72 SOCIAL SCIENTIST a two-volume work, the first having concentrated on the general conceptual framework of the peaceful transition to communism (sic) and the present volume studying its application to the state of Kerala. Within the limits of bourgeois scholarship this is a significant work and, precisely for this reaton, it has to be taken seriously and the numerous distortions and over-simplification exposed. The basic assumption of the author throughout the book is that the communists succeeded in developing a movement in Kerala, not on class terms, but by the manipulation of communal and caste politics. Fie tries to buttress this argument with a detailed analysis of electoral returns from 1957 to 1967. Right at the outset, in his introduction, he sets out his conclusions ; "An analysis of the electoral returns revealed, however, that there had existed no significant correlation between the great poverty of the people on the one hand and the electoral victory of the Communists on the other, and that the victory had been mainly due to a shift in the communal balance offerees in favour of the Communists, and then due to their exploitation of a latent sub-nationalism evident in Kerala at that time" (P VIII). Throughout this analysis which heavily depends on electoral returns, the total absence of any analysis in terms of class and social forces in Kerala, the deliberate sidetracking of the significant social change in the agrarian relations and its impact on Kerala society as whole, makes the attempt one-sided and meaningless. Election results, voting percentages and seats won are merely partial reflections of the more deep-rooted and fundamental changes that took place in Kerala in the last three decades. The author, instead of studying the basic causes, becomes totally engrossed in one of the results and proceeds to make fundamental interpretations on the nature of the communist movement in Kerala. To be more precise, unless one appraises the caste-changes in Kerala during this period for its class content, the essence of the change in the situation is missed. It is true, no doubt, that the communists drew heavily on the support of the Ezhavas and the scheduled castes in the agrarian sector, but unless this is linked to the rural class structure, where the overwhelming majority of these castes are the poor peasants and landless or even the middle peasants fighting against landlord exploitation, mostly upper caste, the reasons for radical mobilisation is totally missed. If the communists in Kerala realised the significance of caste, it was not on the basis of Fic's understanding : "The Communist Party soon realised this, cast aside their traditional emphasis upon and the belief in economic forces as the inexorable propellants to Communism and began to direct its attention to harnessing of the communal forces to the promotion of its aims" (P 5). Instead, as Namboodiripad aptly put it, class antagonisms were at the outset expressed through caste revolts; it would have been foolish for a revolutionary party to ignore this significant development of class relations in a predominantly precapitalist society.