E.M Forster on Iqbal.

 I extract the following article by E.M Forster on Iqbal from the Republic of Rumi website. It suffers some factual errors & lays too much emphasis on supposed European influences on Iqbal. However, none can doubt that Forster was a friend of the Indian Muslims and sought to advance their cause. It should be mentioned that Forster, during the Great War, had lived in Egypt. Thus, he was bound to make an odious comparison such that Indian Muslims appeared less cultured or capable of national regeneration. 

E. M. Forster on Iqbal's 'Asrar-i-Khudi'

It is significant of Empire that we should wait so long for a translation from Iqbal,

His first poetry book had only been published five years previously. That's not a long time at all given that people were preoccupied with fighting a World War. 

Iqbal's English was excellent. He could have given the translation himself but did not do so because the English speaking public had little knowledge of Islam, let alone Sufi esoteric philosophy.  

the writer who has been for the last ten years such a tremendous name among our fellow citizens, the Muslims of India.

subjects, not citizens.  

They respond to him as do Hindus to Tagore, and with greater propriety, for Tagore was little noticed outside Bengal

But Calcutta was the capital. People from all over India came there to study or work. Bengali isn't very different from Braj or Maithili (in both of which Tagore had written) and the songs of Tagore would have been as familiar and as beloved to them as to the Bengali elite.

It must be said, Tagore had published much in different genres for decades before he gained world wide fame. 

until he went to Europe and gained the Nobel Prize,

by translating, or trans-creating, Gitanjali.  

whereas Iqbal has won his vast kingdom without help from the West.

Urdu, it is true, was more of a lingua franca. But Iqbal got his start through the British higher education system. His first job was as a lecturer in Arabic. I think Shikva may have appeared in print in 1909. It certainly attracted a lot of attention. The Jawab too may have been published in 1913 when Iqbal recited it to raise funds for the Turks who were fighting the Bulgarians. But, in book form, they only appeared in his 1924 collection 'bang-e-dara'.  

Lahore, Delhi, Aligarh, Lucknow, Bhopal, Hyderabad regard him as a profound thinker and a sublime poet.

Whereas Tagore was revered in Europe, China & the two Americas.  

Will London confirm their verdict?

No. There was nothing universal in Iqbal. Reform-minded Muslims may like him as may lovers of Urdu. But that is rather a small sub-set of the sub-continent's teeming millions.  

This question cannot be answered until it has been asked, and it has not yet been asked.

Because the answer was obvious. Iqbal was neither profound nor particularly sublime. Still, there can be no doubt of his innate talent.  

Mr. Nicholson’s welcome and excellent little book only touches a corner of the subject. When will he, or some other Oriental linguist,

or Oxbridge educated Muslim- Iqbal being one himself 

gives us the material for a critical judgment?

This would require a broad knowledge of Persian and Urdu literature as well as a familiarity with Islamic philosophy and practice.  

Meanwhile the following remarks may be of some slight help.

Poets in India cannot be spared from politics.

They were welcome to strict to religious or romantic themes. Tagore's poetry wasn't political.  

Would that they could! but there is no hope in the present circumstances; one could as easily part Dante from Florence.

Florence was indeed riven by political faction. But there were other parts of Italy where this wasn't the case. India was very large and there were plenty of places where traditional styles of poetry, on traditional themes, continued to flourish.  

As for the politics, they are triangular. There are two chief communities—Hindu and Muslim—and a ruling class of Englishmen. Owing to their common subjection and common Orientalism, the two communities sometimes draw together and oppose the English; owing to their different religions and to racial and social differences, they sometimes fly asunder.

It would be fair to say that many felt the 'British Umpire' was necessary to safeguard minorities.  

The English view these oscillations with cynicism, but they spring from instincts, deep if contradictory, that exist in every Indian heart. Shall the Indian look to the land he lives in, and try to make it a nation? Or shall he look to his own particular past—to Makkah if he be a Muslim, to the Vedas or Upanishads if Hindu and find in that his inspiration for the future?

The solution was obvious. Partition. Muslim majority areas could look to Mecca. Hindu majority areas could seek to revive the glory of the Gupta Age.   

Heaven forbid that we should assist him in his choice; either goal seems barren if we may deduce from the history of Europe.

Yet Ireland would be divided on religious lines a couple of years after Forster wrote this.  

But the choice itself is living,

or not being killed in a 'communal riot'. With hindsight, people should have been selling up and moving to a place where their own religion was in the majority.  

not to be sneered at, and we can see him hesitating over it even before the English came, advancing towards national unity under Akbar, retiring into religious diversities under Aurangzeb.

Akbar needed Hindus to hold his Muslim rivals in check. Aurangzeb thought he had enough power to dispense with any type of appeasement of 'kaffirs'.  

Poets unless they belong to the school of roses and nightingales (gul and bulbul) cannot abstain from this choice;

If they served a Prince who wanted gul & bulbul but abhorred politics, they stuck to what paid them. However, there was a growing market for books & magazines and political themes were topical.  

but since they decide by emotion rather than arithmetic, their attitude is often unstable and vexes the politicians.

Princes and Politicians may not like market forces but they prevail in the end.  

Iqbal is a case in point. Born in the Punjab, where the feeling between Muslim and Hindu is especially high,

actually Lahore was very peaceful compared to some other North Indian cities. 

he came out at first on the religious rather than the nationalist side.

The first book published by Iqbal was Ilmul Iqtisad (1903/1904) - A study on economic principles in Urdu. After that came Asrar-i-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self) - published in Persian in 1915. His first 
Urdu Poetry Collection: Bang-e-Dara (The Call of the Marching Bell) was only published in 1924. 

Like his predecessor Hali, he wrote for his community.

Whereas Sarojini Naidu wrote for the global Anglophone market 

One of his early poems, ‘A Complaint,’ is addressed to God, and sets forth the great deeds of Muslims, their sufferings, their miserable recompense (“God, we have done all this for you, and for our reward the infidels have houris while if lightning falls from Heaven, it is upon us”). The poem was regarded as daring and had an immense success.

But it can be of no possible interest to non-Muslims.  

In due course, ‘A Reply to the Complaint’ appeared, in which God defends himself by not unfamiliar arguments, retorting that the Muslims are to blame for their own misfortunes, owing to their lethargy and formalism. Both poems breathe the spirit of Aligarh, the great Anglo-Mohammedan College, which was founded to regenerate not India but Islam.

Forster was greatly attached to the son of the founder of that College. But Iqbal was a product of Lahore University which was 'Orientalist' not 'Occidentalist'. Hasrat Mohani could be called Aligarh's greatest contribution to Urdu poetry. His style is much simpler than Iqbal who focussed on Nazm not ghazal. 

‘A Muslim Song’ begins ‘We are all Muslims, the whole world is our country: China, Arabia and Hindustan are ours,’ and then addresses such lost or ruined cities as Cordova and Baghdad.

Cordova had been lost to the infidel. Baghdad had not. 

Iqbal had, however, Hindu friends, who were distressed at the path he was taking and remonstrated. He changed, the other side of his aspirations came to the front (“We are all Indians, our country is Hindustan, we are its bulbuls, it is our garden” very popular among students).

No. Tarana-e-Hind was from 1904. Tarana-e-Milli is from 1910 (i.e. after Muslim League was set up).  

This was followed, in 1916, by ‘A New Temple,’

Naya Shivala was written in 1905.  

in which the same idea is expressed with greater art.

It is stupid. People still sing 'sare jahan se accha'.  

Weary of the narrowness of Muslim divines, the poet calls to the Brahmin priest to turn from his narrowness, and to join him in building a temple more lofty than any the world has yet seen, the Temple of India. The glory of the Courtyard from Makkah shall inhabit that temple; the image in its shrine shall be gold, shall be inscribed Hindustan, shall wear both the Brahmin thread and the Muslim rosary, and the Muezzin shall call worshippers to prayer upon a horn.

After which everybody will drink brandy-soda & eat bacon sandwiches lovingly prepared by a Rabbi.  

A national anthem. Some of the poet’s admirers are pleased with ‘A New Temple,’ others displeased, and there is much discussion as to how he will evolve. If an outsider may venture an opinion, he will not evolve but revolve.

What can you do? Indians are like that only.  

He has felt, with great sensitiveness, the alternatives that Destiny is now offering to India, and one would expect him to continue hesitating between them, as in the past.

Iqbal wasn't stupid. He knew that the age of multi-ethnic Empires had passed. There was no alternative to 'responsible' (if not wholly representative) self-government.  

The above poems, like most of Iqbal’s work, are in Urdu, the language in which Anglo-Indians shout to their servants, and which they do not suspect of any other function.

No. If they held Government employment, they had to pass exams in that beastly thing. 

But he has also written in Persian, and this brings us to an interesting point. A cultivated Indian writer has more than one language lying ready to his pen, and he will select that which is appropriate to his subject-matter, and even to the state of his mind.

The question is whether native speakers will like his Persian or English or whatever.  

If a Muslim is conciliating Hindus, he will certainly write in Urdu, which is becoming their common speech and which furthermore contains a Sanskrit element, within limits variable. The Hindu will, conversely, write in Hindi, which resembles Urdu, though not in script, in vocabulary.

There would be little point writing to a guy in a script he did not understand. In Punjab, Urdu was made the official language in 1849. 

But if the poet feels religious rather than nationalist, if he sings not of a new India but of the glorious past of his community, then a more antique and concentrated medium may attract him; if a Muslim he may turn to Persian or even Arabic, if a Hindu to Sanskrit. Thus The Secrets of the Self, the Persian poem under review, though published between ‘Our Hindustan’ and ‘A New Temple,’ is totally opposed to them in spirit. It is addressed to Muslims only, is philosophic, separatist; on its literary side it depends upon classical Persia; and though there are non-Muslim elements in it they do not come from Hindustan: no, from a very different quarter.

In India there was a long standing convergence between Sufi Ilsam & indigenous Vedanta. Dara Shikoh was its leading exponent. There are plenty of things a Hindu might like about 'Asrar'- e.g. the condemnation of Aurangazeb's conquest as motivated by 'land-hunger', rather than piety.  

The novel aspect is the similarity to Nietzsche's philosophy. Iqbal has the Himalaya mountain demand that the Ganges river become 'hard'. This is like 'the hammer speaks'. It is also deeply silly. The Punjab depends on its rivers. People would starve if the Indus turned into a big rock. 

For Iqbal completed his education in Europe; he had degrees from Cambridge and Munich, and keeps in touch with Western philosophy. And like other of his contemporaries he has been influenced by Nietzsche; he tries to find, in that rather shaky ideal of the Superman, a guide through the intricacy of conduct.

Iqbal repudiated this view. He was a reformer rather than an iconoclast. His point was that Muslims had lost creativity and the spirit of individual enterprise. But this was equally true of Hindus or Sikhs who were prospering under the British. Their chains of gold had crushed their spirit.  

His couplets urge us to be hard and live dangerously; tigers, not sheep;

did he advocate cannibalism? 

we are to beware of those sheep who, fearing our claws, come forward with the doctrine of vegetarianism.

Any sheep which tried this would be swiftly eaten.  

In an amusing fable he sets forth the consequences:

The fodder blunted their teeth And put out the awful flashings of their eye…Their souls died and their bodies became tombs. Bodily strength diminished while spiritual fear increased. The wakeful tiger was lulled to slumber by the sheep’s charm: He called his decline Moral Culture.

Plenty of Sufi adepts lived very ascetic lives. But none doubted their spiritual power.  

We are to shun culture.

No. Islam stresses the need to gain cultured habits and etiquette.  

And though Love is indeed good, it has nothing to do with Mercy,

Save if Mercy proceed from love of the Creator 

Love is appropriation. It is stealing as opposed to begging.

Actually, the khirqa (Sufi cloak) demanded from the preceptor is better than the one freely bestowed by him.  

It is the enrichment of the Self. If we seek love in this way, a new type will be born, a champion will come forth from this dust.

Iqbal was vigilant against Messianic movements like the Qadianis. Champions are one thing but Prophet Muhammad was the seal of the prophets.  

Appear, O rider of Destiny!

Appear, O light of the dark realm of Chances!…

Mankind are the cornfield and thou the harvest,

The leaves are scattered by Autumn’s fury:

Oh, do thou pass over our gardens as the Spring!

Receive form our downcast brows

The homage of little children and of young men and old.

When thou art there, we will lift up our heads,

Content to suffer the burning fire of this world!

Is Iqbal appealing to the Occulted Imam or praying for the arrival of the Mahdi? I think he is merely saying that India's Muslims needed a great leader who would help reform their customs and eliminate social evils- e.g. untouchability.  

As a guide to conduct, Nietzsche is at a discount in Europe. The drawback of being a Superman is that your neighbours observe your efforts, and try to be Supermen too, as Germany now realizes. But this is no place to criticize Nietzschean doctrine. The significance of Iqbal is not that he holds it, but that he manages to connect it with the Quran. Two modifications, and only two, have to be made: he condemns the Nietzsche who is an aristocrat, and an atheist; his Superman is permitted to spring from any class of society, and is obliged to believe in God. No further difficulty occurs. There is a text in the Quran which says: “Lo, I will appoint a vicegerent upon earth,” and another text relating that the vicegerency was offered to Man after Heaven and the Angels refused it. Legalists quote these texts in support of the Caliphate;

the Khilafat movement in India was proving very important politically. Strangely, it enabled Hindus & Muslims to unite.  

Iqbal in support of his Superman. It is our duty to imitate the divine attributes, and to pass through Obedience and Self-Control to His vicegerency.

Iqbal is saying that Humanity is the Viceregent & can alter its own condition by its own efforts. This does not contradict the doctrine of predestination. God wills that we make our willpower stronger so as to improve our common lot.  

God’s vicegerent is as the soul of the universe, His being is the shadow of the Greatest Name. He knows the mysteries of part and whole, He executes the command of Allah in the world.

Iqbal was expressing the educated Muslim's rejection of the, then current, notion that Islam is fatalistic.  

But likeness to God does not mean union with Him. On the contrary. The Hindus are wrong: so are the Sufis, so even is Iqbal’s own master, the great poet Jalaluddin Rumi. The nearer the Superman approaches god the fuller he grows his own individuality. The desire to merge, to renounce the Self, is a sign of decay, and the doctrine has been evolved by subject races as an anodyne.

In India there had been a dispute between those who affirm  Wahdat al-Shahood, which holds creator & creation are distinct from Wahdat al-Wujud, which believes there can be a mystical identity at the end of the arduous quest. Iqbal's position is compatible with Sirhindi & closer to the Deobandi position than that of the Barelvis. Properly taught, Iqbal's poetry is perfectly orthodox though reformist and modern in spirit. 

It may be remarked in passing that Iqbal by no means turns the Pantheistic position; he says that the Self ought not to seek union with God, but he is not clear as to whether it might succeed if it did try; the spectre of Hinduism still haunts him.

No. I think it is the spectre of Ibn Arabi. The safer course is to say that God can do what he likes. We are in no position to lay down the law for him.  

But this again is a side issue. What is so interesting is the connection that he has effected between Nietzsche and the Quran. It is not an arbitrary or fantastic connection; make Nietzsche believe in God, and a bridge can be thrown. Most Indians, when they turn to the Philosophy of the West, do not know what will be useful to them. Iqbal sure has an eye.

Iqbal was repeating a claim by Sarmad- viz. that saying 'there is no God' gets you half-way to affirming 'there is no God but God.'  

In another poem, The Mysteries of Selflessness, he treats of Islam as an ideal society,

Attar's Nishapur was like a 'Welfare State' except in that people were assisted to earn their own living & to rise up in a trade or profession.  

a Catholic Church, in which the Believer can lose himself and touch a life greater than his own. How is the Superman to fit in here? It will be interesting to see, and perhaps Mr. Nicholson will give us a translation. But The Mysteries of Selflessness is likewise in Persian, and what we really need is a translation of the Urdu poems, for it is on them that the poet’s reputation rests.

This raises the question as to in what style they should be translated. There were plenty of older folk could turn anything into heroic couplets or sonnets or whatever. But perhaps the poems would appear to better advantage in more modernist dress.  

That reputation is unchallenged, although purists at Delhi

which still hadn't fully recovered from the Mutiny. In those days a smart kid- like Lala Hardayal- went to Lahore University after getting his first degree from St. Stephens. Still, there was some snobbishness amongst the 'ahl-e-zaban'. I believe it was known that Iqbal's father was a tailor and that the family had only recently converted to Islam.  

complain of his provincialisms and party leaders regret that he will not come properly to heel. One thinks of him as a sensitive and shifting personality,

he didn't want to choose between 'watani' & Islam-pasand politics- i.e. Nationalism vs Pan-Islamism. T 

in whom is possibly the divine fire, as a nightingale vexed by political watchwords which he cannot ignore because of the realities that lie behind them. Neither India nor Islam is at present a garden,

Ghalib had said India was an Eden without an Adam. He himself was the nightingale of an unseen garden.  

and the voice of Iqbal rings clearer when his conscience is lulled and his own true country—though it be a but a mirage—beckons across the arid sands where Muslim and Hindus and Englishman manoeuvre.

Iqbal did hope to reach Persian and Tajik readers. The late Ayatollah Khameni was a great lover of his poetry. 

My song is of another world than theirs; This bell calls other travellers to take the road. How many a poet after his death Opened our eyes when his own be closed, And journeyed forth again from nothingness When roses blossomed o’er the earth of his grace

Such sentiments can be found elsewhere but Iqbal made them fresh and relevant to the rising generation. Not for nothing is he acclaimed as the Poet-Prophet of Pakistan.  Hasrat Mohani, by contrast, was a founder member of the Indian Communist party. He lived to see an independent India which was moving slowly but surely to the Left. As for Pakistan, it is fighting with Afghanistan.

Iqbal's sher on the Ramadan War



How would Iqbal- a great believer in Islamic solidarity- have responded to the current Iran war?

This is my guess-

Hairat khud hairaan hai ki gul‑e‑Shiraz,

Kiya shagufta, missile se, dasht‑e‑Hijaz.

Bulbul‑e‑Lahore ki hai itni buland aawaaz,

Har khisht‑e‑Hospital‑e‑Kabul hui gudaaz.

Amazement is bewildered that the Roses of Shiraz

As missiles, so blossom in the deserts of Hijaz

So strong is the song of Lahore's bulbul

It blows up Hospitals in far Kabul!

Iqbal would be proud that when Iran bombs Saudi Arabia, Pakistan too contributes its mite to the cause of Islamic solidarity by blowing up a Hospital in Afganistan.

Alfred Marsall's view of Depression

 I extract the following from an excellent post on the EconLib blog. on Alfred Marshall's view on Depression as expressed in a book he published in 1879. Later, he felt it was too brief & lacking in rigour & sought to have existing copies recalled & destroyed. 

Excerpted from Alfred and Mary Paley Marshall,
The Economics of Industry, 1879, Book 3 c.1, s.4, italics added.

After every crisis, in every period of commercial depression, it is said that supply is in excess of demand…And it is thought that this state of things is one of general over-production.

Should the Government impose output quotas on enterprises or buy up commodities & destroy them? No. Ordinary people needed to be able to buy more nice things.  

We shall however find that it really is nothing but a state of commercial disorganization; and that the remedy for it is a revival of confidence.

There is a coordination or concurrency problem. If everybody starts investing & hiring more workers the outcome will be good. But who will kickstart this process? The first mover might go bankrupt.

…For when confidence has been shaken by failures, capital cannot be got to start new companies or extend old ones. …Other trades, finding a poor market for their goods, produce less; they earn less, and therefore they buy less; the diminution of the demand for their wares makes them demand less of other trades. Thus commercial disorganization spreads, the disorganization of one trade throws others out of gear, and they react on it and increase its disorganization.

This sounds quite Keynesian!  

The chief cause of the evil is a want of confidence.

Keynes would speak of 'animal spirits'.  

The greater part of it could be removed almost in an instant if confidence could return, touch all industries with her magic wand, and make them continue their production and their demand for the wares of others….Confidence by growing would cause itself to grow ….

There is of course no formal agreement between the different trades to begin again to work full times and so make a market for each other’s wares. But the revival of industry comes about through the gradual and often simultaneous growth of confidence among many various trades; it begins as soon as traders think that prices will not continue to fall: and with a revival of industry prices rise.

Schumpeter might say that new technology creates new products. True, their price will decline as economies of scope & scale kick in but lots of people want to be the first person in their social service to get the cool new gadget.

I suppose the automobile was a big game-changer. It is estimated that London had 300,000 horses in the late nineteenth century. There are only 200 now. That's why the streets aren't caked with dung. 

I extract the following from the Social Democracy blog. 

The UK “Royal Commission on the Value of Gold and Silver” was instituted in 1887 after a report on the “depression of trade.”

Was it caused by deflation- i.e. increased purchasing power of money? Was the solution to go off gold & introduce 'bi-metalism' (which Marshall endorsed in his last book)?  More radically, why not have a pure fiat currency? After the Great War, many countries had no choice but to embrace this option. 

The commission was to investigate the question of changes in the value of gold and silver and the effects on trade and production.

Alfred Marshall was called to give evidence and this exchange with Henry Chaplin is interesting:

“[Henry Chaplin, MP:] Do you share the general opinion that during the last few years we have been passing through a period of severe depression? …

[Marshall]:  Yes, of severe depression of profits.

[Henry Chaplin, MP:. And that has been during a period of abnormally low prices? …

[Marshall]: A severe depression of profits and of prices.

real wages had risen but many more people were having to apply for assistance under the Poor Law. Since there was a stigma attached to this, many people were living miserable lives. Marxist & other Socialist ideologies were gaining ground in the 1880s.  

I have read nearly all the evidence that was given before the Depression of Trade and Industry Commission, and I really could not see that there was any very serious attempt to prove anything else than a depression of prices, a depression of interest, and a depression of profits; there is that undoubtedly. I cannot see any reason for believing that there is any considerable depression in any other respect.” (Court 1965: 20).

But the 'poor rate' was going up. The rate-payer wasn't happy. Moreover, high rates means lower property prices, ceteris paribus. There is less incentive for building & construction.  

So according to Marshall there was a “severe depression of profits.”

With price deflation, there was a squeeze on profits, as deflated prices meant lower profits in nominal terms and perhaps even in real terms when wages did not fall enough as well.

'downward stickiness of wages'! 

Labour apparently often had rising real wages in this period, as wages did not fall as rapidly as prices. When business tried to cut wages, that provoked labour disputes (Livingston 1986: 34).

Indeed. This was the period of 'New Unionism' affecting less skilled & women (e.g. the Byrant & May match girls). Unlike the 'Labour Aristocracy' which was happy enough with the two main parties, the New Unions could sponsor a Labour party similar to the Social Democrats in Germany. Bismarck was happy to do a deal with them though they were more Marxist and radical in their thinking than the British working class.  

Marshall felt that the standard economic model places too much emphasis on the profit motive. He distinguished between the "Honest" Entrepreneur and the 'cheating merchant'.  The "bold and virtuous entrepreneur"  often acted in the best interest of the community. 

In the "ordinary business of life," business confidence is often rooted in the character of industrial leaders (the "gentlemen" of industry) who have a sense of social responsibility, rather than just cold, calculating self-interest. 

 Marshall later focused more heavily on the idea that "the most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings'. The UK had been a little tardy in adopting free universal education. Germany was pulling ahead in some technological fields. 

Keynes, in his beautifully written biographical essay on Marshall explains why his mentor turned from Mathematics or the lure of Missionary work to Economics.  He quotes Marshall at length- 

'About the year 1867 (while mainly occupied with teaching Mathematics at Cambridge), Mansel's Bamptont Lectures came into my hands and caused me to think that man's own possibilities were the most important subject for his study.

No doubt, Darwin's theory had an important effect. Why wait for 'natural selection'? Man could improve his own species-life.  

So I gave myself for a time to the study of Metaphysics; but soon passed to what seemed to be the more progressive study of Psychology. Its fascinating inquiries into the possibilities of the higher and more rapid development of human faculties brought me into touch with the question: how far do the conditions of life of the British (and other) working classes generally suffice for fullness of life ?

Previously, the concern was that if conditions of life for workers were too horrible, it would be difficult for them to remain Christian. Vice would triumph amongst the Mill workers even as Wealth piled up in Mayfair

Older and wiser men told me that the resources of production do not suffice for affording to the great body of the people the leisure and the opportunity for study; and they told me that I needed to studv Political Economy. I followed their advice, and regarded myself as a wanderer in the land of dry facts; looking forward to a speedy return to the luxuriance of pure thought. But the more I studied economic science, the smaller appeared the knowledge which I had of it, in proportion to the knowledge that I needed; and now, at the end of nearly half a century of almost exclusive study of it, I am conscious of more ignorance of it than I was at the beginning of the study."

Sadly, mathematical economists discarded any such humility.  

In 1868, when he was still in his metaphysical stage, a desire to read Kant in the original led him to Germany. "

Mill had attacked the contemporary attempt to found Christian dogmatics on Kantian metaphysics with his essay ' An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865)'

Kant my guide," he once said, " the only man I ever worshipped: but I could not get further: beyond seemed misty, and social problems came imperceptibly to the front. Are the opportunities of real life to be confined to a few ? " He lived at Dresden with a German Professor who had previously coached Henry Sidgwick. Hegel's Philosophy of History greatly influenced him. He also came in contact with the work of the German economists, particularly Roscher.

a founder of the Historical school of Political Economy. 

 Keynes seeks to explain why good economists are rare- 

the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts.

Why not just find one principle or methodology & see if it fits a wide variety of cases? I suppose what Keynes means by 'master-economist' is a person who best captures or most improves the Weltanschauung of his age. 

He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher- in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought.

Samuelson would have disagreed. For his Economics is ergodic and of restricted scope- it only deals with what is scarce. There is hysteresis in history and metaphysics in philosophy. But neither are needful if your task is how to minimize the use of scarce resources and maximise the 'surplus' which accrues to society. Here Utility is merely the other side of the coin of productivity. What is useful enables you to do more with less.  

He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future.

Marshall's world was rescued from deflation by new, high-tech, industries. Sadly, this also made war much more lethal.  

No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposefil and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician. Much, but not all, of this ideal many-sidedness Marshall possessed. But chiefly his mixed training and divided nature furnished him with the most essential and fundamental of the economist's necessary gifts- he was conspicuously historian and mathematician, a dealer in the particular and the general, the temporal and the eternal, at the same time.

The problem was 'Knightian Uncertainty'- we don't all possible future states of the world or how probable they are. This militates for something like 'regret minimization' rather than utility maximisation. 

Keynes plays up the importance of the four months Marshall spent in the US in 1875. I think he believed that America would soon start to experience diminishing returns in agriculture- which was what Keynes said in 'Economic consequences of the peace'. I suppose 'increasing returns' (or 'non-convexity') is difficult to express mathematically. 

Marshall himself gave this account of his intellectual development between 1867 & 1875

"While still giving private lessons in mathematics, he translated as many as possible of Ricardo's reasonings into mathematics; and he endeavoured to make them more general.

So 'diminishing returns' got baked into his thinking. 

Meanwhile he was attracted towards the new views of economics taken by Roscher and other German economists; and by Marx, Lassalle and other Socialists. But it seemed to him that the analytical methods of the historical economists were not always sufficiently thorough to justify their confidence that the causes which they assigned to economic events were the true causes. He thought indeed that the interpretation of the economic past was almost as difficult as the prediction of the future. The Socialists also seemed to him to underrate the difficulty of their problems, and to be too quick to assume that the abolition of private property would purge away the faults and deficiencies of human nature. . . . He set himself to get into closer contact with practical business and with the life of the working classes. On the one side he aimed at learning the broad features of the technique of every chief industry; and on the other he sought the society of trade unionists, co-operators and other working-class leaders. Seeing, however, that direct studies of life and work would not yield much fruit for many years, he decided to fill the interval by writing a separate monograph or special treatise on Foreign Trade; for the chief facts relating to it can be obtained from printed documents. He proposed that this should be the first of a group of monographs on special economic problems; and he hoped ultimately to compress these monographs into a general treatise of a similar scope to Mill's. After writing that larger treatise, but not before, he thought he might be ready to write a short popular treatise. He has never changed his opinion that this is the best order of work; but his plans were overruled, and almost inverted, by the force of circumstances. He did indeed write the first draft of a monograph on Foreign Trade; and in 1875 he visited the chief seats of industry in America with the purpose of studying the problem of Protection in a new country. But this work was suspended by his marriage; and while engaged, in conjunction with his wife, in writing a short account of the Economics of Industry, forcibly simplified for working-class readers, he contracted an illness so serious that for some time he appeared unlikely to be able to do any more hard work. A little later he thought his strength might hold out for recasting his diagrammatic illustrations of economic problems. Though urged by the late Professor Walras about 1873 to publish these, he had declined to do so; because he feared that if separated from all concrete study of actual conditions, they might seem to claim a more direct bearing on real problems than they in fact had. 

Marshall's scrupulousness meant Jevons got priority. However, credit for the first diagrammatic representation of consumer & producer surplus goes to a French engineer, Jules Dupuit, published his seminal paper, "De la mesure de l'utilité des travaux publics" (On the Measurement of the Utility of Public Works) in 1844. I suppose he is the true father of welfare economics. 

Keynes believed that Marshall had a fully worked out theory of money and had anticipated the finding of Irving Fischer & others. 

Since Money was from the early seventies onwards one of his favourite topics for lectures, his main ideas became known to pupils in a general way,' with the result that there grew up at Cambridge an oral tradition, first from Marshall's own lectures and since his retirement from those of Professor Pigou, different from, and (I think it may be claimed) superior to, anything that could be found in printed books until recently.

Why did Marshall not simply endorse fiat money with monetary policy focused on price stability? Perhaps it was the fear of inflation engendered by irresponsible politicians. If you can print money why not engage in wars of 'national glory'? 

It may be convenient at this point to attempt a brief summary of Marshall's main contributions to Monetary Theory. Marshall printed nothing whatever on the subject of Money previously to the Bimetallic controversy, and even then he waited a considerable time before he intervened. His first serious contribution to the subject was contained in his answers to a questionnaire printed by the Royal Commission on the Depression of Trade and Industry in 1886. This was followed by his article on " Remedies for Fluctuations of General Prices " in the Contemporary Review for March 1887; and a little later by his voluminous evidence before the Gold and Silver Commission in 1887 and 1888. In 1899 came his evidence before the Indian Currency Committee. But his theories were not expounded in a systematic form until the appearance of Money Credit and Commerce in 1923. By this date nearly all his main ideas had found expression in the works of others. He had passed his eightieth year; his strength was no longer equal to much more than piecing together earlier fragments; and its jejune treatment, carefully avoiding difficulties and complications, yields the mere shadow of what he had had it in him to bring forth twenty or (better) thirty years earlier. 

Alternatively, he didn't really have a theory. Perhaps, he believed deflation was good for the working class as well as for the 'widows & orphans' who lived on fixed incomes. The problem was unemployment. Maybe, he thought this would encourage emigration to the Settler Colonies which, in turn, would rebound to the advantage of the home islands. 

Keynes's account of Marshall's theory of money (given in 1924) is interesting because it contrasts to much that was revolutionary in his own General Theory. 

(1) The exposition of the Quantity Theory of Money as a part of the General Theory of Value. 

He always taught that the value of money is a function of its supply on the one hand,

this elides the question of what is money & to what extent it is the same thing as 'credit'. Depending on what people Expect, somethings are money and others aren't. If you think the world is going to hell, you may bury gold and silver and use something whose value is not expected to rise. This is Gresham's law- 'Bad money drives out good'  

 and the demand for it, on the other, as measured by " the average stock of command over commodities which each person cares to keep in a ready form."

This is Keynes's 'Transactions' demand. But, it fluctuates. In boom times bills of exchange may be very liquid. Also, technological advances reduce 'transaction' demand. We now have much less cash in our wallet than we did thirty years ago.  

He went on to explain how each individual decides how much to keep in a ready form as the result of a balance of advantage between this and alternative forms of wealth. " The exchange value of the whole amount of coin in the Kingdom," he wrote in the manuscript of

1871 mentioned above, "is just equal to that of the whole amount of the commodities over which the members of the community have decided to keep a command in this ready form.

But this changes if Credit is easily available because the economy is booming.  

Thus with a silver currency if we know the number of ounces of silver in circulation

if the value of silver is rising, more may be hoarded- i.e. be pulled out of circulation.  

we can determine what the value of one ounce of silver will be in terms of other commodities by dividing the value of above given amount of commodities

we have no way of knowing what the amount might be.  

by the number of ounces.

This may be the case if ex post equals ex ante and there are no endogenous shocks or non-convexities etc. But, otherwise, this is a fairy tale.  

Suppose that on the average each individual in a community chose to keep command over commodities in a ready form to the extent of one-tenth of his year's income.

Ex ante, he may wish to do so. Ex post he discovers it is impossible because prices unexpectedly rose or Credit conditions changed. The other point is poorer people may have no choice but to hold all income in coinage.  Keynes would emphasize the different 'marginal propensities' of different classes of people. You could increase the money supply but if that money gets hoarded by the rich and never reaches the pockets of the poor, you would have a 'liquidity trap'. Keynes introduces 'Speculative Demand' to overcome this problem but emphasizes that you have to boost aggregate demand to get out of a slump;

The money, supposed in this case exclusively silver, in the Kingdom will be equal in value to one-tenth of the annual income of the kingdom. Let their habits alter, each

 person being willing, for the sake of gain- in other ways, to be to a greater extent without the power of having each want satisfied as soon as it arises. Let on the average each person choose to keep command over commodities in a ready form only to the extent of a twentieth part of his income.

The velocity of circulation falls. Cateris paribus prices & economic activity fall.  

So much silver as before not being wanted at the old value, it will fall in value.

Not if prices crash because of the lack of aggregate demand.  

It would accordingly be more used in manufactures,

not if manufacturers can't sell their wares to a more frugal populace.  

while its production from the mines would be checked. ..." 

Not necessarily. People may sell stocks and shares & buy precious metal.  

He points out that the great advantage of this method of approach is that it avoids the awkward conception of " rapidity of circulation (though he is able to show the exact logical relation between the two conceptions):

It was necessary. MV=PT.  

" When, however, we try to establish a connection between ' the rapidity of circulation ' and the value of money, it introduces grave complications. Mr. Mill is aware of the evil (Political Economy, Book III. chap. viii. ? 3, latter part), but he has not pointed the remedy." 

There was no remedy. If Business Confidence collapses. People tighten their belts & invest in bullion. The velocity of circulation falls. Prices fall. Economic activity falls even though there is no change in the money supply.  

2 Marshall also expounded long ago the way in which distrust of a currency raises prices by diminishing the willingness of the public to hold stocks of it- 

if you distrust the currency but are obliged to accept it because it is legal tender, you try to spend it as soon as possible. Velocity of circulation goes up. This may raise prices or output or both.  

a phenomenon to which recent events have now called everyone's attention; and he was aware that the fluctuation in the price level, which is an accompaniment of the trade cycle, corresponds to a fluctuation in the volume of " ready command "  which the public desire to hold.

In countries with hyperinflation, everybody rushes to pay off their mortgages and to buy land & other imperishable commodities.  

(2) The distinction between the "real" rate of interest and the "money" rate of interest, and the relevance of this to the credit cycle, when the value of money is fluctuating. The first clear exposition of this is, I think, that given in the Principles (1890), Book VI. chap. vi. (concluding note).

Sadly, we don't know the real rate even after the fact because there is no perfect measure of inflation. As Milton Friedman would later explain there is a 'signal extraction problem'. Keynes himself would speak of 'money illusion'. Savers may be fooled by high nominal but negative real interest rates. 

(3) The causal train by which, in modern credit systems, an additional supply of money influences prices, and the part played by the rate of discount. The locus classicus for an account of this, and the only detailed account for many years to which

students could be referred, is Marshall's Evidence before the Gold and Silver Commission, 1887 (particularly the earlier part of his evidence), supplemented by his Evidence before the Indian Currency Committee, 1899. It was an odd state of affairs that one of the most fundamental parts of Monetary Theory should, for about a quarter of century, have been available to students nowhere except embedded in the form of question-and answer before a Government Commission interested in a transitory practical problem.

Marshall's theory was that if the Central bank rate of discount was held below the "natural" or "real" rate of interest, it encouraged businesses to borrow and invest, driving up the prices of commodities. The problem here is that there might be spare capacity and/or increasing returns. Moreover, nobody knows the natural or real rate. It itself depends on Expectations. 

(4) The enunciation of the "Purchasing Power Parity" Theory as determining the rate of exchange between countries with mutually inconvertible currencies.

It was obvious this theory was false. That is why so many British people preferred to settle on the Continent where their pensions or rents would go much further.  

In substance this  theory is due to Ricardo, but Professor Cassel's restatement of it in a form applicable to modern conditions was anticipated by Marshall in the memorandum 1 appended to his Evidence before the Gold and Silver Commission (1888). It also had an important place in the conclusions which he laid before the Indian Currency Committee in 1899.

There were some Indian Marshallians. They opposed this theory & also wanted infant industry protection. 

The following from an abstract of his opinions handed in by Marshall to the Gold and Silver Commission gives his theory in a nutshell: " Let B have an inconvertible paper-currency (say roubles). In each country prices will be governed by the relation between the volume of the currency and the work it has to do. The gold price of the rouble will be fixed by the course of trade just at the ratio which gold prices in A bear to rouble prices in B (allowing for cost of carriage)."

Russia did go on to gold at the end of the nineteenth century. However, most countries restricted convertibility or private sale of gold during the Great War and then, later on, during the Economically turbulent Thirties. Even America, under FDR, did so.  

Fluctuations in the value of money aren't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, rents need to be inflated away. The landowning class no longer plays a vital role in the defence of the country or the safeguarding of the Social Order. 

Marshall was firmly on the side of price stability. 

" A great cause of the discontinuity of industry," he wrote, " is the want of certain knowledge as to what a pound is going to be worth a short time hence. . .

the solution is factoring (i.e. selling on future revenue) or hedging on futures' markets 

. This serious evil can be much diminished by a plan which economists have long advocated. In proposing this remedy I want government to help business, though not to do business. It should publish tables showing as closely as may be the changes in the purchasing power of gold,

There will be either Laspeyres or Paasche bias- i.e. overestimation or underestimation because tastes change & new products become available.  

and should facilitate contracts for payments to be made in terms of units of fixed purchasing power. . . .

why not just sell on the future income stream? After all a pound today is the same value as any other pound today.  

The unit of constant general purchasing power would be applicable, at the free choice

of both parties concerned, for nearly all contracts for the payment of interest, and for the repayment of loans; and for many contracts for rent, and for wages and salaries. . . .

Friedman was a big fan of 'indexing'. But volatility isn't a bad thing in itself. It drives liquidity and 'creative destruction'.  

Keynes highlights this remarkable passage which Marshall consigns to a footnote- 

 Every plan for regulating the supply of the currency, so that its value shall be constant, must, I think, be national and not international.

In which case a profligate country may inflate so as to gain economies of scope & scale to the detriment of more cautious neighbours. Indeed, they may have deflation as foreigners buy their currency as a 'store of value' (i.e. velocity of circulation falls). 

I will indicate briefly two such plans, though I do not advocate either of them.

On the first plan the currency would be inconvertible. An automatic Government Department would buy Consols for currency whenever it was worth more than a unit, and would sell Consols for currency whenever it was worth less. ... 

i.e. Open Market operations would target inflation. The problem is the timing might be wrong. Also there would be political pressure for a laxer stance.  

The other plan is that of a convertible currency, each note giving the right to demand at a Government Office as much gold as at that time had the value of half a unit together with as much silver as had the value of half a unit." 

This puts fractional reserve banking in peril & could trigger panics. The overall effect would be contractionary.  

The Economist mocked at Symmetallism

i.e. a currency composed of gold welded to an equal value of sliver.  

and the optional Tabular Standard; and Marshall, always a little over-afraid of being thought unpractical or above the head of the " business

man " (that legendary monster), did not persevere.

Back then, Economists had humility. They may not have had the Evangelical faith of their clerical ancestors, but were concerned with Ethics as much as with Efficiency. 

Why Sriniketan failed

The first Indian to gain professional qualifications in Agricultural science was Dwijendralal Ray who received a scholarship to study at the Royal College in Cirencester in the Eighteen Eighties. On return to India he was employed by the Government as a Deputy Magistrate rising to the rank of Commissioner of Excise. He is remembered as a patriotic poet, song-writer (Dwijendra Geeti) &  playwright of genius. Sadly, his relations with Tagore became strained but his son was able to get close to Gurudeva after his father passed away. 

Tagore, whose brother had been an ICS officer, was a landlord who understood that raising agricultural productivity would benefit both the agriculturist as well as the artisan, the merchant and, most importantly, the zamindar. 

He may also have been aware that the famous Dacca Muslin had been made from a strain of cotton which had been wiped out by a plant disease. Perhaps scientific experimentation could create a robust variety of cotton which could be used for, high thread count, hand-weaving for the luxury market. The Bengali village needed to grow more food but it also needed higher value adding cash crops so as to gain resources for investment in infrastructure, education, etc.

Sadly, Tagore failed in his attempt to emulate the work being done at the new Agricultural Institute in Pusa by Sir Albert Howard & his wife. Howard praised traditional Indian farming practices & is considered a pioneer of organic farming.  Tagore's intention was good but his resources were inadequate and the approach was impractical. This was partly because Tagore had experience of supervising his estates in the East where water was abundant. Shantiniketan was in a relatively arid region in the West. The other problem was that it was difficult to bring and retain properly qualified people to a remote rural place. Only if a profit could be turned on their work could the project be sustainable. Though the Tagore family owned vast estates, they were not flush with funds. 

It must be said, American money & expertise could boost agricultural productivity in India. An example is the Etawah project of the Nineteen Fifties. With hindsight, we see that what really mattered was introducing a higher yielding crop strain. 'Village regeneration' was merely palliative- and dependent on increasing subventions of external aid & expertise-  if productivity remained stagnant. 

Recently, Scroll.in published the following 

When Rabindranath Tagore sent 3 men to study agriculture in US so they can build Sriniketan

Tagore's Santiniketan school could not prepare students to an adequate level to get into Calcutta Uni- let alone a British Institution. His initial idea was that they might be able to gain vocational training in engineering in Japan but that was hard work.  Thus, his son, son-in-law & the son of a 'Dipty' who had come under his wing were sent to the University of Illinois- a land grant institution with a large number of Chinese students- to study agriculture. This was a mistake. Illinois specialised in corn & dairy under conditions obtaining in the American mid-West. Bengal has a very different climate and soil. I suppose, one could say Cornell would have been a better choice because it put more emphasis on pure science. Still, at the time, the firs step would be to take a degree in Chemistry & then specialise in Soil Science. 

The  Pusa Agricultural Research Institute had been started in 1905. Its first head was an indigo planter who was part of the Indigo Improvement Syndicate which hired Chemists. I should mention, a first degree in Chemistry would be useful in getting a Government job or, indeed, in setting up a profitable enterprise. The great PC Ray- who had received his Doctorate in Chemistry from Edinburgh during the 1880s- had successfully established a business enterprise. He was very active in the Congress movement. 

The three lads Tagore sent to Illinois did return to India to take up agricultural work but soon got malaria or otherwise failed to do anything useful. Tagore tried to get his son-in-law a Government job with the Agriculture Dept. at a time when he was close to the Governor. But the lad simply wasn't qualified to do anything useful. The son of the Dipty had to be employed at Shantiniketan where he used to dance & sing very nicely till he died in 1926. 

Tagore later brought in Elmhirst, who had studied at Cornell, to take charge of Sriniketan. Since Elmhirst had married an American heiress, he could afford to subsidize that shite. 

In ‘History of Sriniketan’, Uma Das Gupta writes about Tagore’s rural reconstruction project,

which failed 

where scientists,

some scientists- e.g. Bose of Boson fame- but these were guys who knew shit about farming 

economists, sociologists

Mahalanobis? Good at Stats and highly cultured. At a later point, he suggested a new method of sampling to  establish better harvest forecasts.

and technicians came together with villagers to build Sriniketan.

It did introduce some new vegetable crops & encouraged cottage industries. But it didn't and couldn't do what Pusa was doing viz. introducing new higher yield or more robust crop strains (e.g. Pusa wheat) which is what actually lifts up the agricultural sector. 

In India there are specialist castes of market gardeners- e.g. 'Phules' of Maharashtra- & dairy men etc. A landlord can bring them in and help them get established. Once they have succeeded in raising yields, all the farmers in the area learn the technique. The specialists can then sell up at a profit and move elsewhere. Why did Tagore not adopt this method? The answer was that his family were newcomers and had bought some land from the local landlords. Also, Tagore was not money minded. Shantiniketan had been chosen by his father, the Maharishi, as a place of spirituality- not a source of profit. 

Uma Das Gupta


'Please take it seriously when I say that my whole heart is with you in the great work you have started.

Tagore is saying this to Elmhirst whom he invited to India in 1920. This suggests that his son & son-in-law hadn't achieved shit. To be fair, Tagore was seeking to create a cosmopolitan ambience in Shantiniketan. There can be no doubt that foreigners who came to Shantiniketan were gifted and idealistic people who achieved much in their lives. 

I wish I were young enough to be able to join you and perform the meanest work that can be done in your place, thus getting rid of the filmy web of respectability that shuts me off from intimate contact with Mother Dust. It is something unclean like prudery itself to have a sweeper to serve that deity who is in charge of the primal cradle of life.'

I want nice White dude to sweep my primal cradle of life. Also, kindly wipe my bum.  

Rabindranath sent the above note to the Sriniketan pioneer L.K. Elmhirst on 31 March 1922, when he learned that the first batch of Surul students had dug trenches in their own backgardens to dump the night soil to help in the improvement of agriculture.

Bengalis think their faeces are a contribution to science.  

Rabindranath very eagerly looked forward to the day when his village work would benefit from the contributions of modern science.

Nitrogenous fertilizers? Superphosphates had been used in India from around 1906. In the Thirties, ammonium sulphate- as a byproduct of steel plants- became available. Meanwhile, Sriniketan students were concentrating on shitting copiously so as to improve agriculture. It must be said, there were worse things they could have been getting up to. That was the whole point of Shantiniketan. It was far away from the flesh-pots of Calcutta. If your son is a thicko, send him there.  He will learn to climb trees & sing nice songs rather than fuck syphilitic whores. 

In as early as 1906, he sponsored three young men from Santiniketan to study agriculture and dairy farming at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the USA.

Which was fine if you were going to be a corn or dairy farmer in the Mid-West.  

They were his son Rathi, his son-in-law Nagendranath Ganguli (1889–1958, married to Rabindranath’s youngest daughter Mira Devi), and his friend Srishchandra Majumdar’s son, Santosh Chandra Majumdar (1886–1926, student of the Santiniketan school, and afterwards, teacher too).

They may have been stupid but could have eaten their dinners and become British barristers easily enough. That way they'd have been able at least some money on their own.  

The plan was that at the end of their higher studies in agricultural sciences, they would bring their newly acquired knowledge to the work of rural reconstruction in India.

The plan was that they would acquire useful education and be able to support themselves. India is an agricultural country. If you can raise the output of a farm or a herd of dairy cattle, you can earn well as a consultant.  

Rabindranath felt sure from his observation of other agricultural countries that the economic salvation of the village lay in the application of expertise.

Why not help the sons of local farmers get that expertise? Buy them a train ticket to where a better technique was being implemented. They would earn their own keep and return home able and willing to spread the new technique purely by the 'demonstration effect'- i.e. by setting an example others could emulate. Tagore was doing the opposite. His mistake was to bring in an Englishman who was trained at Cornel rather than a nice Eskimo lady who had studied arctic fishing under erudite Polar Bears.  

In 1909, all the three graduates from the University of Illinois returned with their state-of-the-art training in agriculture and animal husbandry and began to introduce scientific methods to the Sriniketan work. Their experiments were carried out jointly with the villagers.

Why did they fail? Malaria? That was part of it. I believe they did buy a tractor or something of that sort. But they couldn't raise productivity. Thus their 'work' didn't pay for itself. Tagore hoped the Government would employ his useless son-in-law. 

To take the work forward, Rabindranath bought 20 bighas of land in 1912,

six or seven acres.  

along with a house that stood on that plot of land just outside the village called Surul, within two miles west of Santiniketan, where the Sriniketan Institute was to be located. The house that stood on the land was commonly known as ‘Cheap Kuthi’. It belonged to the East India Company’s Commercial Resident for the District of Birbhum, John Cheap, who lived in it from 1787 to 1828. His job was to indent the local supply of cotton and silk fabrics on the Company’s account with an annual investment quota of 45,000 to 65,000 in Pounds Sterling. Silk and cotton fabrics comprised the major portion of the East India Company’s advances. The weavers used to work on a system of ‘advances’, all of which was handled by the Company’s Commercial Resident.

There was scope for the development of cottage industries & Sriniketan did in fact encourage some leather-work etc. 

As Commercial Resident, the punctual supply of the Company’s requirements was the main job. For that, good cooperation was needed from the local agents. Mr Cheap found Surul and its neighbourhood not only rich in raw materials, but he also found a friend and ally in an influential landlord cum businessman of Surul, Sri Srinivas Sarkar. It was from the Sarkars that John Cheap obtained a vast tract of land, on which he built his palatial house surrounded by a garden and an orchard. It was an impressively large house, but fallen into ruin by the time Rabindranath bought the property. The fact that John Cheap was posted at the place by the East India Company was proof of the earlier prosperity of the region.

Sadly, fossil fuelled steam power was displacing human sweat. Bengal had coal. Tagore's grandfather had invested in coal mines which had first appeared before he was born. 

John Cheap encouraged spinning and weaving in the villages around.

How? By paying a decent enough price for good quality stuff. I have personally encouraged pizza production in Fulham by buying pizza of good quality and an affordable price. 

He collected his produce, as well as the other goods for sale, through a network of huge clearing stations. It is believed that his enterprise brought the whole area to a level of prosperity, which was seen in a sprouting of ‘pukka’ buildings, houses, and temples.

But did he dig a trench in his garden and fill it with his own shit? No! Thus he didn't improve agriculture at all.  

Machine-spun cloth with identical patterns, copied from Cheap’s exported goods, began to reach the Port of Calcutta at cut rates.

This was because Machines in England were very racist and cruel. Charles Dickens once overheard a power-loom say to another power-loom 'Let's fuck over Bengali weavers by copying their patterns & selling cloth to them at a big financial loss to ourselves'. The other power-loom replied 'Great idea! Let us also make Bengali buddhijivis as stupid as shit'. Sadly, there was and is no need for Machines or AI or anything else to do any such thing.

But the inevitable outcome was that Birbhum’s hand-woven cloths were thrown out of the market.

Birbhum preferred to clothe itself more cheaply in stuff produced using fossil fuel, not muscle, power.  

As a result, the villages were ultimately reduced to poverty

because Machines in a faraway country were RACIST 

and infested with the diseases of cholera and malaria.

Why did those Machines not eradicate cholera and malaria instead of producing cheap cloth?  

This was also the time when the district was getting its first railway line.

How sad! District should have been getting its first Yogic Levitation line.  

The massive digging undertaken by the East India Railways in laying the Bolpur Line had an adverse impact on the environment and the people’s health.

You should only dig a trench for your own shit. Can steam locomotives shit? No! Thus you should not dig trenches for them

For the first few years of the Sriniketan work, nothing substantial could be done with that plot of land except to clear the jungles surrounding the area of ‘Cheap Kuthi’ and to meet the villagers.

I suppose it would take a few years to clear six acres of land if you keep digging and shitting to improve agriculture.  

A scheme was also started to make the Surul farm into a model for the benefit of the cultivators living in the surrounding villages. This holistic task was led by Rathi Babu and Nagendranath Ganguli, who, armed as it were, with their study and training at the University of Illinois were ready to make an impact on rural reconstruction. But nothing came of those early attempts to start the work in earnest, because all the workers came down with malaria. That is how the initial 10 years were spent like a roller coaster with starting the work and stopping it at intervals.

So, Indian graduates from Illinois are useless. Elmhirst, being British, is not useless even though he too studied in America.  

In 1921, Rabindranath travelled widely to

get money for his money-pit Skool. 

inform the larger humanity about his Visva-Bharati International University at Santiniketan, a ‘place’ for the world to meet as in a single ‘nest’.

of stupidity 

When he was in the USA, he arranged to meet a young Englishman who was then a student of agriculture at Cornell University.

i.e. as stupid as shit. To be fair, the dude had been to Cambridge 

This was L.K. Elmhirst (1893–1974, agricultural economist, led the Sriniketan work during 1922–24, and later gave it his lifelong support). Rabindranath had been told about Elmhirst by another Englishman, Sam Higginbottom (1874–1958)

a Missionary who claimed to be helping Indian farmers. Allen Dulles (future head of the CIA) spent his gap year in India teaching Shakespeare to farmers. He didn't understand how this would raise agricultural productivity. Elmhirst came under Higginbotham's wing when he was deemed unfit for the Army & spent some time volunteering for the YMCA in India. My point is that all sorts of people were pretending to help the poor starving masses. Some- who introduced a new seed variety- e.g. Himachal's 'Johnny Appleseed' Samuel Stokes- succeeded. Tagore did not.  

, who founded the Nainital Agricultural Institute, where Elmhirst had worked for some months as a wartime volunteer in 1917–18. Rabindranath appealed to Elmhirst to come over and start the Surul Farm.

Indians are useless. Bring in a Britisher if you want to get things done. 

About their meeting Elmhirst wrote:

I remember well the morning in the spring of 1921 when a telegram reached me at Ithaca, from Tagore, which read ‘Come and see me in New York. I made a hurried journey to New York, and shall never forget the friendly welcome I received.

Why was Tagore so desperate to recruit a Britisher at precisely that time?  The University of Dhaka  was established on July 1, 1921on the basis of a statute promulgated in March 1920,

Tagore's Vishva Bharati declared itself a University at the same time but it was only in 1951 that it was officially recognised as a degree awarding Institution. 

‘I have’, Tagore said to me, ‘an institution of learning and the arts at Santiniketan which is mainly academic.

It really wasn't. That is why it could not become a College under the University of Calcutta.  Krishna Chandra College (K.C. College) in Hetampur (about 30 km from Shantiniketan)  is generally considered the first college in the Birbhum district to receive affiliation from the University of Calcutta, obtaining approval to teach arts courses in 1896. If you were too stupid to study there, you could go to Tagore's skool for wealthy thickos (the fees were high). 

It is surrounded by villages, some Hindu, some Muslim, some Santal,

the Santals had only come in about a century ago because of a famine.  

but all are decaying;

not as noxiously as Tagore's own tax-farmer class 

all had an ancient culture,

The Tagores did. It was called 'Sanatan Dharma'. They turned their backs on it.  

but today they appear sick. Will you come and help me to find out why?

Are you stupid enough to think that you know about India than Indians- more particularly those who didn't study low IQ shite at Collidge?  

Would you be prepared to go and live in a village? Would you like to consider it? Then how about sailing back with me tomorrow?’

‘But’, said I, ‘if I am really to be of any use to you, I must finish my course at Cornell’.

The odd thing is that the son-in-law of Tagore's colleague, K.M Sen, had got a PhD in soil science from London. Pabitra Kumar Sen was another PhD scholar who returned to India in the Twenties. He did visit Shantiniketan in the forties but, as far as I can tell, Sriniketan achieved nothing commensurate with the talent pool it could draw on. To be fair, the Imperial Institute had the resources and the prestige. Sriniketan was just window dressing for a rich-man's Arts college for thickos.  

Elmhirst came to work for Sriniketan after completing his course of studies at Cornell. He came to Santiniketan at the end of 1921 and started the rural work in 1922, by moving to Surul with a team of two teachers and 10 senior students from the Santiniketan school. In the team were Rathi Babu, Santosh Majumdar, and Kalimohan Ghose, whom Elmhirst referred to as his ‘three closest collaborators’. Another resource person who joined them soon after was  from the USA, a paramedical nurse, who was asked to set up the Village Health Centre and Clinic at Surul.

She was first sent to the UK for training as a midwife. She is credited as the first person to make a film about Shantiniketan. She travelled widely and wrote a book about her experiences.

It was not easy at first for the Santiniketan-Sriniketan team to start their work as

they knew were either foreigners or urban, upper class, Indians with little knowledge of rural conditions. 

there was an ongoing political movement at the time. Gandhi’s Non-cooperation Movement had touched many hearts, even in Santiniketan. The political ferment also affected the team’s relationship with the villagers to some extent. Elmhirst wrote in his diary how Rabindranath used to discuss their local problems and experiences regularly and consulted, in particular, with Kalimohan Ghose, as he was the Sriniketan contact person with the local villagers. Moreover, the villagers trusted Kalimohan Ghose

A teacher at Shantiniketan whom Tagore had sent to England to learn modern educational techniques. He came from Tripura and was of a less affluent background. 

Initially, the team took up reconstruction work in the three designated villages in Surul’s neighbourhood. The records in Elmhirst’s diary refer to the desperate struggle they had in making the initial contacts, at first, with the Muslim villages, and later, also with the Hindu villages. Again, as Elmhirst wrote in his diaries, Rabindranath learned about it all from Kalimohan and gave his encouragement to keep the work going and reiterated his support for it.

So, despite having been in the area for twenty years, Tagore & Co. had not established good relations with their rural neighbours.  

After getting the work started, Elmhirst could stay for only two years, from 1922 to 1924. He had to return to England to start his own educational institution, Dartington Hall in Devonshire, though he remained connected with the Sriniketan work throughout his life. His correspondence with Rathi Babu bears out how closely he followed all matters of Sriniketan, even criticized some of it in his assessment. Rathi Babu sought Elmhirst’s advice earnestly, and a number of the leading village workers also stayed in touch with him. Elmhirst himself returned to Sriniketan on short visits every couple of years. The lady he married, Dorothy Whitney Straight (1887–1958), endowed an annual grant of Rs 32,000 for Sriniketan, which was of foundational help to the work over the years. That is how Sriniketan’s ‘permanence’ was ensured.

In other words, it was a charitable project financed by an American heiress. But the Pusa Institute too had been financed by an American millionaire who was a friend of Lord Curzon's wife's family.  

Dorothy Whitney Straight was the daughter of the American financier, William Whitney, and the widow of the distinguished diplomat Willard Straight. Rabindranath dedicated his book of essays, Pioneer in Education, to Dorothy with the following words, ‘To Dorothy Whitney Straight who made Sriniketan possible’.

Swadesi is best financed by American philanthropy.  

When the Sriniketan work was being conceived, Rabindranath insisted on an all-rounded approach that would take account of the villager’s life in all aspects.

What improves village life is higher yielding crop strains.  

He also asserted his confidence in the cooperation of the young people in bringing about the reforms and in gradually taking along their elders with them to that end. That is why he was attracted to the Scout Movement founded by Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941, founder of the worldwide Scout Movement), and decided to tie up the Sriniketan experiment with the Scout Movement.

The Anushilan Samitis were anti-Imperialist. Baden Powell in his 1908 book 'Scouting for Boys' explicitly says  that Scouting was a way to prepare youth to defend and serve the Empire. The Boer War had shown deficiencies in British military training. Boys needed to learn 'scouting'- i.e. exploring and studying the terrain and finding ways to 'live off the land'. Otherwise they would be at a disadvantage when faced with guerilla tactics or a rural insurgency. 

Rathi Babu arranged for two boys from the Santiniketan school to join a training course for Scout leaders in the Central Provinces.

Did they go on to join the Army? No.  

Among the other aspects of the Sriniketan experiment, Rabindranath encouraged the collaboration of scientists, economists, sociologists, and technicians with the work.

Brilliant Bengalis did participate. But the thing was a money pit. It should have been self-sustaining by raising productivity.  

He encouraged one and all to stand by the villagers in their struggle against poverty and oppression.

Raising productivity was the answer. This meant finding higher yield crop strains.  

He was also cautious that the team did not impose too much ‘statistics’ or technicalities on the villagers in bringing about the changes. He wrote to Elmhirst, ‘All the time when Sriniketan has been struggling to grow into a form, I was intently wishing that it should not only have a shape, but also light, so that it might transcend its immediate limits of time, space and special purpose.’

Raising productivity means having more food to eat and more money in your pocket. If your economic condition is improving, you are in no hurry to transcend time and place- i.e. die and go to Heaven.  

Sven Beckert on why penises outlasted the Renaissance

Historiography may be defined as a dynamic, global, system of sodomy & body mutilation driven by the ceaseless accumulation of severed penises & extracted uteruses. This is why we must defund History Departments & 'cancel' any and every Historian who writes big, stupid, books. 

At any rate, the argument given above would be irreproachable if Sven Beckert's big book on Capitalism wasn't itself a bunch of stupid, paranoid, illogical, lies. 

I read in the Guardian that-

'Sven Beckert defines capitalism as a dynamic, global economic system driven by the ceaseless accumulation of privately controlled capital, structured by state power, and characterized by the "power of generation"—the relentless, productive reinvestment of wealth to create more capital. Rather than natural, he views it as a human-made, evolving system that constantly commodifies new areas of life, separating economic activity from mere market exchange'

A global economic system can't be static for reasons Darwin explained. It must be dynamic. Can there be 'ceaseless accumulation of privately controlled capital'? No. Why? Death occurs. People die. So do lineages and tribes and nations. Moreover, Capital depreciates. Control rights over it may get redistributed away from private agents. Large classes of capital goods may become obsolete overnight. They become worthless. 

Can we point to any private enterprise or entity which has 'ceaselessly accumulated capital' over the last 500 years? No. We can point to different entities which at different times and different places did such accumulation- but only for a period. 

What if I were to say 'It doesn't matter if some capitalists are replaced by other capitalism. Capitalism is continuing to accumulate assets'? 

The problem here is that one could equally say 'Monarchy, in the UK, has continued to accumulate assets' or 'the Church has continued to accumulate assets' or the Chinese Communist party has continued to accumulate assets. What is certain is that as countries become more advanced, the State accumulates not just assets but claims on the income generated by assets at a much faster rate than any private enterprise or entity. 

Beckert's claim cashes out as the claim that 'Capitalism is structured by state power'. In other words, something which is empirically true- viz. that most non-failed States see an increase their stock of assets from century to century- is coupled with something which isn't true at all. Capitalism does not ceaselessly accumulate assets. Why? Some are 'white elephants'. Others are vulnerable to theft or confiscation. Few generate a return which covers 'depreciation'. Almost all require some degree of supervision & carry some degree of risk. The sad truth is Capitalists can leave buildings empty till they fall apart. But plenty of State owned property too ends up rotting away. Even beavers, which are ceaselessly driven to build dams, heartlessly abandon those assets if they aren't getting a good enough return in terms of fish.

In the early 17th century, the Peruvian city of Potosí

the area had provided silver to the Incas. The Spanish gained 12,000 kilograms  of silver as part of Atahualpa's ransom alone in 1533. At a later point they themselves took over mining operations and made some technical improvements.

Neither the Inca nor the Conquistadores could be considered to belong to a 'Capitalist' society or 'global economic order'. 

billed itself as the “treasure of the world” and “envy of kings”. Sprouting at the foot of the Cerro Rico, South America’s most populous settlement produced 60% of the world’s silver, which not only enabled Spain to wage its wars and service its debts, but also accelerated the economic development of India and China.

Any great expansion in the supply and distribution of  high value to weight tradable item would have this effect regardless of economic regime. 

The city’s wealthy elites could enjoy crystal from Venice and diamonds from Ceylon while one in four of its mostly indigenous miners perished. Cerro Rico became known as “the mountain that eats men”.

By contrast the Laurium silver mines near Athens, the biggest source of silver in antiquity, contributed to its cultural pre-eminence- the memory of which lasts to this day. It would be fair to say that Periclean Athens was more Capitalist than Potosi. It was also way more cultured.  It is likely that pre-Incan silver miners in Bolivia one thousand years ago had a better material standard of living and more freedom than after they were conquered by shitheads with horrible, sadistic, religions & legal codes.

The story of Potosí, in what is now southern Bolivia, contains the core elements of Sven Beckert’s mammoth history of capitalism:

Though what was exhibited there was servants of the Spanish King continuing & expanding the horrible practices of the Inca Emperors. True, the Spanish didn't go in for human sacrifice but they did burn heretics because they themselves were Cat-licks. Proddy heretics contented themselves with burning witches.  

extravagant wealth,

like the Incas 

immense suffering

as under the Incas 

, complex international networks,

more complex and more international than the Incas but only becomes Kings like Henry the Navigator had sponsored naval expeditions. This wasn't Capitalism. It was Despotic Imperialism of a very ancient type. 

a world transformed.

by wooden sailing ships. The first such were produced 6000 years ago.  

The Eurocentric version of capitalism’s history holds that it grew out of democracy, free markets, Enlightenment values and the Protestant work ethic.

No. It is that it grew out of 'limited monarchy' after the Third Estate gained control over fiscal policy. Mercantilism was the rule save- for about 80 years- for the UK after the abolition of the Corn Laws. This was because of England's large surplus on 'invisibles'. Also some politicians- e.g. Randholph & Winston Churchill associated 'free trade' (which never actually obtained) with 'cheap bread' which, they imagined, is all the proles cared about. 

Beckert, a Harvard history professor and author of 2015’s prize-winning Empire of Cotton, assembles a much more expansive narrative, spanning the entire globe and close to a millennium. Like its subject, the book has a “tendency to grow, flow, and permeate all areas of activity”.

Like cancer? 

Fredric Jameson famously said that it was easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

It was even easier to imagine Fredric Jameson chopping off his own head and shoving it up his pooper.  

At times during these 1,100 pages, I found it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism.

Because this dude wouldn't earn any royalties if Capitalism ended before he finished his shitty book. 

“No religion, no ideology, no philosophy, has ever been as all-encompassing as the economic logic of capitalism,”

Save the biological logic of penises thrusting into vaginas. Shockingly, there is evidence that this deplorable practice existed during the so called 'Renaissance' which, it is totes triggering to say, raped Bilgramian 'Enchantment' thus engendering the abortion known as the 'Enlightenment'. 

Beckert claims, defining it as “the ceaseless accumulation of privately controlled capital”.

Which has never occurred.  

Accounting for it therefore feels like explaining water to fish.

A historian has an IQ more similar to a fish than a bloke who had to make his living working in the City of London.  

Adam Smith, “the hero of capitalism’s triumphant self-remembrance”, attributed it to benign self-interest.

No. He said the baker doesn't produce good bread out of a sheer altruism. He hopes to make a decent living by his trade. He might have added that guys only pretend to be interested in what girls have to tell them. What they really want is to get their penis wet. This doesn't mean there can't be happy marriages.  

Beckert, however, calls it a revolution, centuries in the making, which depended on things that Smith downplayed:

e.g. the existence of penises or the need to take a shit after dining well 

“power, violence, the state”.

the epistemic rape of disabled Lesbians of colour by cunts like Jane Austen. 

Far from natural or inevitable, it has always been “unstable and contested”,

by disabled Lesbians of colour who were all like 'Oi! Austen you fat cow! Shove your head up your own White ass, why don't you?  

proceeding by jolts.

dolts may well think so.

The word “capitalism” originated in France in the 1840s, around the same time as its antagonists “socialism”, “communism” and “anarchism”, but the system was much older.

The question, at that time, was who should exercise power? Aristocrats? Fuck them. Guys who had grown rich dealing in stocks & shares? They didn't want the job. The safest thing would be to talk a bollocks while waiting for Napoleon III to take up where his Uncle left off.  

“Capitalism is a process,” Beckert writes, “not a discrete historical event with a beginning and an end”.

In which case Historians can tell us nothing about it.  

He begins tracking the process in the port of Aden in 1150.

Whose fortunes had fluctuated for 3000 years. Indian Ismailis know the name of the last Queen of the Sulayhid dynasty because she was given the title of 'Hujja'. After Yemen was conquered by the Sunni Ayyubites in 1175, Aden was rebuilt & fortified & thus attracted more trade.  

This vibrant trade hub between Asia and the Middle East, in what is now Yemen, was one of several “islands of capital”

It was not an island & was under Islamic rule. Usury was prohibited. Slavery was encouraged. This is the opposite of Capitalism. Indian 'banyans' residing in Aden had descendants who encountered genuine Capitalism in Surat some six centuries later.  

which formed a “capitalist archipelago”.

No. The rulers might protect & tax merchants but, equally, they might just loot them and, if they were off the wrong sect, kill or forcibly convert them. 'Abd al-Nabī ibn Mahdi, who was pretty fanatical was particularly harsh on Jews. Indeed this prompted Maimonides to write the 'Epistle to Yemen'. The Abuyyid conquest permitted Aden to once again attract kuffar merchants. But under, al-Malik al-Mu'izz al-Ismail (1197–1202), persecution renewed. 

Inventing new trades like accountancy and insurance,

which existed in ancient Sumer & India etc.  

its “strikingly modern” residents were in the vanguard of a global insurgency.

No. They were getting fucked over periodically by fanatical Sultans or marauding tribal chiefs.  

But their accumulation of profit for its own sake was regarded with suspicion by rulers, religions and ordinary people alike.

They were sheep to be sheared. Sadly, they might also be butchered for purely religious reasons.  

They enjoyed wealth without power or prestige: “capitalists without capitalism”.

Merchants without the Rule of Law. What was cool about the East India Company was that it was a bunch of Merchants which could kick the ass of crazy Sultans & establish the Rule of Law as a profitable enterprise. One may call this an 'export of invisibles'.  

He visits Barbados, Samarkand and Phnom Penh;

which never had much in the way of Capitalism.  

he quotes cultural texts from Abba to Zola

because he is stupid.  

What they needed was the state’s collaboration. This developed during the “Great Connecting” between 1450 and 1650, when the discovery of the Americas (named after a slave-owning merchant)

who had a penis. It was a white penis. That's totes triggering to me. Basically, you have this white slave owning penis raping Turtle Island and then partying with Jeffery Epstein & I'm denied tenure? Is it coz I iz bleck? 

finally enabled European traders to challenge Asia and the Middle East while making themselves indispensable.

Fuck off! The Portuguese didn't need the Americas to move into the Indian Ocean.  

In the era of “war capitalism”, new trade routes and territorial seizures triggered conflict, which trade then financed.

European powers were constantly at war. But global trade expanded with very little military conflict. If everybody's making money, what is there to fight about?  

Colonialism established capitalism’s “connected diversity”, which is to say, think global, act local.

Colonialism had always existed. Sometimes it had a commercial aspect. Quite often it didn't- e.g. Maoris. The earliest Austronesian colonists tended not to maintain such links though, in some cases, maritime trade did occur at a later time- e.g. Madagascar. It had nothing to do with Capitalism which is about 'buying low, selling high'.  

Like silver, sugar reconfigured the world. On the then uninhabited island of Barbados,

it had been inhabited but it may have been wholly depopulated before the Brits took it over 

just 74 sugar planters used “American lands, African labour

initially it was Irish labour 

and European capital” to create a private slave colony – the new capitalist avant garde.

it was a Crown Colony similar to Portuguese or Spanish Crown Colonies. Ancient Empires had used slaves on plantations even if they had no open markets or private capital.  

Across the Americas, millions of enslaved people represented trillions of dollars in unpaid labour.

To whom? Nobody at all. That's why nobody could raise any money on the basis of what they did or did not represent. Similarly, the valuable unpaid work we do when we wipe our own bums doesn't represent gazillions of dollars.  

Even after Britain abolished slavery in 1833, there were no clean hands.

Because penises had not been banned even though they cause rape.  

An ordinary European who began his day with a cigarette and a cup of sweetened coffee was already complicit in three branches of the slave trade.

Whereas an African Chieftain who had just sold a whole bunch of slaves to the Arabs had very clean hands indeed.  

The Industrial Revolution, capitalism’s Great Leap Forward, required

exploitation of fossil fuels. Trillions of extinct dinosaurs are owed gazillions of dollars for their unpaid labout.  

less explicit forms of coercion and exploitation. One luminary described Victorian Manchester as “the chimney of the world … the entrance to hell realised”.

The people of Manchester benefitted. They and their descendants enjoyed a life more abundant.  

Meanwhile, envy of America’s vast territories and abundant resources inspired Europe’s dismemberment of Africa, which one French newspaper called “America at our doorsteps”.

I suppose it is fair to say that Africans currently seeking to move to Europe see its as the America at its doorstep. 

Beckert enjoys shredding capitalism’s self-flattering myths.

If he makes a little money by it, good luck to him. True, you can make more money by writing about dragons or wizards but that would take imagination.  

He calls the notion of the free market “nothing more than a figment of scholars’ and ideologues’ imaginations”. The Protestant work ethic was deployed to justify child labour at home and forced labour abroad.

The Devil can quote Scripture.  

“It is necessary to use methods that best can shake their idleness and make them realise the sanctity of work,” was how the Belgian King Leopold II rationalised working millions to death in Congo Free State. And yet, impossible though it was to imagine at the time, capitalism outlasted both slavery and empire.

Just as penises outlasted the Renaissance.  Hopefully, Beckert will devote his next book to explaining this sorry outcome.