Kwlê iwKêo 1853 owËl New
York Tribune ex¢Kwt 10 RÖd, 24 RÖd I 22 RÖlwB ZwxkËL jaw¢ßËi‘The
British Rule in India’ ‘The East India Company – It’s History and Results’ Ggv‘The
Future Results of British Rule in India’ dwËi xZdxU eÞg¬ ÌlËLd„ ZLd gwvlwk
‘dgRwMkYegê’ kwiËiwpd I xWËkwRytwdËbk jÖM AxZ¢ßi KËk xgbøwowMËkk jÖËM ebweêY
KËkËQ„ kwiËiwpËdk oËŠ Kwlê iwKêËok ÌbLw ptxd, iwKêo ZLd Qw¢, jxbI Ìgdzawi,
DBlgwkËfwoê, kgwUê IËtd Ggv AwkI AËdËKk oËŠ Z^wk ÌbLw pËtxQl„ eÞai ÌlLwxU
xUÛxgDËd eÞKwxmZ pgwk ek (10 RÖd, 1853) iwKêo 14 RÖd ZwxkËL l¡d ÌaËK GËŠloËK
GKxU xPxVËZ ÌlËLd :[1]
Your
article on Switzerland
was of course a direct smack at the leader in the Tribune (against
centralization, etc) and..... I have continued this hidden warfare in a first
article on India,
in which the destruction of the native industry by England is
described as revolutionary. This will be very shocking to them. For the rest
the whole rule of Britain in
India
was swinish, and is to this day.
The
stationary character of this part of Asia –
despite all the aimless movement on the political
surface
– is fully explained by two mutually dependent circumstances : (1) The public
works were the business of the Central Government ; (2) besides these the whole
empire, not counting the few larger towns, was resolved into villages, which
possessed a completely separate organization and formed a little world in
themselves.
These
idyllic republics, which jealously guarded only the boundaries of their village
against the neighbouring village, still exist in a fairly perfect form in the
North-Western parts of India which have but recently fallen into the English
hands. I do not think one could imagine a more solid foundation for the
stagnation of Asiatic despotism. And however much the English may have Irelandised
the country, the breaking up of those stereotyped primitive forms was the sine
qua non (essential condition) of Europeanisation. The tax-gatherer alone was
not the man to achieve this. The destruction of their archaic industry was
necessary in order to deprive the villages of their self-supporting character.
how
are we to conceive the relations between the determining structure and the
dominant one, and what determining in economic relations in it that dictates
that there shall be dominance by kinship-relations or by politico-religious
relations? The question could not be answered, or even asked, by dogmatic
Marxism and the other forms of that vulgar materialism to which dogmatic
Marxism belongs, even though it denies the affinity. For vulgar materialism,
the economy, which it reduces to the relations between technology and
environment, ‘produces’ the given society, giving rise to it as an epiphenomenon.
This means refusing to see the irreducible differences between the levels and
structures of social life, the reason for the relative autonomy with which they
operate, and reducing all levels to so many functions, either apparent or
concealed, of economic activity.
How
could this hypothesis be reconciled with the fact for example, that within many
primitive societies it is relations of kinship between men that dominate social
organization…. or that religious relations seem to dominate Indian society,
dividing men into a hierarchy of castes in accordance with an ideology of
purity and impurity…?
In
association with Professor Levi-Strauss, who took a close interest in my
project and obtained for me all the facilities I needed in order to carry it
out, I therefore undertook to initiate myself into anthropology, while devoting
special attention to what is called ‘economic anthropology’, the field that it
seemed ought to include the data of my theoretical problems and perhaps the
elements of their solution.
oiwRUw pl ‘oiÔp’ xgËmn Ggv oiÔp
(aggregates) bÖkKËik pËZ ewËk„ GKkKi pl ‘AjÖZxo¦wgtg oiÔp’ (those of which the parts are in union and
fusion, being lost in the whole), Awk GKkKi pl ‘jÖZxo¦wgtg oiÔp’ (mechanical
aggregates – collection of distinct and independent parts)„ ogêþæËkk
iwdg oiwRB AjÖZxo¦wgtg oiÔp, Ggv Dek ÌaËK jZ xdËPk þæËkk xbËK ÌdËi jwItw jwt ZZ
ÌbLw jwt Ìj Zwk GB AjwxìèK kÕeUw Ìgm eÞKU„ ÌoLwËd oiwËRk QxgUw ZygÛ ÌfwKwËo LÖg
exkûKwk ÌbLw jwt„ oiwRxhx£k AaêdyxZ jxb oiwËR
DekZlwk GKiw¢ xdtìèK pZ ZwpËl AwRËKk oiwËRk AËdK xgËkwËck, AËdK RxUlZwk
oiwcwd opËRB pËt ÌjZ„ Zw ptxd„
the
typological importance of the renaissance is that it makes the first cultural
and social breach between the Middle Ages and modern times : it is a typical
early stage of modern age.
The
producer may become a merchant and capitalist, in opposition to agricultural
natural
economy
and to the guild organized handicrafts of medieval town industry. This is the
really revolutionary way. Or the merchant may take possession of production
directly.
The
necessity for association against the organized robber-nobility, the need for
communal covered markets in an age when the industrialist was at the same time
a merchant, the growing competition of the escaped serfs swarming into the
rising towns, the feudal structure of the whole country: these combined to
bring about the guilds.
Every
workman had to be versed in a whole round of tasks, had to be able to make
everything that was to be made with his tools. The limited commerce and the
scanty communication between the individual towns, the lack of population and
the narrow needs did not allow of a higher division of labour, and therefore
every man who wished to become a master had to be proficient in the whole of
his craft. Thus there is found with medieval craftsmen an interest in their
special work and in proficiency in it, which was capable of rising to a narrow
artistic sense.
Capital
in these towns was a natural capital consisting of a house, the tools of the
craft, and the natural, hereditary customers; and not being realizable, on
account of the backwardness of commerce and the lack of circulation, it
descended from father to son.
nothing
can be further from the historical truth than the idea that Cornwallis was the
originator either of that system or of the Permanent Settlement. What
Cornwallis realy did was to carry out a predetermined plan of the Court of
Directors with a cautious delay…
The
large capitals possessed by many of the natives, which they will have no means
of employing …will be applied to the purchase of the landed property as soon as
the tenure is declared to be secured.
The
mournful story of the ruin of these and other once powerful families under the
Sale Law for arrears is shown in detail in…During two years alone, 1796-98,
estates bearing a revenue of Sicca Rs. 5521252, more than a fifth of the whole
land tax of the Province, were advertised for sale for arrears…within
twenty-two years of the Permanent Settlement, from one-third to one-half of
whole landed property in Bengal had been sold on that account. The wave of the
Permanent Settlement had, in truth, submerged the ancient houses of Bengal.
Results
of ‘Settlement’: First product of this plunder of ‘communal and private
property’ of the ryots : whole series of local risings of the ryots against the
‘landlords’ [conferred on them], involving: in some cases expulsion of the
zemindars and stepping of the East India Co. into their place as owner; in
other cases, impoverishment of the zemindars and compulsory or voluntary sale
of their estates to pay of the arrears and private debts. Hence greater part
off the province’s landholdings fell rapidly into the hands of a few city
capitalists who had spare capital and readily invested it in land.
to seek riches, not in the
absurd form of a heap of perishable goods, but in the very convenient and
mobile form of money or claims to money. The possession of money soon became an
end in itself in an exchange economy.[11]
Science
and Civilisation in China. 7
Vols, 11 parts : London The Grand Titration, Science and Society in East and West
London 1969
Clerks and Craftsmen in China
and the West, London
1970.AwiwËbk eÞxZewbø xgnt eÞoËŠ dyWpwËik GB AwËlwPdw AZøìæ †kØZòeÔYê gËl GLwËd
ovËqËe Zw DËlöL KkxQ„ dyWpwi gËlËQd
whoever
would explain the failure of Chinese society to develop modern scince had
better begin by explaining the faiture of Chinese society to develop mercantile
and then industrial capitalism. Whatever the individual prepossessions Western
historians of science, all are necessitated to admit that from the fifteenth
century A. D. onwards a complex of changes occurred; the renaissance cannot be
thought of without the rise of modern science and none of them can be thought
of without the rise of capitalism, capitalist society and the decline and
disappearance of feudalism… The fact is that in the spontaneous autochthonous
development of Chinese society no drastic change parallel to the renaissance
and the scientific revolution in the West, occurred at all.
The
bureaucratic-feudal system of traditional China proved to be one of the most
stable forms of social order ever developed…it played a leading part in
assuring for Chinese culture a continuity…above all, it meant (as in India)
that there was no indigenous development of capitalism. The mandarinate system
was so successful that it inhibited the rise of the merchants to power in the
State; it walled up their guilds in the restricted role of friendly and benefit
societies; it nipped capitalist accumulation in the bud…
Now
if the Mandarinate was supreme, if the Civil Service was always the great
power, there was a bar to the development of any other group in society, so
that the merchants were always kept down and unable to rise to a position of
power in the State. They had guilds, it is true, but these were never as important
as in Europe. Here we might be putting
our finger on the main cause of the failure of Chinese civilization to develop
modern technology, because in Europe
(as in universally admitted) the development of technology was closely bound up
with the rise of the merchant class to power. It is perhaps a question of who
is going to put up the money for scientific discovery – it is not the Emperor,
it is not the feudal lords; they fear change rather than welcome it. But when
you come to the merchants, they are the people who will finance research in
order do deveplop new forms of production and trade; and such was indeed the
fact in Eurropean history. Chinese society called ‘bureaucratic feudalism’, and
that may go a long way to explain why the Chineses,in spite of their brilliant successes in
earlier science and technology, were not able, as their colleagues in Europe
were, to break through the bondsof
medieval ideas and advance to what we call modern science and technology. I
think, one of the great reasons is that China
was fundamentally an irrigation-agricultural civilization as contrasted with
the pastoral-navigational civilization of Europe;
with the consequent prevention of the merchants’ rise to power.
[3]Maurice Godelier : Rationality and
Irrationality in Economics: Monthly Review Press, New York 1972 : Foreword to the English edition
1972 – ‘Functionalism, Structuralism and Marxism’.
[4]Alfred
Von Martin : Sociology of the Renaissance, London 1945, p.3
[5]Capital,
Vol III : bottomore and Rubel : Karl Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and
Social Philosophy, London 1961, p. 130
[6]iwKêzo-Gk D¦ÙxZ bÖxU Z^wk The German Ideology kPdw ÌaËK MÙpyZ„ iwKêzo-Gk Pre-capitalist Economic Formations MÞËìÿk(N. Y. 1971) oewbKEric
J. Hobsbawm D£ß MÆìÿ ÌaËK eÆËtwRdyt
xKtbvm Supplementary Texts of Maxi and Engels on Problems of
Historical PeriodizationAcøwËt
D¦ÙZ KËkËQd„