Semi Feudalism or Capitalism Alice Thorner 2

Semi-Feudalism or Capitalism? Contemporary Debate on Classes and Modes of Production inIndiaAuthor(s): Alice ThornerSource: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 17, No. 50 (Dec. 11, 1982), pp. 1993-1999Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4371649 .

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SPECIAL ARTICLE

Seni-Feudalism or Capitalism?

Contemporary Debate on Classes and Modes of Production in India

Alice Thorner

For over a dozen years Indian and foreign marxists have beetn arguitng with passion, subtlety and an abundance of statistics about the existing mode of production in Indian agriculture or, more broadly, in India. There have been proponents of capitalism, pre-capitalism, semi-feudalism, coloniaA and post-colonial modes, and recently, a dual mode.

From the beginning, the debate has been carried on simultaneously at several levels: that of the individual cultivating unit, that of the agricultural sector of a particular region (eg, Punjab-Haryana or Ecastern India) or of India as a whole, that of the entire economy of a region or of India as a wchole; that of the colony-metropole relationship or of the imbrication of India in the w;orld economy. A number of authlors have brought in freshly gathered field data, at the first and second levels to buittress their arguments. Others have drawn upon the vast stock of data available from official sources suchl as the Farm Management Studies, the Nationnal Samtple Survey, the Ruiral Credit Suirveys, the Censuses and Agricultural Censuses and the Rural Labour Surveys. Some authors have used historical souirces to document their analyses of nineteenth century developments. Several of the economista have employed mathematical models. A handful have restricted themselves to purely theoretical exercises.

This paper seeks to delineate the main issues at stake int the debate, enmbracing nodes, forces and relations of production; modes of exploitation; agrarian classes; social forma(tions, contradictions aind articulations; mnovements and dominant tendencies; effects of imperialismz and of centre-periphery linlks; and recommendations for praxis.

This is the seconid part of the paper which is being published in thrcc )(Irts. The first part appeared last week.

Rural Class Structure JOAN MENCHER, NIRMAI. CHANDRA,

UTSA PATNAIK, ASHOK RUDRA. FIBANAB BARDHAN, PIRADIIAN PRASAD,

JOHN HARRISS AN important reason put forwxard by Joan Mencher for trying to understand the nature of socio-economic classes in rural areas is *to try to find an

explanation of whv peasant organisations have deve.oped in certain r egions of India, but not elsewhere, "wvhy people in one area are involved in conitinual revolt, while those in another area are relatively (uieseent". (Mencher 1974) Looking at village India (i e, rtling out tribal tracts such as Naxalbari) in recent years, Mencher concludes that movements have occurred "where there is a strong. polarisation between landless and all others". In effect, these are areas with a large agrictultural labour class, although peasant organisations are not strong in all suich areas. In the South Indian context, Mencher asserts, Eric Wolf's hypothesis that it is middle peasants who constitute the pivotal groups for peasant uprisings does not hold. Rather it has been the

landless labourers "unconstrained by possible ties to the land" who have been the main agi'ators or strikers.

Meiucher contrasts developments in two regions known for successftl organisation of landless labourers and sharp agrarian conflicts - Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu anid Kuttanad in KeraTa - with Chingleput district, also in Tamil Nadu. In Chingleput, Mencher points out, there is a large proportion of agricultural labourers, but in any given year a handful of these landless families may become share-croppers "on a 50/50 basis if they have bul- locks; if not, on a 1-to-6 basis". Com- petition for obtaining land on crop- share acts to inhibit iinity among the landless, as alsc between peasants with small plots of their own who equally hope to rent . in additional fields from the same land-owners. The ruiral bigwigs, for their part, are quite capable of jtugaling tenancies not only to prevent the actual cultivators from being able to claim customary rights but precisely to kIeep the poor divided and ealderless.

Thlus, one way of handling a poten- tial organiser of the landless or of the smnall peasants has consistently

been to threaten that he might not get any share-cropping land for the next season or for the next year. (Mencher 1974) Mencher calls attention to the use

of caste alfegiances "by people in the system, as well as by outside obser- vers. to mask class differences". For example, well-to-do members of mlid- dle-ranking castes may give land prc- ferentially- to their own poor caste mates, who are thus led to identify with the village landed.

On the basis of detailed informnatioin which she gathered in 10 villages studied in 1966-67 and 1970-71, Mencher proposes "a very rough socio-economic classification of the rural population of Chingleptit District". Her roster of six classes amnong "the population whichb (derives its miiain stubsistence from land, in onie wvav or another" begins at the botoom. She characterises in order:-

(1) The landless - "those who pri- rmarily (lerive their livelihood from working in agriculture either as day-labourers, as at- tached permanent labourers for particular landlords, or as ... a kind of share-cropper, receiving one portion for every six retain- ed by the landowner".

(2) Poor peasants - "those who

1993o



December 11, 1982 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

own small pieces of land, between 1 and 2.5 acres, small enough to require that on oc- casion some of the members of a household do day-labour".

(3) Middle peasants - "those who are clearly self-sufficient and able to sustain themselves without ever doing coolie-work... Households with over 2.5 acres of Jland are employers of labour, and rarely go out as manual labourers themselves"

(4) Rich farmers - "those having between about 7.5 and 15" acres, "not only self-sufficient they are also able to store surplus for a bad year, and still have enough grain to sell to obtain cash for the purchase of cocisumer goods. (Most have a transistor set or a regular radio, and if possible, electricity)".

(5) Rich farmers, capitalist farmers, and traditional landlords "households owning between 15 acres and approximately 30 acres of land. In this category there are three types of agriculturists: (a) "rich farmers who, apart

fromn giving small parcels of land to share-croppers, cultivate most of the land themnselves with the help of coolies and actually go into the fields and do some of their manual work...."

(b) "capitalist farmers ... who do not do physical labour themselves...."

(c) "traditional lanrdlords of the old school. I hesitate to call them 'feudal' because this is an area that has been subjected to capitalist pene- tration for a long period.... Mostly this category consists of landowners who give their land on various kinds of tenancy to labourers who look after their land for them."

(6) Indeterminate class of large landholders - "a few households in the over-3S-acre category.... I frankly question whether it would even be useful to decide if they are 'capitalist fanners' o. 'feudal landlords'." (Mencher 1974)

Putting together Census of 1971 fig-

ures for Chingleput District and her own survey data, Mencher provides an idea of the relative strength of the six classes. According to the Census, 43 per cent of all working mnales in the rural population of the district were recorded as agricultural labourers. Another 32 per cent were returned as cultivators. The vast majority of these latter, Mencher judges on the basis of her survey villages, belong to her categories 2 and 3, So far as concerns the three upper classes, "Those owning more than 7.5 acres, even of dry land, are qfuite rare...". It is these same well-to-do hou.seholds in which more -famnily mnember.s ten(l to be employed

outside of the village or to have additional sources of income "which add to the households' resource base and serve to,raise them further in the socio- economic sphere". (Mencher 1974)

In the Chingleput villages studied by Mencher, class and caste hierarchies overlap to a considerable degree. Landless households (those owning less than one acre) were mostly Vanniyars (low-caste) and Paraiyans (untouch- ables). Proportionately fewer untouch- ables were to be found in the second, poor peasant, category. Large landowners (over 30 acres) belonged almost exclusively to Brahman, Reddiar and Mudaliar castes (these last two considered locally to be agriculturalist castes), although the majority of households in each of these castes had smaller holdings.

Caste loyalties tend to blur class boundaries, as does the fact that owners of even tiny plots become employers of labour at peak mnoments for transplanting and harvesting rice. Thus "on the whole the well-to-do Vanniyars have managed to keep the Vanniyar poor politically isolated and segregated from the untouchable poor". On the other hand, "families in category 3 (middle peasants), and even many in category 2 (poor peasants), do not see a commonality of interest with the landless - not even with their own landless relatives". (Mencher 19$74)

Nirmal Chandra, in the Frontier articles to which we have already referrred, delineates the rural classes in his Burdwan (West Bengal) villages in somewhat different fashion, and also considers the imnplications of the class structure for political action. He defines as "upper classes" landed families which do not depend to any signifi- cant extent on income from agricultural wage-labour. These classes include landlords "who depend mainly on their rental income,", jotedars "those funec- tioning in a capitalist manner", rich peasants who are dependent upon non- family labour although engaging personally in some major field operations, and middle peasants who cul'tivate with only marginal help from workers outside of the famnily. He proposes twNo separate estimates of class strengths which we can set out in tahullar form. (a) taking into account only household agricultural income, and (b) according to households income from all sources.

In other words, the villages are split almost into equal halves between those with unearned incomes, ie, all who lea.se oult land or hire in wvorker.s on

PERCENTAGES OF HOUSEHOLDS IN

DIFFERENT RURAL CLASSES IN BURDWAN VILLAGES (N CHANDRA 1975b)

(a) (b) Agricul- Income tural from

Income All only Sources

landlords 3.5 2.4 jotedars 19.2 10.8 rich peasants 16.0 19.8 middle peasants 9.0 15.0

i

to'-al upper classes 47.7 48.0

poor peasants 19.9 agricultural

labour 30.3 other 2.1

the one side, and the poor peasants and agricultural labourers on the other. Given this quasi-equality, a struggle launched by the exploited half' against the exploiting half "would never get off the ground". (Nirmal Chandra 1975b)

An alternative political approach implicit in the two giant waves of peasant struggle, for the reforn of the tesancy system in undivided Bengal in 1946-47, and for the recovery and dis- tribution among the poor of surplus land in West Bengal in 1967-70, was to concentrate on a struggle agaicist "one particular feudal remnant". The difficu ty encountered was that in both cases "the exploiters were sometimes men wi b very small means, asid had close friends and supporters among sections of the middle and poorer peasantry". Too many enemies were created. This enabled the "most powerful sections in rural society" to create divisions among the ranks of the militants and their fol'owers, and eventually to defeat the movements. Nirmal Chandra proposes instead a two-stage approach with left-wing political hegemony as the first g<oal. Once this has been achieved, the main task becomes the elimination of all forms of exploitation. He foresees the possibi'ity of a inuimber of sub-stages in the course of the movement "when the lines between 'friendly' and 'hostile' elements may have to be redrawn". (Nirmal (handra 1975b)

Utsa Patnaik retuirns to the centre of the debate in 1976 with an artic'e on class differentiation among the peasantry. Citing evidence from successive censuises of landholdings, she empha- sizes the extent of "concentrationi of the means of prodcuction". This high degree of concentr ationi. Pa'naik rea-

1994



Economxiic Class Clharacteristics (1) Landlord

(a) Capitalist Labour hiring greater than rent (1b) Feudal Labour hiring at most as high as rent

(2) Rich peasant (a) Proto-bourgeois Labour hiring greater than rent (b) Proto-feudal Labour hiring at most as high as rent

(:3) Poor peasant (a) Agricultural labourer

operating land Hiring out greater than renit paytnent (b) Petty tenant Hiring out at most as high as rent

(4) Full-time labourer outonlyform,npayment (4) Full-tie labourerHiring out only form, no rent payment

sonIs, imyplies "a correspondingly high degree of economic differentiation within the cultivating population". Thus, there is nao single 'representa- tive' type of holding, but rather a series of qualitatively distinct types, "which differ in the way their production activity is organised". (Patnaik 1976)

At one end of the scale, Patnaik continues, a small minority of households have resources so great in relation to family size that they must rely primarily on labour from outside tha family. At the other pole, a large proportion of households "which may be the majority" have so few resources that in order to meet their family consump:ion needs they must rely primarily on working for others whether as labourers or as tenants. In between these extremes we may expect to find a middle category of petty producers neither employing others nor employed by others. Taking together the National Sample Survey figures on landholding and the results of various Farm Management Surveys, Patnaik finds that "the majority of holdings in most regions do not fall into this category". The bulk of agricultural holdings, she argues, are so small that peasant families must hire themselve out or take in land at high rents in order to make ends meet. (Patnaik 1976)

Reiterating her earlier contention that the size of landholding is insuffi- cient as an indicator of class status among the peasantry (see Patnaik 1971b), Patnaik elaborates a composite "labour-exploitation criterion", This ratio, to which she assigns the letter E, takes into account for each houisehold hiring in, hiring out, renting in, renting out, and use of family labour. Her E ratio, Patnaik stresses, "has been formulated as an empirical, and there- fore descriptive approximation to the analytical concept of economic class". (Patnaik 1976, italics in the original) In much the same manner as Nirmal Chandra, Patnaik distinguishes between the exploiting classes -landlords and rich peasants - and the exploited classes - poor peasants and Jabourers.

Within each of the first three cate-

gories she further specifies two different strata or divisions on the basis of the predominant form of exploitation, whether wages or rent. The re- sulting array of classes and divisions is shown in tabular form above. Distinctions among the four main classes are those familiar to the Marxist classics. Thus in the case of big landowners, whether feudal or capitalist, family mnembers do not per- form manual labour in major farm operations. Supervision or operating machinery, Patnaik specifies, is not considered manual labour. Rich peasants do participate in manual work; however their resource position is such that appropriation of others' labour is at least as important as use of family labour. The middle peasantry is primarily self-employed since on the average the resources per capita just suffice to employ adequately the sup- ply of familv labour and to provide a living "at a customary subsistence level". The poor peasant family must hire out its members for wages or lease in land no matter how high the rent, or combine these two expedients. Typically these families "cannot make ends meet and have to depress con- sumption standards below customary levels". The same is true of full-time labour families; some of these may own small strips of land which they do not cultivate, but lease ouit. But the labour equivalent of the rent received is not large enough to balance, let alone outxs eigh, the amount of family labour hired out. (Patnaik 1976)

Patnaik explains that her labour- exploitation criterion is designed to bring out the rnecessity for the different classes within the peasantry to enter into relations with each other in the process of production. Ashok Rudra tmakes a very similar point in the first of three 1978 articles on class relations in Indian agriculture. Classes, he understands, "are defined by class contradictions". The relations between classes are relations of production, but (here Rudra diverges) "not all relations of production define classes". They define various "social groups", but "only some social groups are pigses",

(Alhok ludra 1978a)

Havin,g thus rlied out any theoretical obligation to fit the whole of the agricultural population into one or another class category, Rudra proceeds to argue that there exist in Indian agriculture today two, and only two, classes. These are "a class of big landowners and a class of agricultural labourers". The latter include landless labourers, landed labourers, and poor tenants who do not hire any labourers. (Rudra 1978c)

So far as the big landowners are concerned, Rudra can discover no contradictions between those with capitalistic features and those who operate along feudal lines. There may be co-existence of more or 3ess feudal and more or less capitalist farmers "in the same region, or in the same village, or even in the same family". There mnay in fact be co-existence of "some traits typical of capitalists and some other traits typical of feudal landowners in the same farmer". Rudra also rejects the classical distinction between 'landlords' and 'rich peasants' on the basis of participation in the manual work of cultivation. In India, he maintains, this criterion is negated by the caste factor. In somne cases even very smnall and impoverished land. bolders will not take to the pbough because they belong to upper castes. On the other hand, with the introduc- tion of mechanisation, one mnay find, for example in the Punjab, women members of families owning several hundreds of acres who do not hesitate to drive their own tractors. The class of big landowners, in Rudra's view, is "a single class" and also "a hybrid class: part feudal, part capitalist". He refers to it as the "ruling class in Indian agriculture". Apart from the big landowners and the agricultural labourers, the rest of the population may be disregarded: "they do not constitute or belong to any class or classes". This classlessness results from the fact that, while they have contradictions among themselves, they do not have clear contradictions with the two principal cJasses. Or such contradictions "are of a subsidiary nature". Only the struggle between the two main classes "can provide the motive force for any changes in the agrarian strueture".. (Rudra 1978c)

In his conclusion Rudra spells out the political implications of his class analysis. Since he lumps together landlords revealing a preponderance of capitalistic traits and those displaying a more feudalistic prose, Iludra sees no justificatiorl for "those who believe

1995



in progress" to support "the assumed capitalist forces against the assumned feudal forces in an assumed struggle between the two". He rejects scorn- fully the concept of "an allianice of the entire peasanitry from landless labourers up to capitalist farmers against the feudal landlords". Such a political line, he pronounces, "cannot but objectively betray the interests of the peasantry not belong(ting to the ruling class", and in particular the interests of the agricultural labourers. In point of fact, Rudra tells us, this is what has happened in previous peasant movemenits, "led by the political parties of the country" which have "by and large benefited the middle and rich peasants, but not the landless or the landed labourers". By contrast, the line of political action which would follow from Rudra's thesis "is onae of struggle by the class of agricultural labourers against the class of big land' owners, without making any reserva- tion on account of some members of the ruling class revealing more capi- talis.ic traits than some others". (Rudra 1978c)

Rudra's rather drastic disposal of commonly held notions of class structure draws a comment from Pranab Bardhan, who had previously worked together with him in a large-scale survey of land, labour and credit relations in West Bengal, Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. (Bardhan and Rudra 1978). While listing five main points on which he wishes to state his agreement with Rudra, he specifies two major disagreements. Essentially, Bardhan approves Rudra's proposition that the most important contradiction in Indian agricultture is that between big landowners (including rich pea- san!s) and labourers (landed or landless), and Rudra's criticism of the political line adopted by Left parties. But he takes Rudra to task for denying the significance of the middle peasants - who do not hire themselves out very often, or hire in much labour of others, as a separate class. For this purpose he cites data compiled by his wife, Kalpana Bardhan, from Farm Management Surveys carried out during the years from 1967 to 1972 in four states: Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Observ- ing [hat the numerical strength of the middle peasantry varies sharply from one part of India to another, he calls for a more extensive investigation of the phenome-non. Bardhan also takes exception to Rudra's assertion that within the hybrid class of big landowners the feudal elements do nlot have any contradictions with thle capi--

talist elements. (Bardhan 1979) Pradhan Prasad, writing in 1979 and

1980 about Bihar in particular and, by extension practically the whole of the North-Indian ilindi-speaking belt (Ra- jasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pra- desh), provides yet another array of agrarian classes. As Mencher did for South Indian, but with less precision, Prasad inidicates which castes tend to be found in which classes.. His three ca'egories are as follows:

(1) Top peasantry, including landlords, who deem physical labour even on their own lands below their dignity - upper castes.

(2) Middle and poor-middle pea- santrv, who do manual work on their own farms but do not labour for others. The middle peasants hire in agricu,tural labourers; the poor-middle do not - these are essentially "nmiddle-caste Hindus (i e, back- ward castes other than scheduled tribes)".

(3) Agrictultural labourers, "a size- able number of whom have small operational holdings"; these are drawn"mostly from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and some middle caste Hindus".

Prasad points to sharp contradictions between the middle peasants, whose landholdings have increased and whose overall economic position has become stronger over the past thirty years, and the top peasants -

(Ioubled and made more acute by conflict belween the "rising" middle castes and the "traditionally dominant" upper cas'es. He also speaks of an "emerging contradiction" between the "landlords, cultivators and big peasantry on the one side and the poor peasantry on the. other". This anta- gonistic relationship arises "out of semi- feudal "bondage", and is destined to become less important "as the semi- feudal set-up disintegrates". It will be replaced by "another contradiction between new upper caste Hindu kulaks and the poor peasantry". At this stage, Prasad predicts, the landlords and big peasants will foaswear their earlier re- sistance to modernisation and "will take steps to dynamicise their cultivation". In his words,

The fanning of caste passions which at one time led to a diffusion of class contradictions, and thwart- ed agricultural growth, now turns out to be a factor which may sharpen the contradiction and cause the dis- integration of 'semi-feudal' production relations in Bihar. (Prasad 1979,

At the other end of the subcontinent, John Harriss provides a version of the rural dlass structure on the basis

of his field work in the dry districts of Tamnil Nadu. He defines his classes according to two criteria - size of production resources (including land) in relation to household livelihood re- quirements, and labour relations. This gives four categories as follows:

(1) Capitalist farmers, with assets capable of realising more than four times basic livelihood re- quirements, employing a per- malnent labour force, not con- tribulting personally more than a very little family labour;

(2) Rich peasants, with assets yield- ing 2-4 times household require- ments, possibly employing permanent labourers,, but substan- tially dependent upon family labour;

(3) Independent middle peasants, whose assets yield 1-2 times household needs, employing principally family labour, mnay sometimes do wage labour for others;

(4) Poor peasants, whose assets do not cover their livelihood re- quireTnents, so that they must depend primarily upon wage labour, this group includes marginal farners' and agricultural labourers.

In the North Arcot village which Harriss studied intensively, he found evidence of all the features of a well- established capitalist mode of production. He emphasises the dominant position, consolidated since -the end of the last century, of a class of "landowning moneylender merchants", belonging preponderantly in this region to the Agamudaiyan Mudaliar caste. These landowners operate in classical capitalist fashion. "Money has been invested in agricultural production and profits reinvested; and farmers sold a large portion of their output; and farmers employ wage labour...." (Harriss 1979)

Despite the fact that some 80 per cent of the households of the village. may be indebted, Harriss insists that the "dominant mode of appropriation of surplus in Randam is capitalist." (Harriss 1979) The distinctive element in Harriss' contribution to -the debate is his characterisation of the local dominant class as merchants as well as landowners and moneylenders.

Mode of Production in Colonial India

HAMZA ALAvI, ASHOK RUDRA, GAIL

OMIVEDT, JAIRUS BANAJI, KATHLEEN

COUGH, AMIYA K BAGCHI

Starting in the middle of the 1970s, a number of authors take up agai a

19919



topic first tu ooted by Utsa Patnaik, "the specificity of the colonial systenm". (Pal inaik 1972) lHam!za . Alavi, in his in- fluiential article on the colonial mode of production, begins by postulating that neither 'feuidalismii' in colonial India nor contemporary rural 'capitalism' can be theoretically grasped except in the context of the world-wide structure of imperialism into which India was, and is, artictulated. This consideration, he continues, "should leacl uIs toward a concept ion of a colonial mode of production" distinct fromn both feudalism and capitalism in the metropolis. (Alavi 1975) If 'feudal' and 'capitalist' modes co-exist in India, Alavi insists, Marxist theory requires that they must be in contradiction: cme emergent, the other disintegrating. In that case there is a necessity at each historical stage to specify which mode is dominant ainid which are the principal contradictions i,] the class struggle, "as has been elaborated and explained by Mao Tse-tung". Yet, for India, Alavi writes, no one has been able to demonstrate "any conflict between the new rural 'capitalist' class and the 'feudal' landlords, if they can be struclurallv distinguiished at all". (Alavi 1975)

Further Alavi finds it impossible to postulate any contradiction between "colonial 'feudalism' and metropolitan 'capitalism', for it is precisely the latter which generates and supports the former". The specific structures of the colonial agrarian economy result direct- lv from the action of imperial capital which "disarticulates the internal economv of the colony [to use Amin's fruitful. concept]" and integrates these disarticulated segments into the m etro- politan economy. Alavi cites approving- lv Chattopadhbay with regard to the preservation/destrtuction of the older Indian economy by imperialism. (Chat- topadhyay 19721)) He also refers favourably to jairRLs Banaji's concept of a colonial mode of production "neither feudal nor capitalist, though resembling 1)oth at different levels". (Banaji 1979)

Arguing 'that the colonial impact wrought ftundamental transformations in the subject economies, Alavi attacks the "excessive and misleading emphasis on the form of the relationship between the producer and his master". (Alavi 1975, italics in the original) It is wZrong, he declares, "to describe colonial economies as those in which 'pre-capitalist' relationships 'co-exist' with 'capitalist' relations", since such traditional relations, e g, share-cropping, "are no longer 'pre-capitalist'.

"Thev do not r etaini "apar t from their superficial f'orm, the essential nature of the feudal relationships". Wheres the feudal econlomy wsas a system of 'simple ieproduction' geaared to the cons- picuous conisuimpption of the lords, as contrasted with the 'expanded repro- ducttion' of capitalism, in which much of the surplus is invested to bring about a rise in the organaic composition of capital, the colonial mode shares neither of these characteristics. Recent heavv investment in the colonial agrari.an econotnv has taken place. only because of its "encapsulation" within the highlv industrialised world econiomv, and also on account of the' "subordinated indus'trial development that has taken place within the colony itse:f uin(ler the aegis of the mnetro- politaIi- lbourgeoisie.' There is accord- ingly, in the colonial miiode, a systemii of expanded reproduction "but of a deforned nature." More precisely,

a substantial part of the surplus generated in the colonial agrarian economy (as well as that generated in colonial industry is appropnated by the imperialist bourgeoisie and enters into expanded reproduction not directly within the colonial economy but rather at the imperialist centre. (Alavi 1975, cf Patnaik 1972)

Again, with regard to generalised com- rnoditv production, regarded as a criterion of capitalism in the colonial world, this also is created by, and at the service of, the imperial economy. Whereas fetudalism implied localised production, localised appropriation and a 1ocalised power structure, the coonial regime "subordinated the power of the local lords" to its own framework of the "colonial bourgeois state". (Alavi 1975)

A particular feature of the colonia! mode in ILidia has been the creation of "large ntumber of desititute small holders - 75 per cent of all farms in modern India". Since these holdings are too small to assure even a bare subsistence, they- serve as a "valued supplier of cheap labour" both for agri- cuilture and for urban indu-stry. In this way the class of small-holders is in- tegrated i-into the colonial mode of Production, and cannot be described as a 'pre-capitalist' stirvival. (Alavi 1975)

With regard to class contradictions as we.l, the colonial mode has its own pattern. There is no conflict of interest between the so-called 'feudal' or 'semi-feudal' class of landlords on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie (urban or rural) on the other. Nor is there a conflict in which the "wa;ge labourers (the rural pro!etariat) are aligned dif- ferently fromn the other subordinate

c'asses in the countrxside, viz, the sharecroppers anid the sm.aliholdicig milddle peasants';" rather 'the picture is that of "a great increase in peasant miilitancy". This is dtue to the "widespread destitution of all the subordinate classes" brought about iby "the development of 'capitalism' in Indian agricultture, insofar as it has gone and in areas where it has progressed". (Alavi 1975)

In the body of the article it is never quite clear to which period in India's recent history Alavi's colonial mode is stupposed to apply. At the end he sug- gests that there is "by ac-d large, some degree of correspondance in time between the transition from the colonial to the post-colonial mode of production, and {the achievement of political independence". He also takes the pre- caution of indicating that the "structural formation" which he has desig- nated as a "colonial miode of production" does not constitute "a self- contained entity", since it 'cannot be conceptualised except as 'part of a large whole. The search for an alternative terminology, he opines, "may be a profitable semantic enterprise". (Alavi, 1975)

Swift reactions from Ashok Rudra and Gail Omvedt were largely favour- able to Alavi. Both suggest ithe use of the term "social formation" for the constellation of traits characterising the economy of colonial India. Rudra raises the problem of Alavi's vagueness with regard to the post-colonial phase. Om'vedt holds that conflicts between capitalist and feudal elements do exist. "The expanding thrust of the capitalist sector," she writes, "is continually frustrated by agrarian stagnation." This stagnation together with the lack of developmnent of the internal mnarket result "in the ultimate analysis from continuing semi-feudal relations". But these contradictions "are muted by their integration in an imperialist sysstem". Omvedt criticises as too simplistic Alavi's proposition that the l)asic cceriflict is between "the workers and the rural poor (including share- croppers and middle peasants)" on the one hand, and the landowners pluls the bourgeoisie on the o'her. In her words this analysis "hardly seems to do jtstice ,Io the developing com- plexities of contradictions in a colonial society". (Rudra 1975, Omvedt 1975)

A K Bagchi portrays the colonial period as a time of de-indusltrialisation and possihly even de-commercialisation of agriculture. Reviewing the evidenice, he judges that in te period up to 1900 "the share of the secondlary sector in

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national income would on balance have been declining". Similarly, the share of the secondary sector in the \7orkiing force fell until about the micidde of the 1920s. In agriculture share tenancy w as pr-evalent in the nineteenth century, and in somle areas muav liave increased. There nmav vell have been, Bagchi esteems, a net imovenment frorn cash rents to kind rents.

Bagehi speaks of "a symbiotic relationship between precapitalist and capitalist modes of exploitation", and gives examples:

Most European 'capitalist' planters (including the Government as culti- vator of opium) used non-market coercion to exploit the labourers and the peasantry... tmany (in fact most) sugar factories found that it was imore costly to cultivate sugar on their own with large-scale 'scientific' methods tllan to rent out land to tenants on a share-cropping basis. (Bagchi 1975) Even after indepenidence, Bagebli

holds, "this continual interchange between capitalist and pre-capitalist relations has not ceased". Partly this continuity is due to the lowV rate of capital accumulation and to a permanent state of relative oveipopulation in the countryside. It is also the case that "capitalist profit-making itself uses precapitalist methods", and capitalist farmers "depend on other propertv-owning strata for maintaining their political and social power". (Bagchi 1975)

Bagchi is cautiouis about how to label the "amalgam of usury, bondage, wage-labour, and tenancy prevailing in the Indian countryside". He lists 'semi- feudalism', 'semi-capitalism', 'neither feudalism nor capitalism', and 'both capitalism and feudalism' as possibili- ties, but does not mention a 'colonial mode of production'. He announces that he would accept any of the listed terns "so long as the basic laws of motion of such a society are correctly understood". {(Bagchi 1975')

Britain's position as the first country to industrialise didl not lead it to carry through a similar revolution in its Indian colony, Bagchi observes. In fact, he is not suire "that the' 'transition' to capitalismn can ever be complete in the countries of South Asia". It is not the least of the harmftul legacies of co'o- nialism, Baachi avers, "that while it modified the precapitalist relations to suit its purpose, it also preserved tbheci". \Bagchi 1975)

Another stuldy dealing primarily with the British period, in particular with the late nineteenth cenltury, is contri- bouted b)y Jairus Banaji. But this time he also eschews any ref~erence to a

colonial mode of production. Arguing that; in the absence of a specifically capitalist mnode of prodtuction on the national scale, "capitalist relations of exploitation mnay nonetheless he widespread and(I domoiinant", Banaji takes up the case of the Deccan fromii 1850 to 1890. I-le cites evidence for the expansion of commodity production during those years: cotton and ground- nuts for export; sugar, foodgrains and garden crops for the growing population 6of Bombay and Poona cities. The process of commodity expansion implied an increasing conversion of labour-power into a commodity. hy means of proletarianisation. Immediate causes such as drought, scarcity and famine appeared to play a major role in re- duicing the small prodtucers to this state, but this was possible "only be- cauise of the already exhausted and decrepit condition of the Deccan small- production econonmy". A system of capitalist exploitation operated through the advances by merchant-moneylenders for the subsistence of the small peasants. The "purely capitalist nature of relationship between the peasant and moneylenders" was concealed by the fact that the "surplus-vxlue extorted from the small producer would be called 'interest". (Banaji 1977, italics in the original)

These capitalist relations "which at their limit formed the system of the formal subordination of labour to capital" existed in the Deccan economy of the nineteenth century in various stages of crystallisation. The same form of capitalist exploitation through debt which prevailed in the countryside could also be found in the towns in the case of the "smaller artisans". (Banaji 1977)

Where Banaji had earlier intervened as a supporter of Utsa Patnaik, he now classes her with Amit Bhaduri as a practitioner -if "extreme formalism". He argutes that they incorrectly identify forms of organisation of the labour- process" such as sharecropping or other types of tenancy with particular "relations of production" which they label "pre-capitalist" or "semi-feudal". On the contrary, he insists the particular form of wage-labour or of tenant labour which a big peasant or landowner chooses to employ for technical or personal reasons does not affect the "social character or content of the production-relaltions that these labour- arrangements embody". (Banaji 1977, italics in the original)

Distinguishing among the regional, national and international levels, Banaji concluels that in the late nineteeth cen-

tury Deccan "capitalist relations of. exploitation signifying the less developed formns of capitalist production hb(a emerged ... and were widlespread an(d in some districts dominant". But for India as a whole "the bourgeois mode of production in its developed or 'adequate' structure w as neither doomi- nant nor widespread". The specific form of capitalist production which evolved in the Deccan constituted "a subordiinate aurd transitio-tal system within the bourgeois mode of production in its workl extension". Banaji sets himself off sharply from Gunder Frank, whom he criticises for supposing "that it is sufficient to point to the domi- tnance of the specifically bourgeois miiode of production on the world scale in order to establish the prevalence of bourgeois relations in Indlia'. Yet the political lesson which he draws for present-day India is the same as Frank's. Banaji judges that in the Indian cotuntryside "the struggle against capitalist forms of exploitation has already l)egun". He urges that it be conduc!ed "with a clear understanding of its own character", that is, "on the basis of a programme for the abolition of the system of wage-slavery". (Banaji 1977, i'-alies in the original)

In a paper prepared for a Workshop on "African and Asian Societies in Confrontation with Westemr European Colonialism" held in Berlin in 1979, Hlamza Alavi modifies considerably his earlier position. He restates, however, his objections to characterising as feudal Indian agriculture in recent years, prior to the current wave of large investment in farm mechanisation. Referring to Utsa Patnaik, be writes:

To prove that there has been, in recent years, a decisive mnovement toward capitalism in Indian agriculture, her problem, paradoxically, was to prove that what went before was in fact 'feudal'.

In Alavi's view, "social relations of production in Indian society were altered in the course of the colonial transformation". The result was the creation of what, having abandoned the colonial mode of production, Alavi now calls "peripheral capitalism". In India, this development took a long time. Agriculture turned progressively toward the production of crops for metropolitan markets, luch as cotton, jtute and indigo. Elsewhere peasants pro- (iuced food crops as cash crops to feed the colonial towns and also peasants in other areas who had shifted to export crops. This constitulted "a formn of generalised commodity production" specific to peripheral capitalismn, in which the circulation of commodities

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ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY December 11, 1982

was completed via the export-import link wvith the inetropoGis. (Alavi 1981)

Although peasanit farming continued on the basis of largely unchanged techniques, it was nonetheless subject to foxrmal subsumptioni by capital, a conditioln which, in Marx's definitioin, "does not by itself imply a fundamental modification of the nlature of the labour process". In a later phase of capitalist transformation, the real subsumption of labour under capital, the process of production is subject to conJi- nual transformation, "concomitantly with rise in organaic comiiposition of capital". (Alavi 1981)

Alavi takes up cudgels against the cunservation/dissolution formiula put forwarrd by Charles Bettleheim and used by Claude Meillasoux "which views the persistence of peasant pro- deuction in colonised societies as a case of 'conservation/dissolution' of pre- capitalist modes of production by colonial capital". In Alavi's view this concept obscures rather than clarifying the underlying theoretical problem of explaining why peasants do not disap- pear in the course of the transition to capitalism. Alavi argues that peasants are more resilient than urban petty commodity producers becauase they do not need to pass through the market for their food and shelter, they receive some of the earnings of family members who have migra ed in search of employment, and their being physically displaced by large-scale farms is im- peded precisely because they hang on desperate&y to whatever tiny holdings they may have - preventing the for- nmation of the substantial contiguous blocks of land required for mnodern cultivation. Nevertheless, Alavi believes, the conditions of the peasants' existence are being "progressively uindermined" by the "d-namics of peripherall capi- Ltalist development". (Alavi 1981)

Kathleen Gough's contribution to the debate is a major article tracing the political economy of Thanjavur district in Tamil NaduL from about 85() AD to the present. When she come.i to the late nineteenth and early .\ventieth centuiries, G(ugh characterises this period in mnuch the same wvay ats Alavi anid Banaji. During these years, she w7rites, "the capitalist mode of production was (lorninant in Thanjavur"; milost of the actuial relations of production "althouLg1h 1of a colonial character, became essentially those of what Marx called the 'formal subsumption of lab- cur uin(ler capDital' ". The' -were not yet the< relat;Clns of "real sublsulmption

of labour under capital". (Gough 1980) Cough gives six reasons for dubbing

the relations -obtaining in Thanjavur in the illil)erialist period capitalist: (1) With the abolition of slavery the

labourers all becamiie free of political folrns of bondage.

(2) Teinants, artisans, village servants anid labourers had already in the 18th aind early 19th centuries been "freed" from the means of production and forced to sell their labour power.

(3) Landlords becanme private owiners of the means of production, which they could sell; they marketed more than half of their crops.

(4) Extended reproduction in agriculture took the formn of greatly increasing the area of land under cultivation, especially in the case of rice, the chief export crop; there was also some investment in irri(alion.

(3) Extended reproduction as well as a rise in the organic composition of capital occurred in the mills and iel industiral transport. In these areas the real subsumption Of labour under capital' developed.

(6) On the world scale Thanjavur became a specialised producer of rice and a few other exports as a part of the increased internationial divi- sion of labour.

GouLgh nonetheless acknowle(dges the persistence of certain pre-capitalist features in production relations in agriculture: "traditional gifts of clothing and other perqiiisi-es by masters to their labourers at festivals and life- crises"; the formally subservient be- haviour "prescribed by caste" of labourers to masters; the admissibility of nmasters' inflicting coriporal punishment on labourers. She maintains that despite these practices, relations of pro- (luctioii were enforced "primiarily by economic andc not extra-economnic coercion". She is riot prepared to accept Alavi's earlier formmlation of a 'colonial mnode of produiction' separate from the capitalist miiode. Rather, she proposes,

India (lid not develop along the saine path as Britain, as Marx ex- pected it tio do, that it developed along a complementary and specifi- callv colonial trajectory, yet that it (leveloped within the (.single) capitalist mode. (Gaugbh 1980, italics in the original) The perio(l from 1947 to 1980

Gough characterises as ineo-imperial-Lsti. Thanjavur, she tells iis, has continued to be "an agr icullturala] hinterland within the worldl capit;alist modle of prodllc-

tion". There has been some crop diver- sification but the proportion grown for export has actually risen. Farming has been transforimeed throu(rh the use of chemical fertilisers, hybrid high-yield- ing seeds, pesticides, tractors, tube- wells and electric irrigation pumiips. Especially on the larger fanns "there is a continuing rise ihl the organic composition of capital". Correspond- ingly, "the extraction of relative surplus value has greatly increased". The profits of increased production, Gough asserts, have gone mainly to metropolitan capital which supplies much of the new mnachinery and chem-lical in- puts, to Indian big business, and locally to the lbigger landlords akcd merchants. These households "now enjoy such accessories as radios, mopeds, cars, air- comditioning, a range of electrical ap- plicances, and other luxury consumer goods". At the other end of the social and economic scale, Gough f.ound that the standard of living has remained stationary or declined. In two villages at opposite ends of the delta she dis- covered that half of the inhabitants could afford on:y onie cooked meal a day duriiag most of the year. Since they were unable to buy meat or milk, "large nurnbers in the general population had adopted the Harijans' custonm of eating field rats". (Gough 1980)

Cough reviews briefly the history of the Communist movement in Thanjavur, wvhich arose in the 1930s and has been stronv, "among agricultural labourers, most notably Harijans Nvho form 22 per cent of 'the population". In recent years the demands have con- ceotrated on raising the level of daily wages, and when that failed because of the declining number of days of work per year, on 'jobs or dole'. Cough opines that struiggles of this kind "though temporarily palliative, cannot solve the structural contradictions of the capitalist moce of pro(luction in Thainjavtir". (Gough 1980)

Aui op)po';ite poinit of view with regard to the colonial period is voiced by Gail Omvedt, who states that "imn- perialism essentially maintained feu- (lalisin -- thoucgh in a suibitjgated anrd mondifie(l form- as the (lominant mode of production in agyricultuire"'. She argutes that the "specificity of the feu- (lal mio(le of production in India was la-rgel re'ated to caste". Here she refers in partictular to the role of the jOlinlulilbaltltedarj svstein and to the relatious between high caste landlords an(I low-caste seifs or tenants. (Omve(dt 197i8)

(To be concluded)

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Semi Feudalism or Capitalism Alice Thorner 2

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