Marxism, Ex-Colonial Societies

8/14/2019 Marxism, Ex-Colonial Societies

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No serious independent theoretical effort has yet been devoted to the analysis of the structural

effects of colonialism on colonised societies. We shall consider some literature in this field

presently. The CPI (and all other CPs) have been brought up on Soviet formulae. These werelegitimated with reference to certain propositions formulated by Lenin in his 'Theses on the

National and Colonial Questions' presented at the Second Congress of the Communist

International in 1920. We need to look closely into the significance of that instead of takingStalinist formulae at face value.

The key issue that I would emphasise is that of differences between the social structures and

class configurations of 1) advanced capitalist, imperialist, countries of Europe and 2) of Russia, a

rather different case, examined by Lenin, and 3) those of colonised societies. We need to identifythe specificity of the case of colonised societies, in other words 'Modes of Production' of

colonised societies. Analyses of 'Modes of Production' sounds rather like a scholastic pre-

occupation, just an esoteric 'academic' pursuit to be left to mere intellectuals. As we shall seethese are issues that we all need to understand and they are pretty straightforward. They are

central to our perspectives on our history, our social structure and our political practice.

I have explored these questions with reference to our own society (India and Pakistan), being

aware of certain untenable political positions of the CPI, who failed to develop an independentrevolutionary analysis in the light of Indian realities. Instead, it tied itself to Stalinist dogma

about the leading role of the so-called 'Progressive National Bourgeoisie in the National

Democratic Stage of Revolution', with its corollary of unwavering support to the so-called'Progressive National Bourgeoisie' as represented by the Indian National Congress. With

incantation of that Soviet dogma, the CPI ended up supporting the Congress (Indira Gandhi in

1975) to a point of self-destruction. Such formulae were used opportunistically, at the behest of

the Soviet leadership to whom CPs everywhere were beholden. Sadly that has lead to disastereverywhere and the virtual demise of the CPI. Its political perspectives was obscured by false

theoretical ideas imposed upon it by the Russian state. We need to examine the roots of suchideas.

Let me set out my broad argument and show how the theoretical ground lies. We can identifythree classical 'Modes of Production', as summarised below. Listing them together in a sequence

like this clarifies their historical and social structural specificity. We can see that they are each

historically contextual. Historical materialism does not justify universalised propositions,regardless of historical context. This must lead us to an examination of our own historical

specificity as once colonised societies.

Marx's Model - England

It is now widely recognised by many distinguished Marxists that Marx's theoretical model, as inCapital, is based on the social realities of England. It was a society in which capitalism was fully

developed, feudalism was dissolved (subsumed under capitalist landed property, as Marx said)

and, as he assumed not altogether accurately, the small peasantry had been eliminated (by theenclosure movement). Marx posited, thus, a direct and unmediated confrontation between the

capitalist and the proletariat, the central contradiction of CMP. A proletarian revolution was on

the cards.


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Karl Kautsky and the Western European Model

In Western Europe while capitalism was dominant and feudalism transformed into capitalist

farming by the erstwhile Junkers, small peasant production was not eliminated; it proliferated.There was a need to go beyond Marx's 'English Model'; the context was different. That analysis

was provided by Karl Kautsky in his celebrated work called 'The Agrarian Question'. Therewere a large number of small peasants in those countries and Kautsky offers a brilliant analysisof how small peasant production was subsumed under capital, without the separation of the

producer from the means of production.

I got to read Kautsky's work some years ago when Michael Kidron (Pluto Press) asked me to

write an 'Introduction' for the first ever English translation of'The Agrarian Question'. For me itwas a revelation. You will find a summary of Kautsky's argument as well as an account of the

circumstances in which the book came to be written and then quickly disowned by the author

himself, in myIntroduction to that volume, to which my good friend Teodor Shanin alsocontributed. Kautsky, who was anti-peasant, five years later publicly disowned his own work.

Lenin, on the other hand, was greatly impressed by Kautsky's analysis. We find a reference to it

in his Preface to 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia', where he regretted that he did not

see Kautsky's work until his own work had already been set in type-too late for revisions. Leninrepeatedly praised that work. Sadly Kautsky's work, which is so relevant and important for us

from countries with large peasant populations, is relatively unknown to our intellectuals.

Lenin and the Russian Model

Russia was not like England or Western Europe. Lenin realised that one could not simply

extrapolate from Marx's 'English model' to draw conclusions for the political strategy of theRussian Revolution. He offered instead a 'model' based on the realities of Russian society. He

spelt it out in 'Development of Capitalism in Russia' and elsewhere. It was a 'model' of a societyin which feudalism was dominant, not capitalism as in the West. Capitalism was just developing

in Russia. Lenin, therefore, concluded that the central structural contradiction in Russian society

was that between the feudal and the capitalist modes of production i.e. between the dominant

classes located in those two Modes of Production, the Feudals and the Capitalists. An anti-feudal,bourgeois- democratic Revolution was therefore on the agenda. In assigning that historical role

to the Russian bourgeoisie, Lenin was following his teacher Plekhanov.

Lenin was soon to go beyond Plekhanov. A fascinating aspect of Lenin's work is the way in

which he readily modified and developed his ideas in the light of Russian realities. Hetranscended the 'Mechanistic Marxism' of his teacher Plekhanov, especially after 1905. Even

when sometimes we find him still paying lip service to Plekhanov, his writings bear his own

distinctive mark. We should not therefore treat all of Lenin's writing on a par, withoutrecognising the steady development of his ideas, so that later formulations superseded older

ones. We need to differentiate early Lenin's Plekhanovist writings and his later works that bear

the unmistakable stamp of his own revolutionary experience and his creative thought.


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In his 'Philosophical Notebooks', Lenin dates his emancipation from Plekhanov as from 1914. At

that time he spent 9 months in systematic study of Aristotle, Hegel and Feuerbach. In his

'Philosophical Notebooks' he writes that only after he had read Hegel did he really understandMarx. He had left behind Plekhanov's mechanistic Marxism, uninformed by dialectical logic.

My reading suggests that there was not such a sudden transformation in Lenin's ideas, in 1914,merely after reading Hegel. It seems more likely that it was the moment when he became self-

aware of the distance that he had already travelled, away from mechanistic Marxism ofPlekhanov and Kautsky. If we look at his work closely, we find that he had already begun to

transcend Plekhanov much earlier. I had understood that Lenin's ideas began to change radically

after 1907. My friend Teodor Shanin, who has read Lenin's untranslated Russian texts, tells methat it was already from 1905 that we can see a clear departure in Lenin's ideas.

If we consider his 1905 work 'Two Tactics of Russian Social Democracy ' we can indeed see

incipient 'Leninism' breaking through the Plekhanovist mould. While apparently upholding the

Plekhanovist orthodoxy that Russia was in the 'stage' of a Bourgeois Democratic Revolution,

Lenin nevertheless insists that it was the historic mission of the Proletariat and not the Russianbourgeoisie to carry through the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution, an idea that was clearly

subversive of Plekhanovism ! The mind boggles. What kind of 'Bourgeois Revolution' would aproletariat carry out ? While Lenin stuck to Plekhanovist form of words he was advocating a

proletarian revolutionary strategy. Plekhanov and the Mensheviks, instead, stood for a

collaborationist strategy, like that of the CPI and Cps everywhere under the influence of Stalin,in accepting the leading role of the Bourgeoisie as in Kerensky's 'February Revolution'.

Plekhanov and the Mensheviks bitterly opposed the October Revolution. Lenin argued to the

contrary, despite his lip service to Plekhanov inasmuch as he spoke of a Bourgeois Democratic

'stage' of revolution, while advocating a proletarian revolution.

Some Marxists go to great lengths to justify the form of words chosen by Lenin. They bend overbackwards to find some aspects of the 1917 Proletarian Revolution that they might characterise

as an aspect of a Bourgeois Revolution e.g. with reference to the peasantry. I find such worship

of Lenin's every word to be rather pathetic. The plain fact is that verbally Lenin often keptrepeating Plekhanovist orthodoxy while in reality he was advocating a very different practice, in

effect rejecting Plekhanov's class collaborationist strategy ? As we know, Lenin's political break

with Mensheviks came quite early.

Colonised Societies: Lenin's (and Western Marxists') Blind

Spot

While Lenin recognised the structural specificity of Russian society and differentiated it fromthat of England and Western Europe, he failed to ask himself the same sort of questions about the

structural specificity of colonised societies. Russia was not a colonised society. Lenin failed to

see that just as it would be a mistake to extrapolate to Russia ideas relevant to advanced capitalist

societies of Western Europe, so also it would be equally wrong to extend the Russian model tocolonised societies without asking questions about their structural specificity. He was not

justified in extending his 'model' of Russia to colonised societies without taking into account the


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way in which colonialism had transformed their social structure in certain ways. Instead of

asking himself such questions Lenin assumed, unjustifiably that the trajectory of colonised

societies, which he called 'Countries of the Orient', would be no different from that of Russia.Lenin's blind spot is at the root of some of our problems today.

Lenin did little to study the structures and the histories of colonised societies. That lacunae in histhinking is revealed in his tract on 'Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism', where, if

anywhere, we might expect him to fill the gap in Euro-centred Marxist analyses. In that workLenin is concerned with the issue of inter-imperialist rivalry and the effect of imperialism on the

metropolitan societies. Imperialism was for him the Highest Stage of Capitalism -monopoly

capitalism in the West. We look in vain in Lenin's writings for any insights into the manner inwhich metropolitan capital had transformed colonised societies in quite specific ways. His

underlying assumption was that in colonised societies too pre-capitalist social structures were

being confronted by capitalism in ways no different from what we could see in Russia. That wasa big mistake, based on ignorance of what was actually going on in colonial societies.

We find the same blind spot about the structure of colonial societies in the work andpreoccupations of Western Marxists. You may know of the famous Dobb-Sweezy debate on the

'Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism' (edited by Rodney Hilton). It is amazing that not onethese great Marxists of the Western World felt any need to refer to the role of colonialism in the

development of Western capitalism. This is taken up in my paper: 'The Formation of the SocialStructure of South Asiaunder the impact of Colonialism'where we see how the colonial linkcontributed to the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Western Marxists tend to place the issue of

colonised societies into a separate compartment, a matter only for specialist concern.

Lenin on the National and Colonial Question

The crucial text, which is at the root of our present misguided perspectives, is one in whichLenin reverted to a Plekhanovist perspective on revolutionary struggle in colonised societies.

That was his 'Thesis on the National and Colonial Question' which he presented at the Second

Congress of the Comintern in 1920. This deserves careful examination, for it has been the basis

of CPI dogma, leading to class collaboration. Here Lenin turned his back on the notion of theleading role of the proletariat, which he had advocated for the Russian Revolution (as far back as

1905). Now he came forward with a Plekhanovist thesis for colonised societies, namely that the

National Bourgeoisie in colonised societies were playing a revolutionary role and itwas theirhistoric mission to lead the struggle towards a National Bourgeois Democratic

Revolution. The task of the Communist International, 'The Party of the (World) Proletariat, was

to support such Bourgeois led struggles. It was a class collaborationist formulae. The entire

history of the CPI has been caught up in that. How did that come about.

For an indispensable documentary account of that debate on the National and Colonial Question,

see 'Marxism and Asia' edited by H. Carre d'Encausse and Stuart Schram. It is an indispensable

documentary record, more detailed on this subject and more valuable for us than the CominternDocuments edited by Jane Degras.


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In that debate M. N. Roy opposed Lenin, declaring that communists should have no truck with

the colonial bourgeoisie which was vacillating and collaborationist with the Imperial power. He

argued instead that Communists should lead the proletariat into a revolutionary and decisivebreak with imperialism. In 1920 the proletariat barely existed in the colonies and there was

hardly any proletarian organisation, Roy's position was, in that context, purely formal. Not

surprisingly Roy's argument provoked a taunt from Lenin. Where is your proletariat ! Where isyour party of the proletariat ! Be that as it may, Lenin's Draft Thesis too was one-sided. There

was a compromise (about which we find little mention in CP literature which reproduce only the

final and agreed text). Lenin had to concede quite a few points to Roy and other critics. Oneconcession that he made was most unfortunate. A distinction was posited between 'reactionary'

bourgeoisies and 'progressive' bourgeoisies, communists being required to support the latter.

That distinction between 'reactionary' and 'progressive' bourgeoisies was not founded on any

basic principles. It was merely a verbal sop to Roy's objections. There were no criteria by whichthe two bourgeoisies could be distinguished. These are mere descriptive categories, not

theoretical concepts. Bourgeoisies could be put into one or the other category, arbitrarily. Stalin

found it very easy to manipulate and misuse these categories. He and his heirs could label as'progressive' those with whom they could do business. In later Soviet formulations this becameeven more blatant-for any State that had good relations with the Soviets qualified for the label

'Progressive', regardless of whether it was a military junta or whatever its class character.

Ethiopia is a case in point.

But to return to 1920, we must ask ourselves what made Lenin make a theoretical somersault and

take to a Plekhanovist formulae on the subject of the 'National and Colonial Question' and exhort

communists to support bourgeois leadership, advocating 'tailism'. To understand that we must

recall the specific context of that debate. It was taking place at a time when the USSR was facinga combined counter-revolutionary attack from all the major capitalist powers in the world, the

Wars of Intervention. But at that time also there were bourgeois-led anti-colonial struggles goingon in countries of Asia around the Southern frontiers of the Soviet Union, from Turkey to China.It is not surprising that Lenin welcomed them.

In the light of the exigencies of the moment, all kinds of dubious characters were promoted to the

rank of leaders of the 'Progressive National Bourgeoisie'. Thus Col. Reza Shah, the Persian

military adventurer and dictator was elevated to the rank of a leader of a mythical 'PersianNational Bourgeoisie'. So also Kemal Attatrk who, whatever his credentials, can hardly be

called a leader of a Turkish National Bourgeoisie that did not yet exist. Countries around the

flank of the Soviet Union, namely Turkey, Iran, India and China (with Indonesia being thrown infor good measure) mattered to Lenin, because they were all of strategic value in military terms.

Why should Lenin and the Comintern not try to get them on their side. That was justified

enough. Unfortunately it turned out that this conjunctural recommendation valid for the momentwas turned into a basic theoretical principle, that has misled us ever since. Hence from Meerut

jail Dang wrote his famous document in which he assured the Indian National Bourgeoisie that

communists could not but be sincere in their support for the Indian National Congress, for they

could not have their own proletarian revolution until after the National Bourgeoisie hadcompleted the anti-colonial national democratic revolution. That has remained the CPI dogma

ever since, one which ultimately destroyed it. Lenin left us a terrible legacy.


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Stalin and his heirs found here a theoretical weapon to justify their opportunist inter-state

alliances (for a discussion of inter-state relations see my notes on 'Socialist States and Socialist

Movements, enclosed). He used that formulae to impose collaborationist policies on CPseverywhere. Time and again the CPI has resurrected Lenin's 1920 'Theses' to justify its class

collaborationist and opportunistic alliance with Governments of the Indian National Congress.

Chou En-Lai, likewise, did the same by commending Ayub Khan to Pakistani pro-Chinese Leftwhen he visited Pakistan (in 1959 ?). This false dogma has to be exorcised.

The Structure of Colonial Social Formations

So, we come to the crucial question for us. How do we delineate structures of colonised

societies. We will see that they do not correspond to any of the three 'models' of non-colonisedsocieties that we have looked at above, namely 1) Marx's 'model' based on England 2) Kautsky's

'model' based on Western Europe and 3) Lenin's 'model' based on Russia. We need therefore a

fourth, a theoretical formulation of the structural specificity of colonial social formations.

This has not been looked into by properly as yet. CP intellectuals have remained trapped inStalin's formulations and have not been able to go beyond that. Amongst Trotskyite intellectuals,

we can look at the work of Ernest Mandel, one of the most well known of them. We find again

that he too has done little to look at colonial history and colonial society. That is, indeed, ageneral complaint that we have of all Western Marxists. Mandel's work is no less Euro-centered.

In his two volume work on 'Marxist Economic Theory'he does not go beyond Lenin and Rosa

Luxemburg, reiterating the latter's thesis about capitalist expansion into colonies being a basic

tendency of capitalism. Mandel speaks of imperialism being an obstacle to the industrialisationof the Third World. This too is familiar stuff. But where does that leave us ? In Mandel's other

major work on 'Late Capitalism'he relies heavily on the ideas of Andre Gunder Frank, about

which I will have something to say below. They do not get to grips with the basic issue of class

formation and class alignments following colonisation.

I feel that this is a crucial area for us to examine. In 1975 I published an article on 'India and the'Colonial Mode of Production' in Socialist Register 1975. At the time there was little response.

Perhaps too many people have invented too many different 'modes of production. I couldunderstand a certain degree of scepticism. Yet another 'mode'.

I followed that up in 1979 with a study of the colonial transformation of India-'India: Transitionfrom Feudalism to Colonial Capitalism'. That evoked a very positive response. It was translatedand published in German. In Australia, a conference was based around that paper at the

University of Adelaide. The papers, edited by Doug. McEachern were published under the title

'Capitalism and Colonial Production'. That volume includes several valuable papers. My nameappears first on the front cover merely by virtue of alphabetical priority and you may find thatthe book is probably catalogued under my name.

Following that historical study I published an article in EPW called 'The Structure of ColonialSocial Formations' (a copy is enclosed). 'Colonial Capitalism', I have argued, has specific

structural properties which I have delineated in that article. It was reprinted in a book edited byUtsa Patnaik. We need also to elaborate its political corollaries. I am afraid I have not got down


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to that as yet. But they are obvious. But the CPI hegemony on South Asian Left intellectuals is

perhaps too strong for the issues that I have raised to be properly discussed. Perhaps I should

have written it in impenetrable prose for theNew Left Reviewfor people to sit up and take notice.

My papers are only an initial attempt to identify some issues. There are many unanswered

questions in my work which I hope friends will take up. For example we might ask how far andin what way is this colonial 'model' affected by inter-nationalisation of capital and, the

emergence of Multi-National Capital. How do we fit into our analysis the rise of the so-called'Tiger Economies' of the Pacific Rim. Such questions, I am sure, will (and must) be pursued.

I have referred above to my very old friend, Andre Gunder Frank (whose work took Left

intellectuals by storm in the late 1960s and 1970s) in connection with Mandel's work. Being fed

up with CP collaborationism in Latin America, Frank attacked the CP theoretical positions, buton rather dubious theoretical bases. Frank's confused arguments made him easily vulnerable to

an attack by Ernesto Laclau, in an article (published in NLR). What Laclau in fact did was to

restore the CP orthodoxy. Moreover, he has built his argument on a gross misrepresentation of

Peruvian history and social structure. I once thought of writing a refutation, but never got aroundto it. Laclau's article was universally, and mistakenly, acclaimed and accepted by Western

scholars as a definitive work. My own analysis contradicts the Laclau view. So, not surprisingly Ibegin my analysis in my article on 'The Structure of Colonial Social Formations' with a critique

of Laclau.

Soviet Union and China as Fonts of Wisdom

The founding of the Communist International introduced a notion that there was but a single,unified, World Communist Movement. (see Fernando Claudin's 'The Communist Movement' for

this). The notion of a single World Communist Movement was allowed Stalin to impose a given

'line' on Communist parties everywhere, regardless of their particular circumstances. Inevitablythat led to disasters, which were always blamed by Stalin on 'mistakes' of local leaders. Despite

that Mao and the CCP succeeded for they were able to by-pass Stalin. But the Chinese too, in

their turn, were to take over Stalin's mantle. Rival Communist parties in the Third World rallied

behind Moscow or Peking as the seats of their infallible oracles whose guidance they wouldaccept. That has undermined independent indigenous thought in our countries. We will not get

very far until we see the flowering of our own ideas. I am sure that a time for that will come, as

new generations come on the scene, free from dogmas of the past. As for the issue of the role ofthe Soviet or the Chinese state in relations to our movements, I have discussed that in an

unpublished paper of which too I enclose a copy, namely 'Socialist States and SocialistMovements'.

The Colonial Mode of Production and 'Feudalism'

The issue of feudalism is a most important political issue for us Pakistanis. I find that my

analysis is incomplete and therefore misleading in that respect. I would correct that now. I have

argued that it was metropolitan capital that carried out the historic task of dissolving pre-capitalist social formations in the colonies and establishing colonial capitalism. I have therefore


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suggested that feudalism was dissolved by British colonialism. That is not quite correct. I have

based that argument in the light of only one criterion namely that of free and unfree labour. But,

as I shall show below, there is a second criterion too, that completely alters the picture.

When Marx recognised that in Britain feudalism had given way to capitalist landed property, he

nevertheless made a distinction between the great land owners as the 'Governing Class' whereasthe Bourgeoisie were the 'Ruling Class'. The erstwhile feudals played a leading role in British

Government but they were subject to the structural imperative of British capitalism. That was notquite the case in colonial India. Indeed great landlords were valued by the colonial rulers as their

allies and therefore protected and privileged. In India feudalism was to be abolished only after

independence by a powerful national bourgeoisie represented by the Congress. In Pakistanlanded magnates are a dominant force in the State. The feudals inherited the new state of

Pakistan at the time of the Partition whereas our bourgeoisie, such as it is, is extremely weak.

Dissolution of feudalism in Pakistan is our primary and most immediate task.

The error in my analysis stems from the fact that I have take account of only one of two criteria

that distinguish capitalism from feudalism, namely that of free and unfree labour. We come tovery different conclusions when we consider also the other criterion namely that of 'Simple

Reproduction' under feudalism versus 'Expanded Reproduction of Capital' under capitalism. (foran explanation of these concepts see Capital Vol. I, Part VII-chapter XXIII ff.). Under 'Simple

Reproduction' the surplus that is extracted is mainly consumed whereas under 'Expanded

Reproduction of Capital' of capitalism, the surplus is mainly ploughed back into capitalaccumulation.

I would indeed go a step further and conceptualise what I would call 'The Simple Reproduction

Trap' that keeps landowners in the grip of 'Simple Reproduction'. It arises from the fact that in

the case of industrial capitalism, with capital accumulation the number of production units in

industries are extended or multiplied, thus providing an outlet for accumulated capital. Inagriculture, on the other hand, the basic input is land. It cannot be multiplied like industrial

production units. The available land is relatively fixed for the landlord class as a whole, extended

marginally by irrigation schemes. Other inputs like farm mechanisation etc. are marginal. Land isthe determining factor. Capital accumulation cannot take place in agriculture in the same way as

in industry. The landlord class is necessarily a parasitic class, 'trapped' in the circuit of 'Simple

Reproduction', consuming the bulk of the surplus. The landowner remains necessarily parasitical.

In India a powerful industrial bourgeoisie managed to subordinate the landlords. Their political

problem now stems from the rise of 'Rich Peasants' who have demands of their own. In Pakistan

that is not the case. Parasitical landlords are at the centre of our political system. Great land

magnates dominate the electoral process. There may be room for mere scholastic argumentswhether in strict scientific terms we can still call our landed magnates a 'feudal class'. But that

would be an argument about names and labels rather than substance. We have to recognise that

they are not 'capitalists' in the same sense as industrial capitalists.

Words are not immutable. There is no need not restrict the meaning of 'feudalism' to its classical(and scholastic) sense. We do need a label for that parasitical and powerful class and the word

'feudalism' will serve the purpose better than any other that I can think of, for it is essential that


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we distinguish them from Industrial Capitalism. Moreover, it is a highly charged word, with

commonly understood meanings connoting parasitism and arbitrary power.

To say that feudalism was dissolved by metropolitan capitalism would be a only half-truth, amost misleading statement. That would conceal the crucial aspects of the political economy of

our landed class today. I would therefore argue that feudalism does exist in Pakistan and itselimination, not least from the political arena, should be our first priority, without which we

cannot advance far. We need to emancipate our country from their stranglehold.