Is India Capitalist?? [Archive]

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 18:06

What percentage of the Indian population is proletarian ?I don't know. But I'll bet it's a lot larger percentage than the Indian bourgeloisie, comprador or otherwise, which is the ruling class now.

Although the following is by no means a Marxist interpretation, this gives an overall picture.

Members of the upper class--around 1 percent of the population--are owners of large properties, members of exclusive clubs, and vacationers in foreign lands, and include industrialists, former maharajas, and top executives. Below the middle class is perhaps a third of the population--ordinary farmers, tradespeople, artisans, and workers. At the bottom of the economic scale are the poor--estimated at 320 million, some 45 percent of the population in 1988--who live in inadequate homes without adequate food, work for pittances, have undereducated and often sickly children, and are the victims of numerous social inequities.http://www.indianchild.com/classes_in_india.htm

So, could we reasonable assume that the working class, in the Marxist sense, is at least 25% of the population, if one includes urban and rural workers?

Here are some comparable figures for pre-revolutionary Russia.

Throughout its history, the Russian population was overwhelmingly agrarian. Even in the late tsarist period, about 80 percent of the population consisted of peasants. Serfdom was abolished only in 1861 as part of the Great Reforms of the 1860s and early 1870s. Even after emancipation, the peasantry of European Russia remained tied by law, custom, and necessity to the village commune. Life for the poverty- stricken Russian peasants was brutal, and the marginal rises in income they experienced in the early twentieth century still left them far poorer than farmers in Western Europe. In addition, notions of social improvement and accumulating wealth through increased efficiency remained foreign to most peasants.

The connections between Russian peasantry and the growing urban working class were strong because of the migration of peasants to urban areas after emancipation. In 1897, 44 percent of the Russian urban population was made up of persons officially of the peasant soslovie (estate), particularly in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the peasant portions of the population were 69 and 70 percent, respectively.(emph added)

http://library.by/portalus/modules/english_russia/readme.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188905279&archive=&start_from=&ucat=7&a

So, if 80% of the population was peasant and 44% of the population in the urban areas was peasant, which means newly proletarianized peasants, we may conclude that the proletarian percentage of pre-revolutionary Russia was of the order of 44% x 20% or about 8.8%. Allowing for rapid industrialization in the early 20th Century, it's reasonable to assume that the Russian working class was somewhere between 10% and 20% of the population.

Enough for the Bolsheviks to posit the working class as the leading class of the revolution, in alliance with, but leading the peasantry, presumably also leading a section of the urban petit-bourgeoisie.

RED DAVE

Hit The North

30th January 2011, 18:38

India may be a capitalist country, but the proletariat is not in a demographic majority. The DOTP has to be deferred, otherwise you'll have that absurd Bolshevik example of unequal suffrage between workers and peasants.

So if the Indian working class nevertheless decided to implement its dictatorship and - as in Russia 1917 - represented the only economic and political force able to take India forward, we, as Marxists, should argue for its deferment? Like your mentor, Kautsky, this would place us against the revolutionaries instead of with them. Offering deferment in the face of their ferment. Party-pooping socialist paternalism.

The political superstructure of Caesarean Socialism is "a triad of independent working-class political organization, urban petit-bourgeois democratism, and peasant patrimonialism."

Who are you quoting here?

gorillafuck

30th January 2011, 18:40

Yeah, Third World Caesarean Socialism. And what red cat just asked.
Julius Caesar wasn't even progressive for his time.

Also, what the hell is "Caesarean Socialism"?

red cat

30th January 2011, 18:46

In what way is that relevant? Are you saying the proletariat is so small that it's safe to say India is not a capitalist state but only a state with capitalist elements? Is there no urban proletariat in India? Or are the urban areas irrelevantly small?

I don't know. But I'll bet it's a lot larger percentage than the Indian bourgeloisie, comprador or otherwise, which is the ruling class now.

Although the following is by no means a Marxist interpretation, this gives an overall picture.

http://www.indianchild.com/classes_in_india.htm

So, could we reasonable assume that the working class, in the Marxist sense, is at least 25% of the population, if one includes urban and rural workers?

Here are some comparable figures for pre-revolutionary Russia.

(emph added)

http://library.by/portalus/modules/english_russia/readme.php?subaction=showfull&id=1188905279&archive=&start_from=&ucat=7&a

So, if 80% of the population was peasant and 44% of the population in the urban areas was peasant, which means newly proletarianized peasants, we may conclude that the proletarian percentage of pre-revolutionary Russia was of the order of 44% x 20% or about 8.8%. Allowing for rapid industrialization in the early 20th Century, it's reasonable to assume that the Russian working class was somewhere between 10% and 20% of the population.

As of 2006, the CPI(Maoist) estimated the strength of the Indian proletariat to be around 66 million, of the 1050 million population of India.

Enough for the Bolsheviks to posit the working class as the leading class of the revolution, in alliance with, but leading the peasantry, presumably also leading a section of the urban petit-bourgeoisie.

RED DAVE

The proletariat is the leading class of the new democratic revolution.

red cat

30th January 2011, 18:55

I couldn't let this one go by, but I felt that it's so preposterous that it deserved a thread of its own.

Supplying the world economy with raw materials is capitalism. The Indian capitalists would be compradors if they worked for foreign-owned companies and the profits from those companies were sent abroad. These companies are Indian-owned (private or state). India, like China, is a capitalist country.

RED DAVE

Commodity production and capitalism are not the same. Even if most of the economy is devoted to commodity production, it does not become capitalism; not until labour power itself becomes a commodity and follows the laws of the market. So India is not capitalist.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2011, 19:03

So if the Indian working class nevertheless decided to implement its dictatorship and - as in Russia 1917 - represented the only economic and political force able to take India forward, we, as Marxists, should argue for its deferment? Like your mentor, Kautsky, this would place us against the revolutionaries instead of with them. Offering deferment in the face of their ferment. Party-pooping socialist paternalism.

They need to be educated about Caesarean Socialism, which is equally anti-bourgeois.

Who are you quoting here?

Hopefully myself in a published letter submission soon.

Julius Caesar wasn't even progressive for his time.

Also, what the hell is "Caesarean Socialism"?

Check out my album, and check out the link in that album.

The proletariat is the leading class of the new democratic revolution.

That's cheap rhetoric to cover up class collaboration with the bourgeoisie. At least Caesarean Socialism acknowledges the deferral of the DOTP with regards to the proletariat working with other dispossessed classes and the "national petit-bourgeoisie."

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 19:09

red cat

30th January 2011, 19:18

That's cheap rhetoric to cover up class collaboration with the bourgeoisie. At least Caesarean Socialism acknowledges the deferral of the DOTP with regards to the proletariat working with other dispossessed classes and the "national petit-bourgeoisie."

I don't know what Caesarean Socialism is, but can you provide an example in the Indian revolutionary actions where proletarian politics was not in command ? Or can you give an example where the revolutionaries in India have collaborated with the national bourgeoisie and there was a better practical option ?

red cat

30th January 2011, 19:26

When the dominant mode of production is commodity production, production for the market, the country is capitalist.

Why ? How does this relate to labour power being a commodity itself ?

And, labor power is a commodity in all areas of industrial production in India. There is also a significant strata of landless agricultural workers who constitute a rural proletariat (separate but not entirely distinguished from the strata of poor peasants).

Are you saying that England in 1750 before the Industrial Revolution, was not capitalist?

RED DAVE

No, the whole working class population is suppressed with the help of lumpen elements and the state forces, so that the basic rights that allow the worker to sell his labour power are often absent. Whatever small gains are being made today are mostly due to the existence of the people's army. The new democratic revolution is creating a powerful proletariat.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2011, 19:28

I don't know what Caesarean Socialism is, but can you provide an example in the Indian revolutionary actions where proletarian politics was not in command ? Or can you give an example where the revolutionaries in India have collaborated with the national bourgeoisie and there was a better practical option ?

The whole premise behind People's War, Focoism, Breakthrough Military Coups, etc. is basing your political support on a class other than the proletariat. In every collaboration with the "national bourgeoisie" there is a better option: the "national petit-bourgeoisie." This means thoroughly anti-bourgeois economic measures and also taking down the "comprador petit bourgeoisie."

red cat

30th January 2011, 19:38

The whole premise behind People's War, Focoism, Breakthrough Military Coups, etc. is basing your political support on a class other than the proletariat. In every collaboration with the "national bourgeoisie" there is a better option: the "national petit-bourgeoisie." This means thoroughly anti-bourgeois economic measures and also taking down "comprador petit bourgeoisie."

It is better if you explain your theory with examples. I will give an example to explain my stand. Most intellectuals belong to the national bourgeoisie. Due to the advances made by the people's war the Indian government was planning to launch a full scale military offensive and to capture or kill many radical urban working class members and human rights activists. A significant number of intellectuals sided with the mass organizations and often sympathized with the Maoists. Keeping them in the forefront the urban working class organized movements to stop the immediate onslaught in the cities, and to some extent, in the villages. What do you think would be a better option ?

gorillafuck

30th January 2011, 19:38

Check out my album, and check out the link in that album.Is Vladmir Putin a part of third world Caesarian socialism?

Because if so, then seriously what the fuck.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2011, 20:27

No he isn't. You need to read the link in my album to understand why those figures were chosen. None of them qualify as "Caesarists" as I've defined them, not even Lukashenko. Each, however, has certain elements that must be present with others in order to have a Caesarean Socialist movement and regime (note the text in each pic).

It is better if you explain your theory with examples. I will give an example to explain my stand. Most intellectuals belong to the national bourgeoisie.

No they don't. The intellectuals you refer to belong to the petit-bourgeoisie or to the coordinator class.

RED DAVE

30th January 2011, 20:35

Why ? How does this relate to labour power being a commodity itself ?First of all, the commodification of labor power is not the defining feature of capitalism. This is not a dmonant feature of capitalism until, probably, the beginning of the 19th Century. The dominant feature is production for sale not for use. Because of this we can say that England, for instance, was a capitalist nation certainly by 1600. Would you call it feudalism?

No, the whole working class population is suppressed with the help of lumpen elements and the state forces, so that the basic rights that allow the worker to sell his labour power are often absent.Nonsense. All you are saying is that the state in India interferes in the marketing of labor power, which is true of all capitalist countries. Of course the working class is suppressed. But it is still a working class, which sells its labor power on a market, no matter how debased that market is.

Whatever small gains are being made today are mostly due to the existence of the people's army.Are you saying that (a) there is a working class in the tribal areas congtrolled by the Nazalites? (b) The working class in the cities does not fight for "small gains"?

The new democratic revolution is creating a powerful proletariat.(1) Where? (2) And what is going to make the new democratic revolution any different from China?

RED DAVE

red cat

30th January 2011, 21:26

No they don't. The intellectuals you refer to belong to the petit-bourgeoisie or to the coordinator class.

What is the coordinator class ?

Any class that owns significant capital or directly benefits from those who own capital is the bourgeoisie. The right wing of this is the comprador bourgeoisie, and the left wing of it is what we commonly refer to as the national bourgeoisie. The intellectuals directly benefit from capital owners or often themselves lead performance groups etc. So they are very much a part of the national bourgeoisie.

red cat

30th January 2011, 21:45

First of all, the commodification of labor power is not the defining feature of capitalism. This is not a dmonant feature of capitalism until, probably, the beginning of the 19th Century. The dominant feature is production for sale not for use. Because of this we can say that England, for instance, was a capitalist nation certainly by 1600. Would you call it feudalism?

Interesting point. Firstly, Lenin had defined capitalism the other way. Secondly, if you define capitalism mostly in terms of commodity production, then you have no qualitative change to distinguish between capitalist and pre-capitalist societies. The fraction of economy devoted to commodity production is a quantitative feature.

Nonsense. All you are saying is that the state in India interferes in the marketing of labor power, which is true of all capitalist countries. Of course the working class is suppressed. But it is still a working class, which sells its labor power on a market, no matter how debased that market is.

With that kind of political and military interference, we cannot call it a market in the first place.

Are you saying that (a) there is a working class in the tribal areas congtrolled by the Nazalites? (b) The working class in the cities does not fight for "small gains"?

a) Yes, though it is very small.

b) Yes it does. Those struggles were earlier diverted by reactionary trade unions or put down by the police. Nowadays things are different due to the people's war and the resultant mass actions.

(1) Where? (2) And what is going to make the new democratic revolution any different from China?

ED DAVE

1) Both in the cities and villages.

2) One difference from the Russian and Chinese ones is that the masses have more direct control over the revolution.

Apoi_Viitor

31st January 2011, 04:41

The political superstructure of Caesarean Socialism is "a triad of independent working-class political organization, urban petit-bourgeois democratism, and peasant patrimonialism."

Sounds like Fascism to me.

red cat

31st January 2011, 04:48

Political and military interference are part of the bourgeois state, which is part of the superstructure and have nothing to do with the relations of production between worker and capitalist.

The presence or absence of "rights", which are part of the superstructure, do not determine the economic base. Your statements are indicative of the Maoist confusion between ideology and social relations and by speaking in terms of "rights", you are just repeating the language of bourgeois idealists.

On the contrary, some rights are the major determining factors of the relations of production. If you compare this with bourgeois idealism then you are hopelessly lost.

I don't know what this means, but if you mean it creates a bigger proletariat, then you are describing the process of capitalist accumulation because of which the working class and the capitalist relations of production are constantly regenerated and so, it is not clear why you want to preserve capitalism.Capitalist relations of production are almost or totally non-existent in India. The initial stages of the revolution might witness the growth of the private sector. Later stages will have mainly state capitalism serving the interests of the working class, which will gradually transform into workers taking full control. The notion of preserving capitalism is incorrect, since the masses are always in the process of empowering themselves.

Die Neue Zeit

31st January 2011, 04:52

Sounds like Fascism to me.

Fascism maintains the bourgeoisie and doesn't have independent working-class political organization, nor does it really have urban petit-bourgeois democratism, despite the program of the proto-fascists. :glare:

Jose Gracchus

31st January 2011, 05:37

Die Neue Zeit

31st January 2011, 05:42

In the rural areas they're called the peasantry, no? :confused:

I'm talking about thoroughly anti-bourgeois shopkeepers, non-industrial fishermen, non-worker intellectuals (those not in the coordinator class, though), etc.

red cat

31st January 2011, 05:46

Which "rights" are these? If you were aware of the Marxist definition of these "rights" being part of the ideological superstructure and not of the economic base, you would not keep repeating this ignorant statement. The relations of production are not in any way determined by the amount of rights granted to workers by the capitalist class. It was the romantic bourgeois nationalists who were concerned with these so-called rights because of their idealism, while Marxists have been concerned with the existing social relations involving workers. From your statements, it is clear that you have no idea what capitalist relations of production means.

Classical Marxism is something that Maoists openly claim not to follow.

One of the rights that define capitalist relations of production is the worker's right of being able to choose his employer.

If carried out by the working class, this cannot oversee the growth of the "private sector" or state capitalism since this would only continue the process of capital accumulation and reproduction.

The working class can allow capital accumulation in certain stages of the revolution.

Jose Gracchus

31st January 2011, 05:47

Apoi_Viitor

31st January 2011, 07:46

Fascism maintains the bourgeoisie

This is certainly debatable. Where as Mussolini economic policies focused mainly on corporatism and class collaboration, the National Socialists in Germany As written in The Historiography of the Holocaust:

Although National Socialists used some traditional business institutions early on, their overall aim was to restructure companies and commercial attitudes to turn businesses away from the pursuit of individual profit and towards the good of the whole (the state and Volk) as defined by the party.

Of course, the Nazi's had no single, uniform economic goal in mind - although as was stated above, a significant portion were deeply antagonistic towards the bourgeios, who in their eyes pursued profit and greed over Aryanism. Under the Nazi period, business and the bourgeios in general found themselves slowly being stripped of their economic/political power, and by the time the war was heating up, the bourgeios had little political power within the system.

and doesn't have independent working-class political organization,

Do I need to even address this? The constituency of the KPD and the Nazis was virtually the same - and the recent rise of Fascist sympathizers among unemployed East Germans - along with Hitler's infamous beer hall putsch all point to organic grass root support for Fascism.

nor does it really have urban petit-bourgeois democratism, despite the program of the proto-fascists. :glare:

Why on Earth would someone in favor of 'democratism' support a Caesar like dictatorship on the first place?

Hit The North

31st January 2011, 13:35

Classical Marxism is something that Maoists openly claim not to follow.

This is obvious if they can't even agree with a Marxist definition of capitalism.

One of the rights that define capitalist relations of production is the worker's right of being able to choose his employer.
You mention this as if it actually exists as a right in capitalist society, rather than just as an illusion, masked by a formal labour market and incanted by bourgeois ideologues. The worker has never been able to choose his or her employer. We are chosen by them. And when they have no further use for us, they throw us out onto the dole queue.

red cat

31st January 2011, 13:49

This is obvious if they can't even agree with a Marxist definition of capitalism.

True. To make revolution, it is necessary to abandon the over-simplification of classical Marxist analysis.

You mention this as if it actually exists as a right in capitalist society, rather than just as an illusion, masked by a formal labour market and incanted by bourgeois ideologues. The worker has never been able to choose his or her employer. We are chosen by them. And when they have no further use for us, they throw us out onto the dole queue.

But the worker is generally not bound by any political or military constraints. The labour power is a commodity in the market and the bourgeoisie can choose whatever he wants because economically he is in a better position, and often the labour pool is large, so that supply is greater than demand.

This is a crucial factor when we compare capitalist systems with colonies. To prevent the growth of hostile national capital and to exploit the colonies as much as possible, imperialist capital penetrates the feudal system, uses it for commodity production, but stops the development of national capital, and keeps the production relations intact in essence. Due to this, the colony lacks in industries to make it self-sufficient or a developed country. As the industries in demand are lacking, and bourgeois production relations are more progressive than the existing ones, wherever the working class is unable to create and maintain new industries during the revolution, it naturally allies with a portion of the national bourgeoisie against imperialism.

Hit The North

31st January 2011, 14:11

But the worker is generally not bound by any political or military constraints.

Maybe not, but labour markets are determined by different types of constraints imposed by national states (as well as international forces) and, as has been pointed out by others above, this is a consideration of superstructure. There is no such thing as a pure market in which workers and capitalist confront each other and negotiate exchange. To argue otherwise is to trade in the most banal bourgeois abstractions.

This is a crucial factor when we compare capitalist systems with colonies. To prevent the growth of hostile national capital and to exploit the colonies as much as possible, imperialist capital penetrates the feudal system, uses it for commodity production, but stops the development of national capital, and keeps the production relations intact in essence. India is not a colony.

Kiev Communard

31st January 2011, 14:12

Modern India is indeed a capitalist nation, and the remnants of simple commodity and communal production there are mostly subordinated to the logic of capitalist market (formal subsumption of labour). The formal rural ruling class of medieval Indian society has been completely transformed into the typical rural bourgeoisie, exercising its power mainly through usury, not through extraeconomic compulsion per se.

Die Neue Zeit

31st January 2011, 14:19

"National" and "comprador" "petty bourgeoisie" is a very awkward grouping system by analogy with the national and comprador bourgeoisie (which exist but I agree with you, neither are progressive). If "national petty bourgeoisie" means peasants or small farmers, why don't you just say so?

Small freeholders = petty bourgeois?

I already did in my commentary:

Nationalistic or pan-nationalistic petit-bourgeoisie of urban areas (like small-business shop owners) and rural ones (like the more numerous small tenant farmers and sharecroppers), apart from those accommodating to the whims of foreign capitalists, but also part of a propertied class which, in an imperialist power, would belong to “one reactionary mass” (to quote Lassalle) of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois class coalitions.

:blushing:

Die Neue Zeit

31st January 2011, 14:24

Of course, the Nazi's had no single, uniform economic goal in mind - although as was stated above, a significant portion were deeply antagonistic towards the bourgeios, who in their eyes pursued profit and greed over Aryanism. Under the Nazi period, business and the bourgeios in general found themselves slowly being stripped of their economic/political power, and by the time the war was heating up, the bourgeios had little political power within the system.

But they still existed as an economic class. That's what counts at the end.

Do I need to even address this? The constituency of the KPD and the Nazis was virtually the same - and the recent rise of Fascist sympathizers among unemployed East Germans - along with Hitler's infamous beer hall putsch all point to organic grass root support for Fascism.

The Nazis banned independent unions, strikes, etc. Moreover they banned parties other than their own.

Why on Earth would someone in favor of 'democratism' support a Caesar like dictatorship on the first place?

Urban petit-bourgeois democratism can be used by the National Leader at the communal level, for instance, against any attempt at bourgeois federalism. So, for instance, if you have a prominent local legislator who's against certain federal initiatives, he can be pressured to cooperate or step down by pro-Leader communal councils.

Conversely, the National Leader - for all his arbitrary hiring-and-firing in the military, law enforcement and corrections, bureaucracy, and even courts of constitutional law - is accountable to the "managed" multi-party system.

red cat

31st January 2011, 14:51

Maybe not, but labour markets are determined by different types of constraints imposed by national states (as well as international forces) and, as has been pointed out by others above, this is a consideration of superstructure. There is no such thing as a pure market in which workers and capitalist confront each other and negotiate exchange. To argue otherwise is to trade in the most banal bourgeois abstractions.

May be so, but even then these cannot be compared to the conditions in colonies like India. A bourgeois system with slight political or military control is different from a semi-feudal system where political and military control almost totally determine the relations of production. Ignoring these as superstructures and identifying a qualitatively different system with capitalism leads to a highly flawed analysis.

India is not a colony.It is a neo-colony, to be precise.

red cat

31st January 2011, 14:52

RED DAVE

31st January 2011, 15:02

Commodity production and capitalism are not the same. Even if most of the economy is devoted to commodity production, it does not become capitalism; not until labour power itself becomes a commodity and follows the laws of the market. So India is not capitalist.You keep on making this assertion, which you also admit elsewhere does not follow "classical" Marxist. It's nonsense, as has been demonstrated.

The essence of capitalism is (a) commodity production and (b) forced extraction of surplus value. As has been shown over and over again, this forced extraction can take a myriad of forms including: slavery, indentured service, forced labor, restrictions or prohibition of the right of workers to bargain and strike, out-and-out dictatorship, etc. None of these make a difference: it's all capitalism.

If you disagree you would have to that: the US South under slavery was not capitalism; the 13 colonies in the 18th Century, which had both slavery and indentured service were not capitalist; production in US prisons now, were commodities are made for the market is not capitalist; any country that restricts the right of workers to change jobs or residence, such as in parts of Latin America, is not capitalist; the US prior to the civil war, where there was no guaranteed right to bargain, strike or have union was not capitalist; fascism is not capitalism.

RED DAVE

red cat

31st January 2011, 15:12

You keep on making this assertion, which you also admit elsewhere does not follow "classical" Marxist. It's nonsense, as has been demonstrated.

The essence of capitalism is (a) commodity production and (b) forced extraction of surplus value. As has been shown over and over again, this forced extraction can take a myriad of forms including: slavery, indentured service, forced labor, restrictions or prohibition of the right of workers to bargain and strike, out-and-out dictatorship, etc. None of these make a difference: it's all capitalism.

If you disagree you would have to that: the US South under slavery was not capitalism; the 13 colonies in the 18th Century, which had both slavery and indentured service were not capitalist; production in US prisons now, were commodities are made for the market is not capitalist; any country that restricts the right of workers to change jobs or residence, such as in parts of Latin America, is not capitalist; the US prior to the civil war, where there was no guaranteed right to bargain, strike or have union was not capitalist; fascism is not capitalism.

RED DAVE

Alright, then ancient kingdoms that produced commodities were also capitalist.

Hit The North

31st January 2011, 16:09

May be so, but even then these cannot be compared to the conditions in colonies like India. A bourgeois system with slight political or military control is different from a semi-feudal system where political and military control almost totally determine the relations of production. Ignoring these as superstructures and identifying a qualitatively different system with capitalism leads to a highly flawed analysis.

What exactly is a "semi-feudal system" and how can it accommodate and manage cutting edge industries in the way India does? If your argument is a demographic one, pointing to the preponderance of Indian society in the backward conditions of the countryside, then this is only a consequence of Indian capitalism's under-development (as a consequence of imperialism), not its absence. Whilst political and military factors might create distortions within the relations of production (and I'm not clear what these total political and military controls that you mention are supposed to be, maybe you can enlighten me), this is not primary to a description of actually existing relations of production, and specifically, the relations between labour and capital in the Indian economy.

It is a neo-colony, to be precise.
Well, India is an independent nation, so I'm not sure what you mean by a neo-colony.

S.Artesian

31st January 2011, 16:36

Capitalist relations of production are almost or totally non-existent in India. The initial stages of the revolution might witness the growth of the private sector. Later stages will have mainly state capitalism serving the interests of the working class, which will gradually transform into workers taking full control. The notion of preserving capitalism is incorrect, since the masses are always in the process of empowering themselves.

First, this is totally inaccurate. India has a significant and growing industrial capitalist sector that indeed dominates the economy due to its connections to the world markets. Tata Steel and Iron Corporation [TISCO] dominates steel production in India, and is one of the major world players; electronics component production and electronics assembly is a $200 billion/year industry; India is a major exporter to other 3rd world countries of engineering and machine tools, particularly in the areas of power plant development, cement, petroleum etc.

Then there's domestic textile and clothing production, under conditions both advanced and backward.

Secondly, we repeatedly have this argument with our Maoist comrades who claim "It's necessary to reject or adjust classical Marxist categories which are too rigid for practical revolutionary analysis" who then demonstrate their own rigidity by insisting that capitalism can only be existent in areas where the classical rigid definition of "free" "detached" labor governs. Why? Because Marx said such free, detached labor is essential to the transformation of labor into labor power and into surplus value.

That is certainly the case with Marx's critiques of capital, except... except for purposes of his analysis, Marx states quite clearly that he is dealing with an abstraction of capital, an abstraction of industrial capitalism--what its essential characteristics must be, and become, as it develops to its most acute and most "perfect" form. In the concrete world, such abstract, ideal capitalism exists in some areas, but not all. This in no way changes the dominance of capitalism of the world markets, and capitalism's domination locally.

Of course, in the concrete world, capitalism is going to be shaped and formed, or mis-shaped and deformed by the conditions surrounding its own birth-- or imposition-- those conditions being primarily the condition of landed labor.

So all the capitalisms diverge, or may diverge, from their "abstract" model, in a way that is parallel to the fact that the price of commodities will almost always, and necessarily, diverge from their particular values, but the totality of those divergences will always equal the totality of value. The truth is the whole, wrote Hegel, and he wasn't kidding.

Our Maoists then complement their rigid flexibility regarding capitalism, and their "overcoming" of classical Marxist rigidity by demonstrating precisely such unMarxist rigidity in analyzing conditions of land and labor-- for example proclaiming that the result of the US Civil War was the establishment of feudalism in the US South, with African-American sharecroppers being serfs. In fact, when you examine the share-cropping relations, you'll find that what is concealed in this form is a wage-relationship between plantation owner and sharecroppers.

Then we get the "imperialism kicker.." that imperialism has suppressed the "natural" incipient capitalism in countries like India and China... and I suppose areas of Africa around the Congo etc. Except... if you look into those pre-existing relations, and relations ongoing even after the incursion of imperialism, you see no incipient capitalism; you see little if any dispossession labor from its ability to provide directly for its immediate subsistence-- and that dispossession of labor from the condition where labor can provide for its immediate and direct subsistence is the key to "incipient" capitalism.

Between the "too rigid" and "too flexible" our Maoists are actually being consistent-- consistent in the disregard and in their opposition to workers' class struggle against capitalism in its local and global organization.

RED DAVE

31st January 2011, 16:51

Alright, then ancient kingdoms that produced commodities were also capitalist.No, because there was no "ancient kingdom" for which commodity production for sale was the dominant mode of production. Subsistence production was the dominant mode until the advent of capitalism. Most trade was in luxury goods, slaves and specialized manufactures.

RED DAVE

red cat

31st January 2011, 17:22

No, because there was no "ancient kingdom" for which commodity production for sale was the dominant mode of production. Subsistence production was the dominant mode until the advent of capitalism. Most trade was in luxury goods, slaves and specialized manufactures.

RED DAVE

What is the qualitative difference between a system in which commodity production is the dominant mode of production and in which it is not ?

LuÃs Henrique

31st January 2011, 17:54

What percentage of the Indian population is proletarian ?

Here (http://www.indianchild.com/jobs_in_india.htm) is an article about the composition of the Indian workforce. Evidently, it does not use Marxist categories such as "proletariat" and "petty bourgeoisie", so we must make a few guesses.

The data are from 1991, which means they are 20 year old. In 20 years, of course, the Indian workforce changed a lot, and it certainly changed towards a more proletarian and less petty bourgeois composition.

So let's go for the data.

Based on the 1991 census, the government estimated that the labor force/ jobs in India had grown by more than 65 million since 1981 and that the total number of "main workers"--the "economically active population"--had reached 285.9 million people. This total did not include Jammu and Kashmir, which was not enumerated in the 1991 census. Labor force statistics for 1991 covered nine main-worker "industrial" categories: cultivators (39 percent of the main-worker force); agricultural laborers (26 percent); livestock, forestry, fishing, hunting, plantations, orchards, and allied activities (2 percent); mining and quarrying (1 percent); manufacturing (household 2 percent, other than household 7 percent); construction (2 percent); trade and commerce (8 percent); transportation, storage, and communications (3 percent); and "other services" (10 percent). Another 28.2 million "marginal workers" were also counted in the census but not tabulated among the nine categories even though unpaid farm and family enterprise workers were counted among the nine categories. Of the total work force--both main and marginal workers--29 percent were women, and nearly 78 percent worked in rural areas.

So there is a division between "main" and "marginal" workers; 285.9 million would be "main" workers, and 28.2 million would be "marginal" workers. It is not clear what those "marginal" workers would be, further than they are quite probably more impoverished than the others. Let's leave them aside for the moment.

Of the main workers, 39% were "cultivators", which quite certainly means people who cultivate land on their own, or in patriarchal or otherwise non-capitalist relations with landlords. Those would be peasants, not proletarians. 26% were "agricultural labourers", which in this context seems to mean agricultural wage workers; those would be, of course, proletarians. There were 2% of workers labouring in other rural activities; since those include things like fishing and hunting, most of them are quite certainly non-proletarians. 1% of the labourers were employed in mining and quarrying; those were most certainly proletarians. 2% worked in household manufactures, and consequently it looks like they were petty bourgeois. 7% worked in non-household manufactures, and so they were, in all likelihood proletarians. 2% worked in construction, and were quite certainly proletarians. The same goes for 8% of workers in commerce, and the 3% of workers in transportation, storage, and communications. The 10% in "other services" are obviously unclassifiable, so let's conservatively assume they are non-proletarians.

So we would have 26% rural wage workers plus 1% labourers in mines and quarries, plus 7% workers in non-domestic manufacture, plus 2% construction workers, plus 8% workers in commerce, plus 3% workers in "hard" services. This would sum up to 47%. Supposing that all "marginal workers" were non-proletarians, the proletariat seems to mount up to some 42% of the working population of India. Not a small minority, and certainly much bigger, proportionally, than the Russian proletariat in 1917 or the Chinese proletariat in 1949.

And those figures would be for 1991. In 2001, I very much doubt that the proletariat is not the majority of the workforce. Unless we resort to some magic, like considering working class women non-proletarian if they have no job out of the household, or, a bit worse, considering working class children non-proletarian, it much seems that the proletariat is in fact the majority of the Indian population today.

Luís Henrique

red cat

31st January 2011, 18:02

First, this is totally inaccurate. India has a significant and growing industrial capitalist sector that indeed dominates the economy due to its connections to the world markets. Tata Steel and Iron Corporation [TISCO] dominates steel production in India, and is one of the major world players; electronics component production and electronics assembly is a $200 billion/year industry; India is a major exporter to other 3rd world countries of engineering and machine tools, particularly in the areas of power plant development, cement, petroleum etc.

TISCO employs around 80,000 workers. Under what circumstances do these workers work? Under what circumstances do the workers in the mines where TISCO is the sole purchaser and indirect controller work ? Though TISCO is propagandized to be a very "worker friendly" company, there are other reasons for it not being closed even once due to a workers strike. Though these compradors are very efficient in controlling the media, a quick look at the 2006 Kalinganagar affair will indicate how they are used to maintaining and expanding their assets.

Then there's domestic textile and clothing production, under conditions both advanced and backward.

A very small minority of the workers involved in these actually come to anything close to "selling" labour power.

Secondly, we repeatedly have this argument with our Maoist comrades who claim "It's necessary to reject or adjust classical Marxist categories which are too rigid for practical revolutionary analysis" who then demonstrate their own rigidity by insisting that capitalism can only be existent in areas where the classical rigid definition of "free" "detached" labor governs. Why? Because Marx said such free, detached labor is essential to the transformation of labor into labor power and into surplus value.

That is certainly the case with Marx's critiques of capital, except... except for purposes of his analysis, Marx states quite clearly that he is dealing with an abstraction of capital, an abstraction of industrial capitalism--what its essential characteristics must be, and become, as it develops to its most acute and most "perfect" form. In the concrete world, such abstract, ideal capitalism exists in some areas, but not all. This in no way changes the dominance of capitalism of the world markets, and capitalism's domination locally.

Of course, in the concrete world, capitalism is going to be shaped and formed, or mis-shaped and deformed by the conditions surrounding its own birth-- or imposition-- those conditions being primarily the condition of landed labor.

So all the capitalisms diverge, or may diverge, from their "abstract" model, in a way that is parallel to the fact that the price of commodities will almost always, and necessarily, diverge from their particular values, but the totality of those divergences will always equal the totality of value. The truth is the whole, wrote Hegel, and he wasn't kidding.

Our Maoists then complement their rigid flexibility regarding capitalism, and their "overcoming" of classical Marxist rigidity by demonstrating precisely such unMarxist rigidity in analyzing conditions of land and labor-- for example proclaiming that the result of the US Civil War was the establishment of feudalism in the US South, with African-American sharecroppers being serfs. In fact, when you examine the share-cropping relations, you'll find that what is concealed in this form is a wage-relationship between plantation owner and sharecroppers.

Then we get the "imperialism kicker.." that imperialism has suppressed the "natural" incipient capitalism in countries like India and China... and I suppose areas of Africa around the Congo etc. Except... if you look into those pre-existing relations, and relations ongoing even after the incursion of imperialism, you see no incipient capitalism; you see little if any dispossession labor from its ability to provide directly for its immediate subsistence-- and that dispossession of labor from the condition where labor can provide for its immediate and direct subsistence is the key to "incipient" capitalism.

This way, every type of commodity production, starting from the very ancient ones, can be identified as capitalism.

Between the "too rigid" and "too flexible" our Maoists are actually being consistent-- consistent in the disregard and in their opposition to workers' class struggle against capitalism in its local and global organization.

Opposing the portion of the national bourgeoisie allying with the revolution, will immediately stop even the very little media exposure and support from the intelligentsia that the Maoists get, probably along with the development of small businesses in the red areas. Even after the private sector is done away with, state capitalism that serves the interests of the working class, must be maintained for some time. So, struggling at once against all forms of capital is impractical if the revolution is to win. Rather, temporary alliance with certain fractions of capital is necessary, as demonstrated by the continuing failure of the seemingly ultra-left groups in India that call for opposition to all capital.

scarletghoul

31st January 2011, 18:06

Well, India is an independent nation, so I'm not sure what you mean by a neo-colony.
The word neo-colony is used to refer to countries which, despite being officially independent, are still in fact controlled and used by the imperialists. The most obvious example would be something like Afghanistan.

India is not under foreign occupation and indeed it is a regional oppressor, but it relies on foreign investment from developed countries. Only today it was agreed that a South Korean company could start a huge steel plant in Orissa, which some estimate will exhaust the deposits in 20 years. This is just one of many many examples, which you can find on google, of India giving away its resources to developed countries. RED DAVE himself in this thread quoted a figure putting the 'upper class' at just 1% of the population, with only a part of that being actual bourgeoisie and not feudal remnants etc.. in other words a lot of Indian capital is in the hands of foreign bourgeoisie. This of course has an impact on politics etc too (when has India opposed the US on any major issue ?)

So that's why red cat used the term neo-colony, I think. I am still unsure on the issue of colonies, semicolonies, neocolonies, etc, and want to research more before I form a proper opinion, but this post is an explanation of why people class india as a neocolony

red cat

31st January 2011, 18:36

Here (http://www.indianchild.com/jobs_in_india.htm) is an article about the composition of the Indian workforce. Evidently, it does not use Marxist categories such as "proletariat" and "petty bourgeoisie", so we must make a few guesses.

The data are from 1991, which means they are 20 year old. In 20 years, of course, the Indian workforce changed a lot, and it certainly changed towards a more proletarian and less petty bourgeois composition.

So let's go for the data.

So there is a division between "main" and "marginal" workers; 285.9 million would be "main" workers, and 28.2 million would be "marginal" workers. It is not clear what those "marginal" workers would be, further than they are quite probably more impoverished than the others. Let's leave them aside for the moment.

Of the main workers, 39% were "cultivators", which quite certainly means people who cultivate land on their own, or in patriarchal or otherwise non-capitalist relations with landlords. Those would be peasants, not proletarians. 26% were "agricultural labourers", which in this context seems to mean agricultural wage workers; those would be, of course, proletarians. There were 2% of workers labouring in other rural activities; since those include things like fishing and hunting, most of them are quite certainly non-proletarians. 1% of the labourers were employed in mining and quarrying; those were most certainly proletarians. 2% worked in household manufactures, and consequently it looks like they were petty bourgeois. 7% worked in non-household manufactures, and so they were, in all likelihood proletarians. 2% worked in construction, and were quite certainly proletarians. The same goes for 8% of workers in commerce, and the 3% of workers in transportation, storage, and communications. The 10% in "other services" are obviously unclassifiable, so let's conservatively assume they are non-proletarians.

So we would have 26% rural wage workers plus 1% labourers in mines and quarries, plus 7% workers in non-domestic manufacture, plus 2% construction workers, plus 8% workers in commerce, plus 3% workers in "hard" services. This would sum up to 47%. Supposing that all "marginal workers" were non-proletarians, the proletariat seems to mount up to some 42% of the working population of India. Not a small minority, and certainly much bigger, proportionally, than the Russian proletariat in 1917 or the Chinese proletariat in 1949.

And those figures would be for 1991. In 2001, I very much doubt that the proletariat is not the majority of the workforce. Unless we resort to some magic, like considering working class women non-proletarian if they have no job out of the household, or, a bit worse, considering working class children non-proletarian, it much seems that the proletariat is in fact the majority of the Indian population today.

Luís Henrique

The main problem with this is that it relies on the figures provided by the Indian goverment. The Indian government is well known for lying so consistently that it makes the truth quite unbelievable. The information it gives about the growth of jobs and the population below poverty line etc. are commonly known to be false. For example, the Indian government has a scheme of providing 100 days of work to rural unemployed people. First of all it exaggerates the number who are chosen for this kind of work. Then, to those who are actually chosen, 3 or 5 days of work is actually provided, while the rest of the money for setting up more infrastructure is misappropriated by the authorities. In rural areas where most of the population is lower caste or tribal, they are given only a part of the wages, and in many occassions, are forced to work for free. These have been somewhat exposed after the Maoist movements emerged in Bastar, Lalgarh etc and largely did away with the mercenary and state forces. A fully unemployed person or a seasonally unemployed peasant does not qualify to be an agricultural peasant if he works for free for a couple of days. Here I am not addressing the question of landless labourer versus landless peasant.

Keeping these factors in mind, the estimates of the CPI( Maoist ) certainly become more credible than those of the government. So 42% is about seven times larger than what the Indian working class really is.

Hit The North

31st January 2011, 18:39

India is not under foreign occupation and indeed it is a regional oppressor, but it relies on foreign investment from developed countries.

So does the United Kingdom. Does this make it a neo-colony? In fact, as this article indicates, high levels of foreign investment are desirable for the UK economy - even receiving foreign investment from India, of all places:

The UK maintains its position as the number one destination for foreign investors in Europe, and second in the world, coming in after the US.

This year 53 countries have invested in the UK, with investment projects from India increasing by 44% in the past year to become the UK's second largest source - 108 FDI projects.

http://www.economy-news.co.uk/foreign-investment-1706.html

Only today it was agreed that a South Korean company could start a huge steel plant in Orissa, which some estimate will exhaust the deposits in 20 years. This is just one of many many examples, which you can find on google, of India giving away its resources to developed countries.Again, you will find similar scenarios in every developed capitalist nation. It's a consequence of neo-liberalism.

red cat

31st January 2011, 18:56

What exactly is a "semi-feudal system" and how can it accommodate and manage cutting edge industries in the way India does? If your argument is a demographic one, pointing to the preponderance of Indian society in the backward conditions of the countryside, then this is only a consequence of Indian capitalism's under-development (as a consequence of imperialism), not its absence. Whilst political and military factors might create distortions within the relations of production (and I'm not clear what these total political and military controls that you mention are supposed to be, maybe you can enlighten me), this is not primary to a description of actually existing relations of production, and specifically, the relations between labour and capital in the Indian economy.

What you are calling Indian capitalism is actually comprador capitalism, in the sense that it aids in imperialist exploitation of India, and is very limited in size compared to the foreign capital acting there. It is very difficult to get exact data about the actual conditions in a factory or workers slum, due to presence of mercenary and lumpen elements there. Only a few incidents like the abduction and murder of Bhikhari Paswan ever come to light. However, you can look at the history of the SEZ struggles to get an idea of how military means are used in India.

Well, India is an independent nation, so I'm not sure what you mean by a neo-colony.

Independent only in the sense that you won't find any imperialist regime directly ruling India. However, Indian politics and economy is indirectly controlled by them, and India has undergone no significant structural change after its alleged independence. For example, after a rebellion, the British imperialists made a policy of identifying each member of the Shabar community as a criminal by birth. They were subjected to the rules concerned. This policy still remains unchanged in practice.

S.Artesian

31st January 2011, 20:53

TISCO employs around 80,000 workers. Under what circumstances do these workers work? Under what circumstances do the workers in the mines where TISCO is the sole purchaser and indirect controller work ? Though TISCO is propagandized to be a very "worker friendly" company, there are other reasons for it not being closed even once due to a workers strike. Though these compradors are very efficient in controlling the media, a quick look at the 2006 Kalinganagar affair will indicate how they are used to maintaining and expanding their assets.

They work under capitalist circumstances. Look, Bolivia maintained the mita and the pongo well into the 20th century-- and even the MNR revolution was not able to obliterate all aspects of service-labor obligation. So does that make Bolivia feudal? Does that make the Rosca, the great tin mining families, who actually controlled their mines and were not proxies for US or British capital, compradors?

It's not a question of whether TISCO is worker friendly, but whether it is capitalist; and if it is the mode of production that dominates, determines the course of the rest of the economy, of the social relations.

A very small minority of the workers involved in these actually come to anything close to "selling" labour power.
References and data, please-- to show how these laborers are really slaves, serf, reproducing feudalism.

Have you ever read of the history of coal mining in the US-- with workers living in company towns, in company houses, being paid in company scrip exchangeable only at company stores, and being evicted and blacklisted if they organize for a union?

Under your definition would that be "semi-feudalism"? Or is that capitalism

This way, every type of commodity production, starting from the very ancient ones, can be identified as capitalism.
No that way every type of commodity production has to be identified in relation to the dominant mode of production of the economy; that way every type of commodity production has to be defined in its international relations to other modes of production.

Opposing the portion of the national bourgeoisie allying with the revolution, will immediately stop even the very little media exposure and support from the intelligentsia that the Maoists get, probably along with the development of small businesses in the red areas. Even after the private sector is done away with, state capitalism that serves the interests of the working class, must be maintained for some time. So, struggling at once against all forms of capital is impractical if the revolution is to win. Rather, temporary alliance with certain fractions of capital is necessary, as demonstrated by the continuing failure of the seemingly ultra-left groups in India that call for opposition to all capital.

Right, opposing capitalism can be a big blow to one's Nielsen ratings, and only god knows how many times you'll get defriended on facebook if you oppose the national bourgeoisie.

State capitalism that serves the interest of the working class? Oxymoron, contradiction in terms, or in the vernacular, ideological bullshit. Capitalism requires the dispossession of the individual laborers from the means of production. It reconstitutes those laborers as a social labor force whose interests are directly opposed to capitalism; it reconstitutes a social labor force whose every interest requires executing a repossession of the means of production on a social, collective, and NON-state-capitalist basis.

Not to put to fine a point on it...

Comrade, you've worked yourself into a position where you are explicitly endorsing the interests of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism, whether you call it a national bourgeoisie or a state capitalism.

Look where that has gotten the proletariat and the peasantry to date in.. China, in Vietnam...and in the former Soviet Union.

L.A.P.

31st January 2011, 21:01

Went to India recently, I think we forget that just because a country's capitalist economy hasn't reached its peak yet doesn't mean it's not capitalist. We're so used to capitalism being what the United States and most European nations but that's what capitalism looks like at it's peak. India is definitely capitalist just more like what capitalism was in the West years ago.

red cat

31st January 2011, 22:31

They work under capitalist circumstances. Look, Bolivia maintained the mita and the pongo well into the 20th century-- and even the MNR revolution was not able to obliterate all aspects of service-labor obligation. So does that make Bolivia feudal? Does that make the Rosca, the great tin mining families, who actually controlled their mines and were not proxies for US or British capital, compradors?

It's not a question of whether TISCO is worker friendly, but whether it is capitalist; and if it is the mode of production that dominates, determines the course of the rest of the economy, of the social relations.

References and data, please-- to show how these laborers are really slaves, serf, reproducing feudalism.

Have you ever read of the history of coal mining in the US-- with workers living in company towns, in company houses, being paid in company scrip exchangeable only at company stores, and being evicted and blacklisted if they organize for a union?

Under your definition would that be "semi-feudalism"? Or is that capitalism

No that way every type of commodity production has to be identified in relation to the dominant mode of production of the economy; that way every type of commodity production has to be defined in its international relations to other modes of production.

So what is your definition of capitalism that makes it qualitatively different from all other economies ?

Right, opposing capitalism can be a big blow to one's Nielsen ratings, and only god knows how many times you'll get defriended on facebook if you oppose the national bourgeoisie.Getting friends in facebook is a little bit different from waging a revolutionary war. What strategy do you propose to continue the Indian revolution without allying with the national bourgeoisie and specially its representatives, the intelligentsia, and how do you defend the actions of the so called "ultra-lefts" in India ? Why haven't they participated in any effective workers struggle so far ?

State capitalism that serves the interest of the working class? Oxymoron, contradiction in terms, or in the vernacular, ideological bullshit. Capitalism requires the dispossession of the individual laborers from the means of production. It reconstitutes those laborers as a social labor force whose interests are directly opposed to capitalism; it reconstitutes a social labor force whose every interest requires executing a repossession of the means of production on a social, collective, and NON-state-capitalist basis.

Not to put to fine a point on it...

Comrade, you've worked yourself into a position where you are explicitly endorsing the interests of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism, whether you call it a national bourgeoisie or a state capitalism.

Look where that has gotten the proletariat and the peasantry to date in.. China, in Vietnam...and in the former Soviet Union.

For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

- Lenin
The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It

Alright, we choose to follow the "ideological bullshit" of Lenin.

RED DAVE

31st January 2011, 23:20

What is the qualitative difference between a system in which commodity production is the dominant mode of production and in which it is not ?It is a quantitative difference which, according to the second law of dialectical material (Sorry, Rosa :D) states that a quantitative relationship becomes a qualitative relationship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism

Now, we can argue all day and night about the point at which this takes place, but it is quite clear that in India, the vast majority of commodity production, whether food or industrial, is for exchange not consumption.

I think that, red cat's fulminating notwithstanding, it is clear that India is capitalist.

Comrade, you've worked yourself into a position where you are explicitly endorsing the interests of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism, whether you call it a national bourgeoisie or a state capitalism.

Look where that has gotten the proletariat and the peasantry to date in.. China, in Vietnam...and in the former Soviet Union.That's called Maoism.

RED DAVE

red cat

31st January 2011, 23:33

I think that, red cat's fulminating notwithstanding, it is clear that India is capitalist.

So now that you have realized this, you should ask your comrades in India to organize the socialist revolution, shouldn't you ?

That's called Maoism.

RED DAVEAnd no-revolution-only-theory is called ...... :lol:

EDIT:

It is a quantitative difference which, according to the second law of dialectical material (Sorry, Rosa :D) states that a quantitative relationship becomes a qualitative relationship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism

Now, we can argue all day and night about the point at which this takes place, but it is quite clear that in India, the vast majority of commodity production, whether food or industrial, is for exchange not consumption.

So the transition of the society from commodity production being the minor to major mode is qualitative ? This means that if commodity production rises from 49 % to 51 % of the economy, then a qualitative change occurs. Qualitative changes are marked by transformation of the objects or systems concerned into totally new ones having markedly different properties from the older ones, such as the transformation of water into ice etc. What such marked change is observed in the society when commodity production becomes the major mode ( 51 % ) of production from a minor ( 49 % ) one ?

DaringMehring

1st February 2011, 00:16

DaringMehring

1st February 2011, 00:19

pranabjyoti

1st February 2011, 01:40

S.Artesian

1st February 2011, 01:44

The real question is --- is the revolution going to promote capitalist accumulation in India & the development of a capitalist class, or is it going to expropriate capital & eliminate the capitalist class... not what happens to a professor of the history of poetry...

Comrade Daring hits the proverbial nail on its proverbial, and flat, head. Look at Bangladesh, at the recent strikes by textile workers. Are we going to tell those workers that their revolution must place itself in the service of capital accumulation and the capitalist class, or that it is indeed their revolution and their responsibility to themselves and all others is the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, the elimination of capitalism, state and private, and the development of socialist accumulation?

As for this from Red Cat:

For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

- Lenin
The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It

Alright, we choose to follow the "ideological bullshit" of Lenin.

....not one of Lenin's better formulations. Lenin was dead wrong. Socialism is not merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and to that extent has ceased to be a capitalist monopoly. Socialism, even at its earliest stages is much much more than that.

S.Artesian

1st February 2011, 03:13

Just a minute, can anybody show any example of "honor killing" in any properly capitalist country around the world. Those who are arguing in favor of India being "capitalist", I guess most are from first world countries and are just totally ignorant of the ground reality of India. That's why they are arguing on the basis of arguments like "a country that can send a probe to moon must be capitalist" etc.
Why India isn't capitalist? Just one simple reason. If you are Marxist, then you must agree that real capitalist are always looking for ways to make their product/service cheap and that's why they are looking for new inventions. A good lot of capitalist in the first world are basically inventors at the start and most companies spent a good lot of their spending on research and development.
But that's totally opposite in India. Here most capitalists arise from traders family, which exist well in feudal times. Just one example, a good lot of business in India are basically family business run in dynastic mode. While in US, a business empire can not continue after 3 generations maximum. Birla, one of the leading industrialists of present India, were traders during the time of Mughals. There are many such examples.

Honor killings? That indicates what? As opposed to the fact that it happens in Brazil; that a woman in the US is much more likely to be murdered by her boyfriend or husband than by a robber or rapist? As opposed to the fact the SuperBowl Sunday in the US sees a spike in abuse of women by their mates?

As for merchants and the origin of capitalism, you obviously know nothing about the origins of the English capitalists, the transformation the merchants executing from the "putting out" process of cloth and textile home manufacture, to the centralized factory system.

A good lot of capitalists in the advance countries--were tenant farmers in England in the 16th and 17th century; merchants in the 16th 17th 18th centuries.

"Inventors" actually come along only after capitalism is well-established in England. See Robert Allen's The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective and Pat Hudson's The Genesis of Industrial Capital.

What you don't know fills volumes.

Die Neue Zeit

1st February 2011, 03:48

So in this thread, we have red cat, who openly disavows classical Marxism, and DNZ, who says straight up that if the proletariat wanted to seize power in a third world country, he would "educate" them about the need to instead have "Caesarean socialism."

The difference is, you can sense that red cat cares about the oppressed of India & the third world, and at least he argues along & talks through his ideas. DNZ just comes off as a nutty modern day version of Eugen Duhring.

No, it's called making sure the political and economic conditions are ripe for the Third World proletariat to take ruling-class power eventually. Until then, let the other non-dispossessed classes and "national" petit-bourgeoisie do as much of the dirty political work (radical democracy in some form) and dirtier economic work (liquidating the whole bourgeoisie and developing the productive forces) for the proletariat as they can.

Like you said, but paradoxically, "promote [capital] accumulation" and "expropriate capital & eliminate the capitalist class."

DaringMehring

1st February 2011, 04:06

Just a minute, can anybody show any example of "honor killing" in any properly capitalist country around the world. Those who are arguing in favor of India being "capitalist", I guess most are from first world countries and are just totally ignorant of the ground reality of India. That's why they are arguing on the basis of arguments like "a country that can send a probe to moon must be capitalist" etc.
Why India isn't capitalist? Just one simple reason. If you are Marxist, then you must agree that real capitalist are always looking for ways to make their product/service cheap and that's why they are looking for new inventions. A good lot of capitalist in the first world are basically inventors at the start and most companies spent a good lot of their spending on research and development.
But that's totally opposite in India. Here most capitalists arise from traders family, which exist well in feudal times. Just one example, a good lot of business in India are basically family business run in dynastic mode. While in US, a business empire can not continue after 3 generations maximum. Birla, one of the leading industrialists of present India, were traders during the time of Mughals. There are many such examples.

Actually here in the USA, there was just recently a trial of a man in Arizona for "honor killing." And in the UK, I remember reading about several "honor killings." In both cases, it was to do with Muslim immigrants.

It seems, that "honor killing" is a cultural thing... part of the ideological superstructure, which is separate from the relations of production (-- capitalism).

Thus, these immigrants brought their culture with them, but that did not transform the relations of production of the USA or the UK back to feudalism.

And --- most of the wealthy people in the USA/UK trace their wealth back to hereditary roots. There are plenty of "dynastic family businesses" that got their start in brutal exploitation. You are wrong when you say that in western countries most capitalists are inventors --- that's just capitalist propaganda.

red cat

1st February 2011, 05:11

Actually here in the USA, there was just recently a trial of a man in Arizona for "honor killing." And in the UK, I remember reading about several "honor killings." In both cases, it was to do with Muslim immigrants.

It seems, that "honor killing" is a cultural thing... part of the ideological superstructure, which is separate from the relations of production (-- capitalism).

Thus, these immigrants brought their culture with them, but that did not transform the relations of production of the USA or the UK back to feudalism.

I think comrade pranabjyoti wants to point out that feudal culture is still prevalent in India. In the USA, honour killings are committed by populations immigrating from feudal countries, but in India they are committed by the Indian population itself. The reported number of honour killings tell a lot about the prevalent culture :

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/More-than-1000-honour-killings-in-India-every-year-Experts/articleshow/6127338.cms

This is a good way of getting an idea of what kind of production relations can be prevalent in India, because the atrocities on the working class go largely unreported due to the steady alliance of most of the mass media with the comprador bourgeoisie.

red cat

1st February 2011, 05:56

Btw from reading what red cat is saying, he called left-wing intellectuals, eg what would typically be classed as petit-bourgeois, or intelligentsia, "national bourgeoisie." This indicates to me that there may be some talking at cross-purposes based on different lexicons.

This is what Maoists refer to as the petite bourgeoisie :

The petty bourgeoisie. Included in this category are the owner-peasants, [7 (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_1.htm#bm7)] the master handicraftsmen, the lower levels of the intellectuals--students, primary and secondary school teachers, lower government functionaries, office clerks, small lawyers--and the small traders.

- Mao

ANALYSIS OF THE CLASSES IN CHINESE SOCIETY

The national bourgeoisie is the level of businessmen just above these, and the classes that closely ally with it in the economy. They are not compradors as they are not in steady alliance with the ruling class. So, due to the political and military strength of the state aiding their rivals, their businesses are quite small compared to the established ones, but bigger than those of small businessmen who are mainly shopkeepers. Due to its inability to lead the bourgeois nationalist movement against British imperialism to any significant level, the Indian national bourgeoisie is even smaller than what its Chinese counterparts had been in pre-revolution China.

If you look at the intellectuals who stand at the forefront in opposition to the government, you will notice that they are mainly allied with this kind of businesses. So, they are the national and not the petite bourgeoisie.

The real question is --- is the revolution going to promote capitalist accumulation in India & the development of a capitalist class, or is it going to expropriate capital & eliminate the capitalist class... not what happens to a professor of the history of poetry...This depends on the degree of development of a given industrial field. In most cases, the working class is unaware of how to start, manage or expand an industry. This is coupled with the whole party, red army and most of the masses engaging in continuous war with the state forces. So in some places, giving incentives to the private sector is required, at the same time organizing the workers to take control gradually. In the more developed sectors, the working class can hire experts instead of allowing profits. In the most developed fields where the working class already is enough organized and knowledgeable, they take control, as already in the construction and to some extent, arms industries in the red areas in India. Gradually this third kind form of management and ownership will come to span the whole economy.

red cat

1st February 2011, 07:17

As for this from Red Cat:

....not one of Lenin's better formulations. Lenin was dead wrong. Socialism is not merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and to that extent has ceased to be a capitalist monopoly. Socialism, even at its earliest stages is much much more than that.

The working class will require time to attain the knowledge and organization to take full control of workplaces. In light of this, we adopt Leninist theory and practice instead of classical Marxist ones. So the earlier stages of socialism will definitely be mostly state capitalism.

RED DAVE

1st February 2011, 12:27

So the transition of the society from commodity production being the minor to major mode is qualitative ?It is a quantitative change leading to a qualitative change.

This means that if commodity production rises from 49 % to 51 % of the economy, then a qualitative change occurs.No, but it probably occurs if commodity production changes from 5% to 51%

Qualitative changes are marked by transformation of the objects or systems concerned into totally new ones having markedly different properties from the older ones, such as the transformation of water into ice etc.That's one example of one kind of qualitative change.

What such marked change is observed in the society when commodity production becomes the major mode ( 51 % ) of production from a minor ( 49 % ) one ?Who said 49% is minor? 10% is minor; 20% is minor; 30% is minor; but at some point the linear accretion, quantitatively, engenders the qualitative change.

You are either being obtuse or willfully obscuring the the point.

RED DAVE

S.Artesian

1st February 2011, 12:43

So now we determine the dominant mode of production on the basis of newspaper articles.

And we add to our ignorance by claiming "honor killings" in the US are the work of immigrants when physical abuse of women, including murder for "infidelity," is as American as apple pie, cruise missiles, and crystal meth.

And the cherry on the top of this rotten sundae? "Leninist" practice of allying with a "national bourgeoisie." Except of course, in the revolutionary struggle for power, Lenin never allied with a national bourgeoisie, but argued for all power to the organs of working class power, the soviets. Mere technicality, I'm sure.

This puts our Maoist comrades on the other, the wrong, side of the class line.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

Widerstand

1st February 2011, 13:10

Just a minute, can anybody show any example of "honor killing" in any properly capitalist country around the world.

Germany.

Rosa Lichtenstein

1st February 2011, 16:05

Red Cat:

Classical Marxism is something that Maoists openly claim not to follow.

As I have pointed out before, when Maoists say such things apparently it's OK. But if anyone else does then we here cries of "Revisionism!"

pranabjyoti

1st February 2011, 17:45

Red Cat:

As I have pointed out before, when Maoists say such things apparently it's OK. But if anyone else does then we here cries of "Revisionism!"
Not only Maoists, but any proper Marxist takes only the method from Marx, NOTHING OTHER THAN THAT. Actually, Marxism is a science and like other branches of science, it's continuously flourishing.
But, one can only be called "revisionist", when he/she is openly talking/acting against the interest of workers. But to understand that, someone need to have some idea of reality and Marxism together the will to apply it on real world for betterment on mankind. Just using it as a tool for argument and proving identity isn't helpful enough to understand the Marxist terminologies in their real meaning.

pranabjyoti

1st February 2011, 17:49

Germany.
How much? Comparable to India, Pakistan? Who had done that? Proper Germans or Asian immigrants?
Basically, most here can not differentiate between "family violence" and "honor killing". What they described in USA and UK are acts of individuals who done harm to their own family members. "Honor killing" actually means the whole family is united to kill a member of it for "dishonoring" the family. In USA and other capitalist countries, such examples are extremely rare and Asian immigrants are mainly responsible for the incidents.

pranabjyoti

1st February 2011, 17:52

Actually here in the USA, there was just recently a trial of a man in Arizona for "honor killing." And in the UK, I remember reading about several "honor killings." In both cases, it was to do with Muslim immigrants.

It seems, that "honor killing" is a cultural thing... part of the ideological superstructure, which is separate from the relations of production (-- capitalism).

Thus, these immigrants brought their culture with them, but that did not transform the relations of production of the USA or the UK back to feudalism.

And --- most of the wealthy people in the USA/UK trace their wealth back to hereditary roots. There are plenty of "dynastic family businesses" that got their start in brutal exploitation. You are wrong when you say that in western countries most capitalists are inventors --- that's just capitalist propaganda.
Why don't you understand that the origin of such culture is the long standing feudalism in Asian countries?
Well, not most, but a huge lot of capitalists are inventors and I hope you agree with me on that matter. Just compare the number of patent applications to US and India and you can understand what I want to mean.
Can you show some example of wealthy feudal families turned capitalist by using their wealth earned in feudalism as capital? Specially in last hundred years.

red cat

1st February 2011, 18:40

It is a quantitative change leading to a qualitative change.

No, but it probably occurs if commodity production changes from 5% to 51%

But if there is no qualitative change from 49% to 51%, then there will obviously be no qualitative change from 48% to 51%, 47% to 51%, ..... and so on till 5% to 51%.

That's one example of one kind of qualitative change.Yes, but each qualitative change is marked by some qualitatively different properties of the systems involved. You fail to describe the properties in which what you call capitalism differs qualitatively from the economy that precedes it. What are the consequences if commodity production becomes the major mode from being a minor mode in any economy, that make it eligible to be considered as a qualitative change ?

Who said 49% is minor? 10% is minor; 20% is minor; 30% is minor; but at some point the linear accretion, quantitatively, engenders the qualitative change. Can you please explain exactly what you mean by minor and major ? Give me the x such that x % is minor but ( x + 1) % is major. Also, at what point does this alleged qualitative change occur ?

You are either being obtuse or willfully obscuring the the point.

RED DAVEIt's rather you who is being obtuse. You see no qualitative difference between the loot and sale of labour power, but you claim that a qualitative change has happened when a mode of production simply becomes the major mode from a minor mode in the economy. That too when you cannot precisely define the notions of majority and minority in the first place.

red cat

1st February 2011, 19:07

So now we determine the dominant mode of production on the basis of newspaper articles.

A better option would be to engage in an unbiased survey of the factories and workers' slums. Tell me when you have done it.

And we add to our ignorance by claiming "honor killings" in the US are the work of immigrants when physical abuse of women, including murder for "infidelity," is as American as apple pie, cruise missiles, and crystal meth.How many honour killings occur in the US per year ? At least a thousand occur in India. How many female infanticides occur in the US ? In India feudal patriarchy results in so many female infanticides that presently there are only 933 females per 1000 males.

And the cherry on the top of this rotten sundae? "Leninist" practice of allying with a "national bourgeoisie." Except of course, in the revolutionary struggle for power, Lenin never allied with a national bourgeoisie, but argued for all power to the organs of working class power, the soviets. Mere technicality, I'm sure.

This puts our Maoist comrades on the other, the wrong, side of the class line.

Not to put too fine a point on it.I referred to the Leninist practice of state capitalism, not allying with the national bourgeoisie. We accept both Lenin's method of introducing state capitalism and Mao's method of allying with the national bourgeoisie due to their validity proved by first Leninist, and then Maoist movements being the vast majority of the struggles led by the working class that have successfully engaged in revolutionary wars and been able to overthrow capitalism temporarily.

S.Artesian

1st February 2011, 19:23

A better option would be to engage in an unbiased survey of the factories and workers' slums. Tell me when you have done it.

Gee, that answers the question-- factories and poor urban housing conditions of workers in cities? That's capitalism

How many honour killings occur in the US per year ? At least a thousand occur in India. How many female infanticides occur in the US ? In India feudal patriarchy results in so many female infanticides that presently there are only 933 females per 1000 males.

And exactly how does that prove India is not capitalist? That India is feudalist.

Population of 1 billion, 450 million women, 1000 honor killings, that's 1/450,000. Murders of women in the US [2009] 3103-- have no idea how many of them are "honor" based, but we do know that the majority of these are committed by husbands, boyfriends and ex-boyfriends of women. Ergo, the US is a semi-feudal country.

I referred to the Leninist practice of state capitalism, not allying with the national bourgeoisie. We accept both Lenin's method of introducing state capitalism and Mao's method of allying with the national bourgeoisie due to their validity proved by first Leninist, and then Maoist movements being the vast majority of the struggles led by the working class that have successfully engaged in revolutionary wars and been able to overthrow capitalism temporarily.

Well according to you, you don't get one without the other. You have argued that it is necessary to ally with the national bourgeoisie in order to "advance" to state capitalism.

But here's a question, what distinguishes Lenin's "state capitalism" which you, and apparently Maoists, endorse from Khrushchev's state capitalism that Maoists, and apparently you also, denounce?

And that last claim of yours is a corker-- I wouldn't be so quick to put that on my CV-- "able to overthrow capitalism temporarily".... only of course to introduce it permanently thereafter.

It's kind of like saying you took part of your medication and it suppressed the tuberculosis temporarily, giving rise of course to drug-resistant strains that then go on to attack the entire body, and the entire species, in more virulent fashion.

Wonderful.

Jose Gracchus

1st February 2011, 19:44

Which? You think fragile populist dictatorships qualify as building socialism?

red cat

1st February 2011, 19:54

Gee, that answers the question-- factories and poor urban housing conditions of workers in cities? That's capitalism

Not necessarily. The sale of labour power does not span all such factories.

.

And exactly how does that prove India is not capitalist? That India is feudalist.

Population of 1 billion, 450 million women, 1000 honor killings, that's 1/450,000. Murders of women in the US [2009] 3103-- have no idea how many of them are "honor" based, but we do know that the majority of these are committed by husbands, boyfriends and ex-boyfriends of women. Ergo, the US is a semi-feudal country.Do find out how many of these are honour killings. The total number of women murdered in India is much greater. Out of every 1000 female babies, 67 are killed. So each year, around 670,000 female babies are killed. How many female infanticides occur in the US ?

Well according to you, you don't get one without the other. You have argued that it is necessary to ally with the national bourgeoisie in order to "advance" to state capitalism. Only in colonies or semi-colonies.

But here's a question, what distinguishes Lenin's "state capitalism" which you, and apparently Maoists, endorse from Khrushchev's state capitalism that Maoists, and apparently you also, denounce?The state capitalism introduced by Lenin worked primarily for the interests of the working class, both inside the USSR and abroad. This was not the case with Khrushchev's state capitalism.

And that last claim of yours is a corker-- I wouldn't be so quick to put that on my CV-- "able to overthrow capitalism temporarily".... only of course to introduce it permanently thereafter.

It's kind of like saying you took part of your medication and it suppressed the tuberculosis temporarily, giving rise of course to drug-resistant strains that then go on to attack the entire body, and the entire species, in more virulent fashion.

Wonderful.The amount of success matters. Starting from the Paris Commune, the communards, the Leninists and then the Maoists have been the most successful of leftists in overthrowing capitalism and imperialism. These tendencies have continuously evolved to be more and more successful, up till the point today when almost no other tendency is being even able to declare the revolutionary war. Capitalist restoration is a problem, but the only way to deal with it is to find out methods to stop it through engaging in actual revolutionary practice and waging the revolutionary wars. Apart from MLs in Colombia and other communists and anarchists in Greece, all others but Maoists have failed to prove their theory true or feasible by being unable to implement it even at most basic levels.

Jose Gracchus

1st February 2011, 21:05

Populist revolts and paternalistic populist authoritarianism and guerrilla struggles have always existed. Simply because they are occurring does not mean they are going anywhere, will be successful, or because they're using red rhetoric makes it a way forward.

Simply polling the number of incidents of poor guerrillas hiding in the forest for favorite tendency is not a scientific method. Its childish reasoning.

EDIT: @S. Artisan, I think that it is simply that they have no consistency or coherency. Maoism is a pastiche of romanticism and temporary self-serving political opportunism (like Mao's "Bloc" and Mao's revolting "Three Worlds Theory" and compromise with American imperialism).

red cat

1st February 2011, 21:13

Populist revolts and paternalistic populist authoritarianism and guerrilla struggles have always existed. Simply because they are occurring does not mean they are going anywhere, will be successful, or because they're using red rhetoric makes it a way forward.

Simply polling the number of incidents of poor guerrillas hiding in the forest for favorite tendency is not a scientific method. Its childish reasoning.

And writing nonsense about revolutionary movements about whom you know nothing is just first worldist petit-bourgeois bullshit. Such ignorant pseudo-leftists ultimately serve the cause of imperialism.

Jose Gracchus

1st February 2011, 22:08

And writing nonsense about revolutionary movements about whom you know nothing is just first worldist petit-bourgeois bullshit. Such ignorant pseudo-leftists ultimately serve the cause of imperialism.

You've already shown repeatedly in this thread you use terms like "class" and "feudal" and "capital" in impressionistic, vague, conflicting, and metaphorical ways. Consider the fact that you implied intellectuals are "national bourgeoisie"; in what shape or form can this be said to be true? They do not own means of production and extract surplus value from wage slaves. They are not those who benefit from withdrawal from global markets. You're just using a colloquialism. Just like now you said "First Worldist petty-bourgeois". What the fuck does that mean? In what sense are "opinions you do not like" substantively and demonstratively the product of "First World" chauvinism or "petty bourgeois" (itself even in Marxism a vague grab-bag catagory of different material relationships and groups - meaning approximately, small property owner, artisan, etc.). This is just a slur. Dressed up in "red jargon" is poses as class analysis and a substantive reply. But it just makes you look like a shrill ideologue who lacks an ability or desire to reply constructively and substantively.

I know plenty about most Maoists/generic-Third-World-populism-fetishists. I argue with them rountinely. Now, I think we should support national liberation movements. However, the open lack of sincerity, consistency, and coherency in Mao's writings and "theories" deserves to be prodded and scrutinized. Mao contrived imaginary "state capitalism" in the USSR stopped being a good geopolitical ally, he elevated palace intrigue and geopolitical realism to "theory". He worked to isolate "degenerated workers' states" or whatever one wishes to call them - non-capitalist, anti-imperialist states and movements - by opportunistically allying with the West and coming up with a totally un-materialist, self-serving "theory" like "Three Worlds".

All I am saying is socialism as understood in Marx's works and other classic socialist works - meaning the organization of the wage-earners as a social class for themselves, abolition of commodity production, the rising of the working class to the position of social rule, workers' democracy, and extirpation of wage slavery has been abandoned in practice by "really existing" Maoism. Invariably it is some form of self-indulgent "lefter-than-thou" solidarity for Third World guerrillas, no matter how much in principle they draw their manpower and leadership and support from inherently petty bourgeois sources in the authentically Marxist sense (as opposed to your know-nothing pejorative incoherent use), and other elite, non-worker groups like coordinators, or how much they end up capitulating to capitalism or parliamentarism or reformism. It postures as a form of Marxian socialism (whatever the merits of that) while abandoning everything which distinguished it, and substituting for those ideas a kind of "common ancestry" brand-name kind of argument. It produces no novel or successful concepts for working toward socialism outside of Third World ruralities. To the extent it abandons reformism it embraces personality cults and opposes workers' democracy (even when it appears in its midst, as attempted in the Shanghai Commune, etc.). Worse yet, it seems to be associated with the most hysterical "left-than-thou" sectarianism.

DaringMehring

2nd February 2011, 01:06

Nobody seems to have got my point. When I pointed out there were honor killings in the USA, the point was not to compare quantity across the world, nor to start a debate about whether all patriarchy-inspired killing of women should count as honor killing.

The point was --- honor killings are part of culture, ie, part of the ideological superstructure. According to the Marxist sociological model, these are separate from relations of production. Honor killings and capitalism/feudalism represent different parts of the sociological model. There is no way to infer from one to the other. That was proved if nothing else by the explicit honor killings in capitalist USA or UK.

Repeat -- capitalism is defined by relations of production. Culture, which is part of the ideological structure -- Britney Spears, honor killings, Christmas, Christianity, etc. -- does not mark a society as capitalist, slave, feudal, etc.

Marxism 101.

Rosa Lichtenstein

2nd February 2011, 01:15

Pranabjyoti:

Not only Maoists, but any proper Marxist takes only the method from Marx, NOTHING OTHER THAN THAT. Actually, Marxism is a science and like other branches of science, it's continuously flourishing.

Indeed it is a science, but, as I noted, you Maoists are allowed to revise whatever takes your fancy, but when others do this, you all cry "Revisionism!"

[And yet, the only thing you lot won't revise is dialectics, which can only mean it's not a science.:lol:]

But, one can only be called "revisionist", when he/she is openly talking/acting against the interest of workers. But to understand that, someone need to have some idea of reality and Marxism together the will to apply it on real world for betterment on mankind. Just using it as a tool for argument and proving identity isn't helpful enough to understand the Marxist terminologies in their real meaning.

Except, allying with the national bourgeoisie is not considered by you lot to be against workers' interests, which can only mean that you have revised the meaning of the phrase "workers' interests".

Jose Gracchus

2nd February 2011, 01:47

pranabjyoti

2nd February 2011, 03:27

Pranabjyoti:

Indeed it is a science, but, as I noted, you Maoists are allowed to revise whatever takes your fancy, but when others do this, you all cry "Revisionism!"

[And yet, the only thing you lot won't revise is dialectics, which can only mean it's not a science.:lol:]
Buildings all over the world are based on same principles of civil engineering which too are based on same principles of physics. But, just tell me do you follow the same design and technique everywhere in the world to construct a building? If you have some little knowledge of reality, then I hope you can understand what I want to say.
And instead of making buildings as per demand of the place and position, you want to change the basic rule!
For your information: 'Revisionism' or 'progressive' depends on your class standpoint.

Except, allying with the national bourgeoisie is not considered by you lot to be against workers' interests, which can only mean that you have revised the meaning of the phrase "workers' interests".
Instead of much more exploitative colonial rule, national bourgeoisie is a better option, because they at least invest their investments in their own country, don't take abroad like the imperialist MNC's.

red cat

2nd February 2011, 03:34

Left populism is fine, its often better than imperialism and super-exploitation. It is often what in the Third World passes for reformism: if a genuinely revolutionary movement and its class base can organize independently and with only conditional support, that's all well and fine. But that doesn't make it revolutionary socialism, and just because the age-old rural-guerrilla left populism calls itself "Maoism" doesn't make it Marxian. And I say this as someone who does not self-identify as a Marxist. Maoism might even have sui generis value taken on its own, but to be honest it feel in authentic substance more like an authoritarian, militarist, and statist mutation from pro-peasant anarchism. I think it should stop dishonestly portraying itself as Marxism, and as implemented historically, as a real plausible means of world socialist revolution.

That said I wish the Naxalites the best of luck. I just think workers' should make sure should they get too successful, they don't destroy workers' democracy and run over them in their zeal to promote property interests and cut self-serving cynical deals with capitalist, imperialist Great Powers.

I think that people who engage in such wrong evaluation of the Maoists due to ignorance or dishonesty should stop calling themselves communist in the first place. Marxism does not mean following Marx dogmatically, but creatively developing his method to bring about proletarian revolution. In light of this and the present condition of Maoist movements, Maoists are the most successful carriers of the revolutionary legacy of Marx and Lenin. So it is the Maoists who have rights more than everyone else to claim themselves communist, Marxist or Leninist.

Jose Gracchus

2nd February 2011, 03:57

The best you can do is evoke some nonsense about being "carriers" of "legacies" of Great Men? What is this?

It is simple. Marxism is about production and relations and classes and their relations. You cannot throw it away and say "well Marx was wrong about peasants." Well fine, you're coming up with a theory of peasant socialism. That's not bad unless you think belonging to the MARXIST-LENINIST LEGACY is like pulling Excalibur from a rock. And honestly, you totally missed my point, and repeated only slogans in return. You honestly seem like you have very little idea what the Marxist method actually is, and instead of memorized dogmatic phrases and apologia. There is no method on your part.

I've asked already. In what empirical sense do the workers "lead" the peasant army and the Bloc of Four Classes? How do workers exercise this function in more than rhetorical sense? In what Marxian sense can New Democracy be called anything other than capitalism? How does Maoism explain in material terms why the peasantry can be revolutionary? What of the fact Maoists have never brought to power any regime that expropriated the majority of the bourgeoisie and that was in China, and their success was totally dependent ultimately on Soviet support (without USSR economic and diplomatic support, building socialism in the People's Republic of China to the extent it was attempted)?

Outside of China, where has Maoism successfully brought workers' power over society, and expropriated the bourgeoisie? You're substituting "head count of rural guerrilla armies" for "most successful 'science' of revolution". Whatever that means anyway, are you positing some Dawkinsonian "memetic" theory of evolution of revolutionary theories? That'd be rich.

Die Neue Zeit

2nd February 2011, 04:43

Jose Gracchus

2nd February 2011, 05:08

Rosa Lichtenstein

2nd February 2011, 05:11

Pranabjyoti:

Buildings all over the world are based on same principles of civil engineering which too are based on same principles of physics. But, just tell me do you follow the same design and technique everywhere in the world to construct a building? If you have some little knowledge of reality, then I hope you can understand what I want to say.

I've already agreed that scientists (and now technologists) have to change their ideas.

However, and once again, you Maoists are allowed to change whatever takes your fancy, but when anyone else does this, they are accused of "Revisionism".

So, I'm no questioning the need to revise one's ideas, only your consistency.

[Except, you lot do not and will not revise dialectics. That 'theory' is eternally true, the first in human history that was born perfect and changeless. So, in a world governed by universal change, the only thing that does not change is the theory that supposedly studies change!:lol:]

For your information: 'Revisionism' or 'progressive' depends on your class standpoint.

Well, since you lot side with the 'National Bourgeoisie', we can all guess which 'standpoint' you adopt.

Instead of much more exploitative colonial rule, national bourgeoisie is a better option, because they at least invest their investments in their own country, don't take abroad like the imperialist MNC's.

Better still to side with the working class, and push for a proletarian revolution.

Or, are you sticking to unchangeable Maoist theory here?

Rosa Lichtenstein

2nd February 2011, 05:17

RC:

Marxism does not mean following Marx dogmatically, but creatively developing his method to bring about proletarian revolution. In light of this and the present condition of Maoist movements, Maoists are the most successful carriers of the revolutionary legacy of Marx and Lenin. So it is the Maoists who have rights more than everyone else to claim themselves communist, Marxist or Leninist.

As I have pointed out to Pranabjyoti, apparrntly you Maoists are allowed to revise whatever you like (but only so long as it has you siding with the capitalist class, and not the workers) but if anyone else tries to do this, we hear cries of "Revisionism!"

Die Neue Zeit

2nd February 2011, 05:21

Just because Michael Macnair says something - that sounds extremely condescending and clueless, to be honest - doesn't make it true. I'd like some substantive arguments why peasant politics is essentially "Good Father Czar" even where production is increasingly for sale and in a technological and predominantly capitalist and technological society.

That's what happened in Russia from the time of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia ("where production is increasingly for sale and in a technological and predominantly capitalist and technological society" with respect to sickles vs. tractors) to the early Soviet years. In the midst of the Bolshevik coups' d'etat and the assassination attempt on Lenin's life, the semi-literate/illiterate peasant cry was "Down with the Bolsheviks! Long live Lenin!"

There may no longer be stray shepherds and their flocks to catch peasant eyes and make them clamour for protection from a strong central authority. The rates of rural literacy may be higher. However, even Pol Pot's peasant anarchism (SP-USA comrade Chegitz Guevara's observations on Cambodia) required a strong central authority. The rural support for Chavez has its fair share of personality cultism.

Die Neue Zeit

2nd February 2011, 05:28

Better still to side with the working class, and push for a proletarian revolution.

Or, are you sticking to unchangeable Maoist theory here?

Siding with the working class doesn't mean pushing for a proletarian revolution when there's no proletarian demographic majority.

red cat

2nd February 2011, 05:32

The best you can do is evoke some nonsense about being "carriers" of "legacies" of Great Men? What is this?

It's rather your accusations against the Maoists that are nothing more than nonsense.

It is simple. Marxism is about production and relations and classes and their relations. You cannot throw it away and say "well Marx was wrong about peasants." Well fine, you're coming up with a theory of peasant socialism. That's not bad unless you think belonging to the MARXIST-LENINIST LEGACY is like pulling Excalibur from a rock. And honestly, you totally missed my point, and repeated only slogans in return. You honestly seem like you have very little idea what the Marxist method actually is, and instead of memorized dogmatic phrases and apologia. There is no method on your part. It is evident that your ideas concerning the science of Marxism is so shallow that you suspect others of exactly what you yourself do : memorize a bunch of dogmatic phrases without having the least idea about their practical implications.

I've asked already. In what empirical sense do the workers "lead" the peasant army and the Bloc of Four Classes? How do workers exercise this function in more than rhetorical sense?No class other than the proletariat is able to lead a revolution or maintain a revolutionary war for long in the era of Leninism. Other than proletarian politics being in command, that the proletariat is leading the revolution in the field is proved by most Maoists coming from former landless peasants who gradually collectivize and transform into the working class within the red areas, and most Maoist leaders being captured in the cities from workers' areas.

In what Marxian sense can New Democracy be called anything other than capitalism? In a new democratic revolution the proletariat leads the oppressed masses against the ruling classes. So in the areas which have been control under the revolutionary forces for a long time, some characteristics of socialism are achieved. Capitalism does not allow landless peasants to gain lands and collectivize, or tribal communities taking control of forests, with the forest-product workers effectively taking control of their workplaces and industries. Nor does capitalism allow industries like construction etc. to be under the direct control of the masses. The Indian new democratic revolution has achieved these.

How does Maoism explain in material terms why the peasantry can be revolutionary?The whole of the peasantry is not revolutionary. The landless and lower peasants are the most revolutionary sections of the peasantry, followed by the middle peasantry which is the rural analog of the petite bourgeoisie. Why Maoists classify landless peasants as peasants in the first place is a different topic, but since classical Marxism identifies them as a section of the proletariat, it should not be very difficult to see why they are revolutionary. The other strata of the peasantry are varyingly revolutionary due to factors like forced labour, partial wage labour, being able to own only small stretches of land, being forced to grow specific crops and buy and sell from specific people at astoundingly low prices etc.

What of the fact Maoists have never brought to power any regime that expropriated the majority of the bourgeoisie and that was in China, and their success was totally dependent ultimately on Soviet support (without USSR economic and diplomatic support, building socialism in the People's Republic of China to the extent it was attempted)?The new democratic revolution in China had its success mainly due to the strength of the Chinese masses themselves. In fact, the USSR continuously supplied them with a wrong political line which would be disastrous to the revolution if followed.

Outside of China, where has Maoism successfully brought workers' power over society, and expropriated the bourgeoisie? The red areas and liberated zones of today, for example. Consider the red areas in Bastar, Singhbhum and Lalgarh in India. The big bourgeoisie has been driven out from these areas and they show a combination of small private capital, state capital and worker controlled industries.

You're substituting "head count of rural guerrilla armies" for "most successful 'science' of revolution".When the rural guerrilla armies and militias start comprising of the whole of able bodied oppressed masses, who start the process of overthrowing the existing system along with its relations of production, then it is quite logical to claim that the theory in command is indeed the most successful science of revolution.

Whatever that means anyway, are you positing some Dawkinsonian "memetic" theory of evolution of revolutionary theories? That'd be rich.:rolleyes:

S.Artesian

2nd February 2011, 05:51

In a new democratic revolution the proletariat leads the oppressed masses against the ruling classes. So in the areas which have been control under the revolutionary forces for a long time, some characteristics of socialism are achieved. Capitalism does not allow landless peasants to gain lands and collectivize, or tribal communities taking control of forests, with the forest-product workers effectively taking control of their workplaces and industries. Nor does capitalism allow industries like construction etc. to be under the direct control of the masses. The Indian new democratic revolution has achieved these.
How is this [the underlined section] even possible? How can rural areas, where there is no "national bourgeoisie" to "develop the productive forces," where there isn't even a "state monopoly capitalism" run for the benefit of the whole people and "to that extent" cease being state monopoly capitalism, exhibit "some characteristics of socialism"?

Unless of course, what is mistakenly being described as "socialism" is rather a rough rural egalitarianism, or the "socialism" as practiced by numerous rural sects throughout numerous periods of history?

A rural commune is not communism; communal agriculture is not socialism.

Is this what you mean by "socialist characteristics"?

The red areas and liberated zones of today, for example. Consider the red areas in Bastar, Singhbhum and Lalgarh in India. The big bourgeoisie has been driven out from these areas and they show a combination of small private capital, state capital and worker controlled industries.

So let me ask you, first, where is the state capital coming from? And how is it being used? And this small private capital, and these worker controlled industries, what is happening to the products? Are they being exchanged, brought to markets outside the liberated areas, or are they exchanged solely within the liberated areas?

Since small private capital is capital and has to accumulate, exactly what are the owners of this small private capital getting out of this deal. I mean besides a good feeling? Are the small private capitalists accumulating money? Are the workers' controlled industries being run, as has happened in so many other countries [anybody remember the LIP strike in France?] like a workers' collective workshop, like a workers' run for profit corporation?

I'm curious as to what you can tell us about the details, the numbers, the inputs and outputs, the economics of these enterprises.

And this directed against TIC:

It is evident that your ideas concerning the science of Marxism is so shallow that you suspect others of exactly what you yourself do : memorize a bunch of dogmatic phrases without having the least idea about their practical implications.

Dogmatic? You're the one restricting capitalism and wage-labor to existing in and only in its abstract conditions of pure capital and pure wage labor, where pure capitalists and pure wage-laborers "choose each other" and the pure wage laborers purely sell their labor power.

Maoists are the ones whose dogma leads them into the absurdity of proclaiming the US Civil War produced feudalism in the South.

Now if that isn't shallow and dogmatic, then nothing is shallow and dogmatic.

red cat

2nd February 2011, 08:04

How is this [the underlined section] even possible? How can rural areas, where there is no "national bourgeoisie" to "develop the productive forces," where there isn't even a "state monopoly capitalism" run for the benefit of the whole people and "to that extent" cease being state monopoly capitalism, exhibit "some characteristics of socialism"?

Unless of course, what is mistakenly being described as "socialism" is rather a rough rural egalitarianism, or the "socialism" as practiced by numerous rural sects throughout numerous periods of history?

A rural commune is not communism; communal agriculture is not socialism.

Is this what you mean by "socialist characteristics"?

It's very interesting to see how up till now you considered the productive forces developed enough to declare India capitalist. Of course, as soon as the socialist elements introduced by Maoists are brought up, you have to dismiss the Indian productive forces as too primitive, along with the emerging socialist characteristics as "rural egalitarianism, or the "socialism" as practiced by numerous rural sects throughout numerous periods of history". :lol:

So let me ask you, first, where is the state capital coming from? And how is it being used? And this small private capital, and these worker controlled industries, what is happening to the products? Are they being exchanged, brought to markets outside the liberated areas, or are they exchanged solely within the liberated areas?

Since small private capital is capital and has to accumulate, exactly what are the owners of this small private capital getting out of this deal. I mean besides a good feeling? Are the small private capitalists accumulating money? Are the workers' controlled industries being run, as has happened in so many other countries [anybody remember the LIP strike in France?] like a workers' collective workshop, like a workers' run for profit corporation?

I'm curious as to what you can tell us about the details, the numbers, the inputs and outputs, the economics of these enterprises.

I cannot give you the numbers, as no reports concerning the statistics are out yet. However, how these are run is known to some extent even beyond the red areas. The small private capital is in the form of shops and small manufacturers dealing with small commodities like cycles, clothes etc. The arms industry is an example of state capital. It has been reported by the Indian state forces that Maoists run several weapons factories in red areas. The construction industry is a well known industry with workers control. Generally the details of the construction are planned by village gatherings through discussion of the public requirements and voting. Some workers who specialize in construction, along with a section of the masses, occasionally consisting of red armymen as well are appointed for the work. These people are paid collectively by the villagers.

And this directed against TIC:

Dogmatic? You're the one restricting capitalism and wage-labor to existing in and only in its abstract conditions of pure capital and pure wage labor, where pure capitalists and pure wage-laborers "choose each other" and the pure wage laborers purely sell their labor power.

Maoists are the ones whose dogma leads them into the absurdity of proclaiming the US Civil War produced feudalism in the South.

Now if that isn't shallow and dogmatic, then nothing is shallow and dogmatic.

On the contrary, it is your dogma that is leading you to ignore the ground realities of class struggle and the contradictions involved. All those who have defined capitalism in terms of commodity production here, have so far failed to defend their stand.

Rosa Lichtenstein

2nd February 2011, 10:52

DNZ:

Siding with the working class doesn't mean pushing for a proletarian revolution when there's no proletarian demographic majority.

1. It does in a revolutionary situation.

2. It does if that decison strengthens/promotes the oppressor class.

Die Neue Zeit

2nd February 2011, 14:48

DNZ:

1. It does in a revolutionary situation.

2. It does if that decision strengthens/promotes the oppressor class.

And how, in the Trotskyist specifics, would the proletariat lead the other non-worker-but-non-bourgeois classes in the demographic majority and perhaps yearning for a Caesarean Socialism, if not by the historical example(s) of terror?

S.Artesian

2nd February 2011, 16:26

It's very interesting to see how up till now you considered the productive forces developed enough to declare India capitalist. Of course, as soon as the socialist elements introduced by Maoists are brought up, you have to dismiss the Indian productive forces as too primitive, along with the emerging socialist characteristics as "rural egalitarianism, or the "socialism" as practiced by numerous rural sects throughout numerous periods of history". :lol:

I didn't say the Indian productive forces weren't developed enough for India to be declared capitalist, I specified productive forces in the the "liberated" zones, in the "red zones."

You have claimed that India's productive forces and social relations have not developed into capitalism. You have argued that "capitalism" is necessary to develop the productive forces and therefore the Indian revolution is not anti-capitalist, but anti-comprador, pro-national capitalist.

So if the the productive forces are not developed enough to be capitalist, and must be developed to be socialist, how can a small portion of the territory and economic activity without that development be already socialist?

You're the one who has argued that the primitive nature of the productive forces and relations in India, makes a Marxist, proletarian revolution, opposing capitalism in all its manifestation impossible.

[QUOTE]I cannot give you the numbers, as no reports concerning the statistics are out yet. However, how these are run is known to some extent even beyond the red areas. The small private capital is in the form of shops and small manufacturers dealing with small commodities like cycles, clothes etc. The arms industry is an example of state capital. It has been reported by the Indian state forces that Maoists run several weapons factories in red areas. The construction industry is a well known industry with workers control. Generally the details of the construction are planned by village gatherings through discussion of the public requirements and voting. Some workers who specialize in construction, along with a section of the masses, occasionally consisting of red armymen as well are appointed for the work. These people are paid collectively by the villagers.

But you need to do that-- we've done that in answer to many of your questions about the US South post-civil war etc.-- You need to tell us how that socialist economy is reproducing socialist relations of production with small capitalist and workers' enterprises.

On the contrary, it is your dogma that is leading you to ignore the ground realities of class struggle and the contradictions involved. All those who have defined capitalism in terms of commodity production here, have so far failed to defend their stand.

Sorry, saying it's so doesn't make it so. We have explained point by point how the "archaic forms" are embedded and preserved in the "modern" forms of the world markets, in the relations of city and countryside; and how the economy revolves around the modern relations of wage-labor, drawing in population from the countryside, dispossessing rural producers, increasing value production.

We have explained how and why history has shown that "New Democracy" is and will continue to be a failure at what it claims to do.

You've only defended a faux-flexibility, an "improvement" on Marx's analysis of classes and class struggle by a "Leninism" which is no more accurate in its description of Lenin's work than it is in your analysis of the economic and social relations in India.

red cat

2nd February 2011, 19:00

I didn't say the Indian productive forces weren't developed enough for India to be declared capitalist, I specified productive forces in the the "liberated" zones, in the "red zones."

Most of Indian rural and suburban areas resemble the what the red areas were previously. So if you identify India as capitalist then you cannot claim that productive forces there are not developed enough.

You have claimed that India's productive forces and social relations have not developed into capitalism. You have argued that "capitalism" is necessary to develop the productive forces and therefore the Indian revolution is not anti-capitalist, but anti-comprador, pro-national capitalist.True. But semi-feudalism is qualitatively developed enough to distinguish between the emerging socialist characteristics and ancient communes etc.

So if the the productive forces are not developed enough to be capitalist, and must be developed to be socialist, how can a small portion of the territory and economic activity without that development be already socialist?

You're the one who has argued that the primitive nature of the productive forces and relations in India, makes a Marxist, proletarian revolution, opposing capitalism in all its manifestation impossible.

But you need to do that-- we've done that in answer to many of your questions about the US South post-civil war etc.-- You need to tell us how that socialist economy is reproducing socialist relations of production with small capitalist and workers' enterprises.The socialist characteristics have only started emerging. But they are enough to distinguish between capitalism and new democracy. Due to the uneven development caused by imperialism, the private sector should be allowed in most of the industrial fields. But that doesn't mean that the more developed industries will not be nationalized, or that the workers won't take control of the even more developed ones. Maoists will wait for these to expand enough, along with some other factors, before they declare India socialist.

Sorry, saying it's so doesn't make it so. We have explained point by point how the "archaic forms" are embedded and preserved in the "modern" forms of the world markets, in the relations of city and countryside; and how the economy revolves around the modern relations of wage-labor, drawing in population from the countryside, dispossessing rural producers, increasing value production. But you haven't been able to explain how what you define as capitalism is qualitatively different from the preceding economies.

We have explained how and why history has shown that "New Democracy" is and will continue to be a failure at what it claims to do. On the contrary, history has shown new democracy to be the most successful of all models proposed so far. The proponents of new democracy continue to prove its validity by implementing their model. If proponents of other models want to prove them valid, then they must implement their own models too.

You've only defended a faux-flexibility, an "improvement" on Marx's analysis of classes and class struggle by a "Leninism" which is no more accurate in its description of Lenin's work than it is in your analysis of the economic and social relations in India.Of course, this is precisely why in India those who believe in this kind of wrong analysis are conducting a revolution while those who have analyzed everything correctly sit quietly in their burrows.

Jose Gracchus

2nd February 2011, 19:09

That's what happened in Russia from the time of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia ("where production is increasingly for sale and in a technological and predominantly capitalist and technological society" with respect to sickles vs. tractors) to the early Soviet years. In the midst of the Bolshevik coups' d'etat and the assassination attempt on Lenin's life, the semi-literate/illiterate peasant cry was "Down with the Bolsheviks! Long live Lenin!"

Source? Also, sources for nature of peasant economy? I often hear it alleged the large farms of landowners etc. should have been nationalized, not redistributed since only they had adequate productivity to produce urban food and foreign trade surpluses. But again, never been provided with decent sources.

The question becomes is there any bridge to socialism (via communalization, collectivization, etc.) from peasantry? I mean the CNT-FAI's collectives included substantial rural zones and agricultural compesino collectives, and overall production went up in the anarchist-controlled/worker-peasant-collectivized zones. Ditto for the Makhnovists. Certainly I think we can agree fictitious "leadership" of militant urban workers through urban soviets that exclude the peasant majority is no way forward. Neither is repression of peasant parties and sowing incompetent or malevolent class warfare and requisition policies. Nor is rural-based party-guerilla army tactics under a leader's personality cult. But that could easily be interpreted as the malignant ideological-doctrinal-organizational heritage of 'Marxism-Leninism'.

There may no longer be stray shepherds and their flocks to catch peasant eyes and make them clamour for protection from a strong central authority. The rates of rural literacy may be higher.

The tone of this sounds more like racism than anything else, to be honest. Prejudice toward the the simpletons. Again, dynamically I don't see what it must be intrinsic to farming that socialism is alien and impossible to work (especially if there is a strong, socialist and militant urban proletariat).

However, even Pol Pot's peasant anarchism (SP-USA comrade Chegitz Guevara's observations on Cambodia) required a strong central authority. The rural support for Chavez has its fair share of personality cultism.

That's hardly a peasant-only quality. I mean if we are to believe Getty there were organic working-class and mass interactions with the Stalinist personality cult and with the party and bureaucracy that precipitated the Great Purges. Or as you are fond of pointing out, of German workers with Lassalle. Furthermore, some poster's purported say-so is not enough for me to call Pol Pot's regime meaningfully 'anarchist'. I just meant with Maoism that in terms of its conceptions of class struggle, view on peasants, voluntarism, "force of will" kind of socialism, etc. it often comes to sound like someone took all the aspects and types of anarchism that are criticized by Marxists and even more materialist or determinist anarchists, except removed from them any form of authentic mass organizations, bottom-up democratic control, horizontalidad, libertarianism, 'anti-partyism' etc. and added degenerated Leninist conceptions of party discipline, mass politics, relation to the masses, statism, and personality cultism.

I mean, I'm still sympathetic to Maoism for struggling against repressions and since Trotskyists and other post-Orthodox revolutionary Marxists throw peasants around like dirt (I remember hearing ComradeOm respond to a question about elitism toward the peasantry and their disenfranchisement with a flippant "What about peasants? I'm a Marxist"), its nice that Maoists and other revisionist forms of populist or anti-neo-colonial socialism (Sandanistas in the 1980s etc.) do something for Third World peasants who are starved or shot. I just think 'conceptually' it is intrinsically limited by its doctrinal and organizational baggage. I don't think it can establish a durable and genuinely progressive socialist society.

S.Artesian

2nd February 2011, 23:50

Most of Indian rural and suburban areas resemble the what the red areas were previously. So if you identify India as capitalist then you cannot claim that productive forces there are not developed enough.

This is getting tedious. You claimed India is not capitalist. You claimed the forces of production and relations of production are not developed enough to be capitalist. You claimed the development of capitalism and allying with the national bourgeoisie was necessary in India to create a state capitalism leading to socialism.

I'm asking you to show us, give us some details that will support your claim that a non-developed, non-capitalist, rural area can, with small national capitalism, create the social and technical characteristics of socialism-- how the mode of production is socialist. It's not what I claim, it's what you have claimed that needs support.

The socialist characteristics have only started emerging. But they are enough to distinguish between capitalism and new democracy. Due to the uneven development caused by imperialism, the private sector should be allowed in most of the industrial fields. But that doesn't mean that the more developed industries will not be nationalized, or that the workers won't take control of the even more developed ones. Maoists will wait for these to expand enough, along with some other factors, before they declare India socialist.
Ah... uneven development. Well is this the uneven development that has say the oil industry with a higher organic composition of capital vs. the textile industry? Or is this uneven and combined development that says capitalism has taken hold in the cities, and in industry, but has proven itself incapable of carrying through a successful reorganization of agriculture in order to release labor from subsistence production and create a reciprocating domestic market between agriculture and industry?

As for what will and will not be allowed-- can you give us some examples of what private capitalists will be allowed to control?

But you haven't been able to explain how what you define as capitalism is qualitatively different from the preceding economies.Sure I have capitalism is qualitatively different preceding economies in that it must dispossess the direct producers from the means and products of production; must separate labor from the conditions of labor, to force labor to present itself as a value for exchange with the means of subsistence. This is what forces labor to be presented as a commodity with a value, but one that can reproduce itself in a necessary time, leaving a disposable time for the creation of surplus value. As already pointed out, India has industries that do exactly that, and exactly that in a big way.

On the contrary, history has shown new democracy to be the most successful of all models proposed so far. The proponents of new democracy continue to prove its validity by implementing their model. If proponents of other models want to prove them valid, then they must implement their own models too.
You mean in liberated zones? That's the test? Setting up a a rural, small enterprise area? Validity isn't merely established in existence. It's established in relation to the total transformation of the class relations of the entire society. It's established in the introduction and expansion of a mode of production. Can your new democracy do that? Can your red zones do that without either collapsing back into, or leading the way forward to the restoration of capitalism?

Of course, this is precisely why in India those who believe in this kind of wrong analysis are conducting a revolution while those who have analyzed everything correctly sit quietly in their burrows.Who's sitting where? And exactly where are you sitting right now?

Rosa Lichtenstein

3rd February 2011, 02:06

DNZ:

And how, in the Trotskyist specifics, would the proletariat lead the other non-worker-but-non-bourgeois classes in the demographic majority and perhaps yearning for a Caesarean Socialism, if not by the historical example(s) of terror?

That depends on the circumstances of the revolution -- and then the working class would lead itself -- but 1917 comes to mind as an excellent model to follow.

Jose Gracchus

3rd February 2011, 03:02

Does that include coups against soviets where peasant revolutionary parties win out? Does that include repressing peasant parties? When politically embarrassing sailors' and soldiers' revolts occur, blame it on peasants?

Is that workers leading the peasantry?

red cat

3rd February 2011, 03:07

This is getting tedious. You claimed India is not capitalist. You claimed the forces of production and relations of production are not developed enough to be capitalist. You claimed the development of capitalism and allying with the national bourgeoisie was necessary in India to create a state capitalism leading to socialism.

Yes. But before you claim Indian productive forces to be underdeveloped, you should withdraw your previous claim of India being capitalist.

I'm asking you to show us, give us some details that will support your claim that a non-developed, non-capitalist, rural area can, with small national capitalism, create the social and technical characteristics of socialism-- how the mode of production is socialist. It's not what I claim, it's what you have claimed that needs support.I have given examples of the emerging characteristics of socialism. But never have I stated anywhere that the revolution is in its socialist stage. The examples were to distinguish between capitalism and new democracy, not to claim that India is undergoing a socialist revolution right now.

Ah... uneven development. Well is this the uneven development that has say the oil industry with a higher organic composition of capital vs. the textile industry? Or is this uneven and combined development that says capitalism has taken hold in the cities, and in industry, but has proven itself incapable of carrying through a successful reorganization of agriculture in order to release labor from subsistence production and create a reciprocating domestic market between agriculture and industry?Uneven development mainly in the sense that industries concerned with commodities with mass demand are largely non-existent or underdeveloped in most areas.

As for what will and will not be allowed-- can you give us some examples of what private capitalists will be allowed to control?I already gave some examples of this. It is expected that in most industrial fields private capital will be allowed. But it is not possible to pin-point these fields or even claim with 100% assurance that it will happen everywhere. It all depends on whether the workers are ready to take control or not.

Sure I have capitalism is qualitatively different preceding economies in that it must dispossess the direct producers from the means and products of production; must separate labor from the conditions of labor, to force labor to present itself as a value for exchange with the means of subsistence. This is what forces labor to be presented as a commodity with a value, but one that can reproduce itself in a necessary time, leaving a disposable time for the creation of surplus value. As already pointed out, India has industries that do exactly that, and exactly that in a big way. If I am not mistaken, earlier you had claimed that indigo production was an example of classic capitalism. How did this displace producers ?

You mean in liberated zones? That's the test? Setting up a a rural, small enterprise area? Validity isn't merely established in existence. It's established in relation to the total transformation of the class relations of the entire society. It's established in the introduction and expansion of a mode of production. Can your new democracy do that? Can your red zones do that without either collapsing back into, or leading the way forward to the restoration of capitalism?Before we even consider the entire society let's consider what new democracy has done for the oppressed population in the liberated zones itself. I have already given the example of the construction industry where the relations of production have changed. Has any other model resulted in anything close ? Or do you ask me to believe that some ultra-left model that has not resulted in a single gain for the working class till now will magically create communism some day ?

Who's sitting where? The Indian ultra-lefts, in their burrows. All of them.

And exactly where are you sitting right now?Immaterial. I can show you at least a hundred thousand Maoist radicals in India who are taking part in class struggle and helping them the masses secure victories against the ruling class. Show me any instance in India of substantial ultra leftist participation in any form of struggle which resulted in any significant gain for the working class.

Die Neue Zeit

3rd February 2011, 03:15

Source?

I can't remember the book. Maybe it like Shanin's work was once free before archived for subscription. :(

Also, sources for nature of peasant economy?

Did I not just cite Lenin's book? :confused:

I often hear it alleged the large farms of landowners etc. should have been nationalized, not redistributed since only they had adequate productivity to produce urban food and foreign trade surpluses. But again, never been provided with decent sources.

That was the main RSDLP agrarian program for sure, since this would have formed the basis of sovkhozy. However, that little tidbit that you and I know is that Lenin broke from this program and adopted the SR land reform program as early as 1905, not 1917.

The question becomes is there any bridge to socialism (via communalization, collectivization, etc.) from peasantry? I mean the CNT-FAI's collectives included substantial rural zones and agricultural compesino collectives, and overall production went up in the anarchist-controlled/worker-peasant-collectivized zones. Ditto for the Makhnovists.

A recent paper or two did indeed challenge the mainstream and Marxist emphasis on economies of scale in agriculture, and IIRC it or they used Bolivia as an example.

My notion of combining statist (read: sovkhozy-based) food sovereignty with populist redistributions of food production assets on top of that food sovereignty assumes the traditional diseconomies of scale for the latter, but hey I'd like to be proven wrong on that front.

The tone of this sounds more like racism than anything else, to be honest. Prejudice toward the the simpletons. Again, dynamically I don't see what it must be intrinsic to farming that socialism is alien and impossible to work (especially if there is a strong, socialist and militant urban proletariat).

That's not racism at all. The closest analogy you can get to is urban prejudice, not racism. And it should read "small farming" and not "farming" in general, since it has to do with the "society" in "socialism" as opposed to communal farming.

Nor is rural-based party-guerilla army tactics under a leader's personality cult. But that could easily be interpreted as the malignant ideological-doctrinal-organizational heritage of 'Marxism-Leninism'.

[...]

That's hardly a peasant-only quality. I mean if we are to believe Getty there were organic working-class and mass interactions with the Stalinist personality cult and with the party and bureaucracy that precipitated the Great Purges. Or as you are fond of pointing out, of German workers with Lassalle.

The Lassalle cult may (and I stress "may") have had peasant influences as well. Think about how blatant it was, making Bob Avakian and his fans look like amateurs ("the Messiah of the nineteenth century... indisputable dogmas... preached by Ferdinand Lassalle"). Two factors come into play: whether or not the German proletariat was the demographic majority, and the continued existence of the Junker system in agriculture.

I mean, I'm still sympathetic to Maoism for struggling against repressions and since Trotskyists and other post-Orthodox revolutionary Marxists throw peasants around like dirt (I remember hearing ComradeOm respond to a question about elitism toward the peasantry and their disenfranchisement with a flippant "What about peasants? I'm a Marxist"), its nice that Maoists and other revisionist forms of populist or anti-neo-colonial socialism (Sandanistas in the 1980s etc.) do something for Third World peasants who are starved or shot. I just think 'conceptually' it is intrinsically limited by its doctrinal and organizational baggage. I don't think it can establish a durable and genuinely progressive socialist society.

Now I understand why you're skeptical towards my "pastiche" model "cobbled" together from various unrelated (even if non-contradictory) elements.

S.Artesian

3rd February 2011, 06:02

Yes. But before you claim Indian productive forces to be underdeveloped, you should withdraw your previous claim of India being capitalist.

Guess you didn't read or pay attention to what's been the central point of argument: Nobody has said India does not exhibit the characteristics of "underdevelopment." What I am saying is that those characteristics of underdevelopment, that underdevelopment itself are not identical to feudalism, semi-feudalism; do not make India feudalist, requiring some sort of "new directions in capitalism" revolution.

Underdeveloped capitalism is still capitalism. Capitalism that utilized slavery, forced labor, debt peonage was still capitalism. The nature of uneven development is that it is uneven and combined development-- placing the most advanced technologies and capitalist social relations in the midst of the most backward agricultural relations of land and landed labor. That is not feudalism.

The dominant mode of production is capitalism. Industry contributes 28% of the GDP. Agriculture contributes 18%, yet agriculture occupies 80% of the population.

Between 2005 and 2009, investment in energy with private participation has increased from 792 million dollars to 12.45 billion dollars; in telecoms from 6.2 billion to 9.85 billion.

Exports in 2008 were 450% of the 2000 level. Gross capital formation, which includes capital invested in infrastructure, plant, machinery, equipment plus inventories has been consistently at 35% of GDP.

Feudal economies and/or semi-feudal economies do not invest in infrastructure and in telecoms and in energy. There is no need to as such an economy is a subsistence economy including the economy of the ruling class, where surplus is extracted for subsistence needs and for the purchase of luxuries for personal consumption but not for the accumulation of..... capital.

If I am not mistaken, earlier you had claimed that indigo production was an example of classic capitalism. How did this displace producers ?
Before we even consider the entire society let's consider what new democracy has done for the oppressed population in the liberated zones itself. I have already given the example of the construction industry where the relations of production have changed. Has any other model resulted in anything close ? Or do you ask me to believe that some ultra-left model that has not resulted in a single gain for the working class till now will magically create communism some day ?
Yes, exactly, the description you gave of the indigo producers was a classic example of the uneven development of capitalism, where it is incapable of transforming completely the relations of land and labor. That does not change the fact that the relationship between the direct producers and the "owners" is essentially one where the indigo is produced and expropriated as value for exchange and not surplus product for use.

What is concealed in these relations, as was concealed with the sharecropper relations in the US South post Reconstruction is a wage relation.

And what will the course of future production be? It will be dispossession of the rural producers as occurred in Mexico, as occurred with the sharecroppers in the South, as occurred in the Philippines when the sugar plantations accumulated debt in the attempt to mechanize and then sunk when the price of sugar collapsed in the 1970s, as is occurring right now in India.

Immaterial. I can show you at least a hundred thousand Maoist radicals in India who are taking part in class struggle and helping them the masses secure victories against the ruling class. Show me any instance in India of substantial ultra leftist participation in any form of struggle which resulted in any significant gain for the working class.Not immaterial. If the dominant mode of production in an economy of uneven and combined development is capitalism, then the critical class struggle is the working class, urban and rural, struggle against capital.

Whether or not any particular "ultra-left" group is "staking out" a "red zone" is what's immaterial, if the task is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production.

What you will show us is any number of courageous, committed fighters, and some not so courageous and committed, humans being a bit on the imperfect side, engaging in armed struggle and trying to create and sustain rural communes.

The course of such efforts has not been a course leading to the overthrow of capitalism, but rather has led to its restoration.

red cat

3rd February 2011, 08:33

Guess you didn't read or pay attention to what's been the central point of argument: Nobody has said India does not exhibit the characteristics of "underdevelopment." What I am saying is that those characteristics of underdevelopment, that underdevelopment itself are not identical to feudalism, semi-feudalism; do not make India feudalist, requiring some sort of "new directions in capitalism" revolution.

Underdeveloped capitalism is still capitalism. Capitalism that utilized slavery, forced labor, debt peonage was still capitalism. The nature of uneven development is that it is uneven and combined development-- placing the most advanced technologies and capitalist social relations in the midst of the most backward agricultural relations of land and landed labor. That is not feudalism.

The dominant mode of production is capitalism. Industry contributes 28% of the GDP. Agriculture contributes 18%, yet agriculture occupies 80% of the population.

Between 2005 and 2009, investment in energy with private participation has increased from 792 million dollars to 12.45 billion dollars; in telecoms from 6.2 billion to 9.85 billion.

Exports in 2008 were 450% of the 2000 level. Gross capital formation, which includes capital invested in infrastructure, plant, machinery, equipment plus inventories has been consistently at 35% of GDP.

Agriculture contributes less to the GDP because as semi-feudal relations are most prominent there, agricultural commodities are grossly underpriced.

Feudal economies and/or semi-feudal economies do not invest in infrastructure and in telecoms and in energy. There is no need to as such an economy is a subsistence economy including the economy of the ruling class, where surplus is extracted for subsistence needs and for the purchase of luxuries for personal consumption but not for the accumulation of..... capital.I have nowhere claimed that a semi-feudal economy is a subsistence one. What I have claimed, and what you continue to ignore, is that the definition of a semi-feudal semi-colonial economy includes it having commodity production controlled by mainly foreign capital, along with the other political-military features of a feudal economy almost preserved intact.

Yes, exactly, the description you gave of the indigo producers was a classic example of the uneven development of capitalism, where it is incapable of transforming completely the relations of land and labor. That does not change the fact that the relationship between the direct producers and the "owners" is essentially one where the indigo is produced and expropriated as value for exchange and not surplus product for use.

What is concealed in these relations, as was concealed with the sharecropper relations in the US South post Reconstruction is a wage relation.

And what will the course of future production be? It will be dispossession of the rural producers as occurred in Mexico, as occurred with the sharecroppers in the South, as occurred in the Philippines when the sugar plantations accumulated debt in the attempt to mechanize and then sunk when the price of sugar collapsed in the 1970s, as is occurring right now in India. In every classic example of capitalism, agricultural capital concentrated while the peasants were rendered landless and subjected to wage labour. The indigo plantations cannot be fitted into this category. Commodity production existed long before capitalism emerged and cannot be used to classify indigo plantations as capitalist.

Not immaterial. If the dominant mode of production in an economy of uneven and combined development is capitalism, then the critical class struggle is the working class, urban and rural, struggle against capital.

Whether or not any particular "ultra-left" group is "staking out" a "red zone" is what's immaterial, if the task is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production.
Alright, but you consider the landless and small peasants as the working class. So you should consider Maoists organizing them for struggle as working class struggle against capital. And as I have already shown, in certain fields workers have already established control, and in certain others Lenin's model of state capitalism is being followed. In the first category, capitalist mode of production has been done away with. If you want to reject the second category, then you will have to reject the Russian revolution as well.

What you will show us is any number of courageous, committed fighters, and some not so courageous and committed, humans being a bit on the imperfect side, engaging in armed struggle and trying to create and sustain rural communes. But since you identify the conditions in rural India as "underdeveloped" capitalist ones, you cannot compare these communes with anything from the past. These already show socialist characteristics in certain fields and are certainly qualitatively developed compared to capitalism.

The course of such efforts has not been a course leading to the overthrow of capitalism, but rather has led to its restoration.May be so, may be not, but then again, what are the Indian ultra-lefts who identify India as capitalist doing ? There must be some form of workers struggle that are applicable to India ? Why aren't they engaging in that, whatever it might be ? Or is remaining practically inert and maintaining a webpage the best form of struggle applicable to India ?

Sinister Cultural Marxist

3rd February 2011, 09:08

My time in India led me to believe that there were simultaneously co-existing capitalist, socialist feudal and tribal economies, depending on where you are. This is due to the immense and overwhelming ethnic and cultural diversity and size of India.

You go to Mumbai, it is Neo Liberal Capitalist. North India, where I lived, seemed to have a mix of socialist and market based distribution of goods. Much of rural india, populated by millions, are filled with peasants, rural farmers, nomads and villages. Many more conservative ones are run according to the manusmirti and other caste-based social systems. And the tribal "classes" often join maoists, since they are victimized by a state which is more or less blind to their needs.

Capitalism has been making inroads in India for 250 years. But because of the sheer size and lack of development and integration in certain areas, it is hard to say that capitalism is dominant everywhere in India.

Edit-reading some of the other responses, it seems that people are presupposing a number of big categories. First, India may be one "State", but within that one "State", is in reality many nations, peoples, ethnicities and economic areas. According to bourgeoise measures and standards, India makes most of its wealth from Capitalism. But the areas responsible for that are tiny compared to the truly vast areas existing on the periphery or with minimal relations to the broader international market. Add to this a highly decentralized political system, and you have a very interesting mix. Compare Nahendra Modi's gujarat, which follows strong pro-market policies, to states like Kerala or W Bengal, where Socialist enterprises at least coexist with private.

S.Artesian

3rd February 2011, 16:06

Agriculture contributes less to the GDP because as semi-feudal relations are most prominent there, agricultural commodities are grossly underpriced.

Hmmh... really? Is that why agriculture contributes less to the GDP in the most advanced countries? Is not the "under-pricing" of agricultural products itself indicative of capitalism, transferring value from rural to urban areas? A form of "primitive accumulation"?

I have nowhere claimed that a semi-feudal economy is a subsistence one. What I have claimed, and what you continue to ignore, is that the definition of a semi-feudal semi-colonial economy includes it having commodity production controlled by mainly foreign capital, along with the other political-military features of a feudal economy almost preserved intact.

Yet, what you continue to ignore is that you claim that the "semi-feudal" "semi-colonial" "features" make necessary a pro-capitalist revolution, as if the weak, national bourgeoisie, under the direction of "new democracy" will be able to develop the productive forces to a level equivalent to those of advanced capitalism. In fact as China shows what will occur is an invitation to foreign capital to reenter and reexploit.

In every classic example of capitalism, agricultural capital concentrated while the peasants were rendered landless and subjected to wage labour. The indigo plantations cannot be fitted into this category. Commodity production existed long before capitalism emerged and cannot be used to classify indigo plantations as capitalist.

Being landless by definition means their labor power has use only as a medium of exchange with the landowners. Whether that exchange is concealed in a sharecropping form, tenant form, itinerant worker form is immaterial. Whether in fact they cultivate small patches to supplement their own subsistence is immaterial. The dominant form is the exchange of landless, dispossessed labor.

Alright, but you consider the landless and small peasants as the working class. So you should consider Maoists organizing them for struggle as working class struggle against capital. And as I have already shown, in certain fields workers have already established control, and in certain others Lenin's model of state capitalism is being followed. In the first category, capitalist mode of production has been done away with. If you want to reject the second category, then you will have to reject the Russian revolution as well.

First, you've shown us nothing. You've claimed many things, but you've actually shown us nothing. Secondly, you claim you are following Lenin's model of "state capitalism" but you are following nothing of the struggle for power that created the basis for that "state capitalism." Lenin's "state capitalism" required the seizure of power through the organizations of the working class, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie.

Thirdly, you're the one rejecting the Russian Revolution.

May be so, may be not, but then again, what are the Indian ultra-lefts who identify India as capitalist doing ? There must be some form of workers struggle that are applicable to India ? Why aren't they engaging in that, whatever it might be ? Or is remaining practically inert and maintaining a webpage the best form of struggle applicable to India ?

WTF? What does that have to do with the dominant mode of production in India. What you're saying, essentially, is that since the workers haven't taken power, are not involved in mass strikes continuously, and creating soviets, the workers must not be a revolutionary class.

When the workers themselves erupt, as they have in Bangladesh-- the question is what are you Maoists going to do-- tell them that the revolution requires an "anti-feudal" "pro-capitalist" orientation? Tell them to move to "red zones" in the countryside?

red cat

3rd February 2011, 17:52

Hmmh... really? Is that why agriculture contributes less to the GDP in the most advanced countries? Is not the "under-pricing" of agricultural products itself indicative of capitalism, transferring value from rural to urban areas? A form of "primitive accumulation"?

Do you think that India is a developed country ?

Yet, what you continue to ignore is that you claim that the "semi-feudal" "semi-colonial" "features" make necessary a pro-capitalist revolution, as if the weak, national bourgeoisie, under the direction of "new democracy" will be able to develop the productive forces to a level equivalent to those of advanced capitalism. In fact as China shows what will occur is an invitation to foreign capital to reenter and reexploit. A new democratic revolution is not pro-capitalist. The alliance of the working class with the national bourgeoisie takes place when it is necessary and the national bourgeoisie agrees to the terms and conditions imposed by the working class.

Being landless by definition means their labor power has use only as a medium of exchange with the landowners. Whether that exchange is concealed in a sharecropping form, tenant form, itinerant worker form is immaterial. Whether in fact they cultivate small patches to supplement their own subsistence is immaterial. The dominant form is the exchange of landless, dispossessed labor. Now you are dropping a major criterion that characterizes a proletarian.

First, you've shown us nothing. You've claimed many things, but you've actually shown us nothing. Exactly what do you expect me to show ?

Secondly, you claim you are following Lenin's model of "state capitalism" but you are following nothing of the struggle for power that created the basis for that "state capitalism." Lenin's "state capitalism" required the seizure of power through the organizations of the working class, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie.This has already been done partially. For example, the forest-product workers have established control over the forests in some parts.

Thirdly, you're the one rejecting the Russian Revolution. How ? You are the one who opposes state capitalism and hence the Russian revolution.

WTF? What does that have to do with the dominant mode of production in India. What you're saying, essentially, is that since the workers haven't taken power, are not involved in mass strikes continuously, and creating soviets, the workers must not be a revolutionary class.

When the workers themselves erupt, as they have in Bangladesh-- the question is what are you Maoists going to do-- tell them that the revolution requires an "anti-feudal" "pro-capitalist" orientation? Tell them to move to "red zones" in the countryside?Straw-man. I am pointing towards the inertness of the Indian ultra-lefts, not the working class. Why is it that all of those who identify India as capitalists and call for a workers revolution never do anything substantial in practice ? Why don't they actually organize workers instead of printing pamphlets full of tall talk ?

Also, you are repeatedly trying to characterize Maoists as anti-worker and pro-capitalist. This is completely false. The Indian new democratic revolution is led by the Indian working class. The militant struggles of tea and coffee plantation workers, and jute mill workers under the banner of Maoism, are well known. In fact, in some places the plantation workers have taken military action against the capitalist owners and tried to establish control over the means of production. And all these workers consider the Maoist CP, and not any ultra-left tall-talking group, to be their vanguard party.

RED DAVE

3rd February 2011, 17:55

DA new democratic revolution is not pro-capitalist. The alliance of the working class with the national bourgeoisie takes place when it is necessary and the national bourgeoisie agrees to the terms and conditions imposed by the working class.Just like in China.

Listen, red cat, next time you're in New York, look me up. I am the sole owner of a very large antique that straddles the river between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I can let you have it real cheap. Because if you believe the above, you'll believe anything.

RED DAVE

red cat

3rd February 2011, 18:10

Just like in China.

Listen, red cat, next time you're in New York, look me up. I am the sole owner of a very large antique that straddles the river between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I can let you have it real cheap. Because if you believe the above, you'll believe anything.

RED DAVE

I am a little busy right now, so I cannot travel to New York. Instead, why don't you get one of your practicing militant Indian comrades to meet me ? As soon as I see such a comrade of yours I will believe in your theory, your stories about China, and the existence of your antique; and I will give him the money to buy your antique for me.

RED DAVE

3rd February 2011, 19:55

I am a little busy right now, so I cannot travel to New York. Instead, why don't you get one of your practicing militant Indian comrades to meet me ?I'll tell him to hang out with any Marxist he finds in India. Of course, none of them will be Maoists.

As soon as I see such a comrade of yours I will believe in your theory, your stories about China, and the existence of your antique; and I will give him the money to buy your antique for me.As soon as you start acting like Marxists, he'll find you.

By the way, good luck with your "Marxist" support for the capitalist government in Nepal. Enough of this pissing contest. India is capitalist. You want the last word, take it.

RED DAVE

Jose Gracchus

3rd February 2011, 21:36

I can't remember the book. Maybe it like Shanin's work was once free before archived for subscription. :(

I would like to see it. Even so, it seems your arguments are based on anecdote and prejudice than thorough studies of peasants, peasant culture and economy, and historical studies.

Did I not just cite Lenin's book? :confused:

Do you know of no scholarly, corroborating works? I mean Lenin's book is a great statement on his and the Social Democrats' views on capitalism and Russian development, but hardly exhaustive or authoritative on its own.

That was the main RSDLP agrarian program for sure, since this would have formed the basis of sovkhozy. However, that little tidbit that you and I know is that Lenin broke from this problem and adopted the SR land reform program as early as 1905, not 1917.

Where would the agricultural labor for sovkozy come from? Technical specialists and industrial mechanics etc. on loan from the urban proletariat? Put agricultural proletarians and landless peasants to work?

In any case, do you know if anyone has corroborated these claims, that the productivity of communal or collective agricultural production is inherently self-limited and anti-growth/anti-modernization? Do you know any specific sources backing the claim that it was the reparcelization/redistribution that ruined food production? That it was large estates which only had the productive surpluses?

A recent paper or two did indeed challenge the mainstream and Marxist emphasis on economies of scale in agriculture, and IIRC it or they used Bolivia as an example.

Link?

My notion of combining statist (read: sovkhozy-based) food sovereignty with populist redistributions of food production assets on top of that food sovereignty assumes the traditional diseconomies of scale for the latter, but hey I'd like to be proven wrong on that front.

So you'd like state farms producing until basic national food needs can be met, with limited reparcelizations where it is does not interfere with the need to set up the former?

That's not racism at all. The closest analogy you can get to is urban prejudice, not racism.

Hence 'tone'. And yes, that is exactly what it sounds like?

And it should read "small farming" and not "farming" in general, since it has to do with the "society" in "socialism" as opposed to communal farming.

You don't think communalistic farming can be joined organically to larger social forms, like the toilers' republic/commune-state/dictatorship of the proletariat/free association of toilers/whatever?

What's so bad about communal farming conceptually? I know it was a Stalinist farce, but I'd hate to throw away whole concepts just because of what Stalin et al. did to them.

The Lassalle cult may (and I stress "may") have had peasant influences as well. Think about how blatant it was, making Bob Avakian and his fans look like amateurs ("the Messiah of the nineteenth century... indisputable dogmas... preached by Ferdinand Lassalle"). Two factors come into play: whether or not the German proletariat was the demographic majority, and the continued existence of the Junker system in agriculture.

Two factors come to play in what?

Now I understand why you're skeptical towards my "pastiche" model "cobbled" together from various unrelated (even if non-contradictory) elements.

Why? I don't understand this reply. And do you have no response or comment on agrarian anarchist projects? Do we have any evidence for Spanish collective production?

red cat

3rd February 2011, 22:09

I'll tell him to hang out with any Marxist he finds in India. Of course, none of them will be Maoists.

I am relieved to hear this. Since your Indian comrades call themselves Marxists, if they also started calling Maoists the same, then it would be considered an insult.

As soon as you start acting like Marxists, he'll find you.

Okay I will stop visiting workers' slums then. I hope that is what you mean by acting like Marxists? At least it seems so from the actions of your comrades in India.

By the way, good luck with your "Marxist" support for the capitalist government in Nepal. Enough of this pissing contest. India is capitalist. You want the last word, take it.

RED DAVE

If you only wanted me to know that you think India is capitalist, then you could have just PMed your thoughts to me. What was the point of starting this thread and letting everyone know that you fail both in politics and dialectics ? :crying:

S.Artesian

3rd February 2011, 22:19

Do you think that India is a developed country ?

I think India is a capitalist country where capitalism dominates an economy that exhibits uneven and combined growth.

A new democratic revolution is not pro-capitalist. The alliance of the working class with the national bourgeoisie takes place when it is necessary and the national bourgeoisie agrees to the terms and conditions imposed by the working class.

Circular explanation.
The alliance...takes place when it is necessary

The question is why is it necessary? What makes it necessary? The last answer you gave was that it was necessary for publicity reasons.

Now you are dropping a major criterion that characterizes a proletarian.
Exactly what do you expect me to show ?

Not dropping anything. See the previous and copious discussions of uneven and combined development.

I expect you to show how the economy in the rural zones functions, creates "socialism in one [or more] rural settings"-- how capital circulates and accumulates, and what these national bourgeoisie get in return for their cooperation.

This has already been done partially. For example, the forest-product workers have established control over the forests in some parts.

What does that mean concretely? Established control over the forests in some parts? How does that differ for example from a bourgeois state regulating access to forests?

How ? You are the one who opposes state capitalism and hence the Russian revolution.

The Russian Revolution was a proletarian revolution, organized by and around the organs of working class power. There was no collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and there was very little if any collaboration with the so-called petit-bourgeoisie-- the SRs-- all of whom broke with the soviets over the issue of the Constitutional Assembly to which the SRs, Menseviks, and Kadets wanted to transfer all power.

Straw-man. I am pointing towards the inertness of the Indian ultra-lefts, not the working class. Why is it that all of those who identify India as capitalists and call for a workers revolution never do anything substantial in practice ? Why don't they actually organize workers instead of printing pamphlets full of tall talk ?

I have no idea. Bad ultra-lefts don't change the nature of the mode of production and the class struggle.

Also, you are repeatedly trying to characterize Maoists as anti-worker and pro-capitalist. This is completely false. The Indian new democratic revolution is led by the Indian working class. The militant struggles of tea and coffee plantation workers, and jute mill workers under the banner of Maoism, are well known. In fact, in some places the plantation workers have taken military action against the capitalist owners and tried to establish control over the means of production. And all these workers consider the Maoist CP, and not any ultra-left tall-talking group, to be their vanguard party.

No doubt. My characterization is based on your claims, and others, that capitalist development is necessary in India. I regard that as definitively anti-working class. Maybe you want to call that capitalist development "new democracy." Maybe the Maoists have been able to recruit numbers of plantation workers into their organizations. Doesn't change anything.

If you support this notion of necessary capitalist development a la a new democracy what you will get is capitalist development instituted and supported by foreign, international, capitalism, which is the source of the uneven and combined development to begin with.

Die Neue Zeit

4th February 2011, 05:20

I would like to see it. Even so, it seems your arguments are based on anecdote and prejudice than thorough studies of peasants, peasant culture and economy, and historical studies.

Do you know of no scholarly, corroborating works? I mean Lenin's book is a great statement on his and the Social Democrats' views on capitalism and Russian development, but hardly exhaustive or authoritative on its own.

Maybe Boris Kagarlitsky's Empire of the Periphery: Russia and the World System would be of use, but it's not on Google Books. :(

Where would the agricultural labor for sovkozy come from? Technical specialists and industrial mechanics etc. on loan from the urban proletariat? Put agricultural proletarians and landless peasants to work?

That was the plan, I think. Instead of redistributing certain land, expropriate the large estate and hire them on the spot, plus get some specialists.

In any case, do you know if anyone has corroborated these claims, that the productivity of communal or collective agricultural production is inherently self-limited and anti-growth/anti-modernization? Do you know any specific sources backing the claim that it was the reparcelization/redistribution that ruined food production? That it was large estates which only had the productive surpluses?

Did you get the chance to read my work-in-progress commentary on Food Production (http://www.revleft.com/vb/national-democratization-industrial-t143922/index.html)? There are good sources indicating that the sovkhozy were way more productive than the kolkhozy.

With regards to the Bolshevik land redistributions, I once held a negative view until I realized recently that the Russian agricultural economy was breaking down in 1917. At the very least, the redistributions didn't increase productivity.

Link?

All these are Google Books:

The agrarian question in Marx and his successors, Volume 1
Agrarian capitalism in theory and practice
Agricultural land redistribution: toward greater consensus
Agrarian Reform in Russia: The Road from Serfdom
Family farms: survival and prospect : a world-wide analysis

Despite these, I do think my solution is an effective counter. It takes into account vertical farming and my extension of this towards vertical food production in general.

So you'd like state farms producing until basic national food needs can be met, with limited reparcelizations where it is does not interfere with the need to set up the former?

That's right, but I place this somewhere on the side of radical reforms and not social revolution:

Nonetheless, on the level of radical reforms, there can be an accommodation between national-democratized vertical and other industrial food production, on the one hand, and on the other some specific cases of rural and coastal egalitarianism based on equal rental tenures (including redistributions of land every now and then) and equal private ownership relations in small-scale food production equipment like tractors and small fishing boats.

Hence 'tone'. And yes, that is exactly what it sounds like?

I see your point.

You don't think communalistic farming can be joined organically to larger social forms, like the toilers' republic/commune-state/dictatorship of the proletariat/free association of toilers/whatever?

What's so bad about communal farming conceptually? I know it was a Stalinist farce, but I'd hate to throw away whole concepts just because of what Stalin et al. did to them.

I had the kibbutzim more in mind. They, like the kolkhozy, had to be subsidized by the state.

Two factors come to play in what?

Two peasant factors may have played a role in the Lassalle cult.

Why? I don't understand this reply. And do you have no response or comment on agrarian anarchist projects? Do we have any evidence for Spanish collective production?

Now it is I at a loss on what you're saying here. If you're referring to "empirical" arguments against economies of scale in agriculture, the four Google Books above are a good start.

My programmatic bet is a win-win scenario. Nobody wants agricultural family oligopolies with even more technological food production than industrial farming affords them, and some people just want to produce food the traditional way.

red cat

4th February 2011, 07:10

I think India is a capitalist country where capitalism dominates an economy that exhibits uneven and combined growth.

Okay, but I think that it is underdeveloped, what shows some resemblance with capitalism is only a small portion of the economy, and the agricultural sector contributes less to the GDP because crops are underpriced.

Circular explanation.

The question is why is it necessary? What makes it necessary? The last answer you gave was that it was necessary for publicity reasons. Yes, that is one of the reasons.

Not dropping anything. See the previous and copious discussions of uneven and combined development.Yes, and it all seems to boil down to confusing commodity production with capitalism.

I expect you to show how the economy in the rural zones functions, creates "socialism in one [or more] rural settings"-- how capital circulates and accumulates, and what these national bourgeoisie get in return for their cooperation.The national bourgeoisie get to keep their shops in the first place. Then they get to sell their products.

What does that mean concretely? Established control over the forests in some parts? How does that differ for example from a bourgeois state regulating access to forests?Tribals and common people were earlier forbidden to take anything from the forests. It was used only by big companies for logging etc. This has been stopped. Now the masses can obtain forest products.

The Russian Revolution was a proletarian revolution, organized by and around the organs of working class power. There was no collaboration with the bourgeoisie, and there was very little if any collaboration with the so-called petit-bourgeoisie-- the SRs-- all of whom broke with the soviets over the issue of the Constitutional Assembly to which the SRs, Menseviks, and Kadets wanted to transfer all power.Still, orthodox Marxists oppose it because they ignore the realities of class struggle. Similarly, those who oppose Maoists today have no idea about class struggle either.

I have no idea. Bad ultra-lefts don't change the nature of the mode of production and the class struggle.

No doubt. My characterization is based on your claims, and others, that capitalist development is necessary in India. I regard that as definitively anti-working class. Maybe you want to call that capitalist development "new democracy." Maybe the Maoists have been able to recruit numbers of plantation workers into their organizations. Doesn't change anything.

If you support this notion of necessary capitalist development a la a new democracy what you will get is capitalist development instituted and supported by foreign, international, capitalism, which is the source of the uneven and combined development to begin with.It is not about "bad" ultra lefts. It is about "all" ultra lefts in more than a sixth of the global population, in a place where the the oppression is so high and the situation so revolutionary that workers and peasants often burst into spontaneous militant movements.

In such a place no ultra-left participates in a working class movement that leads to even a minor gain. Instead they attack the Maoists, the vanguards of the working class. What the Maoists do are necessary to continue the revolutionary war. If the ultra lefts have better alternatives, then why don't they implement it ? By keeping themselves inert and attacking the revolution they automatically lead the masses to correctly identify them as agents of imperialism.

So before you analyze and comment on the strategy of Maoists, first denounce the Indian ultra lefts as reactionaries, denounce the international ultra-lefts who support them too, as reactionaries, and admit that ultra leftism has failed to even begin revolutionary practice in India. As soon as you find out what is wrong with ultra-leftism, you will know why Maoism is necessary for making any successful revolution.

Jose Gracchus

4th February 2011, 08:35

I'll reply in detail later, but DNZ, the Food Production commentary link is dead.

And I'm sure someday soon the regional rural guerrilla armies will, against all world imperialism, march to the capital and inaugurate the revolution. :lol:

RED DAVE

4th February 2011, 12:45

Yes, and it all seems to boil down to confusing commodity production with capitalism.Still blowing that horn?

One more time:

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” its unit being a single commodity.[Capital, vol. 1, p.1, ln. 1]

Now, there is it. There are no societies other than capitalist societies for which “an immense accumulation of commodities” is the major feature of the economy. Now, either India doesn't have “an immense accumulation of commodities” or It's capitalist. The conditions under which commodities are produced are irrelevant. In Marx's day, due to feudal remnants and an authoritarian state, there was immense interference in production. All this was/is irrelevant to the central fact of commodity production dominating the economy.

But you don't get it, and you won't because to understand the nature of commodity production means to understand the nature and role of the working class, which you Maoists won't do.

RED DAVE

Die Neue Zeit

4th February 2011, 14:21

S.Artesian

4th February 2011, 15:49

Still, orthodox Marxists oppose it because they ignore the realities of class struggle. Similarly, those who oppose Maoists today have no idea about class struggle either.

That's just baloney. What orthodox Marxists oppose the October 1917 Revolution? Other than the "orthodox" "Marxists" of the Second International? Other than Zinoviev's and Kamenev's opposition to the actual MRC seizure of power?

And those who oppose the Maoists-- as has been ably demonstrated throughout the world have every idea of class struggle. You're going to tell the Marxists in Chile who opposed the UP government, and who opposed rural armed struggle, and led strikes and workers councils that they know nothing of class struggle?

You're going to tell the French workers that they know nothing of class struggle because they, pretty uniformly, reject Maoism?

Such arrogance is built upon a foundation of ignorance.

red cat

4th February 2011, 18:28

Still blowing that horn?

One more time:

[Capital, vol. 1, p.1, ln. 1]

Now, there is it. There are no societies other than capitalist societies for which “an immense accumulation of commodities” is the major feature of the economy. Now, either India doesn't have “an immense accumulation of commodities” or It's capitalist. The conditions under which commodities are produced are irrelevant. In Marx's day, due to feudal remnants and an authoritarian state, there was immense interference in production. All this was/is irrelevant to the central fact of commodity production dominating the economy.

One more time :

How is what you define as capitalism qualitatively different from the economies that precede it, and exactly at what point does a qualitative transformation cause it to emerge as capitalism ?

But you don't get it, and you won't because to understand the nature of commodity production means to understand the nature and role of the working class, which you Maoists won't do.

RED DAVE

If you're so sure that I won't get it then why do you waste time replying to my posts? Instead you should try to make your Indian comrades understand that maintaining a website alone isn't enough to organize a proletarian revolution.

red cat

4th February 2011, 18:40

That's just baloney. What orthodox Marxists oppose the October 1917 Revolution? Other than the "orthodox" "Marxists" of the Second International? Other than Zinoviev's and Kamenev's opposition to the actual MRC seizure of power?

Yes, that is the point. The Russian revolution and its consolidation under Lenin was opposed by some Marxists who did not understand why the steps taken by Lenin were necessary.

And those who oppose the Maoists-- as has been ably demonstrated throughout the world have every idea of class struggle. You're going to tell the Marxists in Chile who opposed the UP government, and who opposed rural armed struggle, and led strikes and workers councils that they know nothing of class struggle?

You're going to tell the French workers that they know nothing of class struggle because they, pretty uniformly, reject Maoism?I have not come across any such organization participating in such struggles that has attacked Maoists. Not any trying to analyze the struggle in India at least. Actually those who engage in actual revolutionary struggles have more important work to do than attacking other revolutionaries. This is more or less true for all real revolutionaries from every leftist tendency.

I have utmost respect for workers who participate in such struggles. But have those struggles in any case resulted in a successful armed engagement with the state or workers seizing and maintaining control of even a part of the means of production ? As of now, they don't know how to fight to elevate the struggle to that level. Hopefully they will learn from their experience soon and overthrow imperialism in its own castle.

Such arrogance is built upon a foundation of ignorance.Rather it is based on the observation that the self-proclaimed ultra-lefts in India have never participated in any workers struggles that has led to the smallest of gains for the working class.

S.Artesian

4th February 2011, 23:30

One more time :

How is what you define as capitalism qualitatively different from the economies that precede it, and exactly at what point does a qualitative transformation cause it to emerge as capitalism ?

Well, here's what Marx says in volume 3:

The capitalist mode of production is distinguished from a mode of production based on slavery by this fact among others [emphasis added] that in the former the value, or the price, as the case may be, of labor-power assumes the form of value, or price, of labor itself, that is to say in the form of wages.

Part 1, Chapter 1, Cost Price and Profit.\

Clearly, by that definition, regardless of how the majority of the agricultural population is treated, India is a capitalist economy, internally, and in its international relations. Renumeration to workers in the two largest contributors to GDP, manufacturing and services, is in the form of wages.

That most of the population still suffers under archaic relations of landed labor is an index to uneven and combined development and the incapability of capital, in both local and international incarnations, to effect a thorough transformation of agricultural relations according to its own idealized past.

That means capitalism is obsolete when it comes to social development. It does not mean India is not capitalist.

As for what you say about "Marxists" opposing the October Revolution-- you quite literally are playing this old card: X criticized a struggle, Y criticizes a struggle. Ergo they both criticize the same struggle for the same reasons.

As for workers seizing in partial control of the means of production in advanced countries... oh that has happened a lot. In France, in Italy, in Argentina, in Mexico, in the US even. The workers get defeated. Happens all the time. Until the one time it doesn't.

No defeats in your scheme, comrade? China today isn't a defeat? Acquiescing to the restoration to French colonial rule in Indochina after WW2 and the imprisonment and execution of workers who opposed such restoration, that wasn't a defeat? Suharto's overthrow of Sukarno and the subsequent slaughter of radicals in Indonesia, was that a defeat?

Nothing personal, comrade, but all your glorification of armed struggle has led to is....the eventual restoration of capitalism.

t.shonku

5th February 2011, 06:31

Arundhati Roy said "India is a corporate hindu state"

I think,

India=Feudalism + Corporatism + Hindu Fundamentalism

red cat

5th February 2011, 06:37

Well, here's what Marx says in volume 3:

\

Clearly, by that definition, regardless of how the majority of the agricultural population is treated, India is a capitalist economy, internally, and in its international relations. Renumeration to workers in the two largest contributors to GDP, manufacturing and services, is in the form of wages.

That most of the population still suffers under archaic relations of landed labor is an index to uneven and combined development and the incapability of capital, in both local and international incarnations, to effect a thorough transformation of agricultural relations according to its own idealized past.

That means capitalism is obsolete when it comes to social development. It does not mean India is not capitalist.

Marx mentions wages here. This means that labour power has to enter the market as a commodity. This is contrary to the example of indigo plantations, or to that of the recent seizure of lands by the government. Clearly the peasants are militarily being forced to do whatever imperialism requires. There is no notion of their labour power entering a market.

As for what you say about "Marxists" opposing the October Revolution-- you quite literally are playing this old card: X criticized a struggle, Y criticizes a struggle. Ergo they both criticize the same struggle for the same reasons. It almost always happens that way until the critics implement a better option in the region in question.

As for workers seizing in partial control of the means of production in advanced countries... oh that has happened a lot. In France, in Italy, in Argentina, in Mexico, in the US even. The workers get defeated. Happens all the time. Until the one time it doesn't. That is the point. They haven't been able to keep control because they were not ready to counter state offensives militarily. For this they require a well developed army and the tactics of dividing the enemy.

The masses led by Maoists have captured and kept the means of production in a few cases. They have not been defeated precisely because they have a mass armed movement and the tactics of dividing the enemy.

No defeats in your scheme, comrade? China today isn't a defeat? Acquiescing to the restoration to French colonial rule in Indochina after WW2 and the imprisonment and execution of workers who opposed such restoration, that wasn't a defeat? Suharto's overthrow of Sukarno and the subsequent slaughter of radicals in Indonesia, was that a defeat?Paris, Russia, China; in all of these places we have been defeated; every leftist tendency, that is. But as of now, red zones have been established again. The workers have seized control over the means of production in some cases. So there is some new hope regarding the world revolution.

Nothing personal, comrade, but all your glorification of armed struggle has led to is....the eventual restoration of capitalism.But whether you make revolution in a feudal or a capitalist country, the decisive factor will always be a military victory. This was true for every revolution till now. In countries like India, Nepal etc. under normal conditions workers striking even for minor demands are shot at. So there is no option in these places other than engaging in armed struggle right from the beginning of the movement, or sometime around the beginning at least. And as for capitalist restoration, I think that can be prevented if the masses are politicized and militarized properly. Every tendency has failed to do it till now, but the success of the Maoists at holding back state forces for several decades in some areas, and a majority of the population participating in the CP and red army indicates that they are definitely working at it.

S.Artesian

5th February 2011, 16:59

Marx mentions wages here. This means that labour power has to enter the market as a commodity. This is contrary to the example of indigo plantations, or to that of the recent seizure of lands by the government. Clearly the peasants are militarily being forced to do whatever imperialism requires. There is no notion of their labour power entering a market.

And the means India isn't capitalist? We are talking about uneven and combined development, which is an expression of capitalism, uneven and combined, but no less capitalist in its accumulation.

As for military seizure of lands-- this is an enduring facet of capitalist development.

It seems that your advocacy of Maoism is really based on its practice of armed struggle.

Die Neue Zeit

5th February 2011, 17:44

Why do you have issues with the tactics of that armed struggle? The proletariat isn't in the demographic majority.

S.Artesian

5th February 2011, 18:01

Why do you have issues with the tactics of that armed struggle? The proletariat isn't in the demographic majority.

What issues do I have with the tactic of armed struggle? Where have I indicated I have an issue with using the tactic of armed struggle in this thread or any other thread.

Armed struggle is exactly that, a tactic. Sometimes it fits into a strategy, and sometimes not. That's why we don't advocate everybody gets a gun and meets at the Washington monument.

I was going to respond by asking "Why are you such a pinhead?" but realizing that would be inappropriate, let me ask instead, why are you so incapable of understanding what is being said, and separating what is said from what you think or wish is being said?

red cat

5th February 2011, 18:03

And the means India isn't capitalist? We are talking about uneven and combined development, which is an expression of capitalism, uneven and combined, but no less capitalist in its accumulation.

As for military seizure of lands-- this is an enduring facet of capitalist development.

The central feature of capitalism is labour power entering the market. This isn't the case in most of India. Use of military force, debt bondage etc are regular features of the Indian society that can be traced back to pre-colonial times.

It seems that your advocacy of Maoism is really based on its practice of armed struggle.

It is rather based on Maoists being the only leftist tendency in India who organize class struggle, everywhere from factories to fields. My image of a communist movement is that of actual workers and peasants seizing control of the means of production, not a bunch of practically inert elites maintaining a web-page and a newspaper.

S.Artesian

5th February 2011, 18:04

Arundhati Roy said "India is a corporate hindu state"

I think,

India=Feudalism + Corporatism + Hindu Fundamentalism

Well, that settles it. If Arundhati Roy says it, it must be true. Let me retract everything I've said and produce a new analysis, ignoring the actually economy of India based on what Ms. Roy says.

Try and keep that in mind when Ms. Roy endorses this or that "progressive" bourgeois politician.

One question though... what is the basis for corporatism? What was its basis in Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Germany, etc?

S.Artesian

5th February 2011, 18:08

The central feature of capitalism is labour power entering the market. This isn't the case in most of India. Use of military force, debt bondage etc are regular features of the Indian society that can be traced back to pre-colonial times.

One last time: The dominant sections of the Indian economy, in terms of economic output and activity, industry and services, are precisely organized around labor power entering the market.

One last last time: Uneven and combined development.

It is rather based on Maoists being the only leftist tendency in India who organize class struggle, everywhere from factories to fields. My image of a communist movement is that of actual workers and peasants seizing control of the means of production, not a bunch of practically inert elites maintaining a web-page and a newspaper.

Well, mine is based on workers and rural poor creating organizations of class power that can expropriate the bourgeoisie as a class; that can seize the economy as whole, as a class must do to survive the onslaught it will receive in return.

I have no idea who you are referring to when you talk about practically inert elites.

red cat

5th February 2011, 18:28

One last time: The dominant sections of the Indian economy, in terms of economic output and activity, industry and services, are precisely organized around labor power entering the market.

One last last time: Uneven and combined development.

In that case, last time from me too : Indian agriculture constitutes the major portion of the economy there, and is subject to semi-feudal relations of production, which includes taking the crops from peasants at a very cheap rate so that the overall contribution of agriculture to GDP is low. Also, labour power is not independent of military control in the cities too. Many workers who demand slightly better conditions or pay raises are finished off by the lumpen elements and state forces.

Well, mine is based on workers and rural poor creating organizations of class power that can expropriate the bourgeoisie as a class; that can seize the economy as whole, as a class must do to survive the onslaught it will receive in return.

Very nice and appreciable, but in my opinion, it is not feasible in one step in India. In some cases the workers must start by taking control of parts of the economy, regions of the country, and extend it to the whole.

I have no idea who you are referring to when you talk about practically inert elites.

Every leftist group in India that does not identify with the ML line fits into this category. Many ML groups are reactionary too but they mostly form active military opposition to the revolution.

red cat

5th February 2011, 18:46

You continue to have a very idealist idea of what capitalism is. In your search for the 'real' capitalism, you fail to see what is already present as capitalism. For Marxists, capitalism which does not have uneven and combined development, which does not take crops from peasants at cheap rates and which does not finish off workers struggles by state forces cannot exist. Where has your idealist version of capitalism ever existed?

UK ? How many peasants and workers have been killed by the UK state forces in the past twenty years ? How many have committed suicide for escaping debt bondage ? Will it exceed even a thousand ?

S.Artesian

5th February 2011, 19:20

UK ? How many peasants and workers have been killed by the UK state forces in the past twenty years ? How many have committed suicide for escaping debt bondage ? Will it exceed even a thousand ?

20 years? But in the development of English capitalism, dispossession, suppression of the peasantry was an ongoing event.

Did you ever here of "enclosure," "commons," the diggers?\

Dispossession of indigenous people and small rural producers in Brazil over the past 30 years, and the use of death squads to enforce that dispossession, was that done because the big soya producers, the agro-businesses, in Brazil are feudal?

We need to pay attention to actual class relations... what class assumes power in the process of dispossession. Feudal lords did not WANT to dispossess their serfs.

EDIT:
In that case, last time from me too : Indian agriculture constitutes the major portion of the economy there, and is subject to semi-feudal relations of production, which includes taking the crops from peasants at a very cheap rate so that the overall contribution of agriculture to GDP is low. Also, labour power is not independent of military control in the cities too. Many workers who demand slightly better conditions or pay raises are finished off by the lumpen elements and state forces.

No agriculture does not constitute the major portion of the economy. It provides only 18% of GNP. It certainly constitutes the major occupation of the people, but it does not constitute the major portion of the economy. This is exactly what makes the proletariat the revolutionary agent for the overthrow of capitalism, with or without a peasant war.

red cat

5th February 2011, 19:34

Firstly, there are no peasants in the UK. But why restrict ourselves to the last twenty years? The UK actually has a long history of struggles extending for the last two centuries. It is the same with every "advanced" capitalist country. The bloody expropriation of the peasantry, the forced criminalization of the landless poor, as part of the development of primitive accumulation has been documented extensively. But capitalism itself is a global system, with its world market and as such, the central capitalist nations have had different labour histories than peripheral nations, but this has to be understood as part of the historical development of capitalism on a world scale.

We should restrict ourselves to recent years in order to understand how much difference there is between the societies of UK and India. The Indian society has largely stagnated and has been getting worse in many places since the beginning of the colonial times. Imperialism has forced Indian economy and culture to stay qualitatively unchanged. Capitalism naturally develops the social conditions to the level which has been prevailing in the UK for at least the last fifty years.

The Indian masses were much better off before the imperialists arrived. As soon as they came, they started starving the native population and destroyed the native industries. After that the conditions have been more or less as they are today in most of the places untouched by the peoples war.

red cat

5th February 2011, 19:41

20 years? But in the development of English capitalism, dispossession, suppression of the peasantry was an ongoing event.

Did you ever here of "enclosure," "commons," the diggers?\

No, but can you give an approximate estimation of how many of these people were slaughtered by the state forces, and in which years did these killings take place ?

Dispossession of indigenous people and small rural producers in Brazil over the past 30 years, and the use of death squads to enforce that dispossession, was that done because the big soya producers, the agro-businesses, in Brazil are feudal?I don't know about Brazil. Perhaps a closer look will reveal semi-feudal conditions in its society ? So let's keep the comparison limited to a country that both of us consider capitalist.

We need to pay attention to actual class relations... what class assumes power in the process of dispossession. Feudal lords did not WANT to dispossess their serfs.These are feudal lords and compradors serving imperialism. So in some cases their behaviour will differ.

EDIT:

No agriculture does not constitute the major portion of the economy. It provides only 18% of GNP. It certainly constitutes the major occupation of the people, but it does not constitute the major portion of the economy. This is exactly what makes the proletariat the revolutionary agent for the overthrow of capitalism, with or without a peasant war.Please explain step by step how this works out logically.

red cat

5th February 2011, 20:08

It is not the concern of Marxists whether national economies or national cultures remain stagnant. This is the concern of the capitalist class whose interest remains in retaining functioning economies. Capitalism involves the constant expropriation of unpaid labour and has no "natural" development to develop social conditions.

Capitalism naturally enables the ruling classes to introduce some social developments. That is why exactly those countries that actually have capitalism are so developed right now.

S.Artesian

5th February 2011, 21:43

No, but can you give an approximate estimation of how many of these people were slaughtered by the state forces, and in which years did these killings take place ?

How about state and private forces? But so what? We are talking about England in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. Are you seriously arguing that dispossession of the rural commoners never took place.

I don't know about Brazil. Perhaps a closer look will reveal semi-feudal conditions in its society ? So let's keep the comparison limited to a country that both of us consider capitalist.

Disagree. Let's look at actual dispossession in actual countries in comparable centuries, like Brazil in the 20th and 21st. Besides, you could learn something from the uneven and combined development of Brazil.
These are feudal lords and compradors serving imperialism. So in some cases their behaviour will differ.

Please explain step by step how this works out logically.

What's difficult about this???: industry and services contribute the majority of the "national wealth"-- the gross economic output of the country-- and that portion that is most integrated into the international framework of capitalism. Therefore, the future development of the country will depend on expansion of those sectors, and their expanding presence in the world markets. Consequently all the problems of capitalist reproduction and accumulation-- falling rates of profit, overproduction, etc.-- will be transmitted to the Indian economy through this interrelation. Therefore the working class in India, the proletariat in the industrial and service sectors will be forced to confront this "national" capitalism of India, which is in fact the connection, the link, the portion of international capitalism.

red cat

5th February 2011, 22:30

How about state and private forces?

Okay then, you can still give an estimate. But since you are talking about even the 14th century, I think some of the figures might resemble those in India.

But so what? We are talking about England in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. Are you seriously arguing that dispossession of the rural commoners never took place.If you compare the situation in India with 14th century England, then you are probably right. If I am not mistaken, England at that time was witnessing the beginning of large scale commodity production etc. A society somewhat in between capitalism and feudalism. That is where India is stuck, but a big difference is that it will remain as it is and never reach a capitalist stage, because imperialism won't let it.

Disagree. Let's look at actual dispossession in actual countries in comparable centuries, like Brazil in the 20th and 21st. Besides, you could learn something from the uneven and combined development of Brazil.Since Brazil had been a colony, it will probably be in the same stage as India. It can have what you claim to be capitalism and I call semi-feudalism. So it is better to compare India with the countries that were not colonized by foreign capital.

What's difficult about this???: industry and services contribute the majority of the "national wealth"-- the gross economic output of the country-- and that portion that is most integrated into the international framework of capitalism. Therefore, the future development of the country will depend on expansion of those sectors, and their expanding presence in the world markets. Consequently all the problems of capitalist reproduction and accumulation-- falling rates of profit, overproduction, etc.-- will be transmitted to the Indian economy through this interrelation. Therefore the working class in India, the proletariat in the industrial and service sectors will be forced to confront this "national" capitalism of India, which is in fact the connection, the link, the portion of international capitalism.The proletariat would have been the only class being able to lead the revolution even if industrial output provided a minority of the GNP, due to different reasons. In fact, the proletariat is the class leading the Indian new democratic revolution. But that is not what I am talking about. How do you think the working class is supposed to seize power without the military participation of the peasantry ? And what would happen to the peasantry if the working class, which is a minority of the population, seized power alone ?

S.Artesian

5th February 2011, 22:52

Okay then, you can still give an estimate. But since you are talking about even the 14th century, I think some of the figures might resemble those in India.

If you compare the situation in India with 14th century England, then you are probably right. If I am not mistaken, England at that time was witnessing the beginning of large scale commodity production etc. A society somewhat in between capitalism and feudalism. That is where India is stuck, but a big difference is that it will remain as it is and never reach a capitalist stage, because imperialism won't let it.

Really, the last time: uneven and combined development. India isn't "stuck" in a time warp. It's a country that is manifesting the uneven and combined development of capitalism.

Since Brazil had been a colony, it will probably be in the same stage as India. It can have what you claim to be capitalism and I call semi-feudalism. So it is better to compare India with the countries that were not colonized by foreign capital.Like you said-- you don't know anything about Brazil. Brazil was hardly a colony comparable to India. Actually Brazil was the seat of an empire, at least that's what the Portuguese monarchy claimed after the British helped them escape the rebellion in the home country.

It's better to compare India to countries that exhibit similar conditions of uneven and combined development-- which is why I wouldn't advise comparing India to the US.

The proletariat would have been the only class being able to lead the revolution even if industrial output provided a minority of the GNP, due to different reasons. In fact, the proletariat is the class leading the Indian new democratic revolution. But that is not what I am talking about.

The proletariat is the only class able to lead when conditions precipitate the struggle. We call those conditions, the conflict between the means and relations of production-- a conflict precipitated by the overgrowth of the means of production beyond the property form that encapsulates that production. This is why the struggle in the "underdeveloped" countries is itself uneven and combined, and this is why the struggle is more acute, as the conflict between the advanced "islands" of industrial production, and the archaic relations of land and labor, relations adapted to, and adapted
by capitalism present an obstacle to the bourgeoisie's own need for accumulation.

How do you think the working class is supposed to seize power without the military participation of the peasantry ? And what would happen to the peasantry if the working class, which is a minority of the population, seized power alone ?Where did I ever say the proletariat is supposed to seize power without the military participation of the peasantry? Nowhere. Please, one DNZ is more than enough.

I did say that with or without a peasant war, the proletariat is the only class capable of seizing power, abolishing capital, and....if the revolution conquers in the advanced countries... resolving the conflicts of uneven and combined development.

Doesn't mean the rural poor and landless don't participate in the military struggle. Of course they do. It is a question of program, organization, and what transformation of the economy is required. We can't really develop any of those if we are stuck thinking that India, or Brazil, is suffering from feudalism and consequently alliance with the "progressive," enlightened, national, patriotic etcetcetc bourgeoisie are required.

Die Neue Zeit

6th February 2011, 05:40

What issues do I have with the tactic of armed struggle? Where have I indicated I have an issue with using the tactic of armed struggle in this thread or any other thread.

Armed struggle is exactly that, a tactic. Sometimes it fits into a strategy, and sometimes not. That's why we don't advocate everybody gets a gun and meets at the Washington monument.

I was going to respond by asking "Why are you such a pinhead?" but realizing that would be inappropriate, let me ask instead, why are you so incapable of understanding what is being said, and separating what is said from what you think or wish is being said?

Where did I ever say the proletariat is supposed to seize power without the military participation of the peasantry? Nowhere. Please, one DNZ is more than enough.

I did say that with or without a peasant war, the proletariat is the only class capable of seizing power, abolishing capital, and....if the revolution conquers in the advanced countries... resolving the conflicts of uneven and combined development.

People's War and Focoism are tactics employed by the petit-bourgeoisie. You oppose them because they are such, when it fact they can be the spark to set the prairie fire of working-class political consciousness and genuine class consciousness stemming from that.

"One DNZ" is not enough. The proletariat may be the only class capable of performing the latter two, but other classes can seize political power and socialize capital. In the Third World, this and the proletarian demographic minority means Caesarean Socialism.

red cat

6th February 2011, 12:19

Really, the last time: uneven and combined development. India isn't "stuck" in a time warp. It's a country that is manifesting the uneven and combined development of capitalism.

Most of the social practices in India, such as the caste system, female infanticide or dowry are feudal. It is not "uneven development", but lack of capitalist development at all.

Like you said-- you don't know anything about Brazil. Brazil was hardly a colony comparable to India. Actually Brazil was the seat of an empire, at least that's what the Portuguese monarchy claimed after the British helped them escape the rebellion in the home country.

It's better to compare India to countries that exhibit similar conditions of uneven and combined development-- which is why I wouldn't advise comparing India to the US.Why is it that only the colonies exhibit "uneven development" ? Why not any country that is the base of any imperialist capital ?

The proletariat is the only class able to lead when conditions precipitate the struggle. We call those conditions, the conflict between the means and relations of production-- a conflict precipitated by the overgrowth of the means of production beyond the property form that encapsulates that production. This is why the struggle in the "underdeveloped" countries is itself uneven and combined, and this is why the struggle is more acute, as the conflict between the advanced "islands" of industrial production, and the archaic relations of land and labor, relations adapted to, and adapted
by capitalism present an obstacle to the bourgeoisie's own need for accumulation.

Where did I ever say the proletariat is supposed to seize power without the military participation of the peasantry? Nowhere. Please, one DNZ is more than enough.

I did say that with or without a peasant war, the proletariat is the only class capable of seizing power, abolishing capital, and....if the revolution conquers in the advanced countries... resolving the conflicts of uneven and combined development. Alright, but then what exactly did you mean by "with or without a peasant war" ?

Doesn't mean the rural poor and landless don't participate in the military struggle. Of course they do. It is a question of program, organization, and what transformation of the economy is required. We can't really develop any of those if we are stuck thinking that India, or Brazil, is suffering from feudalism and consequently alliance with the "progressive," enlightened, national, patriotic etcetcetc bourgeoisie are required.But revolutionary practice in India contradicts what you claim. First of all, before the proletariat took over the leadership of the revolutionary struggles, the main resistance against imperialism was launched by the national bourgeoisie itself. After that, attempts by the working class to seize power in the cities excluding the national bourgeoisie, have all resulted in defeat. But the strategy followed now has not only resulted in the expansion of struggles in all fields, but also the working class actually taking and maintaining control over the means of production in some cases, which is yet to be matched by revolutionaries elsewhere. The alliance with the national bourgeoisie has stopped state assaults to an extent, and seems to be necessary also for the stage where revolutionary India will have to undergo rapid industrialization while facing imperialist aggression from all sides. Lastly, to be convinced of the validity of what you claim as a strategy applicable in India, we need some examples of actual practice there. This is completely lacking from the side of the Indian ultra-lefts. If they themselves can organize the Indian working class to seize power from all the ruling classes alone and at once, that will surely prove that it can be done. Otherwise all their theory seems to be just an excuse to strengthen imperialism and oppose actual class-struggle.

S.Artesian

6th February 2011, 15:39

Most of the social practices in India, such as the caste system, female infanticide or dowry are feudal. It is not "uneven development", but lack of capitalist development at all.

First-- transformation of cultural practices that are themselves the legacy of archaic, but remaining, economic relations is rarely "in synch" or coincident with the expansion of "modern" economic relations.

Second-- that lack of co-incidence, that lack of capitalist development in sectors, particularly the rural sector, is exactly what uneven and combined development means. Uneven in that critical areas of accumulation are the areas of the advanced mode of production, while other areas are not. Combined... in that both are linked, and that the "archaic" relations cannot be overcome without overcoming the mode of the most advanced areas.

Why is it that only the colonies exhibit "uneven development" ? Why not any country that is the base of any imperialist capital ?
That is not the case. Russia was the classic case of uneven and combined development. Spain in the 1930s was driven to revolution by uneven and combined development. Turkey exhibited, and continues to exhibit, uneven and combined development based on the history of the Ottoman empire, of which it was the seat. The uneven and combined development that exists in Latin America is the result of the monarch-mercantile imperialism of Spain, combined with the limits to modern capitalist, investment.

Alright, but then what exactly did you mean by "with or without a peasant war" ?I meant that the proletariat is the only class capable of leading in both advanced countries, where there is no peasantry, and agriculture is conducted on purely capitalist lines as well as in less developed countries.

But revolutionary practice in India contradicts what you claim. First of all, before the proletariat took over the leadership of the revolutionary struggles, the main resistance against imperialism was launched by the national bourgeoisie itself.

That is exactly what uneven and combined development, and its practical corollary, permanent revolution predict.

After that, attempts by the working class to seize power in the cities excluding the national bourgeoisie, have all resulted in defeat. Yes, and as we both know, defeat follows defeat, until the final victory.

But the strategy followed now has not only resulted in the expansion of struggles in all fields, but also the working class actually taking and maintaining control over the means of production in some cases, which is yet to be matched by revolutionaries elsewhere.If by elsewhere you mean elsewhere in the world, then you are wrong. If you mean elsewhere in India, the question is-- are organizations of the working class itself in these liberated zones capable of being expanded to the centers of capitalist accumulation, meaning the cities and the industrial centers?

The alliance with the national bourgeoisie has stopped state assaults to an extent, and seems to be necessary also for the stage where revolutionary India will have to undergo rapid industrialization while facing imperialist aggression from all sides.

I don't know how the alliance with the national bourgeoisie stops assaults-- that reminds me of those who claimed that "allying" with the "progressive Democrats" like McGovern, McCarthy, Kennedy etc etc etc stopped the war in Vietnam.

As for allying with the national bourgeoisie to institute rapid industrialization while facing imperialist aggression-- history shows that those advocates of allying with the national bourgeoisie, of "peoples war" etc. have been proven incapable, like the national bourgeoisie, itself of instituting rapid industrialization without turning to and allying with those very imperialists who condemned the country to "semi-feudalism" and "semi-colonialism."

If they themselves can organize the Indian working class to seize power from all the ruling classes alone and at once, that will surely prove that it can be done. Otherwise all their theory seems to be just an excuse to strengthen imperialism and oppose actual class-struggle.I don't know what the practice of Indian left groups is, but I do know that no organization of the working class can seize power from the ruling class "all at once." Doesn't work that way. Maoist organizations don't seize power all at once.

As for seizing power "all alone," who said it was going to be alone? What has been said is that the seizure must be led by the working class and that an alliance with the bourgeoisie, national or otherwise, is counter to that seizure.

And that last part...about an excuse to strengthen imperialism... that's just the typical slander used against those who oppose alliances with the "national bourgeoisie," that those opponents are secretly aiding the IMF,World Bank, the US... etc. by being opposed.

It's the typical charge raised also by the Perons, the Morales, the Mugabes, the ayatollahs against any and all opponents.

LuÃs Henrique

6th February 2011, 15:51

We accept both Lenin's method of introducing state capitalism and Mao's method of allying with the national bourgeoisie due to their validity proved by first Leninist, and then Maoist movements being the vast majority of the struggles led by the working class that have successfully engaged in revolutionary wars and been able to overthrow capitalism temporarily.

Wait wait.

Your point is that these countries were not capitalist. How can capitalism be "temporarily overthrown" in non-capitalist countries?

Luís Henrique

red cat

6th February 2011, 16:53

First-- transformation of cultural practices that are themselves the legacy of archaic, but remaining, economic relations is rarely "in synch" or coincident with the expansion of "modern" economic relations.

Second-- that lack of co-incidence, that lack of capitalist development in sectors, particularly the rural sector, is exactly what uneven and combined development means. Uneven in that critical areas of accumulation are the areas of the advanced mode of production, while other areas are not. Combined... in that both are linked, and that the "archaic" relations cannot be overcome without overcoming the mode of the most advanced areas.

An almost stagnant feudal culture is impossible in a place where allegedly capitalist relations of production were introduced by the imperialists centuries ago. Let alone the rural society, these feudal practices are very much followed even by the urban working class of India.

So the "uneven development" that you talk about is actually a combination of feudal culture and politics enabling commodity production by imperialist capital.

That is not the case. Russia was the classic case of uneven and combined development. Spain in the 1930s was driven to revolution by uneven and combined development. Turkey exhibited, and continues to exhibit, uneven and combined development based on the history of the Ottoman empire, of which it was the seat. The uneven and combined development that exists in Latin America is the result of the monarch-mercantile imperialism of Spain, combined with the limits to modern capitalist, investment. Compare Russia or Spain with any colony of those days. I doubt if any contemporary colony came near to them in terms of development.

I meant that the proletariat is the only class capable of leading in both advanced countries, where there is no peasantry, and agriculture is conducted on purely capitalist lines as well as in less developed countries. Agreed.

That is exactly what uneven and combined development, and its practical corollary, permanent revolution predict. It is a result from Leninism, but this was to show that there are some natural contradictions between feudalism-imperialism-comprador capitalism and the national bourgeoisie.

Yes, and as we both know, defeat follows defeat, until the final victory. Very true, but the alliance with the national bourgeoisie has given much better results than the ones without the alliance, and it stands undefeated till now, with the working class advancing step by step.

If by elsewhere you mean elsewhere in the world, then you are wrong. If you mean elsewhere in India, the question is-- are organizations of the working class itself in these liberated zones capable of being expanded to the centers of capitalist accumulation, meaning the cities and the industrial centers?Where else in the world other than possibly the Maoist or ML red zones is the working class maintaining control over the means of production right now ?

I don't know how the alliance with the national bourgeoisie stops assaults-- that reminds me of those who claimed that "allying" with the "progressive Democrats" like McGovern, McCarthy, Kennedy etc etc etc stopped the war in Vietnam.The national bourgeoisie participated and in many cases stepped into the forefront of the mass movements against operation green hunt. This resulted in widespread popularity of these movements and resulted in protests against the government even from regions not under Maoist influence. The government backed off a little due to this.

As for allying with the national bourgeoisie to institute rapid industrialization while facing imperialist aggression-- history shows that those advocates of allying with the national bourgeoisie, of "peoples war" etc. have been proven incapable, like the national bourgeoisie, itself of instituting rapid industrialization without turning to and allying with those very imperialists who condemned the country to "semi-feudalism" and "semi-colonialism."Tactical alliances have to be made according to needs. I am yet to see a workers movement in colonial countries that has secured even a single military victory without entering into these kind of alliances.

I don't know what the practice of Indian left groups is, but I do know that no organization of the working class can seize power from the ruling class "all at once." Doesn't work that way. Maoist organizations don't seize power all at once. The Maoist tactics in colonial countries is that of a protracted people's war. So of course they don't seize power at once. But other leftist tendencies sometimes advocate simultaneous insurrections throughout the country etc.

As for seizing power "all alone," who said it was going to be alone? What has been said is that the seizure must be led by the working class and that an alliance with the bourgeoisie, national or otherwise, is counter to that seizure.

And that last part...about an excuse to strengthen imperialism... that's just the typical slander used against those who oppose alliances with the "national bourgeoisie," that those opponents are secretly aiding the IMF,World Bank, the US... etc. by being opposed.

It's the typical charge raised also by the Perons, the Morales, the Mugabes, the ayatollahs against any and all opponents.Except that it is justified in this case. If in the middle of countless coordinated and spontaneous unarmed as well as armed workers' and peasants' movements, all a self-proclaimed communist group does is maintaining a webpage and publishing a news paper, that too one that omits mentioning the most advanced struggles and takes to accusing the vanguard party not being revolutionary, then it is very easy to deduce whose interests they are serving.

red cat

6th February 2011, 16:55

Wait wait.

Your point is that these countries were not capitalist. How can capitalism be "temporarily overthrown" in non-capitalist countries?

Luís Henrique

Irrelevant point. Russia was capitalist and in the case of China imperialist and comprador capital were overthrown.

LuÃs Henrique

6th February 2011, 17:16

Irrelevant point. Russia was capitalist and in the case of China imperialist and comprador capital were overthrown.

Russia was capitalist? With a classic feudal absolutist State on top of it? While India is feudal... with a modern bourgeois "democracy" on top?

If Russia was capitalist... why would Lenin insist that the first tasks of the revolution were democratic tasks, instead of socialist ones? Why would "State capitalism" be a progress there?

Luís Henrique

red cat

6th February 2011, 17:54

Russia was capitalist? With a classic feudal absolutist State on top of it? While India is feudal... with a modern bourgeois "democracy" on top?

The Indian system is not a bourgeois democracy. It did not undergo any qualitative change since the colonial times, and despite what it claims, most Indians cannot exercise their right to vote in practice.

During the November revolution Russia did not have a feudal absolutist state. The bourgeoisie had done away with it.

If Russia was capitalist... why would Lenin insist that the first tasks of the revolution were democratic tasks, instead of socialist ones? Why would "State capitalism" be a progress there?

Luís Henrique

Because state capitalism was made to serve the interests of the working class.

S.Artesian

6th February 2011, 22:52

An almost stagnant feudal culture is impossible in a place where allegedly capitalist relations of production were introduced by the imperialists centuries ago. Let alone the rural society, these feudal practices are very much followed even by the urban working class of India.

You need to look a little bit deeper. Remnants of feudal culture persisted in Europe through the 19th and 20th centuries. Whatever cultural practices the working class and the bourgeoisie may practice or not, what is practiced between them is capitalism, the organization of labor as wage-labor for the production and accumulation of value.

So the "uneven development" that you talk about is actually a combination of feudal culture and politics enabling commodity production by imperialist capital.

The uneven and combined development that actually exists in India, and elsewhere, is usually marked by backward relations, and lower technical development, of rural production coincident with the practice of the most capitalist methods of accumulation in industry and services.

Imperialist capital is hardly the only capital present in India, hardly the only capital producing commodities, and hardly the only capital exchanging itself with wage-labor.

Compare Russia or Spain with any colony of those days. I doubt if any contemporary colony came near to them in terms of development.

Quite clearly we can compare Russia, Portugal, Spain, to China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and find points of deep convergence and equally deep divergence. The variations however as with the different configurations of advanced capitalism, are all variations on a theme-- that theme being uneven and combined development.

The fact that the overhang of feudal culture in the Indian countryside is more brutal than that overhang in Spain in the 1930s does not mean the overhang in Spain was not brutal.

It is a result from Leninism, but this was to show that there are some natural contradictions between feudalism-imperialism-comprador capitalism and the national bourgeoisie.

There are always conflicts among the bourgeoisie, among the local agents and the global owners. Capitalists in all iterations are "hostile brothers" as Marx described them, fighting for a portion of the available social surplus. That does not make such conflicts determinants of the system, grounding of the system, or the negation of the system, which negation is, you will remember from your study of Hegel and dialectics, the same thing as the determinant.

The national bourgeoisie participated and in many cases stepped into the forefront of the mass movements against operation green hunt. This resulted in widespread popularity of these movements and resulted in protests against the government even from regions not under Maoist influence. The government backed off a little due to this.

And the national bourgeoisie did this in conscious, articulated, alliance with the Maoist groups? Or did it do so out of "humanitarian concerns," notions of "justice" and "equity"?

Tactical alliances have to be made according to needs. I am yet to see a workers movement in colonial countries that has secured even a single military victory without entering into these kind of alliances.

And the result of those military victories? Has it been the industrialization of the country without the invitation to foreign, international capital to take advantage of low wages, special enterprise zones, suspension of the labor codes?

The Maoist tactics in colonial countries is that of a protracted people's war. So of course they don't seize power at once. But other leftist tendencies sometimes advocate simultaneous insurrections throughout the country etc

So what?

Except that it is justified in this case. If in the middle of countless coordinated and spontaneous unarmed as well as armed workers' and peasants' movements, all a self-proclaimed communist group does is maintaining a webpage and publishing a news paper, that too one that omits mentioning the most advanced struggles and takes to accusing the vanguard party not being revolutionary, then it is very easy to deduce whose interests they are serving.

No, it's not justified. It's never justified to accuse a group or organization of aiding imperialism unless that group or organization consciously aids imperialism. Identifying a group or organization as an agent of imperialism is marking that group for assault and death. That's what it means. That is how it has been used in the past.

But since aiding imperialism is being brought up.... how can any Maoist make that charge against so-called "ultra-lefts" when China itself so aided imperialism in Africa, allying with the US and the Union of South Africa behind UNITA and Savimbi in Angola?

S.Artesian

6th February 2011, 22:59

During the November revolution Russia did not have a feudal absolutist state. The bourgeoisie had done away with it.

WRONG. The workers, rural poor, soldiers and sailors did away with the feudal absolute state in their March revolution. The bourgeoisie did away with nothing but simply try to recuperate the power that had fallen away. That's the point you don't understand. The bourgeoisie did nothing to overthrow the feudal absolute state, other than create the conditions for the accumulation of capital, the uneven and combined development. But politically, the bourgeoisie overthrew nothing and were incapable of establishing a power independent to, and in opposition to, the relations of land and landed labor.

Because state capitalism was made to serve the interests of the working class.

Here's a shocker: Lenin was wrong. There is no such thing as "state capitalism" made to "serve the interests of the working class." That's a nonsensical, anti-materialist formulation.

Jose Gracchus

7th February 2011, 00:05

Every leftist group in India that does not identify with the ML line fits into this category.

Got to love axioms like this. Wonderful to bear in mind as one contemplates the sorry state of the 21st century left.

S.Artesian

7th February 2011, 00:43

People's War and Focoism are tactics employed by the petit-bourgeoisie. You oppose them because they are such, when it fact they can be the spark to set the prairie fire of working-class political consciousness and genuine class consciousness stemming from that.

"One DNZ" is not enough. The proletariat may be the only class capable of performing the latter two, but other classes can seize political power and socialize capital. In the Third World, this and the proletarian demographic minority means Caesarean Socialism.

OK, it isn't inappropriate. You are a pinhead. You ask what problem do I have with the tactic of armed struggle. I answer that I don't and challenge you to show where I have renounced the tactic of armed struggle, and you produce the above about people's war and focoism as tactics employed by the petit-bourgeoisie.

Well, yeah, focoism is most definitely a tactic of the petit-bourgeoisie-- and we can discuss people's war separately, but guess what? Those two do not exhaust the manifestations of armed struggle.

My problem isn't with armed struggle as a tactic-- workers militias protecting demonstrations from assaults, blocking strikebreakers is a tactic of armed struggle. In your examples, the problems are with the class, and the politics guiding the tactic.

And oh yeah, love your retread of the old Debrayist-Weatherman bullshit about sparks and prairie fires.

Yeah, yeah, the other classes can seize power and socialize capital-- and tell me DNZ, where has that occurred since the demise of the USSR? Or perhaps the actual concrete elements of such historical acts don't matter?

As a matter of fact, where has that occurred since 1975?

Not to put too fine a point on it.

Die Neue Zeit

7th February 2011, 02:26

Well, yeah, focoism is most definitely a tactic of the petit-bourgeoisie-- and we can discuss people's war separately, but guess what? Those two do not exhaust the manifestations of armed struggle.

Don't forget Breakthrough Military Coups.

My problem isn't with armed struggle as a tactic-- workers militias protecting demonstrations from assaults, blocking strikebreakers is a tactic of armed struggle.

I have no problem with those defensive tactics.

And oh yeah, love your retread of the old Debrayist-Weatherman bullshit about sparks and prairie fires.

I'm pretty sure Mao said that and not the Weathermen.

Yeah, yeah, the other classes can seize power and socialize capital-- and tell me DNZ, where has that occurred since the demise of the USSR? Or perhaps the actual concrete elements of such historical acts don't matter?

As a matter of fact, where has that occurred since 1975?

Not to put too fine a point on it.

The political consciousness of the petit-bourgeoisie has receded, but that of the proletariat has receded even further. The "democratic theory" authors who don't like liberal democracy, who are into participatory democracy, etc. have more political consciousness than some average Joe who's working multiple jobs to earn a living and doesn't have the time to vote even infrequently.

S.Artesian

7th February 2011, 03:36

The political consciousness of the petit-bourgeoisie has receded, but that of the proletariat has receded even further. The "democratic theory" authors who don't like liberal democracy, who are into participatory democracy, etc. have more political consciousness than some average Joe who's working multiple jobs to earn a living and doesn't have the time to vote even infrequently.

Priceless. In the face of mass strikes in Spain, a general strike in France, continuing action by dockworkers in France, struggle in the streets of Greece, workers strikes in China, protest actions in Vietnam, eruptions led by the unemployed youth of Egypt, actions by working class students in California, London, strikes by workers in South Africa, mass actions by textile workers in Bangladesh.....

our Kautskyite talks about how much the consciousness has receded of the "average Joe."

You cannot make this stuff up.

Meet the new Kautsky, same as the old Kautsky, upholding the revolutionary potential of the.... petit-bourgeoisie. Can there be a more concise definition of opportunism and obsolescence all wrapped in one?

For everything else, there's Mastercard.

Die Neue Zeit

7th February 2011, 04:51

Political consciousness does not grow from mere labour disputes. There are two merger formulas, between some revolutionary socialism and the worker-class movement, and between some radical democratic theory and that same movement.

Priceless.

[...]

Meet the new Kautsky, same as the old Kautsky, upholding the [politically if not socially] revolutionary potential of the.... petit-bourgeoisie. Can there be a more concise definition of opportunism and obsolescence all wrapped in one?

For everything else, there's Mastercard.

Amusing.

S.Artesian

7th February 2011, 05:06

Political consciousness does not grow from mere labour disputes. There are two merger formulas, between some revolutionary socialism and the worker-class movement, and between some radical democratic theory and that same movement.

So you think the struggles in Europe, Africa and Asia are "mere labor disputes"? And what, the protests, demonstrations, battles, strikes are just collective-bargaining tactics?

Class-consciousness grows exactly from those class wide disputes with the ruling class.

red cat

7th February 2011, 06:28

Got to love axioms like this. Wonderful to bear in mind as one contemplates the sorry state of the 21st century left.

It's not an axiom. Try to find out any non-ML group in India which is organizing workers and making even small achievements.

The state of the revolutionary left is not as sorry as you think. Maoists, other MLs, anarchists etc. are advancing militant class struggle in many parts of the world, with the working class already in control of the means of production in some cases. To advance in the path of communism, the portion of the left that is not taking part in class struggle but propagandizing in favour of the ruling classes, has to be identified and isolated.

Die Neue Zeit

7th February 2011, 06:29

So you think the struggles in Europe, Africa and Asia are "mere labor disputes"? And what, the protests, demonstrations, battles, strikes are just collective-bargaining tactics?

Class-consciousness grows exactly from those class wide disputes with the ruling class.

BTW, the anti-austerity strike action is something called a "political strike." It is a case of political issues spilling over into strike action. It's quite different from growing political consciousness (and later on genuine class consciousness) from mere labour disputes.

It's just that there's not enough "democratic theory" discussion in these political strikes, one of the key ingredients to genuine class consciousness. :(

red cat

7th February 2011, 06:35

WRONG. The workers, rural poor, soldiers and sailors did away with the feudal absolute state in their March revolution. The bourgeoisie did away with nothing but simply try to recuperate the power that had fallen away. That's the point you don't understand. The bourgeoisie did nothing to overthrow the feudal absolute state, other than create the conditions for the accumulation of capital, the uneven and combined development. But politically, the bourgeoisie overthrew nothing and were incapable of establishing a power independent to, and in opposition to, the relations of land and landed labor.

Lenin himself identified the March revolution as a bourgeois one. In general the bourgeoisie might use the proletariat and peasantry to overthrow feudalism. The class leadership of the March revolution was certainly not provided by the proletariat.

Here's a shocker: Lenin was wrong. There is no such thing as "state capitalism" made to "serve the interests of the working class." That's a nonsensical, anti-materialist formulation.

Okay, first let's see a revolution overthrowing any state and maintaining itself for sometime, that does not take to implementing state capitalism even partially at any stage. That is necessary to prove Lenin wrong.

red cat

7th February 2011, 07:09

You need to look a little bit deeper. Remnants of feudal culture persisted in Europe through the 19th and 20th centuries. Whatever cultural practices the working class and the bourgeoisie may practice or not, what is practiced between them is capitalism, the organization of labor as wage-labor for the production and accumulation of value.

To what extent were these present in Europe in the 19th and 20th century ? Was there a strong caste system which systematically involved in genocides and enslavement of lower caste people ? Did they kill enough female infants to bring the sex ratio down to a ninety-something percent ?

The uneven and combined development that actually exists in India, and elsewhere, is usually marked by backward relations, and lower technical development, of rural production coincident with the practice of the most capitalist methods of accumulation in industry and services. These relations are backward enough to be considered as feudal ones used for commodity production.

Imperialist capital is hardly the only capital present in India, hardly the only capital producing commodities, and hardly the only capital exchanging itself with wage-labor.
The big capital with native ownership is the comprador capital, but it is still too small compared to imperialist capital, and is tied with imperialism for its own survival.

Quite clearly we can compare Russia, Portugal, Spain, to China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and find points of deep convergence and equally deep divergence. The variations however as with the different configurations of advanced capitalism, are all variations on a theme-- that theme being uneven and combined development. But the points of divergence will outweigh those of convergence by far. It is not a mere coincidence that this happens every time we compare a colony with an imperialist country.

The fact that the overhang of feudal culture in the Indian countryside is more brutal than that overhang in Spain in the 1930s does not mean the overhang in Spain was not brutal.It was brutal indeed. But not nearly as brutal as in India.

There are always conflicts among the bourgeoisie, among the local agents and the global owners. Capitalists in all iterations are "hostile brothers" as Marx described them, fighting for a portion of the available social surplus. That does not make such conflicts determinants of the system, grounding of the system, or the negation of the system, which negation is, you will remember from your study of Hegel and dialectics, the same thing as the determinant. This conflict is different in a colony from a conflict between groups of national bourgeoisie of a capitalist country competing among themselves. In the colonies the national bourgeoisie owns very little capital and exists in the form of small businessmen and their allied classes. The overall contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and imperialist capitalism is so huge that the national bourgeoisie often itself engages in armed struggle against imperialism.

And the national bourgeoisie did this in conscious, articulated, alliance with the Maoist groups? Or did it do so out of "humanitarian concerns," notions of "justice" and "equity"?Portions of the national bourgeoisie visited red areas and interacted with the mass movements and allegedly, Maoists. Some came in open support of the movements saying that imperialism and big capitalism must be stopped at all costs. Of course, the notions of "justice" etc were used, but those are common in open mass movements in white areas of fascist or semi-fascist states like India.

And the result of those military victories? Has it been the industrialization of the country without the invitation to foreign, international capital to take advantage of low wages, special enterprise zones, suspension of the labor codes?Socialism has been defeated in most places, but some of those military victories are continuing and even leading the working class to seize and maintain control over the means of production.

So what?Nothing much. Just mentioned that some leftist groups advocate absurd military techniques.

No, it's not justified. It's never justified to accuse a group or organization of aiding imperialism unless that group or organization consciously aids imperialism. Identifying a group or organization as an agent of imperialism is marking that group for assault and death. That's what it means. That is how it has been used in the past. But exactly what leads these groups to take no part in class struggle and instead identify the militant workers as the "left wing of capital" ? Maoist movements are noted for having struggles launched directly by the working class from below. When the workers seize power they will probably remember all these treacheries and deal with the slanderers accordingly.

But since aiding imperialism is being brought up.... how can any Maoist make that charge against so-called "ultra-lefts" when China itself so aided imperialism in Africa, allying with the US and the Union of South Africa behind UNITA and Savimbi in Angola?China in the Mao-era supported the liberation struggle in Angola by UNITA, which went on till 1975. During this time, UNITA was allied with other groups. But after 1975, the MPLA allied with exactly the global bloc which visibly supported the brutal repression of the revolutionary war in India. So I don't see how China's tactical alliance with the bloc that opposed it was not directed to weaken the main enemies of the Indian revolutionary movement at least.

S.Artesian

7th February 2011, 15:54

At this point, I think further discussion is pointless. I say uneven and combined development varies from country to country and era to era and you say the variations are so great that it cannot be considered uneven and combined development.

You say the uneven and combined development occurs only in colonies, and I point out that such development has not been confined to colonies, or at least not confined to those countries colonized by advanced capitalism, and you say the differences are so great that it can't be considered uneven and combined development.

I point out that brutality is not and has not been restricted to less developed countries, you say the difference is so great as to qualitatively distinguish modes of production, without however ever coming to grips with the variation within the mode of production in India.

You argue that alliance with the national bourgeoisie is "necessary" tactically and as a matter of program in order to provide for industrialization, and I argue that nowhere has an alliance with the national bourgeoisie by the proletariat or rural power led to such industrialization without restoring the very foreign capital considered so antithetical to industrial development.

Certainly we could keep this up, but going around in a circle doesn't really count as development in my book.

So... if there's something else you think can be clarified, go right ahead. But there's no point to this...in this thread. I have no doubt we'll revisit this issue in subsequent threads, with similar results.

S.Artesian

7th February 2011, 16:11

Lenin himself identified the March revolution as a bourgeois one. In general the bourgeoisie might use the proletariat and peasantry to overthrow feudalism. The class leadership of the March revolution was certainly not provided by the proletariat.

What independent organs, independent of the Czarist state and the workers and rural poor did the bourgeoisie create and sustain to lead this revolution?

What independent power did the bourgeoisie exert in transforming the economy?

What expressions of the power of the bourgeoisie as a class were independent of the pre-existing organs of the Czarist state?

What bodies of armed men, i.e. the state, were independently organized by the bourgeoisie in opposition to the armed bodies of the Czarist regime?

The answers are: none, none, none, none.

The "bourgeois revolution" was not a revolution at all. It changed nothing in either the economic organization or in the organization of the administration of the state.

The collapse of the Czar's state was the product of the economic contradictions exacerbated by the impact and demands of the war. The class power that was in motion was the power of the proletariat and the rural poor. In them is the location of new organs of power, the seeds of a different state, and the locus of attempts to reorganized the economy and maintain relations between city and countryside.

The class leadership of the March revolution was most definitely provided by the proletariat and the rural poor just as it was in 1905. That the bourgeoisie rode atop that revolutionary wave, and temporarily achieved a superficial, unstable, and transient "authority" lasting 7 months hardly means the bourgeoisie changed any single determining element of the pre-existing economy and its social relations. As a matter of fact, the bourgeoisie changed nothing and were capable of changing nothing.

To call the March revolution a bourgeois revolution makes sense when and if you grasp that as a bourgeois revolution it was stillborn.

This wasn't the bourgeoisie using the proletariat, the rural poor, the commoners to overthrow the landed aristocracy and/or the monarchy. There's no Cromwell among this bourgeoisie, no New Model Army. There's no Saint-Just, Couthon, Robespierre, Desmoulins. Hell, there isn't even a Danton. There's nothing but those seeking to maintain the ancien regime with perhaps some "democratic" concessions that will make it possible for Russia to continue its role in WW1, continue its organization of landed property, its mode of production

Sinister Cultural Marxist

8th February 2011, 05:43

t.shonku

8th February 2011, 11:48

Well, that settles it. If Arundhati Roy says it, it must be true. Let me retract everything I've said and produce a new analysis, ignoring the actually economy of India based on what Ms. Roy says.

Try and keep that in mind when Ms. Roy endorses this or that "progressive" bourgeois politician.

One question though... what is the basis for corporatism? What was its basis in Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Germany, etc?

Actually Indian version of Corporatism is very different than in west. In India all the corporate tycoons came from powerful merchant family like Tata,Birla,Jindal etc etc were all traditional business family, where as in west industrialists were basically inventors at first for ex- Mr Isaac Merritt Singer founder of Singer Sewing Machine Company , Mr John Browning the famous firearms inventor etc etc. But in India you simply can’t do that , for example the banks simply won’t lend you money if you don’t belong to a powerful family, the administration won’t give you a permit if you are not well connected .

RED DAVE

8th February 2011, 15:00

S Artesian; in addition to major businesses in India, you have a host of landowner, caste, and religious organization that hold power far greater than in many traditional bourgeoise states.This is true, but when it comes to the root, the form of economic transactions, we are still dealing with production, agricultural, manufacture, etc., for the market. This is the root of capitalism. Capitalism can flourish in the modern world under almost all conditions, but it is still capitalism.

A lot of it depends on the geographical area. Sure, in Mumbai, you have major accumulated capital. But in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, you have a fairly minimal amount of private capital mixed with a large number of rural, deeply religious farmers who are following the same social codes and rules they have for millennia. It goes beyond "uneven development"; capitalism never pierced very deep into much of India.If they are producing for the market, regardless of their codes and rules, we are dealing with capitalism. Saris woven in some of the most traditional areas of India end up sold on Lexington Avenue in New York City.

RED DAVE

S.Artesian

8th February 2011, 16:01

S Artesian; in addition to major businesses in India, you have a host of landowner, caste, and religious organization that hold power far greater than in many traditional bourgeoise states.

A lot of it depends on the geographical area. Sure, in Mumbai, you have major accumulated capital. But in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, you have a fairly minimal amount of private capital mixed with a large number of rural, deeply religious farmers who are following the same social codes and rules they have for millennia. It goes beyond "uneven development"; capitalism never pierced very deep into much of India.

That's called uneven and combined development. Landowners do not make an economy "feudal" or "semi-feudal." Religious organizations do not make an economy "feudal" or "semi-feudal." Caste relations do not make an economy "feudal" or "semi-feudal."

Uneven and combined development means that backward relations in landed and landed labor are co-joined with the advanced relations of industrial production; that those backward relations are integrated into the international "format" of capitalist reproduction through the world markets either directly as in the hacienda and/or plantation, or indirectly through production for the urban centers. Uneven and combined development means that a national bourgeoisie, where it exists, is incapable of overturning the "backward" relations of landed labor; are incapable of developing an independent, "modern" capitalism.

S.Artesian

8th February 2011, 16:11

Actually Indian version of Corporatism is very different than in west. In India all the corporate tycoons came from powerful merchant family like Tata,Birla,Jindal etc etc were all traditional business family, where as in west industrialists were basically inventors at first for ex- Mr Isaac Merritt Singer founder of Singer Sewing Machine Company , Mr John Browning the famous firearms inventor etc etc. But in India you simply can’t do that , for example the banks simply won’t lend you money if you don’t belong to a powerful family, the administration won’t give you a permit if you are not well connected .

No, in the "West" capitalists were not initially inventors. Please investigate these things before you spout off. Capitalism in the US was well-established well before Mr. Singer and his sewing machine, and in fact utilized the division of labor and the increased proportion of labor power in production to accrue value prior to the 1850s.

None of the big railroad capitalists were "inventors" of the railroad, of steam locomotives. Keerist, they couldn't even agree on a standard gage [distance between rails], so maybe you could argue that each invented their own little rail fiefdom, but that doesn't exactly make them industrialist-inventors.

In England, the original capitalists existed prior to the industrial revolution, and were merchant-capitalists and capitalist tenant-farmers. Even during and after the industrial revolution, the "inventor as capitalist" is more myth than reality.

And finally "corporatism" does not usually refer to capitalist corporations, or capitalism in general, but rather a specific manifestation of capitalism where the capitalist state attempts, and even achieves, the complete domination of culture, labor, education, etc. by suppressing any independent expression of these relations and compelling an integration, an "incorporation" of culture, labor, education etc within state organized and approved structures.

t.shonku

9th February 2011, 06:16

No, in the "West" capitalists were not initially inventors. Please investigate these things before you spout off

I never said that all of them (western industrialists) were inventors but what I said was there are a lot of such examples

How can you forget the fact that industrialists like Mr Edison, Sherman Fairchild and Alexander Graham Bell were all inventors.

t.shonku

9th February 2011, 06:22

Sinister Cultural Marxist

9th February 2011, 07:32

But even in Mumbai you will find a lot of poor people , have you seen the number of slums in Mumbai? In Mumbai there are mainly two types of people either very rich or dirt poor.In Mumbai the poor people who lives in the slums are the actual workforce behind Mumbai's industrial growth.You see even a megacity like Mumbai is built on blood and sweat of poor people, it's all about exploitation man!

No, but I'd consider the poor in Mumbai a part of the Capitalist economy. I don't know if you can say that about the poor in Bihar.

S Artesian and Red Dave-
I get the idea of uneven development. But it presupposes the unitary nature of a national economy. In India, a lot of these rural areas aren't haciendas or plantations where private rural property gets used as capital, but in India it seems that many of these local rural economies are still somewhat or largely removed from trade and the market economies in general. I think thats why you have so much internal migration in India; there is an expansion of labour demand, but only in certain areas like Mumbai.

i think India may still be building a capitalist economy, but I don't think it's finished integrating all of the national areas into it, either through trade or proper legal structures.

t.shonku

9th February 2011, 10:35

No, but I'd consider the poor in Mumbai a part of the Capitalist economy. I don't know if you can say that about the poor in Bihar.

So you are basically trying to say that factory workers living in urban areas are not proletariat !

I personally think proletariats living in both rural and urban areas must unite if they want to succeed .

Cmon, even in rural areas they have their own brand of exploitation ! what about wealthy land owners who exploit the poor peasants ? What about forced marriage ? What about caste based tensions ? In rural areas too exist a class based system .

red cat

9th February 2011, 12:11

RED DAVE

9th February 2011, 12:35

I would like to draw your attention to the point that even the urban working class is largely bound by feudal culture. A vast majority of them come from lower castes. Recall, for example, what happens if a worker's son enters an engineering college as a student.No one questions the existence of feudal culture, feudal remnants Marx called them. In the USA right into the 1960s, and even after, admission to college was restricted or semi-restricted to certain ethnic groups, castes, etc. In fact there are elements of it still in place today ("legacy" programs).

None of these vitiates the existence of capitalism. What they are are instances of combined and uneven development. Culture doesn't make capitalism; capitalism makes culture out of whatever elements it finds present and uses them for its own purposes.

RED DAVE

red cat

9th February 2011, 13:05

No one questions the existence of feudal culture, feudal remnants Marx called them. In the USA right into the 1960s, and even after, admission to college was restricted or semi-restricted to certain ethnic groups, castes, etc. In fact there are elements of it still in place today ("legacy" programs).

I didn't know that any castes existed in the USA in the 1960s. Please give some details regarding this and how it is comparable to the Indian situation.

None of these vitiates the existence of capitalism. What they are are instances of combined and uneven development. Culture doesn't make capitalism; capitalism makes culture out of whatever elements it finds present and uses them for its own purposes.

RED DAVEA feudal culture cannot co-exist with capitalism for long time. The culture of India itself indicates what kind of economy it follows. This decides some very important strategies of the revolution, which would not be applicable in a capitalist country.

RED DAVE

9th February 2011, 15:00

I didn't know that any castes existed in the USA in the 1960s. Please give some details regarding this and how it is comparable to the Indian situation.What I was describing was remnants. A caste system existed in the American South into the 1950s, in which Black people bore the burden of caste, based on race, in addition to the burden of race itself. The was weakened but not eliminated subsequently. But, even during the period of slavery, the economic system of both the North and the South of the USA was capitalism. Marx, studying the US Civil War, never described the South as not capitalist.

A feudal culture cannot co-exist with capitalism for long time.One more time, get this word "culture" out of your head. The relationship between culture and the underlying economic system, between superstructure and substructure is complex and dialectical. But, as Marxists, we always look to the substructure, which in India is capitalist.

The culture of India itself indicates what kind of economy it follows.Now you are showing us that you don't understand Marxism.

This decides some very important strategies of the revolution, which would not be applicable in a capitalist country.You have no consept of the relationship of substructure and superstructure. A very backward superstructure can exist on a much more modern substructure. This is the essence of combined and uneven development, which neither Maoism nor Stalinism has ever understood.

RED DAVE

red cat

9th February 2011, 15:48

What I was describing was remnants. A caste system existed in the American South into the 1950s, in which Black people bore the burden of caste, based on race, in addition to the burden of race itself. The was weakened but not eliminated subsequently. But, even during the period of slavery, the economic system of both the North and the South of the USA was capitalism. Marx, studying the US Civil War, never described the South as not capitalist.

What you are calling the American caste system is not comparable to the Indian situation. Also, in India it became stronger during the direct colonial period and remains that way in rural and some urban areas untouched by the people's war.

One more time, get this word "culture" out of your head. The relationship between culture and the underlying economic system, between superstructure and substructure is complex and dialectical. But, as Marxists, we always look to the substructure, which in India is capitalist.

As I said earlier, substructure and superstructure cannot differ from each other much. So sometimes looking at the culture gives an insight to the economy and vice versa.

Now you are showing us that you don't understand Marxism.

You have no consept of the relationship of substructure and superstructure. A very backward superstructure can exist on a much more modern substructure. This is the essence of combined and uneven development, which neither Maoism nor Stalinism has ever understood.

RED DAVE

So far it is you who has failed to show what you call capitalism, qualitatively differs from its preceding modes of production. Moreover, if India is capitalist, then why are the corresponding methods of class struggle not being implemented by Indian Trotskyites ?

t.shonku

9th February 2011, 15:49

@ Shiva Trishula Dialectics & T Shonku :

I would like to draw your attention to the point that even the urban working class is largely bound by feudal culture. A vast majority of them come from lower castes. Recall, for example, what happens if a worker's son enters an engineering college as a student.

I agree with you completely !

Even urban India is plagued by feudalism. In past there has been a lot of caste based tensions in urban educational institutions and the feudal system should be blamed for it.

CASTE IN CAMPUS
DALITS NOT WELCOME IN IIT MADRAS
There are only a handful of Dalit students and faculty members at the elite institute, but they face widespread discrimination and harassment
PC Vinoj Kumar
Chennai
All the noise against extending reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in centrally-funded institutions might be a little irrelevant given that an institute like IIT Madras has parted with only a fraction of the 22.5 percent quota for students belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs). According to information provided by the institute’s deputy registrar, Dr K. Panchalan, in September 2005, Dalits accounted for only 11.9 percent of the number of students. They were even fewer in the higher courses — 2.3 percent in ms (Research) and 5.8 percent in Ph.D. Out of a total of 4,687 students, Dalits made up only 559.
Activists who have been fighting for proper implementation of reservations for Dalits describe IIT Madras as a modern day agraharam — a Brahmin enclave. Located on a 250 hectare wooded campus in the heart of the city, the majority of the 460 faculty members and students here are Brahmins. According to WB Vasantha Kandasamy, assistant professor in the Mathematics department, there are just four Dalits among the institute’s entire faculty, a meagre 0.86 percent of the total faculty strength. There are about 50 OBC faculty members, and the rest belong to the upper castes, she says.
Vasantha says Dalit Ph.D scholars are routinely harassed. “They are forced to change their topic of research midway. They are unduly delayed, and are failed in examinations and vivas. It is a stressful atmosphere for them.” She says her support of Dalit students got her into the bad books of the management. (See Box)
There have been many agitations against the management in the past over not filling the Dalit quota and the alleged harassment of Dalit students. Activists say there were even fewer Dalit students and faculty members in the institute some years ago, and it was only because of efforts by parties like Paatali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal (VC) and Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam (PDK) that the situation improved. In 1996, K. Viswanath, general secretary of the IIT SC/ST Employees Welfare Association, remarked in a letter to the institute’s director that the institute was yet to have a professor from the SC/ST community even after 37 years of its existence. There were only two Dalits of the rank of assistant professor and there was just one Dalit scientific officer, he noted.
n 2000, the PDK published a book based on a study it did on the anti-Dalit attitude in the institute. The study noted that there were several departments at the institute where even after 41 years, “not a single Dalit student has been selected for doing Ph.D or has successfully completed his degree”. The study also stated that, “almost all M.Tech and ms Students in IIT were Brahmins.” The PDK is now demanding that the institute come out with a white paper providing details of the total number of Dalit students who have completed postgraduate and doctoral programmes. “The National Commission for SC/ST should closely monitor if reservation policy for Dalits is being strictly followed in student admissions,” says Viduthalai Rajendran, PDK general secretary.
The PDK is not alone in levelling such charges. Retired ias officer V. Karuppan, who is state convener of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), recalls that in 2005 a “meritorious” Dalit student was denied admission to the Ph.D course in the Mathematics department. “They didn’t call him for an interview initially. But he was asked to appear for the interview after we argued his case with the authorities. But in the interview, they asked him irrelevant questions and failed him,” he says.
There have been many complaints of discrimination against Dalit students in the campus. The PDK study cites the case of a Dalit student Sujee Teppal, who had scored 94 percent in Maths, Physics, and Chemistry in the public intermediate exam. Sujee had also secured admission in bits, Ranchi and bits, Pilani but chose to attend IIT Madras, where in spite of her meritorious track record she was made to join the mandatory one-year “preparatory course” for Dalit students. According to the PDK study, “at the end of the course in which she only re-learnt her 12th standard syllabus, she was declared failed.” The institute refused to reverse its decision in spite of the intervention of the National Commission for SC/ST and the then state SC/ST minister Selvaraj in her favour.
Another serious charge against the institute is that successive directors have flouted rules in appointing faculty members, and do not advertise vacancies in newspapers. Former Congress MP Era Anbarasu has brought the issue to the notice of Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh in several letters. In the memorandum submitted to the minister on September 2, 2006, he states: “The ambiguity is apparent because even the number of vacancies is not announced. In order to broaden this arbitrariness, applications to the entry level position of assistant professor are invited for all the 15 departments at the same time. Norms and guidelines for selection are wilfully abandoned by the respective departments.”
Anbarasu wants a high-level committee to probe irregularities in appointments and the violation of reservation policies by the IIT management. He has levelled charges against director MS Ananth, whom he calls a “highly casteist man”. He says that disregarding all norms, Ananth has mostly chosen faculty members from his own community of Iyengar Brahmins. Of the six deans in the institute, four are from the Iyengar community.
In his memorandum to Singh, Anbarasu has demanded that the present director be replaced with someone from the OBC/SC/ST community as the institute has had only Brahmins as directors so far. “I met the minister (Arjun Singh) three or four times and discussed with him these issues. He promised to order a probe, but nothing has happened till now,” he says.
A PIL filed by Karuppan last year against the allegedly flawed selection process in IIT Madras was dismissed by the High Court. Karuppan has now filed a review petition. He also met the IIT director along with a senior leader of the CPI to discuss the reservation issue, and says the director told him that no policy of reservation for SC/ST was applicable to IIT Madras. Karuppan says there are several cases pending in courts against the institute’s selection and reservation policy. They include writ petitions by the IIT Backward Classes Employees Welfare Association, and the Vanniar Mahasangam.
An angry Thol Thirumavalavan, general secretary of the Dalit Panthers of India, says, “Dalits are only working as sweepers and scavengers in the institute”. He wants the IIT management to release a white paper containing details of appointments and admissions given to Dalits and OBCs. “The Tamil Nadu government should demand this information from the institute,” he says.
When Tehelka tried to meet IIT Director MS Ananth to get his views on the allegations against him and the institute, his secretary wanted this correspondent to send a mail stating the purpose for the interview. In the mail to the director, it was stated that the interview was needed “on the issue of SC/ST reservation policy in IIT, Madras.” His reaction on Anbarasu’s memorandum to the Union hrd minister levelling charges of corruption against him was also sought. However, his secretary said the director was not available for comments.

Original Link to this article

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main31.asp?filename=Ne160607Dalits_not.asp

'Why so much discrimination at AIIMS'

Press Trust of India

Posted: Oct 18, 2006 at 1507 hrs IST

With the High Court order staying any action against Director P Venugopal weighing heavily, the AIIMS Institute body on Wednesday demanded an explanation from him over complaints of discrimination of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) students and irregularities in management.
The meeting was marred by a walkout by BJP MP and member VK Malhotra who said the meeting was "illegal, improper, and unconstitutional".
"All the members met this morning and discussed about the functioning and state of affairs in AIIMS. The members showed concern about happenings in the institute and unanimously decided to seek reply from the AIIMS administration on all these issues," Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss told reporters in New Delhi after chairing the institute body meeting, which was attended by 14 of the 17 members.
The administration has been asked to give a reply in two weeks time, Ramadoss said.
On being asked whether the sacking of Venugopal was on the agenda, the minister retorted back by saying "were you there in the meeting?"
He said the AIIMS authorities has been asked to explain complaints of discrimination against SC/ST students in the campus, financial irregularities, administrative inefficiency and indiscipline.
file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/abc/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.gif

Original Link to this article

http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=75756

For people who don't know IIT is India's premier institute for studying Engineering and AIIMS is India's premier Medical College

RED DAVE

9th February 2011, 15:59

So far it is you who has failed to show what you call capitalism, qualitatively differs from its preceding modes of production.You understand nothing. When the predominant mode of production of a country is production for the market, it is capitalist. This is clearly the case in India.

We can go round and round, but, at root, what you are trying to do is justify the strategy of the Naxalites, who are trying to move towards socialism through a rural revolution. We know, from China, what this will lead to: state and private capitalism.

RED DAVE

red cat

9th February 2011, 16:02

I agree with you completely !

Even urban India is plagued by feudalism. In past there has been a lot of caste based tensions in urban educational institutions and the feudal system should be blamed for it.

For people who don't know IIT is India's premier institute for studying Engineering and AIIMS is India's premier Medical College

Thanks for quoting the reports. Besides discrimination by the authorities, these students are selectively chosen for ragging, so that they have to quit their courses midway and often opt for some much humbler profession.

This is the condition of the lower caste people who have somehow attained the economic condition good enough to allow their children to complete school. For the working class the situation is worse. Apart from those that directly affiliate to parliamentary parties, there are very few passive rallies etc. whose members are not jailed, beaten or even shot. The feudal culture serves as a weapon for the rulers which will not allow the working class to organize in any method common in capitalist countries. The recent increase in working class movements is due to the weakening of the state machinery in certain areas due to the people's war and corresponding democratic mass movements.

red cat

9th February 2011, 16:07

You understand nothing. When the predominant mode of production of a country is production for the market, it is capitalist. This is clearly the case in India.

I asked you earlier how it differs qualitatively from the previous modes of production. You haven't answered the question yet. You are just making assertions now.

We can go round and round, but, at root, what you are trying to do is justify the strategy of the Naxalites, who are trying to move towards socialism through a rural revolution. The strategy of the Naxalites have produced concrete gains for the working class, which I have outlined earlier in this thread.

We know, from China, what this will lead to: state and private capitalism.

RED DAVESince you know such a lot you should ask your Indian comrades to go for urban insurrections or at least engage in some form of class struggle that actually helps the working class to gain something. Publishing a worthless newspaper or maintaining a website does nothing for the working class.

S.Artesian

9th February 2011, 17:37

I never said that all of them (western industrialists) were inventors but what I said was there are a lot of such examples

How can you forget the fact that industrialists like Mr Edison, Sherman Fairchild and Alexander Graham Bell were all inventors.

Look at the period of time when Edison, Bell, etc. made their innovations and translated them into value accumulating enterprises. It was well after the US Civil War, during the period known as the "long deflation" when capitalism was transforming itself from what Marx calls the formal domination of labor [i.e the extraction of absolute surplus value] to the real domination of labor [relative surplus value]. This well beyond the "inception" date of US capitalism, by about 80 years.

I did not say that some inventors did not become capitalists. I said that such inventors were not the originators of capitalism in the US or England. Capitalism predates the industrial inventors. Factory capitalism predates the industrial inventors. Capitalism produces some inventions in its need to accumulate value. Invention does not produce capitalism.

You said that the capitalism in the United States was distinguished by the industrialist-inventors a la Singer as opposed to India where old-line merchant families dominate.

Your argument is incorrect. Capitalism in the "West" was not created by inventors; the application of mechanical and scientific invention, and the industrial revolution itself is derived from capitalism. Capitalism is not derived in its origins from a scientific revolution.

S.Artesian

9th February 2011, 17:45

No, but I'd consider the poor in Mumbai a part of the Capitalist economy. I don't know if you can say that about the poor in Bihar.

S Artesian and Red Dave-
I get the idea of uneven development. But it presupposes the unitary nature of a national economy. In India, a lot of these rural areas aren't haciendas or plantations where private rural property gets used as capital, but in India it seems that many of these local rural economies are still somewhat or largely removed from trade and the market economies in general. I think thats why you have so much internal migration in India; there is an expansion of labour demand, but only in certain areas like Mumbai.

i think India may still be building a capitalist economy, but I don't think it's finished integrating all of the national areas into it, either through trade or proper legal structures.

No, it doesn't presupposes the unitary nature of the economy. It recognizes the "unevenness" of the economy-- that there are some places where the local economy exists in isolation, or the economy is practiced on patriarchal, or subsistence, or even near-feudal lines. Such was [and still is the case] in Mexico, in Africa, etc.

What uneven and combined development recognizes is that such unevenness represents the limits to capitalism, even the most advanced capitalism to overcome the limitations imposed upon it by its property form to transform those disparate, varied, and "backward" property relations. And in fact, in critical instances, capitalism will adapt, and adapt itself to, those archaic forms.

Nobody has claimed India has finished integrating all areas of the economy, or regions, into capitalism. In fact the argument of uneven and combined development is that capitalism cannot achieve that complete integration, producing areas of advanced relations while leaving other areas unchanged, or... "half" transformed-- i.e. as occurred throughout Latin American during and after WW2- dispossession and migration of the rural populations to cities without the ability of capitalism to provide employment for the increasingly available potential wage-labor.

Sinister Cultural Marxist

9th February 2011, 18:37

So you are basically trying to say that factory workers living in urban areas are not proletariat !

No.... what I'm saying is that they are proletariat, but a huge portion of India's population is not in the rural areas because there are still feudal relations.

@ Shiva Trishula Dialectics & T Shonku :

I would like to draw your attention to the point that even the urban working class is largely bound by feudal culture. A vast majority of them come from lower castes. Recall, for example, what happens if a worker's son enters an engineering college as a student.

Yes, I don't doubt that. I was merely saying that the urban areas are more capitalist, whereas the rural areas are more feudal in nature. The urban areas have both feudal and capitalist levers, but I think in that case the "bourgeoise" has already come to dominate the power mechanisms.

No, it doesn't presupposes the unitary nature of the economy. It recognizes the "unevenness" of the economy-- that there are some places where the local economy exists in isolation, or the economy is practiced on patriarchal, or subsistence, or even near-feudal lines. Such was [and still is the case] in Mexico, in Africa, etc.

What uneven and combined development recognizes is that such unevenness represents the limits to capitalism, even the most advanced capitalism to overcome the limitations imposed upon it by its property form to transform those disparate, varied, and "backward" property relations. And in fact, in critical instances, capitalism will adapt, and adapt itself to, those archaic forms.

Nobody has claimed India has finished integrating all areas of the economy, or regions, into capitalism. In fact the argument of uneven and combined development is that capitalism cannot achieve that complete integration, producing areas of advanced relations while leaving other areas unchanged, or... "half" transformed-- i.e. as occurred throughout Latin American during and after WW2- dispossession and migration of the rural populations to cities without the ability of capitalism to provide employment for the increasingly available potential wage-labor.

What I'm saying is that it's only just begun integrating into Capitalism. A few big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Goa, or parts of Gujarat maybe. But that's actually a minority of the country. There are hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers bound by landlords where the closest thing to capitalism are usurious rural moneychangers and the occasional project from state-capital. The Maoists, for instance, are often drawn by Adivasi tribesmen who are subsistence forest hunters; there are 84 million in India as an ethnic group. And that's just the forest tribes. Here's the world bank complaining that agriculture in India was still broadly outside of what they think of as free market enough. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_india#Problems) According to the wiki, agriculture accounts for over 50% of the workforce still. That's not counting mines, quarries, temple cities and places where millions more live.

Anyway, its an issue of semantics, you can call it a feudal state with capitalist areas, and some capitalist development, or you could call it an incredibly underdeveloped capitalist state with large number of people existing in a feudal lifestyle.

Hit The North

9th February 2011, 19:02

Anyway, its an issue of semantics, you can call it a feudal state with capitalist areas, and some capitalist development, or you could call it an incredibly underdeveloped capitalist state with large number of people existing in a feudal lifestyle. There's more at stake than mere semantics. It's about a proper understanding of the kind of society you are standing in. Your argument that because the majority of the population live in under-developed rural idiocy this means India is feudal, is the most crude empiricism. The theory of combined and uneven development, is the only approach to understanding the plight of the under-developed world that is consistent with Marxism and takes account of the global nature of capitalist relations. As S.Artesian and Red Dave have demonstrated over again in this thread.

S.Artesian

11th February 2011, 01:19

What I'm saying is that it's only just begun integrating into Capitalism. A few big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Goa, or parts of Gujarat maybe. But that's actually a minority of the country. There are hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers bound by landlords where the closest thing to capitalism are usurious rural moneychangers and the occasional project from state-capital. The Maoists, for instance, are often drawn by Adivasi tribesmen who are subsistence forest hunters; there are 84 million in India as an ethnic group. And that's just the forest tribes. Here's the world bank complaining that agriculture in India was still broadly outside of what they think of as free market enough. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_india#Problems) According to the wiki, agriculture accounts for over 50% of the workforce still. That's not counting mines, quarries, temple cities and places where millions more live.

Anyway, its an issue of semantics, you can call it a feudal state with capitalist areas, and some capitalist development, or you could call it an incredibly underdeveloped capitalist state with large number of people existing in a feudal lifestyle.

This is hardly semantics. We're talking about the accuracy of historical materialist analysis.. and stating that India "has only just begun integrating into capitalism" is about as wildly inaccurate a historical statement one can make, given the fact that India was integrated into world capitalism by force by British imperialism centuries ago.

That usury is still practiced, that subsistence agriculture still is predominant are indexes to uneven and combined development in that these things exist along side chemical factories, textile mills, electronics assembly, power generation facilities were wage-labor determines the mode of production.

This isn't about attaching labels-- as I said its about historical materialist analysis. The whole point of historical materialism is that it identifies the specific class relations that make up the economy. It clarifies which class can, and which classes cannot, overcome the actual limitations and contradictions in social reproduction.

So if you call India "feudal" and argue from that "materialist" analysis that what the class struggle in India requires is an alliance with the bourgeoisie, or some sector of the bourgeoisie; that what is required is a "managed" form of state capitalism-- a "benevolent" or more egalitarian exploitation of wage-labor, you will in the end, as has [I]always been the case wherever and whenever class collaboration with the bourgeoisie has been practiced, wind up restoring the "foreign" capitalism you think maintained the feudal conditions.

t.shonku

11th February 2011, 07:39

t.shonku

11th February 2011, 07:40

Originally Posted by Red Cat
The feudal culture serves as a weapon for the rulers which will not allow the working class to organize in any method common in capitalist countries. The recent increase in working class movements is due to the weakening of the state machinery in certain areas due to the people's war and corresponding democratic mass movements.
The feudal system of India is going to be it's greatest undoing.You are right about the fact that one day people's war will sweep across India today already they are dominating over a large rural area called Dandakaranya and in cities proletariat is getting fed up with the government because of the commercialization of health care and education making it impossible for ordinary people to .......
The rising price rise will also be one major cause for future urban insurrection

red cat

11th February 2011, 13:16

Guys I don’t know if I am right or wrong but I was wondering at the back of my head about drawing an analogy between today’s India and 1920-1930s Japan , when Japan had one of it’s foot firmly in feudal system and was trying to put another of it’s foot into rapid industrialization. Or can we draw an analogy between Tsarist Russia and today’s India , during that time Russia was industrializing while at the same time was following a Tsarist feudal system.
I don’t know I may be wrong but I was just wondering …………….

One big point of difference between the modern histories of India and Russia or Japan is neither of the latter were colonies themselves. Such countries, while having what looks like a very weak monarchy with its powers limited by the national bourgeoisie, undergo natural bourgeois developments and emerge as imperialist powers themselves.

Also, you will notice that the industrialization of those countries was quite different from what is happening in India now. In those countries the industrial growth followed such a path that they were largely self sufficient and overproduced in basic fields. In India, most of the recent industrialization involves inviting more foreign capitalists, destroying the best farm lands of the country in an attempt to ruin its capacity to remain self-sufficient and make it dependent on the first world for food grains, and shutting down smaller industries by using state political and military force. Recall how the government destroyed the native small poultries by culling chickens far beyond the areas that were infected by bird flu, or how political pressure and local lumpen elements are used to shut down small industries in the name of labour movement by the ruling political parties themselves.

S.Artesian

11th February 2011, 13:17

S.Artesian

11th February 2011, 13:24

One big point of difference between the modern histories of India and Russia or Japan is neither of the latter were colonies themselves. Such countries, while having what looks like a very weak monarchy with its powers limited by the national bourgeoisie, undergo natural bourgeois developments and emerge as imperialist powers themselves.

Also, you will notice that the industrialization of those countries was quite different from what is happening in India now. In those countries the industrial growth followed such a path that they were largely self sufficient and overproduced in basic fields. In India, most of the recent industrialization involves inviting more foreign capitalists, destroying the best farm lands of the country in an attempt to ruin its capacity to remain self-sufficient and make it dependent on the first world for food grains, and shutting down smaller industries by using state political and military force. Recall how the government destroyed the native small poultries by culling chickens far beyond the areas that were infected by bird flu, or how political pressure and local lumpen elements are used to shut down small industries in the name of labour movement by the ruling political parties themselves.

And you're wrong too. Industrialization in Russia, other than the state railroads, was the product, in large part, of foreign and capital, with investment and ownership from Germany and France playing leading roles.

As for your claim of "agricultural self-sufficiency" for India-- are you claiming that subsistence levels of agriculture, with 82% of the population engaged in agriculture with large portions of the population living in extreme poverty is "agricultural self sufficiency"?

red cat

11th February 2011, 13:38

And you're wrong too. Industrialization in Russia, other than the state railroads, was the product, in large part, of foreign and capital, with investment and ownership from Germany and France playing leading roles.

Still, judging from the social conditions prevalent there, I expect Russia to have had a substantial national capital of its own. If the vast majority of the acting capital had its headquarters in some other country, then the demonstrations etc during the pre-revolution years would have been put down in a much more brutal manner. Also, after the fall of the monarchy, the national bourgeoisie solely took power, which means they already had some political base where contradiction with the monarchy was the major factor rather than an alliance with it.

As for your claim of "agricultural self-sufficiency" for India-- are you claiming that subsistence levels of agriculture, with 82% of the population engaged in agriculture with large portions of the population living in extreme poverty is "agricultural self sufficiency"?

No, what I was pointing at is the country's ability to feed the whole of its population with crops grown on its own lands. This has already been destroyed to some extent, and the ruling class has been accelerating the process for the past few years.

t.shonku

11th February 2011, 14:57

One big point of difference between the modern histories of India and Russia or Japan is neither of the latter were colonies themselves. Such countries, while having what looks like a very weak monarchy with its powers limited by the national bourgeoisie, undergo natural bourgeois developments and emerge as imperialist powers themselves.

Also, you will notice that the industrialization of those countries was quite different from what is happening in India now. In those countries the industrial growth followed such a path that they were largely self sufficient and overproduced in basic fields. In India, most of the recent industrialization involves inviting more foreign capitalists, destroying the best farm lands of the country in an attempt to ruin its capacity to remain self-sufficient and make it dependent on the first world for food grains, and shutting down smaller industries by using state political and military force. Recall how the government destroyed the native small poultries by culling chickens far beyond the areas that were infected by bird flu, or how political pressure and local lumpen elements are used to shut down small industries in the name of labour movement by the ruling political parties themselves.

I get it ! India is a special case we simply can’t draw any sort of analogy.

But I think you will agree with me when I say that the rise of corporatism in India is nothing more than presentation of the age old feudalism but wrapped in a nice modern looking wrapper .

So one thing has also come out from all this , and that is today’s Indian Corporate houses are like brokers who are basically working for western companies and supplying them with resources basically helping them plunder. So basically these Indian corporate houses are like Zamindars of British Raj era who were helping British to plunder India.

But one thing is similar with Indian government and 1930s Japan (except with a twist) and that is , Japan attacked China to steal it’s natural resources and minerals and today’s India government is doing the same thing , they are attacking tribal areas to steal natural resources and minerals , these greedy fools in Delhi are basically “waging a war on it’s own people” . This fools in Indian government are basically cutting the same branch on which they sit.

red cat

11th February 2011, 15:34

I get it ! India is a special case we simply can’t draw any sort of analogy.

But I think you will agree with me when I say that the rise of corporatism in India is nothing more than presentation of the age old feudalism but wrapped in a nice modern looking wrapper .

True. But one factor that distinguishes it from earlier feudal states is that it has commodity production, and certain means of production that cannot be owned piecewise. So, though bourgeois democracy is absent, there exists a working class whose contradiction with the present rulers leads to social control of the means of production. This, along with the inability of other classes to provide a consistent leadership over any revolutionary struggle, determines the underlying nature of the ongoing war against feudalism, imperialism and comprador capitalism, waged by the Indian masses.

But one thing is similar with Indian government and 1930s Japan (except with a twist) and that is , Japan attacked China to steal it’s natural resources and minerals and today’s India government is doing the same thing , they are attacking tribal areas to steal natural resources and minerals , these greedy fools in Delhi are basically “waging a war on it’s own people” . This fools in Indian government are basically cutting the same branch on which they sit. And it seems that they will meet a fate worse than that of Japan. :)

S.Artesian

11th February 2011, 15:51

Still, judging from the social conditions prevalent there, I expect Russia to have had a substantial national capital of its own. If the vast majority of the acting capital had its headquarters in some other country, then the demonstrations etc during the pre-revolution years would have been put down in a much more brutal manner. Also, after the fall of the monarchy, the national bourgeoisie solely took power, which means they already had some political base where contradiction with the monarchy was the major factor rather than an alliance with it.

This type of "reasoning backward" cannot be used in place of a materialist analysis of the economy, i.e. you claim "the demonstrations weren't suppressed with sufficient brutality, ergo there must have been substantial national capital."

You do the same thing regarding India "There is X amount of infanticide, and Y amount of "honor" killings, aspects of feudal culture. Therefore India is not capitalist."

Demonstrations in Russia were regularly suppressed and with substantial brutality.

After the fall of the monarchy, the national bourgeoisie did not solely take power. Read your history. The rule of the national bourgeoisie was through a coalition-- a coalition of right wing Kadets, center Kadets, landowners, nobility, and the SRs, and Mensheviks.

This is a big problem with Maoism-- it makes things up. It distorts the actual history of class struggles. You did this earlier, also, when you claimed that the bourgeois revolution in Russia had, by the time of October, destroyed the absolutist Czarist state.

No, what I was pointing at is the country's ability to feed the whole of its population with crops grown on its own lands. This has already been destroyed to some extent, and the ruling class has been accelerating the process for the past few years.

And the ruling class doing that must be a capitalist ruling class, as no feudal ruling class, no feudal agriculture, would destroy the basis for its own accumulation.

red cat

11th February 2011, 16:11

This type of "reasoning backward" cannot be used in place of a materialist analysis of the economy, i.e. you claim "the demonstrations weren't suppressed with sufficient brutality, ergo there must have been substantial national capital."

You do the same thing regarding India "There is X amount of infanticide, and Y amount of "honor" killings, aspects of feudal culture. Therefore India is not capitalist."

Demonstrations in Russia were regularly suppressed and with substantial brutality.

When reasoning backward can logically contradict what you call materialist analysis, then of course it is a very important tool in analyzing a historical situation. In fact, it is a type of materialist analysis itself. Comparing the social practices in Russia and India are enough to show which is semi feudal and which was capitalist.

After the fall of the monarchy, the national bourgeoisie did not solely take power. Read your history. The rule of the national bourgeoisie was through a coalition-- a coalition of right wing Kadets, center Kadets, landowners, nobility, and the SRs, and Mensheviks.What was the class character of these groups ? How did they share power with the bourgeoisie ?

This is a big problem with Maoism-- it makes things up. It distorts the actual history of class struggles. You did this earlier, also, when you claimed that the bourgeois revolution in Russia had, by the time of October, destroyed the absolutist Czarist state. Can you explain why, in spite of this allegedly big problem, Maoism is having such a huge success in India, while all other leftist tendencies are failing ? Why have they failed to even participate in a notable workers struggle so far while Maoists have already established workers control over the means of production in certain fields?

And the ruling class doing that must be a capitalist ruling class, as no feudal ruling class, no feudal agriculture, would destroy the basis for its own accumulation.No, it is mainly semi-feudal, to be precise. That is, a politically and militarily feudal class that aids in commodity production under comprador and imperialist capital.

S.Artesian

11th February 2011, 17:10

As Chuck Berry said "round and round."

You make an assertion, offer no support, and when challenged you ask the challenger to provide the data.

Reasoning backward is not a materialist analysis; materialist analysis begins with the examination of the relations between labor and the conditions of labor.

What was the class character of these groups in the PRG, and behind the PRG? Isn't it self-evident what the class character of the Constitutional Democrats was? The nobility? The SRs, representing the better off peasantry? The Mensheviks representing the more established and better compensated workers, like printers?

How did they share power? They were ministers, officials, advisors in and around the PRG. Like I said, read your history. What they shared in reality is a specific powerlessness. The only power they could achieve would require suppressing the workers revolution.

Can I explain why Maoism is so popular? Yes and no. So what?

Sinister Cultural Marxist

11th February 2011, 20:07

This is hardly semantics. We're talking about the accuracy of historical materialist analysis.. and stating that India "has only just begun integrating into capitalism" is about as wildly inaccurate a historical statement one can make, given the fact that India was integrated into world capitalism by force by British imperialism centuries ago.

"India" was not integrated into World Capitalism by Britain. At best, large swathes of India were, but even larger areas were left as feudal protectorates. Look into the British Raj, it was far more economically and socially diverse than many people think. I think you could make the case that the Sepoy Mutiny in many regards slowed down the integration of India into "global capitalism" and preserved much of the feudal structure.

That usury is still practiced, that subsistence agriculture still is predominant are indexes to uneven and combined development in that these things exist along side chemical factories, textile mills, electronics assembly, power generation facilities were wage-labor determines the mode of production.

They often don't exist "alongside" however. For instance, many of the factories are largely in places like Gujarat, whereas areas like Bihar are barely touched. There's barely any wage labour in many Indian provinces.

This isn't about attaching labels-- as I said its about historical materialist analysis. The whole point of historical materialism is that it identifies the specific class relations that make up the economy. It clarifies which class can, and which classes cannot, overcome the actual limitations and contradictions in social reproduction.

So if you call India "feudal" and argue from that "materialist" analysis that what the class struggle in India requires is an alliance with the bourgeoisie, or some sector of the bourgeoisie; that what is required is a "managed" form of state capitalism-- a "benevolent" or more egalitarian exploitation of wage-labor, you will in the end, as has [I]always been the case wherever and whenever class collaboration with the bourgeoisie has been practiced, wind up restoring the "foreign" capitalism you think maintained the feudal conditions.

I'm not arguing that class struggle in India requires an alliance with the bourgeoise. I'm just arguing that most Indians are not proletarians and that much of the wealthy and powerful are not proper bourgeoise but gained their wealth and power from pre-capitalist relations, and vast swathes of India still have barely any if any wage labour at all.

As for the economic system that you see as necessary to fix that ... Deng Xiaopingism, Maoism ... I'm not making an attempt to speak to that. Just saying that there seems to be an over-estimation of just how "Capitalized" India is right now, only a couple of decades after its "liberalization."

red cat

12th February 2011, 13:53

As Chuck Berry said "round and round."

You make an assertion, offer no support, and when challenged you ask the challenger to provide the data.

Each of my claims are based on my observations of a real and alive revolution. I make my claims only when I am convinced that they are most likely to be true. Of course, asking the challenger to provide the data is not very odd, not to me at least, as in this forum itself I myself have been the challenger many times and have provided the examples of workers control in India to many those who were very eager to prove that the Indian Maoist movement was not proletarian, even while knowing practically nothing about it.

Reasoning backward is not a materialist analysis; materialist analysis begins with the examination of the relations between labor and the conditions of laborThat is a very shallow definition of a material analysis. Studying the relationships between various social factors with the economy, as well as the strategies followed by different classes to advance their interests, and working out logical implications and contradictions due to all these constitute a complete materialist analysis. Reasoning backward is a part of it. If all of these are not included in an analysis,, it is mostly very misguiding.

What was the class character of these groups in the PRG, and behind the PRG? Isn't it self-evident what the class character of the Constitutional Democrats was? The nobility? The SRs, representing the better off peasantry? The Mensheviks representing the more established and better compensated workers, like printers?

How did they share power? They were ministers, officials, advisors in and around the PRG. Like I said, read your history. What they shared in reality is a specific powerlessness. The only power they could achieve would require suppressing the workers revolution.Considering that Russia itself was an imperialist power, only second to Britain in terms of total land occupied, the class base of the groups you mention are most likely to have been the national bourgeoisie.

Can I explain why Maoism is so popular? Yes and no. So what? Please do explain it if you can. Because otherwise it is natural for us to think that the achievements that Maoism has made in India would not be possible without the Maoist analysis being correct.