“ONLY an objective consideration of the sum total of the relations between absolutely all the classes in a given society, and consequently a consideration of the objective stage of development reached by that society -and of the relations between it and other societies, can serve as a basis for the correct tactics of an advanced class.”-MARX
Existing class relations are the basis for determining the stage of development of society, while the mode of production is the basis for determining the class relations of society. “Now, according to the principles of dialectical materialism any one system in general is composed of different aspects of which one is principal. The principal aspect of any system determines the essence of the whole.
Therefore, of the different modes of production in India today, one necessarily predominates over the rest. It is then that particular mode of production that determines the nature and stage of development of Indian society as a whole. Further, depending only on this stage of development of society can the nature of the revolution and of the strategy and tactics to be adopted by the proletariat be determined. What then are the different modes of production in India? They can be broadly divided into two; Capitalist and Feudal. 1
In India 72% of the working population is in agriculture 2 while the percentage share of agricultural income in the net domestic product is 39.57%. This clearly shows that India is basically an agrarian country. Thus, it is the essence of the agrarian relations that will be the determining factor of the stage and development of Indian society. What, then, is the nature of agrarian relations in India? The CPI leadership believes that in Indian agriculture
“…. feudal land relations have been curbed, statutory semi-feudal landlordism has been abolished in erstwhile Zamindari areas…..” 4 The CPM leadership maintains, “even though developing in the capitalist way, Indian society still contains within itself strong elements of pre-capitalist society”. 5. Also, there are certain “independent”’ Marxist scholars who make propositions, such as “agriculture is characterized by complete or near complete polarization into two main classes, capitalist and wage laborers”. The three types of ‘Marxists’ have used different words for saying the same thing, the essence being, that the capitalist mode of production predominates over the pre-capitalist or feudal modes. Is this a fact?
In India, where there is an uneven development of economic, political and cultural forces throughout the country, it is neither proper nor correct to study any one particular locality and then generalize for the whole country. Likewise it is impossible to study each part of India with precise factual data. So we are confining our study to the mode of agricultural production in India as a whole, under the following headings, which will provide us with general indications as to the nature of agricultural production:
1) Land utilization,
2) Holdings,
3) Inputs,
4) Productivity trends,
5) Credit,
6) Disintegration of the peasantry,
7) Market and
8) Utilization of surplus.
1. LAND UTILIZATION
Under the capitalist system, land becomes a commodity, a form of capital, and a ‘money-making machine’. In India nearly one-sixth of the cultivable land is not under cultivation and is lying waste, and only 18.43 per cent of the net area sown is cultivated more than once a year. 6 If cultivation was run on a capitalist basis, there would be maximum exploitation of the cultivable land and the proportion of cultivable wasteland would not be as high as one-sixth, unless, of course, wastage of land was subsidized to maintain prices as in the US. Also in a country like the US, land is left fallow due to the conscious application of agronomy (i.e. systematic rotation of land utilization) while in India, where there exists a food deficit and a massive surplus of cheap labor, it is basically due to lack of capital.
2. HOLDINGS
One of the revolutionary aspects of capital is that it organizes and concentrates the means of production and labor, and thereby increases the productive forces, as well as social consciousness of the laboring masses. This is true of industry as well as of agriculture. In Indian agriculture, to what extent has this concentration taken place? This is lucidly brought out by tables I, and II given below. Taking first the question of ownership we find 35.23% own 2.07% of the land; 68.68% own nearly 24.44% of the land, on the other hand 2.12% of the largest holders own.22.91% of the land; and 9.95 /o own 63.64% of the land. Turning to the operational holding we find 32.88% operate only 3.36%of the land and 50.62% operate 8. 97% of the land. This indicates the predominant existence of uneconomical, small parcels of land, which is in direct contradiction with the general laws of capitalist development by which big capital tends to oust small capital. “Under capitalism the small holding system, which is the normal form of small scale production, degenerates, collapses and perishes. Such small scale production is compatible only with a narrow and primitive framework of production and society”: 9 Marx pointed out that the “proprietorship of land parcels by its very nature excludes the development of the social productive forces of labor, social forms of labor, social concentration of capital, large-scale cattle raising and the progressive application of science”. 10 “Small landed property presupposes that the overwhelming majority of the population is rural and that not social, but isolated labor pre-dominates; and that, therefore, under such conditions wealth and development of reproduction, both of its material and spiritual prerequisites, are out-of the quest, on, and thereby also the prerequisites for rational cultivation”.11 Bourgeois economists attribute this parcelisation of land to things like the “law of inheritance” (created by the judiciary) decline of the joint family system etc.
Marx emphatically rejected the idea that the judiciary prevents concentration of land, and reiterated that if capitalism exists, it transforms forms incompatible to it, to forms required by it by subordinating agriculture to capital. The basic cause for the existence of smallholdings is due to the poor development of a commodity economy in which need to own land becomes an absolute law. It is from this patch of land that the whole family attempt to derive their bare subsistence. Such a situation is an inevitable consequence of weak industrial development and limited commodity production in agriculture.
In an independently developed capitalist economy the small peasants would unhesitatingly sell their small uneconomical plots and migrate to the cities, which would absorb them into their industrial and commercial complexes. But, in India selling land amounts to selling employment itself and hence the small holder is forced to, stick to the soil even though it is uneconomical. So far we have dealt only with the existence of the numerous small parcels of land. But what of that top stratum of 2.1% who own 22.9% of the area? Have they accumulated this area in the process of “capitalist accumulation” or through the process of’ primitive accumulation’? Marx specifically distinguishes the two processes of accumulation.
Lenin explains the latter as “the forcible divorcement of the worker from the means of production, the driving of the peasants off the land, stealing of communal land, the system of colonies and national debts, protective tariffs, and the like”.T3 In India it is common knowledge that such an accumulation of land in a few hands began two centuries ago through the usurpation of land stolen during and after the process of break-down of the village communities and through usury and mercantile activity14. Such usurpation and accumulation of land, comes under “primitive accumulation” not “capital accumulation”.
Also, had they expropriated land through a process of “capitalist accumulation”, the larger the size of the operational holdings the greater should be the efficiency of farming? But is this so of the large holdings in India? The Farm Management Surveys (FMS) shows exactly the opposite trend. That is, the larger the operational holding the lower is the efficiency of the farm15. Also in capitalist farming one would’ expect greater sophistication in inputs with an increase in the size, but again the reverse trend is- apparent. And, finally with an increase in size of the farm there is a net drop in income per acre and in the investible surplus.
Lenin has categorically showed the reverse process of an increase in income expenditure and surplus with an increase in size of the operational holdings in any, developing capitalist ecnomy16. Coming now to tenancy, we find that the percentage estimated area held under tenancy and sub tenancy to the total area cultivated was 34% according to the 8th NSS of 1953.54. While according to the 1961/62 survey the figure was a mere 10.7%. And according to 1970-71 surveys it was 9.97%17. Besides this recorded tenancy there is an enormous amount of leased land held on the basis of oral or hidden tenancy right as well as a considerable area under share cropping, which may in fact, exceed the recorded area.
An Important factor here is, that the rent extracted from tenancy is very high— 50% to 65% of the produce; mostly in kind – with still higher rents in the fertile, irrigated areas. Under such burdensome tenancy and sharecropping, typical of feudal mode of production, almost all the surplus product is squeezed out by the landlord. {To be continued)
Notes:
1) Here the term,’ feudal’ indicates the predominant precapitalist mode of production.
2) Census of India, 1971 Registrar general and Census commissioner
3)- Reserve Bank of India Bulletin,June.1979 and press Information Bureau; press note estimate of national product, savings and capital formation, 1977-78-79.
4) Programme of the C.P.I.
5) Programme of C.P.M.
6) Directorate of Ecnomics and Statistics; intensity of agriculture and irrigation. Indian capitalism in Brief. Sixteenth edition. Agricultural situation in India, 1977.
7) National Sample Survey, 27th round. 8) Report of the National Commission on Agriculture, 1976.
9) Lenin, V. I., collected Works Vol. 11, pp 69 & 70. Small holdings with a capitalist mode of production are exceptional as,in Japan.
10) Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, pp 787-
11) ibid, pp 792
12) Marx, quoted by Lenin in ‘Development of capitalism in Russia’, pp. 324 :
13) Lenin, Collected works, Vol. 21, pp 64. 14) see previous article in People’s Power No. 3, p. 14
15.) Economic and Political Weekly, Aug. 1972, ‘Economics of farm size and farm scale’, Utsa Patnaik.
16) Lenin,’Development of Capitalism in Russia’, pp 150-54
17) Record of the National Commission on Agriculture, 1976
Vanguard March 1983