SYMPOSIUM 85 bourgeoisie, feudal and semi-feudal elements and imperialism ? What of the land reforms, ceilings on agricultural holdings, financial and other aids to the small and medium businessmen, promotion of anti-monoly legislation and the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act and so on ? What of the Indian Government's efforts at furthering trade and security alliances with the USSR and other socialist countries, even to the extent they have been implemented ? Do these facts in any way qualify the all bourgeois character of the state ? IV It is our thesis that all the major economic reforms and policies introduced by the Indian Government(s) since 1947, have been objectively directed towards strengthening and extending the capitalist system in the Indian economy. Notwithstanding the many conflicts (and compromises) among the big and the non-big bourgeoisie and the feudal and semi-feudal elements, bourgeoisie and imperialism, bourgeois and socialist countries, in essence everything is being done to subserve the interests of the bourgeoisie as a class, and capitalism as a system of economic and political power. Those who tend to see the Indian State as a special case—a unique phenomenon—(of course, no bourgeois state is an exact replica of the developed bourgeois states, just as no two socialist states can be identical, for obvious historical reasons) pointing out the intra-bourgeois conflicts, miss the essential point of bourgeois history outside India. In every non-socialist country developed or underdeveloped, where once a bourgeois class (mercantile, industrial or financial) begins to emerge, these intra-bourgeois contradictions and conflicts have appeared and have been fought out, though always within the orbit of the bourgeois system and along the bourgeois path. Take any country like UK, USA, France or Italy, and we will observe these intra-bourgeois conflicts and struggles. Laws against monopolies, cartels, trusts and restrictive practices are formulated when things come to a head; yet the inexorable law of tfie capitalism eventually resolves them in the interests of big capitalists with innumerable small bourgeoisie driven to ruin and forced to join the ranks of the proletariat or semi-proletariat. V Now let us take the case of land reforms in post-1947 India. It had three central objectives, apart from creating an illusion of social justice, namely, (a) achievement of self-sufficiency in foodgrains and industrial crops to provide adequate food supply for industrial labour, cheaper labour cost and sufficient raw materials for agro-based industries, to sell Indian manufactures abroad at competitive prices, while tariff duties and restrictions protected Indian products in the internal market from foreign competition; (b) the creation of a new social base of allies in the agrarian sector, in the form of rich and upper middle farmers freed from parasitical, feudal institutions and imposts, and (c) encouragement