regarded as a tribute extracted from agriculture, and paid out of the agricultural surplus. (In general, while both rents and taxes may vary, in principle the reasons are different.) Finally, it is disappointing that there is hardly any discussion of the crucial question of social ethos in Third World societies in this volume. Almost the only specific reference is Tom Kemp's remark that "entrepreneurs do not spring from the soil endowed with the protestant ethic or even elementary standards of honesty" (p 275). This idealisation of the Western protestant ethic, whose absence is held responsible for the grotesque' features of 'backward capitalism' in the Third World is itself controversial, if not grotesque. If we take seriously evidence of lack of honesty' or Corruption" of various kinds in general and in the context of what racism (not only in South Africa today but also in the Unitea States), its absence or ineffectiveness in the Third World may not look like a disaster But even if the 'developmental' aspects o Calvinistic or Lutheran ethics are take seriously, it is possible that more than their absence, the over-powering presence of an ideologically superior and more sophist- cated ethic of the Manusamhila or the Jan texts is one of the keys to understanding the: processes of modern capitalist development in India. When an idealisation of the 'Japanese ethos' (instead of the Western pre- testant ethic)
