COMMUNICATION 67
necessary for the realization of his labour-power.55 (Capital, Vol 1, p 169),
8 7 ^Tasks on the Kisan Front, GPI (M) resolution cited above para 9.
8 s Ibid., para 20.
s 9 Jairus Banaji, "For; a Theory of Colonial Modes of Production'", ^Economic and Political Weekly, December 23, 1972, especially p 2501.
40 Lenm, "Inflammable Material in World Politics", Collected Works, Vol 15. See also "The Awakening of Asia" and "Backward Europe and Advanced Asia," Vol 19 and "To the Indian Revolutionary Association" and "Report of the Commission on the National and Colonial Questions to the Second Congress of the Communist Inter* national", Vol 31.
41 Note in this connection the profound meaning of Lenin's statement:
"The main trends of peasant differentiation are one thing; the forms it assumes, depending on the different local conditions, are another.'9 "The Development of Capitalism in Russia," Collected Works, Vol 3 p 145).
42 A good part of Lenin's discussion of the differentiation of the peasantry in the work cited above is devoted to "the real socio-economic significance of the bottom group of the peasantry". (Collected Works, Vol 4, p 93). Lenin refers to the fact that the lower middle peasantry "provides more workers than it hires", and to its "unstable character and its transitional position between the peasant bourgeoisie and the rural population". {Ibid., p 93). As for the trend of pauperization among the poor peasantry, there can be no doubt about the Leninist theoretical and political conclusion : "in its relation to the other groups, in its scale of farming, which covers only part of the expenditure on maintaining the family, in its source of livelihood (sale of labour-power) and, lastly, in its standard of living, this group should be assigned to the allotment-holding farm labourers and day labourers/3 (Collected Works, Vol 3, pp 169-170\. Lenin makes, in this connection, an extremely significant comment: "To prove that it is correct to assign the indigent peasants lo the class of allotment-holding wage-workers, one must show how, and what sort of, peasants sell labour-power, but also how, and what sort of, employers buy labour-power." (Collected Works, Vol 3, p 177). The term, semi-proletariat, includes more than one section of the poor peasantry. It must be noted that this term is used by Marxists not as a substitute for concrete class analysis but precisely in order to facilitate it.
48 Prakash Karat, "Agrarian Relations in Malabar, 1925-1948," Parts I & II, Social
Scientist Nos. 14 & 15. 4 4 See the unpublished Preliminary Report on the Survey, available at the library of the
Indian School of Social Sciences, Trivandrum.