Az ázsiai termelési mód gondolatának jelentősége a magyar marxista gondolkodásban – túl a sinológián = Significance of the Idea of the Asiatic Mode of Production in the Thought of Hungarian Marxists – Beyond Sinology

Mester, Béla (2025) Az ázsiai termelési mód gondolatának jelentősége a magyar marxista gondolkodásban – túl a sinológián = Significance of the Idea of the Asiatic Mode of Production in the Thought of Hungarian Marxists – Beyond Sinology. In: Filozófiai hatástörténet és kritika II. Közelítések a szocializmus évtizedeinek filozófiai teljesítményéhez. A magyar nyelvű filozófiai irodalom forrásai (21). Pro Philosophia Kiadó; Egyetemi Műhely Kiadó, Kolozsvár, pp. 17-33.

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Abstract

Asiatic mode of production was always a so-called essentially contested concept in the internal debates of the Marxist philosophy of history. It had a significant impact out of the Marxism, as well, mainly within the circle of the historians whose fields are the early civilisations described by this term, by several Marxists. This concept wanted to confirm both the historical plausibility and actual political significance of the Marxian theory of social forms, putting a new one between the tribal and antique forms. By the upholders of this idea, the new term help us in the understanding of the early civilisations and usable in the strategic thinking of the Marxist movements out of the European culture. Within the Hungarian Marxism, the term of Asiatic mode of production was used mainly in the context of the Chinese history and culture, by sinologists (e.g. Ferenc Tőkei based significant conclusions in the literary history and theory of genres, based on this term). On the one hand, the hard-core Stalinists attacked the concept of the Asiatic mode of production, but they had not intellectually interesting arguments. On the other hand, historians who were out of the frames of Marxism, however, formulated critiques of this term (in Hungary, we should mention the name of Géza Komoróczy), the core of their critique was not the concept of the Asiatic mode of production in itself, but the whole of the Marxian theory of social forms. The internal controversy amongst the non-orthodox Marxists logically offered a possibility of the better understanding of present and future, beyond the understanding of the past of the humanity. By the introduction of the Asiatic mode of production shows the transition from the tribal to the antique form as a long, difficult process with despotic regimes. Continuation of the concept within the scheme of the Hegelian-Marxian helix of progress means that the transition from the class societies to communism, what is the actually existing socialism will be a similarly long, difficult process with despotic political tendencies. The idea of the Asiatic mode of production became able for a systematic critique within the frames of the Marxism, with this background.

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