--------------------------------- Weberians and Marxists --------------------------------- Studies have shown that two great thought leaders of the West, Karl Marx and Max Weber, neither of whom ever visited India, have and still continue to exert dominant influence on Indian thinking on sociology and economic development. Take Weber first. Modern West is rooted in Weber’s concept of methodological individualism that saw society as a collection of individuals, rather than individuals as components of the society. This thought founded the concept of social engineering, which consisted of efforts by government or private groups to influence popular attitudes and social behaviour on a large scale. Just as the modern state rested on individualism, rational choice and efficient market theories of modern economics were premised on methodological individualism. While communism believed in social engineering through revolution and state, capitalism trusted the efficient market hypothesis based on methodological individualism to achieve the very end. Scholars like Karl Popper said there was “no such thing as society”. Traditional society was seen as an impediment to individualism that produced entrepreneurs who disturbed static societies and turned them dynamic. Weber also believed that Catholic-Hindu-Buddhist cultures discouraged individualism and hence lacked entrepreneurial spirit, whereas Protestantism encouraged both. He added that belief in karma, rebirth and caste-base made Hindu-Buddhist culture inappropriate for modern capitalism. Likewise, Marx, in his writings in 1853, considered India as semi-barbaric not so much on economic logic, but on what he considered as a frozen and immobile local society, for whose backwardness he cited the custom of worship of monkeys and cows! Marx lauded the British for bringing about social revolution in India by destroying the socio-economic bases of the changeless Indian society, even though he mercifully conceded that the destruction was painful. With the demise of the Soviet Union, Marxian prescriptions have lost their vitality, just as the global economic meltdown in 2008 had led to the questioning of the premises on which the modern economic theories are founded in the guild of economists in the West itself. -------------------- Proved wrong -------------------- But even earlier, the theories of both Marx and Weber were heavily questioned by studies into world economic history by Paul Bairoch in early 1980s and later by Angus Maddison (2001-2010). Both independently reached the same conclusion, namely, that till almost mid-18th century India and China were the world’s leading economic engines. In 1750, while India (24.5 per cent) and China (34 per cent) produced more than two-thirds of the global GDP, the combined share of the US and the UK was just two per cent. But by 1900, the combined share of China (6.8 per cent) and India (1.8 per cent) had crashed to 8.6 per cent, while that of the US and the UK reached 42 per cent. Angus Maddison postulated that “much more of the backwardness of the third world — read China and India — has to be explained by colonial exploitation” and “much less of Europe’s advantage can be due to scientific precocity, centuries of slow accumulation, and organisational and financial superiority.” That may be dismissed as history. But Weber has also been proved wrong by the contemporary rise of India and China. While he had concluded that Hindu-Buddhist cultures were unfriendly to entrepreneurs, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Executive Report 2002 of the London Business School placed India ahead of the US and the entire West. The Total Entrepreneurial Activity [TEA] Index measured by the study for India was 17.9, with China (12.3) coming second. Others, including the US (10.5), Canada (8), the UK (5.4), Germany (5.2) and France (3.2) were found way behind. Only after this study, was Indian economic growth seen by the world as entrepreneur-led. Weber’s conclusion that Hindu-Buddhist culture does not generate entrepreneurial spirit has been proven to have no rationale. --------------------------------- By Swaminathan Gurumurthy
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:23:21 +0000
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