Praxis Paper
Series - II
Abhinav
Sinha
Introduction
The question of capitalist
development in Indian agriculture has long remained an issue of controversy
among Marxist academicians as well as the Communist revolutionary camp. Even
after six decades of independence a
number of Marxist academics (Amit Bhaduri, T.Nagireddy, K. Balgopal, D.
Venkateswara Rao, Pradhan H. Prasad, etc) and majority of ML revolutionary
parties/organizations/groups consider Indian social formation as predominantly
semi-feudal semi-colonial. The reasons which, according to them, lead us to
conclude that Indian social formation is semi-feudal include the predominance
of agriculture in the national economy, prevalence of tenancy, backwardness of
productive forces, dominance of usurers' capital, and some even refer to
predominance of religion and caste consciousness in the social life as proof of
the semi-feudal thesis. However, such analyses often disregard the sanctity of
the particular categories of Marxist political economy or use them in an
arbitrary fashion. In his excellent study of development of capitalism in
Russia, Lenin showed how the same data can be used to demonstrate the
development of capitalism in agriculture, which the Narodniks used to prove
that there was no capitalism in Russian agriculture, and also, that the stage of
capitalism could be by-passed in the particular Russian case due to the alleged
egalitarian laws that govern the peasant economy in Russian villages and the
alleged homogeneous/undifferentiated character of the Russian peasantry. Lenin
also contended that the complexity of the process of capitalist development in
agriculture can create a variety of confusions. In our opinion, the semi-feudal
theorizing in India is mainly a product of these confusions. We will discuss
the fundamental elements of the Marxist theoretical framework which determines
whether a social formation is semi-feudal or capitalist. Then we will proceed
to a short overview of the economic evidence regarding the relations of
production and modes of surplus appropriation in rural India, which will
include the question of primitive accumulation and land reforms, creation of a
home market and a class of agricultural wage-earners, the question of tenancy,
role of usurers' capital and the structure of rural credit, the character of
ground rent, evolution and character of landed property, the question of
serf/bonded/unfree labour and the question of production for
market/consumption.
The Marxist Theoretical Framework and
the neo-Narodnik-Sismondian Origins of the Fallacy of the present Semi-feudal
Theorizations
Question of Primitive Accumulation and its Fall-outs
Marx in Capital, Vol-III discusses the process of development of capitalism
in agriculture and capitalist ground rent in detail. We must start from there
and then move to the views of Kautsky and Lenin on this issue. Marx argued that
property relations and the modes of surplus extraction determine the mode of
production. The essence of feudal production relations is expressed in the
feudal rent. The feudal rent could exist in the form of labour, kind and money.
Money rent came into existence towards the twilight of the feudal mode of
production because it could develop only with a considerable level of
development of money circulation and market mechanism. Money rent gave a lot of
autonomy to the peasant, who could accumulate capital by increasing production
and a marketable surplus. However, Marx clarifies, any form of rent (even money
form) is feudal as long as the landlord-serf
relation exists; as long as the agricultural labour is unfree; the feudal lord collects rent in form of
cash, kind or labour; the peasant is not free to take the decisions of
production; the serf/tenant/peasant is not alienated from the means of
production; the feudal lord acts as a, de facto, parcellized state with legislative,
executive and judicial powers; the extra-economic coercion of the peasant
exists; and, the production is done primarily for consumption of the peasant
family and the surplus is surrendered without recompense to the landlord, the
dominant production relations remain feudal in character. Marx argues further
that the dominant criterion for the development of capitalist agriculture is
the formation of the agricultural
proletariat. This class of rural wage-earners is created through the
process of primitive accumulation,
which also simultaneously creates a home
market for capital. The home market is created because the labour power
itself becomes a commodity, the resources of consumption of the peasantry under
feudalism is now free for sale, means of production are alienated from the
producer and therefore they have to be bought and sold, and now the production
is done for profit, for market. Marx describes the process of primitive
accumulation in detail and shows how between the 13th and the 16th centuries in
England the transition from class complex of feudal landlords, serfs and feudal
tenants to that of capitalist rentier landlord, capitalist farmer landlord,
capitalist tenant farmer and agricultural wage labour occurred through the
intermediary stages of matayers (half farmers) and simple commodity producers.
We cannot go in the nuances of the process here due to the paucity of space and
interested readers might refer to Capital, Vol-III for a detailed and
picturesque description.
The Question of Capitalist Ground Rent and What the Neo-liberal and present
Semi-feudal Theorists Have in Common
Consequently, Marx moves on to a
discussion of the forms of capitalist
ground rent. Marx accepts Adam Smith's definition of ground rent and shows
that Ricardo's conception of ground rent, actually is surplus-profit which
comes into existence due to the different conditions of production prevailing
in different farms, and precisely for this reason, this form of
"rent" can exist in industry also; Marx calls Smith's concept as the absolute ground rent and that of
Ricardo as differential ground rent.
Differential ground rent is actually the surplus profit of the farmers who have
less cost of production than the average and higher rate of profit than the
average profit prevalent in the sector. Unlike industry (where the average type
of production conditions determine the average rate of profit), in agriculture,
the worst type of land determines the average rate of profit. Thus, every farm
with better soil than the farm with the worst type of soil will get surplus
profit, because the general market price will be determined by the worst soil.
Ricardo argues that the only form of rent is this surplus profit, which he calls rent. Thus, according to
Ricardo, the poorest quality of soil will not yield any surplus
profit/differential rent, and therefore the worst soil will not come under
plough because any capitalist landlord will not give his land for free. He will
only give it in return of rent. Smith, Richard Jones and later Marx showed that
even the worst soil comes under cultivation and it yields rent. This rent is
actually absolute ground rent and it
comes into existence due to the monopoly that exists in private land ownership
under capitalism. This ground rent exists even when there is no capital
investment by the landlord in the improvement of land, when there is no surplus
profit, and when there is no cultivation/agriculture (and the land is used for
the exploitation of natural fruits such as wood, timber, waterfall, etc). Marx
shows that Ricardo failed to understand this concept because he did not
understand the difference between value
and price and between surplus value
and profit. He thought that if the market price of commodity includes
anything above the production price [constant capital+variable capital+average
profit (equalized surplus value)], then the labour theory of value will cease
to exist. But Marx showed that Ricardo's paranoia is based on a wrong premise,
that is, price is value! He showed that the market price of the commodity must
rise above the production price to a level as to yield rent (absolute) to the
landlord. Thus the function of the labour theory of value is mediated by the
mechanism of market. This does not mean that labour theory of value ceases to
function. It just shows that in different particular sectors, the profit might
be above, below or (rarely) equal to the surplus value, but the total profit
will always be equal to total surplus value. Kautsky in his excellent work on
agrarian capitalism explains it clearly. He argues, "The value of
commodities is only apparent as a tendency,
as a law-like movement tending to regulate the process of exchange or sale. The
product of this process is the actual
exchange-ratio, or the price obtaining on a market. Naturally, a law and its
result are two different things." ('The Capitalist Character of Modern
Agriculture', The Agrarian Question, Kautsky, in U. Patnaik (ed.) 'The Agrarian
Question in Marx and his Successors', Vol-I, page- 188). At another place,
"Consequently, the prices of production as determined by the "costs
of production" diverged from the values of the products: however, this is
only a modification of the law of value, not its nullification. It continues to
exercise its regulative function behind the price of production and retains its
absolute validity for the totality of commodities and the aggregate mass of
surplus-value, providing the basis both for prices and the rate of
profit--which in its absence would float unsuspended in mid-air." (p.
202-03, Ibid.). Thus, it is clear that the increase in production price caused
by absolute rent does not in the least affect the health and well-being of
theory of value and Ricardo went hysteric and negated the existence of absolute
rent, without any substantial reason. Ricardo's differential rent can come into
existence only when the owner and producer are two different individuals,
because, in that case only, the surplus-profit will be handed over to the
landlord, along with the absolute rent. Once the rent is handed over to the
landlord, as Kautsky shows, it is quite difficult to differentiate between the
absolute and differential rent. Lenin, too, in 'Development of Capitalism in
Russia' gives a lot of importance to the question of absolute rent and
differential rent. He demonstrates the difference between capitalist rent
(absolute and differential) and the feudal rent. Kautsky also shows this
difference quite clearly, "Capitalist ground-rent should not be confused
with the burden imposed on peasants by the feudal aristocracy. Initially, and
more or less throughout the Middle Ages, these corresponded to important
functions which the lord had to perform--functions which were subsequently
taken over by the state, and for which the peasants paid taxes. The seigniorial
class had to superintend the system of justice, to provide police, and
represent the interests of its vassals to the outside world, to protect them
through its possession of arms, and to furnish military service on their
behalf.
"None of these concerns is
relevant to the landowner in capitalist society. As differential rent,
ground-rent is the product of competition; as absolute rent, it is the product
of monopoly. The fact that these accrue to the landowner is not due to the
latter's exercise of any social function, but solely and simply due to the
consequence of private property in land and soil." (p.216, ibid).
Utsa Patnaik has rightly pointed out that the erroneous views of
the exponents of the semi-feudal thesis is due to the fact that they, too, do
not understand the concept of absolute ground rent, and surprisingly, this is a
misconception that they share with the neo-liberal economists! In the
neo-liberal theorization, the tenant farmer is considered at par with the cash
wage worker, the only difference being that the wage of the former is not in
cash but in kind. They completely ignore the fact that the tenant owns his
means of production, invests capital, controls the labour process and takes the
production decisions. This is due to the fact that the neo-liberal economists
are unfamiliar with, rather unaware of, the concept of absolute ground rent.
The capitalist rentier landlord (CRLL) is termed as the capitalist farmer; the
tenant as labourer (wage worker); and the rent is confused with profit; the
share of the sharecropper tenant is arbitrarily called wage (in cash or kind,
does not matter!); all this muddle because the neo-liberal economists only know
the relationship between capitalist farmer landlord and the wage worker, and they
only understand the concept of profit, not rent. Now we can compare this with
fallacy of the semi-feudal theorizations
in India.
Semi-feudal theorists call this
tenant as the near-labourer who is destitute, pauper, has no control over
production decisions and labour process; who is thus "unfree" under
the yoke of "feudal" landlords and usurers. Evidently, they also do
not understand the concept of absolute rent and mistake the capitalist tenant
for unfree, non-capitalist worker or near-worker, almost a serf/bonded labour.
They also do not understand the role of usurers' capital in the agricultural
production under capitalism. To this, we will come later. For them, this tenant
is an unfree, destitute worker, and not a capitalist tenant farmer who owns means
of production. Capital must be provided by the landlord and the sharecropper
contributes only labour. This destitute sharecropper only gets kind wage and
the landlord gets rent (of Ricardo!). But if we look closely, what these
theorists call "wage" is in fact the profit of the capitalist tenant
farmer; what they call "rent" is actually the profit on the capital
that the landlord has advanced, in the form of interest. For instance, Amit Bhaduri conceptualizes the Indian
sharecropper as having little or no means of production, with no saving, with
no means to survive, so he takes "consumption loan" from the
landlord. But in reality this "consumption loan" is nothing but wage
advance which is deducted from the harvest share wage with interest.
Apparently, what Bhaduri calls "rent" is actually profit on the
capital advanced by the capitalist rentier landlord to the wage-earner. What
Bhaduri calls "tenant" is actually worker, what he calls
"rent" is in effect profit; what he calls "consumption
loan" is actually wage advance, which is later adjusted with the harvest
share wage with interest.
What we have in the Indian case
is this (which will later be shown by evidence): absolute ground rent is taken
by the CRLL, irrespective of the fact whether he makes any capital advance to
the tenant as loan or not. What he might take in return for any capital
investment in the land and production is nothing but interest on the loan
advanced to the capitalist tenant farmer. The tenant farmer is not wage worker.
He produces surplus with his own means of production, family and hired labour,
his own investments on the land leased from the CRLL, in return of rent which
is a part of the surplus that he produces over the cost of production which
includes his subsistence cost.
Now, capitalist agriculture might
be dominated by the CRLL or the capitalist farmer landlord (CFLL), depending on
the conditions of production. The CRLL can transform itself into CFLL when
through technological advance and improvement of land, the rent is increased so
much that the CRLL has enough capital to invest. However, this change is not at
all irreversible and the CFLL can again transform itself into CRLL due to a
variety of reasons. Utsa Patnaik has shown the volatility of this
transformation. She argues that during the Green Revolution, the rent barrier
was crossed and numerous rentier landlords took to farming. Now the situation
is different. We are having a capitalist crisis in the agriculture in the age
of Globalization (which the semi-feudal theorists take as the evidence of
semi-feudal relations, but which in fact, as Marx, Kautsky and Lenin had shown
earlier, is only the evidence of capitalist development in agriculture, the
agricultural moment of the universal process of capitalist crisis). What we are
witnessing presently is a shift back to rentierism and shift to other avenues
of investment like real estate, usury and speculative finance. In this period,
the question of tenancy becomes important, so we will now take up the question
of tenancy.
The Question of Tenancy
First of all, one must understand
the fact that preponderance of tenancy
in the agrarian economy has nothing to do with semi-feudal relations in itself,
as claimed by the semi-feudal theorists. Kautsky in his work gives ample
evidence from late-19th century England, France, Germany, the United States and
North Atlantic Union, that with the development of capitalist agriculture,
tenancy became more and more prevalent. He shows that in capitalist agriculture
there are proprietor farms (owner peasant farms) as well as the tenant peasant
farms. The tenant peasant produces surplus on the leased farm with family and
hired labour. A part of this surplus is transferred to the landlord as rent,
another part to the usurer/creditor as interest and the rest is pocketed by him
as profit; proprietor peasant gets the profit after paying interest on the
loan, if any and the capitalist landlord gets the rent. However, Kautsky points
out that the proprietor peasant's proprietary rights become only a formal
juridical reality with the development of capitalist agriculture. The
proprietor peasant needs more and more capital to compete in the market. He
gets this in the form of mortgage loan against his property. In return for this
loan he has to hand over the ground rent to the mortgage creditor, who can be a
state institution or a non-institutional creditor like the usurer. This in
effect is the alienation of the producer from land. Kautsky explains it,
"The division between the landowner and the entrepreneur--albeit hidden
behind particular juridical forms--is still there. The ground-rent which
accrues to the landowner under the lease system ends up in the pocket of the
mortgage creditor under the mortgage system. As the owner of ground-rent, the
latter is consequently the real owner of the land itself. In contrast, the
nominal owner of the land is a capitalist entrepreneur who collects the profit
on enterprise and ground rent, and then pays over the latter in the form of the
interest on the mortgage...the difference between the lease system and the
mortgage system is simply that in the latter the actual owner of the land is
termed a capitalist, and the actual capitalist entrepreneur a landowner. Thanks
to this confusion, our farmers (one can
read the present semi-feudal theorists/neo-narodniks in India here--author),
who actually exercise capitalist functions, tend to get very indignant about
exploitation by "mobile capital"--that is, the mortgage creditors who
in fact play the same economic role as the landowner under the lease
system." (p.225, ibid). He argues that through this process the proprietor
is not transformed into proletariat, but a tenant farmer. He explains further,
"However, progress and prosperity in agriculture will inevitably express
itself in an increase in mortgage indebtedness, first because such progress
generates a growing need for capital, and secondly because the extension of
agricultural credit allows ground rents to rise." (p.226, ibid). Such
capitalist transformation is often mistaken for the ruin of agriculture and
lead some people to call for "saving the peasant". Lenin dismantles
this illusion quite clearly and quotes Kautsky, "The protection of the
peasantry (der Bauernschutz) does not
mean the protection of the person of
the peasant (no one, of course, would object to such protection), but
protection of the peasants property. Incidentally,
it is precisely the peasant's property that is the main cause of his
impoverishment and his degradation. Hired agricultural labourers are now quite
frequently in a better position than the small peasants. The protection of the
peasantry is not protection from poverty but the protection of the fetters that
chain the peasant to his poverty." (Lenin, Review of Kautsky's Die
Agrarfrage, p.267, ibid). Further, "attempts to check this process would
be reactionary and harmful: no matter how burdensome the consequences of this
process may be in present-day society, the consequences of checking the process
would be still worse and would place the working population in a still more
helpless and hopeless position." (p.267, ibid).
Mao's Theory of Semi-feudal Semi-colonial Social Formation and its Incorrect
Appropriation by the Present Semi-feudal Theorizations
Clearly, enough tenancy itself is
not a sign of semi-feudal relations. Mao has clearly defined what he meant by
semi-feudal relations. Mao argued that in the pre-revolutionary China much of
the land was under the ownership of landlords, nobility and the emperor;
peasants were forced to work as serfs; the foundation of the natural
self-sufficient economy were being destroyed but the extra-economic
exploitation of the peasantry by the feudal landlord class was intact and it
got linked with the comprador and usurers' capital. (Mao Tse-tung, Selected
Works, Vol-II, 1976, p. 312-3) Semi-feudalism for Mao was not a separate mode
of production, but essentially feudal mode of production in its transitory
stage, or form, to capitalism, but a transition which was hampered by the
feudal landlords, comprador bourgeoisie and imperialism, and therefore, which
could not be accomplished without a New Democratic Revolution. Here what is of
cardinal importance is the feudal character of rent, unfree serf labour, the parcellized
state in the form of the legislative, executive and judicial powers of the
feudal class, the domination of comprador bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Evidently, semi-feudal relations are a particular category of Marxist theory
and political economy and cannot be imposed on the Indian reality according to one's
wishes. Can we say that in India the landlord-serf relation is the dominant
form of agrarian relationship? So-called bonded labour does not constitute even
1 percent of the rural labour force. Absentee landlordism is being replaced by
self cultivation with hired labour, as we shall see later. And even if such
replacement was not taking place, this could not necessarily be a sign of
feudalism.
Reality, as Reflected by Statistical
Evidence
The area under tenant farming in
India has fallen from 12 percent in 1950-51 to 8.28 percent in 1991-92. The
unregistered tenancy also is on decline. Sharecropping has become the dominant
form of tenancy. Bardhan has shown by his sample survey of 334 villages in northern
and eastern India, that sharecropping is mostly done on 50:50 basis (P. Bardhan, 'Terms and Conditions of
Sharecropping Contracts', Journal of Development Studies, Vol-16, 1977). This
is a huge misconception that sharecropping tenancy is a sign of semi-feudalism.
Under sharecropping tenancy the landlord shows interest in the improvement of
agriculture. Unlike the absentee landlord, the new landlord often invests
capital in agriculture for seeds, fertilizers, machinery, etc. He is not only
owner of land but also the lender of capital. Most of the product of the
tenancy farms is reaching market today. This tenant production is not for
consumption only, either of the tenant or of the landlord, as is the case with
feudal/semi-feudal tenancy. Ashok Rudra
and P.Bardhan have demonstrated that
the so-called attachment/semi-attachment shows the concern of the landlord for
ensured and timely supply of labour, rather than the extra-economic coercion. (Bardhan, Rudra, 'Labour, Employment and
Wages in Agriculture', EPW, Nov. 1980). The major portion of landlord's income
does not come from money-lending but from rent and profit. Share of
non-institutional lending was 95 percent in 1952 which declined to 60 percent
in 1981-82. Though, it has increased during the last two decades, but the new
moneylenders are not professional moneylenders, but other members of the
professional petty-bourgeoisie as Basole
and Basu have shown in their
excellent study ('Relations of Production and
Modes of Surplus Extraction in India', Amit Basole and Deepankar Basu, Department of Economics, University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA---this paper is available at Sanhati.com). Again, this is more due
to the privatization of the credit system and the withdrawal of the State from
the credit services. However, this is not feudal-style domination of the
peasantry (tenant as well as proprietor) by the usurers' capital. As we have
already shown, rural indebtedness itself cannot be a sign of semi-feudal
relations, if there is no unfree/servile labour. Moreover, even under
capitalism, the labour is not completely "free". All the capitalist
contracts are in-built with different amounts of unfreedom as Tom Brass and Utsa Patnaik have argued. The freedom of labour is the general law
or tendency. But anyone who takes it literally, is grossly mistaken. So the
rural indebtedness and usurers' capital might lead to the intensification of
capitalist transformation of agriculture if other conditions of capitalist
development are present (for example, commodification of labour power and land,
capitalist ground rent, creation of a unified home market, etc.). Lets hear
Marx on this issue. He argues that usury exists in the pores of production; it
is capital because it appropriates surplus labour, but without having anything
to do with mode of production; it reinforces the same mode of production, by
making it more miserable, be it feudal or capitalist. Usurers' capital is money
capital that appropriates surplus not through controlling/organizing the
production process, but through the instrument of interest; it expropriates the
producer but does not concentrate them in one large production process and
leaves them scattered and as impoverished, indebted petty producer. BUT, usury continues under capitalist
mode of production and can even become an instrument of capitalist development
if other pre-requisites of capitalist mode of production exist. (Karl Marx, Capital Vol-III, Moscow,
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959, p.580-599).
Basu and Basole also
show that on the whole, tenancy is on decline. They provide ample evidence for
this. The share of households leasing land fell from 25 percent in 1971-72 to
12 percent in 2003; share of area leased in to total area owned fell from 12
percent in 1971-72 to 7 percent in 2003; share of the area leased out to total
area owned fell from 6 percent in 1971-72 to 3 percent in 2003; share of partly
or wholly leased in land fell from 24 percent in 1960-61 to 10 percent in
2002-3; share of lease in land in the total area operated fell from 10.7
percent to 6.5 percent in 2002-03. So there is an undisputed shift from tenancy
farms to self-cultivated agriculture with hired labour. Semi-feudal theorists
might claim that the tenancy among small peasantry has increased. But this too
is not the case. The share of tenant holdings has decreased in all
size-classes. In fact, tenancy in large holdings has increased, that shows the
absolute dominance of capitalist tenancy. Share of tenant households in all
categories has decreased and the share of land under tenancy has decreased
across board. In 2003, 70 percent of tenanted land was operated by large
holdings (>2.5 acres), that is by only 3 percent of all operational
holdings. The terms of tenancy clearly show that capitalist relations have
become dominant beyond doubt. Fixed rent (in cash and in kind) formed 51
percent of total rent in 2002-3, which was 38 percent in 1960-61. Harvest share
(sharecropping) formed 37 percent in 2002-3 which was 40 percent in 2002-3.
Highest tenancy is found in Punjab and Haryana, which are the states with most
developed capitalist agriculture. Reverse tenancy has become a considerably
noticeable phenomenon in all states. Basu and Basole also show that the recent
increase in the non-institutional credit can mostly be accounted to the states
with most developed capitalist agriculture (Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Andhra
Pradesh). This is because of the fact that this rise in non-institutional
credit is nothing but the capitalist privatization and financialization of the
credit system. However, still almost half of the total credit in agriculture
comes from institutional sources.
Penetration of market in
agriculture can also be seen through statistics. In most of the food crops more
than 85 percent of surplus is marketed. Marketed surplus in total agricultural
production for different classes of peasantry is as follows: 44 percent for
effectively landless; 54 percent for marginal; 65 percent for small; 66 percent
for middle; and 71 percent for large. The gross capital formation in
agriculture (GCFA) grew with a rate of 3 percent between 1961 and 1999, which
is a considerable growth rate.
To understand the differentiation of peasantry, which
according to Lenin was one of the most important characteristics of the
capitalist transformation of agriculture, we also need to look at the data
regarding landlessness and structure of
land ownership. 62 percent of agrarian labour comes from households that
own 0.025 to 1 acre of land. These are "effectively landless"; these
households derive 60 percent of their income from wage, and 44 percent of their
yield is marketed, which is substantial for this class of landless population.
Share of households with less than 1 acre in 2004-5 was 76.6 percent; share of
households with 1-2 acres of land was 12.2 percent; share of households with
more than 2 acres of land was 11.2 percent. Effective landlessness increased
from 44.2 percent in 1960-61 to 60.1 percent in 2002-3; 60 percent of poorest
rural households own only 6 percent of land under cultivation. The share of
effectively landless and marginal peasantry in total rural households rose to
80 percent in 2003 from 66 percent in 1961; the share of very large farms
(>10 acres) declined from 12 percent in 1961 to 3.6 percent in 2003; the
share of households with 2.5-10 acres fell from 23 percent in 1961 to 17
percent in 2003; the share of total area held by farmer families (<2.5
acres) increased from 8 percent in 1961 to 23 percent in 2003; and that of
large farmers (>10 acres) fell from 60 percent in 1961 to 35 percent in 2003
and that of the middle farmers (2.5-10 acres) increased from 33 percent in 1961
to 42 percent in 2003.
Conclusion
This data clearly reflects the
differentiation of peasantry and the creation of a huge class of agricultural
wage workers. We have already cited the data relating to the sheer dominance of
the production for market, the credit system and the commodification of land.
This data also shows the nature of land reforms carried out in India. We
certainly experienced the Prussian path
of land reforms in which land was not redistributed to the tenants and
landless labour; the erstwhile feudal lord was allowed to transform himself
into capitalist rentier landlord, or, capitalist farmer landlord. One can
provide enormous body of data regarding the marketization of agriculture,
development of institutional and non-institutional capitalist credit system,
differentiation of peasantry, creation of
a single unified home market, etc. However, unfortunately, available space
does not allow us to do so in this article.
Before we conclude, one caveat
must be put forward here. In our opinion, the capitalist transformation of
agriculture can certainly not be contested with the rigid theoretical
frameworks of the semi-feudal theorizations, as the above evidence clearly
shows; however, due to the unsustainability and contradictions of the
semi-feudal thesis, the whole argument of the semi-feudal theorists ultimately
gets stuck on the question of the
character of the bourgeoisie. This topic will need another detailed
article, but this much can be said: the
behaviour of Indian bourgeoisie during the last six decades is in no way that
of the comprador bourgeoisie; the Indian state is a peculiar kind of
post-colonial (not in the Derridian sense) capitalist state characterized by a
bourgeoisie which is neither national (because it does not share any interest
with the Indian people), nor comprador (because, it is not politically
dependent and a lot of instances can be cited from Suez Canal issue, Soviet
Asia Maitri Sangh issue, to the Copenhagen Summit, etc, which show that it has
taken independent political decisions in contradiction with the metropolitan
imperialist bourgeoisie) and even less, an imperialist bourgeoisie (because the
import of capital by Indian bourgeoisie is much more than its export of
capital, which undoubtedly has been on increase for last two decades). Then
what is the character of Indian bourgeoisie? In our opinion, the Indian
bourgeoisie can be characterized as the Junior
Partner of Imperialism (not one single imperialist country, but the entire
imperialist system); it is politically independent, though economically
dependent; its arms are twisted sometimes by the metropolitan bourgeoisie
(since, it is junior partner!), but it never surrenders its political
independence and performs a tight-rope walking by balancing and
counter-balancing its "national" class interests through bargaining
between different imperialist camps. The unipolarity of imperialist system can only
be a temporary and illusive phenomenon. As Lenin has shown, monopoly is
accompanied by the counter-motion of competition and this very dialectic
creates the revolutionary situation combined with other factors.
To conclude, most of the ML parties and also intellectuals, in our
opinion, need to reconsider the applicability of the semi-feudal semi-colonial
theorizations to the present Indian situation and also Indian history. The
issue of programme should not be converted into an issue of ideology, as is often,
unfortunately, done. If one even mentions capitalist development or Socialist
Revolution, they are often termed as Trotskyites, because, it has become
axiomatic that any such claim is the negation of the two-stage theory of Lenin.
Such line of argument must be avoided so as to initiate an open debate and
discussion on the issue of programme.
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