Social Darwinism and the Concept of Oriental Despotism

Michael Kinsman: The concept of Oriental despotism was developed by an embedded excommunist, Carl Vittfogel. He said Stalinism is an expression of the racist near East and he said it's the result of irrigated societies. But archaeologists have found that when Babylonia and Mesopotamia were irrigated, they were done locally. They weren't done with central planning because you can't centrally plan agriculture very well. It has to be basically local. And the whole idea of Oriental despots was just picked up and made into a racist idea that all Asians are just as despotic as Stalin was.