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MATTER AND METHOD IN SOCIOLOGY & IDEOLOGY 47
If the peasantry itself is not class-conscious or system conscious, then a class analysis or system analysis of the peasantry might serve a purely academic analytic purpose from a particular theoretical point of view. But on the basis of that an action programme cannot be executed.
critically observe here that sociology is after all sociology and must not bother itself so much with the individual psychology or the group psychology. This sort of impatience is responsible for the elimination of "understanding” as an important explanatory category and for the reduction of sociology into behaviourology. The danger underlying this sort of impatience and the resulting positivism has been pointed out, among others, by Lenin in the State and Revolution.20 If a particular revolutionary leadership is carried away in its subjective enthusiasm and fails to understand the subjective consciousness and the preparedness of the working class, it might give an untimely call to the working class and the peasantry for launching a revolutionary struggle. But in that case it would not be adequately responded to and as a result of that it would prove abortive and lead to disaster. Another bad effect of this positivist method is the failure of communication not only between the individuals belonging to the different social system but also between the individuals of the remotely related reference groups belonging to the same social system. When a Levy-Bruhl21 says that the primitive man was pre-logical in his motivation and thought and therefore it could not be understood by the modern logical mind, or when a William Archer says that India is a land of gigantic polytheism and rank superstition, we come across the worst specimens of breakdown of inter-cultural communication. In a lesser form this sort of breakdown of communication is evident in between the different groups of the same society. A highly sophisticated University Professor of Delhi, Bombay or Calcutta can hardly communicate with a fellow travelling peasant (I assume-of course unrealistically-that they are sharing the same compartment). In exceptional cases if the conversation falteringly starts at all it cannot progress far. The point is that two individuals while may live in or share the same or similar physical space, their social spheres being altogether different, they can falteringly converse but rarely communicate. In a different way once again this brings the subjective aspect of social reality to the focus.
To obviate the difficulties involved in this type of immediate reference group analysis it has been suggested that we should resort to more comprehensive analysis, e.g, analysis in terms of class or in terms of social system. Class analysis or system analysis is unexceptionable in principle. But it serves only a limited analytic purpose but not any explanatory one. Analysis is not necessarily explanatory. It may or may not be.
w let us look into the sociological factors responsible for the relatively static character of the Indian peasantry and the relative lack of