---

“I made my mind the witness to truth and untruth, not heeding the opinion of the majority”
Tukaram.

“Ghar ghar mantar det phirtaa hai, maahimaa ke abhimaana guru-sahit sikh sub budhe, ant kaal pachitaana”
Kabir.

“All I know is that I am not a Marxist”
Karl Marx.

 On the Spread of Capitalism and the Market

Being “anti-globalisation” has become the current standard of political correctness. Those upholding the slogan are reluctant to give it up. When it is argued that “globalisation” as such has simply a technological social meaning, is inevitable, and has certain good aspects (all of which the anti-globalisers find hard to deny), they retreat to “opposing imperialist globalisation,”or (which is again a different thing), “opposing neoliberal globalisation”. When Rohini Hensman published, some time ago, an intelligent article in this journal on “capitalism without boundaries”, arguing simply that in a globalised world labour needs global regulation, and that leftists therefore should argue for the extension of these and not simply talk of the impossible task of withdrawing from the world system (’Globalisation, Women and Work’, EPW, March 6, 2004) the response of one of my Marxist friends was “this is a one-sided defence of globalisation”.

Issues have to be grappled with, not dismissed. The only meaningful question is, for a Marxist (or dalit, or feminist) activist, what advances the revolution, that is, the movement towards a non-caste, non-patriarchal, equalitarian and sustainable socialist society? I continue to take this as a goal, but feel we need a little more of what Phule, Ambedkar, Tukaram, Kabir, the Buddha - and Karl Marx himself - saw as independent thinking. In that spirit I am putting forward some rather politically incorrect thoughts.

Dependency theory emerged during my college days and was at the time an important factor in our radicalisation. Immanuel Wallerstein gave a model of the “capitalist world system” in which the extraction of surplus through forced labour at the periphery was inevitably related to the growth of wage labour at the centre. Andre Gunder Frank argued that capitalism itself created underdevelopment and that nations/regions of the world who were the victims of this process developed during periods of delinkage from the system. Samir Amin used more classic Marxist terminology to discuss imperialism in terms of unequal development. All of this was tremendously creative and helpful in breaking from the existing inane paradigm of “modernisation” theory in the social sciences. But none of it was Marxist. It did not explain “underdevelopment” in terms of the logic of capitalism. Even somewhat later references to Rosa Luxembourg and the notion that the development of capitalism required not original but ongoing “primitive accumulation” (and thus that there would always be some areas of the world remaining outside the capitalist mode of production) was in the end not very convincing.

One intervention in this debate was an important article by Bill Warren. (1) What Warren argued simply was that dependency theorists were wrong, that imperialism did not require continuing precapitalist exploitation of any kind. Rather, imperialism spread capitalism, whether we saw this in terms of capitalist relations of production, the market, economic growth or the growth of the forces of production. He claimed the support of classical Leninism. “Capitalism is growing fastest in the colonies and overseas territories”, Lenin had noted in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. He could also have claimed support from Marx, who saw capitalism as spreading “modernity” throughout the world, breaking down national barriers, and supported the free trade proposals of his time (the abolition of the Corn Laws which had protected English agriculture up to that time) on the grounds that the faster spread of capitalism would hasten the socialist revolution. In terms of the oversimplified posing of “modernisation theory” against “dependency theory”, Marx himself was a modernisation theorist.

The debate - between such a view of imperialism and a “dependency theory” position which argues that there are inherent limits to the spread of capitalism as a result of imperialism - continues today. It is dependency theory which primarily fuels the opposition of Marxists in India and elsewhere to the world market and “globalisation”.

If the debate goes on, it does not continue, at least in India, on a very intelligent level. My problem with the “anti-LPG” (liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation) position is, and has been for some time, that there are missing links, unproved statements, and open contradictions in the arguments people are making. For example, one hears “the market is spreading everywhere” (taken as a disaster) and “increasing numbers of people are excluded, poverty is increasing”. But the two statements are contradictory. If the market is spreading, this has to mean that purchasing power is in some way expanding. People have to be getting at least enough employment to buy what is coming on to the market. Otherwise, if poverty, unemployment, etc, are really increasing, the expansion of the market will hit limits and stop.

The questions I would put forward are the following:

(i) Are there inherent obstacles to the spread of the market due to the logic of the capitalist mode of production as such?

(ii) Are there inherent obstacles (due to the logic of the capitalist mode of production) to the shift from accumulation of capital through absolute extraction of surplus value to accumulation through relative extraction of surplus value?

(iii) What should be the position of Marxists in relation to the spread of capitalism?

In regard to the first question, the answer appears to be no. Those who were arguing for a dependency theory “development of underdevelopment” position of one kind or another were not really using Marxist economic theory and talking at the level of the capitalist mode of production. The most sophisticated replies were those using some version of Rosa Luxembourg’s position or simple ecological arguments (the “second contradiction of capitalism”, a position developed by James O’Connor and others). (2) They implied that the limits of capitalist expansion would have to do with the limits put up by the “carrying capacity” of the earth, or, in simple-minded terms, there would never be enough places to park all those cars, or, we would run out of oil, the accumulation of waste would overwhelm us, etc. Leaving aside for a moment the ecological arguments, it has never been convincingly shown or argued that capitalism itself cannot, for reasons of its own logic, expand throughout the earth. (The ecological, or “eco-romantic” arguments are put most forcefully by Maria Mies, most poetically by Vandana Shiva. I will not take space to go into them here; my point is that Marxists at least should subject them to careful examination before wholeheartedly taking up these positions).

The second question can be put again more simply: is there any logic in the capitalist mode of production itself which says that the working class will not expand and increase its standard of living so that workers themselves become part of the market economy? This was a shift that began around the end of the 19^th century, but the paradigm might be said to have shifted when Ford gave its $5 a day wage, i e, paid workers enough so that they could purchase what they were producing. Again, I see no convincing arguments why this should not be so at a global level. Already we are seeing in parts of India and other countries of the south a section of the working class which is “prosperous” enough to purchase what they are producing; and I see no reason why this process should not continue.

Third question: what should be the position of Marxists in regard to these developments. Here I take another point which was well made in the 1960s: that (if socialist revolution is not on the agenda) it is better to be exploited by capital than not to be so exploited. “Exploitation” in Marxist terms is of course a technical term referring to the extraction of surplus value, and the point can be rephrased by saying simply that it is better to be a decently paid worker than to be unemployed, or a slave or serf under precapitalist relations of production, or for that matter a housewife who is exploited through her domestic labour.

Or, as someone else said, we do not have to take “the worse the better” kind of political position. We should feel no compulsion to say that things are getting worse, people are getting poorer, immiseration is increasing, etc, in order to be a revolutionary. The revolution will come when conditions are ready for it, and I think now that part of those conditions include the development of a global working class which is educated and cultured enough to understand and create a new world. This revolutionary class will of course include women and dalits (an issue I will come to below) as an advanced part of it, and will undoubtedly act in ways which we, left intellectuals and political activists, may not be able to control or understand or predict at present.

 On Reservations in the Private Sector

I turn to what is not simply the most crucial issue of the “dalit movement” currently, but also a major question of the working class itself - the issue of affirmative action (diversity) or reservations in the private sector. Unfortunately, this has been discussed until now as if it were an issue simply of the anti-caste movement. The result is that dalits (and bahujans) debate the question as a matter of social justice and try to respond to the “merit” argument of backward Indian corporate leaders and conventional intellectuals by simple refutation, while Marxists either defend the dalits on grounds of social justice, or else express uncertainties and anxieties about the development of caste and other divisions in the working class, or say that it is a pseudo-issue. (3)

The reactions to the question of reservations in the private sector from the corporate bosses on the one hand, and most Marxists on the other, are interesting. Indian capitalists are a backward, upper-caste dominated group and this is reflected in their unwillingness to consider the issue - in contrast with US/multinational capitalists who have learned to live with affirmativ action. (There is also fact that the whole history of the struggle for representation in India has differed from that of the US). So they have mostly responded by stressing the false and ideologically indefensive notion of “merit”, as if the upper castes who dominate among the bourgeoisie and the upper and middle castes who dominate in the higher-earning sections of the working class do so because of some inherent biological qualities. This is erroneous and I will not bother to refute it. (4)

However, the Marxist response has been troubling. Quite aside from the question that Marxists in India tend to take an “economic” position that reservations are only a matter for the “petty bourgeoisie”, it seems other factors have been at work in their reluctance to take up the issue. From quite early on Marxists seemed to want to avoid the question of affirmative action in the private sector because they felt that if it was granted dalits would become committed to the system and co-opted by capital. This was even expressed openly by some at the time of the discussion about the Bhopal document and the Madhya Pradesh initiatives. The very important step of putting the issue on the political agenda was scorned with the argument that “Digvijay Singh wanted to co-opt dalits into the support of capitalism”. In fact the initiative was taken by, and the conference organised by, dalits themselves.

But more important, if affirmative action programmes are to be opposed because they supposedly co-opt those who get the support of the system, by the same logic all demands for wage raises and other working class gains should be opposed. But leftists have brought up this argument only in the case of affirmative action/reservation. They have not seriously tried to understand what affirmative action means in terms of the working class itself. They have contented themselves with identifying the Bhopal document with Chandrabhan Prasad and then attacking Chandrabhan’s formulation of it. But if Chandrabhan talks of “dalit billionaires” then why don’t they talk of dalit workers? Again, some revolutionaries have criticised the Bhopal agenda for “making demands of the government”, or for the “utopianism” that any gains at all can be made under capitalism. This logic would mean no support for any working class demands and it offers no programme except to take up arms and go to the jungle.

My view is as follows: If we look at the question from the point of view of the growth of a revolutionary working class, the obvious beginning point is what everyone knows - that the working class in India (and for that matter everywhere, in the world as a whole) is divided, segmented and hierarchical in terms of caste, race, gender, nationality, religion, etc. Conventional economists have discussed the issue in terms of segmentation of the labour market; Ambedkarites refer to the “caste division of labourers” as opposed to the “caste division of labour” and so on. The most simple argument for affirmative action programmes is that they combat this division, which is certainly a crucial obstacle to the growth of a revolutionary working class movement. What would happen if affirmative action programmes really worked and dalits, OBCs, women, African-Americans, oppressed nationalities, minorities of all kinds, were represented in it according to their proportion of the population? Obviously it would be a step forward in the constitution of a revolutionary and united working class. Further, bringing in dalits, women, etc, would help in the transformation of working class culture, since culture is not simply a matter of reflecting relations of production, and dalit, African-American, women’s culture, etc, tends to be more advanced than that of upper castes, whites, men as a group.

In India, Marxists have argued for revolutionary land reform as the main solution to the problems of caste and untouchability. Giving land to dalits would make them petty property-holders, a petty bourgeoisie (which I am all for), but reservations/affirmative action programmes are aimed at making them into full-fledged workers. There is a very serious question about why Marxists in India have not seen it this way.

 On Adivasis, Extraction of Natural Resources and Local Control

Large numbers of anti-globalisation activists today are working in the adivasi belt, where they are rightly noting two tendencies: the increasing extraction of natural resources and their channeling to the world market via multinationals, the state and local powerholders; and the growing “Hindutva-isation” or “Hinduisation” of the adivasis by forces of the Hindu right. Few have any kind of answer to the second threat; the effort to deal with the first tendency takes two forms - resisting market incorporation and extraction by themes of returning to subsistence production, traditional cultivation methods, etc, and gaining local control over the forest and its resources. The first effort is a romantic impossibility, the second is one of the most progressive and important demands of today.

The problem regarding local control (community control) and the extraction of resources is precisely that the two may go together. Anti-globalisation activists often do not see this; but in fact gaining local control will at best - and this is a very important best - mean that resources will be extracted more sustainably, that local people will get a share of the profits and raise their standard of living. It does not mean that they will resist the world market and extraction or listen to the activists when they try to tell them to do so; self-determination after all does mean just that, that they will do what they want. And this will primarily mean getting a better deal from world capital.

The clear example of this is India’s north-east - where the hill peoples have a much higher degree of local control, and yet extraction goes on. The important difference is that though the north-eastern hill peoples are classified as “scheduled tribes” along with the adivasis of the central India belt, the difference in standard of living, human rights indicators, education and health is one of night and day. The north-eastern states are far ahead. They of course have their own problems and contradictions continue, but the north-east example shows that local control is indeed a goal worth fighting for - even if it simply means getting a better deal from capital. Probably a major source of frustration among activists working in the central India adivasi belt is that in their hearts they know this; they know that the adivasis are not going to listen to them about withdrawing from the global capitalist system and that the extraction will continue.

But they may be missing a major creative possibility of the time. Let me just throw out some ideas. Who, after all, are we dealing with? The term “tribal” which is frequently used in English is after all both insulting and scientifically inaccurate. “Tribal” was at one time used by anthropologists and social scientists in general to refer to pre-state communities: there were bands, tribes and then states. “Tribes” numbered usually in the thousands; bands in the hundreds, state societies in the millions. The term thus refers to a “backward” mode of production and is understood that way. This is the main reason why indigenous peoples throughout the world have rejected it. The Navaho, Cherokee, Dakota and other peoples of north America, for instance, who used to be Indian “tribes” now insist that they are “nations” - and, in the case of Canada, “first nations”. The reason the adivasis of India have not so openly objected to the term and simply thrown out the “progressives” who go on using it is that genuine English-speakers among them are very rare. The peoples of the north-east, though they may be called “scheduled tribes” and have to endure the term, insist that they are “hill peoples”. They are also scientifically right in doing so, especially in the case of the large adivasi communities. Santhals, Bhils, Gonds, Oraons, etc, today number in the millions - and a people of such a size cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a “tribe”.

But is “adivasi” more accurate? This is the question that I have wondered about lately. It is true that they are indigenous people, but so after all are many other groups, including most of those incorporated as “dalits” and “bahujans” in the caste-class system.

Sociologists would suggest that the term “ethnic group” or “ethnicity” is more accurate to apply to the people concerned (after all, the differentiation of “jamaat” and “jati” also did not exist before the colonial period). But why not consider what it would mean if we said that communities like Santhals, Bhils, etc, are in fact proto-nations or nationalities in the same sense in which Tamils, Bengalis, Gujaratis, etc, can be called “nationalities”? They also have a history - one that can be traced not only by oral tradition, but in written records also. Bhils, for instance, can be considered as “Nisadas”, as “Pulindas” or as “Phyllitai” which is how they were referred to in some Greek texts. (5)

Such a perspective raises some very interesting questions. To me the most significant one is the following: might it be possible for such peoples, in the current global situation, to indeed develop as “nations” or “nationalities” - but as non-caste nationalities, which avoid the filth of the caste system that plagues all the major nationalities of India? In other words, they could claim a territory; they would indeed have class divisions and resulting contradictions among themselves - but as non-caste nations they would represent something new in the south Asian context. This does not necessarily mean that a sovereign nation-state is the answer; it would to my mind imply local autonomy of a meaningful kind. We are, after all, beyond the age when “nation-states” can be really sovereign but at the same time local autonomy movements are growing and often successfully so - for example, Scotland achieving a separate parliament within the UK.

Real autonomy includes a resistance to the Hinduisation process, needless to say. This process is a powerful and threatening one, for it is a fact that the incorporation of “tribes” or hill-forest peoples into the caste-state society has gone on throughout Indian history. It is my view, to be very brief, that resistance to it requires the help of a powerful cultural movement: either the so-called adivasi communities must convert to a universalistic equalitarian religion (in which case of course, they will have their own fights within the frameworks of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, but that is another issue), or they must establish what many describe as an “adivasi religion” - for example the Sarna religion of the Santhals - on a strong and sophisticated basis.

 On ’Resisting Globalisation’

Simply put, it is impossible and even undesirable to withdraw from the global economy and social system. Those who seriously argue this have to be joking. Small-scale production is backward. “Subsistence production” is a recipe for poverty. As far as ecological issues are concerned, hunters-and-gatherers have also had negative effects on the environment (e g, species destruction in Australia), but even if we admit that they are more eco-friendly, that hunter-gatherers “live more lightly on the earth,” then a hunter-gatherer economy is possible only on the basis of a drastic reduction in world population. The US group EarthFirst! was at least logically consistent in advocating such a reduction, but others are dreamers.

When I say resisting globalisation as such - meaning globalisation as a (who would deny it?) a currently capital-dominated world system - is impossible, I may well be criticised as pro-capitalist. Those saying this are themselves getting “globalised”, and dalits and others can see this. Their sons and daughters are going to the US, or they themselves are spending time there. Or they return home after taking all kinds of benefits and try to spread the message of not doing what they themselves have done. The most famous opponents of globalisation today live off the plums of high-level jobs provided by the American and European economies. Yet they are urging others not to come, to stay home, to stay in their places - on one ground or another. It is no wonder that people like Chandrabhan Prasad and Kancha Ilaiah get exasperated and leftists are frustrated at being marginalised by people who can no longer understand them. Can one blame dalits and bahujans for distrusting the ongoing upper-caste leadership of left parties?

To ask dalits, women and others to simply “fight globalisation” at the cost of taking up real democratic demands, at the cost of a real analysis and understanding of how to deal with the situation they find themselves in, is a recipe for disaster. It may also be a recipe for keeping the leadership of any movement concentrated among a male, upper caste elite. It is also a recipe for becoming politically irrelevant. The reality is that “globalisation” as a slogan appeals to the masses of people. Not only this, “LPG” is an example of the worst kind of choice of a symbol: liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is something that is a boon to almost every housewife in India.

 Going beyond Sloganeering

“Giving an alternative” has also almost become a slogan. It is usually taken to mean an alternative to the market society (or to neoliberalism, LPG, etc). Eco-romantics take it to mean “an alternative to the market and the state”, that is, a socialist society based on subsistence production. The latter is impossible; the alliance of eco-romantics with the traditional left is opportunistic on both sides - since eco-romantics theoretically condemn statism as well as the market, and the traditional left at least believes that the development of the forces of production is a development in human capacities. The result is an illogical opposition that does not lead us forward.

A true alternative is very necessary. It should be an alternative to the present system (itself a combination of state and market) as well as to current left and ecological challenges to it. It should be an alternative that poses something of what a true equalitarian, classless, casteless, non-patriarchal sustainable society would be, which at the same time shows at least partially how we might move in that direction by recognising and using the seeds formed within the womb of the current capitalist society. (This also means working for the alternative of a more democratic capitalism to lay the foundation for the movement forward. As Marx had also noted, no social formation disappears before all its possibilities are exhausted.)

The following are some sketchy suggestions in this respect. Two basic points can be suggested: One, there is a role for both the state and the market (remembering that both are oppressive). Two, there is a role for “sunrise industries” - which forecast the new society - including what we know as information technology and the development of alternative energy and raw material sources.

In regard to the first point: it is true that saying both state and market have a place is, like stating one is “anti-globalisation”, a rather simple-minded slogan. The difference is that the former allows scope for independent thinking and for judging each case (of liberalisation, privatisation, etc) on its own merits - and this is crucial.

As for the second point, as we all know, the production system of industrial capitalism relies on fossil fuel production, which in so many ways is ecologically unsustainable. But this itself is in the process of being superceded and what we might call “new forces of production” are developing within the womb of capitalism itself. Corporate leaders are talking (and acting on) things like social justice philanthropy, corporate responsibility, stakeholders not just shareholders and so on. They are not only putting up billboards on saving the environment, but actually developing things like electrically-powered cars, windmills, power-saving light bulbs (which are now quite popular in our rural small town of Kasegaon, along with inverters, uninterrupted power supply units and batteries of all kinds). Worker-owned companies, various forms of home production and services, and not-for-profit enterprises are all important and possibly growing in advanced capitalist countries.

All of this may not seem to be much within the framework of capitalist hegemony, but it is the responsibility of those who like to think of themselves as revolutionaries to develop them, direct them, link them up, work them to the point where they may indeed “come into conflict with the existing relations of production” and so herald an era of revolutionary change.

Email: gailomvedt yahoo.com

Notes

1 See Warren, William, ’Imperialism and Capitalist Industrialisation’ in New Left Review, 1973, and Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism, Verso, 1980.

2 James O’Connor, ’Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Introduction’ in Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, 1988, first issue and debates in subsequent issues.

3 See for instance the curious article in countercurrents.org on August 11, 2005 by K Vidyasagar Reddy.

4 Most of the argument about “merit” was debated in the US in the context of racism: to assume that tests (whether IQ tests or SATs or the “objective tests” for marks used in India) measure an actual biological/genetic capacity and have nothing to do with social conditioning factors is a racist position. This view was openly taken by some in the US, for instance in the Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, which provoked a huge debate. The authors amassed hundreds of pages of evidence to argue that IQ tests, which showed a 15-point difference between the average “white” and the average “African-American” score, measured real biological intelligence, a genetic capacity. But at some point they let slip the fact that over the last decades, average IQ scores had risen by about the same amount. Since the genetic capacity of a population cannot change in just decades, this would indicate that social conditioning plays a major role in the scores. European data indicate that this rise in the average was mainly due to a rise in the lowest scores, i e, working class scores had risen due to improving education.

5 See my paper ’Towards a History of the Bhils’, Sahitya Academy, Baroda, 2005.