Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 22:30:10 -0500
From: james m blaut <70671.2032-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re: M-I: David Harvey on the Communist Manifesto


James F:

Two brief comments on your posting of today:

1. "[Most] discussions concerning Marx's views on imperialism and
progress focus on his famous articles on India." This is a correct
statement and it shows us, sadly, how superficial are these "discussions"
which Marxists today engage in concerning Marx's views on imperialism and
colonialism. These articles were among Marx's journalistic pieces for a
mainly bourgeois readership, earning Marx an income, and were primarily
designed to give US readers a view of what was happening in Britain and
(incidentally) the empire (this was the time of the so-called "mutiny").
More importantly, Marx had access to no reliable information about India:
he read the colonialist views of the British government, the East India
Company, directly and indriectly (through the press, etc.). Sure he read
the 200 year old book bty Bernier to get an idea of pre-colonial India, but
most of his ideas about precolonial -- or rather "traditional" --  India
must have come from the government and othjer colonialist sources. THESE
sources, for instance, gave him the false idea that  private property in
land was unknown in India (and inferentially in precolonial societies
generally). There are some texts by Marx and Engels that we should study
very carefully. There are others, like the India articles, that we should
take with two grains of salt.

And by the way, whoever is interested in the Marx-Engels views on
colonialism should read what they had to say about Ireland -- the one
victim of imperialism aboiut which they had first-hand knowlsge.

2. "I wonder if anybody here has has anything to contribute on the
interactions between India's caste system and Indian capitalism.  To what
extant does the caste system help strengthen the power of capital (both
domestic and international) and to what extant does the caste system act as
a barrier to its further development?" My only comment here is to say that
the old idea that the caste system prevented any internal development
toward capitalism, while still a widely held belief among Eurocentric
historians, has largely been debunked. See  Dirks, *The Hollow Crown* and
stuff cited in my book.
  


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