Page 57 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes Under such a system Marx imagined absence of private property in land. However, he also
mentioned that later on private property in land emerged.
India has also been viewed as a pre-capitalist economic formation. But it was neither classless nor
static. The view is that the Asiatic mode does not deny the role of class contradictions and class
structures. Karl A. Wittfogel, Eric Hobsbawm and D.D. Kosambi have upheld the view that India
was never a static formation. According to Kosambi, caste and class-based stratification and
exploitation existed side by side in India. Similarly, different forms of slavery and bondage, feudal
relations have also existed in different combinations in the same areas and at the same time.
Two questions may be asked here :
1. How to analyse India’s class structure ?
2. What is caste-class nexus, its ramifications and interactions in different regions ?
Now caste-class nexus is an accepted reality of India’s social formation. The two cannot be seen
and studied without relating to each other. Even kinship, according to Kosambi, is a principal
basis of primogeniture, inheritance, division of property, dissensions, factions and bifurcation.
V.M. Dandekar, while appreciating the usefulness of the Marxist theory and method, makes the
following observations :
1. Marx did not see that capitalism would change due to trade unions and collective bargaining
power of workers.
2. Marx talked of two antagonistic classes, having “unity of opposites”, but these classes have not
been undifferentiated. Several groups exist in between the two classes. Today, civil society and
voluntary groups have impinged upon the state to change its character and functioning.
3. With burgeoning of middle classes as a global phenomenon, class antagonism is no more a
significant reality.
4. There has been embourgeoisiement of the proletariat in industrial societies.
We have also witnessed basic structural change and vertical mobility in Indian society, particularly
after independence.
Dandekar enlists five classes in India as follows :
1. Pre-capitalist class (cultivators, agricultural labourers and household workers)
2. Independent workers in capitalist society
3. Employers
4. White-collar employees
5. Blue-collar workers.
Besides such a multiple class structure, there are millions of workers in small-scale and tiny
industries and family-owned concerns, and there are no class conflicts and strikes in these domains
of Indian economy.
In India, in spite of globalization and privatization, the state remains the largest employer today.
In view of the recent recession in the world economy, particularly in America, professionals are
again looking for government jobs for reasons of security and guaranteed pay package, And even,
then the organized workforce is about one-fifth of the total earners. In such a situation division of
society in terms of bourgeoisie and proletariat and implicit class conflict between the two seem to
be a presumptuous phenomenon. What we see in India is quite different from the Marxist
perception. There is a simultaneous existence of class cleavages, exploitation, patronhood or false
consciousness in Indian society. More than class conflict, we can see elite conflict, pressure groups,
factions and caste lobbies. Today, middle classes are more pronounced than the upper and the
lower classes. One can also see “mixed classes”, for example, in the form of “gentlemen farmers”,
having “composite status”, with multiple affinities and access to resources and opportunities.

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