British Colonies, National Liberation, Colonial Exploitation, Marxist Views, Karl Kautsky, India

SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY

European Marxist Views on the Colonization of India

Karl Kautsky on the Colonization of India

During the early part of the 20th century, serious Marxists were obliged to take up the issue of colonization. Europe's leading Marxists (such as Lenin and Rosa Luxembourg) naturally realized the imperative of freeing the colonies as a precondition to the realization of socialism in Europe. Today, one might go a step further and make a case for reparations, in addition to demanding that all instances of neo-colonial plunder and exploitation be brought to an end. But in the early part of the 20th century, it took considerable courage to polemicize against colonization in Europe.

For that reason, Karl Kautsky's critique of British colonial exploitation in India remains worth reading today. Here is an excerpt from Karl Kautsky's writings on the colonies:-

Exploitation colonies work quite differently from work colonies. They lie in the tropics where the European cannot perform hard work. There, the working classes can only be composed of natives or of imported inhabitants of other tropical or sub-tropical countries, perhaps Negroes, Hindus or inhabitants of Southern China. From the outset, Europeans came there only as the exploiters of foreign labour. As a rule their residence there is only temporary, as they cannot stand the climate permanently, and because, as members of the European exploiting classes, they are accustomed to a way of life and to pleasures, which are rarely available in the tropical colonies The European does not seek a home in the tropical colony but rapid enrichment.

The quickest way to this, however, is by plunder, and the richer and more numerous the people are who are to be plundered, the greater the riches yielded. If the working colonist seeks empty deserts for his settlement, the exploiting colonists first direct their aim at territories with a high level of culture, provided that they are not able to defend themselves properly. It is the Lack of defences, the lack of martial spirit and military technique, and not the lack of culture, that makes a country an exploitation colony, However rough a people may be, however much it may need higher culture, if it possesses nothing attracting covetousness, but on the contrary has the means and courage at its disposal to defend itself, no European nation would consider applying the right of higher culture to it and fulfilling a cultural mission there. But if people of non-European culture is not skilled in human massacre and is not familiar with the most modern murder machines, then the urge to apply the 'right of higher culture' against it will develop the sooner and more strongly the higher its own culture is. Nobody has yet attempted, for example, to 'exert tutelage' over the Montenegrins to lead them to a higher culture. But India is highly developed, filled with the finest culture, a place, which has produced magnificent art and deep philosophy, has since the end of the Middle Ages formed the main object of every European colonial policy. India and the way to it: all colonial policy revolves around the striving for India and the search for a way to it.

This society has nearly as many inhabitants as Europe - the latter contains 400 millions, India 300 million; it comprises twice as many inhabitants as all the other present colonial territories taken together. This enormous mass of peoples, in part highly civilised, has been the object of continual plunder by Europeans for hundreds of years - at first direct robbery in the literal sense of the word, and when this no longer paid, they were systematically bled dry through the taxation system. In ancient times and the middle ages India was famous for its riches and the well-being of its inhabitants. Diodorus (at the time of Augustine) praises this country for never having famines. It was still richer than Europe in the 14th century, Marco Polo called it the most noble and richest country in the world. Since then this territory has sunk to complete poverty, to a state of constant famine and wretched pestilence,

Such is the development of productive forces brought to a population of 300 millions people by the colonial system.

But to return to our subject. We have seen how the colonial system completely disrupted India's productive power, in that its European conquerors - Portuguese, Dutch, English - stripped it and threw it into deep poverty; how, on the other hand, the colonial system reduced the productivity of human labour to a minimum in the territories where precious metals were acquired and the plantations established by turning it into forced labour.

The industrial capitalists of England, however, used the power they gained from the colonial policy, not merely to develop the productive power of their own country, but also for the suppression of the industrial power of other, competing countries. Thus all industrial progress was limited both in Ireland and the American colonies, and in India blooming industry was destroyed.

That is the picture as shown to us today by Russia. But we can observe the same process in India. There also, continual increase in famine and misery, in spite of the heavy flow of English capital to India with a consequent improvement of the Indian productive forces in places.

(Translated excerpt courtesy Angela Clifford and the Marxist Internet Archive)

The Colonial Legacy - Some Myths and Popular Beliefs

Marxian Theory and Social Change in India (and the subcontinent)

For other topics in Indian History, see Topics in Indian History

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Last update: Aug 9, 2002