Feudalism, Commerce, and Social Change

The debate over feudal society involved two interrelated problems with theoretical implications: What was feudalism, and what were the dynamics of the transition from feudalism to capitalism? The protagonists in the debate accepted the validity of Marxist propositions with regard to these questions; the complexity of those propositions, on the other hand, afforded them some choice in the priority they assigned to the characteristics Marx and later Marxists had associated with feudal society and its evolution into capitalism.

The definition of feudalism was crucial to the whole debate because on it hinged the question of the placement of the feudal stage in Chinese history and, therefore, the question of China's historical development as a whole. T'ao Hsi-sheng's definition, which included legal-political criteria as well as economic ones in distinguishing feudal society from other social formations, led to the conclusion that feudalism as a system had disappeared in Chinese history with the establishment of imperial social-political organization; the definition employed by Chu P'ei-wo, by reducing feudalism to a "basic" mode of exploitation, obviated the need to take account of such institutional changes and enabled Chu to argue that feudalism had persisted throughout Chinese history.

The difference between the two positions, however, was not simply that the one emphasized the organizational "superstructure" and the other the economic basis; T'ao was able to account for the economic changes in Chinese history more successfully than Chu, who formalistically declared all economic changes inconsequential as long as they did not alter the "degree" of exploitation of the peasant by the owner of the

land.^[93] Although T'ao stressed the primary significance of the political component of feudalism, he did so not to downgrade the economic basis but to elucidate the role political power played in determining feudal property relations and exploitation, in the words of Oppenheimer, the use of "political means" to extract from the producers their surplus product. This position was not inconsistent with Marx's view on feudal property relations — contrary to that of his opponents who charged that T'ao overlooked the economic basis or that he interpreted Marx formalistically (in his emphasis on the form of rent and the manorial organization). Marx's analysis in the section on "ground rent" in Capital justifies the inference that when he wrote of the extortion of surplus labor from the peasantry by "other than economic pressure," he was referring to the use of political-legal and military means of exploitation. The example he used in his footnote to that particular statement specified military conquest as a route to such exploitation: "Following the conquest of a country, the immediate aim of a conqueror was to convert its people to his own use."^[94] In his most general statement on this type of exploitation, he remarked that political and economic relationships coincided indistinguishably under feudalism: "It is furthermore evident that in all forms in which the direct labourer remains the 'possessor' of the means of production and labour conditions necessary for the production of his own means of subsistence, the property relationship must simultaneously appear as a direct relation of lordship and servitude , so that the direct producer is not free" [emphasis mine].^[95]

Engels was even more emphatic about the political-military nature of the feudal method of expropriating surplus labor from the peasantry; the conversion of the free peasant into the serf,

[93] Tanaka, who otherwise agreed with Chu's premises, accused Chu of "formalism" on this count, pointing out that it was the relationship of "dependency" (li-shu ), not the degree of exploitation, that identified feudal relations. Tanaka, "Chung-kuo she-hui wen-t'i shih yen-chiu shang chih ji-ko Li-lun wen-t'i," pp. 13–17.

[94] Capital , vol. 3, p. 791.

[95] Ibid., p. 709. As previously noted, Marx did not regard this relationship as an exclusive characteristic of feudalism but it did characterize feudal relations.

according to Engels, originated in military conquest, much in the same fashion in which Oppenheimer described the origins of the feudal state.^[96] Serfdom or the political-social relations of dependence were not, according to Marx and Engels, trivial appendages to the feudal mode of exploitation but the very conditions without which feudalism devolved into "small commodity production."^[97] T'ao's views, from this perspective, were much closer to those of Marx and Engels than those of his opponents who accused him of formalism.

These alternative views of feudalism conditioned the two protagonists' evaluation of the impact of commerce on Chinese society in the post-Chou period. To Chu P'ei-wo, who identified feudalism with harsh exploitation, commerce represented only one more factor that contributed to exacerbating feudal exploitation; T'ao, who viewed feudalism in more precise structural terms, saw in commerce a force that had transformed economicsocial relations and, therefore, marked the end of feudalism in China. It was here that the priority T'ao assigned to the political means of exploitation led him to downplay economic exploitation. T'ao's differentiation of imperial Chinese from early Chou society in terms of the devolution of political and economic power into different hands resulted in the denial of significance to class exploitation and struggle in Chinese history, in spite of the fact that he compromised his argument with ambiguous references to classes and "feudal forces." When he argued that the primary exploiters of society were the gentry, he was, in effect, claiming (as he did in the case of contemporary China) that the exploitation of the peasant by the landlord or the merchant was insignificant when compared to the exploitation of society as a whole by the state and its functionaries. This, in the eyes of his opponents, was what made T'ao's Marxist commitments tenuous. While it is true that Marx and Engels did not rule out the possibility of political power existing independently of and above classes, notably in transitional periods and,

[96] See Engels's essay in Socialism : Scientific and Utopian, pp. 77–93. Especially p. 87.

[97] Hobsbawm, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations , p. 42.

more importantly, in the notion of Asiatic society, the transitional periods in their case referred to temporary instances of social-political upheaval and Asiatic society comprised a special historical case.^[98] T'ao's transitional period, by contrast, covered two thousand years of history, and he was reluctant to acknowledge that there was anything "special" about Chinese society; T'ao, as Li Chi observed, regarded the imperial period as a continuation of the feudal period with the gentry substituting for feudal lords and with a partial commodity economy in place of the self-sufficient feudal economy.

Beyond the issue of political versus economic exploitation, however, T'ao's portrayal of the economic basis of imperial society bore a striking resemblance to that of the advocates of feudalism, which was attested to by Chu's ability to employ for his arguments the evidence that T'ao had adduced in favor of his analysis. Although T'ao distinguished the imperial from the feudal economy by the flourishing of commodities and exchange under the former, he was careful not to exaggerate his claims for economic change; he hedged his statements in this respect by observing that the commodity economy had never been able to abolish local self-sufficiency and that the resurgence of feudalism had remained a possibility throughout the period. What he did claim, however, was that "production for exchange" had come to exist side by side with "production for use" and, undermining the feudal economic system, had also overthrown feudal political and social relations.

The question of the nature of imperial Chinese society was bound up with the theoretical problem of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Regardless of all their differences, T'ao and Chu shared an important premise that shaped their view of imperial society: that the fall of feudalism must be accompanied by the emergence of capitalism. As this change had not occurred in China, they faced a common dilemma in explaining

[98] Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1967), chap. 7, especially pp. 121–122. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State , p. 168. Engels went even further when he suggested that even though the state represented classes, some measure of neutrality was necessary to prevent class struggle from consuming society. Ibid., p. 166.

the development of post-Chou society. Chu bypassed this dilemma by denying that any change of significance had occurred in the transition from Chou to the imperial period; T'ao, on the other hand, resorted to the idea of transitional society to cover the two-thousand-year gap between the feudal and the capitalist stages. The issue in both cases revolved around the role commerce had played in bringing about the change from feudalism to capitalism. It does not do, as Wang I-ch'ang did, to lay the burden for these questions on the heterodoxy of T'ao Hsi-sheng or of his alleged mentor, Bogdanov. As suggested here, T'ao followed Radek in introducing this concept to the analysis of Chinese society. Both authors, furthermore, could count on the blessings of no less an authority than Lenin who, in his only major analysis of Russian history, used commerce to explain the development of capitalism in Russia.

The question of the role of commerce in historical development is ultimately traceable to Marx's attempts to deal with the function of commerce in explaining the evolution of capitalism in Europe. Marx recognized the pervasiveness of commerce historically, but assigned to it different functions in different historical epochs. It is clear from chapter 20 of the third volume of Capital, which offers the most integrated discussion of this problem, that commerce (1) has existed since the beginning of mankind; (2) that it has a dissolving influence on self-sufficient society; (3) that its function changes according to the nature of the society within which it operates; (4) that it does not autonomously determine the new mode of production; and (5) that it is parasitic unless it serves industry, which is its function only in bourgeois society. Of these items, opponents of the view that China was feudal employed the second and the fifth, whereas its proponents used the first and the third to defend their position; both agreed on the validity of the fourth. The advocates of the feudal view also argued that Marx spoke only of "modes of production" and that commercial capital represented no mode; hence it was subsidiary to whatever mode prevailed at a given time (that is, commercial capital under feudalism represented a means of feudal exploitation while under capitalism it represented capitalist exploitation). Both of

these positions were defensible by resorting to the ambivalent attitude Marx himself adopted toward the role of commerce in different contexts of his work.

Beyond his recognition of the disintegrative effects of commerce on self-sufficient society, Marx made a further distinction between different forms of trade that was pertinent specifically to the emergency of capitalism out of feudal society. In The German Ideology, he distinguished commerce confined within a small area from commerce extending over large territories; the former remained negative and parasitic in its effects but the latter played a crucial role in historical development:

It depends purely on the extension of commerce whether the productive forces achieved in a locality, especially inventions, are lost for later development or not. As long as there exists no commerce transcending the immediate neighborhood, every invention must be made separately in each locality, and mere chances such as irruptions of barbaric peoples, even ordinary wars, are sufficient to cause a country with advanced productive forces and needs to have to start right over again from the beginning. . . . Only when commerce has become world-commerce and has as its basis big industry, when all nations are drawn into the competitive struggle, is the permanence of the acquired productive forces assured.^[99]

In another context, Marx was even more explicit in the instrumental role he assigned to commerce:

There is no doubt — and it is precisely this fact which has led to wholly erroneous conceptions — that in the 16th and 17th centuries the great revolutions, which took place in commerce with geographic discoveries and speeded the development of merchant's capital, constitute one of the principal elements in furthering the transition from feudal to the capitalist mode of production.^[100]

Chu and T'ao agreed that commerce in China had never expanded to a volume comparable to that in early modern Europe. To Chu, this was reason enough to discount the transforming significance of commerce altogether; T'ao, on the other hand, argued that even small-scale commerce had been powerful enough to disrupt the feudal system although he conceded,

[99] K. Marx, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1969), p. 49.

[100] Capital , vol. 3, p. 332.

much as Marx did in his statement on localized commerce, that such commerce had not been capable of revolutionizing the forces of production and setting Chinese society on an irreversible course to capitalism.

The issue of the role of commerce in historical development is one of the most problematic aspects of Marxist social theory.^[101] If, as the Chinese Marxists suggested, the maturation of capitalism in Europe had been a consequence of the flourishing of international commerce, which in turn had been contingent on favorable environmental circumstances, then it could no longer be argued that capitalism was a necessary, universal stage of historical development. Furthermore, unless it could be demonstrated that large-scale commerce was a necessary consequence of the peculiarities of feudal socioeconomic structure, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that factors extraneous to the prevailing mode of production had affected a momentous change in history, a conclusion that subverts a commonly held materialistic premise that contradictions inherent in socioeconomic structure provide the sole motive force of history. The analysis of imperial Chinese society pointed to some of these questions but Chinese Marxists, rather inflexibly committed to certain schematic notions of Marxism, refused to draw the obvious conclusions. Chu, even though he recognized the importance of environmental factors when he attributed the emergence of capitalism in Europe to commerce which grew out of Europe's need to obtain commodities from the outside, insisted on the primacy of the mode of production when he dismissed the significance of commerce in China. T'ao was more willing to allow factors external to the mode of production a greater influence in shaping historical development but proved reluctant to face the conclusion that the divergence between Chinese and European historical development pointed to — the diversity of historical development.

The two interpretations of imperial Chinese society, therefore, differed on two general issues: the universality of class oppression and conflict in history, and the relative importance

[101] See Chapter 7, this volume.

of factors internal and external to the mode and relations of production in determining historical development. T'ao denied the importance of class conflict in Chinese history and emphasized, or at least conceded, the significance of external factors in China's historical development. Chu, whose position was more consistent with "orthodox" Marxist views on these questions, insisted that the mode and relations of production bore the sole responsibility for historical development and affirmed the prevalence of class oppression in China's past. It was not accidental that these two interpretations of Chinese history corresponded to the analyses of contemporary Chinese society by the two authors and the larger groupings they represented. Those who believed that China required a social revolution because class oppression impoverished the people and obstructed development sought to justify the revolutionary strategy they advocated by discovering in the past the root of the very conditions that they claimed existed in the present. T'ao and other Hsin sheng-ming writers, who opposed class struggle and gave priority to political revolution, rationalized their position by arguing, much as the first KMT Marxists had done in the early twenties, that not class conflict but political oppression had characterized post-Chou Chinese history. These arguments supported the alternative revolutionary strategies, but they also displayed certain important theoretical and interpretive inconsistencies in the treatment of Chinese history which instigated still other attempts to resolve the question of China's historical development in the next round of controversy.

One of the major weaknesses of the controversy in its first few years was the uncritical reliance on traditional materials. The picture T'ao evolved of early Chou feudalism was derived from materials dating back to the late Chou dynasty, many of which had been rendered suspect by modern textual studies. The next important step in the development of Marxist historiography was the publication in 1930 of Kuo Mo-jo's research which, utilizing a new set of materials, offered a picture of early Chinese society that differed radically from all previous interpretations and raised questions which deepened the Marxist examination of Chinese history.