Describe the relations of production in the Asiatic economic system

The relations of productions in the Asiatic economic system were based on the state’s
organization of communal village production and the extraction of a surplus through
various taxes, tribute and communal labour from the villagers. Since the Asiatic
producers owned the means of production and subsistence, the role of the state in the
production process was mainly that of organizing production. The Asiatic producers
carried out the entire production, consumption and exchange activities on household and
collective levels. Ideology as reflected in the religious, political, philosophical and
genealogical activities carried out by the Monarch gave the state the political power to
intervene in and preside over the production process and surplus distribution. Surplus
labour was extracted by the Monarch because he had the ideological right to do so. This
right was accepted universally by the communities. The sustenance of the production
process relied on the state’s role in organizing the various production activities (works),
means of communication, land distribution and the distribution of surplus.

Taylor (1979) concludes that ideology played a central role in the Asiatic economic
system. It is ideology and the relations of production between the village/community and
the state that ensured the state’s control over the production of surplus labour.

There was a marked absence of class differentiation within the Asiatic economic system.
The relations of production involving communal/village producers and the state were less
complex compared to those in the feudal or classical slave economic systems.

Generally, the structure of the Asiatic economic system ensured a production and
reproduction cycle that prevented capital accumulation, the private ownership of land and
the separation of the direct producers from the means of production. The state maintained
these relations of production which made the transition to capitalism difficult until the
Dutch and English colonial crusades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Indonesia
for example, the advent of the Dutch colonial government and merchant capital laid the
foundation for the capitalist economy through the forced cultivation of export cash crops
etc.

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Titany answered the question on December 8, 2021 at 07:04