Karl A. Wittfogel, Social Scientist Who Turned on Communists, 91 (original) (raw)
Karl A. Wittfogel, Social Scientist Who Turned on Communists, 91
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- May 26, 1988
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May 26, 1988
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Karl August Wittfogel, a social scientist and former Communist whose theories caused him to be denounced in Communist circles, died of pneumonia yesterday at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan. He was 91 years old and lived in Manhattan.
Mr. Wittfogel, who broke with the Communist Party in 1939 when the Russians signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, devised the theory that in early civilizations the building and operation of canals and waterworks for irrigation led to concentration of power in the hands of the elite and to the rise of despots.
He wrote that in such ''hydraulic societies,'' the government's powers were unlimited, and that total power through terror breeds total submissiveness. His likening of such societies to the Communist system in the Soviet Union and China caused him to be denounced by his former Communist associates.
He wrote several books on his theory, including the ''History of Chinese Society,'' published by Macmillan in 1949, and ''Oriental Despotism,'' published in 1957 by Yale University Press. He also wrote a highly regarded book in German in 1931 on Chinese economic and social history. Headed Chinese History Project
Mr. Wittfogel, who was a visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, headed the Chinese History Project based at Columbia University in the 1940's.
He was born in Woltersdorf, Germany in 1919 and studied at the Universities of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, Rostock, Hamburg and Frankfurt-am-Main.
According to G. L. Ulmen, a colleague and his biographer, Mr. Wittfogel joined the Communist Party in 1919 and was the party's leading expert on Asia at the time. He was arrested by the Germans in 1933 but international pressure forced his release. He then traveled to England and New York. From 1935 to 1937, he studied in China. He wrote several plays with a Marxist flavor that were directed by Erwin Piscator, one of the influential directors of the period. Ostracized in McCarthy Era
At one time, he was a member of the American Geological Society, the American Oriental Society and the Oriental Club, of which he was an officer.
In his biography, ''The Science of Society,'' Mr. Ulmen says Mr. Wittfogel was ostracized by the intellectual community after he appeared before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in the 1950's and named some of his former students and colleagues as members of the Communist Party.
He is survived by his wife, Esther S. Goldfrank, a noted anthropologist.
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