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Labour in post-colonial India: A response to Jan Breman

Tom Brassa
a
Social and Political Sciences Faculty, University of Cambridge, UK
To cite this Article Brass, Tom(2000) 'Labour in post-colonial India: A response to Jan Breman', Journal of Peasant Studies,
28: 1, 126 — 146
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Debate
Labour in Post-Colonial India:

A Response to Jan Breman
TOM BRASS
Downloaded By: [Universitetsbiblioteket I Bergen] At: 19:55 26 January 2011
Resuming the debate with Breman about debt bondage in post-

Independence India, this reply to his two-part survey explores the
fact of and the reasons for continuing disagreements about the
capital/unfreedom link in general, and in particular the connection
between accumulation, the decommodification of labour-power,
the enforcement of debt-servicing labour obligations, the
presence/absence of coercion, and worker agency. Also considered
is the analytical efficacy of using a depoliticized concept of worker
'assertiveness'; the mere existence of the latter, it is argued here, is
neither a defining criterion of proletarianization, nor an indicator
of rising levels of class consciousness, and thus not as empowering
as claimed.
Consecutive numbers of another journal recently carried a long, two-part

survey by Jan Breman of labour in India during the post-Independence era.1
Ostensibly about the rather narrow topic of industrial labour in urban India
during the period after 1947, the survey is actually much broader in scope,
and thus about a wider range of issues. These include all the general
questions raised by the national and/or regional patterns of capitalist
transition, and in particular the following: the significance for accumulation
of permanent and non-permanent categories of worker, and consequently the
transformation in production relations, not just in the post-Independence era
and in industry but also in the colonial era and in agriculture, together with
the way all this has affected (and continues to affect) both the urban and rural
sectors of the Indian economy. Because the scope of the survey is so wide, it
touches inevitably on a number of areas which are the subject of debate.
Tom Brass formerly lectured in the Social and Political Sciences Faculty at the University of
Cambridge, UK. e-mail address: tom@tombrass.freeserve.co.uk
The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.28, No.1, October 2000, pp.126-146
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
LABOUR IN POST-COLONIAL INDIA: A RESPONSE TO JAN BREMAN 127
One of these concerns the important and contentious subject of unfree

labour, and in particular its role in capitalist development occurring in Third
World countries.2 Of the many theoretical analyses and/or case studies of debt
bondage considered by Breman in the survey, those by me attract by far the
most hostile and dismissive comments.3 It is in response to the latter that this
has been written.4 I am accused of making a case that is empirically
unsupported and thus questionable, which - if true - is serious indeed. He also
objects strongly, not just to the content of my argument - that in the course of
class struggle capital restructures its workforce by replacing free labour with
unfree equivalents, a process of workforce decomposition/recomposition
which I term deproletarianization - but also to the form of the argument itself.5
Accordingly, this response to Breman is divided into four sections. The
first highlights the inaccurate nature of his accusations against me, while his
claim that he has believed all along that debt bondage is a capitalist relation
is examined in the second. The link between deproletarianization, coercion
and worker agency is scutinized in the third, with particular reference to the
contradictory nature of claims made by Breman in this regard. In the last
part of the article the focus is on the concept 'assertiveness', and in
particular why it is important to be clear about what in political terms it
prefigures. It is an unwillingness to do this - a result of regarding
assertiverness per se as good - that lands Breman in difficulties.
A QUESTION OF (MIS-) ATTRIBUTION

According to Breman, both he and Daniel Thorner were among those who
regarded bonded labour in India as a pre-capitalist relation, while exponents
of the unfreedom-as-a-capitalist-relation view included not just Sudipto
Mundle but also Utsa Patnaik and Gyan Prakash.61 am also accused of merely
'adopting' the ideas of the latter, and subsequently incorporating them into my
own analysis of the capital/unfreedom link, a claim which could only be made
by someone unfamiliar with the work of us all.7 With the exception of his own
case and that of Mundle, Breman's characterization of the positions adhered
to by the rest of the participants is badly mistaken. That Thorner did not rule
out the continued employment by agrarian capitalists of unfree labour is
evident from a variety of sources: not just from his mid-1960s case studies,
therefore, but also from his recognition of the many and varied forms of
unfree labour, and also his objections to the underreporting by the
Agricultural Labour Enquiry of the incidence of attached (or unfree) labour.8
As an exponent of the semi-feudal thesis, Patnaik regards unfree labour as an
obstacle to the development of the productive forces in agriculture; for this
reason, her argument is that capitalist expansion requires the elimination of
debt bondage, and not - as Breman supposes - its 'augmentation'.9
128 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES
A similar confusion surrounds the views of Prakash concerning bonded

labour and capitalism. Rather than embracing the unfreedom-as-a-capitalist-
relation argument, as Breman believes, the postmodern approach of Prakash
does not pose the question of the material/relational connection between
debt bondage and capitalism, since for him it is irrelevant. What interests
Prakash is something altogether different: the way in which an
external/'foreign' colonialism/capitalism illegitimately imposed on rural
India a (spurious) concept of relational 'difference', based on (the equally
false) polarity between labour-as-free and labour-as-unfree. Because he
regards the very concept 'free labour' as part of the colonial imposition on
India, Prakash not only perceives freedom as tainted/compromised but also

(and therefore) idealizes bonded labour as basically a cultural form of
indigenous 'otherness' specific to non-colonial (= 'authentic') India.10
Prakash himself makes clear that he regards the surplus-extracting
dimension of debt bondage - which is at the root of the debate about the
unfreedom/capitalism link - as part of the discourse of political economy,
which he is at pains to dismiss as Eurocentric.
Perhaps the most telling errors made by Breman surface in his confused
and ultimately unsuccessful defence of 'studies by Harriss and Epstein
pertaining to agrarian dynamics in south India' against my criticism of 'their
refusal to see what [Brass] saw'." 'In Harriss's own research locale', Breman
observes, I identified an increase in bonded labour of 'no less than 243 per
cent between 1955 and 1970', an estimate which in the opinion of Breman is
'unsupported by empirical data' and thus 'highly questionable'.12 That
Breman was unable to any find evidence for this claim in Harriss's account of
Arcot District in Tamil Nadu is unsurprising, because he was looking in the
wrong place: as is clear from my article, the data refer neither to Tamil Nadu,
Arcot District nor indeed the work of Harriss but rather to the study by
Epstein of two villages in the state of Karnataka.13 Pace Breman, not only do
empirical data for the latter context exist but they also support my claim about
the rise there in bonded labour." The defence by Breman of Harriss is equally
misplaced, since the author of that study has himself accepted the validity of
the case about an expansion in the amount of labour attachment. Although not
as large as that in Karnataka, therefore, a rise in the incidence of bonded
labour has also taken place in North Arcot District, Tamil Nadu, where
according to Harriss himself the number of permanent attached labourers
(padials) increased by 24 per cent in the period 1974-83.'5
Breman is also mistaken in his belief that I perceive no difference to
exist between past and present forms of unfreedom.16 As I have argued at
length previously, and also in relation to contexts other than India, in terms
of categories of worker affected (permanent/non-permanent), their usufruct
rights (access to or separation from property), and other crucial dimensions
of the bonded labour relation (duration, heritability, coercion and

enforcement), current unfree relations of production do indeed differ from
past variants.17 Not only has attachment shifted from permanent to casual
and/or migrant labour, and the debt bondage relation involve what are
increasingly landless agricultural labourers, therefore, but the latter are no
longer unfree throughout the whole agricultural cycle or on an inter-
generational basis. Furthermore, such workers may under specific
conditions (and only with the consent of their creditor) transfer their labour-
power and indebtedness to another employer.18 As will be seen below, both
the nature of coercion and the enforcement of debt-servicing labour
obligations have also undergone change, points which have been and are
central to my case about deproletarianization. So much for the view that I
see no difference between historical and existing forms of bonded labour.'9
PROLETARIANIZATION, CAPITALISM AND 'NEO-BONDAGE'

On the related questions of bonded labour and its acceptability to capitalist
accumulation now taking place in rural Gujarat, and consequently the
displacement of unfree production relations by free ones, Breman is quite
adamant: his view, he declares, is that the transition which has occurred is
not from an unfree to a free work force but rather from one form of
unfreedom to another. Moreover, such has been his view all along. He has
never maintained, he insists, that capitalist development replaced unfree
labour with free workers, much rather the contrary: his argument has always
been that bonded labour was acceptable to capitalist producers.20 As is clear
from what follows, however, none of these claims are sustainable.
To begin with, his second monograph (published in 1985), where he
outlined the changes in agrarian relations that had occurred since his earlier
fieldwork (conducted in the 1960s), makes numerous references to the
existence in rural Gujarat of a 'landless proletariat', which does indeed
suggest that Breman perceived an expansion in free labour.21 Since that text
was centrally about the process of capitalist development occurring in his
fieldwork area, it is in a sense unsurprising that he also equated a transition
to capitalism with the presence of free labour (and the corresponding
absence of bonded labour).22 During the period after the development
decade, this was the prevailing orthodoxy about the conditions necessary for
economic growth in the Third World. Because they were thought to impede
productive efficiency, blocked investment and planning, and thus hindered
accumulation by a domestic bourgeoisie, therefore, the eradication of pre-
capitalist ('feudal' or 'semi-feudal') institutional forms in Third World
agriculture - among them unfree production relations - was central to both
Marxist and non-Marxist development theory.23 Unfreedom was accordingly
confined epistemologically to a traditional and thus economically backward

agriculture, and was by definition excluded from agrarian relations
involving employers who were forward-looking capitalist farmers or rich
peasants and their landless workers.
This view, from which Breman did not depart, is responsible for the
unresolved contradiction that lies at the heart of his present argument. If the
expanding workforce in rural Gujarat corresponded to a 'landless proletariat',
it cannot have been composed of unfree labour; alternatively, if as Breman
now claims, this workforce was indeed composed of unfree labour, then it
cannot be categorized as a proletariat.24 He cannot have it both ways: either
Breman accepts that the many references contained in his second monograph
to the presence of a 'landless proletariat' were mistaken, due to a fundamental
misunderstanding on his part of the fairly basic theoretical fact that a
proletariat is composed of free and not unfree labour, or else he must
recognize the unbelievability of his post-1990 claim that it was his contention
all along that such labour was unfree. It is not possible to maintain, as he
seems to want to do, that the term 'landless proletariat' is conceptually
compatible with claims about the widespread existence of debt bondage.
Recent claims to the effect that the decline of hali signalled neither the
end of unfreedom nor a transition to free labour are also undermined by the
presence in his second monograph of abundant statements to the contrary.
That Breman regarded not just hali but also unfreedom per se as having
ended is evident from the section in his 1985 book entitled 'Bonded labour?',
in which he specifically addresses 'whether or not [capitalism] led to the
disappearance of bonded labour'.25 There Breman sets out clearly his own
views about three interrelated issues: the presence/absence of bonded labour,
whether or not it applied to particular categories of worker, and the link
between capitalism and unfree labour. On the first point, not only does
Breman dismiss the views of those (Patel, Vyas, Maria) who maintain that
unfree labour continued to exist in rural Gujarat, but he also endorses another
study which in his opinion 'showed clearly that there is no longer any
question of labour bondage', adding that he himself 'hold[s] the same view'.26
About the free/unfree nature of particular categories of worker Breman
was equally clear. It 'is no longer the case' he argued in his second
monograph, that permanent farm servants are bonded, 'even when ...
indebtedness is a persistent feature of the labour relationship', and although
casual workers receive loans and maidservants live in the house of their
employers, '[nonetheless [he] maintain[s] that their situation does not
constitute an unfree working relationship, either'. As to the question of a
link between capitalism and unfreedom, his conclusion to this same section
contains the following categorical and unambiguous statements. 'To my
mind', Breman asserted, 'it is unsound to deduce from this [the existence of
debt] that unfree labour continues in either the same form or a new one ...
[t]he binding which accompanies this cannot...be equated with unfree
labour' (emphasis added), and similarly 'I shall regard as unfree only that
form of debt-labour which is rooted in non-economic coercion...this
relationship has nothing to do with the essence of present-day control over
agricultural labour' (emphasis added).27 Later in the same book he noted
that the legislative prohibition of bonded labour in the Twenty Point
Programme marked 'the transition from a traditional agrarian economy to a
free labour market in the countryside [and] the acceleration of a capitalist
mode of production in agriculture' (emphasis added).28
Taken in conjunction with his use of the term 'landless proletariat',

statements like these effectively demolish Breman's present claim that -
even in in his second monograph - he was already delinking free labour
from and linking unfreedom to accumulation. Not only do the quotes in the
preceding paragraph confirm that in 1985 Breman was unprepared to
countenance the continuation in a capitalist context of either old or new
forms of unfreedom, therefore, but the latter kind of relation was dismissed
by him at that conjuncture as wholly unconnected with the subordination of
agricultural labour under the 'free labour market' of capitalism. It is as a
result impossible for Breman to sustain the argument that the continued
existence of bonded labour and its centrality to the accumulation process in
south Gujarat is something that he has recognized all along, and further that
what he really meant when using the term rural transition was a change not
from unfree to free labour but rather in the form of unfreedom itself. His
present claim, that such references merely served to differentiate a transition
from old to new forms of bondage, is thus transparently unconvincing.29
The omissions are equally telling. That Breman at that particular
conjuncture did not conceptualize production relations accompanying
capitalist development in rural Gujarat as new forms of unfree labour,
therefore, is further underlined both by the absence from his first two
monographs of what he now terms 'neo-bondage', 'the new bondage', and
'the new regime of bondage', and also by the chronology informing the
appearance of these concepts. Had it really been the case that he perceived the
transition as being not from unfree to free labour but rather from one kind of
unfreedom to another, therefore, the crucial section in his second monograph
entitled 'Bonded labour?' would surely have contained references to 'neo-
bondage', 'the new bondage', or 'the new regime of bondage'. None of the
latter is in fact mentioned in that section. This absence is in one sense
unsurprising, since terms such as 'neo-bondage', 'the new bondage', and 'the
new regime of bondage' all posit the continuation in rural Gujarat - and thus
the link with capitalist development there - of bonded labour, a possibility
which Breman had at that stage actually dismissed.
These terms which, because they recognize the reproduction by
capitalism of unfree labour, also accept its continuation, are actually
encountered in articles published by Breman only after 1990.30 Not only
does Breman omit to mention that he has changed his mind about the nature
of the capitalism/unfreedom link - let alone why - but this shift in view also
has implications for his earlier work. If, as he now maintains, bondage not
merely continues under capitalism but is also one of its defining
characteristics, it cannot also and simultaneously be the defining
characteristic of the earlier pre-capitalist hali relation (= that specific
element which differentiated halipratha from capitalist production
relations), as he claimed initially.31
DEPROLETARIANIZATION, COERCION AND ASSERTIVENESS

By contrast, my analysis of the same capitalism/unfreedom link has always
insisted on the centrality to the accumulation process of the debt bondage
relation, a view embodied in the concept deproletarianization. The latter
involves the introduction (or reintroduction) of unfree relations, and
corresponds to a form of workforce decomposition/recomposition
frequently resorted to by employers in their struggle with labour.32 In
contexts/periods where/when further accumulation is blocked by
overproduction, therefore, economic crisis may force capital to restructure
its labour process in one of two ways: either by replacing free workers with
unfree equivalents, or by converting the former into the latter. Both these
kinds of transformation correspond to deproletarianization, or the
economic and politico-ideological decommodification of labour-power.
The economic advantage of such restructuring is that it enables
landholders/planters first to lower the cost of local workers by importing
unfree, more easily regulated, and thus cheaper outside labour, and then to
lower the cost of the latter if/when the original external/local wage
differential has been eroded. In this way it is possible for capitalist
producers either to maintain wages at existing (low) levels or even to
decrease pay and conditions of both components of the workforce, thereby
restoring/enhancing profitability and with it the accumulation project in (or
linked to) the capitalist labour process.
Castigating me for defending these ideas about deproletarianization 'with
more obstinacy than plausibility', however, Breman asserts that such a
process could not possibly be taking place in the Indian countryside because
rural workers did not previously have an ability personally to commodify
their own labour-power.33 'Such reasoning', he observes, 'implies that a
process of capitalist transformation is in progress ... in which free labour is
disappearing to make place for a regime of unfreedom', concluding that 'the
trend is rather the reverse'.34 In support of this contention, Breman advances

two additional and interrelated points. First, that coercion is on the decline,
because landowners are no longer able to rely on the support of the state. And
second, that worker assertiveness is on the increase, a consequence of which
is that unfreedom is now unenforceable. About these objections it is possible
to make the following points.
To begin with, the claim that coercion is on the decline undermines the
very case that Breman claims to have argued all along: namely, that
capitalists have a predilection for unfree labour, which explains its
continuation in contexts where accumulation occurs.35 If creditors cannot
prevent an indebted labourer from defaulting, since they 'are no longer able
to call on the authorities for help', then how is it possible for them to
reproduce the 'new regime of bondage' which Breman now accepts is
widespread?36 Once again, he cannot have it both ways: either coercion -
and with it unfreedom - has ceased, because it is no longer enforceable; or
bondage continues, because it is enforceable by means of coercion. It is
impossible to maintain, as he implies, that bondage continued but somehow
enforcement and coercion did not.37
If the suggestion is that the capacity to coerce vanished along with pre-
capitalist landlords, and that capitalist producers (commercial farmers, rich
peasants) can no longer count on the support of the state, then clearly this
too is wrong.38 Evidence reveals the opposite to be true; thus the new
farmers' movements which emerged in the Green Revolution areas of India
during the 1980s underline the extent to which the power of agrarian
capitalists has increased.39 Not only have these rural mobilizations become
a focus for the political interests and ideology of landholders, many of
whom employ bonded labour, but they also serve to express antagonism
towards and consolidate power against agricultural workers in these
regions.40 In short, the capacity of capitalist producers in rural India to
enforce debt-servicing labour obligations has most certainly not diminished.
To say, as Breman does, that, because there is 'no legal basis in the new
political order' for 'preventive and repressive sanctions', the latter are no
longer applied, is rather like saying that murder no longer takes place
because it is illegal.41 This is a palpably illogical and unsustainable argument,
and one which countless empirical data recording violence and threats of
violence undermine. Such a claim also ignores more subtle and nuanced
forms of coercion - such as those exercised by a landholder indirectly -
about which I have written extensively, and on which my views about the
enforcement of deproletarianization are based. The reason that debt bondage
remains effective, therefore, is that coercion is exercised - and unfreedom
enforced - from within family and kinship networks. This is the argument I
made some time ago with regard to bonded labour in Haryana, where I
showed how the class identity of those who enforced debt-servicing labour
obligations had shifted, from the landholder to fellow caste members of an
indebted worker.42 Since he now makes the identical point, that the most
effective form of enforcement operates within the kinship domain, one must
suppose that it is an argument of mine with which Breman agrees.43
Claims to the contrary nothwithstanding, therefore, the situation
described by Breman in his survey is rather obviously one of
deproletarianization. Hence the growth in India of trade unionism over the
1928-51 period led to a fear on the part of employers of the urban working
class, which in turn led to the contraction of the formal sector economy,
where the industrial proletariat was based, and the expansion of the informal
sector economy.44 Although Breman claims that '[s]caling down
employment in formal sector enterprises improved the bargaining strength
of the permanent workers who were reaffirmed in their job security', it
emerges subsequently that the exact opposite was true.45 This process of
restructuring was designed, much rather, to undermine the bargaining power
of permanent workers belonging to the industrial proletariat, by
demonstrating to them just how easily they could be replaced by temporary
workers who, possessing little or no bargaining power, could be paid less for
doing the same amount of work.
And what, precisely, were the relations of production governing the
employment of these informal sector workers? About this there is no
ambiguity whatsoever. Informal sector employment is characterized by an
absence of trade unions and protective legislation; labour contracting is rife,
as is child labour.46 Most significantly, however, is the admission that
'[w]ork in dependency, expressed in a debt relationship, is a common
phenomenon in the informal sector milieu'." If this is so, then the most
common production relation encountered in the informal sector of India
must be unfree labour which, when combined with the additional process of
formal sector contraction coupled with informal sector expansion, permits
only one conclusion: the situation to which Breman refers is one in which
work in the formal sector, and with it free labour, is being replaced with
employment in the informal sector, where unfree working relations prevail.
In other words, a process of deproletarianization.
No one, least of all Breman, disputes the rising incidence in
contemporary India of landlessness, a consequence of which is that the
labour force is composed for the most part of workers who sell not the
product of labour but labour-power itself. Where such workers, who earlier
have personally commodified their own labour-power, subsequently become
unfree (their labour-power either ceasing to be a commodity, or being
recommodified by someone other than themselves), what has occurred is a
relational transformation that corresponds to ^proletarianization.48 Such
workers are still landless, they still work for someone else on a permanent,
seasonal or casual basis, they can still be employed in conjunction with
advanced productive forces, they still receive cash wages, they may be
migrants or work locally, and (under the control of a contractor, or in the
form of changing masters) their labour-power can still circulate in the labour
market, but - and this is the crux of the issue - they are no longer able
personally to sell their own labour-power. In short, because they do not meet
the second of the two criteria laid down by political economy as necessary
for the existence of free labour - freedom from the means of labour and also
freedom personally to sell their own labour-power - they are now unfree
workers who have been deproletarianized.

Among the many reasons why Breman has been unable to grasp both the
fact and the importance of deproletarianization, three are important. First,
and as has been outlined above, his approach to the question of
freedom/unfreedom has remained trapped ideologically in what might be
called the discourse of 'transition', or the view that agrarian change was an
unproblematically unilinear process involving a once-and-for-all change
from feudal landlordism/bonded labour/patronage to capitalism/proletariat/
depatronization. Second, his view of what precisely constitutes free labour,
and thus a proletariat, has itself been subject to constant revision: Breman
has shifted his ground somewhat, and now defines it in terms of sectoral
employment patterns. Whereas in the past Breman has applied the term
'proletariat' indiscriminately to all rural workers who are landless (see
above), here the same term is used more narrowly, and is confined to the
minority element of the urban industrial workforce employed in factories, in
receipt of regular work and wages, and possessing 'a livelihood that is
reasonably secure and protected'.49 And third, the centrality to his teleology
of worker agency as the defining criterion of proletarianization, an
epistemology whereby the presence/absence of a proletariat is defined in
terms of the presence/absence of worker 'assertiveness' (proletariat =
assertive workers, unassertive workers ^ proletariat).50
As on so many other things, Breman has also changed his view about
worker 'assertiveness'. Previously he argued that such agency, absent in the
pre-capitalist era, emerged along with capitalism, and was thus an indicator
of proletarian status and working class consciousness." In the survey,
however, he accepts my criticism that this dichotomy reproduces the
stereotype of pre-capitalist-worker-as-passive and capitalist-worker-as-
active.52 Accordingly, he now concedes that pre-capitalist unfree labour did
indeed resist, and also that this resistance was unsuccessful. There are two
problems with the conclusions he then draws. First, this lack of success is
attributed by him to the fact that resistance took place in what he terms a
'closed' agrarian system; unfree workers objected to their situation, therefore,
but were unable to escape, due to the lack of alternative employment.53 This
of course is untrue: a closed village society was exposed as a fiction long ago,
notably in the two classic studies by Mukhtyar and Shukla of rural Gujarat in
the 1920s and 1930s; it is also a stereotype that Breman himself has
criticized.54 And second, he does not see this limited success as possessing
any implications for the existence/growth of class consciousness; instead, an
indicator of the latter is for Breman 'a basic unwillingness to seek security in
bondage'. The difficulty'with this view is that an attempt to differentiate the
presence/absence of class consciousness simply in terms of a corresponding
transformation from a situation in which workers 'seek security in bondage'
to one where they 'reject security in bondage' is unviable, since there is no

evidence that workers have ever regarded bonded labour relations as a form
of security (or 'subsistence guarantee').55
WHY POLITICAL DEBATE IS STILL IMPORTANT

Together with his complaint about the polemical nature of my earlier
observations, Breman's view that the rejection by workers of 'security in
bondage' and worker 'assertiveness' correspond to unproblematically
positive indicators of the rising levels of class consciousness all serve to
disguise a political difficulty which lurks at the centre of his analysis of
unfree labour. Although this is perhaps an unfashionable opinion to hold in
the current postmodern climate, in my opinion there ought to be a place for
polemical exchange in academic debates, particularly where - as is the case
with the presence/absence/meaning of unfree labour - important political
issues are involved.56 Nowadays, however, an unfortunate countervailing
tendency predominates in the academy: namely, the celebration of any and
every kind of grassroots agency as an a-political form of 'empowerment'.
One effect has been eschew debate in general and especially that about
politics. The result is not merely blandness but - more worryingly - a
disempowering trend towards the depoliticization of academic discourse.
Breman is one of those culpable in this regard, a shortcoming compounded
by his being unaware of the fact.
As I argued in the 'footloose' article, but first pointed out over a decade
ago, Breman's positive interpretation of unfree labour in Gujarat as a highly
desirable (and thus much sought after) form of 'patronage' - a perception
he also (and wrongly) attributes to the agrarian workforce itself - has led
him into some very strange political company. Hence his argument about
the 'empowering' nature of the halt relation is in fact no different from that
of postmodernism (for example, the work of Gyan Prakash), of 'moral
economy'-based resistance theory (for example, the work of James Scott),
or of neo-classical economics (for example, the work of Pranab Bardhan,
J.-P. Platteau, and Robert Fogel), all of which are deeply hostile to
Marxism.51 Because debt bondage was regarded by Breman as a non-
capitalist relation, and equated by him with patronage landlords extend to
their unfree workers, he not only equated capitalist development with
depatronization but also interprets the latter as a process of material erosion.
Contemporary free labour in Gujarat is accordingly perceived by him as
worse off economically than its historically unfree equivalent.58 Much the
same is true of the way in which Gyan Prakash, James Scott and Robert
Fogel have interpreted different forms of unfreedom.59 What all of the latter
regard as empowering are the smallscale forms/acts of resistance (=
'assertiveness') undertaken by slaves and unfree labourers.60
By contrast, deproletarianization not only recognizes but also

emphasizes the disempowering nature of debt bondage. In ideological
terms, therefore, the object of decommodifying distinct forms of labour-
power employed by capital is either to prevent the emergence of a
specifically proletarian consciousness or to curtail the latter where it already
exists. Hence the utilization of unfree components from the industrial
reserve army of labour not as an addition to the existing (free) workforce but
rather as a substitute for - and thus competitors with - the latter has dire
consequences for the development of working class political consciousness,
in agriculture no less than manufacturing. There are numerous instances of
racist responses on the part of an existing agrarian workforce displaced by
the nationally/ethnically/regionally specific labour-power of cheap/unfree
migrants recruited by planters, landowners or rich peasants engaged in
restructuring combined with deproletarianization.61 Where an initially
progressive - and specifically proletarian - class struggle shows signs of
being/becoming effective, the attempt by capital to demobilize it by means
of workforce restructuring that involves unfree labour may convert what is
an actually or potentially revolutionary situation into a politically
reactionary combination of nationalism and racism.62
In other words, assertiveness per se is not necessarily empowering or
politically progressive.63 The whole point of an analysis structured by a
concept of deproletarianization, therefore, is to highlight the problems
which arise from any attempt to depoliticize agency undertaken by unfree
labourers. Many of those who are exponents of the postmodern 'new'
populism have themselves frequently contributed to this process of
depoliticization, as a consequence of which the historical, ideological and
political distinctions between left and right appear to have been eroded.64
Devoid of any political content, concepts such as 'assertiveness' and
'resistance' could just as easily incorporate grassroots action to prevent the
erosion of traditional ethnic/national identity by finance capitalism. It is
precisely this depoliticized - but actually highly political - kind of agency
(= 'resistance') which is so acceptable to those at the non- or anti-Marxist

end of the political spectrum. For this reason, I argue, it is crucial to be
aware of the politics of particular discourses about unfreedom.65
CONCLUDING COMMENT
Given the overwhelming extent and unambiguous nature of the evidence to
the contrary, a central question remains why Breman persists in denying a
discontinuity between the views expressed in his first two monographs
(where it is clear that because he regarded it as incompatible with
capitalism, bonded labour was displaced by free labour), and those

contained in his post-1990 texts (that because it is compatible with
accumulation, unfreedom no longer automatically displaces free labour),
which show equally clearly his espousal of the opposite view. The answer,
it has been suggested, is that he remains trapped by his original
epistemology, and consequently by a teleology at the centre of earlier
debates about economic growth, shared by neo-classical economic theory
and the semi-feudal thesis: namely, and by his own admission, the
assumption that unfree labour would vanish as capitalism developed.
Try as he might, therefore, Breman cannot escape the implications for
his present arguments of his initial teleology, in which the 'before' of
agrarian transition as interpreted by him encompassed a particular relay-in-
statement, whereby pre-capitalism = feudal landlordism = non-economic
relations = hali = patronage = bonded labour = unfreedom, while the 'after'
of this same transition gives rise to all its 'others': namely, capitalism =
economic relation = depatronization = landless proletariat = free labour.66
Had he not been quite so categoric in his earlier pronouncements, or at least
based these on a more rigorous process of theoretical analysis, he would not
now face the very real epistemological difficulties which confront him.
Having originally embraced an analytical framework to which few any
longer subscribe, Breman was subsequently faced with two options. Either
he could admit he was mistaken, an act which as the case of Ashok Rudra
demonstrates, is a perfectly acceptable intellectual procedure; or he could
defend his original approach as initially argued, again an intellectually
acceptable option.67 However, he has chosen to do neither of these things;
instead, he now maintains that no difference exists between his original
analysis and a subsequent approach which contradicted and supplanted his
own. The result is that his current position has become palpably untenable,
and is one which fails to withstand even the most cursory inspection.
The suspicion remains that, even after all this time, Breman is still
unsure about the theoretical parameters of the debate in which he is a
participant, and in particular the issue concerning the presence/absence of
unfree labour and its link to capitalism. Such a view is not dispelled by the
numerous errors contained in his account of the theoretical positions
occupied by the protagonists in the debate. Accusations levelled against me
by him, that I make claims about a rise in the incidence of debt bondage
which are empirically unsustainable, and that my analysis makes no
distinction between past and present forms of unfreedom, are similarly
fallacious. All these elementary and avoidable blunders do not inspire
confidence in Breman's argument generally, and more particularly leave
one wondering how many more empirical inaccuracies and misattributions
lurk undiscovered in his text, and how much of his overall analysis is built
on such shaky foundations.

Not only are the criticisms made of me unfounded, therefore, but the
irony informing Breman's current position is inescapable. His strongly-held
and forcefully expressed objections to deproletarianization notwithstanding,
Breman inadvertantly ends up confirming the presence of precisely that
process which he has been at such pains to deny. In stating both that
informal sector employment was expanding while that in the formal sector
was contracting, and that unfree labour prevailed in the former context
while free labour predominated in the latter, therefore, he concedes
implicitly the very claim that I make.
NOTES
1. See Breman [1999a, 1999b]. The two parts of the survey are virually indistinguishable from
his two contributions to an edited collection published in the same year [Breman, 1999c;
1999d].
2. The link between bonded labour, unfree relations of production and capitalism is considered
in each part of the survey [Breman, 1999a: 254-6; 1999b: 463-9]. Part of the difficulty lies
in the somewhat baffling tendency on Breman's part simply to adduce every new text about
debt bondage in India as supportive of his own earlier views on the subject. When
considering the findings of others, therefore, he frequently asserts that new arguments/views/
data are either compatible with his own research findings or, indeed, ideas that he himself
has held all along. Absent from such an approach is a sense of contradiction, or a recognition
that empirical data and/or theory are not merely incompatible with his own research findings
but in fact undermine earlier claims made by him on this subject. Such a position also fails
to appreciate the extent to which approaches to the issue of debt bondage by neo-classical
economists or postmodernists are epistemologically and politically incompatible with
Marxist analyses of this same relation.
3. For example, in the first part of the survey [Breman, 1999a: 255-6] my views are
characterized as an 'extreme position' amounting to 'doctrinal zeal' sustained '[i]n
controversial fashion', while in the second [Breman, 1999b: 465-8] I am accused of
conducting an 'ad hominem diatribe' and - again - of defending my viewpoint (about
deproletarianization) 'with more obstinacy than plausibility'.
4. This reply was originally written for and submitted to the journal which published Breman's
two-part survey [1999a, 1999b], as a response to the latter. Despite the fact that the survey
was replete with error (some of them, such as confusing Epstein with Harriss, laughable
mistakes), and also a thinly-disguised attack on my views about unfree labour (a point
recognized by Parry [1999: xv] in connection with other versions of the same argument
[Breman, 1999c, 1999d]), the editor of that journal refused to publish it. Although printed in
the UK by Cambridge University Press, the journal in question is edited out of Amsterdam.
Readers can form their own conclusion as to why no reply was published.
5. My arguments about the nature of deproletarianization, and the reasons for its reproduction
by capital, are set out most recently in Brass [1994, 1999].
6. See Breman [1999a: 255].
7. The inference is that my ideas derive from those of Mundle, Patnaik and Prakash, all of
whom were making the same points long before I did. As even Breman surely knows, and as
both chronology and substance underline, such an inference is of course nonsense. The
assertion that my 1986 article on unfree labour was the first I had written on the subject is
wrong: it was preceded by six articles, all on the same subject. The first of these was
published in 1980 (in this journal), almost at the same time as the book by Mundle, whose
ideas on the subject I encountered only later, when I began fieldwork in India. That my own
ideas about bonded labour could derive either from the semi-feudal analysis of Patnaik or the
postmodernism of Prakash, both of which in their different ways are hostile to the notion of
unfreedom-as-a-capitalist-relation (see below) is quite simply laughable, and a ridiculous
assertion. Mundle, Patnaik and Prakash have yet to mention - let alone endorse - the concept
deproletarianization which informs my work.
8. The recognition of the many and varied forms of unfree labour in India, together with
objections to the underreporting of attached labour, are outlined by Daniel Thorner in
Thorner and Thorner [1962: 21ff., 173ff.]. Case studies from Andhra Pradesh and Bihar
during the mid-1960s also suggest that he recognized the acceptability to capitalism of unfree
labour. In Andhra Pradesh, therefore, a context described by Thorner as 'an affluent area'
where high yields were generated by modern agricultural production based on advanced
technical and mechanized inputs, he also noted that 'big owners would sometimes advance
cash or grain and get repaid in labour on their home farm'. Similarly, he noted that in Patna
district, Bihar, rural producers combined advanced productive forces with the employment
of unfree permanent workers [Thorner, 1980: 222, 231-2]. The Thorner reference cited in
Breman [1999a: 255] to support the latter's view that the former regarded unfree labour as
being on the decline, and thus incompatible with capitalist development, actually refers to
begar, a form of forced labour which is not the same as debt bondage. See Brass [1999: 15].
9. That Patnaik's view about bonded labour is actually the opposite of that attributed to her by
Breman ('the further development of capitalist forces in agriculture will cause the
augmentation of semi-feudal forms of labour bondage') is clear from an earlier exchange
between her and me on this very issue. The extent both of the difference between my own
position on the issue of unfree labour and that of proponents of the semi-feudal thesis, and
consequently also of Breman's mistaken assumptions about this, emerge most clearly from
Patnaik [1995] and Brass [1995]. Rather worryingly, this is not the first time this has
happened. On a previous occasion Breman [1993: 301-2] wrongly accused me of regarding
debt bondage as being incompatible with capitalist production, and thus as a semi-feudal
relation; consequently, he maintained that my views were no different from those of Utsa
Patnaik. As even a superficial acquaintance with what I and Utsa Patnaik have written on this
subject would reveal, both my view and hers are the exact opposites of those attributed to
each of us by Breman.
10. It is in this sense, as emblematic of a pre-existing and therefore authentic Indian identity, that
bonded labour is for Prakash a culturally empowering relation (= 'the economy of
gentleness'). For a critique of the way in which Prakash interprets unfreedom, see Brass
[1999],
11. Breman [1999a: 255].
12. Breman [1999a: 255]. The text referred to is Harriss [1982].
13. The fact that these data refer not to Harriss, Areot District or Tamil Nadu but to the study by
Epstein of two villages in Karnataka is information clearly presented in Brass [1986: 55-6].
14. In her restudy during 1970 of two villages in which she had conducted fieldwork during
1955, Epstein [1962: 74ff.; 1973: 137] found not just that the number of peasant households
employing contract labour had increased in the economically more advanced village, but also
that in the latter context many wealthier households now employed more than one such
worker. Contract servants who owed money to their employer were obliged to repay this debt
in the form of labour-service. The increase in this category of bonded labour, from 14 to 48
over the 1955-70 period, does indeed represent a 243 per cent rise.
15. See Harriss [1992: 207-8; 1994: 183].
16. For this claim see Breman [1999b: 465], where I am accused of arguing that bonded labour
has never changed, and how for me the unfreedom now occurring is 'the same unfree regime
that existed in the past', as a consequence of which I am also said to have 'rejected
forcefully' the view that 'very significant changes have been brought about in the social
relations of production'.
17. Elements of this argument (about deproletarianization) have been applied by me not just to
India but also to Peru, the Caribbean, the United States and Australasia [Brass, 1999].
18. This phenomenon, known as 'changing masters', is examined by me elsewhere [Brass,
1999].
19. About the difference between past and present forms of unfreedom, Breman's own views are
not only in a constant state of flux, and subject to equally continuous process of revision, but
also (and therefore) far from clear. For example, noting that old/new forms of bondage do
indeed share common characteristics, he then goes on to say that for this reason the
differences between them must 'be understood in an ideal-typical sense' [Breman, 1999b:
467]. Either old/new forms of bondage are the same, or they are different. Breman cannot
have it both ways, and say - as he now does - that they are different, that I am wrong for
thinking they are the same, that in fact they are the same, but only in 'an ideal-typical sense'!
20. 'My own opinion continues to be that earlier forms of bondage in agriculture have
disappeared but that they have not always been replaced by free labour', and '[i]n the
reporting on my initial fieldwork I stated that, although the hali system indeed no longer
existed, in the transition to agrarian capitalism the bondage of farm labourers had certainly
not been changed into a free labour system'. See Breman [1999a: 256; 1999b: 464].
21. The term 'landless proletariat' appears not only throughout the text of his 1985 book,
therefore, but also in some chapter headings and/or sub-headings [e.g., Breman, 1985: 66ff.,
115ff.]. That he equated the term 'landless proletariat' with free labour-power is evident
from, for example, the subsequent description in Breman [1996: 237] of its components as
'free of the subjugation to a master', and 'not conditioned by attachment...and dependency'.
'Wage hunters and gathers', he concludes, 'are free'. His 1960s fieldwork findings are
presented in Breman [1974].
22. Significantly, in describing proletarianization as 'incomplete', Breman [1985: 55-6] means
not that debt bondage relations persist but that not all tenants have been separated from their
means of production.
23. The list of Marxist and bourgeois economists (and non-economists) for whom economic
growth in the Third World was the sine qua non of development theory is a long one, and
would include Lewis [1955], Ward [1961], Kotovsky [1964], Kaldor [1964], Balogh [1966],
Dobb [1967: 50ff.], Myrdal [1968], Barraclough [1973], Kalecki [1976], Ladejinsky
[Walinsky, 1977], and Rastyannikov [1981]. Many of the latter also perceived unfree
relations of production (whereby traditional/non-capitalist landowners extracted labour-rent
from tenants) as an obstacle to this economic growth. See, for example, Myrdal [1968:
1039ff.], Balogh [1966: 52; 1963: 37], Kotovsky [1964], Barraclough [1973: 7-9,33ff.], and
Walinsky [1977].
24. Some lessons, it seems, are finally being learned, albeit slowly. The term 'landless
proletariat', which was used by Breman in his 1985 book to describe rural workers he then
regarded as free, was also used by him in his 1993 and 1996 books to designate rural workers
he subsequently accepted were unfree, and to whom the concept 'neo-bondage' or 'new
bondage' was now applied [Breman, 1993: 297ff.; 1996: 101ff., 162ff., 214ff]. In an earlier
article [Brass, 1997] I pointed out that a proletariat cannot be composed of unfree labour. In
the text under consideration here, and in contrast with all his previous post-1990 books,
therefore, the term 'landless proletariat' is replaced by Breman [1999a: 253-4] with concepts
such as 'agricultural labour', 'rural under-class', and 'army of agricultural labourers'.
25. For the section about bonded labour, see Breman [1985: 306-13]. The importance of the
latter as a place where the free or unfree character of labour would be considered is signalled
earlier in the book [Breman, 1985: 130]. For this reason, it is impossible to claim that these
statements are in some sense a-typical or unrepresentative of Breman's views on the subject.
26. Breman [1985: 307-8]. The texts with which Breman disagrees are Patel [1964], Vyas
[1964], and Maria [1981].
27. Breman [1985: 311].
28. Breman [1985: 443-4].
29. This claim is advanced in Breman [1999b: 466].
30. Terms such as 'neo-bondage', 'the new bondage', 'bondage in a new guise', or 'the new
regime of bondage' surface in and appear extensively throughout all the post-1990 texts
published by Breman [1990: 572ff., 595; 1993: 300; 1996: 169; 1999a: 256; 1999b: 466;
1999c: 4; 1999d: 421]. Apart from me, few have questioned the meaning and origin of these
concepts. In a recent collection about labour in India [Parry et a., 1999], for example, a
contribution by de Neve [1999: 400ff.] accepts at face value all Breman's claims about 'neo-
bondage' without bothering to investigate its provenance or epistemology. In support of his
assertion that Breman recognizes that bondage 'can continue to exist along with capitalist
modes of agricultural production', therefore, de Neve [1999:402] cites only a post-1990 text
[Breman, 1993], thereby failing to note not just that its author had earlier espoused the
opposite view, and thus changed his mind about this issue, but also (and consequently) the
profound implications of this unacknowledged about-turn for the theoretical coherence of
Breman's arguments.
31. Whereas in his earlier monograph on rural Gujarat Breman [1985: 127] stated categorically
that '[d]ebt bondage was essential to [the pre-capitalist halt relationship] from the
beginning', now by contrast he states no less categorically that 'neo-bondage has proved able
to go hand-in-hand with capitalist labour practices' [Breman, 1999a: 256], and that
'[indebtedness continues to be a crucial aspect of the capitalist work regime which I have
ultimately defined as new or neo-bondage' [Breman, 1999b: 466].
32. Details about the interrelationship between on the one hand the decommodification of
labour-power, the employment of unfree labour, capitalist restructuring, and workforce
decomposition/recomposition, and on the other the process of deproletarianization are
outlined in Brass [1994, 1999],
33. Breman [1999b: 467].
34. Breman [1999b: 467].
35. Hence the view that a reduction in the frequency/intensity of coercion has led Breman
[1999b: 465] to doubt the viability of debt bondage. This is a common mistake, which
assumes that where coercion appears to be absent from the process whereby rural workers
repay debts in the form of labour-service, it does not actually exist. Such a view ignores the
fact that it is the (all-pervading) knowledge about and fear of the consequences following
default that constitute coercion, rather than the (perhaps infrequent) operationalization of the
consequences themselves. It is easy, therefore, to interpret the absence of the latter as
evidence for the non-existence of the former.
36. Breman [1999b:469].
37. This is in keeping with the contradictory and inconsistent nature of past claims made by
Breman concerning the presence/absence of coercion, about which see Brass [1997: 353 note
35].
38. Referring to the operation of extra-economic coercion associated with the pre-capitalist hali,
Breman [1999b: 465,468] states that 'the exercise of power by landowners has been checked
in major respects...extra-economic coercion with which to ensure compliance with the
agreement entered into is contrary both to law and to the virtual inability of landowners to
enforce their authority', and further, that resistance to unfree labour and debt bondage stems
from the fact that 'the hegemony [sic] of dominant landowners has come to an end', which
does indeed suggest that the successful exercise of coercion is equated solely with pre-
capitalist landlords.
39. For the power and political influence of the new fanners' movements, see Brass [1995] and
Varshney [1995].
40. For an example of the employment of bonded labour by members of the new farmers'
movements, see Assadi [1995].
41. Breman [1999b: 468].
42. Pressure is exercised by a landholder not directly on an indebted worker but rather indirectly,
via livestock-owning fellow caste workers who are themselves dependent on farmers for
supplies of fodder [Brass, 1999: Ch.3]. If nothing else, this shows just how wrong Breman
is in attributing to me the opinion that bonded labour has never changed (see above).
Although the point about the enforcement of debt-servicing labour obligations from within
the family/kinship domain was made with reference Haryana in 1987, it was actually raised
by me initially with regard to Peru in the mid-1970s.
43. See Breman [1999b: 469] for the argument that the enforcement of debt bondage is now
carried out most effectively by the labour contractor 'who belongs to the same milieu as the
worker', and, where family labour is concerned, by the household head. That Breman has not
previously made this connection between the enforcement of unfree labour relations and the
kinship domain is hinted at by Parry [1999: xii-xiii], who notes that 'what is nevertheless
occluded by [Breman's] account are the kinship and neighbourhood ties through which ...
migratory groups are mobilized'.
44. Breman [1999a: 290, 296]. In contrast to my view, which blames the absence or
ineffectiveness of trade unions on employers' utilization of workforce decomposition/

recomposition and deproletarianization in order to undermine any solidarity which exists,
Breman [1999a: 294] appears to inculpate the workers themselves, and in particular the fear
by the 'industrial vanguard' of sharing what they have with other workers. The difference
between these interpretations is that in the latter no solidarity exists, or is possible, while in
the former it exists and is possible, but is undermined and/or destroyed by class struggle
waged from above (by employers).
45. For the claim that the contraction of formal sector employment resulted in an enhanced
bargaining position on the part of the remaining permanent workers who composed the core
of the industrial proletariat, see Breman [1999a: 297],
46. Breman [1999b: 453, 456].
47. Breman [1999b: 463]. Later in the survey he notes [Breman, 1999b: 466] that 'neo-bondage
... also characterize[s] a great diversity of labour in the informal sector [of the urban
economy]'. For an identical view, see Breman [1999d: 422].
48. This would include the rebonding of workers who, having previously been unfree, then
managed to emancipate themselves, only to re-enter bondage subsequently, a process widely
reported throughout India. On this point see Brass [1999].
49. Breman [1999a: 255, 267, 275, 287, 299]. Such factory workers are considered by Breman
'as the dominant class in the industrial sector of the modern economy' which constitutes a
'labour aristocracy'.
50. Breman [1999a: 295] stresses that 'dignity'/'self-esteem' is an integral aspect of proletarian
status. Factory workers possess 'assertiveness', which in turn encourages them to organize.
In endorsing the view expressed by the 1969 National Commission on Labour, that 'the
industrial worker of today [1969] has acquired a dignity not known to his predecessor',
Breman reinstates two stereotypes which elsewhere in the survey he condemns. The first is
the essentialist view of worker-as-peasant, while the second is that in the past unfree labour
was passive. More importantly, such a view appears to endorse the heavily criticized 'quietist
peasant' thesis advanced by Barrington Moore [1967], that in pre-Independence India there
was a dearth of grassroots rural mobilizations.
51. Breman [1999b: 468].
52. Breman [1999b: 468].
53. Breman [1999b: 468].
54. Even the 1920s, therefore, Mukhtyar [1930: 160] noted that in Gujarat 'the avenues of
earnings for rural labour have increased in the urban areas during the last thirty years ... there
is a demand for labour from industrial centres...where bricks are manufactured'. Much the
same point was made by Shukla [1937: 129, 132], who observed similarly that in the 1930s
there was 'a constant and almost day to day migration within the taluka itself ... [labourers
of these and other western villages sometimes travel many miles to villages on the east of the
taluka, which is principally a cotton-growing tract, during the cotton-picking season...the
prospects of getting work in urban centres have increased in recent years on account of the
increased industrial activity in the big cities during and since the [First World] War'. On this
particular issue Breman [1996: 22] has observed recently that '[t]he village is not and never
was an enclave nor has the market for agricultural labour remained closed within the
boundaries of this small-scale territory' (emphasis added).
55. On this point, see Brass [1997: 351 note 16].

56. My style of argument is forceful, certainly, but not in my view overly so. It is about par for
the course in the academic debates about the presence/absence/meaning of unfree labour, and
far less polemical than some. It pales into insignificance when compared, for example, with
the polemics contained in Fogel and Engerman's Time on the Cross (and the reply to this by
Sutch and others) and the exchanges between Bauer and Loveman over the Latin American
enganche system. See Fogel and Engerman [1974], Sutch [1975], Bauer [1979a, 1979b], and
Loveman [1979].
57. For the arguments of Prakash, Scott, Bardhan, Platteau, and Fogel, together with their
accompanying epistemological and political lineages, see Brass [1999: Chs.7 and 8]. The
view that unfreedom is empowering is also shared by the Indian government, which has long
argued that attached labour is a positive good (i.e., provides its subject with a 'subsistence
guarantee'), and indeed has used this as a justification for not implementing existing
legislation abolishing bonded labour.
58. That bondage-as-patronage is for Breman a form of worker empowerment is evident from
what he himself has written on the subject, the details of which are outlined in Brass [1997:
350 note 12].
59. Significantly, revisionist interpretations of unfree labour by neoclassical economic
historiography derived in part from what it saw as an empowering capacity on the part of
slaves to reproduce their culture. According to Fogel [1989: 392], therefore, his own
confidence in the view of slavery as oppressive was undermined by the research of cultural
historians, who 'found more scope for... culture than convention dictated. Mistreatment was
not excluded from the new histories of slave culture, but its role was considerably
diminished.' In other words, as for Scott and Prakash, the fact that culture was not crushed
but flowered was for Fogel evidence of slave empowerment, which in turn licensed the view
that slave labour was reproduced more by consent than by coercion.
60. For his endorsement of Scott's 'everyday forms of resistance' framework, see Breman
[1999b: 470]. As I have pointed out before, such a positive view about the empowering
nature of 'resistance' or 'assertiveness' cannot explain either the inability of such agency to
eliminate historical forms of unfreedom (= the longevity of slavery) or the capacity (even the
willingness) of masters to accommodate such resistance.
61. Many examples of this kind of process are presented in Brass [1999: Chs.3, 5 and 8].
62. These kinds of ideology indicate the extent to which 'assertiveness' and 'resistance' can be
the result of false consciousness. That Breman [1999b: 470-71] disagrees with this is evident
from his view that the 'facile conclusion that all social formations that deviate from
unadulterated class alliance are an expression of false consciousness [fails to appreciate] the
complicated conditions that determine the changing and fragile existence of wage labour in
India at the end of the twentieth century'.
63. This contention is perhaps best illustrated by the case of Fogel [2000], who has now extended
the concept of from-below 'assertiveness'/'resistance' to the religious right in the USA.
Equating the latter with a much broader process of religious revival, Fogel categorizes the
religious right as one of the 'great awakenings' in American history, and as such a
mobilization which in his view corresponds to an egalitarian (new social) movement. To the
objection that the religious right cannot be regarded as egalitarian, Fogel answers that
inequality itself has changed, and poverty is no longer about material but spiritual
deprivation. The similarity between this position, in which material deprivation is
discursively (and politically) banished, to be replaced by a concept of cultural empowerment,
and that of the 'new' populist postmodernism is too obvious to require further comment.
64. The reasons for this are examined in Brass [2000].
65. This is especially true of Prakash and Scott, both of whom utilize a postmodern framework
to analyse unfree labour.
66. It is indeed ironic that Breman [1999a: 257ff., 262, 268] now criticizes many of those writing
about employment in India during the pre- and post-colonial era on the grounds that they,
wrongly, categorized urban workers from rural backgrounds as essentially peasants (= 'the
familiar cliche dating from colonial times'), and also emphasized this rural/urban continuity
in terms of the jajmani system. By characterizing the hali system as a form of 'subsistence
guarantee' reproduced from within a framework of patron-client relations, and its loss as
'depatronization', he himself was responsible for a similar idealization of pre-capitalist rural

relations in Gujarat [Breman, 1974].
67. In the course of the 1970s debate about the mode of production in India, Rudra changed his
mind, and joined those who maintained that agriculture in India was capitalist. On this point,
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Journal of Peasant Studies

Labour in post-colonial India: A response to Jan Breman

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Labour in Post-Colonial India:

Resuming the debate with Breman about debt bondage in post-

Consecutive numbers of another journal recently carried a long, two-part

One of these concerns the important and contentious subject of unfree

A QUESTION OF (MIS-) ATTRIBUTION

A similar confusion surrounds the views of Prakash concerning bonded

India, Prakash not only perceives freedom as tainted/compromised but also

of the bonded labour relation (duration, heritability, coercion and

PROLETARIANIZATION, CAPITALISM AND 'NEO-BONDAGE'

confined epistemologically to a traditional and thus economically backward

Taken in conjunction with his use of the term 'landless proletariat',

relations), as he claimed initially.31

DEPROLETARIANIZATION, COERCION AND ASSERTIVENESS

trend is rather the reverse'.34 In support of this contention, Breman advances

workers who have been deproletarianized.

to one where they 'reject security in bondage' is unviable, since there is no

WHY POLITICAL DEBATE IS STILL IMPORTANT

By contrast, deproletarianization not only recognizes but also

(= 'resistance') which is so acceptable to those at the non- or anti-Marxist

capitalism, bonded labour was displaced by free labour), and those

on such shaky foundations.

ineffectiveness of trade unions on employers' utilization of workforce decomposition/

55. On this point, see Brass [1997: 351 note 16].

'depatronization', he himself was responsible for a similar idealization of pre-capitalist rural

Harriss, John, 1994, 'Between Economism and Postmodernism: Reflections on Research on

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