Abstract
Introduction: Repositioning the Subject
Dante expressed his disapproval of certain occupations and individuals by placing them in the deepest circle of Hell, where some were to be found with their heads buried in the ground. Where then in a hierarchy of the delusional, at the bottom end of which one finds politicians, estate agents and snake-oil salesman, should the academic be located? By now well-known and much written about is the notorious case of how Isaiah Berlin not only blocked Isaac Deutscher, a revolutionary socialist, from a university post simply on political grounds, but also continued to present himself thereafter – and wrongly – as ‘a man of the left’. 1 Even in the present, this capacity for delusion on the part of academics should not be underestimated. A case in point is that of Henry Bernstein, who claims to be not just a Marxist but also an upholder of Leninist theory, despite simultaneously dismissing the work by Marx on the industrial reserve and by Lenin on peasant differentiation. 2 Such claims notwithstanding, the evidence confirms that Bernstein is neither a Marxist nor a Leninist but much rather an agrarian populist.
It is also possible to regard the author of the book reviewed here, Jairus Banaji, as delusional in the same sense as Berlin and Bernstein: believing himself, and believed by others, to be a Marxist while at the same time rejecting virtually every component and concept that is central to such an approach. 3 Although, as will be seen, subject to changes of mind on a continuous basis, the arguments made by Banaji are deployed in support of the following claims: since every known production relation is, in essence, a form of ‘disguised wage labour’, which because it is paid is categorized (initially, at least) as free; this in turn leads inexorably to his conclusion that capitalism itself must be an ubiquitous systemic form; consequently, it is located by him in every context and epoch throughout history. Accordingly, the review of what is a very large tome will focus on aspects of this argument which are problematic, so much so that they bring into question his claim to be a Marxist.
This review consists of two sections, the first of which examines the many changes of mind informing the views held by Banaji, while the second considers how this in turn is linked to misunderstanding the conceptual apparatus of Marxism.
I
Onwards and Upwards?
Right from the start, the (surely misleading) impression conveyed is that the world is beating a path to his doorway. Hence the tenor of the following observations (pp. x, 5, emphasis added): Sebastian Budgen is thanked ‘for suggesting the idea of this book, indeed insisting on it’, while ‘David Yaffe wrote to me saying . . .’ and ‘Nigel Harris stayed in touch with me till at least 1978’. As the chapter proceeds, and seemingly unaware of the humour involved, Banaji goes into full Pooterish mode: his own political centrality (pp. 5, 9) to events is underlined, extending from minor (‘A Third Worldist student society that . . . I had started’) to maximalist form (‘I moved to Bombay [and] formed the Revolutionary Bolshevik Circle . . . the purpose [of which] was to establish a better Trotskyist group than anything that existed then in India [and later] called ourselves the Platform Tendency [which] were years of high theory and a movement away from “Leninism”’). 4 A case perhaps of move over Vladimir Illich and Lev Davidovich, here comes Jairus.
In a tone which is far from modest, Banaji (pp. 4, 6, 7–8, 14, 15–16) informs us of a progress that is nothing if not triumphant: that ‘the college had given me his [Rostovtzeff’s] two massive volumes on the [Roman] empire as a prize’; that a ‘letter from Robin Blackburn . . . says “we were heartened to receive the two chapters from your book . . . ”’; that the JNU staff, including Romila Thapar, ‘showed an obvious sympathy for what was a clear attempt [by Banaji and others] to create an alternative Left that was better read’; and that he was engaged both in ‘building a modernist vision of . . . late antiquity that turned its conventional image upside down’, and likewise a ‘paper on Sasanian aristocracy . . . researched and written to refute the widespread scepticism that existed among scholars . . .’. Fittingly, this exultant litany is rounded off in an unsurprising manner (p. 16):
In the years that followed [2001], Agrarian Change [in Late Antiquity] began to have some impact on scholarship in the field and it was gratifying to see one historian describe it recently as ‘the most important book on the Roman economy in the last generation’.
5
Hard to avoid is the resulting divergence, between on the one hand the confident assertions of the kind found above, as outlined in Chapter 1 of the book, and on the other the problematic arguments encountered in the chapters that follow, which cast doubt on claims to have upended, overturned or refuted existing models. As significant as what is said, therefore, is what is not said. Contrary to the impression of an epistemologically unbroken progression, one corresponding to an intellectually pristine trajectory, Banaji’s ideas have been marked by constant revision, so much so that it is not possible to be sure what he claims is the case today will be what he thinks it is tomorrow.
Consistent Inconsistency
Inferences as to uninterrupted theoretical consistency notwithstanding, in a footnote (p. 10, note 22) is found a passing reference to the mode of production debate in India during the 1970s, without mentioning either his own contribution to the deliberations or to the fact that in the course of that discussion he found it necessary to change his mind not once but twice. Thus the retraction by him of criticism aimed at Paresh Chattopadhyay ‘as badly misdirected’. 6 Having been an enthusiastic supporter of Utsa Patnaik (then as now an exponent of the semi-feudal thesis), Banaji changed his mind and became an opponent of her views. The same is true of his original endorsement of the ‘colonial’ mode of production, which he also jettisoned subsequently, a volte face again mentioned only in passing (pp. 6–7), but not explained thereafter.
Nevertheless, the term itself pops up again in the book (p. 66), where the ‘colonial’ mode is in an unspecific way coupled with the semi-feudal thesis. These kinds of about face were prompted by criticism from others, who pointed out the flaws in the argument he made or the position he held. Modes endorsed, then discarded included not just semi-feudalism, the ‘colonial’ mode, and the peasant mode, but also the tributary mode. 7 In a similar vein the late antique economy has been labelled variously ‘proto-industrialization’, ‘proto-modernity’, ‘quasi-capitalism’ and capitalist. Initially Banaji poured scorn on historians who maintained that capitalism existed in ancient Rome. Terms such as ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘entrepreneurs’ applied to ‘groups of capitalists’ who were engaged in economic activity such as investing in land and labour were dismissed by him originally as unjustifiable ‘clichés in Roman historiography’. 8
Currently, however, these very same ‘clichés in Roman historiography’ are ones to which Banaji himself subscribes: his view now (p. 397ff) is that capitalists were ever-present throughout ancient Rome, the economy of which was ‘organized on capitalist lines’.
9
It is a claim, moreover, that he applies to all the subsequent modes. That the receipt by labour of a wage is considered evidence for the presence of capitalism not just in ancient society but in every other epoch and context is underlined by Banaji (p. 404) in the clearest possible manner:
Does an economy contain elements of capitalism? Signs that we are certainly dealing with an economy that contains ‘elements of capitalism’ would be: the widespread use of paid labour (which was certainly true of the Roman Mediterranean, but also of the Islamic world and China).
Where capitalist restructuring is concerned, Banaji adopts contradictory positions. On the one hand, therefore, he has in the past questioned the conceptual efficacy both of the industrial reserve (‘a race to the bottom’) and of restructuring, observing that ‘[t]he biggest myth of globalization is to believe that a race to the bottom is somehow inherent in the logic of capital’. 10 On the other, however, not only does the same concept pop up throughout the book (pp. 61–62, 65ff., 68, 74, 183, 359, 508, 559, 657), but it is used by Banaji to explain how Henryk Grossman accounted for the manner in which counteracting influences (‘modifying countertendencies’) enabled capitalism to prevent systemic crisis. 11 Among the latter is an expanding industrial reserve army taking the form of immigration, a process identified as restructuring, arguments endorsed by Banaji himself.
Sedulously Aloof?
Mildly intriguing, certainly for this reviewer, is the content of Chapter 32 in the book, about Indian Maoism, and the way it too differs from the case made by Banaji in the course of an earlier interview. 12 Since both date to 2010, their textual interconnectedness is in all other respects much the same. In the interview, Banaji compared the Naxalite movement India to that of Sendero in Peru, arguing that each subscribed to the same mobilizing discourse. The latter was the semi-feudal thesis: the similarity between Sendero and the CPI/ML stemmed from a common Maoist belief in the existence of a pristine peasantry, and the parallel between the nationalism of Maoism and the reassertion of indigenous tribal/peasant ‘otherness’. Unmentioned, however, was that all these arguments, together with the same enthnographic source and the case about the Sendero/Naxalite resemblance, had been made elsewhere two decades earlier. 13 That initial comparison by Banaji, along with the critique based on it, no longer features in the analysis of Indian Maoism presented in this book, and seems to be yet another instance of a change of mind on his part.
Equally problematic is the inference (p. 14) that he ‘published almost nothing in the [nineteen] eighties’, because he was too busy with other things either to engage with or to be affected by postmodern theory (‘[t]hroughout these years I remained sedulously aloof from Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory . . . and was blissfully unaware of the intellectual fashions sweeping through academia on the other side of the Atlantic’). 14 Apart from an unfortunate de haut en bas tone, this is debateable for a number of reasons, not least the overlap between ‘new’ populist postmodern epistemology and his own revisionist view about late antiquity. Acknowledging that ‘postcolonials were cursing the Enlightenment’, and further that postcolonial theory was ‘absurd’, Banaji (p. 15) accepts that, after all, he did engage ‘with that great upheaval’, but only to the extent of questioning the decline thesis as this was applied previously to ancient Rome, in his view an Enlightenment legacy of Gibbon. Moreover, his claim to having had nothing to do with subaltern as a concept notwithstanding, Banaji still deploys the term in the book (pp. 382, 744) without explaining what it signifies. What these contradictory positions suggest is that, in retrospect, he wants to be seen as on the side of the angels – those who recognized the shortcomings of postmodern theory – despite remaining ‘sedulously aloof’ from and unaware of the ‘cultural turn’.
Having rejected the notion of labour being unfree, describing such production relations as ‘so-called’, Banaji seems of late to have rowed back on this, to the extent that he now accepts that labour – not just that of chattel slaves – can indeed be unfree. Accordingly, dismissed out of hand by Banaji in 2003 as ‘so-called’, unfree labour reappears in analyses published during 2007/2008, now no longer ‘so-called’ but an epistemologically standard form of production relation. 15 Conversely, the category of free labour is belatedly recognized (pp. 433–434) as being less straightforward than previously thought, as suggested by the ensuing terms applied to it (‘the indeterminacy of free labour’, its ‘incoherence’). So central is the issue of free/unfree labour, both to his view about capitalism and to his approach more generally, that it requires unpacking further.
II
Misunderstandings by Banaji about systemic modes, production relations, labour regimes and much else besides, together with changes of mind necessitated as a result, have their roots in his contribution to the mode of production debate, where he concluded that ‘[t]he capital/wage labour relationship was thus widespread throughout the Deccan’. 16 Nineteenth-century peasant smallholders working on their own land, selling not labour-power itself but rather the product of labour, are deemed by him to be in receipt of ‘a concealed wage’; accordingly, these subjects are conceptualized as ‘disguised wage labour’, and thus described – wrongly – as a ‘proletariat’ composed of workers that are free. Undifferentiated internally, the rural household is perceived as a unitary form, composed of family members all of whom received ‘a hidden wage’ for growing crops on their own land. This, argues Banaji, enabled capital to integrate peasant economy into commodity production by a process of ‘forced commercialization’ which did not entail dispossession of the direct producer.
What Marxism Is/Is Not
A major difficulty stems from how Banaji defines free and unfree labour, and the difference between them. Characterizing unfree labour as a proletariat overlooks the fact that for Marxism workers belonging to this category must be doubly free: separated not just from their means of labour but also from control exercised by an employer. 17 Banaji seems not to recognize this, since he (p. 434) makes the common error of arguing that Marx restricted the free aspect only to separation from means of production (land). The only labour-power regarded by Banaji as unfree is chattel slavery, a view that similarly ignores the element of unfreedom present in other non-slave work arrangements, such as indenture, bonded labour, sharecropping, and tenancy. Contrary to the assertion (p. 436, original emphasis) that ‘the distinction between free and unfree labour collapses in a grey area which is much better sorted out in terms of a notion of how wage-labour markets are structured and how they work, especially in agriculture’, it is precisely in relation to markets ‘and how they work’ that the free/unfree dichotomy operates.
Overlooked, therefore, is that Marxism situates this dichotomy within class struggle, a process whereby labour that is free can become unfree, and vice versa. In short, Banaji misrecognizes the dynamic at work, one to which he himself purportedly attaches significance when – as below – he speaks of ‘organization and control of the labour process in concrete settings’. Where competition is acute, not just between capital and labour but also between enterprises, producers replace free workers with unfree equivalents, or convert the former into the latter, a transformation that corresponds to deproletarianization. 18 The reverse dynamic, also the outcome of struggle, consists of the emancipation of unfree labour, and its conversion into free counterparts. Thus the free/unfree dichotomy does not, as Banaji insists it does, ‘collapse’.
Another significant break with Marxist theory concerns the way production relations are defined as unfree. For Banaji, the element of unfreedom is characterized solely by the involuntary entry into a work arrangement (=entry into), an interpretation shared by neoclassical economists. The latter, like Banaji, restrict the unfree element simply to the inception of an employment contract: that is, to the involuntary manner in which a labourer enters a work arrangement. That a worker is then unable to withdraw from this work arrangement without the consent of the employer does not influence its conceptualization as unfree. By contrast, in Marxist theory the definition of a production relation as unfree stems from the condition governing the reproduction of the whole relation: entry into + exit from. Not considered by Banaji, therefore, is that the presence of a debt relationship between employer and worker compels the latter to borrow in order to survive, thereby extending the duration both of the debt and – consequently – of employment. In such circumstances, unfreedom based on coercion operates not just at the beginning of the production relation but also its end.
Debt, Coercion as Free Wage-Labour?
Not the least of the many ironies with such claims are two in particular. First is the emphasis placed by Banaji on payment received by labour as evidence of its free character, and thus also its categorization as a ‘proletariat’ signalling in turn the presence of capitalism, when in fact it was precisely through this method – ‘payment’ (=debt) – that workers were bonded, and rendered thereby unfree. And second, the acceptance (p. 358) that ‘[t]he labour relationships of the Byzantine large estates reflected the subjection of free labour in forms that gave large landowners well-nigh absolute power over their employees’, which underlines the confusion informing the way he deals with issues to do with the labour regime, and how to characterize production relations. What is classified as ‘free’ labour-power is, he agrees, a work arrangement in which landowners exercised ‘well-nigh absolute power over their employees’, which suggests that the workers in question were much rather unfree.
For this reason, the theoretical problem with the concept ‘disguised’ wage labour, deployed by Banaji in debates about the mode of production and late antiquity, is clear. Because it fetishizes the wage, this term confuses the fact of payment made to a worker (=wage labour) with labour-power that is free. The two aspects are, of course, distinct: one has to do with the kind of production relation linking a worker to his or her employer, while the other concerns the form taken by the remuneration for labour expended. Ignoring this conflation, Banaji (pp. 663–664, original emphasis) privileges – by essentializing – payment, insisting ‘[t]hat the deployment of these forms of hired labour was characterized by considerable coercion, including debt bondage . . . is incidental to the essential nature of the relationship as a domination of wage-labour’.
Epistemologically, the problem generated by conflating payment of a wage with labour-power that is free is obvious. Throughout history many different kinds of worker who were relationally unfree nevertheless received payment while in the employ of another. That they were paid did not of itself signals the presence of labour-power that was free, as many examples of payments made to workers who were also chattel slaves, indentured labourers, debt peons and attached or bonded, all attest. Hence the problematic nature of his accusation (pp. 436–438) that Marxists ‘have paid so little attention to . . . the deployment of labour [viz.] the actual organization and control of labour processes’. This is an astonishing claim to make, not least because the focus of virtually every article published in The Journal of Peasant Studies – to which Banaji himself contributed – over the period 1973–2008 was precisely on the organization and control of the labour process.
New Ways of Thinking?
There are other reasons for questioning what Banaji understands by Marxism. Noting that ‘[t]he last few years have seen some remarkable contributions to agrarian history’, he (pp. 349ff.) merely asserts the validity of his opposition to the characterization of labour-power as unfree, based as it is not on an examination of the arguments concerning such production relations, but only on citing the work of revisionist historians. 19 This contention is illustrated with reference by him to the analysis by Charles Gibson of rural Mexico from the 16th to the 19th century, an exemplar of the revisionist view that debt peonage was benign, not to say empowering for its subject. 20 Despite insisting that Mexican peonage was non-coercive, however, Gibson himself admits not only that unmet debts were passed from father to son but also that workers were prevented from leaving the hacienda without at first clearing such debts, a position hardly consistent with the idea – misleadingly endorsed by Banaji – of ‘liberal peonage’ based on the exercise of ‘autonomy’ and ‘significant bargaining power’. 21
Once again he appears to qualify this view somewhat later in the book, when observing (p. 436) that ‘[m]ost peones who worked on Mexican estates in the 17th and 18th centuries were not serfs but wage-labourers bound by debt [who] worked full time for the estates’. Hence the concession that those described hitherto as ‘free’ because they received a wage are actually bonded labour. As is the case throughout Latin America where the hacienda system prevailed – unfree workers tasked with carrying out labour-service were meeting the rent owed by a tenant to the landlord. 22 Much the same argument is made by Banaji with regard the inquilino system of labour tenancy found on Chilean rural estates, where (p. 360, original emphasis) the landlord object was based on ‘an expandable supply of labour (the labour of families)’. Again, the precise manner in which this arrangement operated remains unmentioned: how did the household head – the tenant – ensure that kinsfolk (and also fictive kinsfolk) met his labour-rent obligations? Despite being labelled as ‘free labour’, evidence confirms that the Chilean inquilinaje was an unfree production relation: like the gañan in Mexico, it was a form of tenancy structured by debt (often at the estate store) which as long as it remained outstanding prevented its subject from selling his or her own labour-power on a seasonal or casual basis for higher wages elsewhere. 23
Straying into what for him is unknown territory – rural Latin America – prefigures the resemblance Banaji claims to exist between the hacienda system and Byzantine estates. No mention is made of the ‘qualifications’ necessary for this kind of comparative analysis: much rather the opposite, in that an unwillingness to undertake such comparison is now regarded as causing ‘a conceptual atrophy’, and ‘is the biggest limitation on any progress’ in the historiography of ancient society, which is very different from the view he expressed about not being ‘qualified’ to tackle such an approach. 24 In support of his claim that capitalism existed in ancient society he maintains both that landlords were interested in the economic operations on their estates and that the workforce was paid. 25 While the first part of this claim is uncontentious – has anyone ever doubted that landlords were uninterested in the returns from their rural properties? – no reference is made to what sort of production relations structure the work arrangements these sources describe simply as ‘paid labour’. All kinds of unfree labour-power received payment, and that workers referred to merely as ‘paid labour’ were bonded by debt (either to the landowner, a labour contractor or petty trader) means that they were not free, and thus did not constitute a proletariat, as argued by Banaji.
Who Is the Enemy?
An additional reason for questioning the Marxist credentials of Banaji is the extent of his condemnation aimed at leftist politics and parties. 26 Censure includes not just Communist groups and Stalinism, but also – and more especially – followers of Trotsky. All are blamed (p. 8) for shutting down theory, since ‘most claims to orthodoxy were simply spurious’. He continues in much the same vein, labelling as untenable ‘[t]he idea that Bolshevism offered a model for how a revolutionary movement is built’; in contrast to those connected with his sort of ‘study circles’, therefore, leftists of every kind are castigated by Banaji (p. 17) as ‘doctrinal’, to the degree that in his opinion it is not possible ‘to imagine a renovation of the Left emerging out of the legacies of theoretical stagnation . . . that Stalinism bequeathed even to its most resolute opponents’.
Yet another factor leading to this kind of doubt is the wide range of non- and anti-Marxist sources cited with approval by Banaji. In this category are found not just agrarian populists such as Bernstein (see especially p. 498ff.), who like Banaji himself rejects many crucial aspects of Marxist theory, but also vehemently anti-Marxist historians such as Richard Pipes (pp. 430–431), together with neoclassical economists strongly opposed to Marxism, such as Robert Steinfeld (pp. 435–436, 532), Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman (pp. 282, 428). Much the same applies in the case of the espousal by Banaji of the tributary mode, a concept little different from the oriental despotism model formulated by the Cold War warrior Karl Wittfogel. Equally problematic is the endorsement by Banaji of the way unfree labour is interpreted by Jan Breman (pp. 654, 664, 682) who, again like Banaji himself, has not only changed his mind about this production relation – a volte face that goes unmentioned in the book – but also wrongly perceives his own approach to agrarian issues as being influenced by Marxism. 27
Conclusion
Unlike a kaleidoscope, in which the image is ever-changing, a mosaic is composed of small coloured glass pieces forming a pattern that is fixed in place: the consistency of the latter is in marked contrast to the inconsistency of the former. Rather than a Marxist mosaic, therefore, the arguments and case made by Banaji over the years, and collected in this volume, can be said more accurately to be a non-Marxist kaleidoscope. As such it raises once again the contentious – but currently very relevant – political question of how much of the conceptual apparatus of Marxism is it possible to abandon, and yet still be considered (by self and others) to be a Marxist. There are those with whom one disagrees, but whose Marxist credentials are recognized; then there are those with whom one disagrees, and whose claim to uphold Marxist theory is disputed. It is to the latter category that, for this reviewer, Banaji belongs.
Evidence from the many essays in his book points to the extent of a dissonance between a prefiguring affirmation of consistency and a subsequent approach characterized by continuous backtracking, including about what Marxism is thought to be, what modes of production are and what Roman history is. Over a whole range of issues, therefore, Banaji either rejects – or, indeed, opposes – what Marxism not only teaches but also ontologically requires: concepts that are central to this epistemology the meaning of which he changes or discards take in definitions of free and unfree production relations, the proletariat and capitalism itself (its space and time). In many instances, rather than Marxist interpretations, endorsed instead are those advanced by anti-Marxist historiography. In the end, it is difficult to avoid the baleful conclusion that what remains both of Marxism and of his claim to be Marxist is in each case the same: almost nothing.
