Articles by Tom Brass

Misinterpreting Unfree Labour in Contemporary Haryana Tom Brass IN his latest, and it has to be said more strident, contribution to a series of exchanges with me about unfree labour in Haryana, Jodhka (1996) introduces no new information or ideas. Since the points raised by him in his previous contributions [Jodhka 1994, 1995] have been answered by me in Brass (1995, 1996), there would normally be no need for me to respond to his latest one.1 However, apart from fairly innocuous points, such as attributing to me an old view (about worker agency) and a new one (the 4two class model'), neither of which I hold, questioning my point about landholder bias and making symptomatically unsustainable claims about the decline of landholder power, Jodhka's latest contribution also contains two rather obnoxious points: a baseless innuendo about intellectual appropriation, and the invocation of a nationalist discourse, the object of which is intellectually and politically exclusionary. Since these cannot be permitted to pass unchallenged, I will deal with all of these points briefly-2 Complaining once again that I attribute "no agency to workers at all", Jodhka (1996:1286) repeats what by now even he must surely know to be an untrue assertion: that my view corresponds to one of "an absolutist power structure where labourers have no space to bargain and contest". About this continuing (mis)representation of my views two things can be said. First, and as I have pointed out ad nauseam it is precisely because workers exhibit agency in the form of a growing consciousness of class that landholders in Haryana increasingly resort to the debt mechanism as a method of waging class struggle 'from above7. That the latter is effective is clear, not just from what the labourers themselves have to say on this subject but also from what Jodhka states in his thesis.1 And second, what he forgets or perhaps does not know is that even chattel slaves were able to pursue specific kinds of agency, the exercise of which did not obviate the unfree nature of their relation.4 Jodhka fails to comprehend that an important difference exists between a free labour market (a direct exchange between worker and employer) and a free market in labour (an indirect exchange involving only employers or the latter and contractors). To regard the presence of labour-power in both transactions simply as evidence of free labour, and thus worker agency, is palpably nonsensical.

Unfree Labour and Agrarian Change A Different View Tom Brass IN a recent article in the EPW about attached labour and agrarian change in Haryana, S S Jodhaka (1994) attempts to refute an earlier argument made by me [Brass 1990] - that agricultural workers are being deproletarianised-by claiming that workers reject attachment which has itself changed and is now on the decline. Not the least of the many difficulties I have with his case is the extremely misleading way in which the differences between us are presented: many of the processes and changes occurring in Haryana referred to by him are also referred to by me, impressions to the contrary notwithstanding.' In fact, with the exception of the theoretical frame work and conclusions, much of what Jodhaka says about Haryana to a large degree coincides with the situation as I described it.2 The difference in interpretation which exists is in my view due to his confusion about the nature of unfree labour, as a consequence of which Jodhaka underestimates both its role in the class struggle and more generally the importance of the latter for the structure of agrarian transformation.3 This emerges particularly with regard to the way in which he characterises labour attachment, and the connection between on the one hand the element of conflict that clearly pervades the villages he studied, and on the other phenomena such, as workforce recomposition, restructuring and deproletarianisation.