ACADEMIC MARXISM 49 obviously not in keeping with the other contributions in general, and one wonders why it is included in this selection at all. Also, it would appear that some of the academic tilting that the authors indulge in, as in Diptendra Banerji's paper entitled : In Search of a Theory of Precapitalist Modes of Production, which makes a point of attacking "the theoretical and methodological wisdom of those fawning Marxist expositions which seek to explain the life-style and dynamics of a pre-capitalist mode of production via an exclusively economic process of surplus-appropriation comparable... to that in the CMP" (Capitalist Mode of Producaion)\ is a little quixotic. In fact, such a critique of developmental theorists like Rostow, who tries to impose a far more rigid and Eurocentric model on all 'Third World' countries than any Marxist, is really called for but overlooked. And Tom Kemp's paper that touches this aspect is tucked away at the end of the book. On the other hand, to put the record straight, it is to the credit of the Marxist movement that it adopted a Programme on 7 November 1964, which states : "Capitalist development in India, however, is not of the type which took place in Western Europe and other advanced capitalist countries.... The present Indian society, therefore is a peculiar combination of m*onopoly capitalist domination with caste, communal and tribal, institutions. It has fallen to the lot of the working class and its party to unite all the progressive forces interested in destroying the precapitalist society and so to consolidate the revolutionary forces within it as to facilitate the most rapid completion of the democratic revolution and preparation of the ground for transition to socialism.')< In effect, what the Marxists had digested and put down in programmatic form as far back as 1964 is what the Marxians have reflected theoretically in 1985; and that too, in a university in a state governed by a Left Front Government whose dynamics the Marxist movement of India has evolved and which it runs to this day. The two papers that best reflect the actual dialogue between the problematic of revolution and of academic theory are Miomirjaksic's Marx's Theory of Modes of Production : Problems of Colonialism and Under development, and Harold Wolpe's The Articulation of Modes and Forms of Production. Jaksic points out, first and foremost, that Marx never posited a unilinear model of development, but rather, "as in the case of geological formations, historical formations constitute a whole series of primary, secondary and tertiary types.n£) Or ^gain, as in Capital, where he states : "The history of this expropriation assumes different aspects in different countries, and, runs through its various phases in different orders of succession and at different epochs."*' Secondly, he specifically notes Marx's criticism of mechanical attempts to impose the West European scheme on all societies, especially with reference to Mikhailovsky, who "feets he absolutely must metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophical theory of the general path every people is fated to tread, whatever the historical circumstances in which it finds itself."7