The Social Foundations of State Building Process in Asiatic and Western Social Formations: A Comparative Analysis

The division between the West and the East has taken important place in the life of thought. Since BC, this division has been said especially by Western thinkers. The Westerners had looked this subject for long years in the framework of “civilization†and “barbarity†. This point of view led the West to the orientalist point of view. Really at first glance, it can be seen that the difference between Western social formations and Eastern social formations. This difference had brought about economic, political and ideological differences among two social formations. In the Western type of the line of development, the importance of individual property has continuously observed from the past to the present. Individual property had provided peoples with individuality and autonomous areas. This autonomous area had brought definite limitations to the states in this area. In the eastern society, common property had been watched instead of individual property. Individual as the part of society had reached the right to operation instead of ownership in this area. There are physical conditions in the origin of this basic difference. The basic physical difference is geographical conditions. The Western geographical conditions are mild, and the area of this region is smaller. The East has hard geography, and its area is bigger. It is necessary to mobilize more people to fulfil public function. It is one of the important reasons of the Eastern socialization. This situation has passed through to the understanding of property. The aim of this study is to bring socio-economic explanation to the state building process and the setting of state in Asiatic or the Eastern society. The hypothesis of this study is that state building dynamics in Asiatic societies are different from European states, and the main difference of Asiatic states from European states is to organize people for public function. Its reason is geographical determinant, and the result of this is common property. In this context, when the state building dynamics in European states are determined by economic instance, the state building dynamics in Asiatic social formations are defined by political instance.