Landbezit en 'meerarbeid' in Marx' 'Aziatische produktiewijze'

Samenvatting

In Marx's analysis of Western capitalism, the separation between formally free labor & the means of production constitutes one of the main conditions for the extraction of surplus labor. In his concept of the 'Asiatic Mode of Production' Marx tried, inter alia, to answer the question of how surplus labor could be pumped out of Asian villages without a preexistent cleavage between labor & the means of production. In elaborating this concept, he advanced views on Asian land tenure which D. Thorner considered to have arisen mainly from an evolutionary framework & to be against the mainstream of 19th century English civil service & military reporting ("Marx on India and the Asiatic Mode of Production" in CONTRIBUTIONS TO INDIAN SOCIOLOGY, Vol 9: 1966). Marx's ideas on common land possession in Indian villages were not so 'way out' as Thorner suggests & Marx did not commit H. S. Maine's error of viewing the Indian village as a 'little Republic'. Marx's views on royal land ownership should be seen as resulting from his desire to relate the pumping of surplus labor from the villages via ownership of the main means of production. Modified HA.