Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989, pp903, £25

When the first edition of Let History Judge was published in the west, it was of unusual significance. Here we had a massive indictment of Stalin and Stalinism by a dissident Soviet writer, who declared his allegiance to Marxism and the October Revolution at a time when official Soviet propagandists were indulging in the par¬tial rehabilitation of Stalin, and when most Soviet dissidents were embracing; in¬creasingly right wing viewpoints. Today, however, Let History Judge is of less significance to the western reader, despite the additional revelations and memoirs contained in this new edition. In these days of glasnost, Medvedev's historical outlook is more or less officially accep¬table in the Soviet Union, and just as he has had his party card returned and has been elected to the Supreme Soviet, the official climate has changed to the degree that this book could well be published in the Soviet Union.

Medvedev's writings closely resemble those of the Soviet reformists and Eurocommunists. This is not surprising, as he is a staunch supporter of glasnost, and has expressed an admiration for Eurocommunism. Medvedev holds Bukharin in high esteem, and counter¬poses his policies to those of both Stalin and Trotsky. He claims that Bukharin's policies were the direct and logical con¬tinuation of those elaborated under Lenin, and contends that had they been adhered to, the frightful experiences of the Stalin era would have been avoided.

Like anyone embarking on this task, Medvedev is obliged to distort the historical record. His treatment of Lenin shows the extent to which Medvedev, whatever his criticisms of Stalinism, is still influenced by it.

He holds that Lenin believed it possible to build Socialism within the bounds of a single country, claiming that Lenin `in 1915 and 1916 argued that not only could a revolution be made and power taken in one separate capitalist country but that "Socialist production could be organised" and proletarian power defend¬ed against encroachments by other coun¬tries'. From 1918 to 1920 `Lenin's and Trotsky's views on this question virtually coincided' because `Lenin was sure of a rapid victory for the world revolution, or at least of the European revolution', and because the economic devastation in the Soviet Union made it 'impossible to build Socialism in Russia without the support of a Socialist Europe'. However, Medvedev assures us that 'toward the end of 1922... Lenin confidently declared that NEP [New Economic Policy] Russia would "become a Socialist Russia"'. Stalin con¬curred with Trotsky until `under Bukharin's influence and after becoming more thoroughly acquainted with Lenin's texts', he too changed his mind (p129).

A good deal of tendentious text-¬mangling is required to find any support for the idea of Socialism in one country in Lenin's works. However `thoroughly ac¬quainted' Stalin may have been with them, all he could find were a couple of quotes torn out of context. Some 60 years later, Medvedev follows suit.

In `On the Slogan for a United States of Europe', Lenin did indeed say that `the victory of Socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone' (Collected Works Volume 21, p342). But this article refers merely to the seizure of power, not the building of a Socialist society. In `On Cooperation', Lenin refers to political power being in the hands of the proletariat, and the existence of state control of industry and peasant cooperatives, and asks `is this not all that is necessary to build a complete Socialist society'? (CW Volume 33, p468). He then points to the need for a far higher level of culture. Medvedev cites him (p129)  `this cultural revolution would now suf¬fice to make our country a completely Socialist country'   as if to show that the Soviet Union no longer required external aid. But where Medvedev puts a full stop, Lenin continued, `but it presents immense difficulties of a purely cultural (for we are illiterate) and material character (for to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of production, must have a certain material base)' (C W Volume 33, p457). Lenin was acutely aware of the situation right to the end. In one of his last articles, `Better Fewer, But Better', he asked `shall we be able to hold on with our small and very small peasant production, and in our pre¬sent state of ruin, until the West European capitalist countries consummate their development towards Socialism?' (CW Volume 33, p499). For all his condemna¬tions of Stalin, Medvedev uses his methods to attribute to Lenin views that he never held.

Medvedev's attitude towards Trotsky and the Left Opposition is also very much that of the glasnost intellectuals and Eurocommunists. The outright lies of the Stalin era and the less blatant distortions issued afterwards are repudiated. Trot¬sky's rô1e during the October Revolution and the Civil War are recognised, although Medvedev is quick to condemn his `extreme authoritarianism' (p 120). Similarly, he considers the Left Opposi¬tion's fight against bureaucratism in the Soviet Communist Party to be valid. But whilst Medvedev excises some of the worst cliches of the first edition of this book (for instance, Trotsky's `underestimation of the revolutionary potential of the peasan¬try', Spokesman edition, p38), and is now acquainted with a wide range of Trotsky's works, his hostile attitude towards the Left Opposition remains substantially un¬changed. One passage that has remained in the new edition refers to a certain Eshba who had `belonged to the Trotskyist opposition, but soon left and, hav¬ing admitted his mistakes, was reinstated in the party' (p384, my emphasis).

If Trotsky and his comrades get a plus for their activities prior to (roughly) 1924, things are different for later. In order to bolster Bukharin's reputation, Medvedev portrays the Left Opposition as incurable ultra leftists. But. to prove his point, once again he is obliged to distort the historical record.

Under Bukharin's influence, the Fif¬teenth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party voted in December 1927 in favour of certain restrictions upon rural capitalist elements. Medvedev comments:
`However, contrary to the demands of the Left Opposition, it was proposed that these restrictions be carried out primarily through economic means   that is, within the framework of NEP and not by the methods of "War Communism". Moreover, placing restrictions on the capitalist elements or going on the offen¬sive against them did not at all mean that they should be squeezed out of economic life or "liquidated". Therefore the Fif¬teenth Congress took a firm stand against the Left's proposals for compulsory re¬quisition of grain from the prosperous strata in the countryside. The Congress also opposed any hasty mass collectivisa¬tion, since neither the subjective nor the objective preconditions for it had been created.' (p193)

Unlike what Medvedev implies, the Left Opposition did not call for the return of War Communism, the liquidation of the kulaks, or `hasty mass collectivisation'. It called for the voluntary and gradual in¬troduction of collective farming based upon modern techniques, provision of credit to small farmers for equipment, fiscal measures against the kulaks, and it warned that the capitalist elements could not be defeated by administrative orders or simple economic pressure.

Condemning the ultra left idiocies of the Third Period, Medvedev notes that in 1934 some Communists were beginning to favour anti Fascist unity with Social Democrats. He would then have us believe that Trotsky 'in his treatment of the Social Democrats ...continued to defend a position that even Stalin found it necessary to gradually abandon' (p323), implying that Trotsky adhered to the Third Period positions. In actuality, Trot¬sky opposed both the sectarianism of the Third Period and the opportunism of the ensuing Popular Front, and counterposed to them the tactics evolved in the Com¬munist International during Lenin's time, calling for left unity in action in order to expose the reformists and win the masses to a revolutionary leadership.

Ultimately, Medvedev doesn't want to know, pointedly refusing to discuss the Left Opposition's differences with Stalin and Bukharin over foreign policy (p163), and writing off Trotsky's work in exile thus:
`...because of his inherent dogmatism, his tendentiousness, and his lack of infor¬mation, Trotsky could not understand or properly evaluate the complex processes taking place in the Soviet Union and the world Communist movement in the 'thir¬ties. As a result, he was not able to for¬mulate an alternative Marxist pro¬gramme.' (p 180)

In his highly appreciative portrayal of Bukharin, Medvedev does mention his `scholasticism' and `the elements of schematic thinking and oversimplification in almost all of his theoretical constructs' (p190). Just where these characteristics made themselves felt, however, remains a mystery. But it is precisely the issues at which Medvedev considers that Bukharin fared best where his scholasticism was most apparent. This in itself would not be particularly significant was it not for the fact that from 1924 to 1929 the Soviet government's policies were very much in¬fluenced by him.

Bukharin held that a national economy could exist, and its contradictions over¬come, in isolation from the world economy. Now, if this was so, the Soviet Union could logically develop into Socialism insofar as imperialist interven¬tion was averted. Socialism could be built in one country, and the main problem fac¬ing the Soviet Union was thus solved. The best means of defending the country would be the prevention of intervention, rather than the risky business of workers' revolutions in the major capitalist powers. The primary task of Communist parties would turn from seizing power to attemp¬ting to force their ruling classes into establishing friendly relations with the Soviet Union. A Communist party would adopt a conciliatory stance towards a capitalist class, or a faction of one, which, for whatever reason, favoured an alliance with the Soviet Union.

Moreover, if a capitalist class and its state could play a progressive rôle in the sphere of foreign policy, then why not in others? The basis for reformism was thus laid. And if backward Russia contained within itself all the necessary prerequisites for Socialism, then surely so did such ad¬vanced countries as Germany, Britain and the USA. The theoretical necessity for internationalism   that national boun¬daries were a barrier to the development of the productive forces   no longer ex¬isted. Each Communist party could develop its own national programme and go its own way. Bukharin's theories gave rise to tendencies that threatened to  and did   transform the Communist In¬ternational into a collection of national reformist parties.

Although Medvedev prefers not to touch upon the foreign policy debates in the 1920s, it's worth noting that Bukharin played an important part in introducing into the Communist International the schematic Marxism of the Second Interna¬tional, from which the Bolsheviks had broken decisively in 1917. The October Revolution proved conclusively that not only could a workers' revolution occur in a country with a large peasantry and in which the bourgeois democratic revolu¬tion had not taken place or had not been completed, but that the tasks of that revolution could only be carried out under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Communist International in Lenin's days recognised that in anti colonial struggles, any alliance with bourgeois nationalists would be inherently unstable and tem¬porary, and the proletariat must maintain its political independence.

Nevertheless, in 1922 the fledgling Chinese Communist Party was instructed by the Communist International to join the bourgeois nationalist Guomindang, to which it rapidly became subordinate. A mass anti imperialist uprising blew up in May 1925, and civil war raged for the next two years. The Chinese bourgeoisie took fright, and it was clear that the Guomin¬dang leadership was mobilising against the insurgents. Despite pleadings from several leading Chinese Communists, Bukharin and Stalin, convinced that the dictator¬ship of the proletariat was impossible in China, refused to allow the CCP to break from the Guomindang, even though workers had seized power in Shanghai in March 1927. The `anti imperialist bloc' had to be maintained even though the bourgeoisie was more afraid of the workers and peasants than of the im¬perialists. The uprisings were drowned in blood. All Bukharin's chatter about the `anti imperialist bloc' was just a cover for the long discarded dogma that the bourgeois democratic revolution had to be led by the bourgeoisie.

Unlike Preobrazhensky and the Left Opposition, Bukharin did not consider that an immanent conflict existed between the private and state sectors in the Soviet Union. He held that, as all societies re¬quire a mechanism for the distribution of labour time, the capitalist law of value was in essence no different to the con¬sciously planned economic regulation of a Socialist society. The two sectors of the Soviet economy could, therefore, coexist peacefully, and the capitalist sector would gradually be absorbed into the Socialist sector. Bukharin considered that the initial driving force behind the revival of the Soviet economy would be the accumula¬tion of funds within the private agricultural sector, with the increase in de¬mand for manufactured products boosting industry. He was happy to see the unrestricted growth of capitalist farm¬ing, and most of the remaining restrictions on the richer farmers were lifted in 1925. The few collective farms in existence were left to stagnate, and insufficient resources were directed towards industry. Bukharin energetically opposed the Left Opposi¬tion's calls for the steady collectivisation of agriculture and for far reaching in¬dustrial development.

As it happened, the Soviet government was soon confronted with the fruits of Bukharin's policies. The slowness of in¬dustrial growth resulted in a goods famine. The peasants, with little to pur¬chase in exchange for their produce, started to withhold their grain from the market. In late 1927 Bukharin, borrowing not a little from the Left Opposition, call¬ed for fiscal measures against the rich peasants, and moves towards collectivisa¬tion and increased industrialisation. But valuable time had been wasted. Ir¬reparable damage had been done. The NEP, the judicious use of market measures under the auspices of a workers' state, was very much a delicate balancing act in which disproportions would jeopar¬dise the development of the economy. Whatever his enthusiasm for the NEP, Bukharin's policies ensured that the necessary balance was not maintained, thus causing the problems which ultimate¬ly led to the demise of the NEP in 1929.

The appeal of Bukharin is easy to understand. Compared to the boorish and ignorant men who made up much of Stalin's entourage, he was undoubtedly a humane and cultured figure. Compared to the programme of the Left Opposition, Bukharin's moderate policies appear more realistic and less risky. His market-¬oriented schemas appear attractive to those who see market measures as the means of overcoming the stasis in the Soviet economy. Yet Bukharin's ap¬proach had disastrous effects in both the Soviet Union and the Communist Interna¬tional. Moreover, he played a major and ignominious part in the defeat of the Left Opposition    something else that Medvedev glosses over   and thus aided the ascendancy of Stalin.

The crucial question facing any historical study of the Soviet Union is how and why the workers' revolution degenerated into Stalin's terror regime. Medvedev lists many of the factors which undermined the dictatorship of the pro¬letariat: the disintegration of the working class during the Civil War, the absorption of activists into the state machine with a concomitant divorce from the masses, the increasing reliance of officials upon ad¬ministrative solutions for political ques¬tions, the overall low level of culture, the political inexperience of many party cadres, etc. Medvedev also makes much of Stalin's personality. Disagreeing with Trotsky's claim that if Stalin at the start of his fight against him had foreseen the consequences of it, he would have stopped short, Medvedev says: 'No, Stalin would not have stopped even if he had known beforehand the cost of his own victory and of his virtually unlimited power.' (p89)

Like many bourgeois biographers of Stalin, Medvedev sees Stalin's political life as a narrow quest for personal power:
`It was not out of love for suffering humanity that Stalin came to Sqqialism and the revolution. He joined the Bolsheviks because of his ambition and his lust for power. When he joined the radical wing of the revolutionary move¬ment, he already believed in his own special mission ...For Stalin the party was always just an instrument, a means of reaching his own goals... His main motive ...was lust for power, boundless ambi¬tion.' (pp600 1, 585)

This does not ring true. The mere lust for personal power cannot explain why a rebellious seminary student would join a tiny, persecuted movement which, for most of its existence before 1917, ap¬peared to have little or no chance of at¬taining power.

It's not surprising that Medvedev con¬centrates on Stalin's character. The fac¬tors undermining the dictatorship of the proletariat were real enough, but cannot of themselves explain the terrible features of Stalin's era. Medvedev overlooks the transformation during the 1920s of the Soviet bureaucracy from an ad¬ministrative machine into a ruling elite, standing above the workers and peasants, and becoming increasingly hostile to pro¬letarian revolution. Stalin and his faction personified the bureaucracy, and their vic¬tory represented the consummation of the bureaucracy's transformation into an elite.

The bureaucracy, faced with the necessity of maintaining control over the rebellious countryside and of building a large scale industrial base, initiated in 1929 schemes for agricultural collectivisa¬tion and industrial development. But because the bureaucracy was unwilling to relinquish its newly found ascendancy, it could not contemplate encouraging workers' democracy, and therefore, with the market measures of the NEP destroyed, it had no means of regulating the economy except through coercion. The terror of the Stalin era was due, not to the unpleasant traits of the man himself, but to the inability of the bureaucracy to impose its authority over society by any other means. This resulted, especially in the 1930s, in convulsions and irrationalities, the outward form of which were the purges and general yet arbitrary repression, which Medvedev describes in detail. Sure, Stalin, at the apex of the system, had his features stamped on socie¬ty, but these characteristics were only fully developed in and by the society in which he lived. The Stalin of the Moscow Trials was not the Stalin of 30, 20 or even 10 years previously. Medvedev strives to find the secret of Stalin's victory and the basis for his regime in his personality, projected back from its ultimate development. That is not Marxism.

History is politics projected back into the past. Medvedev aims to prove that Stalinism was not the logical consequence of Bolshevism. But he insists that an unbroken thread runs from Lenin to Gorbachev, even if it was severely strained during Stalin's days, that the Soviet Union remains a Socialist state, and that the official Com¬munist movement remains a force for pro¬gress. He refuses to accept that, by the end of the 1920s, the dictatorship of the pro¬letariat had been destroyed, and that the Soviet bureaucracy had become a ruling elite and a barrier to workers' revolution. Medvedev gives the Soviet bureaucracy a legitimacy it does not deserve.

Let History Judge was undoubtedly writ¬ten with a Soviet audience in mind. Its reception, should a Soviet edition appear, will very much depend upon the course of events there. It should prove popular with the glasnost reformers; who knows, Medvedev could become some kind of court historian for those who wish to claim their descent from 1917 but who want to dissociate themselves from the Stalin era. However, noting how rapidly key sections of the bureaucracy and intelligentsia are openly advocating capitalist solutions, it won't be long before they junk the entire Soviet period, Lenin and all. And anyone intending to revive the Bolvshevik tradition will find Medvedev's historical method in¬adequate as they seek to explain the tur¬bulent history of their country.
Paul Flewers

`Marxism and

Popular Fronts

Dear Comrades,
In connection with Paul Flewers's review of The French and Spanish Popular Fronts (Revolutionary History, Volume 2, no 3), it is perhaps worth pointing out that this volume consisted of papers presented to an international conference of academics   hence some of the short¬comings or omissions to which he calls at¬tention. Obviously contributors were left free to decide which aspects they should cover, based, of course, on their par¬ticular line of specialisation. In the nature of things a systematic treatment could not be expected and the contributors would not have been able to agree about the `lesson' of the Popular Front. The volume was, however, significant for showing that the Popular Front has become a serious subject of study by (mainly 'bourgeois') scholars; it is up to Marxist historians to do better. It was significant that the Stalinist interpretation (of the Britain, Fascism and Popular Front sort) received little or no support in the conference.

Unfortunately, it was one of the condi¬tions laid down by the publisher that if all the contributions were to be included each one would have to be cut to about a dozen pages. That was a severe restraint, especially in the case of the broader papers   but such are the exigencies of publishing, even by a prestigious universi¬ty press, to which reviewers might draw attention.

Finally, I was expecting to see a correc¬tion of a mistake which appeared on page 42 of Volume 2, no 2. The full name of the `Wobblies', or IWW, is, of course, the Industrial Workers of the World. I have noticed that bourgeois historians on both sides of the Atlantic, through carelessness or ignorance of the working class move¬ment, make the same mistake that you do, and for which there is no excuse.
Tom Kemp

the Great French Revolution', Interna¬tional Socialism, no 43, Special Issue, June 1989, pp214, £2.50

Although we do not usually review magazines in this section, the one under consideration here in fact amounts to a considerable book, and is well worth more than a passing mention. It is made up of three extended essays, one by Paul McGarr, who gives us an overview which extends beyond a mere narrative to take in class questions, one by Alex Callinicos which discusses the various attacks upon and defences of the traditional Marxist class analysis, and a final piece by John Rees attempting to understand the development of Hegel's thought against the background of 1789 1815. Apart from Peter Taaffe's good basic book and a thoughtful essay in Permanent Revolution no 8, it represents the only effort by the Trotskyists in Britain to rise to the theoretical problems posed by the French Revolution, which Marxists have always believed was the classic model of a bourgeois revolution.

Paul McGarr's contribution is so com¬pact that it can be recommended to anyone whose prior knowledge is less than encyclopedic. Apart from at the end, where Callinicos feels obliged to advertise Cliff's ersatz theory of 'deflected perma¬nent revolution', most of the arguments for and against a class analysis appear to be taken in, even if enough is not made of the fact that the bourgeoisie already has strong influence within a feudal society, and therefore does not need any high degree of class consciousness to be able to organise for complete power, as opposed to the working class, which not only needs this but a fully developed theory of social rela¬tions and historical understanding to be able to gain control of society. The last contribu¬tion is interesting but one sided, but as it is meant to look at Hegel's thought through the prism of the French events, the writer cannot be blamed. But some indication should have been given to first time readers that there is far more to Hegel than that.

Nonetheless, the whole makes up a valuable contribution, if only to take the British Trotskyist movement out of its parochial concerns and remind it that it is meant to be the heir of all previous revolu¬tionary traditions.

Al Richardson


Sally L D Katary, Land Tenure in the Ramesside Period, Kegan Paul Interna¬tional, London, 1989, pp322, £35.00

The development of the Chinese Revolu¬tion has had a profound effect upon the history of the world revolution, and hence upon the development of Marxist ideas in the twentieth century. But what appears to have been generally missed is that it also had a massive impact upon the methodology of Marxist historical analysis, by the elimination of an entire mode of production from its theoretical arsenal, that of the Asiatic mode.

Whatever we may feel about his subse¬quent development, it is to Wittfogel's credit that he demonstrated that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Ryazanov and Varga all held the theory that Lenin (p379) and Trotsky applied it to pre 1917 Russia (p403n), and that Lenin (p378), Varga and Ryazanov (p401) applied it to China in particular.1

But it was, in fact, the need to justify the Comintern's disastrous policy in China during the period 1924 43 that was the cause of its removal from the canon of Marxism. As against Trotsky's argument, that the incorporation of China into the world imperialist market had produced a combination of capitalist, and pre-¬capitalist features, Stalin fell back upon the stages theory to justify the alliance with the Guomindang, on the grounds that as the previous economy had been feudal, the next revolution must be bourgeois. In his struggle against the theory of Permanent Revolution Stalin had, in fact, defined China as `feudal' as early as 1926.2 During the crucial discus¬sion among Soviet scholars at the Yenukidze Oriental Institute in Leningrad in February 1931 M Ia Godes and S Yolk pointed out that the theory of the Asiatic mode threatened the work of the Com¬intern in the colonial countries, and accus¬ed its supporters of 'Trotskyite leanings'.3 Godes in particular pointed out that 'it turns out that the denial of feudalism in China, or the theory of it, always leads to political errors, and errors of an essential¬ly Trotskyist order'.4 As Stephen Dunn comments, those who argued against the theory of the Asiatic mode did so, not in opposition to the theory in itself, but because it denied 'the feudal character of the Ancient Eastern (and particularly the Chinese) social order'.5

In spite of the continued interest in it of certain British Stalinist and Stalinist¬influenced thinkers (particularly Palme Dutt and Gordon Childe), Marx's theory dropped out of orthodoxy, and even out of existence, with ludicrous results. Soviet scholars described Sumer, Babylon, Egypt, India and China, and even the civilisations of the New World, as slave states,6 Magyar savants extended the analysis to the empire of Attila,7 and whilst some Chinese scholars analysed the Shang and Zhou dynasties as slave states, & others argued that feudalism had ap¬peared in China as early as the Western Zhou dynasty.

Since Marx's writings on the subject of the Asiatic mode have now all become ful¬ly available, modern attacks upon his theory have had to become more sophisticated. In the case of Hindess and Hirst, Althusserian mystifications come to the aid of the censor's scissors and the concentration camp. Complaining that `the debate has been dominated by em¬piricist problems', because it was 'of some consequence for the strategy of the revolutionary movements in China and Russia', they argue that 'Marxism-¬Leninism (read Chinese Stalinism) has re¬jected the notion of the AMP on theoretical and political grounds, and in doing so it has come nearest to posing the problems of the AMP in a theoretical rather than an empiricist form'.9 That does not prevent them from trying to cite empirical evidence against Wittfogel's views (pp214 5) whilst claiming that `whether forms of this mode have existed or not does not affect its validity as a con¬cept' (p180). They then proceed to reject it on the grounds that there is no space for it `in the theory of modes of production according to the concepts of that pro¬blematic' (p179), because `class relations are represented as relations between the state and the subject' (p195), there is an `absence of any ruling class which is not subsumed within the state' (p192), and that 'no classes are supposed independent of the state machine in the conception of the Asiatic mode'.10 They even try to argue that the very use of the word Asiatic is 'ideological' (read racist), forgetting that all early class societies are naturally limited in their existence by geographical factors.11

Perry Anderson's approach is much more sophisticated. He opts to select Medieval Islam and T'ang China in order to show their extreme dissimilarities. But Islam only inherited social structures that had by then long grown senile, and the Chinese imperial system was well in place under the Han Dynasty (202BC 220AD), some four centuries earlier than the period he so arbitrarily chooses. Arguing that all the societies grouped under this classifica¬tion are too dissimilar to make the con¬cept a valid one, and that it was largely the product of Marx and Engels' `lack of information' (pp491 2), the theory should be `given the decent burial that it deserves' (p548).12

Unfortunately for Stalin or Mao (depending on which of them you feel deserves your sympathy), the murdered theory refuses to lie down. Stephen Dunn has shown how Soviet Oriental scholars have been surreptitiously disinterring it because of its relevance to their work13 and its applicability to China has been openly defended by Chinese scholars, Wu Dakun among others.14 Umberto Melotti has shown how it can be applied to pre¬-classical civilisation in a stimulating and thought provoking fashion.15

The strongest argument, however, is surely the fact that bourgeois scholarship, entirely innocent of Marxism, has been in¬creasingly bringing support to the theory, at least in the case of Ancient Egypt. 'Abd el Mohsen Bakir has shown that true slavery in Egyptian history is limited to the period of imperial conquest in Syria and Nubia during the New Kingdom (c1567 1085BC) and to the Libyan Period (c1085 715BC), and that for the 2000 odd years expanse of Egyptian history before and after that date only various forms of `bondage' can be demonstrated.16 Ancient Egypt may have been short of water, but it was not short of manpower. Foreign domestic slaves and skilled artisans in state workshops clearly had a privileged position compared with the extortion practised upon the Egyptian peasant, whether directly of his labour or for the products of it. The question is not, of course, whether slavery existed or not at this early period   it clearly did   but whether it dominated the economy, which it clearly did not. Barry Kemp defines the Egyptian economy as 'institutional ad¬ministration of the redistributive kind', commenting upon its power to direct labour on public works, and upon the fact that 'no one who was prominent and suc¬cessful claimed to be so on a basis in¬dependent of the state'.17 Jac Janssen, the foremost authority on the economy of Ancient Egypt, noting the fact that even during the New Kingdom slavery is largely confined to households and the produc¬tion of luxury goods, considers that its economic rô1e was 'rather small', and that 'no slaves were required for the produc¬tion as a whole; the agricultural popula¬tion, unable to leave their fields in order to find others, was virtually bound to the soil, so that no legal coercion such as the slavery system was required'.18

Clearly the whole problem hinges upon the question of the relationship between the state and landholding, and here we have an interesting coalescence between Marxist and non Marxist scholarship. The Russian scholar I A Stuchevsky has recently argued19 that absolute private land ownership as we know it did not ex¬ist, that the land entailed to the great religious cults was merely a variety of state land, and that whilst virtual landowning obviously did exist, its legal status is pro¬blematic (perhaps nearer what we would call usufruct). He further argues for a tax/ rent yield in general as high as 30 per cent. As the physical representative of the gods on earth, it could be argued that the king had title to all land; to what extent it was a legal fiction is impossible to say.

This is the reason why the book under review here, with its seemingly obscure subject matter and its complex computer-¬based reasoning deserves a mention in a magazine devoted to Marxist history. All discussion of the nature of land tenure in Ancient Egypt must revolve around the great Wilbour papyrus, which lists the tenants and plots of temple property and state land for about 4.6 per cent of the cultivable land between modern Minya and the Fayum during the reign of Ramesses V (c1154 1150BC). By the ap¬plication of a number of computer techni¬ques Dr Katary has produced not a few findings that would tend to confirm Stuchevsky's results   that the property of the four great temple cult groups was handled by the same administration as directly royal land, that secular state of¬ficials participated in the grass roots management of temple holdings, that the lands attached to the mortuary cults of previous kings passed in and out of the royal treasury, and that there is even evidence that the Amun cult's lands pro¬vided fodder for the royal army.20 Speak¬ing of what she calls 'the essential unity of temple and crown', Dr Katary notes that 'it is the interaction of the two which defined the contours of the Late Ramesside economy. Such a conception of Ramesside government is not really all that far removed from Stuchevsky's con¬ception of the Egyptian state of which Pharaoh was the titular head'.21

None of this, of course, is conclusive proof that Ancient Egypt was an economy that could be described as organised on the Asiatic mode, and in the nature of the evidence such proof will probably never be forthcoming. But perhaps a closer ac¬quaintance with it might introduce a note of caution, if not of modesty, into the remarks of our Stalinist and New Left wiseacres before they indulge in such sweeping generalisations.
Al Richardson
Notes
1.        Karl A Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, New Haven, 1957.
2. Op cit, pp402, 407. 3. Op cit, p402.
4.        Stephen P Dunn, The Fall and Rise of the Asiatic Mode, London, 1982, p32. 5. Op cit, p36.
6.        Y Zubritsky, V Kerov and D Mitropolsky, A Short History of Pre Capitalist Society, Moscow, nd (1960s), pp44 5.
7.        J Harmatta, 'La société des Huns à 1'Epoque d'Attila', in 'État et Classes dans 1'Antiquité escalaviste', Recherches Interna¬tionales à la lumiere du Marxisme, no 2, Paris May/June 1957, pp179 238.
8.        Kuo Mo jo, 'La societb esclaviste chinois'     in op cit, n7 above, pp30 51.
9.        B Hindess and P Q Hirst, Pre Capitalist Modes of Production, London, 1975.
10. B Hindess and P Q Hirst, Mode of Produc¬tion and Social Formation, London, 1977, p43.
11.Op cit, n9 above, p180.
12. Perry Anderson, Note B, `The "Asiatic" Mode of Production' in Lineages of the Absolutist State, London, 1974, pp462ff.
13. Stephen P Dunn, op cit, n4 above.
14. Wu Dakun, 'The Asiatic Mode of Produc¬tion in History as Viewed by Political Economy in its Broad Sense', in Su Shaozi and others, Marxism in China, Nottingham 1983, pp53 77. This analysis of China had already been made some years before by the Russian scholars I Ostrovitianov and A Sterbalova, op cit, n4 above, ppl06 9.
15. Umberto Melotti, Marx and the Third World, London, 1977.
16. A M Bakir, Slavery in Pharaonic Egypt, Cairo, 1978.
17. B J Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation, London, 1989, pp234, 319, 232, etc.
18. Jac J Janssen, 'Prolegomena to the Study of Egypt's Economic History During the New Kingdom' in SAK, no iii, 1975, pp171-¬3.
19. For refs, cf Katary, p28, n46.
20. SLD Katary, Land Tenure in the Ramesside Period, London, 1989, ppl72, 198 9, 6, 183 4, 66 7, 253, 121.
21. Katary, pp183 4