Social and Economic Systems Preceding Capitalism
2. Social and Economic Systems Preceding Capitalism
Production Relations in the Primitive. Slave, and Feudal Societies 1
The primitive, slave, and feudal societies are the three societal systems which preceded capitalism. To comprehend the replacement and substitution of the production relations in these societies helps us to understand the historical process of the development of production relations in human society. It is especially significant for the understanding of the origin and development of capitalist production relations and the historical law governing their inevitable replacement by socialist production relations.
The Primitive Commune Established the Earliest Production Relations in Human History
Labor Created Man
The primitive society started from the separation of man from the animal world. Human societies appeared simultaneously with the emergence of man. With man, the first chapter of human history began.
The history of human society is about a million years long. Man’s ancestors were a kind of highly developed ape-man. How did the ape-man develop into man? The key lies in labor. Labor began with the making of tools. In the process from ape-man to man, natural objects were transformed into suitable tools. It may only have been the striking of one stone against another to make stone knives and axes or the shaping of branches into crude tools, but a great revolution appeared. Man separated himself from the animal world and could rely on his own hands to make tools for the transformation and conquest of Nature. Just as Engels said: Labor “is the first basic condition for human life. This is true to the extent that we must, in a certain sense, admit that labor created man himself.” 2 In the long process of labor, man learned how to make stone tools, hunt, and fish. He invented bows and arrows. Especially important was the discovery and use of fire. This greatly increased man’s power to conquer and transform Nature. Engels highly valued this achievement. He said: “As far as worldwide liberation is concerned, the discovery of making fire through friction surpasses the importance of the invention of the steam engine”. “Because the discovery of making fire through friction enabled man to control a natural force, he was thus separated from the animal world.” 3 From that time on, human society made its formal appearance on this earth.
Production activities conducted after man’s separation from the animal world were from the start a kind of social and group activity. “Every individual cooperated with other members of the society to form production relations to engage in production activities for the material needs of human life.” 4 When the curtains of human social history were raised, the production relations were those of the primitive commune, and they were the first production relations in human history.
Clan Commune Ownership Was the Basis of the Primitive Commune Production Relations
The primary social and economic organization of the primitive society was the clan commune united on the basis of kinship for the purpose of labor. Clan commune ownership was a primitive form of collective ownership. Land and other means of production were owned by all the members of the commune. At that time, because of the crude stone knives, axes, spears, bows, and arrows used, only by collective labor could the great natural forces be conquered. Therefore, individual ownership of means of production and products was not possible. This clan commune ownership system was the only form adopted under the low level of productive forces. Means of production collectively owned by the clan commune included production tools, land, forests, rivers, and livestock. Weapons, bows, and arrows were carried and used by individuals.
In the primitive society, all able-bodied members participated in productive labor. They employed a natural division of labor based on sex and age. Men went out to hunt, old men made tools, and women harvested plants, managed household chores, and engaged in primitive agriculture. Children helped women do auxiliary labor. Interpersonal relations were primitive cooperative relations.
Under the conditions of clan commune ownership and collective labor, products were shared equally. Because of the low level of productive forces at that time, products obtained through labor were only sufficient to maintain a minimum level of subsistence with little left over. If distribution had not been equal, some members of the clan would have starved, or the clan might have disintegrated.
The economic substructure of the primitive society also produced its corresponding superstructure. The primitive society successively passed through the matriarchal and patriarchal clan stages. The formation of the matriarchal clan was the result of the more important positions occupied by women in productive activities. At that time, women were mainly occupied with primitive agriculture, and men with hunting. But hunting was more seasonal, and its results chancy. Agriculture was a more reliable source of means of livelihood. Therefore, social life revolved around the female. With the development of productive forces, agriculture advanced from its primitive form and animal husbandry was separated from agriculture. Men’s importance in productive activities was elevated. With the transition from group marriages centering around women to one-to-one marriages, women’s positions were rendered more subordinate, ushering in the patriarchal clan.
The clan council, composed of all the adult members of the clan, was the highest power organ in the clan commune. The clan council elected the clan chief and wartime military leaders and deliberated and decided on all important matters. [Lewis H.] Morgan, an American scholar, described in his Ancient Society the clan commune of the American Indians as follows: “All members were free persons and were obliged to protect each other’s freedom. Everybody had equal rights. Not even the clan chief and military leaders could ask for any preferential privilege. They were compatriots based on blood relations.” This superstructure of the clan was instrumental in consolidating and developing the clan economic substructure and in advancing the productive forces at that time.
Chairman Mao points out:
“The development of the Chinese people (here with reference mainly to the Han people) was similar to other peoples in the world. They passed through many tens of thousands of years in a classless, primitive society.” 5
The society connected with the “Peking Man” which was discovered in Choukoutien suburb of Peking represented the earliest stage of China’s primitive society. Many old sites and cultural relics from primitive societies discovered in many areas of China prove that matriarchal clan tribes once existed in the central region along the Yellow River basin and extended to Inner Mongolia, Heilungkiang, Sinkiang, Tibet, Kwangsi, Szechuan, and Yunnan. About five thousand years ago, tribes along the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins gradually became patriarchal clan communes. Before the Hsia dynasty in China, the primitive society existed for several hundred thousand years.
Historical facts tell us that the primitive society had no private property, no classes, no class exploitation, or class oppression. They strongly refute the fallacy that private property and classes have been with us from time immemorial.
The Emergence of Private Property Led to the Collapse of the Primitive Commune
In the course of development in the primitive society, with the development of productive forces, social division of labor arose. In the beginning, animal husbandry was separated from agriculture. Some tribes specialized in animal husbandry. Other tribes specialized in agriculture. This was the first major social division of labor. Later on, handicraft activities were separated from agriculture. This was the second major division of labor. Toward the end of the primitive society, iron was discovered. The appearance of iron symbolized the advancement of human society to a higher stage. But it also heralded the collapse of the primitive society. With the separate appearance of agriculture, animal husbandry, and handicraft activities, production for the purpose of exchange, namely commodity production, appeared.
With the continual development of productive forces, some surplus was available after the maintenance of a basic level of subsistence. The two major divisions of labor increased labor productivity and promoted the development of agriculture, animal husbandry and handicraft activities. Surplus products and social wealth increased. Under these conditions, the possibility of some people expropriating the labor products of other people occurred. On the other hand, with the expansion of exchange, the possibility of the clan chief gradually converting commune property into his own private property also arose. The use of metal tools — especially iron axes, iron hoes, and iron plows — markedly increased labor productivity and created conditions for production on an individual household basis. The original collective production based on the clan gradually dissolved into individual production based on the household. Production changed from a collective to a private matter. Means of production and products also became private property. Then, land formerly collectively owned but assigned to individual households also passed into private hands. Private ownership appeared and the primitive commune disintegrated.
With the emergence of private ownership, inequality in the distribution of property among families arose. The clan chiefs continuously used their power to convert collective property into their private property and became the wealthiest households in the clan. At the same time, as the wealth of these rich families increased and their scope of operation expanded, labor shortages were experienced. On the other hand, with the development of productive forces, the use of slave labor became possible and profitable. As a result, prisoners of war were no longer slaughtered but were converted into slaves. Later on, some poor people of the clan also became slaves of the rich families. The exploitation of people by people emerged.
With the development of production and the expansion of exchange, the third major division of labor occurred. There arose merchants who specialized in commodity exchange. With the development of commodity exchange, money came into being. With the appearance of money, the rich families engaged in usury and accelerated the concentration and uneven distribution of wealth. As a result, wealth rapidly became concentrated in the hands of a few slave owners. On the other hand, the broad laboring masses were forced into slavery by poverty and bankruptcy, rapidly swelling the ranks of the slaves. Thus, society was separated into classes: the slave owners and the slaves. These two opposing classes made their first appearance in human history. With the appearance of classes, the former clan council evolved from being society’s public servant into being its master and became a tool by which the slave owners oppressed the slaves. The state — the machinery for the oppression of one class by another class — was born at that time. From that time up to the present, “all social history has been the history of class struggle.” 6
Slavery Was the Earliest System of Exploitation
The Characteristic of Production Relations in the Slave Society Was the Ownership of the Means of Production and of Slaves by the Slave Owner
In the slave society, the slave owner not only owned the means of production, but also slaves. The slave was merely a living tool under the absolute domination of the slave owner. The slave was not only exploited, he was treated as an animal, a sacrificial object, and a commodity. He could even be slaughtered by his owner. Slave labor was overt forced labor. The slave owner used brute force to make the slave work and indiscriminately tortured his slaves. To make it easier to catch runaway slaves, the slave owners even branded slaves and put them in fetters. The slave owner used the crudest means to extract surplus labor and products from the slave. All products produced by the slave belonged to the slave owner. The slave was fed like an animal, just enough to keep him alive. This, then, was the production relation of the slave society.
Chairman Mao points out,
“About four thousand years have elapsed between the present and the time when the primitive society of the Chinese nation disintegrated into a class society, passing through the slave society and the feudal society” 7
China developed into a slave society after the Hsia dynasty In the Yin dynasty “ chungien” and “hsumin” [“&A” and “HR”: the “masses”] were all slaves. Clay burial figures unearthed in Yinhsii (the abandoned site of the capital of the Yin dynasty in the vicinity of Hsiaot’unts’un, Anyang, Honan Province) all had handcuffs. The male figures were cuffed with their hands behind them, and the females in front. These were reflections of slave lives at that time. The slaughter of slaves was even more hair-raising. The slave owner often sacrificed his slaves in sacrificial ceremonies. In some ceremonies during the Yin dynasty more than a thousand people were killed. From the tombs of slave owners in the Yin dynasty slaves were found buried alive or dead. They ranged from more than ten to several hundreds. Among them were both males and females, even children. There is no doubt that the slave society existed in China.
But, Trotskyites like Ch’en Pota spread the fallacy that there was no slave society in China in a vain attempt to negate the universal truth of Marxist classification of human societies and to create evidence for their fallacy that communism was not suited to Chinese conditions. This is reactionary in the extreme and utterly futile.
Class Antagonism Led to the Opposition between Urban and Rural Areas and between Mental and Physical Labor
The earliest ancient city appeared at the end of the primitive society and was established at the central region of the tribal alliance for the purpose of defense. After the formation of the slave society and with the development of agriculture, handicraft industry and commodity exchange, the opposition between the city and the countryside arose.
At that time, industrial products were handicraft products. The city was the center of the handicraft industry The development of the handicraft industry was related to the development of commerce. Therefore, the city was also the center of commercial activities. In China’s Yin dynasty, commerce developed rapidly. Commercial cities emerged. Yin and Shang [Shang is the Chinese term for commerce] are synonymous, and the Yin dynasty is also known as the Shang dynasty. Present-day Yin-hsu was the site of a fairly large commercial city in the Yin dynasty.
The slave owner established a superstructure corresponding to the economic substructure of the slave society, and the city became the political center of the slave society. The slave owner paid special attention to strengthening the state machinery in the city to suppress the rebellion of slaves. Many slave owners, big merchants, usurers, and bureaucrats were concentrated in the city, leading evil and extravagant lives. To satisfy their needs for recreation, the slave owner forced the slaves to build beautiful palaces, temples, theaters, and other public places. The city thus gradually developed into the cultural center of the slave society.
Thus, the city in the slave society assumed a dominating economic, political, and ideological role and created opposition between the city and the countryside. The opposition between the city and the countryside was a product of acute class contradictions. It was characterized by urban exploitation of the countryside.
In the primitive society, all able-bodied people participated in labor. There was no specialization in mental labor. In the slave society, the situation was different. As a result of a large quantity of surplus products created by slave labor, it was possible for the slave owners to divorce themselves from production labor. At that time, the division between mental and physical labor was necessary and possible. This division between mental and physical labor was antagonistic right from the start. It was the privilege of the slave owning class to enjoy cultural education.
“The class controlling the means of material production also controlled the means of mental production. Therefore, the thinking of those without means of mental production was generally under the influence of the ruling class.” 8
The slave-owning class tried its best to spread the fallacy that “the mental workers rule others while the physical laborers are ruled by others.” It used to its best advantage its politics, law, philosophy, and ideology as tools to rule the slaves and other laboring masses for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the slave owner.
The Rebellion of Slaves Hastened the Collapse of Slavery
Slavery was an inevitable stage in human history. Its appearance met the needs of existing productive forces. Under slavery, prisoners of war were no longer slaughtered en masse. They were instead kept alive to work. This was helpful to the development of production. Because the slave owner possessed large amounts of means of production and labor, it was possible to organize production and cooperation on a large scale. With the use of metal tools, agriculture, animal husbandry, and handicraft industry developed rapidly. Agriculture became the most important component of the national economy. The horse, buffalo, sheep, chicken, dog and pig were domesticated. By means of cooperative efforts among a large number of handicraftsmen, a bronze ritual vessel [ssumumao ta fang ting] measuring 110 centimeters in horizontal length, 77 centimeters in width, 137 centimeters in height, and weighing 1,400 market catties, was cast with fine floral designs. From it we can infer the high production skills and workmanship already reached at that time.
The production relations of the slave society promoted the development of productive forces to a certain extent. But these production relations embodied inherent contradictions to the further development of productive forces. These contradictions became more acute as productive forces developed. The broad masses of slaves could not bear the cruel exploitation and oppression of the slave owner any longer. They slowed their work, ran away in large numbers, and purposely wrecked production tools. On the one hand, the slave owners increased their oppression, leading to massive early death of slaves. On the other hand, they substituted heavy tools not easily subject to abuse. But the development of productive forces was thus restricted. The restriction on the development of productive forces also resulted from the contempt toward physical labor generated by the system. Bankrupt small producers preferred to wander around than to engage in physical labor. These things all showed that the production relations of slavery were already ill=suited to the development of productive forces. Its extinction was as inevitable as its emergence.
At the end of the slave society, feudal production relations appeared. The ownership of land by the slave state was the basis of the production relations in the slave society. In the Yin-Chou period of China, state ownership of land was in the form of Chingt’ien [well fields]. All land within the confines of Chingt’ien was called “communal land.” These “communal lands” and the slaves were at the disposal of the biggest slave owners — the feudal princes, nobles, and state officials appointed by the Son of Heaven.
With the development of productive forces, some slave owners tried their best to force the slaves to bring under cultivation large amounts of “private land” so as to exploit more surplus labor. With the expansion of “private land,” the system of “communal land” was undermined. At this time, the landlord class emerged. They championed the “abolition of Chingt’ien and the demolition of raised paths between fields [used as boundaries].” Slaves gradually became serfs. The sprouts of feudal production relations flourished.
The basic classes of the slave society were the slave owning class and the slaves. Outside of these two classes were the free peasants and handicraftsmen. Slaves were at the bottom of the social strata and were subject to the cruelest exploitation and oppression by the slave owners. All through the whole period of slavery, there was violent class struggle between the slaves and the slave owners. The Spring and Autumn period of China saw the transition from slavery to feudalism. A slave leader named Chih led 9,000 people rampaging across the land and invading the feudal lords. Slave rebellions seriously challenged the rule of the slave owning class. In various countries of the world, slave uprisings were the theme of many heroic epics. For example, in the Roman period, Spartacus led the biggest rebellion with 120,000 participants. This rebellion shook the whole Roman Empire to its foundation. Violent slave rebellions dealt severe blows to the political power of the slave owners and hastened the collapse of slavery. While slavery disintegrated, feudal production relations gradually matured. The newly emerging landlords representing feudal production relations used the power of the laboring people to overthrow the rule of the slave owners and established a government of landlords. Feudalism finally replaced slavery.
The replacement of slavery by feudalism was historically inevitable. In China, during the time of the great epoch-making social changes, Confucius, the reactionary proponent of the slave system, obstinately opposed any social reforms and regarded the changes in production relations as “great evils.” He resolutely opposed all the reform measures carried out by the new feudal lords, advocated the restoration of the old slave system, and hoped in vain to save the tottering social order. But it was all over. His efforts represented the futile struggle of a dying cause.
Feudalism Is Another Exploitative System Based on Class Conflicts
Feudal Landownership Is the Economic Substructure of the Feudal Society
The production relations of the feudal society were based on landownership by the landlord class and their almost complete control of serfs. The landlord owned most of the land. The peasants and serfs owned little or no land. They had to depend on farming the landlord’s land for a living. This way, they were fettered by the feudal land system. They lost their personal freedom and were subject to the landlord’s cruel exploitation and oppression.
The chief means by which the landlord exploited the peasants was through the collection of feudal rent from land rented to them. There were three kinds of feudal rents: labor rent, rent in kind, and money rent.
Labor rent was prevalent in the early period of the feudal society. Labor rent consisted of the peasants using their own tools and working on the landlord-operated land at specified times. The peasants could work on their land only after working for the landlord. Under this type of land rent, the relations between the exploiter and the exploited were quite clearcut. The produce from the land operated by the peasants belonged to them. They were thus interested in the labor performed on it. The produce from the labor performed by the peasants on the land operated by the landlord belonged wholly to the landlord. The peasants were naturally not enthusiastic about such labor. The landlord was well aware of this difference in attitude. To make the peasants work hard on the land operated by the landlord, the latter kept a number of foremen to enforce strict discipline. Therefore, under such a rent system, the relations between the oppressor and the oppressed, the ruling and ruled, were quite obvious. In the early period of feudalism, productive forces were quite weak. The landlord could not have expropriated the surplus labor of the peasants if he had not relied on direct coercion. This kind of feudal rent met with violent resistance from the peasants.
Later, under the impetus of the development of productive forces and out of a desire for greater exploitation and less visibility of their exploitative intent, the landlord adopted rent in kind in place of labor rent. Under rent in kind, the peasant no longer worked under the supervision of the landlord. He did not have to work on the land operated by the landlord. The peasant could control all his labor. But he had to turn in surplus produce in kind to the landlord at specified intervals. Compared with labor rent, rent in kind was instrumental in improving knowhow and labor productivity to some extent. But rent in kind often represented 50 percent or even 70 to 80 percent of the peasants’ harvests. To maintain a minimum level of subsistence, the peasants had to extend their working hours and raise their labor intensity Even so, the peasants were unable to lead a life very far above extreme poverty.
Money rent appeared in late feudal society. Productive forces were then much higher than before. The relations between money and commodities were widely developed. To satisfy his manifold needs for a luxurious and extravagant life, the landlord needed ever more money Under such conditions, money rent appeared. Under money rent, the peasants sold their produce in the market in exchange for money to pay rent. Thus, the peasants 18 were not only exploited by the landlord, but also by merchant middlemen. When harvests were good, the merchants depressed prices to squeeze every drop of sweat and blood from the peasants. As a result, the peasants’ livelihood was even more pitiable, and they were frequently at the brink of bankruptcy
In the feudal society the broad masses of peasants were under the exploitation of feudal rent. They also had to pay heavy taxes to the feudal state and were subject to the exploitation of usurers. The landlord colluded with the bureaucrats and the army to plunder the peasants’ land, steal their wealth, and force them to engage in involuntary unpaid labor. The broad masses of peasants were subject to all sorts of extra-economic exploitation.
Peasant Rebellions Reflected the Increasingly Acute Class Contradictions in the Feudal Society
The replacement of the slave society by the feudal society was a step forward in history. The feudal production relations were conducive to promoting productive forces in the early stage of feudal society. Agricultural production techniques were elevated, and tools improved. The applications of iron instruments to production were disseminated, both the variety and quantity of crops were increased, and handicraft industry was thriving. In the Warring States period of China, largescale water conservancy projects, such as the Tu-chiang Dike in Szechuan Province, were constructed. Through additional construction and maintenance during various dynasties, Tu chi-ang Dike still serves a very useful purpose at present. Salt baking, metallurgy, silk goods, spinning and weaving, porcelain and pottery, and embroidery were quite well developed in China’s feudal society. The compass, gunpowder, paper, and block printing were invented very early.
However, production under feudal production relations was basically small-scale production on a household basis. This small-scale production was not conducive to the further development of productive forces. The broad masses of peasants under feudal production relations were especially subject to cruel exploitation and oppression with little possibility for developing production. The contradictions between feudal production relations and productive forces were reflected as class contradictions between the landlord and the peasant. This was the major contradiction in feudal society. The highest manifestation of this contradiction was armed rebellion by the broad masses of peasants to resist the rule of the landlord. These rebellions and struggles were characteristic of the whole feudal period. About 200 B.C., soon after Ch’in Shih-huang unified China and established the first feudal dictatorship, the first great peasant rebellion in China’s history exploded — the rebellion led by Ch’en Sheng and Wu Kuang. After that, during the more than two thousand years before the Taiping Rebellion in the mid nineteenth century, several hundred small and large peasant rebellions and peasant revolutionary wars were recorded. The size and number of peasant uprisings in Chinese history broke world records.
“Only these peasant class struggles, peasant rebellions, and peasant wars were the real motive force of historical development. Because every major peasant rebellion and peasant war dealt blows to the contemporary feudal rule, they thus promoted the development of social productive forces to some extent.” 9
However, renegades like Ch’en Pota attributed the development of social productive forces to the “concessions” made by the feudal ruling class. This runs counter to historical facts. In history, the landlords never made concessions to peasant rebellions. They always resorted to bloodthirsty suppression, counterattacks, and trickery, but never to “concessions.” Renegade Ch’en Pota’s theory about “concessions” was purely an attempt to beautify the landlords.
The Development of a Commodity Economy and Primitive Accumulation Gave Birth to and Promoted Capitalist Production Relations
In the late feudal period, with the further development of a commodity economy, capitalist production relations arose.
Simple commodity production in the feudal society was based on private ownership and individual labor. The purpose of production was exchange. Small commodity producers had to sell their products in the market. But because every commodity producer had different production conditions, skills, and labor intensity, labor spent on each type of commodity varied. On the other hand, similar commodities were sold at the same price. This constituted a contradiction. With the development of this contradiction, a small number of small commodity producers with better conditions prospered. But the majority of small commodity producers with poorer production conditions were increasingly impoverished. Thus, the simple commodity producers were polarized.
In the feudal society, craft guilds were often formed to prevent competition among handicraftsmen in the same line or from handicraftsmen from other areas or lines. Members of the guilds had to obey guild regulations. In the handicraft guild, there were the master, journeyman, and apprentice. The relations between the master and the journeyman and apprentice were basically feudal with slight exploitation. These guilds limited the polarization among the small commodity producers. But with the development of a commodity economy, some comparatively prosperous masters were unwilling to obey the guild regulations. They indiscriminately increased the number of journeymen and apprentices, lengthened their labor time, improved production techniques, and gradually converted their journeymen and apprentices into hired hands. Other bankrupt masters, journeymen, and apprentices gradually joined the ranks of hired hands. On the basis of polarization, there gradually appeared the capitalist relations of employment.
In the process of polarization among the small commodity producers and the emergence of capitalist production relations, commercial capital played an important role. The merchant was originally the middleman in commodity exchange. Later he became a contract merchant who contracted to sell the products of the commodity producers. He later supplied raw materials and even tools to the small producers who were to produce products at specified times and of a certain quality, quantity, type, and specification. Thus, the small commodity producer was entirely controlled by the merchant and became a hired hand. And the merchant himself became an industrial capitalist.
In the countryside, during the period of late feudal society, because of the development of a commodity economy, the landlord class gradually converted to money rents. This daily increased the peasants’ dependence on markets and hastened their polarization. The majority of peasants went bankrupt and degenerated into hired farm hands. A few elevated themselves to become rich peasants and later agricultural capitalists.
Thus, capitalist production relations gradually established themselves in feudal society. In China’s late feudal society, with the development of a commodity economy, the seeds of capitalist production relations were about to sprout. Without the influence of foreign capitalism, China was gradually to develop into a capitalist society.
The establishment of capitalist production relations in feudal society was closely related to the development of productive forces. In the beginning, the small workshops of the handicraftsmen became large capitalist workshops. In these workshops, hand labor was still the rule. But with many workers working together under unified capitalist command, simple cooperation was possible, forming a new productive force. Later, capitalist simple cooperation developed into capitalist factory handicraft industry. The characteristic of the factory handicraft industry was division of labor among workers producing the same commodity with each specializing in one process. It simplified labor processes and improved labor productivity by intensifying labor input. It also created the conditions for the substitution of machine operation for hand operation.
The development of capitalist production relations depended on two basic conditions: First, there had to be a large body of proletariat who could freely sell their labor. Second, there had to be a prior accumulation of a large amount of pecuniary wealth. To facilitate the development of capitalist production relations, the bourgeoisie used violence to create these two conditions. Therefore, in the development of capitalism, there was a process of primitive accumulation.
An important method of primitive accumulation was exploitation of the peasant. England, where capitalist production relations first developed, was a typical example. During the more than three hundred years from the 1470s until the early nineteenth century, the English ruling class launched the “enclosure” movement by forcibly taking land from the peasants. The modern industry of England started from wool textiles. The wool textile industry required a large amount of wool, thus forcing up its price. The big landlords and farm operators enclosed land wherever they could to raise sheep to cash in on the fortune. They forcibly evicted peasants from their land, demolished and burned down their houses, and expropriated large amounts of means of production and means of livelihood. The enclosure movement forced a large number of peasants to leave their native places and wander far afield begging for their livelihood. Following this, the English ruling class promulgated various bloodstained legislation to forbid the peasants from drifting and force them to accept hired employment under harsh conditions.
The plundering of pecuniary wealth was another important method of primitive accumulation. The European bourgeoisie resorted to armed invasions of Asia, Africa, America, and Australia to establish the colonial system. They launched commercial warfare and plundered the colonies’ material resources and pecuniary wealth in order to amass capital for the establishment of largescale capitalist production.
Therefore, the process of primitive accumulation was the process of forcing the separation of the direct producers from their means of production and concentrating pecuniary wealth in the hands of the capitalists as capital. Marx penetratingly pointed out, “This history of expropriation (of the direct producers by the bourgeoisie) was written with blood and fire into the human chronology.” 10 The process of primitive accumulation vividly demonstrated that the capitalists did not “start from scratch,” but depended entirely on plundering. “Capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” 11
Bourgeois Revolution Declared the Collapse of Feudalism
The birth and development of capitalist production relations in feudal society was severely restricted by feudal production relations and their superstructure. They were prevented from assuming a dominating role in feudal society because the feudal ruling class would never willingly retire from the historical stage. They inevitably used the state machinery in their control to protect the outdated feudal system. The bourgeoisie and the intellectuals representing capitalist production relations publicized capitalist production relations as “manifestations of eternity and rationality” and “an eternal law of Nature.” They championed so-called “freedom, equality, and universal love” and denounced feudalism in their efforts to prepare public opinion for the bourgeois revolution to overthrow feudalism. In the bourgeois revolution, the major class forces were the peasants, the proletariat, and the bourgeoisie. The peasants were the major force, but not the representatives of the 22 new productive forces. The proletariat had not formed its independent political force, so the bourgeoisie assumed the leadership of the bourgeois revolution.
In old China, because it was a semifeudal and semicolonial society, the bourgeoisie was divided into two parts. One was the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. It depended on imperialism. Along with the landlords, its members represented the most backward and most reactionary production relations. They were the targets of the Chinese bourgeois democratic revolution. The second part was the national bourgeoisie. It was subject to the oppression and restriction of imperialism and feudalism on the one hand but was also closely related to them on the other. This determined that the national bourgeoisie was a force on the side of democratic revolution under some conditions. But it was also weak and unstable. Therefore, “it was determined historically that the task of antiimperialist and antifeudal bourgeois democratic revolution could not be completed by bourgeois leadership, but only by proletarian leadership.” 12
Although the bourgeois revolution was a revolution in which one form of exploitation replaced another, this revolution also had its reversals. In the course of the revolution, there were acute class struggles involving attempted restorations by the feudal class and opposition to restorations by the bourgeoisie. England started its bourgeois revolution in 1640. Not until after two internal wars was Charles I, a representative of the Stuarts, executed. In 1660, Charles II, another representative of the Stuarts, again attempted restoration. In 1688, the English bourgeoisie invited the Prince of Orange (William III) from Holland to overthrow the Stuart House. Only then was the bourgeois dictatorship stabilized. In France, in the eighty-six years from 1789 when the bourgeois revolution exploded until 1875 when the Third Republic was formed, advances were mixed with retreats, republics with monarchies, revolutionary terror with antirevolutionary terror, internal with external wars, with conquests by foreign countries, without a moment of peace and stability. Even so, because the feudal system was rotten, it still could not escape its extinction no matter how hard it tried to struggle. The replacement of feudalism by capitalism was inevitable.
Major Study References
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto.
Engels, The Origin of the Family. Private Property and the State.
Chairman Mao, “The Analysis of Chinese Social Classes ”
Chairman Mao, “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party” Chapter 1.
Review Problems
- How did private ownership, classes, and the state arise?
- How did the contradictions between production relations and productive forces in the slave society and the feudal society manifest themselves in class struggle?
- What were the major conditions for the birth and development of capitalist production relations?
12 Footnotes
