Oriental despotism

The oriental despotism is a revived by Karl August Wittfogel term that goes back mainly to Aristotle and Montesquieu, was formulated in Marxist theories of society in the form of the Asiatic mode of production.

Wittfogel understands by a despotic form of government in which the ruler claimed total power and a strong state bureaucracy completely dominated the country. In such societies, lacking political counterweights that can provide for civil liberties. The cities are characterized by a strong dependence of the civil service, so that merchants and artisans were not to their own political power. The Oriental despotism has very adverse effects on the dignity of the individual.

The emergence of oriental despotism looks Wittfogel as follows:

Where greater accumulation of water in an otherwise dry but latent fertile countryside were available, " hydraulic societies " developed. The construction of irrigation systems required the massive use of peasant workers. This work benefits were made by forced labor, but were due to the fragmentation of the many village communities only by the central planning power of a functionary elite possible that rose simultaneously politically dominant caste and had a performance in mathematics, geometry, astronomy and administrative bureaucracy.

Swell

• Nicolas- Antoine Boulanger: Recherches sur l' origine du despotisme oriental, [ Geneva ] 1761
• Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu: De l' esprit des Loix (1748 ), Ger The Spirit of Laws. Reclam, 1994, ISBN 3-15-008953-0
• Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu: persanes Lettres (1721 ), German Persian Letters. Reclam, 1991, ISBN 3-15-002051-4
• Aristotle: Politics, ed. v. Otfried Hoffe, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001.