December 10, 1983

ECONOMIC A N D P O L I T I C A L W E E K L Y as argued by some Historians and Habib differed w i t h the position taken by D D Kosambi and R S Sharma. What it did result in was the emergence of what Habib designated as the 'Medieval Indian System' or the 'Medieval Economic Formation' w i t h two phases or cycles, the first spread over the 13th-15th centuries (Delhi Sultanate) and the second over the 16th-17th centuries (Mughal Empire) with its final dissolution coming only as a result of European colonial rule in India. Habib believed there were hardly any forces 'internal' to this formation which facilitated its dissolution and it was purely the 'external' forces, represented by colonial rule, that facilitated the dissolution of the Medieval Economic Formation. R S Sharma presented a paper (read in absentia by Suvira Jaiswal) entitled " H o w Feudal was Indian Feudalism" which took a position very different from Habib's paper. Sharma argued that "Feudalism in India was characterised by a class of landlords and by a class of subject peasantry, the two living in a predominantly agrarian economy marked by decline of trade and urbanism". Sharma conceded that Feudalism was not a universal phenomenon, that enormous variations existed in the nature of feudal societies and that feudalism in India was vastly different from that in Western Europe. However, what was crucial to the definition of feudalism was the "lord-peasant relationship*' and the "exploitation of the estate by its owner, controller, enjoyer or beneficiary". W i t h these "minimum univ e r s a l feudalism may have several variations", but there was no doubt that this subjection "is a characteristic of early medieval Indian social structure". Sharma proceeded to illustrate the point that the relation of the peasant (equivalent in his view to janapadas) to the land and the changing nature of this relation as found in medieval India enabled us to characterise the nature of his subjugation as essentially 'feudal'. Serfdom was widely prevalent in medieval India and the "practice of forced labour, sharecropping or leasing the lands wore promoted and supported by social institutions and inhabitations. The State was characterised as being a 'ReligiousMilitary, state w i t h the priests and warriors expropriating the peasants and artisans. Indeed the structure did not remain static and peasant revolts were recorded which put pressure on

MARX CENTENARY

Karl Marx and Analysis of Indian Society

Sanjaya
T H E Marx Centenary Seminar on "Karl Marx and the Analysis of Indian Society" organised by the Editorial Board of Social Scientist at New Delhi from October 6 to 8 was the t h i r d all-India seminar organised by Social Scientist. The first seminar on 'Marxism and Aesthetics' met at Kasauli in 1979 while the second on ' Lenin and Contemporary Capitalism' me: at New Delhi in 1981. Clearly these seminars have become an i m portant meeting point for scholars and political activists in India. Indeed these seminars have helped to make this distinction increasingly irrelevant which in itself is important given the fact that of late it has become fashionable for so-called 'Marxist intellectuals' to distance themselves from the communist movement in this country. The Seminar once again stressed the continuing relevance of Marx's w r i t ings on India and of Marxist writings in India to the analysis of Indian society and as a guide for action for the revolutionary movement here. Karl Marx, the intellectual and revolutionary par excellence, therefore, continues to inspire a large body of intellectual work and political action a full century after his death. The Seminar attracted a wide variety of social scientists whose creative output clearly illustrates the vitality and freshness of intellectual effort that has been inspired by this philosopherrevolutionary. At a time when Marxist analysis is being dubbed as 'orthodox', 'straightjacketed' and 'dogmatic', it was refreshing to listen to stimulating papers .that give the lie to such vilification. The Seminar, spread across six sessions, focused essentially on three areas of Marx's and Marxist writings, The first area related to the characterisation of pre-colonial Indian society; the second related to the concept of Primary Accumulation and the role of colonialism, specially British rule In India, in the growth of capitalism in Europe; the t h i r d related to the analysis of caste and social classes in India from the pre-colonial to the present times. Apart from these three main areas other papers were also presented on such diverse themes as the Dictatorship of the 2102

Baru
Proletariat in Socialist states and Marx's views on Pre-Revolutionary Russia.

I
The First Session, chaired by Romilla Thapar, began w i t h a paper read by Irfan Habib on "Classifying Economic Formations in Pre-Colonial India". Habib argued that just as wage-labour remains the basic form of labour under capitalism and socialism, and, therefore, the social form of labour cannot determine or help identify the mode of production, so also simple peasant production could be found across varying social formations and therefore the existence of the peasant as a rent-paying petty producer could not help identify the nature of an economic formation. Having stated this Habib proceeded to question Dobb's identification of feudalism w i t h serfdom, arguing that feudalism was characterised by more than serfdom alone and the variations in the structure of feudalism across societies would indeed alter its laws of motion. Habib accepted the fundamental distinction that Max drew between European Feudalism and Indian society, a distinction that exists because in Indian society (i) it was the village community rather than the individual peasant which represented the 'basic object of subjugation by the exploiting class'; (ii) the surplus extracted from the village is converted into commodities facilitating extensive commodity circulation through keeping the village community outside this sphere; and (iii) the state came to play an important role in providing irrigation. On the basis of these distinctions Marx distinguishes the pre-colonia! Indian economy from the Feudal formation of Western Europe. While Habib accepted Marx's distinction, he questioned the assumption of a 'changeless society' in some of Marx's early writings though Marx seemed to have retracted from this position in his later writings. Habib went on to illustrate how in fact changes did occur within Indian village society. These changes however did not lead to the emergence of Feudalism

ECONOMIC A N D POLITICAL WEEKLY the ruling classes and one encountered the process of differentiation among the peasantry. In an oral presentation Harbans Mukhia pointed to certain limitatioas ol Marx's views on the Asiatic Society and the role of irrigation. Marx placed undue emphasis on the role of the state in providing and maintaining irrigation systems and gave i n adequate attention to peasant initiative, indeed it was the individual peasant's initiative in using water, capital and other inputs which was responsible for the differentiation of the peasantry so that it was the differencial utilisation of the inputs by the peasantry which resulted in the emergence of a stratified peasant society and private property in land. Mukhia drew attention to certain variations in the experience of fedualism in Europe and India. In the European case, the transformation from slavery marked a fundamental change in the labour process with the emergence of a completely new kind of distribution of the means of production and of surplus appropriation. In India, however, the transition from the large farms of the Mauryan period to the small peasant plots in later times did not imply any break in the labour process. Further Mukhia argued that direct labour services prevailed in Europe and did not do so in India not because of reasons adduced by Max but because in Europe the land-man ratio was much higher (vis-a-vis India) as a result of soil fertility being lower and this necessitated compulsory and direct labour service in tbe one instance and explained its absence in the other. Parvati Menon in her paper on ' T h e South Indian Village Community and the Marxian Model'' sought to varify the tenability of Marx's characterisation of the pre-colonial village community. Marx repeatedly drew attention to two features of the Indian village, while conceding some change in i t , namely, the "possession in common of the land" by the commuinty and the "self-sufficient" nature of the village community. Marx did concede variations from this pattern "south of the Krishna" and it is precisely his region that Menon looked at. She found from 18th Century sources that "elements of private property were widespread*' w i t h land concentrated among the superior right holders who "in fact controlled the community and enforced the actual subordination of the poorer landowning strata and village servants". Marx's writings d i d not allow for the kind of stratification in pre-colonial India which Menon in fact encountered nor did they allow for the kind of village inter-dependency that she found. She further questioned Marx's views on the weak development of commodity-money relations based on her evidence and believed that Marx did not adequately appreciate the role of 'the community in irrigational works, over-emphasising the role of the state. While calling for a broadening of Marx's formulations on India so as to allow for the possibility of change in the village community. Menon underlined the continued relevance of what she called the Marxian Model'' in evaluating precolonial Indian society. Diptendra Banerjee in his paper on "Marx and the 'Original' Form of Pre-Colonial India's Village Commuunity" put forward the argument that there was not "one" village community in Marx's writings on India but " t w o , " the first being the "original" form and the second the "developed" form which evolved out of the " o r i ginal or archetypal" form. It is the inability to distinguish betweeen these two that had "largely been responsible for the alleged Marxian view of an unchanging India". Banerjee believed that it was the failure to see this distinction that had resulted in wrong conclusions being drawn by Maxists on the character of Asiatic society. Banerjee objected to the view of the village community as representing a transitional stage from pre-class to class society noting that Marx had in fact viewed it as already a class society in his letters to Vera Zasulich. Perhaps Marx was responsible for part of the confusion, Banerjee opined, in as much as he repeatedly spoke of the "unchangeableness of India's village community". But this "unchangeableness'' was only a relative concept, relative to the pace of development in Europe, and appeared only in Marx's early writings. Banerjee argued, therefore, that the "original" form of the village community (unchanging village) became for Marx the "middle-link between man and the natural-objective conditions of his production" and appeared as "the first great condition of production in human life, w i t h the Earth as its natural property". As long as individual private property had not emerged and all property was communally owned the village community was "unchanging'', but the moment private property emerged the village community was

December 10, 1983 no longer so. Indeed the "original" form was put forward as a universal paradigm of primitive history but by 1881 Marx retructed from this position using it only as a point of departure for the "developed" form of village community in India. Thus the "original" form constituted a primary formation, much in the sense in which Morgan and later Engels defined ''Gentile" society, while the developed community was a secondary formation characterised as it was by slavery and serfdom. In marked contrast to the historical discussion so far came the next paper by Sudipto Kaviraj, "On the Status of Marx's Writings on India", a theoretical critique of some trends in Marxist historiography which awarded Marx's writings on traditional Indian society the starus of a theory so that it was argued there existed a "Marx's theory of Asian societies'". Questioning this proposition Kaviraj argued that Mar's wrttings on India were neither "credible empirical propositions about the structure of traditional social forms in India" nor were they merely "casual, episodic, occasional remarks with no logical necessity behind them". They did, however, play a specific and logical role within the corpus of his total writings and were in fact necessary for his other, more fundamental, writings on European social formation. Starting from the proposition that any statement could be variously interpreted depending upon the "theory of interpretation" one adopted, Kaviraj argued that there were two interpretations one could adopt: a textualist and a contextualist. The textualist interpretation (a la logical positivism) would claim that "meanings of historical texts, if these are not infernally contradictory or faulty in formal terms, must be taken as being self-evident", This self-evidence then became a universal feature devoid of the historical context so that a textualist interpretation took an eternalist view of the relevance of n statement. As opposed to this one cou'd adopt a ''contextualist" interpretation which would insist that all "meanings must be sought through an historical reconstruction of their sense". Thus it was argued that Marx's w r i t ings on India must be viewed from a contextualist rather than a textualist position which would imply placing his writings in the historical context in which they were written. For 2103

December 10, 1983 Marx the analysis of Indian society was necessary in order to delineate the boundaries of his more fundamental enquiry into the European social formation. Thus, if one were evaluating .separate phenomena A, B, C and D and, if one were interested in an understanding of phenomenon C, one would have to not only define C in-itself but also in contrast to A, B and D. Thus A, B and D could also be evaluated in-themselves or merely as 'non-Cs'. In evaluating the European social formation, which Kaviraj argued constituted for Marx his 'C' Indian society was more a 'non-C and its importance derived from the fact that it defined the boundaries of C Thus Kaviraj argued, "There is then no theory of Indian society in Marx; Some of his direct remarks, although perhaps empirically false, served his purpose in making the comments he did. For his principal aim was to demarcate the conceptual boundaries of capitalism." The C in this case was a "filled" concept for Marx while the non-Cs were largely "empty" concepts which in t u r n needed "filling-in" a task left by Marx to future historians of Indian society. Mathew Kurian read a paper entitled " M a r x on India" which brought out the range and depth of Marx's writings on India and argued that, " M a r x dealt w i t h problems of India and other Asian societies not as isolated ones, but as part of his overall enterprise, researching on development of capitalism in Britain, France, Germany, etc, and how such development was linked up w i t h the underdevelopment and stagnation in colonial countries such as India". Kurien emphasised that Marx saw in the colonial rule both a destructive and regenerative role and linked the future of national liberation movements to the future of socialism and the solidarity of the working class movement. In the discussion that followed, interest and controversy were generated around Habib and Kaviraj's papers. Habib's use of the concept of "mode of production" and his characterisation of the medieval Indian economy as an economic formation w i t h its internal laws of motion and his definition of serfdom were seriously questioned. Prabhat Patnaik argued that M a r x used the concept of a "mode of production" as an abstract analytical construct rather than as a descriptive category. If it was necessary to distinguish between European 2104

ECONOMIC A N D POLITICAL WEEKLY feudalism and medieval Indian economy as distinct economic formations, it was necessary to identify their distinct laws of motion and it was insufficient to merely distinguish them on the basis of their descriptive attributes. Utsa Patnaik referred to Dobb's characterisation of serfdom as a special form where surplus was extracted from a "subject peasantry" through extra-economic coercion and said that obviously Habib disagreed w i t h this characterisation. For h i m serfdom was equivalent to labour services in which case he would be hard port to identify feudalism anywhere in Asia. S Naqvi called for a more disaggregated regional analysis of modes of production in pre-colonial India given the sub-continental dimensions of this country. The major critique of Kaviraj came from A n i l Bhatti who raised certain methodological objections to Kaviraj's statement of the contextualist interpretation while endorsing his objections to the textualist interpretation. More fundamentally, Bhatti argued that Marx's writings on India were not in the status of an analysis of "non-Cs" (the other) motivated purely from an interest in the analysis of " C " (the something) but that there was a relationship between the something and the other which fit into an overall theory of the totality which in fact was Marx's project. Marx was not interested in pre-capitalist social formations purely from the point of view of contrasting them w i t h capitalism but indeed he was interested in an analysis of the transition and the dialectical interaction between the Cs and the non-Cs. Bipan Chandra believed Marx's writings on India had great worth in themselves. Kumaresb Chakravarty felt Kaviraj had strayed into non-Marxism, since the dialectical interaction between systems had been reduced to a simple set theory. The second session for the day discussed two papers. Sukomal Sen read a paper on "Marx and Class-Caste in India" in which he argued that in his analysis of various social formations Marx had clearly perceived the emergence of social classes and had viewed class struggle as the motive force of change in history. Indian society, however, had not only been divided into classes but was also stratified into castes which were hierarchically ordered. Marx d i d recognise this i n stitution and its role in Indian society but believed it would wither away w i t h the development of capitalism and industrialisation. On the other hand, caste institutions had in fact re-emerged as focal points for political mobilisation. Tracing the origin of castes and the role played by caste in Indian society, Sen argued that caste consciousness had emerged as a major barrier to the growth of class conscioussness. He saw in the relations of production in agriculture the basis for the sustenance of the caste system, and hence the inability of social reform movements in doing away w i t h this system. He saw its ultimate destruction only through a revolutionary transformation of agrarian society. The last paper for the day was prerented by B T Ranadive on the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in socialist states. In a paper that raised very important questions, Ranadive took a critical look at the relationship between the individual and the state in a socialist society established on the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ranadive rejected bourgeois characterisation of such states as "totalitarian" arguing that the dictatorship of the proletariat was democracy in the interests of the vast majority of toiling people. While socialist states, specially the Soviet Union, had over the course of the last half a century successfully tackled problems like unemployment, poverty, inflation and so on, what they had not fully succeeded in achieving was a proper relationship between the "individual" and the "State" and the "Party". Socialist leaders like Stalin and Mao had undoubtedly contributed a great deal to the cause of socialist revolution in their respective countries but had paid i n adequate attention to the problem of individual liberty as a result of which several mistakes had been made and distortions introduced into the functioning of a socialist society. Tracing the sources of such distortions, Ranadive emphasised the role of the Marxist-Leninist party in rectifying them and guarding against such distortions and in resolving the problem of the relationship between the proletarian state and the individual. T w o important conclusions that followed from Ranadive's discussion were that "formal guarantees against violation of i n d h i d u a l liberties must be embodied in the Constitution and the Party must devote far greater attention to safeguard its own purity, knowing that the struggle against the growth of bureaucratic tendencies is amongst the toughest". Ranadive proceeded to ex-

ECONOMIC A N D POLITICAL WEEKLY amine the various Soviet Constitutions and noted that by 1976 tha Constitution sought to remove the weaknesses of the 1936 (Stalin) Constitution and provided for greater assurance of i n dividual liberty and assured a l l the basic rights such as Right to W o r k , Right to Leisure, Right to Education, Equal Rights to Women, and so on. Cautioning against bureaucratism and the stifling of legitimate criticism of official policy, Ranadive stressed the importance of preventing the Party and State from losing their rapport w i t h the masses. Finally, he warned against attempts by some communists who, having fallen victims to bourgeois propaganda, were demanding the restoration of capitalism in the name of individual "bourgeois" liberty. Responding to Ranadive's paper, Kalyan Dasgupta referred to the experiments in economic decentralisation in Eastern Europe and wondered why there was no corresponding political decentralisation. He raised the question of what was the relationship between dictatorship of the proletariat and self-management. Kumaresh Chakravarty asked if the right to strike was compatible w i t h socialism, while Balbir Batola asked if the Bettelheim thesis on the emergence of a new class in Soviet society was tenable. Irfan Habib argued that institutionalisation of privileges for the bureaucracy d i d not in itself suggest the emergence of a new class and asked what had been learnt from the experience of the United Front between workers and peasants in the conduct of the revolution. II The T h i r d Session was chaired by Ravinder Kumar. The first paper entitled "Primitive Accumulation and Capitalist Development" was read by Prabhat Patnaik which essentially made five important points: (1) The concept of primitive accumulation (PA) of capital in Marx could not be logically rejected even if it was found wanting on historical grounds. In other words, " w i t h i n Marx's problematic there is no escape from the concept of a p r i mitive accumulation of capital; if his specific historical discussion is found wanting in some ways, then the task is to improve upon i t . " (2) The concept of PA encompassed two phenomena normally referred to as the " i n ternal" and "external" factors (a la Dobb and Sweezy) in the transition prooess. Patnaik believed that PA included both these factors and that Dobb and Sweezy were emphasising one to the exclusion or neglect of the other' However Marx's own position would be to regard foreign commerce (external factor) as a ''necessary condition for the transition" while it could be a "sufficient condition only in certain historical circumstances where a loosening in the ties of serfdom had already occurred or was occurring''. (3) Patnaik emphasised, however, that PA should not be regarded purely as a phenomenon which was associated w i t h the "pre-history" of capitalism but also referred to the expropriation of pre-capitalist markets even after capitalism had in fact emerged as the dominant mode (via colonial plunder, for example). Indeed it was this emphasis on the latter process which constituted the merit of Rosa Luxemburg's discussion of the role of external markets while the basic weakness of her argument was to see this as a "theoretical'' error in Marx and to then suggest that it was logically impossible for accumulation to take place in a closed capitalist economy. (4) Based on these theoretical points Patnaik argued that PA in the form of the capitalist economy expropriating the pre-capitalist economy had played on extremely i m portant role not only in the coming into existence of capitalism in Europe but also in its subsequent growth. Pa'naik suggested that one of the i m portant factors that facilitated the "prolonged boom" associated w i t h the industrial revolution was the access to the pre-capitalist markets. Disagreeing with certain economists who had attributed the prolonged boom during the industrial revolution to "pervasive innovations" Patnaik argued that these innovations were in the first place facilitated by the "global control exercised by capitalism on distant pre-capitalist societies". Patnaik cautioned that "pre-capitalist societies" need not always be actual sources of raw materials and markets but may also be "potential" sources so that it may not always be obvious that they in fact play this role. Finally, Patnaik argued, given the importance of these pre-capitalist economies for capitalist growth, the experience of Western Capitalist growth could not always be repeated by T h i r d W o r l d decolonised economies which were not only denied such sources of growth but were themselves such sources of growth as a result of which their economies had become distorted and dependent. The excep-

December 10, 1983 tional case of Japan existed only because Japan had its share of colonies and control over captive markets and later was incorporated into Western Capitalism as an "ally'' against communism. For all T h i r d World countries, however, neither autonomous capitalist growth based on the growth of the home market nor export-led growth based on external markets was feasible alternatives for rapid economic development. The next paper read by Sayera Habib on "Rosa Luxemburg and the Marxist Theory of Imperialism" argued that in Marx's discussion on Primary Accumulation the meaning of the term PA was not confined only to accumulation that took place at the i n i i a l sage of capitalism but should also be seen as including accumulation that proceeded w i t h capitalist development but in pre-capitalist economies. Thus what distinguished primary from secondary (capitalist) accumulation was not their historical incidence but the "nature of the process by which capital has been historically gathered into the capitalist class". Sayera Habib then proceeded to interpret Luxemburg's theory of Imperialism as a theory that explained " w h y imperialism developed precisely in the period of Free Trade". While Lenin developed a theory of imperialism associated w i t h the monopoly stage of capitalism, Luxemburg's theory explained imperialism in the competitive stage. The session continued w i t h a paper read by Utsa Patnaik on " I n d i a and B r i t a i n : Primary Accumulation in Relation to Industrial Development" which focused on three issues: (1) The content, quantitative importance and the mechanics of primary accumulation in the colonial period. (2) Whether colonisation was a necessary pre-requisite for the development of capitalism. (3) The nature of the transformation from the era of colonialism to that of imperialism from the view point of PA. Utsa Patnaik distinguished between three stages in the evolution of the colonial relationship between India and Britain. The first stage, designated as the Mercantilist phase, covered roughly the period 1650 to 1820 and was associated largely w i t h the export of manufactured goods and tropical primary products from India to Britain, a flow that began to reverse direction by the end of the period. The second stage, termed as the Competitive Industrial Capitalist stage 2105

December 10, 1983 spanned the period 1820 to 1870 when India became a market for B r i tish manufactures and a supplier of raw material. The third stage was associated w i t h imperialism and the export of capital and lasted from 1870 to 1930. What Utsa Patnaik proceeded to examine was the changing character and role of primary accumulation in each of these three stages of British capitalist growth. She emphasised that PA in the colonies played a singularly important role in ensuring the emergence of industrial capitalism in Britain and in maintaining its supremacy till the turn of the last century. India's "tribute" played an extremely important role in Britain's international payments and became the lynchpin that held securely the entire financial edifice of the British Empire. Utsa Patnaik rejected the wrong inference Ragnar Nurkse drew from the fact that colonial investments were a tiny part of Britain's total capital exports, namely, that tropical colonies were unimportant for Britain in the t h i r d phase. On the contrary, Utsa Patnaik argued, without the "tribute'' extracted from these colonies in precisely this phase Britain would not have been able to export capital to the areas of highest profitability. In the discussion C P Chandrasekhar emphasised the inter-linkages between technical innovation and the accumulation of capital which formed the basis for the transition from formal to real subsumption of labour. Prabhat Patnaik suggested that it was possible to infer from Lenin's scattered writings that he did not accept Luxemburg's theory of imperialism. Usha Menon argued that while it was possible for exploitation of non -capitalist economies to continue alongside industrial capitalism, it was a moot point whether it was correct to say that there was no essential difference between the analysis of capitalism in the stage of monopoly capitalism as done by Lenin and Luxemburg. Diptendra Banerjee pointed out that mere accumulation of wealth was an insufficient condition for the development of capitalism as illustrated by the Spanish experience. Sunanda Sen pointed out the need to take cognisance of the fact that Britain had a highly developed and centralised banking and capital market and the inflow of investment income into Britain had also to be i n cprporated i n t o the discussion on the role of the colonies. M a n Habib dis2106

ECONOMIC A N D P O L I T I C A L W E E K L Y agreed w i t h Prabhat Patnaik's interpretation of Lenin's views on Luxemburg and added that Utsa Patnaik's locating of primary accumulation in Britain w i t h commodity production (in colonies) was self-contradictory. He pointed out that Luxemburg was not talking of PA but of accumulation in a global capitalist system. C P Bhambri wondered why Prabhat Patnaik d i d not discuss the role played by socialist countries in influencing the potentiality of capitalist development in ex-colonies. The fourth session, chaired by C P Bhambri, began w i t h a paper read by M J K Thavaraj on "Public Works and Pre-Colonial and Colonial India". Thavaraj argued that Marx did not refer to irrigation works as one of the defining characteristics of the Asiatic Mode of Production but only emphasised the role of irrigation in a tropical monsoon-dependent economy. Thavaraj criticised Wittfogel for distorting Marx and insisting that Hydraulic societies were inherently prone to despotism. Surveying the role of irrigation in India in ancient pre-colonial and colonial India, Thavaraj argued that investment in irrigation was found to be very important until the Colonial State in India began to neglect it. The revival of interest in irrigation, albeit inadequate, was perceivable in the late 19th century. However, funds for irrigation had to compete with demands from railways and given that irrigation did not have such forceful sponsors as railways did, much of public expenditure was confined to the railways to the relative neglect of irrigation. This Thavaraj concluded had had a debilitating impact on Indian agriculture in particular and the economy in general. Meena Gupta in her paper on " K a r l Marx and Colonial Exploitation of India" d i d an extensive survey of Marx's writings on India. Dividing the study into three periods characterised by Merchant, Industrial and Finance capitalism, respectively, she looked at the actual experience of colonialism in India and the relevance of Marx's writings in understanding this experience. The extensive plunder of the Indian economy through the three phases of colonial rule had shattered the Indian economy seriously. Satya Deva presented a paper on "Administration in Developing Count r i e s - .A Marxian Analysis" in which he drew an interesting parallel between the rise of bureaucratism rmilitary-dvil bureaucracies) in T h i r d W o r l d countries and the French experience under Napoleon Bonaparte in the 19th century when the bureacuracy was able to "subdue all classes". Given this parallel, Satya Deva drew inspiration from Marx's essay on the "Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" in understanding the role of the bureaucracy in Third World countries. Satya Deva proposed that if the dissolution of feudalism led to the autonomised state in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, the dissolution of colonialism and feudalism had led to it in the mid-20th century in much of the T h i r d World. From this he went on to look at the bureaucracy in India and at the role of the central services in the shaping of the "autonomous state" in India, at the implications of the failure of land reforms and the meaning of the debate on Centre-State relations from the point of view of the characterisation of the "autonomous state". Mohinder Kumar discussed in his paper entitled " K a r l Marx, Andrew Ure and the Question of Management Control" the view of Andrew Ure on management of capitalist factories and the rebuttal of these views by Marx. Andrew Ure, dubbed by Marx a "philosopher of the factory", was a founding father of management theory and highly regarded by Marx for his clear understanding of the labour process. His views, which could be characterised as bourgeois apologetics, came close to those of the vulgar economists of the 19th century who failed to see the exploitative character of capitalist production. Marx refuted Ure's juxtaposition of Man versus Machine arguing that the worker was not exploited by machinery per se but by the system of control under which he was forced to work. Since this system of control was in fact defined by those who owned properly and the means of production in capitalist society, the contradiction had to be located between the worker and the capitalist and not the worker and the machine. Kumaresh Chakravarty in his paper, "Marxism-Leninism and the Agrarian Question in India" illustrated the difficulties Marxist analysis had faced in its attempts to grapple w i t h Indian agrarian relations and in characterising the mode of production. Nevertheless i t . was important that these issues in fact be taken up for discussion given their impotrance both from a theoretical Marxist-Leninist point of view and from that of their relevance to praxis for the communist movement. Not-

ECONOMIC A N D POLITICAL WEEKLY ing the distinction between "formal" and ''real subsumption of labour" Chakravarty criticised those who equated the existence of "formal" subsumption w i t h capitalism, proper stressing the relevance of Utsa Patnaik's statement that "a sufficient condition for defining agrarian capitalism emerges only when the employment of hired labour is accompanied by accumulation i e, reinvestment of surpluses and expansion". Chakravarty also took issue w i t h recent trends in historiography which had come to be called "subaltern studies" which he argued had abandoned Marxism despite their occasional use of Marxist categories. Krishna Bharadwaj in her oral presentation on the "Process of Commercialisation in India" stated that this process was uneven both historically and regionally (across India). Asserting that Marx had only developed a comprehensive theory of the capitalist mode of production but had not developed a clear theory of other modes and of the transition process, Bharadwaj emphasised the need for detailed studies of this process in India. She then proceeded to present her own analysis, of the process of commercialisation in agriculture and the structure of the production and exchange relations that had evolved. Noting the inability of this process to facilitate capitalist development in colonial India, Bharadwaj looked at the factors that had inhibited this process. She argued that it was the complexities of the exchange relations which were neither uniform nor equal for all participants and the interlinkages between various markets and the presence of extra-economic coercion which allowed for pre-capitalist forms of exploitation to prevail even as commercialisation and monetisation were growing apace. The last paper for the day was read by Kalyan Dasgupta on "Marx and the Question of Socialist Transformation of Backward Economies". Dasgupta examined M a r x s thinking and rethinking on the possibility of by-passing capitalism in backward economies like Russia which had exhibited certain peculiarities which w o u l d have facilitated his by-passing. The period 1867-72 was crucial in the intellectual development of Marx's ideas on the subject when he moved from indifference to admiration towards certain ideas of the Russian Populists. Marx made a serious study of Russian radicals like Chernyshevskii and Flerovskii whose works had a profound influence on Marx's thinking on Russian society and the possibility of by-passing capitalism. Maxx himself was seriously discussed and debated by Russian radical scholars and revolutionaries but clearly Chernyshevskii had not been exposed to Marx's ideas. The 1870s and the 1880s w i t nessed a serious discussion in Russia of Marx's "Capital" and Marx had himself begun to acquaint himself w i t h the Russian language and Russian society and history. He was specially interested in the role of the "commune*' which he thought could "develop directly as an element of collective production on a national scale". Consequent upon his analysis of the specificity of Russain society Marx developed, in Dasgupta's view, the thesis of "Historical Expediency" as opposed to his thesis of "Historical inevitability' 1 arguing that Russia could by-pass capitalism and move on to a socialist revolution. Thus Dasgupta argued there were numerous factors including objective economic conditions and the nature of the state outside the developed capitalist countries of Western Europe and especially in Russia for the emergence of a "new paradigm of social transformation". In the discussion that followed Sanjaya Baru felt that while W i t t fogePs thesis might be questionable was it not necessary to take a closer look at the relationship between watermanagement and utilisation regimes and the power-structures that evolved in agrarian irrigation-dependent societies. Prabhat Patnaik referred to the role played by Revenue Settlement systems in India in determining the extent of state participation in irrigation development. He was not clear what implications Krishna Bharadwaj was drawing from her study of commercialisation to the analysis of contemporary social formation in India. Ramana emphasised the i n compatibility of counterposang the concept of "historical expediency" and ''inevitability" since the latter derived from the immanent laws of capitalism in the abstract while the former corresponded to the application of Marxist revolu'ionary theory to concrete conditions. S Naqvi declined to concur w i t h Chakravarty on the question of remunerative prices for farmers stating that this benefited only the kulaks. A n i l Rawat believed that Satya Deva's notion ol an "autonomised state" was not accept-

December 10, 1983 able, arguing that Engels saw this only at a possibility in a transitional stage and did not regard it even as a quasipermanent phenomenon.

III
The Third Day's Session began with K i t t y Menon as chairperson. The first paper was read by E M S Namboodiripad on "Class Struggle in India" Contending that Marx's writings on India were in fact based on a deep understanding of Asian social formation, Naniboodiripad argued that it was false to suggest that Marx had little to say on India. However, his use of the concept of Asiatic Mode of Production ( A M P ) had been erroneously interpreted by some Marxists who had either regarded it as an initial formulation which Marx later abandoned or contrarily as a comprehensive formulation aimed at explaining all problems of history in countries like India. Both such approaches were wrong. In designating the progressive epoch in the economic formation of society, Marx identified Asiatic, ancie n t feudal and modern capitalist society as the successive modes. However, in the case of the Asiatic society it had lagged behind Greece and Rome and therefore did not witness the transition to feudal society. The stimulus for this transition was purely external and came w i t h colonial rule. In the intervening centuries the Asiatic society remained stagnant in the sense that while social change did take place such change had not resulted in the basic reconstitution of the caste-based society and even the change that did occur was not m o t i vated by class struggle. Thus while in European societies Marx believed that the "history of all hitherto existing; societies is the history of class struggle", this was not true of the Asiatic society where change came only as a result of successive incursions by external agressors. What is interesting however, was that the Caste system (the Varna form of class division) played the same role in India as Greek and Roman slavery did in giving b i r t h to division of labour in its earliest form while it did not take the subsequent step, as in Europe, of evolving into a class system. Namboodiripad then proceeded to answer the question as to w h y the system of slave-holding had changed in Ancient society but had not changed in Asiatic society basing his views on Marx's own discussion of this issue. 2107

December 10, 1983 Namboodiripad concluded his paper w i t h a discussion of the impact of colonialism and imperialism in determining the evolution of class struggle and state formation. He pointed to the vital role of language and literature and the emergence of nationalities in the shaping of this struggle. For the communist movement in India it was imperative that it came to grips w i t h the problem of this peculiar history and pre-history of Indian society in its attempt to sharpen the edge of class struggle. In the discussion that followed, Prakash Karat referred to the need for regional studies of pre-colonial India like Namboodiripud's study of Kerala. Bipan Chandra wondered why antifeudal struggles were launched if feudalism d i d not exist at all. Irfan Habib argued that it was one thing to say that Marx's ideas on the succession of social formations was relevant to Europe, but it was quite another thing to say that Marx's approach to class struggle could not be applied to formations outside Europe. P C Joshi felt Indian Marxists had neglected geography and their framework was unduly conditioned by issues relevant to the 19th and 20th century understanding of India's boundaries. G P Deshpande stressed the need for studying the evolution in India of the counterposed Vedic and Avaidic philosophies which was indicative of some kind of class struggle. The contradiction between Savarna and Avarna, and Varna being replaced by Jati system had all indicated forms of struggle in Asiatic society. Suvira faiswal wondered if Jati functioned as class since there were always dominant and subordinate castes. The last session chaired by Irfan Habib began w i t h an oral presentation by Ravinder Kumar who spoke on the evolution of the Jati system in the Gangetic plain. The process was a complex one related as it was to the high density of population and high fertility rates in this region. The next papar read by Judy Whitehead on "The Development of the Asiatic Mode of Production in Marx's Thought" analysed the differences between the A M P , feudalism and the Mughal social formation (MSF) in terms of basic property relations and the social form which production relations assumed. She further looked at the interrelationship between the different forms of the State and the nature of the State's connection w i t h 2108 the basic production forms. While similarities existed between A M P and MSF the important differentiating factors were the existence of private property rights in land throughout the Empire, which Marx underestimated, and the nature and degree of state intervention in the circulation process which Marx overestimated in the formulation of the concept of the AMP.

ECONOMIC A N D POLITICAL WEEKLY "State in India: A Few Issues for Discussion" which argued that the nature of the Stale in India was historically conditioned by the colonial experience and the role of the ruling classes in the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal movements. However, the Indian capitalist class had compromised both w i t h imperialism and feudal elements as a result of the historical peculiarities of its origin and constitution and Dipankar Gupta read a paper on its access to state power in India. S Bhattacharya read a paper on "Continuous Hierarchies and Discrete Castes" which was a critique of Louis "The Outsider: A Historical Note" Dumont's views on the Caste system. which argued that the Left movement Democratic movement in Gupta rejected the coincidence esta- and the blished by some sociologists between India were bedevilled by the problem Caste and Class and argued that of 'middle-class' leadership. The urban castes could not be viewed as "hierar- middle classes had acquired leadership chies" but were in fact "discrete" of the working class movement begroups w i t h independent caste ideolo- cause of the former's access to edugies. The notion of "hierarchy" was cation (both in the mother-tongue and part of upper-caste ideology, Gupta English) which facilitated their emerargued, and each caste had its own gence as the leadership of the 'illiteideology and therefore its own theory rate' working class. It was the ascenof its origin and formation. Through a dence of the 'outsider' that had redistortions w i t h i n survey of specific caste ideologies sulted in several Gupta established that upper-caste the working class movement. Bipan Chandra made an oral preideology was in fact rejected by other castes who had their own versions of sentation of an as yet untitled paper, their caste formation. Gupta referred and argued for better ideological trainto instances of political authority re- i n g of the working class and in this stressed the role of he ordering the jatis in the hierarchy and connection suggested that this hierarchy therefore intellectuals. He argued that while the the devolved from political authority rather bourgeoisie in India had made transition from being a "Class-inthan from the principle of purity and pollution as suggested by Dumont. I t s e l f to being a "Class-for-Ifself" the Rejecting the correspondence between working class had not made such a discrete castes and social classes he transition. He quoted the instance of questioned the belief that caste ideology several working class areas in the could be a focal point of class m o b i l i - country voting for ruling class parties rather than for the working class party sation. ( w i t h the exception of West Bengal) In the discussion Suneet Chopra and argued that this revealed poor stressed the need for a satisfactory ideological training of the working explanation of w h y the extensive cash' class. nexus in Mughal period did not bring During the discussion T M Thomas about a change in social relations. D Isaac wondered how Bipan Chandra Raghunandan wondered if it was true and Bhattacharya could categorically that castes were not hierarchically assert that the working-class in India ordered and noted that Marx did not had not emerged as a "Class-for-Itself' put forward a simple two-class model and that the leadership was constitutbut in fact recognised the complexity ed by "outsiders" when one could of the class structure also. G P commandeer a lot of evidence against Deshpande made a distinction between this proposition. He referred to his "Caste as ideology" and "Caste is o w n research on the working class ideology" arguing that Gupta had re- movement in Alleppey District and ferred to the former while what was said neither of the above arguments important was the latter as the Caste would be validated by his evidence. system was based on the single ideoFurther debate was curtailed by the logy of the ruling classes/castes and paucity of time but clearly the Semiwas legitimised in BrahmanicU texts. nar had seen time well spent and one The opposition to caste oppression was looks forward to the next seminar based on an opposition to Brahmanism that w i l l be organised by the Social and class oppression. Scientist. The Seminar ended w i t h one of the Convenors, The session continued w i t h the Irfan Habib, reading of a paper by C P Bhambri on thanking all participants.