Abstract
Marxism with and beyond Marx presents the work of some of the foremost Marxist scholars who have chosen to revisit the interpretations of Marx and the practice of Marxism to bring out the continued relevance of Marxist perspectives and methods. In line with the understanding that Marxism is a world view the book engages with the Marxist perspectives on subjects that include globalization and imperialism, end of booms in capitalism, historiography of socialism, crude and positive communism, human nature, alienation and freedom, identity politics, contemporary revolutionary movements, Tagore and Marx, Marx, Indian materialist tradition and Asiatic mode, Folk artist as traditional intellectual, literary aesthetics and Rosa Luxemburg, Gramsci and Bukharin on the place of human subject. The book takes a long range view on the relevance of Marx. A powerful introduction from the editors of this book is itself a testimonial for the point that how Marxism has not yet outlived its utility and why we still need to walk miles with Marx. The volume has been edited by Amiya Kumar Bagchiand Amita Chatterjee.
The book deals with the history of making of Marxism in Soviet Union, Europe and India in a highly refreshing way. It has been successful in bringing together the perspectives of a broad spectrum of the Indian Left into one volume. It does not bypass differences that have existed within the world of Marxist scholars on the questions of theory and practice. Quite a few of the contributors explicitly recognize that the lack of access of political activists and ideologues of socialism to many of such works that became widely available only from the 1950s, neglected in the official Marxist position of Soviet Communist Party, may have influenced the praxis of Marxism during the period of last few decades in India. By critically engaging with all those works the contributors to this volume have been able to provide invaluable insights into contemporary issues of politics, history, economics, culture and ideology. The volume also includes contributions that critically reflect on the strategy and tactics under perusal by the left front governments and the Maoists in India.
Aijaz Ahmed starts with the texts through which he found the premises of his own thought on some of the pressing issues of our own time, in this post-Soviet world, beset by religious frenzies and in the midst of a perhaps irreparable damage to our shared planet: issues of the secular/religious divide, ecologically responsive socialism, state and civil society. While he does not hesitate to add that a reading of Marx cannot offer us readymade answers to any of these issues, but it may infuse and ignite an imagination. He wants the social movements to know that the alternative to the capitalist state, so far as Marx is concerned, is not a ‘proletarian state’ or a ‘state of the whole people’ (as the Soviet Union called itself in the 1930s) but a ‘withering away of the state’ (a rather complex matter). Real/positive communism, as distinct from crude communism creating state ownership dispossessing everyone and claiming to represent a universal interest, in Marx’s conception, being not only a practice of ‘humanism’ but also a ‘naturalism’ which is a reconciliation with nature, requires the Marxists to work upon the ‘Trinity Formula’ of Capital, Volume 3, as socialized man, the association of producers, rationally regulating their material interchange with nature.
Sobhanlal Datta Gupta suggests that the philosophical positions of Antonio Gramsci and Nikolai Bukharin deserve attention because both focused on the importance of subjectivity. Their understanding of politics did not square with that of either the Italian Communist party or the Soviet Communist party. Both, Gramsci and Bukharin, critiqued deterministic Marxism.
Radhika Desai discusses the dialectic of capitalist globalization and multi-polarity. She suggests that the development of capitalism is not purely economic. Not only do states intervene to promote and sustain in their favour, the very patterning of development is the product of the dialectic between capitalism’s unevenness and periodic challenges to it through combined development compressing many stages into shorter and intense bursts. This state-directed development can take both capitalist and communist forms. In her view, this dialectic, not the market or capitalism, conceived in exclusively economic terms, is also responsible for productive capacity spreading ever more widely around the world and has created a multipolar world in which there exist too many substantial economies for any one of them to even hope to dominate the rest.
Allan Freeman suggests that the latest expansion of capitalism differs in vital and fundamental historical respects from all previous booms and purely capitalist expansions. Most basically, it affects at least half, and potentially the majority, of the population of the world. It cannot, therefore, depend on the impoverishment of the majority as have all prior purely capitalist booms. His view rests on the understanding that in this phase the BRICs economies are characterized by the developmental character of the expansion, but it is no more catching up; as in any process of combined and uneven development, it is establishing new thresholds and new standards. He deduces from this that if the expansion is confined to imitating the economic and social structures of the ‘no-longer developing nations’, including the predominance of private accumulation as the driver of technical change, it is only a matter of time before that same exhaustion which accompanies all capitalist booms takes hold in the new contenders. New principles of growth, in which the private investment motive is no longer primary, in which the goal of human, cultural and environmental development are placed at the centre by consciously organized public and state efforts, are the precondition for a continued, new, flowering. He argues that we have seen, in short, the last capitalist boom.
Vamsi Vakulabharanam argues that for the first time in the history of capitalism, the system is poised for tremendous uncertainty and may resolve in multiple possibilities: perpetuation of a US-centred world, emergence of an Asia-centred capitalism or a totally different configuration (fascism). If political forces gather in a critical direction, a more progressive world also becomes possible, although that possibility does not seem very strong at this point in time. Partha Chatterjee suggests that we have not transcended the age of empire and can see in near future even the use of imperial practices that were once quite ubiquitous but, in the wake of decolonization, rendered only temporarily obsolete.
Prabhat Patnaik points out that imperialism refers to an inner compulsion of capitalism, rooted in its very modus operandi, to oppress the working population of countries which are not themselves predominantly capitalist. The process of capitalist accumulation necessarily entails an interaction between the capitalist and pre-capitalist sectors; the dragging of the latter into such interaction through acquiring control over those regions was essential for capitalism. Continuing with the logic of the compulsion of capitalism, Prabhat argues that money is a form in which wealth is held under capitalism. Hence, the entire edifice of finance continues to work even today for the realization of stability of the value of money. This remains as central a concern for capitalism today, as it was during the colonial period—in fact, perhaps even more central today than earlier.
In his essay on major historical problems in the light of Marxism, Irfan Habib also summarily rejects the idea that caste is only a matter of ideology, and argues that the use of caste, community affiliations, racism, gender discrimination and ethnicity is part of the apparatus of exploitation in India and, with modifications, anywhere else in the world. Continuing with his concern regarding why Marxists need to engage with the Indian reality, Habib suggests that after the collapse of socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe and its changing features in China it is now very much necessary to examine the political and economic problems that developed within socialism, in order to be able to determine how they can be avoided in future. In India, at least, such an effort is yet to be made by Marxists in sufficient depth and detail, but it can surely not be avoided for long.
Continuing with the context of mobilization of adivasis against dispossession, Archana Prasad suggests that how the adivasis have become landless workers in rural and urban areas. She confronts the emerging challenge of identity politics among adivasis for the com munists in India. She brings out how the communist approach to adivasi mobilization has tried tackling insurgency in Tripura successfully through the successful implementation of the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. She supports the communist view that the adivasi struggle must be connected with the broader democratic movement of workers and peasants. In his essay on beyond armed struggle, Nirmalangshu Mukherjee argues that while it is possible to resort to armed struggle when faced with fascism, but there is actually no room for an armed struggle to overthrow the system of democracy in India in today’s world. Sumanta Banerjee also supports Nirmalangshu and suggests that the capture of state power by waging armed struggles and using the slogan of ‘dictatorship of proletariat’ has ultimately led to the defeat of the basic objectives of these struggles.
Marxism needs to be used to evaluate the literary and aesthetic practices and indigenous folk knowledge and traditions. In this part of the book, there are three more essays. Subhoranjan Dasgupta analyzes Rosa Luxemburg’g literary contributions to reveal the tools and principles of Marxist literary theory and criticism which thrives on a dialectical notion of non-insular social culture and creativity. Malini Bhattacharya uses the cultural category of ‘folk’ a la early Marx to emphasize the role and contributions of indigenous folk artists of Murshidabad, Malda, Burdwan, Hooghly, Jalpaiguri, Coochbihar and West Dinajpur and the story telling traditions of South Bengal. She points out that their contribution in society is significant because they voice resistance through laughter against the hegemony of feudal order and usurious capital. Ramakrishna Bhattacharya argues for the use of Marx’s way of approaching the philosophical history of the materialist tradition of ancient India. In the introduction, the editors suggest that by exploiting Marx’s insight and approach to the history of materialism in Europe it should be possible to reconstruct the history of materialism in India too.
The book illuminates the grey spots of Marxism. It provides the way forward to deal with the issues of contemporary politics of political, cultural and economic change. It shows that Marxists can practice critical reflection. They are committed to Marxist Method and are willing to go beyond Marx. The volume succeeds in making the point that while socialism might not be the historical necessity which the classical Marxist theory often claimed, but it is certainly a moral imperative that humanity must strive to realize. In order to get rid of the culture of mutual indifference and to meet the current and impending ecological crisis arising out of the mindless exploitation of nature socialism is the alternative. Marxism should devote more effort to the elaboration of the principles and heuristics of real and positive communism.