Can Asia Industrialize Democratically?
Mehta, Asoka
In January 1953, Asoka Mehta, one of the leaders of the Indian Praja Socialist Party, published a pamphlet— really a little book—entitled Socialism and Peasantry. In this study Mehta tried to...
...3) The co-ordination leads to the need for, and the emergence of, professional men with the controls ever moving upwards...
...Communism, with its distinctive theory and organization, 152 is believed to have the requisite point and thrust...
...on the contrary, they were strengthened and given an elaborate ideological overlay as a part of the • Maurice Zinkin...
...If democracy is to survive in an Asian country, it will have to advance farther and fast...
...For each level there obviously will be partial or full employment, and the aims of economic policy would be to reach as close to full employinent at different levels as possible...
...161 policy of economic transition by deliberate plan and control...
...Both are mechanized through capital ization...
...The young Indian scholar has posed a dilemma: "Thus the choice in the developing stage may well be between larger employment at very low levels of real income or partial employment at greater aggregrate real income...
...For him, change is the essence not of life alone, but of logic too...
...Such total power, it is argued, can become a vital force...
...For different levels, different equations might be needed...
...Recently, a newspaperwoman said to me: "When I am in England I feel like a Conservative, in Italy I feel like a Socialist, in India I feel like a Communist...
...The fact that so far Russia's aid to China has amounted to only $300,000,000 provides the answer...
...To gain advantage among competing capitalisms vast military might is built up...
...It had taken Great Britain, greatest of overseas lenders, a century to lend an amount equal to her 1938 income...
...In Manchuria, Japan, without the philanthropic purpose, sought the transformation from above...
...Modern states seek to divert the gains of development in depth for advantages in width...
...The poor must learn to live on faith...
...In developed industries, in so far as that sector is concerned, the Keynesian multiplier would work...
...A theory of economic development suited to the needs and claims of Asia has to satisfy two conditions: (1) it must work out the transformation, spell the stages wherein the agrarian chrysalis changes into a semi-industrial butterfly...
...156 But non-violence outside and tensions inside cannot go together...
...Production of crops went down...
...Ordinarily," wrote Prof...
...it is true that technical advance augments resources, but the generating technique is always conditioned by the limiting resources...
...Each level has to seek its appropriate "full employment...
...The combat party is the turbine, the social energy drawn out by politicalizing every branch of activity is the rushing stream, and the two together produce the mighty force needed for transformation...
...Foreign aid has to be controlled by sociological understanding and technological innovations...
...Military strength helps to bring behind developed technology a wider base...
...The collectives were not owned by the peasants, and the machines needed were available only from the State, on terms offered by the State...
...The Soviet pattern suffers from two fatal flaws...
...That other alternatives are not avail• able is further made clear in his next paragraph...
...Industrial imperialism lived upon its colonies through this power to inundate lower levels of production...
...When it is realized that almost 80 per cent of farms in India are under 5 acres, and in China, the average size of a holding, even in 1935, was 2.4 acres, and that in Japan 92 per cent of farms and in Java 71 per cent are under 3 acres, collectivization and mechanization forfeit their raison d'etre...
...developed countries...
...The tension between nations has diverted much of capitalization and industrialization of economy to military ends...
...It is not the vast human misery that I want to point to, but the reasons for it and the results...
...Where the Western socialists have been so negligent, we have no right to expect better insight from professional economists...
...4cia and the West...
...Outside this limited area (of West Europe and North America), in this present century, the social conditions for a bourgeois revolution are not present, and that is why, in the absence of any alternate instrument of moderniza...
...The wider, difficult and fascinating problems of the transformation of a backward country into an advanced economy have received scant attention...
...there has been more embroidering on the thought of the master than reweaving of the fabric...
...Lindahl has said, that "properly interpreted, static theory also (i.e...
...In Russia and in Japan, the vast expansion in heavy industry has not led, even after a long time lag, to the production of vastly increasing consumption goods...
...Let us take a recent publication, Prof...
...The result was that after the war, an additional 6 per cent of industrial production of the world was appropriated through the expansion of the Soviet sphere...
...But how about foreign aid...
...In Asian countries, virgin lands are generally non-existent, the develop...
...That is the price of their survival...
...The reaction was hostile...
...The difference in their per capita income is 1: 30 and the flux of time and techniques will widen the margin...
...While superhuman sacrifices may have brought Russia in that realm to the level, of Western nations, realizing the much greater leeway that has now to be made up and the woefully limited resources from which the Asians have to start, can India or China or Indonesia ever hope to reach and overtake the West in military might...
...If integrated development is to be achieved, different sectors of economy must be democratically organized...
...Their political set-up is expected to make up for the lack of necessary economic integration in underdeveloped countries...
...This transformation was accomplished by pouring in vast capital: "By 1945 total investment may have reached 500,000,000 pounds-40 per cent of Japan's national income...
...TO DEVELOP SUCH A THEORY is the responsibility of the socialist movement as a whole...
...and (2) it must provide latitude for more than one picture of the developed society...
...From a careful analysis of Russian population figures made for the League of Nations, Dr...
...That is the inescapable danger in Asia...
...The stern logic of facts directs Asian countries towards a policy not just of peace but of non-violence...
...5) The smallness of agricultural holdings increases the proportions of the uprooting involved, and the resistance of the peasants is likely to be more violent...
...Is the tendency to expand at the expense of small producers an expression of capitalism, or also of technological develop * P. R. Brahmananda in The General Theory and the Problem of Development of Backward Areas...
...His twelve postulates of Socialist Economics have no relevance to the problems socialists of three-fourths of the world are called upon to resolve...
...However vitally significant these theories may have been to the West, to Asia they are intellectual adornments, not practical tools...
...Only the long and stern discipline of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the pressure of rationalized technique will transform the peasant, and proletariat, into a member of the classless commonwealth...
...The techriique may function on multi-lateral levels, but its total expression is circumscribed by the resources: if too much is sucked up by the higher levels, the lower levels get disrupted—starvations and deaths ensue...
...G. D. H. Cole's Socialist Economics...
...To evolve techniques suited to resources available at different levels of production is to achieve social transformation economically...
...If the old relations of production are unsuited to the needs of the Asian people, and imperialists and capitalists who strive to perpetuate them spell barbarism, so also the forces of production envisaged by the Communists are fundamentally disruptive of the social existence of the Asian people...
...This unceasing and unbounded struggle, associated with the politicaliation of every facet of society, gives the Communists the following advantages: (1) By co-ordinating initiative in diverse organizations, like a party, trade union, a cooperative or a family unit, operational effectiveness is much heightened...
...In the preface to the first volume of Capital, Marx wrote: "The industrially developed country only shows the less developed country the picture of its future...
...Any increase in investment activity in backward areas will 158 have to be accompanied by a severe check on the propensity to consume...
...Functional and territorial democracy is the pre-requisite of an economic transformation that is built upon the willing cooperation of the people, particularly the peasant...
...159 ment...
...The Soviet pattern of development, wherein concentrated efforts are made to construct the heavy base of industry at the very start, cannot appeal to the peasant...
...The justice prevailing in their social life, the allegiance that economic changes evoke among the people to the land, the discipline people develop through democracy—these will be the bulwark of strength against aggression...
...Thus, while New Economics is learned, Old Economics is understood...
...Technology develops the depth of the economy, war extends the width...
...Economic development is a matter of social integration and not just capital investment...
...Asian socialism will fail if it permits a respect for power to become an admiration for power qua power, if it transforms expediency into a virtue...
...Either there has to be foreign aid or the peasant has to pay...
...The study was originally written in English, and the style and language have not been tampered with.—The Editors...
...Concentration on heavy industry not only needs large capital but also causes an inflationary pressure...
...When the Asian Marxists see the future in Moscow, if not in New York, they are like Dorian Gray—the picture shaping in the attic of real life being a travesty of the one on "show...
...Technique has to conform to resources...
...For submerged, depressed Asia the path is as barren of significant achieveInents as capitalism, because both refuse to temper technology with sociological realities...
...MARX HAD SAID, IN HIS FAMOUS DISCUSSION on "consolidation" in the third volume of the Capital, that big capitalists were eager to expropriate the small ones in order to compensate for the falling rate of profit by an increment in the mass of profit obtained from larger centralization...
...then alone could the needed surplus value be drawn out of him...
...That is why for him "the entry of the peasant into a Kolkhoz (collective) does not make him a socialist...
...WHY CANNOT A DETERMINED DICTATORSHIP repeat this achievement in an Asian country...
...Stalin envisages not only sharp lifting of the bottom, but raising up all levels to a uniform surface...
...And once people realize that the future can be shaped, once not just the philosophers but the people know that history need no longer be interpreted but can be changed, the multitudes of Asia, the peasants may not want to seek, and accept, the transformation that spells the extinction of their way of life, and of their distinctive place in society...
...In twelve years-1928-40—industrial output increased seven to eight...
...This has been known as the development of capitalism into imperialism...
...So long as he can till with his own means of production, he cannot be easily mulcted of his produce...
...In 1930, Manchuria was still "in most ways a typical Asian country...
...The first is its obsession with the technology capitalism developed...
...ments that no dictatorship would be able to master them...
...Such a terrific transformation would involve the destruction of many millions of men, and would raise such vast problems of adjust...
...It must sketch the various phases of "the middle term" of transformation, but leave scope for variations for "the final term...
...the provision of a decisive focal point and the ironing out of pluralist, individualist, luxuriant variations, give social energy a precise channelization...
...When asked what she meant by this, she explained that the need for change in India was so pressing that only a regime ruthless, determined and full of drive, could grapple with the immensity of the problem...
...Developed countries have usually moved towards encroachment on backward economies...
...It is taken as axiomatic that democracy cannot grow in under...
...Can the further burden of Asian development be added to it...
...The Communist method, if it suits anyone, is suited to the needs of the intermediate countries—those in the belt of 34 per cent of the world's population earning 34 per cent of the world's income...
...3) In the Soviet Union, as in the U.S.A., vast expanse of land, much of it virgin, facilitated mechanization of agriculture...
...As against Stalin's dream of a seamless surface of uniformly advanced technique, Asian countries might achieve, and perhaps prefer, a many-leveled structure, with appropriate links and locks...
...We do not share this assumption...
...In Japan modern economic organization was grafted on feudal social organization...
...It comes in the second bracket, where 34 per cent of the world's population has 34 per cent of the world's income...
...Population went up...
...They view politics as omnipresent...
...like dynamic theory) has for an object economic developments taking place in time, only the variables studied do not change their values with the lapse of time...
...For each level, there are different limits of full employment...
...Where there is a scope for extensive agriculture, these methods yield results...
...a few minor grammatical changes have been made...
...The problem of "intervening occupations" appears to be integral for Asian economy...
...The tendency reaches its fruition in Keynes whose theories uncover the danger of savings outrunning investments, of consumption not rising fast enough...
...154 (2) If farms are not mechanized, mere collectivization not only becomes difficult but does not yield that hold over the peasant's produce...
...To Asia, Communism, wedded to a particular force of production, can be a vehicle of barbarism in the same way in which capitalism is because of its obsolete relations of production...
...demands on the peasants went up...
...The first fact to be noted is that not only the degree, but the form of industrialization is variable...
...The resources cannot come from the industrial sector alone...
...The tremendous task of mechanizing its agriculture, simultaneously with industrialization, has been shouldered by that country...
...But the strain of forced concentration, political or economic, can become so severe, that the development snaps...
...Democracy breaks down in some Asian countries, not because of under-development but because of the fact that imperialist powers loosen their grip only by reducing the, countries concerned to shambles...
...That "leak" makes roundabout production more involved without yielding sufficient end product: consumer goods...
...The dilemma does not exist...
...to telescope them one after the other is to court disaster...
...It is forgotten that the use of such a technology involves the greatest "load" on capital, and economizes, to the vanishing point, the most abundant resource in an under-developed country, labor...
...In the peasant sector of economy, land distribution, village oriented economy and voluntary labor for rural public works, would provide opportunities for full employment...
...For us the width is given, only the depth can be developed...
...R. H. S. Crossman speculated on the theoretical possibility of a crusading imperialism industrializing a backward country and "thereby liberating the masses from localized enslavement to the soil and to the nature...
...155 The disharmony between the two sectors was resolved, in Soviet Russia, as in Western countries generally, by drawing the agrarian sector into the industrial sweep...
...Implicit in this is their freedom from limitations of the Rule of Law or constitutional safeguards...
...The flow of technique, like the flood of a river, has to be trained...
...Those whose thoughts are shaped by the experiences and, ideologies of the West find it difficult to grasp this simple fact...
...The pre-eminence of Marx lies in his informing economics with 157 sociological understanding...
...4) When such a combat party meets the stream of energy extracted from every recess of social activity that has been channeled in the needed direction a sort of social hydropower emerges...
...capital-saving, as against the traditional laborsaving...
...AFTER MARX, SOCIALIST ECONOMICS AS SUCH has failed to develop...
...Such "flooding" destroys the economy with its employment, ihcome, production and joys and sorrows of men and appropriates resources for the expansion of the technically superior sector...
...We say this not to criticize or to condemn, but to point to an additional difficulty . . . The earlier economists dealt with a world with which the Asians find point of contact: there are vistas of thought that have for them familiar resemblance...
...During that period, the peasant, owning his little piece of land, is unlikely to remain docile...
...As in a truly progressive society the higher sector would aid the lower to raise its level, so the much developed countries would help the backward...
...This tendency is welcomed and developed by the organizational pattern of Communism: since Lenin the party is a combat organization built on cadres controlled from above...
...Wasting their substance on military preparation is futile and foolish...
...What wonder if Marx has emerged as the supreme teacher of social dreamers and social engineers of Asia...
...The second error lies in over-emphasizing the tendency to concentration...
...In the Soviet Union, the ratio of industrial production as between consumption goods and capital goods was changed, almost abruptly, from 2.3:1 to 0.88:1 in less than five years-1928-1932...
...R. H. S. Crossman, in the New Fabian Essays, has advised Western socialists to "accept both intellectually and emotionally the fact that Communism outside Europe is still a liberative force...
...The Marxian edifice was built upon that basic tendency...
...If the industrial sector alone develops technologically and agriculture is allowed to remain as it is, severe strains emerge between the rationalized and traditional sectors...
...Precision about the middle term with openness about the final term has to be the hall-mark of the theory...
...dollars, while in India, industrial capital in the same year was a little over 2,000 million dollars...
...The position of different levels is determined by the available resources...
...Apart from the inclinations of the peasants, the fact remains that for Asian countries to achieve the visage of the West is just not possible...
...The solution lies in Prof...
...In such a perspective the following "steps" have to be worked out: (1) production of the developed sector has to be prevented from flooding the lower levels...
...That was the fatal mistake...
...As tensions develop inside a country between rationalized and primitive sectors of economy, so in the world tensions arise between developed 160 and undeveloped countries...
...ment here has to be in the intensive direction...
...His is the one grand edifice of thought that provides rolling vision, and is dynamic to the core...
...This is yet another contradiction that Communism faces in Asia...
...It is development within the framework of Western life and experience...
...The unfinished task is to fabricate tools and machines appropriate to the lesser levels...
...Only by fusing intellect with conscience can we grow...
...A World Organization alone can handle the task...
...By treating the whole society as a source of power and by developing a hierarchical organization, the Communists' build a new instrument of history...
...The result was not so much social transformation, as superimposing "a feudalism of gold" on the feudalism of land...
...THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION of an under-developed country greatly affects its pattern of development...
...How far will the levels rise, is there any need for stabilization...
...It needs to be realized that backwardness and population pressure might converge to a point where austerity becomes too arduous, where new forms have to be discovered...
...and (3) use the surplus output of higher levels to raise the bottom of production...
...if they are scarce or rationed, he will have little incentive to produce...
...The Communists have always believed in power and the strength of military might...
...The latter policy may lead the systems to a greater aggregate real income after the lapse of a certain period...
...The reasons are clear: (1) On the top of the needs of industrialization it cannot add the effort of mechanization of agriculture (as a general policy) , because that would mean significantly raising the demand for capital, and making the problem of capital accumulation insoluble...
...The process of capital formation is a long and arduous one: The more backward the economy and the larger the population the more time consuming is the process...
...As a consequence they have discovered and utilized vast new areas of political potential in institutions and mass organizations...
...No other Asian country can hope to compete with the West in the arena of war...
...The USSR is the only country in the world today which continuously progresses towards the adoption of the newest and the most advanced techniques in all fields," proudly observes Leontiev, a Soviet economist...
...tion, Communism often becomes the chosen instrument of history...
...we can offer here only tentative suggestions...
...In this study Mehta tried to find an answer to the most difficult and important question facing all Asians: Is there an indigenous and democratic way for the people of Asia to raise their economic level without succumbing to traditional imperialism, Russian domination, or yielding to new absolutisms...
...Frank Knight, "economic forces tend towards a progressive concentration...
...He mostly needs consumption goods...
...THE INDUSTRIAL BASE IN ASIAN COUNTRIES is very narrow: total industrial capital in China in 1939 amounted to just 1,200 million 153 (U.S...
...A World Development Authority, financed with one or two per cent "tax" on the national income of developed countries and functioning through its panels of sociologists, anthropologists and technicians, has to emerge to smooth the tensions between the rich and the poor in the comity of nations...
...Stalin, through collectivization and mechanization, not only increased production, released men from agriculture for urban industrial activities, but was able to gain a hold over the agricultural produce that millions of scattered farms never gave him...
...Yet this tour de force left Manchuria weaker at the base: "The peasant indeed actually lost by a decade of Japanese development...
...But it needs to be remembered that in an under-developed country there are different levels of production, employment and income...
...In a short dozen years Japan took Manchukuo through the whole course of Western industrialization, a course which had required half a century in Japan herself...
...It cannot sugar-coat the bitterness of transformation with the honey-filled visions of the future...
...4) The pressure on land is so great that collectivization and mechanization would throw such vast masses of people out of occupation and out of their traditional social milieu as cannot be absorbed in industries or the urban milieu...
...2) new techniques have to be evolved to suit the investing capacity and employment requirements of different levels...
...We present in this and the forthcoming issue of DISSENT two sections of his pamphlet, which form independent articles...
...About dynamic adjustments, the best minds—from Malthus to Schumpeter and Ohlin—have written, but their conception of economic development comes very close to the complex of ideas brought together by business cycles theories...
...Such a complex of relationships cannot be achieved between just the lending and the receiving countries...
...In a sense, it has to be scientific not only about the middle term, but also refrain, unlike Marxism, from being utopian about the final term...
...Lorimer concludes that there were some five million abnormal deaths in 1930's, More than half of these perished in the process of collectivization...
...But the Communists have sought to discover it where it does not exist...
...The more difficult question is how to raise the level, to lift the bottom...
...Steel factories and hydroelectric plants not only take a long time to construct, but even a longer time to "mature" and to yield consumption goods...
...Where such a road is not open—because of three stubborn and irreducible difficulties, (1) paucity of capital, (2) abundance of human labor, and (3) low land-man ratio—the Communists have pro duced no answer...
...The power of the Asian peasant turning away from the portrait in the mirror will become apparent as imperialism retreats from Asia and democratic advances are made...
...The postulates are partly vague, and mainly drawn up to serve the needs of Western socialists...
...In knowledge t.hexe need be no fear of flooding...
...fold, but in the sector of heavy industries...
...The naivete of the young lady is widely shared...
...Its organizational philosophy is that of hegemony...
...The development needs to be "envisioned in its entirety...
...As Walter Reuther, president of the CIO, has suggested, a tax of 2 per cent on the national income of the Western countries may be necessary...
...Even of static theory, Prof...
...Multi-levelled economy can be operated effectively only with enveloping democracy...
...More and more, with the development of equilibrium economics, the economists have been preoccupied with problems of developed economy...
...Dantwala's brilliant suggestion of "technological locks...
...An increasing percentage of growing wealth is sucked up to become the sinews of war...
...In the Soviet Union, the rule of the bureaucracy has distorted the development...
...In Rammamohar Lohia's words, economic aims and general aims have to grow together...
...The peasant resisted the integration and the results are writ large in history...
...The Soviet Union is not among the top eight countries of the world that have between them 56 per cent of the world's income...
...In this fascinating work, technicians, scientists and economists from all lands have to cooperate...
...The Communists believe that power is social, is generated in the course of all types of action (not simply the narrowly "political") and is latent in all institutions...
...2) The co-ordination leads to mobilization of social energy...
...The form will be different because of the difference in basic conditions...
...So, the Asian countries should be pacifist...
...Expenditure is not balanced by production that comes to the market...
...One Asian country, Japan, tried the gamble and lost...
...The Western economists have given deep thought to problems of economic change...
...Its strength lies in humane enthusiasm for generous aims...
...Wilbert E. Moore, Industrialization and Labor...
...The crucial problems of economic transformation are not even in the wings of discussion in the suburbs of thought...
...For reasons of space a good deal of supporting statistical data has been eliminated...
...In both countries, austerity continues...
...On this point followers of Marx have never offered clarification...
...This needed the integration of the peasant into the total economy...
...To be continued in next issue of DISSENT) 162...
...The rest disappeared in the mortality associated with an unprecedented rate of industrialization and in political purges...
...It can, but what is the source of foreign aid...
...The peasant will exchange his foodgrains and raw materials only if he gets the goods he needs...
...Before the question is answered, it needs to be realized that as water, at a higher level, inundates lower levels, so higher levels of production "flood" production at lower levels of technique...
...Even then the peasant retains vestiges of capitalism in his psychology...
...In handicrafts, better tools, adequate raw materials, co-operatives for credit and marketing and protection against developed industries would provide increased and secure employment...
...The capital base of the economy has been used, to a great extent, for military preparedness...
...Where peaceful withdrawals have been made, as in India, Ceylon, or the Gold Coast, the prospects for democracy have been better than for totalitarianism...
...Such aid however needs to be related to the capacity of, and offered in forms suited to, the receiving countries...
...Cannot foreign aid get over the difficulty...
...For Asia, because of the unequal development of the world that capitalism achieves, there is no scope, no hope, of realizing the lineaments of a developed country...
...There the archaic kinship forms and hierarchical order of society were not disrupted by the introduction of industry...
...Because of ossified and stubborn difficulties, "the chosen instrument of history" for development has to have a sharp point and decisive thrust...
...The peasant was thus deprived of his instruments of production, was proletarianized...
...The recent developments in India, Burma, Ceylon and Indonesia demand a revision of this view...
...The assumption is that technology is capable of all triumphs...
...to bring them together into in enveloping theory is the task of Socialist Economics...
...In Asian countries the general level is likely to remain far below that of the USA, though steel mills, in their limited capacity, may become as modern as in the U.S...
...For Asian socialists its recognition is the beginning of wisdom...
...Even in the Soviet Union, where the share of the country in the world's industrial production increased from 4.7 per cent in 1928 to 10 per cent in 1940, a substantial part of the extra 6 per cent was diverted to military strength...
...The defeat of Japan in 1945 afforded a unique opportunity of studying the peasant's own reaction to the whole process of industrialization...
...Before the problem of raising the level is solved, the threat of "flooding" has to be attended to...
...That tempo and that path can mean only disaster for them...
Vol. 2 • April 1955 • No. 2
