Category: Political Science Notes

In this article we will discuss about the Role of Muslim Politics in India’s Struggle for Independence.

Muslim politics played a very important part in India in country’s freedom struggle. The Muslims, from the very beginning, formed an important community in India along with vast the Hindu majority and no national problem could amicably be solved unless both the communities worked together in the spirit of mutual adjustment and understanding.

In 1857, the Britishers had taken power at least nominally from the Muslims and as such for a long time the former remained under the impression that the latter might try to get back their lost power. Accordingly the government did not follow policy of encouraging the Muslims. The result was that vast majority of the Muslims became socially, economically and culturally backward.

This attitude of the government, however, changed in 1871 when Sir William Hunter in his book. ‘The Indian Musalmans’ tried to stress that the Muslims were so weak that they could not rebel against powerful British empire. Moreover, as the time passed, the government also felt interested that the gap between the Hindus and the Muslims should narrow down.

In order to win over the Muslims, Principal Beck of Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College, played a leading role and took initiative. He could convince Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a leading Muslim leader, that the interests of the Muslims lay in supporting the government and siding with it, rather with than the nationalist.

Cross Invites Crescent:

Sir Syed Ahmed had all along been a nationalist and always pleaded that both the major communities i.e., the Hindus and the Muslims should work in unison. He quite often said, “If united we can support each-other. If not, the effect of one against the other would tend to the distinction and down fall of both.”

But under the influence of Beck, same Sir Syed Ahmed began to criticise the Congress as well as the Hindus parties. He now began to plead that if elections were held in India without any special safeguards for the Muslims, the result was bound to be permanent domination of the Hindus over the Muslims.

He also founded Indian Patriotic Association with the object of making it clear to the members of British Parliament that Congress wrongly claimed that whole Indian nation was behind it.

He also laid the foundation of Annual Muslim Education Conference in 1886. In 1893, he founded Mohammedan Defense Association of upper India, with Beck as one of its Secretaries.

The Association tried to convince British authorities that democratic system of government was most unsuited to India. In one of the communications the Association said, “It is imperative for the Britishers and Muslims to unite with a view to fighting these agitators and prevent the introduction of democratic form of government unsuited to the needs and genius of the country.”

Not only this but he also tried to bring about religious re-approachment between the Muslims and the Christians. In the words of Shah Din, “He tried to bring about a religious re-approachment between Mohammedans and Christians as he was fully aware that so long as religious antagonism, suspicion and distrust subsisted between the Cross and the Crescent, so long was it hopeless to expect either that the Indian Muslims should become loyally attached to the British rule or that their Christian rulers should on their part learn to regard them as loyal subjects and entitled as such to protection and patronge.”

He also founded M.A.O. College at Aligarh. Lord Lytton, while laying the foundation stone of this college said that aim of the college was to make the Musalmans of India worthy and useful subjects of British Crown.

He supported ilbert Bill and the principle of parity of justice between the English and the Indians. He then began to preach that India was yet not prepared for a popular form of government and that Congress movement was seditious one. According to him under the Congress rule the Muslims will not be much benefited.

The British government gradually began to feel that their future in India could be secure only if two great religious communities fought with each other and also that the government should side with the Muslims.

Sir John wrote in 1894, “The better class of Mohammedans are a source of strength to us and not of weakness. They constitute a comparatively small but energetic minority of population whose political interests are identical with ours, and under no circumstances would prefer Hindu domination over ours.”

Then came the partition of Bengal. Though Lord Curzon pleaded that the aim of partition of the province was to have administratively better control over it, yet in actual practice, according to many critics, it was reward, to the Muslims of their loyalty.

It was felt by the British government that once a Muslim dominated separate province was created, then the Muslims shall be happy and continue to extend their loyalty to the government.

It was, however, misfortune of British government that the plan had to be withdrawn. But it appears that the British government was determined to follow a policy by which two major Indian communities were made to fight with each-other.

The ball was set rolling by Mr. Archbold, Principal, Aligarh Government College. In a letter to Sir Agha Khan, he wrote that Colonel Dunlop Smith, Private Secretary to H.E., the Viceroy had written to him that His Excellency was agreeable to receive a Muslim deputation and that a formal request be made to that effect.

Archbold, however, suggested that such a letter should go under the signature of some representative Muslims and the deputationists should give an assurance of their loyalty to the government.

The deputation should also appreciate the decision of the government that India is to be taken on the path of self-government but should stress that if the principle of election was, introduced that was bound to very adversely effect the interests of minorities.

In order to protect the interests of the Muslims it was, therefore, essential and it should lay stress that either the principle of nomination or that of representation by religion should be introduced. A demand should also be made that some representation may also be given to the Zamindars. He even offered to prepare a draft of the memorandum to be submitted to the His Excellency.

Accordingly a deputation of the Muslims waited on Lord Minto which demanded representation on elected bodies for the Muslims.

The Viceroy in reply said, “I am firmly convinced as I believe you to be, that any electoral representation in India would be doomed to be mischievous failure which aimed at granting personal enfranchisement of the beliefs and traditions of the communities comprising the population of this continent.”

In this way demand for separate electorate was planned and fully met.

The Viceroy then wrote to the Secretary of State, Lord Morley that nothing short of a separate electorate will satisfy the Muslims of India. Morley was in the first instance not satisfied with the proposal made for separate electorate, but ultimately under Minto’s pressure he had to agree and ultimately the system of separate electorate was introduced under Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909.

In this way though the government simply accepted the demand of the Muslims to have separate electorate yet actually it engineered it and thus government sowed the seeds of differences between the two major Indian communities, which ultimately resulted in the partition of the country in 1947.

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Stalinism and de-Stalinisation were for few years’ hotly-talked topics and students of Marxism and post-Marxist thought took interest in this issue. But it is surprising to note that none of these two terms had an official seal. De-Stalinisation started its journey from the Twentieth Party Congress of CPSU in February 1956.

Though the historians view in this line none officially uttered the words. Denunciation of Stalinist methods and tactics is treated as de-Stalinisation. Just this much. The bombshell of Khruschev’s speech is generally regarded as the basis of de-Stalinisation. But the speech cannot be treated as the real foundation of de-Stalinisation because it did not contain any new information about the mischiefs that were supposed to have been done by Stalin.

All his misdeeds, errors and mischiefs were known to everyone. But no one had the courage to protest. The death of Stalin in 1953 opened the flood-gates of protest and de-Stalinisation got maximum publicity. So we can say that both the contents and other aspects of de-Stalinisation are quite feeble and unworthy in nature.

The torture and atrocity by Stalin is beyond all sorts of condemnation. But at the same time it is required to be remembered that the political chaos and uncertainty created by the death of Lenin could not be put into check without the methods adopted by Stalin. From the standpoint of stability, unity in the party and peace in society the unethical activities of Stalin had certain amount of utility, but from a neutral point of view it is definitely condemnable.

The relation between politics and morality or ethics is still an issue of controversy. But this does not rule out the scope of criticism. That is, the activities of Stalin are not above criticism. Here again we hold the view that Stalin committed certain inhuman activities.

The concentration camp was undoubtedly the most heinous creation of the Stalinist era and the most remarkable achievement of Khrushchev was the abolition of these camps. In our post-mortem analysis we can say that numerous changes were introduced in Russia to remove the black spots of the Stalin-era, but no remarkable success was achieved.

The excessive emphasis on heavy industries of the Stalinist era continued. There was no substantial improvement in agriculture sector. After Stalin’s death several attempts were made to decentralise and minor success was achieved. But all these could not bring about an air of openness and ensure complete decentrali­sation. The foundation of communist despotism remained unimpaired.

Kolakowski writes, “The abandonment of mass terror was important for human security, but it did not affect the state’s absolute power over the individual, it did not confer on citizen’s any institutional rights on infringe the state and party monopoly. The principle of totalitarian government was upheld, whereby human beings are the property of the state”.

So we hold the view that the condemnation of Stalinism as an embodiment of torture and autocracy was not worthy. It should be maintained that the rise of Stalinism or de-Stalinisation is chiefly due to the fact that some people could not tolerate Stalin and his method of administration and policy.

“The only communist regimes in the world are the Leninist-Stalinist pattern on Stalin’s death the Soviet system changed from a personal tyranny to that of an oligarchy”.

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Read this essay to learn about Alienation. After reading this essay you will learn about: 1. Definition and Nature of Alienation 2. Rise and Development of Alienation 3. Marx’s Theory 4. The German Ideology 5. Effects 6. Types 7. Emancipation.

Definition and Nature of Alienation:

According to COD alienation is the state or experience of being alienated. A state of depersonalisation or loss of identity in which the self seems unreal.

Alienate means cause to feel isolated. Lose or destroy the support or sympathy. But the dictionary meaning of alienation though paves the path for better understanding of the concept; it is not enough for forming a comprehensive idea.

Rousseau and Marx used the concept in their political philosophies and in the twentieth century this has been widely analysed by a good number of thinkers. In this analysis we shall primarily confine ourselves within the Marxian sense. But before him Rousseau developed the idea in his mind.

The author of the article Alienation published in Bottomore’s a Dictionary of Marxist Thought says:

“In Marx’s sense an action through which (or a state in which) a person, a group, an institution or a society becomes (or remains) alien (1) to the results or products of its own activity (and to the activity itself) or to the nature in which it lives or to other human beings. Thus conceived alienation is always self-alienation i.e., the alienation of man (of his self) from himself (from his human possibilities) through himself (through his own activity). And self-alienation is not just one among the forms of alienation but the very essence and basic structure of alienation”.

Alienation has another manifestation. It is not simply a concept but a real picture of a capitalist society. If it is so then we may treat it as an appeal for a revolutionary change of society.

Marx intended to emphasize that alienation is the primary cause of dehumanisation and both alienation and dehumanisation are curse of a bourgeois society.

Meszaros in his noted work Marx’s Theory of Alienation explains the concept in the following way: “Alienation is an eminently historical concept.” If man is alienated from something, as a result of certain causes the interplay of events and circumstances in relation to man as the subject of this alienation which manifest themselves is a historical framework. Meszaros calls it a historical idea or concept because it did not arise all on a sudden.

In a capitalist society the system of production and the nature of the economy created an atmosphere which ultimately resulted in alienation. Alienation is not a negligible aspect of a bourgeois society. Its tentacles spread almost every part of society and in that sense it is general.

It is said that:

(a) Man is alienated from nature,

(b) From himself, that is from his own activity,

(c) From his species-being,

(d) And, finally, he is alienated from his fellow citizens.

What is of importance is that there are foot-prints of alienation in every nook and corner of a capitalist society.

In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscript 1844, Marx made the following remark: Man’s species being, both nature and his spiritual species properly, into a being alien to him, into a means to his individual existence, his human being.

Man is estranged from the product which he produces with his own labour, with his own intelligence and physical capacity. He becomes, due to the curse of alienation, simply a machine.

We here quote a part of Meszaros’ comment he makes about Marx’s idea on alienation: “Thus Marx’s conception of alienation embraces the manifestations of man’s estrangement from nature and from himself on the one hand and the expressions of this process in the relationship of man-mankind and man-man on the other”.

Rise and Development of Alienation:

Since alienation is an important part of Marx’s philosophy the scholars have displayed active interest in its various aspects. George Lukacs is of opinion that Marx’s theory of alienation can be traced to Hegel’s Protestantising Critique of positivity.

In this critique Hegel rejects as dead those human relationships or institutions in which persons give only an outward and constrained conformity, but concerning which they lack a freely given inward conviction.

Gouldner says:

The roots of the theory of alienation, then, reach down into the rejection of “constraint” into the disjunction in which constraint is experienced as powerful but wrong; it is a response to the perception of this violation of grammar of societal rationality and an effort to overcome such an unpermitted social world.

The spiritual world is a world of corruption and slavery. It is uncontrolled absolutely by few churchmen. Ordinary people are deprived of unhindered access to the temple of God. Naturally the church or temple or any holy place is alien to them.

Neither protestation nor grumbling has any effect. Common people have no feeling for the world they live in. It is alien to them. This is the picture of alienation generally found in religious world.

Rousseau is the real progenitor of Marx so far as the idea of alienation is concerned, because he spoke of this concept in the most unequivocal terms.

He started in Social Contract with the famous declaration:

“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.” Rousseau says that from the moment of his birth man is the victim of alienation. Man is born in a society and then he is alienated from it.

This alienation is to be removed through the formation of a new society whose mechanism is social contract. A new body formed on the basis of certain principles can destroy the possibility of alienation.

The formation of body politic alone cannot remove alienation. The whole body politic will be administered by the principle of general will and this general will is the sovereign.

In other words, introduction of direct democracy is the only way out from the menace of alienation. In Rousseau’s judgment enlightenment and the all-round development of reason were the root causes of alienation, because these invited fraud and corruption. This led Rousseau to revolt against reason and progress of science and civilization.

In this connection I quote a beautiful remark of J. S. McClelland. “Rousseau’s insistence that the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of force and fraud is an ideological statement”.

Rousseau speaks of alienation from nature. He is of opinion that when a good thing is out of hands of God it finally comes to be vicious. Degeneration in all its forms steals the virtue of goodness and man comes to be its victim.

Finally civilization comes to be the victim of this degeneration. Man is separated from his near and dear ones, from his environment. Man’s most dear wishes remain unfulfilled.

In the state of nature there was no existence of alienation. For that reason he suggested to build up a new society which would facilitate the revival of old state of nature and at the same time destroy alienation. Money and wealth are chiefly responsible for the alienation because these have corrupted man’s mind and self centred.

The exorbitant love for money leads him to earn more and more money and this is a vital factor of the rise of alienation. We think that Rousseau rightly diagnosed the cause of alienation.

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) threw sufficient light on the concept of alienation and Marx agreed with most of the views of Feuerbach. We have already stated that Feuerbach strongly critici
zed the prevailing concept of religion and in that connec­tion he opposed the religion-created alienation.

Feuerbach said that “man is not a self-alienated God, but God is self-alienated man” God is created by man, but he is above man and is separated from man in all respects. He is estranged from man and Feurbach calls it alienation.

In Feurbach’s opinion religion is the best example of estrangement or alienation. He further says that it is peculiar that the religion or God is man’s own creation and ultimately he is separated from it. Naturally if man wants to make him alienation-free, the best way is de-alienation.

Feuerbach confined himself within the religious alienation and Marx did not agree with this, because he was of opinion that alienation was of more than one form. This was first pointed out by Hess.

Hess did not agree with Feuerbach’s one type alienation. Marx also agreed with Hess and this he noted in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. “Marx praised Hegel for having grasped the self-creation of man as a process, objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and transcend­ence of this alienation. But he criticized Hegel for having identified objectification with alienation and for having regarded man as self-consciousness and the aliena­tion of man as the alienation of his consciousness” Bottomore (ed) A Dictionary of Marxist Thought.

Marx’s Theory of Alienation:

Both The German Ideology and Paris Manuscripts have elaborately analysed the theory of alienation. In the Paris Manuscripts Marx has used the term alienation of labour or alienated labour.

What did Marx actually mean by alienation or alienated labour? We shall quote a lengthy passage from his Paris Manuscripts. He said: “The worker is related to the product of his labour as to an alien object. The object he produces does not belong to him, dominates him and only serves in the long run to increase his poverty. Secondly, alienation appears not only in the result, but also in the process of production and productive activity itself. The worker is not at home in his work which he views only as a means of satisfying others’ needs. It is an activity directed against himself, that is, independent of him, and does not belong to him. Thirdly, alienated labour succeeds in alienating man from his species. Species life, productive life, life creating life turns into a mere means of sustaining the worker’s individual existence and man is alienated from his fellowmen. Finally, nature itself is alienated from man, who thus loses his own inorganic body.” Marx speaks of these four types of alienation.

The alienation, he describes, is primarily the product of capitalist system of economy. But if the capitalism is in its childhood stage the alienation does-not seem to be its basic characteristic.

When it sufficiently develops the alienation surfaces prominently. Explaining Marx’s standpoint or view Kolakowski makes the follow­ing observation: “Private property is a consequence and not a cause of the alienation of labour. In the developed conditions of capitalist appropriation the alienation of labour is expressed by the fact that the worker’s own labours as well as its own products have become alien to him. Labour has become a commodity like any other, which means that the worker himself has become a commodity and is obliged to sell himself at the market price determined by the minimum cost of maintenance; wages thus tend inevitably to fall to the lowest level that will keep the workmen alive and able to rear children”.

In other words, the worker works hard and this he does not for his own satisfaction or benefits but for the benefits of the capitalist. He grumbles, he remains dissatisfied. But he is helpless.

Marx has also said:

“The worker only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home”.

Marx draws our attention to this point. He says that the working class alone is not the victim of alienation. The entire capitalist society comes under the evil influence of alienation.

In the Holy Family he writes:

“The propertied class and the class of proletariat represent the same human self-alienation. But the former feels comfortable and confirmed in the self-alienation knowing that this alienation is its own power and possessing its semblance of human existence. The latter feels itself ruined in the alienation and sees in it impotence and the actuality of an inhuman existence”.

Alienation produces double effects. The capitalist class, though alien­ated, produces wealth. The working class is alienated but is the victim of poverty and exploitation. There is hardly any good relation or coordination between the two classes though both are indispensable for production.

The German Ideology and Alienation:

In the German Ideology Marx and Engels have discussed the alienation. But instead of using the word alienation they have used “estrangement” which also signifies alienation. 

According to Marx-Engels one of the basic characteristics of capitalist society is the division of labour and within this there lie numerous contradictions. The worker is separated from family. But normally this should not happen.

Again, in a capitalist society, families are opposed to each other. The produce is not properly distributed, that is, there is unequal distribution of commodities. This is also a type of contradiction and leads to alienation.

The conditions in the family, relations that grow within the family and other related matter are also the product of capitalist system. These are the potential sources of alienation. None gets rid of it because everything is inextricably related with capitalism.

Marx-Engels write in the German Ideology:

“Out of the very contradiction between the particular and the common interests, the common interest assumes an independent form as the state, which is divorced from the real individual and collective interests, and at the same time as an illusory community as long as man remains in naturally evolved society, that is as long as a cleavage between the particular and the common interests, as long as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally divided man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him which enslaves instead of being controlled by him. As soon as division of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape”.

Some critics have alleged that compared with Paris Manuscripts Marx uses the word alienation or alienated labour less frequently in The German Ideology. But Kolakowski says that this allegation is baseless because in many places he and Engels have used the alienation or estrangement.

In The German Ideology Marx and Engels have said that division of labour was the real villain, that it was the root cause of alienation. The improvement of tools has intensified and universalized the division of labour and this, in turn, led to the alienation.

Kolakowski observes:

“Division of labour leads necessarily to commerce, i.e., the transformation of objects produced by man into vehicles of abstract exchange value. When things become commodities, the basic pre-miss of alienation already exists”.

Hence the real culprit is division of labour. Furthermore, without division of labour the modern industry cannot proceed at all. It is, however, evident that in The German Ideology Marx and Engels both were fully conscious of the alienation.

Let us quote few lines from the German Ideology:

“Individuals have always regarded themselves as the point of departure; their relations are part of the real process of their lives. How can it b
e, then, that their relationships become independent of them, that the forces of their own lives gain control over them? The answer, in a word, is the division of labour, the degree of which depends on the extent to which productive forces have developed.”

In the German Ideology they have further observed:

“For the proletarians the condition of their life, labour and with it all the conditions of existence of modern society, have become something extraneous, something over which they as separate individuals, have no control, and over which no social organisation can give them control”.

Effects of Alienation:

Marx and Engels have not consistently analyses the inhuman effects of alienation. The central idea of this alienation is it is the core of the entire capitalist system and it is the primary reason of the dehumanisation of man in general and workers in particular.

As a result of alienation man simply becomes an instrument of produc­tion. All his good and artistic qualities are lost.

“Alienated labour deprives man of his species-life, other human beings become alien to him, communal existence is impossible, and life is merely a system of conflicting egoism. Private property, which arises from alienated labour, becomes in its turn a source of alienation, which it fosters increasingly”.

The effect of alienation is it paralyses the entire society. Man is paralyzed; he forgets social and ethical aspects of life. In society there develops social relation among men. This social relation based on mutual love, respect, and give-and-take relation is, in a sense, elixir of life.

Man draws inspiration from the social relation. But the division of labour destroys all these aspects and man finally becomes a tool of production of various commodities. The worker is reduced to a mere animal or a lifeless instrument of production.

Physiologically a worker is a man and this much only. In the real sense he is not a man. Again, the capitalist is not free from the bad effects of alienation. A capitalist is a human being no doubt. But as a consequence of alienation he is simply a money-making machine. He forgets social life.

To a capitalist money is the supreme good and all other things are inferior to it. A worker is practically forced to think in the same line. Thus the whole society is dehumanised as a result of alienation.

Types of Alienation:

In Capital, The German Ideology, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) and many other works Marx, along with Engels, has discussed various types of alienation. These may be categorized as political alienation, economic alienation, alienation of human power etc. We shall start with political alienation.

According to Marx man plays double role he is a member of society and, at the same time, he is a member of state which is also called political system. As a member of society he has his own views or conception about religion, morality, ethics, values and culture and he always endeavours for the fulfillment of these.

An individual cannot avoid society or he cannot live outside it. He is also a member of the state or political system. The problem lies in the fact that though the individual is a member of the state, he is not fully free to do his duties. This is primarily due to the fact that the economy and administration of the state are dominated by the bourgeoisie and it is so controlled as to safeguard the interests of this class.

In the state, common people are not free to take their political an economic decision freely. It is because the capitalists control the entire state for their own benefits, and, in that situation, general public are practically alienated from the political and economic structure. Again, in capitalist system, people have very little or no scope of participation in the affairs of the state.

Again, in the economic field, people are simply wage-earners and this wage is subsistence level that is somehow to maintain the physical existence of the wage-earner and his family. Again, the bureaucracy of the state is all powerful and the common people have no scope of participation. This is the central idea of political alienation as Marx and Engels witnessed in their contemporary society.

The economic alienation is the most important form of alienation and both Marx and Engels have emphasized it.

In the Economic and Political Manuscripts (also called the Paris Manuscripts) and Capital (Vol. III) Marx elaborately analyses the economic alienation.

He has said that in the primitive mode of production there was no division of labour because the productive system was not developed at all. But, with the progress of productive system and capitalism, division of labour ultimately came to be an integral part of capitalist economy. For the betterment of economy and other compulsive reasons the capitalists were forced to introduce division of labour and with the progress of the capitalist system the division of labour gradually intensified.

With the improvement of the division of labour there appeared spectacular loss of freedom of the workers. Because the workers of one industry had no freedom to move from one industry to another.

Marx said:

Since his own labour has been alienated from himself by the sale of his labour power, has been appropriated by the capitalists and incorporated with capitals, it must be in the production process, be realized in a product that does not belong to him.

The labourer constantly produces material, objective wealth but in the form of capital of an alien power that dominates and exploits him. The capitalist also produces labour power in the form of subjective source of wealth separated from the objects in which it can alone be realized.

In expansion of capitalism, growth of wealth creates only wage labourer. A barrier or alienation is created between capitalists and worker. The growth of capitalism only perpetuates alienation.

Marx further says:

“Capital shows itself more and more as a social power and its agent is the capitalist. The capitalist enjoys the right to appropriate values created by the workers. On the contrary, the worker is not the owner of the product he produces. Capital becomes a strange, independent social power. It stands opposed to the society and opposed to the interest of labourers. The contradiction between capital as a general social power and as a power of private capitalists over the social conditions of production develops into an ever more irreconcilable clash.”

This clash or contradiction is basically due to the alienation of worker from the mainstream of productive system. Marx’s special emphasis is that a capitalist system cannot get rid of alienation because there is contradiction.

Marx has also said that in the field of alienation technological progress has a special importance Machinery is not guided by man; rather man is guided by machine. Labourer has no opportunity to work with the machinery in accordance with his own will or advantage. Rather, labourer will have to cooperate with the machinery.

It is a fact that machinery helps man to produce huge amount of commodities but its dark side is it has made man its slave. How the capitalist productive apparatus intensifies the alienation.

Kolakowski beautifully says:

“Work presents itself to him as an alien occupation, and he forfeits his essence as a human being, which is reduced to purely biological activities. Labour becomes only a means to individual animalized life and the social essence of man becomes a mere instrument of individual existence. Alienated labour deprives man of his species- life, other human beings become alien to him, communal existence is impossible and life is merely a system of conflicting egoism”.

If we go through Marx’s writings we shall find another type of alienation and it is alienation of human power.

Ma
rx says:

“Man is directly a natural. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand furnished with natural powers of life he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities as impulses. On the other hand as a natural corporeal, sensuous, objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his impulses exist outside him, as objects independent of him. Yet these objects are objects of his need essential objects indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential power.”

What Marx emphasizes here is that as a natural human being he has certain desires, impulses, liking and disliking. He has the desire to fulfill his desires. But the tragedy of the capitalist system is man has no power to satisfy his desires, to translate the impulses into reality, because he does not possess the power. The capitalist system has snatched away that power.

Marx further observes:

“Man is not merely a natural being, he is a human being. That is to say he is a being for himself. Therefore, he is a species-being and has to confirm and manifest himself as such both in his being and in his knowing. Neither nature objectively nor nature subjectively is directly given in a form of adequate to the human being.”

From the above two passages we can draw certain conclusion:

(1) Man is a natural being.

(2) As a natural being he has certain impulses and natural needs and he wants to satisfy them.

(3) Man lives in a society.

His life and all sorts of activities are performed and satisfied with the help of others and in association with others. But in the system of capitalist economy he is not getting these opportunities.

The capitalist system virtually separates one man from another. The needs of man are not fixed, always changing, but he is not capable of keeping himself abreast of change. It is because the capitalist system has enormously truncated his power and ability.

Suppressing his wishes and all sort of impulses he is forced to the power of the society that is the authority of the capitalist system.

Marx is of opinion that alienation is peculiar to class; society workers are alienated from the mainstream of society (both politically and economically). They are the real agents of production. They create wealth but they are deprived of the benefit of wealth.

The system of the division of labour has created an atmosphere of alienation. It is beyond the capacity of the workers to rectify or change it in their favour.

The workers are alienated in the field of production due to the strict division of labour. Workers are converted into machine and they work just like machine. They have impulses but have no time to feel them.

“In bourgeois society men acquire values in which they cannot find satisfaction, they are frustrated and are therefore, prone to actions which are wrong or illegal according to the moral rules and laws which embody these values. The morality of a bourgeois society is not a truly human morality; it does not allow men to make the most of their natural capacities”.

Plamenatz, however, does not agree with Marx that the alienation is the product of capitalism and class society.

Emancipation from Alienation:

We have pointed out the harmful effects of alienation. It paralyses man’s artistic aspects of life, it dehumanises him. Because of alienation man fails to establish himself as a man. Hence it is the primary objective of man to get rid of the alienation. But the problem is to think to emancipate from alienation and finally to translate it into reality are very different issues.

Only the abolition of private property cannot ensure the emancipation from alienation. The tentacles of alienation are spread far and wide and sometimes they have gone into the deep of society.

The primary source of alienation lies in the system of private property. This was the opinion of Marx and Engels. Even before them Saint-Simon thought almost in the same line. The problem is how emancipation from alienation is possible remains a million dollar question.

The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts were first published in 1932 and the Grundrisse in 1939 and they were republished in 1953. The Marxists are of opinion that the publication or republication have thrown profuse light on various aspects of Marxist philosophy but throws little light on the emancipation of alienation.

In The German Ideology Marx and Engels casually mention Rousseau’s Contract Social. Perhaps Marx and Engels thought of Rousseau’s ambitious plan of establishing a new society which he called public person and we call it an ideal society based on Platonic model of idealism.

Rousseau thought that setting up of such a society would be capable of emancipating people from alienation which was the conse­quence of the development of art, science and culture. But we are not sure whether Marx and Engels thought in the line of Rousseau.

There will be an end to all speculation if we look at the complete philosophical thought of Marx and Engels and their numerous suggestions. They were all along against the system of private property which, according to Marx, created disastrous effects in society.

In other words, the system of private property is the root of all evils including alienation. It paralyses practically everything of man’s “species-life”. Hence the abolition of private property shall be the first step towards the emanci­pation from alienation.

Along with the abolition of private property Marx also suggested that religion must be abolished. Both private property system and the system of God were simultaneously responsible for the alienation. Private property system means capitalism.

In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx elaborately analyses various aspects and forms of alienation.

“The criticism of alienation was not an end in itself for Marx. His aim was to pave the way for a radical revolution and for the realization of communism understood as the reintegration of man, his return to himself, the supersession of man’s self-alienation and the positive abolition of private property”.

The Communist Manifesto ends with the following declaration:

“The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

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After reading this article you will learn about the Marxian Theory of State:- 1. Introduction to Marxian Theory of State 2. Definition of State 3. Origin of State 4. State and Irreconcilable Classes 5. State as an Instrument of Exploitation 6. Evaluation of Marxian Theory of State 7. A Critique of Marxian Theory of State.

Introduction to Marxian Theory of State:

Marxian theory of the state is basically different from pluralist and elitist theories. According to the former there are manifold agencies and groups in society and the position of the state is just like a neutral agency whose function is to settle disputes neutrally. But it is wishful thinking that the state maintains neutrality among the different conflicting groups and classes.

Rather, it always acts in favour of economi­cally dominant class. Marx and Engels reject this pluralist notion of state. The elitist theories hold the view that only a small group, called elite, having higher and better skill and ability, controls political power.

Engels has said that the minority group qualified and called to rule by the given degree of economic development. The power base, then, is the ownership and control of society’s productive resources.

The elite group, that controls the forces of production, ultimately controls the political power. Marxism sees and interprets state from a quite different perspective which in final analysis is the rejection of both pluralist and elitist theories.

It views the state in the light of classes and class struggle and believes that a classless society will be the final goal of the struggle. The classic view of Marxian theory of state is to be found in Communist Manifesto.

Here Marx and Engels make the following observation:

“The executive power of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

Commenting on this view of Marx and Engels the writer of the article published in Bottomore edited A Dictionary of Marxist thought, writes:

“This is a more complex statement than appears at first sight, but it is too summary, and lends itself to oversimplification – however it does represent the core proposition of Marxism on the subject of the state”.

It is to be noted here that what is popularly known as the Marxian theory of the state is nowhere clearly and elaborately stated by Marx. Only his life-long friend Engels has dealt with the matter in his the origin of Family, Private Property and State.

Later on, Lenin in his State and Revolution elaborates the contention of Marx and Engels. Besides, in numerous other works, Marx and Engels have made passing or cryptic remarks about state which provide potential sources or materials for building up a theory of state.

A few more words may be added to our present analysis. In fact, Marxist theory of state of the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century has been reformulated by the continental thinkers. So long Stalin was alive he did not allow any country or individual to commence research work about numerous aspects of Marx’s and Engel’s thought.

After his death in 1953 tremen­dous enthusiasm was shown by scholars throughout the globe. The tangible consequence is that the scholars of various countries have started to interpret various concepts of Marx and Engels in new light and perspective. Marxism, today, is not the property of few blunt-headed and less educated politicians.

From the extensive research work three views of state have come out. The state is the product of class divisions of society, the state is an instrument of class rule and finally when the society becomes classless there will be no need of state. It will wither away. These three assertions build up the whole fabric of Marxian theory of state. All these are connected with each other.

Definition of State:

In the German Ideology Marx and Engels have made the following observation regarding state “out of this very contradiction between the interest of the indi­vidual and that of the community, the latter takes an independent form as the State, divorced from the real interests of individual and community.”

In such a state there are conflicts and struggles, but all these are illusory, that they are not real. Mere mock fighting. No one is interested in setting up a true government or democracy and in abolishing class division.

They have further said in the same book that the state is the political form of class rule. In their own words “Since the state is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests, and in which the whole civil society of an epoch is epitomized, it follows that all institutions are set up with the help of the state and are given a political form.”

There is an Introduction by Engels to The Civil War in France (1891) where he criticizes the philosophical theory of state elaborated by Hegel. The state is neither the “realization of the idea” nor March to the kingdom of God on earth.

It is absolutely a material conception devised by men to meet material needs. These needs, of course, belong to a particular class or group of people. Engels writes in this Introduction “In reality the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after the victorious struggle for class supremacy”. The state, according to Marx and Engels, is a machine of class rule and it is also an evil.

In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx points out that the state is a political or administrative unit consisting of bureaucracy and army. Elsewhere Marx and Engels have said three agencies combined together constitute a political form and this is called state.

These agencies are bureaucracy, army and police. In fact, these are the three arms of any modern bourgeois state. In The Civil War in France Marx has added judicial organ to the three arms of bourgeois state.

The Russian state, he said, was completely dependent on the police and army and with the help of these two the Prussian Government established autocratic rule.

In Grundrisse Marx has said that state is a complex synthesis of multiple determinations.

In Politics Ideology and the Stale Sally Hibbin writes:

“One cannot take the state as an unproblematic given nor reduce it to one of its multiple determinations. The state is both the point of departure and the point of arrival in political analysis since it can only be comprehended after a complex process of theoretical analysis and synthesis.”

Of all these definitions, we think the most significant one is the state is a complex synthesis. The concept of state can never be confined within certain specific denominations. With the change of economic, political and situations or conditions the managers of the capitalist state change the methods of administration and attitudes to various issues.

It is because the sole purpose of the managers is to keep intact the supreme hold over the state.

Origin of State:

Marx and Engels studied the views of the three contractualists and found their view unacceptable because the state could never be the product of any contract. From the study of history both Marx and Engels reached the conclusion that it was the product of class rule and the dominant class uses it to maintain its supremacy.

That is, the state is man-made and it was created to fulfill specific purposes Marxian theory of the state is based on the foundation of historical materialism. It has nothing to do with contract. It is the prod
uct of class antagonism.

In The Origin of Family, Private Property and State Engels has surveyed the gradual development of state. It is man- made no doubt, but the artefact of the state is based on scientific reason and perfect logic. Here lies the novelty of their idea.

They have not imagined of any state of nature which according to Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau was either intolerable or inconvenient. On the contrary, Marx and Engels have shown the development of state from the primitive communal stage to the industrial period.

Only in the primitive period there was no state in modern sense because there were no classes and private property. To sum up, the state represents a particular class, used as a machine by that class and protects the interests of the economically dominant class Both Marx and Engels have elaborated the rise and development of state as a political organisation in The German Ideology.

Summarizing the views of Marx and Engels in Anti-Duhring, The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State Plamenatz says “The need for the state arises from the increasing size of the community and from the extended division of labour inside it. A close study of views expressed by Marx, Engels and Lenin in many of their works reveals that two factors are primarily responsible for the emergence of state. One is division of labour and the other is the class division of society. As the division of labour increases, the society divides itself into classes. With the increase of the size of the community the occupations within it became diverse and specialized. Complex rules and procedures were needed to control them. Complexity created ample room for varied disputes. Primitive way of settling the disputes proved its irrelevance and ineffectiveness. All these together needed an authority with controlling power. Maintenance became the primary function of state. The interests of the classes were irreconcilable.”

Following Engels we can admit that the form of the state depends on how the society is divided into classes but the class structure is dependent on division of labour and system of property Hence the institution of state has not emerged out of nothing. It is a reality and product of real situation.

We quote here the famous observation of Engels:

“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without just as little is it “the reality of ethical idea”, the “image and reality of reason”, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development, it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contra­diction with itself, that it is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. A power above society became necessary”.

It therefore, appears that according to Marx and Engels the state is a reality and it is not an embodiment of Absolute Spirit. The state is the creation of men and it was created to meet certain specific demands of some people who formed a class which was economically most powerful.

The emergence of the state is characterized by the formation of a special group of people engaged only in government and using a special apparatus of coercion for this purpose.

“When there appears such a group of man occupied solely with government, and who in order to rule need a special apparatus of coercion to subjugate the will of others by force prisons, special contingents of men, armies etc. then there appears the state.”

Lenin has said that the appearance of class and the emergence of state as an institution are almost simultaneous. If there were no classes and private property, there would been no necessity of state. This point has been elaborated by Lenin in his small Pamphlet State. Of course Lenin’s views are not different from those of Marx and specially Engels.

Engels in his noted work The Origin of Family, Private Property and State. Engels has elaborately analysed the rise, growth and other aspects of state.

The organs of the state appear partly as a result of the transformation of the previous organs of government that took shape within the tribal system, and partly by means of the elimination of the management organs of the tribal system and their replacement by the new organs.

Thus, the apparatus of the special public power of class society, the so-called state apparatus, gradually takes shape. Following Engels, Lenin has said that the origin of state can be traced to the emergence of economic classes in society and also to the creation of property system.

The organs of the capitalist state also existed in tribal and feudal systems though in different forms. Coercion was the characteristic feature of the tribal system of government and the bourgeois state system inherits that.

State and Irreconcilable Classes:

It has been stressed by Engels that the state is the result of irreconcilability of class interests. Recent researchers have made attempts to show whether the irreconcilable class interests are exclusively responsible for the emergence of state or the state causes the interests of various classes irreconcilable. The issue is to be treated with all seriousness.

The persons having free access to political power can use it to augment the quantum of property or wealth and it is a quite natural tendency on their part. Besides political power they use other means.

However, political power is the chief source of accumulation of property. Accumulation of wealth enhances exploitation.

Plamenatz writes:

“The owners of property acquire, in various ways, rights of property in other people’s labour; they acquire slaves or serfs. Therefore, the exploitation of class by class arises, at least in great part, as a consequence of the emergence of state.”

There is a famous sentence in the Communist Manifesto – “Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another,” So far as the nature of bourgeois state is concerned this is a significant comment.

In this short sentence Marx and Engels have portrayed the real picture of capitalist state. Political power is used to oppress or exploit class or classes. It is well-organized and used by a class.

The economically powerful or dominant class creates access and avenues to the corridor of political power and subsequently uses it for the realization of its own sectorial interests. The appearance of classes, irreconcilability of interests and the inequality between the classes are no doubt responsible for the emergence of state.

Simultaneously the state is the cause of exploitation, oppression and aggravation of inequality. Mere existence of antagonis­tic classes cannot cause oppression. Or even if there is oppression it cannot assume alarming form.

In this connection we can remember the observation of Plamenatz  “Where there is no apparatus of power controlled by one class to the detriment of others there cannot be much class oppression.”

There are two processes the appearance of state and appearance of unequal classes. Do these two processes overlap? Plamenatz says that these two processes do not overlap.

According to Engels the appearance of classes is the cause of the rise of state. But once the state appears and consolidates its power and position it begins to act in favour of the powerful class and the political or state power is used to widen the inequality.

Plamenatz concludes “What Marx and Engels say about connections between two social processes does not accord with their actual description of these processes. They tell us that one process determines the other, when they come to describe one or other of the processes they admit that each has a powerful influence on the other the rise of the state is as much a cause as an effect of the emergence of classes”.

State as an Instrument
of Exploitation:

The general and most popular formulation of Marxist theory of state is to be found in the Communist Manifesto. It is popularly known as the instrumentalist model or the state is an instrument of exploitation.

In numerous places Marx and Engels have expressed that the state is used as a weapon by the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletarians. Two famous remarks of Marx and Engels may be quoted here in support of the above view. These are from the Manifesto.

One is “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” This remark I have already quoted earlier in reference to the definition of state. The second we have quoted in the present analysis several times. This is “political power is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.” In the Socialist Register, 1968, Ralph Miliband says, “This is the classical Marxist view on the subject of the state and it is the only one which is to be found in Marxism-Leninism.”

In regard to Marx himself, and this is also true to a certain extent of Engels as well, it only constitutes what might be called primary view of the state. But there is to be found another view of the state in his work. This is the relative autonomy model. This cannot claim equal status with the instrumentalist model. It is, nonethe­less, of great importance.

The implication of the statement, the state is an instrument of exploitation of class rule is that if there were no unequal classes, with the superior among them needing to use force to maintain the social conditions of their superiority, there would be no state. Because of the unequal distribution of property, one class having the largest share of property or wealth and the dominating class having free access to governmental affairs, the exploitation by the ruling class becomes the character­istic feature of society.

The instrumentalist model of Marxist theory of state emphasizes that the state is simply a weapon of class rule. It never thinks of neutrality among the various classes of society. Whenever there is a conflict between proletariat and capitalists the two most powerful classes of capitalist state, the authority or what may also be called the government always comes forward to protect the capitalists from all types of attack.

It is because the interests of state and capitalists fully coincide. The bourgeois state always fights for the interests of capitalists. This type of state sometimes gives some concessions to the proletarians but it is infinitesimal. The state does it to establish it’s so called neutrality.

We have earlier noted that The German Ideology and the Manifesto of Communist Party are the two primary sources of the instrumentalist model. Reference to Manifesto has already been made.

Now we shall turn to the German Ideology. “By the mere fact that it is a class and no longer an estate, the bourgeoisie is forced to organize itself no longer locally, but nationally and to give a general form to its average interests it is nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois are compelled to adopt, both for internal and external purposes for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.”

Miliband says that this “general form” is nothing but state. The capitalists use this general form of organization to safeguard their property and other interests. It is simply due to the fact that army, bureaucracy and police the three pillars of bourgeois state are under the control of the authority of such state.

In the Poverty of Philosophy published in 1847, Marx again states that political conditions are only the official expression of civil society. The state is always subject to economic conditions. Legislation reflects the will of those who control the economic affairs.

If the state were not an instrument of exploitation there would never arise the necessity of class struggle that is, the struggle between the two dominant or powerful classes of capitalist state. Hence the instrumentalist model of state occupies the most important place in Marxian theory of state.

Why did Marx and Engels say that the political power is an instrument of exploitation? It is observed that in their time there were mature and powerful capitalist states Great Britain, France and USA. Of these three first two were European countries and when they were writing Manifesto both Britain and France established themselves as representative of powerful ruling class.

The persons manning the various branches of state administration were recruited only from the powerful sections of society. Even today this system has not lost its importance. The economic and cultural background of the persons managing the state affairs is the same.

Naturally these persons who are also called elites will make all efforts to use the state as a weapon of protecting the interests of the ruling class. Marx and Engels were so much convinced that they, in various ways, expressed the instrumentalist character of bourgeois state in Manifesto and The German Ideology.

In a developed capitalist economy the sources of production are in the complete control of the bourgeoisie and this control is intensified to consolidate the power and position of bourgeoisie.

By setting up giant industrial organisations the capitalists control the production and also the productive system.

In the capitalist controlled world small business holdings have no place. Both the internal and external markets are under the control of the bourgeois.

Particularly for establishing hegemony over the markets of other states the state machinery is used by the capitalists. The domains of politics and economy coincide. The capitalists form an organization to press their demand and these acts as a powerful pressure group.

Because of the structural constraints the state is called the instrument of exploitation. What do we mean by these structural constraints? If the economy, in all its manifestations, is under the full grip of the bourgeoisie, the state will be the complete reflection of this particular class.

Miliband has said that the state is the instrument of the ruling class because, given its insertion in capitalist mode of production, it cannot be anything else. The economic system or base will be capitalist and the superstructure will be socialist that peculiar situation cannot be imagined. Even it is un-Marxian. There shall be a correspondence between base and superstructure. Antagonism might also appear, but not always. A recent critic has defined the state as an instrument of ruling class.

He says, “The state is the institution or complex of institutions, which bases itself on the availability of forcible coercion by special agencies of society in order to maintain the dominance of a ruling class, preserve the existing property relations from basic change and keep all other classes in subjection.”

This implies that the state consists of an increasingly complex apparatus of domination to defend the existing property relations. This comment of Hal Draper is nothing but the repetition of the view that the state in bourgeois system always acts to protect primarily the interests of the ruling class. Our point is the instrumentalist model of state is a widely accepted notion of Marxist theory of state.

Evaluation of Marxian Theory of State:

The instrumentalist model of Marxian theory of state has been criticized from various angles. Bob Jessop, a recent critic, observes that there is uncertainty in the formulation of the instrumentalist approach. This approach is accompanied by 3 short message and rhetoric.

It suffers from objective analysis. The state, in all cases and in all epochs, is an instrument of the ruling class this is an oversimplification of the whole issue. Bob Jessop is of opinion that it is unjustified to brand the capitalist state as an instrument of exploita
tion.

It has other manifestations. It exploits and at the same time it performs welfare activities. Not a single bourgeois state has neglected the interests of the working class.

It is true that its main sympathy is for the capitalist class. But the parliamentary forms and political consciousness have alerted the state about its primary responsibility towards the teeming millions.

Sometimes the state plays the role of neutrality. It may be rare but it is a fact. In many political systems the bourgeoisie has not succeeded in controlling the politics and economic affairs up to its full satisfaction

In the second half of the nineteenth century the rise of middle class, modification of liberalism and propagation of Fabian Socialism curtailed the meteoric rise of capitalism. Particularly the Fabian socialists were determined to cut the capitalism to size.

The philosophers, intellectuals, politicians, statesmen and policy-makers could not keep them aloof from the growing misery and deprivation of the working class. They did not advocate for the introduction or Marxian socialism through class struggle and violent revolution, but they pleaded for stale interference in the social and economic affairs of the state with the sole purpose of mitigating the misery.

Plamenatz has raised another objection against the instrumentalist approach. He says that in the Origin of Family, Private Property and State Engels says that the state arises to keep peace between the classes having irreconcilable interests. But the classes which exist when the state arises are not classes in the Marxian sense of the class, they are merely groups engaged in various occupations having divergent interests.

The interests of various classes will be irreconcilable when they will be classes in the strictest Marxian sense. So when there are no classes in the proper sense of the term how can their interests be irreconcilable?

In order to raise itself to the level of ruling class, it must be adequately powerful. Mere control of productive forces cannot make a class powerful. It must have sweeping control over politics, culture and other spheres of social life. These objections do not however make the instrumentalist model fully irrelevant.

We are of opinion that sometimes the state decisions go in favour of the working class and common people. It is to be remembered that the capitalist state adopts this neutralist approach simply to camouflage its real motive and the real motive is to safeguard the most vital interests of the capitalists.

This is not mere conjecture or fabricated allegation. History is replete with instances that in Marx’s time and before him the state acted in favour of the ruling class.

A Critique of Marxian Theory of State:

Our survey of Marxian theory of state has dealt with several aspects of the concept. In this section few points are required to be highlighted.

The discussion of this part is based on the essay Marx and The State by Ralph Miliband which was published in the Socialist Register 1965. In this essay Miliband has analysed the Marxian theory of state from historical and contemporary reality.

We think that this approach of Miliband is quite plausible because no thinker can overlook or ignore the influence of contemporary events. The events of contemporary Greek city states created an impact upon the political philosophy of Plato. Similarly Machiavelli or Hobbes or Locke kept in mind the prevailing incidents.

Ralph Miliband observes that Marx has not made any detailed analysis of the theory of state. Marxian theory of state is based on the “interpretations and adaptations made by the Marxists and supporters of Marxism and above all by Lenin. Miliband says that these interpretations and adaptations cannot be taken to constitute an adequate expression of Marx’s own views. This is not because these theories bear no relation to Marx’s views but rather that they emphasize some aspects of his thought to the detriment of others and thus distort by over­simplification.”

Miliband has said that it was not possible for Marx to avoid the influence of contemporary events of the capitalist states of his time particularly of France and Britain. Marx wrote three important books The Class Struggle in France, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France. The Class Struggle in France was written by Marx in 1850.

The Eighteenth Brumaire was written between December 1851 to March 1852 and The Civil War in France in April-May 1871. So within a span of 21 years he wrote these three important books.

The critics of Marxian theory of state garner materials from these three books. The political, social and economic conditions of France during the second half of the 19th century are quite well-known to the students of history.

The authoritarian rule, political turmoil and instability in governmental affairs considerably influenced Marx’s thought system. Miliband has emphasized that aspect.

According to Miliband, Marx had also studied the nature and function of states of Asia. Fie called the Asiatic states as despotic states where the political realm is nothing but the arbitrary will of a particular individual. Marx is quite right in his assessment about the nature of the Asiatic states. The administrative systems of Mughal emperors can be cited as illustrations.

The will of the Mughal emperor was final and new as the ultimate source of authority and sovereign power. The despotic nature of Indian emperors is also revealed is their flamboyant claims that they were ate representatives of God on earth.

Marx closely observed all these things.

Miliband writes:

“It is evident that Marx does view the state in the conditions of Asiatic despotism, as the dominant force in society, independent of and superior to all its members.”

Miliband has dealt with Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat”. In the letter to Weydemeyer in March 1852 he said that the only new thing he said is that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. But unfortunately he has not defined the concept in any specific way. The concept dictatorship of the proletariat constitutes a basic aspect of Marxian theory of state.

So it is necessary to throw light on what Marx actually meant and Miliband had performed that job.

In the words of Miliband:

“The dictatorship of the proletariat is both a statement of the class character of the political power and a description of the political power itself; and that it is in fact the nature of the political power which it describes which guarantees its class character.”

The dictatorship of the proletariat would be the outcome of a socialist revolution. Marx pointed this out in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. Lichtheim in his Marxism, published in 1961, said that Marx’s theory of state is decidedly authoritarian doctrine.

According to Marx the state was to assume dictatorial powers. But Miliband does not agree with this view of Lichtheim. He is of opinion that Marxian theory of state is “decidedly authoritarian” in character is not based on facts or evidence.

Explaining Marx’s stand on the nature of state Lenin said “If the political struggle of the working class assumes violent forms, if the workers set up this revolutionary dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, they commit the terrible crime of violating principles, for in order to satisfy their wretched, vulgar everyday needs, in order to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie instead of laying down their arms and abolishing the state, they give the state a revolutionary and transitory form”.

Ralph Miliband concludes:

“The fact is that, far from bearing any authoritarian imprint, the whole of Marx’s work on the state is pervaded by a powerful anti- authoritarian and anti-bureaucratic bias, not only in the relation to a distant communist society bu
t also to the period of transition which is to precede it. True, the state is necessary in this period. But the only thing which, for Marx, makes it tolerable is popular participation and popular rule. If Marx is to be faulted, it is not for any authoritarian bias, but for greatly understating the difficulties of the libertarian position”.

All critics may not agree with Miliband’s views. But it is a fact that there is a difference between Marx’s words and his real intention. Particularly his term “dictatorship of the proletariat” has been misinterpreted and it has been source of all confusion. There is no doubt that Marx was democratic-minded out and out.

It is inconceivable that a man who wanted to abolish the supremacy of capitalists will ultimately support the supremacy of another class. If Marx were alive for another one or two decade he could give reply to many of the criticisms raised against his theory of state.

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After reading this article you will learn about Robert Owen: 1. Life of Robert Owen 2. Political Ideas of Robert Owen 3. Contribution to the Socialist Movement.

Life of Robert Owen:

In the middle of May 1771 Robert Owen was born. His parents were so poor that they could not bear nominal expenses of his education. When other boys of his age spent their time and energy in reading and playing Owen went out in search of job to earn money. At the age of eleven he was apprenticed to a businessman.

The rest of his life was a record of phenomenal success in business. He then borrowed a meagre amount of money from his brother to open a shop for machinery parts required for cotton textile industry. Goddess of wealth blessed him.

At the age of twenty three he started a cotton textile factory on a partnership basis and he became its manager. This business brought for Owen both wealth and recognition. Within a short time Owen was elected the leader of the business community to which he belonged. He did not want to confine himself only in the business world.

He displayed increasingly his interest in the social problems. Just then he got an opportunity. There was a cotton mill at New Lanark. He purchased the entire cotton mill as well as the village where it was situated. He started to improve the lot of the village.

Robert Owen implemented certain welfare schemes and achieved success forthwith. This brought for him international success. In 1813 he wrote a series of essays entitled a New View of Society.

In 1817 he was requested by a Parliamentary Committee to prepare a report on the relief of the manufacturing poor and he did it.

In the report he analysed the economic and social conditions of machine production and he proposed plans to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. Owen, it is said, was a rational secularist.

He did not mingle religion with politics and welfare activities. He announced his view publicly and this offended many of his fellow industrialists and politicians. They used it for political gains. Though Owen was against religion he was not against Christian ethics and morality.

Robert Owen died in 1858 at the age of 87. The students of socialist thought still remember him for two reasons. One is, even being a big capitalist his heart wept for the suffering and toiling masses of the British industrial society. For the emancipation of the working class he tried heart and soul to build up a socialist society.

The other reason is he was the owner of vast amount of wealth and it is amazing that he spent the entire amount for the benefit of the working class and at the fag end of his life he became practically pennyless.

Political Ideas of Robert Owen:

1. Social Programmes and Performance:

Robert Owen was dumbfounded seeing the ugly, insanitary and impoverished conditions of New Lanark where there was a cotton mill which he purchased. The other mill towns were no better than New Lanark. But Owen was a man of different type.

The appalling conditions of the inhabitants of New Lanark pained his soft heart. The children above six had to work from six in the morning to seven in the evening.

The wages in the factory were miserably low. The low-paid wage earners were also cheated by local shopkeepers at every point. They had no education, no healthy environment. Diseases, drunkenness, degradation and debauchery were their all time companions. They were plunged from head to foot in poverty and debt. Death rate increased in astronomical proportions.

The situation was intolerable to Owen. He proceeded with strong determination to save the workers and villagers of New Lanark. Robert Owen was a socialist both in his mind and activities. He decided to convert New Lanark into a socialist model.

He had an apprehension that this small attempt may not help him to achieve his ambitious goal. But he was not worried. He believed that small is beautiful and every big project starts with the small.

So he began to implement his programmes. He reduced working hours, stopped employing children under ten, and introduced free primary education and relatively hygienic conditions, eliminated drunkenness and theft by persuasion and not by punishment.

Robert Owen was not a theoretical or declared socialist. But he showed that by improving the physical environment the health and mental conditions of the workers could be changed and production of the mill could be remarkably increased. This he achieved.

It was a miraculous success. Many criticisms and obstructions were thrown upon him but he overcame them with stone-like determination. In 1806 an acid test came to him. Government drastically cut the import of cotton and as a consequence all the mill owners closed the mills and retrenched the workers.

Robert Owen did not follow the path of the fellow industrialists which was quite uncommon in his days. Though he closed the mill, he retained all his employees and gave them wages. We do not know any other better socialist principle than this. After the crisis was over he introduced other socialist measures, such as old-age pension.

The activities of Owen drew the attention of various sections of society as well as government. Being requested by the government he submitted the Report to the Committee for the Relief of the Manufacturing Poor.

In this Report he mentioned that the immediate cause of the large scale distress among the workers was the depreciation of human labour.

This was due to the introduction of mechanism into the manufacture of objects. The rapid advancement of mechanism reduced the demand for labour. Labour power came to be cheap. This made their condition more miserable. Mechanism also dominated the labourers.

The capitalists were not interested in the psychological or social problems. Their main concern was profit. Impoverishment and degradation in all its forms took alarming shapes.

Robert Owen worked hard to get his different schemes implemented; he particularly wanted to stop the employment of children in all factories. On this issue he faced stiff opposition from other manufacturers, because child labour was remunerative to them.

With great difficulty he succeeded in obtaining the passage of the Factory Act of 1819, the first law in England to limit child working hours in the textile industry. This can be treated as a great success on the part of Owen.

He created a public opinion in favour of the abolition of child labour and being excessively pressurised by Owen and the people—government was forced to enact the law.

Robert Owen then launched an attack against the established church for keeping masses in poverty and superstition. Although Owen did not pronounce it publicly that religion was opium, by action he showed that. His objective was to save-the masses from the clutches of the church.

We have earlier said that he was a socialist, now we see that he was also a materialist. Robert Owen was convinced that both church and religion were squarely to be blamed for religious superstition.

Church was misguiding the common people and befooling them. So long church and religion were controlling or misguiding the general public no progress was possible. Both church or religion and capitalists would continue to exploit people. Owen’s assessment of church and religion was accepted by Marx.

2. Utopian Programmes:

Robert Owen was really a great benefactor of common people and philanthropist. He did not like to confine himself within the four walls of welfare activities. He planned to build up a new society where there would be no exploitation, no inequality and, finally, no antagonism. Owen said that millions of suffering people coul
d not be left to their fate, because in that case the result would be disastrous.

Robert Owen thought that since mechanism was the cause of depreciation of human labour, the progress of mechanism must be stopped. But according to Owen that would be an impractical suggestion.

The only practicable way open to the society to devise a plan which would provide security for the working classes against the vicissitudes of machine production.

Robert Owen proceeded to set up cooperative villages. All the able-bodied working men shall be employed.

One section of the working men shall work in industry to produce industrial goods and the other section shall be engaged in the agricultural sector. And when this scheme is fully implemented every cooperative village shall be self dependent and self-sufficient.

Every cooperative village would contain about 1,000 men and 1,200 acres of cultivable land would be allotted to every village. Ownership would be common. Production would be stored in a common store house and each will draw his necessaries from that store. Each village would have a common kitchen, common dining room and dormitory.

There would also be provision for worship and education. All members of the cooperative village irrespective of sex, age, and ability would be employed in various occupations such as farming, manufacturing and different establishments of the community. Wealth would be distributed according to ability and experience.

Every cooperative village or society would be self-sufficient in all respects. The internal administration of the cooperative village will be managed by the members on cooperative basis.

The raison d’etne of Owen was to make man completely self- dependent so that they do not fall to the prey of self-interest seeking persons. Throughout his life Owen fought for the elimination of poverty, unemployment, crime and exploitation and for that purpose he wanted to build up a communistic system of society.

He was somehow convinced that private property is the chief cause of social ulcer and in order to cure it the very system of private property is to be abolished. His cooperative society was fashioned in that light.

Robert Owen gave priority to education since he believed that only education could change the mind of man. Education would inculcate love of the community from the child’s earliest years.

Fellow-feeling, brotherhood and other traits of human character should be ingrained in the mind so that real community feeling can grow. For this purpose Owen wanted to set up a communist society.

Education, self- consciousness and financial stability, Owen believed, would remove the social evils such as illiteracy, drunkenness, diseases, debauchery. Communist way of life can save society from exploitation that was the firm belief of Robert Owen.

It is worthwhile to note that Owen wanted to change the mind of man and his character through the improvement of physical environment. Socialism, Owen believed, could do that.

He insisted upon augmentation of wealth as well as its proper distribution. Both would be left to the management of society. Private management in production and distribution would entail corruption and all sorts of inequality.

Once inequality takes final leave from society spontaneous develop­ment of personality would not be impossibility.

It was the intention of Owen to materialize the various programmes through comprehensive reforms. Owen himself believed that the workers were the real source of wealth and, if so, it was the primary duty of the industrialists to adopt measures for the improvement of the in economic condition.

That is, the owners of industry must give a share of profit to the workers. By doing this the capitalists will do their own benefit. But it is unfortunate that the capitalists took no notice of this.

By giving meagre wages the manufacturers put the severest assault on the purchas­ing power of the workers. Low purchasing power leads to the minimum consump­tion and this creates over-production.

Robert Owen argued to the capitalists that low level of wages was not profitable to them; rather it was the cause of their ruin.

It is also a self-defeating process. They should, for their own benefit, protect the interests of the workers and refrain themselves from exploitation. It was his pious hope that noble sense and rationality would ultimately prevail upon them.

The various programmes launched by Owen proved that he was a great critic of capitalism and a socialist. He admitted that there were inconsistencies in capitalism, but these were the products of ignorance and confusion.

Spread of education among the workers and dawn of rationality could function effectively in the removal of exploitation and other harmful consequences of industrialization, violent armed struggle or revolution was unnecessary.

Robert Owen was also not eager to convince his readers that he was a believer of class struggle. He was rather afraid of it. His insistence upon class collaboration reveals his love for utopianism.

He failed to realize that privileged and unprivileged would never cooperate to free the society from the curse of exploitation. Clear conception of human nature he never nurtured.

The communistic proposal of Owen was not received cordially by his country­men, co-manufacturers and people in authority. Some exhibited lukewarm attitude to his efforts. The Report he submitted was also kept in abeyance.

Robert Owen was disheartened. He realized that the social and political structure of his country was not ripe for launching a comprehensive reform scheme. But Owen was a great dreamer and activist.

He was fully convinced of his own potentialities. In order to translate his dreams into reality Robert Owen went to America and purchased a 30,000 acre tract at the price of 150,000 dollars in the new state of Indiana.

There he started his experiments. He called the colony New Harmony. It was constructed in the model of New Lanark colony and he also intended to implement fully the communistic principles.

He made every effort to make New Harmony a grand success. But all his efforts were in vain. He recruited brilliant individuals for the implementation of the project. Maxey comments, “This was his mistake. There were too many brains in the colony and not enough brawn, too many brilliant individuals and not enough plodding co-operators”.

Discontent on theological and other issues began to brew within a short time. The whole New Harmony was divided into different warring factions. Owen gave in to the demands. The New Harmony no longer remained a united and cooperative society.

When Robert Owen accepted the contradictory demands of conflicting groups and factions that signalled the death of the communistic society. The New Harmony started in 1824 and its end came in 1827.

He wound up the project and returned to England in 1829 almost empty-handed. He spent four-fifths of his fortune behind the project of New Harmony. Everywhere the Utopian scheme of Owen met with failure. But he did not give up hope because he was optimistic.

He was a great dreamer and he liked to dream. He had unbound faith on rationality and good-will of man. He believed that the oppressor and the oppressed could live together; employer would sacrifice his profit motive to widen the benefit of the employees.

The collaboration and cooperation among all classes of people would be able to eliminate poverty, inequality, disease and debauchery.

This was Owen’s lofty idealism. His dreams and idealism were never translated into reality. As a philanthropist he was successful, but as a Utopian socialist his failure knew no bounds. In spite of the series of failures history remembers him. Why? We shall discuss this in our following section, i.e., Owen’s contribution to Utopian socialist thought.

Contribution of Robert Owen to th
e Social Movement:

Engels in his Socialism – Scientific and Utopian says that the new mode of production, created by Industrial Revolution, was the herding together of a homeless population in the worst quarters of the large towns, the loosening of all traditional moral bonds, of patriarchal subordination, of family relations, overwork especially of women and children and complete demoralisation of working class.

At this juncture, there came forward a reformer and a manufacturer.

Robert Owen adopted the teaching of materialist philosophers – that main character is the product, on the one hand, of heredity, on the other, of the environment of the individual during his life-time.

Needless to say that Owen supported the influence of environment. In the Industrial Revolution all other manufacturers saw the chaos and trouble and they utilized it as an opportunity of fishing in the troubled waters, but Owen saw in it the opportunity of putting into practice his favourite theory. He saw the chaos as an indication of a new era. He wanted to build up a new society out of it.

Robert Owen was an uncompromising fighter. He fought relentlessly for the emanci­pation of workers from exploitation. His fight was against all the evils of industrialization. How much sympathy he held for his men is quite evident from his gesture or behaviour meted out to them. Without depending upon what other industrialists would do Owen unilaterally adopted certain welfare and socialist measures and these incurred for him their displeasure.

The untiring efforts of Owen may only be compared with those of Marx and Engels. Owen, no doubt, was a big industrialist and he had accumulated a vast amount of wealth. But he spent the entire amount for the fructification of an ideal-socialism.

He did not succeed. But he was the forerunner of Marxian socialism. This is no small a contribution. Robert Owen was convinced that only mass education could ignite consciousness against exploitation.

So he insisted upon the spread of education and he wanted to inculcate education among the children. He set up schools. The Marxian socialists on this point are not at all different from him. Education is viewed as the foundation building factor of socialism. Owen once said, “The best governed state will be that which shall possess the best national system of education.”

Kolakowski, a noted interpreter of Marxian thought, makes the following observation on Owen’s contribution:

“Owen’s doctrine initiated a new phase of the British workers’ movement, in which it ceased to be merely an outburst of despair and became a systematic force which in the end brought about immense social changes. Moreover, his attack on capitalism and his plans for a new society contained enduring features although some of his ideas—for example, that of a labour and currency were soon discarded as they proved to be based on entirely false economic diagnoses”.

Every social movement in England was associated with the name of Owen. Even Marx admitted the importance and contribution of Owen to the socialist movement and that is why Marx sought his help to make International Working Men’s Association a success. Both Marx and Engels were profoundly influenced by Robert Owen.

When Engels was in England he contributed to Owen’s New Moral World. In several places of Capital—Marx points out Owen’s importance, specially his conception of social revolution.

In this respect Owen occupies a higher place than Saint-Simon. After his conversion to communism Robert Owen concentrated his attack upon the main obstacles which prevented the transformation of the bourgeois social order into a communist social order.

He was a hard-shelled materialist, and based his theories upon the idea that human character is the outcome of exterior influences, that man does not possess any innate ideas or qualities or moral sentiment or conscience and that none of these things are instilled into his mind by any kind of supernatural power.

“The fact is that conscience is just as much a manufacture as cotton or any material.” This observa­tion has a far deeper significance than all the thoughts of ordinary non-historical materialists put together. Owen was also pioneer in many other activities, such as labour legislation and introduction of education for the children working in factories.

In spite of all these remarkable contributions Owen remained basically Utopian and his utopianism was the prime cause of his failure. His faith on class collabo­ration, reforms, appeal to big industrialists and other conciliatory moves as the modes of attaining socialism proved in his lifetime ineffective.

Anikin says, “Owen’s system is Utopian, and hence full of contradictions and inconsistencies.” He spent enough resources to implement his scheme, but even that was insufficient.

Apparently Owen’s utopianism was responsible for the failure of all his schemes. But we are to think the whole issue from a different perspective. Marx and Engels have claimed that their socialism is scientific.

Has that socialism succeeded? No. People, government and industrialists of Owen’s time were not prepared to walk on the road of socialism. Particularly the government and the capitalists were against socialism.

People were not prepared. Under the leadership of Lenin a “socialist” state was established in Russia. The Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991 and that brought about an end of socialism.

There are few socialist states in the present day world. Question is are they in Marxian model? Many still firmly believe that socialism is not the only system that can emancipate the people from oppres­sion. Today capitalism has radically changed and so also people’s attitude. They think that emancipation from oppression may be possible through parliamentary procedure.

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Read this article to learn about the views of Fabian Socialism on Economy!

A common charge generally levelled against the Fabians, and it is correct, that they did not approach the subject coherently or systematically, rather eclectically.

Some of the members of the society adhered to the market economy, others flatly rejected it. In the thirties of the twentieth century, when Keynes adumbrated certain principles to fight depression and arrest growing unemployment, some Fabians did not hesitate to show alle­giance to the Keynesian economics. Simultaneously, others were sceptical about it.

Some of the Fabians were convinced that state control was the only way out and hence planning was essential. Many refused to pin their hopes on planning and state control.

Elizabeth Durbin is perfectly right when she says in her essay Fabian Socialism and Economic Science that there is no consistent body of thought which could properly be described as Fabian economics. Nonetheless, continues Elizabeth Durbin, a distinctive Fabian approach to economics can be traced.

In the middle of the eighties of the nineteenth century Sydney Oliver, Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb first made a concerted effort to thrash out certain principles which would guide the socialism of Fabian brand. But at the very outset the point they made clear was that they were rejecting Marxian economic principles. Graham Wall as later joined the group and whole-heartedly supported the anti-Marxian approach. The leadership fell upon Webb and Shaw. Originally, Shaw laid his faith on Marxian economics and later on he shifted his allegiance. The tangible result of the efforts was Fabian Essays.

In the introduction to the essays Shaw categorically announced that the writers of the essays were all social democrats. Shaw also explained in the introduction the Fabian economic basis for socialism.

He said that the members of the society proceeded “with a common conviction of the necessity of vesting the organization of industry and the material production in a state identified with the whole people by complete Democracy.”

Shaw propounded the theory of marginal productivity. He accepted the Ricardian theory of economic rent or surplus value. He said that rent or surplus value could accrue to all the factors of production, to land and labour.

He rejected the labour theory of value and advocated the exchange value. He wanted to say that the value of commodity was determined by the free play of demand and supply and not by the amount of labour needed for its production.

What Shaw said about Fabian political economy is nothing new. He took the side of Ricardian economic theory and rejected Lockean labour theory of value. Whereas, Marx accepted it. The fact is that Shaw’s views about economic functions of state do not suggest socialism.

Shaw has summarized the Fabian socialist economic policy in the following words:

“What the achievement of socialism involves economically is the transfer of rent from the class which now appropriates it to the whole people. Rent being that part of produce which is individually unearned, this is the only equitable method of disposing of it.”

What is the method which purports to transfer the wealth concentrated in the hands of a few to the hands of the whole society? This is the common ownership of property. Let us quote Webb “the gradual substitution of organized cooperation for the anarchy of competitive struggle.”

Webb’s words “anarchy of competitive struggle” is very significant. The Fabians admitted the evils of capitalist economy and monopolistic competition. Capitalism, according to Fabians, was the chief source or cause of large scale poverty and suffering of men. But they did not predict that capitalism would collapse.

They had no intention to recommend an intensive class struggle for its destruction. Socialism could be achieved through gradual process, parliamentary initiative and, finally, people’s conscious efforts arising out of propaganda launched by Fabian Society.

The Fabians admitted that capitalism was associated with periodic slumps and recesses. But because of these slumps capitalism could not be overthrown. It would meet a natural death or be cut to size if socialist programmes were imple­mented successfully.

Both Shaw and Webb conceived that socialism would be achieved through nationalisation, municipalisation and expanding governmental control over the economic affairs. These three methods were designed to signal the end of laissez- faire.

Democracy to the Fabians was not simply political—it was both social and economic. Particularly, they emphasized the economic aspect of democracy.

A society characterized by exploitation cannot be called truly democratic. Shaw described the aim of social democracy in these words “to gather the whole people into the state, so that the state may be trusted with the rent of the country, and finally with the land, the capital and organisation of the national industry—with all the sources of production, in short, which are abandoned to the cupidity of irresponsible private industrialists.”

Summarizing Fabians’ approach to neoclassical economics Elizabeth Durbin con­tends “Neoclassical analysis was central to the Fabian case against Marx and for collective ownership. However, there were problems with this approach which a more sophisticated understanding would later reveal. For it is impossible to measure rent, and the early Fabians were confused between the payments due to the factors of production and the income going to families”.

The Great Depression of the thirties of the 20th century threatened the economic arid political stability of capitalist countries. At the same time, the then Soviet economy, through state control and planning, achieved miraculous success and that impressed a number of Fabians.

The Webbs were so much impressed with Soviet success in the economic field that they wrote a book Soviet Communism – a New Civilization? In this book they advocated state controlled economy and adoption of planning as potent methods of attaining socialism.

In the thirties of the twentieth century the Fabians were influenced by another thought. In 1936, J. M. Keynes published his epoch-making work General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

As a result of depression the expansion of economy shrank to a considerable extent. People’s purchasing power fell remarkably. The unemployment reached a stage that was unprecedented.

The growth of economy was so discouraging that common people and even the big policymakers and administrators could not find a single ray of hope. At this juncture of time the Fabians thought that J. M. Keynes’s suggestion could provide solution and they forthwith accepted his proposals. The Fabians accepted the Keynesian theory of full employment. To arrest growing unemployment Keynes urged upon the government to expand spending.

The Fabians saw in this Keynesian proposal the intervention of government and also the cornering of capitalism. The Fabians further thought that the government spending would offset the insufficient private spending.

However, Fabians did not share Keynes views on capitalism. There were many Fabians who opposed Keynes’s individualism. After the Second World War (1939-1945) the economic condition of Britain underwent drastic changes. The unemployment and inflation were mounting day by day.

The Labour Party came to power in 1945 after the war and it showed no resistance to Fabian philosophy. The socialist principles of Society were incorpo­rated by the Labour Government into its future programme. Side by side the post­war economic situation created an atmosphere for free discussion.

The Fabian Society commissioned Arthur Lewis to write a book on the economic perplexities of the moment. Lewis performed the duty by writing The Principles of Economic Planning. Lewis argued that the crucial issue w
as whether the state should operate through the price mechanism or in supersession of it.

The real choice was between “planning by inducement” and “planning by direction”. The Labour Government, guided by Fabian philosophy, ultimately decided to make enough room for the private enterprise and this signaled the advent of mixed economy in fact the Fabian Society was the creator of mixed economy which was later on accepted by India’s Planning Commission and politicians. The central idea of such a system is both the state and private enterprises will be allowed to play important role.

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