Date: Mon, 03 Nov 1997 13:43:07 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: A discussion of Marx and India


(This was written by Michael Perleman, the moderator of PEN-L)

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE PRESS: KARL MARX AND HENRY CAREY AT THE NEW YORK
TRIBUNE

For many years, Karl Marx earned his living as a correspondent for the
widely read New York Daily Tribune. The Weekly Tribune, which was composed
of selections from the daily edition, had a circulation of 200,000 (see
Marx 1860, p. 265). Marx was naturally proud to be invited to be a part of
the Tribune, which he considered to be "the 'leading [verbreitetste]
journal' in the United States" (Marx to Engels, 14 June 1853; in Marx and
Engels 1975, p. 79). In the duly famous introduction to his Critique of
Political Economy, he wrote of his "collaboration with the New York
Tribune, the leading Anglo-American newspaper" (Marx 1859, p. 23).

The editor, Charles Dana, considered Marx's contributions to be very
important. The biographer of Horace Greeley, owner of the Tribune, offered
a description of a typical working day at the Tribune:

"Mr. Dana enters with a quick, decided step, goes straight to his desk and
is lost in perusal of 'Karl Marx' or 'An American Woman in Paris'. [Parton
1854; cited in Draper 1968, p. 11]"

On 12 March 1852, Dana wrote, "It may perhaps give you pleasure to know
that [your articles] are read with satisfaction by a considerable number of
persons, and are widely reproduced" (cited in Blitzer 1966, p. xix). Marx
basked in the glow of a leader that Dana attached to one of Marx's
articles: "we may properly pay a tribute to the remarkable ability of the
correspondent by whom this interesting piece of intelligence is furnished."
In a letter to Engels, Marx drew the conclusion, "As you see, I am firmly
in the saddle" (Marx to Engels, 26 April 1853; reprinted in CW: 39, pp.
315-16). When the 1857 crisis compelled the Tribune to reduce its staff,
Marx was one of the two correspondents who remained on the payroll (Padover
1978, p. 287), although, as we shall see, this honor was rather hollow.
Indeed, although Dana later assured Marx in a letter that Marx was "not
only one of the most highly valued, but one of the best paid contributors
attached to the journal," Dana had no intention of making his sentiments
(reprinted in Marx 1860, pp. 323-24). Many years afterwards, as editor of
the Sun, Dana requested information from Marx concerning the International.
Marx's answer, which arrived only a few months before his death, was
printed, along with a short statement from Dana in which he praised Marx as
"an extraordinary man." Dana added:

His talents were brilliant and his learning varied and accurate. [Reprinted
in Marx and Engels 1978, Vol. 22; Appendix, p. 1095].

MARX'S SECRET WAR ON CAPITAL

Marx was delighted with the opportunity to write for the Tribune. His
finances were at low ebb. Besides, the paper actually offered him the
chance to teach socialism to the capitalists. That idea was not so far
fetched as it might sound today. Between 1852 and 1854, about one-half
million Germans landed in New York, including a good number of Marx's
comrades-in-arms from the Revolution of 1848 (see Padover 1978, p. 303). Of
these, a not insubstantial portion managed to combine personal success with
a vague retention of their earlier revolutionary ideals. The Tribune also
drew upon the New England transcendental heritage of a sentimental
opposition to capitalism. The marriage between Marx and the Tribune seemed
to have been made in a socialist heaven.

The Tribune published 487 articles from Marx. He wrote 350 by himself and
12 together with Engels. The other 125 articles he submitted were written
by Engels (Ibid., p. 287). Almost one-quarter of his contributions were
printed as unsigned editorials (Padover 1980, p. 168), although the paper
chose Engels' articles as editorials more frequently than those written by
Marx (see Blitzer 1966, p. xxi). At one point, Marx's contributions were
used so extensively that he could write to Engels that "for eight weeks
past, Marx-Engels have virtually constituted the EDITORIAL STAFF of the
Tribune" (Marx to Engels, 14 December 1853; reprinted in CW: 19, p. 404). 

A good number of Marx's articles were economic in nature. One source
estimates that 50 of the 321 articles that it attributes to Marx concern
economic matters (see Padover 1978, p. 308). Thus we could properly
describe Marx as one of the most influential financial writers in this
hemisphere. Although Marx was not residing in the United States, his base
in London may actually have been an advantage. After all, England was still
"the metropolis of capital" (Marx to Meyer and Vogt, 9 April 1870; in Marx
and Engels 1975, p. 223).

At first, Marx worried that his intended conquest might not succeed. He
fretted:

"Greeley reported in the Tribune the speech Heinzen made there, and went on
to praise the man. So storm clouds are threatening me from that quarter. If
we send him [Dana] short articles, he will think he is being fleeced and
will cast me out of the temple, since he now has such a plentiful supply
from Heinzen, Ruge and B. Bauer. What is even more unfortunate, I see from
today's Times that the Daily Tribune is protectionist. So its all very
ominous. [Marx to Engels, 5 August 1852; in Marx and Engels 1982, p. 146]"

Engels reassured him:

"As for being thrown out of the Tribune, you need have no worries. We are
too firmly ensconced there. Furthermore, to the Yankees, this European
politicizing is mere dilettantism in which he who writes best and with the
greatest espirit comes out on top. [Engels to Marx, 6 August 1852; in Marx
and Engels 1982, p. 147]"

Moreover, Engels counselled Marx that all the American Whigs were
protectionists (Ibid.). The leading protectionist Whig was Henry Carey, who
according to one report was "virtual editor of the New York Tribune in this
doctrinal department [i.e. the tariff and political economy] for which it
was then so distinguished." (Smith 1951, p. 36; citing Elder, p. 22).

Indeed, Marx's early articles caught the attention of the Tribune
readership. John Bright, the famous British free trader, told the Parliament:

"He had seen articles perhaps better written with more style, but never any
that had a better tone. . . . [After singling out Marx's work], [h]e
ventured to say that there was not at this moment a better paper than that.
[Marx 1853c, p. 176; citing The Times, 28 June 1853]"

In addition, Marx proudly informed Engels:

"Mr Tribune has given special prominence to a note about my 2nd article on
Gladstone's Budget, drawing the attention of readers to my 'masterly
exposition' and going on to say that nowhere have they seen 'a more able
criticism' and 'do not expect to see one'. [Marx to Engels, 2 June 1853; in
Marx and Engels 1982, p. 331]

Even here, Marx was not altogether pleased:

"Well, this is all right. But in the following article it proceeds to make
an ass of me by printing under my name a heading of mine which is quite
trifling and intentionally so. [Ibid.]"

Henry Carey was among those who took notice of Marx's work. He sent Marx a
copy of his book, Harmony of Interests (Marx to Engels, 30 April 1852; in
Marx and Engels 1973: 28, p. 68). Later, he mailed Marx his Slavery at Home
and Abroad, in which Marx was repeatedly cited as "a recent English writer"
and "a correspondent of the New York Tribune" (See Marx to Engels, 14 June
1853; in Marx and Engels 1975, p. 78). 

Unlike Marx, who specifically hoped to undermine the support for Carey's
ideas, Carey gave no public evidence of having any particular interest in
opposing Marx's work. In fact, he even expressed respect for Marx's
contributions to the Tribune. Nonetheless, Carey probably did direct his
considerable powers against Marx, especially regarding the Tribune's policy
toward Russia.

MARX AND CAREY

Both Marx and Carey had strongly held views. Carey is said to have
frequently exclaimed, "Salvation, it is in me, and my books" (Anon. 1894,
p. 141; cited in Green 1951, p. 43). As might be expected, Marx was not
quite ready to receive Carey's brand of salvation. After receiving the
second book that Carey sent him, he wrote to Engels:

"[I]n his previously published works this man described the 'harmony' of
the economic foundations of the bourgeois system and attributed all the
mischief to superfluous interference by the state. They state was his
bogey. Now his is singing a different tune. The root of all evil is the
centralising effect of modern industry. But this centralising effect is
England's fault, because she has become the workshop of the world and
forces all other countries back to crude agriculture, divorced from
manufacture. For England's sins the Ricardo-Malthus theory and especially
Ricardo's theory of rent of land are in their turn responsible. The
necessary consequence of Ricardo's theory and of industrial centralisation
would be communism. And so as to escape all this, so as to confront
centralisation with localisation and a union of industry with agriculture
spread throughout the country, our ultra-free-trader finally recommends
protective tariffs. In order to escape the effects of bourgeois industry,
for which he makes England responsible, he resorts like a true Yankee to
hastening this development in America by artificial means. His opposition
to England, moreover, throws him into Sismondian praise of petty bourgeois
ways in Switzerland, Germany, China, etc. . . . The only thing of positive
interest in the book is the comparison between the former English slavery
in Jamaica, etc., and the Negro slavery of the United States.

"The Tribune is of course hard at it trumpeting Carey's book. Both indeed
have this in common, that under the guise of Sismondian-
philanthropic-socialist anti-industrialism they represent the protectionist
bourgeoisie, i.e., the industrial bourgeoisie of America. This also
explains the secret why the Tribune in spite of all its 'ism' and socialist
humbug, can be the 'leading journal' in the United States.

"Your article on Switzerland was of course an indirect smack at the leading
articles in the Tribune (against centralisation, etc.), and its Carey. I
have continued this hidden warfare in my 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. [Marx to Engels, 14 June
1853; in Marx and Engels 1975, pp. 78-80]"

This letter is trebly important. In the first place, it offers considerable
insight into Marx's interpretation of Carey, which portrays Carey as a sort
of early dependency theorist. Secondly, it explains how Carey, with his
violent antipathy toward socialism could work with the progressive Tribune.
Thirdly, it tells us something of Marx's "hidden war" to subvert the
editorial policies of the Tribune.

Consider the first point, Marx's analysis of Carey's political economy.
Instead of class struggle, Carey represented an early version of what later
United States historians refer to as the Turner thesis, that the frontier
served to dampen class conflict in the new world. Unlike Turner and the
others who wrote of this phenomenon, Carey assumed that economic
development always could occur without conflict; that the harmony of
interests among different classes was a universal rule. 

Marx correctly characterized Carey as attributing most of the world's ills
to "the diabolocal influence of England on the world market" (Marx 1977, p.
705).  Carey alleged that the "English system" sought "the annihilation of
commerce among the people of other communities; and here was. . . that it
went far beyond any others which had been devised." (Carey 1858; i, p.
411). The ultimate object of the British was to compel "the rude produce of
the earth to be sent to England, there to be subjected to those mechanical
and chemical processes required for bringing it to the form in which it was
fitted for consumption. (Ibid., p. 412) Carey frequently lumped the
situation of the United States together with those of Ireland, India and
the other less developed nations.  

To make this point, Carey distinguished between commerce and trade. For Carey:

"The words commerce and trade are commonly regarded as convertible terms,
yet are the ideas they express so widely different as to render it
essential that this difference be clearly understood. [Carey 1858; i, p.
210)."

In Carey's system, commerce was benign; trade, exploitative. His
understanding of commerce "related to Eighteenth Century French meaning of
an ideal ensemble of social relations which arise when exchange is carried
on within a given geographical region" (Morrison 1968, p. 134). 

Marx was not particularly impressed by Carey's conclusions. He wrote to his
friend, Weydemeyer:

"H. C. Carey (of Philadelphia), the only American economist of importance,
is a striking proof that civil society in the United States is as yet by no
means mature enough to provide a clear and comprehensible picture of the
class struggle. [Marx to Weydemeyer, 5 March 1852; in Marx and Engels 1975,
pp. 62-65; see also Marx 1856- 1857, p. 884]"

Accordingly, Marx continued his appraisal of Carey:

"He attacks Ricardo, the most classic representative of the bourgeoisie and
the most stoical adversary of the proletariat as a man whose works are an
arsenal for anarchists, Socialists, and all enemies of the bourgeois
system. He reproaches not only him but Malthus, Mill, Say, Torrens,
Wakefield, McCulloch, Senior, Whately, R. Jones, and others, the leading
economists of Europe, with rending society asunder and preparing civil war
because they show that the economic bases of the different classes are
bound to give rise to a necessary and ever growing antagonism among them.
He tried to refute them. . . by attempting to show that economic
conditions-rent (landed property), profit (capital), and wages (wage
labour) instead of being conditions of struggle and antagonism are rather
conditions of association and harmony. All he proves, of course, is that he
is taking the 'underdeveloped' conditions of the United States for 'normal
conditions.'" [Ibid.] 

Marx's words might sound somewhat exaggerated, but Carey actually wrote:

"Mr. Ricardo's system is one of discords. . . its whole tends to the
production of hostility among classes and nations. . . His book is the true
manual of the demagogue, who seeks power by means of agrarianism, war, and
plunder. [Carey 1848, pp. 74-75]"

To a limited extent, Carey was perfectly willing to write of contradiction
so long as the contradictions were limited to those between England and
other nations. All labored under the malevolent influence of the British.
In summarizing Carey's theory, Marx observed:

"[E]ven Carey, himself is struck by the beginnings of disharmony in the
United States. What is the source of this strange phenomenon? Carey
explains it with the destructive influence of England, with its striving
for industrial monopoly, upon the world market. . . . England distorts the
harmony of economic relations in all countries of the world. . . . The
harmony of economic relations rests, according to Carey on the harmonious
cooperation of town and countryside, industry and agriculture. Having
dissolved this fundamental harmony in its own interior, England, by its
competition, proceeds to destroy it throughout the world market, and is
thus the destructive element of the general harmony. The only defense lies
in protective tariffs-- the forcible national barricade against the
destructive power of large-scale English industry. . . . All the relations
which appear harmonious to him within specific national boundaries or in
addition, in the abstract form of general relations of bourgeois society. .
. appear as disharmonious to him where they appear in their most developed
form-- in their world market form. [Marx 1857-1858, p. 886]"

Besides his hatred of all things English, Carey's writings were shaped by
his own economic interests. Both Dorfman (1946) and Green (1951) document
the self-serving nature of Carey's theories. Just one example suffices-- a
letter from Washington Representative George W. Scranton to Carey, written
on 30 April 1860:

"Coal stocks and estates well located are improving in value and have
touched the lowest points, if we can carry the Tariff Bill through, you may
safely mark up your coal interests. I will sit down with you and we will
join in the business and agree upon the increased percentage that we will
start with. [cited in Green 1951, p. 200; see also p. 165]"

Carey's program of protecting industry by opposing British commodities was
well received in some quarters, including, initially, the Tribune. He was
instrumental in inserting tariff plank in the 1860 Republican Party
Platform. Both Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary, Chase, frequently
consulted him. In fact, during the half century in which Carey hosted his
"vespers" for influential visitors, every treasury secretary took pains to
attend frequently (see Green 1951, pp. 35-36).

This background brings us to the second point of Marx's letter on Carey;
namely, his relationship with the Tribune. Carey managed to transform the
Fourierist conception of association into the idea of corporate
organization (see Dorfman 1946; 2, p. 790). At the same time, he opposed
the large, impersonal British corporation as the source of an evil cabal
designed to keep the United States in a state of perpetual backwardness
(see Conklin 1980, pp. 280-81).

This approach made Carey's work very congenial to the rising business
community of the United States, including the Tribune. While Marx received
a mere pound for each article, Carey refused direct payment for his
contributions to the Tribune lest, he be accused of penning his
contributions for worldly gain (see Green 1951, p. 25). Nonetheless, Carey
was handsomely rewarded for his work. His access to the editorial pages of
the Tribune substantially added to the value of his services as a
well-placed power broker.

Marx could not know the sordid details of Carey's business adventures, but
his own pathbreaking writings on ideology should have been sufficient to
disabuse him of Engels' idea that 'He who wins is he who writes best and
has the most spirit.' Instead, Marx, the hardheaded philosopher of
dialectical materialism, rushed headlong into his challenge to Carey.

In part, Marx's scheme may have had some merit. Carey was making inroads
into the German-American community, just as Carey's disciple, Duerhing, was
to do a few decades later. If Marx were to keep such people from being
misled by Duerhing, an attack on Carey was required. To this end, he
supplied his friend, Adolph Cluss, with notes to aid him in preparing a
journalistic critique of Carey in the German paper, Die Reform (see Cluss
1853, pp. 623-32).

Cluss' article could say, "Carey totally overlooks the transforming,
revolutionary element in the destructive effects of industry" (Cluss 1853,
p. 627). In the Tribune, the battle could not be as direct. Marx himself
had to be more circumspect.

Marx's correspondence shows him gearing up for his attack on Carey. Engels,
who usually agreed with Marx about economic conditions, wrote to his friend
on 6 June 1853, only four days before he wrote the first of his India
articles. Engels observed:

"An Oriental government never had more than three departments: finance
(plunder at home), war (plunder at home and abroad), and public works
(provision for reproduction). The British government in India has put a
somewhat narrower interpretation on Nos. 1 and 2 in a more narrow-minded
manner and dropped 3 entirely, so that Indian agriculture is being ruined.
Free competition discredits itself there completely. The artificial
fertilisation of the land, which immediately ceased when the irrigation
system fell into decay, explains the fact which otherwise would be rather
odd. [reprinted Marx and Engels 1975, pp. 76-77]"

Marx's response was his letter, in which he described his 'hidden warfare'.
Immediately after speculating that "This will be very shocking to them," he
added, "Incidentally, the entire British management in India was swinish,
and is to this day" (Ibid., p. 79). He continued:

"The stationary character of this part of Asia-- despite all the pointless
movement on the political surface-- is fully explained by two circumstances
which supplement each other: 1) the public works were the business of the
central government; 2) moreover, the whole empire, not counting the few
larger towns was divided into villages, each of which possessed a
completely independent organisation and formed a little world in itself..."

"I do not think that one can envisage a more solid foundation for Asiatic
despotism and stagnation. And however much the English may have
Hibernicised the country, the breaking up of those stereotyped primitive
forms was the sine qua non for Europeanisation. . . . The destruction of
their ancient industry was necessary to deprive the villages of their
self-supporting character. [Ibid., p. 79]"

This part of the letter seemed to be a practice run for his article. Note
that Marx ignored Engels' point about the decline of public works
(irrigation); Instead in his article, he pointed to the rise of a different
type of public works (railroads). 

In his duly famous articles on British India, to which he referred in the
letter on Carey that he sent to Engels, Marx stressed that the long-run
effect of British industry would be to prepare India for a future based on
modern technology (Marx 1853, pp. 125-33). Marx even went so far as to
claim that England had actually laid the groundwork for "the greatest, and
to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia"
(Ibid., p. 132). He continued:

"Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness. . . , we must
not forget that idyllic village-communities, inoffensive as they may
appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that
restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass. . . .

"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
fulfill its 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 1853,
p. 132]"

This article represented a fundamental challenge to Carey's thesis. To
begin with, Marx suggested that the English were playing a valuable social
mission in civilizing the Indians. He wrote:

"England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the
other regenerating-- the annihilation of old Asiatic Society, and the
laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia. [Marx 1853b,
p. 494]"

Marx's articles on India appeared to be among his most explicit works on
the nature of capitalist expansion into the peripheral nations.
Consequently, they have been very influential in the analyses of later
marxists, especially those who believed that capitalism was congenial to
peripheral development (see Warren 1980; and Clarkson pp. 190-91). To the
extent that the India articles were colored by his efforts to critique
Carey obliquely (and I believe that they were), they fail to reflect
accurately Marx's own understanding of the process of economic development.

Of course, Marx never assembled a comprehensive theory of development.
Capital was admittedly Eurocentric. In his later years, Marx paid more
attention to the development of economies outside Western Europe, however
these writings have not been fully integrated into thought. Nontheless,
some aspects of Marx's analysis of the development process are relatively
clear.

To begin with, in the India articles and elsewhere, Marx recognized that
the accumulation of capital eventually yields beneficial consequences.
Eventually, as capitalism takes root, it promotes modern technology and
establishes the preconditions for socialism. In this limited sense, the
India articles partially reflected Marx's understanding of the nature of
economic development.

In a more general sense, the usual reading of the India articles were
misleading in several respects. Firstly, they ignore the significant
technological strengths of traditional economies, stressing instead their
backwardness. In this respect, as Daniel Thorner once pointed out, these
particular articles had a great deal in common with Hegel's interpretation
of India, as "a phenomenon antique as well as modern; one which has
remained stationary and fixed" (Thorner 1966, p. 38; citing Hegel 1837, p.
145).

Worse still, in the India article, in speaking ill of the Indian villages,
Marx alluded to the charge made in the Cluss piece that "Carey. . .
burrow[ed] himself deeper and deeper in the petty-bourgeois element,
advocating the long since discarded patriarchal association between
agriculture and manufacturing" (Cluss 1853, p. 627). That particular point
is most unfortunate, since Marx himself frequently argued that one of the
great benefits of socialism would be a unity of industry and agriculture
(see Marx 1977, Ch. 15, Sec. 10).

Marx also adopted a negative perspective toward traditional economies when
discussing the impact of free trade on European societies, but not
generally when addressing the question peripheral societies (see Marx
1848). True, in the Grundrisse a few years later, Marx wrote of Asiatic
society, "where the little communes vegetate independently alongside one
another" (Marx 1857-58, p. 473). But in the same work, he commented more
favorably on the Asiatic village economy. For example in the same work, he
subsequently added:
The Asiatic form necessarily hangs on most tenaciously and for the longest
time. This is due to its presupposition that . . . there is a
self-sustaining circle of production, unity of agriculture and
manufactures. [Ibid., p. 486; see also p. 473]

In fact, Marx generally wrote about the stability of Asian society in
relatively positive terms. He described, "[c]ommunal property and
small-plot cultivation" as "a fertilising element of progress" (Marx 1881,
p. 104). He also referred to the "natural vitality" of traditional communal
agriculture (Ibid, p. 106).

For example, after his articles on India appeared, Marx placed an article
on China in the Tribune. There, he cited a Mr. W. Cooke, who was earlier a
correspondent of the London Times at Shanghai and Canton, to demonstrate
the savings resulting from a close association of cottage industry and
agriculture. According to Mr. Cook, British exports often had to be sold in
China at prices that barely covered their freight to be competitive (Marx
1858, p. 334; see also Marx to Engels, 8 October 1858; in Avineri 1868, p.
440; Myers, 1980; and Perelman 1983, p. 34).

The same idea was later repeated in the third volume of Capital, where he
wrote:

"The substantial economy and saving in time afforded by the association of
agriculture with manufactures put up a stubborn resistance to the products
of the big industries, whose prices included the faux frais of the
circulation process which pervades them. [Marx 1967: iii, p. 334] "

In 1859, Marx expanded on the nature of the Indian economy, comparing it
with that of China:

"It is this same combination of husbandry with manufacturing industry
which, for a long time, withstood, and still checks the export of British
wares to East India; but there that combination was based upon a peculiar
constitution of landed property which the British in their position as the
supreme landlords of the country, had it in their power to undermine, and
thus forcibly convert part of the Hindoo self-sustaining communities into
mere farms, producing opium, cotton, indigo, hemp and other raw materials,
in exchange for British stuffs. In China the English have not yet wielded
this power nor are they ever likely to do so. [Marx 1859a, p. 375]"

About this same time, Marx associated the resistance of traditional
economies with the scale of agriculture (Marx to Engels, 8 October 1858; in
Marx and Engels 1983, p. 347). In this sense, the forced introduction of
capitalism can represent a major step backwards in certain types of
traditional production. 

The India articles were misleading in a second respect. They presumed that
contact with capitalism would actually lead to the rapid accumulation of
capital in the periphery. Indeed, in the case of Russia, he noted:

"Russia. . . could acquire machinery, steamships, railways and so on. . . .
[T]hey managed to introduce the whole machinery of exchange (banks, credit
companies, etc.) which was the work of centuries elsewhere in the West.
[Marx 1881, p. 110]"

In reality, Marx understood that the acquisition of these elements of
progress would not be sufficient to bring progress in their wake. Even in
his relatively optimistic letter of 14 June 1853 to Engels, cited above,
Marx referred to the promise of a "Hibernicised future," which hardly
bespoke a glowing future for India. Certainly, Marx's writings on Ireland
gave no indication that association with England was beneficial to that
troubled island (see Perelman 1977, Ch. 12). In any case, all the
pessimistic suggestions, found in this letter, were expunged from the India
articles.

What Marx wrote about India's prospect for economic development in the
India articles was considerably different than his later discussions of
economic development in other parts of the world in a third respect. In
contrast to what he wrote in his Tribune articles, Marx did not generally
applaud the destruction of primitive economies. This attitude was closely
related to his doubts that capital accumulation would proceed in the near
future in the peripheries. For example, in 1881, Marx drafted a letter in
which he asserted:

"the suppression of the communal land ownership [in India] . . . was an act
of English vandalism, which drove the indigenous population backward rather
than forward.

"The English. . . only managed to spoil the indigenous agriculture and to
swell the number and intensity of famines. [Marx 1881, pp. 121 and 118]."

In Capital as well, Marx emphasized that the British had disrupted the
small communities, but the result was not nearly so revolutionary as he had
suggested in his articles on India. According to Marx, the British ruled in
India as a "ruthless and despotic state" (Marx 1967: iii, pp. 726). The
East India government extracted "tribute" (Ibid., p. 582) and system
"reduced the direct producers to the physical minimum of means of
subsistence" (Ibid., p. 796). The British did not improve industry, but
ruined it for their own commercial profit. He noted that "it is not
commerce . . . which revolutionizes industry, but industry which constantly
revolutionizes trade (Marx 1967; iii, p. 333). What consequences trade with
the British had were tragic, to say the least. In Marx's words, the sense
of which were not fully reflected in the 1967 translation of Capital:

"In so far as English trade has had a revolutionary effect on the mode of
production in India, this is simply to the extent that it destroyed
spinning and weaving, which form an age-old and integral part of this unity
of industrial and agricultural production. . . . Even here, their work of
dissolution is succeeding only very gradually. [Ibid., p. 452; emphasis
added]"

Marx added a footnote that underscored his negative verdict about the
impact of contact with capitalism:

"More than that of any other nation, the history of English economic
management in India is a history of futile and actually stupid (in
practice, infamous) economic experiments. [Ibid., p. 451]"

So Marx saw the English as revolutionary after all, but only in a negative
sense. What about the great contribution of the railroad? Marx returned to
this subject late in his life in letters that he wrote to the Russian
populist, Danielson:

"Generally, the railways gave of course an immense impulse to Foreign
Commerce, but the commerce in countries which export principally raw
produce increased the misery of the masses. . . . [M]any articles formerly
cheap, because invendible to a great degree, such as fruit, wine, fish,
deer etc., became dear and were withdrawn from the consumption of the
people, while on the other hand, the production itself, I mean the special
sort of produce, was changed according to its greater or minor suitableness
for exportation, while formerly it was principally adapted to its
consumption in loco. [Marx to Danielson, 10 April 1879; reprinted in Marx
and Engels 1975, p. 299]"

Indeed, during the United States Civil War, the extension of Indian rice
production led to a tragic famine, which cost the lives of one million
people in the district of Orissa alone (Marx 1967; 2, p. 141n).

In the second of the letter letters to Danielson, after discussing the
economics of railways, Marx noted:

"In India serious complications, if not a general outbreak, is in store for
the British government. What the English take from them annually in the
form of rent, dividends for railways useless to the Hindus. . . . -- what
they take from them without any equivalent and quite. . . apart from what
they appropriate to themself annually within India, speaking only of the
value of the commodities the Indians have gratuitously and annually to send
over to England-- it amounts to more than total sum of the sixty millions
of agricultural and industrial labourers of India. This is a bleeding
process, with a vengeance! [Marx to Danielson, 19 February 1881; reprinted
in Marx and Engels 1975, pp. 316-17]"

The India articles misrepresent Marx's views in one final respect. Even
though the very slow and painful process of capitalist accumulation may
ultimately evolve into a humane socialism, it be an unnecessarily
circuitous route to a collective society. 

As Marx became more familiar with both capitalism and the underdeveloped
economies, he became more sensitive to the potential of the traditional
economies. He even entertained the possibility that the traditional Russia
community could serve as the basis of a socialist society (see drafts of
Marx to Zasulich, 8 March 1881; reprinted in Hobsbawm 1964, pp. 142-45 and
in Shanin 1983).

Whether activists in a land such as Russia should build their political
strategy around traditional social forms was an open question for Marx (see
Shanin 1983; and Melotti 1977). Given Marx's outlook for political change,
socialism in the west, quite likely sparked by a revolution in Russia,
would provide the most favorable environment for development in the
periphery (see Marx 1881, esp. 110).

In short, Marx's later writings on Russian economic development are far
representative of his analysis than his articles on India. The Indian
articles should be read in terms of Marx's efforts to unhorse Carey, if not
at the Tribune, then at least within the German immigrant community. In
this respect, they may reflect Marx's views of Carey rather than India.





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