hamza alavi, the state in post-colonial societies: pakistan and bangladesh (1974)

(59): historical specificity of the postcolonial experience

(61): state as 'over-developed' in relation to the structure

(61): key--argument is that the inherited state apparatus weighs heavy on the domestic bourgeoisie, at the moment of independence. [but no mechanisms are elucidated--so this is a profoundly institutionalist argument. how the hell does this institutional complex reproduce itself?]

(62): relatively autonomous in order to mediate between three classes [is the sneaking implication here, though, that it would not be 'relatively autonomous' were it simply the instrument of one class? seems like it.]

(62): also must track his use of relative autonomy of the oligarchy vs. relative autonomy of the state (they are used interchangeably in this piece--they might mean the same thing, but they aren't the same thing)

(62): key--he notes that the State's acquiring an economic role matters. [but the mechanisms are not clear, nor are the facts. is it true that the State appropriates much of the economic surplus, as he is saying here? will have to look more closely at the Ayub period to substantiate this--but my hunch was that it was not the case. State pandered to its capitalists.]

(62-63): key--here he's mentioning the relationship between politicians and the oligarchy (ambivalent--acceptable insofar as they accede to the oligarchy's interests). next page he is clarifying that his argument is meant to apply to the State apparatus as a whole. [this is fine, I have no qualms with the claim--but he's not consistently explicit enough about defining the oligarchy as a part of the State]

(65-66): two facts about Pakistan, which stand out

1. dominant position of the oligarchy
2. challenges to the oligarchy have been led by national minorities

(66): noting the "anxiety of military leaders to retain a facade of political government"

(69): key--claim that the bureaucracy and the military are "highly developed" viz-a-viz the capitalist class [that they have a corrupt relationship to the few corrupt families that command the economy -- thus giving them a different kind of autonomy, the implication would be. nonetheless, we can focus on the fact that this is only ever an implication. the mechanism is not made clear enough.]

(69): landowners dominate party politics; their interests, though, are being served unevenly

(70): mentioning the role of the US

(70): relative autonomy of the oligarchy

(71): SUMMARY of the argument, once more -- none of the three propertied classes can command the State. hence it's relatively autonomous.

(72): key--again, making clear that the 'material basis' for the relative autonomy is the proportion of the economic surplus that the State commands

(72): key--there is now, also, a very different kind of rivalry between these three competing classes, than there existed previously ("mutually competing but reconcilable") [what follows, of course, is an account of the failure of the postcolonial bourgeoisie. an antiquated understanding of the bourgeois revolutions].

(73-74): the relationships:

1. there is accord b/c the national bourgeoisie no longer needs to 'win a national-bourgeois legal framework'. this was already established by metropolitan bourgeoisie.
   
2. green revolutions eliminated need for 'land reform' for national bourgeoisie (thus landlords can rest easy).
3. national bourgeoisie does like restrictions on foreign investment, but it also needs foreign technology. it becomes "increasingly dependent on the metropolitan bourgeoisie"
   

(75): thus we now have collaboration.

(76): ideology of the oligarchy [not v. insightful]

(77): elitist and populist wings of the Bengali leadership (Suhrawardy/Mujib vs. Bhashani, break in 1957)

(79): in E. Pakistan, State giving handouts to capitalists (two-thirds of all investment)

(80-81): implication that had the Indians not intervened, maybe the reformists wouldn't have won (and that this is precisely why they intervened)

The first phase of the India’s relationship with Europe was one of mutual trade and prosperity. Until the East India Company began to establish a monopoly for itself in Indian trade, pushing out European rivals, notably the French, followed by conquest, that first phase from 1600 to 1757 was not really an unequal ‘colonial’ relationship. The East India Company had a large vested interest in promoting the export of cotton textiles and silks from India which soon began to militate against British industrial interests. Political agitation in Britain began to demand curtailment in the trading privileges of the East India Company and an end to imports of Indian textiles.
(...) The second phase of India’s relationship with Britain and the East India Company, opened with the beginning of the conquest of India in 1757. The main interest of the East India Company was still to maximise the export of Indian textiles to Britain and Europe. To that was now added the direct extraction of surplus from the Indian countryside in the form of land revenue and other taxes and impositions. Conquest and plunder joined hands with trade. In the collection of land revenue, the paternalism of Indian feudalism was replaced with the unmitigated avarice and greed of the faceless officials of the Company.
(...) [The third phase:] The East India Company had a major vested interest in the preservation and expansion of exports of Indian textiles. It obtained Indian textiles for resale in the Far East as well as Europe, where they fetched a profit of three times their cost. But there were rising pressures in England against that trade and for protection and promotion of the cotton textile industry in Britain. It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that a cotton textile industry emerged in England. It is generally held that it was the development of the Manchester textile industry that triggered off the Industrial Revolution in England. As Landes pointed out, the ‘threshold’ of the industrial revolution in England was first crossed in cotton manufacture’. (Landes, 1970:82) It is little realised that the prior destruction of the Indian cotton textile industry was a necessary pre-condition for progress of the British Industry. It is a myth that is universally believed by economic historians (Marx among them) that it was the mechanisation of English textile production that killed the Indian textile industry. That was not so. Active steps had to be taken by the British government to suppress the flourishing Indian textile industry. The East India Company had a large interest in the continuation of Indian textile exports that conflicted with those of the rising British bourgeoisie and, especially, the British textile interests. Under pressure from them, the Company’s profitable trading monopoly was ended in 1813 and in 1833 it was required to stop its commercial operations altogether. It then became exclusively an organ of colonial government.