DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

1.3] VILLAGE PRODUCTION 11
“These small and extremely ancient Indian (village) communities, some of which
have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common of the land,
on the blending of agriculture and handicrafts, and on an unalterable division of
labour, which serves, whenever a new community is started as a plan and scheme
ready cut and dried. Occupying areas from 100 up to several thousand acres, each
forms a compact whole producing all it requires. The chief part of the products is
destined for direct use by the community itself, and does not take the form of a
commodity. Hence production here is independent of that division of labour brought
about in Indian society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities. It is
the surplus alone, that becomes a commodity and a portion of even that, not until it
has reached the hands of the State, into whose hands from time immemorial a certain
quantity of those products has found its way in the shape of rent in kind.... The
simplicity of the organisation of production in these self-sufficing communities that
constantly reproduce themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed
spring up again on the spot and with the same name — this simplicity supplies the
key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies, an unchangeableness in
such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic States
and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The’ structure of the economic elements
of society remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the political sky “ (Capital. I.
391 ff).
Acute and brilliant as these remarks are, they remain misleading
nevertheless. Most villages produce neither metals nor salt, two
essentials that had mostly to be obtained by exchange, hence imply
some commodity production. Who exchanged these commodities is a
different matter. Marx was justified in saying that the surplus did not
become a commodity till it reached the hands of the state — if one
restricts the statement to certain periods. The villages did not exist
“from times immemorial.” The advance of plough-using agrarian village
economy over tribal India is a great historical achievement by itself.
Secondly, even when the size of the village unit remains unchanged,
the density of these units plays a most important role; the same region
with two villages, or two hundred, or twenty thousand cannot bear
the same form of superstructure, nor be exploited by the same
type of state mechanism. Conversely, the progressive weight of this
superstructure changes land ownership within the village. Change of
quantity ultimately means change of quality. Similarly, we cannot let