WHAT IS HINDUISM?
Traditional forms of theocratic socialism took the form
of cultures and civilizations founded on what Marx
described as ‘The Asiatic Mode of Production’. These were
characterised by self-sufficient village communities or
‘communes’, each of which combined agriculture and craft
manufacture through a well-defined hereditary division of
labour which formed the basis of the caste system. They
were neither slave nor feudal economies, since in the village
commune land was essentially co-owned, and only its
surplus product or labour took the form of an exchange
value or commodity – becoming a vehicle of trade and of
tribute to the state. The state also drew on surplus labour –
either for the construction of great public works (for
example irrigation systems or temples) or for war (military
conscription in defence of common land).
The social-economic form of the village commune
existed also in Russia and amongst Teutonic and other
tribes of Europe – but endured much longer in Asia and in
India in particular. It was the extraordinary historic
durability of this system in India – its capacity to survive
despite invasions, wars and countless changes of the ruling
dynasties – that gave it an apparently a-historical culture – in
contrast to those fundamental changes in socio-economic
structure that lay at the heart of the entire history of
Europe and the West. For there, propelled by new and
more advanced modes of production, class and not caste
came to dominate the social division of labour, though in