Microfilms Ihtematiaital

1.0 Igia im wa III 2.2

I: 1^ IIIII2.0 l.l 1.8

1.25 1.4 1.6

MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL 1010a (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2)

\ \

University Microfilms Inc. 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

INFORMATION TO USERS

This reproduction was made from a copy of a manuscript sent to us for publication and microfilming. While the most advanced technology has been used to pho tograph and reproduce this manuscript, the quality of the reproduction Is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. Pages In any manuscript may have Indistinct print. In all cases the best available copy has been filmed.

The following explanation of techniques Is provided to help clarify notations which may appear on this reproduction.

1. Manuscripts may not always be complete. Wlien It Is not possible to obtain missing pages, a note appears to Indicate this.

2. When copyrighted materials are removed from the manuscript, a note ap pears to Indicate this.

3. Oversize materials (maps, drawings, and charts) are photographed by sec tioning the original, beginning at the upper left hand comer and continu ing from left to right In equal sections with small overlaps. Each oversize page Is also filmed as one exposure and Is available, for an additional charge, as a standard 35mm slide or In black and white paper format. *

4. Most photographs reproduce acceptably on positive microfilm or micro fiche but lack clarity on xerographic copies made from the microfilm. For an additional charge, all photographs are available In black and white standard 35mm slide format. •

*For more information about black and white slides or enlarged paper reproductions, please contact the Dissertations Customer Services Department.

IMversMy Mkamhns InteoniffltàQnal

8607159

Bouguerra, Belgacem

THE QUESTION OF THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION AND PRE COLONIAL ALGERIA

The American University Ph.D. 1986

University Microfilms

I nternstionsi 300 N. zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106

PLEASE NOTE:

fn all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible w ay from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark V

1. Glossy photographs or pages.

2. Colored illustrations, paper or print______

3. Photographs with dark background_____

4. Illustrations are poor copy______

5. Pages with black marks, not original copy.

6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of p a g e .

7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages t /

8. Print exceeds margin requirements______

9. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine______

10. Computer printout pages with indistinct print.

11. Page(s) ______lacking when material received, and not available from school or author.

12. Page(s)______seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows.

13. Two pages numbered . Text follows.

14. Curling and wrinkled pages______

15. Dissertation contains pages with print at a slant, filmed as received

16. O t h e r ______

University Microfilms International

THE QUESTION OF THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION AND PRE-COLONIAL ALGERIA By Belgacem Bouguerra

submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of

The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology

Signatures of Committee Chairman

Dean^V College

1985 , The American University L>0l9^ Washington, D.C. 20016 © COPYRIGHT BY

ABSTRACT

One of the most controversial concepts in Marxism today is that of the Asiatic mode of production. The latter has been used to characterize the social formations of Asia, Africa, and pre-Columbian America. However, studies that connect theory with practice are still far from being realized. Marx's concepts which he developed for the capitalist mode of production are still applied to pre-capitalist modes of production without either criti cism or re-examination, and more alarmingly, with revi sion. Thus, the present work aims at (1) narrowing the gap between theory and practice, (2) re-examining some of Marx's basic concepts, and (3) formulating a theory of the Asiatic mode of production. In doing so, this dissertation explores in some detail the origin, development, and current status of Marxist historiography in general and the Asiatic mode of production in particular. In the light of this, it examines the social history of pre-colonial North Africa,

11 with an emphasis on Algeria. It outlines the theory of the Asiatic mode of production. Thereby, it suggests that human history cannot be presented as a single sequence of successive stages, each the necessary outcome of its predecessor. Rather, it suggests that the Asiatic mode of production is a stage in the historical development of human society. It evolved from the primitive-communal mode of production and constitutes a stage from which all more developed modes of production evolved, whether directly or through other stages.

Ill TABLE OP CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... il LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...... vi LIST OF TABLES ...... vii

PART ONE THEORIES OF ORIENTAL PRE-CAPITALIST SOCIETIES Chapter I. THE PROBLEMATIC OF THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION...... 2 II. ORIENTAL DESPOTISM VS. THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION...... 17 Oriental Despotism ...... 17 Marx's and Engels' Views of Oriental Societies ...... 36 C o n c l u s i o n ...... 55 III. THE FATE OF THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION...... 57 The Direct Successors to Marx and E n g e l s ...... 57 Revival of the Asiatic Mode of Production...... 70 Conclusion...... 112 IV. THEORIES OR MODELS OF PRE-COLONIAL ALGERIA ...... 117

Conclusion...... 145

PART TWO THE CONCRETE STUDY OF PRE-COLONIAL ALGERIA

V. PRE-OTTOMAN ALGERIA ...... 149 Historical Background of Pre- Islamic Northern Africa ...... 149 Islam in North A f r i c a ...... 171

iv Islam, Land, and Shari'a (Religious Law) Revenue ...... 175 Islam, Land, and State Revenue in the Maghrib ...... 178 Islam and Commerce in the M a g h r i b ...... 185 The Crisis of the Fourteenth C e n t u r y ...... 199 VI. OTTOMAN RULE IN A L G E R I A ...... 207 Establisïiment of the Turkish State in A l g e r i a ...... 207 Sociopolitical Structure of Ottoman A l g e r i a ...... 211 The Economic Structure of Ottoman A l g e r i a ...... 218 Types of Property...... 218 Fiscal System and State Revenues ...... 234

VII. AN OUTLINE OF THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION...... 242 Asiatic and Other Modes of Production...... 261

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 265

V LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Post-Independence Frontiers of North African States ...... 150 2. Limits of the Roman Empire in North Africa (First Century A.D.) 153 3. Limits of the Roman Empire in North Africa (Fifth Century A.D.) 156 4. Limits of Islamic Empire in Africa (900 A . D . ) ...... 174 5. Limits of Islamic Empire in Africa (1500 A.D.) 174 6. Main Sub-Saharan Trade Routes in the 10th to 12th Century ...... 186 7. Limits of Almoravid and Almohad Empires (1050-1250) 194 8. Administrative Divisions of Ottoman Algeria (1516-1830) 214

VI LIST OP TABLES

1. The Relationship of the Producer to the Means of Production, Appropriation of the Surplus, Organization of Labor, and the Form of L a b o r ...... 263

Vll PART ONE

THEORIES OF ORIENTAL PRE-CAPITALIST SOCIETIES CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEMATIC OF THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION

The concept of the Asiatic mode of production is one of the most controversial concepts in the history of Marxism. The term was originally developed by Marx in the 1850s to account for a type of society outside the main stream of Western development. Neither Marx nor his

followers restricted this mode to the geographical region of Asia. It has been used to characterize the social formations of Asia, Africa, and pre-Columbian America. Nevertheless, the theoretical status of the Asiatic mode of production has never been too secure. This is true for three reasons : (1) the unfinished work of Marx on social evolution in general and the Asiatic mode of production in particular, (2) the little or no attention paid by Western scholars to non-European history, and (3) the eagerness of early Marxist orthodoxy to embrace a unilinear and mechan ical conception of history. The unfinished work of Marx has opened the door to different interpretations. The scarcity of information on non-European societies forced the discussion to remain at a theoretical level. Finally, the mechanical conception of history condemned the discus sion of the Asiatic mode of production. 3 In this atmosphere, the discussion of the concept of the Asiatic mode of production was revived in the 1960s within Marxist social theory. The two chief reasons for this revival are (1) the tremendous efforts by Marxist scholars to find a way out of the confusion resulting from the Stalinist five-stage theory (primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, communism), and (2) a closer familiarity with the societies of Asia, Africa, and pre-Columbian America. Unfortunately, the theoretical and practical re-examination of the concept of the Asiatic mode of production has not eliminated divergences among Marxist participants in this debate. Some participants have attempted to introduce new elements such as trade to explain pre-capitalist social formations in general and

non-European formations in particular. Others have introduced new concepts such as archaism, command feudal ism, military democracy, the African mode of production, and the post-colonial mode of production. Finally, there are those who have totally rejected the concept of the

Asiatic mode of production. Despite these efforts, profound studies of pre capitalist societies, namely those of Africa, Asia, and pre-Columbia America, are far from being realized. The connection between theory and practice is still an excep tion within the mainstream of the discussion. Concepts

such as social classes, state, social formation, mode of 4 production, etc. are still points of departure of one author from another. Finally, the current situations of undeveloped societies, particularly the so-called "social ist countries," add complexity to already complex issues. In spite of this complexity, it is not impossible to find an alternative to the problems of development of these societies in general and of the Asiatic mode of production in particular. This is exactly the purpose of the present work. To do so, this dissertation explores in some detail the origin, development, and current status of Marxist historiography in general and the Asiatic mode of production in particular. It makes an effort to connect theory and practice through a re-examination of the social history of North Africa, with an emphasis on pre-colonial Algeria. In light of this, it attempts to outline the Asiatic mode of production and raises methodological issues which could possibly pave the way toward under standing both pre- and post-colonial societies. In doing so, the analysis includes brief definitions of the concepts of mode of production, social formation, period of transition, etc. In the first and second chapters, the dissertation includes an account of the idea of the particularistic nature of Asiatic and other non- European societies as found in Aristotle, developed in political terms by Montesquieu and in politico-economic terms by British political economists, and then taken over 5 from a different angle by Marx to form the concept of the

Asiatic mode of production. However, because the concept of the Asiatic mode of production in the thought of Marx and Engels has been, and will be for some time, a matter of debate, Marx's and Engels' view are taken mostly at face value in Chapter II, as they have been the source of the whole discussion. Thereafter, particularly in the concluding chapter, their views are re-interpreted in the light of concrete re-examination of the social history of pre-colonial North Africa. This re-examination suggests, I believe, the necessity for such re-interpretation, for Marx's and Engels' information about Oriental societies was insufficient and incomplete, a fact which prevented them from formulating a consistent and adequate theory of the Asiatic mode of production. Chapter III is divided into two sections. The first section traces the origin, nature, and development of the discussion of the concept of the Asiatic mode of produc tion during the five decades following Marx's and Engels' deaths. It looks at the arguments between Russian Marx ists such as Plekhanov and Lenin that took place before the October Revolution of 1917. It analyzes the causes of the revival of this concept in the 1920s and of its elimination from official, and academic discussions by Stalin in the 1930s. The second section deals with the revival of the concept of the Asiatic mode of production 6 in the early 1960s. This revival was initiated by a group of French and Russian Marxists; it has widened to include a significant number of Marxists from other parts of the world. The fourth chapter is devoted to the analysis and evaluation of the models (archaism, command feudalism, military democracy, Asiatic and tributary modes of produc tion) that have been developed for pre-colonial Algeria. Critique of these models is kept to a theoretical minimum in this chapter. For a comprehensive critique, they are re-examined in the second part of the dissertation, wherein I undertake a concrete study of pre-colonial

Algeria from earliest times to the end of Ottoman domina tion in 1830. The second part of this dissertation is not only a critique of the five models that have been developed for pre-colonial Algeria, but also a re-examination of North African history, a critique of European historians who wrote on this part of Africa, and of early as well as late participants in the discussion of the concept of the Asiatic mode of production. It is also the source of re-interpretation of certain concepts in Marxism such as social classes, the state, economic intervention of the state. Oriental despotism, property, the Asiatic mode of production, etc. Re-interpretation or a new approach to certain Marxist concepts, particularly that of the Asiatic mode of production, suggests that human history cannot be pre sented as a single sequence of successive stages, each the necessary outcome of its predecessor. It suggests that the Asiatic mode of production is a stage in the histori cal development of human society. It is a stage that evolved from the primitive communal mode of production and constitutes a stage from which all more developed modes of production are evolved, whether directly or through other stages. It also suggests that a real understanding of today's undeveloped societies should begin with under standing first their pre-colonial modes of production, for the paths of development of post-colonial societies are, I believe, tied up with elements from the past and the present level of development of these same societies, as well as with elements peculiar to both capitalism and socialism. For our analysis, however, this last point can be neither stressed nor analyzed in detail. The reason for this is twofold; such an analysis would be a topic for a separate study and, as is well known, this topic is complex and needs numerous, profound, and specialized studies. Here, I would only like to stress that the findings of the present work qualify this to be a 8 hypothesis and an alternative method that needs to be proved by further studies.^ Bearing this in mind, let us first define some basic concepts that will be used in the present work. To begin with, a mode of production is defined as a system of producing, a distinct way of carrying on social production in a distinct stage of historical development of human society. A system in which a social production is carried on must involve the forces and relations of production. To allow the functioning of this system there must exist a correspondence between the forces and relations of produc tion. Therefore, a distinct stage of historical develop ment of human society is that of distinct forces and relations of production at the moment of their correspon dence . The forces of production are those elements necessary to produce material use-values. These are labor-power and the means of production. Labor-power is "the aggregate of

Many attempts to study this topic have appeared in many parts of the world. Among these are the work of John G. Taylor, From Modernization to Modes of Production, A Critique of the Sociologies of Development and Underdevel opment (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. , 1979) ; and Hartmut Elsenhans, "Capitalisme d'etat ou société bureau cratique de développement," Etudes Internationales 13 (March 1982) : 3-21. This article is a summary of Elsenhans' book, Abhângiger Kapitalismus oder bflro- kratische Entwicklungsgesellschaft (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 1981). Unless otherwise stated, all translations in this work are mine. 9 those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value 2 of any description." It is, therefore, these capabili ties , which create the means of production or appropriate them in the labor process. The means of production are 3 the objective conditions of labor. They include both the 4 objects (subjects) and instruments of labor. The objects of labor are raw materials and auxiliary substances.^ The instruments of labor are those elements which are indir ectly related to the labor process (canals, roads, etc.) or directly involved in the labor process (machines, tools, etc.) Relations of production are those social relation ships between people into which they must enter as a result of their participation in the process of social production, such as the relationship between the higher and lower communities, master and slave, lord and serf, and bourgeois and proletarian. The place which these two groups (on the one hand, lower communities, slaves, serfs, and proletarians; and on the other hand, higher

2 Karl Marx, Capital, 3 vols. (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 1:167. Îbid., 2:80. Îbid., 2:161. Îbid., 2:160. 10 communities, masters, landlords, and bourgeois) occupy in their relations to the means of production, social organi zation of labor, and the share of social wealth — appro priation or non-appropriation of the unpaid surplus labor — determine their class position. According to Marxism, as is well known, everything changes; everything is in perpetual motion. Today's ruling classes and states are very different from those of feudalism, slavery, and the Asiatic mode of production. The contemporary working class is totally different from

serfs, ancient slaves, and Asiatic lower communities. The computerized technology of today is radically different

from the archaic plough, hoe, sickle, etc. Airline jets and space shuttles are very different from camels, horses, and donkeys. In addition, the exploitation of one class by another is the product of historical evolution of human society, and not of human nature. It has not always existed. It was not always the same, and it will not always survive. Therefore, it is incorrect to view everything as being in motion while holding the defining concepts static. On the contrary, each concept and element should be viewed according to the historical stage attained by the society under investigation, because Marx's method is not separable from the subject matter. It is directly related to the materials, not just fitted to them. It is emanent in them and emerges out of them. 11 One cannot, for example, generalize the concept of owner ship or non-ownership of the means of production as the only indicator that defines the ruling and ruled classes in all social formations. Nor should we ignore the role

of the productive forces in determining these elements. One cannot speak of a ruling class and a state machinery that maintain the existing relations of production where the level of the forces of production does not allow the production of enough unpaid-surplus to maintain this class and the state. Under such conditions, if a ruling class and state exist, they must exist in a different state from those, let us say, where large amounts of unpaid-surplus can be produced. This is not only true for different modes of production, but also for a single mode of produc

tion in its different stages. A mode of production, however, has never existed in a pure state. It always contains elements of the past and future. It is always in motion. In the early stages of its development it contains more elements from the preced ing modes of production, whereas in later stages these elements decline or disappear, giving way to elements from the succeeding mode of production. As a result of these changes, as well as those changes occurring in its inter nal development (development of the forces of production), varying stages appear in the dominant mode of production. 12 The best example is that of the capitalist mode of produc tion (competitive capitalism and monopoly capitalism). Concerning the Asiatic mode of production, as we will see in later chapters, I have distinguished between two stages; early and later. In the early stage, the struc tures of the societies of the Asiatic mode of production were little different from the societies of the primitive- communal mode of production. In the later stage, the Asiatic mode of production included elements of the ancient, feudalist, and capitalist modes of production. In this stage, slaves existed but their labor was used very little in agricultural activities. Serfdom resemb ling that form of tenancy known to the European Middle Ages developed, but it was an exception within the main stream of development of the societies of the Asiatic mode of production. The best example is that of North Africa in the last century of Roman domination. In the later stage, private property, commodity relations, etc. are partly introduced from the outside and partly developed within the internal structures of the societies of the Asiatic mode of production. Only under the forces of European colonialism did a significant, but not radical, change take place in these societies. In theory, of course, one can construct a mode of production in its pure state. In practice, however, this has never been the case. Only in the well-advanced future 13 communist mode of production will such a theory correspond to the concrete. It follows that when we are investigat ing a given mode of production in a given society at a given period, we are investigating a group of articulated modes of production in which one is dominant and the others are subordinated to it. This brings us to what I believe is a central and basic category of historical materialism: social formation. Social formation, following Samir Amin, consists of "concrete, organized structures that are marked by a dominant mode of production and the articulation around this of a complex group of modes of production that are subordinated to it.Since the relations of production are the signifiera of a specific mode of production and the determinants of all other social relations, distinct concrete societies that have the same relations of pro duction, all their differences notwithstanding, belong to or represent the same social formation. Distinct socie ties, or what we call today nation-states or "countries," that belong to the same social formation are bound to develop according to the same principles. Contemporary United States, England, Japan, or Italy may differ from

Samir Amin, Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism, trans. Brian Pearce (New York/London: Monthly Review Press, 1976), p. 16. 14 one another culturally and politically, but all represent capitalist "countries" and their development is defined by the laws of motion of capitalism. The same can be said of India, Algeria, Peru, etc. of the 17th century. They belonged to the same social formation, united by the same relations of production; they reached the same level of development; and they were dominated by the same mode of production, the Asiatic mode. There exist today coun tries, such as Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, that can be differentiated in politico-geographical terms; and Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, only in political terms ; but all of them belong to one social formation. On the other hand, Germany, which recently has been divided, is now two separate states developing into two different societies, each belonging to a different social formation. This brings us to the question of the transition from 7 one mode of production to another. Based on our defini tion of a mode of production, the transition from one mode

7 There is a heated debate on modes of production, the transition period, and the elements that play a determin ing role in historical development. The bibliography on these topics is almost endless; nevertheless, the reader is referred to Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1970: Rodney Hilton and others. The Transition from Feudalism (new Left Books, 1976); Charles Bettelheim The Transition to Socialist Economy, trans. Brian Pearce (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1976); Charles Bettelheim and Paul Sweezy, On the Transition to Socialism (New York/ London: Monthly Review Press, 1971) ; G. John Taylor, From Modernization to Modes of Production (London: The Mac Millan Press, 1979); Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst, Pre- 15 to another is never the succession, but always a transi tion from one complex group of modes of production to another. However, unlike a stable mode of production, the transition period is characterized by non-correspondence O between the forces and relations of production. As we noted above, transition from one mode of production to another may have an impact on one society (country) in a given social formation, but not on another. This is due to different historical, geographic, climatic, and inter nal development of that particular society, as well as its relations with other societies, particularly those belong ing to a different social formation. I am neither claiming sufficient definitions of these concepts nor attempting to enter into arguments with those scholars who devote much of their time to the investiga tion of these concepts. I am only bringing this up in an attempt to shed light on some basic concepts used in the present work. Therefore, it is not important, for exam ple, whether an element of the means of production is classified properly as an instrument of production or not.

Capitalist Modes of Production (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976); Barry Hindess and others, Marx's "Capital" and Capitalism Today (London: Routledge and Kégan Paul, 1977). O For an example of the non-correspondence between the forces and relations of production in the period of transition from fuedalism to capitalism, see Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital, pp. 201-308. 16 and whether or not the relations or production are proper ty relations. Rather, the importance of each of these concepts can be judged in terms of how much it contributes to the analysis of the development of human society in general and of societies in the Asiatic mode of production in particular. One final note should be mentioned here. To avoid

the confusion between the societies of Asia and those of the Asiatic social formation, the latter are referred to as the societies of the Asiatic mode of production. CHAPTER II

ORIENTAL DESPOTISM VS. THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION

Oriental Despotism

From the European viewpoint, the Orient is the direction of the sunrise, "the lands of Biblical reference and history: ex oriente lux." Then, the Orient included the ancient empires of China, India, and Persia. Later, it included the empires of the "ancient East lying along the Nile Valley, Tigris, and Euphrates" as well as the "lands of the Arabic conquests and those which fell to the Turks, expanding across North Africa to Algeria, Morocco and the Atlantic."^ Although "political" frontiers of the Orient have been under constant changes, despotism has been tradition ally considered a principle of political organization of Eastern societies. Thousands of years ago, Aristotle was the first to systematize the distinction between Western and Eastern forms of political organization. In discus sing the forms of government, Aristotle noted in his Politics that "it is easy to see that there are many

^Lawrence Krader, The Asiatic Mode of Production (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., B.V., 1975), p. 5.

17 18 [forms] , and that the manner of government is not the same 2 in all of them." He distinguished among five types of government: the monarchy, the despotic, the generalship, 3 the dictatorship, and the kingly rule. The most impor tant forms were those of the generalship and the despotic rule; the rest fell in between. The generalship form ruled in Western societies and the despotic in Eastern societies. The despotic form of government is, for Aristotle: ...another sort of monarchy not uncommon among the barbarians, which nearly resembles tyranny. But this is both legal and hereditary. For barbarians being more servile in character than Hellenes, and Asiatics than Europeans, do not rebel against a despotic government. Such royalties have the nature of tyrannies because the people are by nature slaves; but there is no danger of their bein^ overthrown, for they are hereditary and legal. The translation of Aristotle's Politica into Latin in the 13th century reintroduced Aristotle's concept of Asiatic government into European political thought, and it remained a focal point for study of the principles and forms of governments for centuries. Thus, as the Turkish empire was emerging in the 14th century, the epitome of the Asiatic despot as portrayed in Aristotle became a

Aristotle, "Politica," in The Works of Aristotle, Book III translated by Benjamin Jowett (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1921), 1285a. ^Ibid., 1285a and 1285b.

^Ibid., 1285a. 19 model for European theoreticians. Niccolo Machiavelli, without any direct reference to Aristotle, wrote: ...all those principalities we know about are governed in two different ways: either by a prince with all the rest as his servants...or by a prince and barons, who, not because of any kindness on the part of the master, but because of noble lineage, hold that position. Examples of these two different kinds...are the Turk and the king of France. All the Turkish monarchy is governed by one rule, the others are his ser vants .... Almost a century later, Jean Bodin in his Six Books of the Commonwealth, helped to popularize the identifi cation of the sultan of Turkey with Aristotle's Asiatic despot, adding to the Asiatic despotic monarchies that of Ethiopia in Africa, Tartary, and Muscovy in Russia. "Elsewhere in Europe, and in the kingdoms of Barbary," Bodin added, "I know of no despotic monarchies."^ Bodin divided the forms of government into two

categories. The first category includes the despotic, royal, and tyrannical monarchies, the second includes 7 aristocratic and popular states. In monarchies, "the

authority of the king extends over all," and in states, "the government body has authority over the whole body of

^Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, translated and edited by Mark Musa (New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1964), p. 29. ^Jean Bodin, Six Books of the Commonwealth, Book II translated by M.J. Tooley (Oxford: Basil Blackwell and Mott, Ltd., 1967), p. 58.

^Ibid., pp. 52-57. 20 citizens only in their individual capacity, and not as a O corporate whole." Each of these five types "can be 9 legitimate, despotic, or tyrannical." In relation to other monarchies, the despotic monarchy is different from royal and tyrannical in that ...the prince is the lord and master of both possessions and the persons of his subjects by right of conquest in just war; he governs his subjects absolutely, as the head of a household governs his slaves. In the seventeenth century, the number of European travelers, missionaries, and merchants to the East increased. Evidence about eastern societies was accumu lated. The burden of the reports of Sir Thomas Roe, Jean Tavernier, Jean de Thevenot, Francois Bernier, Jean Chardin, etc. reaching home was that Asia was dominated by absolute monarchies and all the lands were owned by the kings. In 1634, Pierre Bergron wrote that "everything belongs to the emperor to such an extent that there is nobody who can, or dares to, say that this or that is his, but everything is the emperor's." 11 In 1670, Francois

Bernier, a French physician who received his Doctoral

®Ibid., p. 69 . ^Ibid., p. 57. l^Ibid., pp. 56-57. 11As quoted in Marian Sawer, Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production (The Hague: Martinus Nijheff, 1977) , p. 12. 21 Degree in 1652, traveled in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Persia, and India, and wrote, "Those three countries, Turkey, Persia and Hindoustan, have no idea of the principle of meum and tuum, relative to land or other real possession...." 12 He added, "In Hindoustan every acre of land is considered the property of the king, and the spoliation of a peasant would be a robbery committed upon the king's domain. In the eighteenth century, Montesquieu, a pre-eminent author of the century on the topic of Oriental despotism, wrote, "Men are all equal in a republic state, they are also equal in a despotic state; in the first, because they are everything; and in the second, because they are nothing.Montesquieu also noted that "of all despotic governments there is none that labors more under its own weight than that wherein the prince declares himself proprietor of all the lands, and heir to all his sub jects.

12 Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656-1668, ed. Archibald Constable (New Delhi: S. Chand and Co., 1968), p. 232. l^ibid., p. 354. ^^Quoted by Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolute State (London: New Left Books, 1974), p. 464. ^^Charles de Secondât Baron Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, Vol. I, trans. Thomas Nugent (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1949), Book V, Chapter XIV, p. 59. 22

To justify his arguments, Montesquieu advanced two major explanatory elements of this phenomenon. The first is that of geographical factors and the second consists of non-geographical elements. Geographical factors are those of climate and large natural unit of territory. Asia is, for Montesquieu, divided into two extremes of heat and cold. The cold regions gave rise to strong nations and the hot regions to weak nations. The former easily conquered the latter and reduced them to political slav ery. After the North (cold regions) conquered the South (hot regions), they formed a large empire on the model of the south because the conquerors "are themselves enslaved." Thus the despotic character of the south "will likewise be so in the north." 17 Non-geographical factors that Montesquieu regarded as also having an important role in the formation of the political systems were religion and law. "The Christian religion," Montesquieu wrote, "is a stranger to mere 18 despotic power." In the Mohammedan countries, "the subjects...are connected with [the state] by the force and principle of religion." The Islamic religion greatly encouraged the veneration of the prince. 19 Moreover,

l^ibid.. Book XVII, p. 266. l^ibid., p. 267. 1 ft Ibid., Vol., II, Book XXIV, p. 29.

l^ibid.. Vol. I, Book V, p. 59. 23 "when a religion adapted to the climate of one country clashes too much with the climate of another it cannot be there established." 20 Shortly after Montesquieu's time, his ideas were rejected by Anquetil-Duperron, who left Paris and lived in India from 1755 to 1761. 21 Anquetil, who knew the coun tries of the East at first hand, rejected Montesquieu's theory because the latter, Anquetil declared, relied on travelers' reports that had "made of the Asian people a portrait sometimes imaginative, and sometimes of interest and or prevention...." On such kinds of reports Montesquieu had formulated "a system of despotism which does not exist in reality." 22 There existed slavery, but it was not universal; laws were violated in Asia, but so they were in other places. Communal property did not exist in India. "The ancient families of Tondaman are the proprietors of their lands and transmit.their right to 23 those to whom they sell them." There existed also 24 government lands, religious lands, and private lands.

2°lbid., Vol. II, Book XXIV, p. 44. 21Franco Venturi, "Oriental Despotism," Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963), p. 136. ^^Quoted in Ibid., p. 137. ^^Quoted in Krader, Asiatic Mode of Production, 1975, pp. 65-66. 24%bid., p. 66. 24 Therefore, Montesquieu among others who employed Oriental despotism as a negative model were in the first place defending the aristocratic privilege of feudal 25 lords and justifying the "legal" oppression "practiced by Europeans in Asia."^^ Anquetil-Duperron rightly noted that the idea of despotism had served to justify the violent intervention of the Europeans in the East, and the conviction that no private property existed there had proved of considerable use in supporting the claims of those who favored the confiscation of all native terri tory. This behavior is well known in the history of European colonialism. In the case of Algeria, as we will see, French colonialists behaved exactly in the way Montesquieu and others taught them about property in the

Orient. Since all lands belonged to the Turkish state, and the latter was overthrown by the French army, there was no reason, in their view, not to confiscate all state lands. It was their right to take over what they consid ered public property, and therefore all property which could not be proven in writing. Since traditionally the natives, both individually and as a group, had not regis tered their properties, most private as well as tribal property was confiscated, particularly after the French

25 Sawer, Marxism, p. 16. Venturi, "Oriental Despotism," p. 138. 25 authorities officially issued the Law of Confiscation in

1873. Another factor which weakens Montesquieu's view of Oriental despotism is his sources. Montesquieu relied heavily on Sir Paul Ricaut, Jean Baptiste Tavernier, and Jean Chardin. Sir Paul Ricaut, an English diplomat at the Ottoman capital who viewed the Turks as enemies of Euro peans and Christians, "in no way mitigated his unrelieved hostility toward the religion, manners, morals, and 27 statecraft of his hosts." Jean Baptiste Tavernier was a merchant whose expeditions to Asia earned him enough money to purchase the title of baron and the estate of Aubonne from the impecunious government of Louis XIV. Finally, Jean Chardin, "the most philosophical of Montesquieu's sources on the East," was a jeweller who spent some fifteen years in Iran and, as Rousseau said, "has left nothing to be said about Persia." 28

Taken together, Montesquieu, his predecessors and successors presented a picture of despotism that was a caricature of the worst moments of Iranian, Turkish, Indian, and Chinese history. Each writer was concerned with an Oriental polity which each assimilated into his own theory of despotism. The aim of each theory was

27 David Young, "Montesquieu's View of Despotism and His Use of Travel Literature," Review of Politics 40 (1978): 394.

^®Ibid., p. 395. either to prevent the establishment of a despotic rule at home or to justify the oppression practiced by Europeans in the East. Although the number of European writers on the East had increased significantly and attempts to formulate a general theory of Oriental society abounded, theory of society in general was lacking, and the theory of Oriental societies in particular could not be developed in the eighteenth century; only in the nineteenth century did the particular and the general emerge. In the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Hegel, with his own "idealist" view of history, saw that the first phase of world history took place in the Orient, but the scene of the development of the world spirit had moved elsewhere. 29 History in the East "is still predom inantly unhistorical, for it is merely a repetition of the same majestic process of decline.The nations of the East had not progressed to the principle of subjectivity, 31 and the will of the despot was free. In China the state was, for Hegel, "fundamentally patriarchal." This patriarchal organization is "organized

29 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, ed. Johannes Hofmeister, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 198 ff. 3°ibid., p. 199.

^^Ibid., pp. 199-200. 27 as to form a state." The state is despotic. The despot leads a state apparatus which is hieratically organized and subordinate to him. All matters, even family affairs and religious matters, are "regulated by laws of the 3 2 state." In the East, the states have no "political" purpose. Their political life contains substantial free dom, but "it does not attain the inward conditions of 33 subjective freedom." This phase of historical develop ment "can be likened to that of a childhood." Only in the world of Greece did this child become an adolescent; and the Roman Empire was a "manhood of history. In the meantime, the British political economists had succeeded, for the first time in history, in investigating the concept of Oriental despotism with an element of systematic economic analysis that it had previously lacked. As early as 1776, Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations presented a model of Oriental despotism couched purely in economic terms. According to Smith, there existed a distinctive Asiatic political economy character ized by the fact that the sovereign derived the whole or a considerable part of his income from a variable land tax

^^Ibid., p. 200. S^ibid., p. 202. 34ibid., pp. 202-203 28 or land rent. 35 Because the sovereigns derived their revenues from agricultural produce, Smith declared, it was natural that the executive power was involved in the public works, regulated irrigation, and developed "good roads and navigable canals in order to increase, as much as possible, both the quality and value of every part of the produce of the land."^^ In the light of these new ideas, the notion of the static systems of the East was no longer regarded as truly reflecting those systems. Historical development of Oriental societies thus was introduced, but certainly did not share that of the West. In 1831, Richard Jones, "who was to exercise the greatest single influence on Marx's idea of Oriental despotism" and the concept of the Asiatic 37 mode of production, wrote; Indications present occasionally, which would lead us to conclude that in portions of that quarter of the globe, a state of things once existed, under which the rights to land must have been in a différant state from that in which we see them....

35Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, Inc., 1937), p. 647.

3Gibid., p. 789. 37 Sawer, Marxism, p. 34. 3 8 Richard Jones, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1964), p. 109. 29 Rights to land in Oriental societies once existed, but it is beyond the period of historical memory which "baffles all attempts at investigation." As within "the period of historical memory," all lands are owned by the sovereign state. Not only in India, China, and Persia, but, Jones announced, "throughout agricultural Asia (with 39 the exception of Russia) the same system prevails." Since the sovereigns are, for Jones, "proprietors of the soil, the form of government is a pure unlimited despot ism. In his discussion of different types of rents, Jones singled out Asia as the home of ryot rents.According to him, this type of rent had disappeared in Europe, while in Asia, though there existed both labor rents and metayer rents,ryot rents were the dominant type, and in prac tice they were "more hopelessly destructive of the proper ty and progress of the people than any form of the rela tion of landlord and tenant known to us.Peasants in

39 ^^Ibid., pp. 112-13. ^^Richard Jones, Political Economy (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 234. Jones, Distribution of Wealth, p. 109. Ryot rent means simply peasant or land rent. It is levied on the produce of the land. 42ibid., pp. 136-137.

43lbid., p. 113. 30 those countries were "in every case dependent upon the great sovereign proprietor for the means of obtaining food." This dependence was the cause of the establishment of a perpetuated despotism. In that despotism, the despot, by extracting rents from the direct producer, prevented the accumulation of capital and thereby the 44 formation of capitalists or any independent body on the land.^^ Even the population of towns, including crafts men, are totally dependent on the despotic state. If a dynasty, for one reason or another, changes its capital, "the population of that town depart at once."^^ In the countryside, the Indian village formed a complete, compact, and independent body. For Jones, agriculture is the chief occupation of the village commu nities. The system of the village supports "the ryots 47 against the pressure of the government," which extracts "one-sixth in time of peace, and one-fourth in time of war, of the surplus produce." 4 8 Jones went on to describe the village system by quoting the same report of the Committee on East India Affairs as Marx and others

^^Ibid. ^^Ibid., p. 138. 46 Jones, Political Economy, pp. 449-450 4?ibid., p. 215.

^®Ibid., p. 213. 31 did. 49 In those villages, agriculture is the chief occupation of the village community. The division of labor remains hereditary and immutable within its enclosed world. Thus the village community is both the unit of production and that of consumption.^^ Jones, as we have seen, raised a fundamental issue which Marx had supported in his analysis of the Asiatic mode of production. However, Jones could not take advan tage of his discovery to formulate the theory of the Oriental society. Instead, Jones fell back on non economic explanations. For him, the development of the exclusive proprietorship of the government in the East resided in the phenomenon of war and conquest. Almost quoting Montesquieu, he wrote, "All the great empires of Asia have been overrun by foreigners; and on their rights as conquerors the claim of the present sovereigns to the soil rests. In 1818, writing on taxes in India, James Mill concluded that "the property of the soil resided in the sovereign" and that "all the benefits of the land went to

49 This report was published in 1812 and the same passage was quoted by many authors, including Marx. In section two of this chapter, we will discuss the direct source of Marx's quotation as well as the contents of the report. 5°ibid., pp. 446-447. ^^Jones, Distribution of Wealth, p. 110. 32

the king." 52 Further, "according to the Asiatic model, the government was monarchial, and, with the usual excep tion of religion and its ministers, absolute.The sovereign, according to Mill, "claimed a right to as much

of the produce as he pleased, and seldom left to the ryots 54 more than a very scanty reward for their labor." Taxes were collected by the viceregent of each district or town. The head of each district passed them to the lord of ten towns, and the latter to the lord of one hundred, etc., 55 until they reached the royal treasury. Like Jones, Mill extended his analysis from India to other parts of the world such as China, Persia, Egypt, Russia, Africa, Mexico, and Peru.^^ In India, as well as in those countries, the tools and instruments of produc tion — both in agriculture and in industry — were, for Mill, "generally" primitive. Such tools can only be 57 "found among a rude people, and nowhere else." This is true for all Asian societies, because the same stages of

James Mill, The History of British India, Vol. I (New York; Chelsea House Publishers, 1968), pp. 216-217.

S^lbid., P- 141. Sîbid., P- 224. Sîbid., PP . 143-144. Sîbid., PP . 210-213. Sîbid., p. 24. 33 civilization prevail there,and "together compose the great branches of the Asiatic population." 5 9 That civili zation is, for Mill, at the same degree of development as Cyrus, Persia, and Egypt "of the time of Alexander. Mill attempted to show that Indians made only a few steps in the progress of civilization. This slow develop ment or stagnation, particularly in agriculture, which is the most important of all, was caused by the dependence of this sector "upon the laws relating to landed property. For this reason, the Indians should be governed as they are^^ for, if "farmers, and other proprietors of the land, have been seized upon their estates...the minds of natives were thrown into the utmost consternation and alarm. In reality. Mill's fear was a cry of the British bourgeoisie against landed aristocracy. For him, "it is not because in England we have a landed aristocracy, that our agriculture has improved, but because the laws of 64 England" protect the cultivator against his lord.

^®Ibid., p. 150. SÎbid. G°lbid., p. 151. GÎbid., p. 16. Gîbid., pp. 107-164. James Mill, The History of British India, abridged and introduced by William Thomas (The University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 412-413.

G^ibid., p. 492. 34

Therefore, the British government should keep the Indian village unchanged and protect its members from the Zemin dars, whose property "was to regard themselves as petty sovereigns. Mill aimed to prevent the growth of the Zemindars as well as to prevent the English aristocracy from extending its own lifespan and from reproducing itself overseas. Marx was right when he wrote. That is a frank expression of the hatred the industrial capitalist bears toward the landed proprietor, who seems to him [Mill] a useless thing, an excrescencegupon the general body of bourgeois production. Mill, however, succeeded in investigating Indian society in particular, and that of Asian nations in general, by investigating their economic structures; but he failed to see the real causes of the exclusiveness of ownership of land by the sovereign in the East. Like Montesquieu and Jones, Mill fell back on non-economic explanations. To summarize what has been said in this section, it should be noted that in the nineteenth century the idea of a static Oriental society was regarded asno longer suitable for understanding those societies. Moral and "racial" explanations were replaced by economical analyses

G^ibid., p. 493. ^^Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, intr. Friedrich Engels (International Publishers, 1963), p. 161. ^^Mill, History of British India (NY) I: 210. 35 which were taken seriously by the British political econo mists of the nineteenth century. Thus French materialism, German philosophy, and British economics built up the nineteenth century's picture of Asia. The major features of this portrait can be summarized as follows: 1. The despotic rule was all-powerful. The only law was the power of the army and the will of the king 2. There was no private ownership of land. The despot owned it all 3. Village communities were the basis of this economic system 4. The villages were self-sufficient. Each village grew its own food and made what it needed 5. Towns were more like military camps than market centers 6. The lands of Asia cried out for water; irrigation was a necessity of life. The state built canals and kept up waterworks. Because the despot controlled irrigation, he had the village communities at his mercy 7. The state took the produce from the village communities; they had nothing left to exchange with one another, so there was little or no trade in those socie ties 8. Social stability was a universal feature of that part of the world: there was no progress, no dynamism, no change. For thousands of years, those societies lived 36 under the same conditions and dreamed under their despots "like an opium addict." These major features of Asian societies, especially of India and China, would be taken up again by Karl Marx in his analysis of these societies in particular and the Asiatic mode of production in general, but from a differ ent methodological and theoretical approach.

Marx's and Engels' Views of Oriental Societies

Marx's development of the concept of a specific social totality, the Asiatic mode of production (here after, AMP), spanned a period of 30 years, beginning with his newspaper articles of the 1850s, expanding through his critiques of political economy, and culminating with the correspondence of the last years of his life. The earliest significant writings by Karl Marx on the Oriental society appeared in a series of articles in the New York Daily Tribune in the 1850s.At this time Marx observed that Indian society "has no history at all." What was known as the history of India "is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on

These articles have been published by Progress Publishers in Marx/Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975-1984). Volume 12 of this collection contains most of the articles referred to in this dissertation. Some of the same articles have also been published in Karl Marx on Colonialism and Moderniza tion , ed. Shlomo Avineri (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1968) . 37 the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society.From this observation, Marx formulated a gradation of human societies according to a scale on which India was held to be a high civilization; only the British civilization was at a higher stage than India. The Arabs, the Moguls, and the Pathans were only superior militarily to the Hindus, who were superior in other aspects. Thus, when they conquered India, they were swiftly "Hindooized" and themselves conquered "by the superior civilization of their subjects.The British, being superior to the Indians in all aspects — primarily in productive power — affected Indian civilization without being affected by it. To do so, the British broke up "the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by levelling all that 71 was great and elevated in the native society." It is clear from the start of his writing in 1853 on India that Marx distinguished between the development of civilization in the Orient and in the Occident. Clearly, too, he developed a conception of Indian civilization, and of Asian civilization in general, not only as opposed to

^^Marx, Collected Works 12; 217. 7°lbid., p. 218. 71 Marx, "The Future Results of British Rule in India," in ibid., p. 218. 38 that of Europe but also inferior to it. 72 This inferior ity would not permit the Indians to "reap the fruits of the new elements of society...till the Hindoos themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke. In his article "The British Rule in India," Marx saw the cause of Indian inferiority in the village system, which had existed "since the remotest times" with particu lar features and developed under the influence of two main circumstances. These circumstances were:

The Hindoo, on the one hand, leaving, like all Oriental peoples, to the central Government the great public works, the primary condition of his agriculture and commerce, dispersed, on the other hand, over the surface of the country, and agglomerated in small centers by the domestic union agricultural and manufacturing pur suits . This passage contains some basic ideas on the genesis of Oriental society and the AMP as developed by Marx in his early writings on India, and implies that he was aware of the existence of an economic and social system in the

7 2The characteristics of Indian civilization, as opposed to European, being the continued existence from the highest antiquity of the village communities in the Indian society. 73 Ibid., p. 221. It must be noted here that Marx explicitly meant the British proletariat and implicitly the Indian proletariat. But there are no indications that the Indians would evolve in the direction of capitalism if left to themselves. ^^Marx, Collected Works 12: 128. 39 Orient qualitatively different from those that had pre vailed during all the phases of development of European societies. What made the Oriental system qualitatively different from those of Europe? Marx found the key "to be the absence of private property in land" (Marx's emphasis) , 75 and in the social organization of the communities that "had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism. On June 6, 1853, Engels, in a letter to Marx, asked the question, "How does it come about that the Orientals did not arrive at landed property, even in its feudal form?". His answer was that due to climate and the nature of the soil (great stretches of desert), artificial irriga tion was "the first condition of agriculture and this is a matter either for the communes, the provinces or the central government." 77 Marx incorporated these observa tions in his article "The British Rule in India," and went on to outline some ideas on the genesis of the AMP; Climate and territorial conditions, especially the vast tracts of desert extending from the Sahara, through Arabia, Persia, India, and

7 5 Marx to Engels on June 2, 1853, in Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization, p. 427. In this letter, Marx wrote, "Bernier correctly discovers the basic form of all phenomena in the East...to be the absence of private property in land. This is the real key even to the Oriental heaven." ^^Marx, Collected Works 12: 132. 77Marx, Colonialism and Modernization, p. 427. 40 Tartary to the most elevated Asiatic highlands, constituted artificial irrigation by canals anA water works the basis of Oriental agriculture. In the Occident, the "prime necessity of an economic and common use of water...drove private enterprises to volun tary association," while in the Orient the climate, the nature of the soil, and the low degree of civilization necessitated "the interference of the centralizing power of Government" in providing this work. "Hence an économi sa cal function developed upon all Asiatic Governments."

At this stage, it is clear that Marx and Engels agreed that:

1. There is no Oriental feudalism 2. Its absence is synonymous with the nonexistence of private property in land 3. Oriental despotism has arisen from the need to provide artificial irrigation 4. The system was forcibly destroyed by British

., 1 • 80 capitalism In addition, they believed that the village communities had always been the base of Oriental despotism.

7fi Marx, Collected Works 12: 127. ^^Ibid. 80 In their correspondence of June 6 and 4, 1853, and in most of Marx's articles on India, both Marx and Engels believed that British capitalism, whatever its motivation, was about to introduce the preconditions of "progress" in the Western sense, albeit at immense cost. 41 Following Francois Bernier, Marx considered the absence of privately owned land to be the real "key to the whole of the East." However, as Marx encountered this controversy among British writers, he almost began to modify his initial thesis concerning the absence of private property in land. In a letter to Engels dated June 14, 1853, Marx wrote; As to the question of property, this is a very controversial one among the English writers on India. In the broken hill-country south of Krishma property in land does seem to have existed. In any case it seems to have been the Mohammedans who first established the principle of "non-property" in land glÿiroughout the whole of Asia (Marx's emphasis). In the late 1850s, Marx no longer believed that the Mohammedans first introduced non-property in land to Asia, but that it was founded upon tribal structure and the combination of agriculture and manufacture within the small community that contains "within itself all conditions of production and surplus production." 8 2 The structure of these self-sufficient communities gave to each small community its independent organization and distinct life. The peculiar character of this system was described by Marx, quoting a long passage from the

81 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels on Colonialism, ed. and published by Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960, p. 281. 8 2 Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, tr. Jack Cohen (New York; International Publishers, 1965), p. 70. 42

Report of the British House of Commons on Indian Affairs in 1812.83

In this Report, the Indian village resembles a corporation or township. Its proper establishment of officers and ser vants consists of the following descriptions: [the potail, the kurnum, the tallier and the totie, the boundaryman, the superintendent of tanks and watercourses, the Brahimin, the schoolmaster, the calendar-Brahimin or the astrologer, etc.]. Under this simple form of municipal government, the inhabitants the country have lived from time immemorial.

These forms of social organization "Have been to the 8 5 greater part dissolved, and [are] disappearing" through the destruction of the self-sufficient inertia of the

p 9 Ibid., p. 131. It should be noted here that the immediate source for the quotation by Marx is not yet identified. Avineri (Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modern ization, p. 88) referred to the immediate source as G. Campbell, Modern India: A Sketch of the System of civil Government (London: 1852), pp. 84-85; the editors of Marx/Engels' Collected Works (12:131) referred to the immediate source as Thomas S. Raffles, The History of Java (London: 1817) , p. 285; and finally, Krader (Asiatic Mode of Production, p. 83) referred to the immediate source as Mark Wiks, Historical Sketch of South India (London: 1820) . a A Ibid., p. 131. The Potail is the head of the village; the Kurnum keeps the accounts of cultivation and registers everything connected with it; the Tallier reports crimes and escorts travelers from one village to another; the Totie guards the crops and assists in measur ing them; the Brahimin performs the village worship. G^ibid. 43 villages by the introduction of modern industry®^ and the 8 7 British tax-gatherer. The relationship between the village community and the despot is exploitative. The village community mem bers, being only "hereditary possessors" of land, are exploited by the state which "appears as the higher or sole proprietor [Marx's emphasis]. " 8 8 The concrete and formal relation of the individual to the soil is mediated by the community. Thus the relations of the individual producer to the "natural condition of labor and production appear to the mediated by means of a grant [Ablassen] from the total unity to the individual through the intermediary of the particular community." 89 This particular community produces the surplus product, which is appropriated by the higher community. The higher community (the state) thus 90 "appears as a person [Marx's emphasis]." For this reason, the individual is doubly dependent: on the one hand, he is dependent on his village community in part because he is a member of the unit of production, and in part because "production [has] always [been] production by

GGçoiiected Works 12:220-222. 87%bid., p. 131. 88Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 69. G^lbid.

8°lbid., p. 70. 44

social individuals;" 91 on the other hand, he is dependent on the state which, by its provision of the conditions of production, appears as the sole proprietor and the father 92 of the lower community. At the village level, small peasants are independent in their agricultural and rural industries. The individu al producer owns his instruments of production, as well as his labor power. The "small peasants may form among themselves a more or less natural production community as they do in India." 93 Under such conditions, the state can

only extort the surplus from these communities "by other than economic pressure, whatever the form assumed may be." 9 4 Enforced labor may play no role in these communi ties. Traditions "must play a dominant role in the primitive and undeveloped circumstances on which these social production relations and the corresponding mode of production are based." Because of the repetition and reproduction of these relations, this form "entrenches itself as custom and tradition and is finally sanctioned 95 as an explicit law."

91 Karl Marx, Grundrisse, ed. and trans. by David McLellan (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971), p. 18. 9 2 Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 70. 93 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill (New York: Interna tional Publishers, 1967), p. 791. S^ibid. q s ^"^Ibid., p. 793. 45 In these societies, exploitation of the producers was limited, as in the feudal system of the West, by the predominance of natural economy. "The imperfect develop ment of all social productive powers," Marx wrote, "will naturally absorb a relatively much smaller portion of the direct producer's total labor than under a developed mode

of production."8® Where "the use-value of the product predominates, surplus-labor will be limited." This is due primarily to the low degree of development of the forces of production and to "the nature of the production it- Q 7 self." In the Orient, for Marx, this limited surplus is

"rendered both as tribute and as common labor for the glory of the unity, in part that of the despot, in part go that of the imagined tribal entity of the god." From this it appears that the source of retardation of the Orient was presented by Marx on two levels: above, the monopolization of economic initiative and surplus value by a centralized state apparatus; below, the perpet uation of a natural economy in isolated, self-sufficient village communities. The slow rate of change of the life of the villages of Asia conditioned the slow rate of change of the great central polity, such that the changes

S^ibid., pp. 793-794. ^^Marx, Capital I: 235. 98 Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 70. 46 of the central authority were superficial from the begin nings of history down to the most recent times. This retardation was described by Marx as follows : The simplicity of the organization for produc tion in these self-sufficient communities... supplies the key to the secret of the unchange ableness of Asiatic societies, an unchangeable ness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic states, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The structure of the economic elements of society remains untouqhed by the storm-clouds of the political sky. This unchangeableness was particularly puzzling for Marx since the basis of his writings on pre-capitalist society was the contradiction between communal and private property and between the social systems these implied. In his discussion of the ancient city-states, as in his discussion of feudalism, the contradiction between the two types of property had been identified as the driving force of c h a n g e . ^80 How then was it possible that a similar contradiction in the Orient had not led to the same or similar development? Marx found the answer in the self- sufficient communities and in the undeveloped private property. In these communities, social differentiation was not yet developed. The integrity of the community was maintained centrally by the state. The state represented.

99 Marx, Capital I: 358.

^8®Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 68 ff. 47 at least in the people's minds, the essence of the commun

ity. Thus it was in the interest of the state to maintain the communities and not to destroy them. In other words, the state helped the community in resisting the amassing of wealth in the hands of a few. Such a system "neces

sarily survives longest and most stubbornly.

Marx defined this system as the Asiatic mode of production. In his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx acknowledged the AMP to be a socio-economic formation of comparable historical importance to the Ancient, Feudal, and modern Bourgeois modes of production. 102 A decade later, Marx, in his discussion of commodities, wrote, "In the Ancient, Asiatic, and other ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion of products into commodities...holds a 103 subordinate place...." Unlike in the ancient, feudal, and capitalist modes of production, cities in the Asiatic mode of production arise only where the location is "favorable to external trade, or where the head of the state and his satraps exchange their revenue (the surplus product) against

101^^■^Ibid., p. 83. 102Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, trans. S.W. Ryzazanskaya (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) , p. 21. 10 3 Marx, Capital I: 79. 48

labor, which they expend as labor-funds." 104 The effects of a state monopoly of surplus prevented any indigenous advance toward industrial capitalism, on the one hand, and on the other, left the history of Asia one of "undifferen- tiated unity of town and country." 105 These were the main features of the Asiatic mode of production as described by Marx and which he did not abandon throughout the rest of his life. In fact, in the last years of his life, Marx returned to his interest in pre-capitalist societies, this time devoting himself to a more concrete study of these societies rather than attempting to relate them to the categories of the capi talist mode of production. His critical notes on Morgan, Ancient Society; Phear, The Aryan Village; Maine, Lectures on the Early History of Institutions; Lubbock, The Origin of Civilization; and Kovalevsky, The Primitive Communities (1879), and his letters to Engels in 1868 and to Zasulick

in 1881^86 show clearly that Marx's interest in the pre-capitalist modes of production had increased. His criticism of Phear and Kovalevsky for the suggestion that feudal relations of production were to be found in India

^8^Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formation, p. 71.

^°^Ibid., pp. 77-78.

^8®Marx's excerpts from these works have been admir ably translated and edited with an introduction by Lawrence Krader in The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (Assen: Von Groum, 19 72). 49 and Algeria 107 leave no doubt that Marx had not dropped the AMP from his model of historical development of societies. More evidence concerning Marx's views on the notion of feudalism in Asia can be gleaned from the material he copied from M.M. Kovalevsky and heavily emphasized, in particular Kovalevsky's account of why the Ottoman rule in Algeria did not lead to feudalization. Peudalization was ...hindered by the powerful centralization of the military-civil administration of Algeria; this excluded the possibility of hereditary sequestration of local offices and the conver sion of their incumbents in fact into great landowners independent of the Deys. All local Deys and Kaids who usually farmed out the levying of taxes in the districts in their charge remained only 3 years in their functions. The law strictly enjoined such change, and in practice i,t^ptook place even oftener [Marx's emphasis]. However, compared with his general perspective of the historical development of societies, Marx's model of the Asiatic state is not completed and contains some exaggera tions. According to his social theory, "the history of all hitherto-existing society is the history of class 109 struggle" while, according to his article "The British

107Marx's excerpts from the work of M.M. Kovalevsky have been translated and reproduced by Krader (The Asiatic Mode of Production, 1975, Part II). 108Excerpted from Kovalevsky in ibid., p. 404. ^^^Marx and Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," in Collected Works VI: 483. 50 Rule in India," India "has no history." Moreover, if the state, according to Marx, is essentially part of the superstructure of society, brought into existence when class antagonism had become so severe that it could only be held in check by a repressive power, the state in Asiatic societies came into existence without a repressive

function required by class society. In addition, Marx's general model postulates that the state bears only an indirect relationship to the productive base, the function of maintaining the exploitative relations of production, while an economic function was assigned by Marx to the state in the Orient. It is erroneous to jump to the conclusion that the AMP as developed by Marx and Engels has no place in their teaching. In reality, "Marx himself never wrote his projected work on the state," 110 nor did he, as we have seen, abandon his views on the AMP. It is also erroneous to copy the model for the creation of pre-capitalist classes from the model developed by Marx for the genesis of classes of capitalist society and apply it to all societies. Concrete studies demonstrate "that the appear ance of social stratification precedes property differentiation." 111 The ruling classes in pre-capitalist

110 Sawer, Marxism, p. 69. Ill L.V. Danilova, "Controversial Problems of the Theory of Pre-Capitalist Societies," Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology IX (1971): 294. 51 societies may have come to power not through economic domination, but through customs and traditions. In those undeveloped social formations and agricultural communities "which continued... [to exist among] civilized peoples of a later period," 112 class opposition, if it was expressed at all, was maintained within traditional forms and

relations. .%2$ibers of the higher community — the state — did not, of course, immediately lose contact with their 113 communes, class, and tribes. It was Engels who developed a two-stage theory of the state, in which he included the Asiatic state. In this

theory, the state in the first stage is founded in the natural groups of communities of the same tribe. Its

functions are (1) to safeguard the common interests of

the communities, and (2) to protect these communities from external enemies. In the second stage, the state has the purpose of maintaining the conditions of overlordship of the ruling class, which is now developed and is distin guished economically from the exploited classes. The members who held the offices in the first stage of devel opment "hold a special position in relation to each individual community." "Through heredity of functions" and under certain circumstances, such as the increase of

112Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring (Moscow; Foreign Languages Publishing House, 3rd ed., 1962), p. 247. 113Danilova, "Controversial Problems," p. 303. 52 conflicts with other groups, these organs which were originally servants were transformed into overlords. Under favorable circumstances, such an overlord became an Oriental despot.However, in his more detailed work on the state, Engels put aside the agricultural village communities and Oriental despotism. 115 The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the

State, which was published by Engels a year after Marx's death, "can offer but a meager substitute for that which [his] departed friend was not destined to accomplish."

The Origin of the Family also cannot substitute for Marx's and Engels' works of three decades (1853-1883). Engels knew of the theory of the AMP from Marx's Grundrisse, the

Critique of 1859, and Capital. Engels' own work of 1877, 117 his 1882 letter to Bernstein, and his note to the 1888 English edition of the Communist Manifesto express his views on the AMP in general and the Indian community as the paradigm of early social forms in particular.

114 Engels, Anti-Dühring, p. 247 ff. Engels did not go on to explain "how this independence of social func tions in relation to society increased with time until it developed into domination over society" (p. 248) ; he mentioned that the servant became "an Oriental despot or satrap," but he did not explain how. 113 Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (New York; Pathfinder Press, Inc., 1972). ll^ibid., p. 25. 117 Engels to Bernstein on August 9, 1882, in Marx/ Engels on Colonialism, pp. 446-447. 53 In The Origin of the Family, Engels has, as Krader puts it, "simply supplanted the theory of the Asiatic mode of production" by the theory of the gens. "Marx did not bring his studies in ethnology to a close," and therefore, there is no relation between the theory of the AMP and 118 that of the gens. Besides, "there is no hint in any of Marx's own writings of that degree of endorsement for 119 Morgan's theoretical position." Nor is there any indication in Marx's excerpts from Morgan's Ancient Society that Marx regarded Morgan as a materialist, a view held by Engels in his Preface to The Origin of the Fami- ly. 120 It is because of Engels' anthropological enthu siasm and his trust in Morgan that "the whole facade of Engels' Origin of the Family collapses." 121 The facade may have collapsed, but the concepts of the AMP and the Indian community as the paradigm for the early society was retained by Engels until his death. In fact, in a footnote to the 1888 English edition of The Communist Manifesto, Engels wrote;

118 Krader, The Asiatic Mode of Production, p. 301. 119 Maurice Block, Marxism and Anthropology; The History of a Relationship (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 49. 120Engels, The Origin of the Family, p. 25. 121Maurice Godelier, Perspectives in Marxist Anthro- pology, tr. Robert Brian (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 103. 54 In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organization existing previous to recorded history, was all but unknown. Since then, Haythausen discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and the village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland.... With the dissolution of these primeval communi ties, society began to be differen^^^ted into separated and antagonistic classes. In this passage, Engels simply repeated what Marx had already explained to Zasulich in 1881, and earlier to Engels in 1868. In that year, Marx wrote to Engels, "though M[aurer] knew nothing of the view I have put forward, namely that the Asian or Indian forms of property constitute the initial ones everywhere in Europe, he 123 provides further proof of it." Concerning the village communities as the location of transition from undivided society to the society divided into classes, Marx wrote to Zasulich: The village-community is everywhere the very youngest type, as it were the last word of the archaic formation of society.... As the last phase of the primitive formation of society the agricultural community is at the same time a transitional phase to the secondary formation, i.e. transition from society based on common property to society .based on private property [Marx's emphasis].

19 2 Marx/Engels Collected Works VI: 482. 123 Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 139. 19 4 Marx to Zasulich in ibid., p. 145. 55 Neither Marx nor Engels dropped the concept of the

AMP from their theory of social development. Engels' elimination of the AMP from The Origin of the Family by no means indicates his rejection of it from Marxist theory of the historical development of society. On the contrary, his reiteration of Marx's earlier views on Oriental societies proves his strong belief in the theory of the AMP as developed, with his partnership, by Marx since the 1850s.

Conclusion

In the picture received of Oriental societies, private property in land was missing in Asia. The state was the real landlord. The rise of Oriental despotism was in striking contrast to European development. Marx and Engels discovered that in the economic development of Western Europe, the following sequence prevailed; tribal property, feudal landed property, the property of the guilds, manufacture capital, and modern industrial capi- 125 tal. In Asia the shift from tribal property to state property had broken the chain established by Marx and Engels for Western societies near its beginning. Without private property there could be no feudalism, no class

12 5 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The German Ideology," in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, trans. and edited by Lloyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat (N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1967), p. 469. . 56 struggle and no social revolutions. Marx and Engels formed a hypothesis to explain Asian stagnation: the absence of private landed property prevented social progress. Marx was not satisfied with this hypothesis. Thus he advanced another: the Asiatic mode of production was stable because the self-sufficient villages, robbed of their surplus by the despot, could never undergo social change. This last hypothesis enabled Marx to discover in India, China, Mexico, Peru, Algeria, and Russia the AMP, the stage out of which all modes of European history developed. The theory of the AMP as developed by Marx goes far beyond its geographic limits and contains the elements whereby the transition from primitive communities and tribal life to class-divided society and the state is brought about. Village communities were the base of the socio-economic and political structures of the societies of the AMP. Non-property in land existed only in certain regions of certain countries of the AMP and by no means was a general character of this mode. Nor were public works a common and necessary element for the economies of these societies. CHAPTER III

THE FATE OF THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION

The Direct Successors to Marx and Engels

Marx's and Engels' direct successors, whether they supported the concept of the AMP or denied its existence were primarily repeating the later ideas of Engels, especially as set forth in The Origin of the Family. (The German Ideology and Grundrisse were not yet published.)^ Theoreticians such as Plekhanov, Kautsky, Luxemburg and Lenin were only familiar with the Origin. In that work, as we have seen, Engels was strongly influenced by Morgan; the latter himself was a product of the current of opinion which stressed the total relevance of Darwinism. Thus, before the Russian Revolution of 1917, evolution became a matter of increasing importance; understanding of the social evolution of a particular society and the charac terization of its situation in evolutionary terms was considered the theoretical precondition for formulating an appropriate national and international strategy.

For a history of the publication of Marx's Grund risse , see Samuel H. Baron, "Marx's Grundrisse and the Asiatic Mode of Production," Survey 21 (1975).

57 58

Although the school of Kautsky is particularly important in that it included the Russian Plekhanov and therefore had a direct effect on Lenin, Plekhanov played a pre-eminent role in systematizing Marx's philosophy of history. In his works The Development of the Monist View of History, Essays in the History of Materialism, and Fundamental Problems of Marxism, Plekhanov strengthened the tendency of the later Engels to subsume history under more general laws of nature. In 1895, Plekhanov claimed that the entire structure of the social union "is deter mined in the long run by the characteristics of the geographical environment." Thus, for him, "the character of natural environment determines the character of the 2 social environment." Plekhanov, in explaining the relation between the teaching of Marx and the teaching of Darwin, wrote, "One can say that Marxism is Darwinism in its application to social s c i e n c e . Darwinism shows how "animals and vegetables are under the influence of their physical environment;" Marxism, on the other hand, shows how the development of different types of social

2 Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov, The Development of the Monist View of History (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 217. 3 G.V. Plekhanov, Essays in the History of Materialism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1967), p. 215. 59 organization takes place under the influence of their natural environment.^ It is, of course, a matter of debate how the later Engels and Plekhanov maintained Marx's position concerning the historical development of human society in general and the relation of natural and geographical environment to this development in particular. Marx, as is well known, tended to treat the stage of the development of the forces of production as the determinant in the last analysis of social relations and social structures, while Plekhanov believed that the primary condition for the development of any given production force must be sought in the proper ties of environment.^ For Plekhanov, Marx's historical materialism is a form of geographic and technological

determinism. Although Plekhanov was true to Marx in suggesting a multilinear — or at least a bilinear — schema of pre capitalist development, he was more deterministic, and suggested what Marx and Engels fought against. In fact.

4 Plekhanov, The Monist View, note on pp. 218-219. ^The well-known passage of Marx in his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970, pp. 20-21), "In the social production of their existence, men...", was interpreted by Plekhanov in his Fundamental Problems of Marxism (New York: International Publishers, 1969, pp. 62-63) in terms of geographical environment. 60 Engels, attacking the deterministic point of view, wrote

in 1890: According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, ^stract, senseless phrase [Engels' emphasis]. This passage clarifies, on the one hand, Marx's position

concerning the deterministic view, and rejects, on the other hand, both Plekhanov's geographical determinism and 7 Stalin's retarding and/or accelerating concept. Based on this interpretation of Marx, Plekhanov acknowledged East and West to be "two more or less polar models" of development. Russia shared both developments;

Engels' letter to J. Bloch, September 21-22, 1890, in W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, Vol. II (London: Frank Cass and Company, 1976), p. 791. Engels continues in this letter to make it clear that the ele ments of the superstructure ...also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form.... Marx and I ourselves [are] partly to blame for the fact that younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize the main principle vis-a-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place, or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction..." (Ibid., pp. 791-793). 7 Stalin's view of the role of geographical environ ment will be discussed later in this chapter. 61 nonetheless its development was assimilated by Plekhanov

Q into the Eastern rather than the Western pattern. The Eastern model of development, according to Plekhanov, co-existed with the ancient. Their "distinctive features were evolved under the influence of the geographical Q environment." The ancient civilizations of the East are, for Plekhanov, "only the first great steps of humanity on

the path of historical development. For further steps a different geographical environment, one which favors other socio-political conditions, is required.It is clear that Plekhanov was the first to assert that after having read Morgan's Ancient Society, Marx modified his earlier view on the AMP, namely its place in historical develop ment. In earlier works, according to Plekhanov, Marx placed the AMP before the Ancient mode. Later, he placed the former on a parallel with the latter. 11 This interpretation of Marx helped Plekhanov to work out the implications of the concept of the AMP in its

p H. Samuel Baron, Plekhanov, The Father of Russian Marxism (California: Stanford University Press, 1963) , p. 299. ^Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems, p. 63. ^^G.V. Plekhanov, "Civilization and the Great Histor ical Rivers, in The Asiatic Mode of Production, ed. Anne M. Baily and Joseph R^ Llobera (London/Boston: Henley/ Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 63. 11Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems, p. 63. 62 relation to Russia from an alternative Marxist theory of historical development. "Old Muscovite Russia," Plekhanov wrote, "was distinguished by its completely Asiatic character.... Everything in it was alien to Europe and very closely related to China, Persia, and Ancient Egypt." 12 In fact, social classes of the West are, for Plekhanov, economically distinguished, and the state "is the result of the class struggle;" while in Russia ... it is not the class struggle which has given rise to the given state structure but, on the contrary, that structure, itself which brings into existence the different classes with their struggle and antagonism. However, Plekhanov did not use the term "Asiatic mode of production." Lenin was the first Russian Marxist to use it.^^ In a political argument with Plekhanov, Lenin

viewed Russian nationalization in the seventeenth century as an exaggerated version of Plekhanov's history of Muscovite Russia. He emphasized that Plekhanov confused "nationalization based on the Asiatic mode of production with nationalization based on the capitalist mode of

^^Quoted by Baron in Plekhanov, pp. 302-303. 13 G.V. Plekhanov, "Our Differences," in Selected Philosophical Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House) , p. 319 . ^^For Lenin's use of the AMP and different terms to designate it, see Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 1957), pp. 378-379. 63 production." Hence the differences between Plekhanov and Lenin appear to reside not in the question of the AMP, but rather in the history of this mode. Plekhanov believed that the AMP was still the dominant mode, at least in Old

Muscovite Russia, while Lenin believed that this mode was dissolved and that "the capitalist mode of production... [was] established in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century, and is absolutely predominant in the twentieth century" [Lenin's emphasis]. 15 Therefore, the Asiatic mode of production issue, among others, put Plekhanov in a position different from that of Lenin. Lenin, as is well known, wanted to get the revolution going at once and was all for the immediate realization of socialism in Russia, but due to the lowly state of capitalist development he insisted that the unification of peasants and workers was necessary to achieve that revolution. Plekhanov considered the immedi ate realization of socialism in Russia to be out of the question, since capitalism would first have to go through its complete development. Therefore, he urged a political alliance with the bourgeoisie against aristocracy and absolutism. The character of Russian development became not only an issue of disagreement between Lenin and

15 V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1962), pp. 331-332. 64 Plekhanov, but one of the causes of the split of Russian Marxists before and after the Revolution of 1917. As opposed to Plekhanov's multilinear development and geographical determinism, Stalin's concept of unilinear development and the role of geographical elements as accelerating or retarding this development had dominated Russian thought for about three decades, and was repeated more or less even after Stalin's death. His formula signified a complete abandonment of any dynamic conception of the interaction between man and nature. Geographical

environment, for him, was static, and any important changes in it "require millions of years, whereas a few hundred or a couple of thousand years are enough [for] even very important changes in the system of human socie

ty. To understand human history, Stalin declared, one has to look at the laws governing the development of material production which alone explain the five types of relations of production: primitive communal, slave, 17 feudal, capitalist and socialist. The AMP was complete ly ignored by Stalin. Oriental societies, for him, followed the same path of development as that of the West. For Stalin,

Joseph Stalin, "Dialectical and Historical Materi alism," in The Essential Stalin: Major Theoretical Writ- ings, 1905-52, ed. Bruce Franklin (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 316-317.

l^ibid., pp. 320, 323. 65 ...to deny, after this, the existence of [the] feudal...system of exploitation as the main form of oppression in the Chinese countryside, to refuse to recognise that the agrarian revolution is the factor in the Chinese revolutionary movement at the present ti^e, would be flying in the face of obvious facts. Thus Stalin gave the seal of approval to what has been called the five-stage theory. According to it, mankind always went, and always would go, through a succession of five stages: primitive society, ancient or slave society, feudalism, capitalism, and communism. The five-stage theory, however, before it established itself was preceded by a debate over the validity of the AMP in general and its applicability to China in particu

lar. The debate started in 1926 and reached its zenith during the years 1929-1931. It was mainly a political debate between the two divisions of Russian Marxists. "The discussion," as one of the opponents of the AMP wrote, "originated with politics and its political import 19 was evident throughout." The debate was intimately linked to the formation of Comintern policy for contempo rary China and particularly the position of Soviet policy toward the Kuomintang and the Communists. The question of

18J. Stalin, "Notes on Contemporary Themes: China (1927)," in The Essential Stalin, pp. 198-199. ^^M. Godes, "The Reaffirmation of Unilinealism," in The Asiatic Mode of Production, p. 100. 66 whether China should undergo a bourgeois democratic

revolution or overthrow the remnants of feudalism before participation in a socialist revolution was the main point of contention between the opponents and the proponents of the AMP. Since it was a political debate, the temporary victory was on the side of those who were politically dominant — the AMP opponents. For this reason, discus sion of the AMP was forcibly quelled. The participants in

the Third International in the 1930s, "both pro and contra, were imprisoned or killed." 20 Outside the Soviet Union, discussion of the AMP had

not taken place; nevertheless, Karl Wittfogel, a German who considered himself a Marxist, participated in the discussion of the 1930s and was the first to dig the AMP up and "turn it into a war machine against socialism." 21 Wittfogel, broke with the German progressive movement, emigrated to the U.S., where he taught Chinese history at Washington University and chaired the Chinese Project at Columbia University. He spent, as he indicated, "more than a quarter of a century" studying Chinese society in particular and what he called "hydraulic-societies" in

20Lawrence Krader, The Asiatic Mode of Production (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., B.V., 1975), p. 113. 21 Maurice Godelier, "The Concept of the 'AMP' and Marxist Models of Social Evolution," in Relations of Production, Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthrolopogy, ed. David Seddon (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1978), p. 250 67 general. 22 His mature work of the late 1950s was a political weapon against Marxism-Leninism. In his Oriental Despotism of 1957, Wittfogel's main goal was to attack the USSR and China through his attack on Oriental despotism. At first sight. Oriental Despotism gives the impression of an extraordinarily broadly- conceived and firmly grounded work, but a serious look at

this work quickly yields the idea that Wittfogel tried to turn his whole attack on despotism against Marxism- Leninism. His focus on the category of Oriental despot ism, the political side of the problem led him far from Marx's analysis of a mode of production (i.e., the AMP); and by considering the managerial and bureaucratic cate gories as entering directly into the economic relations of a society, he divorces the state from the superstructure.

The state in the Orient is, for Wittfogel, a part of the economic basis of the society. Thus it appears to be what it is not, i.e., a part of the immediate labor in society, not a part of the superstructure. Throughout the pages of Oriental Despotism, Wittfogel argues conversely to Marx. He proceeds from the managerial power of the state to the central control of public works, and then from the state to the society and hence to the political economy.

^^Karl Wittfogel, "Reply to Arnold Toynbee," in Bailey and Llobera, Asiatic Mode, p. 171. 68 If the bureaucracy is necessary for irrigation works, as Wittfogel claims, how is it economically possible for the personnel supposedly needed for management to exist before the surplus necessary to feed them? And if the bureaucracy is necessary for the functioning of the irrigation works, how do we explain the fact that the irrigation works must precede the bureaucracy? Such questions easily show the weakness of Wittfogel's theory. In approaching Oriental despotism from this obscured method, Wittfogel accuses Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Childe, among others, for the changes they made in the theory of the AMP. He devoted a whole chapter to explain

ing what he calls "retrogressions" of Marx and his follow ers, accusing them of making changes in the theory of the AMP not as a result of a deep insight or the collection of better data, but because of changes in the political line. The concept of Oriental despotism has, for Wittfogel, paralyzed Marx's "search for truth," not because the AMP could not be proven scientifically, but because, [as] a member of a group that intended to establish a total managerial and dictatorial state and was ready to "use despotic measures" to achieve its socialist ends, Marx could scarcely help recognising some disturbing similarities between Oriental despotism and the state of his program.

23 Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, A comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), p. 387. 69 Because of his "sin against science," Wittfogel declared, Marx had not "designated the functional bureaucracy as the ruling class of Oriental despotism;" rather, he "obscured" the character of the ruling class in those societies and his theory was "a step backward.Now it was the task of Wittfogel to build that missing theory,to fill that "theoretical vacuum,to "revive the propaganda myth of 2 7 good Europe and bad Asia," to alert "the intellectual and political leaders of non-communist Asia" 2 8 to the "danger" of Marxism spreading among the proletariat in their countries, and finally to give the bourgeois world a system which could serve as a weapon in the struggle 29 against Marxism.

Z^ibid., p. 381. K. Wittfogel, "Results and Problems of the Study of Oriental Despotism, The Journal of Asian Studies 28 (Nov.-Aug. 1968-69): 361. ^^Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, p. 371. 27 Arnold Toynbee, "Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism," in Baily and Llobera, Asiatic Mode, p. 165. 28 wittfogel. Oriental Despotism, p. 9. 29 Impudently, Wittfogel declared in his presentation at the 27th Congress of Orientalists held at Ann Arbor, Michigan that his theory is at the same level as that of Adam Smith, Herder, Hegel, Marx and Engels, and Max Weber. Every one of these theoreticians, «according to Wittfogel, had made a step in formulating the "hydraulic" theory, and now its was Wittfogel's turn to make the last and defini tive step in building this theory (The Journal of Asian Studies 28:361). 70 Revival of the Asiatic Mode of Production

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic revival of the concept of the AMP within Marxist social theory, but this revival has not eliminated divergences among Marxists about the nature, universality, and validi ty of this mode. Some scholars have attempted to intro duce new elements in explaining pre-capitalist social formations in general and Oriental formations in particu lar . Others have introduced new concepts such as Archa

ism; Command Feudalism; and African, Tributary and Post- Colonial modes of production. Still others have supported the AMP and tried to apply it to non-Asiatic formations. Finally, despite these attempts, there are those who have totally rejected the concept of the AMP and concluded that the primitive-communal, slavery, feudalist, and capitalist modes of production were not the one path of historical development toward communism, and there must be new concepts, different from the AMP, to explain this develop ment. One of the chief reasons for the revival of interest in the AMP is, as many of the participants in the discus sion note, the fact that there has been in the last two decades a closer familiarity with the social systems of African and Asian countries. Anthropologists, archeologists, historians and sociologists have accumulated more materials and concrete historical data that call for the 71 re-examination of non-European social formations. The participants in the AMP discussion, as we will see, almost exclusively start their investigations by first analyzing this concept as found in the works of Marx and Engels. They then proceed to find theoretical interpreta tions for concrete historical data, i.e., incorporating Marx's and Engels' views on the Oriental societies with new data. In so doing, the proponents of the AMP have tried to find a way out of the confusion resulting from the five-stage theory. Since there exists an extensive body of literature on this subject by scholars from many parts of the world, the present chapter's analysis will be limited to the most eminent works both for and against the AMP. In the following chapter, we will discuss some specific studies focusing on those attempts that have been introduced to characterize pre-colonial Algerian social formation. With this in mind, let us first begin with the examination of some works by French scholars who were the first to enter this discussion or debate with the Russians in the early 1960s. For the Seventh International Con gress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences, held in Moscow in August 1964, the French Marxists Maurice Godelier and Jean Suret-Canale prepared papers on the AMP. 72 Together with a reply from the Russian scholar V. Struve, the papers were circulated.The initiative in reviving

the discussion of the AMP thus came from the French scholars. It reopened the discussion on pre-capitalist modes of production in general and the AMP in particular, both in the Soviet Union and abroad, and remained, as we will see, both the source and the target of later discus

sions . In his article "The Concept of the 'Asiatic Mode of 31 Production' and Marxist Models of Socialist Evolution,"

Godelier adjusted his conclusion of 1964 when he asserted that after having read Morgan, Engels abandoned the concept of the AMP; in his revised paper, Godelier showed that "neither Marx nor Engels abandoned their former hypotheses after reading Morgan." 32 On the contrary.

Abstracts of these papers were first published in Narody Azii i Afriki 1 (1965). English translations of these abstracts were published in Soviet Anthropology and Archeology IV (Fall 1965). 31This paper was revised by Godelier and published in the C.E.R.M., Sur le mode de production asiatique, 1968. It was translated into English by Helen Lakner and pub lished in Seddon, Relations of Production. A part of this edition was published in Baily and Llobera, The Asiatic Mode of Production, pp. 164-277. The main theses of this article have, in one way or another, been reproduced by Godelier in his 1968 Rationality and Irrationality in Economics (London; New Left Books, 1972); Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 1977); and many other works. 3 2 Godelier, "The Concept," in Seddon, Relations of Production, p. 210. 73 "there is...a continuity between the texts of Foritien, Anti-Dühring and The Origin of the Family.Godelier added that even if Marx and Engels abandoned the concept of the AMP,there is nothing that "would prevent us from taking [their hypotheses] up today if the present state of 34 scientific information gave them a new topicality."

In an attempt to find "a theoretical concept which takes into account the methods of his time (scientific or otherwise) and in applying the analysis inherited from 35 Marx as often as possible," Godelier advanced his model of historical development in general and the development of the AMP in particular. In this model, "the concept of the Asiatic mode of production designates a specific, original mode of production to be confused neither with the ancient slave mode of production nor with the feudal mode of production" (Godelier's emphasis). Its essence is the existence of primitive communities and the communal landownership that are partly organized "on the basis of kinship relations." In the societies of the AMP, there exists a state power "which expresses the real or imaginary unity of these communities." The state power controlling the essential economic resources "directly

^^Ibid., p. 211. ^^Ibid., p. 210. 3 K Godelier, Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, p. 121. 74 appropriates part of the labor and production of the communities which dominates." Finally, the societies of the AMP represent one of the forms of transition from classless societies to societies divided into classes. In the societies of the AMP, the social organization is characterized by a contradictory structure: community structures and the embryo of an exploiting class. Any ...society characterized by this contradiction is thus presented simultaneously as a final form of classless society (village communities) and an initial form of class society (a minoriÿ^ exercising State power, a higher community). This type of social organization represents a specific form of transition: from classless to class-divided society. Since these contradictory elements were found in Ancient Europe, Africa, Asia, and pre-Columbian America, the concept of the AMP should be widely applied to those types of societies, no matter what their geographical 3 8 locations or their time in historical development. To explain the emergence of the AMP, Marx advanced the hypothesis of the necessity of public works by a centralized state power at the top and the perpetuation of a self-sufficient village at the bottom. Godelier added a

^^Godelier, "Asiatic Mode," in Seddon, Relations of Production, p. 212. 3?lbid., p. 240.

^®Ibid., pp 240-241. 75 second hypothesis: control of "inter-tribal or inter regional trade" in rare commodities — gold, ivory —

and/or cattle or slaves. This hypothesis enabled him to distinguish between "two forms of Asiatic mode of produc tion — with or without major projects." In the one with major projects, the state and the ruling class enter directly into the conditions of production; in the without- major-projects form, they indirectly intervene in those conditions "by appropriating surplus labor or produce as profit." Thus the essential element determining the existence of the AMP in a society is the presence of two contradictory structures in which "kinship relations function as relations of production, political relations, and current ideologies." 39 The hypothesis of public works, for Godelier, explains nothing but the existence or non-existence of centralized state power. It does not explain the way inequality was introduced into classless societies. Nor does it explain how this inequality led to the emergence and formation of social classes and the state. More importantly, it does not define a mode of 40 production (the AMP).

^^Godelier, Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, p. 123. ^^Godelier, in Seddon, Relations of Production, pp. 241-243. Also in Perspectives in Marxist Anthropol ogy, p. 119. 76 The AMP knows no stagnation, according to Godelier. On the contrary, it represents the further progress of the productive forces attained on the basis of the communal mode of production. The law of its evolution is, as in other social formations, "the law of the development of 41 its internal contradictions" [Godelier's emphasis]

However, if the internal contradictions, as in other social formation, fail to develop, the former modes of communal social organizations would be maintained instead of destroyed. In its development, the AMP develops class

exploitation. However, because the massive levy of revenue in kind, the absence of incentives to create a market, and the use of the state of peasant labor, the development of the forces of production would be slowed down and the evolution of the AMP would sink and stagnate for a long period of time.^^ Therefore, for Godelier, the AMP is originally progressive, then tends to sink and stagnate. If its internal contradictions are developed, however, two forms of further development may be seen: one toward slaveholding via the ancient mode of production, the other "to certain forms of feudalism, without going through a slave

^^Godelier, in Seddon, Relations of Production, p. 243. 42 Ibid., p. 244. 77 stage" (Godelier's emphasis). The former path would be that taken by the Graeco-Roman social formations, and the latter by "China, Vietnam, Japan, India, Tibet...."^^ The line of development which gave birth to slavery gave birth also to modes "of production based on the combina tion of private property with commodity production," i.e., 44 to Western Feudalism and capitalism. The other line of development was the most frequent and the simplest. In it there was neither a great development of commodity produc tion nor private property; agriculture and industry were combined and preserved for a long time, and central authority played an important role in organizing and controlling public works. In this path of development, Japanese feudalism needed "to be studied separately," for its industrial base was imported from "Western capitalist countries and [was] not developed in the Japanese feudal ism. The main difference between Western feudalism and Eastern feudalism is that the latter "slowed down the development of commodity production and prevented the appearance and the triumph of industrial capitalism"

43lbid., pp. 244-245. ^^Ibid., pp. 247-248.

^^ibid., pp. 245-246. 78

(Godelier's emphasis). 46 On the other hand, the Graeco- Roman social formations overcame the forms of the AMP and moved "toward a mode of production based on the combina tion of private property with commodity production." Similarly, Western feudalism moved beyond Eastern feudal ism because "it alone created the conditions for the appearance of industrial production and world trade. Private property alone cannot explain this development. It existed in Eastern feudalism but did not give birth to capitalism. Therefore, the combination of private proper ty with commodity production is, for Godelier, a necessary condition for the greatest technical progress and ensures "the maximum development of the productive forces." This progress was attained only by the Western line of devel opment, i.e., by capitalism. Jean Suret-Canale, in his "Les sociétés tradition nelles en Afrique tropicale et le concept de mode de production Asiatique," tried to characterize "the essen tial structures of pre-colonial African societies," speci- 49 fically traditional tropical Africa. These societies

^^ibid., p. 246. 47 'ibid., p. 248. 48 For a detailed comparison of Eastern and Western feudalisms in particular and pre-capitalism modes of production in general, see ibid., pp. 219-230. 49 / La Pensee 114 (1964): 24. 79 represent, said Suret-Canale, three types of modes of production; the primitive community, the tribo- patriarchal society, and class societies.The primitive community is founded on gathering and hunting. Gathering and hunting are, on the one hand, a necessary condition for the community's subsistence, and on the other hand, a minimum source which excludes accumulation of a surplus product, and ultimately excludes any possibility of exploitation of man by man. 51 Compared with American Indians, Melanesians, and

Australians, who have the same material conditions, the culture of tropical African primitive communities, for Suret-Canale, is relatively poor. The level of its productive forces is very low and the life conditions of its members is precarious. Because of this, the primitive community is grouped in "hunting leagues" or flocks which generally correspond to a fraction of a clan based on extended family. Although there exists equality at the level of consumption, "the forms of organization are extremely multifarious and could involve a large part of individualism." Thus, according to Suret-Canale, it is erroneous to call these societies "primitive communism," a term external to Marxism. The only definition that can be

50 3"lbid., pp. 24-30. S^lbid., p. 24. 80 given to these societies is that they do not and would not allow the exploitation of man by man and could not evolve into antagonistic classes. 52 This type of society disap peared in the 19th century and remains have been encoun tered only among the Pygmies of the equatorial forest and 53 among the Boshimans of South Africa. In the other type of society, the tribal society, agriculture and raising cattle constitute the essential social production. Though pastoral activities still dominate, the generalization of agricultural activities and the use of iron tools increase productivity and ultimately allow the appearance of a surplus product. The appearance of surplus product creates the division of labor, specialized crafts, and trade. This in turn permits the formation of antagonistic classes. The social unit in these societies is the patriarchal family which, as in the primitive community, corresponds to a fraction of a clan fixed to the soil. This fraction, though it may include some strangers, is the fundamental unit of produc tion. Private property does not exist. The right to land is collective and inalienable.^^ Each patriarchal family is given a portion of land periodically. The patriarchal

S^ibid., p. 25. S^lbid., p. 26. S^ibid. 81 chief or the "dean" of the old generation assumes the

function of land distribution. The patriarchal family is at once isolated, autonomous, the political unit of the village and its total inhabitants. This system can function in a democratic way, especially where agricul tural productivity is very low. However, if productivity is high, slaves or captives of war may be used in agricul ture and their surplus product is appropriated by the patriarchal family. 55 Hierarchical divisions of families

are originally founded on seniority in the village; then this division tends to be based on wealth. This wealth usually comes from being "a chief of land or a chief of war." By their functions, the families of these chiefs become privileged. They transfer a part from the common

interests or goods to their private use; hence, transition to a class society is possible. Therefore, the tribal society represents a transitional society from primitive community to class society. In class society, the surplus product is significant, for it is separated from the producer and passed to unproductive hands — to the aristocracy, which, for Suret-Canale, may remind us of European feudal lords but is not analogous to them. Although there is a development of the aristocracy and the state, the status of landed

S^ibid., p. 27. 82 property is not changed or modified. It is a "collective and inalienable property." Therefore, the mode of produc tion in traditional Africa has never been either a "feu dal" mode of production or a slave mode. It is an Asiatic mode of production in which "trade (and especially gold trade) appears to be the decisive element in consolidating the first states of Tropical Africa." The economic function of war chiefs and kings who appropriated taxes from the merchants appears to have been very important in the formation of most Black African states. Therefore, the AMP represents, for Suret-Canale, a universal and transitional stage from primitive community to class society. The tribal society is a transitional society. The internal contradictions are between the rural commune and the ruling aristocracy. Property is collectively owned and exploitation is always mediated by the community itself. The economic function of the state in the Asiatic societies is the provision of public works and, in the African societies, the protection of trade 57 routes. In the Asiatic as well as the African socie ties, class exploitation appears before the formation of the state. The state is not the cause of exploitation.

S^ibid., pp. 28-37. ^^Ibid., pp. 35-36. 83 but rather its result.Thus, in the societies of the AMP, the dominant class makes its appearance by separating itself from the direct production process and identifying or confounding itself with the embryonic state machinery.SS Other French Marxists who participated in the dis cussion of the AMP in La Pensee do not differ from the views held by Godelier and Suret-Canale.^^ The universal ization of the concept of the AMP was supported by Charles Parain, who applied it to the Minoan, Etruscan, Hittite and Mycenaean civilizations;^^ Pierre Boiteau, who applied it to pre-colonial Madagascar; and Jean Chesneaux, who wrote :

^®Ibid., p. 38. S^lbid., p. 39. See, for instance, Jean Chesneaux, "Le mode de production asiatique quelques perspectives de recherche," La Pensee 114 (1964); 33-54 and "Ou en est la discussion sur 'le mode de production asiatique'?". La Pensëe 122 (1965); 40-57; Charles Parain, "Protohistoire mediterran- ienne et mode de production asiatique," La Pensee 127 (1966); 24-43; Pierre Boiteau, "Les droits sur la terre dans la société' Malgache precolonial (contribution a l'etude du 'mode de production asiatique')," La Pensée 117 (1964) ; 43-69; and Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch,^ "Recherche sur mode de production africain," La Pensee 144 (1969); 61-78. ®^Parain, "Protohistoire," pp. 24-43. 62 Boiteau, "Les droits," pp. 43-69. 84 The Asiatic mode of production, for the reason that it has been the most general form of evolution of primitive communist society, has established itself in very diverse regions, in societies on which both history and geography have imposed very different rhythms of evolu tion. Brutally destroyed in the Mediterranean by the Dorian invasion..., liquidated by the Spanish conquest in America.... [It] slowly evolved...in China, India, Egypt, and it seems was in full strength iç Black Africa on the eve of colonial conquest. However, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch objected to this universalization and advanced the concept of the African mode of production. 64 The African mode of produc tion is, for Coquery-Vidrovitch, "irreducible to precapi talist modes of production of the Occident, and radically differentiated from the AMP by the absence of a true despotism that aimed to exploit directly the peasant class. Although there are some differences in their approaches to the concept of the AMP, these scholars generally agree that; 1. This mode of production is universal, occurring as a final phase of the primitive mode of production and a beginning of class society

^^Chesneaux, "Le mode de production asiatique," p. 53. ^^Coquery-Vidrovitch, "Recherche," pp. 70 ff.

G^ibid., p. 77. 85 2. Geographical elements play a marginal role in its development 3. It represents a progressive stage in the histor ical development of human society^^ 4. The superstructure (particularity, ideology, kinship, and religion) play a significant role in shaping the historical development of the societies of the AMP®^ It must be noted here that the Hungarian Sinologist Ferenc Tôkei has participated in La Pensee's discussion, read a paper in Paris in 1962,^^ and published his work on

Among these scholars, only Suret-Canale holds that the societies of the AMP are stagnant. The internal contradictions of this mode — class exploitation and the maintenance of collective property in land — could not, for Suret-Canale, implement by itself a progressive development ("Les societies traditionelles," pp. 40-42). Besides Godelier's earlier quoted passage on the role of kinship in the societies of the AMP, see his Rationality and Irrationality, pp. 93-95. See also Emmanuel Terry, Marxism and Primitive Societies (New York; Monthly Review Press, 1972), p. 143; Claude Meillassoux, Anthropologie économique des Gouro de Cote d'Ivoire; de l'ëconomie d'autosubsistance a l'agriculture commerciale (Paris; Mouton, 19 64), p. 168, "From Reproduction to Production," Economy and Society I (1972): 100-101, and "The Social Organization of the Peasantry; The Economic Basis of Kinship," in Seddon, Relations of Production, pp. 159-169. In the last article, Meillassoux wrote, "[Kinship] is, above all, the expression of the relations of production and reproduction of peasant community" (p. 164) . ^^Ferenc Tôkei, "Le mode de production asiatique dans l'oeuvre de K. Marx et F. Engels," La Pensée 114 (March- April 1964); 7-32. He also read a paper on the AMP in Paris in 1962 (see Tokei, "Some Contentious Issues in the Interpretation of the Asiatic Mode of Production," Journal of Contemporary Asia 12 (1982); 294-303). 86 the AMP in 1966.^^ Tôkei agrees with the French Marxists that the "Asiatic mode of production, as a type, is a transitional formation, notably found between the primi tive communal mode of production and the ancient mode of production," i.e., between classless society and class- divided society. However, he sees that "the developmental tendency of the Asiatic mode of production...is not progressive," and because it is stagnant it "represents a deviation from the typical path of development and to some extent a new path," which left it in a transitional 70 phase. Arguing against those who claimed that Marx's theory of the AMP underwent some modification when he read Morgan's Ancient Society, Tôkei emphasized that "the essence of Marx's theory of the Asiatic mode of produc tion" was developed by Marx in the 1850s and that he "did not modify it in any way." It was Plekhanov in 1908 who misunderstood the AMP and ventured the supposition that Marx modified his view when he read Morgan. 71 From the beginning Marx considered the base of the AMP as well as

69 Ferenc Tôkei, Sur le mode de production asiatique (Budapest; Akademiai Kiado, 1966) . A good part of this work has been translated into English and published in Baily and Llobera, Asiatic Mode of Production, pp. 249- 263. 70 Tokei, in Bailey and Llobera, Asiatic Mode of Production, pp. 262-263. 71 Tokei, "Some Contentious Issues," pp. 294-296. 87 those modes of production prior to European modes, Tôkei argued, to be the "primitive-tribal and/or village commu nity ownership, the so-called primitive society." The notion that all lands were owned by the Oriental despot is misleading. Private property did exist in those societies, 72 but it was not dominant. Thus, on the basis of tribal or communal ownership of land, Tôkei suggested, we can understand the AMP, the early class societies, states, and . 73 their emergence. On the basis of the type of property, Tôkei rejected all those attempts which inflated the notion of the AMP by introducing "the peasant mode of production, the domestic mode of production," African, or American modes of produc tion. For him, ...nothing really motivates us to dispense with the attribute "Asiatic".... We are free to use the term Asiatic mode of production quite broadly, summing up with it all communal owner ship of land in all five continents. Elsewhere Tôkei argued that since self-sufficient village communities, based on communal ownership of land, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America survived even the colonial era, the AMP should be the only way to understand the social formations of "Third World" or "developing countries."

^Îbid., pp. 299-300 ^Îbid., p. 298. ^îbid., p. 302. 88 Any "Marxist research on the problems of the development of the Third World is unimaginable without facing the 75 problems of the Asiatic mode of production." No one would deny Tôkei ' s contribution to the study of pre-colonial social formations in the Orient. However, his emphasis on the communal ownership of land as the only determining element, as evident in the above-quoted passage, led him to confuse property and the mode of production. In the USSR, the debate over the AMP in the early 1960s was opened in a way similar to events of 1925 by the economist Eugene Varga. Varga, who since 1925 had been a proponent of the AMP, published shortly before his death in 1964 his Politico-Economic Problems of Capitalism, in which he devoted the last chapter to the analysis of the concept of the AMP. In this chapter, he first confirmed that Marx and Engels stressed that "the Asiatic mode of production is different fundamentally from all other modes

75 Ferenc Tôkei, "On the Historical Basis of the Problems of Development of the 'Third World'," Journal of Contemporary Asia 13 (1983): 316. This article was originally a lecture introducing a joint session of three departments of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences within the scope of the Assembly Meeting in 1981. ^^Eugene Varga, Politico-Economic Problems of Capi talism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968) . The chapter on the AMP, according to Chesneaux ("la discussion," p. 40), was written or revised by Varga in 1960. Thus, independent of French influence, Varga urged competent Marxist scholars to reopen the discussion on the AMP (Varga, Politico-Economic Problems, p. 351). 89 of production" and that their "interest in the problem did 7 7 not flag right up" to the time of their deaths. Then Varga emphasized that "the term 'Asiatic mode of produc tion' should not be interpreted in a geographical sense" (Varga's emphasis). Rather, the concept of the AMP should be applied to areas where the rainfall was insufficient for agricultural production, i.e., where irrigation was a 7 8 necessary condition for agriculture. Therefore, the AMP is, for Varga, a universal mode, occurring where "wide- scale irrigation [is] organized by the state.For him,

there was no possibility for African and Asian towns, temples, etc. to grow up in the middle of the desert without an Asiatic mode of production, without a strong centralized power that controlled the water system and owned the lands. 8 0 Although there were no new attempts by Varga to interpret his old view on the AMP, he emphasized the 81 notion that there was no feudalism in the Orient; that the AMP is a historical stage in the development of human

77%bid., p. 331. ^^ibid., pp. 332-335. 79lbid., pp. 335, 346-340. ®°Ibid., pp. 346-347, 340. 81 See his comparative analysis of Western feudalism and the AMP in ibid., pp 244-246. 90 society, occurring "before the slave-owning period;" 8 2 and that it is not absolutely stagnant. 8 3 The other Russian Marxist who participated in the discussion of late 1929 and the early 1930s and re-entered the discussion in the early 1960s was V. Struve. Struve, who denied in 1928 the existence of the AMP, declared in 84 1931 that it had existed in Egypt up to the Roman epoch. In 1933, he again denied its existence.In 1964, he welcomed the works of the French Marxists Godelier and Suret-Canale.^^ However, he did not approve their view. Arguing against them, he returned to his 1941 work to prove that Marx meant by the AMP those social formations of the ancient East in which the slave mode of production was characterized by large-scale public works. In this mode, slaves "were the joint property of temples, the central sanctuaries of communities, cities, and states which established large irrigated agriculture in their

Gîbid., p. 331. GÎbid., p. 341. GÎbid., p. 347. ^^Marian Sawer, Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production (The Hague: Martinus Nijheff, 1977), p. 191. In 1940, Struve published an article in Sovetskaia Ethnografia in which he affirmed himself definitively as an adversary of the AMP (Chesneaux, "la discussion," p. 49). ®^V.V. Struve, "The Concept of the 'Asian Mode of Production'," Soviet Anthropology and Archeology 2 (1965) 42-43. 91 territories." Slaves in those societies were used to dig canals and build dikes. This was, for Struve, "the Asian mode of production which Marx defined." 87 Like Struve, Pigulevskaia rejected the concept of the AMP. The ancient Eastern civilizations, for him, belonged to the slave formation and "it is beyond question that slaveholding existed among the settled peoples of Asia and Africa." 8 8 Therefore, it is "correct to deduce that the

Eastern societies went through the same stages of develop ment" as Western societies, that the line of development is universal, and that the laws of this development are "defined by the founders of Marxism." Unlike Struve, Pigulevskaia does not see any significant differences between Western and Eastern societies. "The special characteristics and distinctiveness are supplemental, non-obligatory traits of the given stage of develop ment."®^ Unlike Struve and Pigulevskaia, Vitkin and Ter- Akopian in their review of La Pensee*s AMP discussion declared that the new factual data on the history of African and Asian societies "could not be satisfactorily

®^Ibid., pp. 43-44.

Q O N.V. Pigulevskaia, "The Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production," Soviet Studies in History IV (Spring 1966): 36.

®®Ibid., p. 34. 92 explained within the confines of the concepts of slaveholding or feudal modes of production."®® They associated themselves "entirely with the opinion of [the French authors] and of Academician Varga." They urged Soviet scholarship to make its contribution to this problem which is very important in the elaboration of historical mater- xalism.. , . 91 More or less, L.S. Va Sil'ev and I.A. Stuchevsky tried to combine the theories of both opponents and proponents of the AMP into a single theory. In their article "Three Models for the Origin and Evolution of 92 Precapitalist Societies," they argued that though these theories are sharply conflicting, they are derived in the final analysis from the premise that all precapitalist "societies had developed in sequence: primitive, Asiatic, slave-holding, feudal." Both the opponents and the proponents of the AMP recognize that two or more of these stages existed side by side. The sequence is, for

Vasil'ev and Strachevsky,

90M.A. Vitkin and N.B. Ter-Akopian, "In the Pages of the Journal La Pensee," in ibid., p. 46. ®^Ibid., p. 51. ®^L.S. Va Sil'ev and I.A. Stuchevsky, "Three Models for the Origin and Evolution of Precapitalist Societies," The Soviet Review VIII (Fall 1967): 26-39, and Soviet Studies in History V (Winter 1966-67): 24-37. The original publication was in Voprosy istorii 5 (1966): 77-90. In this article, the authors referred mainly to Godelier, Struve, and Semenov. 93 ...either moved from the primitive through the Asiatic to the slaveholding or from the primi tive through the Asiatic to feudal, or from the primitive, skipping, the Asiatic, to slavery or to feudalism, etc. For this very reason, they saw that all these conflicting conclusions "may be reconciled and reduced to one common denominator: primitive communal society (the primary formation), precapitalist class society (the secondary formation), and capitalist society." 9 4 Determined by a

series of factors, the internal structures of the three main forms of primitive communities — Asiatic, Antique, and German — "led to unlike results."®^ The determining

factors were mainly natural. Thus, the laws of progres sion in precapitalist (secondary) formations are not related, and their development assumes three alternative forms: the slaveholding, the feudal, and the Asiatic. The Asiatic form is, for Vasil'ev and Strachevsky, a fusion or combination of both slave and feudal modes of production. Wherever the structures of primitive communal form begin to disintegrate, elements of either slavery of feudalism appear; but in the Asiatic form, the elements of slavery and of feudalism serve to inhibit and repress each other. This accounts for the slow rate of evolution of

®®Ibid., p. 34. 94 ^*Ibid., pp. 28-32. ®^Ibid., pp. 27-28. 94

the AMP. However, in the course of millennia, "the feudal elements...begin gradually to prevail over... slavery." Because of the very slow rate of evolution, "the purifica tion of the feudal mode of production" was very far from completion by the time capitalism attained worldwide dissemination. More recently, Y.I. Semenov, in his own way, defended both the AMP and the unilineal interpretation of Marxism. 97

Semenov distinguished between human society and social organism. Social organism is, for him, "distinct concrete societies," while human society is "the sum of a good number of" these social organisms. Every distinct social organism (for example, France, England, etc.) has its own history which is different from "the history of all other social organisms." 9 8 All social organisms "pass through the same stages of development: they emerge, grow, reach maturity, age and, finally, perish." Thus the history of human society "appears as the monotonous repetition of the 99 very same processes, as the eternal movement of a wheel."

96 Ibid., p. 36. 9 7Yuri Semenov, "The Theory of Socio-Economic Forma tions and World History," in Soviet and Western Anthropol ogy, ed. Ernest Gellner (New York; Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 29-58. 9P ^°Ibid., p. 30. ^^Ibid.,99 p. 31. 95 Since the relations of production are, for Semenov, "the foundation of all other social relations," distinct social organisms could either have the same socio-economic structure, or possess diverse structures based on diverse types of productive relations. Social organisms having the same base, the same type of relations of production, constitute a single socio-economic formation. Therefore, the productive relations "determine" the inclusion of a social organism in one type or another of socio-economic formation. All social organisms belonging to one and the same formation develop in accordance with the same laws.^®®

At the same time, this socio-economic formation represents an idea of types of societies and of stages in historical development. 101 A single socio-economic formation does not constitute a single pan-global system. A global historical development of human society must include a number of socio-economic formations. It follows that the history of every social organism and every socio-economic formation are but parts of the history of the whole of human society.. ^ 102 Based on this formulation, Semenov sees that the transition from pre-class to class society did not take

!®®Ibid., pp. 32-33. lO^Ibid., pp. 35, 40. lO^ibid., pp. 40-41. 96 place simultaneously throughout all the areas of human settlement. The first class-endowed society formed only in the Nile Valley and in the areas between Tigris and Euphrates. These are, for Semenov, the first regional centers of historical development. Subsequent development followed (1) the emergence of new independent regional centers in the valleys of the Indus and in the Hwang Ho, and (2) the formation of a broad system of class societies embracing the entire Near East in which social organisms belonged to one type of socio-economic formation. The entire Near East, then, constituted the center of global- historical development and was characterized by the class-endowed formation. This formation does not, accord ing to Semenov, appear to be that of slave-owning society. 103 "Following Marx," Semenov wrote, "we shall call this the 'Asiatic' formation. The Asiatic socio-economic formation, according to Semenov, is characterized by the transformation of the political map, the existence of a strong centralized despotism, and in certain periods, a social organism disintegrated to form smaller social governmental forma tions and vice versa. Contrary to modern times, a social organism in the ancient East did not coincide with the

!®®Ibid., p. 45.

lO^Ibid., p. 42. 97 concept of "country." In the East, a country could at one period represent one social organism and at another period constitute a combination of semi-independent or indepen dent organisms and states. Through victorious wars of

conquest strong social organisms subdue a number of smaller or weaken large social organisms. By this expan sion, they touch upon regions inhabited by tribal socie ties, i.e., the peripheries. This ultimately leads to the expansion of the center at the expense of the periphery. With the weakening of the center, the whole disintegrates. It follows that a new social organism either from the 105 center or from the periphery emerges and expands. The transformation from one stage to another, from

the Asiatic to slavery, Semenov claimed,could not take place as the qualitative transformation of the existing social organism, nor could the new formation emerge on the ruin of the old. Rather, the new formation emerges "at the edges of the world system of Asiatic social organ isms."^®® Thus the center of global-historical develop ment moved from the Near East to the Mediterranean, from the Asiatic formation to slavery. At the northwestern edge of slave formation (in France) emerged feudalism, and thus the center of global-historical development shifted

!®®Ibid., p. 43.

!®®Ibid., p. 44. 98 to Western Europe, where it remained the center for a new 107 stage — capitalism. Why did the center of world historical development under capitalism remain the same as under feudalism? Semenov neither asked this question nor answered it. However, according to his theory, there were no more new peripheries at the north. In fact, the "new world system, the socialist, which in the subsequent period emerges as 108 the center of the world historical development," emerged at the edge of the capitalist formation, i.e., a periphery that had never been a center of any previous historical stage. In other words, the Near East was the center of the Asiatic stage; Asia Minor and the Mediter ranean were the center of the ancient; Western Europe was the center for both feudalism and capitalism; and Russia was the center of Socialism. It is clear that the new center emerges not only in the periphery of the old, but in a new periphery that has never been a center of world history. Outside France and the USSR, the debate over the concept of the AMP in particular and the theoretical analysis of pre-capitalist modes of production in general

107 Ibid., p. 48. Compare this formulation to that of Hegel mentioned in the first chapter of this dissertation, and to that of Plekhanov in the present chapter.

!®®Ibid. 99 has been a marginal or secondary issue until the last decade. In the mid-1970s. Perry Anderson and Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst, though for very different reasons, denied the usefulness of the concept of the AMP. Mean while, in Germany, Lawrence Krader was the first to 109 systemize the concept of the AMP. In his second volume, Anderson rejected the concept of the MAP on empirical grounds. His argument was that the concept of the AMP was derived by Marx and Engels from the greatest Western tradition, far from any close analy sis of non-Western social realities. Contemporary know ledge and "the empirical evidence available" today are,

for Anderson, incompatible with Marx's and Engels' hypo thesis; "the absence of private property in land and the presence of public hydraulic works on a large scale." Historical and empirical evidence, Anderson argued, do not confirm this hypothesis. On the contrary, concrete data show that those societies — Turkey, Persia, and India — "which were marked by the absence of private property in land...never possessed any public irrigation works of importance," while China, which was marked by private

Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudal ism and Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974); Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst, Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975); and Krader, The Asiatic Mode of Production. 100 property in land, "possessed major irrigation systems." 110 In the Mughal Empire, "with which Marx was specifically concerned," only 5 percent of the cultivated land was irrigated. Although Anderson acknowledged that Marx and Engels abandoned this hypothesis in their later works and replaced it with the hypothesis of the self-sufficient village as the foundation of the AMP, 112 he again rejected the later hypothesis on both theoretical and empirical grounds. For him, actual facts and historical evidence did not show that communal property as the dominant form in the self-sufficient villages "ever existed in either 113 Mughal or post-Mughal India. " Nor were the rural villages of India "in any real sense 'detached' from the state above them." 114 The original insistence by Marx and

Engels on the hypothesis of non-property "was quite incompatible with their later" hypothesis, for ...the combination of a strong, despotic state and egalitarian village communities is thus intrinsically improbable; politically, socially

^^®Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, 491. Ill ^^Îbid., pp. 517-518. llîbid., p. 484. llÎbid., p. 488. llîbid., p. 489. 101 economically they virtually exclude one another." However, while rejecting the AMP concept, Anderson approved Marx's discrimination in the use of the feudal category. For Anderson, neither the feudal mode of production nor the AMP can be generalized. To mix very different and disparate social formations such as those of China, India, the Islamic Empire, Peru, Hawaii, or Ireland is "to end with the same reductio ad absurdam produced by 1 1 an indefinite extension of feudalism." Anderson accepted indirectly the lessons of the AMP debate.

However, his insistence on juro-political structures as the elements that specify the mode of production in pre-capitalist societies led him to reject both the feudalist and the AMP theories as tools to explain the non-Western world. 117 He suggested that new and distinct concepts relating to the juro-political complexes of the non-Western societies must be drawn up "from concrete and accurate typology of social formation and state systems in their own right, which respects their very great differ- 118 ences of structures and development."

115 ^^^Ibid., p. 490. ll®Ibid., pp. 486-487. 117 For a critique of Anderson's work, see Hirst's review in Economy and Society IV (1975, No. 4): 446-475. 118 Anderson, Lineages, p. 549. 102 Contrary to Anderson, Hindess and Hirst in their Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production rejected the AMP concept on theoretical grounds. They aimed in their work "to construct the concepts of certain pre-capitalist modes of production," to build what they believed was a "Marxist 119 scientific theory." They started from theoretical abstraction to formulate an abstract theory "even if concrete conditions to which...[those concepts] are pertinent do not exist, have not existed and will not exist." 120 By doing so, they hoped to "raise the concep tualization of these modes of production and of transition 121 to a more rigourous level." To make their case, they first asserted that "there is no general theory of modes of production," 122 and that there are no fore-ordained paths of transition leading automatically from one mode of production to another. 123 Hindess and Hirst set out to clarify concepts such as modes of production, relations of production, social formation, etc. 124 to arrive at what they believed a mode

119 Hindess and Hirst, Pre-Capitalist Modes, p. 3. IZOibid., p. 321. IZlibid., p. 1. IZ^ibid., pp. 5, 320. ^^^Ibid., pp. 5, 321.

^^*Ibid., pp. 1-20. 103 of production should mean in a Marxist context. They then sought to confirm that the several modes of production mentioned by Marx in his writing could be analytically reconstructed in the terms of this general definition. In other words, if a particular mode of production fit in their definition, they accepted it, and vice versa. Based on this method, Hindess and Hirst denied the existence of the AMP. In their view, nothing in Asian social history (at least in modern times) can be conceived as an "articulated combination of forces and relations of 125 production." In Asiatic social formations, the mode of appropriation of the surplus product was that of "tax/rent couple,and ...no concept of a mode of production can be derived from the tax/rent couple, no articulated combination of relations/forces of production can be deducted, and no systematic conditions of existence for the mode of appropriation of the- surplus-product, tax/rent can be constituted. Thus Hindess and Hirst denied the AMP concept, not because Asian history does not correspond to Marx's 128 description of this mode, but because it cannot be conceived as "an articulated combination of forces and

19 5 Ibid., p. 9. This is their definition of a mode of production. 126 Ibid., p. 192. 12?ibid., p. 200. ^^®Ibid., p. 218. 104 relations of production." As they indicate, the question "Is there an AMP?" has "become the question, is there a mode of production which corresponds to the tax/rent couple?". To answer this question, they set up "two sets of conditions" which they claimed the tax/rent couple supposes. The first condition is that "the land is state property...cultivated by state subjects, and that these subjects have effective possession of the means of produc tion." The second condition is that commodity production is not the dominant branch of production; there is no developed division of labor, there is a unity of handi crafts and agriculture, and "the conditions of reproduc- 129 tion are secured within the units of production." These elements, according to Hindess and Hirst, are entailed in the tax/rent couple, or it presupposes them. They conclude that these elements will not enable them "to set up an articulated combination of relations/forces of production." In other words, the AMP cannot fulfill the requirements of their definition of a mode of production. That is, the AMP concept as defined by the absence of private property in land and communal cultivation embodies two quite different forces of production; i.e..

129 ^^^Ibid., p. 193. 105 agriculture is carried out both individually and collec tively, and this implies two different relations of production.j 130 There is more to the argument, namely, that the AMP cannot exist because its "concepts" entail the self- contradictory notion of the state ruling over a classless society of peasant producers. This is, of course, contra dictory only because the authors of Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production hold to a static conception of the state as an organization that exists only to preserve a pre existing class society and enforce the claims of the ruling class upon the ruled classes. Can state managers and their sovereigns constitute a social class? This is a question which the authors neither pose nor answer. They conceptualized the mode of production, state, social classes, etc. from the model developed by Marx for capi talist society, and tried to fit a pre-capitalist forma tions into that model. In fact, all their references to Marx and Engels in their chapter on the AMP were either to Marx's Capital or Engels' Origin of the Family, putting aside works such as the Grundrisse, the Communist Mani festo, Anti-Dühring, etc. The reason is that Capital, as the authors themselves acknowledged, was devoted to the study of the capitalist mode of production, and any

13®Ibid., pp. 191-195. 106 indications or references to pre-capitalist modes of production in it are merely "a series of brief and partial indications which are mostly in the form of illustrative comparisons designed to highlight certain features of 131 capitalism." What has been said about Marx's brief indications of pre-capitalist modes of production in Capital is true, but to conceptualize the Asiatic mode of production from these brief and partial indications is to delude the reader on the topic of the AMP and to propagate a false belief regarding the notion of non-property in Asiatic societies. Marx, as we have seen, introduced this notion only as a

hypothesis that he later abandoned. Engels' elimination of the concept of the AMP from the Origin of the Family by no means indicates his rejection of this mode. In addi tion, it is not enough to build "the Marxist theory of the state" by relying only on the Origin and Lenin's The State and Revolution. In Chapter II, we evaluated the former work, on which Lenin based his analysis of the state.

Marx's Grundrisse had not been published at the time The State and Revolution was written; nor did Lenin, as we have seen, reject the concept of the AMP for theoretical

131 Ibid., p. 6. The authors mentioned Marx's Pre- Capitalist Economic Formations on p. 200 only in order to criticize Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism, not in order to conceptualize from it as they did from Capital and Origin of the Family. 107 reasons. His rejection of this mode was purely for practical and political reasons. To build a theory from clearly controversial issues requires not only a theoretical "proof," but also a solid and concrete example that existed, exists, and will exist. 13 2 Theories should be explanatory hypotheses that help us to investigate what needs to be investigated, not mere verbal juggling with abstractions, adding confusion to already confused issues. The method that Marx devel oped, as Lawrence Krader put it, "is directly related to the materials, it is not only fitted to them; the method is immanent within them, and emerges to the view out of 13 3 the materials." Possibly without any idea of Anderson's Lineages and Hindess and Hirst's Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, Krader introduced a monumental survey of Marx's writings about Asia, his empirical sources, and the theoretical foundations of his concept of the AMP. In this work, Krader. was the first to systematize Marx's concept of the AMP.

13 2 To avoid self-contradiction in the theory formu lated in Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, Paul Hirst, in his critique of Anderson's Lineages, completely ignored Anderson's 87-page chapter on the AMP. For a detailed critique of Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, see Talal Assad and Harold Wolpe's review in Economy and Society V (1976, No. 4); 470-506. 13 3 Krader, Asiatic Mode of Production, p. 297. 108 Of the seven chapters which make up the first part of Krader's Asiatic Mode of Production, the seventh chapter, "Principles and Critique of the Asiatic Mode of Produc tion," is probably of the greatest interest. In fact, a better understanding of the other chapters may require a reading of this chapter first. In it, Krader summarizes the basic and most important concepts and formulations, and introduces a systematic outline of the AMP, its rela tion to change, its place in the system of Marx, its critique, and its outcome. In general, Krader sees that the AMP was developed in societies where agriculture has been the predominant basis of subsistence and where the great majority of the people of Asia lived in villages, farming communities in direct relation to the soil. These communities of producers were ruled by an overarching sovereignty. Thus, the AMP was developed among people who already established political societies — class-divided societies. 134 Social classes in the AMP make their appearance, but their express 135 opposition to each other is not yet developed. The relations of labor, both in relation to the soil and to the state, were unfree. The unfreedom was a collective one. The laborer was bound to the soil bv tradition and

^®"^Ibid., p. 286.

13®Ibid., p. 288. 109 to the state by virtue of the obligation to pay taxes. The former bondage was an internal and positive factor and the latter was positive and external. A negative and external factor that bound the village community to its traditional life was the lack of alternative employment in other parts of the society and the country. This is one of the chief elements working upon the village to maintain village unity. The sovereignty was subject to the same limitations of tradition and customary rights as the villages. It was absolute within these limitations. There was little contact between the state and the villag es, a factor that limited the effects of the state upon village communities.^®® Each village tended to be a self-sufficient unity, isolated from other villages. Each village combined both agricultural and handicraft production. Exchange between villages existed, but to a low degree. Money circulation was minimal. Gold was buried or served "as ceremonial presentations, donations and ornament." Capital was formed sporadically and in a non-systematic way. Each village produced in the main what the next produced. Each of them repeated the kind of production found in the next. Division of labor between villages was not highly devel oped, and the distinction between countryside and town and

®®®Ibid., pp. 288-289. 110 between agriculture and manufacture was only modestly developed. The concentration of the ownership of land, the means of production in the hands of the sovereignty, was a nominal act. 137 Public works such as irrigation were found in certain societies and not in others. The "cen

tralization of the management of water control is by no means a feature common to all;" therefore, it is not a determining element in the AMP. Oriental despotism was not founded on the principle of the centralization and management of the water supply. The relation between despotism and the AMP is an accidental, not an inherent, characteristic of the AMP. The foundation of despotism is to be sought in the same way as that of village employ ment, not in water control. Neither the concentration of

land ownership in the hands of the state nor public works can explain the AMP. It can only be explained through the village community, for "the criteria of despotism belong to the superstructure;" it draws "attention from the motor 138 of history, the economic relations." The village community was the location of the transi tion of mankind from classless society to a society divided into classes and opposed within itself. The

l^^ibid., p. 299.

^^®Ibid., p. 293. Ill

community of the AMP is "the earliest form of class- divided societies, or the prototype for all such societies, whether the earliest chronologically or not." 139 The village community of the AMP "contained and set in motion new productive forces, which transformed the history of mankind." The AMP stands to the primitive communal mode of production "in the same way that the capitalist mode" stands to the Asiatic. Each constitutes an evolutionary movement and a stage in historical devel opment.The AMP is at the same time continuous with the capitalist mode of production and opposed to it. It is opposed because, in the AMP, the relations of labor were not free, and in the capitalist mode they were free. This non-freedom in the AMP corresponds to the content of daily life, while the form of free labor under capitalism "is opposed to its content of unfreedom." Thus, the capitalist mode is the outcome of the AMP: The potentialities of the relations of labor and capital, of production, exchange, the division of labor and of technology in the latter being realized in the former. If the Asiatic mode of production is more abstract than the capitalist, it is because these potentialities were not realized therein.

l^îbid., p. 291. lÔibid., p. 292. l^îbid., p. 321. 112 Therefore, for Krader, the AMP is a stage in the evolutionary movement of human society "that directly or indirectly precedes the capitalist" mode of production. At the same time, it is the stage from which all European 142 modes of production developed.

Conclusion For several decades after the death of Marx and Engels, their direct followers, except Plekhanov, appear to have made little use of the concept of the AMP. Plekhanov's reliance on the older Engels strengthened the tendency to subsume history under more general laws of nature. The unavailability of some of Marx's works, including the Grundrisse and the German Ideology, and the importance of evolutionary theory and the relevance of Darwinism at the time led Plekhanov to interpret Marx's historical materialism in terms of geographical and technological determinism. Following Hegel's interpreta tion of world history, Plekhanov, as well as the later Semenov, asserted that the first step of historical development of humanity occurred in the East. Further steps of this development required different geographical, historical, and social environments. Consequently, slavery and feudalism were developed in other geographical

^^^Ibid., p. 310. 113 areas — the Mediterranean and Europe. In the East, including Russia, the AMP was the dominant mode up to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the 1920s, revolutionary action in China impelled a number of Russian Marxists to direct their thought to the AMP. In 1931, a politically motivated and supported decision to deny the existence of the AMP in China was handed down. Stalin gave it the seal of approval by declaring that geographical and historical variations have no role in governing the development of humanity. Rather, it is the law of the development of material production that determines the types of relations of production. Hence there is only one line of historical development. This path is universal, and all societies must go through the same stages: the primitive communal, slaveholding, feudalist, capitalist, and communist modes of production. With this declaration, the concept of the AMP was buried until Wittfogel dug it up in 1957 and turned it into a weapon against socialism and Marxism-Leninism. In the early 1960s, a group of French Marxist schol ars launched an energetic and effective campaign to promote research and discussion on the AMP. Though approaches of these scholars varied from one to another, the majority agreed with Marx and Engels that pre-colonial societies of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and pre- 114 Columbian America were dominated by neither the slavehold ing nor the feudalist mode of production. Most of them classified these social formations as societies of the AMP. However, using different elements in their analy ses, they diverged in two directions. The first group, emphasizing the powerful centralized state and public works, extended the notion of the AMP to comprise most of the Middle East and Mediterranean prior to the classical epoch. The best examples from this group is Charles Parrain and the Russian economist Varga, who years before the debate in La Pensee stated that the AMP should be applied to all agricultural societies where irrigation was a necessary condition for agricultural production. The second group, the most influential, emphasized tribal or communal landownership, self-sufficient vil lages, and kinship relations, extending this notion to

cover all societies characterized by these features on all five continents. The pre-eminent scholar of this group is the French anthropologist Godelier. The Hungarian Sinologist Ferenc Tokei, though he belongs to the last group, emphasized only the communal ownership of land as the determining element in specifying the AMP. It appears that he confused property and mode of production. 115 Both tendencies strengthened the Marxist multilinear

approach to the historical development of societies, crediting the societies of the AMP with being the last classless and the first class societies. After entering the transitional phase, the societies of the AMP were viewed by some as stagnant and by others as progressive. They were stagnant because class exploitation and communal landownership, two contradictory elements, could not by themselves result in progressive development. However, to those who maintained that the AMP societies were progres sive, including the non-French scholars, the law of the evolution of the AMP is, as in other social formations, the law of the development of its internal contradictions. Analysis of social classes as a major element in defining the AMP was almost avoided in all works on the AMP. Though there were some attempts here and there indicating that the state and its agents were the ruling class, and the agricultural producers the ruled and exploited class, express opposition between the classes was not developed. This is due to the fact that the state

itself is an overarching community and/or a higher community that at once exploits the dominant communities and prevents the development of a large private property within these communities. Both schools of thought agree that there existed private property in land, but it was not the dominant type. Communal land was predominant. 116 Finally, even those who denied the existence of the AMP as a stage in historical development acknowledged that neither slavery as known in antiquity nor feudalism as known in Europe ever dominated the societies of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and pre-Columbia America. They suggested, as did some of the proponents of the concept of the AMP, a search for a better and comprehensive name to designate these social formations. CHAPTER IV

THEORIES OR MODELS OF PRE-COLONIAL ALGERIA

This chapter will present different models that have been developed to define the dominant mode of production in pre-colonial Algeria. Their critique and evaluation will be kept to a minimum in this chapter. In the second part of this dissertation, they will be evaluated, and I will undertake a concrete analysis of pre-colonial Algeri an society. The reason for doing this is twofold. First, the discussion of the dominant mode of production in pre-colonial Algeria was an extension of the discussion of the AMP that took place in France in the 1960s. Thus the discussion in this chapter can be considered inseparable from the general discussion of the AMP. Second, since the models that have been developed for pre-colonial Algeria were essentially developed from theoretical, rather than concrete, analysis, it will be more fruitful if they were evaluated within the concrete historical analysis of pre-colonial Algerian society. The very complex social formation of pre-colonial Algeria, combined with the lack of knowledge of North African history in general and Algeria in particular,

117 118 resulted in an unsettled debate among those Marxists who attempted to study pre-colonial Algeria. Although pro found studies of this period are still lacking, hypotheti cal attempts have abounded, theories and models have been introduced, and explanations have varied from one author to another. The variety of these models has resulted mainly from three factors. First, the unfinished work of Marx on non-European social formations paved the way for different interpretations. Second, attempts to complete Marx's theory of the Asiatic mode of production varied from one author to another according to each author's approach and the elements used to define this mode. Third, the little attention paid by scholars to non-European societies in general has left the knowledge of the history of those societies and of Algeria in particular lacking in sub stance. The discussion of the dominant mode of production in pre-colonial Algeria was an extension of the discussion of the Asiatic mode of production taking place in France in the 1960s. On 27 April 1968 a discussion of the feudalist mode of production and pre-colonial North African (the Maghrib) mode of production was held in the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Marxistes (GERM).^ Papers on

Papers and discussions of this meeting were pub lished by GERM in Sur le Féodalisme (Paris: Editions sociales, 1971) . 119 both feudalism in France and the dominant mode of produc tion in pre-colonial Maghrib were presented in the meet ing. Among the participants in this discussion were Suret-Canale, Parain, Coquery-Vidrovitch, Lucette Valensi, and Rene' Gallissot. Aside from the view of non-Marxists, at least five models or theories have been developed by different Marxist authors to characterize and define the mode of production in pre-colonial Algeria. These models are: Archaism, Command Feudalism, Military Democracy, Asiatic, and Tributary mode of production, developed respectively by Lucette Valensi, Rene Gallissot, Yves Lacoste, Abdelkader Djeghloul, and Samir Amin. The concept of archaism was first developed by Karl Marx in his excerpts from M.M. Kovalevsky, and was taken up by Valensi in 1968 and 1969.^ For Marx, Algeria has ...still, after India, the most traces of the archaic form of land ownership. The kin and undivided family property [are] here the domi nant type of landownership. Centuries of Arabic, Turkish, and finally French rule, except in the most recent period, officially since the law of 1873 — were unable to break up the

Rene Gallissot and Lucette Valensi, "Le Maghreb precolonial: mode de production archaique ou mode de production feodal?" La Pensée 142 (November-December 1968): 57-93; CERM, Sur le feodalisme; and Lucette Valensi, On the Eve of Colonialism: North Africa Before the French Conquest, tr. Kenneth J. Perkins (New York: African Publishing Co., 1977) . 120 consanguineal organization and the principles of indivisibility and inalienability of landowner ship. In these excerpts Marx noticed, as he did in India in 1853, that "the collective landownership, and at the head of this, ownership by the clan, were without doubt intro duced by the Arabs." This communal form of possession was developed "from the primitive-communal type of kin proper ty." Individual property also existed, but it was limited to movable property such as clothing and ornaments/* Thus, according to Marx, collective ownership was intro duced by the Arabs, and individual property "probably arose under the influence of the Roman Law.In short, "the Algerian society was founded on the principle of blood," i.e., kinship.^ Marx did not use the term "archaic mode of produc tion." It was Lucette Valensi who first used it to define the dominant mode of production in pre-colonial Algeria. In her discussion with French Marxists at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Marxistes, and in On the Eve of Colonialism, Valensi insisted on the social structure as a

3 Marx's excerpts from Kovalevsky (1879) were admirab ly translated and edited by Lawrence Krader in The Asiatic Mode of Production (Assen; Van Gorcum and Co., 1975), p. 400. *Krader, Asiatic Mode, pp. 400-442. ^Ibid., p. 400.

GIbid., p. 412. 121 starting point to construct a model that would be capable of explaining pre-colonial North African social formations 7 and defining their dominant modes of production. For Valensi, the tribe functions as a political, ideological, g and economic unit. Each tribe or village occupies a particular territory; each tribe is divided into frac tions, each fraction into families. The family is "the real unit of production." Production is geared toward maintaining the existence of the family, rather than "production for value." The industry is domestic and performed by women. The pastoral and arborical, the oasis and pastoral economies are complementary. Each community is a self-governing body. The domination is by one "group over another, and not by a lord over a village collectivi ty. Types of property, according to Valensi, varied according to geographical and climatic environment. In the North Mountains of Kabylia and the Aures, where rainfall and water were sufficient, arboriculture and private property dominated. On the fringe of the desert, however, farming played a negligible part in the economy

^Gallissot and Valensi, "Le Maghreb precolonial," pp. 82-83. 8Valensi, On the Eve of Colonialism, pp. 12-21. ^Gallissot and Valensi, "Le Maghreb precolonial," p. 83. 122 of the tribes. In these regions, herding was the major livelihood of the communities; thus communal or tribal property in land was dominant. In between these two extremes, there were immense open lands owned by tribes

whose livelihood was mostly herding, but partly cultiva tion of cereal grains. In the summer, the tribes moved to their northern lands where they avoided the heat of the desert and grew their cereals. After the harvest, they migrated to their warmer southern lands. Thus "membership in the tribe automatically provided access to land, but the land was not, strictly speaking, collective."^® The means of production were in a low degree of development. All throughout the Maghrib, the same primi tive tools were used in farming, grinding grain, squeezing out olive oil, etc. If the history of the plough may be traced back to the Romans, the history of irrigation techniques may go back thousands of years before the Romans invaded North Africa. 11 Pre-colonial Maghrib was, for Valensi, "neither barbarous nor uncultured." It had the spiritual, econom ic, and social aspects of a coherent culture different from that of Europe. It developed at a slower pace. Valensi concluded that neither feudalism nor slavery were

^®Valensi, On the Eve of Colonialism, pp. 25-27.

l^Ibid., pp. 27-28. 123 dominant in North Africa. She proposed the archaic mode of production, which

.. .merits the review of (a) all the levels of social activities in their coherence, [and] (b) the stabilization of this social regime. Finally, (c) it is not excluded that this model covers other societies, at least in the rest of the Mediterranean Basin. In the same debate, Rene"" Gallissot defined the dominant mode of production of pre-colonial Algeria as 13 command feudalism. According to him, the explanation of pre-colonial Algeria in terms of the concepts of primi tive, military democracy, and Asiatic modes of production, as well as that of feudalism, is ill-adapted to this society. For Gallissot, any examination of pre-colonial Algerian society has to start from the rural areas, the peasantry. Pre-colonial Algeria was characterized by an agro pastoral economy. Two forms of property existed: the Germanic and the Ancient communal. The Germanic was dominant in the regions where there was an interconnection

^^Gallissot and Valensi, "Le Maghreb precolonial," p. 84. ^^Rene Gallissot, "L'Algerie pre'coloniale: classes sociales en système prècapitaliste, mise en question du mode de production feodal," in CERM, Sur le féodalisme. This paper was also published in La Pensée 142 (1968) : 57-77. An English translation was published in Economy and Society 4 (1975): 418-445. Reference in this disser tation will be to the English translation. 124 between the dominant (the mulk) and the declining (commun al) type of property. The other type of property, the ancient communal, was dominant in the south where pastor- alism dominated. In it the mulk (private property) was reduced to "the tent, its immediate surroundings, the small livestock, and to rights of cultivation." Group property was the dominant type in these regions. 14 In the regions where mulk property predominated, the land was divided into plots exploited by families. Control over the family share was exercised by the family head. Family heads became a group that controlled the village. The latter was a grouping based on kinship relations and named after the dominant family. The dominant family gradually took over the rights of possession and enjoyed both prestige and "access to income arising from the labor of other families." Thus, under cover of family property, the move toward private property was made. The head family or families were also the agent of tax collection. They lived in luxury and appropriated the product of the group's labor.This type of exploitation, according to

Gallissot, was true for pastoral tribes as well as for habus (religious) lands.

^^Gallissot, "Pre-colonial Algeria," pp. 419-421. l^ibid., pp. 421-422. 125 In all three types of property — mulk, *arsh (com munal) , and habus, there was a communal organization: the tribe, the duar (hamlet), and the family. However, within this organization, "the relations of exploitation show themselves as the manifestation of the social relations of production; they include them." Thus, contrary to Mellassoux, Godelier, and others, Gallissot saw that "collective or derived forms of kinship therefore do not define the relations of production." For him, it is the internal exploitation of the collectivities "which weaves the web of connections into social classes."^® It is by the "reference to the nature of social classes that one identifies the mode of production." 17 Based on this, Gallissot distinguished between five types of methods of exploitation; 1. Direct exploitation by the Beys and the Deys 2. Indirect exploitation by the Deys and the Beys 3. Mixed exploitation by the Beys and the Deys 4. Autonomous exploitation from internal hierarchi cal command 5. Autonomous exploitation based on possession and non-possession of land

l®Ibid., p. 423.

l^Ibid., p. 425. 126 The first two methods were exercised directly by the Turkish state; the third, by the Turkish state through the heads of tribes'; and the fourth and fifth prevailed within 1 ft the tribe itself. From these methods of exploitation Gallissot distin guished between two great social classes; the exploited peasantry and the exploiting aristocracies. The aristoc racy itself "had unequal 'nobility'." The inferior aristocracy was from the land and maintained its local solidarity with the tribes. The superior aristocracy — the Turkish state and its apparatus — was urban, mili tary, and political. By its political and economic status it controlled both the rural aristocracy and the peasant ry. However, the rural aristocracy had its own degree of independence. It was made up of warriors who ruled over a whole region through a hierarchy of vassals. "They resembled the first feudal nobility which emerged from 19 Germanic influences." Little by little, the rural aristocracy became the representative of the state. 20 At the same time, another military aristocracy was forming itself from the Janissary corps of Turkish descendants —

^®Gallissot, "L'Algerie pre'coloniale," La Pensee 142: 69-75. ^®Gallissot, "Pre-Colonial Algeria," Economy and Society 4: 427.

2®Ibid., p. 429. 127 half-Turks. The latter frequently came into conflict with

the local aristocracy. 21 The system of exploitation in pre-colonial Algeria, for Gallissot, consisted of "a series of interconnected levels...which in the long run exercised pressure in the form of taxes essentially on the agricultural and pastoral peasantry." 22 Gallissot noted that the fiscal character and the public and military nature of the dominant group gives pre-colonial Algerian society an Asiatic aspect. However, since the basic communities were far from primitive, craftsmen were no longer a mere complement to rural life, and the power of the state was fragmented into subordinate and rival, the AMP concept is inadequate to explain pre colonial Algeria. Gallissot concluded his analysis by saying, "Would it not thus be possible to define Byzan tine, Arab and Turkish feudalisms as Command Feudalism?". This feudalism "would then not be the feudal 'model,' but a variant of feudalism...soon to be dissolved by the 23 advent of capitalism" (Gallissot's emphasis). Here we see that Gallissot's thesis stands in direct opposition to Valensi's thesis. For Gallissot, the dominant mode of production in pre-colonial Algeria was

Z^lbid., p. 430. Z^Ibid., p. 433. Z^Ibid., p. 435. 128 feudalism; the forces of production were developed to a degree superior even to that of "early European feudal age."^^ The society of pre-colonial Algeria was a society 25 of two classes: the peasantry and the aristocracy. On the other hand, according to Valensi, the dominant mode of production was the Archaic. For her, Algeria knew no "development of the forces of production, and more prac tically of techniques, until the colonial period. Pre-colonial Algerian society was a society of "ethnical 27 clusters" in which ...even those families claiming nobility through their origins did not always enjoy great wealth. The instability of their power and the quarrels between rival branches of a family height^:^d the difficulties of social differentiation. In Algeria, Abdelkader Djeghloul refuted both 29 Gallissot's and Valensi's theses. He favored the concept of the AMP as initiated by Marx and later devel- 30 oped by Godelier. The concept of the AMP is, for

^*Ibid., p. 441. Z^ibid., p. 433. 2 fi Gallissot and Valensi, "Le Maghreb precolonial," X p. 81. 2?Ibid., p. 83. 28 Valensi, On the Eve of Colonialism, p. 22. ^^Abdelkader Djeghloul, "La formation social algéri enne à la veille de la colonisation," La Pensée 185 (1976) : 61-81. This essay was first published Iri the Algerian Archives Nationals 1 (1975, No. 3),: 57-80.

3®Ibid., pp. 66-67, 71. 129

Djeghloul, a tool of analysis capable of gathering to gether synthetically the empirical knowledge that we possess on pre-colonial Algeria and setting up in evi dence the questions on which we have fragmented informa tion and contradictory conclusions. At the same time, the concept of the AMP as a tool of research avoids the empiricist approach which sees the pre-colonial Algerian social formation as complex "without a mode of production clearly dominant. The pre-colonial Algerian social formation was, for Djeghloul, characterized by (1) lineage relations of production founded on private property and/or collective appropriation of the soil and of agricultural production, and (2) class relations founded on the forms of private property in land (fahc), the means of production (arti- sant), and exchange (commerce). Pre-colonial Algerian society was structured on the basis of the articulation of these two types of relations. Class relations, according to Djeghloul, interconnected and intervened in segmentary or lineage relations on two levels. On the external level, this intervention was manifested in the extraction of a part of agricultural production by a non-productive category which functioned outside of the segmentary relations. On the internal level, intervention was

^^Ibid., p. 70 130 manifested in the development of internal social cleavage within segmentary relations; i.e., private appropriation i of a part of the surplus gives rise to chiefdom. 32 However, because there existed many types of property — private, communal, beylic, habus, and public domains, the methods of exploitation — the 'achur, the zakat, the ghrama, the kharaj, and hacur, and the confiscation of tribal lands by the Turkish oligarchy prevented, on the one hand, the transformation of tribal and religious aristocracies into landed aristocracy, and on the other hand, created a detribalized category (the khammasah) that worked on beylic land as well as on private lands. This last category was insignificant until the early nineteenth century, when it increased to one-fifth of the total rural population and even more during the primitive accumulation 33 of French capitalism. The mechanisms set up by the Turkish oligarchy to levy taxes from the rural population prevented "also the development of feudalism at the top." In fact, the Beys, who represented the authority of the Dey in different regions, held their positions for only three years. They collected taxes and transformed a part of it for their private use. In some cases, only one- third of the amount collected reached the Dey's treasury.

32ibid., p. 69.

33lbid., p. 75. 131 The resistance of tribal organization, the dependence of the Beys on the Deys, the leakage of revenues, and the instability of the Beys in their positions prevented the transformation of both Beys and Deys into feudal land lords. Thus, both tribal and Turkish aristocracies were prevented from further development.^* The expansion of European capitalism played, in Djeghloul's view, an important role in the disintegration of the AMP in pre-colonial Algeria. Its influence on the social formation of the Algerian society started as early 35 as the sixteenth century. It opened new avenues for the Turkish state and the national bourgeoisie. The Turkish state monopolized all external trade transactions and benefitted from custom dues that were imposed on all imports and exports. It invested the new revenues in purchasing landed estates, houses, etc. In other words, it founded the means by which the European bourgeoisie destroyed the local bourgeoisie, manufacturing, and local trade. It also transformed the local bourgeoisie into landed proprietors. In the long run, the latter helped European capital to control both external and local markets. At this stage, "the internal contradictions of the Asiatic mode of production reached a critical point

34 ^ Ibid., p. 76. ^^Ibid., p. 77. 132 marked principally by the constitution of private property in land and a layer of detribalized peasantry."^® According to Djeghloul, this critical point of the AMP in pre-colonial Algeria was the source of the errors of Gallissot, Valensi, and Dhequois. For Gallissot, pre-colonial Algerian social formation was dominated by a feudalist mode of production only because Gallissot "transposed to the pre-colonial period what has been produced by French colonialism after the conquest" of 3 7 1830. It was stagnant for Valensi because she studied the period of disintegration of the AMP and generalized its characteristics to the whole period of pre-colonial Algerian history. 3 8 Finally, pre-colonial Algeria seemed without a dominant mode of production only because Dhequois' empiricist approach forced him to transpose the 39 features of 1830 Algeria to the preceding periods. Djeghloul's critique of the hypotheses of archaism and feudalism, as we will see in the second part of this dissertation, is valid and opens the door to further investigations in this line. However, Djeghloul's unde fined concept of the AMP, unspecified features of the

3®Ibid., p. 81.

37lbid., p. 76. ^®Ibid., p. 68.

3*lbid., p. 70. 133 societies of this mode, reliance on Godelier's definition, and his trust in Lacoste's information led him to see that (1) the AMP was sinking because of the decline of Saharan trade*® and the penetration of French capitalism in Algeria as early as the sixteenth century, and (2) the

internal contradictions of the AMP and its crisis do not "call forth for the birth of a new mode of production at the level of the whole social formation." If this crisis were to take place within the framework of capitalism, however, it calls "for a crisis of the whole Algerian social formation and the blockade or the regression of the forces of production."*^ Here we see that Djeghloul joins Suret-Canale in asserting that the AMP cannot by itself develop into another mode of production. 42 Yves Lacoste, another French Marxist, gives great importance to trade in the development of North African civilization.*^ Trade in medieval North Africa was "perhaps a determining factor — and certainly a very important one — in the development of Muslim civilization

4n *"lbid., pp. 77-81. *^Ibid., p. 81. *^See Chapter III of this dissertation. ^^Yves Lacoste, Ibn Khaldoun; naissance de l'histoire passe du tiers monde (Paris: Francois Maspero, 1969). A major part of Chapter One is translated into English and published in Economy and Society 3 (1974, No. 1); 1-17, under the title "General Characteristics and Fundamental Structures of Mediaeval North Africa." 134 and also, without doubt, in the slightly later rise of 44 Western Europe." Gold trade from the Sudan to the Middle East and to Europe was a conductor and motor "of the development of the Maghrib during the Middle Ages." This trade basically developed out of private enterprise. It was also a fundamental factor in the emergence of the 45 Maghribi states. Attempts to control the Atlantic route of this trade by different Maghribi tribes were the determining factor in the emergence of the major states of medieval North Africa — the Fatimids, the Almoravids, and the Almohads. It was also a determining factor in the development of the major cities of Fez, Tlemcen, Tahert, al-Qal'a, Constantine, Kairawan, and Sijlimassa. On the other hand, it was the main, if not the only, cause of 46 conflicts and wars between these city-states. The correlation between the development of the political state and the gold trade is, for Lacoste, "proof that a major portion of the income" of the rulers was "derived directly or indirectly from the trans-Saharan traffic." Since trade was basically privately owned, the rulers associated themselves with the merchants. The state needed the traders for the. purpose of collecting

44 Lacoste, "General Characteristics," p. 1. 45 ^ibid., p. 2.

*®Ibid., pp. 3-4. 135 taxes on commercial goods, and merchants needed the state to protect them and their merchandise. Thus, the realiza tion of profits from trade operations "required no condi tions other than those associated with the circulation of money and commodities." Nor were the profits a result of the appropriation of the means of production. By being middlemen in the international market, merchants and rulers had the power to absorb all profits.Thus the merchants were able to maintain their position among the privileged minority. Belonging to the ruling minority was

not by ...birth, military, specialization, nor by the ownership of land, but by financial power which came from commerce or from the proceeds of taxes raised by militarvg— and therefore, by tribal — force of arms. Aside from the revenues derived from trade transac tions, the other revenue sources of the privileged minori ty were the taxes imposed on a section of the population. This tax, according to Lacoste, was known as the system of ‘'qta^ . The 'qtaf was a temporary delegation that had the right to collect taxes from a particular group or tribe; it had no right over lands, nor any political and juridi cal rights in the administration. Therefore, the qta system cannot be associated with that of the fief of

^^Ibid., p. 5.

*°Ibid., p. 9. 136 European feudalism. In addition, Lacoste sees that the maintenance of strong kinship and/or tribal relations prevented the )qta* system from developing into a feudal system. 49 The maintenance of strong tribal cohesion in the Maghrib can be explained, in Lacoste*s view, by; 1. The non-establishment of great estates by the Arabs and the partial penetration of the Romans and Byzantines in the Maghrib 2. The importance of pastoral economy 3. The military tradition in which all Maghribi men carried arms 4. The importance of benefits from trade transac tions in which the appropriation of the means of produc tion was more or less insignificant The tribal structure in the Maghrib was "close to being 50 self-sustaining "communities'." Thus, medieval Maghrib, like all pre-capitalist societies, was characterized by: 1. The existence of a great majority of the popula tion in a complex of village communities or autarchic (or semi-autarchic) tribes

^^Ibid., p. 6. 5°Ibid., pp. 7-8. 137 2. The existence of a privileged minority whose members disposed of an important surplus without having private ownership of the means of production. In Lacoste's view, the societies characterized by these two fundamental features were defined by Marx as the societies of the AMP. But North Africa, Lacoste asserted, is quite different from the examples of Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, India, and Muslim Spain. North African societies appear to be related to the societies that Marx described as the societies of the AMP only in terms of

their relations of production as opposed to the slave, feudal, and capitalist relations. Nevertheless, North African societies were different in many areas from the hydraulic societies. 52 In fact, Lacoste emphasized, the hydraulic societies were characterized by major public works, generalized corve labor, complete authority of the king, and more developed forces of production; the state aristocracy was of foreign origin and isolated from the exploited communities, the communities Were defenseless and not autonomous, and religion provided supernatural legitimation of the powers of the ruling aristocracy. In North Africa, major public works were absent. Instead there was large-scale international commerce. The

S^lbid., p. 10. 52 This interpretation is borrowed by Lacoste from Wittfogel. See Chapter III. 138 level of development of the forces of production "was fairly mediocre." The degree of exploitation was far less than in the hydraulic societies. The ruler himself was essentially the chief of a tribe. The state was a confed eration of allied tribes and an integral part of the tribal structure. The tribe in North Africa was different from the communities of the hydraulic societies in that the former "was not merely characterized by the existence of blood ties between its members." It was essentially autonomous and greater than the village communities of the hydraulic societies. 53 From this comparison, Lacoste concluded that these two types of societies cannot be ascribed to one mode of production, even to two varieties of the Asiatic mode of production. For him, to ascribe the hydraulic and North African societies to a single mode of production would be the same as to ascribe to a single mode of production slavery and feudalism. This does not mean that no other societies were similar to those of the Maghrib. On the contrary, the same social and economic structures can be found in those social formations characterized by long distance trade, the absence of major public works, and a cohesive tribal structure into which an aristocracy is still deeply integrated. Lacoste mentioned as examples

53 Lacoste, "General Characteristics," pp. 10-13. 139

the Turkish Seljuk, Ottoman and Mongol tribes, and the 54 empires of Sudan, Mali, Ghana, and Songhay. In those societies, as well as in the Maghribi societies, the development of the political state was determined by the control of trade routes. The aristocracy was merely an embryonic exploiting class. The latter tended to develop openly into a dominant class. This type of society represented, in Lacoste's view, a transitional point "from the last classless society to the first class society." The dominant mode of production was "military democracy, or rather a military pseudo- 55 democracy." Since the wealth of the state in the military-democratic mode of production was not based on material and production activity, these societies were "characterized...to a considerable extent, by an artifi cial mode of production." In fact, most of those states collapsed when the long-distance trade "took other routes than those they controlled" (Lacoste's emphasis) In a more generalized study, Samir Amin arrived at more or less the same conclusion: control of long distance trade routes was the determinant factor in the formation of the states in these societies, and a shift in

S^ibid., p. 14. S^ibid., p. 15.

S^ibid;, p. 16. 140 the trade routes was the cause of their collapse. 57 In his study, Amin distinguishes between five modes of production: the primitive-communal, the tribute-paying, the slave-owning, the simple petty commodity, and the capitalist mode of production. He divides the tribute- paying mode of production into two forms; the early or less-developed and the developed. Feudalism belongs to 58 the latter category. All pre-capitalist societies, for Amin, are social formations combining the same elements, and marked by 1. The dominance of tribute-paying or communal mode of production 2. The existence of simple commodity relations in a limited sphere 59 3. The existence of long-distance trade relations. According to Amin, the tribute-paying mode of production succeeded the primitive-communal mode. It is character ized by contradictions between the continued existence of the community and its negation by the state, and the

57Samir Amin, Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism, tr. Brian Pearce (London/New York : Monthly Review Press, 1976). Chapter One is devoted to "The Precapitalist Formations." S^lbid., pp. 13-14. 59 ^^Ibid., p. 17. 141 confusion of the ruling class with the politically domi nant class. It is thus "the first of class-divided social formations''^^ and the most widespread mode in the history of pre-capitalist societies. The feudalist, the slaveown- ing, and the simple-commodity modes of production are secondary modes linked with the dominant tribute-paying mode. The importance of each of these secondary modes depends on the relative importance of the surplus extract ed in the form of tribute. Therefore, any analysis of these modes should take into consideration the circulation of the surplus within each mode and between secondary and dominant modes — in other words, the relations between 61 peripheral modes and the central tribute mode.

Based on the circulation and transformation of surplus, Amin divided the tribute-paying mode of produc tion into three subdivisions: the rich, the poor, and the tribute-paying and trading formations. The rich was characterized by a large internal surplus. It embraced all the great Ancient empires, especially Egypt and China. The poor was based on a small internal surplus. It embraced all the civilizations of antiquity and of the Middle Ages. Finally, depending on the importance of trade routes, the tribute-paying and trading formations

G°lbid., p. 52.

G^lbid., p. 19. 142 appeared here and there for periods of varying duration. This last sub-family of the tribute-paying mode appeared particularly in ancient Greece, the Arab World at its apogee, and some societies in Africa. Pre-colonial Algerian society belonged to the last form. Like Lacoste, Amin stressed the trans-Saharan trade as the determinant factor in the formation of the major North African states of "the Almoravids, the Almohads, and others, and to the south of the great desert the states of Ghana, Mali, and Sughay."^ ^

The Arab World has, according to Amin, always "ful filled a commercial function.” It was a great zone of passage between the civilizations of the Old World. It related the civilizations of Europe, Black Africa, and Monsoon Asia. 64 Cities were essential in Arab societies. In their best period, they embraced the majority of the population. "They were merchant cities like those of Italy." They accumulated wealth. This accumulation did not lead to the development of capitalism, however, for the countryside was isolated and landed property and agricultural production remained unchanged; i.e., there was no chance for feudalism to develop.

^^Ibid., p. 20.

G^lbid., p. 43.

G^ibid., p. 38.

®^Ibid., p. 42. 143 The Arab societies, as well as the societies of tribute-paying and trading formations, were basically divided into two major social classes: state-class and peasantry. The state class, according to Amin, must not be confused with either the bureaucracy or the state bourgeoisie.^® The state-class in the Arab world lived

mainly on the profits of long-distance trade. It was an urban class, "made up of court officials, merchants, religious leaders, and around them that little world of craftsmen and petty clerks that is typical of Eastern

cities." Long-distance trade made this class, and the latter in turn "made up 'Arab civilization'." To secure trade caravans, this class allied itself with the nomadic tribes, thus isolating the agricultural areas. This isolation led the agricultural tribes and communities to retain their old systems and their own personalities. They played no role in the development of the Arab civili zation. Except in Egypt, the agricultural tribes and communities were "subjected only episodically and slightly to the levying of tribute." For this very reason, Arab civilization was fragile. With a decline in trade or a shift in its routes, a whole state perishes and poverty strikes the nomads. This was also true for Tropical

®®Ibid., p. 24.

G^ibid., p. 47. 144 Africa.®® This pattern of trading formations remained in North Africa until the French colonial conquest, and in the Mashraq (Middle Eastern Arab countries) until the 69 First World War. The tribute-paying mode of production is therefore, for Amin, the most widespread mode. It succeeds the primitive-communal mode of production. It represents the first class-divided society. State-class and peasantry are the two embryonic social classes. The tribute-paying mode of production is divided into central and peripheral

formations. In the central formations — China Egypt and India -- irrigation played a dominant role. In these formations, the law of development is "accounted [for] essentially by its own inner dynamism," whereas in the peripheries, the interaction between internal dynamism and trade play a determinant role in their development. 70 For this very reason, Amin characterizes peripheral societies as the societies of tribute-paying and trading formations. In pre-colonial Algeria, as well as in the Balkans, Caucasia, Syria, and parts of Black Africa, "the tribute- paying mode never succeeded in taking root" 71 when

®®Ibid., pp. 48-51 69 G^lbid., p. 38. 70 'ibid., p. 58. 71lbid., p. 74. 145 European capitalism entered these societies and trans formed them into capitalist peripheries.

Conclusion

The discussion of the pre-colonial Algerian dominant mode of production was an extension of the discussion of the AMP that took place in France in the 1960s. The five models that have been developed by different authors to

specify the dominant mode of production in pre-colonial Algeria can be divided into three categories: (1) those that did not find in pre-colonial Algeria major public works and emphasized trade as the determinant factor; (2) those emphasizing the economic and social structures as the key to understanding pre-colonial Algerian history; and (3) those combining both trade and socio-economic structure as the starting point for such studies. The first category is represented by Samir Amin and Lacoste; the second, by Gallissot and Valensi; and the third, by

Djeghloul. With the exception of Gallissot, all concluded that pre-colonial Algerian society was in transition from a classless to class-divided society. The forces of produc tion were at a low degree of development. Antagonism between the two embryonic social classes was developed only to a modest degree. The ruling aristocracy separated itself from the tribes and communities not because it 146 owned the means of production, but because of its reli gious, political, traditional, and military functions. All, except Gallissot and Valensi, emphasized the

importance of the cities in the development of North African civilization. Gallissot found that more than 95 percent of the population of pre-colonial Algeria lived in the countryside and that the latter dominated the city; thus, the key to understanding pre-colonial Algeria is the

rural population. These findings and contradictory conclusions are disturbing and complicate the analysis of pre-colonial Algerian social formations. However, if one takes into consideration the theoretical and methodological deficien cies of these authors, one might be able to take a closer look at pre-colonial Algeria. One of the basic short comings of these authors is that each one of them present ed a picture of pre-Colonial Algeria that suited his/her approach. The concern of each was to find in that society what assimilated his/her theory of pre-capitalist socie ties . What is important is not the terms Asiatic, military, archaic, tributary, and feudalist, but the elements used in designating them. It is true, as we will see in the second part of this dissertation, that elements from all these modes of production co-existed in pre-colonial Algeria, but one has to determine the dominant elements. 147 their relationships, their articulation, and the role of each in shaping the development of Algerian society. The latter will be the aim of the second part of this disser tation. PART TWO

THE CONCRETE STUDY OF PRE-COLONIAL ALGERIA CHAPTER V

PRE-OTTOMAN ALGERIA

Historical Background of Pre-Islamic Northern Africa

Algeria is the central part of the Maghrib^ (see Map 1) . The origin of its inhabitants has not yet been 2 established and perhaps never will be. However, ethno logical and archeological discoveries show that the Maghrib was inhabited by man earlier than 15,000 years B.C.,® and probably 300,000 or 400,000 years B.C.^ This

Originally the word Maghrib (the lands of the sunset) was introduced by the Arabs when they conquered North Africa in the middle of the seventh century. It included what is known in modern times as Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and parts of Mauritania. For conven ience, I will use "Maghrib" to refer to Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, i.e., French North Africa. The words "Maghrib" and "North Africa" will be used interchangeably. 2 Most historians assert that Berbers were a composite race formed of dissimilar ethnological elements within the Mediterranean type. For a critique of such views, see Abdellah Laroui, The History of the Maghrib; An Interpre tive Essay, tr. Ralph Manheim (N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 15-26. Jamil Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 7; Paul Mackendrick, The North African Stones Speak (University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p. 179. ^Charles-Andre Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord; Tunisie-Algerie-Maroc, Vol. ï (Paris : Payot, 1968,), p. 31. 149 150

'O k O m oX

> (U 3

Cfl m 1 4J c •H to CO Ü k •H CD W > tH •H o oo < G Æ D 4-1 'O M k O 0 3 IH M-l X O O C9 w CD . k 44 -4 r 0) •r4 MH . 4-1 0 CL o> G 0 44 k G ro k CD CD e r - 0 44 CTi U k rH «9 G to 0) - CD CO Q CO g (D Ü k S' • H G i X i H CL >1 c/> to 44 1 k •H SE 4J tP CO CO 0 k ro O 44 CD A k > to •H at u G D CD X t *0 CL k 0 S LH ## X CD 0 0 k G CO 0 to CO H 44 < 151 early man, or as the archeologists call him, Mechta al-*Arbi man,^ lived on hunting and gathering. He ate wild animals such as rhinoceros, bison, monkey, elephant, wild cats, beef, horsemeat, and mutton. None of these animals was domesticated. Early man also ate wild spelt, millet, sorghum, barley, beans, peas, fennel, asparagus, and wild olive. About 4000 or 3000 B.C., Capsian man had domesticated animals and cultivated the soil.^ He did not have to wait for the Carthaginians to teach him agricul ture. "Agriculture settlements were in existence well before the first millenium." Archeology has found that wheat, olives, figs, and vines were not imported from 7 Phoenicia. The natives used a plow and "knew how to graft the olive and fig.... There are Berber words for 0 these activities without Punic, Latin, or Greek roots." Chariots existed long before the Phoenicians arrived.

Among such sources see Gabriel Camps, Berbers aux marges de l'histoire (Paris: Editions des hesperides, 1980) , particularly pp. 19-72. ^Mackendrick, North African Stones Speak, p. 188; Yves Lacoste et al., L'Algérie passe*' et prësent (Paris: Editions sociales, 1960), pp. 66-68. Capsian Man was named after the type discovered in Southern Tunisia. He lived there about 7000 or 8000 B.C. 7 Laroui, History, p. 43; Stéphane Gsell, Histoire ancienne de 1*Afrique du nord (8 volumes, 1914-1928), (Paris: Librarie Hachette et cie) , Vol. I, pp. 166-168, Vol. IV, pp. 9, 18; Mackendrick, North African Stones Speak, p. 188. O Mackendrick, North African Stones Speak, p. 188. 152 They appeared in the art of the natives about 120 0 B.C. These chariots were drawn by two or four horses; the charioteers were "armed with spears, daggers, and shields, 9 but no longer the bow." Because the history of the Maghrib was reported to us by foreigners. North Africa entered history "in the sixth century B.C. in the course of Greco-Phoenician struggle for domination of the Mediterranean."^^ Carthage, founded by the Phoenicians at the end of the ninth century B.C.,11 emerged as a prosperous city and the capital of the Carthaginian empire in the fifth century B.C. Carthage became a superpower because the Phoenicians at the time controlled the Mediterranean Sea and accumulated wealth from unequal trade with Europe and Africa. It was the Carthaginians who founded the cities of Gades in southern Spain and Rusaddir (Milila) in Morocco in about 1110 B.C. and Utica, near Carthage, in 1101 B.C. 12 (see Map 2).

^Ibid., p. 182.

Laroui, History, p. 29; Abun-Nasr, History, p. 13; Gilbert and Colette Charles-Picard, The Life and Death of Carthage; A Survey of Panic History and Culture from its Birth to Final Tragedy, tr. Dominique Collon (New York: Taplinger Co., 1969), p. 56 ff. 11 For different accounts of how and when Carthage was founded, see Gsell, Histoire ancienne 1:380-401. 12 Brian Herbert Warmington, Carthage (London: Robert Hale and Co., 1969), p. 27. 153

ra t9 Q a • r l m ■o I—1 p o 5 S § G u iC e •p o X X [/} K CD p CO •H X)

as lO U 0) ■H 0 1 I o M-J O

cn u o ■ H m T3 (0 -rl a H PJ

•H (0 CM Z k CD «/) & s 0 rl CO M g 0 tr o H CO p 154 Historians who wrote of this period tell us nothing about the natives. All they tell us is that the natives or "Berbers lived like animals." Gsell, who wrote eight volumes on the history of North Africa, never made an effort to question why the Berbers, for example, imposed a tribute on Carthage since the day it was founded, and why they declared a war against Carthage in 530 B.C. when the latter refused to pay tribute. The Berbers won the war and reimposed the tribute on Carthage until about 480 13 B.C. The Berbers who won such a war and imposed a tribute on strong, "civilized" Carthage were without doubt socially, politically and militarily organized. In fact, the value and strength of the Berbers "was fully recog nized by Hannibal...who suffered his only defeat when they were no longer available." 14 Nor was it accidental when the Berbers revolted against the Carthaginian king Majo during 396-373 B.C.^^ Such occurrences indicate that the natives knew of the tribute long before they imposed it on Carthage; that they were ruled by a king or a tribal chief; that this chief held a powerful position within the tribe; that this tribe

13Charles-Picard, Life and Death of Carthage, pp. 64- 65. 14Warmington, Carthage, p. 46. 15 Laroui, History, p. 44; Charles-Picard, Life and Death of Carthage, p. 125. 155 lived on a specific land with defined territories; and that this land was their property. From the sixth to the second century B.C., Carthage lived in continued conflict with the Greeks. In the 270s B.C., Carthage allied itself with the young Roman empire against the Greeks.After this alliance defeated the

Greeks they began their own conflict. By the beginning of the third century B.C., two Berber states were formed from the native Numidians. The two Numidian kingdoms were divided into two main groups: the Massy les and the Massaesyles. By the end of the third century B.C., the Massyles were headed by Massinissa and the Massaesyles by Syphax. Massinissa ruled the areas between Cirta (Constan tine) and Western borders of Carthage. Syphax, who first had his capital in Siga (Oran), then in Cirta, ruled the 17 greater part of Numidia (see Maps 2 and 3). There is no reason to believe that Carthage played any role in build ing the two kingdoms. Most European historians tell us that Massinissa allied himself with the Romans to defeat his rival Syphax, who was a strong ally of Carthage and the son-in-law of 18 the Carthaginian leader Hasdrubal. According to these

^^Abun-Nasr, History, p. 24. ^^Gsell, Histoire ancienne 111:176-177. 18Warmington, Carthage, p. 212. 156

'H •0 Q rH k sz < o !S > i o V) a 0 C +> rt c E 0) 0 u « *0 d 5 nJ •H 0) 0) n3 M Ü O •H 0) M X m •p « rtj m m N f: 0 +1 CQ a 0 nJ 3 (A 2 r-H +J c < tH •H oo & CT» 0) • iH Jh •0 •H 0) CO CO 1 *0 0) d p 0 A CO (0 m as >1 I 0 So 0} « Xi S 4J td o Q) W-l tp O m *0 nJ •H U) iH « 4J •iH as0 u P •H (0 3 A

n 0) -P u •H A p 3 (0 d Cr s o H CO P d C 157 historians, Massinissa fought Syphax and Hasdrubal because Sophoniba, Hasdrubal's daughter, was his fiancee and was forced to marry Syphax.This romantic explanation is superficial. The real cause of Massinissa's alliance with the Romans was his aim to defeat the Phoenician enemies who occupied his land and refused to pay tribute. As we have seen, tribute was imposed on Carthage from the very first day Elissa and her followers landed in Tunisia in 914 B.C. When the Carthaginians refused to pay tribute in

530 B.C., the Berbers fought them and reimposed payment until 480 B.C. The latter date marks the history of Carthage as a Mediterranean superpower. The natives were aware of Carthaginian supremacy, but they tried continu ously to restore their lost lands and rights. Gaia, Massinissa's father, inherited this mission from his ancestors who revolted against Carthage in 383-373 B.C. Massinissa, who grew up in Carthage, 20 continued the fight until his army destroyed Carthage in the middle of the second century B.C. 21

19 Charles-Picard, Life and Death of Carthage, p. 264; Abun-Nasr, History, p. 27. Edmond Jouhad, for example, wrote in his Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord (Paris: Edi tions des Deux Coqs d'Or, 1968): "...it was a young Carthaginian beauty who started a hatred rivalry between Syphax and Massinissa" (p. 29). 20Warmington, Carthage, p. 227. ^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:100-106. 158

Thus, contrary to the classical view that holds that the Romans used Massinissa to fight Carthage, Massinissa used the Romans to restore the power of his tribe over their land. He defended his people "against the most immediate danger by playing off one foreign power against another, because it was no longer possible to resist them both at once." 22 In about 193 B.C., when Massinissa seized Tripolitania and its tribute which was supposed to go to Carthage, the latter took the matter to Rome for arbitration. Massinissa's delegates said in the court.

If the original rights of the case were to be considered, then what part of the African territory could, in fact, be said to belong to the Carthaginians? They were refugees to whom a temporary concession had been granted on which they could build a town. This was not to exceed in area that covered by an ox-hide: all that extended beyond the limits of their living- quarters in Bysra^^ad been acquired by violent and unjust means. Rome, whose aim was to expand its power over Africa, was aware of Massinissa's ambitions. Roman help in the destruction of Carthage was not, as many historians think, due to fear of Carthage's restoration, but "to prevent her falling willingly or unwillingly into the hands of Massi nissa, now grown too powerful for Rome," particularly when some of Carthage's leaders joined Massinissa after they

22Laroui, History, p. 62. 23 Quoted in Charles-Picard, Life and Death of Carthage, pp. 280-281. 159 "were exiled at the instigation of the popular party" that dominated the dying empire.After the destruction of Carthage, as we will see, Massinissa's successors entered into a struggle with the Romans. Although most historians of this period claim that Massinissa's unification of Numidia de-tribalized North African society, in reality Massinissa built a kingdom whose population preserved the preceding social organiza- 25 tion. Up to this time, there is no proof that agricul tural societies were grouped according to kinship rela tions. Nor is there proof that "the whole history of the Maghrib is a history of tribes — an expression dear to all colonial historiography." The socio-economic and geographical circumstances and the effects of foreign influence varied from one region to another. Numidian cities such as Cirta and Siga were developed in agricul tural areas long before Massinissa came to power. All sources, historical records, and archeological discoveries tell us that down to Massinissa the Berbers lived in agricultural areas and most fertile lands — the plains of Medjerda, Annaba, Cirta, and Siga. In fact, the two first

Warmington, Carthage, pp. 2 31, 2 33; Mackendrick, North African Stones Speak, p. 26; Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:103. ^^Lacoste et al., L'Algérie passe, p. 74.

Laroui, History, p. 64. 160 states in the history of North Africa developed on these plains. It was not Massinissa who, as most old and new historians believe, "rendered the Numidiahs sociable and 27 agriculturalists." They were farming long before Massinissa. They lived in villages and "grew the most essential crops..., traded with the opposite shore of the Mediterranean, and created or adapted the Libyan alpha bet."^® In 172 B.C., Massinissa liberated 70 villages from Carthaginian oppression, and more than 50 in the years 153-150 B.C.^^ Thus Massinissa "was not in need of searching for lessons out of his proper kingdom. In fact, in the first years of his reign, he supplied the Romans with "vast and increasing amounts of grain" 31 — in some years, 32 one million bushels. Massinissa and his successors also

Strabon, quoted in Gsell, Histoire ancienne de 1 'Afrique V:187. See also Charles-Picard, Life and Death of Carthage, in which they write, "Polybius tells us that Massinissa introduced agriculture into his kingdom, and we therefore tend to consider him...the defender of the settled people against the nomads" (p. 288) .

28Laroui, History, p. 61; Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:57. 29 Mackendrick, North African Stones Speak, p. 189; Charles-Picard, Life and Death of Carthage,, p. 288; Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:102. •30 Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique V:188. 31 Mackendrick, North African Stones Speak, p. 189.

®^Lacoste et al., L'Algérie, p. 76. 161 33 exported grain to the Balkans. By the middle of the first century B.C., the Numidian kingdom produced about 34 three million bushels of wheat. Certainly Massinissa's rule, lasting about 60 years, created peace among the Numidian tribes and did much for agricultural prosperity, but he was not the founder of agriculture in North Africa. During his reign, Massinissa extended his power over most North African territories. He became the master of the areas between Tabarka near Carthage and Mulaya in the 35 Eastern parts of Morocco. He tried to unify Barbary and make it an independent state. 3 6 To do so, he needed money, an army, political and social power. He collected taxes "by surprise or by force" from the masses. 37 He collected this levy in his own granaries and exported most 3 8 of it for his own profit. By doing so "he grew rich, 39 too, from taxes paid in kind — grain, cattle, horses."

Gilbert and Colette Charles-Picard, Daily Life in Carthage at the Time of Hannibal, (London; George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1961), p. 182. ^^ibid., p. 183. ®^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:97; Lacoste et al., L'Algérie, p. 77. ®^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:96-97. ®’^Ibid. , p. 97. 3 8Charles-Picard, Life and Death of Carthage, p. 288.

39Mackendrick, North African Stones Speak, p. 189. 162

When he died in 148 B.C., he left to each of his sons a piece of land amounting to 10,00 0 plethers (about 900 hectares). There is no proof, however, that the parcels of land given to Massinissa's three sons were his property. These accounts were reported by Greco-Roman writers who, without doubt, applied their prior conceptions of property to North Africa. Perhaps they reported those parcels of land that were given by the Romans to Massinissa's sons from the public domain (ager publions)

It was the Roman commander Scipio Aemilianus who actually divided the Numidian kingdom between Massinissa's 42 three sons, Missipsa, Gulussa, and Mastanabal. Missipsa was in charge of the administration in Cirta; Gulussa was in charge of the army; and Mastanabal was in charge of justice. This division of functions was introduced by the Romans, but was not popular among the Numidians. Indeed, they fought it; after the death of his brothers, Missipsa was in charge of all the functions. He closely followed

Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:98; Mackendrick, North African Stones Speak,, p. 188; Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique V:189-190; Lacoste et al., L'Algérie, p. 77. Julien and Lacoste believe that Massinissa left about 50 children. Other sources tell us that only 10 survived to adulthood. ^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:111-112. 4 2 Charles-Picard, Life and Death of Carthage, p. 294. 163 his father's policies for 30 years (148-118 The same attempt at reorganization was made by the Romans after Missipsa's death in 118 B.C. Missipsa's son Jugurtha, adopted by Missipsa in 120, refused such a division and rebelled against the Romans. 44 Certainly agriculture and the state were developed at this stage, but there is no reason to believe that this development dissolved the tribal structure. Nor is there any proof that the tribal structure was shattered under foreign domination and later reconstructed. 45 From the fourth century B.C. onward, historians tell us, chieftancy was hereditary. Unless there was a shift of power from one tribe to another, the ruling family of the ruling tribe had the right to political functions. The Massyles, for example, dominated Numidia for about three centuries. Massinissa's family dominated the Massyles for about the same period: from Gaia in the early third century to Juba in the late first century B.C.^® New and smaller tribes emerged later to form confederations, but nothing like Massinissa's kingdom. Under the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian, we hear of the tribes of the Musulamii, the

^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:112. ^^Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique VII:262. ^^For a critique of this view, see Laroui, History, pp. 64-66. 46Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique V:121-167, 164

Suburbures, the Nattabutes, the Nicivibus, the Zimizenes, and the Saboides.^^ In the fifth and the sixth centuries A.D., we hear of nine dominant tribes or confederations of 4 8 tribes. Later there existed three main divisions: the Masmuda, the Sanhaja, and the Zanata tribes. 4 9 Despite intensive and unpleasant efforts on the part of the Romans to divide and dissolve these tribes, they reappeared, as we will see, whether with the same name or under different names.In the fourteenth century, Ibn

Khaldun wrote: The berber tribes in the West are innumerable. All of them are Bedouins and members of groups and families. Whenever one tribe is destroyed, another takes its place and is as refractory and rebellious as the former one had been. There fore, it has taken the Arabs a long time to establish their dynasty in the land of Ifriqyah [Tunisiac^nd Eastern parts of Algeria] and the Maghrib.

Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: The Claren don Press, 1941) , p. 283-285. 4 8 Laroui, History, p. 73. 49 Ibid., p. 65. For other tribes, see Christian Courtois, Les vandales et l'Afrique (Germany: Scientia Verlag Allen, 1964) , pp. 333-338; Jean Désonges, Cata logue des tribus africaines de l'antiquité"' classique a' l'oué'st du nile (Dakar: 1962) ; and Charles Diehl, l'Afrique byzantine, 2 vols. (1896, reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1959), Vol. 1:301-330. ^^Camps, Berberes, p. 98, in which he affirms that the name "Massyles" existed later during the Roman rule. ^^Abderrahmane Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, 3 vols, tr. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton University Press, 1958), Vol. 1:333. 165 The internal organization of those tribes under the Arabs is as obscure as under the Carthaginians, the Romans, and the Byzantines. Under the Romans, the natives were driven by force or by fear into the mountains and desert. It was the decision of Caesar in 46 B.C. to annex Numidian lands and deprive the tribes of their lands that 52 forced them to take refuge in the mountains and the Sahara. 53 As we will see later, this also occurred under Arab and French rule. Under the Romans those who remained in confiscated lands "were enslaved and crushed with 54 55 taxes" or driven "to the most poor regions" where they were forced to live a semi-nomadic life.^^ Some lived in villages and "were forced to work for [the Romans] as 57 hired laborers or tenants." However, even those tribes controlled by the Roman governor (praefectus qentis) had their own tribal lands and "conserved their internal organization."5 8

^^Charles-Picard, Carthage, pp. 173-174.

^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:129. ^^Laroui, History, pp. 54-55. ^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:158.

^^Rostovtzeff, Roman Empire, pp. 280, 289. 57 Ibid., p. 280. Rostovtzeff mentions 463 villages in the municipalities of Carthage, Numidia, and Tripolis.

^®Camps, Berberes, p. 118. 166 The tribes that took refuge in the mountains and the Sahara were not dominated by the Romans. They carried on the old policies of Massinissa — extreme caution, combined with great determination to allow no further westward advance on the part of invaders, whether Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, or Arabs. 59 In the second century A.D. there were five types of land tenure: 1. The imperial saltus, owned by the emperors 2. The saltus privati, owned by senatorial families 3. Lands belonging to the City (municipium) 4. Tribal (gens) lands 5. Mining and forest lands owned by the emperors^^ Except in the tribal lands, "the prevailing method of cultivation was by means of tenants (coloni)." Tenants were mostly natives. They paid the owner part of the produce and gave him some days of their own and their cattle's labor. Rent was collected by conductors of the estates, from the influential class in the cities. "They formed associations of the same type" as those of mer chants and shipowners.

S^ibid., pp. 118-120.

^^Rostovtzeff, Roman Empire, p. 289; B. Herbert Warmington, The North African Provinces from Diocletian to the Vandal Conquest (London: Cambridge University Press, 1954), p. 53.

^^Rostovtzeff, Roman Empire, p. 291. 167 The owners of lands were Romans and perhaps a few of "the well-to-do Berber and Punic aristocracy." They lived

in cities and managed their lands through agents. 6 2 Some of the landowners lived in Rome. The natives were peasants; they still lived in villages, worshipped their native gods, and spoke their native tongues. 64 Slaves existed; their labor was used in building castles and walls,in domestic labor, and certainly in cultivating land,^^ but slavery was not dominant as it was in Rome and Greece. Therefore, two main social classes existed during the

Roman domination; landowners as the ruling class and peasants as the ruled class. However, this was confined only to the regions under Roman control. The latter were estimated at 900,000 square kilometers during the last 6 8 decades of Roman domination (see Map 3) . In the last

6 p Ibid, p. 291; Warmington, North African Provinces, p. 64. Warmington, North African Provinces, p. 64. ^^Rostovtzeff, Roman Empire, p. 293. ^^Lacoste et al., L*Algérie, pp. 84, 194; Warmington, North African Provinces, pp. 59, 100; Courtois, Les Vandales, especially Part Three. ^^Rostovtzeff, Roman Empire, pp. 289, 293. G^lbid., p. 289.

^®Courtois, Les Vandales, pp. 184, 326. 168 century of Roman domination, peasants "came to resemble that form of tenancy known to the European Middle Ages as serfdom." In fact, "landowners were forbidden to sell land without the coloni who cultivated it." By the end of Roman rule, the coloni had become a rural slave (rustici servi) However, this partial transformation did not last long. It was first destroyed by the Vandals in 429,

then by the Byzantines, and lastly by the Arabs, whose 70 civilization "swept it entirely away." Thus, neither slavery nor feudalism dominated in Roman North Africa. Under Vandal rule (429-533 A.D.), North Africa

experienced a slightly different mode of domination. Perhaps there was more confiscation of lands, particularly in the first years when the Vandals invaded North Africa and "proceeded to a massive confiscation in the peripheral provinces." 71 However, they gave a choice to the people living on the lands to leave or to be enslaved. This 72 mainly touched the Roman landowners, not the natives, for the Vandals occupied only about 100,000 square kilo meters of the 900,000 square kilometers that the Romans

^^Warmington, North African Provinces, pp. 66-67.

7°Ibid., p. 68. 71 Courtois, Les Vandales, p. 279.

^^Ibid., pp. 281-283. 169 retained to the end of their domination. 73 In addition, the regions most populated by the Berbers were dominated by neither the Romans nor the Vandals. In fact, when the Vandals tried to extend their control beyond the late Roman limes, the Berbers of the Aures Mountains "revolted (477-4 84) and inflicted defeats on the Vandals." The same thing happened in Northern Tunisia when the kingdom of Antalas defeated the Vandals to the point of sounding "the 74 death knell of the Vandal power in Africa."

Thus, Vandal rule made little or no change in the economic and social structures of Roman North Africa. The

Byzantine rule which replaced the Vandals in 533 restored the Roman system. Churches were restored by Catholics; private lands were transferred to "the descendants of 75 ancient proprietors;" and the Berbers, as always, revolted. Their revolts made the Byzantine rule a defen sive system and, over time, their attacks weakened the empire. By the end of the sixth century, Berber tribes were knocking at the doors of Carthage; by the middle of

7®Ibid., pp. 184, 326. ^^Laroui, History, p. 74. ^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:260 170 the seventh century, with Arab help, Carthage was restored 7 6 and Byzantine rule in North Africa ended. When the Arabs conquered North Africa, they observed four social groups: the Rum (Byzantines), the 'Afranj (Romans), the*Afariga (Africans), and Berbers. Abdellah Laroui rightly interpreted these groups in socio-economic terms. He viewed the Rum as representatives of military and administrative power; the ’Afranj as the landowners; the *Afariqa as city dwellers, "probably bilingual and Christianized;" and Berbers as the rural indigenous population. 77 We do not know how many each group num bered, but we do know that the strategy of the Arabs failed in their first attempts to bypass the cities and conquer the countryside. Their leader‘'Uqba Ibn Nafa* was killed by the Berber Kussayla in 683, and his army was imprisoned, killed, or withdrew to Barqa. When they changed their strategy, the Arabs easily conquered the cities of Sussa, Kairawan, Carthage, and Byzerte, but they failed again when they reached the mountains. There the

Eugene Albertini et al., l'Afrique du nord fran çaise dans l'histoire (Paris/Lyon, Editions Archat, 1937 and 1955), pp. 123-128; Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 1:256-276; Diehl, l'Afrique byzantine 1:299-330; Laroui, History, pp. 75-79. 7 7Laroui, History, op. 84; and Hichem Djait, "l'Afrique Arabe au VIII^ sciêcle (86-184 H/705-800)," Annales é^conomes societies civilisations 28 (May-June 1973, No. 3) : 61 — 615. 171 Berber al-Kahina defeated them in the countryside near Tebessa, to the point that their leader withdrew to Barqa in Libya. Islam in North Africa

Islam spread more quickly than Christianity in the Maghrib. European historians such as Gautier interpreted this as ...the attraction which brings the nomads, both Arabs and Berbers, closely together. Similarity of life and common essential sentiments are of a greater force than difference in tongue.... In the Maghrib, sedentaries and nomads have never tried to live together without the one disgorg ing the other ._Q There lies the triumph of the Arab invasion. These interpretations are misleading and have no founda tion. If what these historians tell us is true, why was there no attraction between the Vandal Barbars and the North African Berbers? In the eyes of these historians, both Barbars and Berbers were primitive and destructive of civilization and sedentary life. In reality, as we will see, the Islamisation of North Africa took more than has been asserted. The real factors facilitating the spread

Abd al-Arrahman Ibn ^Abdallah Ibn ^Abd al-Hakam (died ca. 871 A.D.), Futuh Ifriqiya wa-al 'Andalus (Beirut, 1964), pp. 62-64; Laroui, History, pp. 71-86; E.F. Gautier, Les sciecles obscures du Maghreb (Paris: Payot, 1927) , pp. 240-255. Tebessa is located 20 0 kilometers east of Constantine. 79 E.F. Gautier, le passe* de l'Afrique du nord (Paris: Felix Alcom, 1942), pp. 279-280. 172 of Islam in North Africa were economic. Whenever a

tribute was imposed on the Berbers, they revolted. They did so not only under the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Vandals, and the Byzantines, but also under the Arabs. When*Amr Ibn al-As imposed the jizya (the head tax) on the Lawata tribes, the Berbers revolted and killed the Arab on leader*Uqba in 683. After the death of Kusayla in 686, Al-Kahina, the queen of the Aures Mountains, waged a war against the Arabs in which the latter "suffered a major defeat." Most of them were killed, and their leader.

Hassan Ibn Nu'man, "took refuge in Barqa" until the first years of the eighth century. 81 Thus, the first 50 or 60 years of Arab presence in North Africa did very little in the way of implementing Arab culture and Islamizing the Maghribis. Only after 711 did North Africa become (theoretically) a province of the Arab empire. Even at this date, the North African prov ince still contained "the parts of the Maghrib that had

Amr Ibn al-As imposed 13,000 dinars on the Lawata tribe. He told them, "you shall have the right to sell your children and your women to pay your share of the tribute" (quoted in H.T. Norris, The Berbers in Arabic Literature [London/New York: Librairie du Liban, 1982] , p. 46). The Lawata tribe occupied the regions between the Aures Mountains and Tiaret. For more details about this tribe, see Camps, Berbers, pp. 27, 49, and 125. ®^Norris, Berbers, pp. 49-53; Ibn *Abd al-Hakam, Futuh ifriqiya, p. 63; Laroui, History, p. 82. 173 been ceded to foreigners ever since the Carthaginian period." 8 2 Wide expansion of Islam in the Maghrib took place only in the eighth and ninth centuries, during which Kharijism dominated the ideological scene in North Africa (see Maps 4 and 5). Kharijism was theoretically a political party which

opposed both the Caliph Ali and the Umayyad rule. The first faction wanted the Caliphate to revert to Ali because of his kinship relations to the prophet Muhammad 8 3 and because Ali was one of the early converts to Islam. The second faction wanted the ruler to be chosen from the community, but to have total power "without fear of ever being deposed." 8 4 The Kharajistes wanted the Caliphate to revert to the best member of the community, and believed that the ruler should be punished by deposition "under the accusation of breach of the religious law. Practically each of these factions or divisions

represented a social class or group. The supporters of Ali represented the old aristocracy of the Quraysh tribe;

82Laroui, History, p. 89. 8 3 Dominique Sourdel, Medieval Islam, tr. J. Montgomery Watt (London/Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), p 107.

G^ibid., p. 108.

G^ibid. 174

Kairawan Tlemcen arrakesh

S a h a r a

Map 4. Limits of Islamic Empire in Africa (900 A.D.)

Source; William C. Brice, ed., An Historical Atlas of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), p. 8 .

SPAIN

iTIemcen Marrakesh Barqa

Map 5. Limits of Islamic Empire in Africa (1500 A.D.)

Source: William C. Brice, ed., An Historical Atlas of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), p. 11. 175 the''Umayyads, "the commercial aristocracy;"^^ and the 87 Kharijites, the exploited rural population. Herein lies the secret of the success of Arabs and Islam in North Africa during the eighth century and yielding its success in the ninth. The Maghribis who, ever since Massinissa, had tried to overthrow foreign domination and exploita tion, saw Kharijism as being able to lead them to such goals. Kharijism seemed to take into consideration the pre-existing conditions of Maghrib. Berber leaders supported them against the 'Ummayyad and the Abbasid O p dynasties. However, Kharijism did not last for long. It was replaced by other Muslim dynasties, both local and foreign — Idrisids, Aghlabids, Fatimids, Almoravids, Almohads, Marinids, Zayyanids, Hafsids, and finally the Ottomans.

Islam, Land and Shari'•a (Religious Law) Revenue

Theoretically, in Islam, "no person should consider himself the absolute owner and complete possessor. Absolute power and compete possession belong only to God." Land and natural resources are not the particular property

^^Laroui, History, p. 92. G^ibid., pp. 96-97. ®®Abdelkader Djeghloul, Mugaddimat fi tarikh al- Maghrib al-Arabi al-qadim wa-al-wasit, tr. from the French by Fadilah al-Hakam (Beirut, 1982), p. 38. 176 of anyone. The Guardian of Islam (the Imam) has the right of supervision, not the ownership. Individuals have the right to possess lands only as long as they put them to productive use. Based on the principle of public welfare, the Imam has the right to possess wealth and levy tax (the Kharaj) on the land and natural resources. Islam divides land into two categories: cultivated and uncultivated (Mawat). No one, whether individual, group, or state, has the right to ownership of mawat lands. There is a right to ownership of cultivated lands, but this is limited as 89 to duration of cultivation, i.e., as long as it is used. Shari^a taxes can be divided into two types: those taxes derived from Muslims and those from non-Muslims. The first consists of zakat (the income tax) the second consists of kharaj (land tax) and jizya (poll tax). Theoretically, the zakat is received from the wealthy and 90 spent on the poor and needy. It is attached "exclusive ly to productive wealth:" agricultural produce, domestic

89Seyyed Mahmood Taleqani, Islam and Ownership, tr. A. Jabbari and F. Rajae (Lexington, Ky.: Mazda Publishers, 1983), pp. 88-93. ^Ôn zakat, see *Abd al-Aziz al-Ali al-Nuâym, Nizam al-daraîb fi al-Islam (Beirut, 1975), especially Part One; G. de Zayas Farishta, The Law and Philosophy of Zakat (Syria: Al-Jadidah Press, 1960); al-Quaradhawi Yusuf, Fiqh al-zakat (Beirut, 1977), particularly Volume I; ’Afzal-Ur-Raman, Economic Doctrines of Islam (Pakistan: Islamic Publications Limited, 1976), especially Vol. Ill; Ibrahim Fu'ad Ahmad Ali, al-marawrid al-maliyah fi al-Islam (Cairo, 1972). 177 animals, and things used in exchange such as silver, gold,

money, etc. 91 The zakat levy on agricultural produce varies between 5 and 10 percent; on cattle, from 1 to 2&

percent; on commercial goods, silver, and gold, from 2 to 92 2& percent. The kharaj or tribute is "a tax imposed by the Muslim state on its non-Muslim subjects by reason of their non-Islam, and attached to the productivity of the land 93 (i.e., levied on arable land)" (Farishta's emphasis). The kharaj applies to non-Muslims under the protection of the Muslim state and those non-Muslims who were defeated by force. 9 4 The kharaj lands that the Muslims acquired by force became automatically the property of the community of Islam — the state.However, previous owners could stay on the land, cultivate it, and transmit it to their

children, but they had no right to sell land.^^ Finally,

91 Farishta, Law and Philosophy of Zakat, p. 6 .

Q O ^ Ibid., pp. 76, 136-137, 211-231. 93Ibid., p. 202. An eyewitness who wrote about the kharaj in the early days of Islam was 'Abu Yusuf Ya/qub (113-182 H./730-798), al-Kharaj (Egypt: Dar al-Nasr, 1983). 94 Yusuf, Fiqh al-zakat, p. 407-419. 9 5 ^^Ibid., p. 407. 9fi ^®Ibid., pp. 408-411. 178 the jizya is levied on non-Muslims. It was sometimes used to designate kharaj, and sometimes to designate a poll tax.” One distinction must be made here between the zakat tax and other taxes — kharaj, jizya, customs dues, spoils of war, etc.. Theoretically, the zakat was collected by the state from Muslims and kept separately in the zakat fund. It was distributed by the state to the poor and the needy. Other revenues (those of jizya, spoils of war, and customs dues) were designated to maintain the army and the state agents, and to be spent on public works. Thus, 98 these revenues went directly to the state treasury.

Islam, Land, and State Revenues in the Maghrib

Theoretically, all lands of the Maghrib were kharaj lands. In the early days of Islamic expansion,'Abu*Ubayd identified the kharaj lands that the Muslims acquired by force as follows ; It has to be a land that was acquired by force (

97 On this point, see J.F.P. Hopkins, Medieval Muslim Government in Barbary Until the Sixth Century of the Hijrâ (London: Luzac and Co., Ltd., 1958), Chapters 2, 3, and 4; Antoine Fattal, Le statu des non-musulmans en paye d'Islam (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1958), pp. 264-342. go Yusuf, Fiqh al-zakat 1:407-411. 179 [greater Syria] but their cities — Egypt, and the Maghrib. However, ‘‘Amr Ibn al*‘As, as we have seen, imposed on the Lawata tribe in 641 a jizya of 13,000 dinars^^^ without knowing either the amount of their lands or the number of the Lawata tribe. We do not know if this amount of tribute was paid or not, but we do know that the Berbers fought this policy and stopped the movement of the Arabs westward until the death of al-Kahina in 701 or 702. In addition, the Arabs divided the spoils of war among

themselves. 101 Thus they left nothing to the Maghribis but to surrender and join the Arab army or take refuge in the mountains and in the Sahara. In fact, when 'Amr Ibn Abdellah levied enormous amounts of taxes on the Berbers, 102 they killed him in 646. In 720, when Yazid Ibn'Abi Muslim tried to send back to their villages the Maghribis 103 who surrendered, they revolted and killed him; and when al-Muradi "tried a tax of one-fifth on the Berbers" he was

go Quoted in ibid., pp. 406-407. ^^^Norris, Berbers, p. 46; Abd al-Aziz Salim, Tarikh al-Maghrib fi al-asr al-islami (Alexandria, 1982), p. 321.

^^^Hopkins, Medieval Muslim Government, pp. 26-27. 102Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al- '•ibar, published in seven volumes under the title Tarikh al-tallamah Ibn Khaldun (Beirut: dar al-Kitab Allubnani, 1969), Vol. VI: 240. 103 Hopkins, Medieval Muslim Government, pp. 24-25. 180 assassinated in 740.^^^ By 771, the Maghribis, under the ideological orientation of the Kharijites, controlled all the lands of present-day Algeria and Tunisia. In 772, they fought the "last battle of the 375 battles" waged against the Arabs since *Umar Ibn al-^As.^®^ Detailed information on taxes is lacking. Vague indications exist that the Arabs imposed "a lump sum tribute on the vanquished infidels, making no distinction between the source of money.We do not know what and how much the Maghribis paid during these centuries, but we do know that in the first half of the eighth century, the 'Ummayyad state tried to impose the kharaj on all Muham madan territory. In addition, it imposed the jizya on the 107 protected people. Between 786 and 809, the Maghrib paid 13,000,000 dirhams and 120 carpets to the central treasury (bayt al-mal)This, of course, did not include the costs of all services, military and state

Ibn Idari al-Marrakushi, Kitab al-bayan al-maghrib fi ~*akhbar al-maghrib wa-al-andalus, ed. G.S. Colin and E. Levi-Provenpal (Leiden; E.J. Brill, 1948), Vol. 1:51-52. ^^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 11:24.

^Hopkins, Medieval Muslim Government, pp. 24; Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (London: Cambridge, 1957), pp. 310-311. 10 7 Levy, Social Structure, p. 310. 1 n ft Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah 1-365; Levy, Social Structure, p. 320. A dirham equals 0.22 dinars; 2 dinars equal about 1 pound sterling. 181 agents' salaries in each province, and those huge sums which went to provincial governors and the wazirs (minis ters) It seems that most of the revenues sent to the East or spent locally in the Maghrib were obtained from spoils of war and the jizya. Theoretically, expenditures on the needy and public works constituted a significant percentage of total expenditures, but in practice, in the years 918-919 public expenditures were less than 1,0 00,00 0 dinars. This was spent on the cities of Mecca and Medina, the pilgrim routes, the qadis (judges), police officers, magistrates, and the officers of the barid (post office). The expenses of the royal household accounted for over 14,500,000 dinars. 110 Comparing these amounts to the 1,000,000-dinar yield of the kharaj from the whole empire in 867, 111 we come to the conclusion that the jizya, the spoils of war, and particularly the zakat constituted the most important sources of state revenues. Contrary to the widespread belief that early Islam was built on equality, we see that it was built on inequality, domination, and exploitation. 112

109 Levy, Social Structure, pp. 306-307, 316. ^^°Ibid., p. 324. 111 ^^^Ibid., p. 323. 112It took four months for al-Fadhl al-Rabi and his secretaries to account the inventory of Harun al-Rashid's treasures when he died in 809. For a complete list of these treasures, see al-Qadhi al-Rashid Ibn Zubayr, Kitab 182 As soon as the period of Islamic expansion came to an end and the majority of the people of the newly conquered lands were Islamized, the Maghrib state, whether dependent or independent of Damascus and Baghdad, searched for additional sources of revenues, because by now the jizya and spoils of war were insignificant. Extra Shari‘a revenues were invented and legalized. Custom dues were imposed on all merchandise, taxes on all consumer goods, and the zakat/kharaj tribute was transformed from a certain amount (5-10%) paid in kind on the produce of land to a fixed amount paid in cash. In 812, ^Abd Allah I, the Aghlabid, fixed it at eight dinars per qafiz and/or 18 dinars on each faddan. In addition, he created a special office, the diwan al-kharaj (the office of land tax) for 113 the collection of those taxes. Although from the first day of Arab conquest Maghribi lands were considered kharaj lands, in practice it was not until the twelfth century (1160) that ^ Abdel-Mumin "ordered a land survey (taksir) of all North Africa from Barqa in Tripolitania to Nul in southern Morocco." Excluding the mountains and unproductive lands, all the rest was "subjected to a land tax (kharaj) payable in al-dakha'ir wa-al-tuhaf, ed. Salah Ediine al-Munajjid (Kuwait, 1959), pp. 214-218. 113 Hopkins, Medieval Muslim Government, pp. 39-48. 183 : money or in kind."^^^ The Maghribis paid the kharaj as a group, not as individuals. This is evident from all accounts and references to taxes by all writers. 115 Kharaj lands, as we have seen, cannot be sold. The state does not own them, but has the right of supervision and collection of the kharaj on them. The economic and social structures of the tribes which once the Romans, the Vandals, and the Byzantines tried to dissolve were strengthened by the kharaj. Tribal villages liberated by Massinissa from the Carthaginians in the middle of the second century B.C. still existed in the ninth and the fourteenth centuries. Almost in each page of their books, al-Ya*qubi, Ibn Hawqal, al-Idrisi, and al-Bakri mention these villages.

Laroui, History, p. 184; Roger le Tourneau, The Almohad Movement in North Africa in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 61; Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 11-114. 115 For a detailed account of the collection of the kharaj in the tenth and eleventh centuries, see Hady Rogpr Idris, la berbêrie orientale sous les Ziridies, X-XIII sciecles (Paris: Librairie d'ame'rique et d'orient, 1962) , Vol. II. ^^^Ibn 'Abi Ahmed Ya*qub al-Ya*qubi (died 897), Kitab al-buldan (Leiden; E.J. Brill, 1960); Abu al-Qasim al- Nasiri Ibn Hawqual (lOth century), Kitab surat al-ard (published as Opus Geographicum, ed. J.H. Kramers; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1938); •'Abu'■Abdallah Muhammad al-Idrisi (died 1166), Description de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne (Arabie and French texts in one volume) (Amsterdam: Oriental Press, 1969); 'Abu *Abayd al-Bakri (died 1094), Kitab al-maghrib fi dhikri bilad Ifriqiya wa-al-Maghrib (Arabic and French texts in one volume) (Paris: Librairies d'Amerique et d'Orient, 1965); see also Kitab al-istibsar 184 Thus, contrary to what Marx believed, non-property in land was as old as Maghribi society. The Arabs did not introduce it; however, their system of tax collecting strengthened it. Since the time of Massinissa, the

dominant type of property in land was tribal. In it the extended family possesses a defined parcel of land. Whether they lived on it or not, its members have the right to cultivation and inheritance. Besides being almost a copy of the already existing system, the kharaj gave it the seal of approval and gave no chance to any member of the family or the tribe to transform any parcel of land to private land. Herein lies the secret of the success of Islam and the Arabs in the Maghrib — not as Gautier and others believe. The Phoenicians, the Romans, the Vandals, and the Byzantines wanted to confiscate tribal lands and transfer them into private property. The Berbers fought it and maintained their indigenous culture. The Arabs, however, both ideologically and practically encouraged the pre-existing system of land tenure and taxed it through the kharaj system, thus succeeding in the Maghrib.

fi 'ajib al-*amsar, written by an unknown Maghribi author in the twelfth century, edited by Sa‘•Ad Zaghloul (Alexan dria, 1958) . It should be noted here that all these writers, among others, described only the cities and their surroundings. Al-Bakri, for example, in describing the surroundings of the city of Tahuda in southeastern Algeria, wrote, "Around the city there is a big number of gardens which produce vegetables and all kinds of fruits.... In the surroundings there exist more than 20 villages" (Kitab al-maghrib, pp. 71-73). 185 No one claims either that all lands were kharaj lands or that all Maghribi society was organized in tribes. There existed private property and non-tribal organiza tions, particularly in the regions where pre-Arabic rule penetrated and within the surroundings of the cities they founded and/or administered. However, neither private

property nor non-tribal organization dominated in pre- French North Africa. In the fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun wrote of the real estate and farm owners, ...this is achieved only by a few and is achieved only rarely through market fluctua tions.... But if someone achieves it, the eyes of amirs [princes] and governors are directed to him. As a rule, they take it away, or they urge him to sell it to them.

Islam and Commerce in the Maghrib

European historians, including those Marxists who tried to analyze pre-colonial North Africa, exaggerated the role of trade in the formation of the Maghribi states

in the ninth through fourteenth centuries (see Map 6) . Lacoste, as we saw in Chapter IV, maintained that trade played a determinant role in the history of North Africa. Unfortunately, some Maghribi historians and students of sociology followed him in this aberration. Liess Boukra, who blindly echoes Lacoste's theory word by word, wrote, "the control of the long distance trade routes provides

117 Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah 11:285, 186

1— 1 > 1 k 0 k 0 G C 0 m k 4-1 0 «/) G +> 0 0) m h] U k 0 < -P S • CN P r—1 0 < 0 m 4J 0 k A 0 0 4J > i 4 J o •H G pH Cf (U • H O 0) k A m 43 4J H 44 z G c/> G 0 •H % 0 4J 44 CO A k 0) 0 •H +> k 43 O 0 m E h i n 0 m r-| 0 0 A •• 0) 0 44 •0 43 CTC 0 u 0 CD k •H 44 EH g r H 43 G e 44 * 0 0 MH n c/> lO k k r H 0 A & 0 0 •0 EH g m 0 1 +J 0 A 0 A o 0 0 44 r H CO k 44 e H G 0 0 k •H G k 0 0 0 m 44 s u 0 0 0 •H P i •0 « • 0 CD k G #» EH 0 & 0 U 0 0 G •H s k 0 k 0 k 44 0 0 rtj CO 43 0 m co o 187 the key that explains the whole history of precolonial 118 Algeria." Moreover, Boukra, without reason or histori cal evidence, arrives at an unsound conclusion which leaves the whole of his thesis without foundation. For him, ...the precolonial Algerian social formation went through two qualitatively different histor ical stages. The first stage which extended from the ninth century to the fourteenth century is characterized by an Asiatic mode of produc tion. The second historical stage which corres ponds to the period of Ottoman occupation...is a transitional stage from the -A^atic mode of production to feudal society. According to Boukra, the AMP was born when the Saharan trade flourished in the ninth century, and the decay of this trade sounded the death knell of the AMP in Algeria. Boukra says nothing of pre-ninth-century Algeria. If we put together his conclusion and Godelier's theory of the AMP (which Boukra adopts without any modifi cation) , we arrive at the conclusion that the dominant mode of production in Algeria under the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Vandals, and the Byzantines, and in the first 150 years of Arab rule, was the primitive-communal mode of production. Such a conclusion, as we have seen in the

118Liess Boukra, "Controversial Problems in the Theory of Pre-Capitalist Societies and the Concrete Study of Precolonial Algeria," (M.A. Thesis, American Univer sity, Washington, D.C.), p. 65. 119 ■^•^^Ibid. , p. 58. 188 first section of this chapter, has no foundation whatso ever in the concrete historical reality of pre-ninth- century North Africa. I will define the dominant mode of production in pre-colonial North Africa in Chapter VII. In this section, I will limit my criticism to the theory of long distance trade in general and to Lacoste's theory in particular, for he was the source of many Maghribi misinterpretations of the history of pre-colonial North Africa. Lacoste, who derived his theory from Ibn Khaldun,

picked up only those accounts which suited his prior formulated theory. Ibn Khaldun lived in the fourteenth century. His sources were Arab geographers and travelers such as al-Ya*qubi, Ibn Hawqual, Ibn Abd al-Hakam, al- Bakri, and al-Idrisi. Some of these travelers were themselves merchants. Others had never visited either North Africa or the sub-Saharan countries. The best example of the first category is the great geographer of the tenth century, Ibn Hawqual, 120 and the best example of the second category was al-Bakri. 121 All of the pre-Khaldun writers followed one style of writing: description of the cities, their surroundings.

X 2 0 Ibn Hawqual, Surat^ al-ardh, p. 5. 121Michael Berett, "Ifriqiya as a Market for Saharan Trade from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century A.D.," Journal of African History X (1969) : 353. 189 and the distance between one city and another. They mentioned trade, markets, trade routes, caravans, etc. in the same way they mentioned agriculture, irrigation, mines, villages, cattle, taxes, etc. There is no reason to emphasize certain accounts and disregard others. Their writings are full of exaggerations and false stories. The latter were reported to them by adventurers and merchants, 12 2 or simply came from the writer's imagination. Al-Bakri, who is perhaps the best among those who wrote of the sub-Saharan societies, wrote of the surroundings of the Yarsni in the Sudan, In Yarsni there are short goats. The inhabi tants slaughter the male and leave the female alive. To bear other goats, the female goat rubs against a certain type of tree from which she becomes pregnant. She will give birt^go without having intercourse with a male goat. Such stories obscure any information about trade with sub-Saharan societies. Accounts such as that of the 124 Aghmat weekly market and the 200,000 soldiers of Ghana who celebrate with their king 125 must be seen simply as

19 9 , Kitab al-Istibsar, p. 126. 1 9 q al-Bakri, Kitab al-Maqhrib, p. 177. Even the author of Kitab al-*istibsar repeats exactly what al-Bakri had to say of the cities of Dar'a and Aghmat. More important, in describing the Sudan (pp. 217-226), without mentioning al-Bakri, he copied word for word more than eight pages from Kitab al-Maghrib. ^^^Ibid. , p. 153. Al-Bakri claimed that more than 100 cows and over 1,000 sheep were slaughtered weekly for local consumption.

l^^ibid., p. 177. 190 exaggerations on the part of al-Bakri. Ibn Khaldun, who read the works of these geographers and was the source of Lacoste's theory, wrote of the route between the Maghrib

and the Sudan, ...the distance of this road is braved only by a very few people. Therefore, the goods of the Sudan country are found only in small quantities among us, and they are particularly expensive; the same applies to our goods among them. Certainly the essential characteristic of ninth- through fourteenth-century Maghrib was the dual agricul tural and commercial economies. The basic contradictions were between commerce and agriculture, between exploited peasants and tax-levying commercial aristocracy, and between countryside and town. Al-Ya*qubi tells us that the eastern Algerian communities and the Barghwata commun ity were supported by agriculture alone, while the Khari- jite groups and the Zanata tribes of the west were supported by commerce alone. 127 In Ifriqiya, the Aghlabids 128 depended completely on agriculture. They constructed some water reservoirs and aqueducts that revived the 129 prosperity of the region. Other reservoirs were

^^^Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah 11:338. ^^^Al-Yatqubi, Kitab al-buldan, pp. 138-143. 12 8 Mohamad Abdul-hay Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 190. ^^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 11:49; al-Ya'qubi, Kitab al-buldan, p. 137. 191 observed by al-Ya'gubi in the ninth century, 130 by Ibn 131 Hawqal in the tenth, and by the author of Kitab al-* 132 stibsar in the twelfth. Even in the west, al-

114 11% Marrakushi, al-Idrisi and al-Ya qubi tell us that some of the Zanata tribes were farmers, sheep raisers and marketeers. They sold milk, wood, and other country- produced goods. Even in the very far southwest (Sijlmassa), al-Idrisi tells us that the inhabitants of this region cultivated wheat, cotton, camun, henna, etc. they irrigated their fields from a river resembling Nile. "Its water is employed for agriculture in the same way as that of the Nile."^^^ Al-Ya *qubi, who visited the Maghrib sometime in the second half of the ninth century, was struck by the grain fields and different kinds of fruit trees, olive, fig, and vineyards, and by the mines of silver, antimony, iron.

^^Âl-Ya'qubi, Kitab al-buldan, p. 142. Ill Ibn Hawqual, Surat al-ardh 1:78-103. ^^^Kitab al-stibsar, pp. 115, 117. ^^Âbd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi, Kitab al-mu*‘jib fi talhkis âkhbar al-Maqhrib, ed. Reinhard P.A. Dozy (Amsterdam: Oriental Press, 1968) (Arabic text), p. 247. ^^âl-Idrisi, Description de l'Afrique (French text) pp. 79 ff. ^^âl-Ya*qubi, Kitab al-buldan, pp. 138-143.

^^^al-Idrisi, Description de l'Afrique, pp. 69-70. 192 lithum, and lead. 137 A century later, when Ibn Hawqal visited the cities of Gabes, Susa, Tunes, Tabarqa, Baja, Bona (Annaba), al-Jazair (Algiers), Wahran (Oran), Sabta, Zulul, Kurt, Fez, etc., he was amazed by the "great number

of the berbers who had fields of grain,...olive trees, fruits, wool, silk, tanneries of skins, clothes tailor ings," artisans, manufacturers of silk and leather, and by the abundant pottery, cotton, oil, fish, pearls, grain mills, and the mines of the region of Bona (Annaba). 13 8

Ibn Hawqal tells us that the regions where wheat and barley were cultivated in great amounts represented "a big 139 source of revenues for the Sultan." Other regions paid great amounts in sadaqat (zakat) and kharaj. This information shows, on the one hand, that the prosperity of the agricultural economy preceded and pre-dated the development of the Saharan trade of the Arab period, and on the other hand, falsifies Valensi's theory of archaism. Valensi, as we saw in the preceding chapter, maintained that Maghribi society had never witnessed a change throughout its history. Everything in it was primitive and thus it should be characterized as an

117 al-Ya* qubi, Kitab al-buldan, pp. 138-143; Ibn Hawqual, Surat al-ardh, p. 84. 1 O O ^ ‘ Ibn Hawqual, Surat al-ardh, pp. 70 ff. 1 IQ ^^^Ibid., p. 84.

l^Oibid., p. 86. 193 archaic society. This is, as Djeghloul noted,a false generalization. Valensi studied the worst moment in Algerian history, the early period of French conquest, and generalized from it to all Maghribi history. Maghribi society, like all other societies, had its better and worse moments of stability and economic prosperity. Certainly, Massinissa's Numidia (pre-Roman) and the Arab Maghrib in the ninth-fourteenth centuries were the best 14 2 moments. The "obscured centuries" (sixth-eighth A.D.) , the period of Arab conquest and consolidation, the crisis of the fourteenth century, the period of Ottoman domina tion and the primitive accumulation of French capitalism were the worse moments. However, none of these periods, as we will see later in this dissertation, can be consid ered new modes of production nor as periods of transition from one mode to another. The long-distance trade theorists tell us that the formation of the Maghribi states of the ninth-fourteenth centuries was determined by the control of trade routes

(see Map 7) . History tells us that the most powerful state of the ninth-tenth century, the Fatimid state, was developed as a result of the revolt of the Kutama peasants of lesser Kaylia. Like the Kharijites, the Shi*ites took

^^^See Chapter IV. ^Gautier, who studied this period, entitled his book Les sciecles obscurs du Maghreb [The Obscured Cen- turies of the Maghrib] (Paris: Payot, 1927). 194

0) M •H (U & k e •H H w A w G 0 n W +J •H co > *0 •rH (0 (0 m k X î o 0 0 m >0 e e u. rH i H H (N M rtj ^ 0 OO & m ^ 4-1 tn o o M 0 N IT) 4H tH rH 0 a 1 U1 1 + ) o HJ O CO • H m • H '3' Id e o e M •iH IH •rl rH 4J ^ — <

K CO X 0) X g •rl EH

Q) . x; EH n rH - ■ü 0)

x i 00 ■ H ;3 o> 0 rH 1—1 ü •. Id • H T) u •P id iJ m >1 co O) .X M •H 0 \ V • ( 0 s 4 H 0 MH m 0 Q) 0) CD g •r| BH

(U • t u G JZ M 0 3 *o 0 G en 0 iG 195 advantage of the Kutama opposition to Aghlabid Kairawan and joined them to overthrow the Aghlabid state. The

Shi'ites promised the Kutama peasants "to abolish taxes contrary to the Koran and above all put down jurists and men of religion.By conquering the Aghlabid state, which depended on the Arab Orient, the Shi^ite Fatimids pushed their conquest eastward until they reached Alexan- 144 dria in Egypt in 913, 919, and 924 A.D.; later they established al-Qahira (Cairo), also in Egypt. Peasant rebellions also took place in the west, joined by the Malikite Almoravids in the western Sahara and the Almohads of the Moroccan mountains. The former originated with the Lemtuna tribe; the latter, with the Masmuda Berbers of the 145 Moroccan Atlas. In fact, when the Almohad aristocracy came to power, "a general massacre of the Lemtuna Berbers was carried out."^^^ It is senseless to ascribe, as most historians do, the development of the Fatimid empire to one unknown man.

^^^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 11:53. 144 Laroui, History, p. 132; Julien, Histoire de 1 'Afrique 11:54; Shaban, Islamic History, p. 193. ^^^Ibn Khaldun, Histoire des Berbères, tr. into French by le Baron de Slane (Paris: Librairie Orientale, 1969), Vol. II, pp. 67 ff. and 161; Djeghloul, Mugaddi- mat, pp. 62-63; Laroui, History, p. 161; Abun-Nasr, History, pp. 93-118.

l^^Abun-Nasr, History, p. 107. 196 Abd Allah, who came from the east as a propagandist 147 (da'ia) for Shi'ism. Abd Allah only joined the already 148 well-organized revolt, of which he heard in Mecca from 149 the Kutama pilgrims. However, after the revolt suc ceeded and the commercial aristocracy came to power through its religious propaganda, the first actions of Ubayd Allah the Mahdi were "to have...the Kutama chiefs put to death"^^^ and to impose irregular taxes on the peasants and other exploited groups. He imposed taxes ...on all items entering any town and collected at gates, road-blocks, quays, market places, ports and custom-houses. Pottery makers, home spinners, oil pressera, beer makers, and prosti tutes all had to pay their taxes. Fish were taxed at the seaside and where they were pre served. Cattle were taxed on grazing grounds, in transport and at the slaughter house. A value-added tax was imposed on all important textile industry at every stage of^^^oduction from raw material to final product. Thus, the prosperity of the Fatimid state came from "large tax revenues" 152 which, according to Ibn Khaldun, were

The same thing was said of Ibn Tumart of the Almohads. See, for example, le Tourneau, The Almohad Movement, p. 11. 1 4P Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah 1:45. 1 49 Laroui, History, p. 131. 1 sn Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique II:??. 1 51 Shaban, Islamic History, p. 202. Ibn Khaldun (Muqaddimah 11:92) says that "taxes were levied even upon pilgrims making the pilgrimage" to the Holy Land. 1 59 Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimat 11:283. 197 collected "from the subjects and [were] spent among the people of dynasty and then among those inhabitants of the 153 city who [were] connected with them." Even under the domination of the nomadic tribes of the Banu Hilal, "the 154 rural population paid tribute." On the other hand, the notion that the history of the Maghrib was a continuous struggle between nomads and sedentary peoples is misleading and superficial. 155 In reality, the struggle was between the ruling commercial and tax-levying aristocracy and the masses of peasants and cattle raisers. The commercial aristocracy ruled and exploited the peasants through the use of tribal chiefs, particularly those of the dominant tribes or confedera tions of tribes. The dominant tribes were at the same time the agents of collecting taxes and the suppliers of the Junds (soldiers) to the state.The Kutama tribe under the Fatimids and the Banu Hilal under the Almohads are the best examples. The commercial aristocracy needed the tribal chiefs for the collection of taxes, and the tribal chiefs needed the commercial aristocracy to secure their dominance over other tribes and a share of the

IS^ibid., p. 287. ^^^Laroui, History, p. 149; Djeghloul, Mugaddimat, p. 60. 155For a detailed critique of this view, see Laroui, History, pp. 218-223.

ISGibid., p. 211. 198 revenues of trade. From above, this system of exploita tion was supported, by religion, and (more importantly) from below by kinship relations. If the later dynasties and revolts were concentrated mostly in the west and southwest, it was not because those tribes moved there to control the Saharan trade routes,

but because they fled to those regions from the Fatimid 157 and Banu Hilal oppression of the preceding periods. This was not new to those tribes, for they did the same under the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines, and later under the French. The Sanhaja tribe, for example, which according to Ibn Khaldun accounted for one-third of the Berber population,moved from the middle Maghrib (central parts of Algeria) to the southwestern Sahara. 159

Thus heavy taxes and confiscation of lands led to these movements, not the interest of the tribes in trade routes. If the theory of long-distance trade is valid, why did not the Berber tribes move in the fourteenth century to the Maghribi seaports when the Mediterranean trade "developed most strikingly during this period"Why

1 57 Ibid., pp. 135, 150; Abu-Nasr, History, p. 120; Lloyd Cabot Briggs, Tribes of the Sahara (Harvard Univer sity Press, 1960), p. 81; le Tourneau, The Almohad Movement, pp. 90-91; Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 11:162, 172. ^^®Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al*Ibar VI:309. 159 ^^^Ibid. , p. 311.

^^^Laroui, History, p. 217. 199 did not the cities of Jerba, Gabes, Safax, Tunis, Annaba, Bejaya, Algiers, and other Maghribi seaports replace the Saharan trade centers of Sijlmassa, Aghmat, Fez, Tlemcen, and Kariawan?The answers to these questions among others, as we will see shortly, will demonstrate the weakness of the theory of long-distance trade.

The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century

Two main factors were at the root of the decline of the Almohad empire in particular and the Maghrib in general: (1) the increased oppression and exploitation of the rural population, and (2) the decline of the Saharan trade. However the crisis of the fourteenth century by no means meant an end of a mode of production. Perhaps all it meant was the decline of the first real Maghribi state uniting all the regions from al-Mahdiya in the east to the Atlantic in the west, and the decline of the Saharan trade that played such an important role in the prosperity of the Maghrib for over four centuries (see Map 7) . The causes and effects of this trade decline have, in one way or another, been discussed in the works of Lacoste, Djeghloul, Braudel, etc. Here I will only try to show

Yves Lacoste, Ibn Khaldun: naissance de l'histoire passe du tiers-monde (Paris: Francois Maspero, 1969); Djeghloul, "La formation social" and Muqaddimat; Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde mëditerranien à l'epoque de Philippe II, 2 vols. (Paris: A. Colin, 1966) , particularly Volume I. 200 its relation to other factors, stressing its effects on the ruling aristocracy. The history of the Maghrib in the Middle Ages was the history of the struggle between the commercial and tax- levying aristocracy and the rural peasants. Relations between the two were mediated by tribal chiefs and domi nant tribes. As noted earlier, the tribal and commercial aristocracies needed each other to secure their revenues derived from agricultural produce, cattle, merchandise, and/or profit made directly from trade. Tribal chiefs

maintained their dominance over weaker tribes through kinship relations and military power invested in them by the commercial aristocracy. Neither the commercial

aristocracy nor the tribal chiefs owned the lands. The latter were still the property of the tribe or confedera tion of tribes. Consequently, the ruling aristocracies extracted the surplus from peasants through customary forms of extra-economic coercion. The use of the army and 164 dominant tribes in collecting taxes is the best example of such a method. This method pre-dated the fourteenth century and was used by the Ottoman aristocracy up to 1830.

^^^Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah 11:93 ff. IG^ibid., 1:309. ^Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 11:114; Laroui, History, pp. 210-211. 201 When the Almohad aristocracy of the thirteenth century used the Banu Hilal mercenaries,^®^ freed slaves, and converted Christians^®® to protect their interests and collect taxes, the tribal chiefs and dominant tribes lost interest in the tax collection function. They opposed the Almohad aristocracy and easily became autono mous.^®® Tax collection was maintained for their direct benefit only. In fact, in 1274 the Marinid tribe subdued the Banu Hilal "who for a century, under the nominal suzerainty of the Zayyanids of Tlemcen, had imposed themselves as the sole political power in south-western Morocco."^®® By losing the tribal chiefs and the dominant tribes, particularly the Marinids and the Banu Abd al-Wad, the Almohad state lost the most important source of its revenue and found itself defenseless against the Chris tians in Islamic Spain. Al-Marrakushi, in his al-mu* jib fi talkhis akhbar al-Maghrib, and Ibn Abi Zera, in his Qirtas, attributed the defeat of the Almohad state in Spain in 1212 to its unpaid mercenaries, who intentionally

^®®Laroui, History, pp. 184, 203. ^®®Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 11:127. ^®^al-Marrakushi (Kitab al-mu*-jib, p. 248) estimates that the number of mercenaries in Marrakesh alone reached 10,000 soldiers. ^®®Laroui, History, p. 216; Abu-Nasr, History, pp. 150 ff. icq Laroui, History, p. 2 04. 202

did not fight. 170 Years later, these same mercenaries 171 joined the Marinid and the Zayyanid tribes. The Almohad state had thus reached its zenith when Abd al-Mu min in 1160 imposed the kharaj on all lands from Barqa in the East to the Atlantic in the West, and when his son Abu Ya&qub organized the system of levying and enforcing this kharaj during his reign (1163-1184). By enforcing the kharaj on all lands, the Almohad state 172 ensured itself abundant revenue. However, this gen eralized kharaj and its enforcement were the bane of the empire. For the first time, kharaj tax had been imposed on tribal lands. When the Marinid tribe revolted, all the tribes of northern Morocco contributed with payments to re-enforce the rebels against the Almohad aristocracy, now 173 "entrenched...in the towns." Although previous movements appeared to be religious — Kharijism, Shi'■ism, Malikism, and Almohadism — "the three states which succeeded the dynasty of Abd al-Mu'min in ruling the Maghrib were all Muslim states, but none of

170 Noted by de Slane in Ibn Khaldun, Histoire des Berberes 11:225. 171 Abu-Nasr, History, p. 122; Julien, Histoire de 1 'Afrique 11:175. ^^^Abu-Nasr, History, pp. 113, 153. 1 79 Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique 11:173. 203 them started as a religious movement. As taxes weighed "heavily upon the subjects and overburdened 175 them...they lost hope" and revolted. Tribal chiefs, with one foot in the countryside and the other in the city, had no choice but to pull out of the cities and stand upon solid ground — their tribes. 176 In doing so, they not only separated themselves from the commercial aristocracy, but they actually led the revolts. The best example is that of the Banu Abd al-Wad, led by their dominant clan, the Zayyanids. The latter had been the first to help Abd al-Mu'min and Abu Ya'qub to build the Almohad empire. 177 Mediterranean trade developed most strikingly in the fourteenth century, and perhaps enriched the "amirs and 178 their entourages" more than ever before. However, it failed to attract the tribal aristocracy. By this time, the latter had emerged in opposition to the merchant aristocracy and its army of mercenaries. The new dynas ties which succeeded the Almohads fell victims to their

Abun-Nasr, History, p. 119. The three states were those of the Marinids, the Zayyanids, and the Hafsids. They ruled, respectively, in Western, Central, and Eastern Maghrib. ^^®Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah II;92. l^Gibid., pp. 129-130. ^^^Ibn Khaldun, Histoire des Berbères 111:326 ff.

1 7 Q Laroui, History, p. 218. 204

own policies. The rural population no longer supported them. These dynasties were duly defeated by the Spanish Christians in the same period. The mercenaries, particu larly the Christians, in turn became the agents of col lecting taxes on goods entering or leaving the Maghrib,

for the benefit of the Spanish rulers who, after defeating the Muslims in Spain, extended their political and econom- 179 ic dominance to parts of the Maghrib. Goods "carried largely by European ships" now achieved supremacy in the Mediterranean. 180 Maghribi markets were chiefly frequent

ed by foreign traders. Even in the far southwest (Sijlmassa), Jack the Conqueror extended his official protection to two Jewish families living there 181 in an attempt to monopolize the Saharan trade and ensure its arrival in Barcelona. These were the main factors that put an end to the Almohad empire and to the "golden centuries" of the Maghrib. By no means, however, did they put an end to a mode of production. Tribal land, we are assured by Ibn Khaldun, was still the dominant type throughout the Maghrib in the fourteenth century. The Marinid, the

179 Abun-Nasr, History, pp. 153-158. 1 fi 0 Laroui, History, p. 217; Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah 11:45-46. 1 fi 1 Abun-Nasr, History, p. 153. 205 Zayyanid, and the Hafsid states were not radically differ ent from previous Muslim and Maghribi dynasties. Ibn 182 Khaldun's theory of cycles is in reality a rationaliza tion of the events of his time, particularly the develop ment and fall of the dynasties of the eleventh to four teenth centuries. His theses — that the course of history is determined by political power, that the latter is dependent on tribal cohesion, and that the lifespan of a dynasty is at most three generations — reflect two realities: the unceasing changes in the political sky, and the unchangeability of the tribal structure. The latter, in turn, is determined by the type of land tenure, non-private private property in land. In the three dynasties that succeeded the Almohads, the commercial and tax-levying aristocracy lost its role as the dominant group and was replaced by the tribal aristocracy. Thus the two groups that constituted the exploiting class disintegrated, and political power went

182 An Ibn Khaldun bibliography would be almost endless. Nevertheless, the reader is referred to Lacoste, Ibn Khaldoun; Muhsin Mahdi, Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophic Foundation of the Science of Culture (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1957); Aziz al-Azmeh, Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in Reinterpretation (London: Frank Cass and Company, Ltd, 1982); Abdelkader Djeghloul, al-'ishkaliyat at-tarikhiyah fi ' ilm al-'igtima 'assiyassi

^®®Laroui, History, pp. 208, 210-211; Abun-Nasr, History, p. 135. 1 QA Laroui, History, p. 210. CHAPTER VI

OTTOMAN RULE IN ALGERIA

Establishment of the Turkish State in Algeria

In the course of European and Ottoman struggle to control the Mediterranean Sea, the Maghrib fell victim to both superpowers of the sixteenth century. In 1492 the Muslims were expelled from Spain. In 1497 Christian ships occupied Malila in Morocco. In 1505 they occupied Qasas and Marsa al-Kabir. Oran was occupied in 1509 and Tenes, Algiers, Dellys, Sharshal, Bejaya, and Tripoli in 1510.^ At the same time the Turks, who were advancing to the north, landed "sometime between 1500 and 1504" in the seaports of Tunisia. 2 In 1512 the Turkish admiral ‘Aruj 3 and his brother Kheir ed-Din arrived in Bejaya. In 1514

Jamil Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 161 ff; William Spencer, Algiers in the Age of the Corsairs (University of Oklahoma Press, 1976); p. 16; Charles-Andre Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord: Tunisie-Algerie-Maroc, Vol. II (Paris: Payot, 1968,), pp. 275 ff. 2 Ernle Bradford, The Sultan's Admiral: The Life of Barbarossa (London: Hodder and Staughton, 1968), p. 24; Fray Diego de Haedo (1612), "Histoire des rois d'Alger," tr. into French by H.D. de Grammont, Revue Africaine 24 (1880, Vol. 24): 42. 3 Stanley Lane-Poole, The Story of Barbary Corsairs (New York/London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1890), p. 40.

207 208 they established themselves in Jijel and in 1516 they occupied Algiers/* In 1518, ‘•Aruj was killed by the Spaniards in the region of Tlemcen, and Kheir ed-Din took over his functions. A short time later, Kheir ed-Din was

nominated by the Ottoman Sultan Selim as Pasha of Beylerbey (amir of amirs).® Counter-attacks of the Maghribis on Christian ships are defined by most European historians as acts of piracy. In their eyes, '■Aruj and Kheir ed-Din were independent

pirates who came from Turkey and promoted piracy in North Africa. Cities that they occupied were pirates' nests. In reality, piracy was long practiced by Europeans in the Mediterranean. 'Aruj and Kheir ed-Din, who grew up on the Island of Lesbos in western Turkey, saw in their youth Catalan, Italian, and Sicilian pirates making the capital Mitylene a base of operations.® 'Aruj and Kheir ed-Din, as some of the European contemporaries acknowledged "were a model family." They were learned men who spoke fluent Turkish, Arabic, Greek, French, Spanish and Italian.

Abdellah Laroui, The History of the Maghrib; An Interpretive Essay, tr. Ralph Manheim (N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 248; Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique II: 278-279. ®Laroui, History, p. 249. ®Godfrey Fisher, Barbary Legend: War, Trade and Piracy in North Africa, 1415-1830 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 42-43; de Haedo, "Histoire des rois d'Alger," pp. 39 ff. 209 Kheir ed-Din "devoted most of his wealth to founding a 7 college at Constantinople." "He was not a corsair but 0 the Sultan's admiral and minister." European misconcep tions and "strange confusion of thought" rendered "one of the greatest personages of the Ottoman empire" a pirate and barbarian.® Maghribi cities occupied by the Spaniards were forced to pay tribute to the Spanish rulers and abandon sea activities.^® This meant more tribute imposed upon the rural population. The latter not only paid tribute to the Spanish, but also to the Maghribi aristocracy that ruled those regions. In fact, when the city of Algiers sent for help to 'Aruj, "the traditional chiefs" of the Tha'liba tribe opposed such a decision and allied themselves with the Spaniards. 11 When the inhabitants of Tlemcen revolted against the Zayyanid aristocrat Abu Hammu III, the latter joined the Spanish forces stationed at Oran. Again, the inhabitants of the Tlemcen region opened the gates of the

^Fisher, Barbary Legend, pp. 44-45; Bradford, The Sultan's Admiral, p. 86. O Fisher, Barbary Legend, p. 73. ®Ibid., p. 65. Abun-Nasr, History, pp. 161 ff; Spencer, Algiers, p 16. ^^Laroui, History, p. 248; Julien, Histoire de l 'Afrique 11:279. 210 city to '•Aruj . 12 The same thing was repeated when Kheir ed-Din in 1534 "was received with open arms" by the 13 inhabitants of Tunis. There the Hafsid aristocracy joined the Spanish army and fought against Kheir ed-Din

until they defeated him and Tunis was handed back to the 14 Hafsid Muley Hassan. Only at a later date was Tunis reoccupied by Turks, and it remained a dependent beylik until the time of the French occupation in 1881. Thus, the success of Turkish rule in North Africa did not result from the intelligence of ‘Aruj and Kheir ed-Din, nor in the strength of their army, nor in their religion (Islam). The Zayyanids, the Hafsids, and the Marinids were not only Muslim states, but also Maghribis. More important, and beyond any doubt, their army out numbered that of *-Aruj . However, their exploitation of the masses made them, along with the Spaniards, the enemies of the great majority of the Maghribis. This explains the success of 1,100 or 1,300 Turkish soldiers^^

^^Laroui, History, pp. 248-249. 13 Fisher, Barbary Legend, p. 78. ^^Bradford, The Sultan's Admiral, pp. 1370143; Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique II;282-284; Ellen G. Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age (University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), p. xx. ^^Bradford, The Sultan's Admiral, pp. 53, 59; Fisher, Barbary Legend, p. 51. Mouloud Gaid, in his l 'Algérie sous les turcs (Tunis, 1974), says there were only 800 Turks and 3,000 Maghribis (p. 37); Lucette Valensi, in her On the Eve of Colonialism (New York: 211 in North Africa. The Spaniards and the Maghribi aristoc racy imposed great amounts of tribute on the masses. The Turks, on the other hand, had no immediate interest in such tribute, because (1) their army was too small to require large revenues for its maintenance, and (2) they needed the support of the masses to establish their power in the region. When ‘Aruj and Kheir ed-Din marched on Algiers in 1516, there were more than 5,000 native sol diers and volunteers under their command.Their number and knowledge of the city was one force, if not the only one, that made the mission of ‘Aruj successful and paved the way for the Ottomans to establish their rule in the Maghrib. This was not a new occurrence; it had happened earlier under the Shi‘ites and the Kharaijists, among « others.

Sociopolitical Structure of Ottoman Algeria

The organization of the Turkish state in the Maghrib went through four phases. The first phase (1518-1586) was that of the Beylerbeys; the second (1586-1659) , the Pashas; the third (1659-1671), the Aghas; and the fourth

African Publishing Co., 1977) estimates that the number of the Turks in Algeria and Tunisia never exceeded 10,000 (p. 8) ; Venture de Paradis, in "Le Royaume d'Alger au XVIII sciècle" (Revue Africaine 41 [1897]), estimates the latter number to be between 7,000 and 8,000 (p. 117).

^^Bradford, The Sultan's Admiral, p. 59. 212 (1671-1830), the Deys. 17 The latter period is the most important, for during this period the character of the Turkish rule in Algeria took its final and lasting form. Our brief discussion of the first three phases will be confined only to those structures developed by the Turks under the leadership of Kheir ed-Din that continued to exist under the leadership of the Deys. Under the Beylerbeys the central state was organized as follows; (1) the Beylerbey as the head of the Regency,

(2) the superior council, and (3) the Diwan. The superior council was composed of the wakil al-kharaj (the receiver of tribute), the Khawjat al-khayl (the receiver of tribute and director of the domains), and the Agha (commander of the militia) . The diwan was composed of all militia 18 officers. Only the Beylerbey was nominated by Constan tinople. Other functionaries were either nominated by the Beylerbey or by the Diwan. By 1559, Beylerbeys were replaced by army officers, the Pashas. The nomination of the Pasha to run the Algerian Regency was intended by Constantinople to maintain the dependence and integration of this Regency in the Ottoman empire. However, it was

Claude Bontems, Manuel des institutions algériennes de la domination turque a 1'indépendance (Editions Cu]as, 1976), Vol. I, pp. 29-80; Gaid, 1'Algérie sous les turcs, pp. 46-187. ^^Pierre Boyer, la vie quotidienne a Alger a la veille de l'intervention française (Paris; Hachette, 1963) , pp. 96-97. 213 not long until the power shifted from designated Pashas to 19 military Aghas stationed at Algiers. By 1671, the Agha became a Dey. The Dey was more or less a product of the struggle between the militia and the marine. Unlike the

Agha, who was nominated by the officers, the Dey was elected by unanimous vote of all members of the militia stationed at Algiers. Any regularly enrolled member of the militia was eligible for the office of the Dey. 20 Other functions such as that of the khaznaji and the khujat al-khayl remained the same until 1830. By 1567, Algeria was divided into four administrative divisions or provinces known as the beyliks. The four beyliks were Algiers or Dar-Sultan, Titteri, the West (whose capital was first in Mazouna, then in Mascara, and after 1792 in Oran), and Constantine in the East (see Map 8) . Each beylik was governed by a bey. The bey was nominated by a dey for a three-year period. He was assisted in his functions by a hierarchical organization that resembled the one at Algiers. 21 He divided the

19 , Bontems, Manuel des institutions algériennes, pp^. 334-340; Spencer, Algiers, p. 43; Pierre Boyer, "la revolution dite 'des Aghas' dans la régence d'Alger (1659-1671)," Revue de l'Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée 13-14 (1^ semestre 1973); 159-170. 20 Spencer, Algiers, pp. 60-61; de Paradis, "Le Royaume d'Alger," p. 257. 21E. Vaysettes, "Histoire des derniers beys de Constantine," Revue africaine 3 (1858-59, Vol. 41); 121-152, 331-350. 214

G O to •P ITS Of + ) 4J(0 o P fO 0) CO U tH m •H VOI e iH 9 in m ■ p 5 (d ip •HU 0 0) tP H r4 > 9 Ol P fiO 0) +a, J -pI + 1 6 o C iw •P o •Ü (/] 0) c m to 0 0 ITS •H (0 (0 •H > •HQ

•H> 1 •P fO i p to +J u-i •H(/} C 'O •H 0) ts 4J 0Ü to 1 p + J 0(/] 00 0 u

Q) Ü eaO f P g w 215 beylik into qaidits or regions, 22 for each of which he nominated a qaid. Each qaid exercised power over one or 23 more tribes. Each tribe, or a fraction of it, was commanded by a sheikh or by a council of sheikhs called d jama'•a (council) . The sheikh or the djama'a were desig nated by family heads of the tribe. The family head was usually the eldest male of an extended family. The family head was responsible to the djama^a, the d jama‘‘a to the qaid (commander), the qaid to the bey, and the bey to the dey. Theoretically, the latter was responsible to the Sultan in Constantinople, but practically he was con trolled by the Diwan (council). His success, failure, and life were totally dependent on the Diwan. In fact, out of 27 deys, "only two seemed to have lived beyond their term of office — one by abdication, the other in exile. At the level of social organization, the social structure of a city was fundamentally different from that of the rural areas. In the city, particularly in Algiers, there existed roughly three social groups or categories :

22Abdeljelil Temimi, Le beylik de Constantine et #adj Ahmed Bey (1830-1837) (Tunis; press de la société' tunisienne des arts graphique, 1978), Chapter II; Louis Rinn, "le royaume d'Alger sous le dernier dey," Revue Africaine 41 (1897): 121-152 and 331-350. 23 Vaysettes, "Histoire des derniers beys," pp. 107- 128. 24 Spencer, Algiers, p. 58. 216 the Turks, the non-Muslims, and the Maghribis. In addi tion to their diverse ethnic origins, the three groups performed three different functions. The Turks, having total power, filled the administrative and military functions (from the dey at the top to the qaid at the bottom). Below this group, there existed what can be termed trade intermediaries. It was composed of renegade Christians and of Jews. By being intermediaries in trade transactions, particularly in international trade, this group was economically and politically in a better posi tion than the Maghribis. This latter group performed unskilled labor, and consisted of servants, porters, 25 public bath attendants, etc. In the countryside where the majority of the total population lived, the social structure remained unchanged. The tribal structure was still the dominant type; the tribe, as always, was the basic socio-political unit. It was subdivided into fractions (duars or mechta), each of which was divided into patriarchal extended families. The patriarchal extended family was the group within which

25 Ibid., pp. 66 ff; Boyer, la vie quotidienne. Chapter 5; John B. Wolf, The Barbary Coast; Algiers Under the Turks, 1500 to 1830 (London/New York; W.W. Norton, 1979), Chapter 6; de Paradis, "Le Royaume d'Alger," p. 278; Diego de Haedo, "Topographie et histoire générale d'Alger," tr. A. Berbrugger and Monnereau, Revue Africaine 14 (1880) ; 490-519. 217 basic social interactions took place. The D jama‘•a made the major economic and political decisions. They resolved internal conflicts and were the negotiators, defenders, and decision makers in external affairs. Even the tax obligations imposed by the Turkish state were divided by 27 these sheikhs among families. If the interests of the collectivity were threatened and peaceful means to resolve the conflict failed, force might be used against the encroaching party, even if it was the state. This, as we will see, was a significant problem for the Turkish state, particularly in militarily controlling the tribes and imposing the tribute on them.

Probably the best works on the social structure of Algeria in particular and North Africa in general are Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians, tr. from French by Alan C.M. Ross (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962) , and by the same author, A Theory of Practice, tr. into English by Richard Nice (London/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Jacques Berque, Structures sociales du haut atlas (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1955); and Robert Montagne, The Berbers, Their Social and Political Organi zation, tr. into English by David Seddon (London; Frank Cass, 19 73) . It should be noted here that, according to Abdeljelil Temimi in his Sommaire des registres Arabes et Turcs d'Alger (Tunis, 1979), there exist more than 500 registers of the official government of the deys of Algiers (pp. 18-23). Written in Arabic or Turkish, each register contained up to 400 pages. Unfortunately, due to diverse difficulties, I have not consulted these regis ters. I hope in the future to have the chance to study these valuable documents. 2 7Henri Federmann, "Notice sur l'histoire et l'admin istration du beylik de Titteri," Revue Africaine XI (1867) ; 366. 218 The Economic Structure of Ottoman Algeria

Types of Property

On the basis of the theory of kharaj, it would appear that state property or property of the community of Islam was the dominant type at the time of French conquest of Algeria. This is exactly what led many French writers in the early days of French occupation to view the ruler as the grand lord of the bulk of Algerian soil. Contempo rary writers, however, distinguished between more than six types of property; the beylik (state) , the ^azl, the makhzan, the habus, the mawSt, the ‘■arch, and the mu Ik. Some of these types are hardly distinguishable; others were confined only to some regions or cities, a fact which led some writers to reduce them to three types: beylik, 29 ‘■arch, and mulk. For the sake of clarification, I will treat each type separately, compare it with other types, and try to fit it into Marx's schema. Beylik Property The beylik is used to describe lands that supposedly constituted the property of the dey of Algiers and the

2 8For a critique of this view, see John Ruedy, Land Policy in Colonial Algeria: The Origins of the Rural Public Domain (University of California Press, 1967), pp. 1-4. ^^Andre Noushi, Enquête sur le niveau de vie des populations rurales constantinoises de la conquête ]us- qu'en 1919; éssai d'histoire économique et sociale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961), p. 79. 219 beys of Constantine, Titteri, and Oran. Including the habus and makhzan, the beylik accounted in 1830 for 1.5 30 million hectares. According to Noushi, in the beylik of Constantine the beylik lands also included the ^azl lands. 31 In any case, beylik lands were usually comprised of "excellent lands, well irrigated and suitable for all 3 2 kinds of intensive cultivation." The prevailing method of cultivation in these lands was the khums ("one-fifth").

Although all European historians, including Noushi, claim that the khums was a secondary method, contemporary evidence shows otherwise. For those writers, the prevail ing method was the tuwiza or, as they call it, corve labor. In Berber, however, the word tuwiza (in Arabic, musa*-ada; in French, donner un coup de main) means "to help out." The tuwiza, as it survived in the second half of the twentieth century, was voluntary. The tuwizee knew in advance that there would be no compensation for his labor, his animals' labor, or the use of his tools. Generally, a tuwiza lasted for one day. The number of participants (5, 6, 10, or hundreds) varied from one tuwiza to another, according to the amount of land, the

^^Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 9. ^ ^^Noushi, Enquête, pp. 79-85; Frederic Godin, "le regime foncier de l'Algérie," in L'oeuvre legislative de la France en Algérie, ed. Louis Milliot et al. (Paris; Librairie Felix Alcan, 1930), p. 248.

^^Noushi, Enquête, p. 80. 220 number of tribes, and the invitation of the tuwizer. In the tuwiza the participants compete for the position of the best worker, the best singer, the best runner, the best multakh (wrestler), etc. They exchange ideas, news, and make deals such as that of marriage, etc. None of the foreign rules over pre-colonial Algeria founded the tuwiza method. It is as old as Algerian society, and has its roots in primitive communal forms. Of course, it lost some of its originality and became a secondary method of cultivation, but never became corve labor depended on by a private owner or a state in their agricultural activities. Thus the notion that the kham- massah (persons who work for one-fifth of the produce) were called in only when the tuwiza was insufficient is unsound. On the contrary, the tuwiza was called in only when the khums or other methods were insufficient. In addition, the khums method itself was insignificant under Ottoman rule. When it reached its apogee under French rule, it affected only one-fifth of the whole active rural population. Another common error that has been handed down from one writer to another is the identification of the beylik land by the person that filled the position of the dey or the bey. In other words, the historians confuse the

33.Abdelkader Djeghloul, "La formation social algér ienne a la veille de la colonisation," La Pensée 185 (January-February 1976): 75-76. 221 private property of the bey with that of the state. In reality, after the death of a bey or a dey, his heirs inherited only what was left in the home of his wife and 34 children, not what was under his control. This is demonstrated by the history of the deys and beys and by the administration of beylik lands. As mentioned earlier, 27 deys ruled Algeria during the 1671-1830 period. Many of those deys came from the lower classes. They had no kinship relations with previous deys; nor were they wealthy. The best example is that of the shoemaker Mohammed ben Osman, whose reign (1766-1790) was the 35 longest and most effective of the Algerian deys. The responsibility "for the administration of beylik lands was entrusted to a complex of offices known as the bayt al-mal al-Muslimin (the treasurer of the Muslims) which also collected the ‘•ushr and khara j taxes. Thus, beylik lands cannot be compared with private lands of European feudal lords. As we will see, the same is true for ‘•azl and makhzan lands. ‘Azl Lands *-Azl lands were theoretically and practically state lands. The difference between them and beylik lands is

^^Vaysettes, "Histoire des derniers beys," p. 116. 35Spencer, Algiers, p. 63. ^^Godin, "le regime foncier," pp. 249-250; Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 10. 222 that lazl lands were still cultivated by the same tribes 37 from which they were confiscated, and the revenues derived from them were directed to the payment of state 38 functionaries. These lands were particularly extensive in the beylik of Constantine.^^ According to the method of cultivation, they were divided into four types or groups; khums ‘azl, djabri *-azl, ^azib ‘•azl, and djabel lazl.^^ In the khums ^azl, the method of cultivation is identical to that of the khums in beylik lands. The djabri ‘•azl (state lands subject to land rent) were confiscated from certain tribes and left in their posses sion in return for payment to the bey of a pre-fixed quantity of grains called Ijokur (land rent) . In the beylik of Constantine, hokur was fixed at 12 sa‘ (1,680 litres) each of wheat and barley for each plough. 41 The ‘azib ‘•azl (state lands reserved for raising cattle) were left in the hands of the tribes in return for raising the bey's cattle and paying a religious ‘ashure (tithe) fixed at one sa*- each of wheat and barley. Finally, the djabel

3 7 Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 9; Federmann, "Notice," pp. 114-116. 38Noushi, Enquete, p. 80. ^^Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 9. Noushi (Enquete, p. 84) estimated these lands to be 146,693 hectares in the beylik of Constantine. 40 Noushi, Enquete,^ pp. 80-81. ^^Ibid., p. 81. According to Federmann ("Notice sur l'histoire," p. 118), one sa‘ equals 140 litres. 223 ‘azl (state lands subject to cash payment) were given to certain tribes in return for payment of certain amounts in 42 cash. Makhzan Lands Makhzan lands were also state lands. They were granted to specific tribes by the beys and deys in return 43 for military and tax-collecting services. These lands seem to have existed mostly in the beyliks of Titteri and 44 Oran. Even in these two beyliks their number is limit ed. The beylik of Titteri, for example, possessed only two makhzan tribes: the Duair and the ‘Abid.^^ In the three beyliks, makhzan lands have been estimated at 400,000 to 500,000 hectares.As with all state lands, the makhzan tribes had not the right to alienate the land. The makhzan tribe was a creation of the preceding rules. Under the Byzantines, it was called the

42 A Noushi, Enquete, pp. 80-81. ^^Federmann, "Notice sur l'histoire," pp. 357-371; Godin, "le regime foncier," pp. 245-247; Rinn, "le royaume d'Alger," p. 124. 44 Neither Noushi nor Temmimi mention makhazan lands in the beylik of Constantine. Federmann, "Notice sur l'histoire," p. 357. 46 Ruedy, Land Policy, pp. 10-11.

^^Ibid., p. 10; Godin, "le regime foncier," p. 246. 224 limitanier; 4 8 under the Arabs, Berbers, and Turks, the 49 limitanier became a makhzan. In the twentieth century, particularly in Morocco, it was given the name neo- makhzan.^^ The role of makhzan tribes under all these rules was to press the masses to pay tribute. In indepen dent Morocco, the makhzan tribes played "the role of central group around which all traditional forces would be mobilized to create a strong monarchist party. Habus Lands

Habus or waqf (religious) property consisted mostly of religious foundations, mosques, and zawayas or schools. Consequently, it was associated with urban life, and included suburban gardens and farms within a reasonable distance from the city. In the early nineteenth century there were about 400 habus units, of which nearly 200 were

48 ' Jean Durliant, "Grands propriétaires africains (533-709)," Cahiers de Tunisie 29 (1981, NOs. 117-118): 518. 49 On the makhzan, see different articles in Arabs and Berbers from Tribe to Nation in North Africa, ed. Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud (London/Toronto: Lexington Books, 1972); Montagne, The Berbers, and his Les Berbères et le Makhzan dans le sud du Maroc: essai sur la transfor mation politique des Berbères sédentaires (groupe Chleuh)~ (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1930).

^^Abdaslam ben Kaddour, "The Neo-Makhzan and the Berbers," in Gellner and Micaud, Arabs and Berbers, pp. 259-267.

^^Ibid., p. 260; Edmunde Burke, "Rural Resistance and Popular Protest in Morocco: A Study of the Rural Rebellion of 1991," Revue de l'Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée 13-14 (1973): 193-206. 225

located in Algiers and its suburbs. 52 One hundred and three of the 200 were mosques.The majority of babus units were controlled by a very few religious foundations and managed by a wakil (supervisor) and a secretary. The

largest foundation by far was the foundation of Mecca and Medina, which helped the poor, sent funds to the holy

places, assisted pilgrims, and ransomed Muslim captives in European countries. The next largest, the Andalus founda tion, was founded by Muslim refugees from Spain to help new refugees.Other foundations included 19 marabouts (saints) of Algiers, th§ Sjabul al-Khayrat, and other less important foundations. 55 In the rural areas, habus was estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000 hectares^^ situated mostly near the cities. Thus, in relation to other types of property, habus was insignificant, and its economic role was nonexistent.

Mawat Lands Mawat (dead) lands included forests, rocky areas,

ravines, brush-lands, mountainsides, and so on. At the

52 Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 6. ^^M.M. Aumert, "la propriété urbaine a l'Alger," Revue Africaine 41 (1897); 330. ^^Ibid., pp. 327 ff; E. Pellissier, Annales alqéri- ènnes, 3 vols. (Paris; Anselin et Gautier-Laguionie, 1839), Vol. III, pp. 455-480. 55 / / Aumert, "la propriété urbaine," pp. 326-330; Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 8.

^^Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 8. 226 time of French conquest, there were some 3 million hec tares of mawat land. Theoretically, any person who cultivated a parcel of these lands became the owner. Practically, the ruler seems to have had control over them. In fact, portions of these lands may have been granted to makhzan tribes. However, tribes enjoyed 57 certain rights of usage, especially for raising cattle. “-Arch Lands ‘Arch or sebqa is the name given by early French colonists to tribal lands.It covered in 1830 about 5 59 million hectares. Colonial jurists whose goal was to confiscate state lands viewed ‘arch lands as those lands which The Turkish sovereign abandoned to the tribes for only a usufruct.As long as the occupants remained on the land and paid tribute, the state could not evict them.^^ Occupants also had the right to transmit these

S^ibid., p. 12. ^^Godin, "le regime foncier," pp. 235-236. "Sebqa" was used only in the beylik of Oran. ^^Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 11. In its Statistiques et documents relatifs au Sdhatus-Consulte sur le propriété arabe (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1863), the French Ministry of War reported that the ‘arch land covered "more than half of the Algerian soil" (p. 28). Algerian soil here meant all the territories of Algeria but the Sahara. Including the Sahara, Algeria covers an area of about 219 million hectares. Parts which concerned the Ministry here are called the Tell. It covered about 15 million hec tares . ^^Godin, "le regime foncier," pp. 234 ff.

^^Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 11. 227 lands to their direct male heirs.However, other facts prove that the Turkish state had no connection with this

type of land but the collection of tribute. As long as the family cultivated the land, neither the djama‘a nor the state could legally evict them. On the other hand, the periodic distribution of land among families was in

the hands of the djama‘a. In addition, if a head family left no male inheritant or the latter was "not in a position of cultivation" or unable to work, the djama*-a, not the state, redistributed his parcel of land between

other members of the tribe.All members of the tribe believed in common property. They fought the development of private property. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a member of the Ulèd Rechaich tribe declared; The French defeated us in the plain of Sebkha. They killed our young men; they forced us to make a war contribution when they occupied our terri tories. All that was nothing; wounds eventually heal. But the setting up of private property and the authorization given to each individual to sell his share of the l^ d , this means the death sentence for the tribe. Theoretically, ‘arch land was the property of the community of Islam, the tribe. Accordingly, it would

®^Ibid.; Godin, "le regime foncier," pp. 238-40; Noushi, Enquête, p. 87. ^^Noushi, Enquete, p. 86. fi4 ° Ibid., pp. 86-88. ^^Captain Vaissiere, Les oulèd Rechaich (Algiers, 1863), p. 90. 228 belong to kharaj lands. Practically, ‘arch land predated the Arab invasion of North Africa, as we have seen. The Arab states, the Maghribi states, and the Turkish state were not interested in the ownership of land. Their only concern was to fill their coffers as easily as possible. They imposed tribute on the masses, making no distinction between, the mulk, the ‘arch, or other types of land tenure.The method used by the Turks to collect this tribute was no different than that used by the Arabs. The function of makhzan tribes, as we have seen, was identical under both those rules as well as under Byzantine rule. Mulk Lands The mulk (private) is defined by French jurists as private property. In 1830 it covered about 4.5 million hectares, of which about 3 million were located in the mountains of Kabylia^^ and a significant portion of the rest in the mountains of Aures.^^ According to French jurists mulk property carried with it the rights to acquire, enjoy, and dispose of the property, and transmit it by heritage. 69 In reality, however, mulk property was fundamentally different from private property as known in

^^Noushi, Enquete, pp. 93-94. Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 4. ^^Noushi, Enquete, p. 93. ^^French Ministry of War, Senatus-Consulte, p. 29. 229 E u r o p e . It was not Muslim law, as most writers believe, that complicated the understanding of mulk property in Algeria, but false interpretations that rendered it difficult. There is no room here to trace the origins of

these interpretations and cite all the difficulties they caused. In order to understand the concept of mulk property, one has simply to look at its historical devel opment, its characteristics during the first years of French colonialism, and its effects on social differentia tion . Historically, as we have seen, the Berbers, or what the French colonists called Kabyles and Chaouias, lived on plains, not in the mountains. They fled to the mountains in the middle of the first century B.C. when the Romans oppressed them and confiscated their lands. This migra tion continued under all succeeding rules, including the French. In the plain regions, the Berbers were agricul turalists. When they arrived in the mountains, they found no land suitable for cultivation. There they engaged in 72 vivifying the land. Due to the low development of the forces of production, the larger the extended family the

^^Noushi, Enquete, pp. 90-94.

^^See, for example, Godin, "le regime foncier," pp. 252-290; Ruedy, Land Policy, pp. 4-6. ^^Noushi, Enquete, pp. 90-94; Charles-Robert Ageron, Les algériens musulmans et la France (1871-1919) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1968), Vol.I., p. 71. 230 more chances to acquire larger portions of land. When the French conquered Algeria they found in some areas "the number of owners involved with a single piece of ground 73 was known to reach 300 or 400." If we took into consid eration only the number of individuals and their segmen tary relations, we would deal with a tribe, not a family, for the number of individuals in a North African tribe varied from 500 to 40,000.^^ Historically, this is probably how the North African tribe was developed and later modified by economic, geographical, and political conditions. The anthropological definitions of North African tribes 75 and the belief of tribesmen in a common agnatic ancestor support this view. However, we have no room at present to follow up this discussion. We only

73 Ruedy, Land Policy, p. 5. ^^Raphael Danzier, Abd-qadir and the Algerians; Resistance to the French and Internal Consolidation (New York/London: Holmes and Meier, 1977), p. 7. 75 See, for example, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (Oxford; The Clarendon Press, 1949), esp. pp. 59-60; Ernest Gellner, "Tribalism and Social Change in North Africa," in French-Speaking Africa; The Search for Identity, ed. William H. Lewis (New York; Walker and Company, 1965), pp. 107-118; David M. Hart, "The Tribe in Modern Morocco; Two Case Studies," in Gellner and Micaud, Arabs and Berbers, pp. 25-58. See also Jacques Berque, Structures sociales du haut-Atlas (Paris: Presses univer sitaires de France, 1955) , passim, and by the same author, "Qu'est-ce qu'une tribu Nord-africaine?" in his Maghreb histoire et sociétés (Alger; SNED, 1974), pp. 22-34. ^^Valensi, On the Eve of Colonialism, pp. 13-22; Bourdieu, The Algerians, passim. 231 wish to bring to the attention of those who compared mulk property in the Maghrib to private property in Europe a fundamental difference.

Historically, sociologically, economically, and practically, the sale of mulk property was prevented within the tribe. Even if a family or an individual decided to sell mulk property, "his fraction or sub fraction" had the last word, particularly if the buyer was not related to the tribe. The tribe had also the right to repurchase that piece of land. 77 More importantly, in some tribes such as that of the Beni Amram Djebala of Jijel, a person could sell his house and fruit trees, but 7 8 not his land that was reserved for cereal cultivation; among the tribe of Ait Ndhir of central Atlas in Morocco, once an individual left his tribe, he lost his right to the piece of land he possessed. All he took with him were "his animals, his horse, and his gun."^^ These restric tions have their historical and logical basis. On the one hand, since the land was vivified and/or acquired by a family from which all sub-fractions and fractions descend ed, a single person or family had no right to sell what

^^Noushi, Enquête, pp. 90-94. ^^Ibid., p. 92. 79 Amal Rassam Vinogradov, The Ait Ndhir of Morocco; A Study of the Social Transformation of a Berber Tribe (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), p. 88. 232 had been historically undivided or common. 80 On the other hand, a person or a family had the right to sell the house and fruit trees because these were historically and practically the product of the seller's labor. Noushi made use of this point, rightly concluding that in Algeria, thanks to individual labor, the passage from communal property to private property played out. 81 Here we might add that due to the low development of the forces of production, the development of such property would be at a very low level and its effects on social differentia tion would be almost nil. In fact, in the second half of the twentieth century, nine-tenths of the families owned less than 25 acres. 8 2 Another contradiction that has been handed down from one writer to another is that all agree that mulk property is the dominant type in the mountains of Kabylia and Aures, while in analyzing the social structure and politi cal system of Kabyles and Chaouias, they credit them with equality and democracy. For those writers, in "the Kabyle democracy" 8 3 or "the Berber Republic" each "patriarchal family was ensured of an equitable distribution of the

8 0Bourdieu, The Algerians, p. 2. 81 Noushi, Enquete, A p. 91. 8 2Bourdieu, The Algerians, p. 2. ^^Ibid., pp. 16 ff. 8 4 Montagne, The Berbers, pp. 45-46. 233

benefits and the responsibilities of power." 84 Adhesion to a republic or a group ...is assured by the sentiment of solidarity that is indissociable from the feeling of real frater nity, the sentiment of existing only in and through the group, of existing only as a member of the groupcand not as an individual in [one's] own right." Finally, even if we assume that the family had the right to sell its share of land, this was rarely the case.^^ Even if we assume that the sale of such lands was common within the society, we are theoretically and practically speaking of family property, not individual property. Historically, the former, as is well known, preceded the latter. Thus we are dealing with a type of property that was the step between primitive-communal property and private property; ‘arch property is the step 8 7 between primitive-communal property and mulk property. Expressed in terms of higher and lower, ‘arch property is the lower step and mulk property the higher step. Because they are only steps, they cannot be characterized as either primitive-communal nor private property. The only

8 4 Montagne, The Berbers, pp. 45-46. ^^Bourdieu, The Algerians, p. 20.

^^Noushi, Enquete, p. 90. 8 7 A French administrator wrote in 1890, "The more we live among the indigenous population, the more we are convinced that they have never understood our terms of mulk and ‘arch" (quoted in Ageron, Les Algériens musulmans 1:71). 234 difference between ‘arch and mulk is that the former was a waste land suitable for cultivation and the latter a waste land vivified to suit cultivation. Consequently, the individual family was emphasized more in the mulk property than in the ‘arch. On this land (‘arch and mulk) lived the majority of the total population of pre-colonial Algeria. Here we rejoin Gallissot in that the real understanding of pre-colonial Algerian society should start from the rural areas. However, to define it as a feudal society, or even a variant of it, is misleading.

Fiscal System and State Revenues

The Turkish state in Algeria used every possible means to fill its coffers. Aside from the tribute imposed on most European countries and the United States, the revenues collected from the ransom of European captives, customs dues, and taxes on local traditional industries and the Jewish community, the Turkish state developed an internal system of tribute well adapted to the economies of different regions of the Regency. In the early days of its establishment, the state imposed what appears to be

O Q the Qura-’nic '’ushur and khara j . Later the Turkish state

go ^ Hamdan Khawajah, Mirât, Lamhatûn Tarikhiyah wa- Ihsaiya ‘Ala 'Ayalati al-Jazayr (Beirut: 1972), pp. 117-18; Ahmad al-Zahhar, Mudhakkirat al-Hajj Ahmad al-Sharif al-Zahhar, ed. Ahmed Tawfig al-Madani (Algiers, SNED, 1980), p. 35. It should be noted here that this is the first time al-Zahhar's memoirs were published. 235 transformed these taxes into fixed *ushur, gherama, and

lezma. Hamdan Khawajah says the latter system was devel oped because of the leakage of the ^ushur before getting 89 to the dey. Al-Zahhar, on the other hand, says that this system developed because of the deviance and the injustice of the rulers.Both views indicate that the Turkish rule established a new system of taxation to assure the arrival of the tribute in the rulers' coffers and to increase the amounts by developing the lezma and gherama. Each of the three types of tributes was well adapted to the economies of each region. The lushur or the zakat was imposed in the regions where cultivation of wheat and barley dominated and where the Turkish rule had complete control over the tribes. In the regions where Turkish control was limited and animal husbandry was dominant, the state imposed the gherama. Finally, in the regions where state control was limited and arbor-agriculture was dominant, the lezma was imposed. Theoretically, the luchur or zakat represented one-tenth of the produce or cattle. Practically, it was calculated according to the number of zuija or jebda

^^Khawajah, Mirât, p. 118.

Q f) al-Zahhar, Mudhakkirat, p. 35 236

(ploughs). 91 The amount paid by each jebda was one sa^ of wheat, one sa*> of barley, and one chebka of straw. 9 2 In 93 the best years, a jebda produced eight sa' from an area of 5 to 15 hectares. 94 Theoretically, the evaluation of each jebda was made by the qaid al-'achur at two different periods : one in the fall and the other after the har- 95 vest. Practically, this was rarely the case. It was probably applied only under the last bey of Constantine, Ahmad Bey, and then only in his beylik.^^ Prior to 1830, as we will see, it was fixed from above and collected yearly along with the lezma and gherama by mahallat (army troops) and makhzan zemla (troops). Al-Zahhar, who was at one time the head of some noble families of Algiers and later the first secretary of Ahmad Bey, reports the following amounts of 'ushur paid to the dey by each bey:

^^Khawajah, Mirat, p. 118; Noushi, Enquete, p. 97; Boyer, la vie quotidienne, p. 112. ^^Noushi, Enquete, p. 98. The French War Ministry (Tableau de la situation des établissements français dans 1 'Algérie en 1840 [Paris: Imprimerie Royale - succeeding years]) estimated chebka to equal 2 metric quintals (p. 341) . 93 Boyer, la vie quotidienne, •- p. 112. 9 4 A Noushi, Enquete, p. 104. The War Ministry's Tableau 1843-1844 estimated an area of only 5 hectares (p. 402); Tableau 1840 (pp. 340-341) estimated the number of jebdas in Constantine at 17,527.

Q R A Noushi, Enquete, pp. 97-98.

^^Ibid., p. 97. 237 1. The bey of Oran paid; 10,000 sa' of wheat, 10,000 sa' of barley, 6,000 sheep. In addition his gifts to different functionaries at Algiers amounted to 1,000 sa\ of wheat, 1,000 sa' of barley and other valuable gifts 2. The bey of Constantine paid the same amounts as the bey of Oran; in addition he paid 1,000 cows, dates, olives, butter, etc. 3. The qaid of Sbow paid; 500 sa' of wheat, 500 sa' of barley, 1,000 quintals of figs, 100 quintals of candles 4. The bey of Titteri furnished a large number of animals In addition, the seven qaids of Dar el-Sultan levied the 'ushur on their qaidits and delivered it directly to . 97 Algiers. In the regions where cattle raising dominated, the tribes paid gherama. Gherama consisted basically of animals and goods derived from their milk, wool, skin, and 98 99 hair. It was imposed on the whole beylik of Titteri, the east, west, and southern regions of Constantine, , and some nomadic tribes that emigrated in summer from the

^^al-Zahhar, Mudhakkirat, p. 48. Q R War Ministry, Tableau 1843-1844, p. 402.

^^Boyer, la vie quotidienne, p. 113. ^^^Noushi, Enquete, pp. 99-100. 238 Sahara to the northern regions. 101 Gherama varied from one tribe to another, depending on the size of the tribe and the animals they raised. The Ulid Allan, who emigrat ed to the regions of Berroughia near Algiers, for example, paid 500 kilograms of butter, 100 sheep, 16 flidjs (tents),

30 bags of camel hair, 12 measures of goatskin, and 12 mules. The Uled Chaib paid 500 sheep, 20 camels, 2 horses, and 1,200 kilograms of butter. Some tribes

furnished chicken, wood, and coal, 102 while others paid in dried couscous. 103 In the south and southeast of the beylik of Constantine, gherama consisted mainly of sheep. The tribe of Segnia, for example, paid 1,400 sheep, the tribe of Heracta 1,000, and the tribe of Nemencha 104 3,000. Far to the south of the Regency, Urgla and Tuggart delivered black slaves. In the mountain regions and some parts of the Sahara where the Turkish rule had no control over the tribes, the latter paid the lezma. Lezma was basically a certain amount paid in cash by those tribes in return for their access to the markets of the Turkish-controlled areas. We

^^^al-Zahhar, Mudhakkirat, p. 49; Boyer, la vie quotidienne, p. 113. ^^^Boyer, la vie quotidienne, pp. 113-114. 10 3 al-Zahhar, Mudhakkirat, p. 47. ^^^Noushi, Enquete, p. 107.

^^^Boyer, la vie quotidienne, p. 113. 239 do not know how much each tribe paid, but we do know that every year the beys of Constantine and Oran each paid to the central government 80,000 riyals, and the bey of

Titteri and the qaid of Sbow each paid 14,000 riyals. In addition, each bey's khalifa delivered to Algiers every

six months half the amount paid by his superior.Added to this, each bey paid a monthly lezma of 4,000 duru for the maintenance of the mahallat, which helped the beys to 107 collect tribute in their beyliks. In the beylik lands, the tribes paid the hukor (land rent) and the zakat. In the beylik of Constantine before Ahmad Bey, the tribes paid the hukor and zakat in nature. Under Ahmad Bey, they paid them in cash. The zakat levied on each jebda was one sa' of wheat, one sa' of barley, and one chebka of straw. Under Ahmad Bey the zakat totaled 15

French francs on each jebda, and the hukor 27 francs. 10 8 If one sa' of wheat, one sa' of barley, and one chebka of straw were priced at 15 francs, then the hukor appears to be double the amount of the zakat. Here, we see that the tribute weighted more heavily on the peasants who worked on beylik lands than on those of 'arch and mu Ik lands. The reason is clear. The Turkish state exercised more

^^^al--Zahhar, Mudhakkirat, p. 46. lO^Ibid., p. 47. ^Khawajah, Mirât, p. 120. 240 economic and political control over the beylik lands, while in 'arch and mulk lands such control was limited.

Although many writers^^^ attempted to estimate the total amount received yearly by the central government, careful studies that take into consideration all the different factors are still far from being realized. Here I would only like to emphasize that the available esti mates are far below the real amounts collected yearly by the Turkish state from different beyliks and qaidits. Any real estimation has to take into consideration the reve nues of each beylik, for the latter was in this matter an independent state. In fact, each bey paid to the dey only one-eighth of the total amount collected from his beylik. To collect 'ushur, gherama, and lezma, the Turkish state depended partly on the Turkish army and partly on the makhzan tribes. Each year mahallat or hamiyyat (army troops) left Algiers on a cross-country trip to collect tribute. Constantine's raahallah left Algiers on the first day of summer in a trip to the east lasting six months. Titteri's mahallah left in summer for a two- or three- month trip to the the beylik of Titteri. The mahallah of Oran left in April for a trip to the west lasting four

See, for example, Noushi, Enquete, pp. 103 ff; William Shaler, Sketches of Algiers (Boston; Cummings, Hilliard & Co., 1826), pp. 34-35; Boyer, la vie quotidi enne , p. 119.

^^^Khawajah, Mirât, p. 114. 241 months. 111 The Mahallah of Constantine numbered 3,000 soldiers, the mahallah of Oran 1,800, and the mahallah of 112 Titteri 1,200. The qaid of Sbow had no mahallah; however, if a tribe in his jurisdiction refused to pay its share of tribute, a special mahallah was sent to him from 113 Algiers. Upon arrival in the beylik, each mahallah was joined by the makhzan zemla (soldiers). The well-known makhzan tribes of Titteri were those of Duair and 'Abid; those of Constantine, the Uled Zenati, Ulid Abd-al-Nour, Uled Derraj, and Hanencha; and those of Oran, the Ghraba and Cheraga. The 'Abids and Duairs of Titteri, for example, furnished 1,200 soldiers, and Uled 'Abd-al-Nour of 114 Constantine furnished 1,000 soldiers. Under such conditions, the tribes had to pay what they had been told to pay, even if they had been told, as had their ancestors once by 'Amr ibn al-'As, to sell their children and women 115 to pay their share of the tribute.

Ill Ibid., p. 113; al-Zahhar, Mudhakkirat, pp. 35-36. ^^^Khawajah, Mirât, p. 114. 113 al-Zahhar, Mudhakkirat, p. 36. ^^^Ministry of War, Tableau de 1838, p. 230; Tableau de 1840, pp. 330, 338. lie; See note 80 of Chapter V. CHAPTER VII

AN OUTLINE OF THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION

Before outlining the Asiatic mode of production (AMP), I would like first to summarize briefly the main theories that have been analyzed in this dissertation, with an emphasis on the five models that have been devel oped for pre-colonial Algeria. Ever since Aristotle, the formations of Oriental societies have been distinguished from those of European societies. Racial and political explanations dominated political theories until the British political economists of the nineteenth century introduced economic elements to explain the Oriental path of development. Starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, Marx, without sufficient information on non-European societies, tried to fit this type of development into his system. At different times and in different works, he gave the genesis of a theory which he called the Asiatic mode of production. Unfortu nately, his death left this theory incomplete. For a variety of reasons, mostly political and practical, the direct successors of Marx and Engels paid little attention

242 243 to this theory. Only in the early 1960s was much atten tion given to the concept of the AMP, both in the Soviet

Union and elsewhere. Beginning in the early 1960s, many African, Asian and pre-Columbian American societies have been studied by Marxists within the framework of the theory of the AMP. One of these societies was that of North Africa. The discussion of the dominant mode of production in this part of Africa was an extension of that discussion which took place in France in the 1960s over pre-capitalist modes of production in general and the AMP in particular. Five models have been developed for pre-colonial North Africa in general and Algeria in particular; archaism, command feudalism, military democracy, tribute- paying, and the AMP. These five models can be divided into two groups. The first includes archaism and command feudalism, developed respectively by Lucette Valensi and Rene Gallissot. The second includes military democracy, tribute-paying, and AMP, developed respectively by Yves Lacoste, Samir Amin, and Abdelkader Djghloul. Valensi and Gallissot emphasized economic and social structures in their analysis. Lacoste, Amin and Djghloul emphasized trade. Trade theorists completely ignored economic and social structures of pre-colonial Algeria. The starting point was trade, namely Saharan trade. Their analysis 244 thus was directed to exchange relations instead of produc tion relations. They emphasized the importance of cities and commercial aristocracy in the development of North African civilization. By doing this, they ignored more than 90 percent of the Maghribi population in their investigations. More important, these writers neglected the production process by which the exchanged surplus product itself came into existence. In short, contrary to

Marx's method, these writers proceeded from exchange relations to relations of production. In Marxism, it is through the relations of production that a comprehensive understanding of all other social relations is possible.

In contrast to the trade theorists, Valensi and Gallissot emphasized socio-economic structures in their studies of pre-colonial North Africa. Unfortunately, they arrived at two contradictory conclusions. Valensi claimed that pre-colonial North African society never witnessed a change, but stagnated in the stage of archaism. Gallissot, on the other hand, claimed that this same society wit nessed a radical change similar to that of European societies and by the time of French colonialism had reached the stage of feudalism. Although both Valensi and Gallissot rightly consid ered socio-economic structure as the starting point to understand pre-colonial North African society, their theories (command feudalism and archaism) are incorrect. 245 The reason for this is that both writers studied the period in which French capitalism began to have enormous effects on pre-colonial structures. Such effects, as is well known, produced a temporarily complex structure. This was transposed and generalized by Gallissot and

Valensi to the whole of the pre-colonial period. In Chapters V and VI, we showed that there existed elements from a primitive-communal mode of production, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, but none of these modes was dominant in pre-colonial Maghrib. We showed that trade, as in all pre-capitalist social formations, existed in North Africa. Its strengths and weaknesses affected only a small fraction of the urban population and a few tribes in the rural areas. Progress in the forces of production had been made; nevertheless, not to a degree which would call for the replacement of existing relations of produc tion. Social classes, state, private property, commodity production, etc. existed, but in a different state from that of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. These types of societies, as we have seen, have been called the societies of transition from primitive-communal to class societies. This notion, however, is incorrect, for it implies that the period in which these societies were found was a transitional period, not a specific stable 246 mode of production. This specific stable mode of produc tion was the AMP, which I will attempt to outline in the remaining pages of this dissertation. The dominant mode of production in pre-colonial Algeria was the Asiatic mode of production. It is so named not because it is restricted to Asiatic social formations, but because it was first detected there. A mode of production, as defined in the first chapter of thi,s dissertation, is a distinct way of carrying on social production in a distinct stage of historical development. A mode of production, thus is comprised of distinct forces and relations of production taken at the moment of their correspondence. If the latter is absent, the stage is called a period of transition. The forces of production are those elements (labor- power and means of production) necessary to produce material use-values. The relations of production are those necessary social relationships between men (slave/ master, lord/serf, etc.) in the process of production. The relationship of each individual to the means of production, organization of labor, and the surplus- product, determines his/her class position. Marxism views everything as being in perpetual motion; each Marxist concept, therefore, should be viewed according to the historical stage attained by the society under investigation. Thus a definition of any concept is 247 not separable from the subject matter. It is directly related to the materials and it emerges out of them. Bearing this in mind, let us start to specify the historical stage attained by the society of pre-colonial Maghrib. North Africa had been for thousands of years a land in which agriculture was the predominant basis of subsistence. The great majority of the inhabitants of this part of Africa lived in villages, forming tribal communities based largely on kinship relations. They had a direct relation with the soil. They cultivated their lands by means which changed but little from those of ten or fifteen thousand years ago. Production within the village was conducted primarily for the satisfaction of the immediate wants of the families in the tribe. Little of this production was directed to the exchange with other communities or levied by the higher community. Commodity production within the village was absent. The urban development and commerce permitted by the centralization and accumulation of the surplus in the hands of the higher community is not an expression of internal commodity production, but only the transformation of the surplus into commodities. Luxury goods in the Asiatic mode of production are produced for those privileged individuals or families of the higher community. Each tribal village was a self-sustaining community. Each village tended to repeat the kind of production found 248 — in other villages, whether they lived alongside each other or preceded/followed each other. Each village had little dependence on other communities or the outside world. I,t had little communication with the sovereign power. Aside from the levy of tribute, the state had little contact with tribal communities and thus little effect upon them. The single effect was that of preventing the development of productive forces; by taking all the surplus from lower communities, the sovereign power deprived the producers of the surplus of incentives for improving the forces of production. All tribal villages and their various members were equal in the submission, or what Marx called general slavery. This type of equality prevented the development of both private property and private slavery within the communities of the AMP. It follows that the labor of these communities had a twofold lack of freedom: the laborers were bound to the soil as a collectivity by custom and tradition, and this same collectivity was not free by virtue of the obligation to provide unpaid surplus to the higher community. In the early stage of the AMP, the tribal community was the basic unit of production and "the first precondi tion of the appropriation of the objective conditions of life." It was but little different from "the natural 249 common body," the primitive tribal community.^ However, when these communities settled down in the plains of Medjerda, Annaba, Constantine, Metidja, etc., and prac ticed agriculture, tribal lands appeared in the history of the AMP. When the tribes settled down on a piece of land, which is at the same time the precondition of their existence and "the great laboratory, the arsenal which 2 provides both the means and material labor," they regard ed it as their property. Neither social classes nor the state existed at this stage. As time passed, the forces of production developed to a relatively higher level, and the number of the community 3 members increased, the individual community searched for additional lands. Due to the level of development of the productive forces, they searched for lands within reason able distance from their location that could be worked by the already existing instruments of production. Thus the individual community was confronted by another community or communities because the very conditions (level of the forces of production, water, fertile land, etc.) that necessitated the settlement of the first community in that

^Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (New York: International Publishers, 1965), p. 68. ^Ibid., p . 69.

^Ibid., p. 92. 250 specific region were also the conditions of the settlement of the second, the third, etc. This confrontation result ed in wars. The latter necessitated the search for arms. The search for arms was, therefore, a step in the develop ment of the forces of production. To be sure, a step not of their preconditions, for the latter were the production within the tribal community and reproduction of its increased members. Therefore, "the great all-embracing task, the great communal labor" was the occupation and/or the protection of the objective conditions of the existence of the tribal 4 community. For one reason or another (such as the number of fighters in one community) one community wins the war. The loser in this war becomes dependent on the winner. Because the objective conditions of the existence of the conquered tribal community are at the same time the objective conditions of the conquering community, the latter assumes the function of protecting these very conditions and thereby protecting the conquered community. In return, the conquered community assumes certain respon sibilities such as the payment of tribute to the higher or the protector community. Thus, although the conquering community is in essence protecting its objective condi tions of existence, it appears — at least in the minds of

^Ibid., p p . 71, 89. 251 both communities — to be only protecting the conquered community, not dominating it. In reality, however, the

conquering community is both a ruling and producing commu nity. It is a ruling community because it appropriates the unpaid surplus labor of the dominated communities, and a producing community because of the necessity of repro ducing its members (for the unpaid surplus obtained from 5 lower communities is not enough to do so.) This is precisely what makes the higher community of the AMP different from the ruling classes of the classical, feudalist, and capitalist modes of production. The one-way line of division separating the ruling

from the ruled classes in other modes of production (slavery, feudalism, and capitalism) has two directions in the AMP: horizontal and vertical divisions.^ Horizontal division exists because (1) communities are differentiated by kinship relations, and (2) even the community which stands vertically higher is still the direct producer. Vertical division exists because there exists unpaid surplus produced by lower communities and appropriated by the higher community. By appropriating the unpaid sur plus, the higher community is the ruling and exploiting

5 Karl Marx, Capital (New York: International Publishers, 1967), Vol. II, pp. 793-794. ^Vertical division is defined here as one community standing above the other; horizontal division as one community standing equal to another. 252 community. To maintain these relations, the higher community is at the same time the state. Its army is the total population of the tribal community. Even the small unpaid surplus obtained from lower communities is "equally" distributed among the members of the higher community (spent on irrigation, trade, etc., or to cover war expenses). Added to this, the higher community in the societies of the AMP is subject to the same limitations of tradition and customary rights as the lower communities. Its members are related by kinship relations. They rise to power, maintain their position, and/or submit to other powers as a collectivity (tribe). These vertical and horizontal divisions of the communities of the AMP inspired Marx to acknowledge the economic functions of the state in these societies and to see that these societies had no history, because for Marx, history is the history of class struggle in which a social class is defined in relations to ownership or non ownership of the means of production. In addition, Marx saw that exploitation was not only taking place but weighed heavily on the lower communities. This is so not because the higher community levied large amounts of unpaid surpluses, but because of the general dependence and equal submission of lower communities. Marx's notions of the economic functions of the state, exploitation, the 253 absence of private property in the Asiatic mode of produc tion, etc., are contradictory only if we misinterpret them, look at them as static, and copy what Marx formu lated for more developed modes of production, particularly the capitalist, and apply it to less developed modes, particularly the Asiatic mode of production. The direct intervention of the higher community in production process cannot be associated with Oriental despotism, nor was the latter the result of the former.

Although irrigation may contribute to the development of despotism, the latter belongs to the superstructure and can be found everywhere. Public works, particularly irrigation, were the results of the direct and necessary intervention of the higher community in production, not a result of oriental despotism. The same is true for societies like those of North Africa. In these societies, the higher community entered directly into trade — particularly international trade — or assumed the func tion of protecting its routes. Here, the AMP was not developed as a result of Saharan trade. On the contrary, the Saharan trade flourished as a result of the structures of the AMP. In short, the intervention of the higher community in irrigation and trade was necessitated by the very existence of the members of the higher community and their reproduction. The higher community not only inter vened in public works and trade, but also used wars and 254 conquests as a source of revenues. It follows that the

higher communities that entered directly into irrigation were in most societies (China, India) victims of foreign domination, while the communities that entered into trade (Arabs) or into neither (Mogul tribes, Germanic tribes) were more likely the conquerors, for both trade and conquests require expansion. However, this cannot be interpreted to mean that the whole economy of the AMP societies was dominated by either irrigation or trade. To be sure, these two activities were performed by the higher community whose members were but a small portion of the whole society. In fact, as we have seen, in North Africa only a few tribes participated in trade, and in the Far East only about 5 percent of the cultivated land was 7 irrigated during Mogul rule. Not all tribal communities, however, submit to higher communities. Those who do not submit migrate to other regions. In the new regions, the communities will face different geographical, climatic, and physical circumstanc es. These new conditions, especially of unvivified land, have two effects on these communities: (1) such condi tions will force the communities to work longer hours and/or find different ways of life (going back to nomadic life or adapting themselves to it; (2) a need exists to

7 Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974), p. 518. 255 create from that environment new instruments that new conditions require for production. In other words, in the plains all that was necessary for a community to acquire land was natural settlement or occupation by force. In the new environment, especially in the mountain regions, it does not only require a settlement, but also labor and instruments of labor that change the conditions of land from wild and uncultivatable to suitable for cultivation. Such labor necessarily develops the forces of production and emphasizes the individual's or the family's labor. The latter appeared to foreign observers as a reflection of private property in land. It was reported from pre- colonial Algeria as the mulk property, and to Marx from India as private property. Nevertheless, neither the mulk of Kabylia and the Aures mountains nor the type of proper ty in India's broken-hill country of Kirishma can be defined as private property. In his excerpts from Kovalevsky, Marx emphasized that "if private property is also known among the Kabyles, it is only an exception. It appears everywhere among them as the product of gradual process of dissolution of the clan, community and family

O property." At best, both North African mulk and the "private" property of India can be defined as tribal

O Lawrence Krader, The Asiatic Mode of Production (Assen; Van Gorcum and Co., 1975), p. 403. 256 property in which individual family, rather than a tribe, was emphasized.

Sooner or later, the same conditions which lead to the development of productive forces will become an obstacle to further development. This is because the amount of land that can be vivified is limited, and its nature cannot allow production to increase beyond a certain degree. At a certain stage of their development, the population of these tribes will increase to a number that cannot be supported from only the product of these lands. The tribe searches for additional lands and revenues. In their search they are confronted by other tribes, especially those of the plain regions. Examples are numerous; here we only mention the Mogul tribes, the German tribes, the tribes of the Moroccan Atlas who founded the Almohad empire, and the Kutama tribe who led the establishment of the Fatimid Dynasty. These types of movement were noticed by Montesquieu, Hegel, Plekhanov, and Semenov. Montesquieu spoke only of the first (north-south) migration. Hegel, Plekhanov and Semenov spoke only of the second (east-west) migration. Montesquieu and Marx noted that the conquering tribes have conquered themselves by the civilization of conquered nations. Hegel, Plekhanov, and Semenov declared that history moves from east to west. Set apart from each writer's interpretation and from geographical directions. 257 both views, according to the theory of the AMP, are correct. Montesquieu's and Marx's views are correct because the dominant relations of production of the conquering powers are the same as those of conquered nations. Hegel's, Plekhanov's, and Semenov's views are correct because the new environment leads to the develop ment of the forces of production and stresses the individ ual's labor. In the long run, the latter leads to the development of private property. By the development of

private property, a transition to what Marx called "secon dary formations" is possible. Now it is clear why Arabs and Turks succeeded in North Africa and why the Romans, Byzantines, and Vandals failed to do so. Due to the degree of development of the productive forces in the societies of the AMP, old structures and external influences must play a significant role in shaping the history of these societies. In other words, the low degree of the level of development of the produc tion forces not only promotes such structures, but also cannot resist external influences or divorce itself from the old structures. This is why Marx gave a determinant role to custom and tradition in primitive and undeveloped societies.^ This lack of resistance to external influenc es and inability to overthrow the old structures are at

^Marx, Capital 111:793. 258 the same time features that characterize the AMP and contribute to the difficulty of detecting, defining, and locating this mode. In fact, the little or no attention paid to these features by those who studied pre-colonial

Algeria resulted in conflicting conclusions. The best examples are Gallissot's feudalism, Valensi's archaism, and Lacoste's military democracy. Such unawareness not only resulted in conflicting conclusions on pre-colonial societies, but also complicated the understanding of these

same societies after their independence.^^ The questions of social classes, the state, and the effects of capital ism and non-capitalism on post-colonial societies can only be answered if we understand their past. On the other hand, it is by reference to the communi ties of the AMP that we understand the ancient, German, Slav, etc. communities; not, as did Gallissot, under standing the former by reference to the latter. It is simply Marx's method by which he understood capitalism. Probably his focus on pre-capitalist societies in the last years of his life was intended to answer certain questions which neither he nor Engels fully studied. The publica tion of The Origin of the Family by Engels shortly after Marx's death indicates that Marx probably was interested

It is probably time to abandon the expressions "Third World," "underdeveloped," and "developing" nations and use the phrase "undeveloped societies" in the sense explained above by a lack of resistance and weakness. 259 mainly in the historical development of classes and the state, a project of his early scholarly years which he never wrote, and chapters of Capital of which he wrote only a few lines. Thus, only by understanding the lack of resistance to external influences, the inability to overthrow the old structures, and the internal development of the AMP do we understand the later stages of this mode and its relations to slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. Compared to its early stages, the later stages of the AMP are more com plex. They combined both old and new structures. The old structure can be tested by the dominance of non-private property in land and structures. The new structures can be tested by the development of private property, commodi ty production, and the separation of the higher community from the direct production process. Private property and commodity production were developed partly because of the internal development of the AMP and partly because of their introduction from the outside. In North Africa, mulk property was the result of internal development and the introduction of private property by the Romans. The development of commodity production was a result of both the interaction between communities and the increased exchange with the societies whose dominant mode of produc tion combined private property with commodity production. 260 Although the tribal community at this stage continues its capacity for self-sustaining production, it becomes a subjected part of the state and engages in exchange relations with other communities. Once commodity relation is introduced in the external relations of the community, it is then introduced into its internal relations as well. However, in the AMP, just as in the classical mode of production, commodity production plays a subordinate role in production. Only under the effects of external forces of trade, colonial domination, and internal development of the AMP can such development lead to the decline of old structures of the tribal community. This is felt signifi cantly only under the influence of capitalism, whose main

principle is to free the producer from direct bondage to the soil and separate him from the means of production. Thus, by the time capitalism arrived in the societies of the AMP, the last major transformation in the AMP was incomplete — the movement from commodity exchange (mainly exchange of the surplus) to commodity production. The weak development of commodity production is related to the

self-sustaining strength of the tribal communities. In other words, the very strength of the self-sustaining community is a condition of the weakness or the slow development of commodity production in particular and the

AMP as a whole. 261 Such transformation necessarily affected other levels in the societies of the AMP. War chiefs, religious leaders, astrologists, etc. became a group that separated itself from both direct production and other producing groups. They became kings and amirs. The army, once the total population of the higher community, became a separ ate tribal community (makhzan tribes). Religion, once used to legitimate the expansion of the Arabs, became an instrument to protect the interests of the amirs, whether these were local interests (kharaj and zakat) or interests derived from regional and international trade (protection of trade routes from Christians).

Asiatic and Other Modes of Production

Generally speaking, there existed two fundamentally different modes of production in history: communal and capitalist. To each of these modes corresponds a clearly defined type of property: communal property or individual private property. In the communal mode, everything related to production belongs to all. In the capitalist mode, nothing belongs to all. The passage from the communal mode of production to the capitalist mode is through different stages of development: Asiatic, classi cal, and feudal modes of production. These three modes can be designated as pre-capitalist exploitative modes. However, this does not mean that pre-capitalist exploita tive modes do not differ from one another, nor does it 262 mean that the ultimate mode is the capitalist. In addi tion, this should not be interpreted as a unilinear development. The modes are arranged here simply in accordance with their chronological occurrence, not in the sense given to them by unilinear theory. The designation of each of the pre-capitalist exploi tative modes by a specific name reflects, as we will see, a more profound difference, than the differences between the adjectives Asiatic, classical, and feudal. On the other hand, the designation of the Asiatic, classical, feudalist, and capitalist as exploitative modes of produc tion underlies the fact that the capitalist mode is neither natural nor the end of the the journey of history, but rather a phase to the well organized unexploitative mode, the communist mode. Keeping this in mind, let us try to specify each stage of the historical development of human society. Although there are countless similar and dissimilar elements between different modes of production, I will only summarize what I believe are the decisive elements. The following table shows the relationship of the producer to the means of production, organization of production, appropriation of the surplus, and the form of his labor. 263 TABLE 1 THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE PRODUCER TO THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION, APPROPRIATION OF THE SURPLUS, ORGANIZATION OF LABOR, AND THE FORM OF LABOR

Control of the Means of Production Control Over Producer's ------Organization Appro- Form of Labor Instru- of Production pria------Objects ments ------tion Formal Mode of of of Full Partial of the Free Unfree Free Production Labor Labor Control Control Surplus Labor Labor Labor

Communal + + + + +

Asiatic + + + +

Slavery - - — — - +

Feudalism - + + - +

Capitalism - - -- +

The above table shows that : 1. If the producer controls the means of production, has full control over production organization, and appro priates the surplus, and his labor is free, the historical stage is called the communal (or communist) mode of production 2. If the producer controls the means of production and has full control over production organization, but does not appropriate the surplus, and his labor is not free, the stage is called the Asiatic mode of production 264 3. If the producer does not control the means of production and neither organizes production nor appropri ates the surplus, and his labor is not free, the stage is called slavery 4. If the producer controls the instruments of production and has partial control over production organi zation, but neither owns the objects of labor nor appro priates the surplus, and his labor is not free, the stage is called feudalism

5. Finally, if the producer is deprived of all but his labor, the stage is called capitalism Leaving aside the communist mode of production, the table shows that only under capitalism is the producer completely separated from the means of production; he is formally free. Under pre-capitalist exploitative modes of production, the producer is not free, because he is still bound to the soil as well as to the exploiting class. This, however, does not mean that pre-capitalist exploita tive modes are similar in all aspects. Although labor is not free in all of them and although this bondage necessi tates extra-economic measures for the extortion of sur plus, under the slave mode of production the exploiting class does so by virtue of its owning both lands and men; under feudalism it does so only as owner of the land; and under the Asiatic mode of production it does so only because it is the higher community. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abun-Nasr, M. Jamil. A History of the Maghrib. London: Cambridge University Press, 1972. Ageron, Charles-Robert. Les Algériens musulmans et la France 1871-1919). Two vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968. Ahmad'Ali, Fuad Ibrahim. al-Mawarid al-Maliyah fi al- Islam. Cairo: Dar al-Nashr, 1972. Albertini, Eugene, et al. L'Afrique du nord française dans l'Histoire. Paris/Lyon; Editions Archat, 1937.

Althusser, Louis, and Balibar, Etienne. Reading Capital. Translated by Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 1970. Amin, Samir. Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism. Translated by Brian Pearce. London/New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976 . Anderson, Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: New Left Books, 1974. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: New Left Books, 1974. Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1921. Asad, Talal, and Wolpe, Harold. "Concepts of Modes of Production." Economy and Society 5 (November 1976): 470-506. Aumert, M.M. "La propriété urbane a Alger." Revue Africaine 41 (1897). Algiers: Adolphe Jourdon, 1897. Reprint edition. Nessdelss/Linchtenstein: Kraus- Thomson, Ltd., 1971, pp. 321-330. al-Azmeh, Aziz. Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in Re-interpreta tion. London: Frank Cass and Company, Ltd., 1982.

265 266 al-Bakri, 'Abu ^Ubayd (d. 1094). Kitab *al-Maghrib fi dhikri bilad Ifriqiya wa-al-Maghrib. Arabie and French texts in one volume. Translated by McGuckin de Slane. Paris: Librairie d 'Amérique et d'Orient, 1965. Barm, H. Samuel. "Marx's Grundrisse and the Asiatic Mode of Production." Survey 21 (Winter-Spring 1975): 128-147. ______. Plekhanov, the Father of Russian Marxism. California: Stanford University Press, 1963. Bat'sieva, M. Mikhailovan. al-'Umram al-bashari fi muqaddimat Ibn Khaldun. Translated from the Russian by Radhwan Ibrahim. Tunis: Presses de la Société Tunisienne des Arts Graphiques, 1978. Berque, Jacques. Structures sociales du haut atlas. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955. Maqhreb histoire et sociétés. Alger: SNED, 1974. Bernier, Francois. Travels in the Mogul Empire AD 1656- 1668. Translated by Irving Brock. New Delhi: S. Chaud, 1968. Bettelheim, Charles. The Transition to Socialist Economy. Translated by Brian Pearce. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1976. Bettelheim, Charles and Sweezy, Paul. On the Transition to Socialism. London/New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971. Block, Maurice. Marxism and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1983. Bodin, Jean. Six Books of the Commonwealth. Translated by M.J. Tooley. Oxford: Basil Blackwell and Mott, Ltd., 1967. Boiteau, Pierre. "Les droits sur la terre dans la société Malgache précoloniale (contribution a l'étude du 'Mode de production asiatique')." La Pensée 117 (September-October 1964): 43-69. Bontems, Claude. Manuel des institutions Algériennes; de la domination turque a 1 'independence. Two vols. Paris: Editions Cujas, 1976. 267 Boukra, Liess. "Controversial Problems in the Theory of Pre-Capitalist Societies and the Concrete Study of Pre-Colonial Algeria." M.A. Thesis, The American University, Washington, D.C., 1978.

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Algerians. Translated by Alan C.M. Ross. Boston: Beacon Press, 1962. "La revolution dite 'des Aghas ' dans la régence d'Alger (1659-1671)."^ Revue de l'occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée 13-14 (1st Semester 1973): 159-170.

Bradford, Ernie. The Sultan's Admiral: The Life of Barbarossa. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1968. Braudel, Fernand. La méditerranée et le monde méditer- ranian a l'époque de Philippe II. Two vols. Paris: A. Colin, 1966. Brett, Michael. "Ifriqiya as a Market for Saharan Trade from the Twelfth to the Thirteenth Century A.D." Journal of African History 10 (No. 3, 1969): 347-364. Briggs, Cabot. Tribes of the Sahara. Harvard University Press, 1960. Burke, Edmund. "Rural Resistance and Popular Protest in Morocco: A Study of the Rural Rebellion of 1911." Revue de l'Occident Musulman et de la Mediterranee 13-14 (1st Semester 1973): 193-206. Camps, Gabriel. Berbers aux marges de l'histoire. Paris: Editions des hesperides, 1980. Centre d'Estudes et de Recherches Marxistes (CERM). Sur le féodalisme. Paris: Editions sociales, 1971. Sur le mode de production asiatique. Paris: Editions sociales, 1968. Charles-Picard, Gilbert. Carthage. Translated by Miriam and Lionel Kocham. New York: Frederick Unger Pub lishing Co., 1965. Charles-Picard, Gilbert, and Charles-Picard, Colette. The Life and Death of Carthage: A Survey of Panic History and Culture from its Birth to Final Tragedy. Trans lated by Dominique Collon. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1968. 268 ______. Daily Life in Carthage at the Time of Hanni bal .__ Translated by A.E. Foster. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1961. Chesneau, Jean. "Le mode de production asiatique: Quel ques perspectives de recherches." La Pensée 114 (March-April 1964): 33-55. "Ou en est la discussion sur le mode de production asiatique?" La Pensee 122 (July-Auqust 1965) : 40-57 . Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. "Recherches sur le mode de production africain." La Pensee 114 (March-April 1964) : 61-78.

Courtois, Christian. Les vandales et l'Afrique. Germany: Scientia Verlag Allen, 1964. Danilova, L.V. "Controversial Problems of the Theory of Pre-Capitalist Societies." Soviet Anthropolgy and Archeology 9 (Spring 1971): 269-328. Danzier, Raphael. Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians: Resis tance to French and Internal Consolidation. New York/London: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1977. Desonges, Jean. Catalogue des tribus africaines de l'antiquité classique a' l'ouest du nile. Dakar (no publisher), 1962. Diehl, Charles. L'afrique byzantine. Histoire de la domination byzantine en afrique. Two vols. New York: Burt Franklin, 1959. Djait, Hichem. "L'afrique arabe au VII® sciecle (86-184 H./705-800).” Annales Economies Sociétés Civilisa tions 28 (May-June 1973): 610-615. Djeghloul, Abdelkader. "La formation sociale algérienne a la veille de la colonisation." La Pensee 185 (January-February 1976): 61-81. ______. Muqaddimat fi tarikh al-Maghrib al-'Arabi al-qadim wa-al-wasit. Translated by Fadilah al- hakam. Beirut: Dar-al-Hadrathali, 1982. ______. al-Ishkaliyat at-tarikhiyah fi ^ilm al- '"igtima'assiyassi ''inda Ibn Khaldun. Beirut: Dar-al-Hadathah, 1981. 269 Durliant, Jean. "Grands propriétaires africains (533- 709)." Cahiers de Tunisie 29 (3-4th trimesters 1981): 517-531. Elsenhans, Hartmut. "Capitalisme d'état ou société bureaucratique de développement." Etudes Interna tionales 13 (March 1982): 3-21. Engels, Friedrich. Anti-Dühring. Moscow: Foreign Lan guages Publishing House, 1962. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. New York: Pathfinder Press, 19 72. Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. The Sanusi of Gyrenaica. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1949. Farishta, G. de Zayas. The Law and Philosophy of Zakat. 3 vols. Syria: al-Jadidah Press, 1960. Fattal, Antoine. Le statut des non-musulmans en payé de 1'Islam. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1958. Federmann, Henri and Aucapitaine, Ben. "Notice sur l'histoire et l'administration au beylik de Titeri." Revue Africaine 11 (1867). Algiers: Adolphe Jourdon, 1867. Reprint edition. Nessdelss/Linchtenstein: Kraus-Thomson, Ltd. 1968, pp. 113-129; 212-219; 289-301; 357-371. Fisher, Godfrey. Barbary Legend, War, Trade and Piracy in North Africa, 1415-1830. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1959. France, Ministère de la guerre. Statistiques et documents relatifs au Senatus-Consulte sur la propriété arabe. Paris: Impreimerie Impériale, 1863.

______. Tableau de la situation des établissements français dans l'Algérie. 13 vols. Paris : Imprimerie Royale, 1839-1864. ______Tableau de la situation des établissements français dans l'Algérie 1843-1844. Paris : Imprimerie Royale, 1845. Tableau de la situation des établissements français dans 1 'Algérie en 1840. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1841. 270

Friedman, G. Ellen. Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Gaid, Mouloud. L'Algérie sous les turcs. Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de l'Edition, 1974. Gallissot, Rene. "Pre-Colonial Algeria: Social Classes in a Pre-Capitalist System, the Problem of the Feudal Mode of Production." Economy and Society 4 (November 1975) : 418-445. Gallissot, René and Valensi, Lucette. "Le Maghreb pré colonial : mode de production archaique ou mode de production féodal?" La Pensee 142 (November-December 1968): 57-93. Gautier, Emile Felix. L'islamisation de l'Afrique du Nord. Les sciécles obscrus du Maghreb. Paris; Payot, 1927. Gellner, Ernest. "Tribalism and Social Change in North Africa." In French Speaking Africa: The Search for Identity, pp. 107-118. Edited by William H. Lewis. New York: Walker and Co., 1975. Gellner, Ernest and Micaud, Charles, eds. Arabs and Berbers from Tribe to Nation in North Africa. London/Toronto: Lexington Books, 1972. Godelier, Maurice. Perspectives in Marxist Anthropolgy. Translated by Robert Brian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. ______. Rationality and Irrationality in Economics. Translated by Robert Brian. London: New Left Books, 1972. Godin, Frederic. "Le regime foncier de l'Algérie." In L'oeuvre législative de la France en Algérie, pp. 203-411. Edited by Louis Millot and others. Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1930. de Haedo, F. Diego (1612). "Histoire des rois d'Alger." Revue Africaine 24 (1880). Algiers: Adolphe Jourdon, 1880. Reprint edition. Nessdelss/Linchtenstein: Kraus-Thomson, Ltd., 1968, pp. 37-69, 116-132, 215-239, 261-290, 344-372, 401-432. 271 ______. "Topographie et histoire générale d'Alger." Revue Africaine 24 (1880). Algiers: Adolphe Jourdon, 1870. Reprint edition. Nessdelss/Linchtenstein: Kraus-Thomson, Ltd., 1968, pp. 490-519. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lectures on the Philoso phy of World History. Translated by H.B. Nisbet. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Henderson, 0. William. The Life of Frederick Engels. 2 vols. London: Frank Cass and Co., 1976. Hilton, Rodney et al., eds. The Transition from Feudal ism. London: New Left Books, 1976. Hindess, Barry, and Hirst, Paul. Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. London; Routledge and Kigan Paul, 1975. Hindess, Barry, et al. Marx's "Capital" and Capitalism Today. London; Routledge and Kigan Paul, 1977. Hirst, Paul. "The Uniqueness of the West." Economy and Society 4 (November 1975): 446-475. Hopkins, J.F.P. Medieval Muslim Government in Barbary Until the Sixth Century of the Hijra. London: Luzac and Co., Ltd. 1958. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (d. 871 or 872 A.D.). Futuh 'ifriqiya wa-al-' andalus. Edited by ‘•Abdu al-Allah Ânis. Beirut: Dar-al-kitab al-lubnani, 1964. Ibn Hawqal, Âbu al-quasim al-Nasiri (10th century). Kitab surat al-ârd. Edited by J.H. Kramers. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1938. Ibn Khaldun, '■Abderrahmane. The Muqaddimah. 3 vols. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1958. ______. Tarikh al-**allamah Ibn Khaldun. 7 vols. Beirut: Dar-al-Kitab al-lubnani, 1956-1959. Histoire des Berberes. 4 vols. Translated by le Baron de Slane. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste, 1969 . Ibn al-Zubayr, al-Qadi al-Rash'id. Kitab al-dakha'ir wa-al-tuhaf. Kuwait: Daîrat al-matbu*-at wa-al- nashr, 1959. 272 Idris, Hady Roger. La Berbèrie orientale sous les zirides, X-XIII® sciëcles. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie d'Amérique et d 'Orient, 1962. al-Idrisi, *Abu ‘•Abd-Allah Muhammad (d. 1166). Descrip tion de l'afrique et de l'éspagne. (Arabie and French texts). Edited by Reinhart P.A. Dazy and Micahel J. de Geje. Amsterdam: Orientale Presses, 1969 . Jones, Richard. An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation. New York: August M. Kelley, Bookseller, 1964.

______. Political Economy. London: John Murry, 1859. Jouhaud, Edmond. Histoire de l'afrique du nord. Paris: Editions de Deux Coqs d'or, 1968. Julien, Charles-Andre. Histoire de l'afrique du nord: Tunisie-Algérie-Maroc. Vol. 1; Histoire de l'afrique du nord: Tunisie-Algérie-maroc, des oriqines a*~ la conquête Arabe 647 AP.J.-C. Paris: Payot, 1968. Vol. 2: History of North Africa: Tunisia-Alqeria-Morocco. From the Arab Conquest to 1830. Translated by John Petrie. New York/ Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1970. Khawajah, Hamdan. Mir**at, lamhatun tarikhiyah wa-ihsa**iyah *-ala 'ayalati *al-~jazayr. Beirut: Maktabat al-hayat, 1972. Kitab al-istibsar fi ^ajib al-^amsar (12th century). Edited by Saad Zaghloul. Alexandria (no publisher): 1958. Krader, Lawrence. The Asiatic Mode of Production. Assen: Van Gorcum and Co., 1975. The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx. Assen: Van Gorcum and Co., 1972. Lacoste, Yves. Ibn Khaldoun: naissance de l'histoire passe'du tiers-monde. Paris: François Maspéro, 1969. "General Characteristics and Fundamental Structure of Mediaeval North Africa." Economy and Society 3 (February 1974): 1-17. Lane-Poole, Stanley. The Story of Barbary Corsairs. New York/London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1890. 273 Laroui, Abdellah. The History of the Maghrib; An Inter pretive Essay. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Lenin, I. Vladimir. Collected Works. 50 vols. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960-1972. Levy, Reuben. The Social Structure of Islam. London: Cambridge University Press, 1957. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Translated and edited by Mark Musa. New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1964.

MacKendrick, Paul. The North African Stones Speak. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Mahdi, Muhsin. Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophic Foundation of the Science of Culture. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1957. al-Marrakushi, Ibn ‘•Idari. Kitab al-bayan al-maqhribi fi akhbar al-maqhrib wa-al-andalus. 2 vols. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1948 (Vol. 1) and 1951 (Vol. 2) . Marx, Karl. The Poverty of Philosophy. New York: Inter national Publishers, 1963. ______. Capital, a Critique of Political Economy. 3 vols. Edited by Frederick Engels. Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling from the 3rd German edition. New York: International Publishers, 1967. ______. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Translated by S.W. Ryazanskaya. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970. ______. The Grundrisse. Edited and translated by David MacLellan. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971. Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization. Edited by Shlomo Avineri. New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1968. Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations. Translated by Jack Cohen. New York: International Publishers, 1965. Marx/Engels Collected Works. Vols. 1-14, 16-19, 38-40. New York: International Publishers, 1975-1984. 274

Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick. "The German Ideology." In Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society. Translated, and edited by Lloyd D. Easton and Kent H. Guddut. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1967. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels on Colonial ism. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960 . Meillassoux, Claude. Anthropologie économique des Gouro de Cote d'Ivoire: de l'économie d 'autosubsistance a*~ l'agriculture commerciale. Paris: Mouton, 1964. "From Reproduction to Production." Economy and Society 1 (February 1972) : 93-105. "The Social Organization of the Peasantry: The Economic Basis of Kinship." In Relations of Production, Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthropology, pp. 159-169. Edited by David Seddon. London: Prank Cass and Co., 1978.

Mill, James. The History of British India. 6 vols. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1968. The History of British India. Abridged and introduced by William Thomas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Montagne, Robert. The Berbers, Their Social and Political Organization. Translated by David Seddon. London: Frank Cass and Co., 1973. ______. Les Berberes et le makhzan dans le sud du Maroc: essai sur la transformation politique des Berbères sédentaires (group Chleuh). Paris: Felix Alcan, 1930. Montesquieu, Charles de Secondât de Baron. The Spirit of Laws. 2 vols. Translated by Thomas Nugent. New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1949. Norris, H.T. The Berbers in Arabic Literature. London/ New York: Librairie du Liban, 1982.

Noushi, Andre. Enquête sur le niveau de vie des popula tions rurales constantinoises de la conquête jusqu'en 1919: essai d'histoire économique et sociale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961. 275 al-Nu^aym, '•Abd al-‘•Aziz al-'•Ali. Nidam al-dara'ib fi al-Islam. Beirut: Abu al-hafiz al-Bassat, 1975. de Paradis, Venture. "Le royaume d'Alger au XVIII® sciecle." Revue Africaine 39 (1895). Reprint edition, Nessdelss/Linchtenstein: Kraus-Thomson, Ltd., 1968, pp. 265-314.

"Le royaume d'Alger au XVIII® sciecle." Revue Africaine 40 (1896) . Reprint edition, Nessdelss/ Linchtenstein: Kraus-Thomson, Ltd., 1968, pp. 33-78. "Le royaume d'Alger au XVIII® sciecle." Revue Africaine 41 (1897) . Reprint edition, Nessdelss/ Linchtenstein: Kraus-Thomson, Ltd., 1971, pp. 68-118. Parain, Charles. "Le mode de production asiatique: une étape nouvelle dans une discussion fondamentale." La Pensée 114 (March-April 1964): 3-6. ______. "Protohistoire méditerranienne et mode de production asiatique." La Pensée 127 (May-June 1966) : 24-43. Pellissier de Reynaud, H.J.P. Edmond. Annales Algéri ennes . 3 vols. Paris: Anselin et Gautier-Laguiosie, 1836-39. Pigulevskaia, N.V. "The Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production." Soviet Studies in History 4 (Spring 1966): 31-37. Plekhanov, Georgi Valentinovich. "Civilization and the Great Historical Rivers." In The Asiatic Mode of Production, Science and Politics, pp. 58-70. Edited by Anne M. Bailey and Josep R. Uobera. London/ Boston/Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. The Development of the Monist View of His tory. Translated by Andrew Rothstein. New York: International Publishers, 1972. Essays in the History of Marxism. Translated by Ralph Fox. New York: Howard Ferting, 1967. Fundamental Problems of Marxism. New York: International Publishers, 1969. Selected Philosophical Works. 5 vols. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1974- 1981. 276 al-Quaradawi, Yusuf. Fiqh al-zakat. 2 vols. Beirut: Muâssat -’arrisalah, 1977. Rinn, Louis. "Le royaume d'Alger sous le dernier dey." Revue Africaine 41 (1897) . Reprint edition: Nessdelss/Linchenstein: Kraus-Thomson, Ltd., 1971, pp. 331-350. Rostovtzeff, Mikhail Ivanovich. The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1941. Ruedy, John. Land Policy in Colonial Algeria: The Origins of the Rural Public Domain. California: University of California Press, 1967. Salim, al-Sayyid '■Abd al-*-Aziz. Tarikh al-Maqhrib fi al-âsr al-Islami. Alexandria: Muâssasat shabab al-jami*ah, 1982. Sawer, Marian. Marxism and the Question of the Asiatic Mode of Production. The Hauge: Martinus Nijheff, 1977. Semenov, Yuri. "The Theory of Socio-Economic Formations and World History." In Soviet and Western Anthro pology, pp. 29-58. Edited by Ernest Gellner. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Shaban, Mohamad Abdu al-Hay. Islamic History, A New Interpretation. London: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Shaler, William. Sketches of Algiers. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, and Co., 1826. Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. New York: Random House, 1937. Sourde1, Dominique. Medieval Islam. Translated by J. Montgomery Watt. London/Boston : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. Spencer, William. Algiers in the Age of the Corsairs. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976.

Stalin, Joseph. The Essential Stalin, Major Theoretical Writings, 1905-52. Edited by Bruce Franklin. New York: Anchor Books, 1978. 277

Struve, V.V. "The Concept of the 'Asian Mode of Produc tion'." Soviet Anthropology and Archeology 4 (Fall 1965): 41-46. Talegani, Seyyed Mahmood. Islam and Ownership. Trans lated by A. Jabbari and F. Rajae. Lexington, Ken tucky: Masada Publishers, 1983. Taylor, G. John. From Modernization to Modes of Produc tion; A Critique of the Sociologies of Development and Underdevelopment. London: The MacMillan Press, 1979? Temimi, Abdeljelil. Le beylik de constantine et Had] Ahmed Bey (1830-1837) . Tunis: Presses de la société Tunisienne des arts graphiques, 1978. ______. Sommaire des registres Arabes et Turcs d'Alger. Tunis: Presses Tunisienne des arts graph iques, 1979. Terray, Emmanuel. Marxism and "Primitive" Societies: Two Studies. Translated by Mary Klopper. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. Tfikei, Ferenc. "The Asiatic Mode of Production." In The Asiatic Mode of Production, Science and Politics, pp. 264-277. Edited by Anne M. Bailey and Joseph Llobera. London/Boston/Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. "Le mode de production asiatique dans 1'oeuvre de K. Marx et F. Engels." La Pensee 114 (March-April 1964): 7-32. "On the Historical Basis of the Problems of Development of the 'Third World'." Journal of Contemporary Asia 13 (No. 3, 1983): 314-323. "Some Contentious Issues in the Interpreta tion of the Asiatic Mode of Production." Journal of Contemporary Asia 12 (No. 3, 1982): 294-303. Sur le mode de production asiatique. Buda pest: Akademiai Kiado, 1966. le Tourneau, Roger. The Almohad Movement in North Africa in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969. 278 Toynbee, Arnold. "Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism." In The Asiatic Mode of Production, Science and Politics, pp. 164-167. Edited by Anne M. Bailey and Joseph R. Llobera. London/Boston/Henley; Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Ur-Rahman, Afzal. Economic Doctrines of Islam. 3 vols. Pakistan: Islamic Publications Ltd., 1976. Vaissiere, Captain. Les Oulèd Rechaich. Algiers (no publisher): 1863. Valensi, Lucette. On the Eve of Colonialism: North Africa Before the French Conquest. Translated by Kenneth J. Perkins. New York: African Publishing Co., 1977. Varga, Eugene. Politico-Economic Problems of Capitalism. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968. Vasil'ev, L.S., and Stuchevskii, I.A. "Three Models for the Origin and Evolution of Pre-Capitalist Socie ties." The Soviet Review 8 (Fall 1967): 26-39. Vaysettes, E. "Histoire des derniers beys de Constan tine." Revue Africaine 3 (1858-59). Reprint edi tion: Nessdeless/Linchenstein: Kraus-Thomson, Ltd., 1968, pp. 107-128, 193-198, 259-270. Venturi, Franco. "Oriental Despotism." Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (January-March 1963): 133-42. Vinogradov, Amal Rassam. The Ait Ndhir of Morocco: A Study of the Social Transformation of a Berber Tribe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974. Warmington, B. Herbert. Carthage. London: Robert Hale and Company, 1969. ______. The North African Provinces from Diocletian to the Vandal Conquest. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Wittfogel, Karl. Oriental Despotism, A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957. "Reply to Arnold Toynbee." In The Asiatic Mode of Production, Science and Politics, pp. 168-72. Edited by Anne M. Bailey and Joseph R. Llobera. London/Boston/Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 279 ______. "Results and Problems of the Study of Orien tal Despotism." The Journal of Asian Studies 28 (November-August): 357-365. Wolf, B. John. The Barbary Coast: Algiers Under the Turks, 1500-1830. London/New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1979. Ya'qub, •'Abu Yusuf (d. 798) . al-Kharaj. Edited by Muhamad Ibrahim. Cairo: Dar al-Nashr, 1983. al-Ya'qubi, Ibn **Abi -'Ahmad Ya'qub (d. 897). Kitab al-buldan. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960. Young, David. "Montesquieu's View of Despotism and His Use of Travel Literature." Review of Politics 40 (July 1978): 392-405. al-Zahhar, Ahmad. Mudakkirat al-gaj Ahmad al-Sharif al-Zahhar. Edited by Tawfiq al-Madani. Algiers: SNED, 1980.