এই স্বয়ংসম্পূর্ণ গ্রামগুলি সম্বন্ধে হেগেল(২১৮) লিখছেন :
The whole income belonging to every village is, as already stated, divided into two parts, of which one belongs to the Rajah, the other to the cultivators; but proportionate shares are also received by the Provost of the place, the Judge, the Water-Surveyor, the Brahmin who superintends religious worship, the Astrologer (who is also a Brahmin, and announces the days of good and ill omen), the Smith, the Carpenter, the Potter, the Washerman, the Barber, the Physician, the Dancing girls, the Musician, the Poet. This arrangement is fixed and immutable, and subject to no one’s will. All political revolutions, therefore, are mater of indifference to the common Hindoo, for his lot is unchanged.
অর্থাৎ, প্রতিটি গ্রাম থেকে যা উপায় হতো তার পুরোটাই দ’ভাগে ভাগ করা হতো; তার মধ্যে একটা ভাগ রাজার, আর একটা ভাগ কৃষকদের। কিন্তু নিম্নোক্তরাও আনুপাতিকভাবে নিজেদের অংশ পেতো : স্থানীয় শান্তিরক্ষক, বিচারক, জল-পরিদর্শক, পুরোহিত, গণৎকার, কামার, ছুতোর, কুমোর, ধোপা, নাপিত, বৈদ্য, নর্তকী, গায়ক, কবি। এই ব্যবস্থা ছিলো একেবারে বাঁধাধরা ও অনড়-অচল এবং তা কারুরই ইচ্ছার উপর নির্ভর করতো না। অতএব সাধারণ হিন্দুর কাছে সবরকম রাজনৈতিক বিপ্লবই ছিলো উপেক্ষার ব্যাপার; কেননা, তার অবস্থায় কোনো পরিবর্তনই হবার নয়।
মার্ক্স্ও সাবেকী(২০১৯) ভারতবর্ষের স্বয়ংসম্পূর্ণ গ্রামগুলির বৈশিষ্ট্য-বর্ণনায় যৌথজীবনের উপরই সবচেয়ে বেশি জোর দিচ্ছেন এবং স্বভাবতই ভাববাদী-দার্শনিক হেগেলের তুলনায় বস্তুবাদী-দার্শনিক মার্ক্স্-এর বর্ণনা অনেক স্পষ্ট ও বস্তুনির্ভর :
Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some of which have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common of the land, on the blending of agriculture and handicrafts, and on an unalterable division of labour, which serves, whenever a new community is started, as a plan and scheme ready cut and dried. Occupying areas of from 100 up to several thousand acres, each forms a compact whole producing all it requires. The chief part of the products is destined for direct use by the community itself, and does not take the form of a commodity. Hence, production here is independent of that division of labour brought about, in Indian society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities. It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity, and a portion of even that, not until it has reached the hands of the State, into whose hands from time immemorial a certain quantity of these products has found its way in the shape of rent in kind. The constitution of these communities varies in different parts of India. In those of the simplest form, the land is tilled in common, and the produce divided among the members. At the same time, spinning and weaving are carried on in each family as subsidiary industries. Side by side with the masses thus occupied with one and the same work, we find the ‘chief inhabitant’, who is judge, police, and tax-gatherer in one; the book-keeper who keeps the accounts of the tillage and registers everything relating thereto; another official, who prosecute criminals, protects strangers travelling through and escorts them to the next village; the boundary man, who guards the boundaries against neighboring communities; the water-overseer, who distributes the water from common tanks for irrigation; the Brahmins, who conduct the religious services; the school master, who on the sand teaches the children reading and writing; the calendar Brahmin or astrologer, who makes known lucky or unlucky days for seed time and harvest, and for every other kind of agricultural work; a smith and a carpenter, who make and repair all the agricultural implements; the potter who makes all the pottery of the village; the barber, the washer man, who washes clothes, the silversmith here and there the poet, who in some communities replaces the silversmith, in others the school master. This dozen of individuals is maintained at the expense of the whole community. If the population increases, a new community is founded, on the pattern of the old one, on unoccupied land. The whole mechanism discloses a manufactures is impossible, since the smith and the carpenter, etc., find and unchanging market, and at the most there occur, according to the sizes of the villages, two or three of each, instead of one. The law that regulates the division of labour in the community acts with the irresistible authority of a law of Nature, at the same time that each individual artificer, the smith, the carpenter, and so on, conducts in his workshop all the operations of his handicraft in the traditional way, but independently, and without recognising any authority over him. The simplicity of the organisation for production in these self-sufficing communities that constantly reproduce themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the spot and with the same name–this simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies, an unchangeableness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The structure of the economic elements of society remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the political sky.
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