Marx characterized idyllic Indian villages as foundations of Oriental despotism

Evidence

Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilization and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath the traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 391

Categorization

• DEFINE: Primary-source example of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ stereotype: the village community as despotic, superstitious, and history-less.
• XREF: Connects to the hegemonic ‘common sense’ module — Marx’s diagnosis itself absorbed the Orientalist figure of the static, enslaved Orient.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 391