The oppressed are One Community

Marxists keep insisting that a socialist revolution is impossible without completing a democratic revolution. Ambedkar insists that a classless society is impossible without a casteless society.

Ambedkar paid keen attention to the debate with Marxism. In his speech delivered in Kathmandu, he states, 8220;I was a professor of economics and I have spent a great deal of time studying Karl Marx, communism and all that8221;. In his article on Buddha and Karl Marx, Ambedkar introduces himself as a person 8220;having read both Buddha and Karl Marx and being interested in the ideology of both, a comparison between them just forces itself on me8221;.

We find that Marxism was the only ideology Ambedkar respected in any of his discussions on social analysis and social transformation. Although the methodology of Ambedkar was not a Marxist one, the economic works of Ambedkar clearly evidence the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and radical democratic direction of his economic analysis.

Ambedkar indicates the economic inefficiency of the caste system all through Indian history and asserts that the caste practice reduces the mobility of labour as well as capital. Social and individual efficiency and the capacity of an individual to choose and to make his own career are violated in the caste system. The caste system appoints tasks to individuals in advance, selected not on the basis of trained or original capacities, but on that of the social status of the parents.

The caste system contains not only economic exploitative mechanisms but operates on the basis of the dogma of predestination, formulated and safeguarded by the Hindu religion. The caste system is able to mobilise cheap labour or free labour under capitalism. Ambedkar goes on to state that the burdens of economic crises are laid upon the oppressed castes by maintaining the caste system in current times.

The miseries of globalisation, for example, are laid upon the peasantry and the most oppressed of this country. Ambedkar indicates that the caste system has the peculiar character of the upper castes having no social responsibility towards the exploited castes. No public opinion could be mobilised against the irresponsibility of the upper castes. Ambedkar freely moves from religion to economics and from economics to public opinion or to legal aspects. Without any attempt at determinism, he moves from one factor to another and establishes how the caste system is over-determined in its nature.

In his work on 8216;States and Minorities8217; Ambedkar expounds his idea of state socialism in the field of industry and state ownership in agriculture with collective farming. The finance mobilisation for the above two primitive accumulation of capital must be organised through the nationalisation of insurance and banks. Collective farms are proposed keeping in mind the interests of the landless agricultural workers. Ambedkar proposes to guarantee state socialism by working it into the foundation of the Indian Constitution. 8220;The plan has two special features. One is that proposes state socialism in important fields of economic life, the second special feature of the plan is that it does not leave establishment of state socialism to the will of the legislature. It establishes state socialism by the law of the Constitution and thus makes it unalterable by any act of the legislature and the executive8221;. Ambedkar was sure that state socialism could become real only when it was established through political democracy. He systematically developed the idea of socialism and tried to put in place constitutional guarantees for it.

Ambedkar observed: 8220;The problem therefore, is, to have state socialism without dictatorship, to have state socialism with parliamentary democracy, the way out seems to be to retain parliamentary democracy and to prescribe state socialism by the law of constitution. So that it will be beyond the reach of parliamentary majority to suspend, amend or abrogate it. It is only by this that one can achieve the triple object, namely to establish socialism, to retain parliamentary democracy and avoid dictatorship.8221; Ambedkar was committed to values of equality and to values of liberty and fraternity.

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The question of democracy is central to Ambedkar8217;s thinking because it engulfs the problem of the caste system in India. Democratising Indian society means above all the annihilation of castes in India. According to the Marxist theory of the stages of revolution, a socialist revolution is always preceded by a democratic revolution. The democratic revolution is basically anti-feudal, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist in character. When Indian feudalism becomes the basis and perpetrator of the caste system, the struggle for annihilation of castes becomes the inevitable strategy in the democratic stage of revolution in India. Indian Marxists formulate that the present stage of revolution is democratic. Marxists keep insisting that a socialist revolution is impossible without completing a democratic revolution. The one merges into the other. Ambedkar insists that a classless society is impossible without a casteless society. No revolutionary can take exception to this.

This historic vision of Ambedkar in terms of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and social democracy has added relevance in the present day context of globalisation and neo-colonialism.

The writer is national secretary, CPI. These are edited extracts from Chapter VI 8216;Ambedkar and Marxism8217; of his book 8216;Dalit Question: The Way Forward8217;, CPI Publication, March 2007