text:
SCOPE OF THIS ARTICLE
PART 1. VANDANA SHIVA: GANDHI REINCARNATED
A) PHILOSOPHICAL BASE
B) THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF SHIVA
i) SOME GENERAL POSITIVE ELEMENTS
ii) HUMANITY AND NATURE; SCIENCE AND DEAD WHITE MALES
iii) THE REAL HISTORY OF INDIAN VILLAGES
iv) A BOUNTIFUL NATURE ?
v) IS THERE ACTUALLY AN ECOLOGICAL CRISIS?
a) DENYING POLLUTION: THE WARSAW PACT COUNTRIES
b) THE SECOND DANGER : ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHISM
c) POPULATION, THE REVEREND MALTHUS AND CAIRO HOT AIR
III) CONCLUSIONS : SHIVA'S GANDHIAN SOLUTION
PART 2. GAIL OMVEDT AND DEVELOPMENT
I) PHILOSOPHICAL BASE
i) ANTI-INDUSTRIALISATION
ii) IMPOVERISHED MARXISM "UNDER VALUES" THE PROLETARIAT
IN SUMMARY, OMVEDT'S ATTACKS ARE :
II) CRITICAL COMMENTS UPON OMVEDT
A)General Comments
B) HISTORICAL INACCURACIES.
i) Workers & Peasant Parties Of India
ii) Telangana
C) THE ROLE AND NEED FOR HEAVY INDUSTRY
i) OMVEDT AND BUKHARIN. SLURS on USSR.
ii) PROLETARIAT AND PEASANT SMYTCHKA.
iii) TROTSKY & PREOBRAZHENSKY URGE CRUSH PEASANTS.
iv) BUKHARIN & KULAKS "ENRICH YOURSELVES"
v) STALIN SUPPORTED THE PEASANTRY
vi) VIEWS OF MODERN ECONOMISTS ON HEAVY INDUSTRY
vii) "MARXIST ANALYSIS INSUFFICIENT" SAYS OMVEDT.
viii) OMVEDT CHARGES A BASE "BIAS"
ix) OMVEDT'S CHARGES ON COMMODITY PRODUCTION
x) OMVEDT & "PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION"
xi) OMVEDT'S CHARGES ON HUMANS AND NATURE
CONCLUSIONS : ONLY ONE PATH TO LIBERATION
3. SOVIET RUSSIA AND ECOLOGY : POST WAR AGRICULTURE AND THE STALIN PLAN TO TRANSFORM NATURE
i) GEOGRAPHY OF USSR AND MONOCULTURE (map only in hard copy)
ii) AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY
iii) PLAN TO TRANSFORM NATURE, & WILLIAMS.
iv) KHRUSHCHEV:STALIN DESTROYED AGRICULTURE
Seeing clear cut forests on the British Columbia mountains, people experience desecreation, and a disgust at the lumber industry's drive for profit. Some Green activists are driven to oppose industrialisation and development. They believe development and "Marxists" abuse the peasantry. But Marxist-Leninists argue that turning history back is impossible. They embrace development in order to liberate society from mind and back breaking work; and to develop ALL human faculties. Development includes industrialisation, which Green activists criticise; instead prescribing a "Green" path for colonial countries, or "SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT".
Some Greens dwell in, and try to resurrect a Utopian past. This backward gaze arose in attacks on agri-business, lumber and heavy industry. But capitalist environmental spoilage is a "normal", though offensive, part of capitalist development. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels saw this destruction; but also saw the simultaneous creation of the class bringing socialism:
"We may add at this point that all historical antagonism between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed class to this very day find their explanation in this same relatively underdeveloped productivity of human labour. So long as the really working population were so much occupied with their necessary labour that they had not time left for looking after the common affairs of society - the direction of labour, affairs of state, legal matters, art, science etc. -so long was it necessary that there should constantly exist a special class, freed from actual labour, to manage these affairs; and this class never failed, for its own advantage to impose a greater and greater burden of labour on the working masses. Only the immense increase of the productive forces attained by modern industry has made it possible to distribute labour among all members of society without exception, and thereby to limit the labour-time of each individual member to such an extent that all have enough free time left to take part in the general - both theoretical and practical -affairs of society. It is only now, therefore that every ruling class and exploiting class has become superfluous and indeed a hinderance to social development, and it is only now too, that it will be inexorably abolished."
Frederick Engels "Anti-Duhring", Moscow,1977, p.222-223.
Two Indian activists Vandana Shiva (a Green) and Gail Omvedt (a peasant activist) are in the fore of farmers and peasant movements, described loosely as "eco  feminist". Shiva decries "Dead White Men"'s patriarchy, and Omvedt says Marxism has "failed". Why should Marxist-Leninists devote time to these "bourgeois" authors?
The Greens helped organise mass rallies (3-400,000) in New Delhi, against foreign agri-business. Indian "Greens" command attention. But they are prey to romantic anti-modernisms, that appeal to many. This mystic, religious appeal has drawn Western alienated youth, since the days of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Vandana Shiva insists that peasant movements be based upon Satyghara and Gandhism; and ancient planting methods. Omvedt proclaims industrialisation is passe; and that Marxists suck peasant blood. These are old debates; they took place in the USSR.
Did the former USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries abuse ecology? In the post-Stalin years - Yes! Chernobyl chilled us, reinforcing a backward looking Utopianism. Abuses in the ex-Warsaw Pact, supposedly show Socialism itself is anti-ecological. This is false. Firstly, of the Warsaw Pact only the Soviet Union established socialism. Secondly, during Stalin's era, ecology policy was sound and based on nature. The historian of Soviet science, Loren Graham agrees:
"There was also a pioneering movement in the history of Soviet conservation theory and community ecology. The historian who has uncovered this fascinating episode.. is Douglas R. Weiner, who points out:
'Through the early 1930's the Soviet Union was on the cutting edge of conservation theory and practice', Russians were among the pioneers in individualistic theory of plant distribution (L.G.Ramenskii), and ecological energetics (V.V.Stanchnskii)."
Graham L.R. "Science in Russian and the Soviet Union", Camb Univ Press 1993. p.243.
Marxist-Leninists, must extract the progressive core and discard the romantic utopianism of the Greens. Otherwise another generation of activists is lost. Here we critique Vandana Shiva and Gail Omvedt; dealing with the role of heavy industry, and technology, and the leading role of the working class. We reject charges that "industrialisation" per se - irrespective of the social system - is inevitably associated with ecological abuse. We show the Liberman capitalist "reforms" under Brezhnev leading to ecological abuse in the former Soviet Union. Finally, we examine charges, that Stalin destroyed the agricultural ecology of the Soviet Union.
VANDANA SHIVA: GANDHI REINCARNATED
Shiva has received great critical acclaim and veneration, even winning the "Alternative Nobel Prize". What does she say?
Perhaps Shiva herself would say, that her central theme, is that it is primarily women who can overcome a "Reductionist view of the 'passivity of the earth'". This links with her overall view that, a reductionist science and biology was established by classical "white patriarchal" thinkers like Francis de Verulam Bacon (1561-1626). Apparently, this white reductionist science was aimed at, and resulted in, a conscious act of domination over nature. This "separated" parts of nature from herself. Marxist-Leninists use the term "alienation", and we believe this is what she means.
Her philosophical base then, runs from the creation of a conscious reductionism that "masters" science; then overturns a Previous Harmony between all parts of nature, including ourselves. This results in a profound alienation. This alienation originates in white dominated patriarchy.
Here we deal only briefly, with "feminism" and women versus men. But we will quote Shiva extensively on this. She cites Evelyn Fox Keller:
"Science had been produced by a particular sub-set of the human race, that is, almost entirely by white middle class males. For the founding fathers of modern science, the reliance of the language of gender was explicit; they sought a philosophy that deserved to be called 'masculine', that could be distinguished from its ineffective predecessors by its 'virile' powers, its capacity to bind nature to mans' service and make her his slave."
Cited in Shiva Vandana "Staying Alive", Zed Press, London, 1989.
Referenced hereafter as Shiva 2; p. 15; Quoting From Evelyn Fox Keller :"Reflections on Gender and Science", New Haven Yale University Press,1985, p.7.
Shiva and other eco-feminists (Carolyn Merchant, Evelyn Fox Keller etc) all object to Baconian science. These objections begins with Bacon's terminology (Nature - she; Science - He):
"In Tempores Partus Masculus or the Masculine Birth of Time..
Bacon promised to create 'a blessed race of heroes and supermen' who would dominate both nature and society.. Modern science was a consciously gendered patriarchal activity."
Shiva 2. p.16-17.
"The rise of mechanical philosophy with the emergence of the scientific revolution was based on the destruction of concepts of self-regenerative selforganising nature which sustained all life. For Bacon.. nature was no longer "Mother "Nature, but a female nature, conquered by an aggressive masculine mind."
Shiva V; "The Seed and the Earth: Biotechnology and the colonisation of Regeneration." In : "Close to Home Women reconnect ecology health and Development Worldwide." Ed. By Vandana Shiva. Philadelphia, New Society Publ, 1994.
Referenced also as Shiva 3; p.130.
But the objections that are raised, go beyond mere terminology. They relate to the scientific method itself:
"According to Bacon:
'the nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.'
The discipline of scientific knowledge and the mechanical inventions it leads to, do not:
'merely exert a gentle guidance over nature's course; they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake to her foundations."
J.Spedding ed: The Works of Francis Bacon Stuttgart, Verlag Press, 1963, Vol V, p.506. Cited By Shiva 2. p.16.
The notions of a controlled experiment are repugnant to Shiva:
"The controlled experiment and the laboratory are a central element of the methodology of reductionist science. The object of study is arbitrarily isolated from its natural surroundings, from its relationship with other objects and the observer(s). The context (the value framework) so provided determines what properties are perceived, and leads to a particular set of beliefs. The Baconian programme of domination over nature was centrally based on the controlled experiment which was formulated and conceived in the language of rape, torture and the inquisition. The controlled experiment was therefore a political choice, aimed at control of nature and exclusion of other ways of knowing."
Shiva 2; Ibid; p.29.
For the eco-feminists this Baconian vision renders Mother Nature into powerlessness; into becoming the passive recipient of whatever male society wanted to do to her. This rendering "removed all restraint", and the scientific revolution "functioned as cultural sanctions for the denudation of nature" (Shiva 2. p.17). Shiva sees this as part of the capitalist exploitation of the world, and the expropriation of "original inhabitants" - whether the Maori in New Zealand, the North American Indian, or the Indian sub-continental peasant:
"The patriarchal construct of the passivity of the earth and the consequent creation of the colonial category of land as terra nullius, served two purposes : it denied the existence and prior rights of original inhabitants and negated the regenerative capacity and life processes of the earth."
Shiva 3; p.130.
Moreover, for Shiva, Reductionist Biology assisted the displacement of women (It is true that Shiva acknowledges that ALL peasants and tribals may also be displaced, even if they are not women - See Shiva 2, p.2) from "productive activity". Even more sinister, this "patriarchal biology and science" is linked to the need to "develop" and obtain "surplus":
"As Maria Mies has pointed out this concept of surplus has a patriarchal bias, because from the point of view of nature and women, it is not based on material surplus produced over and above the requirements of the community : it is stolen and appropriated through violent modes from nature (who needs a share of her produce to reproduce herself) and from women (who need a share of nature's produce to produce sustenance and ensure survival)."
Shiva 2, Ibid, p. 4-5.
ULTIMATELY THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL IS A PROFOUND REDUCTIONISM, THAT SEPARATES, AND SPLITS ALL "ONE" - APART IN FRAGMENTS:
"The source of patriarchal power over women and nature lies in separation and fragmentation. Nature is separated from and subjugated to culture; mind is separated from and elevated above matter; female is separated from male and identified with nature and matter. The domination over women and nature is one outcome, the disruption of cycles of regeneration is another; disease and ecological destruction arise from this interruption of the cycles of renewal of life and health. The crisis of health and ecology suggest that the assumption of man's ability to totally engineer the world including seeds and women's bodies is in question. Nature is not the essentialised passive construct that patriarchy assumes it to be. Ecology forces us to recognise the disharmonies and harmonies in our interactions with nature. Understanding and sensing connection as and relationships is the ecological imperative.. But stating a partnership with nature in the politics of regeneration, women are simultaneously reclaiming their own and nature's activity and creativity. There is nothing essentialist about this politics because it is, in fact based on denying the patriarchal definition of passivity as the essence of women and nature."
p.141-142. Shiva 3. Ibid.
There is a truth in the unity of nature. But rarely has a hymn to this truth been recited in such mystical tones. For Shiva, a re-uniting principle is the influence of ancient views (ie pre-modern scientific renaissance). Shiva joyfully enters Indian cosmology. One can paraphrase this as a sort of spiritual plea to "Let us get back to basics."
"From the point of view Indian cosmology.. the world is produced and renewed by the dialectical play of creation and destruction, cohesion and disintegration. The tension between the opposites from which motion and movement arises is depicted as the first appearance of dynamic energy (Shakti). All existence arises from this primordial energy which is the substance of everything pervading everything. The manifestation of their power is energy is called Nature (Prakriti). Nature, both animate and inanimate is thus an expression of Shakti, the feminine and creative principle of the cosmos; in conjunction with the masculine principle (Purusha), Prakriti creates the world. Nature as Prakriti is inherently active a powerful productive force in the dialectic of the creation renewal and sustenance of all life. In Kulacudamim Nigama Prakriti says:
'There is none but Myself,
Who is the Mother to create.'"
Shiva 2. p.38.
Armed with this newly energised, swirling demoness of Shakti, from this underlying and complex philosophical base, Shiva strikes out with her more direct ecological arguments.
THIS IS SHIVA'S PHILOSOPHY. WHERE DOES IT LEAD HER ?
Firstly, she identifies a "FATAL FLAW" in previous thought. This is that "scarcity" is a fundamental underpinning to the current ecological crisis. This error assumes that nature is the source of economic scarcity. Resulting social tensions are usually seen, says Shiva, as a necessary and inevitable violent struggle over scarce resources. A further consequence implicates all development as necessarily bad. Because, in order to generate "material abundance":
"Development then becomes a strategy to 'combat scarcity and dominate nature' to generate material abundance.'"
Shiva, V; "The Violence of the Green Revolution. Third World Agriculture Ecology and Politics"; (The Other India Press, Mapusa 403 507 Goa India. ISBN 81-85569-04-5); Referenced hereafter as Shiva 1; p.14.
Against this "fatal flaw", Shiva proposes that Nature is generally munificent and abundant in her provision for humanity. But.. humanity messes up this Ideal relationship.
Secondly, Shiva asserts that both "the left and the right" share this 'view of scarcity and of violence'. This facilitated "development", which was inherently bad; as the entire political spectrum was in agreement:
"The Green Revolution was prescribed as a techno-political strategy that would create abundance in agricultural societies and reduce the threat of communist insurgency and agrarian conflict. The British-American sponsored Colombo Plan of 1952 was the explicit articulation of the development philosophy which saw the peasantry as incipient revolutionaries, who if squeezed too hard, could be rallied against the political and economically powerful groups. Rural development in general and the Green Revolution in particular, assisted by foreign capital and planned by foreign experts, were prescribed as means of stabilising the rural areas politically which would 'defuse the most explosive grievances of the more important elements in the countryside."
Shiva One. p.14.
Thirdly, she attacks the "Green Revolution". Loosely defined, this is the technical change associated with "new seeds" (really highly selected seeds originally from the Third World) that are "High Yield Varieties". This technology was pioneered by a USA scientist, Norman Borlaug. Neither Shiva nor other writers comment on the underlying bias to traditional Western genetics. This understands, that environmental changes count for little to explain nature, the genes explain all.
Shiva shows that the Borlaug missions, were stimulated by fear of impoverished Third World peasant insurrections and communism. The Green Revolution also fostered dependency of underdeveloped countries on the West. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Prize. Shiva shows the Green Revolution impoverishes the seed and bio-diversity available to Indian peasants. Further, the Green Revolution seeds demand lots of fertiliser and water; therefore the actual real yield is low; and water resources become a serious concern. In contrast, if traditional practices are compared, new "Green Technology" seeds are worse; with a lower bio-availability of useful natural fertiliser.
Fourthly, Shiva attacks the social results of the Green Revolution. She shares ground with many other critics. The Green Revolution was driven by the desire of the social elites to make profit. Whatever profits were made in the countryside, this accentuates the class divisions of the countryside. As a consequence the peasantry is even worse off, rather than better.
Fifthly, Shiva attacks the fostered dependency upon the West. The "new", "foreign" seeds and technology are patented and available only under license. "Foreign" seeds have often originally been taken from peasants who for aeons have used them, and now are sold back to them as a "new patented product". New patent laws (foisted by Arthur Dunkel, of The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT]) allow foreign "ownership" of seeds originally from the fields of the peasants themselves. Foreign companies then link these seeds to further profiteering. Seeds are engineered to be resistant to various herbicides and chemicals. This creates a costly package. This now becomes a single, essential, more costly package, containing both seed and chemicals for the new genes:
"Biotechnology has become an instrument for dispossessing the farmer of seed, as a means of production. The relocation of seed production from the farm to the corporate lab relocates power and value between the North and the South; ad between corporations and farmers. It is estimated that the elimination of home grown seed would dramatically increase the farmer's dependence on biotech industries by about $6 billion annually."
Shiva 1, p.245.
Sixthly, Shiva believes that the social upheaval in the Indian Punjab is directly due to the Green Revolution. Obviously, this is a gross over-simplification of a national struggle taking place in a multi-national state. But thankfully - she explicitly disclaims views of religion as the root of Punjabi turmoils. She also provides data showing that the process of big farmer swallowing up the little farmers is an ongoing dynamic in the Punjabi countryside. This drives social unrest and tensions. But, she believes it is the sole reason for the eruption of struggles in Punjab.
What are Shiva's solutions?
Shiva's alternatives to development, revolve around a pre-industrial, native technology.
She embraces Mohandas K. Gandhi :
"Like Gandhi challenged the processes of colonisation linked with the first industrial revolution with the spinning wheel, peasants and Third World Groups challenge the recolonisation associated with the biotechnology revolution with their indigenous seeds."
Shiva 1, p.16.
Marxist-Leninists would say:
"If there has not been a liberation from colonisation, how can there be a recolonisation?!"
But, the main point, is that she wishes a Gandhian view of life:
"Mahatma Gandhi said, "there is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not for some people's greed".
Shiva 2, p.6.
"Why must India become industrial in the Western sense?' Gandhi has asked.
'What is good for one nation situated in one condition is not necessarily good for another differently situated. One man's food is often another man's poison.. Mechanisation is good when hands are too few or the work to be accomplished. It is an evil where there are more hands than required for the work as is the case in India."
Shiva 1,p 239.
Shiva describes Gandhi's search for "regeneration of livelihoods" in India; how he resurrected the hand mill known in India as the CHARKHA. This thriving industry was devastated by the power mills of Lancashire as Marx described. Gandhi in 1917 had to search in India for even one Charkha, which had already been put away by its owners as useless. Shiva does not inform us how many she finds now in India. The Charkha became Gandhi's sybmol, and for Shiva it epitomises the dilemma:
"The spinning wheel symbolised a technology that conserves resources, people's livelihood and peoples' control over their livelihoods. In contrast to the imperialism of the British textile industry, the "Charkha" was de-centered and labour regenerating, not labour displacing. It needed peoples' hand and minds, instead of treating them as surplus, or as mere inputs into an industrial process. This critical mixture.. were essential to undo the waste of centralisation, livelihood destruction, resource depletion and creation of economic and political dependence that had been engendered by the industrialisation associated with colonialism."
Shiva 1. p.239-240.
She invokes various movements as models, which she traces to Gandhi. For instance she traces "The Chipko Movement", of the people of Garwhal Himalayas in India to Mira Behn, a disciple of Gandhi who moved to the Himalayas in the 40's. Mira Behn trained a man, Sunderlal Bahuguna who married Bimla Behn (another disciple of Gandhi). The "problem" of a male intermediary is taken care of however. In Shiva's account, only when Bahuguna "learnt to listen to the quiet voices of women" was he able to "articulate the feminine ecological principles of Chipko." (Shiva 2. p.68-77). Others would contest her Gandhian biased view.
The Chipko movement did mobilise people against the logging and commercial exploitation of the hill forests of Uttar Pradesh. Similar movements advocated re-forestation with diverse, native species (mango, tamarind, jackfruit and bonge) rather than the imported monoculture of eucalyptus. Courting arrest, people (mainly women) uprooted eucalyptus seedlings, replacing them by native species. (Shiva 2, p.77-80). Even she sees that other movements were spontaneous, and not so driven by some form of Gandhian wisdom. Amongst those, many are centred upon the protection of COMMONS LAND. "Commons" are lands historically designated for use by the whole population, this land is being steadily privatised and usurped (Shiva 2 p.83-95). Commons Land is very important as:
"It is evident that till the end of the last century and in all historical periods before that, at least 80% of India's natural resources were common property, with only 20% being privately utilised.. This extensive common property has provided the resource base for a non-cash, non market economy. A whole range of necessary resources has been freely available to the people, Thus commonly available wood, shrubs and cowdung have been utilised for cooking and heating; mud, bamboo, and palm leaves for housing wild grass and shrubs as animal fodder, and a variety of fruits and vegetables as food."
Chattrapati Singh, Common Property and Common Poverty" Delhi, Oxford Publishing 1985. p.2. Cited Shiva 2. p. 83
The usurpation of this land is resisted by such peasant movements as the "Mannu Rashana Koota" or "Movement for Saving The Soil". These are largely spontaneous movements.
i) SOME GENERAL POSITIVE ELEMENTS IN SHIVA
Shiva's analysis is a complex eclectic mixture. But Marxist-Leninists are immediately attracted to parts - such as her assault on foreign imperialist big corporations. It is quite true that imperialism distorted social reality in the countryside of the developing world, as she says. She describes very well the chain of dependent command they have built : from seed originally stolen for the peasant, through to its' genetic engineering, and dependence on the companies' own chemical products, through the international legal charades of absurd patent laws. All this is spot on.
But what solutions does she offer? And in rejecting this "imperialist" usurpation of rural life, why throw out the technological development baby with the bathwater of the ownership of that technology ? Does Shiva really not have a refrigerator in her household ? What are the deeper links of imperialism with the possibility of change in India ? Where does native, or national capital fit in ? And even more important and fundamental for Shiva, is her mystical view of ever bountiful Nature viable ? Why should one accept the feminine 'Prakriti'; any more than the masculine 'Jehovah' ?
THESE QUESTIONS SHE CANNOT ANSWER.
BUT THERE ARE TWO MAIN ASPECTS OF HER WORK THAT ARE POSITIVE
Firstly: She shows how intelligently the Indian peasant has dealt with her/his lot. Shiva is part of a real grass roots movement. These spontaneous movements have stood up to and defied exploitation (eg the usurpation of common land) testifiying to the militancy of the Indian peasant and poor. In Shiva 2, there are numerous references to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the forest and lowland peasantry - both men and women - though she refers only really to women. This led shrewd observers to note that the peasant farming had stood the test of time:
"Sir Arthur Howard, the father of modern sustainable farming wrote in his classic "An Agricultural Testament", London, 1940), that:
"In the agriculture of Asia we find ourselves confronted with a system of peasant farming which, in essentials soon became stabilised. What is happening today in the small fields of India and China took place many centuries ago. The agricultural practices of the Orient have passed the supreme test they are almost as permanent as those of the primeval forest of the prairie or of the ocean."
Cited In Shiva 1. p. 25.
Marxist-Leninists agree that workers and peasants are undervalued, for their brains and common sense, as well as for their labour, by their class enemy. W.David Hopper lived for 15 months in Senapur village (North India) concluding:
"That given the absence of investment resources, agricultural technology in the village was at or near the optimum.
'An observer in Senapur cannot help but be impressed with the way the village uses its' physical resources. The age old techniques have been refined and sharpened by countless years of experience, and each generation seems to have had its experimenters who added a bit here and changed a practice there, and thus improved the community lore."
Cited In Galbraith, J.K. "The Nature of Mass Poverty", London, 1980, p.51.
- FOR LIBERALS, THIS INTELLIGENT LOW TECHNOLOGY APPLICATION IS SIMPLY DUE TO AN "ABSENCE OF INVESTMENT RESOURCES".
- BUT WHAT IS AN "ABSCENCE OF INVESTMENT RESOURCES" BUT BOURGEOIS CONTROL ON RESOURCES?!
- WOULD THE PEASANT IF OFFERED SENSIBLE INVESTMENT RESOURCES REFUSE THEM?
- SHIVA ARGUES "OUT WITH DEVELOPMENT!"
- WE ARGUE: "OUT WITH SUCH NAIVETE!"
It condemns the peasantry to stay within their nexus indefinitely; and it has no historical basis either for Indian history, or Western history. For one small instance, how can we take seriously the forthright assertions of Shiva that:
"While traditional systems did in rare cases lead to material transformation of the environment that led to ecological disasters, in most cases ethno-sciences have proved to be adequate in maintaining societies and nature."
Shiva 2, p. 33.
What about the ecological impacts of the first faltering steps towards agricultural innovation? One "Dead White Male"- Frederick Engels - thought that the deserts of the Middle East were due to cultivation and de-forestation. Also were people ever hungry before "Devlopemnt"? Shiva perhaps thinks famines did NOT occur BEFORE British imperialism, during the "Harmonious relationship" between Prakriti and Purusha?
Ecological damage was wreaked by "primitive" people. Though pre-industrial, they did create ecological havoc. For instance the native Rock Cree of the North American boreal forest. Believing in regeneration after death, they indiscriminately killed all species of animals to extremes, deluded that reincarnation would increase availability.(Lewis M.W."Green Delusions"; Durham NC;1992; p.63).
The Second major Positive aspect of Shiva, is that she details the limits of the Green Revolution well, and its bad effects on the water reserves in India, eg. the Punjab. She demonstrates that "High Yield Variety" seeds are only so (ie. "high yielding") under "Ideal" conditions - and not in conditions of the field. This is very valuable. Even better, she notes the additional, indirect, non-calorific values, in the non-grain component of seeds that have been traditionally used. These include the use of the straw for fodder and for organic fertiliser:
"Under the Green Revolution multiple uses of plant biomass seem to have been consciously sacrificed for a single use, through non-sustainable consumption of fertiliser and water. The increase in marketable output of grain has been achieved at the cost of a decrease of biomass for animals and soils and the decrease of ecosystem productivity due to over use of resources (including water-ed). The increase in production of grain for the market was achieved by reducing the bio-mass for internal use on the farm."
p. 74. Shiva 1.
All this, exposes how the multi-national corporations and big farmers gain from the enhanced technology of monoculture. Monoculture is driven by the market and the intensifying search for profit. But, although Shiva sees the root cause (imperialism and market driven production), she cannot link it historically, nor pose adequate solutions.
THESE SOLUTIONS WOULD SEEM OBVIOUS:
1. EXPROPRIATE FOREIGN CAPITAL, AND DRIVE OUT IMPERIALISM.
2. TAKE OVER THE PRIVATE FORCES THAT PUSH A MARKET ECONOMY.
BUT THIS REQUIRES A TWO STAGE REVOLUTION:
This would move from the national democratic revolution through to the socialist revolution. It needs differentiation of the peasant strata (Big, middle and poor) with appropriate tactics to each strata. It requires recognising the ever increasing proletariat as the leading force in this revolution. It requires ownership of the means of production by the workers and peasants; and a planned economy based not on profit but need. Shiva does not even see these steps.
Actually Shiva's comments in fact are often faint echoes of clearer liberal activists. For instance, one louder and clearer voice is that of SUSAN GEORGE ("How the Other Half Dies - The Real Reason for World Hunger"; Harmondsworth, 1985). Both George and Shiva are non-Marxist activists in Third World agriculture, and have a natural overlap. Shiva's substantive points : the role of foreign (especially USA) imperialism in developing the Green revolution; the fact that agribusiness and the local rich elites profit from it; the dependency on chemical fertilisers and pesticides; the lack of increase in ploughed and farmed acreage due to the Green Revolution; the effects on the diets of the indigenous peoples of a shift to wheat and rice monoculture; the social impacts of the Green revolution in the third World etc. have all been already made by George. The themes are already long exposed.
Even a cherished center of the Shiva story - "The Loss of Bio-diversity" is an old theme. Susan George cites INGRID PALMER's 5 year research into the Green Revolution :
"Many local varieties of food crops are in danger of becoming extinct so that certain genetic characteristics could be forever lost. Parts of the Near East are being described as genetic disaster areas."
p.121, George Ibid.
This is not an originality contest. But it is of interest, that Shiva is awarded the "Alternative" Nobel Prize, and the other is awarded book contracts. That George is more sharply focused on a central question : "Who controls power?" provides an explanation. Shiva's thrust is veiled by a constant yearning for what, in fact never even was in real existence - AN EASTERN IDYLL.
ULTIMATELY, GEORGE STANDS TALLER THAN SHIVA.
GEORGE DOES NOT LOCATE THE PROBLEM IN A MYTHICAL PERNICIOUS DEVELOPMENT, BUT INSTEAD IN POWER RELATIONS;
SHE SEES THE WORLD AS IT IS:
"Put a leash on your corporations, your foundations, your universities and your banks. So much for utopia. Life is not like that, neither are the multinational corporations, neither are states. Their methods may change; their basic goals will not."
p.271. George S. Ibid.
Far from arguing against technology, George argues for more research and more technology, into innovations such as single cell protein (micro-organism such as yeast) fodder for animals (Ibid p.273). George correctly sees that the problem is NOT technology - it is WHO CONTROLS TECHNOLOGY FOR WHAT. Marxist-Leninists phrase this as : "Under capitalism the motive force for production is profit !" George makes a concrete real and political analysis; and urges her readers in an engaging final chapter to join the mass struggle and get involved. Whether Shiva really sees the role of capitalism is unclear. Shiva's enemy is "development", meaning "Westernisation". Her battle cry is "Back to the village and ancient way of doing things!" Instead of "New Seeds and Monoculture", she shouts "Use the traditional 5 grain and 10 grain methods". Her essential view is : "Stop the world now, let us go back to the ancient ways." Shiva does not even see, that this violates her own cherished ancient philosophy, where it is at its most dialectic. She stops the dialectic cold - to impose a mythical previous ideal.
"STOP THE WORLD NOW, LET US GO BACK TO THE ANCIENT WAYS."
THIS AT CORE, IS HER CENTRAL PARADIGM; AND FROM IT FLOW ALL HER SUBSIDIARY FLAWS.
This violates even Shiva's own cherished ancient philosophy at its most dialectical. She stops the dialectic cold - to impose a mythical previous ideal.
Another fatal flaw is her view of the human relationship to nature. From a warp of "anti-development" and a weft of a prescription for a Gandhian based change, Shiva weaves an entire reactionary fabric, shrouding her progressive views. Her whole anti-technology bias makes Shiva into a modern day LUDDITE (the spontaneous peasant movement that destroyed machines, in a vain attempt to industrialisation in Britain).
Marx and Engels anticipated much of the positive part of Shiva.
Ultimately, Shiva's "Utopian" approach fails.
Being anti-development, Shiva cannot understand the history of civilisation, and its development. Develop it did, though. Shiva dislikes the philosophy of 'violence of the struggle against nature'. In contrast, Marx saw the relationship between Nature and humans as a dialectical process, as it existed - where humans exert their will. [Footnote: Digressing for a moment. Both Marx & Engels fully understood that the development of class society, developed simultaneously with female subjugation. Engels acknowledged Charles Fourier (1772-1837, a Socialist Utopian) who pointed out that socialists must help women to liberate themsleves. But Marx & Engels did use the masculine gender in their writings to refer to all men & women. We do not adjust their terminology, in the following quotes].
REVERTING TO MARX'S VIEW OF RELATIONS BETWEEN NATURE AND HUMANS:
"Labour is in the first place a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates and controls the material reactions between himself and Nature.. He opposed himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body in order to appropriate Nature's production in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway."
Karl Marx Capital Vol 1, 1974; p.173-4.
Shiva's mystifies and "prettifies" Nature. She obfuscates the contradiction between human activity (clearing land) and an unspoiled Nature. This is misguided.
Marx and Engels recognise this central fact of human life, and its ecological consequences :
"Let us not however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory it is true in the first place brings about the result we expected, but in the second and third places has quite different unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who in Mesopotamia Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable lands by removing along with forest the collecting centers and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of these countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the Southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the Northern slopes they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the very roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not ware that with these farinaceous tubers that they were at the same time spreading scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded that we be by no means rule over nature, like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature- but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly."
Engels, Frederick. "Part Played By Labour In Transition from Ape to Man, Contained In Engels "Dialectics of Nature", Moscow, 2nd Edition, 5th printing 1972. p.181.
This supremely dialectical, modern and ecologically minded passage was written in June 1876. Presumably Shiva does not agree about the destruction of forests in Mesopotamia. An example closer to her home, also could show the myth of a "Harmonious world". The Indian ancient book of "The Mahabharata", has an incident showing the impact of pastoral life on food gatherers. Clearing the land by fire (Agni) resulted in vast ecological devastation:
"The burning of the Khandava forest.. Khrishna and Arjuna are at picnic in the great forest which lies on the bank of the Yamuna, where the city of Delhi stands today. A poor Brahman appears begging for alms. On being granted his desire, the Brahman reveals himself as Agni, the fire god. He then asks that his hunger be satisfied by the burning of the Khandava Forest, along with every creature in it. Khrishna and Arjuna agree to this, whereupon Agni gives them a fire chariot, and bows and arrows to perform this task. The forest is set on fire and Khrishna and Arjuna patrol its perimeter driving back all the creatures who attempt escape. This includes nagas (cobras) -probably the appellation for the food-gathering tribes which venerated snakes. Arjuna evidently wants to clear the Khandava forest to provide land for the agricultural pastoral clan and to build their capital city Indraprashtha."
M.Gadgil and R.Guha; "This Fissured Land-An Ecological History of India";Berkeley;1992; p.79.
To revert to "Dead White Men"; Shiva appears not to know the names Marx or Engels. She knows dialectics only from the dialectical part of primitive Indian philosophy. Of course, it would be dangerous for her to acknowledge two of the prime exponents of dialectics. Marx and Engels thought that life was (in brutally short language) - an exertion of the human will against nature. An exertion, driven by constant increase in technology to increase productivity.
Actually, the eco-feminists do not even acknowledge that the first fundamental critique of Bacon and reductionist science was offered by a "Dead, White Male". Let us listen to "Dead Voices". First, Engels paints a dialectical nature:
"When we consider and reflect upon nature at large or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions (permutations and combinations) in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything changes comes into being and passes away.. This primitive naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy and was first clearly described by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing constantly coming into being and passing away."
Engels "Introduction to Anti-Duhring", Moscow 1977. p.30.
Not Ancient Indian philosophy, but Ancient Greek philosophy. Indeed, these views can be traced in other civilizations. They reflect the universality of the development of history and civilization. Returning to our "Dead White Male", Engels now states the limitations of the Greeks. Why they could not transcend this correct - but naive dialectic view :
"But this conception correctly as it expresses the general character of the picture of appearances as a whole, does not suffice to explain the details of which this picture is made up, and so long as we do not understand these we have not a clear understanding of the whole picture. In order to understand these details we must detach them from their natural historical connection and examine each one separately, its nature, special causes, effects, etc. this is primarily the task of natural science and historical research : branches of science which the Greeks of classical times, on very good grounds, relegated to a subordinate position because they had first of all to collect materials for these sciences to work upon."
Engels Ibid, p.30.
Unlike Shiva, Engels knows that to study science you have to first "detach" topics. Shiva herself must know this, she was previously an atomic physicist! Even, her writing shows the analytical approach of one familiar with the need to describe first by detaching. Why then her fulminations and invectives against the "controlled experiment"? The pharmaceutical industry, against which Shiva correctly heavily inveighs, depends for medical profits, on a lack of correctly "controlled experiments". Yet Shiva sees "controlled experiments", as alienating!
To proceed. Engels was a co-founder of dialectical materialist revolutionary socialism. Therefore it is un-surprising to find that he does know the inherent limitations of this "detaching" approach:
"The foundations of the exact natural sciences were first worked out by the Greeks of the Alexandrian period, and later on in the Middle Ages by the Arabs. Real natural sciences dates from the second half of the 15th Century.. The analysis of nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organic bodies in their manifold forms-these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us with as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their natural connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constants, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life."
IT APPEARS THAT A "DEAD WHITE MALE", ANTICIPATED SHIVA.
FINALLY, ENGELS BRINGS US TO FRANCIS BACON HIMSELF:
"And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century. To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are subjects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once and for all. He thinks in absolute irreconcilable antitheses.. For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other. At first this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so called common sense... Only sound common sense.. has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought justifiable and necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions." Engels Ibid, p. 31-2.
NOW IS THIS NOT A MORE CLEAR AND BALANCED APPROACH, THAN THAT OF SHIVA AND MERCHANT?
LET US LEAVE THE "AIRY WORLD" OF PHILOSOPHY.
WHAT IS THIS VILLAGE, ENDURING PAST THAT SHIVA VAINLY, WISHES THE PEOPLE OF INDIA TO RETURN TO?
"At last when least expected by friends and foes,
Grandly and silently the people rose!
None gave the word ! - they came, together brought
By full maturity of ripened thought.
Truth sought expression : - There the masses stood,
In living characters of flesh and blood,
Then erst was shown how Vain embattled might,
Whene'er the People will - and will the Right."
"The Revolt of Hindostan", by Ernest Jones, (1819-1869).
Chartist leader and poet on the First Indian War of Independence 1857.
Shiva tries to "obstruct" the inevitable. At least Canute when commanding the waves of the ocean back, knew he could not. Canute only wished to expose sycophants who claimed he could. To see the village as it really was, like Shiva, we also hark back. But we will hark back to another critic of Indian development -another "Dead White Male", Karl Marx. Marx had no illusions about village culture in India. For Marx the "bitterness" felt upon seeing the "crumbling of an ancient world", was tempered. How? By seeing that the British brutality in its wake created a future.
Marx thought himself a failure as a poet; yet Marx loved poetry still. He cited JOHANNE WOLFGANG GOETHE, to illustrate how the past should be viewed. Romantics have never learnt this lesson, that one should not forget previous brutality :
"Sollte diese Qual uns quälen, Da sie unsre Lust vermehrt; Hat nicht Myriaden Seelen, Timur's Herrschaft aufgezehrt?" "Should this torture then torment us, Since it brings us greater pleasure? Were not through the rule of Timur, Souls devoured without measure?" Goethe, "Westöstlicher Diwan". Cited,"The British Rule in India": "Marx and Engels On Britain." Moscow; 1971; p.168.
More analytically, though still feelingly, Marx takes us through to this conclusion, by stripping bare the reality that the ancient Hindoos (sic) created:
"I share not the opinion of those who believe in a golden age of Hindostan, without recurring however like Sir Charles Wood, of the confirmation of my view to the authority of Khuli-Khan. But take for example the times of Aurung-Zebe; or the epoch when the Moghul appeared in the North; and the Portuguese in the South; or the age of Mohameddan invasion, and of the Heptarchy Southern India; or if you will go still back more to the antiquity than the mythological chronology of the Brahmin himself, who places the commencement of Indian misery in an epoch even more remote than the Christian creation of the world".
Marx: 'The British Rule In India',Ibid. p.168.
Not to be misunderstood, Marx attacks British colonial viciousness:
"There cannot remain any doubt but that the misery inflicted by the British on Hindostan is of an essentially different and infinitely more intense kind than all Hindostan had to suffer before.. All the civil wars, invasions revolutions, conquests famines strangely complex, rapid and destructive as the successive action in Hindostan may appear, did not go deeper than its surface. England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptom of reconstitution yet appearing. This loss of the old world, with no gain of the new one, imparts a particular kind of melancholy to the recent misery of the Hindoo, and separates Hindostan ruled by Britain from all its ancient traditions and from the whole of its past history." Marx, Ibid, p.67-8.
Marx lays out the mechanisms that underlay the "Hindoo" Indian state, those that codify the stultified oppression. In doing so, he describes the Oriental Despotic State:
"There have been in Asia generally from time immemorial but three departments of Government; that of Finance, or the plunder of the Interior; that of War, or the plunder of the exterior; and finally, the Department of Public Works. Climate and territorial conditions especially the vast tracts of desert, extending from the Sahara, through Arabia, Persia, India and Tartary, to the most elevated Asiatic highlands, constituted artificial irrigation by canals and waterworks the basis of Oriental agriculture. As in Egypt and India, inundations are used for fertilising the soil of Mesopotamia, Persia etc; advantage is taken of a high level for feeding irrigative canals. This prime necessity of an economical and common use of water, which in the Occident drove private enterprise to voluntary association as in Flanders and Italy, necessitated in the Orient where civilisation was too low and the territorial extent too vast to call into life voluntary association, the interference of the centralising power of the Government. Hence and economical function devolved upon all Asiatic Governments, the function of providing Public works. this artificial fertilisation of the soil, dependent upon a Central Government, and immediately decaying with the neglect of irrigation and drainage, explains the otherwise strange fact that we now find whole territories barren and deserted that were once brilliantly cultivated, as Palmyra, Petra, the ruins in Yemen, and large provinces of Egypt, Persia, and Hindostan; it also explains how a single war of devastation has been able to depopulate a country for centuries and to strip it bare of all its civilisation."
Marx, Ibid, p.168.
India's villagers had seen many waves of invaders. But with the British invasion, a qualitatively new phenomenon came. This was the destruction of the indigenous industrial base represented by the Indian hand-loom industry:
"Now while the British in East India accepted from their (Mughal) predecessors the department of finance and war, they have neglected entirely that of public works. Hence the deterioration of an agriculture which is not capable of being conducted on the British principle of free competition of laissez-faire and laissez-aller. But in Asiatic countries we are quite accustomed to see agriculture deteriorating under one government and reviving again under some other government. There the harvest correspond to good or bad government, as they change in Europe with good or bad seasons. Thus the oppression and neglect of agriculture as it is, could not be looked upon as the final blow dealt to Indian society by the British intruder, had it not been attended by a circumstance of quite different importance, a novelty in the annals of the whole Asian world.. The handloom and the spinning wheel producing their regular myriads of spinners and weavers, were the pivots of that society.. It was the British intruder who broke up the Indian hand-loom and destroyed the spinning-wheel.. British steam and science uprooted, over the whole surface of Hindostan, the union between agriculture and manufacturing industry.. England it is true in causing a social revolution in Hindostan was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is can mankind fulfil her destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia ? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution."
Marx, Ibid, p.169-172.
Marx cited a graphic depiction of the restrictive, rigid, mind numbing narrowness of life in these villages, in an "old official report of the House Of Commons On Indian Affairs":
"A village, geographically considered is a tract of country comprising some hundred or thousand acres of arable and waste lands; politically viewed it resembles a corporation or township. Its proper establishment of officers and servants consists of:
The pottail or head inhabitant.. the superintendent settles the disputes of the inhabitants attends to the police, and performs the duty of collecting the revenue.. The kurnum keeps the accounts of the cultivation and registers everything to do with it. The tallier and the totie, the duty of the former of which consists in gaining information of crimes and offence, and in escorting and protecting peoples travelling from one village to another; the province of the latter being more immediately confined to the village.. guarding the crops and assisting in measuring them. The boundaryman who preserves the limits of the village, The Superintendent of Tanks and Watercourses distributes the water for the purposes of agriculture. The Brahmin who performs the village worship. The schoolmaster who is seen teaching the children in a village to read and write in the sand. The calender-Brahmin, or village etc.. Under this simple form of municipal government the inhabitants of the country have lived from time immemorial. The boundaries of the villages have been but seldom altered, and though the villages themselves have been sometimes injured and even desolated by war, famine or disease, the same name, the same limits, the same interests, and even the same families, have continued for ages, The inhabitants gave themselves no trouble about the breaking up and divisions of kingdoms; while the village remains entire, they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves; its internal economy remains unchanged."
Cited by Marx, In Ibid, p.170-71.
This view of an unchanging Indian interior, is challenged. Some see this as diminishing the peasant. David Ludden says:
"Peasants in this logic appear to be social actors who resemble billiard balls.. (whose) changes are produced by external shocks."
David Ludden: "Peasant History in South India", Oxford University Press New Delhi, 1989, p.4.
Yet Ludden himself, confesses that, when British imperialism entered the scene amazing and dramatic things happened on an unprecedented scale:
"The ideological structure remained intact.. new techniques had come into being in Tirunelveli for centuries, with serious repercussions, but the arrival of the Industrial Revolution after 1840 wrought unprecedented changes in the context of peasant life.. New World crops.. guns and military techniques.. paper and ink.. imported English organizational skills and the English language itself.. key imports included hardware-railways and telegraph lines, and materials for modern seaports and dams.. ideas about efficient bureaucratic management."
Ludden, Ibid, p.115-116.
Ludden and recent history-revisionists, provide new "microcosm" data; unavailable to Marx. This is of interest. But it certainly does not challenge Marx's main conclusions. The major qualitative rupture with the past, came with imperialism. Many sources parallel Marx's condemnation of ancient Indian village life. Such as the tragic song of Sundari Malua. This narrative poem was written by the poetess Chandrabati (ca 1550-1600). It tells how a beautiful woman - Sundari Malua - married to Binod, is harassed by the local qazi (magistrate) and diwan (local lord). They and the priests, throw the family into penury and seize their land. Sunadari is driven to spend some nights in the Diwan's hauli. Even though she is rescued and the family escape, the elders refuse to allow her to live in the village as she is defiled:
"A village elder decreed: "taking this woman back
Will cost us rank and caste. For three long months
She lived between Muslim walls. The shame of it
Would shatter a tiger! Who can save a doe
Caught in the wild beast's claws? We can do
Nothing once chastity and caste are gone.
Have we not turned away other weeping
Women who have came back in shame from the Hauli?"
Chandrabati, Contained In : "Women Writing in India. 600 BC to the present. Volume I: 600 BC to the early 20th Century." Ed Susie Taharu & K.Lalita, Delhi,1993. p.106.
Marx hated what was happening to the peasantry, but yet he saw the kernel of change carried by the unconscious tools of history, the British and their railroads:
"Sickening as it must be to human feelings to witness these myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilisation and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism which concentrating on some miserable patch of land had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetuation of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns, with no other consideration bestowed upon them than on natural events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who deigned to notice it at all. We must not forget that it is a undignified, stagnant, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked one the other are in contradistinction wild, aimless unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan. We must not forget that the little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjected man to external circumstances instead of elevating man to be the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into a never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that Man the sovereign of nature fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman the monkey, and Sabbala the cow."
Karl Marx. Ibid. p.171-172.
Movements inspired by Vandana Shiva's thoughts only lead to a stale recitation of "The Past". This past is gone.
What history books does Shiva read? She asserts that nature and humans live in a harmony, only rocked by technology. But this is a fantastic unreality. The nexus between Nature and man is not easy. Humans are distinguished from other animals, because of their ability to labour with the elements of Nature:
"In short the animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is labour that brings about this distinction."
F.Engels, "Part Played by Labour in Transition From Ape to Man", In Dialectics of Nature, Ibid. p.179-80.
Shiva sees only a bucolic past. But, did famines only occur, when the British imperialists came to the Indian sub-continent ? Even many Marxists claim that famine only began with the advent of the British into India. Thus Rajani Palme Dutt in his "India Today", which influenced countless Marxist inspired militants, says:
"Tavernier in his account of his journey in 17th century India remarks that:
'Even in the smallest villages rice, flour, butter, milk, beans, and other vegetables, sugar and other sweetmeats can be procured in abundance'."
Tavernier : "Travels In India," Oxford U.P. 1925 Edition p.238 Vol 1. Cited by Dutt, Rajani Palme. "India Today", Second Indian edition, 1992 reprint. Calcutta, p.22.
Despite Dutt, Tavernier and Shiva; famines DID occur before the British came. Kachhawaha lists various Rajasthani sayings that poignantly record the times of Bhook- of famine :
"Clouds flying in the morning and cold winds blowing in the evening says Dank, O Bhaddli! are the sure signs of famine.
"Flying clouds seen in the morning very hot in the mid-day. Night cloudless with shining stars, its time to leave the native place, viz these are the sure signs of famine.
"If there be a substantive tithi during the dark half of sawan, women somewhere in the country mother will have to sell their children to get food, so sever will be the famine."
O.P. Kachhawaha : "Famines In Rajasthan," Research Publishers Jodhpur, 1992. p. 20-21.
As Kachhawaha points out:
"We find references to severe and prolonged drought during the Ramayans (Epic) period also. Famines may be classified according to their intensity:
Annakal (grain famine), Jalakal (Scarcity of water), Trikinal (scarcity of fodder) and Trikal (scarcity of grain water and fodder.) Rajasthan had been subjected to famine from the earliest times of which we have any record. In Marwar people generally expected one lean year in every three an one famine year in every eight... the couplet says:
'My (i.e. Famine - Ed) feet remain in Pungal (Bikaner), my head in Kotada (Marwar), and my belly in Bikaner. And some times I (Famine) can be found in Jodhpur but Jaisalmer is my permanent residence."
Ibid, p. 24.
Of course the historical record before the British came, is not quite so good as after, but some information is clear:
"Of the famines which occurred prior to 1812 there is a dearth of historical facts save tradition. Colonel Todd mentions one that occurred in the 11th century as having lasted for 12 years.
Marwar faced famine between the years 1309-1313 AD. due to the failure of rains during the reign of Rao Rajpal. Government grain depots were opened for this subjects. The famine of 1570 AD affected Nagaur. At that time, the Mughal Emperor Akbar ordered the digging of the 'Kukar Talao' at Nagaur for the relief of the people. The contemporary historian Badaoni "with his own eyes witnessed the fact that men and women were driven by hunger to eat human flesh... The famine of 1747 AD was so severe that Umed Singh the Maharana of Udaipur decided to vacate his city and go to the bank of the Dhebar Lake and live there. He was driven to sell his best elephant to meet his wants..the severe famine of 1783 is remembered as 'Chalisa', it occurred in the greater part of Upper India. Bikaner was one of the worst affected. It caused misery and distress to thousands of people. There was a severe and wide spread famine on 1796 AD called the 'trepanya' famine."
Ibid, p.24
The Battle of Plassey was won in 1757 by Robert Clive [later Lord Clive of India]. Clive defeated the Indian Mutiny rebels led by Siraj-Ud-Dawlah, and became the effective ruler of Bengal, sealing British rule over India.
Cornelius Walford in his addresses to the Royal Society of London, itemised all recorded World famines he could track down in 1879, before and after British rule, and Indian famines were prominent in both periods (See: "The Famines of The World -Past and Present." London, 1879. Republished Burt Franklin, New York, 1970).
R.P.Dutt was correct in that the British exacerbated the famines by deliberate neglect of the irrigation. This was a central concern of pre-British agriculture and formed the backbone of the system known as Oriental Despotism (See above). This system is contested. But all scholars agree that irrigation was and is a major concern in Indian agriculture.
The British let all the:
"Hindu or Mussalman Government constructed roads, tanks and canals fall into dilapidation, and now the want of the means of irrigation causes famines" said G.Thompson, in 1838 in "India and the Colonies".
Cited Palme Dutt, Ibid, p.213.
Very trenchantly, Sir Arthur Cotton stated:
"Public works have been most entirely neglected throughout India.. The motto has been:'Do nothing, have nothing done, let nobody do anything. Bear any loss, let the people die of famine, let hundreds of lakhs (An Indian unit of money-ed) be lost in Revenue for want of water, or roads, rather than do anything."
Lt Col Sir Arthur Cotton "Public Works In India" 1854, p.272. Cited by Palme Dutt, Ibid,p.213.
It is also perfectly true as cited by Palme Dutt (Ibid, p. 21) that:
"The most arresting fact about India is that the soil is rich and her people poor."
M.L.Darling, "The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt," 1925, p.73.
This buttresses Walford's point that the causes of famine could be divided into natural causes (rain, drought, fire, locusts etc) and "artificial" (Government legislation, poor agricultural habits, speculation, transport deficiencies etc). In the India of today, there can be little doubt that the main causes of hunger and poverty are not "natural", but totally "artificial". But poverty and hunger is a "natural" consequence of the capitalist system. But this unequivocal diagnosis is not made by Shiva anywhere. Without a correct diagnosis, who can have confidence in her prescriptions?
The question is, to which mythical past will Shiva return?
(V) IS THERE ACTUALLY AN ECOLOGICAL CRISIS? TWO DANGERS.
We have thus far avoided a serious question, is there really an environmental crisis? In answering Marxist-Leninists should avoid two primary dangers.
It should be openly acknowledged that the environment is a genuine, major concern. Revisionists deny pollution in the Warsaw Pact countries. But Marxist-Leninists agree that capitalism is the pursuit of profit. When revisionist states restored the profit motive, this led to profit and thus pollution. This happened in the former Soviet Union.
Environmental pollution was a problem after the E.G.Liberman "economic reforms", introduced by Leonid Brezhnev; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1964. Stalin resisted similar "reforms" promoted by Nikolai Voznosensky in 1948 (See Alliance 9). After Stalin's death, the "reforms" - in reality the destruction of socialist planning and centralised control of production - were enacted. Under Liberman, Centralised planning was destroyed and replaced by "guidelines":
"Control figures will be drawn up.. in a generalised value form, to be given to sectors of the economy. In the same form these control figures will be handed down to the enterprises not as precise directives, but rather as guidelines for drawing up their plans."
E.G.Liberman :"Plan, Direct Ties and Profitability In Pravda, November 21st, 1965 in "The Soviet Economic Reform: Main Features and Aims", Moscow 1967; p.51; Cited "The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union", by W.B.Bland, Wembley UK, 1980, ISBN 0 86237 000 0. p.10.
The "guidelines" were sham, expressing "aims". In reality :
"These enterprises now draw up their production plans themselves."
V.Sokolov, M.Nazarv and N.Kozlov: "The Firm and the Customer, In "Ekonomischeskaya Gazeta", 16th January 1965, In : M.E.Sharpe (ed) "Planning Profit and Incentives in the USSR", Volume 2, New York; 1966; Cited by Bland Ibid, p.11.
This restored the profit motive for production, disguised under a veil of so-called
"socialist profit"; E.G.Liberman : "The Plan, Direct Ties and Profitability", in Pravda November 21st, 1965. In M.E.Sharpe op cit; p.179. Cited by Bland W.B.Ibid p.140.
Supposedly, this differed from "capitalist profit" (Bland Ibid p. 140). It supposedly differed, because:
"Under socialism profit.. (which is formed directly from the difference between the price and cost of production) - is distributed in the interests of the people".
L.Gatovsky "The Role of Profit In a Socialist Economy", In "Kommunist" No. 18, 1962, In M.E.Sharpe op cit Vol 1, p.98. Cited Bland, p.148-9.
This is indeed profit, as Marx had said:
"Surplus value is the difference between the value of the product and the value of the elements consumed in the formation of that product."
Capital Vol 1, London, 1974, p.201.
But this was not "socialist profit"; despite claims made, the "profit" was not distributed amongst the people. The new capitalists got their profit, disguised as called "bonuses".
"Economic stimulii.. already exist in the form of bonuses. Therefore bonuses and other incentives should be strictly dependent on the size of the profit derived."
V.Belkin& I.Berman :"The Independence of The Enterprise and Economic Stimuli" In Izvestia, Dec 4th, 1964, In :M.E.Sharpe op cit, Cited Bland Ibid, p.153.
Well now, to whom does the bonus go and who decides ?
For the managers bonus was decided by the state:
"Bonuses to directors of enterprises, their assistants, chief engineers, heads of planning departments, chief bookkeepers and heads of technical control departments are approved by the chief executive of the higher agency."
Y.L.Manevich "Wages systems "In the "Soviet Planned Economy," Moscow, 1974, p.253. Cited Bland, Ibid, p.154.
The managers decide how much the worker get. But how much money ended up where ? What was the final split of the bonus? W.B.Bland, made the following calculations based on data in: Droginchinsky N.Y. "The Economic Reform in Action", In "Soviet Problems"; Moscow; 1972 p.194:
"It follows that 1% of the personnel received 20.5% of the monthly "bonuses" paid out of the material incentive fund if they were in the management and 0.2% if they were workers. Thus on the average each member of the management received more than 102 times the monthly "bonus" received by each worker. However the material incentive fund was not the only source of the "bonuses" paid by an enterprise. In a majority of enterprises these constitute only a minority of the "bonuses" paid out."
W.B.Bland, Ibid, p.157-8.
WHATEVER THE STATE CALLS ITSELF THE IMPORTANT QUESTION IS: "IS A SURPLUS BEING MADE, AND WHO GETS THE SURPLUS?"
THE PROCESS DESCRIBED FOR THE USSR IS EXTRACTION OF PROFIT.
WHERE THERE IS PROFIT, THERE'S MUCK.
The revisionists paid lip service to principles of harmony between humans and the environment:
"Contemporary harmony between man and nature is only possible under socialism and communism."
(K.Ananichev: Environmental international Aspects"; Moscow; 1976; p.30; cited Bland; Chapter 23 Ibid).
But pollution occurred in the USSR - after socialism was destroyed. Under the Liberman "economic reforms," each enterprise had to maximise profits and minimise production costs. This aim frequently conflicted with the social need to minimise pollution. USSR economists admitted:
"The implementation of pollution control programmes leads to the worsening of the cost-accounting performance of enterprises."
N.Fedorenko and K.Gofman : Problems of optimisation of the Planning and Control of the environment", in "Voprosy ekonomic" No.10, 1972 In "Problems of Economics" Vol 15, no 12, April 1973; p.46;cited Bland; Chapter 23 Ibid).
As a result the environmental pollution in the Soviet union reached dangerous levels, just as in orthodox capitalism:
"The Zhadanvsky and Lovozersky ore-dressing combines of the USSR Ministry of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy have not yet taken the necessary measures to bring a complete halt to contamination of the rivers and lakes on the Kola Peninsula.. a number of enterprises belonging to the ministry of the Chemical Industry.. are polluting the air. Many cement plants are operating with a low degree of purification of exhaust gases. The construction of purification facilities at the Selenginsky and other pulp and paper industries is unsatisfactory. Individual enterprises of the ministries of oil refining and of the petrochemical industry, of power engineering and electrification, of the building industries, of the food, meat and dairy industry are also polluting the air and water. In a number of major cities the contamination of the air by automotive transport has increased.. The law calling for the re-cultivation of disturbed land is not always observed in the prospecting and extracting of minerals and in urban, industrial and transport construction."
"Safeguard and Multiply Natural wealth:, in "Planovoe khoziaistvo". No.6, 1973, in "Problems of Economics", Vol 16, no 11, March 1974; p.32-33;cited Bland; Chapter 23 Ibid)
"In the Soviet union and other socialist countries .. there are violations of technology.. and as a result unpurified gases are discharged into the atmosphere, unpurified waters are discharged into rivers and basins, there is soil erosion etc." G.Khromushin :"problems of Ecology" in "Voprosy ekonomiki" No 8, 1973, In : Problems of Economics", Vol 16,No 11; Mar 1974; p.53-54;cited Bland; Chapter 23 Ibid).
"For all the variety of causes behind the deterioration of the environment in the USA and the USSR, both these countries are now faced with the practical need to check this process.. The harm caused to bodies of water by effluent from pulp-to-paper, chemical fibre and other factories is well-known. Every day they discard thousands of tons of polluted water into rivers, lakes and seas. The damage caused by these effluent is incalculable."
K.Ananichev :Ibid; p. 118, 123; cited Bland; Chapter 23.
"Soviet" politicians supported in words, the reduction of pollution. The practice was quite different. Environmentalists agree that one of the chief causes of atmospheric pollution is motor transport. They also agreed, that any difficulty in producing a clean motor vehicle was economic, not technical :
"The development of motor transport has come up against a number of 'dead-ends'. One of them is the air pollution with the noxious gases of internal combustion.. The chief sources of air pollution today are the power industry and motor transport.. Of course it is possible in principle to develop a motor vehicle which does not emit poisonous or harmful exhaust fumes. This would be very costly."
K.Ananichev Ibid, p.97, 120. Cited Bland; Chapter 23.
Environmentalists proposed that the number of cars be reduced. But because the car sector was "so important to the Soviet capitalist economy, this never occurred" (From Bland, ibid, Chapter 23, p 185-189).
Capitalism of any stripe, brings pollution of all sorts, including that of the environment.
The second danger over emphasises and exaggerates hazards to the environment, a "crying wolf" tendency. This blunts recognition of real problems. The morass of claim and counter-claims have been examined by; for instance, Ronald Bailey whose "Eco-Scam" exposes Doom sayers (St Martin's Press, New York, 1993. ISBN 0-312-10971-7). These include well known ecological warriors such as Paul Erlich, David Foreman, and Carl Sagan. These warriors "trim their sails", when their dire predictions of apocalypse turn out to be false. He refutes:
1. An alleged "permanence" of ecological devastations. (eg.The Exxon Valdez oil leak in Alaska; the Kuwait Gulf War oil fires [Bailey, Ibid, p.117]). The predicted time scale for natural (ie performed by Nature herself) environmental clean up was far longer than reality.
2. Exaggerated fears about the ozone hole and global warming. Data suggests that global ozone has increased (p.132-133 Bailey Ibid), not decreased. Secondly, even scientists who predicted "an Atlantic ecosystem collapse" due to phytoplankton overgrowth, from ozone depletion, have now retracted (Ibid, p.130). Thirdly, measures of trapped carbon dioxide in ice cores, used to estimate the rise in temperatures; are unreliable (Ibid, p.150-1). Predicted global warming did not occur.
3. Unrealistic fears of bio-technology. Concerns raised by the National Academy of Sciences Recombinant DNA Committee led to a research moratorium. But many co-signatories retracted. Publicity went to their warning, but not to their later recantation. Shiva cites only the original warning ("Monoculture of the Mind", Zed Books, London, 1993. p.98-99). An original co-signatory, Nobelist James Watson, later said:
"Scientifically I was a nut.. there was no evidence at all that the recombinant DNA poses the slightest danger."
Bailey, Ibid, p.94.
A special aspect of this second 'hyped' danger is population.
c) ON POPULATION, THE REVEREND MALTHUS AND CAIRO HOT AIR
Fears of over-population are especially potent. Charles Darwin (1809-82) absorbed the Victorian idea of individual bitter struggle for existence. This came from Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834). Darwin recounted a revelatory experience upon reading Malthus, as he "suddenly saw how nature struggled". Malthus, an economist working for the British East India Company, had a bleak message:
"More mouths, more poor, more demands for welfare - a vicious circle."
Adrian Desmond & James Moore. "The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist." New York, 1991. p.153.
This was buttressed by claims that the resources of food and environment could only arithmetically increase, whilst the population could increase by a geometric progression. Thus poverty was a natural law, and nothing could be done to alleviate its root cause. Malthusianism became a great ideological spur for the new Workhouses; called Bastilles by their inhabitants - the poorest of the working class. The New Poor Law workhouses, were predicated on the principle that the poor had to be "deterred" from "shying away" from work. Malthus provided a potent justification for poverty. The argument was shored up by the calculation that:
"With the brakes off humanity could double in a mere 25 years. But it did not double; if it did the planet would be overrun. The struggle for resources slowed growth and a horrifying catalogue of death, disease, wars and famine checked the population. Darwin saw that an identical struggle took place throughout nature, and he realised that it could lead into a truly creative force."
Desmond and Moore, Ibid, p. 264-65.
Malthus' followers :
"Circumvented death by deportation and shuffled the poor out of the country.. where the increase of the British race.. and of their extension over the world, and.. the vigour of the race itself will be more promoted by this colonising system."
Ibid, p. 266.
The general increase in poverty stimulated the poor people to better themselves. This was "Natural Selection" aiding the "Survival of the Fittest" :
"If no man could hope to rise or fear to fall in society; if industry did not bring its own reward, and indolence its punishment; we could not hope to see that animated activity in bettering our own condition which now forms the master-spring of public prosperity."
Malthus "Essay on Population", 1954, II p.254. Cited by Harold Perkin, "The origins of Modern English Society" London, 1969, p. 85.
Malthus was hated in his own time, by the best of the working class. Thomas Hood (1799-1852) had this to say:
"Oh Mr. Malthus I agree In everything I read with thee! The world's too full, there is no doubt, And wants a deal of thinning out.. And yet some Wrongheads With thick not long heads, Poor metaphysicians! Sign petitions Capital punishment to abolish; And in the face of censuses such vast ones New hospitals contrive, For keeping life alive, Laying first stones, the dolts! instead of last ones!.. Why should we let precautions so absorb us,] Or trouble shipping with a quarantine- When if I understand the thing you mean, We ought to IMPORT the Cholera Morbus!"
"Ode to Mr. Malthus"; in "The poetical Works of Thomas Hood,"; Chandos Classics, nd; London, p.457-459.
Malthus and Neo-Malthusianism have always served ruling class ideology. Reincarnations of these views (eg.Paul Ehrlich ("The Population Bomb", New York, 1968) periodically fuel concern. Gurus at the Cairo Population Conference, in September 1994 (sponsored by the World Bank and supposed "Development" agencies of the United Nations) offer panaceas to the Under-Developed World : cut consumption, have fewer children, in order to "Save the World".
It is not difficult to disprove Malthus. The rapid increase in the world's population since Malthus, with a general increase in well being proves him wrong. Not that poverty world wide, is no longer a problem. But it is not one that socialist society could not alleviate. This is ignored by Neo-Malthusians. Malthusian views are still a challenge. They are used to justify poverty in the under-developed world, and in the West. But Birth Control programs, fail to remove poverty. These failures displays the blinkers that Malthusianism has to social, political, and economical class issues that transcend "biology".
Mahmood Mamdani, in "The Myth of Population Control", (New York, 1972) exposes many of these present day neo-Malthusian blinkers. It emerges that of the many expensive programs for birth control up to 1972; that there were, only 3 programs with any scientific controls. This control should be a non-treated population. Then if birth rates show changes for any other reason at all, including chance, one can know what effect the program itself had. Without controls, it is impossible to know whether the treatment itself works.
The three World Health Programmes (W.H.O.) were Kyong in South Korea, Singur in West Bengal and Khanna in North India. In Kyong - the 'exerimental' area where birth control was promoted vigorusly - the decline in births, as a rate of per 1000 of population, was equivalent or faster in the controls. The differences between year one and year two, were not "statistically significant".
RESULTS OF CONTROLLED TRIAL OF POPULATION MEASURES IN KYONG
CONTROL TEST
YEAR 1 6.8 9.7
(From Mamdani, Ibid, p.15-29).
Similar findings were seen in Singhur. In Khanna, there was indeed a decline in birth rates (From 40/1000 in 1957 to 35/1000 in 1968). BUT this difference was NOT accounted for by contraception, but by an increase in the age of marriage from 17.5 years in 1956 to 20 years in 1969. (Mamdani, Ibid, p. 28). The W.H.O. strategy did not work. Why not? The peasants wanted a large family for hard class facts. The need for most labour was most acute in the poorest families :
"Every family knows that the cost of having each child declines the more children he has. The benefits on the other hand increase. Gurdev Singh (Of Manpur Village, Khanna) hoped for.. many grandsons so they could accumulate enough savings for land.. A saying among the Jats (A caste of peasant farmers) goes :
"A Forest is not made of one tree,
A Jat is not made of one son."
Cited, Ibid, p.135.
The poorest needed the most to have numbers of people for physical strength for emergencies and class fights:
"In these villages we have faction (ie.caste) fights and you win fights not with contraceptives but with men, said Jat Puran Singh of Manpur Village Khanna."
Mamdani, p.135.
These realities are a matter of blithe indifference to the modern day Malthusians who met in Cairo in 1994. Their solution to poverty is a simplistic biological reductionism.
Data on child mortality from Zurbrigg shows the inhumanity of World Agencies in their approach (Sheila Zurbrigg: "Rakku's Story : Structures of Ill Health and Source of Change"; Bangalore; 1984). Zurbrigg shows that Indian child mortality remains very high in rural as compared to the urban areas (136 versus 70 per 1000 live births). Foreign relief agencies assume the poor are ignorant about nutrition; or that they are reluctant to accept modern medicine; or that they have too many children. Zurbrigg rightly points out three mistaken assumptions.
Firstly:
"Malnourished children in India do not die from lack of one particular nutrient, but rather from insufficient food generally. Though consisting mainly of simple porridge of coarse cereals, children; diets are usually adequate in protein content. Rather they are grossly deficient in overall calories, that is in the quantity of food."
Zurbrigg p. 67, Ibid.
On the Second wrong assumption, Zurbrigg notes that when you don't have money you use what you can. Modern Western medicine is expensive. Homeopathic native medicine is considerably cheaper (Zurbrigg p.69).
On the Third wrong assumption, she corroborates Mamdani:
"It has been estimated that an Indian couple must have an average of 6.3 children in order to have a 95% certainty that one son will survive until the father is 65 years old."
Zurbrigg p. 73.
Finally Zurbrigg also notes the motivation to focus on Population. Imperialist nations need to stabilise their semi-colonies. The intent of population control and poverty relief was revealed by a candid USAID Deputy-Director:
"In an official document entitled : "Winning the Cold War : The US Ideological Offensive", the Deputy -Director of USAID had clearly stated those objectives :
"Our basic broadest goals is a long range political one, It is not development for the sake of sheer development.. An important objective is to open up the maximum opportunity for domestic private initiative and to ensure that, foreign private investment particularly from the USA is welcomed and well fixed.. The problems is to evaluate the manner in which the programme can make the greatest contribution to the totality of the US interests."
Zurbrigg, p. 216, Citing S.George: "How the other Half Dies. The Real Reason for World Hunger." Harmondsworth, 1976, p. 70.
Poverty and unemployment are social, and not biological issues. Marx pointed out the value of a standing army of unemployed to drive down labour costs :
"The labouring population, therefore produces along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which it itself is made relatively superfluous and is turned into a relative surplus population, and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its own limits alone. An abstract law of population exists for plants and animals only, and only in so far as man has not interfered with them."
Karl Marx, Capital Vol 1. Moscow, p. 591.
This underlies unemployment and associated poverty. The "Cairo Conference on Over-Population" (September 1994),cannot acknowledge these truths. Engels points out that Malthus followed Thomas Hobbes (English philosopher 1568-1679); who proclaimed "Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes" ("A war of all against all"). Malthus derived inspiration from this, in turn leading Darwin to his "struggle for existence". The argument originated in philosophy, was then applied to society, transferred to biology, and then applied back to society :
"Until Darwin, what was stressed.. was the harmonious cooperative working of organic nature.. Hardly was Darwin recognised, before these same people saw nothing but struggle. Both views are justified within narrow limits, but both are equally onesided and prejudiced.. The whole Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence is simply the transference from society to organic nature of Hobbes' theory of "bellum contra omnes" and of the bourgeois economic theory of competition, as well as the Malthusian theory of population. When once this feat has been accomplished (the unquestionable justification for which, especially as regards the Malthusian theory, is still very questionable), it is very easy to transfer these theories back again from natural history to the history of society, and altogether too naive to maintain that thereby these assertions have been proved as eternal laws of nature".
Engels, Dialectics Nature.Moscow. p.307.
The "shell game" of arguing from society back to nature back to society - still goes on under the label SOCIOBIOLOGY. Engels explains the more complex reality of nature. To accurately depict nature, "prejudiced and one sided" views should be avoided. On one biased side "An All Harmonious Nature", and on the other " An All Struggling Nature" :
"Both views are justified within a narrow limit but both are equally one sided and prejudiced. The interactions of bodies in non-living nature includes both harmony and collisions, that of living bodies conscious and unconscious co-operation as well as conscious and unconscious struggle. Hence even in regard to nature, it is not permissible one sidedly to inscribe only "struggle" on one's banners. But it is absolutely childish to sum up the whole manifold wealth of historical evolution and complexity in the meagre and one sided phrase: 'Struggle for existence'. That says less than nothing."
"Dialectics of Nature", Engels Ibid. p.307.
We have not given a systematic analysis of Gandhism. Elsewhere, we detail Gandhi's role as a comprador support of British imperialism ("The role of the national bourgeoisie in the colonial type countries. What is the class content of the Indian state?" Alliance Number 5). Certainly Time Incorporated has not yet approached Alliance for distribution rights. Other sources though, also show a similar picture.
If more "reputable" source be required by Shiva, we refer Shiva to Dhanagare D.N. ("Peasant Movements In India 1920-1950", Oxford UP, Delhi, 1983). Dhanagare details how the famous Bardoli agitations , led by Gandhi, in reality benefited the rich peasantry. Dhanagare shows how Gandhi at key movements in the anti-British struggles sabotaged the mass struggles. Moreover a significant Indian activist, Mabendra Nath Roy (1887-1954, consulted by Jawaharlal Nehru no less); also dealt in detail with Gandhism. M.N. Roy, concurred with Dhanagare in this assessment of Gandhi (See Professor Sibnarayan Ray Editors :"The Selected Works of M.N.Roy" New Delhi, 1993, Oxford University Press 3 volumes).
The fundamental flaws (at least three!) that we have tried to address in Shiva's views, lead inexorably to a host of other problems. For instance, her naive and ill thought out assertion that the problems of the Punjab today are due entirely to the Green Revolution and the loss of traditional farming practices.
The realities of the multi-national question in India and the warped development of Punjab under a state dominated by one nation-the Gujerati-Marwari power brokers - is obviously news to Shiva. Moreover Shiva's explanation ignores power struggles going on between New Delhi and yet other States - Kashmir, the North East, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. ("The role of the national bourgeoisie in the colonial type countries. What is the class content of the Indian state?" Alliance Number 5).
No possibility of a plea of ignorance on these issues exists. Many bourgeois academics and journalists (See for example, Akbar M.J. "The Seige Within. Challenges to a Nation's Unity, Harmondsworth, 1985; Vanaik A. "The Painful Transition - bourgeois Democracy In India." London, 1990, etc) note these issues.
Finally, Gandhism is certainly no effective solution to the concerns of India's population, nor for India's ecology. WE ARE COMPELLED TO SAY, THAT SHIVA HAS ONLY A BACKWARD GAZE. BY SO DOING, SHE ONLY CAN PRESCRIBE CHANGES BASED ON WHAT SHOULD BE DONE. THIS IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT CAN AND WILL BE DONE.
WHAT ARE THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THIS?
The reformist movements centred on the environment must be supported. They act as restraints upon the capitalist class in its naked drive for profit. They are broad fronts. However, activists should not see these movements as a "be all and end all". Marxist-Leninists waste their time in these organisations, unless they explain their limitations.
- MARXIST-LENINISTS RECOGNISE THAT, NO FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY CAN BE EFFECTED BY THE GREEN MOVEMENTS ALONE.
-ANY "GREENING" BY THE LARGE CORPORATIONS WHICH DOMINATE OUR LIVES WILL BE PAID FOR BY COSTS SENT ON TO US, THE CONSUMER- WORKER.
-TO EFFECT FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE REQUIRES A MUCH DEEPER CHANGE. THIS CAN ONLY EFFECTED BY A REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE. -THIS CAN ONLY BE DONE IN THE PRESENCE OF A MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY, WHICH REMAINS OUR CENTRAL TASK.
"I fell in love with a factory maid, And if I could but her favours win, I'd stand beside her and weave by steam. How can you marry a factory maid, When you could have girls fine and fair, I don't care if she's a factory maid, If I had her, we'd keep our shuttles in play. Where are all the young girls gone? They've gone to factory to weave by steam." "Factory Maid;" English Traditional song, lamenting the passing of the artisan hand weaver.
The song depicts the contempt of the artisans for the grimy future of the factory; while showing that it was inevitable. Omvedt like Shiva is no Marxist, she is another backward looking Utopian. She asserts that Marxist class analysis cannot explain the world. Her attack sounds only one note - the poverty and narrowness of Marxism. We synopsise her view from recent works.
If Shiva is a reincarnated Gandhi, what of Omvedt? Perhaps she can be thought of as a modern Bukharin with a 'dewy view' of all things peasant, distrusting industrialisation.
Omvedt attacks the "Third World Theorists" - Andre Gunder Frank, Harry Magdoff and Samir Amin; correctly she identifies them as departing from Marxism-Leninism. We cannot examine these writers further here. Omvedt ascribes to them a hidden motive:
"Dependency theory was itself a distortion of Marxism fitting the needs of the rising third world elite of the post-war years."
Economic & Political Weekly, (Hereafter E&PW) Volume XXIX No.4; p.169-176; This reference is also referred to in text as Omvedt 1.
Omvedt now paints an "Old and New "Paradigm".
The Old Paradigm means that:
"Developments means a rise in living standards based on the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society in which the main owners of industry are either the national capitalists or a national state, and in which a country is capable of providing most of the capitals equipment, consumer goods and raw materials in needs out of its own rescues, manufactured or produced by its own farmers and workers.. This means that the backward, mainly agricultural excolonies and dominated countries require strong state initiative and a break from (delinking, barring from entry etc) imperialism or advanced capitalist countries.. State intervention should focus on blinding a industrial base and educated technological scientific manpower; agriculture is in this process an object. Thus industrialism delinking, statism and a treatment of the agricultural sector as primarily a surplus for use by the state in promoting industrialisation are central aspects of this model."
E&PW; Ibid; Omvedt 1; p. 169
In contrast to this "out-moded" view, Omvedt's favoured New Paradigm notes that :
"The crucial transition of our times is from an ecologically destructive and economically centralised industrial system based on non-renewable fossil fuel energy resources to an ecologically sustainable one based on renewable energy sources (wind solar biomass) in which agriculture and agro-industries play a central role if not leading role."
Ibid; Omvedt 1; E&PW p.169.
WHAT DOES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE TWO PARADIGMS REALLY COME DOWN TO IN MODERN-DAY ECONOMICS?
OMVEDT'S VISION OF HER BELOVED NEW PARADIGM CONTENDS THAT:
"What is central to capital accumulation (the basis of production) is not so much steel and machinery as information and communications technologies."
Ibid; Omvedt 1; , E&PW p.169.
IN HER CONCLUSIONS OMVEDT SUMMARISES HER MAIN CONCERNS WITH THE DEPENDENCY THEORISTS.
THESE ARE :
"Looking back, it seems that there were two major flaws in 'dependency theory'. One was the neglect of the processes of exploitation and capital accumulation underlying relations between producers especially peasants and the state (both within nations and the international level). The other is the assumption of the necessarily leading role of heavy industry and the backwardness of agriculture, in regard to the potential contribution to national economic development, linkage to the 'state of the art' technological advance, and the potential creativity and socially 'valuable' nature of the production relations fostered in the sector."
Omvedt, Economic & Political Weekly, (Hereafter E&PW) Volume XXIX No.4; p.169.
In her New Paradigm, Omvedt identifies a strand of what she terms "neo-liberal economics"; though it is unclear what Omvedt thinks of the "neo-liberal" label:
"The new paradigm.. reverses the values of the old. This reversal.. is in terms of claims about production relations and exchange.. Whereas dependency theory argued that the market is the source of exploitation, and the state can show the way to national independence; while integration into the world economy increases backwardness, neo-liberalism argues that the market and globalisation are the ways to liberation and development while the state constitutes slavery."
Ibid; Omvedt 1; E&PW, Ibid, p.169.
TO ALLIANCE, IT APPEARS THAT OMVEDT IS SYMPATHETIC TO "NEO-LIBERALISM".
BUT THE NEW PARADIGM, SHE BELIEVES, TRANSCENDS EVEN "NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS", BECAUSE IT:
"Goes beyond it.. to bring out entirely new aspects, looking at how the production system itself relates to nature (in more traditional Marxist terminology, how the 'relations of productions' are connected with the 'forces of production')."
E&PW, Ibid; Omvedt 1; p.169.
Omvedt generally promotes the Green movement. She is though, well aware that some positions within the Green movement are ill thought-out. Not wishing to appear naive, Omvedt steers a middle path. But in doing so, she accepts an ill-defined amalgam of both Green and pro-developers. She at least acknowledges "Green extremism" as "romantic":
"The Green movement has critiqued both market and state as well as the choice between national autarchy and linkage to the world market. The extreme romantic and sometimes apocalyptic forms of environmentalism reject both market and state for a return to a tribal utopia with traditional ways of relating to the earth; the more scientific 'sustainable development' forms seek a cautious usage of both. But both trends see capitalism and statism as inimical."
Omvedt, Ibid, E&PW, p.169.
She ends with an alternative 'sustainable development'. This simply embraces the limited visions of modern day reformers of Capital. They are epitomised by such "enlightened ones", as the BRUNDTLAND COMMISSION of.. ..The UNITED NATIONS ! It is these august bodies that preach "SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT", of Omvedt's future:
"This sustainable development approach is seen in the Brundtland Commission, the South Commission and is expressed in the recent Human Development Report that:
"The central fallacy in the old ideological debate was that the state and the market are necessarily separate and even antagonistic - and that one is benevolent, and the other not. In practice both state and market are often dominated by the same power structures. This suggests a more pragmatic third option: both state and market should be guided by the people."
United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 1993, Oxford U. Press, Delhi,1993, p. 52-53."; Cited Ibid; Omvedt 1; E&PW.
Above all Omvedt argues against a:
"Technocratic Marxism exemplified.. by Soviet industrialisation..(where) development is equivalent to "industrialisation". that is the growth of heavy large-scale industries producing steel and machinery and using primarily non-renewable fossil fuel resources."
Omvedt, Gail: "Reinventing Revolution - New Social Movements & The Socialist Tradition in India"; New York; 1993; Hereafter referred to as Omvedt 3; p.29.
ii) OMVEDT: "IMPOVERISHED MARXISM "UNDER VALUES" THE NON-PROLETARIAT" -(low caste, women, environmental movement, and Peasantry).
Omvedt finds that Marxism is far too narrowly concerned with the proletariat. First she asserts the political and theoretical weakness of Marxism:
"Marxism as theory and ideology came into India and existed for 50 years (with the solitary exception of D.D.Kosambi) in a fairly mechanical and vulgarized form, with its firm assertion that social systems are and relations are historical .. material, and characterised by conflict, contradiction and exploitation, its disadvantage was that it took the overriding reality of 'class' and 'class struggle' so strongly as to assert the fundamental irrelevance of every other sociological category.. this Marxist mechanical materialism not only succeeded in becoming the primary ideology guiding the.. working class and peasant movements.. but also over the anti-caste movement."
Omvedt, Gail: "Dalits & The Democratic Revolution - Dr Ambedkar & The Dalit Movement in Colonial India"; New Delhi; 1994; Hereafter referred to as Omvedt 2, p.24.
It is difficult to tell whether Omvedt is anti- Marxism as opposed to being "antimechanical Marxism". But it rapidly becomes clearer that she believes Marxism itself is philosophically constrained - Marxism is simply not enough:
"While Marxism has been called the historical materialism of the proletariat, what is needed today is a historical materialism of not only industrial factory workers, but also of peasants, women, tribals, dalits (ie. The previously so called Untouchable, or Harijan caste in India - ed) and low castes, and oppressed nationalities. It can no longer be assumed that a theory that (apparently) serves the needs of the industrial working class is adequate for the liberatory struggles of the whole society. An analysis of capitalism will be insufficient, even erroneous, if it does not move out of the sphere of commodity production and exchange in which value is defined in terms of abstract labour time and capital accumulation is defined through the appropriation of surplus value only."
Omvedt 3, p.xvi.
Omvedt argues that Marxism is inadequate politically, and it cannot explain economic history. Why? Because Marxism ignores the economics of any "surplus value extraction" that transcend ownership rights; and it ignores the exploitation of nature:
"The basic problem for Marxist analysis today is not so much that features other than 'class' (such as 'caste', 'gender', 'community', or 'race') are appearing as important social realities. If we limit ourselves to recognising this we continue to fall into the trap of identifying these other realities as fundamentally 'non-economic'. Rather it can be seen in the non-coincidence of the narrow and broad meanings of class. That is 'class' defined in terms of private property (ownership versus non-ownership of the means of production) does not explain some very important processes of exploitation or the appropriation of surplus labour. As some owners are exploited (eg small peasants); some non-owners exploit (eg controllers of state property in societies described as 'socialist'; lords and upper castes in certain feudal societies). Proletarian husbands may benefit from the exploitation of their wives' unpaid labour. Moreover many ecologists would even argue that nature itself can be 'exploited' in the double sense that resources incorporated from nature into the accumulation cycle increase the accumulation of capital and that this has a destructive effect on the ecologies of regions that provide such resources.."
Omvedt 2; p.54-55.
Omvedt explains that the first step in exploitation was to breach a subsistence economy; thereafter consumption relations became key to understanding exploitation; Marx had not understood that (apparently!):
"The major theoretical point of Maria Mies and others of the 'German school of ecofeminists'.. (is) the role of violence and force in exploitation and the primary accumulation being that of the forcible extraction of surplus from subsistence producers. Even beyond this it can be argued that the primary relations of production are those between producers and consumers; early non-exploitative societies are 'subsistence societies' in which production is for self-consumption, gradually extended through kin and other social networks to mediated exchange; and only with the breaking of these direct links and the establishment of an alienation between consumer and non-producer do exploitative 'relations of production' between owners/non-owners, producers/looters, etc even begin. One of Marx's fundamental errors was from this point of view, to treat consumption as simply passive, a reflection of production.. Capitalism as a system is not simply based upon the extraction of surplus value through wage labour; it rests fundamentally not so much on wage labour as on the commodity from in which the direct links between producer and consumer are broken and the extraction of surplus from the direct producer in the form of the commodity (paid through wages or prices or not paid at all) forms - the basis of capital accumulation."
Omvedt 2, p.56-57.
Because of their philosophical stance, Marxists incorrectly "foresaw" the "proletarianisation" of the peasantry, under Nehru's Government:
"Agriculture was considered to be fundamentally backward and peasants by nature of their rootage in the soil, primitive; development meant not only removing people from agriculture but extracting them from far-flung villages to the 'modern' collective life of the neighbourhoods and factories of the cites. In both industry and agriculture, advanced production was thought to be the large scale centrally organised production in which thousands of labourers worked collectively.. But statistics do not show an increase in landlessness."
Omvedt 3, p.20, 34.
Are these true deficiencies of Marxist analysis?
If so, they are serious. These charges are examined below. To continue with Omvedt's assault. Her second spearhead arises from these theoretical faults- the historical results of these (apparent!) theoretical deficiencies. Omvedt enumerates battles that Marxism allegedly ignores:
"The explosions in India are not the explosions of the "class struggle" of traditional Marxism but rather have been revolving around.. issues - of caste, gender, community and ethnicity". Omvedt 3; p.xii.
Marxists ignore these, Omvedt says, because "traditional Marxism" is un-interested in peasants except to extort revenue. Development even in the USSR entailed:
"The material basis for development was the extraction of surplus from the peasantry and from the fields, forests and mines that dotted the country, from the natural resources of the land. In the original European development of capitalism "primitive accumulation" had been largely from colonies and conquered or looted third-world territories. European agriculture was transformed to the extent of forcing out enough of its producers to provide the labour in the new countries, and only Rosa Luxembourg was left to argue that an "ongoing primitive accumulation", or the continued exploitation of "non-capitalist" sources was necessary for the very survival of capitalism. The Bolsheviks catapulted into power in still agriculturally based and very backward society without colonies, seized consciously on their own peasantry as the source of "primitive socialist accumulation"- not only because growing factories needs the surpluses but because the 'small commodity producing' peasantry itself was (in spite of the official rhetoric of the 'worker-peasant alliance') seen as the antithesis of and even antagonism of the factory proletariat, needing not only "leadership" but control. The forcing of peasants into collective farms took place in particularly brutal fashion in Stalin's Russia; in Mao's China and elsewhere the process was much less murderous, but there also first the revolution and then collectivisation allowed both control over the peasantry and the extractions of agricultural surpluses."
Omvedt 3, p.30.
Omvedt now asserts the identity of interest between the "Indian elite" and Bolsheviks in the development of India:
"Like the Bolsheviks, the Indian elite argued that the resistance came from rural vested interests who oppressed the rural poor, from the village "dominant castes", the "kulaks" the landlords. But the basic assumption was the same : that surplus had to be extracted from the peasantry and centralised in the hands of the bureaucracy for investment in industry and agriculture. The peasantry was tradition bound, caste-ridden primordial force that had to be controlled, If collective farms were not possible, then other means could be sought-the price system, state control of trade and investment."
This is a rather large set of "sins" for "guilty Marxists" to expiate. Some of these "sins" are a sleight of hand (Asserting "All Marxists said.."; "All Communists said and did.." etc). Some "sins" relate to Omvedt's poor history knowledge. (Did Omvedt learn history, only from Congress Bapus and bourgeois schools?) Some "sins" reflect Omvedt's misunderstanding or poor knowledge of some serious Marxist-Leninist theory.
TO SUMMARISE OMVEDT'S ATTACKS ON MARXISM:
1. Heavy industrialisation is passe, and is at the root of much wrong.
2. It is, not Heavy Industry (Department I industry); but the information and communications technologies that are now central to capital accumulation.
3. The peasantry has a central economic role; which is denied.
4. "Marxists" neglect "processes of exploitation and capital accumulation underlying relations between producers especially peasants and the state".
5. No contradiction exists between "market" and "state".
6. Marxist views that class is "fundamental" are incorrect.
7. "Communists" over-emphasise the proletariat and neglect the peasantry.
8. That the peasantry is only a source of revenue to "Marxists".
9. In India the Communist Party of India had identical aims to that of the "Indian elite". 10. Indian "Marxists" ignore many present struggles in India.
-HER MAIN POINT IS THAT MARX AND MARXISTS CONSIDER THE PEASANTRY AS UNIMPORTANT - AS JUST A MILCH COW; THAT THE PROLETARIAN COMMUNISTS HAVE NOT ENTERED INTO PARTENRSHIP WITH THE PEASANTRY;
- AT HEART, OMVEDT LIKE SHIVA, WISHES TO TURN THE CLOCK BACK.
- FURTHER MORE, OMVEDT GLORIFIES THE PEASANTRY.
BUT AS MARX SAID IN CAPITAL PART VIII :
"The English student of history.. always finds this peasantry turning up again although in diminished numbers, and always under worse conditions."
From Selected Works, Moscow 1985, Vol.2, p.131.
Students and activists in Indian history find the same!
The first comment to ask is: "Who can have any confidence in the UN?" The UN is the Public Relations wing of the General Staff of the world's imperialist forces! Can that seriously be disproved? It is somewhat bewildering then, to see activists who model strategies for India, upon recommendations from Commissions of the United Nations ! It is naive in the extreme, to expect the UN to materially change the balance of forces between the colonial and semi-colonial world and the imperialist world.
The second obvious point is that Omvedt ignores historical differences between various self-styled "Marxists" and "Communists". To a member of the United Nations, this may be a matter of supreme unimportance. But we object. It may be tedious to recount these differences but they are critical.
The third initial point is that Omvedt is unaware of key historical facts. That is that revisionism, as a movement consciously disrupted the international communist workers and peasants movements; that the Communist International set out to exclude J.V.Stalin from leadership of the Comintern; and having done so it then destroyed the Workers and Peasants Parties of India. This is detailed in Alliance Issue 5 (See: http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/All-5table.htm ). Here we set out only enough details to rebut Omvedt's central point here: that the "Communists" did not try to forge links with the peasantry.
In general, Omvedt's history is shallow. We only touch on a few key issues, to expose how little thought she gives to history. She merely parrots history sold in the market place.
i) THE WORKERS AND PEASANT PARTIES OF INDIA
Omvedt repeats bourgeois and revisionist histories, equating Stalin with the Comintern (ECCI). Alliance and the Communist League (UK) have shown this is untenable (See Alliance 5 http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/All-5table.htm ). In fact Stalin was removed from control of the ECCI in 1926-8, by hidden revisionists led by Otto Kussinin, who then destroyed the Workers and Peasants Parties (WPP). The WPP advocated by J.V.Stalin and M.N.Roy, proved very successful in mass mobilisations across India. The revisionist united front of the ECCI leadership and Communist Party Great Britain (CPGB), destroyed the WPP. Contrary to Omvedt's imaginative histories Stalin advocated that workers of the then embryonic CPI should unite with non-proletarians :
"The victory of the revolution cannot be achieved unless this bloc is smashed, but in order to smash this bloc, fire must be concentrated on the compromising national bourgeoisie, its treachery exposed, the toiling masses freed from its influence, and the conditions necessary for the hegemony of the proletariat systematically prepared. In other words, in colonies like India it is a matter of preparing the proletariat for the role of leader of the liberation movement, step by step dislodging the bourgeoisie and its mouthpieces from this honourable post. The task is to create an anti-imperialist bloc and to ensure the hegemony of the proletariat in this bloc. This bloc can assume although it need not always necessarily do so, the form of a single WORKERS AND PEASANTS PARTY (WPP), formally bound by a single platform. In such centuries the independence of the Communist Party must be, the chief slogan of the advanced communist elements, for the hegemony of the proletariat can be prepared and brought about by the Communist party. But the communist party can and must enter into an open bloc with the revolutionary part of the bourgeoisie in order, after isolating the compromising national bourgeoisie, to lead the vast masses of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie in the struggle against imperialism."
J.V.Stalin. "Political Tasks of the University of Peoples of the East." May 18. 1925. Reprinted San Francisco, 1975 in : J.V.Stalin. Marxism and the National Colonial question. p.318-9
Stalin only extended Lenin's line into the Workers and Peasants Party policy:
"We Communists should and will support bourgeois liberation movements in the colonial countries.. when these movements are really revolutionary."
Lenin, Report of the Commission on the national and Colonial Question, "Selected Works", Vol 10, London, 1946, p.241.
But the Sixth Congress of the ECCI, became dominated by hidden revisionists after the defeat of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC). They disrupted the struggle by foisting an Ultra-Left line on the CPI. The Chinese worker and peasant massacres committed by the Kuomintang bourgoieie was the responsibility of the CPC. The CPC repeatedly rejected Stalin and M.N.Roy's advice : to escalate the class struggle, and not to kow-tow to the bourgeois nationalists. However, the ECCI used the Chinese debacle as a pretext to remove Stalin. The 6th ECCI Congress now adopted an anti-WPP line. The first Workers and Peasants Party had been formed in Bengal on 1st November 1925. WPP formed in other parts of India as well. The WPP's aimed to achieve complete independence by widening the anti-imperialist struggle. (See Bairathi S: "Communism and Nationalism in India." Delhi, 1987. p. 95-96).
M.N.Roy and Stalin, had long advocated massive wide non Communsit broad mass Worker and Peasant parties (WPP). Roy, promoted joint activity with progressive elements. Therefore, British imperialism repeatedly tried to rupture Roy's ties with militant elements. The WPP led major struggles. During 1927-8, a great strike wave began, ignited by the Simon Commission. The WPP called the Indian National Congress (INC) to boycott the Simon Commission, and to mobilise for full independence. The revisionist Communist Party Of India (CPI), is also uninterested in revealing revisionism. Even the CPI concedes the success of WPP pressure. ("Guidelines History of CPI", p.19).
In April 1928 a six month long strike in Bombay led by Communist WPP leaders (Bombay) led to formation of the Girni Kamgar (Mill Workers) Union (GKU); in Calcutta large strikes of jute and railway workers were led by the WPP (Bengal):
"The workers came to recognise the red flag as the symbol of their class solidarity.. with the socialist Soviet Union.. The strike upsurge.. can be seen from the following official STRIKE FIGURES:
NO. OF MAN-DAYS LOST
(Million)
This strike upsurge and the mass activities were, led by the WPP which the Communists had set up."
CPI: Ibid p.19.
British Intelligence reports confirmed this picture:
"By the end of 1928.. there was hardly a single public utility service or industry which had not been affected, in whole or in part by the wave of Communism which swept the country during the year."
Government of India; Home Department: "India Communism"; Simla 1935; p126.
These broad, legal mass workers and peasants parties (WPP) under Communist leadership, advocated by Stalin, were clearly successful; enabling Communists to lead masses of workers and peasants in militant struggle.
BUT THE COMINTERN 6TH CONGRESS, LED BY OTTO KUUSINEN DESTROYED ALL THIS. IN HIS REPORT KUUSINEN ATTACKED THE WPP INDIA:
"For a time some comrades considered the advisability of 'labour and peasant parties'.. It is now clearer than before that this form is not to be recommended, especially in colonial and semi-colonial countries. It would be an easy matter for the labour and peasant parties to transform themselves into petty bourgeois parties, to get away from the Communists, thereby failing to help them to come into contact with the masses."
O.Kuusinen, Report on the Revolutionary Movement in The Colonies and Semi-Colonies, 6th Congress, CI In : "International Press Correspondence", Volume 8, No. 70; October 4th, 1928, 1230-1.
THIS ATTACK ON THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS PARTIES (WPP) MATCHED TROTSKY'S ATTACK OF JUNE 1928 SUBMITTED TO THE CONGRESS:
"The cardinal question for us here as everywhere and always, is the question of the communist party, its complete independence, its irreconcilable class character. The greatest danger on this path is the organisation of so-called "Workers and Peasants Parties" in the countries of the Orient..
Stalin advanced the formula of the "two-class Workers' and Peasants' Parties" for the Eastern countries.. it is a question here of an absolutely new, entirely false and thoroughly anti-Marxist formulation of the fundamental question of the party and of its relation to its own class and other classes.. Without a relentless condemnation of the very idea of workers and peasants parties for the East, there is not and cannot be a programme for the Comintern."
L.Trotsky : "Summary and Perspectives of the Chinese Revolution" In :"Third International after Lenin", London; 1974; p.162-3, 171.
THE NOW REVISONIST LED ECCI CALLED FOR THE DISSOLUTION OF THE WPP. THE ECCI COLONIAL THESES SAID:
"Special Worker and peasants parties, no matter how revolutionary they may be, can be all too easily transformed into ordinary petty-bourgeois parties. Therefore organisation of such parties is inadvisable."
In J.Degras (Ed). "The Communist International:1919-1943:Documents", Volume 2; London; 1971; p.526-48.
DESPITE THE OPPOSITION OF THE WPP THEMSELVES, THE ECCI WON:
"By the 10th Plenum (Comintern) 1929.. all opposition to the Leftist line of the 6th Congress was submerged and the Comintern plunged forward on its ultra-leftist course.. Kussinen was the spokesman for India..In his report he said:
'Our greatest weakness there is the fact that we have not established ourselves as a Communist Party, A good many Indian Communists have worked in the ranks of the "Workers And Peasants Party"(WPP). We have advised them to endeavour to induce these Parties to reorganise themselves, to assume another form, in keeping with the principles of Leninism."
Overstreet, G.D., Windmiller, M. "Communism in India." Berkeley, 1960. p.139.
At this 10th Plenum of the ECCI, held in Moscow from July 3rd to 19th 1929, Roy was formally expelled from the CI. Otto Kuusinen cited amongst other matters, Roy's objection to the ECCI line against the formation of an alliance within the INC between the CPI and the Independence League; and against the WPP.
THE ULTRA-LEFT TURN OF THE REVISONIST COMINTERN, TOOK A DEVASTATING TOLL ON THE CPI AND ITS MASS LINKS, THE WPP.
ii) Telangana Insurrection 1948
Having gainged control of the ECCI, revisionism needed to stamp its mark at a more local level. "Independetly minded" Communists like Roy were leading the CPI correctly. This was inconvenient for the ECCI. The CPI was therefore "minded" by "Reliable Foreign Big Brothers". The First Big Brother was the revisionist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
Folowing the previous incorrect Ultra-left turn, the CPGB now inflicted an ultra-right turn. This came to a head during the final thores of the Second World War, and the liberation struggle in India. Nehru negotiated with British imperialism for the notorious partition of the Indian sub-continent. This perpetuated the divide and rule policy of Britain, and allowed the British imperialists, to seemingly withdraw, in a situation where they could continue to exercise their dominance on two weakened and warring states. The classic neo-colonial strategy had perpetuated the divide and rule policy of Britain. The CPGB under R.P.Dutt forced a right revisionist line, and forced the CPI to swallow these manoeuvres.
In the face of opportunist right revisionism, a left wing reaction broke out. With no Marxist-Leninist leadership however, it was prone to the Left wing adventurism of the RANADIVE FACTION. This was ill-judged given the lack of preparation of the CPI after years of right stultification. Even more complicatedly, the Telangana branch of the Party came under the control of the revisionist Communist Party of China (CPC).
Admittedly all this is complex. No one said that serious history is easy, but you may ignore history only at your peril. Omvedt's serious errors, stem from a superficial "rose-coloured" view of "any" peasant struggle. In this laudable aim, she overlooks certain inconveniences.
For example, the Telangagna revolt of 1946-50 did establish "GRAM RAJ", or SOVIET POWER in nearly 4,000 villages. But she implies that Hyderabad should have been led to secession by the CPI. But the army of the central Indian state could not be resisted then. But there was no overall climate for revolution, far from it. The brilliant Soviet observer, DYAKOV, wrote "That the situation was far from being revolutionary." (Overstreet & Windmiller, Ibid, p.281).
Illustrating her willingness to accept anything labelled "peasant" as good, she even ignores the class facts of the Telangana Revolt itself. Omvedt slights "left scholars", who criticise the revolt as "rich peasant" dominated (See Omvedt 3, p.23-24). BUT Telangana specifically exempted the rich peasantry from any local CPI attack. This rightist class collaboration, by the local ANDHRA FACTION OF THE CPI, was in fact, inconsistent with the then Ultra-Left CPI! It was a line that came from the Mao led revisionist Communist Party of China:
"To ally with any capitalists or landowner was intolerable of course for B.T.Ranadive, secretary for the CPI.. With their leadership in the wealthy Kamma landowning caste, the Andhra Communists had good reason to espouse the Maoist line in India. The Andhra Communists had established ground rules at the start for the Telengana insurrection in 1948 which assured most of their Kamma brethren went unscathed. So long as the middling rich farmers who make up the bulk of the caste stayed above the battle, they were classified in Communist strategy as neutralized. This (was an) outright deviation from the Ranadive line, which saw all landowners as equally villainous.. Ranadive attacked the Andhra Secretariat, publicly charged that in Andhra Communist ranks:
"It is the rural intellectuals, sons of rich peasants and middle peasants that preponderate in important positions. The party politically based itself on the vacillating politics of the middle peasants and allowed itself to be influenced by rich peasant ideology'" Harrison, S: "India the most dangerous decades." Princeton, 1960. p.162.
"The Andhra Communists had made no secret of their "Rich peasant" policy within the party. They explicitly declared themselves on this point in a 1948 program report.. which stressed 2 major tactical rules of thumb:
"1. In delta areas the pressure of population would be heavy and as such slogans should be raised for the distribution of lands belonging to rich ryots among the poor peasants and labourers.
2. Propaganda should be carried out to convince the ryots about the just demands of the workers, and we should also effect compromises with those of the ryots who would follow with us. Assurance should also be given that we should not touch the lands of rich ryots."
Ranadive also singled out for special attack another statement of this position in a 1948 Andhra statement discussing tactics towards Government rice procurement for rationing:
"In the matter of procurement of paddy the Secretariat believes that it is possible to neutralize the rich peasants as the government plan goes against the rich peasantry also. Though the rich peasantry as class is not standing firmly in the fight, it is parting with paddy with dissatisfaction."
Harrison, Ibid.p.163.
IN CONCLUSION, OMVEDT'S BIASED HISTORY OF THE INDIAN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IGNORES REAL DYNAMICS.
Let us dispose of a further charge - that the "Marxist left" ignored in India the emergence and development of struggles such as the Jharkhanad, the adivasas, the dalits etc.
Who does she here label as the "Marxists"?
Why, no other than the revisionist CPI and the CPM.
These parties are part of the state power apparatus, being in Governments and heading some State Governments. How can they possibly wish to disrupt that state power? The CPM and its West Bengal leader Jyoti Basu, is hailed by the Financial Times (UK) as a great place to invest and a stable society! What can one hope for from a party with Jyoti Basu as a prominent leader? Only opportunists do not unhesitatingly call these parties revisionist. Omvedt's charge here is toothless. Even worse actually.
-OBJECTIVELY IT IS DANGEROUS AS SHE EQUATES "MARXISM" WITH PROVEN REVISIONISTS.
-THIS CONTINUES TO FOSTER ILLUSIONS ABOUT THESE PARTIES.
In passing we note that she is much more "gentle" in reproaches against the CPI(ML)). Doubtless this is as the CPI(ML), of pro-Maoist stripe has been heavily involved in the countryside. The nature of their involvement in the countryside (Left adventurism, individual assassination, under-estimation of the role of the proletariat etc) was however anti-Marxist Leninist. Historically it led to a physical decimation of the best of a generation of activists. We cannot dwell on this history here.
As to her "New Paradigm", perhaps the most obvious error is the sweeping dismissal of the heavy industry.
i) OMVEDT AND BUKHARIN. HISTORICAL SLURS AGAINST THE USSR.
Marxist-Leninists know there is a basic difference between two types of industry. The split is between Heavy (Marx's Department A) and Light (Marx's Department B). This, split, is an important consideration for the development of a country's industrial and economic independence.
Most authors follow Marx in recongising that development requires the necessary underpinnings of Heavy Industry.
According to Omvedt, this is not so. But how exactly does Omvedt imagine that "New Paradigm" computer chips are made? Perhaps no heavy industry has been involved in the making of chips? Are they made in someone's back yard smelter perhaps? Besides what exactly are chips made for? Are computer chips, we wonder, purely to help when making hotel reservations, or to book theatre tickets?
Of course not. They have further extended and revolutionised the role of heavy industry. Their advent actually makes the control of heavy industry even more - not less -critical in development. Omvedt's argument is not a new one. It is dressed up in the modern garb of electronics.
AS A STRATEGY, OMVEDT'S PROPOSAL RESEMBLES THAT OF NIKOLAI BUKHARIN IN THE USSR.
Bukharin argued that the economic measures of J.V.Stalin were:
"A disastrous going over to the Trotskyist positions." An industrialisation based on the "impoverishment of the country, the degradation of agriculture, and the squandering of reserves."
S.F.Cohen, "Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution : Political Biography 1888-1938", Oxford, 1980, p.306.
-A BRIEF RECAP OF THIS SOVIET PERIOD SHOWS THAT MANY OF OMVEDT'S "MARXIST" SHIBBOLETHS ARE ACTUALLY TRUE.
- BUT THEY WERE APPARITIONS OF STALIN AS SHE THINKS.
-MANY OF HER "MARXIST" FEARS WERE PUT INTO WORDS AND DEEDS BY THE TROTSKYITES.
- THE MARXIST-LENINISTS, LED BY STALIN FOUGHT AGAINST THEM.
a) ALLIANCE OF PROLETARIAT AND PEASANT - THE SMYTCHKA.
Lenin's policy was to support the alliance of the proletariat, with the peasantry [in especial the poor section], which took the name the SMYTCHKA. As Stalin points out this confronted the most serious problem for the proletariat :
"Important problem of the proletarian revolution is the question of how the urban and rural masse of the labouring petty bourgeoisie are to be won over to the cause of the proletariat. In the struggle for power which side are the masses of the town and the rural workers going to espouse? Are they going to rally to the bourgeoisie or to the proletariat?"
J.V.Stalin :"October Revolution and the Tactics of The Russian Communists"; in "Leninism"; New York; 1928; p.184.
Lenin proposed that this "important question" would be solved by a special form of alliance:
"The dictatorship of the proletariat is a special sort of class alliance between the proletariat (the vanguard of the workers) and the numerous non-proletarian strata of those who labour (petty bourgeoisie, small employers, peasants, intelligentsia, and so forth) or the majority of these; it is an alliance whose objects are the complete overthrow of capitalism, the crushing once for all of the resistance of the bourgeoisie in its attempts at the restoration of the old social order, and the definitive inauguration and consolidation of socialism."
Cited by J.V.Stalin In "October Revolution and Tactic of Russian Communists"; Ibid; p.185.
This meant identifying strata of peasantry. The Bolsheviks then allied with the most revolutionary sections. Actually, the Bolsheviks pursued a policy towards the peasants that empowered peasant desires. For instance, in the debates on the NATIONALISATION OF LAND, Lenin showed how well he had understood the peasant needs. The Bolsheviks pushed for the nationalisation of all state land, yet the Mensheviks tried to obstruct this, arguing that the:
"Peasant would never understand the transfer of peasant land to anyone but themselves.." But, replies Lenin:
"In both the First and the Second Dumas, the peasants put themselves forward the Trudovik "Bill of the 104". The Bill called for the nationalisation of the land. The peasants said that the entire land would become the property of the state.. the peasants say that the tangle of old agrarian life can only be unravelled by nationalisations.. The party of the proletariat demands the nationalisation of all the land in the country."
V.I.Lenin: "Report on the Agrarian Situation" April 28 7th All Russia Conference of the RSDLP(B). "Selected Works"; Volume 2; Moscow, 1977, p.99.
This is nothing more than what Marx and Engels had advocated:
"Leaving aside the so-called Rights of Property, I assert that the economical development of society, the increase and concentrations of people, the very circumstances that compel the capitalist farmer to apply to agriculture collective and organised labour, and to have recourse to machinery and similar contrivances, will more and more render the nationalisation of land a 'social Necessity,' against which no amount of talk about the 'right' of property can be of no avail. The imperative wants of society will and must be satisfied, changes dictated by social necessity will work their own way and sooner or later adopt legislation to their interests.
What we require is a daily increasing production and its exigencies cannot be met by allowing a few individuals to regulate according to their whims and private interests, or to ignorantly exhaust the power of the soil. All modern methods, such as irrigation, drainage, steam ploughing, chemical treatment and so forth ought to be applied to agriculture at large. But the scientific knowledge we possess, and the technical means of agriculture we command, such as machinery etc. can never be successfully applied but by cultivating the land on a large scale.
If cultivation on large scale proves (even under its present capitalist form, that degrades the cultivator himself to a mere beast of burden) so superior from an economical point of view, to small and piecemeal husbandry, would it not give an increased impulse to production if applied on national dimensions?
The ever growing wants of the people on the one side, the ever-increasing price of agricultural produce on the other, afford the irrefutable evidence that the nationalisation of land has become a social necessity."
Karl Marx, "The Nationalisation of The Land" In Selected Works Marx and Engels; Volume 2; Moscow; publ. 1872.
Omvedt is upset that Marxists believe that the peasant is a "reactionary force".
It is true that Marxists think that land holding introduces a different mentality. Marx considered that land ownership did indeed was part of a "reactionary" mentality; one that tried to obstruct moving forward to the new world. If that new world is based on a socialist view, land nationalisation is a prerequisite. What is controversial about that? Now there is no socialist country in the world. There is also now, no country where land nationalisation exists! Did Marx think that private property in land prevented a social awareness? Certainly so - Marx viewed France as a country where land nationalisation was unlikely, because of the small scale abundance of peasant holdings:
"France.. with its peasant proprietorship it is further off the nationalisation of land than England with its landlordism. In France it is true, the soil is accessible to all who can buy it, but this very facility has brought about a division into small plots cultivated by men with small means and mainly relying upon the land by exertions of themselves and their families. This form of landed property and the piecemeal cultivation it necessitates, while excluding all appliances of modern agricultural improvements, converts the tiller himself into the most decided enemy to social progress and above all the nationalisation of the land. Enchained to the soil upon which he has to spend all his vital energies in order to get a relatively small return, having to give away the greater part of his produce to the state, in the form of taxes, to the law tribe in the for of judiciary costs, and to the usurer in the form of interest, utterly ignorant of the social movements outside his petty field of employment; still he clings with fanatic fondness to his bit of land and his merely nominal proprietorship in the same. In this way, the French peasant has been thrown into the most fatal antagonism to the industrial working class.
Peasant proprietorship being then the greatest obstacle to the nationalisation of land, France in its present state is certainly not the place where we must look to for a solution of this great problem."
Karl Marx In "The Nationalisation of the Land", In Volume 2 Selected works, Ibid, p. 289.
- BUT DOES THIS MEAN AN IRRECONCILABLE RIFT BETWEEN PEASANT AND PROLETARIAT?
Working out Marx's formulations into the practice of the first socialist revolution, Lenin showed this rift was not irreconcilable.
In "Resolution on the Land Questions", Lenin showed in what way Land Reforms could work. This should tell Omvedt why the pusillanimous so-called "Land Reforms" of the bourgeois governments following Nehru have not produced a state of harmony in the Indian countryside.
WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF LAND REFORM ACCORDING TO LENIN?
"(5) The party advises the peasant to take the land in an organised way..
(6) Agrarian reforms by and large can be successful and durable only provided the whole state is democratised ie. provided on the one hand that the police, the standing army, and the privileged bureaucracy are abolished and provided on the other, there exists a system of broad local self-government completely free from supervision and tutelage from above". "Resolution on the agrarian Situation", Vol.2; Ibid; p.103.
Clearly these requirements were not present in India. The so called "Land Reforms" of Nehru were bound to be mere words. Later, Lenin again showed how carefully he had understood the land hunger of the Small peasant, when the Decree on Land exempted the small peasantry, but not the large and middle landowners, from expropriation:
"1. Landed proprietorship is abolished without any compensation.
2. The landed estates as also all crown, monastery, and Church lands with all their livestock implements buildings and everything pertaining thereto shall be placed at the disposal of the volsot land committees and the uyezd Soviets of Peasants Deputies pending the convocation of the Constituent Assembly". .....
5.The land of ordinary peasants and ordinary Cossacks shall not be confiscated".
Decree On Land; Second All- Russian Congress of Soviets, 26.10.1917. In "Report on Land"; "Selected Works" Ibid Vol 2; p.425.
WE ARE SORRY TO BE BLUNT TO OMVEDT. BUT A PEASANT, IS NOT SIMPLY ANY PEASANT.
To be clear: not every peasant is like any other "peasant". Lenin's attitude was to distinguish the peasants into groups, whether in the stages of seizing stae pwoer, or of consolidating state power. The tactics were:
-DIFFERENTIATE THE RICH FROM THE POOR PEASANT.
-EITHER NEUTRALISE the MIDDLE PEASANT;
- OR PULL THE MIDDLE PEASANT TO SOCIALISM.
Lenin's attitude to the middle peasant was a very realistic one. Yet Omvedt cannot abide the thought of distinguishing between layers of peasantry. She is worried that 'Marxists' in state power would inevitably crush the peaasant. But who advocated this? And who resisted this?
iii) TROTSKY AND PREOBRAZHENSKY URGED CRUSHING THE PEASANTS.
Trotsky had long been contemptuous of the peasantry. Indeed this was a key component of his book "Permanent Revolution". After the death of Lenin in 1923, and during the last years of the New Economic Policy (NEP) the future path of Soviet Russia was under debate. After the temporary retreat of the New Economic Policy, an intense struggle ensued over whether, when and how to embark upon industrialisation. The TROTSKYITES, became allied with Preobrazhensky. He advocated "pumping the peasantry". In fact at the Communist Academy, which took up several pseudo-Left positions (see Alliance 7) Preobrazhensky put it very bluntly :
"Socialism in the existing state of Russia was concerned with the sources and methods of what he termed "primitive socialist accumulation".. the growth of State industry depended upon the accumulation of cash in the hands of the State; and apart from loans from abroad, the only two sources from which such accumulation could be derived were the surplus production of State industry itself.. and what it could derive from the "exploitation of small-scale private economy.. the latter .. he gave the name of primitive socialist accumulation. This he defined as "the accumulation in the hands of the State of material meas obtained chiefly from sources lying outside the State economic system..In a backward agrarian country this accumulation is bound to play a very great role.. These outside spheres of economy he termed "colonies"; and the necessary economic basis of the transition period was a relation of "exploitation" between the "metropolis " of State industry, its productivity and the possibility of living on its own surplus, until finally petty private economy was crushed and engulfed in the socialist economy, as the rise of capitalism had crushed out the peasant and the small craftsman and turned them into proletarians..the methods of this accumulation were two in number. The "colonial" areas might be subjected to direct taxation.. Second and more important was the method of market exchange between State industry and the "colonies". Though the monopoly position of state industry on the market and by measures of "Socialist Protectionism", the rate of interchange could be turned to the advantage of the former.. it involved "exploitation" of the "colonies" by the State."
Dobb, Maurice; "Soviet Economic Development Since 1917"; London, 1972; p.184-5.
Here then, is Omvedt's "Marxist" who sees the peasantry as a tool to be extorted ! But then as we said above there are Marxists, and then there are Marxists! This was not the line of Marxist-Leninists like Stalin. This line was soundly rejected by the 13 th Party Conference and subsequently too. Allied to Preobrazhensky was Trotsky, Ossinsky, Radek and Zinoviev and Kamenev.
iv) BUKHARIN URGES THE KULAKS TO "ENRICH YOURSELVES".
In contrast to Trotsky, Bukharin went the other way! One could say that he did an Omvedt turn! He wished to aid the peasantry to retreat into a capitalist mode of existence. In effect he aided the richer sections of the peasantry. Bukharin argued that the USSR could develop its ability to fulfil the needs of the population, through consumer products. Already in 1925 Stalin had asserted the principle of industrialisation to be critical. But even more so, Stalin emphasised heavy industry:
"At the 14 th Congress in December 1925, the general report on economic policy and industrialisation.. presented by Stalin.. placed primary emphasis on heavy industry. The resolution adopted by 59 votes against 65 with 41 abstentions, enunciated as the leading principle governing economic construction "that the Soviet Union be converted from ac country which imports machines to a country which produces machines, in order that by this means the Soviet Union in the midst of capitalist encirclement would not become an economic appendage of the capitalist world economy, but an independent economic unit which is building Socialism."
Dobbs; Ibid; p.192.
At the same time, there was debate on whether to stimulate the peasantry and agriculture by means of:
"Extensive concessions which must have priority even if this should result in giving rein to the revival of petty capitalism in the countryside. From time to time between the 'scissors' crisis and the end of 1925, a policy of so-called "goods intervention" had been canvassed: A large scale import of consumers' goods from abroad to supplement the deficient supplies that home industry was able to furnish and by placing them on village markets in particular to coax more product from the peasantry and thereby increase the trade between village and town.. this proposal was included in the policy advanced by supporters of Trotsky : eg.. Ossinksy in 1923, and again by Smilga in 1925. Its advocacy was particulary associated with.. Sokolnikov.. who undoubtedly represented at that time the Right tendency although he later joined forces with the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Trotsky bloc. At the 14 th Congress he advocated that the programme of industrialisation should give priority to the expansion of light industry.. Another spokesman of this view was Shanin.. who argued priority must be given to.. agriculture since Russian industry could only expand on the basis of imported equipment and this import of machinery would only become possible on the basis of an enlarged surplus of agricultural produce for export."
Dobb Ibid, p.200-201.
At this time Bukharin issued the call to the kulak to "Enrich Yourself". Dobb, Ibid, p.202.
Under the pressure of a general Bolshevik outrage, Bukharin retracted. But he continued to advocate "proceeding at a slowly"; or:
"Without undue haste to round up the seething unorganised industry under the socialist influence",
In "Building Socialism", Cited by Dobb, Ibid, p.202.
By 1928 - Bukharin and Shanin representing the Right tendency became more open in their opposition, as the pace of industrialisation was increasing; and now pressure on the kulak increased. Shanin charged that industrialisation was taking place on the basis of "inflationary financing". Bukharin in "Observations of an Economist ", written in 1928 attacked the increased tempo under a cover:
"Under the guise of an attack upon the "SUPER-INDUSTRIALISATION" proposals of Trotsky, Bukharin proceeded to show that the real cause of present difficulties was that the industrial construction was increasing too fast for the conditions of agricultural production.. as witnessed by the fact that foodstuffs, consumption goods, and building materials were all alike in deficit supply, compared to the demand."
Dobbs, Ibid, p.204.
In talking of a crisis Bukharin alleged that:
"The high rate of investment itself created "A record demand for industrial goods"; which industry was unable to satisfy : "Industry in its development encounters the limits of this development". "The failure of industry to satisfy the demand of the village"; was not evidence of a too slow rate of development of industry. Quite the contrary was true: "Whilst industry develops at tremendous pace, whilst the population increases rapidly and the needs of this population increase steadily, the amount of grain remains unaltered"; and any "Further acceleration of the speed of development of industry depends to a considerable extent on agricultural raw material production and agricultural export", and any further capital investment "Must be effected with due consideration for all those factors which guarantee a 'more or less crisis-free development and better coordination". Any overstraining of capital expenditure will lead in time to the stoppage of enterprises already begun; it will react unfavourably on other branches in every direction, and it will finally retard the speed of development.. our bow is at a very high tension. To increase this tension still further and to increase the 'goods famine' still more, is impossible.. The acuteness of the goods shortage must certainly be alleviated.. The first steps in this direction must be made."
Cited Dobbs, Ibid, p.204.
This was a direct attack on the 15 th Congress Resolution which had said there were two problems that needed to be circumvented:
"It is incorrect to take as a starting point the demand for a maximum pumping over of means from the sphere of agriculture into the sphere of industry; for this demand would mean a political rupture with the peasantry as well as an undermining of the home market, and undermining of export and an upsetting of the equilibrium of the whole economic system.. It would be incorrect to renounce altogether the use of means drawn from agriculture for the furtherance of industry.. since at the present time this would mean a retardation of the speed of development to the detriment of the industrialisation of the country."
Dobbs, Ibid, p.204-5.
In opposition to Bukharin, Stalin pointed out the essential need to develop heavy industry. Only this would increase the overall capacity of the USSR productive base in order to be able to meet the ends of the population. Stalin argued that:
"We must maintain the present rate of development of industry; we must at the first opportunity speed it up in order to pour goods into the rural areas and obtain more grain from them, to supply agriculture, and primarily the collective farms and state farms, with machines, so as to industrialise agriculture and to increase the proportion of its output for the market.
Should we perhaps, for the sake of greater "caution", retard the development of heavy industry so as to make light industry, which produces chiefly for the peasant market, the basis of our industry? Not under any circumstances! That would be.. suicidal; it would mean abandoning the slogan of industrialising our country, it would mean transforming our country into an appendage of the world capitalist system of economy."
Stalin J.V.S. 28 May, 1928. "Speech to the Institute of Red Professors, On the Grain Front", 'Works', Vol 11, Moscow 1954, p.98.
THE MYTHOLOGY IS THAT THIS LED STALIN TO SQUEEZE TO PEASANT
As opposed to Omvedt's allegations, parroted from the bourgeoisie, collectivisation was not a vicious attack on the peasantry. Here Omvedt agrees with Nikita Khrushchev, a braggart who destroyed the socialist state of the USSR. Khrushchev alleged that Stalin destroyed the peasantry and the peasant led a miserable life under Stalin. As to Collectivisation, Alliance has dealt with allegations of forcible collectivisation etc; in Alliance 10; (See article by JP). In this essay we concentrate on later data concerning peasant life under Stalin.
Khrushchev alleged that Stalin placed the peasant and agriculture in backward conditions. This allegation could not be more misplaced. Stalin himself attacked backwardness in agriculture saying:
"It would hamper the continued growth of the productive forces of our country more and more as time goes on."
Cited by Durgin, Jr F.A.; "The relationship of Stalin's death to the economic change of the post-Stalin era"; In Stuart R.C. "The Soviet Rurla Economy"; 1984; New Jersey; p.138.
IN REALITY AMOUNTS SPENT ON AGRICULTURE ROSE TILL STALIN'S DEATH:
"The trend toward an increasing share of investment clearly began a decade prior to Stalin's death.. The rate of increase in agriculture's share slowed abruptly and came to a halt in the years following his death."
Durgin; Ibid; p.125.
Stalin's attitude to heavy industry at an earlier epoch in Soviet USSR is discussed above. Similar considerations applied following the Second World War. Stalin's resisted further expenditure on light industry, because of the needs of heavy industry; precisely in order to improve the well being of the people. Stalin makes this clear in his last work, written to rebut Khrushchev's revisionist friend Voznosensksy:
"Insuring the maximum satisfaction of the continual growing material and cultural needs of society - that is the goal of socialist production: a continuing growth and development of socialist industry on the basis of an even higher technology that is the means for its attainment." J.V.Stalin "Economic problems of Socialism in the USSR" p.78 Cited Durgin Ibid, p.121.
As Durgin states in 1984:
"This postulate.. is one that the current generation for US economists has come to recognise.. in the new "supply side" economics."
Durgin, Ibid, p. 121.
Durgin also points out the FALL IN LIVING STANDARDS THAT TOOK PLACE AFTER Stalin's death. This can be seen from the share of Gross National Product going to consumption:
"One of the most salient and overlooked features of the post-Stalin era has been the ever decreasing share of GNP going to consumption and the ever increasing share going to investment.. consumption's share fell from 62.4% of the total in 1950 under Stalin to some 56.5% in 1974 under Brezhnev. Investments' share during the same period doubled, rising form 14.8% of the total to 28.4%. The "imbalance".. of the Stalin years seems not to have improved, but rather in a certain sense have worsened."
F.A.Durgin Jr; p.119.
Durgin concludes:
"All of the Stalin 5-Year Plans called for significant increases in consumption. While consumption's share of the national income during the First 5 year Plan was to fall from 77.4 to 66.4%, in absolute terms it was to increase by some 75%. The Second Plan called for a 133% increase in the output of consumer goods and a two fold increase in the urban workers consumption of food and manufactured products.. The priority that Stalin gave to consumption in the post war period.. was also high."
Durgin, Ibid. p.121-122.
ALLEGATIONS THAT:
- STALIN USED THE PEASANTRY AS A MILCH COW FOR RESOURCES, AND
- THAT STALIN DEPRESSED THEIR STANDARD OF LIVING;
ARE UNTRUE.
vi) VIEWS OF SOME MODERN ECONOMISTS ON HEAVY INDUSTRY
Not only Marxist-Leninists believe in the primacy of heavy industry. Many non-Marxist economists agree that an accent on heavy industry is even more critical nowadays, to ensure some independence for the smaller and colonial type countries. Thus the economic and technological historian Nathan Rosenberg writes:
"One particular sector of the economy stands out in its role as a source of new technology appropriate to a country's factor endowment and its ability to facilitate the adaptation to changing output: The capital goods sector. [i.e. Heavy industry - Ed] This sector - apart from construction - is usually underdeveloped in primary producing countries and its underdeveloped state would appear to constitute a handicap of enormous proportions. It is probable that one of the most important factors contributing to the viability and flexibility of industrial economies is the existence of a well-developed capital goods sector possessing the technical knowledge, skills, and facilities for producing machinery to accommodate the changing requirements of productive activity plus the ability and the incentive for raising machinery production itself-thereby reducing its cost and encouraging its further adoption, industrial societies throughout the role of their highly developed capital goods producing industries have in effect internalised int their industrial structure a technological capacity which undertakes technological change and adaptation almost as a matter of course and routine." Rosenberg N; "Perspectives On Technology"; 1976, Cambridge. p.99.
In fact there has been a steady trend to the increasing predominance of heavy industry, world wide:
"Around the middle of the last century agriculture accounted for one-half or more of total output in the countries not considered developed, and industry for around onefifth. One hundred years later these shares were practically reverse. Similarly consumer goods accounted for two-thirds or more of total industrial output, and producer goods for one-third or less. One hundred years alter these share were also reversed. Such a reversal in these two components means that the rates of growth over time of industry in total economy and of producer goods within industry were higher one and half to two times or even more than in agriculture and consumer goods respectively."
D.Chudnovsky, M.Nagao and S.Jacobsson : "Capital Goods Production in the Third World. An Economic Study of Technology Acquisition", New York, 1983. p.xi-xii.
Chudnovsky points out, that over the post-Second World War years, those who propounded an accent on heavy industry were "castigated" - as "socialist"; whilst those that favoured light industry were labelled as "consumerist- OR-being for the people". These labels are shibboliths, in being put into this false opposition:
"The universal prevalence of faster growth of capital goods rather than of consumer goods had little to do with any ideological predilections, It follows from four interrelated common-sense causes."
Chudnovsky, Ibid, p.xiii.
From here, Chudnovsky et al, enumerate four common sense causes, that, favour the historical trend of increasing weight of heavy industry. The First is :
"Industrial development requires an increasing division of labour which in turn calls for a larger production of goods forming part of the process of manufacturing and not directly destined for consumption. Only the end products are consumed but not the intermediates ones." Chudnovsky, Ibid, p.xiii.
"Every newly industrialising country was generally more dependent on the imports of capital goods than of consumer goods.. the process of import substitution in the countries would soon embrace the production of capital goods."
Thirdly and more fundamentally:
"As development proceeds there is generally a decline in the share of consumer expenditures and a rise in the share of capital formation. It follows therefore that the supply of producer goods would have to grow faster than that of consumer goods, unless the relative prices of capital goods were to rise higher".
Fourthly:
"In countries.. where there is shortage of foreign exchange.. the domestic output of capital goods would be called for to meet the increasing requirements of capital goods". Chudnovsky, Ibid, p.xiii.
How Omvedt can argue against this? She does not try. She first asserts and then shifts ground. The assertion is that industrialisation is passe. Then she shifts ground to say that in any case it is "information technology" that is now key. No economic data anywhere can support this assertion. To the contrary. As far as the electronic industry, this only accentuates the importance of heavy industry. This can be seen in the rapidity with which it has taken over in the Western imperialist countries:
"The first result of the new electronic industry has been the introduction of new activities within the engineering industries which are no collectively referred to as the electronics sector.. telecommunications, industrial control and instrumentation, office machinery, consumer electronics and the electronics comments accounted for roughly 10% of the gross output of the engineering sector of such developed countries as the USA, Japan, And Sweden in 1977. Secondly an increasing number of capitalist goods are now equipped with electronic devices; this particularly true of control instruments were electrical mechanical control is replaced by electronic control. For example, over 50% of the lathes produced in the leading Western industrialised countries were equipped with computer control in 1980. .. in Sweden in 1981 36% of all firms in the engineering industry (excluding electronics and metal products branches) included electronic devices in their products."
Chudnovsky et al; Ibid; p.22.
The growth of the micro-electronic industry has led to an increasing dominance of multinational corporations based in the capitals goods industries (Department I) imperialist countries:
"It is common for between 20-25% (in terms of value) of the investment in machine tools to be made in lathes. The sue of computer numerically controlled (CNC) lathes in the total production of lathes grew from about 28% in 1975 to more than 50% by the beginning of the 1980's.. While the share of CNC lathes in the total investment in lathes was usually around 20% in the mid-1970's, this share had reached 50% by 1951, Sweden .. 78%. CNC lathes were also being diffused in Newly Industrialised Countries (NIC's - ed ie the semicolonial world) albeit more slowly. For example the share of CNC lathes in the total investment in lathes increased from about 7% in 1978 to around 20% in 1981 in the case of Taiwan.. the market from conventional lathes has shrunk not only in relative but also in absolute terms.. conventional lathes may be divided into .. automatic lathes and engine lathes. Automatic lathes are generally complex.. engine lathes are simplest.. CNC lathes have not replaced automatic lathes to the same extent as engine lathes.. it is only in the sub-market of engine lathes that the developing countries have gained a significant share of the market of a developed country.. it is strategically important for the NIC's to enter into the production of CNC lathes." Chudnovsky; Ibid; p.183-85.
The stranglehold of imperialism be broken. This can only be done with national liberation struggles, that pass immediately onto socialist revolutions. All this entails a definite utilisation of heavy industry to attain porductive capacity. Omvedt will not and cannot accept this.
"MARXIST ANALYSIS OF CAPITALISM IS INSUFFICIENT" SAYS OMVEDT.
Omvedt laid a number of charges against the Dead White Male who wrote "Capital". Well no one is perfect. But, Omvedt finds several imperfections. Lest we forget her theoretical threads we briefly recap her assertions (See p.46-50 for quotes):
i) Marxist analysis emphasises class. But there is a "non-coincidence of the narrow and broad meanings of class.. ownership versus nonownership of the means of production does not explain exploitation.. some owners are exploited & some non-owners exploit."
ii) Value is defined only by "abstract labour time" and "capital accumulation is defined only through the appropriation of surplus value only."
iii) "The major theoretical point of Maria Mies is the role of violence and force in exploitation and the primary accumulation."
iv) The "primary relations of production are those between producers and consumers; early non-exploitative societies are 'subsistence societies' in which production is for self-consumption, gradually extended through kin and other social networks to mediated exchange".
v) "Only with breaking of direct links" and an "alienation between consumer and nonproducer do exploitative 'relations of production' between owners/non-owners, producers/looters, begin".
vi) "One of Marx's fundamental errors was treating consumption as simply passive, a reflection of production".
vii) "Capitalism as a system rests fundamentally not on wage labour as on the commodity form in which the direct links between producer and consumer are broken'" ;
viii) "The extraction of surplus from the direct producer in the form of the commodity forms - the basis of capital accumulation."
ix) "Nature itself is exploited'; which Marx denies somehow.
THESE BOIL DOWN TO FOUR CORE CHARGES. THESE ARE:
-Class is not the be all and end all; ie. that Marxists see economic relations explaining everything and that this is not correct;
-Primitive accumulation occurs by force in a way that Mies needed to teach Marx;
- Marx does not understand the centrality of commodity production and the many means by which surplus labour can be extracted; and;
- that Marx did not understand that man exploited nature.
This alleges that Marx and Engels, explained everything by the a mould of Base economy; and that "Class is ALL". Almost anything inexplicable was explained by a secondary and hermetically sealed "superstructure". Omvedt feels that Marxists have not adequately explained the caste system in India, and this reflects the tendency to say all comes from an economic base.
But nothing could be farther from the truth. It is certainly true that others may apply such a pre-ordained moulding. But it was Marx we believe who said somewhere, "Save me from Marxists"; and Engels points out:
"Marx and I are ourselves to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes place more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-a-vis our adversaries, who denied it and we had not always the time or the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other factors involved in the interaction."
Letter to Joseph Bloch September 21-2, 1890". In Marx and Engels "Pre Capitalist Socio-Economic Formations"; Moscow; 1979; p.524.
Omvedt excuses the leader of the Untouchables, Ambedkar, his support for British imperialism for a period; arguing that he and the Dalits had "too many enemies to fight"! Doubtless she might then find the charity to excuse Marx and Engels in laying emphasis on the main determinant, whilst they established a new science of society.
How did Engels himself, see interaction of superstructure and base?
"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining factor in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I have ever asserted more than this. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, he transformed that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure - political forms of eh class struggle and its results, such as constitution established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc, juridical forms, and especially the reflections of the all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political, legal, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into system of dogmata-also exercise their influence upon the courses of the historical struggle and in many cases determine their form in particular. There is an interaction of all these elements in which amid all the endless host of accidents (that is of things and events whose inter-connection is so remote and impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent and neglect it), the economic movement is bound to assert itself."
Frederick Engels :" Engels Letter to Bloch Ibid p.522.
Engels gives an example how a mechanical insistence upon economic determinacy will lead to obvious "ridicule":
"We make our history ourselves, but in the first place under very definite antecedents and conditions, Among these the economic one are ultimately decisive. But the political ones etc; and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, but not the decisive one.. It is hardly possible without making oneself ridiculous, to explain in terms of economics the existence of every small state in Germany past and present, or the origin of the High German consistent shift, which divides the geographic partition formed by the mountain partition formed by the mountain ranges from the Sudentenes to the Taunus, into a regular fissure running across Germany".
Engels; Ibid; p.523.
Moreover, there are a myriad of factors that individualise final results, as opposed to classes alone. Each individual then plays a role in the "parallelogram of forces", that ends up in any result:
"In the second place however history proceeds in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills and every one of them is in turn made into what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant-the historical event." Ibid, p. 523.
In another letter, to W.Borgius Engels explains:
"Political, legal, philosophical, religious, literary artistic etc; development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. One must not think that the economic situation is cause and solely active, whereas everything else is only [passive effect. On the contrary interaction takes place on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself. The state for instance exercise an influence by protective tariffs, free trade, good or bad fiscal system.."
F.Engels Letter to W.Borgius; January 25th; 1894: In Marx and Engels, "Pre Capitalist Socio-Economic Formation; Ibid; p.540.
None of this of course takes away from the MAIN THING- that is undoubtedly class and economics.
That is of discomfort to Omvedt? So be it.
ix) OMVEDT'S CHARGES ON ROLE OF COMMODITY PRODUCTION
It appears that Marx needed lessons on commodity production. We argued against Shiva's mythical bucolic past. But to be sure, a radically different world for peasants did exist, with a common ownership. This past was based on a harsh struggle against Nature, contrary to the dreams of Omvedt and Shiva. But it existed - as a primitive form of communism:
"In reality the communal ownership of the land is an institution which is to be found among all Indo-Germanic peoples on a low level of development, from India to Ireland.. In India.. the communally owned land is cultivated by the peasant in common and the product then divided in some parts."
F.Engels; "On Social Relations In Russia"; In "Selected Works Marx and Engels"; Vol 2; Moscow; 1985; p.393.
How did Marx and Engels see the fall of humanity from the grace of a primitive communism? Undoubtedly, by the erosion of the former nexus of human relations by commodity exchange:
"The German Mark organisations, the Celtic Clans or the Indian and other communities with primitive communist features. In the course of time and under the influence of production and exchange of commodities between families and individuals, which surrounded and developed inside of them, and which gradually permeated them, they all came to shed their communistic character, falling apart into communities of landowners independent of each other."
F.Engels; "After word to:"On Social Relations In Russia"; In Marx and Engels, Vol 2; Ibid; p.401.
In fact Money itself only emerged, after the perceived need for exchange appeared. In other words, the need was felt, for an equivalence marker between different commodities. actually, the money economy already arrived long before capitalism. This money economy, even under pre-capitalist society began to erode the well being of the peasantry:
"When taxes are due to fall, the usurer, the kulak- frequently a rich peasant of the same village community - comes along and offers his ready cash. The peasant must have the money at all costs and is obliged to accept the conditions of the usurer without demur. But this only gets him into a tighter fix and he needs more and more ready cash. At harvest time the grain dealer arrives; the need for money forces the peasant to sell a part of the grain which he and his family require for their own subsistence. The grain dealer spreads false rumours which lowers prices, pays a low price and often even part of this in all sorts of high priced goods.. It is quite obvious that the great corn exports of Russia are based firstly on the starvation of the peasant population."
F.Engels : "On Social Relations In Russia". In Selected Works, Vol 2, Ibid, p.398.
Marx recognised that the tempo of changes in commodity production differed in different social formations, but wherever it took place, it was corrosive:
"In the ancient Asiatic and other ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion of products into commodities, and therefore the conversion of men into producers of commodities holds a subordinate place, which however increases in importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution. Trading nations properly so called, exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia or like Jews in the pores of Polish society. Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. But they are founded on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjection."
Marx, K. "Commodities"; Part I; Chapter I; "Capital"; Vol 1; Moscow; 1954; p.79.
In many places Marx describes the enormous transforming properties of money in relation to commodity relations. He quotes the blistering words of Shakespeare's King Timon, to illustrate how money changes the world:
"Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is does away with all distinctions:
'Gold glittering precious gold!
Thus much of this will make black white; foul fair;
Wrong right; base noble; old young; coward valiant;
. What this you gods? Why this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides.
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads;
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd;
Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves,
And give them title, knee and approbation,
With senators on the bench; this is it,
That makes the wappen'd widow wed again:
. Come damned earth,
Thou common whore of mankind."
K.Marx; "Capital"; Vol 1; Moscow; 1954; "Money or the Circulation of Commodities"; Part I; Chapter III; p.132.
The corrosive properties of commodity production and money were obviously appreciated by Marx, who highlighted the views of prior bourgeois economy.
What is now left of Omvedt's portentous charge that:
"Only with the breaking of direct links and the establishment of an alienation between consumer and non-producer do exploitative 'relations of production' between owners/non-owners, producers/looters, etc even begin. One of Marx's fundamental errors was from this point of view, to treat consumption as simply passive, a reflection of production."
Obviously precious little!
We have established that Marx and Engels fully understood the erosive properties of commodity and money circulation. What of this "passive" view of Marx on the relation of commodity/consumption to production? Well again Omvedt should give a reference. All we find speaks to a much different, and dialectical view:
"Production produces consumption:
(1) By creating the material for consumption;
(2) By determining the mode of consumption;
(3) By creating in the consumer a need for the products which it first posits as objects.
It therefore produces the object of consumption, the mode of consumption and the urge to consume it. Similarly consumption produces the predisposition of the producer by soliciting him as a purpose-determining need. The identity of consumption and production thus appears three-fold:
(1)Direct Identity: production is consumption; consumption is production. Consumptive production. Productive consumption..
(2) Each appears as a means of the other, is mediated by it; this is expressed as their mutual dependence; a movement through which they are brought into mutual relation and appear to be indispensable with each other, but nevertheless remain external to each other. Production creates the material as the external object for consumption, consumption creates the need as the internal object, the purpose of production. No consumption without production, no production without consumption...
(3) Production is not only directly consumption, and consumption directly production; nor is production only a means of consumption and consumption the purpose of production, in the sense that each provides the other with its object, with production supplying the external object of consumption, and consumption the notional object of production. Each of them is not only directly the other, nor does it merely mediate the other, but each of the two, by the fact of its taking place, creates the other, creates itself as the other. It is only consumption that consummates the act of production, since consumption completes the production as a product by dissolving it, by consuming its independent material form. Moreover, by the need for repetition consumption raises the abilities evolved during the first act of production to a skill. Consumption is therefore the concluding act which not only turns the product into a product, but also turns the producer into a producer. Production on the other hand, produces consumption by creating the definitive mode of consumption, and also by creating the incentive to consumption."
Marx K; "Introduction to The Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1861; 'The Grundrisse'; Vol 28 "Collected Works"; Moscow; 1986; p.30.
What else has Omvedt not read, but simply heard about through the grapevine about "Marx's Errors?"
x) OMVEDT"S CHARGE CONCERNING "PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION"
For Omvedt, Marx "apparently" did not understand primitive accumulation. Apparently the world had to wait Maria Mies' "discovery" of the "violence underlying accumulation.
Any cursory flip through Marx will reveal that this is simply absurd. Marx unleashes invective against the forcible impoverishment of the peasantry:
"As soon as the question of property crops up.. In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and "labour" were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the present year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic."
Marx, K; "Capital"'The So Called Primitive Accumulation'"; Part VIII; Chapter XXVI; Volume I; Moscow; 1954; p.714.
Has Omvedt not read Marx's praise of Thomas More's (16th Century) "sheep" eating passages? These describe how the Enclosures took over peasant property to make room for the new wool industry. Or his fulminations against the Duchess of Sutherland who in the 19th Cnetury drove herHighlanddcottagerss out for her sheep ? But by now, we should not be surprised if Omvedt has not read these. Let her pass the following snippets to her grapevine:
"In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are epoch-making that act as levers for the capitalist class in course of formation; but above all those moment when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from the means of subsistence and hurled as free and "unattached" proletarians on eh labour market. The expropriation of the peasant from the soil is the basis of the whole process..
Bacon says: 'Inclosures at that time (1489) began to be more frequent, whereby arable land was turned into pasture; an tenancies for years, lives and at will.. were turned into desmenes. This bred a decay of people...
In his "Utopia", Thomas More says that in "England your shape that were wont to be so meke and tame and so small eaters, now, as I heare saye, become so great devourers and so wylde that they eate up, and swallow downe the very men themselves"..
The cry of the people and the legislation directed, for 150 years after Henry VII., against the expropriation of the small farmers and peasants were alike fruitless..
The last process of the wholesale expropriation of the agricultural population form the soil is finally the so called clearing of estates ie. the sweeping men off them..
the Duchess of Sutherland.. resolved to .. turn the whole country, whose population had already been by earlier processes of the like kind, reduced to 15,000 into a sheep walk. From 1814-1820 these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3,000 families were systematically burned and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their field turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this eviction and came to blows with the inhabitants. On old woman was burned to death in the flames of the hut, which she refused to leave. Thus this fine old lady expropriates 794,000 acres of land that had from time immemorial belonged to the clan, She assigned to the expelled inhabitants about 6,000 acres on the sea shore- 2 acres per family.. they became amphibious and lived, half on and half on war, and withal only half on both."
Marx K; "Expropriation of Agricultural Population"; Part VIII Chapter XXVII In "Capital" Vol I; Ibid; p.716; 719; 720; 728; 730.
The rapid and vicious industrialisation that formed the Industrial Revolution in the colonised world now, is a process mirrored now in the "First World". Just as in the earlier industrialisation in the West, technology is the driving force. Technological developments made possible the wool trade and the explosion in the profitability of the business of keeping sheep. So too did technological improvements make possible the growth of the proletariat that worked in a factory.
"Modern industry alone and finally supplies in machinery the lasting basis of capitalistic agriculture, expropriates radically the enormous majority of the agriculture population and completes the separation between agriculture and rural domestic industry - whose roots -spinning and weaving - it tears up. It also therefore for the first time, conquers for industrial capital the entire home market."
K.Marx."Part VIII, Chapter XXX. "Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution", In "Capital" Vol 1; Ibid; p.748-9.
Is this process occurring in India?
Unequivocally "Yes".
Do any progressive notions underlie "Sustainable development"?
In both Shiva and Omvedt, this might lie in empowering the peasantry to allow them to stay as a peasantry. But can the peasantry decide their future so easily, by a "free" choice? Shiva offers a sterile up dated Gandhism. Omvedt, instead serves the tender mercies of the Brundlandt Commission. Meanwhile the reality is the unstoppable pauperisation -about which we protest. But Engels points out, it leads to the social revolution:
"Marx sharply stresses the bad sides of capitalist production but with equal emphasis clearly proves that this social form was necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were too poor for this. Capitalist production is the first to create the wealthy and the productive forces necessary for this, but at the same time it creates in the numerous and oppressed workers the social class which is compelled more and more to take possession of this wealth and these productive forces in order to utilise them for the whole of society - instead of their being utilised as they are today for a monopolist class." Frederick Engels: Upon "Marx's Capital". 1867, In Selected Works, Volume 2, p.152.
Gail Omvedt denies that this process is occurring to the population of India. She wishes to deny Marxist theory on empirical grounds. If she is right then Lenin's statement below would not apply in India:
"The fact that the yield on.. the capitalistically cultivated landlords' is higher than on the peasant lands reveals the technical progress of capitalism in agriculture. This progress is due to the transition from the labour rent system to the wage labour system.. The landlords and the wealthy peasants are transformed into employers of labour."
Lenin "The Agrarian Question In Russia"; in 'Selected Works' Vol 1' London; 1944; p.187.
As stated above, Lenin saw the "peasantry" as composed of several parts, an exploited part and a small exploiters part:
"One of the main features of the rich peasant is that they hire farmhands and day labourers. Like the landlords the rich represents also live by the labour of the other.. It is clear that in the great fight between the propertied class and the propertyless, .. the rich peasants will take the side of the property-owners against the working class."
V.I.Lenin:"To the Rural Poor"; Selected Works' Volume 2; London; 1944; p.265.
- BUT TO OMVEDT, "A PEASANT IS ALWAYS A PEASANT".
- AGAIN: IS THIS PROCESS THAT MARX, ENGELS AND LENIN DESCRIBED IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD OCCURRING IN INDIA?
- IT WOULD APPEAR THAT IT IS.
xi) PAUPERISATION IN INDIA TODAY
The Government of India itself gives corroborating figures.
Firstly land concentration is occurring. According to official figures the class of landlords and rich peasants holding 15 acres or more of land; holds more than 50% of the total land, although consisting only 7% of the rural population.(P.S.Appu: Ceilings on Agricultural; Holdings', Government of India; 1971;p.38.)
Secondly, the bourgeoisie are assisting this trend. The concentration of landholding has increased since the 'so-called Independence':
"Concentration of landholding and other assets in the hands of a tiny minority of landlords and rich farmers and a corresponding pauperisation and proletarianisation at the bottom has emerged as distinct trends after Independence".
A.R.Desai; 'India's Path of Development'; Bombay; 1984;p.15.
Thirdly, the state has directed its' policies, to a considerable extent to the benefit of the rich peasantry:
"A disproportionately large share of the benefits accruing from the heavy investments made by society during the last two decades in irrigation, rural electrification, community development, road building, agricultural extension etc; has gone to the rich farmers, Those with more land have derived a larger share of the increased prosperity. This progress has also led to a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the rural elites... The Cooperative Societies, controlled as they are in most parts of the country by the rich framers, seldom cater to the needs of the weaker section of the population. The benefits of community development programmes, as of all other development efforts in general have accrued to the richer sections of society,, leaving the poor untouched."
P.S.Appu: Ibid; p.37; 39.
"Since independence considerable public investments have been made in irrigation, rural electrification, community development, road building, agricultural extension etc; .. The benefits of these public investment have been largely accrued to the bigger landowners, who are not required to pay any betterment levy to even reasonable irrigation rates. The benefits of the recent breakthrough in agricultural production based on the adoption of modern technology have also gone mainly to the well-to-do farers, On of the spectacular results has been a widening of disparities in health and income in rural areas".
Planning Commission: 'Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations' Government of India; 1973; p.14.
"The state.. has launched schemes to create social, political, cultural and economic institution to strengthen her positions of power of the richer section of the peasantry and the trading class through which it is initiating the process of capital formation and of reshaping of agrarian production and the rural social order.. The Indian bourgeois has successfully transformed Indian agrarian society into one composed of small group of landlords and rich peasants, and vast armies of agrarian proletariat and pauperised peasants, with vast numbers of human derelicts-the unemployed or economically superfluous population..
With a view to strengthening this class of rich peasantry and landlords.. the Indian bourgeois has provided extensive facilities like the supply of seeds, fertilisers, improved tools, irrigation and water supply as well as faculties for credit and improved means of communication and transport. It has further, allowed various kinds of organisations like cooperative, land mortgage bans, marketing and purchasing societies, panchyats and others, which primarily serve the same purpose...
The Indian bourgeois state, as part of its agrarian strategy, is also elaborating varieties of ..institutions which in the context of class polarisation in agrarian areas are basically being used to enable those richer sections to influence and control the rural population.
The cooperatives, the gram and nyay panchayats, the educational, youth womens' and other organisations which have been elaborated in the agrarian society are also associational forms which have been cleverly worked out by the Indian bourgeois state to provide powerful levers for the richer section of the village communities to establish their control over the village poor and to provide necessary facilities to subserve the interests of the these richer peasants."
A.R.Desai;Ibid;p .149-50;158-59
Fourthly, the domination of the state by landowners particularly large landowners is admitted by Indian government reports and other studies:
"The attitude of the bureaucracy towards the implementation of land reform is generally lukewarm, and often apathetic. this is, of course, inevitable because , as in the case of the men who wield political power, those in the higher echelons of the administration are also substantial landowners themselves or they have close links with big landowners, the village functionaries.. Are inevitably petty landowners.. they were also under the sway of the big landowners."
The Planning Commission; Ibid.; p.9.
"The rich and well-to-do farm groups in India count very much in the inner councils of the Congress Party bot in the Centre and the States".
W.Ladejinsky:"Economic and Political Weekly", Bombay; 30 September, 1972.
"A nation wide survey conducted under the auspices of the National Institute of Community Development in 1965.. revealed that 64% of the rural politicians, or almost two-thirds, owned 10 acres or more of land each with 38.2% owning 25 acres or more each." S.Arora:"Economic and Political Weekly"; Bombay; Annual Number 1972.
Moreover OMVEDT HERSELF gives data that there is indeed a pauperisation of the Indian peoples:
"The overall statistics show a clear decline in tenancy (area leased -in was 35.7% of total land in 1950-1 and 9.25 percent in 1971-72) and a rise in agricultural labourers (from 19.7% of total work force in 1951 to 24.9% in 1981)."
Omvedt 3; Ibid, p.34.
Omvedt takes refuge in the fact that:
"The figures do NOT show a growth in landlessness: in 1953-54 the proportion of rural households cultivating no land was 10.96% while in 1981-82 it had risen to 27.41% (Only 9% owned no land) and in 1981-82 it dropped to 23.7%."
Omvedt 3; Ibid; p.34.
This menas absolute landlessness here. It is as if a tiny square of non-productive land somehow transforms the peasant into a qualitatively different class. Omvedt even points out that differentiation between industry and agriculture is growing. There is a drift into the mills:
"The data seem to indicate that rural impoverishment was pushing people into wage labour, and the lack of nonagricultural jobs meant that they were thrown back on the land to constitute a destitute wage-labour force but not a true proletariat."
So the difference between a "destitute wage labourer and a true proletariat" is for Omvedt only that the "destitute wage labourer" has a tiny piece of land.
How big is this land?
Well Omvedt again gives us facts. And who argues with facts?
ESTIMATED OPERATIONAL FARM HOLDINGS AND AREA OPERATED.
1970-71 1980-81 1985-86 (Percent of Operational Holdings)
Marginal (0-1 hect) 50.6 56.4 58.1
Small (1-2 hect) 19.1 18.1 18.3
Semi-medium (2-4 hect) 15.2 14.0 13.5
Medium (4-10 Hect) 11.2 9.1 8.1
Large (over 10 Hect) 3.9 2.4 2.0
(From Omvedt 3; Ibid; Table 2.1; p.35).
How does Omvedt interpret this data?
"Land re-distribution statistics show that up to 1985-86 the proportion of poor peasantry was maintaining itself-and that with a growing population remaining dependent on agriculture, the whole agrarian structure was in a sense "pushed down": more and more holdings and a grater proportion of the area operated was in a marginal category." Omvedt 3; Ibid; p.34.
This is completely true. Even more would this come out if the figures were to be expressed per capita (ie per head). But Omvedt misses the fact that even the middle peasantry is declining also. If figures for semi-medium and medium are combined, this comes out to be 26.4%; to 23.1%; to 21.6%.
So there is a general impoverishment, or drift to the proletariat; or is this incorrect?
Omvedt shows in anohter table, (Table 2.4 a Omvedt 3; Ibid; p.38) that this interpretation is correct. So, by "Sector of industrial origin:" national income derived from "agriculture and allied activities" fell from 54% in 1950-51 to 37.9% in 1984-85. In the same period, income from "manufacturing, construction and mining" rose from 17.14% to 22.17%; whilst in "tertiary defense and public administration" it rose from 24.81% to 39.91%.
ISN'T THIS WHAT MARXISTS-LENINISTS HAVE SAID?
LEAVE ASIDE THE SHIBBOLETHS OF THE "MARXISTS" !
Where does Marx say that the peasant absolutely has to not have nary a single possession, nor a tiny bit of land? We are sure that Omvedt is thinking of a reference. But unfortunately, as she does not offer it we cannot find it ourselves! But Marx does indeed say this:
"The agricultural labourer is therefore reduced to the minimum of wages and always stands with one foot already in the swamp of pauperism"
Marx K; "The General Law of Capital Accumulation"; Chapter XXV; Part VII; Capital", Vol I; p.642.
And that is exactly what Omvedt's statistics say. There may be a tiny piece of land, but it is not adequate as a "productive means" to keep the peasant from becoming a "destitute wage labourer if not a true proletariat". What academic "distinctions" like these can disguise!
THAT THE PROLETARIAT HAS GROWN IN INDIA IS INDISPUTABLE.
BUT OMVEDT'S ARGUMENT IS REALLY THAT:
"THE PEASANTRY STILL EXISTS, ERGO THE MARXIST THEORY MUST BE WRONG".
AND SHE ARGUES:
"NOT ALL THE PEASANTRY ARE CONVERTED INTO EITHER RICH LANDED PEASANTS; OR INTO LANDLESS DISPOSSESSED PEASANTS. ERGO - MARX WAS WRONG".
This mechanical and naive world view cannot help anyone. Only the shackling of Indian industry by foreign imperialism, resists the faster pace of this process of pauperisation and driving into the factories. The main thrust of changes in the Indian countryside cannot be explained by Omvedt. But in any case, can Omvedt offer a different path from socialist revolution?
xiii) OMVEDT'S CHARGES ON HUMANS AND NATURE
We have already argued to Shiva, that Marx well understood that humans exploit nature. To pretend otherwise is a fantasy. We have already shown that Engels cogently explains the history of the desertification of the Middle East. But this is all part of the human's urge to eat, to reproduce themselves, to rise above the elements of the world around. Marx expresses it well in the following passage:
"It is the necessity of establishing social control over a force of nature, of making use of it, in an economical way, and of appropriating it on a large scale through works of art, in a word of conquering it, that plays the decisive role in the history of industry. Such was the necessity of regulating and distributing the flow of water in Egypt, Lombardy and Holland etc. Such is it today in India in Persia etc.. Canalisation was the secret of the flourishing industries of Spain and Sicily under Arab domination".
From Marx K; Capital French Edition; Vol 2; pp. 186-88. Cited In : Marx and Engels "On Literature and Art"; Moscow; 1976; p.47.
We have already given part of this following quote to Shiva. But we must complete it, because the difference between OTHER Nature; and OUR Nature is put very graphically here. Who has not marvelled at Nature's constructions? But are they of the same ilk as the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal or the Moscow Subway completed under Kaganovich's direction?
"Labour is in the first place a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates , and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her forces, setting in motion arms and legs, heads and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate natures' productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world, and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are now dealing with this primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man bring his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it exclusively human. A spider constructs operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act."
Marx K; "The Labour Process and the Process of Producing Surplus Value"; Chapter VII; Part III; "Capital Vol 1"; Moscow; 1954; p.177-8.
CONCLUSIONS ON OMVEDT: ONLY ONE PATH TO LIBERATION
We described above the passage from primitive communism to a more modern, albeit, harsher world. But, in some parts of the world, there were remnants of this earlier form of society, until very late. One such place was Russia.
"It is thus seen that the artel is a co-operative society which has arisen spontaneously and is, therefore still very undeveloped, and, neither exclusively Russian or Slavic. Such societies are formed wherever the need for them exists. For instance in Switzerland among the dairy farmers, in England among the fishermen, The Silesian navvies (Germans not Poles) who built so many German railroads.. the predominance of this form proves it is true the strong impulse to associate, but is far from proving the ability to jump with the aid of this impulse from the artel straight to the socialist order of society."
p.392. Engels, On Social Relations in Russia. Ibid.
In these societies it was once possible to "bypass" the passage through the hell of capitalism:
"It is clear that communal ownership in Russia is long past its period of florescence and to all appearances is moving towards its disintegration, Nevertheless the possibility undeniably exists, of raising this form of society to a higher one, if it should last until such circumstances are ripe for that, and it shows itself capable of development in such a manner that the peasants no longer cultivate the land separately but collectively; of raising that to a higher form; without it being necessary for the Russian peasants to go through the intermediate stages of bourgeois small peasant holdings. This however can only happen if, before the complete break-up of the communal ownership a proletarian revolution is successfully carried out in Western Europe, creating for the Russian peasant the preconditions for such a transition."
Engels, Ibid, p.395.
But only one way could have bypassed this hell of capitalism, via the creation of socialism. In present day India this "short cut" is no longer possible. Because capitalism has already been well and truly established in both town and countryside; BUT co-existing with a vicious feudal type oppression of the peasantry; AND the whole under the thumb of foreign imperialism. This mandates the completion of the stalled bourgeois democratic revolution. In India a ruthless land accumulation has gone on apace. This land accumulation accrued to the benefit of rich landlord farmers who buy tractors. Omvedt glissades past all this, preferring to lump all peasants into the "Farmers" movement.
THERE IS A SOLUTION TO THE MISERY OF THE PEASANTRY. IT IS REMARKABLY SIMPLE IN CONCEPT THOUGH ARDUOUS IN PRACTICE. MOREOVER IT IS PROVEN TO WORK BY TWO CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTS - ONE WAS RUSSIA AND ONE WAS ALBANIA.
There is only one way that peasant liberation can be achieved. This is to create conditions for the socialist revolution. Omvedt does not suggest how this is to be done. Is the Marxist-Leninist party redundant? How does the peasant link with the workers? Are the interests of countryside and town reconcilable and if so how? These are the questions that the Marxist-Leninist party must grapple with. Omvedt does not wish to try to even create a Marxist-Leninist party.
OMVEDT'S SOLUTION IS A MUCH MORE SPONTANEOUS AFFAIR; EVEN THOUGH IT IS GUIDED BY THE BRUNDLANDT COMMISSION!
Whilst struggling against the proletarianisation of India's masses, Omvedt does not even have the insight of the British Famine Commissioners of 1880:
"At the root of much of the poverty of the people of India and of the risks to which they are exposed in seasons of scarcity lies the unfortunate circumstance that agriculture forms almost the sole occupation of the mass of the population, and that no remedy for present evils can be complete which does not include the introduction of a diversity of occupations, through which the surplus population may be drawn from agricultural pursuits and led to find the means of subsistence in manufacturers or some such employment."
Famine Commission of 1880, Government of India, Cited by B.R.Tomlinson, "The New Cambridge History of India. III.3. "The Economy Of Modern India 1960-1970", New Delhi, 1993. p.104.
Moreover the continuing proletarianisation and dispossession of the peasantry remains a mystery to her. For an unstoppable process, all she offers is to try even harder to turn history back. She has turned her back on the only path that effectively can face the pauperisation of the peasants:
"Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is the only really revolutionary class. The other classes perish and disappear in the face of Modern Industry, the proletariat is its special and essential product.. the lower middle classes, the small manufacturers, the shopkeepers, the artisan, the peasant - all these fight against the bourgeoisie to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the ideal class.. they are reactionary for they try to roll back the wheel of history".
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. "Manifest Der Kommunistischen Partei", London, 1848. pp9-11. Marx and Engels Vol 2, Selected Works, Moscow 1985. p.145.
Here, the leaders of the world proletariate saw the future. It is this same development that Omvedt fights.
PART 3. SOVIET RUSSIA AND ECOLOGY : POST WAR AGRICULTURE AND THE STALIN PLAN TO TRANSFORM NATURE
Traditional histories state that Stalin destroyed agriculture and biological science by supporting Trofim Desnisovich Lyensko Elsewhere we document that Lysenkoism evolved a reductionist biology as a part of a revisionist led attack on the principles of science. This was obstructed by Stalin (A full analysis of Lysenko is available from Alliance).
Nonetheless, cautions against the monoculture of maize - as was advocated by Khrushchev for the Soviet Union - were however justifiable.
I) THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE USSR AND MONOCULTURE
Maize hybrid monoculture for the USSR was first sponsored by Nikolai Vavilov. In the USA this had increased yields by 20-30% on:
"Millions of acres. The hybridization program was organized by Vavilov and his collaborators.. But this.. met the sharp resistance of Lysenko, Prezent, Ol'shansky and others who kept discrediting it.."
Zhores Medvedev, "The Rise and Fall of Lysenko" New York, 1969. p.64.
Lysenko resisted corn monoculture. However Stalin, by 1952 signalled that "seigniorial attitudes in science" were intolerable (See Alliance #7; - Stalin on linguistics) and Lysenko came under scrutiny. After Stalin's death, Lysenko changed his views by 180 degrees, and joined Khrushchev's campaign to promote maize monoculture. The second "maize" sponsor then, was Khrushchev.
THERE WERE GOOD REASONS TO OPPOSE MAIZE MONOCULTURE.
The first was the geography of the USSR (See map below). Levins and Lewontin point out :
Only in hard copy
MAP USSR VEGETATION ZONES.
From Knystautas, Algridas "Natural History of the USSR";London, 1987.p.32. Shows the vast range of climate zones from polar zone; tundra; desert, to mountain.
"There can be no understanding of Lysenkoism that does not begin with the hard facts of climate and soil in the Soviet Union.. It is illuminating to compare Soviet and American agricultural production, Nearly all of the USSR lies above the latitude of St.Paul Minnesota (40 Deg N) so its general temperature regime is more like that of the Western Canada.. The growing season in the most productive belt the Chernozem, is short, and the contrast between summer and winter temperatures is extreme, as compared with Western Canada and the USA. Although the population of the Soviet Union is one-third larger than that of the US, the total harvestable acreage per year is the same about 360 million acres. The rich black chernozem soils of the USSR, equivalent to the Great Plains and prairie of USA and Canada are in a narrow east-West belt from the Ukraine in the West, passing just North of the Black Sea, to Akmolinsk in the East, running roughly along the 50th Parallel. South of the Chernozem belt rainfall is 10 inches or less per year and so is much too arid for normal agriculture, North of the chernozem belt rainfall is 16-28 inches per year, quite adequate for agriculture but the soil is poor the growing season short and the winter frosts very severe, so neither winter wheat nor spring wheat is favoured. The problem for farmers in this region is to plant late enough to avoid killing frosts, yet early enough to get a full growing season, The Chernozem belt itself, which is the chief agricultural region of the Soviet Union, lies in band of marginal rainfall, 10-20 inches per year, with frequent droughts that result in catastrophic crop failures. In contrast, the back soil belt of the US runs North to South in the Great Plains, spans a broad range of temperature regimes, mostly milder than in the USSR, and receives 15-25 inches of rainfall per year, reaching 30 inches in the Easternmost sections. In addition a large central section of the US, just East of the Plains, had 30-40 inches of rain, soils 3-10 feet deep, a long and mild growing season with summer nights that do not fall below 55 Deg F, that is ideal for maize. This corn belt which is the basis for meat production, is completely absent in the USSR... these generally poor conditions in the Soviet Union are similar for other crops. Cotton which in the US is chiefly produced in the most regions of the Southeast by dry farming, must be irrigated at considerable expense in the Soviet Union, since warm temperatures are accompanied there by semi-aridity. The most striking example of the deleterious effect of environment on a staple crop is sugar beets."
Levins R and Lewontin R; "The Dialectical Biologist"; Cambridge, Mass; p.171-2.
These authors appropriately conclude that:
"Lysenko's rejection of hybrid corn and his insistence on the use of locally adapted varieties usually is offered as a prime example of the counterproductive effects of his unscientific theories.. while Khrushchev is praised for adopting American hybrid corn breeding. Yet hybrid corn has not been a success in the Soviet Union, precisely because there is no corn belt. In the US outside of the corn belt, in areas that are more marginal for maize, locally adapted varieties commonly outperform hybrids."
Levins and Lewontin, Ibid, p.172.
There were other biological reasons, to oppose monoculture. Darwin showed that inbreeding of plants led to weakness; but "hybrid vigour" developed with "out-breeding". Lysenko adopted this principle, calling it "heterosis". But this was also recognised in the West. Biologists now interpret hybrid vigour as follows:
"In the heterozygous diploid the dominant allele often shelters recessive alleles which are deleterious in the homozygous state. Self fertilisation quickly results in the segregation of lethal or sub-lethal types as homozygous recessive are produced. Unless specially looked for in the seedling stage these types which may die at an early stage of growth may be undetected even in garden or glasshouse culture. Further selfings produce rapid separation of the material into uniform lines - often called pure lines - differing from each other in various vegetative and reproductive characteristics. The continued selfing of uniform lines may be rendered impossible as some plants may become weak or sterile. Surviving lines may by characterised by plants of reduced fertility and vigour."
Briggs D and Walters SM, "Plant Variation & Evolution", 2nd Edition; Cambridge; 1984; p.134-5.
Actually the hybrid corn that so impressed Khrushchev on his USA visits was first developed in recognition of Darwin's proof of "hybrid vigour". Edward Murray East and George Harrison Schull established special hybrids of corn by outbreeding selected corn, because:
"Inbreeding depressed corn yields. They.. discovered that crosses between inbred lines produced great yields, or what is called " hybrid vigour".
Jack Doyle."Altered Harvest", New York, 1985.p.37.
East and Schull used "controlled fertilisation"; (detasseling of corn) to prevent un-wanted pollination. This was similar to Lysenko's practices. USA corn yields rose. But the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) used hybrid corns exclusively for "monoculture". They now ignored the background theory, allowing the "hybrid vigour" to decline. This led to widespread chaos; and the corn futures market was in shock, with the Corn Leaf Blight of the 1970's:
"The USDA was caught completely off guard by the blight.. the Southern Corn Leaf Blight devastated 15% of America's 1970 corn crop, reducing the average national corn yield from 83.9 to 71.7 bushels per acre, costing farmers about $1 billion in, losses.. Said University of Illinois plant pathologist A.L.Hooker: "Dry weather reduced disease spread in the Western Corn Belt and delayed Northward spread of the disease on the Eastern seaboard. In addition, because of favourable climatic conditions, Northern states had above normal yields. Without these two features, national disease losses could have been greater."
Doyle, Ibid. p.5-7.
The rapid spread of the Blight was due to a cytoplasmic gene. This is another irony; as cytoplasmic genes were supposedly "impossible" - according to classical genetic theory. The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) studied this and in 1976 reported:
"In the 1960's it became clear that relatively few corn breeding parents were being used to produce the bulk of American hybrid corn varieties.. the narrowness of the germ plasm set the stage for potential vulnerability to disease insects, and other stresses. In early 1970, environmental conditions in southern and Northern central corn producing regions were favourable for early disease establishment and spread among vast plantings of highly uniform varieties. the Southern Corn Leaf Blight epidemic became of national and international significance."
Cited Doyle, Ibid. p. 15.
In conclusion, corn monoculture in Khruschevite Russia was a mistaken policy. Special hybrid corns were not adequate to boost production. The opposition to maize monoculture under Stalin was well grounded. When Khrushchev later initiated monoculture, maize production was poor. In arguing against monoculture as a danger, Vandana Shiva is undoubtedly correct.
II) THE NEED TO INCREASE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY
By 1929 the USSR population was 12% more than in 1917; and the area of grain production only 90 % of the pre-war figure. There was also a continued land parcellation (24.5 million households in 1928). To overcome these problems, a higher technical use of the land was needed. Even before the Second World War, expansion of the arable land had been needed. Stalin pointed out in 1929:
"The question of cultivating unused and virgin land is of tremendous importance for our agriculture.. the pivot of the revolutionary movement in Russia in the old days was the agrarian question.. one of the aims of the agrarian movement was to do away with the shortage of land. At that time:
"There were many who thought that the shortage of land was absolute, ie. that there was in Russia, no new land suitable for cultivation. And what has actually proved to be the situation?.. Scores of millions of hectares of free land were and are still available in the USSR. But the peasants were quite unable to cultivate unused and virgin lands, they longed for "soft" land for the soil which belonged to the landlord, for soil which could be tilled with the aid of peasant implements by individual labour. It is not surprising therefore that our Grain Trusts.. equipped with tractors, is now able to place under cultivation some 20 million hectares of free land.. unoccupied by peasants and unfit for cultivation by individual labour with the aid of small wretched implements."
Cited McCauley Martin; "Khrushchev and the Development of Soviet Agriculture"; London; 1976; p.23.
DID COLLECTIVISATION DEAL WITH THESE PROBLEMS?
Collectivisation resulted in an immediate increase in the Sown Area seen in the Table below:
EXPANSION OF THE SOWN AREA (Ha).
REGION AREA % TOTAL INCREASE %INCREASE STATE FARM
North & Central 4,518 21.1 1,140
Southern 11,516 54.3 6,801
Eastern 3,477 16.2 3,290
Central Asia &
Transcaucasia 1,796 8.4 482
TOTAL 21,442 100.0 11,713
Source : Summary of Fulfilment of the First 5 Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the USSR (Moscow 1933). Cited from McCauley p.25).
Even hostile forces to Stalin acknowledge the measures were successful:
"By the great expansion of acreage under collective cultivation and the imposition of very low prices on the produce of that acreage, the government achieved its main goal : enough grain was delivered to the state each year.. The Bolsheviks had reason to begin, as early as 1932, the periodic boasts that they had solved Russia's grain problem. In other senses they could not.. overlook the fact that grain yields per hectare had declined. The average for the periods from 1930-1934 was 0.14% lower that the average for 1925 -1929."
David Joravsky, p.64-5.
"Even as critical an expert observer of the Soviet agricultural scene as Naum Jasny could not deny that: 'The socialization drive in Soviet agriculture achieved to a large extent its major purpose of serving as a basis for the industrialization drive."
Harry Shaffer in:"Soviet Agriculture, An Assessment Of Its Contribution To Economic Development". Ed Harry G Shaffer. Kraeger Press London, New York 1977. p.62.
The Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS) overcame the lack of suitable machinery. But still, famine in the Ukraine occurred with crop failures. In the winter of 1927-28 5 million hectares of winter wheat perished, and after the severe winter of 1928-9, about 7 million hectares of winter wheat perished. With this background, let us examine the Plan to Transform Nature.
iii) THE PLAN TO TRANSFORM NATURE, AND V.R. WILLIAMS.
V.R.Williams is largely forgotten by modern scientists, remembered only by political theorists who ridicule him. Yet his concepts strike a modern Green note. He had been a soil scientist and Rector of the former Petrovskaia Agricultural Academy. He kept the post when it became the Moscow Agricultural Institute under the Bolsheviks. Williams was a member of the Agricultural Committee. He believed that grasses counter-acted desiccation:
"He tied everything from solar radiation to soil structure into one great evolutionary process that would produce a universal desert unless the world's farmers checked disaster, by planting grass." Joravsky p.24.
This led him to a system he called Travople (a form of crop rotation), which he advocated for widespread use. This was opposed by other scientists, primarily Tulaikov and Prishianokov. They insisted upon chemical fertilizers, instead of Travople; despite the expense of chemical fertilizers. They won the debate initially. Tulaikov was sent by the Party to the USA to examine the USA dept Agriculture's farms. In 1928 Tulaikov proposed a Soviet version of the giant grain farms in the semi-arid plains of North America, following the USA model:
"A special commission, established directly by the Politburo with Kalinin as Chairman, endorsed the proposal. Stalin himself was sufficiently impressed to quote Tulaikov.. to the CC. Huge State farms were established on marginal land to work as "grain factories". Following simple grain-fallow rotations, ignoring Williams pleas for grass and livestock and crop diversification.. the initial results in the Soviet Union were interpreted as success, though the Agency in charge, the Grain Trust, ended each year in the red. Stalin had decreed that profit (rentabel'nost) was not to be calculated for each individual enterprise.. the cost of production in 1929-30 declined from 10.6 rubles to 8.4 rubles per centner of grain.. but by 1932 reached 22.9."
Joravsky p.65-6.
But a reappraisal occurred with declining land productivity. Williams' remarks on "the land being too dry anyway " now were heard. At the Conference on Drought Control in October 1931.. travopol'e was accepted for 20 state farms and 20 Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS):
"The major officials Iakovlev, Kalinin, and Molotov - held to their policy of allowing specialists to decide such matters. Molotov expiated on the practical benefit of free debate among specialists."
Joravsky p.66
Current Western texts on soil management cite practices quite similar to Williams. Thus J.H.Stallins when discussing soil conservation in areas of wind erosion says:
"In the Great Plains.. the safest practice is to return all fields West of the 20 inch rainfall belt.. to grass, at best on a rotation basis for a period of 5-7 years. Such a rotation is more likely to maintain much needed crop stubble and other residues for wind protection to improve soil structure and to promote other favourable conditions than is the conventional cropping system."
Stallings J.H. "Soil Conservation", New Jersey 1957. Prentice - Hall Inc. p.248
Western authorities suggest that since Khrushchev abandoned Williams' travopol'e, major deficits began:
"The virtual abolition of the grass land system of crop rotation (ie.Travopole system of Williams) without enough fertilizer and cultivation equipment to make such an undertaking a halfway acceptable risk proved costly in the long run in terms of soil deterioration and depletion of fertility that is not easy to restore."
Harry Shaffer In "Soviet Agriculture". Ibid; p.69.
McCauley compares Saskatchewan Canada to Kazahkstan USSR, finding similar weather and land problems. But the anti- Travopol'e bias of Khrushchev is not a Canadian practice:
"A most striking difference in the agronomical practices between the two areas under study is the amount of clean fallow regarded as necessary in Saskatchewan. It averages between 30-4 % even higher in certain parts. The Soviets employed 10-15% during the Khrushchev years." McCauley, p.173.
Much scorn is heaped on the proposals after the Second World War, to transform the Steppes of Russia from a hostile wind swept area to arable farming land. This was termed the "STALIN PLAN TO TRANSFORM NATURE":
"Here also, as in genetics early achievement were blotted out by the Stalinist repression. G.A.Kozhevnikov early exponent of nature preserves in Russian and the Soviet Union was expelled from his academic positions during the Cultural Revolution, and V.V.Stanchinskii developer of trophic dynamics was denounced and arrested. Conservation and ecology suffered reverses in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Remarkably despite the atmosphere of threats and repression, attempts by scientists and activists to resist the worst excesses of Stalin's "great transformation of nature", and to defend some islands of "free nature" continued throughout his rule and beyond."
Graham, Ibid, p.243.
But in fact other Western sources value wind breaks:
"The utilization of trees as windbreaks in humid areas where wind erosion constitutes a problem is relatively simple."
J.H.Stallings Op Cit. p.257.
"Shrubs and trees make good windbreaks and add greatly to a North Dakota homestead.. windbreaks and tenacious grasses and shrubs are especially effective.. rye planted in narrow strips across the field is sometimes used on peat lands. All of these devices for wind erosion control whether applied in arid or humid regions and whether vegetative or purely mechanical are after all, but phases of the broader problem of soil moisture control."
"The Nature and Properties of Soils." p.565-4. Nyle C Brady. Cornell Univ.& USAID. McMillan New York 1984.
Following the Second World War devastation, it was needed to extend agriculture into the Steppe Virgin Lands:
"The sown area of the vast RSFR in 1945 was 25 million Ha less than in 1940. In the USSR the sown area decreased by 36.6 million Ha between 1940 and 1945. In Kazakhstan the drop was 770,000 ha."
McCauley, p.30.
But the land problems of drought had to be tackled:
"Agriculture in the steppe area of the European part of the Soviet Union, especially in the areas to the East and South East of the river Don, is affected by dry winds (sukhovei) coming from the desert and semi-desert areas of Central Asia. Consequently drought is one of the great problems of these regions. Besides drought, low level fertility and wind erosion have to be combatted. The solution of these problems was to be found in a complex system of afforestation measures for the preservation of moisture in the soil, and increase in the number of ponds by bring and the construction of reservoirs, measures for the introduction of rotation in grain and fodder crops (Travople) and other ameliorative measures."
McCauley, M. p.31.
The Plan called for the Travopole system to be applied. The Soviet Degree was later rescinded by Khrushchev, who ignored ecological reality. It had:
"Relied.. on the planting of protective tree belts in areas suffering from water or wind erosion.. in the Volga Basin, and the Caspian Sea area, Voronezh to Rostovon-Don, the Northern Donets to the Don, Krasnodar krai, the Crimea and the Southern Ukraine.. and in Asiatic Russia, Vishneveya Hills -Orenburg-Urals-Caspian Sea.. the implementation met with mixed fortunes. The survivors proved valuable as wind breaks and contribute to the anti-erosion struggle. The plan, put into action in 1949, lost impetus after Stalin's death.. Khrushchev turned a deaf ear to those who feared the spread of erosion to the large expanses of newly cultivated soil in the East.. it took Khrushchev a decade to realise that Kazakhstan was a dry farming area."
McCauley p.156-160.
In addition under Stalin, there were irrigation plans that:
"Would provide.. 6 million ha.. and 22 million ha of extra grazing land, mainly in the semi- deserts and deserts north and east of the Caspian.. none of the irrigation projects.. received much official backing.. The opposition to the scheme was demonstrated after the death of Stalin."
McCauley p.32.
Not all the wind breaks survived; planted as they were in accord with Lysenko's "cluster" theory. Lysenko argued that the saplings themselves would allow the best to survive. This was a mistaken theory, akin to Peter Kropotkin's view of "Mutual Aid". However some 5.7 million hectares of protective trees were planted; and, witnesses, testify that contrary to Western assertion, not all the belts died. Durgin, himself a Western academic claims that the belts survived:
"There has been considerable debate about the effectiveness of these tree belts which now present a familiar landscape to a traveller in the countryside."
Cited F.A.Durgin Jr. "The relationship of Stalin's death to the economic change of the post-Stalin era" In R.C.Stuart. The Soviet rural economy. New Jersey, 1984.; p. 126.
Overall the Stalin Plan on Nature made sense and contributed to relief of the agricultural crisis. By 1953:
"Socialist agriculture had been able to extend the sown area by about 40 million ha." McCauley, p.32.
iv) KHRUSHCHEV"S ALLEGATION:"STALIN DESTROYED AGRICULTURE".
Khrushchev claimed that Stalin destroyed Soviet agriculture, promoting Lysenkoism. The figures do not support this contention. Table Two below shows the yields of wheat relative to the base years 1926-1928, for the USA and the USSR, using data from the USA Bureau of the Census, 1975.
The figures for the war years show the expected devastation in the Soviet Union. In the following years potentially attributable to Stalin's "terrible influence"; the figures do not corroborate Khrushchev. Even immediately after Stalin's death, farm yields were not a problem. Indeed later on, the resurrection of private property did make an enormous impact upon the distribution of the available supply.
TABLE TWO : WHEAT YIELDS USA AND THE USSR. (base years 1926-1928)
YEARS USA SOVIET UNION
1926-28 100(14.83BU/ACRE) 100 (6.69 bu/acre)
1938-1940 96 113
1941-44 118 -
1951-53 116 135
THUS THE ALLEGATION THAT USSR AGRICULTURE WAS SEVERELY DAMAGED UNDER STALIN IS CLEARLY INCORRECT.
Lewins and Lewontin conclude:
"There is no evidence that Soviet agriculture was damaged."
Lewins and Lewontin, p.19-1.
Khrushchev also charged in his "secret speech" that Stalin neglected updating agriculture, and did not spend adequate resources upon it. Khrushchev meant Stalin had not introduced maize monoculture with a large chemical fertiliser industry. As seen above, Williams was given support for a primary reliance upon travopol'e; certainly a more "green" and natural approach than chemical fertilisers. But Khrushchev campaigned heavily against Travopole and for expansion o of light industry with a fertiliser component. When he came to power later, unhappy consequences flowed from Khrushchev's bias against Travopole and irrigation:
"The widespread damage caused by the dust storms of 1960 and 1962 brought the problem of wind erosion to the attention of a wide public.. water erosion is a widespread scourge affecting almost 50 million ha of the European part of the RSSR.. The Ukraine suffers considerable annual damage. Of a total of 42 million ha inspected.. 13 million were affected.. it was calculated that throughout the USSR 500 million tonnes of topsoil were washed away annually."
McCauley p.159-60.
As McCauley says:
"Such official neglect is even more surprising when one recalls that many of the pioneers of the study of soil were Russian. Soil science is replete with Russian words now accepted in other languages."
McCauley Ibid, p.160.
CONCLUSIONS :
Following the Second world war, the pressure on agriculture was met. Contrary to revisionist and bourgeois charges, Stalin's agricultural policy was sound. There were appropriate measures for control of drought and wind erosion in the Virgin lands program. Despite the Lysenkoist cluster planting, the Stalin Plan was appropriate. The Stalin Plan rested on ecological principles that subsequently have become commonplace and accepted.
Consistent with Khrushchev's plan to disrupt socialist practices in the countryside, Khrushchev opposed these plans. Khrushchev went on to dismantle the Machine and Tractor Stations. The former Soviet Union is now in a state of severe starvation and ecological disaster.
"After Gorbachev came to power in 1985 the full horrors of environmental abuses in the Soviet Union emerged. The wishes of industrialists had triumphed over those of ecologists and biologists."
McCauley, p.243.
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