FORWARD, BACKWARD OR IN ZIGZAG:
Observation on “Some Comments on the Stage of Revolution in India” by Manoj Sinha of Proletarian Politics

Marxist Front (INDIA)
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Manoj Sinha of Proletarian Politics has written a long Comment on the Stage of revolution in India, (Proletarian Politics, Volume 1 November 2004)

In this article we will not go into the details of the draft under discussion; it will only show how Proletarian Politics (Pr P) and Manoj Sinha(MKS) has strayed from the central theme and jumbled up the entire topic leading to further confusion to the reader who thaught that something concrete and worth pondering is in offering.

Allow me to quote in full the sometimes-lengthy passages from his Comment in italics to enable the readers afresh to be quite abreast with the thaughts of MKS

The theses of Proletarian Politics cognises nothing but the elementary generalisation from direct facts as they exist. Such observations may be quite sufficient for everyday ordinary requirements, but cannot reveal the true essence, or the content of the subject.

MKS has based his comment on the following papers/analysis

·        Proletarian Path’s' On the Stage of Indian Revolution' which appeared in its inaugural issue (New Series, Vol. I, No. I, Nov-Dec., 1992);

·        Revolutionary Democracy 'On the Stage of the Indian Revolution' in its Vol. II, No. 1, April-May 1996

·        Alliance (Marxist-Leninist) Upon the Polemic Between Proletarian Path & Revolutionary Democracy --Concerning The Stage of the Indian Revolution.

Sinha begins:

            The sine qua non for Europianization of Indian society was the breaking up of its stereotyped primitive forms. This could not be done only through tax collectors. The destruction of India’s archaic industry -in particular combination of hand-weaving, hand-spinning and hand tilling agriculture- was necessary to deprive the villages of their self supporting character. This was achieved through “English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindu spinner and weaver, dissolved these semi-barbarian, semi-civilized communities by blowing up their economical basis...”

 These long years of colonial rule destroyed the old feudal regime, the old state apparatus, old institutions like village community. In place of fragmented warlord feudal state, it established a centralized colonial state. The old division of labor based on caste was  liberated and made suitable for commodity production and exchange.

             During both the  kinds  of  imperialism in India, its pre-capitalist structures were undermined and  a  new structures necessary for capitalist development were established. This not only allowed world finance capital to penetrate and develop but also created conditions for the development of indigenous capital in industry as well as in commerce and agriculture. However, the colonial state remained the instrument of British bourgeois and was deployed against indigenous classes where their respective rights clashed.

              Sinha says that the long years destroyed the old feudal institutions, the old state apparatus, old institutions like village community. Which is partially correct.

 When British rule was established in Bengal and Oudh in the latter part of the 18th century, the colonial administration formed a class of intermediary revenue collectors who were drawn from the native landed nobility itself—i.e. the native ruling feudal lords. These revenue collectors called Zamindars were basically different from the Jaqirdars and Subahdars of the Mughal period in that they did not have the administrative powers of the feudal lords of the Mughal period. In addition to Zamindars there were the princely states, which were controlled by the British through a subsidiary alliance, under which the princes had freedom in their own internal administration so long as they regularly paid tributes to the colonial authority. As a result, different revenue systems and tenancy laws prevailed in different parts of India. The Zamindars had many arbitrary powers but this was never formally recognized and the British administration did not interfere with the Zamindars till their arbitrary powers did not create a rival center of power. To begin with no Zamindar had a private army, he could not dispense justice and he could levy no tax which was not sanctioned by the colonial administration. This prevented a Zamindar from becoming mini or a semi-independent ruler, which the Jagirdars and Mansabdars could easily become under the Mughals. But the economic base of the Zamindars were intact. Hence there was a change in the political status of the native ruling class, but their social and economic base were kept intact.

But it was not from these collaborators of British colonialism that the first Indian capitalists were to emerge. The Zamindars were the rural lackeys of the British colonialists who due to the rights of revenue collection conferred on them by the British developed a vested interest in supporting the British colonial rule.

 The British Governor-General Cornwallis (1786-93) institutionalized the feudal system in order to consolidate the colonial interest. Permanent Settlement introduced by Cornwallis was the required institution in this regard. Permanent Settlement not only preserved and maintained the feudal system but it was a tax collection mechanism of the British government. But the greatest vacuum that was created through this system was the absence of an accountable government. Within the state apparatus, a bureaucratic network, down to concerned police stations via the district and sub-divisional administration, was the structure of the administration.

Thus we see that the Imperialist rulers of India had no interest in destroying the old feudalism and replacing it with modern capitalism. Rather they preserved and helped feudalism though typical to Indian style flourish and helped them in becoming the lackeys of the new government. While the people were just neglected. Thus what MLS says does not go with history. Though the development of Capitalism as Marx said was a product of developmental work done by the Colonialist power it was not as what MKS has to say.

 Here it would also be pertinent to understand the developemnt of Liberal Democracy and Capitalism in India.

 DEVELOPEMNT OF DEMOCRACY IN INDIA AS COMPARED WITH THE WEST

The development of democratic process in India has been quite different from that of the West. Like Feudalism, Democracy has taken a very different form in this country, which is confusing to political, and social scientists as well as the common people.

In comparison to the West, in India democracy did not arise quite as as a result of political struggles of ordinary working people. While 20th century mass movements of workers, peasants and "Depressed Classes"(the backward castes) did add in significant measure to the popular pressures upon the colonial state as much as shaping the formal political strategies of the Indian National Congress but on the whole the Democratic process remained a prerogative o f the western educated higher caste rich leaders both from the Hindu and the Muslim community.

 Historically the political process of democratization in the West has been the sometimes rapid; sometimes slow erosion of communities, supported by the growth of capitalism with its marked indifference to the life of communities. While the phenomenon is centuries old, it gathers momentum especially after the Industrial revolution, beginning in the 18th century. By the 19th century bourgeois individualism, the cornerstone of liberal democracy and capitalism was already the order of the day. These two salient facts need to be contrasted with the historical facts of the Indian social and political environment.

 In an ethos of the kind that has always prevailed in India at least in living memory -- Caste system have held sway, both over the lives of individuals as well as over public life. These communities are not naturally democratic. On the contrary, within themselves, as much as in relation to each other, they are organized hierarchically. Indian family arrangements, for instance, are uninhibitedly patriarchal and authoritarian. Caste remains an obstinate social fact in the Indian countryside, and often, even in urban India. Besides, outwardly, these communities are externally as greedily materialistic as corporate institutions in the Western world, even if values of sharing and cooperation have been sustained, in the past, within them (without the faintest realization of the inherent hypocrisy underlying this double-standard).

On the role of Indian Bourgeoisie Proletarian Politics says:

However, there was no structural contradiction between these indigenous bourgeois and finance capital because they had a common interest of preserving capitalist social order to earn more and more profit. And this is why a section of indigenous bourgeoisie was from the very beginning a compromising class. It always tried to gain some economic & political concession  by helping national revolutionary liberation movement.   The compromising section of indigenous bourgeoisie was from the very beginning saddled with rising workers consciousness and revolt of workers, peasants, petty-bourgeois, small producers and middle man.

Sinha further says:

……. The compromising section of bourgeois achieved major constitutional reform  when they got Government of  India Act 1935 passed. With the passing of this Act, ‘the national movement led by compromising bourgeois was able to win the franchise for about one quarter of the adult population in 1935. While considerably less than universal franchise, and based essentially on property and educational qualifications, this was still an advance when compared to the situation in the earlier stages of colonial rule. But still India was a part of British colony.   

Sinha calls the Bourgeoisie in the national liberation movement probably he is referring to the BIrlas and the Seths of the then rising indian Bourgeoisie who formed the core of the initial freedom movement particularly before the advent of Mahatma Gandhi as compromising, but what is new he is saying?  Is it not the known characteristics of the Bourgeoisie? To quote Lenin where he has cited Marx:

As marx’s theory of the distinction between the three main forces in 19^th century revolutions: According to this theory the following forces take a stand against the old order, against autocracy, feudalism, and the serf owning system: 1) The liberal big bourgeoisie; 2) the radical petty bourgeoisie; 3) The proletariat. The first fights for nothing more than a constitutional monarchy; the second for a democratic republic; the third, for a socialist revolution.
--Lenin V; ATwo Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution@; Collected Works Volume 9; Moscow; 1962; p. 87.

On the attainment of Indian independence Proletarian Politics says that  the people got limited empowerment and as agrees with the Proletarian Path that India followed the Prussian Path Model; and further lambasts parties like the CGPI (Communist Ghadar Party of India) for saying that the people had no empowerment in the post-colonial India. To quote the Proletarian Politics :

    … India attained it’s independence through constitutional reform, or what we can call as through Prussian way where still parliamentary supremacy is questioned..  This  led to the empowerment of the toiling people to a certain extent where they established their press, trade union and other organization  and strikes. 

…Constitutional democracy created irreconcilable contradiction between economic and political poles  as capital was in the hands of the capitalist and votes(politics)  were in the hands of the toiling people.  

Sinha takes on the Proletarian Path saying that they have undermined the importance of the transfer of power by only looking at one side of the picture – i.e. the on the changes in the politics and not looking at the larger picture on the changing correlation pf the class forces. Sinha says that the class interest divided the Indian Bourgeoisie with the Indian working class as they started pursuing different goals former of integrating with the World Bourgeoisie and the other with a aim for  workers revolution. But again what Sinha is saying is known to all then What is new that he is trying to say with the readers, along with this Sinha has nowhere taken pain to substantiated his pints with any historical facts or figures, he has adapted a priest like approach where the priest tells all he has to say and the devotees listen to him without raising any question or asking for more clarification.  Which is most un-Marxist in its polemics.

 Sinha says that the Indian Bourgeoisie started to become comprador of the international Bourgeoisie to preserve the capitalist order and to penetrate their own capital in the most profitable areas. Which again is not true.

  At Independence in 1947, private foreign capital dominated the narrow industrial base in India. It was three quarters

British-owned, concentrated mostly in extractive industries and trade, and managed by expatriate Europeans. The continued dominance of these colonial enterprises was an irritant to nationalist sentiments. Fledgling Indian business houses envisioned a future in which foreign interests would be curtailed, and Indian industry and markets reserved for swadeshi (that is, domestic) capital.

The term swadeshi had its origin in the turn-of-the-century Swadeshi Movement that aimed to boycott foreign goods. Subsequently, the term became emblematic of nearly all forms of hostility to foreign interests. The Bombay Plan (formally, A Plan of Economic Development in India, 1944), an early articulation of hostility of Indian business houses to foreign capital. led to the formation of the Swadeshi League. In 1953, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry adopted the Swadeshi Resolution. Nationalists were only too conscious of the record of foreign investment in India: the East India Company, arguably the largest foreign direct investment enterprise in Indian history, had later formed the basis for imperial rule.

The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948, while conceding that ‘participation of foreign capital and enterprise will be of value to the rapid industrialization of the country’, demanded that ‘the conditions under which it may participate be carefully regulated in the national interest. As a rule, majority interest in ownership and effective control should always be in Indian hands’, and called for a gradual replacement of foreign personnel.

 (Private Foreign Investment in India, August 1999, Authors: Suma Athreye, Manchester School of Management, England, Sandeep Kapur, Birkbeck College, University of London, England

            The Indian Governemnt tried to break itself with the international finance Capital is again evident with the folowwing table:

1947          India’s independence.

1956            -second Five-Year Plan focuses on government led industrialization—strict foreign exchange and import controls enacted.

1969          all domestically owned banks nationalized.

1972          all insurance companies nationalized.

1973             all foreign investment placed under governmental control; limited foreign holdings to under 40%.

AGRARIAN SITUATION IN INDIA

Relations with the peasantry and with the bourgeoisie are two fundamental questions of tactics to be solved by the Communist Parties in backward countries with preponderant peasant populations. 

IIn Indian agriculture the prevalence of attached labour (in the sense of farm servants) has declined considerably, as confirmed by Jodhka (1994), and especially so in the more irrigated and commercialised regions. Venkateswarlu (1997) makes a similar finding for coastal Andhra Pradesh. Attached farm labourer relationships are still found in dry and backward regions. One report on bonded labour in Medak District, another dry area of Andhra Pradesh, noted the widespread prevalence of attached labour (Subrahmaniam et al, 1994), putting the figure at 500,000 with bonded labour among them as 13,000. From the interplay of the semi-feudalism thesis and the deproletarianisation thesis we draw two conclusions. Firstly the forms of labour relations are diverse across India, and one therefore expects the dynamic trajectories arising from them to be varied. Secondly, the labels used for classes and power groups in analytical theories (e.g. semi-feudal landlords; capitalist class; workers) are potent in themselves when they become integrated into political action. Instead of making a conscious choice between competing labels for social classes, it may be important to recognise diverse forms of exploitation—– between castes; between genders; patriarchal exploitation of the young; and class exploitation. Each of these forms in turn interacts with the others. 

A social relations approach rejects the dualism offered by the Brass-vs.-Bhaduri debate in favour of integrating feminist insights with marxist theories. A similar integration is achieved by Kapadia  in her gem-cutting and agricultural-labouring case studies. We also see a variety of social structures stressed by Kalpagam , who is analysing women’s informal-sector work. The social relations appr
ee-labour analyses (1997b: 38). However Brass ignores the problem that the conceptions of ‘worker’ and ‘labour’ used by most contributors to Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues are anathema to feminists who wish to transcend the dualism of productive-vs.-reproductive work (e.g. Himmelweit  who criticizes the assumption of a work-nonwork divide).4 For transformative politics, it is important to identify explicitly oppressive modes of social behaviour, both within and between households.  A third school of thought lies out side of the political-economy tradition. Neoclassical economists such as Srinivasan (1989) have examined the labour-credit linkage. These economists analyse contractual debt bondage as risk-averting behaviour of the bonded labourer, who is assumed to be a rational maximiser of his/her utility in light of the conditions they live in. By accepting a year long contract, one reduces the transactions costs of finding alternative employment avenues and one avoids unemployment. Unemployment would be worse than the contract which guarantees some work and food for a person and their children. The oppression is taken to be an acceptable cost of reducing risk. 

Such an approach is shallow in its understanding of the nature of bondage and poverty. Authors in this tradition claim to be more objective than the marxists. However Olsen  has stressed the subjective positioning of such authors and the specific norms that are embedded in their claim that bondage contracts must be efficient. The claim is also functionalist since research on transactions costs and risk aversion could not falsify the claim that all contracts are efficient. Contracts are seen merely to function to keep the capitalist economy working efficiently. Neoclassical economics has been evolving from demand-supply models, through transactions-costs analysis, to information economics, and now centres on the ‘new information economics’ which we have called neo-institutionalism. Hoff and Stiglitz give a presentation of the theory, while Hodgson  distinguishes the old and new institutionalisms. However the apolitical economists still underplay the role of local politics and social power in the development of labour relations. Caste, gender and household dynamics play no role in these models. In common with methodological individualism generally, the new institutional economics has an implicit gender bias and a claim to value-freeness, whereas the political economists are prepared to make their normative positions explicit and to open them up to debate. These epistemological differences help to explain why both of the political economy schools are so open to the introduction of feminist ideas, whereas the neo-institutionalists are not. 

Sinha agrees with the 1951 programmes of the CPI where the Party said : "India is the last biggest dependent semi colonial country in Asia still left for the enslavers to rob and exploit".

Which according to Sinha is absolutely correct though the stats says something else

 DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM: The Stage of Revolution

On the Stage of revolution the summation of the Proletarian Path theses is that India since gaining independence has transformed itself into a capitalist country from a pre-dominantly pre-capitalist economy. They assert that India has been following the Prussian Path model. Hence the stage of revolution has become socialist instead of democratic in the present situation.

When we talk about bourgeoisie taking power and removing the last vestiges of feudalism, we have to take into consideration the Indian condition and society. We cannot mechanically put any ideology according to a particular condition.

History does not come in neat bundles nor is it the case that a new mode of production eliminates the old one instantly as it appears on the scene. Typically, a new mode of production already begins to develop within a society in which an old mode of production is dominant. Two modes of production ‘coexist’, in mutual contradiction, for a time, until the forces associated with the new and rising mode of production complete the destruction of the old. That was Lenin’s conclusion as he analysed the ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia.

Sinha has repeatedly said that capitalism already exists in feudalism. That is conceptual perplexity. Capitalism does not exist within feudalism. It comes into existence in opposition to it. What we have is a situation in which developing capitalism is present in a social formation in which feudalism is dominant, the challenging forces of capitalism being antagonistic to the dominant forces of feudalism.

Much confusion derives from inability to differentiate and analyse the contradiction between the nascent yet developing capitalism and dominant but declining feudalism. Comrades like Sinha and other mechanically try to understand this social dynamics and try to substantiate their preconceived notions by citing long passages from Marx and Lenin and also mechanically trying to find seeds of similarity in what happened in Germany and Russia with what is happening in India. This has been the irony of the Indian Communist Leaders and the movement in general that they have always tried to imitate the happening of the communist revolution, what is needed is that we should be guided by the victories of the Working class but not blindfolded with these epochs so as to we forget and do not see the alleys on which we have to tread towards our final goal.

Way back in 1921, Lenin told the communists of the Eastern countries to work out their own strategy basing on the general lessons of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution. He also warned them that they might not get the answers to their problems in any communist book.

It was this task that Mao Tse Tung undertook in right earnest and went on to successfully establish the People’s Republic in China while the Indian Communist Party leadership miserably failed to grasp its significance.

The market is, of course, an essential component of the mechanism of capitalism. But, except in pseudo-Marxist works, such as those of Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), the market does not define the structure of capitalism. What is specific and central to the capitalist mode of production (in agricultural capitalism as well as industrial) is the separation of the producer from the means of production. As Marx himself put it, ‘This separation of labour from the conditions of labour is the precondition of capitalist production.’ (Marx, 1969:78)

Marx is quite consistent in his analysis of capitalism. As in his later works, his statements in the Manifesto too speak of the separation of the producer from the means of production that creates two antagonistic classes namely free labour and the capitalist owner of the means of production. With the rise of capitalism, he points out, society as a whole is split into two great classes directly facing each other: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

In, The German Ideology Marx points out that ‘the bourgeoisie itself finally absorbs all earlier possessing classes (while it develops the majority of the earlier non-possessing classes, and a part of the earlier possessing class, into a new class, the proletariat). (Marx, 1960:48) .

The concept of mode of production entails determinations as follows:

Source Colonialism and the Rise of Capitalism: Hamza Alavi

 The impact of capital on colonized societies did not generate, as Marx had expected, a capitalist mode of production there. But neither did that leave the pre-capitalist structures in the colonies unchanged. The structures of colonial social formations took a specific shape, as we shall see from the example of India. The resulting structure was neither the unchanged pre-colonial one nor was it identical with that of metropolitan capitalism.

Sinha has been confusing in his analysis an example:

Proletarian Path in its article “The stage of Revolution: The Presentation of Question” has tried to explain the Marxist methodology of ascertaining the stage of revolution. What is this methodology? For this it quotes Stalin which runs as follows :

“Lenin says that “the main question of every revolution is the question of state power.” In the hands of which class or which classes is power concentrated, which class or which classes must be overthrown, which class or which classes must take power- such is the main question of every revolution.”

The Parties fundamental strategic slogans which retain their  validity during the whole period of any particular stage of the revolution, can’t be called fundamental slogans if they are not wholly entirely based on the cardinal thesis of Lenin.” (Stalin – Problems of Leninism/p-237).

The passage quoted above not only shows the failure of the author of Proletarian path in analyzing the conditions of Germany and Russia but also reflects his deviation from his earlier position.

Therefore, it is not accidental that immediately after putting his fundamental proposition, he makes a caricature of  its so called “Marxist proposition” by saying that  “if it is to be a democratic revolution of anti-feudal type the feudal has to exist as a class in the true sense of the term-.” Does the author hold the view that if feudal forces exist as a class in the true sense of the term; it will also hold sway in the state power? Even the observation made by Proletarian Path regarding India after 1947 indicates the predominant existence of the feudal forces in the economic setup of that country in the true sense of the term, even when the state power   was transferred in the hands of the bourgeoisie and hence Proletarian Path cannot escape. Thus Proletarian Path themselves hold the view that feudal class may exist as a true sense of the term but it may not hold sway in the state power. If these two conditions are not the same, why these have been equated, have been confused? Let us examine:

In India immediately after independence, according to Proletarian Path, feudal forces did not hold sway in the polity of the country as the state power was transferred in the hands of the bourgeoisie but the feudal forces did exist as a class as India at that time was predominantly a pre-capitalist country. That is why it was necessary to amend the proposition making a caricature of its so called Marxist proposition. Thus its conclusion from the experiences of Germany and Russia boils down to : the stage of democratic revolution is discerned  when the feudal forces hold sway in the socio-economic set up of the society even if the state power is in the hands of bourgeoisie. If the conclusion derived from German and Russian experiences does not fit in the Indian condition, then it is amended. 

Further his proposition that. “the so called enumeration of the remnants of semi-feudalism if not feudalism is of no avail.”(P.P. page-104) is also wrong because it ignores the character of state power which might be held sway by the feudal forces. Besides “the so called enumeration of the remnants of feudalism” along with emerging bourgeoisie order under a semi-feudal state is a good avail. Under [p1] 

What does one make out of this …I leave it for the readers to decide.

Sinha has been quoting long passages from various works of Marx Engle’s Lenin and Stalin to suggest how the thesis of Proletarian Path and even SUCI has been wrong. But the pertinent question is even if we agree with Sinha’s assumption that the conditions of Germany was different from Russia of Feb. 1917 and if we are allowed to say so from India today what is the point he is trying to assert. At the start of his paper he said India has entered into a Capitalist stage—if it is so then the stage of revolution should be Socialist for it cannot be Democratic, because of its logical reason(s). Then the part III of his paper Stage of Revolution – Experiences of German, Russian and Chinese Revolution he seems to be against this position. Why?

As usual he doe not arrive to any conclusion and so one cannot say what is his position on a particular issue, which he raises brilliantly but leaves the point at the fag end.

CONCLUSION

The tragedy of Indian communist movement is that the leaders and ideologues get bogged down on some trivial word or sentence and waste all their energy on solving the mystery, which never was. Yet History rolls on in its due course. It happened with the undivided CPI at time of Telangana, it happened in the period aftermath of Naxalbari uprising. The more they think the muddier the analysis becomes. It has happened with Proletarian Politics of Manoj Sinha.

Let us ask a question, where did Marx and Lenin say that the Proletariats are the only class given the sole prerogative to make revolution. Where did they say that a country should analyse it to the threadbare what is its mode of Production or stuff like that before giving the clarion call for revolution.

CPI-Marxist said that it will not start any movement in the Hindi heartland of Bihar and UP their Logic : ‘Bihar is one of the most backward of Indian States, beset with rigid caste polarizations and devoid of any history of bourgeois reforms worth the name’. But the same Bihar became the hotbed of Revolutionary activity and is still holding the flag of revolution up and high. While the social Democrats of india viz the CPI and CPI M jhave been relegated to regional forces, the revolutionary winds are sweeping the villages and the farms. If urban proletariats have become pety bourgeoise should’nt the revolutionary’s turn to the fields which is hot bed of exploitation and oppression—feudal, semi feudal or capitalist, the crux of the matter is in India there is exploitation and oppression and it has to be weded out and smashed. This is the Revolutionary task and Revolutionary Goal.

Marx said: “ Philosopher’s have interpreted the world in various ways the point however is to change it”. Change can only be by a revolutionaery action anot revolutionary discourse.

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