production" is one of the most controversial examples of occidental visions of the East which have mixed fact and fantasy, and in this trenchant but accessible book the controversies surrounding Marx's ideas are rigorously examined. Brendan O'Leary's revision of the conventional wisdom of the Asiatic mode of production shows up the inaccuracy of many previous critics of Marx and Engels' writings - notably the theoretical and empirical deficiencies of Karl Wittfogel's "Oriental Despotism", the most famous reconstruction of the concept - and shows how the theory poses an insuperable dilemma for historical materialism: Marx's theory of history is damned with the concept, and damned without it.
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Höhe: 234 mm
Breite: 156 mm
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ISBN-13
978-0-631-16766-2 (9780631167662)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
The Most Controversion Mode of Production; The Antecedents of the Asiatic Mode of Production; Marx and Engels on the Asiatic Mode of Production and India; The Theory Dilemmas and Contradictions of the Asiatic Mode of Production; The Asiatic Mode of Production and Varieties of Historical Materialism; Wittfogel and Oriental Despotism; The Asiatic Mode of Production and Indian History.
