Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2017

 

A Debate on Slave Society: Revisiting the Debate on the Stages of Slave Society in China

(Abstract)

 

Chen Minzhen

 

The basic questions in the debate on the stages of Chinese slave society include the following: What is slave society? Did Marx regard slave society as one of the “five social formations”? Did slave society exist everywhere in human history? Did slave society exist as a social stage in China? Which Chinese historical period was a slave society? The theory that the Shang dynasty was a slave society is the focus of the debate. The theory has two pillars: that the human sacrifices excavated from the Yin Ruins were slaves, and that the terms zhong (众) and min (民) in the literature handed down and the unearthed documents designated slaves. Scholars have focused on these two pillars in multiple debates. In recent years, new materials have emerged which will help answer the questions. Studies of slave society in China are based on archeological, anthropological, philological, intellectual history and other perspectives; these need to be integrated. To explore the characteristics of the form of ancient Chinese society and its background, we need to focus on the particular process of its occurrence and the early development of Chinese civilization, and undertake a more comprehensive study of the “Chinese path” from the perspective of world civilization.