Problems of Marxist Historiography

Author(s): Irfan Habib

Source: Social Scientist , Dec., 1988, Vol. 16, No. 12 (Dec., 1988), pp. 3-13
Published by: Social Scientist

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3517416

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IRFAN HABIB*

Problems of Marxist Historiography

In one of his theses Marx said: 'Philosophers have so far inter

the world. The point is to change it.' Marxism sees an innate
between perception of the past and present practice. This unity im
continuous interaction: as time passes and history (human exp
lengthens, we draw greater lessons from it for the present; and a
present experience tells us more about the possibilities and lim
of social action, we turn to the past and obtain new comprehensio
it. Consider Marc Bloc's understanding of the French Revolu
representing continuity and not a break in French agrarian h
reached after the Soviet Revolution of 1917; similarly o
perception of the limitations of Soviet peasant mobilisatio
followed the success of the Chinese Revolution, a massive 'pe
revolution' (1949). It is inherent in the unity of past and prese
Marxist historiography must continuously turn to fresh asp
explore and re-explore and fresh questions to answer. Nothing
illustrative of this need than the history of Socialist societies
1917. That history cannot be meaningfully studied only from wh
classics tell us Socialism should be. The lengthening, complex
of Socialism is of great significance not only for the peoples of S
countries, but also for all those who aspire for Socialism in th
countries.
There are other factors too which must cause continuous
reconsiderations of positions previously taken. Research expa
exposes facts we did not know of before: without undue modest
say we know more about India's past than Marx did. Can his stat
on India be accepted as the last word, even when we recognise
information was limited? Naturally, extended knowledge im
us the task of testing our older interpretations against our info
as it now stands. It has to be an unceasing process.

More: Marxism, as the ideology of the working class, does

alone and in isolation. There are rival interpretations arisin
time. The authors of these interpretations might not accept
premises of a class-approach; and, therefore, for us to dismiss t

*Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

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4 Social Scientist

'bourgeois' and ignore them brings no conviction. They

rationally analysed. In India every day we find ourselves
with chauvinistic, communal and regional approaches
which we must answer by detailed arguments. But there are
more fundamental challenges too. Gramsci, in criticising
ABC of Communism said that in the war of ideas, unlike or
you have to attack the enemy's strongest, and not weakest p
of course, demands constant preparation and self-exam
refining and extension of Marxist positions. This exam
cover everything from general principles to specific facts,
are all the time being brought into question by others.
answer not by denunciation-that is always a bad cou
careful scrutiny and investigation.
Finally, I believe that Scientific Socialism require
debate within itself, without need for polemics from o
before the current recognition of the virtues of 'plurality', M
had urged that truth could belong to a minority, and all
first espoused only by a minority. This applies to a revoluti
as well as society at large.
'MIND AND MATTER' IN HISTORY

One of the common obscurities in popular understanding about Mar

historiography has been caused, I believe, by the text-book vie
Marxism as 'determinism'. While Marxists have protested against
characterization, their own description of 'Historical Materialism
in Stalin's essay on Dialectical and Historical Materialism) is ofte
fact couched in deterministic terms. We are told that the produ
technology ('forces of production') determines the social relation
('relations of production'). These together constitute the 'mode
production', which determines the world of ideas and culture
superstructure'). For has not Marx said, 'It is their social being
determines their consciousness'? Clearly the relationship
technique-class relations and mode of production-and culture,
crucial, but in what way exactly does one part of the relation
'determine' the configuration of the other part? It has been said
'Marxism is a product of capitalism'. It could not have arisen b
capitalism created the working class. But that the different aspe
Marx's thought were inevitably or automatically just what they
having been directly formed by the conditions created by capit
would be a statement very difficult to substantiate.
One would rather propose that capitalism set the context, ra
than the structure, for Marxism-and this is very different fr
determinism of any recognisable kind. (For the moment, I am not g
into Althusser's discussion of 'determination' and 'overdetermination').
Marxist text-books often suggest that the 'mode of production', but
especially the 'forces of production', represent the 'material' base,
whereas ideas form a separate superstructure seated upon it. But long

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 Problems of Marxist Historiography 5

ago the archaeologist Gordon Childe in the very title of his work, Man
Makes Himself, showed that production technology is after all
inseparable from ideas. Matter does not create technology; human
ideas, reflected in skill, dexterity, and science, create it. When
Maurice Dobb argues in his Studies in the Development of Capitalism
that the inventions which triggered the English Industrial Revolution
in the eighteenth century came not earlier, and only then, because the
surrounding economic circumstances were not favourable earlier, is he
not suggesting a reverse determination of 'forces of production'-the
supposedly material base-by social relationships?
Marx's view of historical development is clearly far more refined
and persuasive than a mere extension of materialist determination to
social evolution: 'Just as we cannot judge an individual by the opinion
he has of himself, so we cannot judge a period of social transformation
by its own consciousness.' This statement means that the intricacies of
the contemporary modes of production and social relationships could
not be seen in the earlier periods. Rather, they were always
misconceived. To Marx such misconceptions or imperfect perceptions set
limits to the growth of further ideas, or of action during the process of
transformation. When he said that 'ideas become a material force once
they have gripped the masses', he surely meant that consciousness once
generalised delimits the range of ideas of individuals and social
action. Religion, and race or community prejudices could colour class
struggles and shape their results (we can illustrate this from our own
history). What happened in the epoch of capitalism and as a
consequence of the simultaneous or attendant scientific revolution was
the creation of a possibility, re-realised in Marxism, of an
approximately closer perception of the mode of production and social
relationships with a view to a far more resolute guidance of the
'transformation' or social revolution. It is in this sense that the
achievement of the perception by the working class of the real
around it and the potentiality of its own revolutionary role-its
consciousness'-has been given such signal importance in Ma
practice. But this surely means that the role of ideas compared
earlier periods has been substantially enlarged: blind struggles
been replaced by sighted ones. Can we not go further and say that
has been a feature of human development, and that the bourge
which according to the Communist Manifesto had played s
'revolutionary role', was responsible for the previous enlargem
feel convinced that Marx believed that ideas would be atta
continuously greater importance in future. When he spoke of the f
as one where mankind marched 'from the realm of necessity t
realm of freedom', I feel convinced (in spite of Engels's unfortunate
on freedom' as the 'recognition of necessity') that Marx looked for
to ideas at last gaining ascendancy over matter, not by any spiritu
exercise, but by the abundance of material wealth which comm
would ultimately produce.

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6 Social Scientist

Far, therefore, from being a theory of materialist de

Marxism sees the past of humanity in its true relation
material world and aspires to achieve for it its ultimate sov
progress through socialism and communism, the twin states
future, of social evolution that Marx confidently ch
Critique of the Gotha Programme.
It goes without saying that for us today liberation fro
book 'inevitability' theory, erroneously ascribed to Marxism
necessity. Capitalism and other exploitative systems are
break down by their own weight or by the 'Genera
Capitalism.' There is no alternative to entering the batt
economic action, on behalf of toilers to teachers, is a help, b
substitute for class-consciousness.

SOCIAL FORMATIONS AND CLASS STRUGGLES

'The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history o

struggles.' These ringing words of the Communist Manifesto seem
often lost in the long debates among Marxist historians over m
production, social formations, and especially feudalism. I
protest too much over it, because I have also participated in t
debates. Nor do I think that they are irrelevant, although it does s
to me that we should be careful not to lose sight of the wood f
trees.

The relevance of defining social formations arises because you

cannot study class struggles without discerning classes; and classes must
belong to structures which we call social formations. Social formations
constitute successive organisations of society, so that the classic order of
succession has been primitive communism-slavery-feudalism-
capitalism. Whether the classic order is also universal is a question on
which there has been much controversy. Marx did not think that pre-
colonial India was 'feudal': it lacked serfdom, and there was identity
between tax and rent. The 'Asiatic Mode', which Marx speculated on in
the 1850s, has been resurrected as the Tributary Mode by Samir Amin;
and sub-classified into 'feudal' (based on rent) and 'despotic' (based on
tax) by Chris Wickham; Kosambi and R.S. Sharma have argued that
India did not see the stage of slavery, but had forms of feudalism from
the middle of the first millennium or thereabouts to the colonial
conquest.
While the controversy is not likely to cease, I do not wish to discuss
it here at length. My own views are against a universalization of
'feudalism' as an umbrella to cover all pre-capitalist systems
whatever their actual modes of surplus-extraction (class-exploitation).
I agree that failure to universalize feudalism would lead us to accept a
multiplicity of social formations over different territories; but I see no
scandal in this. I would reassert that this is also implicit in the
Communist Manifesto, when it treats capitalism as the first universal
mode of production, and speaks of complex class structures preceding it.

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 Problems of Marxist Historiography 7

What I think needs correction is the view tacitly accepted by many

Marxist historians that every social order is created exclusively by the
internal contradictions of the previous one only at the apex of its
development. Thus slavery-feudalism-capitalism form a unilinear
succession, which if confined to Europe, would show that social
evolution in its highest stages belonged to Europe alone. I would contest
the premise. Marx and Engels were conscious, as shown by many of their
statements, of the backwardness of European feudal society when
compared with contemporary societies in other parts of the world.
European feudalism was not necessarily-in terms of commodity
production, productivity, etc-the most advanced social formation in
the world in its day. That it was ultimately transformed into
capitalism was by no means due to the development of its internal
contradictions alone. James Needham has rightly emphasized the
importance of Chinese technological discoveries, viz. paper, printing
press, pedals, belt-transmission with fly-wheel, mariner's compass,
gun-powder, etc., for the technological developments in late and post-
feudal Europe, without which the technological base for the Industrial
Revolution would have been inconceivable. Clearly, while human
advance has been on a universal scale, different regions in different
periods have been ahead of others: China was so clearly ahead of
Europe before 1200. And yet it could not for that reason generate
capitalism. Other factors too were required for the genesis of
capitalism, such as overseas plunder from the close of the 15th century
onwards and the ravaging of Africa for slaves, on the one hand, and the
Scientific Revolution, on the other. We may, by labelling India or
China as 'feudal', lay claims to having possessed the potentiality of
developing capitalism had colonialism not intervened. Despite the
seductiveness of this notion, I hope we will resist it, not only because
the factual base has been lacking (despite my colleague Iqtidar Alam
Khan's firm arguments), but also because a universal feudal system
would go so strikingly against the law of uneven development which is
so vital a part of Marxist dialectics.
All social formations contain contradictions; the most important
revolve around classes and express themselves in the form of class
struggles. For Marxist historians it is not only important to rescue from
oblivion the narratives of rebellions of the subjugated classes but also to
analyse their nature and the extent to which their participants were
aware of their true class affiliations. For there can be class struggles
without the participants realising that they are such. Unfortunately,
since many of the uprisings are written about by their opponents, who
were partisans of the ruling classes, we have often no means of knowing
what the rebels really thought. Even so, one becomes aware that there
was more class-consciousness in the peasant rebellions of China or in
England in 1881 than in the agrarian uprisings in India of the 17th
century. The reasons for this backwardness, such as possibly the caste
system must be investigated; these may well have lessons for us today.

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8 Social Scientist

We should also not forget that class struggles appear on two

risings of the oppressed (e.g. peasant wars) and conflict bet
ruling classes (e.g. aristocracy versus the bourgeoisie in th
Revolution). The latter may involve the other classes in the
auxiliary. We should consider if this has not been true of
uprisings in India where, as in the case of Shivaji with his b
peasants were used to establish a zamindar-style state.
In this connection, Gramsci's judgement that peasants canno
an ideology of their own, is an interesting thesis to test. We m
remark that Professor Ranajit Guha, and other scholar
'subaltern school', who use Gramsci's terminology (but in
way and with additions like 'elite classes') lay particular str
'autonomy' of the 'subaltern classes' in ideology and cultur
'subaltern classes', however, often appear to be not true c
merely castes, tribes and communities, where zamindars an
are seen and accepted as undifferentiated. The view th
composite groups necessarily developed 'autonomous' ideolog
working-class does, in Marxism) is an unproven premise. If
the opium of the people, a religion that attaches itself on
ruling class and does not command the loyalty of the subje
would be of no use to the ruling class. The 'hegemony' of the ru
in any stable social formation, is only partly based on armed p
must also be an ideological hegemony. To think that 'subalte
in India have possessed deep-rooted subterranean ideologie
own is belied by the universal prevalence of caste-ideology
these classes have shared with the ruling class. It is the pre
such ideas within the 'autonomy' of the 'subaltern' gro
necessarily limited their protest or resistance and brought abo
downfall. The subaltern scholars are happy narrators of trag
not their task to look for salvation. That can come, of course,
the oppressed protecting their 'autonomy' in a system
exploitation, but with rejecting their past parochialism, espo
ideology of the working class and joining with their peers in a
struggle for liberation.

CAPITALISM AND COLONIALISM

Marx in his contributions to the New York Tribune, and in Capital

other writings, gave special attention to the relationship betwee
colonies and the emergence of capitalism in England. He framed
theory of primary or primitive accumulation of capital to explain
the industrial revolution in England was generated by colonial plun
Nationalist economists, since the time of Dadabhoy Naoroji rig
made the Tribute or Drain of Wealth a major Indian grievance a
Britain. Unfortunately, British Marxist historians, like Dobb
Hobsbawm, have either omitted a consideration of this aspe
colonial relationships or only assigned it a marginal role in the orig
and sustenance of capitalist expansion in Britain. This lapse has s

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 Problems of Marxist Historiography 9

to be rectified if the real significance of colonialism in the formation of

a capitalist economy is to be properly assessed.
In still another matter, there has been a seeming lag in Marxist
appraisals of nineteenth century colonialism. Imperialism the Highest
Stage of Capitalism, which was taken to suggest that Imperialism, as
a vehicle of capitalists' striving for territory and wealth abroad, came
only with the development of finance-capital and monopoly. Indeed,
Lenin went so far as to say that

When free competition in Great Britain was at its height, i.e.

between 1840 and 1860, the leading British bourgeois
politicians were opposed to colonial policy and were of the
opinion that the liberation of the colonies and their complete
separation from Great Britain was inevitable and desirable.
I am sure Lenin would not have written these words had he known
that Marx had regarded the anti-colonial professions of the British
Free Traders of that very period with healthy scepticism. When India
had been in the process of annexation, everyone had kept quiet; once
the 'natural limits' had been reached, they had 'become loudest with
their hypocritical peace cant'. But, then, 'firstly, they had to get it
(India) in order to subject it to their sharp philanthropy'. This was
written in 1853. In 1859 Marx was writing that 'the 'glorious' reconquest
of India' after the Mutiny had been essentially carried out 'for securing
the monopoly of the Indian market to the Manchester Free Traders'. He
came perilously close to the conception of the Imperialism of Free
Trade, which John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson put forward a
hundred years later (1953), but without Marx's economic insights.
The importance of colonies for free-trade capitalism also poses for
Marxists a simple theoretical problem. All surplus-value is produced
by the worker. Thus surplus values of manufactured goods exported from
Britain to India represented the exploitation of the English worker, not
Indian. Yet, these very exports caused unemployment and vast artisan's
distress in India. Marx might have had this particular question in
mind when he put forward the notion of 'unequal exchange' (without
use of the particular term) and said that 'the richer country exploits
the poorer one.' The precise mechanism, given Marx's theoretical
framework, still remains only dimly illumined. Rosa Luxemburg came
near to answering the question by asserting that there could be no
'extended reproduction' in capitalism without exchanges with the non-
capitalist sectors (including colonies), through which the additional
surplus value would be 'realised'. Whatever the theoretical
weaknesses of Rosa Luxemburg's position (for which see the
sympathetic assessment by Joan Robinson and the harsher ones by
N.Bukharin and Paul Sweezy), the question she poses does not go
away. It is an area where Marx's own historical understanding of a
phenomenon has yet to be appropriately accommodated within his
theory of capitalist production and circulation.

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10 Social Scientist

It is also time that we may reconsider the question of expor

capital as an important element of the colonial relationship. O
the railways, much of British capital in India was not imported
generated in India from official salaries and mercantile activiti
Englishmen. Its later transfer from India to Britain was not t
repatriation, but another element of the Drain.

THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT

Since R.P. Dutt's India Today (1940/1946) there has been conside
writing on the Indian National Movement by Marxists. There ha
a recent detailed survey by E.M.S.Namboodiripad, A Histo
India's Freedom Struggle. It seems to me that there is now a ge
understanding that the National Movement was a united front
classes of the Indian people, the peasantry, other petty bourg
the bourgeoisie and the working class, to the exclusion of the
landowners and princes. The major nationalist organisation, the
National Congress, did not always reflect the united front, alth
as in the late 1930s it came very close to such a position.
It is, of course, important in the light of this understandin
review many harsh criticisms of the leaders of the Nation
Movement, which can be found in the documents of the Communist
Movement till before the Dutt-Bradley thesis of 1936 and occasionally
later. The correction of this attitude need not, however, mean that the
Communists or the other Left groups were incorrect in all the basic
positions they took, for example in 1942. An overwhelming
preoccupation with the 'errors' of the Left, as in the volume edited by
Professor Bipan Chandra, is unfortunate, since by this very
preoccupation, it belittles the achievements of the Left during the
National Movement and its contributions to it. After all, the creation of
the organised Kisan Movement and the trade unions was mainly the
handiwork of the Communists and their allies; and that cannot be
forgotten.
I would urge that we should treat the National Movement (which
was always larger than the Congress) as a common heritage. All
assessment of individuals playing roles in it must be tempered by the
realisation that they stood up in opposition to British rule. Dadabhoy
Naoroji spoke for the silent millions when he brought the poverty of
the Indian people and its removal as a major issue between Imperialism
and the Indian people. Gandhi succeeded in mobilising those
millions-though the forms of that mobilisation may have remained
limited. These were undying services to the cause of the Indian people.
Marxists should be on guard against efforts to treat these as illusory, or
insignificant, as in the writings of the Cambridge and Subaltern
schools, which, by the way, in effect, treat the Left also as part of the
elite leadership.
Today, the positive aspects of the National Movement, its
bourgeois-democratic values such as secularism, women's rights,

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 Problems of Marxist Historiography 11

national unity, freedom of the press, and parliamentary democracy,

need particular emphasis. These can form the initial points for a
people's front, in which all classes may be united as can carry forward
the cause of democracy and socialism. Such a front could be a worthy
successor to our National Movement.

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SOCIALISM

One of the admitted weaknesses of Marxist historiography lies

limitations of its analysis of the history of socialist societies,
existence began with the Russian Revolution of 1917. While in M
Capital, we have a theoretical framework for understanding 'th
of motion' of capitalist society, no such framework is availab
socialism. It was for long thought sufficient that the state should
industry and agriculture should be collectivized so as to pr
Socialism. Not until 1952 did the Soviet Union possess in S
pamphlet, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
authoritative exposition of some of the most elementary ques
relating to socialist economy. But Stalin left many important prob
unresolved or omitted them from view altogether. The only ob
that he set for socialism was the enlargement of production on th
of higher techniques. A more important breakthrough was ma
Mao Tse-tung. Althusser commends Mao for making, in his ess
Contradiction, a basic addition to the Marxian theory of diale
And Oscar Lange commented as early as 1957 that 'it has been the m
of Mao Tse-tung to have re-called with emphasis that socialist s
too develops through contradictions.' What Stalin's essay had
lacked primarily was the spelling out of the contradictions that
socialist society in the USSR in the particular stage he was de
with. In his speeches Correctly Handling Contradictions amon
People and Ten Great Relationships in the late 1950s, Mao had c
begun to evolve a theoretical basis for analysis of progress to
socialism. But unluckily, by the mid-1960s he seems to have altered
views so as to hold that the contradictions of socialism were
transformed in China into contradictions between socialism and
capitalism; and he thereupon initiated and led the Cultural
Revolution, which our Chinese friends now hold to have been an error.
It is, therefore, important to consider what specific contradictions
need resolution in a socialist society. These are obviously to be
considered in two major stages within socialism: (1) transition to
socialism and (2) socialism, or what Marx called the lower stage of
communism. In the first stage there are obvious class contradictions
between the proletariat and the former capitalists and landlords, and
between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie (rich peasantry,
etc). There is little dispute involved here, although the time is past
when we should accept all the measures actually taken in the USSR
and other socialist countries as the only ones possible. A comparison
between the Soviet methods of collectivization and Chinese

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12 Social Scientist

mobilization for cooperatives and communes suggests im

differences in outlook towards the peasantry, which co
important lessons for other countries building socialism.
For the second stage in which the USSR and China now ar
basic contradictions may be defined by looking at the goals whic
in his Critique of the Gotha Programme set for 'the higher
Communism', towards which socialist society would evolve.
(1) Contradiction between 'mental and physical labour
essentially the contradiction generated by higher incomes
authority for bureaucrats, managers, intellectuals, etc., wh
has to be maintained in socialism for quite a long time in
interest of higher production.
(2) Contradiction between town and country: this often arises
the socialist countries in the form of pressure of industry u
agriculture. It was the source of the theory of socia
primitive accumulation, abandoned in words, but often pursu
in practice to promote industrialisation.
There are other contradictions, which need also to be examined.
Socialism has come about in a system of nation-states, and when one
large economically powerful socialist nation deals with others,
national contradictions are bound to arise.
How such contradictions are to be resolved, raises the problem of
the political system of socialism. In an old controversy (where Stalin
was on the side of the angels), the question was raised whether the
dictatorship of the proletariat means the dictatorship of the Party
and whether they were the same. Clearly, there must always exist
contradictions between the ruling Party apparatus or leadership and
the Working Class, which cannot be glossed over by a mere designation
of the party as a Working-Class Party.
There is no doubt that until the abundance of material wealth
ushers in the period of communism, these contradictions would conti
to exist. This has been proved amply by the Chinese measures after t
Cultural Revolution, under which even individual farming has b
restored: this is relevant to our Contradiction No. 2, since both
communes and collective farms could be made to surrender surpluses for
industry more easily than individual farmers, who, apparently,
produce more. In the Soviet Union there has recently been more concern
with the contradictions between the party and the population, and
measures similar to those of the Chinese are on agenda, relating to
both our Contradictions (1) and (2). And yet if what Marx called
'bourgeois rights' continue in socialism, it is also important that as
production advances they should be contained. Distribution is as
important as production (a point not touched upon by Stalin in his
essay); and 'Equality, Liberty and Fraternity' should surely be more
than mere slogans in a socialist society-far more than in
Revolutionary France which gave birth to them.

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 Problems of Marxist Historiography 13

A Marxist historiography of socialism can be reconstructed on the

basis of our comprehension of the various contradictions within
socialism. The task can be eminently performed by historians of the
socialist countries with direct access to archives and experience. But it
is as crucial a task for Marxists outside the socialist countries. One
would differ from Charles Bettelheim in the stand he takes, but the
task of analysing the Soviet experience from a Marxist point of view,
which he aims at in his Class Struggles in the USSR, is in principle an
unexceptionable one. The gauntlet has been thrown to those who could
do it with a different perception of the evolution of socialism. With
socialism a reality for the last seventy years, the people's choice for it
cannot be invoked on the basis of the inequities of capitalism alone. It
is surely obligatory on us to frame our own independent analysis of the
history of socialist societies in order to define the contours of the
socialism that we aspire to build in India.

(Text of the Second V.P. Chintan Memorial Lecture, Indian School of

Social Sciences, Madras, September 1988)

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