People's Democracy

Thinking Together

Marxism-Leninism clearly states that social progress takes place by stage by stage, i.e., primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and at last communism. My question is: why in India, feudalism was not fully destroyed, eliminated by capitalism?  Such a situation – keeping feudalism undestroyed to the hilt, while promoting capitalism with full swing – has created its own inherent problems -- unnatural complexities -- to capitalism itself.  How does CPI(M) view it? What is your analysis?

 P S Jayanthan (through email)

MARXISM-Leninism and Historical Materialism, while stating that social progress takes place through stages with different modes of production defending any particular stage, as you have suggested, also clearly does not subscribe to a linear interpretation of history. There are and there will be many occasions in the development of history when more than one mode of production may coexist often, if not always, with antagonisms within a specific  geographic territory.

In India, however, at the time of independence from British colonial rule, the Indian bourgeoisie, the big bourgeoisie in particular, seeking to assume  the role of the ruling classes in independent India needed to consolidate their position.  In order to achieve this, it required, on the one hand, to contain the popular people's movement for independence from assuming a revolutionary character after independence.  The best agent to achieve this was the oppressive feudal landlord who could  keep the rural masses under check. On the other hand, in order to consolidate their political position in a parliamentary democracy, the bourgeoisie required the support of the rural masses in elections.  Again, the best agent to accomplish this task was the  feudal landlords.   Thus, in order to consolidate its own position and establish its leadership of the post-independence Indian ruling classes, the Indian big bourgeoisie entered into an alliance with feudal landlordism.  This is the reason that instead of developing  capitalism after eliminating  feudalism, the Indian bourgeoisie  entered into an alliance and collaboration with feudalism.

At the same time, the Indian bourgeoisie also collaborated and continues to collaborate with  imperialism in the pursuance of the capitalist path of development. The development of the capitalist path in India, therefore, is not in conformity with the classic laws of social development but is a process that is seriously limited and distorted because of the alliance with feudalism.

Naturally, such an alliance with feudalism created many problems and continues to do so even today.    The Indian bourgeoisie seeks to overcome this by attempting to superimpose capitalism over feudalism rather than destroying feudalism thus, paving the way for capitalist development.  The best example of such an effort is the Green revolution that was imposed from above.  Given the fact that this was not a natural process of changing from below, such an effort also became limited.  The Green revolution was thus confined to only a few pockets in the country. 

This alliance with feudalism meant that amongst many other things, the domestic market in India would continue to be limited as the vast majority of the rural population groaning  under the double yolk of capitalist and feudal exploitation simply cease  to have sufficient purchasing power.  This, in turn, means a low domestic demand for goods produced by the industrial sector which by itself severely restricts capitalist development.

Further, the continued dominance of the feudal vestiges in agriculture means that the potential for growth of agricultural surplus which, in the final analysis, feeds the people working in the industrial and services sectors, is also not achieved.  True, as you suggest, these by themselves, impose severe restrictions for capitalist development itself. 

At the time of independence, the first stage of our democratic revolution was completed. However, important unfulfilled tasks remained which require the completion of the second stage, viz, the elimination of the imperialist political pressures and control over our economic resources and the elimination of feudal landlordism through a sweeping agrarian revolution.  The anti-imperialist and anti-feudal tasks of the democratic revolution are not being allowed to be completed because of the leadership of the ruling classes, i.e., Indian big bourgeoisie or monopoly capital in its desire to consolidate its leadership over the Indian ruling classes.

It is the completion of this second  stage of the democratic revolution with its tasks -- anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, anti-monopoly capital -- that defines the stage of the people's democratic revolution in India.  This can only be accomplished by replacing the present ruling class alliance led by the big bourgeoisie with a people's democratic alliance led by the Indian working class. It is  only after accomplishment of this task can the  transition to the socialist revolution in our country begin.

(For further details of this analysis, please go through the CPI(M) Party Programme.)