Marx on India
(LP: I will respond to this in a separate post.) Hallo Louis, we just recently came across your mail on Marxs writing on the British rule in India. On the background of ongoing discussions about a progressive imperialism we realized that quite a few former leftist scientists seemed to support their legitimisation of current allied wars with quotes from Marxs articles on India. With a due amount of distrust we set out to reconstruct Marxs texts. During our internet research we found your reply to Van Gosse. In discussing it we thought it interesting to get in touch with you, to argue about your view on Marxs writings. Because most statements on the NYDT articles seem to subdue them to the political opinions of the respective writers, we would like to strengthen a more material access. To our knowledge a critical reconstruction of the NYDT articles to date is not available. In the beginning we checked on the material, that Marx based his writings upon. In contrary to the statement, that Marx had only limited and outdated information on Indian society, a position you obviously agree with, we determined, that Marx had read most of the recently published books on India. His excerpts and some quotes in the articles show, that he had worked on: Campbell, George; Modern India: A Sketch of the System of Civil Government, 1852 Chapman, John; The Cotton and Commerce of India, considered in Relation to the Interests of Great Britain; with remarks on Railway Communication in the Bombay Presidency, 1851 Dickson, John; The Government of India under a Bureaucracy, 1853 Mill, James; The history of British India, 1826 Murray, Hugh; Wilson, James; Historical and descriptive Account of British India etc., Edinburgh, 1832 MacCulloch, J.R.; The Literature of Political Economy, 1845 - (Source: footnotes from MECW Volume 12, No.127) Klemm, Bernier, Saltykow, A.D.; letters sur lInde, 1848 These books are listed in the literature list of the German edition of MEW Volume 9. If the English MECW has not dropped scientific standards this list should be included there. In light of this, we tend to conclude, that the attempt to suggest Marx had no empirical basis has a political reason. A comparable misconception insists on a split up into a young, philosophical, unscientific Marx on one side and an older, materialistic, scientifically matured one on the other. To our knowledge there is no evidence to support such a separation. In the history of reception of Marxs writings it appears to be a means to discredit or ignore the political implications of his early writings and to insist on the necessity to add a lacking political sphere to his later works. To describe Marxs view on British colonialism as enthusiasm is contradicted by his articles. You even quoted some of the passages yourself. If Marx was enthusiastic about anything, than it was changing conditions of the opportunity for something new. In you mail you state Marxs understanding was a need for capitalist transformation of all precapitalist social formations. That suggests a general view on historic development, that is independent from specific local economic and social conditions. But Marx has always linked his evaluations to specific conditions. It wasnt for no reason, that he explicitly limited his statements on the need for capitalist transformation to western Europe. Eastern European or Asian economic and social formations are treated differently. I think we touched enough subjects to start a discussion. Attached you will find the version of your mail, that we worked with. Also you will find a German translation of your mail. Not all members of our group feel comfortable with original English versions due to a lack in language skills. Hope to hear from you Thomas Rathgeber Frankfurt am Main Germany Erwiderung auf Van Gosse zu Indien von Louis Proyect 15. Januar 2002 == Van Gosse: KollegInnen der H-RADHIST Liste, nehmt dies als Provokation. Was sagt uns Marx (und verschiedene Marxisten seitdem) ber die Mglichkeiten eines fortschrittlichen Imperialismus? Marxens Kommentare zu Indien und der Britischen Raj sind ziemlich bekannt, aber ich habe sie in der letzten Zeit nicht wiedergelesen. Aijaz Ahmad schrieb einen interessanten Artikel ber Marxens frhe Ansichten zu Indien (Marx on India: A Clarification), der in In Theory: Classes, Nations and Literatures erscheint. es war eine Erwiderung auf Edward Said's Polemiken gegen Marx in Orientalism. Ahmad's Hauptziel ist es den Kontext darzustellen in dem Marxens beilufige journalistische Stcke ber Indien erscheinen. Bemerkenswerter weise scheinen diese frhen Marxtexte eine anziehende Wirkung auf nach rechts driftende sozialistische Intellektuelle wie Van Gosse zu haben, die sie als eine Art Untersttzung fr humanitre Intervention durch die westliche Zivilisation gegen den dreisten Barbaren sehen knnten. Hardt und Negri beziehen sich auch auf
Re: Marx on India
Thomas Rathgeber wrote: In contrary to the statement, that Marx had only limited and outdated information on Indian society, a position you obviously agree with, we determined, that Marx had read most of the recently published books on India. His excerpts and some quotes in the articles show, that he had worked on: Campbell, George; Modern India: A Sketch of the System of Civil Government, 1852 Chapman, John; The Cotton and Commerce of India, considered in Relation to the Interests of Great Britain; with remarks on Railway Communication in the Bombay Presidency, 1851 Dickson, John; The Government of India under a Bureaucracy, 1853 Mill, James; The history of British India, 1826 Murray, Hugh; Wilson, James; Historical and descriptive Account of British India etc., Edinburgh, 1832 MacCulloch, J.R.; The Literature of Political Economy, 1845 - (Source: footnotes from MECW Volume 12, No.127) I am not sure whether these citations invalidate my claim that Marx was lacking the kind of information that would have prevented him from writing such obviously one-sided formulations: We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow. The British Rule in India, New-York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853 After all, the above-cited J.R. MacCulloch was described by Marx in the Grundrisse as a 'past master in pretentious cretinism', 'at once the vulgarizer of Ricardian economics and the most pitiful image of its dissolution'. As for James Mill, perhaps the less said the better. Well, maybe a few words are in order. Mill believed that India, China and Japan needed enlightenment and progress in the utilitarian sense. He states in The History of British India that even to Voltaire, a keen-eyed and sceptical judge, the Chinese, of almost all nations, are the objects of the loudest and most unqualified praise. The spread of European, and British in particular, rule would bring glorious results for the whole of Asia, described rather infelicitously as that vast proportion of the earth, which, even in its most favoured parts, has been in all ages condemned to semi-barbarism, and the miseries of despotic power. When the question of independence for India came up, Mill argued, whatever may be our sense of the difficulties into which we have brought ourselves, by the improvident assumption of such a dominion, we earnestly hope, for the sake of the natives, that it will not be found necessary to leave them to their own direction. Not to belabor the point, it seems that all that was wrong in Marx's Tribune articles on India was a function of reading nonsense like this. Years later, especially in an aside with the Russian Danielson, Marx dispensed with any notions of Great Britain's civilizing mission in India, and simply described it--accurately--as thievery. To describe Marxs view on British colonialism as enthusiasm is contradicted by his articles. You even quoted some of the passages yourself. If Marx was enthusiastic about anything, than it was changing conditions of the opportunity for something new. But that's the problem. His enthusiasm for railroads, telegraphs, etc. was a reflection of an inadequate understanding of how and why they would be used in a place like India or Argentina, for that matter. Here is what Frederic Clairmont wrote in The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism, The Other India Press, Goa, India, 1995). It tends to deflate the sort of expectations that were found in the Tribune articles: It is one of the banalities of liberal economic thought to consider private international foreign investments as a polarizing agent in the industrialization process of the recipient country; but the illusion that foreign investment in railways would, under all conditions, usher in a new period of industrialization was also shared by the founders of Marxism. In one of his letters to Engels, Marx maintained that the British conquest of India should be seen as part of a historically progressive force, and that the British occupant was the unconscious tool of history. England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the
Re: Marx on India
I have mentioned several times that I have written about Marx and India. My research led me to believe that Marx was more concerned about refuting Henry Carey than about India. Carey was trying to sabotage Marx's relationship with the New York Tribune. He believed that England was responsible for all the ills in the world, so Marx suggested that England might have some positive influence. I doubt that he ever thought that these articles would be taken to be a major indication of his theory economic development. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Marx and India
There's an article in Aijaz Ahmad's "In Theory: Classes, Nations and Literatures" titled "Marx on India: a Clarification" that was written as a reply to Edward Said. Said had included Marx as a "Eurocentric" in his polemic against Orientalism. The problem is that the articles that figure in Said's polemic are not reflective of the thinking of the mature Marx. Said quotes the famous paragraph from a June 10, 1853 Herald Tribune piece that described Indian village life as superstition-ridden and stagnant. The model that Marx had in mind when writing this article was North America. Marx was concerned with the possibilities of capitalist economic development within a colonial setting around this time. In the 1850s, he entertained the possibility that India could follow the same line of march as the United States. Ahmad reminds us that the gap in material prosperity between India and England in 1835 was far narrower than it was in 1947. Part of the problem was that Marx simply lacked sufficient information about India to develop a real theory. His remarks have the character of conjecture, not the sort of deeply elaborated dialectical thought that mark Capital. And so what happens is that enemies of Marxism seized upon these underdeveloped remarks to indict Marxism itself. Ahmad notes that Marx had exhibited very little interest in India prior to 1853, when the first of the Herald Tribune articles were written. It was the presentation of the East India Company's application for charter renewal to Parliament that gave him the idea of writing about India at all. To prepare for the articles, he read the Parliamentary records and Bernier's "Travels". (Bernier was a 17th century writer and medicine man.) So it is fair to say that Marx's views on India were shaped by the overall prejudice prevailing in India at the time. More to the point is that Marx had not even drafted the Grundrisse at this point and Capital was years away. So critics of Marx's writings on India are singling out works that are not even reflective of the fully developed critic of capitalism. Despite this, Marx was sufficiently aware of the nature of dual nature of the capitalist system to entertain the possibility that rapid capitalist development in India could eliminate backward economic relations and lead to future emancipation. His enthusiasm for English colonialism is related to his understanding of the need for capitalist transformation of all precapitalist social formations. His animosity towards feudal social relations is well-known. He regards them as antiquated and a block on future progress. The means by which they are abolished are universally cruel and inhumane such as the Enclosure Acts. What he is looking for in this process is not a way of judging human agencies on a moral basis, but what the dynamics of this process can lead to. That goal is socialism and the sole measure of every preceding historical development. A few weeks later, on July 22nd, Marx wrote another article that had some more rude things to say about India and England as well. But here he was much more specific about the goal in question. He says that the English colonists will not emancipate the Indian masses. That is up to them to do. Specifically, Marx writes, "The Indian will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the new ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether." So unless there is social revolution, the English presence in India brings no particular advantage. More to the point, it will bring tremendous suffering. Furthermore, there is evidence that Marx was becoming much more sensitive to the imperialist system itself late in life. He wrote a letter to Danielson in 1881 that basically described the sort of pillage that the socialists of Lenin's generation were sensitive to: "In India serious complications, if not a general outbreak, are in store for the British government. What the British take from them annually in the form of rent, dividends for railways useless for the Hindoos, pensions for the military and civil servicemen, for Afghanistan and other wars, etc. etc., -- what they take from them without any equivalent and quite apart from what they appropriate to themselves annually within India, -- speaking only of the commodities that Indians have to gratuitously and annually send over to England -- it amounts to more than the total sum of the income of the 60 million of agricultural and industrial laborers of India. This is a bleeding process with a vengeance." A bleeding process with a vengeance? Make no mistake about this. Marx did not view England as on a civilizing mission. It is also difficult to understand why Edward Said put so much stock in Gandh
More on Marx and India
The discussion that began with my report on David Harvey's talk on the Communist Manifesto has sparked a fascinating thread on Marxism-International as well as PEN-L. What's interesting is that one of the main defenders of the 1853 articles by Marx on India is a writer named James Heartfield, who is connected with Living Marxism, an English mag that circulates the thoughts of the cult leader, one Frank Furedi. Basically, the group has an undialectical understanding of 20th century capitalism, which they believe is playing a progressive role in places like Brazil today. They side, believe it or not, with the lumpen-bourgeoisie that is cutting down the rain-forest and they attack human rights groups that defend the Yanomami indians. Extremely bizarre stuff. Does anybody know any good gossip about them that I can use in an unprincipled and underhanded fashion in a faction fight? Please send it to me offline. (For Colin Danby, this was a joke). One of the participants in the Marxism-International thread is Jim Blaut, author of "Colonizer's Model of the World", which attacks the Eurocentric, diffusionist version of Marxism found in Living Marxism. These are his comments just posted to m-i: Heartfield really does not know what was going on in India, in Ireland, in the peripheral countries in general in the 19th century. In the case of Ireland, he doesn't understand Marx's reasons for supporting independence: they were based on direct knowledge that the Irish working class was becoming proletarianized, partly through the forced emigration of Irish workers to England, and highly politicized. These workers showed revolutionary momentum, and the initial goal was to win independence; hence Marx and Engels gave them wholehearted support, even when this called for support of the slightly seedy fenians. So Marx and Engels said, in the case of the Irish, independence is a vital necessity in the struggle. In the Irish and Polish cases, they understood that national liberation was a vital part of the struggle for socialism. This was the nucleus of an anit-colonialist position. In the case of India, Marx believed, as Heartfield says, that " property forms contained no tendency to apply the surplus to developing social productivity. They were incapable of taking Indian society any further." But Marx was WRONG! This was the old, colonialist theory that non-European peoples had no concept of private property in land. Marx and Engels accepted this utterly false theory because the did not have access to thwe truth. They were also largely wrong in their vision of the Indian village as being somehow self-sufficient and hermetically sealed from progress. See Irfan Habib and Romila Thapar on this question. Also, see the famous article by Bipan Chandra, "Karl Marx, his theories of Asian societies, and colonial rule," in *Review* 5 (1981):13-94. These are questions about which the proper attitude of a Marxist is to acquire knowledge, not just mechanically defend everything that Marx and Engels said. It is not at all treasonous to say that Marx and Engels knew very little about colonialism and really had no theory of imperiaalism. En lucha Jim B
Michael Perelman's Marx/Carey/India article decoded
tique 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 th
Re: Aijaz Ahmad's Marx and India: A Clarification
On Fri, 31 Oct 1997, Louis Proyect wrote, among much else: I informed Siddhartha that I was going to use Ahmad's article in a debate with some post-Marxists on the Internet. He said give it to them good.^ Louis has suddenly decanted the term "post-Marxist/ism" into our midst; I would rather hear a definition of it than do my own deducing. Would he or someone else give that a try? [...After much deleted comment...:] Part of the problem was that Marx simply lacked sufficient information about India to develop a real theory. His remarks have the character of conjecture, not the sort of deeply elaborated dialectical thought that mark Capital. And so what happens is that enemies of Marxism seize upon these underdeveloped remarks to indict Marxism itself. Hasn't this sort of vicarious approach been endemic in Europe till quite recently? James Mill, I'm pretty sure, wrote a history recounting some 240 years of India's encounter with the British without ever having left Europe, but the work was standard for quite a while nevertheless. Not to be outdone, in our century Sir Solly Zuckerman's book on primate behavior was considered scriptural although based only on the observation of captive animals. Let's hope that the appetite for hands-on reality is better established today, though that often seems scarcely the case. [...] Gandhi: "The more we indulge in our emotions the more unbridled they become...Millions will always remain poor. Observing all this, our ancestors dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures. We have managed with the same kind of ploughs as existed thousands of years ago. We have retained the same kind of cottages that we had in former times, and our indigenous education remains the same...It was not that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our forefathers knew that, if we set our hearts after such things, we would become slaves and lose our moral fibre. They, therefore, after due deliberation, decided that we should do what we could with our hands and feet...They further reasoned that large cities were a snare and a useless incumbrance and people would not be happy in them, that there would be gangs of thieves and robbers, prostitution and vice flourishing in them, and that poor men would be robbed by rich men. They were therefore satisfied with small villages." Louis: Now I realize that Gandhi is a complex thinker and that passive resistance was a powerful force against English colonialism, but doesn't this idealization of village life seem terribly mistaken. It is a Tolstoyan view of this life that seems at odds with the terrible suffering of people who are forced to do back-breaking work for the minimal forms of sustenance. This life not only is not free, it will inevitably be crushed by the forces of global capitalism. It, of course, is the utopian premise of Vindana Shiva that such an existence can be realized in the age of jet planes, computer networks and transnational corporations. Gandhi generally saw cities as incubators of finance capitalist values, and his "home-spun" campaign was intended to inspire industries of low capital content that would spare India's masses the cruel curse of categorical redundancy. This was more important than simply frustrating the looms of Manchester. Gandhi was sure that the villages could be made dynamic and healthy places. Confident of an exhausted Britain's withdrawal sometime in the post-war period, Gandhi likely foresaw a Soviet preoccupation with America, Europe, China and Japan that would leave India free to follow a domestically determined path of growth. Nehru's foreign policy after independence certainly suggested this. Unfortunately, Gandhi's ideals seem to have little currency in India today; the spinning wheel, once such a potent political symbol, has been replaced by another round object: the satellite dish. Those who believe that the socialist omelet is worth any number of broken eggs will surely get their wish in India! valis
Aijaz Ahmad's Marx and India: A Clarification
My homeboy Steve Philion told me not to waste any time. Get a hold of Aijaz Ahmand's "In Theory: Classes, Nations and Literatures", he said. There's a killer article in it called "Marx on India: a Clarification." (Speaking of killer articles, there's one by Steve on the new social movements and the working class that will appear in an upcoming issue of Rethinking Marxism. It's appearance in RM bodes well for the sort of dialog that classical Marxism and post-Marxism have to undertake following the Sokal affair.) I stopped by at the Labyrinth bookstore right after work to pick up the book and got into a conversation with the clerk who's not only from India but a gung-ho classical Marxist as well. He was at the David Harvey meeting that I reported on, the one that got this thread going, and he remembers me from my citation of Jim Blaut, who he knew from his undergraduate work at Clark. That's where Blaut, author of "Colonizer's Model of the World" and Marxism-International stalwart, used to teach. (He told me a wild story about Jim but I pledged to keep it a secret.) I informed Siddhartha that I was going to use Ahmad's article in a debate with some post-Marxists on the Internet. He said give it to them good. Ahmad's article is a reply to Edward Said, who attacks Marx's articles on India as Orientalist racism. Ahmad's main goal is to show the context in which Marx's incidental journalistic pieces on India appear. This is totally missing in Said's treatment of the subject, as it is in Ajit Sinha's. Said zeroes in on the first in the series, which appeared in the June 10, 1853 Herald Tribune. This article described Indian village life as superstition-ridden and stagnant. The model that Marx had in mind as an alternative to backward India when writing this article was North America. Marx was evaluating the possibility of capitalist economic development within a colonial setting such as India's around this time. In the 1850s, the notion that India could follow the same line of march as the United States was not so far-fetched. Ahmad reminds us that the gap in material prosperity between India and England in 1835 was far narrower than it was in 1947. Part of the problem was that Marx simply lacked sufficient information about India to develop a real theory. His remarks have the character of conjecture, not the sort of deeply elaborated dialectical thought that mark Capital. And so what happens is that enemies of Marxism seize upon these underdeveloped remarks to indict Marxism itself. Ahmad notes that Marx had exhibited very little interest in India prior to 1853, when the first of the Herald Tribune articles were written. It was the presentation of the East India Company's application for charter renewal to Parliament that gave him the idea of writing about India at all. To prepare for the articles, he read the Parliamentary records and Bernier's "Travels". (Bernier was a 17th century writer and medicine man.) So it is fair to say that Marx's views on India were shaped by the overall prejudice prevailing in England at the time. More to the point is that Marx had not even drafted the Grundrisse at this point and Capital was years away. So critics of Marx's writings on India are singling out works that are not even reflective of the fully developed critic of capitalism. Despite this, Marx was sufficiently aware of the nature of dual nature of the capitalist system to entertain the possibility that rapid capitalist development in India could eliminate backward economic relations and lead to future emancipation. His enthusiasm for English colonialism is related to his understanding of the need for capitalist transformation of all precapitalist social formations. His animosity towards feudal social relations is well-known. He regards them as antiquated and a block on future progress. The means by which they are abolished are universally cruel and inhumane such as the Enclosure Acts. What he is looking for in this process is not a way of judging human agencies on a moral basis, but what the dynamics of this process can lead to. That goal is socialism and the sole yardstick of every preceding historical development. A few weeks later, on July 22nd, Marx wrote another article that had some more rude things to say about India and England as well. But here he was much more specific about the goal in question. He says that the English colonists will not emancipate the Indian masses. That is up to them to do. Specifically, Marx writes, "The Indian will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the new ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether." So unless there is social revolution, the English presence in India brings no particular adva
