Studies in the Development of Capitalism in India (An Old and Rare Book)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

With the publication of Maurice Dobb's Studies in the Development of Capitalism, there started an international discussion on it. This discussion was started by Paul M. Sweezy, formerly of Harvard University, participated in by H. K. Takahashi, of the University of Tokyo, and both of them were further replied to by Dobb. Later on Rodney Hilton, of the University of Birmingham, Christopher Hill, of Oxford University, and Georges Lefebvre of a French University also made their contributions to the discussion. All these discussions and counter-discussions were published in the issues of the Science & Society, New York, between 1950-1953. Later these were brought into booklet form entitled The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. While I was a graduate student of the University of California, Berkeley, in the first half of the fifties, I had the opportunity of going through those discussions in the issues of the Science & Society. Besides, in my economics classes also Maurice Dobb and his book were greatly discussed. It was there in those class discussions, when the questions like how did capitalism develop in India? Were raised, that I conceived of the idea of making a thorough study of the Indian situation in which capitalism came into being in India.

In the discussions between Sweezy, Takahashi, Dobb and others, the theoretical question was that the capitalism that came into being after feudalism in the history of the world was in which way, in "the really revolutionary way" or in the indirect way, as pointed out by Karl Marx in his Capital, Vol. III. Maurice Dobb's Studies was generally based on the West European, and specially English situation. On the basis of those West European, and specially English situations, Dobb came to the conclusion in his Studies that the capitalism that came into being in Europe was in "the really revolutionary way", which means that the class of the bourgeoisie grew out of the ranks of the producers themselves, who had slowly accumulated enough capital and then started controlling the mode of production and acting as merchants too. These merchant capitalists came from within the mode of production, and in "the really revolutionary way", as pointed out by Marx. In the indirect way, the merchants who had nothing to do in actually producing the goods and were mainly confined to taking the produce from the producers to the market, later on after accumulating capital, started controlling the mode of production in which the producers were brought under one roof under the direction of the merchant. In other words, when this bringing of the producers under one roof was done by some prosperous one from the rank of the producers them- selves, it was "the really revolutionary way," and when it was done by someone who had been doing the middle manship in taking the produce from the producer to the market, it was the indirect way, as pointed out by Marx. The "really revolutionary way" was "from within" and the indirect way was "from above," the mode of production. The "really revolutionary way", the way of "from within", has been agreed upon by Dobb, Takahashi and Sweezy as Way No. I and the indirect way, the Way of "from above", as Way No. II. In the contribution to the discussion Takahashi pointed out that the capitalism that came in Western Europe, and specially in England, came in Way No. 1, but the capitalism that came into being in Japan and Prussia was in Way No. II.

In the Indian situation, although the detailed materials have not yet been systematically arranged, on the available materials that I could find, simultaneously with the gradual emerging of capitalism in Western Europe from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a parallel situation was unfolding in the Indian society. Just as in Western Europe that situation begot capitalism in Way No. I, so in the Indian situation, too, capitalism was coming into being in Way No. I. But the advent of the British on the Indian scene nipped that indigenous Indian capitalism in the bud in the eighteenth century.