The Centralisation of Tributary Surplus
In all the pre-modern systems (the old regionalizations) this surplus appears as a tribute, and in the modern (capitalist) system as profit for capital or, more precisely, the rent of dominant oligopolistic capital.
The specific difference between these two forms of surplus is qualitative and decisive. Levying tributary surplus is transparent: it is the free work of the subjugated peasants on the land of the nobles and a proportion of the harvest creamed off by the latter or by the State. These are quite natural, non-monetary forms and even when they assume a monetary form it is generally marginal or exceptional. The levying of profit or rent by dominant capital is, in contrast, opaque as it results from the way the network of trade in monetarised goods operates: wages of workers, purchases and sales of the means of production and the results of economic activities.Taxation of tributary surplus is thus inseparable from the exercise of political power in the region (large or small) where it operates. In contrast, that of capitalist surplus appears to be dissociated from the exercise of political power, apparently being the product of the mechanisms that control the markets (of labour, products, capital itself). The (pre-modern) tributary systems were not applied over vast territories and large numbers of people. The level of development of the productive forces typical of these ancient times was still limited and the surplus consisted essentially of what was produced by the peasant communities. The tributary societies could be split up, sometimes to the extreme, with each village or seigneury constituting an elementary society.
The fragmentation of tributary societies did not exclude them from participating in broader trade networks, commercial or otherwise, or in systems of power extending over greater areas. Elementary tributary systems were not necessarily autarchic, even if most of their production had to ensure their own reproduction without outside support.
The emergence of tributary empires has always required a political power capable of imposing itself on the scattered tributary societies. Among those in this category were the Roman, Caliphal and Ottoman empires in the Europe/ Mediterranean/Middle East region, the Chinese empire and the imperial states that India experienced on various occasions during its history.
This emergence of tributary empires in turn facilitated the expansion of commercial and monetary relationships within them and in their external relations.The tributary empires did not necessarily pursue the political aim of the homogenisation of conditions in the region controlled by central power. But the laws and their usages governing these systems, dominated by the political authorities to which the functioning of the economy remained subordinated, did not in themselves create a growing polarisation between the sub-regions constituting the empire.
History has largely proved the fragility of tributary empires whose apogee was short—a few centuries—followed by long periods of disintegration, usually described as decadence. The reason for this is that the centralisation of the surplus was not based on the internal requirement necessary for the reproduction of the elementary tributary societies. They were very vulnerable to attack from outside and revolts from within, by the dominated classes or provinces, such as they were. Evolutions in the different fields, of ecology, demography, military armaments, the trade in goods over long distances, proved to be strong enough to turn this vulnerability into catastrophe.
The only exception—but it is a vital one—was that of the Chinese empire.
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