Not only Europe and France, Marx also pointed out social conditions of Asia and said in broad outlines asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production- antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonisms, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals , at the sametime the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of mthat antagonism.This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of society to a close.
Thus, as the science of understanding pre-history progressed , Marx and Engels changed their understanding and descriptions accordingly. In the above text, Marx mentions "Asiatic" modes of production. At the time, they had thought Asian civilisation was the first we could speak of humanity. They dropped the idea of a distinct Asiatic mode of production and kept four basic forms : tribal,ancient,feudal, and capitalist.
Arrest from worker's movement
