Nazariya’s “Critique” of The Anvil’s Stand on Kulak Movement: A Nazariya of Sheer Ignorance, Unfathomable Idiocy, Matchless Inanity, Mind-boggling Stupidity and Shameful Tail-ending of the Kulaks and Ignominious Ideological Capitulation
Delhi University Correspondent Team, The Anvil
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1. Introductory Remarks
Nazariya magazine has written a criticism of The Anvil’s article on kulak movement titled ‘Who are the Masses, What are the Classes: A Critique of Anvil Magazine’s Analysis of the Farmers’ Protest’. We were not at all surprised to find Nazariya’s position out and out neo-Narodnik and that, too, a particularly inane version of neo-Narodism which smacks of sheer ignorance of political economy and history, complete lack of awareness about the basic concepts of Marxism and unparalleled theoretical muddle-headedness. If anything, this article can be taken as a leading example of how not to develop a Nazariya (point of view) about anything at all! We will demonstrate this fact in the present article point-by-point.
We can sympathize with the anguish and theoretical fix in which the editors of Nazariya find themselves. They wish to support the kulaks but they want to do this with a semblance of radicalism. Consequently, Nazariya editors hold the kulaks to be different from ‘landlords’ and call them ‘rich peasants’ and declare them to be a part of the masses. Proceeding axiomatically from semifeudal semicolonial thesis, Nazariya editors attempt to force-fit the Indian reality and every fact into their worn-out dogma. The kind of logic the Nazariya editorial team and the whole semifeudalism semicolonialism orthodoxy is pursuing is called petitio principii, where in order to prove a hypothesis one begins with the assumption that the same hypothesis is true! Nazariya editors write:
“…analysis and the strategy and tactics of this group of the Anvil ‘Maoists’ needs to be appreciated, if India indeed was a backward capitalist country, but the objective reality of India speaks another story and this objective reality is that of a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country. Therefore, the rich peasantry in India is not an enemy class but part of the masses in the country and therefore, the proletarian movement has a responsibility to take part and if possible be the vanguard in the struggle of the rich peasantry too.”(Nazariya editors, “Who are the Masses, What are the Classes: A Critique of Anvil Magazine’s Analysis of the Farmers’ Protest”, https://Nazariyamagazine.in/2024/08/31/who-are-the-masses-what-are-the-classes-a-critique-of-anvil-magazines-analysis-of-the-farmers-protest/)
However, when Nazariya editors begin to deal with the “objective reality”, they find themselves obliged to manacle this “objective reality” into their dogmatic formulations. In order to achieve this feat, among other somersaults, they resort to distorting the basic Marxist methodology and scientific categories as well as shamelessly misinterpreting the facts. Since the whole endeavor is fraught with conflicts, they keep contradicting themselves. The icing on the top is that they do it with “revolutionary” phrase-mongering. In sum, this “critique” by Nazariya editors is inundated with complete ignorance of the basics of Marxist political economy, categories of historical materialism, and history. They are totally oblivious to the meanings of different terms of Marxist terminology, whether it is imperialism, fascism, capitalism, wages, ‘parcel of the state’ and even of general historical and political terms like caste, religion, etc.
Let us, first of all, enumerate their basic arguments, so that we can then proceed to a systematic criticism of the monument of nescience erected by Nazariya editors:
- The Indian bourgeoisie is comprador and as a proof of this they point out that Adani is heavily indebted! In other words, indebtedness is a measure of comprador-ness for the editors of Nazariya. They refer to Suniti Kumar Ghosh and claim that he had proved that the Indian bourgeoisie is comprador in his book The Indian Big Bourgeoisie.
- There is absence of development of capitalism in agriculture in India. To prove this, the editors first draw an ahistorical ideal image of capitalism and then on the basis of this image reject capitalist development in Indian agriculture by arguing that it has various forms of tenancy, that there is existence of extra-economic coercion, lower rate of capitalization of surplus value in agriculture, prevalence of small peasant landholdings, etc. For them, these are signs of semifeudality. They also claim that there is no wage-relation in Indian agriculture, there is predominance of subsistence agriculture and the landlords are feudal because they are intermediaries between the state and the peasantry with executive, legislative and judicial powers and therefore function as a parcel of the state. (The articulation is being done by us in more accurate terminology, as the editors themselves are unable to articulate their views in proper Marxist terms.)
- They present kulaks as rich peasants and assert that these poor rich peasants are exploited by landlords and comprador bourgeoisie. They brazenly distort The Anvil’s position by arguing that we do not support kulak movement because the kulaks practise religion! They also misinterpret The Anvil’s argument regarding why we do not support the kulak movement for MSP by claiming that we reject the movement because semi-fascist elements like Tikait came in the support of the movement, whereas according to them, in mass movements such elements, too, can come and join; while the fact is that The Anvil’s position was unequivocally clear that the basis of rejecting the movement is the class-character of the charter of demands of this movement, precisely because of which even elements like Tikait were coming in its support.
- Finally, they state that The Anvil claims that MSP is rent appropriated by landlords which causes the real wages to fall. They claim that MSP does not cause inflation rather it eases it and that demand for MSP is a democratic demand.
Since, the Nazariya editors have completely distorted the Marxist method and categories in order to accomplish the above feat, it would be imperative to, first, show their methodological errors, their complete lack of understanding of Marxist political economy and historical materialism and the falsity of their assumptions and then proceed to point-by-point rebuttal of their “critique”. Due to their unbelievable ignorance and childish intransigence to persevere with this ignorance, we have used for them the epithet of “left”-wing toddlers. Also because, in terms of Marxist education, this lot is as wanting as a bunch of tiny-tots who have just started going to a kindergarten.
2. Methodological Errors of Nazariya
I. Suniti Kumar Ghosh’s The Indian Big Bourgeoisie and the dogmatism of Nazariya: Misinterpretation of Mao and Marxist Political Economy
First methodological error Nazariya editors commit in order to prove their semifeudal semicolonial thesis pertains to the question of comprador bourgeoisie. The Nazariya editors, following in the footsteps of their ideological predecessors, make the claim that Indian bourgeoisie is a comprador bourgeoisie. To prove this, they distort Mao’s definition of comprador bourgeoisie. This distortion was originally undertaken by Suniti Kumar Ghosh and Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers fall back upon him to substantiate their claim. Nazariya editors argue:
“…the Indian bourgeoisie is an independent bourgeoisie because of two reasons, one being that it just cannot be comprador because the word comprador refers to mercantile and commercial bourgeoisie and not industrial bourgeoisie, secondly, there are apparently multiple instances of it having an independent foreign policy. The first claim has already been negated by Comrade Suniti Kumar Ghosh in his authoritative piece on the bourgeoisie called the ‘Indian Big Bourgeoisie: Its Genesis, Growth and Character.’ Comrade Suniti clearly points out that nowhere has Comrade Mao Zedong mentioned that the comprador bourgeoisie cannot be industrial bourgeoisie.
“Suniti Kumar Ghosh mentions Yeng Hao’s analysis to further prove this. Hao mentions that the early industrialization in China happened under the comprador bourgeoisie. Hao points out that this comprador was dependent on foreign capital and technology to run these industries. These bourgeois were part of the ruling class of the country and were not considered to be allies in the new democratic revolution of China. According to the claims of Anvil, this bourgeoisie in China would also be ‘independent’ junior partners of imperialism, since they are not commercial or mercantile bourgeois. The initial industrialization in India also occurred under the comprador bourgeoisie like the Tatas and Birlas who were dependent on British capital and technology.
“Anvil magazine twists the essence of what was written by Mao in his “Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society”, to change the definition of comprador to suit their own agenda. This definition of comprador is not something that was developed through the experience of the Chinese revolution but one that was developed by the Khruschevite revisionists to suit their agenda of arguing for a peaceful transition to socialism, by denying the heightened contradictions induced by neo-colonialism. Rajani Palm Dutt and multiple other intellectuals use this distorted definition of the comprador bourgeoisie to claim that the big bourgeoisie in India is independent.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
The argument of Nazariya depends on the “analysis” of Suniti Kumar Ghosh and his book The Indian Big Bourgeoisie. We will first see how the analysis of Suniti Kumar Ghosh is actually a distortion of Marxism. We will also show that it is, in fact, Suniti Kumar Ghosh who is distorting Mao while referring to Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society.
First hypothesis of Ghosh is that Indian ruling class, i.e., the big bourgeoisie is comprador. Ghosh takes the task of studying the origin, development, policies of Indian ruling class and its relationship with imperialist capital to prove its comprador character. For this, he distorts the definitions of national bourgeoisie and comprador bourgeoisie and erases the difference between the two. He accomplishes this through two further distortions: first, by stating that the industrial bourgeoisie can also be comprador and second that the comprador bourgeoisie can also lead struggle against imperialist capital!
“The bourgeois of a colony or semi-colony, whether commercial or industrial or both, is a comprador if he serves imperialist capital directly and helps intensify imperialist economic (and, consequently, political) aggression against his country. As we shall see, it is not participation exclusively in commercial activities but service to the foreign imperialist bourgeoisie as its agent that is the criterion for distinguishing the comprador from the national bourgeoisie.” (Suniti Kumar Ghosh. 1985. The Indian Big Bourgeoisie, p. 12)
Wow! What does that mean? It means that the definition of comprador bourgeoisie is that it is comprador bourgeoisie! Just like the definition of a squirrel is that it is a squirrel! The definition of homo sapiens is that it is homo sapiens! Brilliant. With this “logic” the entire definition is made self-referential and subjective. This ridiculous wizardry deprives the definition of comprador bourgeoisie of its political-economic and historical foundations. Any bourgeoisie could have any character! An industrial bourgeoisie can be comprador, a commercial bourgeoisie that is comprador can also fight against imperialism! This is tantamount to etherealization of the very concept of ‘comprador’, ‘national’, or even ‘imperialist’ bourgeoisie. Marxist political economy stipulates very concrete economic and political foundations of the characterization of the bourgeoisie in question. Ghosh evaporates all that with idiotic political sorcery.
Secondly, with this definition the bourgeoisie of Britain, too, can be proved as a comprador of the US bourgeoisie! Because Tony Blair did not even seek the permission of the British parliament before plunging Britain into the Iraq War and even British dailies caricatured Blair as a pet of Bush Jr.! The same could be said about the interrelationship of many imperialist countries. What Ghosh does is this: he creates an ideal image of the relation between the non-comprador bourgeoisie and imperialism, a relation of complete parity and complete autonomy and then rechristens the Indian bourgeoisie as comprador because it fails to comply with that image! Whereas the truth is that the interrelationships among imperialists, between politically-independent non-imperialist capitalist countries on the one hand and imperialist countries on the other, and those among the politically-independent non-imperialist capitalist countries, are never characterized by the fabled image of ‘equality’ conjured up by Ghosh. Why? Because unequal development is the general law of capitalism and it applies to these relations as well. In a while, we will show what the Bolshevik Party and the Chinese Party as well as Mao wrote about comprador bourgeoisie. However, first, few more gems from Ghosh!
Ghosh contends further:
“There are widely prevalent misconceptions about the character and function of the comprador bourgeoisie. It is usually held that the compradors are exclusively mercantile bourgeois whose function is to serve as agents of the imperialist bourgeoisie, procuring raw materials for the latter and selling their manufactures on the domestic market. That is, exclusive participation in the commercial sphere as an agent of foreign capital is deemed to be the criterion for distinguishing the comprador from the national bourgeois. Those who hold such a view theorize that there invariably exist antagonistic contradictions between the metropolitan bourgeoisie and the industrial bourgeoisie of a colony or semi-colony.” (Ghosh, ibid, p. 16)
Ghosh uses the arbitrary category of ‘agent’ intentionally and with deliberate carelessness so that he can substitute Mao’s definition of comprador bourgeoisie for his own bogus and meaningless definition. To clear this confusion created by Ghosh, we must see what Mao actually said regarding comprador bourgeois class:
“In economically backward and semi-colonial China the landlord class and the comprador class are wholly appendages of the international bourgeoisie, depending upon imperialism for their survival and growth. These classes represent the most backward and most reactionary relations of production in China and hinder the development of her productive forces. (Mao. 1975. “Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society”, Selected Works, p. 13, emphasis ours)
More:
“A comprador, in the original sense of the word, was the Chinese manager or the senior Chinese employee in a foreign commercial establishment. The compradors served foreign economic interests and had close connection with imperialism and foreign capital.” (ibid, p. 19)
Mao further says:
“The imperialist powers have established a network of comprador and merchant-usurer exploitation right across China, from the trading ports to the remote hinterland, and have created a comprador and merchant-usurer class in their service, so as to facilitate their exploitation of the masses of the Chinese peasantry and other sections of the people. (Mao. 1975. “Chinese Revolution and Chinese Communist Party”, Selected Works, p. 311)
Ghosh possibly knew what Mao had written. Therefore, Ghosh finds himself obliged to reject Mao’s article Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society by saying that “in no other writings did Mao speak of the compradors as representing the most backward relations of production.” Even though this claim is incorrect, had that been correct, what would it prove? Nothing. Is there any place where Mao rejects this argument? No. We will show further in this critique that there are several places where the writings of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party are unequivocal in characterizing the comprador bourgeoisie as a commercial-bureaucratic bourgeoisie.
According to Ghosh, Mao wrote only once in 1926 that comprador represents backward productive forces. This is totally incorrect. Mao argued the same in 1940, too. Moreover, the article which Mao wrote in 1926 was included in Selected Works in 1951 by the Editorial Group which worked under the leadership of Mao himself. We can clearly see that Mao maintained this argument even in the 1950s. Selected Works of Mao was propagated by the CPC all over the world.
Ghosh is also making a false claim that it was a mistake by Mao! When Mao is characterizing compradors as representatives of backward capitalist class he means that they represent commercial, usurer and bureaucratic capitalist class, as we saw above. Mao has written clearly that bureaucratic and commercial bourgeoisie are agents of imperialism, this class maintains the backward production relations and thus restricts the development of productive forces in China and it is precisely because of this that Mao called them representative of backward capitalist class.
On the question of genesis of industrial bourgeoisie Mao wrote:
“In fact, some merchants, landlords and bureaucrats began investing in modern industry as far back as sixty years ago, in the latter part of the 19th century, under the stimulus of foreign capitalism and because of certain cracks in the feudal economic structure. About forty years ago, at the turn of the century, China’s national capitalism took its first steps forward. Then about twenty years ago, during the first imperialist world war, China’s national industry expanded, chiefly in textiles and flour milling, because the imperialist countries in Europe and America were preoccupied with the war and temporarily relaxed their oppression of China.
“The history of the emergence and development of national capitalism is at the same time the history of the emergence and development of the Chinese bourgeoisie and proletariat. Just as a section of the merchants, landlords and bureaucrats were precursors of the Chinese bourgeoisie, so a section of the peasants and handicraft workers were the precursors of the Chinese proletariat. (Mao. 1975. “Chinese Revolution and Chinese Communist Party”, Selected Works, p. 310)
Mao clearly states that with the investment of Chinese capital in manufacturing, national capitalism was born. A section of Chinese traders, landlords and bureaucrats invested in industries and on that basis national capitalism grew. It must be noted here that commercial and bureaucratic capitalists are not always and necessarily comprador, but comprador bourgeoisie is always, without exception, commercial and bureaucratic. Thus, Ghosh is actually standing on his head when he says that industrial capitalists can be comprador. Moreover, Ghosh tries to convince his readers that since it was the merchants and usurers and compradors who began to invest in the industry, the industrial bourgeoisie that emerged due to this investment, too, was comprador! However, this claim of Ghosh has nothing whatsoever to do with Mao’s definition. In most of the cases, the emergence of industrial bourgeoisie happened, at least, in part, from the commercial and usurer capital itself. The readers might well recall Marx’s point that the history of capital and history of capitalism are not the same. Two forms of capital, namely, commercial and usurer capital, preceded the advent of capitalism as a mode of production by more than two thousand years. In the initial phase of the emergence of industrial capital, on the one hand, a part of merchant and usurer capitalist class transformed into industrial capitalist and on the other hand, a part of artisans and handicraftsmen (especially, the master craftsmen) transformed into industrial capitalist. In colonies and semicolonies, the examples of the first abound, which Marx called ‘capitalism from above’. The same was true for China, as Mao himself points out in the excerpt quoted above. Partially, the same was true for the Indian case as well. Therefore, Ghosh’s claim that since the industrial bourgeoisie originated from the ranks of commercial and usurer comprador bourgeoisie, it was bound to remain comprador even after its industrial transformation, is ridiculous to say the least.
Further.
The Comintern’s Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies clearly mentions that it is a section of trading bourgeoisie which serves imperialism while industrial bourgeoisie is national bourgeoisie:
“The national bourgeoisie in these colonial countries does not adopt a uniform attitude in relation to imperialism. A part of this bourgeoisie, more especially the trading bourgeoisie, directly serves the interests of imperialist capital (the so-called comprador* bourgeoisie). In general, it more or less consistently defends the anti-national imperialist point of view directed against the whole nationalist movement, in common with the feudal allies of imperialism and the more highly-paid native officials. The remaining portions of the native bourgeoisie, especially the portion reflecting the interests of native industry, support the national movement and represent a special vacillating compromising tendency which may be designated as national reformism (or, in the terminology of the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International, a ‘bourgeois-democratic’ tendency).This intermediate position of the national bourgeoisie between the revolutionary and imperialist camps is no longer to be observed, it is true, in China after 1925; there the greater part of the national bourgeoisie from the beginning, owing to the special situation, took the leadership in the national-emancipatory war; later on it passed over finally into the camp of counterrevolution. […]” (Sixth Congress of the Comintern, Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies, 1928)
Also noteworthy is the footnote which defines the comprador:
“Native merchants, engaged in trade with imperialist centers, whose interest are in continuation of imperialist exploitation. They act as agents for exploiting the masses in the colonial countries.”
Further:
“The progressive results of capitalism, on the other hand, are, for the most part, completely lacking in the colonies. Where in the colonies the ruling imperialism is in need of social support, it first of all allies itself with the ruling strata of the previous social structure, with the feudal lords and with the trading and money-lending bourgeoisie, against the majority of the people. Everywhere imperialism attempts to preserve and to perpetuate all those pre-capitalist forms of exploiting (especially in the villages) which serve as the basis for the existence of its reactionary allies. The mass of the people in these countries are compelled to payout enormous sums for the upkeep of the military, police and administrative apparatus of the colonial regime. The growth of famines and epidemics, particularly among the pauperized peasantry, the mass expropriation of the land of the native population, the inhuman conditions of labor (on the plantations and mines of the white capitalists, and so on), which at times are worse than open slavery – all this exerts its devastating effect on the colonial population and not infrequently leads to the dying out of whole nationalities. The ‘cultural role’ of the imperialist states in the colonies is in reality expressed in the role of an executioner.” (Sixth Congress of the Comintern, Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies, 1928)
K.V. Ostrovityanov also writes on similar lines, in the textbook on political economy written during Stalin’s time:
“The ruling classes in the colonies and semi-colonies are the feudal landlords and the capitalists, both urban and rural (kulaks). The capitalist class is divided into the comprador bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. The compradors are native middlemen between the foreign monopolies and the colonial markets, both for selling and for buying raw materials. The feudal landlords and the comprador bourgeoisie are vassals of foreign finance capital, direct mercenary agents of international imperialism, which holds the colonies and semi-colonies in thrall. As the colonies develop their own industries the national bourgeoisie grows in importance. It finds itself in a position facing two ways: on the one hand, oppression by foreign imperialism and feudal survivals bars its path to economic and political power, while on the other hand it shares, together with the foreign monopolies, in the exploitation of the working class and the peasantry. In the largest colonial and semi-colonial countries monopolistic associations of local bourgeois exist, which are dependent on the foreign monopolists. In so far as the national liberation struggle is directed towards the overthrow of imperialist rule, the winning of national independence for the country and the abolition of the feudal survivals which hinder the development of capitalism, the national bourgeoisie at a certain stage takes part in this struggle and plays a progressive role.” (K.V. Ostrovityanov, Political Economy, 1954)
We need to understand why this point has been iterated and reiterated so many times by Marxists that an industrial bourgeoisie cannot be comprador, and only a commercial-bureaucratic bourgeoisie can be comprador. The argument has been summarized sufficiently by Sunny in his critique of Suniti Kumar Ghosh being published in the sixth issue of Disha Sandhan:
“Even someone who has acquired even a basic education of Marxism knows that the industrial capitalist class can never be comprador because it needs control over the domestic market for the realization of its appropriated surplus value. In a colony, semicolony, or a neocolony, the control of the domestic market is in the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie of one or many imperialist countries. The industrial capitalist class is in direct competition in the market with the imperialist capital for this and it is incapable of competing with the capitalist industry of advanced imperialist countries because the labour productivity in these countries is much greater. These domestic industries often also face extra-economic oppression at the hands of imperialism which further weakens their ability to compete. What were the demands of the industrial capitalist class in the colonial period in India? You can take a look at this entire history and you will discover that they demanded protection for Indian domestic industries against British commodities. That is to say, they needed protective duties and tariffs in the price competition with British commodities in the market. British capitalism protected the Indian markets against German, French and Japanese industrial commodities, but it provided no protection to the domestic industrial products in the Indian markets against British industrial commodities. The industrial capitalist class of India consistently raised precisely this demand–the demand for protection–through its political party and its economic associations. This is not at all how a comprador capitalist class behaves. And you can understand the reason behind this through a study of the political economy of this Indian bourgeoisie.
“Au contraire, bureaucratic and commercial capitalist class is not concerned at all with whose commodities it is selling in the market: those of the domestic capitalist class or of imperialist capitalist class. It is concerned only with its commission (commercial profit, which is nothing but a part of the appropriated surplus value). Obviously, this does not mean that the commercial capitalist class will always and everywhere be comprador. This depends on whether the state power in the concerned country is in the hands of an imperialist power (directly or indirectly) or in the hands of a politically-independent industrial-financial capitalist class. However, this much is clear that it is only a commercial bourgeoisie that can play the role of a comprador bourgeoisie because whether the domestic market is under native control or foreign control, that is to say, under the control of commodities produced by the industries of the domestic capitalist class or a foreign imperialist capitalist class, has no bearing on this commercial bourgeoisie. It is concerned only with its commercial profit. Whether this comes as a part of the appropriated surplus value of the domestic capitalist class or that of an imperialist capitalist class is a matter of no special concern for it. It is the function of the commercial bureaucratic capitalist class to help realize the surplus value of the imperialist capitalist class. In return, it receives a part of this realized surplus value in the form of commercial profit. It is precisely the political economy of this class that allows it no basis for being “national”. On the other hand, the basis of the “national” character of the industrial capitalist class is also to be found precisely in its political economy. The control over domestic market and protection from the commodities of advanced imperialist countries is, for this class, a question of life and death. As Marx said, its “nationalism” is born in the market.” (Sunny, ‘Marxwaad aur Itihaas ki Durvyakhya’, Disha Sandhan-6, 2024, translation ours)
Stalin makes the similar point in his epochal work on national question:
“The chief problem for the young bourgeoisie is the problem of the market. Its aim is to sell its goods and to emerge victorious from competition with the bourgeoisie of a different nationality. Hence its desire to secure its “own”, its “home” market…” (Stalin, Marxism and National Question)
Wang Yanan wrote widely-read Chinese textbook of political economy under the guidance of Mao which was published in 1940. It is imperative to note what Wang Yanan says about industrial bourgeoisie and its non-comprador and national character. Yanan writes:
“During the last imperialist war, when the pressure on China’s industrial capital eased slightly, it made considerable progress in a number of sectors in light industry. However, as soon as the war ended, the pressure intensified again, and the weak industrial base of the previously-developed sectors again shrank.” (Wang Yanan, Basic Principles of Chinese Economics, 1940)
Yanan points out further:
“Up to 1911, there were only eight banks. After World War I until 1925, there were 141 banks in China. Of course, the reason for this can be grasped by the vigorous development of China’s national capital, especially light industrial capital, during World War I and the following years, so we can infer the relationship between the development of banks and the development of industry. However, this is at most a mere formulation, and it will not be effective when it is applied to subsequent periods. From 1925 until the beginning of the July 7th Anti-Japanese War, China’s industry was in a difficult period. The textile, match, and flour industries – which had flourished before – almost all contracted, closed down, or were transferred to outsiders. However, during this period, China’s banking industry did not collapse. On the contrary, not only did they increase in number, but also the size of banks and their capital strength grew more substantial and larger. […] In fact, 1929, 1930, and 1931 were the years when the Bank of China was booming, and at the same time government bonds were increasing.” (Wang Yanan, Basic Principles of Chinese Economics, 1940)
Let us also see what the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, 1938 edition entry says about comprador:
“COMPRADORS (Spanish – “purchaser”), trade intermediaries between foreign capital and the local markets in colonial and dependent countries. The origins of compradorism date back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when the first European trading posts and bases were founded in the Indian Ocean countries and in China. In 1729, Chinese merchants created their own trade intermediary organization, the so-called Kohong, in Canton, the only port open at that time to foreign ships. This comprador organization received from the Chinese government a monopoly on trade operations with foreigners (primarily with the British). Only in 1842, after the defeat of China in the Opium War, the Kohong monopoly, which was embarrassing for European capital, was destroyed. However, the comprador continued to retain its importance in the economic life of China. Of no less importance were the compradors in Turkey, where trade intermediary operations were concentrated, mainly, in the hands of Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and Levantines, although Turkish merchants were also increasingly involved in foreign trade from the beginning of the 19th century. By the end of the 19th century, the comprador bourgeoisie in all colonial and dependent countries had grown into a significant and influential force and often put forward moderately-liberal political demands, seeking a certain modernization of the feudal system of the eastern countries. Thus, the Tanzimat reforms and the Young Turk movement in Turkey, the reforms of Kang Youwei in China, etc. enjoyed the support of the comprador bourgeoisie. However, the compradors, closely connected with foreign capital, were hostile to the national liberation anti-imperialist movement, which particularly grew following the victory of the great October Socialist Revolution in the USSR. In Turkey, during the years of the Kemalist revolution, the comprador bourgeoisie of Istanbul, Smyrna, and other ports acted as a united front with the feudal landlords, the Sultan clique, the Muslim clergy, and foreign interventionists against the national liberation movement headed by Kemal Ataturk. In 1924, armed detachments of compradors, the so-called paper tigers, led by the major comprador of the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank Chen Lianbo, rebelled against Sun Yat-sen with the direct support of British imperialism. The counter-revolutionary role of the compradors in China, India, and other colonial and semicolonial countries has been repeatedly noted in the decisions of the plenums of the ECCI and the congresses of the Comintern. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the compradors oppose the united people’s anti-imperialist front in the colonial and dependent countries.”
From the classical Marxist literature, it is very clear that only a commercial and bureaucratic bourgeoisie can be comprador under certain conditions, whereas under no conditions an industrial bourgeoisie can be a comprador bourgeoisie. Moving on.
Ghosh further claims in his book that the comprador bourgeoisie can struggle against imperialist capital. He makes this claim so as to be able to portray the struggle of Indian bourgeoisie against the imperialist capital and political positions it took in the Twentieth century as examples of its comprador character! In other words, since Ghosh cannot demonstrate that the Indian bourgeoisie was, in the words of Mao, “wholly an appendage of imperialism” and comprador, he now makes the definition of comprador bourgeoisie stand upside down and claims that even the comprador bourgeoisie can fight against imperialism! So, first he says that an industrial bourgeoisie can be comprador; then he says that if the industrial bourgeoisie emerged from within the class of merchants and usurers it is condemned to remain comprador, even after its industrial transformation; then he says that such comprador bourgeoisie need not be “wholly an appendage of imperialism” as Mao pointed out, but can also fight against imperialism! Can one imagine more stupefying intellectual somersaults?
Ghosh writes:
“It is also absurd to assert, as many do, that there can exist no contradiction between imperialist and comprador capital. The interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie and its compradors are indeed tied up as they are engaged in a joint venture to fleece the people. But, at the same time, there are contradictions between them-contradictions over respective shares of the spoils. The comprador serves the imperialist bourgeois in order to serve himself. Naturally, he seeks advantageous terms for himself, and pressure, concession, compromise and, in a few cases, termination of agency are part of the business. Nevertheless, such contradictions are not usually antagonistic and are resolved within the framework of dependence on imperialist monopolies.” (Ghosh, ibid, p. 18)
First of all, Mao does not mention anywhere the independent struggle of comprador bourgeoisie against the imperialists. Rather, he defines comprador as those who “serve imperialists directly” and who are “wholly appendages of the international bourgeoisie”.
Secondly, when Mao said that a comprador can leave one imperialist master to become an agent of another imperialist country, Mao is not talking about the contradiction between the comprador bourgeoisie and imperialist capital, but about inter-imperialist rivalry! Wherever a comprador shows sharp conflict with an imperialist country, it is actually acting on the diktats of another imperialist master. And in a semifeudal semicolonial country, occurrence of this phenomenon is inevitable because by definition a semifeudal semicolonial country is divided into spheres of influence of more than one imperialist countries. Such was the case in China. In such a situation, it is possible for revolutionary communists to make a tactical military alliance with a section of comprador bourgeoisie. However, this much is clear that whenever this happens it is an expression of inter-imperialist rivalry and not independent action of comprador bourgeoisie. Mao writes:
“The Chinese big bourgeoisie, which is comprador in character, is a class which directly serves imperialism and is fostered by it. Hence the comprador Chinese big bourgeoisie has always been a target of the revolution. However, different groups within this big bourgeoisie are backed by different imperialist powers, so that when contradictions among these powers become sharper and when the edge of the revolution is mainly directed against a particular power, the big bourgeois groups dependent upon the other powers may join the struggle against that particular imperialist power to a certain extent and for a certain time.” (Mao. 2004. ‘Introducing ‘the Communist’’, Selected Writings of Mao Tse-tung, Rahul Foundation, p. 132-133)
Thus, it can be clearly seen that it is Ghosh himself who tries to distort Mao and Marxist understanding of comprador bourgeoisie.
Sunny summarizes Ghosh’s position:
“It can be clearly seen that Ghosh continuously distorts Mao’s writings. Ghosh distorts the definition of the comprador bourgeoisie in two basic ways: first, by claiming that industrial capitalist class can be comprador and second by claiming that the comprador capitalist class can wage a struggle against imperialism. To substantiate this definition of his, Ghosh cites Yen-p’ing Hao’s book “The comprador in Nineteenth Century China.” Ghosh tells us that according to Yen-p’ing comprador capitalists were also industrial capitalists. However, for a non-Marxist bourgeois academic like Yen-p’ing, the comprador capitalist class was also nationalist! According to Yen-p’ing: “Some noted compradors at Shanghai took part in the 1911 Republican revolutionary movement.”(Yen-p’ing Hao. 1970. The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, p.193, emphasis ours).
“Yen-p’ing further writes: “At any rate, the compradors, quite contrary to the generally accepted contention, probably were not the most unpatriotic group of people in China. On the contrary, many of them were very nationalistic.” (ibid, p.195).
“So, according to Yen-p’ing, compradors were revolutionary and they also participated in Sun Yat-Sen’s nationalist movement. In this way, political economic and political basis for the comprador character of the capitalists are entirely removed, and whether they will play a revolutionary role or not now comes to depend on the subjective desire and behaviour of particular capitalists, and this desire, too, is not determined by any structural cause but becomes a matter of simple chance! Ghosh, in a bid to establish his argument, cites this particular Mr. Yen-p’ing at several places in his book. Ghosh tries to ground his thesis of the comprador capitalist class in this ridiculous argument. Yen-p’ing’s entire book is filled with precisely these sort of ridiculous arguments. Actually, Yen-p’ing defines comprador on the basis of its birth as an ‘institution of agents’ in Chinese history, and the political usage of the term by Mao and the Chinese Communist Party carries no significance for him. Ghosh has also done precisely this in his book. He has muddled the definitions of the national bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie. He blurs all these definitions and differences which differentiate the national bourgeoisie from the comprador bourgeoisie.
…
“Ghosh identifies class on the basis of its origin and its “aspirations”, and not on the logical basis that Lenin provided, that is, “according to its location in the social system”. Classes, and with them class contradictions, come into existence only during a particular stage of contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production, that is, only in the historical epoch of class society. It is precisely the ideological, political, social and cultural expressions of this class contradiction that appear in history. Ghosh reasons that since this class was born as a comprador in a colonial system, it is therefore bound to remain comprador. We shall critically examine these arguments by Ghosh through a historical discussion. He talks ad nauseam, in his book, about the birth of the Tata, Birla and all such capitalist houses as agents in a bid to prove that since they were born as compradors, it is their birth that will determine their character and not their participation in economic activities or their investment in the industrial sector. This is to say that a capitalist class born as a comprador will, like the “obedient virtuous Hindu wife”, remain comprador even if it develops an industrial character and base! On the other hand, only a capitalist class not born from any comprador capitalist class can therefore be a national capitalist class. He gives the example of a small capitalist, Mannu Subedar and the Bengal Chemicals, and argues that they were a part of a capitalist class in India which advocated independent capitalist development in India, and were therefore a part of the national capitalist class.
“This line of reasoning is extremely vulgar. According to this, there is no explanation of why there can be no change in the character of the comprador bourgeoisie born in a colonial system. Besides, various economic historians have questioned the very thesis that claims that the entire capitalist class of India was born as a comprador commercial capitalist class. It is of no consequence, here, whether a part of the capitalist class born as industrial capitalist class did or did not fight intensely against British imperialism from its very infancy. By the way, this does not happen in any country. Only after reaching a certain level of economic might do the economic class contradictions reveal themselves in an explicitly political form. According to G.K. Lieten, the Indian capitalist class was definitely born as a comprador but by the 1920s, it had, essentially and mainly, become a national bourgeoisie, regardless of how conciliationist and compromising its strategy and general tactics had been at times. (Lieten, G. K. (1983). ‘The Civil Disobedience Movement and the National Bourgeoisie’, Social Scientist, 11(5), 33–48). Bipin Chandra argues that the Indian capitalist class was never comprador. (Chandra, Bipin. 1996. Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India, Orient Longman, New Delhi). Aditya Mukherjee and Mridula Mukherjee also believe that from the 1920s the Indian bourgeoisie was undoubtedly a part of the nationalist camp. (Mukherjee, Aditya. 1978. ‘Indian Capitalist Class and Congress on national planning and public sector 1930-47’, Economic and Political Weekly, September 2, 1978). There are problems with Bhagwan Josh’s characterization of the Congress but he, too, agrees that at least from the 1920s, the Indian capitalist class was playing the role of an independent national capitalist class. (Josh, Bhagawan. 1991. ‘Indian National Congress and Politics of the Capitalist Class’ in Dwijendra Tripathi (ed.) Business and Politics in India: A Historical Perspective, New Delhi: Manohar). For all their differences with each other, all these historians clearly hold that it is clear from its economic policies, ideology and politics that from the 1910s and 1920s, the Indian bourgeoisie was not comprador at all.
“But for Ghosh the comprador capitalist class is like the Hegelian demiurgos or the Absolute Idea. The national bourgeoisie can only be a national bourgeoisie if it was not born from the ranks of a comprador bourgeoisie and has no relation to any imperialist power. Since Ghosh severs the economic activities of the comprador bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie from their political character, the only basis for ascertaining their character becomes their birth as if they are not a class but a caste. Ghosh has adopted this method of argumentation in order to refute the fact that as the industrial character of the Indian bourgeoisie developed with the changes in the economic relations within the colonial structure, its national character, too, developed in the same proportion. It was indeed the semicolonial system because of which, in China, the capitalist class was organized, on the one hand, into national bourgeoisie (who had developed an industrial base, no matter how backward) and, on the other, as an agent of imperialist capital, into a comprador bourgeoisie (which, essentially and mainly, remained commercial and bureaucratic). A considerable part of the Indian capitalist class, which was born under a total colonial structure, initially played the role of the agent and commercial partner of imperialist capital. From the end of the Nineteenth century, a sizable part of this class, taking advantage of the compulsions of the British ruling class caught in inter-imperialist rivalry and war, invested in the industrial sector. Its political character changed in direct proportion to its economic development.”(Sunny, ibid)
The fact is that the thesis of Suniti Kumar Ghosh is a distortion of Mao’s writings and Marxist political economy in general. Learning from such poor intellectual source, the editors of Nazariya editors repeat the similar argument, but in a much poorer form. This is the first principal blunder of Marxist methodology by Nazariya editors.
II. Is the Absence of Protectionism a Characteristic of Comprador Bourgeoisie?
The second methodological blunder which Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers make is to claim that capitalist development through the Prussian path occurs only if the bourgeoisie permanently sticks to the policy of protectionism. Nazariya editors quote Marx and Engels selectively to prove this idiocy. The whole point is to assert that since in the neoliberal phase, the ruling class in India opened up the market for foreign capital and protectionist policies were revoked, therefore Indian bourgeoisie is comprador in character! Nazariya editors write:
“The bourgeoisie in Germany requires protection against foreign countries in order to clear away the remnants of the feudal aristocracy.” If Germany, a country that followed the Prussian path had a protectionist foreign policy, to ensure the end of feudal fetters, why doesn’t India also have the same policy?
“Marx in the ‘German Ideology’, mentions that manufacturing was always sheltered by protective duties in the home market. In India, this shield was completely revoked after the WTO forced India to remove protective tariffs. This led to the complete ruin of the MSME sector, which was run by the national bourgeoisie (middle bourgeoisie) of the country. This section aspires for independent capitalist development but is restricted by a government that backs the interests of imperialism. What independent foreign policy does the Indian state have, when it extinguishes its own indigenous manufacturing sector at the behest of the imperialist institutions?”(Nazariya editors, ibid)
First of all, let us ask the basic question: is protectionist policy the differentia specifica or a precondition of the Prussian path? No. The fact is that protectionism is the need of every emerging bourgeoisie in the initial phases of national capitalist development. Engels, elaborating Marx’s position on protectionism and free trade, writes:
“Such was protection at its origin in the 17th century, such it remained well into the 19th century. It was then held to be the normal policy of every civilized state in Western Europe. The only exceptions were the smaller states of Germany and Switzerland – not from dislike of the system, but from the impossibility of applying it to such small territories.
“It was under the fostering wing of protection that the system of modern industry – production by steam-moved machinery – was hatched and developed in England during the last third of the 18th century.” (Engels. 1888. ‘Preface’ to Marx’s On the Question of Free Trade)
However, as capitalism develops in a country, its bourgeoisie becomes economically strengthened and competitive, and gains confidence, the protectionist policies give way to the doctrine of ‘free trade’. Protectionism is never the permanent general policy of the bourgeoisie of any nation and it cannot be. As Engels points out, the same happened with England:
“The secession of the South American colonies from the rule of their European mother countries, the conquest by England of all French and Dutch colonies worth having, the progressive subjugation of India turned the people of all these immense territories into customers for English goods. England thus supplemented the protection she practiced at home by the Free Trade she forced upon her possible customers abroad; and, thanks to this happy mixture of both systems, at the end of the wars, in 1815, she found herself, with regard to all important branches of industry, in possession of the virtual monopoly of the trade of the world.
“This monopoly was further extended and strengthened during the ensuing years of peace. The start, which England had obtained during the war, was increased from year to year; she seemed to distance more and more all her possible rivals. The exports of manufactured goods in ever growing quantities became indeed a question of life and death to that country. And there seemed but two obstacles in the way: the prohibitive or protective legislation of other countries, and the taxes upon the import of raw materials and articles of food in England.
“Then the Free Trade doctrines of classical political economy – of the French physiocrats and their English successors, Adam Smith and Ricardo – became popular in the land of John Bull.
“Protection at home was needless to manufacturers who beat all their foreign rivals, and whose very existence was staked on the expansion of their exports. Protection at home was of advantage to none but the producers of articles of food and other raw materials, to the agricultural interest, which, under then existing circumstances in England, meant the receivers of rent, the landed aristocracy. And this kind of protection was hurtful to the manufacturers. By taxing raw materials, it raised the price of the articles manufactured from them; by taxing food, it raised the price of labour; in both ways, it placed the British manufacturer at a disadvantage as compared with his foreign competitor. And, as all other countries sent to England chiefly agricultural products and drew from England chiefly manufactured goods, repeal of the English protective duties on corn and raw materials generally was at the same time an appeal to foreign countries to do away with – or at least to reduce in turn – the import duties levied by them on English manufactures.
“After a long and violent struggle, the English industrial capitalists, already in reality the leading class of the nation, that class whose interests were then the chief national interests, were victorious. The landed aristocracy had to give in. The duties on corn and other raw materials were repealed. Free Trade became the watchword of the day.” (ibid, emphasis ours)
Even in Germany, about which the editors of Nazariya peddle a lot of non-sense, the protectionist policies of a certain period had nothing in and by themselves to do with the Prussian path of land reforms. Marx writes in the same essay, the Engels’s ‘Preface’ of which we have just quoted:
“Moreover, the protectionist system is nothing but a means of establishing large-scale industry in any given country, that is to say, of making it dependent upon the world market, and from the moment that dependence upon the world market is established, there is already more or less dependence upon free trade. Besides this, the protective system helps to develop free trade competition within a country. Hence we see that in countries where the bourgeoisie is beginning to make itself felt as a class, in Germany for example, it makes great efforts to obtain protective duties. They serve the bourgeoisie as weapons against feudalism and absolute government, as a means for the concentration of its own powers and for the realization of free trade within the same country.” (Marx. 1847. On the Question of Free Trade, emphasis ours)
Marx and Engels have pointed out that protectionism has never been the general permanent policy of a politically independent bourgeoisie or national bourgeoisie. Whether a bourgeoisie adopts the policy of protectionism or free trade depends on the stage of development of capitalism in which the bourgeoisie finds itself and secondly on its place in the international competition. In the quote which Nazariya editors refer to, Marx is writing about trade wars in the era of colonization among those countries, where capitalism was growing. Presenting this as characteristic feature of national bourgeoisie is sheer ignorance and non-sense. Here is what Marx says:
“With the advent of manufactures, the various nations entered into a competitive relationship, the struggle for trade, which was fought out in wars, protective duties and prohibitions, whereas earlier the nations, insofar as they were connected at all, had carried on an inoffensive exchange with each other. Trade had from now on a political significance.
“Through the colonization of the newly discovered countries the commercial struggle of the nations amongst one another was given new fuel and accordingly greater extension and animosity.
“The competition of the nations among themselves was excluded as far as possible by tariffs, prohibitions and treaties; and in the last resort the competitive struggle was carried on and decided by wars (especially naval wars).
“Manufacture was all the time sheltered by protective duties in the home market, by monopolies in the colonial market, and abroad as much as possible by differential duties.
“It was the merchants and especially the shippers who more than anybody else pressed for State protection and monopolies; the manufacturers also demanded and indeed received protection, but all the time were inferior in political importance to the merchants. (Marx Engels, German Ideology, p. 77-79)
Here Marx and Engels are talking about the initial phase of capitalist development. We have seen above how Marx and Engels pointed out that as soon as the policies of protectionism have played their historical role, they are abandoned by the bourgeoisie which now clamors for ‘free trade’.
We see similar trajectory in the development of Indian bourgeoisie. As long as, it was oppressed by imperialism, it was unable to compete with British capital, it demanded protectionism by reminding the British bourgeoisie of its own period of protectionism. Economic nationalists like Naoroji, Dutt, Ranade, etc. had been doing precisely this. The protective barriers were strengthened by the Indian bourgeoisie in the most aggressive manner after the independence. They were reduced only gradually and only in proportion with the increase in the economic might and competitiveness of the Indian bourgeoisie, as well shall see in a little while.
Thus, the “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya have utterly failed to understand the fact that in the initial phases of capitalist development, every bourgeoisie demands protectionism, which is essential for many purposes: the development of domestic industry and free trade within the country, the primitive accumulation and proletarization of the petty commodity producers, and becoming capable of competition in the international market. This policy has been implemented by the bourgeoisie in countries that witnessed the American path of land reforms as well as those which saw Prussian path of land reforms. The policy of protectionism has nothing whatsoever to do with the model of land reforms implemented by any bourgeoisie, causally speaking.
The fact is that Prussian path of land reforms has no causal relation with protectionism as such. Had that been so, Lenin would have mentioned it when he categorically explained what he meant by Prussian path of land reforms. Let us see what Lenin writes about the Prussian Path? Lenin explains:
“The survivals of serfdom may fall away either as a result of the transformation of landlord economy or as a result of the abolition of the landlord latifundia, i.e., either by reform or by revolution. Bourgeois development may proceed by having big landlord economies at the head, which will gradually become more and more bourgeois and gradually substitute bourgeois for feudal methods of exploitation. It may also proceed by having small peasant economies at the head, which in a revolutionary way, will remove the “excrescence” of the feudal latifundia from the social organism and then freely develop without them along the path of capitalist economy.
“Those two paths of objectively possible bourgeois development we would call the Prussian path and the American path, respectively. In the first case feudal landlord economy slowly evolves into bourgeois, Junker landlord economy, which condemns the peasants to decades of most harrowing expropriation and bondage, while at the same time a small minority of Grossbauern (“big peasants”) arises. In the second case there is no landlord economy, or else it is broken up by revolution, which confiscates and splits up the feudal estates. In that case the peasant predominates, becomes the sole agent of agriculture, and evolves into a capitalist farmer. In the first case the main content of the evolution is transformation of feudal bondage into servitude and capitalist exploitation on the land of the feudal landlords—Junkers. In the second case the main background is transformation of the patriarchal peasant into a bourgeois farmer.” (Lenin. 1962. ‘The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy’, Collected Works, Volume 13)
Lenin’s definition has got nothing to do with protectionist policy as the readers can see. There are a lot of such absurd “arguments” in Nazariya’s article.
Secondly, India did have a strict protectionist policy for a long time after the independence. Even now, internationally, India is a country which has one of the highest protectionist tariff regimes. The protective tariff was demanded by the Indian bourgeoisie from the 1920s itself. It can be traced back to the emergence of economic nationalism in India in the late-Nineteenth century. Abhinav Sinha writes:
“Roy has also argued that the origins of a policy of import-substitution industrialization (ISI) must be traced back to the 1920s, when the colonial government began the policy of protecting industries in India through what Roy has termed ‘discriminate’ protection. The only change after the Independence was that the ISI based on ‘discriminate’ protection was changed to ISI based on ‘indiscriminate’ protection. Roy’s argument goes against the argument of Chibber who focuses on the failure of ISI-based industrialization in India; he contends that the question of ISI was not so much a question of industrialization but that of ‘nurturing the indigenous capital’. We, too, argue along the same line: seeing ISI as a mere failed way of industrialization in India misses the real political point: ISI was a political choice of the Indian capitalist class, based on what it perceived as its collective class interest, rather than an economic technical question. This choice of the Indian capitalist class was certainly an expression of its political will and determinateness. Roy has demonstrated that it was the will of the industrial bourgeoisie that determined the policy of the nationalists also. That is why ISI was stressed upon by the industrial capitalists and especially textile capitalists. They put pressure on the colonial government to buy from the firms based in India only. Notably, the Bombay Plan clearly opted for ‘indiscriminate’ protection from foreign competition, state subsidies and building of the infrastructure by the state on the basis of taxpayers’ money.”(Sinha, A. 2024. In the Valley of Historical Time, p. 47)
We must also dwell upon the ‘Bombay Plan’ as it also clearly reveals the long term vision and planning of the Indian bourgeoisie. Abhinav writes:
“..what was the basic idea or vision behind the Bombay Plan? It was simply this: the state was supposed to own and run the infrastructural and many of the capital goods industries on the one hand, whereas the private capital was supposed to invest in industries that promise smaller investments and quicker returns, that is, shorter turnover period and therefore a higher annual rate of profit. The intention was to develop an industrial base with taxpayers’ money because the Indian capitalist class lacked the capital, technology and efficiency to do it on its own. It needed the state to accumulate the primary capital for this task by pooling the national savings and deficit spending. Similarly, from these savings and deficit spending itself the capitalist houses were given huge loans for investment. A solid industrial base and infrastructure was needed for industrial development with least dependence on foreign capital. The economic dependence had to be minimized and regulated in such a way as to ensure that the political independence is not compromised and the whole story of Indian capitalist class during the entire period of the so-called Nehruvian ‘socialism’ and public sector capitalism, can be metaphorically summed up in this ‘tight rope walk’. This demonstrated the character of Indian capitalist class. It was neither comprador, nor ‘national’ (as the events of repression of peoples’ movements and refusal to implement radical land reforms after the Independence demonstrated) nor imperialist. It aspired to become capable of competing in the international market and in maintaining its political independence while regulating its economic dependence. It was scared of unleashing of popular revolutionary democratic potential, therefore, it shied away from implementing radical land reforms and instead opted for a peculiar kind of Indian variant of what Lenin had called ‘the Prussian Path of land reforms’, or the ‘landlord or junker-type transformation’. At the same time, it did not want to compromise its political independence. As a consequence of this dialectic, the Indian capitalist class acted as a ‘junior partner’ of imperialism and at the same time always suppressed any popular potential from unleashing and demonstrated the same repressive zeal as had shown by the colonial state. The entire historical trajectory of Indian capitalist development especially till the 1990s was determined by this contradiction of the reactionary ‘national’ bourgeoisie of India. The Bombay Plan represents this very vision in its infancy. (Sinha, A. 2024. In the Valley of Historical Time, p. 46)
More:
“…what began in the 1980s, namely, ‘liberalization by stealth’ and then with inauguration of the New Economic Policy in 1991, was certainly part of the plan, rather than a departure or aberration from it. If one reads the ‘Bombay Plan’, the documents of the First Five Year Plan and the Second Five Year Plan, between the lines, this fact comes out clearly. In the political sense, the transition from partial state monopoly capitalism to full-blown neoliberal capitalism was always part of the plan; rather, it would be more accurate to say that the plan was precisely about this transition. (Sinha, A. ibid, p. 40)
There is a general consensus among the leading historians, economists and economic historians that India pursued the policy of strict protectionism and import-substitution for more than four decades after the independence and the majority of political economists agree that even today India, though not following strict protectionism of the state monopoly capitalism period, has one of the highest protective barriers. Even if we take Nazariya’s false claim that India totally abandoned protective barriers in 1991, it does not prove that Indian bourgeoisie is comprador, because protectionism is the necessity of any bourgeoisie only in the initial phase of capitalist development as we demonstrated above. In fact, after this phase is past, protectionism becomes one of the barriers to further capitalist accumulation. That is why, the new economic policies implemented in 1991 were manifestation of the need of the Indian bourgeoisie.
Moreover, if Nazariya toddlers concede that the Indian bourgeoisie did pursue protectionist policy till 1990s, then it was, from Nazariya’s own definitions, a national bourgeoisie and only since 1991, in the neoliberal phase, did it, again (!) become comprador!
As we pointed out, the problem is that even after 1990s, India remains a country with high protective tariffs! On the other hand, the US bourgeoisie has lower protectionist tariffs, so does it make them comprador? South Korea is country having the least protectionist policy. Does this make South Korean bourgeoisie a comprador bourgeoisie? No, it does not. Here is a list of tariff rates for different countries in 2021:
Australia: 0.8 %
China: 2.3%
France: 1.4%
Germany: 1.4%
India: 5.9%
United States: 1.5%
(Tariff rate, applied, weighted mean, all products (%), Source: World Bank)
The editors of Nazariya attempted a very foolish sleight of hand: claiming that Prussian path of land reforms can be implemented only with protectionist policy, which is a general permanent policy of any national bourgeoisie. We have seen that the particular model of land reforms has nothing to do with protectionism or free trade policies and secondly, in the initial phases of capitalist development, bourgeoisie of all countries implemented protectionist policies. Thirdly, we demonstrated that Indian bourgeoisie implemented strict protectionism till the end of the 1980s and even after that reduced protective tariffs very slowly and gradually and even today India has one of the highest protective tariffs in the world.
III. Is the Indebtedness of a Bourgeoisie a Symptom of its Comprador Character?
Third methodological blunder by Nazariya is to claim that indebtedness of a bourgeoisie is a sign of its comprador character. The claim made by Nazariya editors on the question of debt removes all doubt about their total ignorance of the ABC of Marxist political economy. They think that ‘indebtedness’ is characteristic of a bourgeoisie which is under the yoke of usurer’s bondage! Nazariya claims:
“A capitalist that has his own capital and is therefore independent would not be completely dependent on debt to run his business. … An independent capitalist may take debt to run his business but he would have some capital of his own too. In the case of Adani, he is completely dependent on foreign finance and therefore, a majority share of his profits go abroad. In the case of an independent capitalist, it is surplus profit that is used to pay back the debt.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
This small paragraph has so many stupidities fused into one that it would take us a few pages to clear them out.
First of all, one of the basic features of capitalist production is that with increasing concentration and centralization of capital, it becomes increasingly difficult for the individual capitalists to make new investments or replace the fixed capital of existing investments on the basis of their own individual capital. The socialization of production reaches such a scale, where without the credit system, further development of productive powers is not possible. Credit system, in the words of Marx, first creeps in as a humble assistant of capitalist production and very soon becomes one of its principal levers. The fusion of bank capital and industrial capital takes place precisely as the result of the increasing concentration and centralization of capital, monopolization and socialization of production. In the monopoly stage of capitalism, that is, in the imperialist era, it is one of defining characteristics of most of the major capitalist houses that the share of debt in their total assets continuously increases. This is not a sign of their comprador character! Rather, it is a sign of the increasing industrial-financial character of the bourgeoisie.
Secondly, Nazariya “left”-wing upstarts also do not understand the categories of ‘interest’, ‘surplus profit’ and ‘entrepreneurial profit’. They claim that if bulk of the assets of capitalists are formed by foreign debt, then most of their profits go to the foreign finance capital as interest! First of all, no capitalist would pay interest rates that bring their profits lower than the average rate of profit. That is why profitability functions as the limits for the rate of interest. That is why, whenever there is a capitalist crisis, central banks lower their rates of interests, in order to give impetus to investments. Whenever the rate of profit is high, then the demand for capital also increases and as a result the rate of interest also increases. Therefore, if most of Adani’s profits go out of the country as interest payment, and the lesser part of his appropriated surplus value remains with it as entrepreneurial profit, then Adani would simply not invest! Moreover, the editors of Nazariya do not understand the category of surplus profit. Surplus profit is the profit that is over and above the average rate of profit. Such surplus profit is possible only on the basis of some kind of monopoly. This can be monopoly ownership of land, natural monopoly, economic monopoly or political monopoly. The monopoly ownership of land gives rise to a surplus profit that is transformed into absolute ground rent. Rest of the types of monopoly give rise to what Marx calls an ‘independent monopoly price’ giving the capitalist a surplus profit over and above average rate of profit. The absolute ground rent is determined by the difference between the average rate of profit and the surplus value in the agricultural sector in the conditions of monopoly ownership of land (that is, in the effective absence of nationalization of land), whereas the independent monopoly price is limited by the effective demand for the commodity. Without understanding all these things, the editors of Nazariya mindlessly write anything at all, which does not make any sense!
Now let us see what Lenin and Hilferding have to say about this. Hilferding explains this process in these words:
“…as the scale of production expands, and fixed capital becomes much more important, so this limitation of credit to circulating capital is felt to be too restrictive. If credit is then required for fixed capital, however, the terms on which credit is made available undergo a fundamental change. Circulating capital is reconverted into money at the end of a period of turnover, whereas fixed capital is converted into money very gradually, over a long period of time, as it is slowly used up. Consequently, money capital which is turned into fixed capital must be advanced on a long-term basis because it will remain tied up in production for a long time.
“A bank cannot lend funds for investment in fixed capital until it has attained a certain size; and it must expand as rapidly, or more rapidly, than industrial enterprises themselves. Moreover, a bank cannot limit its participation to a single enterprise, but must distribute the risks by participating in many different enterprises. This policy will in any case be adopted to ensure a regular flow of repayments on its loans.
“This way of providing credit has changed the relation of the banks to industry. So long as the banks merely serve as intermediaries in payment transactions, their only interest is the condition of an enterprise, its solvency, at a particular time. They accept bills in which they have confidence, advance money on commodities, and accept as collateral shares which can be sold in the market at prevailing prices. Their particular sphere of action is not that of industrial capital, but rather that of commercial capital, and additionally that of meeting the needs of the stock exchange. Their relation to industry too is concerned less with the production process than with the sales made by industrialists to wholesalers. This changes when the bank begins to provide the industrialist with capital for production. When it does this, it can no longer limit its interest to the condition of the enterprise and the market at a specific time, but must necessarily concern itself with the long-range prospects of the enterprise and the future state of the market. What had once been a momentary interest becomes an enduring one; and the larger the amount of credit supplied and, above all, the larger the proportion of the loan capital turned into fixed capital, the stronger and more abiding will that interest be.
“At the same time the bank’s influence over the enterprise increases. So long as credit was granted only for a short time, and only as circulating capital, it was relatively easy to terminate the relationship. The enterprise could repay the loan at the end of the turnover period, and then look for another source of credit. This ceases to be the case when a part of the fixed capital is also obtained through a loan. The obligation can now only be liquidated over a long period of time, and in consequence the enterprise becomes tied to the bank. In this relationship the bank is the more powerful party. The bank always disposes over capital in its liquid, readily available, form: money capital. The enterprise, on the other hand, has to depend upon reconverting commodities into money. Should the circulation process come to a halt, or prices fall, the enterprise will require additional capital which can only be obtained in the form of credit. Under a developed credit system, an enterprise maintains its own capital at a minimum; any sudden need for additional liquid funds involves obtaining credit, and failure to do so may lead to bankruptcy. It is the bank’s control of money capital which gives it a dominant position in its dealings with enterprises whose capital is tied up in production or in commodities. The bank enjoys an additional advantage by virtue of the fact that its capital is relatively independent of the outcome of any single transaction, whereas the fate of the entire enterprise may depend entirely upon a single transaction. There may, of course, be cases in which a bank is so deeply committed to one particular enterprise that its own success or failure is synonymous with that of the enterprise, and it must then meet all the latter’s requirements. In general, however, it is always the superiority of capital resources, and particularly disposal over freely available money capital, which determines economic dependency within a credit relationship.
“The changed relationship of the banks to industry intensifies all the tendencies toward concentration which are already implicit in the technical conditions of the banking system.” (Hilferding. 1910. Finance Capital)
Hilferding explains that industrial enterprise could repay the loan at the end of the turnover period and as turnover period for fixed capital is long, the enterprise is tied to bank. It becomes dependent on loans. This is a general process through which finance capital emerges as the regulator of capitalist production.
Lenin explains:
““A steadily increasing proportion of capital in industry,” writes Hilferding, “ceases to belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the medium of the banks which, in relation to them, represent the owners of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to sink an increasing share of its funds in industry. Thus, to an ever greater degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalist. This bank capital, i.e., capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call ‘finance capital’.” “Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists.”
“This definition is incomplete insofar as it is silent on one extremely important fact—on the increase of concentration of production and of capital to such an extent that concentration is leading, and has led, to monopoly. But throughout the whole of his work, and particularly in the two chapters preceding the one from which this definition is taken, Hilferding stresses the part played by capitalist monopolies.
“The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry—such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept. (Lenin. 1916. Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism)
Thus, for Lenin, the coalescence of bank capital and industrial capital gives rise to monopoly finance capital and it is clear from Hilferding’s quote above that loan for fixed capital becomes a feature of this investment. Hilferding’s analysis is based on Marx’s concept in Capital, Volume 3. The difference between pre-capitalist usurious capital and modern finance capital is precisely this, which the editors of Nazariya fail to understand: the pre-capitalist usurious capital was based on unequal exchange (‘profit upon alienation’) with the petty commodity producers, whereas the modern finance capital is based on the fusion of bank capital and industrial capital and it appropriates profit not on the basis of unequal exchange, but through modern capitalist production.
Today, the most indebted companies in the world are Toyota, Evergrande, Volkswagen, Amazon and Apple among others. Principal lenders of include Bank of China, Mizuho Bank of Japan among others. Would the editors classify the owners of Toyota or Amazon as comprador bourgeoisie? Such is the height of inanity of the dogmatic semifeudalists!
In this part of methodological issues, this much suffices right now. In section 3 of this essay we will see concrete examples pertaining to indebtedness of various corporations and again reveal the ludicrousness of the claims of the editors of Nazariya. If anything, there article can be a primer of how not to develop any Nazariya about anything.
IV. Idealization of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and Nazariya’s Mindless Charge of Khruschevism on The Anvil
Nazariya editors’ fourth major idiocy is the claim that The Anvil’s understanding of India’s transition from feudalism to capitalism is Khruschevite revisionist. This laughable charge is based on their inability to make a distinction between bourgeois democratic revolution and socialist revolution. Khrushchev’s arguments in Twentieth Congress of the CPSU (B) for ‘peaceful transition’ was aimed for transition from capitalism to socialism. To claim that the transition from feudalism to capitalism can take place only through a bourgeois democratic revolution and to argue otherwise is Khrushchevite revisionism, is, in fact, tantamount to call Lenin a Khrushchevite revisionist. Let us explain what our “left”-wing infantiles of Nazariya cannot understand.
It is true that the revolutionary communist strategy for national liberation would always be one of accomplishing a national democratic revolution and Khrushchev’s revisionism consisted in the fact that he advocated the line of ‘peaceful coexistence’ and just like the ‘Three Worlds Theory’ presented by the Chinese successors of Khrushchev, would mean giving up radical militant struggles for national liberation. However, one needs to make a distinction between the conscious subjective communist strategy of fulfilling the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic tasks on the one hand and the objective historical process of completion of the bourgeois democratic tasks on the other hand, which has historically assumed both forms: national democratic revolutions through national liberation wars (led by communists or radical national bourgeoisie) as well as transition from feudalism to capitalism in a non-revolutionary process. In fact, history shows the tasks of democratic revolution were accomplished in most of the European countries in a non-revolutionary process. Did Germany ever have a bourgeois democratic revolution which did away with feudalism in a radical way? Did Italy ever witness a radical bourgeois democratic revolution which abolished the feudal relations of production? Long before any democratic movement or upheaval, capitalism was established in these countries as the dominant mode of production. How many European countries actually witnessed a radical bourgeois democratic revolution which put an end to feudalism? In most of these countries, the transition from feudalism to capitalism happened in a non-revolutionary process. The political structure in some of these countries did undergo some radical changes afterwards due to popular movements. However, capitalist mode of production itself did not become the dominant mode of production through a democratic revolution and the bourgeoisie did not become the ruling class by overthrowing the feudal aristocracy through a democratic revolution. Same is true for many post-colonial capitalist countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Except the communist-led national democratic revolutions in a number of countries and a few examples of revolutionary national liberation wars led by radical national bourgeoisie (for instance, in Algeria), in most of the countries, political independence did not come through classic revolutionary national liberation wars.
Clearly enough, the editors of Nazariya have no clue what they are talking about! To claim that capitalism as the dominant mode of production and bourgeoisie as the ruling class can come into existence only through a democratic revolution, is not only a mockery of theory but also a complete ignorance of history.
The charge that it is Khrushchevite revisionism to say that India underwent a Prussian path of land reforms, or junker-type transformation of production relations, i.e., through a protracted process without any radical land reforms and implementation of the classic bourgeois democratic slogan of ‘land to the tiller’, is not only ridiculous but also a childish and yet criminal distortion of Marx and Lenin by these upstart “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya. Let us see where Marx and Lenin stand on this question.
Marx and Lenin said that it was possible for the transition from feudalism to capitalism to take place through non-revolutionary process and through gradual reforms. It was also Marx who analyzed how English bourgeoisie came to power through a non-revolutionary process. However, on the contrary, Nazariya editors claim that:
“Indian “independence” was not a qualitative change in production relations (a revolution), but a reformist measure to change the face of the ruling classes in India. At a time when contradictions are high and the possibility of revolution is near; the ruling classes have historically not only used outright fascism to defend itself, but also more seemingly democratic tactics in order to preserve itself. This pushes forward the Khruschevite agenda that national liberation struggles had ended across the world and a peaceful transition to socialism, just like a peaceful national liberation struggle, was a possibility across the world. One can clearly see that the basis of the analysis of Anvil is based in revisionism and not in Maoism. (Nazariya editors, ibid)
Who can be so muddle-headed except for our upstart “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya!?
Let us see what Lenin can teach to these “left”-wing infantiles. Lenin differentiates between Prussian path and American path in the following way:
“Serfdom may be abolished by the feudal-landlord economies slowly evolving into Junker-bourgeois economies, by the mass of the peasants being turned into landless husbandmen and Knechts, by forcibly keeping the masses down to a pauper standard of living, by the rise of small groups of Grossbauern, of rich bourgeois peasants, who inevitably spring up under capitalism from among the peasantry. That is the path that the Black-Hundred landlords, and Stolypin, their minister, have chosen. They have realized that the path for the development of Russia cannot be cleared unless the rusty medieval forms of landownership are forcibly broken up. And they have boldly set out to break them up in the interests of the landlords. They have thrown overboard the sympathy for the semi-feudal village commune which until recently was widespread among the bureaucracy and the landlords. They have evaded all the “constitutional” laws in order to break up the village communes by force. They have given the kulaks carte blanche to rob the peasant masses, to break up the old system of landowner ship, to ruin thousands of peasant farms; they have handed over the medieval village to be “sacked and plundered” by the possessors of money. They cannot act otherwise if they are to preserve their class rule, for they have realized the necessity of adapting themselves to capitalist development and not fighting against it. And in order to preserve their rule they can find no other allies against the mass of the peasants than the “upstarts”, the Razuvayevs and Kolupayevs. They have no alternative but to shout to these Kolupayevs: Enrichissez-vous! — enrich yourselves! We shall make it possible for you to gain a hundred rubles for every ruble, if you will help us to save the basis of our rule under the new conditions. That path of development, if it is to be pursued successfully, calls for wholesale, systematic, unbridled violence against the peasant masses and against the proletariat. And the landlord counter-revolution is hastening to organize that violence all along the line.
“The other path of development we have called the American path of development of capitalism, in contrast to the former, the Prussian path. It, too, involves the forcible break-up of the old system of landownership; only the obtuse philistines of Russian liberalism can dream of the possibility of a painless, peaceful outcome of the exceedingly acute crisis in Russia.
“But this essential and inevitable break-up may be carried out in the interests of the peasant masses and not of the landlord gang. A mass of free farmers may serve as a basis for the development of capitalism without any landlord economy whatsoever, since, taken as a whole, the latter form of economy is economically reactionary, whereas the elements of free farming have been created among the peasantry by the preceding economic history of the country. Capitalist development along such a path should proceed far more broadly, freely, and swiftly owing to the tremendous growth of the home market and of the rise in the standard of living, the energy, initiative, and culture of the entire population. And Russia’s vast lands available for colonization, the utilization of which is greatly hampered by the feudal oppression of the mass of the peasantry in Russia proper, as well as by the feudal-bureaucratic handling of the agrarian policy—these lands will provide the economic foundation for a huge expansion of agriculture and for increased production in both depth and breadth.
“Such a path of development requires not only the abolition of landlordism. For the rule of the feudal landlords through the centuries has left its imprint on all forms of landownership in the country, on the peasant allotments as well as upon the holdings of the settlers in the relatively free borderlands: the whole colonization policy of the autocracy is permeated with the Asiatic interference of a hide-bound bureaucracy, which hindered the settlers from establishing themselves freely, introduced terrible confusion into the new agrarian relationships, and infected the border regions with the poison of the feudal bureaucracy of central Russia. Not only is landlordism in Russia medieval, but so also is the peasant allotment system. The latter is incredibly complicated. It splits the peasantry up into thousands of small units, medieval groups, social categories. It reflects the age-old history of arrogant interference in the peasants’ agrarian relationships both by the central government and the local authorities. It drives the peasants, as into a ghetto, into petty medieval associations of a fiscal, tax-levying nature, into associations for the ownership of allotment land, i. e., into the village communes. And Russia’s economic development is in actual fact tearing the peasantry out of this medieval environment—on the one hand, by causing allotments to be rented out and abandoned, and, on the other hand, by creating a system of farming by the free farmers of the future (or by the future Grossbauern of a Junker Russia) out of the fragments of the most diverse forms of landownership: privately owned allotments, rented allotments, purchased property, land rented from the land lord, land rented from the state, and so on.”(Lenin. 1962. ‘The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy’, Collected Works, Vol. 13, Progress Publishers, p. 422-24)
Further, Lenin says:
“The survivals of serfdom may fall away either as a result of the transformation of landlord economy or as a result of the abolition of the landlord latifundia, i.e., either by reform or by revolution. Bourgeois development may proceed by having big landlord economies at the head, which will gradually become more and more bourgeois and gradually substitute bourgeois for feudal methods of exploitation. It may also proceed by having small peasant economies at the head, which in a revolutionary way, will remove the “excrescence” of the feudal latifundia from the social organism and then freely develop without them along the path of capitalist economy.
“Those two paths of objectively possible bourgeois development we would call the Prussian path and the American path, respectively. In the first case feudal landlord economy slowly evolves into bourgeois, Junker landlord economy, which condemns the peasants to decades of most harrowing expropriation and bondage, while at the same time a small minority of Grossbauern (“big peasants”) arises. In the second case there is no landlord economy, or else it is broken up by revolution, which confiscates and splits up the feudal estates. In that case the peasant predominates, becomes the sole agent of agriculture, and evolves into a capitalist farmer. In the first case the main content of the evolution is transformation of feudal bondage into servitude and capitalist exploitation on the land of the feudal landlords—Junkers. In the second case the main background is transformation of the patriarchal peasant into a bourgeois farmer. (Lenin, 1978. ‘The Agrarain Programme Social-Democracy’, Collected Works, Vol. 13, Progress publishers, p. 239)
“Only by clearly understanding the difference between these two types and the bourgeois character of both, can we correctly explain the agrarian question in the Russian revolution and grasp the class significance of the various agrarian programmes put forward by the different parties.”(Lenin, ibid, p. 242)
Lenin also makes it clear that in Russia, the history showed examples of both paths, though the Prussian path was the main. The “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya might jump at this and whing, whine and wail: ‘then why Lenin still talked about democratic revolution in Russia?’ Well, because the question of revolution is the question of state. The state in Russia was still feudal aristocratic Czarist monarchy, even though the bourgeoisie has gained considerable economic might. Therefore, according to Lenin, the first task was to consummate the people’s democratic revolution by taking the entire peasantry along, and then the second task was moving to socialist revolution in an uninterrupted fashion by splitting the peasantry and taking the poor working peasantry along. One can ask the editors of Nazariya: did capitalism suddenly develop in nine months between the February Revolution and October Revolution? How did the conditions of socialist revolution become ripe in nine months? The fact is that in terms of mode of production, the capitalist mode of production had become the dominant mode of production long before the February Revolution, as was demonstrated by Lenin so many times since 1898 itself.
So, according to Nazariya, Lenin here is anachronistically a Khruschevite revisionist because he demonstrates the capitalism can develop in a non-revolutionary process!
Let us also be clear that why the transition from capitalism to socialism cannot be a peaceful, non-revolutionary process and why the transition from feudalism to capitalism can be a non-revolutionary gradual process in certain conditions. The transition from feudalism to capitalism is marked by the replacement of one exploitative oppressive minority as ruling class by another exploitative oppressive minority. In fact, this holds true for all systemic transitions before the transition from capitalism to socialism. Such transitions have taken place as a revolutionary rupture as well as non-revolutionary gradual process. The transition from capitalism to socialism is the first instance where for the first time in the history of class society, the exploited and oppressed majority replaces an exploitative and oppressive minority as ruling class. This is a revolution which aims to end the class society itself. It is not simply a revolution targeting capitalist society, but the entire class society. That is why, the socialist revolution can never take place in a non-revolutionary process. However, the transition from feudalism to capitalism can take place in a non-revolutionary fashion and historically it has. Only the “left”-wing infantiles of the likes of Nazariya, can be blind to this fact.
Here the observations of György Lukács are particularly relevant:
“For socialism would never happen ‘by itself’, and as the result of an inevitable natural economic development. The natural laws of capitalism do indeed lead inevitably to its ultimate crisis but at the end of its road would be the destruction of all civilization and a new barbarism.
“It is this that constitutes the most profound difference between bourgeois and proletarian revolutions. The ability of bourgeois revolutions to storm ahead with such brilliant elàn is grounded socially, in the fact that they are drawing the consequences of an almost completed economic and social process in a society whose feudal and absolutist structure has been profoundly undermined politically, governmentally, juridically, etc., by the vigorous upsurge of capitalism. The true revolutionary element is the economic transformation of the feudal system of production into a capitalist one so that it would be possible in theory for this process to take place without a bourgeois revolution, without political upheaval on the part of the revolutionary bourgeoisie. And in that case those parts of the feudal and absolutist superstructure that were not eliminated by ‘revolutions from above’ would collapse of their own accord when capitalism was already fully developed. (The German situation fits this pattern in certain respects.)
“No doubt, a proletarian revolution, too, would be unthinkable if its economic premises and preconditions had not already been nurtured in the bosom of capitalist society by the evolution of the capitalist system of production. But the enormous difference between the two types of process lies in the fact that capitalism already developed within feudalism, thus bringing about its dissolution. In contrast to this, it would be a utopian fantasy to imagine that anything tending towards socialism could arise within capitalism apart from, on the one hand, the objective economic premises that make it a possibility which, however, can only be transformed into the true elements of a socialist system of production after and in consequence of the collapse of capitalism; and, on the other hand, the development of the proletariat as a class. Consider the development undergone by manufacture and the capitalist system of tenure even when the feudal social system was still in existence. As far as these were concerned it was only necessary to clear away the legal obstacles to their free development. By contrast, the concentration of capital in cartels, trusts, etc., does constitute, it is true, an unavoidable premise for the conversion of a capitalist mode of production into a socialist one. But even the most highly developed capitalist concentration will still be qualitatively different, even economically, from a socialist system and can neither change into one ‘by itself’ nor will it be amenable to such change ‘through legal devices’ within the framework of capitalist society. The tragi-comic collapse of all ‘attempts to introduce socialism’ in Germany and Austria furnishes ample proof of this.
“The fact that after the fall of capitalism a lengthy and painful process sets in that makes this very attempt is no contradiction. On the contrary, it would be a totally undialectical, unhistorical mode of thought which, from the proposition that socialism could come into existence only as a conscious transformation of the whole of society, would infer that this must take place at one stroke and not as the end product of a process. This process, however, is qualitatively different from the transformation of feudalism into bourgeois society. And it is this very qualitative difference that is expressed in the different function of the state in the revolution (which as Engels says “is no longer a state in the true sense”); it is expressed most plainly in the qualitatively different relation of politics to economics.”(Lukács, 2010. History and Class Consciousness, Aakar Books, p. 282-283, emphasis ours)
We can see that the “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya have been too hasty in putting the charge of Khrushchevite revisionism on us and in their childish scramble they, by mistake, put this charge on no one else, but Lenin and Marx themselves! One can only sympathize with such “left”-wing kindergarteners.
V. Nazariya’s Disastrous Attempt to Deal with the Question of MSP
Nazariya editors do not understand a thing about MSP and make a mockery of themselves in their zeal to support it. This is the fifth methodological blunder committed by Nazariya editors. Since they do not understand what the MSP is, their speculative comments about MSP and its impact are simply ridiculous, as we shall see. Nazariya editors write:
“In a capitalist country, an increase in the floor price in the form of MSP, will lead to greater exploitation of the proletariat. Even if the nominal wages increase, the real wages would decrease. In the agricultural sector, there would be a capitalist landlord to whom surplus profits will have to go to in the form of ground rent. This surplus profit that needs to be given to the landlord would be taken away from the wages of the proletariat.
“An increase in MSP would mean that greater surplus profits will have to go to the landlord and therefore, increased wages will be taken away from the hands of the proletariat and will be turned into surplus profits that would go to a landlord.”
…
“The other point put forward in the Anvil magazine that the real wages of the agricultural proletariat would decrease as a result of MSP…”
…
“The peasantry in India mostly does not sell its labour for wages. Therefore, the conditions in which MSP would lead to greater exploitation do not exist in India.”
…
“The claim raised by most of the pro-government economists and other progressive sections that the legalization of MSP will push the inflationary tendencies. But, the reality of inflationary tendency is different, where the peasants have to increase the input cost because of the privatization of electricity, lack of irrigation access and the imperialist monopoly over fertilizer and pesticides production and innovation.
“The guarantee of M.S.P will push the domestic market, making borrowings easier for the people. This will in turn reduce inflationary trend and will lead to a decrease in indirect taxes paid by the poor and landless peasantry.”(Nazariya editors, ibid)
How can someone insert so many idiotic arguments in so few words! One is obliged to give kudos to the Nazariya’s “left”-wing toddlers!
Evidently, Nazariya editors have not been able to comprehend what The Anvil had written on the question on MSP. Let us first make our kindergarteners understand few basic things.
First, MSP is the monopoly price which the government fixes for certain agricultural commodities. As a political monopoly price, it ensures a surplus profit over and above the average rate of profit to the class of agrarian bourgeoisie which includes not only capitalist rentier landlords, as our “left”-wing toddlers presume, but also capitalist owner farmer and capitalist tenant farmer. Secondly, the category of surplus profit by definition presumes an average rate of profit, which can emerge only with the capitalist transformation of agriculture. Thirdly, this surplus profit is appropriated by the capitalist owner farmers as well as tenant farmers. The capitalist owner farmers pocket the average profit as well as the surplus profit, whereas the capitalist tenant farmers hand over the surplus profit in part or in toto, to the capitalist rentier landlord. Fourthly, the higher MSP means a higher floor level prices for foodgrains, which are the principal wage goods. It does not necessarily lead to deductions from the wages. This creates an upward pressure on the average wages. If the working class is organized it can fight to increase its wages in an organized way. Otherwise, the nominal wages remain stagnant, whereas the real wages decline because the prices of the wages goods have increased due to high MSP. If the workers are able to increase their wages, then the rate of profit declines for the bourgeoisie. In general, any monopoly price and resultant monopoly rent enjoyed by any particular section of bourgeoisie means a transfer of value from other sections of the bourgeoisie to that section of the bourgeoisie which enjoys this monopoly rent. Thus, Nazariya editors do not understand what MSP or remunerative prices are! They make childish and wild speculations from what they understand, which is next to nothing. We had written clearly on this question:
“The MSP is nothing but a surplus-profit, which is created by the determination of prices by the government at a level that which ensures a surplus-profit over and above the average rate of profit, in order to serve the class interests of rich farmers and kulaks. The profitable remunerative price or MSP is nothing but a surplus-profit or monopoly-rent, a tribute, imposed by the capitalist landowners, capitalist farmers, and capitalist tenant farmers on the entire society, including the working masses, and it comes into existence due to the government’s monopoly over determination of prices. It is a type of a tribute extorted from the society and, therefore, is outright anti-people. Any kind of monopoly rent (including absolute ground rent as well as forms of independent monopoly rent) causes the prices to be above the prices of production that ensure average rate of profit. Thus, they cause price rise or inflation. In fact, one of the structural factors of inflation in agricultural commodities is this monopoly rent which is ensured by MSP.
“In the Indian case, the monopoly-rent ensured by MSP and the absolute ground rent arising out of the monopoly ownership of land have to be disaggregated. Absolute ground rent is a determinate quantity which is determined by the difference between the surplus value produced in agricultural sector and the average profit that would have been ensured by the notional prices of production, had there been free flow of capital in agricultural sector. In this case, the surplus profit is a determinate quantity dependent on the above difference, as we pointed out earlier. However, the surplus-profit ensured by monopoly-price (MSP) can be higher than the surplus-profit that is ensured by absolute ground rent and often it is indeed higher. In that case, this excess of the surplus-profit ensured by MSP must be considered as monopoly rent and the surplus-profit ensured by the private monopoly ownership of land must be considered as absolute ground rent. In this way, the independent monopoly rent and absolute ground rent can be disaggregated, because one cannot ignore the question of property-relations (private monopoly ownership of land) from a consistent Marxist perspective. Had this private monopoly ownership of land not existed, whereas the MSP had existed, then the capitalist farmers would simply have appropriated monopoly rent and the class of capitalist rentier landlords would not have existed. Conversely, had there been no MSP, but only the private monopoly ownership of land, then there would have been no independent monopoly price, but absolute ground rent would still have existed. If both exist, then one will have to disaggregate the independent monopoly rent originating due to an independent monopoly-price and the absolute ground rent originating due to the private monopoly ownership of land. In general, the independent monopoly rent ensured by MSP would not go below the determinate quantity of absolute ground rent because then the capitalist farmers would never sell their commodities in the APMC markets at MSP and would prefer to sell in the open market at higher prices. Note bene, MSP only creates a reference floor level for prices, rather than creating a ceiling for prices and also that there exists no compulsion for the farmers to sell to the state. Whenever the farmers are able to sell their agricultural products at prices higher than MSP for any reason, they do so. The fact that capitalist farmers do sell in the APMC markets at MSP, itself shows that the independent monopoly rent ensured by MSP is generally higher than the absolute ground rent.
“In the past, the Indian bourgeoisie needed to give rise to and give patronage to a class of capitalist farmers (tenant and owner) for the capitalist development in agriculture for its own political and economic interests because low productivity in agriculture had made India dependent on food imports, which did not bode well for the political independence of the Indian bourgeoisie. In order to increase the productivity of Indian agriculture, theoretically, there were two paths available to the Indian bourgeoisie: one, radical land reforms which would have unleashed the revolutionary initiative of the peasant masses and would have antagonized the powerful landlord class, which was not possible for the Indian bourgeoisie, in practice; two, patronizing the rising class of capitalist owner as well as tenant farmers and help the landlords to transform themselves into capitalist landlords, through a system of incentive. It was precisely the second path that the Indian bourgeoisie adopted and put in place a system of profitable remunerative prices to incentivize the capitalist farmers and kulaks to increase productivity. That is why the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ was started in the 1960s and this entire class was strengthened and consolidated through state support and patronage. It was the need of the hour for Indian capitalism in the 1960s. However, that hour is long past now. India became net exporter of food-grains in 1978. The capitalist transformation of Indian agriculture developed rapidly after that and remaining feudal remnants were wiped away by the end of the millenium. Even subsistence agriculture and simple petty-commodity production has long become a subordinate trend in Indian agriculture. The stage in which Indian capitalism finds itself today, does not warrant such patronage to the rich farmer and kulak class as it is now detrimental to the interests of financial-industrial capital in general because the monopoly-rent ensured through the monopoly-price (MSP) causes transfer of value from other branches of production to agrarian bourgeoisie and causes food inflation which creates an upward pressure on the average wages leading to decline in the average rate of profit.
“Therefore, the big industrial-financial capital, that constitutes the ruling bloc of the Indian bourgeoisie, wants to end this patronage, with its own class interest in mind. However, just because the industrial-financial bourgeoisie wants to eliminate this monopoly-price (MSP) ensuring monopoly-rent to the agrarian bourgeoisie does not make these profitable remunerative prices, that is, the MSP, a progressive or pro-people thing! This much is certain that this surplus-profit/monopoly-rent is absolutely not in favour of the working masses, rather it clearly goes against their class interests.” (Sinha, A. 2024. ‘What is Remunerative Price or the Minimum Support Price (MSP)?’, For a Proletarian Line, p. 363-66)
Now we must look closely at what is the impact of the hike in M.S.P. on the working masses.
“An International Monetary Fund (IMF) report was published by Sajjad Chenoy, Pankaj Kumar and Prachi Mishra in 2016. This report discusses the remunerative price system and farm produce prices in detail. According to it, the rural and urban working-class along with poor peasants suffer the most from the remunerative price system and rise in remunerative prices of farm produce. The reason being that when remunerative prices increase then food grain prices also increase and prices of industrial products which use farm produce as input in production also increase. Obviously, these industrial products largely include those products which are purchased by a broad cross-section of working masses. Consequently, on one hand, the food grain prices rise and on the other hand the non–agricultural products purchased by the working class and working masses also get expensive.
“The demand for food grains is flexible only upto a limit and it is relatively more rigid. That is why despite the rising prices, the demand for food grains does not drop below a certain point. However, there is more flexibility in the demand for other goods and consequently, their demand falls. As a result, the part of expenditure on food grains by the families of workers and common working masses can be said to be reduced in itself but it increases in comparison to the spending on other goods and services. In simpler words, on one hand, the common working population consumes less food than earlier and its food security diminishes, however, on the other hand, it spends comparatively larger than earlier fraction of its income on food and as a result reduces the consumption of other goods and services, because of which the domestic demand for these goods and services also drops.
“Resultantly, owing to the contraction in domestic demand, the capitalist economy which is already reeling under crisis due to declining rate of profit gets pulled deeper into the abyss; however, it must be borne in mind that the inability of the produced goods to be sold (the crisis of realization) is not itself the reason for the crisis, nonetheless it aggravates the already existing crisis of decline in the average rate of profit. Nevertheless, it is the working class which pays the price for this too, because the rate of investment falls due to this crisis and the working class has to face retrenchments, layoffs, lockdowns and consequently unemployment and reduced average wages.” (Sinha, A. 2021. ‘The Three Farm Ordinances, Present Farmers’ Movement and the Working Class’ on Red Polemique Blog)
Thus, what we argued was, one, MSP is a monopoly rent created by a political monopoly price; two, just like any monopoly rent it causes inflationary pressure; it is a tribute imposed by the agrarian bourgeoisie on the society, just like the Corn Laws had been in England; three, it causes a transfer of value from other sectors to the agrarian bourgeoisie; four, it can also cause a deduction from the wages, if the upward pressure created on the average wages by high MSP is not translated into actual increase in the nominal wages, because that would mean a decline in the real wages; five, the monopoly rent accrues not only to the capitalist landlord but also the capitalist owner farmer and capitalist tenant farmer; in the latter’s case, the surplus profit is handed over to the capitalist landlord wholly or partially. From that, how can someone take such a leap or flight is still a mystery to us! But then we consider these “left”-wing toddlers and realize that one of the special characteristics of such toddlers is indeed taking such leaps or flights of imagination!
Nazariya editors continue to be on their own trip. The claims made by Nazariya are that MSP will decrease inflation and it is a democratic demand. However, these claims are ludicrous. Let us probe these claims in little detail.
First of all, as we have shown above, all the empirical evidence show that MSP creates inflationary pressures rather than decreasing inflation. Moreover, any kind of monopoly price always causes upward pressure on average price level. That is one of the basic teachings of Marx. Secondly, these “left”-wing toddlers do not understand what a democratic demand is! The democratic demand is, in essence, a political demand, not an economic demand. It is demand for political rights. How is MSP a democratic demand? If anything, it is the most undemocratic demand of imposing a tribute on the entire society by the capitalist kulaks and capitalist farmers! It is an economic demand of the agrarian bourgeoisie, not a democratic demand.
Moreover, the claim that higher MSP will expand the home market, too, is false. Why? The total agrarian population in 2011 was around 263 million. Out of this, landowning peasants were 118 million. Of all the landowning peasants, only around 15 million have more than 2 hectares of land. The farmers which actually have the benefit of MSP are part of these 15 million upper-middle and big farmers. The increase in their income will make a very little impact on the size of the home market, especially when we know that this increase in their effective demand will happen at the cost of impoverishment of 90 percent of the working masses. Secondly, by this logic, what is wrong in increasing the profits and therefore the effective demand of all capitalists? That too will increase the home market for Nazariya editors! This is pure and simple tail-ending of the bourgeoisie and betrayal of the cause the working class and working masses.
Further.
In the quote from Nazariya editors that we presented above, they claim that “The peasantry in India mostly does not sell its labour for wages. Therefore, the conditions in which MSP would lead to greater exploitation do not exist in India.”! Can a Marxist write such a nonsensical sentence? First of all, it is proletariat or semi-proletariat who sell their labour-power; secondly, they do not sell labour! They sell their labour-power. That is one of the most fundamental advances made by Marx over the Classical bourgeois political economy and which stands at the foundation of the theory of surplus value. However, our “left”-wing kindergarteners are in bit of a hurry all the time! They must first be schooled in the ABC of Marxism. Secondly, suppose the agricultural workers are actually serfs who do not sell their labour-power to landlords, as the Nazariya in the Wonderland wants us to believe, even then, the sum of money that this servile labourer receives and uses to buy foodgrains would lose its purchasing power because of the high prices of foodgrains due to MSP. It does not really matter whether the labourer is buying the dearer foodgrains with wages that he/she has received in return of his/her labour-power, or a sum of money that the labourer has received as a servile or bonded labour. The sum of money still remains the same sum of money and if high MSP increases the prices of the foodgrains, it would indeed hurt this class. So, not only the Nazariya kindergarteners are weak in political economy, they also lack the basic knowledge of mathematics!
It is clear that all the claims made by Nazariya regarding the MSP are childish and stupid. They do not understand the question at all and just blabber Narodist gibberish. It is precisely because they are modern day narodniks (much dumber than the classic Narodniks!) and want their kulak-tailsim appear revolutionary that they try to paint MSP as a revolutionary demand of peasantry! Nazariya editors completely expose their class collaborationism here:
“In this context, when the state is against its own people, the role of MSP is important in allowing competition and enabling democratic space for independent industries and economies to grow regardless of whether they’re rich or poor peasantry as both these sections are allies of the revolution through their anti-imperialist nature.
“The essential question here is simple – who does the division of the peasantry serve? In the case of MSP, it serves the imperialist ruling classes and its Indian stooges, not the people. This is summarised in Nazariya’s article, “The indirect taxes paid by the poor and landless peasantry, is one of the major expenditures, which can be reduced through this process (note: process here referring to MSP). But the intention of the government is completely opposite and they themselves welcome the foreigners to manage our economy according to their own interest.” The demand for M.S.P is an economic demand for all of the peasantry in the country. Thus, the participation of poor and landless peasantry in the farmers’ protest is not a reflection of ruling class ideology but a reflection of the peasantry to struggle against the oppressive state and the imperialism it helps perpetuate.
“However, the fight for MSP is still in their interest because it impacts the overall economic conditions of rural India. A fair and guaranteed price for crops can help stabilize the agricultural economy, which in turn could benefit the landless laborers by ensuring more consistent employment and better wages.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
How is MSP an economic demand for entire peasantry? Did not these “left”-wing toddlers claim that it is the landlords who benefit from MSP? Here it can clearly be seen that Nazariya editors want to defend kulaks by declaring them to be different from capitalist rentier landlords. We have demonstrated above that MSP benefits all sections of the agrarian bourgeoisie, including the rentier landlords, owner farmers as well as tenant farmers. The editorial in The Anvil states:
“The economic class demand of the rich kulaks and farmers is MSP, which is a monopoly rent ensuring a surplus-profit to the farmers at the cost of the working masses of the country. While the working class naturally opposes big capitalists, it opposes the big capitalists not from the ground of the comparatively smaller capitalists. Who is a capitalist? A capitalist is someone who exploits wage-labour of the working class and appropriates the surplus value.
“The rich farmers and kulaks are nothing but capitalist farmers and landlords who plunder the poor and lower-middle peasants and the agricultural proletariat (bulk of which comes from dalit castes) in a variety of ways. First is the entrepreneurial profit of the capitalist tenant farmers and capitalist farmer-landlords, who employ and exploit wage-labour regularly and appropriate at least the average profit. The second way is the commercial profit that accrues to the rich farmers and kulaks who also act as traders and middlemen for the small and medium peasants who do not have access to the APMC markets to sell their agricultural produce. These poor and middle peasants are forced to undersell to the kulaks-cum-middlemen who then sell this agricultural produce at MSP in the APMC markets. (It must be reminded that even if small peasants are provided access to the APMC markets, they would still be losers because they are not principal sellers of agricultural produce but principal and net buyers of agricultural produce.)Also, in many cases, the kulaks-cum-middlemen enter into contract with such poor and middle peasants to grow certain variety of certain crops in pre-determined quantity at pre-determined rates. This is contract farming by the rich kulaks and farmers to exploit the poor and middle peasants, even though the rich farmers and kulaks are opposing contract farming by the big capitalists! Therefore, the present struggle is between the agricultural bourgeoisie and the big industrial-financial bourgeoisie to secure the right to exploit the rural poor! The third way (and one of the cruelest ones) is plundering the rural poor (agricultural proletariat and marginal, poor and lower-middle peasants) through usury. These big capitalist farmers and kulaks also give credit to the agricultural proletariat as well as marginal, poor and lower-middle peasants for a variety of purposes; sometimes the loan is given for working capital to small peasants and at others it is given for special reasons, like marriage, education of children and young members of family, etc. These loans are given at exorbitant rates and have continued to be one of the principal reasons of structural indebtedness of the rural poor and their proletarianization. This is precisely the reason why the rich kulaks’ and farmers’ lobbies have shown no interest or enthusiasm in the expansion of institutional agricultural credit for poor and middle peasants, as it would rob them off the opportunity to mint money through usurious exploitation of the rural poor. On the top of all these forms of exploitation and oppression is the question of MSP, through which the rich kulaks and farmers levy a tax on the entire society in order to gain a surplus profit.” (Editorial, ‘One Divides into Two’, The Anvil-6, December 2021)
There can be no possible justification to claim that MSP is demand of all peasants, except the hideous design to rally the masses of poor working peasants behind their own enemies, the class of rich kulaks and farmers, who are the principal exploiters of agricultural proletariat as well as poor and middle peasantry. If it was a demand of all peasants, why this movement remained confined to Punjab? Why the overwhelming masses of poor peasantry in UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra, Karnataka and other states displayed no interest in it? Why did the rich kulaks and farmers of Punjab need to put fines on poor peasants and agricultural workers for not turning up for their protests? Why did the rich farmers of Punjab need to put a ceiling on agricultural wages and organize boycotts of agricultural workers who refused to go to their protests? As usual, Nazariya editors prefer to roam in their own wonderland in order to justify their class collaborationism.
We also need to understand that the classes of capitalist rentier landlord, capitalist owner farmer and capitalist tenant farmer partially overlap. Abhinav Sinha writes:
“In reality, there is a partial overlap in the classes of capitalist rentier landlords, capitalist owner landlords and the capitalist tenant farmers in the case of India because many capitalist owner farmers also rent out some land, many of rentier landlords also keep a plot of land where they function as entrepreneurs and directly exploit wage-labour to appropriate surplus value, and many capitalist farmers who are mainly tenant, also own some land which they might or might not rent out. Some are mainly rentier landlords, most are mainly capitalist owner farmers, others are mainly capitalist tenant farmers, while still others might be purely capitalist rentier landlords, or capitalist owner farmers, or capitalist tenant farmers. However, despite this complexity of partial overlapping among these different classes, we must be very clear about the forms of income that they appropriate. These are: ground-rent (in case of capitalist rentier landlords), average profit (in case of capitalist tenant farmers) and ‘extraordinary profit’ due to non-transformation of surplus-profit into rent (in case of capitalist owner farmers).”(Sinha, Abhinav. 2024. ‘What is the Remunerative Prices or Minimum Support Price (MSP)?’, For a Proletarian Line, p. 361-62)
Here we can see Nazariya editors’ claims are actually circular. They begin with what they had to prove and try to fit every definition and economic category into their dogmatic semifeudal semicolonial framework. MSP is thus dipped in Holy Ganges of semifeudal thesis and so are the kulaks. However, as we have demonstrated, Nazariya is making these claims out of thin air and all their “arguments” of proving India a semifeudal country fall flat as we will also see later in the article.
VI. Nazariya’s Total Ignorance on the Question of Unfree Labour under Capitalism
Sixth methodological mistake committed by Nazariya is to make the claim that unfree labour cannot co-exist with capitalist mode of production. By giving example of naukars in Haryana, they claim that India is still a semifeudal country. Here is what Nazariya has to say:
“The bourgeoisie employs wage labour to gain surplus, while in the Indian agricultural sector, this kind of wage labour is almost non-existence. Ajay Kumar’s paper showcases how, even after the Green revolution, the landlords continue to employ semi-bonded labourers in the form of Naukar.
“The Naukar does not get wages for his labour but takes a loan in advance which he is not able to repay. The loan gets compounded until he is not able to repay it and has to get a higher loan. The Naukar clearly does not sell his labour for wages but is bound by usury. In a capitalist society, extra-economic coercion to extract surplus is absent; in a country with semi-feudal relations, such forms are prevalent.”(Nazariya editors, ibid)
Firstly, it is not the labour which is sold by a labourer! Writings of Nazariya are filled with such stupid and ignorant blunders. We will discuss about these ridiculous blunders of Nazariya later in this article. Secondly, what this so-called naukar is getting is nothing but wages in a particular form of advances. Why? Even the bogus study of Ajay Kumar (which cites no sources for his claims about bonded labour!) admits that the worker has to pay 3-4 percent of interest on the loan; now, the original sum and the interest has to be paid by the naukar by working on the farm of the landlord; however, how is the repayment calculated on the basis of work? It can only be calculated on the basis of a wage-rate! Without the wages which are determined according to the average market conditions, the loan cannot be paid! The fact is that the bonded labour of the pre-capitalist times was a totally different thing. It did not get wages and there was no quantification of work. Ajay Kumar in his “study” claims that these naukars are made to perform any task! Well, any worker, once he/she has sold his/her labour-power to the capitalist has to perform any task that the capitalist wants him/her to! What is so surprising about it? Moreover, in the informal sector lack of strict determination of working-day is a norm. The working-day is often expanded or even contracted according to the exigencies of the capitalist employer. This, too, does not make the labour of the naukar as ‘bonded labour’ of the pre-capitalist times.
It is true that in this particular form of wage-labour, there is an element of unfreedom. However, this is nothing that is incompatible with capitalist mode of production as such. In fact, under capitalism, precisely due to the class struggle between the capitalists and the working class and working masses, various forms of unfree labour do emerge and have emerged in history, not only in India but even in the US, and other advanced capitalist countries. Moreover, this form of labour is not the dominant labour regime in any part of the country today. These unfree forms exist at the periphery of present capitalist economy of India. One can read the studies by Surinder Jodhka (‘Agrarian Changes in the Times of (Neo-liberal) Crises: Revisiting Attached Labour in Haryana’ published in EPW, June 30, 2012; The Indian Village: Rural Lives in the Twenty-first Century published by Aleph) where he shows: (1) the system of naukars is a system of wage-labour itself where the annual wages and sometimes a little more than annual wages are paid to the attached labour, which then, is repaid with interest by the attached labour through his work; (2) this system has declined not only in Haryana but in all parts of India; (3) this system of wage-labour has elements of unfreedom, but such forms do exist under capitalism, as the studies of Jan Breman and Tom Brass have clearly demonstrated; (4) most of the times such forms of unfree labour come into existence under capitalism precisely due to capitalist exploitation. That is why Basu and Basole write:
“The controversy over “unfree” labour in Haryana provides another example of seemingly pre-capitalist labour relations (in this case bonded or attached labour) being created in part as a result of capitalist class struggle (Brass 1990, 1994; Jodhka 1994)” (Basu, Deepankar and Amit Basole. 2011. ‘Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: Part I – Agriculture’, Economic and Political Weekly 46, no.14, April 2, 2011, emphasis ours)
One more thing: who is exploiting this attached labour in Haryana? It is not some feudal landlord! It is capitalist owner-farmers, capitalist tenant farmers as well as capitalist landlords! The loved ones of the editors of Nazariya! Their beloved and cherished “national bourgeoisie”! That is the fix for these “left”-wing juveniles: they cannot find a real feudal lord! So, whenever there is a movement for MSP, they term the same capitalist junkers, kulaks and farmers as ‘national bourgeoisie’ and whenever there is the question of land reforms and bonded labour, they term these same guys as ‘feudal lords’! The problem is that both these categories are non-existent. They are not national bourgeoisie because the national question has been resolved and they are certainly not feudal landlords because the character of rent has changed from feudal rent to capitalist rent due to the insertion of capitalist farmers between the class of landlords and direct producers.
The freedom of wage-labour, too, is grossly misunderstood. Marx’s sarcastic comment on the “dual freedom”, that is the “freedom to sell their labour-power to any capitalist” and “the freedom from the encumbrances of the ownership of the means of production and subsistence” has been taken literally by many people. We could not have expected any better from the “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya. Marx pointed out that this freedom was only juridical and the wage-labour is in essence forced labour; however, here the force is not exerted by a juridical authority, but the structural dependence of the producers created by their separation from the means of production and subsistence. This condition systematically reproduces the dependence of the workers and their subjugation to the capitalist class. However, Marx also pointed out that under capitalism, as a peripheral tendency, this unfreedom might also assume formal or semi-formal shapes. Marx quotes a report in his chapter on ‘Machinery and Large-scale Industry’ in the first volume of Capital, where he shows the incidence of unfree labour based on debts:
“A favourite operation with manufacturers is to punish workers by making deductions from their wages for faults in the material supplied to them. This method gave rise in 1866 to a widespread strike in the English pottery districts. The reports of the Childrens’ Employment Commission (1863-6) give cases where the worker not only receives no wages, but becomes, by means of his labour, and owing to the penal regulations, the debtor of his worthy master.” (Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital, Volume 1, Penguin Edition, p. 551, emphasis ours)
There has been a lot of research on the question of unfree labour coexisting with capitalist mode of production in India, too. Basole and Basu write:
“Labour bondage, gender and caste hierarchies, unpaid domestic work and contingent and casual labour can all be understood as attempts to increase absolute surplus value. This reinforces the fact that in all these cases, there is formal rather than real subsumption of labour by capital. The incentive to alter the methods of production or adopt new techniques of production comes, in these circumstances, from the direct producer, who however, lacks the resources to undertake this task. Capitalists in the formal sector do not have the incentive to undertake technical change because under formal subsumption of labour there is no drive to increase relative surplus value. Efforts to increase productivity and reduce work burdens are thus doubly undermined as producers, who have the incentive do not control their own surplus while capitalists, given a large labour force ready to work for extremely low wages, have resources but do not face incentives for technical change.” (Basu Deepankar and Basole Amit. 2011. “Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: Part II – ‘Informal’ Industry.” Economic and Political Weekly 46, no. 15, April 9, 2011)
Jan Breman, Tom Brass and other authors have shown through extensive research that unfree labour is not incompatible with capitalism (Brass, Tom. “Modern Capitalism and Unfree Labor: The Unsaying of Marxism.” Science & Society 78, no. 3 (2014): 288–311). The problem with some of these academics is that they claim that “orthodox” Marxism failed to understand the co-existence of unfree labour with capitalism. We have seen that such a claim cannot be taken seriously. However, the contribution of these studies is that they destroy the idealized image of free labour under capitalism and show that economic categories are analytical tools to understand the rich and complex social phenomena. We do not find them walking in flesh and blood in reality. Capitalism, as it has really existed in history and as it exists even today, vindicates Marx’s point that it is possible for various forms of unfree labour to coexist with capitalism. Reviewing Breman’s work on unfree labour in capitalism, Paritosh Nath comments:
“…one cannot simply dismiss the view that capitalism is the dominant mode of production in India simply because of the presence of these unfree relations…The presence of unfree labour relations, therefore, does not signal the continued predominance of pre-capitalist relations. Varied forms of unfree relations, including neo-bondage, operate alongside the large-scale development of capitalism in India.” (Paritosh Nath. 2021. “Neo-Bondage and Unfree Labour in Rural Gujarat,” Review of Agrarian Studies, vol. 11, no. 1)
Besides, there are plenty of examples which show that there are cases of such bondage and semi-bondage in USA, Australia and many advanced capitalist countries.
“Our data suggest that at any given time ten thousand or more people are working as forced laborers in the United States. It is likely that the actual number reaches into the tens of thousands. Determining the exact number of victims, however, has proven difficult given the hidden nature of forced labor and the manner in which these figures are collected and analyzed. Data on victims of forced labor is further complicated by the U.S. government’s practice of not counting the actual number of persons trafficked or caught in a situation of forced labor in a given year. Instead, it counts only survivors (defined by the Trafficking Act as victims of a “severe form of trafficking”) who have been assisted in accessing immigration benefits. (Stover E, Fletcher L, Bales K. 2004, Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United States, UC Berkeley: Human Rights Center. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4jn4j0qg )
Zhang of San Diego State University in his research estimates that there are 2.4 million victims of human trafficking among illegal Mexican immigrants. (Zhang, S. X. 2012. Trafficking of Migrant Laborers in San Diego County: Looking for a Hidden Population. San Diego, CA: San Diego State University.)
National Human Trafficking Resource Center’s Annual report mentions that the most common types of labor trafficking included domestic work, traveling sales crews, agriculture/farms, restaurant/food service, health and beauty services, begging, retail, landscaping, hospitality, construction, carnivals, elder care, forestry, manufacturing, and housekeeping. (“National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) Annual Report” . National Human Trafficking Resource Center. December 31, 2014.)
So, as per the ‘Nazariya’ of our Nazariya editors, above facts actually prove that the US is a semi-feudal country as there is presence of various forms of unfree and forced labour in the USA! Can anyone take these “left”-wing toddlers seriously?
VII. Nazariya’s “Innovative” Yardstick to Measure the Productive Capitalist Economy
Nazariya editors create an incorrect parameter for measuring capitalist development of a country, then test the Indian case on that flawed parameter and then reject the capitalist nature of Indian economy and society. What is this flawed parameter? They claim that according to Marxism, in capitalism, wage-workers employed in manufacturing sector must keep on increasing. Nazariya rejects other sectors such as construction and the entire service sector as unproductive. Nazariya claims that:
“Capitalist development in agriculture grows side by side with industrialisation, which means an increasing manufacturing sector which will absorb the now unemployed peasantry and make them into industrial proletariat. The facts are such-the comparison of NSSO data shows that from 1993 to 2010, the percentage of rural persons employed in manufacturing industries has remained at a steady 7%, while the number of persons involved in agriculture has actually reduced in this period from 78% to 68%. Where did this 10% mass of people go? Not into the agrarian sector but into the informal construction work.”(Nazariya editors, ibid)
Today, even the least aware Marxist would not make such a claim that it is only manufacturing sector that is productive, whereas construction, transport, entire services sector are unproductive. What is capitalist production? Is it only the production of tangible commodities? No.
Deeming the service sector and construction, “as a whole, an unproductive sector has nothing to do whatsoever with Marx and Marxist political economy. One needs to remember Marx’s words “a commodity can also be a useful effect or a service”. In fact, it is the service sector that contributes a major share of the GDP of a number of advanced capitalist countries including the US. Does it mean that the capitalist development in these countries is also dependent on foreign capital?” (Jaya Prakash. 2023. ‘The Question of Determination of Program of Indian Revolution and the Inanities of CPM’, The Anvil-7)
Any sensible Marxist political economist would not simply count the manufacturing sector as the only productive sector. Productive can mean two things, according to Marx: one, productive as such (any activity of labour that produces wealth, or use-values) and two, productive for capital (any activity of labour that produces use-value for exchange, that is, use-values as well as value). Any activity that is producing value and surplus value for capital is productive activity for capitalism. The activities of circulation and financial services do not add to the wealth of society and do not produce any new value; they can only redistribute the value among different sections of the bourgeoisie; however, besides manufacturing, all activities that produce useful thing or effect and are produced for exchange, produce value. For instance, transport is a service but it is productive sector. It produces a commodity which is a useful effect, not a useful thing. Is transport sector productive capitalist sector? Yes. Similarly, whenever construction activities are not taken up for individual consumption (for instance, a worker making a house for himself/herself and his/her family), it is a productive activity that produces use-value (a house/building, etc.) and value because that constructed structure is for selling. Someone familiar with the basics of Marxist political economy understands that. But not our rowdy “left”-wing juveniles of Nazariya!
Secondly, Marx himself pointed out that as the productive powers of labour are increased by capitalism (which, precisely, is its historical function), the expenditure of labour in productive sector decreases, because a smaller magnitude of social labour can produce sufficiently large mass of use-values, which makes a lot of labour superfluous in the productive sectors. As a consequence, larger part of labour begins to go into unproductive services and as domestic servants, etc. Let us see what Marx has written about the country which was the leading example of capitalist development for Marx:
“Lastly, the extraordinary increase in the productivity of large-scale industry, accompanied as it is by both a more intensive and a more extensive exploitation of labour-power in all other spheres of production, permits a larger and larger part of the working class to be employed unproductively. Hence it is possible to reproduce the ancient domestic slaves, on a constantly extending scale, under the name of a servant class, including men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, etc. According to the census of 1861, the population of England and Wales was 20,066,224; 9,776,259 of these were males and 10,289,965 females. If we deduct from this population, firstly, all who are too old or too young for work, all ‘unproductive’ women, young persons and children; then the ‘ideological’ groups, such as members of the government, priests, lawyers, soldiers, etc.; then all the people exclusively occupied in consuming the labour of others in the form of ground rent, interest, etc.; and lastly, paupers, vagabonds and criminals, there remain in round numbers eight millions of the two sexes of every age, including in that number every capitalist who is in any way engaged in industry, commerce or finance. These eight millions are distributed as follows:
| Agricultural labourers (including shepherds, farm servants, and maidservants living in the houses of farmers) | 1,098,261 |
| All who are employed in cotton, woollen, worsted, flax, hemp, silk, and jute factories, in stocking making and lace making by machinery | 642,607 |
| All who are employed in coal mines and metal mines | 565,835 |
| All who are employed in metal works (blastfurnaces, rolling mills, &c.), and metal manufactures of every kind | 396,998 |
| The servant class | 1,208,648 |
“All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines, taken together, number 1, 208,442 ; those employed in textile factories and metal industries, taken together, number 1 ,039,605 ; in both cases less than the number of modern domestic slaves. What an elevating consequence of the capitalist exploitation of machinery!”(Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital, Vol. 1, Penguin Edition, p. 574-75)
This is what Marx wrote regarding the leading example of capitalist development in the world, that is, England at the peak of its powers in the second half of the Nineteenth century. Any student of Marxism and especially Marxist political economy can see the sheer stupidity of the arguments put forth by the editors of Nazariya in order to prove their equally stupid semifeudal semicolonial theorization regarding India. This is what Mao had called cutting the foot to the size of the shoe. What is even more striking in the case of Nazariya is the exceptionally poor quality of articulating this incorrect thesis of semifeudalism. Not only are they ignorant about the basic concepts of Marxism, their presentation and the comprehensibility of language, too, betrays the mind of a second-grader. Instead of taking up the task of criticism, these upstarts should devote at least a few years of their lives to the study of basics of Marxism and that too with the help of a good teacher.
3. Nazariya’s Absurd Claims about Indebtedness of the Bourgeoisie and their Silence on the Independent Foreign Policy of Indian Bourgeoisie
To prove that the Indian ruling class is comprador, Nazariya mentions, as evidence, the indebtedness of Adani. Nazariya editors claim:
“Economic statistics show that Adani’s overall debt is 1% greater than the overall GDP of the country. Disclosing the data of foreign direct investment for Adani, Financial Times produced a report, which shows that 45% of overall direct investment in this country directly went to Adani in all 5 years. A capitalist that has his own capital and is therefore independent would not be completely dependent on debt to run his business. The majority of the capital that Adani invests to run his business is in the form of debt. This clearly proves how Adani is dependent on foreign finance capital for its survival. An independent capitalist may take debt to run his business but he would have some capital of his own too. In the case of Adani, he is completely dependent on foreign finance and therefore, a majority share of his profits go abroad. In the case of an independent capitalist, it is surplus profit that is used to pay back the debt.”(Nazariya editors, ibid)
We have already shown in the previous section on the methodological blunders of Nazariya, that the indebtedness of capitalist houses is not at all a sign of their comprador character. On the contrary, it is the sign of their development as big monopoly industrial-financial capitalists. Now let us talk a little about the capability of the “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya to read statistics. Adani’s overall debt is not “1% greater than overall GDP” but it is around 1% of GDP of India. Here is the report which has been misread by the Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers: (https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Most-read-in-2023/Adani-s-debts-exceed-1-of-Indian-economy). As we can see, our rowdy “left”-wing juveniles not only fail miserably in political economy, but also in mathematics and language!
As we have shown in above section, this indebtedness is not at all a characteristic of a comprador bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is characteristic of a big monopoly industrial-financial bourgeoisie. This is evident from the fact that heavy indebtedness is the common characteristic feature of almost every US as well as European and Japanese corporate company. The most indebted company of the world is Toyota. Following Toyota are Evergrande, Amazon, Volkswagen, Apple, etc. Let us cast a cursory glance on the list of indebtedness of some leading corporations in the US as on 30/09/23:
Apple: ₹9.2T
Microsoft: ₹ 5.628T
Alphabet: ₹ 2.33T
Amazon: ₹11.19T
For the US economy “in 2020Q3, the ratio of corporate debt assets was 68 percent for book value, 49 percent for fixed assets, and 56 percent for tangible assets. For the period 1960 to 2019, the average corporate debt to asset ratios were 43 percent for book value, 40 percent for fixed assets, and 44 percent for tangible assets.” (https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2021/4/23/corporate-debt-historical-perspective)
It can be clearly seen that the indebtedness is a characteristic of financial monopolies and Adani’s debt only proves this. However, Nazariya toddlers have decided they will see what they want to see.
Moreover, the belief of Nazariya that any capitalist house can pay so much interest that the greater part of its annual turnover goes in the servicing of debts again betrays their total obliviousness about the basics of Marxist political economy. We have talked about this in the previous section and showed that Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers are unaware about the meanings of the various forms that surplus value assumes from entrepreneurial profit, commercial profit to ground rent and interest. They have only heard about these words and they throw it here and there just like a monkey sitting on banana tree throws bananas everywhere.
Secondly, on the question of foreign policies, Nazariya editors do not refute even a single example of Indian foreign policy measures that clearly demonstrate that Indian ruling class is not a comprador and it takes independent political decisions. India did not take the desired pro-imperialist stand on the Suez Canal, on the question of opening the office of Voice of America during India’s China war, India’s stand in the Copenhagen Summit on environment, and today on the question of Ukraine War, relations with Russia as well as relations with Iran. Does the stands taken by the Indian bourgeoisie on all these question reveal the behavior of a comprador bourgeoisie? Not at all. In the words of Mao, comprador bourgeoisie is wholly an appendage to imperialism and it does not have an independent political character to make independent political decisions. All its political decisions are in reality made by the imperialist bosses.
Here is what Nazariya editors say:
“the illusion of the so called “independent foreign policy”, the futile basis of Anvil’s assertion of “political independence”, of India being a “junior partner of imperialism” lies in their lack of understanding of the nature of parliament in India, rooted in a revisionist understanding of imperialism. Anvil “Maoists” don’t understand that India has not completed its bourgeois democratic revolution, and hence its Parliament is not actually a bourgeois democratic institution.”(Nazariya editors, ibid)
Where is the logic or argument in this statement? It is more of an assertion of a stubborn toddler! These “left”-wing toddlers in want of any argument, reason or logic, keep prattling nonsense. First of all, what is semifeudal parliament? According to Nazariya, India is a semifeudal semicolonial country so its parliament is semifeudal parliament and so its foreign policies are that of a semicolonial/neocolonial country!
However, it was precisely this claim that was refuted in The Anvil’s article by giving examples that the foreign policies of Indian ruling class are that of a politically independent bourgeoisie. Instead of refuting these arguments on the basis of concrete facts Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers just stubbornly repeat their assertion, believing that inanities would become intelligence by repetition! They start with an assumption that they had to prove!
Secondly, the ‘Third International’ clearly stated that parliament is a bourgeois institution, even if it comes into existence in the transition phase to capitalism. As was the case in England, Prussia and even Russia! In Russia, Lenin called the Czarist Duma one of the most reactionary parliaments; Russia was in the stage of democratic revolution; during this time itself, Lenin formulated the line of tactical participation in elections and the Czarist Duma. Therefore, the reactionary character of parliament does not decide anything in this regard. The parliament remains a bourgeois institution.
Lenin wrote:
“We Bolsheviks participated in the most counterrevolutionary parliaments, and experience has shown that this participation was not only useful but indispensable to the party of the revolutionary proletariat, after the first bourgeois revolution in Russia (1905), so as to pave the way for the second bourgeois revolution (February 1917), and then for the socialist revolution (October 1917).” (Lenin, 1970. “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, p.55)
Also, Lenin further writes:
“Parliament is a product of historical development which one cannot abolish from the world until one is strong enough to scatter the bourgeois parliament. Only if one is a member of parliament can one combat bourgeois society and parliamentarism from the given historical standpoint.” (Lenin, 1921. Minutes of the Proceedings. Second Congress of the Communist International.)
Unable to respond to concrete arguments, just like stubborn toddlers, Nazariya bunch of rowdies keep repeating their stupidities and inanities. Just look at this:
“It is neocolonial farce that our so-called Anvil Maoists have fallen for due to which they call the country-wide subservience, exploitation and oppression to the world economic system as political sovereignty, as India laughably being a “junior partner” to imperialism.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
Absurdity, too, is one of traits of bored children. The Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers are showing the same trait. They are repeating their non-sense ad infinitum and then laughing without reason. Where is the reason in this? Where have they proven that Indian foreign policy is politically not independent? Why did the Indian ruling class bluntly reject the US call for not buying oil and natural gas from Russia after the beginning of the Ukraine War? The US imperialists even threatened India with sanctions! However, the Indian bourgeoisie did not relent and replied in a very stern tone. Following this, it was the US that backed off from the threat of imposing sanctions. Is this the sign or symptom of Indian ruling class being comprador? In what world! In the kindergarten of the Nazariya toddlers only!
4. Nazariya’s Political Blindness to Perceive the Development of Capitalism in India
Nazariya editors assert that rich peasants are part of masses and for that they need to prove that India is a semifeudal country. Their idiotic methodological framework has already been dealt with in section-2 of this article. One general method they follow is to present an idealized image of capitalism and then compare the Indian conditions with that image and on this basis reject that India is a capitalist society. Now we will see how they cut the actual historical reality to the shape of their assumptions. For this, we will begin by the question of capitalist transformation of agriculture.
We will first here clarify the Marxist position on what is capitalist agriculture so that the absurdity of Nazariya’s viewpoint and facts become apparent.
Jaya Prakash writes:
“Capitalist agriculture is a socio-economic development. Feudal agriculture involves a feudal landlord class that is in absolute control of land. This class, which is a parcel of the state and has, de facto, the executive, legislative and judicial power, makes the dependent peasants and serfs, the direct producers, to cultivate the land under its control and extracts the entire surplus labour in the form of feudal rent, that can assume the form of labour rent, rent in kind and towards the twilight of feudalism, the form of money rent. There is no class of entrepreneurial farmer between the direct producers, that is, the peasants and the feudal landlord. Entire surplus labour is appropriated by the feudal lord. When capitalist farmer appears on the scene, considerable part of direct producers are transformed into wage labour, the character of rent changes from feudal ground-rent to capitalist ground-rent. Now, the entire surplus labour of the direct producers is not appropriated by the landlord, but it assumes the form of surplus value and is distributed between the capitalist farmer and landlord as entrepreneurial profit and capitalist ground-rent. The principal sign of the emergence of capitalist ground-rent can be found in the emergence of the class of entrepreneurial farmer between the landowner and the transformation of the direct producer, the peasant, into wage-labourers. The class of capitalist farmers invests capital in agriculture and appropriates the surplus labour of the direct producers in the form of surplus value by exploiting wage labour. The average profit remains with the capitalist farmer as entrepreneurial profit whereas the surplus profit over and above average profit goes to the landlord who has now become capitalist landlord. If the capitalist farmer does not get at least average profit, he will invest his capital in some other branch of production where he can get at least average profit and if the capitalist landlord does not get the surplus profit over and above average profit, then he will not give his land on rent to the capitalist farmer. The dynamics of market ensures that the capitalist farmer gets at least average profit and the surplus profit is transformed into capitalist ground-rent and is pocketed by the capitalist landlord. There is surplus profit in agriculture due to the lower organic composition of capital in agriculture and this surplus profit is transformed into capitalist ground-rent because there is private monopoly ownership of a non-produced natural resource, namely, land, in the hands of the class of capitalist landlords. These are the basics of determining the character of ground-rent (feudal or capitalist). In nutshell, one can broadly determine the nature of agriculture as capitalist with the help of the following yardsticks. (i) Capitalist ground-rent replaces feudal ground-rent (ii) Dominance of production for the market by investing capital and exploiting wage labour (iii) Class differentiation among peasants, and conversion of bulk of peasantry into wage-labourers and proletariat becoming the most important class in the countryside, though not necessarily the majority of the agrarian population.
Capitalist agriculture generally involves the classes of capitalist farmer landlords, capitalist rentier landlords, capitalist tenant farmers, agricultural wage-labourers as well as a class of small and middle peasants, who are involved in simple commodity production and are increasingly transformed into semi-proletariat. Similar to industrial capitalists in their firms, capitalist farmers invest in agriculture – they invest on their land to produce commodities for the market and extract surplus value by exploiting wage labour in the process. Capitalist farmers can be tenant farmers or owner farmers. If they are tenant farmers they appropriate the part of surplus value equal to average profit and hand over the surplus profit to the capitalist landlords in the form of capitalist ground-rent. If they are capitalist farmer landlords owning the land, then the surplus profit, too, is pocketed by them as extra-ordinary profit. Those who simply own agricultural land but do not play the role of an entrepreneurial farmer and extract a part of the surplus value as ground-rent are capitalist landlords. Today, most of those regarded as rich farmers are capitalist tenant farmers and capitalist owner farmers. Then there is the class of capitalist rentier landlords, who simply own the land, have nothing to do with production and only appropriate rent from a part of the surplus value produced in agriculture, namely, the surplus profit over and above the average profit. The class of middle and lower peasants does not employ wage labour on a regular basis and depend mainly on their family labour. They are involved in simple commodity production. Among them too, there are owner peasants and tenant peasants. The tenant peasants are exploited by capitalist landlords through ground-rent, which has not properly assumed capitalist form, but it is also not feudal rent, because these peasants are not under feudal bondage. It is a transitional form. They are also exploited by rich capitalist farmers (the upper and upper-middle farmers) through contract farming and commercial profit because these small peasants do not have access to the market. Moreover, the small tenant farmers as well as owner farmers are also exploited by the rich capitalist farmers and landlords through usury, because the small peasants do not have access to institutional credit. Thus, all small peasants are exploited by the rich capitalist farmers and landlords through commercial profit and interest and the small tenant peasants are also exploited through rent. As a result, a large part of these small peasants are heavily indebted (not to corporates, but rich capitalist farmers and landlords!) and are being rapidly proletarianized. Already, more than 75 per cent of their income comes from wage labour because they cannot run their households on the basis of cultivation and have to rely principally on wage labour. In other words, more than 80 per cent of small peasants have already transformed into semi-proletariat. They are not at all feudal peasants and are certainly a part of capitalist agricultural system.
The higher strata of middle farmers, that is, the upper-middle farmers are essentially capitalist farmers as they regularly employ and exploit wage labour. Even though other middle peasants also sometimes employ wage labour, most of the labour expended on their farms is family labour. Small and marginal farmers, however, end up exploiting themselves (in their effort to remain as peasants, they end up working more and more). Unable to meet their needs with the income from crop production, they resort to selling their labour-power. That is why, the majority of small and marginal farmers exist as semi-proletariat in villages. Agricultural workers are completely dependent on selling their labour-power for their livelihood. It is mainly by exploitation of their labour-power that surplus value is created in the countryside. The numbers of this proletarian class is always on the rise compared to that of farmers in capitalist agriculture. All the general laws of capitalist accumulation applicable to the industrial sector are applicable to capitalist agriculture. Therefore, it would only be foolishness to deny the capitalist nature of agriculture in today’s India, citing the ruination of small agricultural capital by big agricultural capital, or the desperate state of poor peasantry. These phenomena, in fact, demonstrate the capitalist nature of agriculture in a country much more clearly. This is, in essence, a broad picture of capitalist agriculture. To put it simply, when a capitalist farmer class comes into existence, when agricultural production processes are dominated by wage labour, when capitalist commodity production takes precedence over subsistence production in agriculture, it means that feudal rent has been transformed into capitalist ground-rent, and that feudal agriculture has given way to capitalist agriculture. These phenomena in Indian agriculture are very clearly present.” (Jaya Prakash, ibid)
We will see with data that on the above yardsticks, Indian agriculture has clearly completed its capitalist transformation. For now, we will present some of the fantastic claims of Nazariya editors which fly in the face of reality.
Claim-1: Nazariya’s foolish claims about the Green Revolution
Nazariya editors make the claim that the Green revolution was an imperialist agenda and it meant that foreign capital was allowed to destroy the Indian nascent bourgeoisie. According to Nazariya:
“The Green Revolution in India has not led to the development of technology and tools, it has not led to qualitative changes in the mode of production. Green Revolution is an imperialist policy which was introduced through imperialist agencies like IMF and World Bank at a time when the anti-feudal struggle was strong. Abhijnan Sarkar describes it in the following terms, “but on the intensification of credit and purchased inputs like chemical fertilizers and pesticides and finally high yielding seed. It was based not on self-reliance, but on dependence on imported agricultural inputs from the imperialist monopoly capital of the United States.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
According to Nazariya editors, Green Revolution was a policy of imperialist plunder. Such ignorance of the economic history of modern India is really unparalleled. Almost all the leading economic historians of modern India present a very different assessment of Green Revolution. For instance, Dietmar Rothermund has very clearly shown this policy was implemented by the Indian ruling class as it needed to give patronage to a class of capitalist farmers (tenant and owner).
Abhinav Sinha writes:
“for the capitalist development in agriculture for its own political and economic interests because low productivity in agriculture had made India dependent on food imports, which did not bode well for the political independence of the Indian bourgeoisie. In order to increase the productivity of Indian agriculture, theoretically, there were two paths available to the Indian bourgeoisie: one, radical land reforms which would have unleashed the revolutionary initiative of the peasant masses and would have antagonized the powerful landlord class, which was not possible for the Indian bourgeoisie, in practice; two, patronizing the rising class of capitalist owner as well as tenant farmers and help the landlords to transform themselves into capitalist landlords, through a system of incentive. It was precisely the second path that the Indian bourgeoisie adopted and put in place a system of profitable remunerative prices to incentivize the capitalist farmers and kulaks to increase productivity. That is why the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ was started in the 1960s and this entire class was strengthened and consolidated through state support and patronage. It was the need of the hour for Indian capitalism in the 1960s.” (Sinha, A. 2024. ‘What is Remunerative Price or the Minimum Support Price (MSP)?’, For a Proletarian Line, p. 365-366)
Further, Abhinav Sinha writes:
“The period of the early-1960s was a period of tumult for Indian economy for a variety of reasons. Nehru’s Himalayan misadventure with China and then war with Pakistan took a toll on the economy. Subsequently, the sudden demise of Nehru and then of Lal Bahadur Shastri created political instability. The drought of the 1965 took the tragedy to its culmination point. It was this testing period in which Indira Gandhi came to power. Planning was abandoned as more deficit spending was not possible and it was restarted only in 1969. In the 1967 elections, the strength of the Congress decreased in the Parliament, though Indira Gandhi still emerged victorious. In states, too, many non-Congress coalition governments were formed. In this period, the rising agricultural prices helped the rising agricultural bourgeoisie, that is, the class of rich farmers and kulaks. This class now wanted to invest in technology and machinery to increase productivity and profitability. In this context, the ‘Green Revolution’ was initiated. Rothermund argues that the overall increase in production of food-grains was not phenomenal by any standard between 1966 and 1980, except, may be, wheat and to a certain extent, rice. However, the changing pattern was evident from the fact that this increase in production was not due to the horizontal expansion of cultivation, but increase in productivity. In this period, the yield-per-hectare increased at a healthy rate. This was primarily due to the use of high-yielding varieties of the seeds, the increase in the irrigated area and the support of the state.” (Sinha, A., 2024. In the Valley of Historical Time, Brill, p. 58)
The fact that India utilized the help of imperialism in this process does not alter the character of this process. Also, the fact that imperialism, too, helped the Indian bourgeoisie in this process for its own interests in mind, does not change the character of the process either. The whole German industrialization in the late-Nineteenth century was based on the British and French finance capital. Did that make Germany a semicolony of Britain or France? The industrialization of Russia also got major fillip from foreign finance capital. Did that make Russia a semicolony of France, or any other European power? The point is that whether the policy of Green Revolution was implemented by the Indian bourgeoisie under the consideration of its own interests or not. Now let us see whether Green Revolution led to increase in agricultural productivity or not. Nazariya’s claim that there was no change in productivity is false. Here is the data on the productivity during Green Revolution.
| Rice | Wheat | Jowar | Bajra | Pulses | ||
| Cultivated Area (millionhectares) | ||||||
| 1955 | 31 | 12 | 17 | 11 | 23 | |
| 1960 | 34 | 13 | 18 | 11 | 23 | |
| 1975 | 39 | 20 | 16 | 11 | 23 | |
| 1980 | 40 | 22 | 15 | 11 | 23 | |
| 1985 | 41 | 23 | 16 | 11 | 24 | |
| 1990 | 43 | 24 | 15 | 10 | 24 | |
| Production(milliontons) | ||||||
| 1955 | 29 | 9 | 7 | 3 | 12 | |
| 1960 | 35 | 11 | 10 | 3 | 13 | |
| 1975 | 49 | 29 | 10 | 6 | 13 | |
| 1980 | 53 | 36 | 11 | 5 | 11 | |
| 1985 | 64 | 47 | 10 | 3 | 13 | |
| 1990 | 75 | 54 | 12 | 7 | 14 | |
| Yield(kg/hectares) | ||||||
| 1955 | 874 | 708 | 387 | 302 | 476 | |
| 1960 | 1013 | 851 | 533 | 286 | 539 | |
| 1975 | 1235 | 1410 | 591 | 540 | 533 | |
| 1980 | 1388 | 1648 | 673 | 466 | 493 | |
| 1985 | 1568 | 2032 | 641 | 345 | 544 | |
| 1990 | 1751 | 2274 | 819 | 661 | 576 | |
(Source: Economic Survey, cf. Bibliography, Section11.2)
Here we can clearly see that the claims of Nazariya editors that Green Revolution did not bring any change in productivity is a lie to prove their idiotic thesis of ‘Green Revolution’ as an imperialist conspiracy.
Further, Nazariya editors present the case of present agrarian crisis in Haryana as an example of the failure of the Green revolution:
“Take the state of Haryana as an illustration of the same: wheat yields have remained around 4,500 kg/ha for the past decade, with only marginal increases, signaling that the benefits of Green Revolution technologies may have plateaued. Soil fertility in many parts of Haryana has declined, leading to diminishing returns on crop yields. According to the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), over 60% of the blocks in Haryana are over-exploited or critical. The over-reliance on groundwater for irrigation, especially for water-intensive crops like rice, has led to a crisis that threatens the long-term sustainability of agriculture in the state. A large number of farmers in Haryana are trapped in a cycle of debt due to the high cost of inputs (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides) and the declining profitability of farming. According to NSSO data, the average debt per agricultural household in Haryana is significantly higher than the national average. The irony is that states like Punjab and Haryana are considered the states which brought about capitalism in India, through the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution is considered the pinnacle of “capitalist development in India”. However, even the state of agriculture in Haryana is dismal, pointing to suspicion on the basis of which Anvil makes its claim.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
Of course, the productivity gains due to the policies of Green Revolution (MSP is part of this set of policies) have long borne their fruits. In 1978, India became the net exporter of foodgrains for the first time. During the period of Long Recession, the capitalist agricultural crisis emerged and all the symptoms that Nazariya editors talk about in the above quote, are precisely the symptoms of capitalist crisis in agriculture. Here all the data presented by Nazariya are on declining soil fertility, ground-water crisis, debt cycle for small farmers, and declining profitability. These are signs of mature capitalism and not of semifeudal agriculture. Also, these “left”-wing toddlers hide the fact the farmers that are trapped in the vicious cycle of debts are actually marginal and small farmers, and they are victim of this vicious cycle precisely because they do not have access to institutional credit and are looted and plundered by the rich kulaks and capitalist farmers who give them loans on exorbitant interest rates. The large farmers, too, take loans from institutional credit system. However, there is no qualitative difference between the loans taken by the large farmers (agricultural bourgeoisie) and any other capitalist. This loan is not to meet incidental individual expenses or financing small-scale petty commodity production undertaken by poor farmers. This loan is to invest on a larger scale to exploit wage-labour on a larger scale and also enjoy the fruits of ‘economy of scale’, just like all other capitalists do. If our “left”-wing toddlers are shedding tears for the loans of the rich kulaks and capitalist farmers, then they could as well cry a bit for Adanis and Ambanis! If they are crying because the corporate capitalist class gets loans waived off on a much larger scale than the agrarian bourgeoisie, we can only say that this is worst kind of class capitulation that can be shown by a person who claims to be a communist.
As far as soil fertility is concerned, its decline is a general problem of capitalist farming. Soil fertility is declining in the US as well. See:
“One-third of the fertilizer applied to grow corn in the U.S. each year simply compensates for the ongoing loss of soil fertility, leading to more than a half-billion dollars in extra costs to U.S. farmers every year, finds new research from CU Boulder published last month in Earth’s Future.
“Long-term soil fertility is on the decline in agricultural lands around the world due to salinization, acidification, erosion and the loss of important nutrients in the soil such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Corn farmers in the U.S. offset these losses with nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers also intended to boost yields, but scientists have never calculated how much of this fertilizer goes into just regaining baseline soil fertility—or how much that costs.” (https://www.colorado.edu/today/2021/01/12/soil-degradation-costs-us-corn-farmers-half-billion-dollars-every-year)
Scalon et al write:
“Aquifer overexploitation could significantly impact crop production in the United States because 60% of irrigation relies on groundwater. Groundwater depletion in the irrigated High Plains and California Central Valley accounts for ∼50% of groundwater depletion in the United States since 1900.”(Scanlon, B. R., Faunt, C. C., Longuevergne, L., Reedy, R. C., Alley, W. M., McGuire, V. L., & McMahon, P. B. (2012). Groundwater depletion and sustainability of irrigation in the US High Plains and Central Valley. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(24), 9320–9325)
Debt cycle affecting the American farmers is also noticeable:
“In its February 7, 2023, release, ERS forecast total farm sector debt for the year at a record high $535.09 billion, an increase of $16.95 billion, or 3.3 percent, from 2022. This increase would nearly double the total sector debt compared with the amount in 2000, when it was $274.22 billion (adjusted for inflation). Although actual debt is forecast to reach a record level, another measure—debt as a percent of cash receipts—is still below the high of 121 percent in 2020.” (https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2023/august/increases-in-u-s-farm-debt-and-interest-expenses-minimally-affect-sector-s-financial-position-in-the-short-term-as-measured-by-liquidity-and-solvency-ratios/)
The US farmers, too, are reeling under the crisis of profitability:
“A sharp drop in crop prices coupled with rising production costs is set to slash U.S. net farm income this year, though inflation may be masking the significance of these price and income declines, especially in relation to past years.
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture last week forecast 2024 net farm income at $116 billion, down from $156 billion in 2023 and a record $186 billion in 2022, all in nominal dollars. That would be the fifth-highest on record after the past three years plus 2013.” (https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-farm-income-set-biggest-plunge-18-years-prices-cool-way-off-2024-02-14/)
The situation in European countries is no different. Thus, according to Nazariya editors, as “the state of agriculture in the pinnacle of capitalism”, that is, the US and Europe, is also dismal, we must doubt about capitalist development in these countries as well! What the “left”-wing toddlers do not understand is that capitalist economies experience periodic crises and during crises the production might even contract, expanded reproduction cannot happen, there will be devalorization of capital, decline in the rate of investment will happen and productivity might stagnate or even decline because there is no incentive to invest in modernizing production. They have an ideal image of capitalism in their mind, which is ceaselessly progressing at all given moments! Thus, all crisis-ridden capitalist countries of the so-called ‘Third World’ appear to them as semifeudal semicolonial. However, they do not dare to apply the same parameters to the crisis-ridden economies of the West! Because that would lead them to the absurd conclusion that all countries in the world are semifeudal semicolonial and their bourgeoisie is comprador! However, then the question will arise: comprador of whom?
Claim-2: Nazariya’s outrageous claim of absence of wage labour and presence of semifeudal relations
Nazariya editors further claim that in Indian agriculture wage labour is absent. According to them:
“A proper analysis of the areas affected by the Green Revolution in a study published in 2013 authored by Ajay Kumar shows how feudal relations of production are still dominant. One of the major distinctions between capitalist and pre-capitalist relations of productions, is the extraction of surplus through wage labour in the form of profit. The bourgeoisie employs wage labour to gain surplus, while in the Indian agricultural sector, this kind of wage labour is almost non-existence.” (Nazariya Editors, ibid)
First of all, let us inform the readers that this “study” by one Ajay Kumar was published in an equally inane trend within semifeudalist orthodoxy, a magazine named Towards a New Dawn. Nazariya and this magazine belong to the same ilk. Moreover, as we have shown above, this study is a bogus study which misinterprets every fact and data regarding the forms of attached labour found as a peripheral declining trend in Haryana and even in Punjab. Secondly, this form of attached labour itself is nothing but wage-labour, as the studies quoted above in section-2 demonstrate.
As far as the question of absence of employment of wage labour is concerned, Nazariya editors are blinded by their faith. They do not want to see the facts. As seen in section-2 Nazariya tries a trick to convert wages into a loan advanced! The data on this question is very clear. In general, what is the dominant mode of surplus extraction in Indian social formation including agriculture? There have been many studies on this. One of the finest is the study of Prof. Deepankar Basu and Prof. Amit Basole. Basu and Basole point out:
“On the basis of the data presented in the foregoing sections, we are led to the following tentative conclusions: over the past few decades, the relations of production in the Indian agrarian economy have become increasingly “capitalist”; this conclusion emerges from the fact that the predominant mode of surplus extraction seems to be working through the institution of wage-labour, the defining feature of capitalism. Articulated to the global capitalist-imperialist system, the development of capitalism in the periphery has of course not led to the growth of income and living standards of the vast majority of the population. On the contrary, the agrarian economy has continued to stagnate and the majority of the rural population has been consigned to a life of poverty and misery.
“Aggregate level data suggests that the two main forms through which the surplus product of direct producers is extracted are (a) surplus value through the institution of wage-labour (which rests on equal exchange), and (b) surplus value through unequal exchange (which mainly affects petty producers) where input prices are inflated and output prices deflated for the direct producers due to the presence of monopoly, monopsony and interlinking of markets. Semi-feudal forms of surplus product extraction, through the institution of tenant cultivation and sharecropping, have declined over time. Merchant and usurious capital continues to maintain a substantial presence in the life of the rural populace, both of which manage to appropriate a part of the surplus value created through wage-labour, apart from directly extracting surplus value from petty producers through unequal exchange.” (Basu, D. and Basole A. 2011. ‘Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: Part I – Agriculture’, Economic and Political Weekly 46, no.14, April 2, 2011, emphasis ours)
Further, Basu and Basole write:
“We suggest that the logic of semi-feudalism –appropriation of the surplus labour predominantly through direct labour services, bondage and attached labour; interlinked credit, labour and product markets; prevalence of usurious credit; lack of incentives for productive investment both for the direct producers (the tenant) and the owners of the land (non-cultivating landlords) – does not seem to be at work here; what is relevant is the political economy of contemporary backward capitalism resting on the vicious cycle of precarious non-farm employment and small-scale agricultural production, both marked by low productivity and low incomes and one reinforcing the other.” (Basu, D. and Basole A. 2011. ‘Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: Part II – ‘Informal’ Industry’, Economic and Political Weekly 46, no.15, April 9, 2011, emphasis ours)
These studies clearly prove that principal mode of surplus extraction in Indian agriculture is wage-relation. The fact that we are being obliged to support this obvious fact with studies and arguments, itself is tragic! Everyone knows this that the principal mode of surplus extraction in Indian agriculture today is wage labour. There is not even a single serious political economist or social scientist who contests this fact. This is something that we can expect only from the particularly inane trend of the “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya.
Claim-3: Nazariya’s fantastic claim: there is no capital formation in Indian agriculture!
According to Nazariya, there is no capitalist development in Indian agriculture because “the surplus that the landlords have gained is being used for usury instead of investing in agriculture to gain more profits”
This is what they write:
“Capitalism would mean the formation and further formation of capital so as to gain more profit. The agricultural sector in Haryana is making very little capital. The surplus that the landlords have gained is being used for usury instead of investing in agriculture to gain more profits.”
More from Nazariya:
“Big houses in the village areas are part of feudal prestige and honour. Thus, surplus extracted does not become capital, but strengthens feudal relations in the village. A proper investigation with proper data would reveal that there is a distorted form of capital production in the country and that feudal relations prevail all around along with some form of distorted capitalist relations.” (Nazariya Editors, ibid)
What kind of reasoning is this? Are big houses only and only a sign of feudal prestige? Cannot they be a sign of capitalist exuberance? And how do big houses of capitalists show that they are not capitalizing their appropriated surplus value? How does a big house prove that the revenue used by the capitalist is bigger than the part of surplus value that he has capitalized? This is not analysis. This is impressionism and that too of the most infantile kind, that suits these “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya.
Now let us see whether capital formation is happening in Indian agriculture or not. Facts clearly show a healthy historical rate of capital formation in Indian agriculture. Gulati and Bathla write:
“From 1961 to 1999, gross capital formation in agriculture (GCFA) grew at about 3% per annum, a significant rate of growth by developing country standards. Decomposed by decades, the growth in gross capital formation displays significant differences. While the growth rate of GCFA was 5.05% per annum in the decade of the 1960s, it accelerated to 8.7% per annum during the 1970s; thereafter, the growth rate slowed down significantly.
“During the 1980s, capital formation registered a negative growth rate of -0.33% per annum and picked up again to a growth rate of 2.89% per annum during the 1990s. What is interesting is that the slowdown in capital formation is largely accounted for by the deceleration of public sector capital expenditures in agriculture. Private sector investments, though growing at a slower rate than in the 1960s and 1970s never became negative even as public sector investment growth dipped below zero; moreover, it has picked up steam during the 1990s despite poor performance of the public sector (Gulati and Bathla 2002: Table 1.2). The data suggests two things, investment or capital formation in agriculture significantly increased in 1970s and 1980s, spearheaded by the state investment. After the reforms, a decline in public investment is more than outweighed by private investment in agriculture.”(https://www.anveshi.org.in/broadsheet-on-contemporary-politics/archives/broadsheet-on-contemporary-politics-vol-2-no-1011/transition-in-indian-agriculture-what-does-the-data-tell-us/, emphasis ours)
Thus it is evident that decline in capital formation (after the 1980s) was symptomatic of decline in public investment, not private investment. While probing development of capitalism in agriculture, we have to take into account private capital formation. If we look purely at private capital formation, capitalist development is evident. Gulati and Bathla show that the decline in the rate of capital formation in agriculture is due to decline in public investment. On the other hand, the private investments in agriculture has continuously increased.
“The behaviour and structure of gross capital formation in agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors (GCFA) as per type of assets and institutions is based on the revised and updated series from 1960 to 1998 at base 1993-94 prices. The analysis reveals a steady increase in GCFA (inclusive of change in stocks) over the years from a meagre level of Rs 63 billion in 1960-61 to Rs 182 billion in 1978-79. Thereafter, it declined up to 1986-87, and gradually recovered touching Rs 190 billion in 1998-99…Thus, over a 20 year period, 1978-98, the story of GCFA appears to be that of stagnation. The behaviour of GCFA is somewhat interesting when decomposed by the type of institutions, viz, public and private. Since the beginning of 1980s GCFA in public sector started coming down gradually and continued falling till early 1990s, while that under private sector followed this declining trend only up to 1986-87, but thereafter started looking up and even got accelerated from 1993-94 onwards…The share of private sector GCFA in total GCFA increased from 49 per cent in 1980-81 to 75 per cent in 1998-99.” (Gulati, Ashok, and Seema Bathla. “Capital Formation in Indian Agriculture: Re-Visiting the Debate.” Economic and Political Weekly 36, no. 20 (2001): 1697–1708. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4410633, emphasis ours)
Whether the agrarian bourgeoisie is capitalizing appropriated surplus value or not is determined by the contribution in the gross capital formation by the private sector in agriculture. The state expenditure in agriculture will inflate the data of capital formation. The true marker of capitalist profitability, rate of investment and therefore capital formation is the trends of private investment. Indian agriculture has a quite healthy historical trajectory of capital formation in this context.
If we compare data on the annual rates of capital formation in different continents we find very interesting fact. Contrary to the expectations of our “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya, Asia shows much higher rate of capital formation than Europe, Americas and Africa.
“Over the last five years, the fastest average annual increase of the GFCF was observed in Asia (3.1 percent), followed by Europe (2.7 percent), the Americas (1.2 percent) and Africa (0.3 percent); Oceania is the only region showing a decrease in investments, with an average annual rate of -3.4 percent.” (FAO. 2021. Agricultural investments and capital stock 2000–2020. Global and regional trends. FAOSTAT Analytical Brief Series No. 32. Rome.)
So according to data, Europe and Americas with lower rate of capital formation in agriculture, must be semifeudal according to Nazariya editors!
Lastly, in crisis-ridden capitalism, it is not necessary that we witness expanded reproduction and therefore a healthy rate of capitalization of surplus value all the time! It is the general historical tendency of capital accumulation. It does not mean that if one looks at the rate of capital accumulation and expanded reproduction in the US during the decade of the Great Depression, they will find a positive rate. In fact, during that time-frame we find devalorization of capital, contraction of production and rising unemployment. The fact that expanded reproduction happens, is a historical tendency and a qualitative and thematic point. For Marx, it did not and cannot mean that expanded reproduction will happen all the time! Since the period of beginning of long depression, it can be shown even from the economies of the US, Germany, France and Britain that in many sectors including agriculture, expanded reproduction did not happen in many financial years. Why? Because the regulator of investment in capitalism is profitability. If the rate of profit is low then the rate of capitalization of surplus value into capital, too, will be low and it can become even negative in the periods of crises. This does not prove that capitalist mode of production does not exist. The fundamental yardstick is not the quantitative yardstick of GCF or expanded reproduction, which exists as a general historical tendency in capitalism, but the existence of capital-relation and wage-relation, not the quantity of the surplus value being capitalized. Moreover, even if 22% of surplus value is being capitalized, as their article itself admits, it is admission of capitalist mode of production. Most of the time, Nazariya editors do not know what they are talking about. Mostly, they are blabbering baby-nothings.
Claim-4: Nazariya’s ignorant claims regarding tenancy and semifeudalism
Nazariya claims that India is not a capitalist country as there is prevalence of tenancy. Nazariya editors write:
“Not only is caste a key player in determining ownership of land and class relations, another pre-capitalist system that is prevalent in Punjab is tenancy. Those who push for Punjab as the citadel of capitalist relations in agriculture in India harken on the role of landlords and rich peasants leasing land from other peasants, a trend opposed to rest of India it is the poor and landless peasants who work as tenants. Yet, there is no conclusive evidence, however, of large-scale reverse tenancy (that is, of a system in which large farmers lease in from small farmers), as has been suggested by some scholars.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
Again, so many follies in a small paragraph! First of all, the present caste system is not a pre-capitalist system, even though it came into existence in the latter part of the Early-Vedic period (which was definitely not feudal period!). Since its inception, the varna-caste system has been articulated with every new mode of production that became dominant. There have been so many studies on the articulation and remolding of the caste system by new social formations in the Indian subcontinent. Some of the best are from Suvira Jaiswal, R.S. Sharma, D.D. Kosambi, Vivekanand Jha and Irfan Habib. It is not a static system but a system of social oppression and just like any system of social oppression, it is always molded, remolded, adjusted, readjusted, articulated and re-articulated with new emerging modes of production.
Secondly, the prevalence of various forms of tenancy is not an evidence to support the non-existence of capitalism. This is one of the basic teachings of Lenin on the agrarian question. Lenin writes:
“America provides the most graphic confirmation of the truth emphasized by Marx in Capital, Volume III that capitalism in agriculture does not depend on the form of land ownership or land tenure. Capital finds the most diverse types of medieval and patriarchal landed property—feudal, “peasant allotments” (i.e., the holdings of bonded peasants); clan, communal, state, and other forms of land ownership. Capital takes hold of all these, employing a variety of ways and methods. For agricultural statistics to be properly and rationally compiled, the methods of investigation, tabulation, etc., would have to be modified to correspond to the forms of capitalist penetration into agriculture; for instance, the homesteads would have to be put into a special group and their economic fate traced. Unfortunately, however, the statistics are all too often dominated by routine and meaningless, mechanical repetition of the same old methods.”(Lenin. 1964. ‘New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture’, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 22, emphasis ours)
Elsewhere, Lenin says:
“It is a great mistake to think that the inception of agricultural capitalism itself requires some special- form of land tenure. “But the form of landed property with which the incipient capitalist mode of production is confronted does not suit it. It first creates for itself the form required by subordinating agriculture to capital. It thus transforms feudal landed property, clan property, small-peasant property in mark communes (Markgemeinschaft)—no matter how divergent their juristic forms may be—into the economic form corresponding to the requirements of this mode of production” (Das Kapital, III, 2, 156). Thus, by the very nature of the case, no peculiarities in the system of land tenure can serve as an insurmountable obstacle to capitalism, which assumes different forms in accordance with the different conditions in agriculture, legal relationships and manner of life.” (Lenin, 1977. ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’, Progress Publishers, p. 328-29, emphasis ours)
We do not know the origin of this fallacy that if there is existence of various forms of tenancy, then it is a sign of some pre-capitalist mode of production. The real question is the character of the tenancy. Tenancy can be of capitalist character, or of transitional character, where the feudal bondage has come to an end, but the tenant itself is not a capitalist tenant farmer, but a simple commodity producer. Now, if this tenant peasant who is a simple commodity producer is producing for subsistence, then, too, for Marx, it is a ‘transitional form’; however, if such tenant peasant is producing mainly for the market, even though it is not exploiting wage-labour and therefore is not a capitalist farmer, he is certainly not a feudal tenant. In all capitalist countries, with the existence of advanced forms of capitalist tenancy, there is also co-existence of various backward and transitional forms of tenancy. This does not make any country semifeudal! That would be the case only if there is not capitalist entrepreneur in agriculture and the character of the rent is feudal. Moreover, in India, such tenant peasants who are under transitional or backward forms of tenancy are proportionally less and it is a declining trend. Most of such small and marginal tenant peasants have been transformed into semi-proletariat because their principal source of livelihood is no longer cultivation, but wage-labour.
In general, to see the existence of tenancy itself as a sign of semifeudalism is sheer ignorance. Abhinav Sinha writes on this question:
“First of all, one must understand the fact that preponderance of tenancy in the agrarian economy has nothing to do with semi-feudal relations in itself, as claimed by the semi-feudal theorists. Kautsky in his work gives ample evidence from late-19th century England, France, Germany, the United States and North Atlantic Union, that with the development of capitalist agriculture, tenancy became more and more prevalent. He shows that in capitalist agriculture there are proprietor farms (owner peasant farms) as well as the tenant peasant farms. The tenant peasant produces surplus on the leased farm with family and hired labour. A part of this surplus is transferred to the landlord as rent, another part to the usurer/creditor as interest and the rest is pocketed by him as profit; proprietor peasant gets the profit after paying interest on the loan, if any and the capitalist landlord gets the rent. However, Kautsky points out that the proprietor peasant’s proprietory rights become only a formal juridical reality with the development of capitalist agriculture. The proprietor peasant needs more and more capital to compete in the market. He gets this in the form of mortgage loan against his property. In return for this loan he has to hand over the ground rent to the mortgage creditor, who can be a state institution or a non-institutional creditor like the usurer. This in effect is the alienation of the producer from land. Kautsky explains it, “The division between the landowner and the entrepreneur–albeit hidden behind particular juridical forms–is still there. The ground-rent which accrues to the landowner under the lease system ends up in the pocket of the mortgage creditor under the mortgage system. As the owner of ground-rent, the latter is consequently the real owner of the land itself. In contrast, the nominal owner of the land is a capitalist entrepreneur who collects the profit on enterprise and ground rent, and then pays over the latter in the form of the interest on the mortgage…the difference between the lease system and the mortgage system is simply that in the latter the actual owner of the land is termed a capitalist, and the actual capitalist entrepreneur a landowner. Thanks to this confusion, our farmers (one can read the semi-feudal theorists/neo-narodniks in India here–author), who actually exercise capitalist functions, tend to get very indignant about exploitation by “mobile capital”–that is, the mortgage creditors who in fact play the same economic role as the landowner under the lease system.” (p.225, ibid). He argues that through this process the proprietor is not transformed into proletariat, but a tenant farmer. He explains further, “However, progress and prosperity in agriculture will inevitably express itself in an increase in mortgage indebtedness, first because such progress generates a growing need for capital, and secondly because the extension of agricultural credit allows ground rents to rise.” (p.226, ibid). Such capitalist transformation is often mistaken for the ruin of agriculture and lead some people to call for “saving the peasant”. Lenin dismantles this illusion quite clearly and quotes Kautsky, “The protection of the peasantry (der Bauernschutz) does not mean the protection of the person of the peasant (no one, of course, would object to such protection), but protection of the peasants property. Incidentally, it is precisely the peasant’s property that is the main cause of his impoverishment and his degradation. Hired agricultural labourers are now quite frequently in a better position than the small peasants. The protection of the peasantry is not protection from poverty but the protection of the fetters that chain the peasant to his poverty.” (Lenin, Review of Kautsky’s Die Agrarfrage, p.267, ibid). Further, “attempts to check this process would be reactionary and harmful: no matter how burdensome the consequences of this process may be in present-day society, the consequences of checking the process would be still worse and would place the working population in a still more helpless and hopeless position.” (p.267, ibid).” (Sinha, Abhinav. 2019. ‘Development of Capitalist Agriculture in India and the Intellectual Origins of the Fallacy of Present Semi-feudal Thesis, Subversive Interventions, Rahul Foundation)
Dipankar Basu and Amit Basole in their paper ‘Relations of Production and Modes of Extraction in India’ point out:
“Based on village-level studies, Sidhu (2005) also points to the changing nature of tenancy in North-Western India. In states like Punjab and Haryana, the majority of the tenant cultivators are no longer the landless and poor peasants; it is rather the middle and rich peasants who lease-in land to increase the size of their agricultural operations and reap some economies of scale on their capital investments (Sidhu, 2005). Thus, the prevalence of the fixed money rent form of tenancy, in Punjab for instance, is not an indicator of pre-capitalist relations of production, but are rather very much part of the capitalist development in Indian agriculture; the land rent that is earned by the lessor, in this case, can be considered capitalist rent.” (Basu, D. and Basole A. 2011. ‘Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: Part I – Agriculture’, Economic and Political Weekly 46, no.14, April 2, 2011)
Let us see this rather long quotation from Abhinav Sinha’s essay, which presents all the relevant data, facts and leading studies on this question:
“The 59th Round NSSO data revealed that in Punjab, Haryana, Central UP, Southern Bihar, Eastern Andhra, and some other areas of comparatively higher capitalist development in agriculture, the percentage of leased-in land in total operational holdings is higher than at least 22.48 percent. In Western UP, Coastal Maharashtra, Northern Bihar, parts of Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu the share of leased-in lands in the operational holdings was between 11.88 percent and 22.48 percent.
“Who is renting out the land? In most cases, capitalist rentier landlords and capitalist farmer landlords as well. Some of this tenancy is also ‘reverse tenancy’, where small and marginal peasants rent out their land to big capitalist farmers and migrate to cities to work. But share of this ‘reverse tenancy’ is still low and it is anyway a sign of capitalist development as Lenin pointed out in The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In some parts of India, some backward tenancy forms do exist, where small peasants lease land, they do not exploit wage-labour on a regular basis. However, most of agricultural land is under capitalist tenancy where the leased-in land is under the management of capitalist tenant farmers who employ wage-labour, appropriate the surplus-value and the surplus-profit is handed over to the capitalist landlord as Absolute Rent.
“Arindam Banerji writes:
“ “However, the landlord–bourgeoisie alliance that came to dominate the Indian state after 1947 prevented any meaningful land reforms in most parts of the country, except in a few pockets where protracted peasant struggles could not be suppressed by the ruling classes (Harriss 2013). Rather, capitalist development in agriculture was triggered more through the technological intervention of the green revolution strategy in the mid-1960s, and not through a radical transformation of the rural feudal society. Further helped by the development of public interventions like the crop management system, credit provisioning, seed research, and so on, and stepping up of public investment in agriculture, capitalist landlords (transition from above) and rich peasants (transition from below) emerged through a process of peasant differentiation.” (Arindam Banerji, ‘Agrarian Crisis and Accumulation in Rural India’, in The Land Question in India, edited by, Anthony P. D’Costa and Achin Chakraborty, Oxford University Press, p. 103-4, emphasis ours)
“He notes further:
“ “A rich rural elite comprised of capitalist landlords, thin sections of the rich peasants, and other collaborative agents of organized capital within the rural areas may have found ways and means for continued accumulation even within this larger crisis. The primary data analysis later in the section substantiates this situation in agriculture.” (ibid, p. 105, emphasis ours)
“Banerjee continues:
“ “Capitalist landlords and thin sections of the rich peasants who have established extended control over the value chain in cultivation, both on input and output ends, continue the accumulation process more vigorously within the conditions of agrarian crisis.” (ibid, p. 112, emphasis ours)
“The case of Punjab to understand the existence of large capitalist tenant farmers is essential. Soham Bhattacharya has done a commendable study of capitalist landlordism and capitalist tenancy in Punjab. Bhattacharya shows that the rent per hectare for large capitalist tenant farmers in Punjab on an average was Rs. 70,056.4 per annum. The share of rent in the gross value output (GVO) was 0.31 percent. This is certainly not Differential Rent, and this total Ground-Rent is mainly composed of Absolute Rent. These are capitalist tenants employing considerable number of wage-labourers regularly. Who are they paying rent to? According to Ajay Sinha, they do not pay any Absolute Rent and all farmers in India are landowners, who do not pay Absolute Ground Rent, and they only pay Differential Ground Rent to the State (an even more absurd claim, to which we will come later.) Bhattacharya, in his conclusion, writes:
“ “First, in 2012–13, large tenant farmers constituted the major category among tenant farmers in rural Punjab. This was in contrast to the rest of rural India, where more than 50 per cent of lessees operated less than 2 hectares of land. The profit motive impelled large tenant farmers to lease in land. There is evidence of intensification of farming during the post-Green Revolution period through higher use of inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, expansion of irrigation, and introduction of new technology. The increased prevalence of tenancy suggests that during the decade 2003–13, large farmers leased in land in order to enhance the economic size of their farms.” (Soham Bhattacharya, ‘Agricultural Tenancy in Contemporary Punjab’, Review of Agrarian Studies, Volume 9, No. 2, July-December 2019)
“Gaurav Bansal too has done a good study of capitalist landlordism and capitalist tenancy in Punjab. Bansal points out the predominance of capitalist tenancy and capitalist landlordism in Punjab as well as the partial overlapping between these two classes. Often, the big capitalist farmers are capitalist landlords, capitalist farmer owners as well as capitalist tenants. Bansal says in the very beginning of his research paper:
“ “This article contributes to this debate by studying aspects of capital accumulation in Punjab. It uses data from two surveys of a village in the Doaba region of Punjab: a census survey by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies in 2011 and a resurvey by the author of a sample of households in 2019. The article argues that capital accumulation in the village has continued over the past two decades and was concentrated in a class of tenant-capitalist farmers belonging to the dominant class and caste (Jat Sikhs). In the context of stagnation of agricultural productivity and declining profitability per unit of land, this group of capitalist farmers was able to enhance their total income by leasing in land. This opportunity was created by large-scale emigration among the landed Jat Sikhs. Tenant-capitalist farmers had privileged access to the lands of the emigrants with whom they shared caste and kinship ties. This path of accumulation was further facilitated by access to cheap migrant workers, assured procurement by the State, an active market for machinery, and access to credit at affordable rates of interest. Tenancy thus provided an impetus to accumulation and investment in the capitalist agriculture of Punjab in the contemporary period.” (Gaurav Bansal, ‘Tenancy and Accumulation: A Study of the Capitalist Farm Sector in Punjab’, Review of Agrarian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, July-December 2020, emphasis ours)
“Bansal’s study identifies the basic classes of farmers and landlords in Punjab: capitalist landlord, big tenant capitalist farmer, and other capitalist farmers, besides the class of wage-labourers, obviously, the bulk of which is migrant labour. Now let us cast a glance at some statistics: capitalist landlords in the surveyed village constituted 5.1 percent of households. Average size of operated farm land for them was 16 hectares out of which 29.2 percent of land was leased in. Second important bourgeois class was the class of Big Tenant Capitalist Farmers. The average size of operated land for them is 11.1 hectare, out of which 70.4 percent was leased-in land. As one can see, there is a class of agrarian capitalists, which is predominantly capitalist landlord and another class of agrarian capitalists which is predominantly capitalist tenant; however, both of them are involved in leasing-in of land and obviously leasing-out of land. Notably, 46 percent of the Capitalist Landlords are NRIs! This means an absentee landlord, only enjoying a title to Absolute Ground Rent! Just as Marx pointed out, “It undoes the connection to such an extent that the landed proprietor can spend his entire life in Constantinopole, while his landed property remains in Scotland.” (Sinha, A. 2024. ‘Ajay Sinha aka Don Quixote de la Patna’s Disastrous Encounter with Marx’s Theory of Ground Rent (and Marx’s Political Economy in General)’, For a Proletarian Line, Rahul Foundation, p. 206-210, emphasis ours)
It is clear to any serious student of Marxist political economy, that the prevalence of various forms of tenancy, in and by themselves, are not a symptom or cause of semifeudality of agriculture in a country. From that standpoint, almost all countries of the world will become semifeudal! The question is the character of the tenancy and the character of the ground-rent, two things, which the boisterous “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya have no clue about.
Claim 5: Nazariya’s ignorant claim regarding preponderance of small peasantry as a characteristic of semifeudalism
Nazariya editors further claim that the presence of small landholdings represent the existence of semifeudalism in agriculture. According to Nazariya:
“Not only have the patterns not largely changed, there is a domination of poor and middle peasantry in land ownership and a reduction in the ownership of land among landlords and rich peasants after the so-called Green Revolution! This is diametrically opposite to capitalist development in agriculture as it maintains small parcels of land and petty production, maintains the small peasantry that preserves handicrafts and does not displace the peasantry in a manner that the pre-capitalist relations of production are demolished. The numerical dominance of the middle and small peasantry (peasants who own small parcels of land i.e. means of production) is a testament to the unthoughtful analysis of these Anvil “Maoists”.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
Does presence of small landholdings is antithetical to development of capitalism in agriculture? Jaya Prakash has cleared this confusion. He writes:
“The argument that the existence of small holdings is antithetical to capitalism is also unscientific. In his seminal work, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, Lenin himself made a case against these arguments. Kautsky’s The Agrarian Question, also explains why small holdings continue to exist for a long time in backward capitalist countries. (If CPM disregards Kautsky’s views because Lenin called him a renegade, not much help can be extended. It will be helpful to note that by the time The Agrarian Question was published, Kautksy had not yet become a renegade and Lenin had highly praised this book of Kautsky as a major contribution to Marxist political economy). Moreover, Marx himself had pointed out to the existence of transitional forms in agriculture after the capitalist relations have established themselves firmly in chapter 47 of Capital, Volume 3, where he talks about the persistence of sharecropping and small peasant production and calls them as “transitional forms” which are no more feudal and are yet to become properly capitalist. Moreover, today’s small peasantry is not even like the “small peasant production” of Marx’s time, which was mainly subsistence production! Even for small peasants, the bulk of production is production for market and they have been transformed into semi-proletariat.” (Jaya Prakash, ibid)
Thus the Marxist understanding is crystal clear on this question. Secondly the data of even advanced capitalist countries, idealized by Nazariya, also show similar trend. Jay Prakash further explains:
“According to data from 2013, there were a total of 1,11,740 smallholdings of area less than two hectares in France. They were all cultivated and owned by households that were primarily dependent on family labour. Out of all holdings in the European Union, 50 per cent are in the hands of small farmers who owned less than two hectares each. (Source: ‘The Number, Size and Distribution of Farms and Family Farms Worldwide’ by S.K. Lowder, J. Skoet, and Terri Raney, FAO of UN, Rome, Italy) Just because smallholdings continue to exist in Italy, France and Germany in considerable numbers, should we be saying that democratic tasks in these countries have not been fulfilled or the agriculture has not become qualitatively capitalist? Should we be declaring that these countries are at the stage of a people’s democratic revolution? In fact, it is theoretically possible to practise capitalist agriculture in as small a landholding as 2 hectares depending on the level of development of productive forces.” (Jaya Prakash, ibid)
Further we must also answer that what does presence of small landholdings mean? Abhinav Sinha writes:
“What does the preponderance of small peasant proprietorship in agriculture mean?… In many countries with developed capitalist production, the small peasants numerically predominate in the peasant population. However, they do not dominate the agricultural economy as the major share of land is concentrated in the hands of capitalist landlords and capitalist farmers. In fact, the capitalist landlords and farmers never generally predominate numerically. It is the wage-labourers that predominate numerically. What is the case in India today?
“According to the 10th Agricultural Census of 2015-16, farmers who own 2 to 10 hectares of land (semi-medium, medium farmers) own 43.6 percent of crop area (cultivated land), though they constitute only 13.2 percent of all farmers. The 86.2 percent small and marginal farmers own only 47 percent of the crop area. And 0.6 percent large farmers (>10 ha) own approximately 10 percent of the crop area. In other words, the middle to rich farmers who are just 13.4 percent of all peasant population own almost 60 percent of entire cultivated land. What does this show? It shows high levels of land concentration in the hands of capitalist farmers and capitalist landlords.
“Do small peasants dominate in the overall population, or even in the agricultural population in India today, as the transitional small peasant economy would have it? NO! In 2011 itself, the agricultural population was only 263 million. Out of this, landowning peasants/farmers were only 118 million, whereas the agricultural workers were 145 million. In the decade that has passed since then, the rate of depeasantization has been even higher and almost another 10 million peasants have “left agriculture”, that is, have been proletarianized. As one can see, the small peasant population not only does not predominate in the overall population today, but it does not even predominate in the rural population or even agricultural population.
“The class differentiation has developed to considerably high levels, the small peasants have been turned into agricultural semi-proletariat depending mainly on wage labour, whatever they produce, they produce for the market as the data on marketable surplus shows and they neither preponderate in the overall economy nor in the population.” (Sinha, A. 2021. ‘Ajay Sinha aka Don Quixote de la Patna’s Disastrous Encounter with Marx’s Theory of Ground Rent (and Marx’s Political Economy in General)’, For a Proletarian Line, Rahul Foundation, p. 162-63, emphasis ours)
The point is not the decreasing number of large farmers and the increase in the number of small and marginal farmers. The point is land concentration. In other words, how much of operational landholdings are under the ownership of large farmers, medium farmers, small farmers and marginal farmers. In fact, the decrease in the number of magnates of capital in the agricultural sector is not a sign of semifeudalism, but higher stage of development of capitalism. In India, 32 percent of the best agricultural land is under the ownership of 4.5% farmers, the richest ones. A large farmer in India has 45 times more land than the marginal farmers. The data of land concentration fluctuates between the large farmers and medium farmers (both capitalist farmers) and at times there is also decline in land concentration. However, this temporary decline does not change the overall picture. As a secular tendency, the land concentration in the hands of big capitalist farmers and landlords has been increasing, even though the number of big capitalist farmers and landlords might decrease, which would be in complete consonance with the general tendency of capitalist development.
Basu and Basole also rightly observe:
“The interstate evidence on landownership inequality and land concentration seems to suggest that semi-feudal landlords have been replaced by rich and middle peasants as the ruling bloc in the agrarian structure of a large part of contemporary India. This, as we point out later, was not so much the result of political conflict between a rising capitalist farming class and the feudal oligarchy; rather, the latter have, aided by a pliant State, gradually transformed themselves into capitalist farmers, among other things.” (Basu, D. and Basole A. 2011. ‘Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: Part I – Agriculture’, Economic and Political Weekly 46, no.14, April 2, 2011, emphasis ours)
Basu and Basole point out further:
“Some political economists would probably argue that this warrants a characterization of the contemporary political economy as semifeudal. Does lack of land concentration, the perpetuation of small-scale farming, and the resultant economic stagnation have anything in common with the stagnation associated with semi-feudal relations of production observed in an earlier period? We do not think so.” (Basu and Basole. 2011. ‘Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: Part II – ‘Informal’ Industry’ in Economic and Political Weekly 46, no.15, April 9, 2011, emphasis ours)
As we can see, on the basis of concrete facts and data, this ignorant claim of Nazariya, too, falls flat. We would have enjoyed writing this rebuttal, had there been an iota of intelligence, rigour and awareness of basics of Marxism in the poor piece scrambled together by the “left”-wing toddlers of this inane trend.
Claim-6: Nazariya’s idiotic claim of dominance of agriculture for “sustenance” in India
Another false claim of Nazariya is that in India there is still agriculture for “sustenance” (We think the “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya meant ‘subsistence’; all economic activities are driven towards sustaining themselves, whether for exchange or subsistence). Nazariya editors claim:
“Another factor which is important for a country to be termed as capitalist is that production should be for exchange in the market, and not feudalism. In fact, the continued perseverance of tenancy and the land fragmentation in India have led to production being primarily for the purpose of sustenance. Firstly, the Agriculture Census 2015-16 reports that small and marginal farmers, who own less than 2 hectares of land, constitute about 86% of all farmers in India. These farmers typically have limited landholdings, which restricts their ability to produce surplus crops for the market and instead, their primary focus is on producing enough food to meet their household’s consumption needs. An analysis of the NSSO Report 2017 shows that a significant portion of the produce from small and marginal farmers is not sold in the market but is retained for household consumption.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
This is totally incorrect and a gross misrepresentation of data. The small-owner peasant in Indian economy does not produce mainly for direct consumption, that is, he/she is not involved mainly in subsistence agriculture. He does not sell surplus product after his direct consumption. Let us see some concrete data. First of all, the data on marketable surplus has to be taken into consideration, not the marketed surplus. Whether the farmer is able to sell his/her produce in the market, depends on a variety of factor, most importantly the overall state of economy; during periods of crisis, the share of marketable surplus might not go down, but that of marketed surplus will certainly go down.
Abhinav Sinha writes on this:
“In 2012, the marketable surplus of entire agricultural production of rice and wheat in the major agricultural states was 83 percent of total output. Even in marginal farms, the marketable surplus was 64.8 percent; for small farms it was 72.2 percent; and for the larger farms, it was 85.4 percent. (see Vijay Paul Sharma, ‘Marketable and Marketed Surplus of Wheat and Rice in India: Distribution and Determinants’, Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 71, No. 2, April-June 2016).
“Of course, it does not mean that agriculture is the dominant means of livelihood for marginal and small peasants, as we shall see. It only means that they are not practicing subsistence agriculture and the bulk of their produce is for sale, even if, this sale does not provide them with sufficient means of livelihood.
“According to the NSSO Survey of 2013, one-third of all peasants in India with less than 0.4 hectares of land, earn only 16 percent of their annual income from land and the rest comes from wage labour; another one-third of all peasants with 0.4 to 1 hectare of land, earn 60 percent of their income from wage labour. In other words, nearly 70 percent of small peasants do not depend mainly on land for their livelihood; their principal source of income is wage labour. What are the conclusions to be drawn from this? They are as follows:
“This overwhelming majority of small peasants in India are not the ‘small peasant proprietors’ that Marx discusses in the 47th Chapter of ‘Capital’, Volume 3. They do not produce mainly for direct consumption, they do not depend on cultivation as their principal source of income, and whatever they produce is for sale in the market, though this sale has to be supported by income from wage labour in order to make ends meet. These small peasants constitute the semi-proletariat, who are in principal wage-labourers. They do not constitute the small peasant proprietor practicing subsistence farming, depending mainly on land, signifying a ‘small peasant economy’ and characterizing a transitional form before the consolidation of capitalist mode of production in agriculture as well as outside agriculture.” (Sinha, A, 2024. ‘Ajay Sinha aka Don Quixote de la Patna’s Disastrous Encounter with Marx’s Theory of Ground Rent (and Marx’s Political Economy in General)’, For a Proletarian Line, Rahul Foundation, p. 161-62, emphasis ours)
Even if we look at the marketed surplus the capitalist market character Indian agriculture becomes crystal-clear. Basu and Basole point out:
“Table 4 gives the marketed surplus ratio (MSR), i.e., the share of the output (in quantity terms) that is sold in the market, for key crops at two points in time five decades apart. Comparing the early 1950s to the early 2000s, we see a sharp increase in the marketed surplus ratio for all important non-cash crops like rice, wheat and maize; cash crops like sugar cane, cotton and jute, on the other hand, have always registered a high marketed surplus ratio and did not show much change over the last five decades. The massive increase in the marketed surplus ratio for key crops indicates an increasing penetration of the market over the last five decades. But this aggregate figure for key crops might hide important variations across size-classes. It is possible that most of the marketed surplus comes from large landholding families, while small landholding families produce mainly for subsistence needs.
“How is the market penetration spread out across size-class categories? Figure 14 plots the marketed surplus ratio by size-class categories in 2003. Along expected lines, the MSR increases secularly with the size of holding with the small and middle categories being almost indistinguishable on the basis of MSR.…Thus even if it is true that in absolute terms most of the marketed surplus is accounted for by large landholders, in relative terms even the smallest landholders sell a non-negligible 44% of their output.…
“Combined with the data we presented earlier on labour costs as a per cent of cultivation expenses, as well as the well-known commercialization of other inputs to farming, such as seeds, electricity and fertilizer, we are confronted with a picture of the peasantry that has been substantially integrated into the market across size classes and hence is extremely sensitive to input and output prices. This is one of the key characteristics of current Indian political economy…” (Basu and Basole. 2011. ‘Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: Part I – Agriculture’ in EPW, April 2, 2011, emphasis ours)
Again, Nazariya editors have tried to spread a white lie about the actual situation in Indian agriculture and have been caught red-handed.
Claim-7: Nazariya’s wild claims regarding finding feudal lords in India
Continuing on their wild escapades the Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers claim:
“Haryana is an example which shows that a feudal ruling class, an intermediary, still exists between the state and the peasant.”(Nazariya editors, ibid)
Why only Haryana? In all states, we can see that there is an intermediary between the farmers and the state: the capitalist landlord! The existence of a landlord between the farmers and the state is not a sign of feudalism and that landlord is not necessarily a feudal landlord unless and until he/she enjoys legislative, judicial and executive political power, that is, he/she effectively functions as a parcel of state. Did the toddlers mean that? May be yes. Nazariya editors say:
“Examples of the control of the feudal landowning classes can not only be found in agriculture but in everyday examples like rural voting patterns. It is a known fact that elections are won on the basis of caste, money and “muscle power” in India – in most cases, the feudal landlord is the “representative” of one’s caste and exerts extra-economic control over the peasantry due to which they vote for the most powerful landlord within their caste.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
Okay. If voting on the basis of caste, money and “muscle power” means that the candidate is actually a feudal landlord functioning as a “parcel of state”, then every country in the world would be feudal. In the US elections, voting takes place on the basis of race, money and muscle-power; so does in various countries of Europe, where voting happens on the basis of xenophobia, money-power and muscle-power! One would be inclined to ask the Nazariya toddlers: what do they expect to happen in a capitalist election? The adherence by the capitalist candidates to the golden rules of morality and ethics? Implementation of transparency? No use of money-power and muscle-power? No use of identity politics? In what world these idiots live!?
Our “left”-wing toddlers do not understand the meaning of “parcel of state”. Parcel of state means that the state itself is parcellized or fragmented and the political power does not reside in a central authority; this is precisely what happens in a semifeudal semicolonial country. That is one of the fundamental reasons why in such countries the path of revolution of protracted people’s war is applied and not that of armed insurrection. Being parcel of state does not mean that the landlord enjoys the use of money-power and muscle-power or would be inclined to use identity politics based on caste.
The feudal landlord class has absolute control of land and production on the land. This class is a parcel of the state and has, de facto and often de jure, executive, legislative and judicial powers and at the level of the village functions as the government. The feudal landlord makes the dependent peasants and serfs, the direct producers, cultivate the land under its control and extracts the entire surplus labour in the form of feudal ground-rent. This is what a feudal landlord is. Does India have this situation? No. The examples Nazariya presents as evidence do not show that these landlords constitute a “parcel of state”. We have seen above that our “left”-wing toddlers do not understand the meaning of the term. To give example of presence of caste and other oppressions as example of presence of feudalism is sheer stupidity. Jaya Prakash has rightly written that:
“Severe oppression of the Blacks is still a reality in capitalist USA. Gender discrimination is rife in every capitalist country. Several European nations are witnessing a rise in xenophobia. Regional differences in development and regional oppression are present in every capitalist country. Are all these feudal characteristics in and by themselves? By that logic, should not we be declaring that the development of capitalist relations in these countries has not reached a qualitative phase? In India’s case, all the above-mentioned forms of oppression are joined by another peculiar form of social oppression, namely, caste-based oppression. Ruling classes of new societies will inevitably make use of the values and forms of oppression that came into existence in the older societies for their own ends. They will transform, articulate, adapt and sublate many of these forms of oppression to suit their needs. More importantly, they will actively promote some of these values, in so far as they are not in contradiction with the capitalist mode of production itself. For instance, the caste system in India today is not the caste system that existed in the later-Vedic period, or Gupta period or the Turkish or Mughal rule. The registers of caste that were in contradiction with capitalist mode of production are on decline for example, commensal prejudices, untouchability, and hereditary division of labour, but capitalist system has co-opted caste endogamy because this has no contradiction with capitalism; on the contrary, it makes private property even more sacred than the bourgeoisie would have imagined! That is why, caste endogamy is the one register of caste system that not only persists but is consolidated, whereas the other elements which were a hindrance to capitalist mode of production are on decline. This is how every new mode of production adopts, adapts, articulates, adjusts and sublates every form of social oppression that came into existence before its own advent. In that way, all forms of oppression that we see around us today are capitalist forms of oppression. What we witness today is a capitalist patriarchy, a capitalist caste system, a capitalist communalism, a capitalist regionalism, a capitalist xenophobia. Everywhere in the world, including India, oppression of the women existed even in pre-feudal times. Similarly, caste-based oppression also has been in existence since before feudalism. It was later during the Gupta period that it was co-opted and sublated by the feudal state. It is in the same way that caste continues to exist today. Therefore, it is important to try and understand how every society based on exploitation protects, sublates and reproduces various forms of oppression, rather than blindly labelling those forms of oppression as belonging to specific modes of production. Otherwise we would have to proclaim that every country in the world today is in the stage of democratic revolution! (Jaya Prakash, ibid)
Nazariya toddlers also claim that the state in India intervenes through these “feudal landlords” who are the “parcel of state”! First of all, the state always intervenes in the general political struggles of society through their social props and indeed the class of capitalist landlords and capitalist farmers is their social prop and at times, they do intervene in the political struggles through this class. However, it does not mean that the rule of the Indian capitalist state is materialized only indirectly through the class of capitalist farmers and landlords in the countryside. There is an elaborate structure of various institutions of the central state that penetrate the pores of rural society, from bureaucratic bodies to the institutions of repressive state apparatus like police, armed forces, etc. The countryside is not ruled by the bands of feudal retainers like the medieval period, except in the dreams of our “left”-wing toddlers. In fact, these limbs of the state might act against the class of capitalist farmers and landlords in the cases of the contradiction between the industrial-financial bourgeoisie and the agrarian bourgeoisie become sharp.
5. How to Make Gigantic Mistakes by Adding Up Small Mistakes
Now we will see how poor and pathetic is the ‘Nazariya‘ of these dogmatic so-called “Maoists” who do not understand even the very basics of Marxist political economy. We showed earlier that even the beginners of Marxism understand the difference between ‘labour’ and ‘labour-power’, but our boisterous “left”-wing toddlers are totally unaware about it.
At many places they talk about worker/peasant selling ‘labour’ in return of wage! Anyone who knows even the ABC of Marxist political economy knows that the workers do not sell their ‘labour’ but the ‘labour power’. See what our stubborn toddlers write:
“The Naukar clearly does not sell his labour for wages but is bound by usury.”
Again:
“The peasantry in India mostly does not sell its labour for wages…..”
Clearly, they don’t understand difference between labour and labour-power. It is the labour-power which is commodified by capitalism and the worker, as its owner, sells it in the market to capitalist, in return of wages. Whereas ‘value of labour’ is a tautological absurdity, as value is nothing but objectified or congealed labour. Labour is the substance of value. Therefore, labour has not value, it is value.This is the level of the so-called “Maoists” of Nazariya. They bring only bad name to Mao Tse-tung, the great teacher of the proletariat.
Now let us see some funny paradoxes of our “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya. On the one hand, they say that the ‘peasants don’t sell their labour in return of wages’ because according to them in agriculture there is ‘unfree labour’. However, on the other hand, in the same breath, to justify the MSP of kulaks and rich farmers, they say that MSP will benefit the poor and landless peasantry as ‘their demand for the minimum daily wages will go as high as 700!’ But we thought that these ‘landless peasants are not selling their labour in return of wages’!
Nazariya editors say:
“The peasantry in India mostly does not sell its labour for wages. Therefore, the conditions in which MSP would lead to greater exploitation do not exist in India. In fact, landless and poor peasantry benefit from M.S.P and the demand for the minimum daily wage of 700 rupees.”
So, introduction of high MSP will somehow change the production relation and the labour will become free and will start ‘selling labour to get high wages!’ Wow!
Now we can see not only their idiocy but also their opportunism. If there is no wage labourer, than whose wages will go high due to MSP of rich farmers and kulaks? Clearly this is double-speak of rank opportunists, the so-called “Maoists” of Nazariya. When they have to justify their assumptions of semifeudal relations and the dominant existence of bonded labour, they say wage-labour does not exist and at the same time to justify the MSP they dig out the wage labourers, to make them beneficiary of it!
Further, they say:
“Marx in the ‘German Ideology’, mentions that manufacturing was always sheltered by protective duties in the home market. In India, this shield was completely revoked after the WTO forced India to remove protective tariffs. This led to the complete ruin of the MSME sector, which was run by the national bourgeoisie (middle bourgeoisie) of the country. This section aspires for independent capitalist development but is restricted by a government that backs the interests of imperialism. What independent foreign policy does the Indian state have, when it extinguishes its own indigenous manufacturing sector at the behest of the imperialist institutions?” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
In India, till 1990, there were protective tariffs and policy of import substitution in order to shield domestic capital from foreign competition. And only after the domestic capital became capable to withstand the competition from foreign capital, protective tariffs and restriction on foreign direct investment were removed in a gradual way. So if we go by the logic of these “Nazariya (less)” people, till 1990 when there were protective tariffs and restrictions on foreign investment, then Indian state represented national bourgeoisie and later during the neoliberal phase, when the regime of protectionism was withdrawn, the state became comprador again! However, according to them since 1947 itself the Indian state was comprador and an agent of imperialism! Look at the sheer absurdity of their laughable claims!
Let us see, yet another self-contradictory statement:
“The essential question here is simple – who does the division of the peasantry serve? In the case of MSP, it serves the imperialist ruling classes and its Indian stooges, not the people. This is summarised in Nazariya’s article, “The indirect taxes paid by the poor and landless peasantry, is one of the major expenditures, which can be reduced through this process (note: process here referring to MSP). But the intention of the government is completely opposite and they themselves welcome the foreigners to manage our economy according to their own interest.” The demand for M.S.P is an economic demand for all of the peasantry in the country. Thus, the participation of poor and landless peasantry in the farmers’ protest is not a reflection of ruling class ideology but a reflection of the peasantry to struggle against the oppressive state and the imperialism it helps perpetuate.” (Nazariya editors, ibid)
So the point is simple. The Indian state introduced MSP during Green Revolution (which according to them is nothing but an imperialist conspiracy!) to serve the interests of kulaks and rich peasants, who are part of the masses of Nazariya toddlers! Then, till the time the Indian state was supporting the policy of MSP, was it ‘national’! If yes, how, since the policy of MSP was part of the overall policy of the Green Revolution and the Green Revolution was an imperialist conspiracy for the Nazariya toddlers! Even if we ignore this question, was the Indian bourgeoisie not comprador before it started opposing the policy of MSP? And now it has been transformed into comprador?
These are just few instances of the absurd contradictions and paradoxes in which the “left”-wing toddlers of Nazariya tumble into repeatedly.
6. Nazariya’s Tail-ending of Kulaks: Class Collaborationism and Ideological Capitulation at its Worst
Nazariya editors were evidently mortified because we criticized the tail-ending of so-called “revolutionaries” who had been justifying the kulak movement as a mass movement so as to cover-up their class-collaborationism. This is what we had written at the time of rich farmers’ movement:
“The present farmers’ movement for the reasons already enumerated is not a mass movement in the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist sense. The agricultural bourgeoisie does not constitute a part of the masses anymore. India is a capitalist country and Indian bourgeoisie is politically-independent bourgeoisie, which has nothing in common with the people. It is neither a comprador bourgeoisie, nor a national bourgeoisie today, nor an imperialist bourgeoisie yet. It is a ‘junior partner’ of imperialism, which is politically-independent and economically partially-dependent on imperialism for capital and technology. We are in the stage of socialist revolution and no part of bourgeoisie is going to be a strategic class ally of the proletariat in revolution. In other words, following the dynamic meaning of the term ‘masses’ established by Lenin and enriched by Mao, it must be said that rich kulaks and capitalist farmers do not form a part of the masses or ‘the people’. In the contradiction between the people and the enemy, it is the proletariat, poor peasantry and other sections of semi-proletariat, and the lower middle classes (including lower-middle peasantry), which constitute what Lenin and Mao would term as ‘the masses’ or Mao would define as ‘the people’. All factions of bourgeoisie including the small and medium capitalists, small and medium commercial capitalists, the agricultural bourgeoisie form part of the ruling class or, to borrow from Mao, ‘the enemy’. Therefore, the situation of ML groups/organizations/parties that believe in the stage of socialist revolution and still support the present rich farmers’ movement is particularly ridiculous. Those who believe India to be a semi-feudal semi-colonial social formation can still find some reason to justify their support for the present rich farmers’ movement, though they too find themselves in a compromising position because it is the same rich farmers which are termed by them as being feudal landlords at times, when they cannot find any actual feudal landlord. Still, even in the stage of new democratic revolution, as Mao pointed out, it is poor peasants, semi-proletariat and middle peasants who are firm allies, whereas the rich farmers are vacillating allies. However, it would be a mockery of Maoism to call these Narodist-communists as Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, at least in terms of understanding.”(Editorial, 2021, ‘One Divides into Two’, The Anvil-6)
Responding to our above observation, Nazariya editors served a deadly concoction of ignorant and inane arguments to justify their tail-ending of kulaks and rich farmers and in this process they have even further crossed over to the realm of political and ideological opportunism. It was one thing to capitulate in front of kulaks (though for that too hardly any ideological justification can be sought) but our Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers have gone to the extent of kowtowing to religious fundamentalists like Khalistanis and all kinds of other reactionaries which were present in the rich farmers’ movement. As readers will recall, we criticized the kulak movement on the question of character of the leadership as well as on the charter of demands of the movement. Nazariya has presented, rather distorted our stand as follows:
“Calling oneself a vanguard, thinking that they practice the most correct and scientific ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, it is no surprise that our comrades over in Anvil looked at the masses with scorn and condemned the “fundamentalist” elements in the peasant movement and displayed a highly Brahamanical outlook, resulting from a mechanical understanding of religion.”(Nazariya editors, ibid)
Is this the point of contention here? Firstly, the Nazariya editors are completely silent on our principal criticism pertaining to the character of the leadership, which undoubtedly was held by the kulaks and rich peasantry, and charter of demands, which undoubtedly represented their class interests, of the kulak movement. Secondly, the point of contention is presence of fundamentalist elements at protest site. On this question Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers are foolishly babbling and engaging in empty phrase-mongering about masses being religious! The fundamentalist elements referred to in The Anvil article were Nihangs who killed a Dalit worker at protest site. Rather than questioning the presence of these fundamentalists at protest site, Nazariya is peddling inanities wholesale. We had observed then:
“The class character of the present rich kulaks’ and farmers’ movement has been exposed more than once in the course of the present movement itself. The most recent ones are the killing of a dalit worker by Nihangas at the protest site on Delhi border. A dalit worker Lakhbir Singh was first decapitated and paraded in the entire protest site and then killed by the Nihangas and finally his body was hung at a barricade to convey a message. Lakhbir Singh had allegedly ‘disrespected a religious scripture’. Now, this logic of ‘hurt sentiments’ is the same that is used by all religious fundamentalists, extreme right-wingers and fascists to attack the vulnerable sections of society like dalits, women, religious minorities, etc. No one would deny the fundamentalist character of the Nihangas and their act at the Singhu Border, including the leadership of the rich kulaks’ and farmers’ movement. The rich kulaks’ and farmers’ movement tried to distance itself from the Nihangas and tried to portray the entire incident as something done by the ‘fringe elements’ at the behest of the fascists. However, the fact remains that when Lakhbir Singh was decapitated and paraded at the protest site, there was only one old farmer who meekly protested by saying that Singh had already been punished for disrespecting the religious text and there is no need to go any further. Still, Singh was killed by the Nihangas and his body was hung at a barricade.
“Moreover, the farmers’ organizations, while expressing “regret” on this killing also added that a religious text must not be ‘disrespected’! Thus, the Sikh religious fundamentalists must not be antagonized! The farmers’ organizations walked a tight-rope here by condemning the murder as well as the alleged disrespecting of the religious text, so as not to alienate the Sikh sentiments! This is behavior, not of a progressive political leadership, but a bourgeois and petty-bourgeois opportunist political leadership. Just suppose: if dalit workers do the same to Jatt rich farmers for disrespecting their human dignity and honour for centuries, what would be the result? Is the sanctity of a religious scripture more important than a human life?” (Editorial, 2021, One Divides into Two, The Anvil-6)
Moreover, these tiny-tots of Nazariya, in their juvenile enthusiasm to tail-end the kulaks, are in fact simultaneously bending backwards and bowing to all kinds of reactionary ideologies and are trying to cover this up by vacuous phrase-mongering and equally childish sermonizing. Nazariya editors write:
“For the masses who lack a scientific temperament of society, religion is a means of comfort, of reprieve from the material conditions and therefore as long as the social relations of production do not change, the masses would resort to religion. To condemn them for the same, to exclude them from the definition of masses, what Anvil has shown in its analysis of their role in the farmers protest, is its blatant lack of understanding of who the masses are, and what they need. Reactionaries exist in this society- you can find them across all sections of the masses, even the proletariat! Does that mean that the proletariat is a reactionary class? No. It simply means that the masses need to be analysed in a dialectical manner, not a mechanical and reductionist manner of Anvil which relegates all members of a particular religion to being an anti-social force without critically understanding why Marx says, “religion is the opium of the masses”. (Nazariya editors, ibid)
We have already clarified that what should be the position of a revolutionary group on this question. It is not about the question of program but a question of ideology! This is what we had written in the same editorial:
“The revolutionary communist position is against the logic of ‘hurt sentiments’ and the false binary of ‘tolerance-intolerance’. The proletarian position is that it is no business of communists to propagate atheism and disrespect the religious sentiments in the society, but at the same time they unconditionally support the civil and democratic right of any citizen to express their views or feelings about religious symbols or scriptures and they unconditionally condemn and oppose any attack on this individual freedom. However, the farmers’ leadership (including the ML leadership) failed to take this position and educate their cadre on the democratic principles of secularism and individual liberty; rather, it took an opportunist position by condemning both, the killing as well as ‘disrespecting of religious scripture’. This is a typical bourgeois and petty-bourgeois liberal and opportunist stand and it has nothing to do whatsoever with the communist position. A few days later another Nihanga attacked another dalit worker and broke his leg for not giving him a chicken for free.
“Even more important is the question why have the farmers’ organizations allowed the Nihangas at their protest sites? What do Nihangas have to do with farmers’ protests, except a Sikh religious identity of a section of farmers? If the organizations leading the protests claim to be progressive and even Marxist-Leninist (!), they must refuse to allow such elements in the farmers’ protest, even if it is a protest of rich kulaks and farmers. However, in Punjab, a general tendency of liberalism and conciliationism towards Sikhism is prevalent even among ML groups and except a few exceptions most forces betray this lack of courage to take a correct ideological position on this question.” (Editorial, 2021, One Divides into Two, The Anvil-6)
Nazariya editors blinded by their kulak-love and capitulating even further claim that:
“Another manner in which the Farmers Protest is critiqued by Anvil is through the presence of elements like the Tikait brothers, as well as other semi-fascist elements who join the movement with the sole purpose of undermining BJP and elevating themselves to rule and exploit. For example, in the context of the Anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) movement, even parties that engage in minority oppression and fascist practices might support demands that resonate with the masses. This does not invalidate the demands themselves; rather, it demonstrates a mechanical and non-dialectical understanding when one dismisses these movements solely because of the involvement of reactionary forces.” (Nazariya editors, ibid.)
One can see how the Nazariya “left”-wing toddlers evade the real question. Drawing parallels with anti-NRC-CAA movement is also a subterfuge and reeks of worst kind of opportunism on this question. The charter of demands of Anti-CAA movement was democratic, while that of kulak movement deals with an economic demand, not a political democratic demand. The movement against CAA-NRC was for the question of a political democratic right. On the contrary, the kulak movement was for a particular economic demand of the rich kulaks and farmers, which directly goes against the working masses, including the agricultural workers and poor working peasantry. To see how Nazariya’s response evades the real question, we must again go to The Anvil’s position and see how these ideological capitulationists run away from simple questions, as confronting them will expose their own class-collaborationism and thus end up prattling nonsense. We criticized kulak movement on following lines:
“Most of the farmers’ organizations were praising the government when till 2019 the MSP for paddy and wheat was being increased continuously. Most of the farmers’ organizations extended their support to the BJP in the western UP even when the BJP manufactured riots against Muslims. The same could be applied to Haryana too, though in a different way. The fact is that the coincidence of opposition of the farmers’ movement to Modi government and the fascist character of Modi government does not in any way make the present farmers’ movement a politically anti-fascist movement, even though, due to Narodist-communist leadership of some of the major farmers’ unions, the farmers’ movement frequently uses anti-fascist symbolism. At the same time, the same “communist” leaders have no qualms whatsoever in collaborating with the open stooges of the BJP, namely, the Tikait brothers! However, a few months ago two of the principal unions leading the protest, the BKU (Ugrahan) and Krantikaari Kisaan Union, clearly said that they were ready to take back the movement if the Modi government repeals the first two laws that threaten the MSP! These statements shred any shroud of doubt on the fact that the present rich farmers’ movement is centred principally on the demand of saving MSP. Any movement or opposition that targets Modi government does use anti-fascist tropes and symbolisms, including many political parties within the parliament, for example TMC (Mahua Moitra), Congress (Mani Shankar Ayyar and Manish Tiwary), etc. Does that make them anti-fascists? One needs to understand that it is only revolutionary proletarian forces that can truly oppose fascism today. All other appearances of alleged anti-fascism are basically products of political opportunism and pragmatism.” (Editorial, 2021, One Divides into Two, The Anvil-6)
Instead of answering a concrete question, Nazariya editors are dancing on the tunes of their own empty phrase-mongering! What should be the correct outlook of proletarian organizations towards the kulak movement? This is what we wrote back then:
“We cannot and must not side with one of the factions of bourgeoisie and must maintain the political independence of the working class in order to establish a proletarian class line among the masses. Without this political line, the different classes of the masses would tailend this or that bourgeois political force, their movements will always ultimately be circumscribed by bourgeois politics and ideology. The communist activists must organize the poor peasants and agricultural proletariat on their independent class demands, reveal that they have nothing to gain from the MSP, rather they would lose if this monopoly price is retained and increased; they must organize the rural poor in their independent mass organizations, like agricultural proletariat’s unions and unions of poor working peasants. Without independent proletarian class line and independent mass organizations, the poor working peasants and agricultural proletariat are doomed to tailend the rich farmers and kulaks due to lack of political class consciousness as well as their structural economic dependence.” (Editorial, 2021, One Divides into Two, The Anvil-6)
To Sum Up…
The arguments (or the lack thereof) made by Nazariya editors throughout their “critique” are intended to create a legitimation for their bankrupt and outdated semifeudal semicolonial fallacy, and in its wake manufacture justification for their support to the rich peasants and kulaks. To fulfill this end, first, they declared MSP a democratic demand, and second, they declared class of rich peasantry, as part of the masses. They do so by distorting the basic Marxist concepts and categories. The pile of arguments built by Nazariya editors fall like castle of cards when faced with facts and basic Marxist logic. To force-fit Indian history and contemporary reality into their semifeudal semicolonial framework, Nazariya editors first distort Marxist theory and principles on the question of comprador bourgeoisie and its characteristics, idealization of bourgeois democratic revolutions, question of remunerative prices or MSP, possibility of coexistence of unfree labour with capitalist mode of production, and many other questions. We saw that Nazariya editors do not even understand ABC of Marxism.
We would only suggest this stubborn gang of boisterous “left”-wing urchins to read, read and read and learn, learn and learn, before plunging their perambulators into the abyss of Marxist polemics. It would save a lot of people a lot of time.
