Wittfogel explained Eastern bureaucratic despotism through irrigation-driven productive forces.

Evidence

In his essay on The Theory of Oriental Society', Wittfogel again defended the view that only an analysis starting from the structure of the productive forces could provide an explanation for the specific laws of social movement in the East and explain both the stagnation of the East and the rise of the West towards modern industrial society in the perspective of universal history. He saw the explanation for the dominant role played in the East by centralized bureaucratic administrative power as lying in the way that it suited the specifically oriental’ requirements of the agricultural production process. These appeared not only in the East but also wherever else the vital necessity for large-scale irrigation works arose. Following on from Marx, he mentioned China as a supreme example of the form of society created by the Asiatic mode of production', corresponding to oriental society’ at the level of productive relations, and to `oriental despotism’ at the political level. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 719

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ concept as Marx derived, mapping productive forces to oriental despotism at the political level.
• XREF: Directly relevant to Karl Wittfogel’s later famous book Oriental Despotism (1957), and to the general Marxist debate on the Asiatic mode of production.
• QUESTION: Interesting that the Institute’s planned China volumes never appeared — worth chasing what happened to this research program and its 1725 questionnaires.