ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

MarxismSubscribe to Marxism

A Critique of Non-Marxist Caste Studies

Caste as a system of Brahminical ideas derived from Hinduism in isolation from material conditions and history, a view common to non-Marxist caste studies, is a mystification. The Marxist view of caste as a social relation of production rooted in economic, political, and cultural conditions specific to time and space is a demystification. Neither the theory of caste nor the praxis of its annihilation, which was Ambedkar’s dream, is conceivable outside Marxism.

Lacking among the Have-Nots: The Faring of the Locals in Extractive Industrial Setup

The ability to endure the externalities arising out of environmental disruptions is crucial in understanding environment-related inequalities. This ability is what separates the community that can fare well in undergoing major structural changes, namely, the “haves,” from those that cannot, the “have-nots.” Taking into consideration the extractive industries, this article ventures through the various aspects of inequalities faced by the communities as a result of resource extraction in terms of displacement and externalities in terms of health hazards, livelihood, and issues of agricultural productivity, mining closure, accidents, and gender. Through this process, the relevance of the Marxian arguments of exploitation is examined in the domain of metabolic rift.

A Dialogical Travel through History

From Volga to Ganga by Rahul Sankrityayan translated by V G Kiernan and Kanwal Dhaliwal and edited by Kanwal Dhaliwal and Maya Joshi, Delhi: Leftword, 2021; pp 380, `595.

Wage-led Climate Change Amelioration

A Marxian orientation towards ecology must support an increase in wages and employment and a fall in profits.

The Alienation and Commodification of Nature: Fighting the Fallacious Fetishism of Contemporary Frameworks through a Revolutionary Transition

With the frantically incessant economic production activity that apparently projects no end, the human-nature relationship seems to have come full circle. As man agonises being manacled by natural constraints, in the form of planetary ecological crises, he stands to be the alleged culprit. For analytical coherence, this paper is divided into four sections. The first section elucidates, through a Marxist perspective of ecology, how the unheeded capitalistic socio-economic course of human action has engendered the alienation of nature itself, which in turn is posing fatal afflictions, conspicuous through compelling phenomena like climate change. Following it is a discussion on the repercussions of commodification of nature. The third section brings out the dichotomous reasoning evident in redundant environmental policy frameworks and paradigms in India. Accentuating the dialectical relationship between sociology and ecology, it explicates, in advocacy for the contemporary “have-nots,” the need to constantly heed the multidimensionality of sustainability, also discernible in the Sustainable Development Goals. On these lines, finally, the course of a “revolutionary transition,” to reinstate a progressive human-nature nexus, is expounded. As a way forward, the paper suggests eschewing the repudiation and outright denial of the prevailing ‘problem of production’ and the need for a sagacious dialogue, in order to mount radical action in response to the looming environmental threats.

Revisiting the Debates on Man-Nature Relation in Marxist Tradition

This paper tried to locate the debate on man-nature relation in the Marxist tradition. It looks at Marx’s theory of alienation and dialectics and argues that his theory of alienation and dialectics is not limited to a critique of capitalist modernity but shows man’s alienation from nature. Developing on this thesis, this paper looks at Engel’s position on the place of nature in Marxism. We argue that Engels’s notion of ecological crisis in capitalism is a result of his idea of nature as above society as he argued in Dialectics of Nature. In Lukacs and western Marxism, Engel’s thesis of the dialectics of nature is criticised. We especially highlight how Engels’s notion of nature suffers the reification of capitalism.

Marxist Ecology in the light of Contemporary Ecological Thought: Reflections on the Ontological Questions in Dark, Deep and Marxist Ecology

The paper strives to explore some fundamental debates concerning the question of ecology, nature and culture in Marxian corpus. First, it attempts to explicate the differences and commonalities between the philosophical conception of nature in Marxism and contemporary and old ecological thoughts like Dark ecology of Timothy Morton and Deep ecology of Arne Naess. Second, the paper is also an attempt to revisit some of the larger philosophical and ontological questions pertaining to nature and ecology; especially the questions related to ontological position of mind and matter in relation to nature and how these fundamental questions have a bearing on the current and future trajectory of ecological thought and movements globally in the Anthropocene epoch.

Aijaz Ahmad (1941–2022)

A tribute to the departed scholar looks at his immense contributions to literary criticism, world politics, and Marxist theory and brings out the consistent underlying thread of principled political commitment to the working-class politics.

 

Vernacular Communism

Satyabhakta’s engagements with communist politics, the Hindi print public sphere, and workers’ movements in the Gangetic heartland often intermeshed caste, gender, and nationalism, with an indigenous communism. Signifying a strand of the Hindi literary project, he represents some of the suppressed traditions of left dissent, and takes us back to debates between internationalism and nationalism, materialism and spiritualism, class and caste. Even if his ideas were, at times, amateur, they provide us with the everyday lived realities of communist lives, and utopian dreams of equality, which need to be taken into account and historicised seriously.

 

Agrarian Transformation and Quality of Life in Highlands of Tripura

Socio-economic Surveys of Three Villages in Tripura: A Study of Agrarian Relations edited by Madhura Swaminathan and Ranjini Basu, Delhi: Tulika Books in association with Foundation for Agrarian Studies, 2019; pp xxiv+376, `600.

 

Pioneer of Marxist Social History

Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History by Richard J Evans, London: Little Brown, 2019; pp xiii + 785, 954 (hardcover).

Marx at 200

As we mark Karl Marx’s 200th birth anniversary, it is clear that the emancipation of labour from capitalist alienation and exploitation is a task that still confronts us. Marx’s concept of the worker is not limited to European white males, but includes Irish and Black super-exploited and therefore doubly revolutionary workers, as well as women of all races and nations. But, his research and his concept of revolution go further, incorporating a wide range of agrarian non-capitalist societies of his time, from India to Russia and from Algeria to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, often emphasising their gender relations. In his last, still partially unpublished writings, he turns his gaze Eastward and Southward. In these regions outside Western Europe, he finds important revolutionary possibilities among peasants and their ancient communistic social structures, even as these are being undermined by their formal subsumption under the rule of capital. In his last published text, he envisions an alliance between these non-working-class strata and the Western European working class.

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