ABSTRACT
Classical Western economics is based on certain fundamental principles, namely unlimited wants on the part of the economic subject, money economy as the system under which the economic subject lives and individualism as characteristic of the economic subject. These three fundamental principles are inextricably intertwined. The Western outlook on life and Western economic principles may also be represented by groups of the native population. In the Netherlands Indies the dualism has taken mainly the typical form of agricultural capitalism. An antithesis sometimes used to characterize colonial dualism is Eastern-Western. The case of India plainly shows that to seek the criterion of dualism in the antithesis “native-foreign” is to impose an entirely arbitrary limitation upon the conception. There, as well as in Japan, sharply differentiated classes, castes, representing the principles of capitalism, may be distinguished in clear contrast to the pre-capitalistic masses, though both groups belong to the native population.
