Class struggle in rural Maharashtra (India): Towards a new perspective

In the state of Maharashtra, in western India, the rural population can be usefully divided into tribals and non‐tribals, and it is only among tribals that there have been independent and effective movements of the rural poor. Some of the implications of this are examined and an attempt is made to explain why it should be so. Orthodox Marxist explanations have tended to run in terms of tribal characteristics conducive to organisation and the absence of such characterstics among the non‐tribal poor. Explanations of this kind are rejected. Within a political economy framework, in an analysis which is historical, the author, while giving due weight to the economic, assigns to ideology or consciousness more than just a site in the superstructure. Among tribals, the attempt to preserve identity, a consciousness of total distrust of outsiders, and an identification of all outsiders as exploiters are traced and shown to have been important in tribal movements of the rural poor. Among non‐tribals, the role of caste consciousness in relation to peasant strata in preventing the emergence of independent rural poor movements is given prominence, and the primacy of caste intervention in the class struggle posited. Much Marxist analysis of these issues has been rendered sterile by a refusal to contemplate such explanations.     

Transition in agriculture: Empirical indicators and results (evidence from Punjab,India)

In this paper, the author studies the impact of agricultural transition on certain well‐known empirical relationships that have, so far, been identified with backward agriculture. The study tests the relation between farm size and productivity to see if the inverse relation breaks down with the advent of new technology. Farm size is also related to several other variables in an analysis of agricultural transformation. Using recent data the results indicate that: the historically more advanced regions exhibit a positive relation between farm size and productivity; in regions which have been recently transformed the relation is neither significantly negative nor positive, and in the relatively backward areas the inverse relation still prevails. Corresponding changes in other variables also tend to reflect the nature and extent of transition in agriculture.     

Agrarian contradictions and resistance in Faizabad district of Oudh (India)

The history of the Indian peasantry is a rather unexplored area even today. Hence, as some historians have complained with reference to histories of their own societies, a subject as vital as peasant resistance has received little attention despite a strong tradition of peasant militancy.¹ During the British period peasant resistance was greatly in evidence in the Awadh region. In this paper we examine the pattern and magnitude of peasant resistance in Faizabad, one of the major districts of Awadh, between 18S8 and 1920. This period was marked by the development and sharpening of internal contradictions in the agrarian structure and by resistance by various classes. It was the policies of the British administrators which played a vital role in sharpening the contradictions and strengthening one class at the cost of others. This paper brings out the nature and forms ofresistance; the manner in which it was built up over time; the reasons for its success in some cases and failure in others; and finally the inability of these frequent but isolated cases of resistance to culminate in a mass movement. The above exercise also leads one to question some of the basic assumptions of conventional Indian sociology which tend to assign to kinship and caste a predominant role in containing social tensions, including those emerging from agrarian contradictions. Contrary to the conventional view, membership in a kin or caste group does not necessarily lead to solidarity between members if they belong to different economic groups.     

劳权本位:劳动法律体系构建的基点和核心--兼论劳动法律体系的几个基本理论问题

劳动法律体系的建构,应以劳权本位作为理论出发点,应以劳权的实现和保障为其基点和核心.本文所提出的劳权概念,是指法律所规定或认可的劳动者在履行劳动义务的同时所应享有的与劳动有关的权益.劳权即劳工权益应是劳动法律的基本范畴和劳动立法起始概念.本文提出和论证了劳动者的概念和法律特征,认为市场经济下的劳动关系中的劳动者应为受雇于他人的以工资收入为基本生活来源的直接生产者.本文还提出了劳权关系的概念,认为劳权关系是劳动法律关系的本质体现,这一关系是相对于产权关系和经营权关系而言的,现代企业制度的经济权利结构是由产权、经营权和劳权的三权关系所构成的.     

Class struggle and the deproletarianisation of agricultural labour in Haryana (India)

This article considers the way in which labour attachment is theorised, both in the 1950s Agricultural Labour Enquiries, and subsequently in the work of Rudra, Bardhan, and Breman. Common to all these texts is a positive conceptualisation of attached labour, and consequently the elimination of its element of unfreedom. Instead, the relation is presented in terms of a materially reciprocal exchange between landholder and worker, a transaction which from the viewpoint of the latter corresponds to a much sought‐after form of job insurance or subsistence guarantee. By contrast, it is suggested here that attachment constitutes de‐proletarianisation undertaken by capital in the course of class struggle, and that in Haryana the agricultural work‐force strongly dislikes this kind of employment.     

Tenancy contracts during transition: A study based on fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh (India)

This article attempts to situate the nature of and changes in tenancy contracts in the context of agrarian transition in developing countries such as India. Inter‐ and intra‐village variations in tenancy contracts are examined in detail for three contrasted villages in Uttar Pradesh (India), with the aim of bringing out the systematic basis of such variations. It is argued that Marxist analysis, based on the nature of class relations, offers a more credible explanation of the nature and unevenness of change, than neo‐classical analysis. Moreover, such analysis also offers a satisfactory explanation of the impact of tenancy on several commonly studied variables.     

The New Miss India: Popular Fiction in Contemporary India

Miss New India is the title of a 2011 novel by Indian-born (now American-based) Bharati Mukherjee, which tells the story of a young woman who leaves her small-town home and family to find work in a call centre in the information technology city of Bangalore. The call centre is emblematic of a ‘new India’, in which educated young people seize the possibilities of a global labour market. This is a generation for whom colonialism is ancient history, a generation who have grown up in the aftermath of economic liberalization in India. Chetan Bhagat refers to this generation as ‘Young India’ and has written a series of best-selling novels that feature ambitious young men in the ‘new India’. There is, however, an emerging genre of similar narratives written by women and addressed to a female readership. This article discusses a range of contemporary Indian women’s popular novels and argues that, while Bhagat and his male heroes may embrace globalization and the market, the narratives written by women are more nuanced in their celebration of economic liberalization. The novels dramatize the tensions between tradition and modernity, family and independence, and suggest that these are particularly fraught for young Indian women. These texts pick up on the discourses of contemporary journalism about ‘Young India’, within the generic form of the romance, but their resolutions are repeatedly uneasy and suggest that the ‘new India’ is not an entirely comfortable space for the new Miss India.     

中国劳动立法:变化与影响——首届东北亚劳动关系论坛综述

2007年4月29日,由中国劳动关系学院、韩国劳动教育学院、俄罗斯劳动与社会关系学院、日本社会经济发展生产力中心共同发起、我院承办的首届东北亚劳动关系论坛在中工大厦成功举办。来自四方的20余位专家学者齐聚一堂,共同就“中国劳动立法:变化与影响”进行研讨,中华全国总工会     

The political ecology of traditional farming practices in Thana district,Maharashtra (India)

This article attempts to discuss the traditional agricultural practices dalhi and rab, in Thana district, Maharashtra (India): in 1818, when the British took over the district; the 1880s, when the effects of the British land revenue and forest policies were visible; and the 1980s. It is suggested that the traditional system was appropriate, in the past, given the existing ecology and the level of development of technology; and that even now a well‐regulated utilisation of forest resources for rab may be sound, in the long run, from the viewpoint of preservation of soil fertility and a pollution‐free environment, especially in the absence of viable alternatives.     

Labour and Place: The Contours of Freedpeoples' Mobilization in Reconstruction South Carolina

Important advances in scholarship on the post-emancipation South have made possible a new synthesis that moves beyond broad generalizations about African American agency to identify both the shared elements in black life across the region and the varying capacity of freedpeople to assert their interests in the face of white hostility. Building on a number of recent studies of Reconstruction this article seeks to demonstrate that the varying capacity of freedpeople in South Carolina to shape and defend the new society that would emerge after the end of slavery was rooted in their relative strength at work and in their communities. In Charleston and its lowcountry rural hinterland, demographic strength combined with deeply-rooted traditions of collective assertion to sustain a remarkably vibrant grassroots movement that persisted beyond the overthrow of Reconstruction. From very early on, by contrast, former slaves dispersed across the rural interior found their freedom severely circumscribed by a bellicose and heavily-armed white paramilitary campaign.     

Debate - Theory and History in Thinking the Transition to Capitalism: A Reply to Zmolek

Zmolek's condensed summary of the development of 'agrarian capitalism' is good as far as it goes, but it needs to be supplemented with how this development interacted with manufacturing, with the development of money, with the kinds and degrees of commodification of labour-power and land, with various kinds of commodity markets both internal and external, with the kinds and degrees of productivity increase in various sector, and finally with the unprecedented expansion of putting-out manufacturing in the eighteenth century. Methodologically his account suffers from anachronism, structuralism, teleology and undialectical or either-or thinking. Ironically, these are all things he says he wants to avoid. A key difference between us is the importance of putting-out manufacturing as the first historical manifestation of dynamic capital accumulation. Zmolek seems oblivious to the difficulties in referring to a period of transition to capitalism as already capitalist as in 'agrarian capitalism'.