Ilango Arasiyal

MARX ON CASTE

Ranganayakamma

Marx did not write a special treatise on ‘caste’ just as he wrote on ‘capitalism’ under the title ‘Capital’. However, in his writings, he made some observations on the caste system in India and on certain regulations akin to castes in other countries. Through these observations, it is possible for us to understand the conception of castes and the solution that he indicated with regard to that question.

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According to the laws of economics, mental labour possesses higher value and manual labour possesses lower value. This is based on a natural law of formation of value. Values of different kinds of labour are formed differently depending on the resources required to learn a given kind of labour. There is nothing ‘wrong’ in it. As the mental labour possesses more value and manual labour less value, a person who always does mental labour gets higher income and a person who always does manual labour gets lower income. Societies based on exploitation further increase the naturally existing gap between values of different kinds of labour. 

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Marx (along with Engels) talked about castes in India for the first time in “The German Ideology” (1845-6). He made some observations and offered explanation concerning castes on six or seven occasions including in ‘Capital’ (1867). By means of those observations and ‘Capital’, which elaborated Marx’s theory in great detail, we can understand the caste question and get hold of its solution.

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Criticizing the wrong conception concerning the process of history in general and the idealist conception of post-Hegelians in Germany in particular, Marx made the following observations on caste in “The German Ideology”:

“When the crude form of the division of labour which is to be found among the Indians, and Egyptians calls forth the caste-system in their state and religion, the historian believes that the caste-system is the power which has produced this crude social form.” (Moscow edition 176, p. 63)

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In December 1846, Annenkov, a Russian intellectual, asked Marx’s opinion on Proudhan’s book “Philosophy of Poverty”. Replying to Annenkov’s letter, Marx comments that Proudhan does not have a proper understanding of division of labour and that he assumes it to be identical at all times. Marx wrote to Annenkov as follows:

“But was not the caste regime also a particular division of labour? Was not the regime of the corporations another division of labour? And is not the division of labour under the system of manufacture, which in England begins about the middle of the seventeenth century and comes to an end in the last part of the eighteenth, also totally different from the division of labour in large-scale modern industry?” (Poverty of Philosophy, p. 158, Moscow 1966).

In 1847, Marx wrote ‘Poverty of Philosophy’, a critique of Proudhan’s book. There he says:

“Under the patriarchal system, under the caste system, under the feudal and corporative system, there was division of labor in the whole of society according to fixed rules. Were these rules established by a legislator? No. Originally born of the conditions of material production, they were born of the conditions of material production; they were raised to the status of laws only much later. In this way these different forms of the division of labour became so many bases of social organization.” (p. 118).

While commenting on ‘how capitalist economists wrongly understand the relationship between production and distribution’, in his 1859 work, “A contribution to the critique of political economy”, Marx makes a reference to castes.

“Or, legislation may perpetuate land ownership in certain families, or allocate labour as a hereditary privilege, thus consolidating it into a caste system.” (p. 201, Moscow edition 1970)

In his 1853 article on “The Future Results of British Rule in India”, Marx expressed certain views on castes and division of labour.

“Modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labour, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power.” (On Colonialism, Moscow edition 1974, p. 85)

“I know that the English millocracy intend to endow India with railways with the exclusive view of extracting at diminished expenses the cotton and other raw materials for their manufactures.” (p. 84)

“All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both.” (p. 85)

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Only by following the path of class struggles that are waged from a correct perspective against exploitation of labour, is it possible for the working class to transform various forms of “faulty social relations” (to use Marx’s expressions) and liberate itself from the slavery to the class of masters.

If all the lower castes in society are part of the working class and if they are living within traditional division of labour based on exploitation, then elimination of faulty relations of labour alone will be the correct solution for the liberation of those castes.

Marx’s observations on castes in volume one of ‘Capital’ that appeared in 1867:

“Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detail labourer, by reproducing, and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop, the naturally developed differentiation of trades which it found ready to had in society at large. On the other hand, the conversion of fractional work into the life-calling of one man, corresponds to the tendency shown by earlier societies, to make trades hereditary; either to petrify them into castes, or whenever definite historical conditions beget in the individual a tendency to vary in a manner incompatible with the nature of castes, to ossify them into guilds. Castes and guilds arise from the action of the same natural law that regulates the differentiation of plants and animals into species and varieties, except that when a certain degree of development has been reached, the heredity of castes and exclusiveness of guilds are ordained as a law of society.” (p. 321. Moscow edition 1974).

Here, at the end of these words, Marx cited the words of another writer as a footnote:

“The arts also have…in Egypt reached the requisite degree of perfection. For it is the only country where artificer may not in any way meddle with the affairs of another class of citizens, but must follow that calling alone which by law is hereditary in their clan….In other countries it is found that tradesmen divide their attention between too many objects. At one time they try agriculture, at another they take to commerce, at another they busy themselves with two or three occupations at once. In free countries, they mostly frequent the assemblies of the people…In Egypt, on the contrary, even artificer is severely punished if he meddles with affairs of State, or carries on several trades at once. Thus there is nothing to disturb their application to their calling….Moreover, since, they inherit from their forefathers numerous rules, they are eager to discover fresh advantages.” (pp. 321-22)

The handicrafts reached such a stage in Egypt since it was a rule that they ought to remain in those trades only. They were not allowed to pursue another trade. If they do, they will have punishments. Hence, every trade reached there to a stage of specialized occupation.

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