Caste as “enclosed class” Ambedkar
The Communists, however, saw his movement as dividing their proletariat. This is the attitude that precipitated in Dange’s vile call to voters to waste their votes but not to cast it in favour of Ambedkar in the 1952 elections. As a result, he was defeated.
One instance of Communists ignoring the discrimination against Dalits came from Bombay’s textile mills. When Ambedkar pointed out that Dalits were not allowed to work in the better-paying weaving department, and that other practices of untouchability were rampant in mills where the Communists had their Girni Kamgar Union, they didn’t pay heed. Only when he threatened to break their strike of 1928 did they reluctantly agree to remedy the wrong.
In a sense, Ambedkar is not against the general theory of history as history of class struggles and social revolutions. Ambedkar neither hide his closeness to Marxism. “I have definitely read studiously more books on the Communist philosophy than all the Communists here. However beautiful the Communist philosophy is in those books, still it has to be seen how useful it can be made in practice…. if work is done in that perspective, I feel that the labor and length of time needed to win success in Russia will not be so much in India. And so, in regard to the toilers’ class struggle, I feel the Communist philosophy is closer to us.” (Janata, 15 February 1938). Ambedkar recognized that the fact of class struggle lies at the basis of Indian history too. “Most of the orthodox Hindus are repelled by the doctrine of class war which was propounded by Karl Marx and would be certainly shocked if they were told that the history of their own ancestors probably furnishes the most cogent evidence that Marx was searching for support of his theory.” (BAWS 3 1987: 329).
“The unit of Hindu society is the class or varna to use the Hindu technical name for class.”
Where Marx speaks about class contradiction, Ambedkar speaks about caste or varna contradictions. Marxian contradiction is mostly economic in character, whereas the Ambedkarian concept is not purely economic, although it is not devoid of economic
connotations. Ambedkar looks into the roots of Indian history and identifies the contradiction between Brahmanism and Buddhism as two ways of looking into Indian social setup.( caste and casteless)
Ambedkar and the realm of Dialectics
The thoughts of Ambedkar and Marx have the most remarkable and the most outstanding common ground that both of them are founded upon the social and
historical realities of human existence, creativity and suffering of the toiling masses, the most secular and humane approach to the human predicament. The theories of both Marx and Ambedkar have rendered unlimited opportunities to the study of Indian society. They both are uncompromisingly materialistic theories because they do not allow any divine interference or metaphysical explanation enter into the understanding of and hence in the discussions about social reality. Both Marx and Ambedkar derive all their empirical observations as well as the theoretical arguments from the concrete social reality and its historical forms of existence. For Ambedkar and Marx, nothing exists except society and its history.
However, there are differences between Marx and Ambedkar in realizing their studies on Indian society. The Communist Manifesto starts with the statement that, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (Marx, Engels, Lenin 1974: 84). Marx continues to analyze the origin and interaction of social classes as founded upon in the historical modes of production, supported by the dialectics of forces of production and relations of production, vividly expressed in the dialectics of economic basis and ideational superstructure, and finally, reaching their culmination in the contradiction between the classes, thus paving the way for a social revolution. In a sense, Ambedkar is not against the general theory of history as history of class struggles and social revolutions. Ambedkar neither hide his closeness to Marxism. “I have
definitely read studiously more books on the Communist philosophy than all the
Communists here. However beautiful the Communist philosophy is in those books, still it has to be seen how useful it can be made in practice…. if work is done in that
perspective, I feel that the labor and length of time needed to win success in Russia will not be so much in India. And so, in regard to the toilers‟ class struggle, I feel the
Communist philosophy is closer to us.” (Janata, 15 February 1938). Ambedkar
recognized that the fact of class struggle lies at the basis of Indian history too. “Most of the orthodox Hindus are repelled by the doctrine of class war which was propounded by Karl Marx and would be certainly shocked if they were told that the history of their own ancestors probably furnishes the most cogent evidence that Marx was searching for support of his theory.” (BAWS 3 1987: 329).
Ambedkar is inclined here to offer a proof from the real course of Indian history that the Marxian concept of class struggle is thoroughly applicable to India. Ambedkar says that Indian social history “furnishes the most cogent evidence” to the Marxian concept of class struggles. This has been done by Ambedkar when many scholars both in the west and east were trying to repudiate the concept of class struggle out rightly by theoretical means or through empirical facts. This has been done by Ambedkar when many Indian scholars and European indologists were trying to show that Indian history was the history of spiritual seekings and religious quests. And many were arguing that Indian spirituality was beyond the scope of identifying its meaning through historical and sociological means. Ambedkar literally subscribes to the Marxian concept of class struggle in history, particularly in Indian history.
According to Ambedkar, the ancient Indian history has ample evidences for social conflicts fought in the name of Varnas or castes. Ambedkar informs that the history of India, from its most ancient days, was the history of conflict between social groups identified in terms of caste, varna or religion. “The unit of Hindu society is the class or varna to use the Hindu technical name for class.” (BAWS 3 1987: 99). Ambedkar is inclined here to say that the difference is only in technical terms. “It must be recognized that the history of India before the Muslim invasions is the history of a mortal conflict between Brahmanism and Buddhism.” (BAWS 3 1987: 275). Ambedkar is unassumingly enthusiastic, and very fast and unconditional to pick up the category of class for
interpreting the Indian society. This is symptomatic because only the most oppressed groups of people can understand the meaning of such concepts as class or class struggle. Thus Ambedkar is not against the understanding of history in terms of class conflicts but he is strongly inclined to replace the term class with indigenous categories such as varnas and castes especially when it is about the traditional social system of India. Ambedkar places the caste or class conflict at the bottom of Indian history. Placing a social contradiction or conflict at the bottom of history is philosophically a unique
position characteristic of Marx and Ambedkar. No body except Marx and Ambedkar had the courage and genius to locate the problematic of a social contradiction at the bottom of history. In this sense, Ambedkar offers the entry point of Marxism to Indian history. According to Marx, contradiction is the motor force of history and it is the source of all creativity, it allows to see history into a continuing process, as a creative and progressive process. By making the concept of contradiction the basis of Indian history, Ambedkar shares the philosophical position of Marx.
The concept of class struggle is the fundamental modification Marx introduced into the Hegelian dialectics of pure concepts. Through the concept of class struggle Marx made the Hegelian idealist dialectics transformed into a materialist and historical theory. No more the concept of contradiction is an idealist abstraction as it was in the philosophy of Hegel. The concept of contradiction has acquired flesh and nerves in actual human conditions and starts operating as concrete historical category in Marxism. By providing historical evidence in Indian history and substantiating it with fresh demonstration, Ambedkar opens a chapter for Marxism in India.
However, there are certain differences between Marx and Ambedkar in their conception of contradiction at the roots of Indian history. Where Marx speaks about class
contradiction, Ambedkar speaks about caste or varna contradictions. Marxian
contradiction is mostly economic in character, whereas the Ambedkarian concept is not purely economic, although it is not devoid of economic connotations.
It seems that the Ambedkarian concept of contradiction at the roots of Indian history has yet another difference from the Marxian concept. Ambedkar looks into the roots of Indian history and identifies the contradiction between Brahmanism and Buddhism as two ways of looking into Indian social setup. Brahmanism is based on varna hierarchy and Buddhism represents a non-varnic or pre-varnic society. Brahmanic literatures attribute divine origin to the varna system whereas Buddhism defies such an origin and it visualizes an egalitarian society in the model of the Sangha. Brahmanic philosophies propose a concept of atman as the essential of individualism in philosophy whereas Buddhism is a philosophy of anatman or non-atman. Buddhism considers atman as a social construct of the society based on private property and individualist power. Thus, Ambedkar‟s vision of the basic contradiction in ancient Indian history is between a caste society and a casteless society. Ambedkar is not a social historian of modern academic type and he does not provide elaborate empirical data for proving his idea of
contradiction between caste and casteless in his writings. However, his very detailed studies of Buddhism, Upanishads, origins of caste system and untouchability, and other essays indicate that he had a very strong concept of the ancient Indian contradiction that it is between caste and casteless.
At times, it seems to us that Ambedkar is operating with a complex idea of
contradictions at the roots of Indian history. It is the concept of caste struggles in Indian history on the one hand and the contradiction of caste and casteless in Indian history on
the other hand. Ambedkar identifies the above contradictions not only in the social bases of Indian history but also locates them in the philosophical and religious literatures, further in the law books, social ethics and behavioral patterns. Thus, Ambedkar detects not a simple contradiction at the roots of Indian philosophy but an over-determined contradiction, to use an Althusserian term. It may be noted for
reference here that Marx never mentions that a contradiction must be in its simple form and that it always should be expressible in economic terms. Such an approach would be a vulgar understanding of Marxism.
Ambedkar‟s problematic is the closest to the Marxian understanding of history with definite variation in the details. However, the „definite variation in the details‟ is not a small thing in a dialogue between Ambedkar and Marx or in the understanding of Indian society. Class is a concept that mostly reflects its situated-ness in capitalist society, particularly in the capitalist economic mode of production, whereas caste is above all a category of pre-capitalist societies, particularly the Indian society,
comprehending it not necessarily in its economic mode. Marx himself recognized the existence of such a non-economic category and such a non-dichotomic reality in the pre-capitalist formations. “In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank…again subordinate gradations… Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie,
possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” (Marx Engels Lenin 1974: 85).
The first part of the quoted words informs about the complexity of social gradations and ranks in traditional societies whereas the second part predicts the process of
simplification that may proceed with the advent of capitalism in complex societies. Regarding the first part, Marx and Ambedkar do not differ at all. However, regarding the course of development of capitalism in traditional societies, Marx and Ambedkar appear to be differing. But is it really a difference? Marx did not witness the course of development of capitalism in traditional societies. He knew only the course of
development of capitalism in western societies. There it really simplified and polarized the varieties of historical classes into two. If it would have been happened in India, that is, in a traditional society like India, it means that the bourgeoisie revolution had
appreciating such a course of development. The problem is that the traditional Indian society did not always follow the course predicted by Marx on the basis of his experience in Europe. Ambedkar is located in a society where the capitalists did not complete their historical role and Ambedkar is compelled to speak about the completion of that task by other social forces and by other social means. Here, the traditional social categories such as caste continue to resist social change. Consequently, Ambedkar calls the communists and other democratic social groupings to address the caste question that continues to persist.
Marx further continued his studies of society, primarily the capitalist society, equating the emergence and existence of classes popularly known as economic categories. The rigor attributed by Marx to economic relations and consequently, to the category of class allowed the Marxists to declare that the priority of economic relations and class analysis bears the stamp of materialism and objectivity in Marxist methodology. In contrast to this, any other type of social relations and usage of other categories for indicating the social groups are said to be non-Marxist, un-scientific and subjective. This line of thought makes the pre-capitalist relations among social groups too as being less objective and extra-economic.
Ambedkar‟s understanding of caste system in India informs us that caste is not a pure economic category that it is social, sometimes understood as religiously or culturally determined, although the economic component is not thoroughly excluded. “The caste system is infested with the spirit of isolation and in fact it makes the isolation of one caste from another a matter of virtue. The class system, it is true, produces groups. But they are not akin to caste groups. It does not make isolation a virtue, nor does it prohibit social intercourse.” (Ambedkar, What Gandhi and Congress have done to the
untouchables? P.53-54). “The problem of untouchability is a matter of class struggle. It is a struggle between caste Hindus and untouchables. That is not a matter of doing injustice against one man. This is a matter of injustice being done by one class against another. This „class struggle‟ has a relation to the social status.” (Grover (ed.) 1992: 4). Ambedkar here brings out certain important features of caste system that differentiate it from any other social system, particularly from a modern European class system.
Ambedkar attributes in a most comprehensive manner the term class to caste because he identifies a collective or communal nature in caste that here an individual on the basis of private property is not exploited or oppressed but a group of people is
stigmatized, isolated, exploited and oppressed by virtue of birth and profession. In Marxian analysis, class as a clear cut economic group comes into existence only in a capitalist society. It is the social nature of production against the private appropriation of the surplus brings the individual workers into a group called a class. The main objection Marx raises against the peasantry in a feudal society is that the peasantry never comes into unity and consolidated as a class. According to Marx, the peasants always remain as individual small owners and producers although they are exploited by the feudal lords. But Ambedkar shows that caste as a group, many times more thickly unified, as an identity and stigma, has come into existence in Indian context well before the advent of capitalism. Not only the exploited but also the exploiting groups acquire the collective nature in caste system. Formation and development of such rigid
collectivities, the exploited and the exploiting, from the most ancient days through the feudal ages, represent the essential feature of the caste system. If the term commune or community may be attributed to every caste, then the caste system is a communal exploitative system or a system of exploitation based on communities.Collective and Structured exploitation is at the basis of Indian caste system. Marx did understand the specificity of caste as a collectivity or community under exploitation. It is to be reminded here that in his discussions of Asiatic mode of production, Marx recognizes the commune character of Indian society. The absence of private property, and
consequently the absence individual‟s right to property, has been asserted by Marx in the Asiatic communes. In the Asiatic commune, the individual‟s right to property is mediated by virtue of his/her membership in the commune. Ambedkar is inclined to suggest that the caste is the more fitting group identity than class in Indian context. The European revolutions failed because class as a group did not serve the purpose
adequately to mobilize the working masses. Western Marxism of 20th century showed that the ideological manipulations of European capitalism played a determining role in dissipating the class consciousness of the working masses. If compared with European working class, the Indian caste is unified by its givenness, by birth, profession as well as by ideological forms such as believes, behavior etc. In this way Ambedkar is justified to identify class and caste in Indian conditions, particularly in regard to its past and even to its present. It is relevant to bring to notice that a leading sociologist of late
20th century who has reputed works to his credit, Andre Beteille, acknowledges that the concept of class is more suited to the study of Indian agrarian society than to the study of industrial societies. “It may appear ironical while the architect of the concept of class (that is, Marx) believed it to be particularly suited to the study of Industrial societies, the experience of sociological research (especially, in Indian society) may well suggest that it
is in fact more useful in the study of agrarian rather than Industrial communities.” (Dipankar Gupta (Ed.), Anti-Utopia: Essential Writings of Andre Beteille, Oxford, 2005, P. 111).
Ambedkar keeps on probing the non-economic (or extra-economic) and ideational moments involved in the making of and in the functioning of the caste system. In another place Ambedkar indicates that the social determinism in the caste system is more powerful than the political and judicial determinations. “Society can practice tyranny and oppression against an individual in a far greater degree than a Government can. The means and scope that are open to society are more extensive than those that are open to Government, also they are far more effective… Rights are
protected not by law but by the social and moral conscience of society. But if the
fundamental rights are opposed by the community, no law, no parliament, no judiciary can guarantee them in the real sense of the term.” (Grover (ed.) 1992: 22,28). Ambedkar does not use any deterministic yardstick here to measure or describe the Indian society. Ambedkar very flexibly moves from economic to social, from social to moral, from moral to political and vice versa. This is characteristic of Ambedkar and he follows a true
method of dialectics. Economic, social and religious are not rigid categories in the hands of Ambedkar and the social reality exhibits its different faces while seen from different angles.
Ambedkar is least interested in any deterministic type of philosophy or sociology. He is for a flexible understanding society as it lives and struggles. Ambedkar seems not
interested in any singular and certain principle out of which the social phenomena could be derived. On the other hand, Ambedkar perceives the unceasing interaction of social, economic, political, moral and religious forces in a society. He does not want to reduce these forces into any one ultimate principle that may sound metaphysically attractive. Ambedkar comfortably moves in a realm that is relative, that is value oriented, that is dialogic and finally, that is dialectical. He often speaks of the criterion of utility and usefulness of a particular arrangement whether it is the caste system or the Hindu religion.
One finds certain gentle but important influences of American Pragmatism in
Ambedkar‟s ways of thinking and action. John Dewey, one of the founders of American pragmatism was the most influential teacher of Ambedkar in ColumbiaUniversity. Eleanor Zelliot, a brilliant American scholar informs in an article titled The American
commitment to a pragmatic, flexible democratic system…John Dewey‟s thought
especially was meaningful to Ambedkar, for it offered encouragement that educated and politically aware people could work out their own political destiny in a pragmatic way, pruning the useless in their societies. In his Annihilation of Castes, Ambedkar quotes John Dewey, “who was my teacher and to whom I owe so much…Ambedkar‟s methods were directly related to Indian conditions. The ideology behind those methods was closely associated optimistic, pragmatic American democracy…Mrs. Savitha Ambedkar tells of Ambedkar happily imitating John Dewey‟s distinctive classroom mannerisms.” (Grover (ed.) 1992: 293, 298-299).
Although Ambedkar does not inherit pragmatism as his own philosophical standpoint, a careful reader cannot miss the pragmatic loom in many of his writings and activities. Pragmatism is especially popular for its “emphasis on the practical consequences of ideas as employed in the solution of human problems…Pragmatism is a method of
clarifying the significant differences among ideas through the anticipation of their future consequences in practice…The „mission‟ of the pragmatic movement in philosophy appears, negatively, in its opposition to intellectualism and all forms of totalitarian thinking. It appears, positively, in the attitude, described by James, of turning away from first things, principles, „categories‟, supposed necessities, and of turning towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.” ” (Vergilius Ferm 1950:389, 392, 397-398). Quoting concretely from the philosophy of John Dewey, Richard Rorty, a recent American philosopher says, “Because philosophy inherited the realm with which
religion had been concerned, it naturally adopted the notion that the office of knowledge is to uncover the antecedently real. Given the further inheritance from religion of the premise that only the completely fixed and unchanging can be the real, it is natural that the quest for certitude has determined our basic metaphysics.” (Richard Rorty 1982: 43). Criticizing such a metaphysical tradition prevalent even in modern philosophy, Dewey moved towards a philosophical method that proves practical consequences. We cannot avoid asserting that Ambedkar has inherited a mild pragmatism from his teacher-philosopher John Dewey. Ambedkar‟s inheritance of pragmatism does not develop into adhering to all the standpoints of the pragmatic school. On the other hand, Ambedkar‟s choice of Buddhism as his own philosophy informs us that Ambedkar is attracted by the practical, moral and middle way of it. Buddhism too is not inclined to reach any ultimate real such as God, Nature or Atman, on the other hand is pragmatic, more oriented on relativism and therapeutic.
If we take into consideration the influences of Pragmatism and Buddhism on Ambedkar, we may locate Ambedkar in the dialectical and interactional realm of philosophizing where ultimate realities and absolute truths are not important but the practical, useful, relational and consequential play the vital role. It has to be reminded here that Marxism too is not a philosophy of ultimate realities and it explores the concreteness of human living in all its multifaceted interactions. Dialectics as the most powerful philosophical methodology and theory of knowledge of Marxism keeps perpetually and ceaselessly exploring the real and empirical life without reducing them dogmatically into any ultimate ends of philosophy. In the coming pages we shall be describing the rich dialectics of the Marxist philosophy in terms of the interaction of Subjective and
Objective as well as the unity of democracy and socialism, the two fields where Marx and Ambedkar have certain vested interests.
Marxian Dialectics of Subjective and
Objective
Marxism is the philosophy of the Dialectics of the Subjective and the Objective. Materialist philosophy before Marx was purely objective in the sense that matter was understood either as the physical things (objects) or as physical properties. Nature, the five natural elements, atoms as the final cells of the physical world, human body, human brain and nervous system, physical properties such as extension, mass, field etc were considered as the objective and so the material foundation of life and existence. The methodology of the pre-Marxian materialism was naturalistic and natural scientific. The pre-Marxian materialism hesitated to enter into the human and social realms because it found it difficult to catch something material within the human and the social. In the modern age, some of the European Materialists did dare to expand their materialist approach to the social realm and reached the assertion that the human beings were the products of circumstances and upbringing. Circumstances as the material background render a very passive pose to the materialist philosophy. It has failed to make
materialism an active stance. Marx wrote against this type of materialism of
circumstances. The materialism of circumstances is another version of contemplative philosophy. It is apologetically explains the human and the creative essence of the humans does not find registered in it. Materialism of circumstances has not gone
beyond interpreting the world and does not have even the traces of praxis. It is true that the old materialists might have wanted to move carefully and correctly, and did not want
to become one another set of philosophers of mystic or idealistic type. We indeed
appreciate the prudence of the old materialists but should not miss the qualitatively new development or the revolutionary development of the Marxian dialectical and historical materialism. One of the corner stones of the new achievement of Marxian philosophy is the transcendence of the contemplative objectivism and outreaching the dialectics of the Subjective and the Objective.
In the “Theses on Feuerbach” written in 1845, Marx says,” The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism-that of Feuerbach included-is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not ashuman sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active
side, in contradistinction to materialism, was developed by idealism-but only abstractly,
since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such.” (Marx, Engels, Lenin 1974: 11). This is the moment of the birth of Marxism, particularly the Marxian dialectical materialism, and more specifically the Marxian dialectics of the subjective and the objective. Here is a Marxian promise and methodology of the materialist entry into the human and social realms and also a critique of the one-sided objectivism of the pre-Marxian materialism. The Marxian methodology finds its classical formulation in the above quoted words of Marx. In human and social affairs we are not in search of mere physical entities, not the objects or the things which Marx considered as the passive materiality but we are in search of material relations in the form of interactions between human beings and the surrounding natural world (Labor), between human beings and the social world (Class struggle, Social practice) and finally among human beings (contradictory social relations). Marxist materialism becomes an active
philosophy by re-appropriating the creative side of human existence and social life. Due to the passive approach of the pre-Marxian materialism, idealism in the history of philosophy had stolen the active side that is the subjective side of existence, but it developed the active side only in an abstract way. Idealist philosophies tried to show that the human mind was the source of activism and creativity, and that human reason was the reservoir of all dynamism. If not the human mind and reason, the idealist schools argued that the world reason or the world Spirit was the source of activity and dynamism. Once the basis of idealism is understood by Marx in this way, he proceeds on to bring down the active side to its original source that is to the human sensuous activity itself. Marx considers the early materialist doctrine that the humans are the products of circumstances too as a form of passive materialism. Marx asserts that such a doctrine, “forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs
educating…The coincidence of the changing circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionizing practice.” (Marx, Engels, Lenin 1974: 12). The last sentence clearly brings to notice that the passive objective side and the active subjective side should be grasped in their dialectical interaction. The social conditions are to be understood and they are to be acted upon and changed by the revolutionary class. Marxist philosophy, while not dismissing the standpoint of earlier materialism, identifies it as passive and inadequate, and passes over to an active position where the subjective moment plays a creative role.
If we extrapolate the quoted thesis of Marx on Feuerbach, it is not difficult to identify the concept of class struggle as the active, practical and creative side of the social change whereas the class contradictions of a society as they are found in their actuality as the passive material side of social change. In other words, the class structure of a society with its immanent contradictions form the passive side of the social existence whereas the class struggles of the revolutionary classes form the active side of social change. The revolutionary classes are agencies of social change and the social contradictions
condition the social classes to move towards social awareness and social organization. The dialectics of social structure and agency should not be missed because it creates the coincidence of circumstance and revolutionizing activity. The dialectics of the subjective and the objective has its important say in the Marxian concept of Basis and Superstructure. Marx defines the structure of economic relations as the basis of society and the ideological structures such as law, politics, philosophy, art and literature, morality, religion etc as the superstructure. Defining is only an analytic exercise and Marx furthers by discussing the dialectical interactions between the basis and the superstructure. In an actual and concrete society, the basis and superstructure are in inseparable interaction. In the “Theses on Feuerbach”, the subjective moment covered only the practical component, but in the dialectics of basis and superstructure, the ideational components are entering into interaction with the basis or the social structure. It is in the ideological realm, the social contradictions come to awareness and the latter starts to act upon the structure. It should not be imagined that the ideological realms is merely a realm of ideas and concepts. Ideas and concepts are very important epistemological tools but the ideological realm is many times bigger than mere knowledge and concepts. It is the passion of a people, revolutionary anger, commitment of the people and the revolutionary party with a clear social and political program that make together the ideational component of social change. Marx asserted that a theory becomes a material force when it grasps the masses. Marx insists to note
how the ideational moments transform into material moments or to take note of the material levers of ideological systems. It is an occasion of dialectics when an idea transforms into a material force. Marx is fond of the dialectics of the subjective turning into the objective and the objective turning into the subjective.
In the history of Marxism, the theme of basis and superstructure found its vigorous criticisms. It was due to the deterministic understanding of the relation between the basis and the superstructure. Marx and Engels indeed wrote about the deterministic role of Basis or the economic relations of a given society. However, later they clarified the independent role of the ideational forms and the interactive moment between the two realms. Engels wrote in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of classical
German Philosophy, “Every ideology, once it has arisen, develops in connection with the
given concept-material, and develops this material further; otherwise it would not be an ideology, that is, occupied with thoughts as with independent entities, developing
independently and subject only to their laws.” (Marx, Engels, Lenin 1974:234-234). Engels suggests the independence of the immanent logic of the ideological forms here. Again, “The state [as a super-structural form] presents to us as the first ideological power over man… Hardly come into being, this organ makes itself independent vis-à-vis society… The consciousness of the interconnection between this political struggles and its economic basis becomes dulled and can be lost altogether.” (Ibid. 1974:233-234). Engels, irritated by the non-dialectical and so metaphysical understanding of the relation between basis and superstructure by some scholars, at one time, completely abandons the metaphor of basis and superstructure resorts to another conceptual frame and names it a division of labor. In his letter to Schmidt (1890), Engels writes,
“[Basis/Superstructure] is easiest to grasp from the point of view of the division of labor… The persons appointed for this purpose [ideological work] form a new branch of division of labor within society… This gives them particular interests, distinct, too, from the interests of those who empowered them; they make themselves independent of the latter and- the state is in being… The new independent power… reacts in turn, by virtue of its inherent relative independence … It is the interaction of two unequal forces.” (Ibid. 1974:279). Lenin too abandoned the metaphor of basis and superstructure preferring to attribute organic relations between them. Lenin wrote in What the “friends of the
people’ are etc (1894), “The whole point, however, is that Marx did not content himself
with this skeleton,… he nevertheless everywhere and incessantly scrutinized the
superstructure corresponding to these production relations and clothed the skeleton in flesh and blood.” (Ibid. 1974:319-320). If we understand that dialectics is vital for Marx,
then we would also understand that Marx is not just defining what is the basis and what are the superstructures but he is above all interested in the multifarious interactions between the economic and ideological and vice versa, in the magic of one transforming into another. It will be also easy to grasp the point that the synthetic structures that organically unite the economic and the ideological moments are many times more effective than the monolinear or one sided function of economic or ideological. A clear case is the case of castes in India.
What would be the standpoint of Ambedkar in the dialectics of the subjective and objective or basis and superstructure? Ambedkar as such does not share the Marxian terms such as subjective and objective or basis and superstructure. He appears to be following an objective language in all his writings, possibly, true to the methodology taught to him in the western universities. Ambedkar elaborately quotes from Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavat Gita or Manudharma Sastra, the original sources of ancient Indian culture, whenever he wants to prove a point from them. He is argumentative and rational, however polemic he may be, in all his works. A careful reader can find the suppressed emotions buried under the objective and rational style of writing of Ambedkar. One can compare the way of writing of Franz Fanon or any other Black phenomenological writer of mid-twentieth century and that of Ambedkar. Ambedkar is definitely and thoroughly different from the emotional and experiential style of writings of post-war Black thinkers. However, it is pertinent to understand that the theoretical standpoint of Ambedkar is not for identifying an economic system at the basis of Indian society and history. When Ambedkar very flexibly moves from economics to social and from social to political or to religious, one can discover that the great thinker is without any presupposed theoretical design but the truest only to the object of his study.
Ambedkar is under the magical spell of the most comprehensive approach to the study of Indian society exploring the economic, social, political and religious foundations and implications of the caste system. That is to say, Ambedkar moves, in Marxian terms, from economic basis to political and religious, that is, to the super-structural realms. It is a grand coincidence that Ambedkar‟s method is immensely and inherently dialectical. Ambedkar‟s study of Indian caste system is a brilliant and exemplary occurring of the dialectics of the subjective and objective as well as of the basis and superstructure. Some of the terms Ambedkar uses so frequently evidence his mastery of
dialectics. They are, for example, “Hindu Social Order”, “Hindu Society”, “Division of Laborers” and “Social Economics”. The term Social order in its content is almost
only the “Social” and “Economic”, Ambedkar very lucidly combines the “Hindu”, a religious term, and the “Social Order”, a sociological term. (Hindu) Religion, according to Marx, is a super-structural system and Marxists may not agree to render a
fundamental place to combine it with a social order. But Ambedkar has his own justifications to combine the two. We shall be pondering over that in another chapter. Here it is suffice to say that Ambedkar combines in the analysis of Indian society the basic economic and the politico-religious or religio-ethical super-structural moments. Ambedkar‟s treatment of Hinduism contains another pertinent question whether Hinduism is a superstructural form. To be exact, the term Hindu social order erases the known boundaries between base and superstructure, and allows the fusion of the two. Ambedkar is justified in the sense that Hindu social order as it is available in the ancient texts and practice is one at the same time economic, social and religious. It is a socio-cultural structure framed in ancient Indian conditions and consolidated during the medieval period to serve social exploitation and oppression. Let us note here that structure is a term recently vogue in philosophical literature to avoid the dichotomy of base and superstructure.
Ambedkar‟s dialectical method also contributes to the late-found cultural politics of 20th century Marxism and its identity politics. Ambedkar consistently enters into the critique of oppressive cultural apparatus that stands behind the caste system. There was a century of cultural critique and a vanguard of intellectual army before the great French Revolution. The 20th century Marxists acknowledge that a long period of cultural critique is inevitably needed to achieve a social revolution in countries like India and not only in India. Ambedkar intensely conducts an open ideological war with the cultural dominant of Indian society, namely Hinduism. Ambedkar evidently shows that Hinduism is a religion of inequality and it is against any social coherence and unity among its
members. Ambedkar asserts that Hinduism is structured on the pattern of brahmanic hegemony unceremoniously spread upon all its other members. Hinduism inculcates hatred, mistrust and suspicion among all its members. Ambedkar enters into
deconstructing Hinduism before Indian Marxists themselves started any critique of Hinduism.
Lenin and the Dialectics of Democracy and Socialism in Asian context The dialectics of the subjective and the objective finds another significant elaboration in the Leninist thesis of subjective and objective factors in a revolution. Leninism in the history of Marxism is very important, particularly to Asian countries,
because Lenin recreated Marxism with an awareness that Marxism is stepping into Asia societies. When Lenin appeared in the political realm of Russia and was making his first attempts in understanding Russian society in the last decades of 19th century, he was only particular to the Russian reality in relation to the west European conditions. In those days, many of Lenin‟s works were devoted to show that capitalist relations were entering and consolidating themselves in Russian society, particularly in Russian
agriculture, and the Narodniks were theoretically in error in understanding the Russian reality. Lenin‟s early writings of these days show Lenin‟s remarkable attraction towards terms such as “objectivity”, “scientific approach”, “natural history” etc. However, soon Lenin became aware that doing Marxism for Russia implied an intensively complex and extensively bigger space than that of Russia that it included the vast Asian reality and the national-colonial conditions in which most of the Asian countries were living
through. It is pertinent to note that with increasing awareness about the complexities of reality, the role of subjective factor too increases. Lenin wrote in What is to be
Done? (1902), “The national tasks of Russian Social Democracy are such as have never
confronted any other socialist party in the world. [We have to] deal with the political and organizational duties which the task of emancipating the whole people from the yoke of autocracy imposed upon us… History has now confronted with an immediate task which is the most revolutionary of all the immediate tasks confronting the proletariat of any country. The fulfillment of this task, the destruction of the most powerful bulwork, not only of European, but of Asiatic reaction, would make the
Russian proletariat the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat.” (Marx, Engels, Lenin 1974: 385, 387).
The clean theoretical form of proletarian socialist revolution is no more appealing to Lenin and he thickly moves into the most complex contradictions of an Asiatic society. Lenin starts speaking about the revolutionary democratic alliance of proletariat and peasantry in the bourgeois democratic revolution of 1905. As much as Lenin perceived the complex and multiple structures in the Russian society, so much he started working out an appropriate alliance of social forces to encounter the complex reality and lead the situation to revolution. Lenin wrote in Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the
Democratic Revolution(1905), “What is a Revolution?. .. [It is] the forcible demolition of
the obsolete political superstructure.. [It is] all the more severe owing to the lengthy period in which this contradiction was artificially sustained.” (Ibid. 1974: 408). The existence of obsolete structures in Asiatic societies such as autocracy or religion or a caste system handed down by history to the modern social classes comes into the focus
of Lenin. The obsolete structures of the past intensify the social responsibilities of the revolutionary classes.
Social contradictions maturing to the stage of general crisis is called by Lenin as the objective factor of a revolution. The preparedness of the class or the alliance of classes for a revolution is named by Lenin as the subjective factor of a revolution. Both these factors should dialectically coincide. The class contradictions of the society should reach a stage that things cannot be maintained by the old means. The revolutionary classes must reach a stage of understanding that the revolution is a great political act.
Organizationally the revolutionary classes must find their political party. The
coincidence of the general crisis and the political preparedness of the classes makes possible a successful revolution. Just before the bourgeois democratic revolution of 1905, Lenin wrote, “No doubt that Russia is ripe for a democratic revolution, but it still remains to be seen whether the revolutionary classes have sufficient strength at present to carry it out… The moral preponderance is indubitable- the moral force is already overwhelmingly great; without it, of course, there could be no question of any revolution whatever. It is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient.” (Marx, Engels, Lenin 1974: 410). Lenin here is by no means for a pure objectivism. He is for the dialectical unity of the conditions of revolution and the praxis of the revolutionary classes. Lenin again writes, “It would be a mistake to think that the revolutionary classes are invariably strong enough to effect a revolution whenever such a revolution has fully matured by virtue of the conditions of social and economic development. No, human society is not constituted so rationally or so “conveniently” for progressive elements. A revolution may be ripe, and yet the forces of its creators may prove insufficient to carry it out, in which case society decays, and this process of decay sometimes drags on for very many years.” (Ibid. 1974: 409). The quoted words of Lenin explain not only the conditions needed for a successful revolution, but also informs why in countries like Russia or India despite the fact that objective conditions for revolution were ripe at many times in history they failed due to the absence of appropriate subjective responses. Further Lenin formulates the dialectics of revolution in 1907, “Marxism differs from all other socialist theories in a remarkable way it combines complete scientific sobriety in the analysis of the objective state of affairs and the objective course of evolution with the most emphatic recognition of the importance of the revolutionary creative genius, and revolutionary initiative of the masses – and also, of course, individuals, groups, organizations, and parties that are able to discover and achieve contact with one or another class.” (Ibid. 1974: 420).
By the year 1915, Russia fermenting for a socialist revolution, Lenin started visualizing the most complex nature of the nearing revolution. All abstract formulations of a
revolution disappear and Lenin writes, “Socialist Revolution should not be regarded as a single act, but as a period of turbulent political and economic upheavals, the most
intense class struggle, civil war, revolutions, and counter-revolutions.” (Ibid. 1974: 468). Lenin visualized the Russian revolution as completing the democratic tasks in Russia. In the given Russian context, the democratic tasks meant, above all, addressing the peasant question, the patriarchy and the national question. Lenin pays the most important attention to these three significant problems of Russian democratic revolution and organically links the same with the tasks of the Socialist revolution. The democratic tasks of democracy are perceived by Lenin as to be attended immediately before the socialist revolution. The democratic tasks are immediate and the socialist revolution is, on the other hand, a mediated one. The success of the socialist revolution is conditioned by the success of the democratic revolution. Lenin states, “It would be a radical mistake to think that the struggle for democracy was capable of diverting the proletariat from the socialist revolution or of hiding, overshadowing it, etc. On the contrary, in the same way as there can be no victorious socialism that does not practice full democracy, so the proletariat cannot prepare for its victory over the bourgeoisie without an all-round, consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy.” (Marx. Engels, Lenin 1974: 473). As a democratic task, the nationality question should be addressed by the socialist revolution, otherwise “it would be a betrayal of socialism to refuse to implement the self-determination of nations under socialism.” (Ibid. 480).
Lenin had a profound idea about the importance of the democratic slogans as well as the limitations of democracy. “Only those who cannot think straight or have no knowledge of Marxism will conclude: so there is no point in having a republic, no point in freedom of divorce, no point in democracy, no point in self-determination of nations! But
Marxists know that democracy does not abolish class oppression. It makes only the class struggle more direct, wider, more open and pronounced, and that is what we need. The fuller the freedom of divorce, the clearer will women see that the source of their
„domestic slavery‟ is capitalism, not lack of rights. The more democratic the system of government, the clearer will the workers see that the root evil is capitalism, not lack of rights. The fuller national equality (and it is not complete without freedom of secession), the clearer will the workers of the oppressed nations see that the cause of their
Lenin was confident that only a socialist revolution could solve the problems of democratic transformation in Russian society in terms of abolition of class oppression. However, Lenin was equally sure that the communists must be in the forefront in the struggle for democracy because in the struggles for democracy the workers, peasants, the nationally oppressed and the oppressed women are brought to the streets and prepared for the socialist revolution. They learn from the experience of struggles that the democratic rights could not be practically and comprehensively achieved within the bourgeois democratic set-up. The struggle must be continued till to reach the class confrontation of the masses with the bourgeois and other oppressive classes. It is during the struggles for democratic demands, the working class movement assumes the mass character, thus really becoming a revolutionary social force. A class alliance is
constructed, a mass front is made out and the revolutionary classes become a material force.
Lenin warns the socialists who talked about the “impracticability” of solving the democratic questions without reaching socialism and so rejected the struggles for democracy. “Such a rejection would only play in the hands of the bourgeoisie and reaction-but on the contrary, it follows that these demands must be formulated and put through in a revolutionary and not a reformist manner, going beyond the bounds of bourgeois legality, breaking them down, going beyond speeches in parliament and verbal protests, and drawing the masses into decisive action, extending and intensifying the struggle for every fundamental democratic demand up to a direct proletarian
onslaught on the bourgeoisie, i.e., up to the socialist revolution that expropriates the bourgeoisie.” (Ibid. 474). Lenin clarifies how the democratic question is radically founded in the socialist question and consequently, the mass mobilization must be founded on class positions. Lenin continues, “We would be very poor revolutionaries if, in the proletariat‟s great war of liberation of socialism, we did not know how to
utilize every popular movement againstevery single disaster imperialism brings in order to intensify and extend the crisis.” (Ibid. 486).
The dialectics of democracy and socialism is the key problem discussed by Lenin just before 1917 when Russia was nearing the Great Event. It is the decisive problem that contributed to the success of revolution in Russia.
Leninist discussion of the dialectics of democracy and socialism has a
methodological significance to countries like India. Olle Tornquist who studied the Indian and Indonesian Communists asserts, “While social democracy became dominant
in highly developed industrial countries, communism shaped the colonies in the East.. The Russian revolution was crucial. Lenin was looking for approaches to less developed nations and for means to undermine the threatening imperialist powers…The Russian revolution itself proved that socialists in the colonies did not have to wait for capitalism to develop and reach its ultimate limits.” (Olle Tornquist, What is wrong with
Communism? (On India and Indonesia), Manohar, 1989, p. 3). The experience of Russian revolution and Leninism throw immense light into the dialogue between Marx and Ambedkar. In a sense, Ambedkar occupies the pole of democracy and the Marxists often occupy the pole of socialism in the debate. Ambedkar stands to insist that without going through the democratic revolution a socialist revolution in India is impossible. The Marxists would assert that the forces that stand for democracy should not ignore the socialist tasks in perspective.
However, the unity of democracy and socialism does not mean democracy here and socialism there; it does not mean democracy now and socialism afterwards. It does not mean mere stagial understanding of democracy and socialism. A dialogue between Marx and Ambedkar should overcome the presupposition that democratic revolution and socialist revolution really mark two stages of revolution in India. In the context of globalization and spread of capitalist relations in India, the concept of two stages in revolution does not make much sense. An organic unity of democracy and socialism in Indian context would mean to unite the so-called two stages into one. In a sense, the Russian revolution of October 1917 made the two stages into one. During the post-revolution period of construction of the foundations of Socialism, Lenin combined the tasks of Democracy and Socialism organically in Russia. In a similar sense, the Chinese revolution too successfully combined both democracy and socialism during its long march towards socialism.
Ambedkar had a deep understanding about Indian society and the rootedness of caste system in it, he considered that the task of annihilation of caste was the most difficult assignment of any revolution in India. Annihilation of caste is the primary duty of a revolution in India. In traditional Marxist terminology, abolition of caste is the task of a democratic revolution in India. But Ambedkar would argue that a democratic revolution (that is, annihilation of caste) in India would be more fundamental and more violent than even a socialist revolution. That is the logic of a traditional society. A
traditional society like India contains so many historical contradictions accumulated and unresolved that they must be attended in the democratic stage of revolution. As
Marx himself indicates at another place, Indian history has developed in a particular way where “one set of social relations has been superimposed upon another” and India has met with no revolution in its history to simplify the course of development. One can identify in Indian society so many historical layers and social relations characteristic of those historical layers. It is not difficult to trace certain primitive tribal social relations conditioned by birth, blood and kinship in the caste system. Some of the caste relations, particularly at the bottom of the caste structure, are comparable to social relations akin to the slave society. As well as, the feudal land relations of the medieval times are
identifiable in the caste system. It is such a kind of superimposition of different types of exploitative social relations that is at the womb and making of the caste system in India. Caste system is over-determined by variety of exploitative and oppressive social
relations accumulated all through the history. Caste system has also dissipated the resistance that may arise against its basics and thus it has its self-preserving
mechanisms in tact. It is on the basis of the above mentioned complex and consolidated structure of caste system, we come to the conclusion that the annihilation of the caste system as a democratic task would be more fundamental in nature and more violent in practice than any other revolution in India.
Asiatic Mode of Production: Marx and Ambedkar
Another pertinent concept that needs to be probed in the discussion on Marx and Ambedkar is the theme on Asiatic Mode of production. The present state of the
discussions is that the theme of Asiatic Mode of production is attributed to Marx in his writings on India, China and Russia, and the exposition of caste system and its features is attributed to Ambedkar. But the present work attempts to propose the hypothesis that there is a real continuity between Marx and Ambedkar in their exploration of the Indian social reality.
Asiatic mode of production is important to any discussion on India because the concept asserts the possibility of a non-western historiography pertinent to India. Ambedkar, despite his western education, was very much true to the Indian reality that starting from his post graduate dissertation he entered into the discussions on caste system in India. Marx, through the concept of Asiatic mode of production, and Ambedkar, through his conception of caste system, arrive at a common position that Indian history, including its modern phase, must be approached through non-western categories. Both of them implicitly agree that a plain class approach as it was utilized for European conditions may not be applicable to Indian reality. When Marx pronounced
the concept of Asiatic mode of production and when Ambedkar uttered the discourse of caste, both of them propose or they are in search of an alternative course of
development for a revolution in India. Both Marx and Ambedkar agreed upon the fact the social system in India, the Asiatic communes for Marx and the caste system for Ambedkar, was not conducive to the development of productive forces. Both of them assert on various occasions that the social system did not guarantee free space for effective technology and for mobilization of the productive energies of the workers. On the other hand, the social system curtailed the mobility of the working people, tied them to the commune or to the caste system, making them moribund within the stagnated system. And finally, both Marx and Ambedkar condemned the wretchedness of British colonial rule in India destroying Indian agriculture, however, anticipating certain fundamental changes in the course of development of Indian history in modern times.
It has been already mentioned in the earlier pages that Marx arrived at the concept of Asiatic communes as specific to the history of such countries as India by 1860 when fresh data were reaching him about those countries. After 1860s, Marx was careful to specify the non-European path of development to countries like India, China, Arabia and Russia. The Marxist concept of Asiatic Mode of Production throws light on the reality of commune relations that were existent in Indian society from times
immemorial. Marx was writing that the key to understand Indian society lies in its absence of private property and in its place the existence of commune property and commune relations among groups of people. The existence of commune property and commune relations has caused in India what popularly known as caste and community relations in Indian society. Indian society has practiced not only community ownership and community form of exploitation, but also community forms of resistances in its history, the latter often goes unnoticed by historians.
According to the Marxist theory of Historical Materialism, the individual comes into existence when individual property consolidates in a society. The latter component was absent or weak in Indian history and this fact has been expressed by the concept of Asiatic mode of production by Marx. “The absence of property in land is indeed the key to the whole of the East. Herein lies its political and religious history. But how does it come about that the Orientals did not arrive at landed property, even in its feudal form? I think it is mainly due to the climate, taken in connection with the nature of the soil, especially with the great stretches of desert which extend from the Saharas trait across Arabia, Persia, India and Tartary up to the highest Asiatic plateaus. Artificial irrigation
is here the first condition for agriculture and this is a matter either for the communes, the provinces or the central government” (Letter of F. Engels to K. Marx, June 6, 1853). It is true that Marx derives the specifics of Asian communities from the geographical and natural conditions of the region. However, Marx comes to address the social fact of the absence of private property in land as the key to understand not only its economic history but also its political and religious history. It is striking to note that Marx does not go by the “economic determinism” in his discussions on Asiatic communes. Without any hesitation he brings to focus the political and religious history.
It must be noted here that the idea of Asiatic commune is, in principle, against any strict dichotomy of basis and superstructure. Absence of private property in land informs that the society retains certain important traits of the primitive communist society of the ancient past. In such a situation, the otherwise Marxist usage of base and superstructure cannot be applied strictly and the dialectical interactions of base and superstructure become pertinent here. The social, economic, political and religious dimensions are intertwined here in a very complex and concrete way. The Marxian idea of commune in itself contains the absence of sharp polarization into social classes, say into slaves and slave owners or feudal lords and farmers, and inevitably yields to the formation of non-polarized social stratification imprinting upon each social strata the features of commune. The idea of Asiatic commune stands philosophically to represent the non-polarization of classes, non-distinctness of basis and superstructure, fluidity of interactions between economic relations and ideational relations etc. This exactly means the course of formation of a caste system in Indian conditions. It is at this point we become committed to the idea of continuity between the Marxian concept of Asiatic commune and the Ambedkarian concept of caste system.
Marx, further, differentiates private ownership and private possession of land by which he means that customary laws permit the individual to possess the land for a time being under certain condition as member of a particular clan or community that does not however make them owners of land (K. Marx, Capital Vol III, p. 771-772). The private possession (not ownership) of land by individuals as members of a community indicates the emergence of private social relations in imprecise and indefinite form. A weak and indistinct individualism appears always rendering itself to slip back into the dominant commune entity. Absence of private property, consequently absence of distinct
individualism, becomes the source of identity making in terms of caste, religion, region or language. Taking the idea of Asiatic Mode of production close to the discussion of
identity, Marx asserts that in Asian societies the individual is related to the next individual both as members of their respective communities, where the community appears as natural or divinely given. An individual is always mediated by the commune or by the divine. The actuality of community ideologically and in alienated expression produces the divine as the higher unity. “This relation.. is instantly mediated by the naturally arisen, spontaneous, more or less historical1y developed and modified presence of the individual as member of a commune” (K. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 485. ). The relation of the individual to the natural conditions of labor and of reproduction as belonging to him as the objective, nature-given inorganic body of his subjectivity – appears mediated for him through a cession by the total unity – a unity realized in the form of the despot, the father of the many communities – to the individual, through the mediation of the particular commune” (Ibid., p. 472-473). The mediation by a higher unity is significant because it is the surrender of individual to the higher unity that is celebrated in many of the religions of India. The absence of private property and the mediation by the higher unity are well documented in Buddhism, particularly in its concepts of anatmavada and Sangha. Anatnamavada literally means non-existence of individual soul. Buddhism holds the view that atma or individual soul itself is a construction constituted by innumerable social interactions, thus it can be
deconstructed. Buddhist meditations are aimed at deconstructing the individuality and for achieving Nirvana or total annihilation of whatever individual. Annihilating the individuality ends up achieving unity with the higher reality that is the Sangha or commune. The Buddhist ideal of annihilating the ego travels into other religions of India, into Saivism and Vaishnavism too. Although Saivism and Vaishnavism name the higher reality as God, Siva or Vishnu, however they retain the ideal of annihilation of ego as absolute surrender (Parapatthi in Vaishnavism) before God or annihilation of Anavam and Ahanghar. The difference between Buddhism and the latter monotheistic religions is that where Buddhism holds an absolute standpoint of annihilating the ego and merging in community, Saivism and Vaishnavism place the objective of annihilation of ego secondary to their devotional attitude to one God.
In some other places Marx says that the individual remains “bee- like” in a community that is satisfying and comforting and that such a life produces a “communality of blood, language and a life of reproducing and objectifying activities” (Ibid., p. 472. K. Marx, The Ethnological Note Books, p. 329).
The non-polarization of basis and superstructure and the higher reality mediating the inter-commune relations in conditions of Asiatic communes explain why (and how) religion and state get involved in instituting the varna or caste order and in safeguarding the same with all their might all along in Indian history. Ambedkar is thoroughly
justified here to name the caste system as the Hindu social order. The Marxian idea of Asiatic commune implies that the economic interests of the ruling elite within the commune are taken care of by the non-economic factors of the society. One is reminded of the Brahmin-Kshatriya unity achieved by Bhagavat Gita or by Manudhrama Shastra as the key factor of the caste system in ancient India.
The dominance of community as a higher reality in Asiatic societies also has a positive implication in Indian history. It keeps alive the memory of primitive communism and consequently, the search for a utopia. At every occasion of crisis, the people of east address back to this moment of utopia and take inspiration from that original utopia. Utopia is an inalienable component of the cultural memory of the people and it operates as the unconscious of the peasant masses. For Ambedkar, the utopia of equality is really represented by Buddhism in ancient India. In Ambedkarian understanding, Buddhism is always an argument for equality, casteless society, profound humanism and
egalitarian ethics. Ambedkar is committed to assert that the idea of casteless society has always remained as an argument in Indian history despite the fact that Buddhism was defeated by Brahmanism institutionally. As Marx brought out the utopias of classless society from the cultural memory of European civilization, Ambedkar too has brought out the memories of casteless society from within Indian culture.
Ambedkar and Marxism of Twentieth Century
Marxism has proved itself as the most influential thought in the 20th century. Apart from its direct political articulations, it has its academic variations too. While Marxist movements have met with certain definite political failures that have been conditioned by the objective course of history in 20th century, it has withstood the test of time in terms of assimilating the newly emerging trends. Marxism has shown itself as a successful social analytical theory particularly from the point of view of subaltern masses struggling for their emancipation. Marx, Engels, Roza Luxemberg, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Che Gua Vera etc are the leaders of the Marxist political movement all over the world. George Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, Adorno, Louis Althusser and others are the academicians who contributed considerably to the making of 20th century
Marxism. Thus, Marxism has undergone basic transformations in 20th century and early 21st century. Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, is one among those who have been
very much instrumental to changes and developments in present day Marxism. Gramsci has created waves of interest in re-reading and reinterpreting Marxism particularly in conditions of traditional societies with immense population of peasants. To us, it is pertinent that the recent developments in Marxism have changed the character of Marxism as an European theory and have come to contribute much to the
understanding of Third World realities such as Indian society. In this part of the book we elucidate a few key concepts worked out by eminent Marxist thinkers of 20th century who have immensely contributed to Marxist thought that, for our purpose, facilitates the continuing dialogue between Marxism and Ambedkarian thought.
One of the earliest thinkers was Georg Lukacs (1885-1971), a Hungarian Marxist, who lived in Germany, served as the Commissar in the HungarianSovietRepublic and then migrated to Austria and Soviet Russia. As a brilliant exponent of classical German philosophy, particularly that of Hegel, Lukacs revived the dialectics of being and
consciousness in his writings and reached the epoch making concept of Totality. He perceived the capitalist system not just as an economic system but a totalizing system that engulfs the entire society including the every day life and behavior of the people. To quote Andre Gorz, a later Marxist, “The dictatorship of capital is exercised not only on the production and distribution of wealth, but with equal force on the manner of
producing, on the model of consumption, and on the manner of consuming, the manner of working, thinking, living… over the society‟s vision of the future, its ideology, its priorities and goals; over the way in which people experience and learn about
themselves, their potentials, their relations with other people and with the rest of the world. This dictatorship is economic, political, cultural, and psychological at the same time; it is total. That is why it is right to fight it as a whole, on all level, in the name of an overall alternative… The cultural battle for a new conception of man, of life, education, work, and civilization, is the precondition for the success of all the other battles for socialism because it establishes their meaning.” (Andre Gorz, Strategy for Labour, Beacon Pree, Boston, 1967, Pp. 131-132).
A careful reader would immediately grasp that what is given here as the totalizing power of capital is applicable to a caste society. Marx‟s idea of Asiatic commune too implies the total nature of social relations in Indian society. Emerging and consolidating itself all through the known history of India, superimposing one set of exploitative and oppressive relations upon another set of social relations, the caste system has spread out itself into all spheres of public and private life of the Hindus. It is there in the economic life, in politics, culture, religion etc, more over in the structure of a village, in the marital
