Karl August Wittfogel

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Karl August Wittfogel (6 September 1896 – 25 May 1988) was a German-American historian and sinologist.

Wittfogel was born in Woltersdorf, Province of Hanover. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt in 1928. He joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1920 and in the 1920s and early 30s, he was an active member of the party. Between 1925 and 1933 he was a member of the Institute for Social Research, better known as the Frankfurt School. During this period he was a vocal critic of the German Nazi Party. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he decided to leave Germany. Before he could leave, however, he was arrested and interned in a concentration camp, but was released following an international outcry. He moved to the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1939. There he held academic positions at Columbia University and at the University of Washington where he taught until his retirement in 1966.

Youth in Germany

Wittfogel entered Leipzig University in 1914, but studied at several German universities, concentrating on study of China, but studying other subjects too, including history, economics, and psychology. In his youth Wittfogel wrote a number of plays: Rote Soldaten (Red Soldiers), Der Mann der eine Idee hat (The Man Who Has an Idea), 'Die Mutter, Der Fluchtling (The Mother, The Refugee), and Wer ist der Dummste? (Who is the Biggest Fool?) but declined an offer to become the dramatic producer of the revolutionary Volksbuhn (People's Stage) in Berlin in order to concentrate on his academic studies.^[1]

Wittfogel is best known for his work Oriental Despotism: A comparative Study of Total Power published in 1957. Starting from a Marxist analysis of the ideas of Max Weber on China and India's "hydraulic-bureaucratic official-state" and building on Marx's views of the Asiatic Mode of Production, Wittfogel came up with an analysis of the role of irrigation works in Asia, the bureaucratic structures needed to maintain them and the impact that these had on society. In his view many societies, mainly in Asia, relied heavily on the building of large-scale irrigation works. To do this, the state had to organize forced labor from the population at large. This required a large and complex bureaucracy staffed by competent and literate officials. This structure was uniquely placed to also crush civil society and any other force capable of mobilizing against the state. Such a state would inevitably be despotic, powerful, stable and wealthy.

After arriving in the United States, Wittfogel began to reconsider the nature of Communism and became a strong opponent of the ideology. He came to believe that the socialized economies of the Soviet Union inevitably lead to despotic governments even more oppressive than those of "traditional Asia". Wittfogel came to consider the Eastern World such as Soviet and the People's Republic of China as the greatest threats to mankind's further development. These two states were the examples he had in mind when writing about "Asian despotism".

Works

Wittfogel, Karl August, Vom Urkommunismus bis zur proletarischen Revolution, Junge Garde, 1922

Interviews

• “Conversations with Wittfogel”. Telos 43 (Spring 1980). New York: Telos Press.

Plays

• Rote Soldaten (Red Soldiers)
• Der Mann der eine Idee hat (The Man Who Has an Idea)
• Die Mutter, Der Fluchtling (The Mother, The Refugee) Berlin, Malik, 1922
• Wer ist der Dummste? (Who is the Biggest Fool?)

Non-fiction

• Karl August Wittfogel, China Awakening (Das erwachende China)
• Karl August Wittfogel, The Foundations and Stages of Chinese Economic History, Alcan (1935)
• Karl August Wittfogel, New Light on Chinese Society; An Investigation of China's Socio-Economic Structure, International secretariat, Institute of Pacific relations, 1938
• Karl August Wittfogel, The society of prehistoric China, Alcan (1939)
• Karl August Wittfogel, Meteorological Records from the Divination Inscriptions of Shang, American geographical Society (1940)
• Karl August Wittfogel, Public Office in the Liao Dynasty and the Chinese Examination System ..., Harvard-Yenching Institute (1947)
• Karl August Wittfogel; Jiasheng Feng; et al, History of Chinese Society: Liao, 907-1125, American Philosophical Society: Distributed by the Macmillan Co., New York, 1949
  • Karl August Wittfogel; Chia-shêng Fêng; Karl H. Menges, History of Chinese society : Liao (907-1125). Appendix V, Qara-Khitay 1949
• Karl A Wittfogel, Russia and Asia : Problems of Contemporary Area Studies and International Relations, 1950
• Karl A Wittfogel, Asia's Freedom...and the Land Question 1950
• Karl A. Wittfogel, The influence of Leninism-Stalinism on China, 1951?
• Karl A Wittfogel, The Review of Politics : The Historical Position of Communist China: Doctrine and Reality, University of Notre Dame Press (1954)
• Karl August Wittfogel, Mao Tse-tung, liberator or destroyer of the Chinese peasants?, Free Trade Union Committee, American Federation of Labor, (1955)
• Karl A. Wittfogel, The Hydraulic Civilizations Chicago, 1956
• Karl August Wittfogel, Oriental despotism; a comparative study of total power Yale University Press, 1957
  • Karl A. Wittfogel, Class structure and total power in oriental despotism, 1960
  • Karl August Wittfogel, Results and problems of the study of oriental despotism 1969
• Karl A. Wittfogel, Chinese society : An Historical Survey, 1957
• Karl Wittfogel, The New Men, Hong Kong, 1958?
• Karl A. Wittfogel, Food and society in China and India, New York, 1959
• Karl A. Wittfogel, Peking's "Independence (1959)
• Karl A. Wittfogel, The Marxist View of Russian Society and Revolution, 1960
• Karl August Wittfogel, Viewer's guide to From Marx to Mao, University of Washington (1960)
• Karl August Wittfogel, The legend of Maoism, 1960?
• Karl A. Wittfogel, Class structure and total power in oriental despotism, 1960
• Karl August Wittfogel, A Stronger Oriental Despotism 1960
• Karl August Wittfogel, The Russian and Chinese Revolutions : A Socio-Historical Comparison 1961
• Karl August Wittfogel, The Marxist view of China China Quarterly, 1962
• Karl A. Wittfogel, Agrarian Problems and the Moscow-Peking Axis, 1962
• Karl Wittfogel, A short history of Chinese communism, University of Washington, 1964
• Karl August Wittfogel, The Chinese Red Guards and the "Lin Piao Line, American-Asian Educational Exchange, Inc. (1967)
• Karl August Wittfogel, Results and problems of the study of oriental despotism 1969
• Karl August Wittfogel, Agriculture: a key to the understanding of Chinese society, past and present, Australian National University Press, 1970
• Karl August Wittfogel, Communist and Non-Communist Agrarian Systems, with Special Reference to the U.S.S.R. and Communist China a Comparative Approach Univ. of Washington Press 1971
• Karl August Wittfogel, Herbert Marcuse Hans Mayer, Autorität und Familie Association, (Hamburg, 1975) (in German)
• Karl August Wittfogel, Zedong Mao, Some Remarks on Mao's Handling of Concepts and Problems of Dialectics, University of Washington. Far Eastern and Russian Institute, not dated
• Karl August Wittfogel and G L Ulmen, Society and History : Essays in Honor of Karl August Wittfogel, Mouton, The Hague, (1978), hardcover, 517 pages, ISBN 9027977763

Papers

The collected papers of Karl August Wittfogel (1939-1970) are archived at the University of Washington Libraries, Papers, 1939-1970

Notes

See also

• Hydraulic empire

External links

• Columbia Encyclopedia Wittfogel article