That awkward appendage to the corpus of Marxism—the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP)—has been repeatedly declared dead, with some Marxist theorists calling for its final burial. Most notably, Perry Anderson once argued that the notion "be given the decent burial it deserves." However, in contrast, Umberto Melotti has revived the concept in his thorough and insightful analysis.

The persistent reappearance of the AMP suggests that it contains a vital principle. Its perceived weakness may stem less from inherent flaws and more from a failure on our part to apply it perceptively and flexibly. Melotti presents the concept with clarity and brevity, making any attempt to summarize it here unnecessary. Instead, this post offers a few comments and observations on the matter.

Karl Marx has often been misrepresented by those claiming to follow his work. He did not claim that the pattern of historical progression he identified in Western Europe was universal. On the contrary, he explicitly and repeatedly emphasized its specificity. Nevertheless, many Marxists have projected this model across all continents, attempting to reconcile contradictory facts with rigid dogma. Melotti exposes how these distortions have yielded unproductive results.

Still, Marx recognized the necessity of explaining not only the emergence of capitalism in Western Europe but also its failure to develop elsewhere. Western Europe's transition from a precapitalist formation to autonomous industrial capitalism—seemingly arising spontaneously from its own material and institutional resources—required explanation. Ethnocentric or arbitrary explanations were unacceptable to Marx. Thus, to understand this divergence, he posited multiple precapitalist formations. Among these, the AMP gained prominence due to its broad applicability.

The central question remains: what made the AMP inhospitable to the development of capitalism? This puzzle, particularly striking in light of China’s rich scientific and technological history, continues to provoke debate.

Melotti traces the history of the concept, noting that its marginalization was influenced by political developments in post-revolutionary Russia and China, as well as intellectual trends in non-Communist settings. The AMP gained renewed relevance in post-World War II debates on underdevelopment—not only among Marxists, where it had never vanished from discourse, but increasingly among non-Marxist circles as well.

Before the Second World War, non-Marxist economists paid scant attention to what became known as "underdevelopment." Development economics only emerged seriously after the war. Even Marxist thinkers, typically more attentive to these issues, appeared surprisingly Eurocentric. Early strategies for overcoming underdevelopment were naive, often reducing the problem to a formula of capital plus planning. Many Western economists were invited to assist newly independent states in drafting national economic plans, while others offered guidance from afar.

When these prescriptions failed to yield results, simplistic explanations for underdevelopment fell out of favor. More nuanced analyses emerged, encompassing variables like geography, resources, religion, genetics, psychology, culture, and language. However, few addressed colonialism as the structural precondition for underdevelopment or acknowledged revolution, as in China, as the necessary path out of it. Those who did often returned to the AMP for deeper understanding.

Marx's enduring relevance lies in the depth and breadth with which he examined the global inequality of development. His systematic approach continues to offer valuable insights. Engels, too, made foundational contributions that are inseparable from Marx’s own. Melotti, in turn, provides a lucid introduction to Marxism while offering a novel interpretation of its foundational ideas.

However, it must be noted that even Marx could not fully escape a residual Eurocentrism—a point Melotti illustrates with familiar quotations. Among Marx’s Western followers, this tendency has shown remarkable persistence, especially among Trotskyists, who continue to insist that revolutions in the global South await the lead of industrial workers in advanced capitalist nations. Melotti himself, despite his strengths, exhibits traces of this outlook in his treatment of the Chinese Revolution.

This intellectual residue of Western superiority lingers in different ways. Anderson, for example, elevates classical antiquity as humanity’s pinnacle, while Melotti places undue emphasis on Western technological progress as the guarantor of revolutionary success. Such perspectives are increasingly outdated as global dynamics shift and capitalist and state-capitalist societies approach obsolescence.

In this context, the AMP may prove essential to understanding why Asian societies have shown such receptivity to alternative social formations. This insight is crucial for grasping the transformations currently unfolding on the global stage.