The search for the Asiatic mode of production (AMP) and its related political structure, Oriental despotism, in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels may not have lasted as long as the quest for the Holy Grail, but it has had equally passionate devotees, heretics, and disbelievers disputing the nature and even the existence of the quarry. Marx, in the original preface to the first volume of Capital in 1859, conscious of the provocative character of his work, was aware that inquiry into the nature of political economy summoned as “foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the furies of private interest.” The concept of the Asiatic mode has aroused even more emotional turmoil and heated polemical exchanges than is customary in the normally turbulent world of Marxist exegesis.

Some of the heat engendered by the considerable debate about Oriental despotism and the AMP emanates from genuine differences in interpretation of the often opaque or contradictory writings of Marx and Engels. An unusually large variety of interpretations of the two concepts has been presented.