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Karl A. Wittfogel: Article – "Russia and Asia. Problems of Contemporary Area Studies and International Relations", World Politics, vol. 2, no. 4, 1950. ; The article is annotated by Karl Polanyi.

Officially the one-centeredness of the Communist world ended in 1943. In that year the Communist International, which had recognized the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as the hegemon, was dissolved, because the new political situation demanded the "great flexibility and independence" of the various "sections." The people's democracies that a few years later came into being in Eastern Europe emphasized, as Brzezinski has noted, that they "were to be sovereign—not Soviet. Their relations with the USSR were to be, naturally, 'friendly' but founded on mutual recognition of the principles of independence and noninterference in internal affairs." Thus ideologically the transformation of international communism into a complex with many allegedly independent power-holding and power-seeking Communist parties was proclaimed long before Togliatti in 1956 asserted that the Communist world was becoming "polycentric."

Marx's interpretation of China enriched his concept of a completely Asiatic society. While dealing with England's relation to the Far East, he became aware that in imperial China, unlike in other oriental countries, land was privately held. His analysis of this seeming exception to the rule is unsatisfactory, but it is indicative of his socio-historical position. He continued to view China as a major case of "Asiatic production" even after he learned that there communal landed property had long been abolished.

"The victory of communism is inevitable." This claim has been made since the consolidation of the Soviet Union, and it has been restated with relish by the Kremlin's supreme spokesman during his recent visits abroad. It rests on the argument that Russian society, in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, has advanced from feudalism to capitalism and socialism, blazing a trail along which all other countries are bound to go. Thus the superiority of the Communist regime is asserted not merely on the basis of operational successes, but with reference to historical considerations which are ascribed to the "classics" of communism, and ultimately to Marx and Engels.

In the first part of this article I argued that the "Maoist" thesis is a "Maoist" legend. It is so because it is based on a false concept of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. And it is so also for two other reasons. Contrary to "Maoist" assertions, Mao in his Hunan Report did not outline a concept for a Communist-led peasant-supported revolution; and he did not, in 1940, present himself as an original top-ranking Marxist-Leninist theoretician.