The Devolution of Controversy

The contumacious mood that surrounded the social history controversy precluded the resolution of differences over interpretations of the past. Marxist historiography in 1934 still faced the task of resolving the questions that had instigated the controversy: the question of the existence of a postfeudal, precapitalist "commercial society," the question of the universality of the slave mode of production, and the question of Asiatic society.^[70] In the ensuing years, Marxists continued to debate the issues arising from these questions in splinter controversies; when the war with Japan broke in upon China, those questions had still not been resolved and, judging by the tendencies of the discussions, would probably have never been resolved even if circumstances had permitted continued debate.

It would serve little purpose to trace these controversies in detail. The arguments and counterarguments the various protagonists exchanged were mostly repetitions of earlier views on the same issues. A brief overview of the more conspicuous controversies will be sufficient to describe the dénouement of the first phase of Marxist historiography in China.

One relatively sustained discussion after 1933 concerned slavery. This discussion, a direct offshoot of the social history controversy, flared up when several authors, independently, criticized the application of that concept to Chinese history. In critiques directed mainly at Wang I-ch'ang but also including

[69] See the essay by L.S. Yang cited in footnote 65. For slavery, see C. M. Wilbur, Slavery in China during the Former Han Dynasty (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1943).

[70] See Lu Chen-yu, Shih-ch'ien ch'i Chung-kuo she-hui yen-chiu (Examination of Prehistorical Chinese Society) (Peking, 1934), pp. 12–31, for a detailed discussion of the problems.

the historical interpretations of T'ao Hsi-sheng and Kuo Mo-jo, these authors argued on theoretical grounds that slavery was not a universal stage of history and that, in the case of China, commerce, which was a precondition of the slave mode of production, had never expanded to a volume sufficient to induce the full maturation of the slave system. Some authors added that at no time in the past had slaves constituted a significant enough portion of China's population to dominate labor and, hence, to justify the use of the term slave mode of production .^[71] Wang I-ch'ang was the only one of their targets to rise to the challenge of this criticism. In a series of articles, he defended his position both on theoretical grounds and by adducing detailed evidence that, he believed, supported his contention that slaves had existed in China in large numbers and that they had played a crucial role in production all the way to the end of the Han dynasty.^[72] Briefly in 1934, these disagreements grew into an animated controversy between Wang and two of his chief critics, Liu Hsing-t'ang and Ting Ti-hao, involving the anti-Communist leftist journal Wen-hua p'i-p'an (Cultural Critic), where Wang and Liu published most of their essays, and the Li-shih k'o-hsueh (Historical Science) of the National Normal University in Peking, which published a special issue on slavery where Ting stated his views on the subject in two long detailed articles.^[73] The fervor of debate petered out rapidly, but the authors involved continued to resurrect their differences on and off until the very eve of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.^[74]

[71] For criticism of Wang's view, See the articles by Liu Hsiung-t'ang and Ting Ti-hao in the bibliography. Wang Hsiung-jui and Li Chi criticized Wang's view on the grounds of the small number of slaves. For Li's criticism of T'ao, see Chung-kuo she-hui shih lun-chan p'i-pan , pp. 441–444. Wang's criticism is cited in Wang I-ch'ang, "Tsai wei nu-li she-hui pien-hu" (New Defense of Slave Society), Wen-hua p'i-p'an , 1.4–5 (September 15, 1934):131. In that article, Wang also cites some works by Liu and Ting that are not included in the bibliography here (p. 128).

[72] "Tsai wei nu-li she-hui pien-hu." Also see "Wei nu-li she-hui pien-hu" (Defense of Slave Society), weekly social science supplement to the Shih-chieh Jih-pao (World Daily), February 21, 1934, and "Chung-kuo nu-li she-hui yu feng-chien she-hui chih pi-chiao yen-chiu" (Comparative Examination of Slave and Feudal Societies in China), Wen-hua p'i-p'an , 1.6 (October 15, 1934).

[73] Li-shih k'o-hsueh , 1.5 (September 1933).

[74] See the essays by Ting Tao-chien in Shih huo , 5.7 (April 1937):1–9, and Liu Hsing-t'ang in Shih huo , 5.11 (June 1, 1937):6–9.

The second one of the "minicontroversies" that persisted beyond 1933 involved the question of commercial society, which once again came to the fore in 1935, long after the idea had been disavowed by its original proponent, T'ao Hsisheng.^[75] In this case, the controversy was occasioned by an article by Li Li-chung in the Shih huo where Li contended, going beyond anything T'ao had dared to claim openly during the earlier phase of the discussions, that the Ch'in-Ch'ing span in Chinese history represented the period of commercial capitalism, which was not a mere transitional phase but a mode of production in its own right.^[76] In the following issues of the journal, a number of authors published refutations of Li's views, arguing, as others had argued against T'ao earlier, that commerce served only the "counterfunction" (fan-tso-yung ) of dissolving a mode of production but did not constitute such a mode itself and could not, therefore, be utilized to define a historical stage.^[77]

Li eventually retracted some of his more extravagant claims and offered a compromise solution, identifying commercial capitalism as the transitional (primitive accumulation) first phase of capitalism which corresponded to what Marx had described as the "manufacture period" (shou-kung-yeh shih-tai ), or the premachinery phase, of capitalism.^[78] However, even this concession, which brought Li quite close to T'ao's earlier position, did not mollify some of his opponents, who continued to attack his views; the last such piece was published in May 1937, only a month before the Shih huo stopped publication with the outbreak of war in July of that year. The one interesting aspect of this discussion was Li's willingness to endow "commercial capitalism" with the status of an independent stage in history;

[75] For this controversy, see essays in the bibliography, by Li Li-chung, Ting Tao-chien, Fu An-hua, and Fan Chen-hsing. T'ao reiterated in his postscript to Shih huo , 2.9 (October 1, 1935), that he no longer held this view (p. 36).

[76] Li Li-chung, "Shih t'an t'an Chung-kuo she-hui shih shang ti i-ko 'mi'" (Discussing a "Puzzle" in Chinese Social History), Shih huo , 2.9 (October 1, 1935):14–16.

[77] Fu An-hua, "Shang-yeh tzu-pen chu-i she-hui shang-chueh" (An Evaluation of Commercial Capitalist Society), Shih huo , 3.11 (May 1, 1936):1-19, especially p. 2.

[78] Li, "Shang-yeh tzu-pen chu-i she-hui ti sheng-ch'an hsing-t'ai" (The Mode of Production of Commercial Capitalist Society), Shih huo , 5.2 (January 16, 1937):1–11.

otherwise, the discussion, unlike the one on slavery, was highly theoretical, with the authors placing greater value on quotations from Marx than on historical evidence, and contributed little that was new to Marxist historiography.

As noted, the third issue that had been inherited from the earlier phase of the discussions, the question of Asiatic society, was revived in an occasional essay but, so far as I have been able to determine, it did not become the subject of any sustained controversy. The majority of these essays, whether the authors were Chinese or foreign, rejected the concept on the grounds that have already been discussed.^[79] One compromise solution that came to the fore in the late thirties is of interest because it took account of the concept and its relevance to China without having to concede that China had departed from the universal laws of historical development. As explained by Ho Kan-chih, one of the proponents of this view, Chinese society before the Western intrusion was essentially feudal, but feudalism coexisted with remnants of previous modes of production; in other words, Chinese society had represented a blend of all the precapitalist modes of production. China, he argued, had gone through all the stages that the West had, but none of these stages had grown to maturity because of the persistence of elements of former stages: Thus, slave society had never reached completion because of the persistence of primitive elements, and feudal society had never matured because of the persistence of elements of primitive and slave societies. The dead weight of the past had held back social development and gave China the appearance of a peculiarly stagnant or "Asiatic" society.^[80] At one sweep, Ho was able to rationalize the problem of "Asiaticness" as well as to resolve the problem of why feudal society in China had never made the transition to capitalism, all the time retaining the basis for the antifeudal revolution he believed to be necessary to China's future progress.

[79] For a detailed discussion of the continuing concern with Asiatic society in China, Japan, and the Soviet Union, see Ho Kan-chih, Chung-kuo she-hui shih wen-t'i lun-chan , pp. 1–78.

[80] Ibid., preface, pp. 2–3.