tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26787600298126427832024-03-13T17:20:28.872-07:00EkalavyaThis blog is meant to offer comments on - in no particular order of importance - things I come across when I happen to be able to post something. This is strictly for the consumption of friends, comrades and colleagues. However, all are welcome to offer comments and share views.Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-62688257891780936252010-03-16T00:04:00.000-07:002010-03-16T00:04:56.741-07:00Explain!<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Since I am unable to understand many things you say, probably it is better to request you to explain. I shall insert where I need clarification. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">"As you know, this point is as political as economic, though, strictly speaking, such distinction is meaningless beyond a point in Dalit Marxist analysis just as in any Marxist analysis."</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">I do not subscribe to your understanding of Marxism here. To say that such points are strictly meaningless beyond a point in Marxist analysis is a crudest distortion of Marxian method. The point may be meaningless for your Dalit Marxist analysis but not for Marxism.</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> By this, do you mean there is no difference between what is called political and what is known as economic? Do you even claim that Marxism thinks so? </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">"I am not clear what do you mean by “specificity or uniformity of labor form or labor process,”</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Comrade, trust me, I am really not at all clear what do you mean by this phrase? Please explain! In this connection (neither clarification nor explanation) you said: 1. “Labour form specific to each mode of production” 1. That you referred to Engels’ text “Principles of Communism.” Still, I don’t know what you mean. Could you please explain? You are free, of course, to heap any number of insults while doing it, but please explain! </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">By highlighting the work of Engels (Principles of Communism) in my post I have made it clear what I mean by labour form specific to each mode of production. To say that you are not clear about my expression only underlines your theoretical ignorance of Marx and Engels.</span><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">"At a different level, one is surprised that you think Dalits should embody a uniform labor process in India." </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I still ask this question. It is not enough for you to assert that I was wrong and misrepresenting when I asked you the meaning of a line you wrote and switch over to some other issue. It is not useful to avoid the responsibility to explain your own words when asked to. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">This is not true. It is your wrong inference/ interpretation of my writing. My conflict with your use of 'Dalit' prefixing Marxism is fundamentally related to the specificity of labour form associated with each mode of production. The category you are prefixing Marxism does not necessarily embody a specific labour form typical of the capitalist mode of production. </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Tell us, why a prefix has to do with “a specific labour form typical of capitalist mode of production”? And, why should it ‘embody’ it? This business of embodying is another curiosity. Are you sure you are the word correctly? Please confirm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To equate 'Dalit' with the form of labour that capitalist production entail in India is a crudest distortion of Marxism/Marxian politics.</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> What do you mean by “equating ‘Dalit’ with the form of labour that capitalist production entail in India.”? It is clear that this attempted sentence doesn’t mean anything as it is. But, it is not important if you explain what did you try to say? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The category you are prefixing Marxism is totally insufficient and in fact has a regressive impact on the understanding of Marxian theory, method and politics.</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">You say that I am a comrade from Mars who is totally alienated from earth (and by extension Indian reality). I believe that you are sunken in the distorted understanding of Indian reality and seem to extend your decayed understanding (spreading the disease) to Marxism too.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">My fundamental conflict with you still remains on the prefixing of 'Dalit' to Marxism.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I am happy comrade that you can write clearly when you want to. I hope you extend this healthiness to other things. If your fundamental problem is with Dalit prefix, what is your point in trying to explain which you used various phrases with the word ‘labour’ in them? Again, please explain. We don’t have to know everything in advance. Find out if you have to, but explain. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">Understand that when Marx/Engels theorized the labour form specific to each mode of production, they also implicitly underlined the 'mentality' associated with each labour forms specific to each mode of production. Their theorization of labour has implication for politics as well. Propaganda and mobilization of labour, central to Marxian politics, bases itself on the theorization of labour by Marx/Engels.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">There can be no innocence in your prefixing of 'Dalit' to Marxism albeit a deliberate one aimed at poisoning and distorting the Marxian politics.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span">Unless you keep the emotions away and engage in the central theme that I try to explain in my understanding of Marxian method and politics there can be no meaningful consensus between us.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red; font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It helps me to systematically respond to your inputs and criticisms if you explain things I don’t understand. I beg your patience and cooperation.</span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-15367236085127963252010-03-15T07:28:00.000-07:002010-03-15T07:28:30.854-07:00George's response<span style="color: red;">In response to "Why Communism failed......", George wrote the following. After unsuccessfully trying to post my response in the buzz, I may be allowed to do it here. George's post is in blue and my response is in black. </span><br />
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<span style="color: blue;">P J George - I don't agree with the point that certain labour can be derived to be unnecessary. In that sense any labour unrelated to hunting and gathering is unnecessary. The entire idea works only within a framework in which we accept certain goods and services as necessary. In such a framework there will be n number of ways to achieve production and the shortest is usually the capitalistic one. What is needed is a more efficient socialist means of production. It might need a radical thinking that does not start from the factory floor up. In that sense, from what i understand is its basic tenets, Dalit Marxism has a distinct advantage.16:03</span><br />
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I completely agree with George's first point which he sharply and humorously puts. A dry rendering of it would be something like this: human needs are to be defined not so narrowly as the European countries' idea of Developing Countries needs when they offer scholarships to students of Third World. <br />
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True, if we adopt some "glutton socialist perspective" where more and better food is the point of socialism. In this way, we end up reducing human beings - the way The Hindu made me - to physical beings. <br />
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But there are many forms of labour which are utterly unnecessary, for example, this enterprise called the press or the police in a much advanced form of civilisation. Not the Stalinist kind of suppression of the press or a much sophisticated sidelining of the good press of US-brand techniques, but a condition where this thing called press loses its usefulness.<br />
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However, desirable or inevitable our urge to scratch may appear to be, most forms of itch could simply be cured. So are many forms of labour, for example, most of the sub-editing whose job mostly is to edit out anything damaging to the state and thus truly useful to the people. <br />
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Many forms of labour are needed now and ultimately unnecessary in that sense. Marx said our needs become so diverse — and virtually there would be no end to them — in communist society. In fact, labour itself becomes the natural expression of our human nature rather than something we sell and underpaid and unemployed and in many other ways debased.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-2552988619398005412010-03-15T00:20:00.000-07:002010-03-15T02:01:08.288-07:00Why Communism failed, why we should be thankful for that?<div style="border-bottom: solid #4F81BD 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 4.0pt 0in;"><div class="MsoTitle" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">This is yet another contribution to an ongoing debate with a comrade who thinks Dalit Marxism is a handmaid of business classes because of 'its failure to conform to what he thinks are the nuances of Marxist understanding of labour.' Well, this is admittedly an attempt at overconfidence of typical of Marxists, my own included, in the correctness of their theory even if 'in practice some mistakes do happen.' For example, Nadigram or Kakatiya Express. </span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Working class includes those unable to find or not allowed to, work. Most of the Dalits don't find work. What a small section of them finds is not ‘productive’ in the sense that ‘domestic work’ is not productive, in the simple sense that it doesn't contribute to production or produce anything directly but in the sense that we can do without it. There will never be any economy without agriculture in one or other form but there can and are societies without manual scavenging or cloth-washing. We mean that they do contribute to existing production in the immediate sense but they exist due to the historical or accidental or cultural reasons without which too production can be organised.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Most of the clerks and managers are simply parasitical classes not in the sense that they don't work or their work is not necessary but the conditions which make their work necessary are actually unnecessary.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Society has many such forms of work- for example a great portion of advertising, printing money, share-market, making land mines, PhDs such as the comparative studies of school enrolment patterns in two village in Tamilnadu and many more such things. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Prostitution is another example. This is for all practical purposes ‘work’ but not given such status. We fight for giving prostitution the dignity of work but we don't think it is actually work.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">We oppose the exploitation and debasement of prostitution but ask for the right to practice it as profession because it is a better form of exploitation in comparison with treating it as just plain immorality.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Then we join the prostitutes’ struggle to have all the rights other workers have or should have and then work for conditions in which practicing prostitution becomes unnecessary.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So is the case with many forms of labour many including, but not limited to, Dalits do engage in. We ask for the simple abolition of some of them because they are already redundant in the present ‘stage of development of productive forces’ and ‘cultural sensibilites’ even when they are not universally available. There are other forms of unnecessary forms of labour which we don't seek their direct abolition but the abolition of their need.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">We do retain many 'forms of labour' or can't do without even in 'idealistic' and advanced condition of communism, which Marx insisted could only be defined negatively, in terms of what will not exist but not what would make it up, but the forms of labour change so dramatically that we cannot actually say that they are the same. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">So, we can safely say that if humanity avoids total self-annihilation and proceeds to form communism we most probably avoid all forms of labour we now know of. Even the content of labour will have to change. As Marx said, those forms of labour- despite all the automation and advanced technological sophistication and drastic cut down on time a person daily works for, might still not be very easy. They may still be difficult but they resemble the happy strain we love to bear in playing, exercising and love-making. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Marxism doesn't say simply that what those elite sophisticates spend their time doing, appreciating and producing art, tasting widest variety of food, sporting etc in themselves are wrong and hard labour is inherently superior, because the latter is what gives the fundamental means of our existence. Marxism is for creating condition in which such sophisticated life is accessible to all by changing the conditions in which such is the privilege of a very few. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Well, Marxism doesn’t say that such advantages of the few are to be gradually extended to the whole society. Marxism’s point is such is not possible. It has shown repeatedly how false or naive such ideas of lower down percolations or gradual extentions of the few to the whole. Privileges are not exceptions but the very condition of the deprivations of the most. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Such conditions, in terms of development of productive forces, are already in place. But mere socialisation is not enough. We need people mature enough to make best of them. It is not enough to socialise the means of production and develop them to their full potential. This can be achieved even through military means. A coup in US defence is enough, however improbable, such scenario is not impossible and enough for achieving such socialisation and unleashing of productive forces. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But, sadly we don't have mature enough humanity to make best of it. History has repeatedly proved that after establishing rule of the communist parties the biggest hurdle for such society to move forward to better social organisation is the all-powerful parties themselves.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">It is relatively easy to defeat capitalists to socialise means of production but humanity has not discovered how to defeat communists to create communism. Both the defeat of capitalism and defeat of communism have actually occurred in the previous century. But defeating capitalists but not to revert to capitalism or defeating communists to advance to communism did not happen. We don't know how will it happen. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">You must have known this cynical anti-communist quip, making a mockery of different historical stages attributed to Marxism: the shortest route from feudalism to capitalism is via communism. How cruel, but how true!! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Nearly all advanced countries 2 centuries ago remain advanced today and those left out of capitalism then remain so today with very few exceptions. And, nearly all those exceptions are due to 'communism,' excepting, probably, Japan. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Coming back to the question of 'subjective conditions,': despite objective development and potential of productive forces and even the lingering crisis in capitalism, what stops us from bringing revolution? Not just the near invincible military might of the global capitalism and their agents. It was never the case that communist revolutionaries ever defeated foes through their own force but by winning over a section of the ruling class' military forces or though coups or seizing upon the momentary lapse in the state functioning. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But, I think even if present day's crisis fails to stabilise for too long as to give us enough time and we are alert and lucky enough to put together revolutionary forces and created enough popular support still I don't think we can win or if we win we can make our world any better place. In all likelihood, we will end up creating a disaster. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Why? We don't have human beings worthy of communism. We are like the U.S. which can potentially without much risk to itself occupy nearly any country except the nuclear powers. But the US can't rule them. We can pull off revolution at the most but we cannot create a better society. Our human rights record is worse than that of fascism's. Zizek's judgement is that Stalinism is worse than Nazism.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Our pre-history of communism - establishment of formal socialist societies from Russia to Korea- is akin to the oil-rich countries of West Asia: strong in productive forces, but utterly incapable in mindset to ‘realise’ its potential. We achieved socialisation of production but, you know what followed, if not reasons at least results. Nearly all collapsed communist countries were overthrown by their own people born and brought up by those very communist countries. What allows people of China and Cuba to remain with the status quo till today is nationalism and not communism. All of it can be explained as the effect of external pressures. True. But, corruption can be from outside but corruptibility is within. So far, we have defied and even defeated the power but never learnt to wield it wisely. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The word Communism has two meanings in Marxism. First is an advanced form of society in which most social evils we see (and fail to see) don’t exist because the conditions for them disappear. Second meaning is, the theory of those who try to change existing society with a view to lead it to such advanced level later. In the first sense, the humanity as a whole is not mature enough to create, even imagine it. In the second sense, humanity is not mean enough to tolerate it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">All of it might sound anti-communism to you. This is simple self-critical communism. Communism is nothing if not self-critical. It doesn’t have to depend on false claims and apologies. All the above narrative which refuses to be self-congratulatory is admittedly too simplistic. At times it is too broad to be meaningful. Dalit Marxism hopes to base itself on a double reversal in our semi-feudal surroundings. It builds not only on the strengths of capitalism but also the faults of communism with an aim to exploit the opposites of both! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Why both capitalism and communism? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Because both are better forms than the one we are locked in. </span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-7412134052635440002010-03-11T23:49:00.000-08:002010-03-11T23:49:49.152-08:00Once again on Women's Reservation BillThis is a post from an ongoing discussion on the Bill in buzz.<br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">There is a quantitative aspect to justice. In that respect, any space whatsoever in this word in which women are not 50%, is exclusionary and biased. If Brinda Karat demands 50% of Green Hunt personnel must be women, I don't think we can counter it by noting that the quarter million of Green Hunt forces with advanced technology and virtual licence to kill, rob, rape, torture and impunity and also the Left's support, set out on taking lands away from and ousting tribal people. Not just because her party is instrumental in making such massive - the biggest in the world and the only in any democracy, but because quantitative aspect of justice is different from and could not be confused with, the qualitative aspect of it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">This Bill doesn't do a bit to advance gender justice (in qualitative sense) nor does it in anyway harm the interests of OBCs in the long-run. OBCs will be forced to redefine themselves as including both men and women. Dalits will neither gain nor lose anything from it, except that we will have some Dalit women brokers instead of just male ones. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Unless some politicians are there without the burden of appealing to men's votes, they cannot represent some of the most important demands of gender justice that go against the 'interests' of men. Such unburdening is possible only when there is a scope for some politicians who can get elected only with women votes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Women are luckily the biggest oppressed group of all. But this advantage is cancelled by the unfortunate fact that women are not allowed to see themselves as primarily as ‘women’ when it comes to electoral considerations. Their prioritised allegiance is still family, caste, class, region etc.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">To change this situation, much better way is to have constituencies not just on the basis of geography but on gender. There should be some 66% seats in legislatures elected only by women. Such situation is better for forging 'women identity.' Such a thing exists at a vague moralistic level already and in much diffuse form of an inactive awareness among women as being potential victims of male violence. But it is only after many leaps ahead that it could become effective common identity. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">This argument for 'pure' constituencies is not a call for fragmentation of the polity. If the polity as whole is mature enough, it is good to compel <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>each group to get approval or at least no-objection from other groups through forcing them to get votes from other groups too. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Unfortunately the polity is not that mature because the society is full of antagonistic contradictions. You can't have minimal human rights for women and prevention of their blatant, widespread and routine violation without hurting men and patriarchal values of both men and women. Therefore, we need representatives of women who are spared of the burden to be unobjectionable to men voters. This is possible only if constituencies are reserved for women voters and not just for women politicians. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">This is precisely the reason I consider Brinda Karat and her party's position and their joining the BJP and Congress is CRIMINAL. They should have known all this. This is the basic lesson of the disaster called reserved constituencies for Dalits.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I am surprised at the utter failure of nearly everybody to draw the obvious lesson from the ineffectiveness of a huge guaranteed number of Dalit MPs and MLAs. This is actually much secure guarantee for a certain number of Dalits to be in the legislature all the time than any political mobilisation would have given. Yet, there is virtually nothing these Dalit representatives could do. Whatever is done to, or achieved by, Dalits is what is allowed by the Uppercaste parties and governments and through struggles NOT led or supported by these Dalit elected representatives. It is plain cynicism to think that all Dalit politicians hitherto have been just corrupt or inept. Their election, just like the one this Women's bill now going to repeat, was fundamentally faulty. Constituencies are reserved for Dalit leaders and not to Dalit voters.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The point is, if you are to represent a group protecting and promoting whose interests involves going against the interests of another group with more electorally organised numbers, you need to get elected, you are doomed to be ineffective. Because that majority or well-organised group will not let you elected in the first place, even if all your group is firmly behind you.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">In terms of superficial but illusory numerical terms, women representatives could escape this plight. Women are bound to be roughly half anywhere any time. If sex ratio is slightly biased against women, women live longer to balance it numerically (Chunk of North India is the only place on the face of earth where women longevity is less than men, but that too can't be a big problem if women are organised electorally). In an election with multiple contestants you don't even have to mobilise more than 20% to win seats. But, alas such is not possible. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">What these women representatives conjured up through this Bill could <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>achieve is the NGO agenda of economic empowerment of women with the argument that it alone would liberate women. It alone is the way to do something for women, without displeasing men. Is that right? This is just plain misleading. If somebody argues that if workers work more and give more profits to the capitalist and capitalists compensate them for it, what will you say? It is structurally not possible, while in the short-run and at sparse cases works. But this kind of thinking is based on plain ignorance of how economy works. The agenda of economic strengthening of women is nothing but an exact equivalent of workers-working-more philosophy. Many rapes are prevented each day by not letting women go out but it is not gender justice. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The profound conformism in this kind of thinking is what is otherwise known as reformism in Marxist lingo. This is an attractive proposition for the smug; the idea of helping the victim without hurting the perpetrator. And, doing it top-down. </span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-73348971118214114132010-03-09T12:47:00.005-08:002010-03-09T12:47:43.281-08:00A Brief Overview of The World<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2c2c2f; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
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</h4><h4 id="publisher" style="display: block; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</h4><h4 id="publisher" style="display: block; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?issue=282" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">New Left Review 48, November-December 2007</a></h4><br />
<div class="abstract" style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; display: block; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;">A reckoning of global shifts in political and economic relations, with China emerging as new workshop of the world and US power, rationally applied elsewhere, skewed by Israeli interests in the Middle East. Oppositions to it gauged, along with theoretical visions that offer exits from the perpetual free-market present.</div><div class="abstract" style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; display: block; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2c2c2f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; text-transform: uppercase;"><br />
</span></div><div class="abstract" style="background-color: transparent; color: #990000; display: block; line-height: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #2c2c2f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; text-transform: uppercase;"><b><br />
</b></span></span></div><h1 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 26px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">JOTTINGS ON THE CONJUNCTURE</h1><h4 class="center" style="display: block; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center;">Editorial</h4><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The contemporary period—datable at one level from the economic and political shifts in the West at the turn of the eighties; at another from the collapse of the Soviet bloc a decade later—continues to see deep structural changes in the world economy and in international affairs. Just what these have been, and what their outcomes are likely to be, remains in dispute. Attempts to read them through the prism of current events are inherently fallible. A more conjunctural tack, confining itself to the political scene since 2000, involves fewer hazards; even so, simplifications and short-cuts are scarcely to be avoided. Certainly, the notations below do not escape them. Jottings more than theses, they stand to be altered or crossed out.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">I. THE HOUSE OF HARMONY</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Since the <i style="font-style: italic;">attentats</i> of 2001, the Middle East has occupied the front of the world-political stage: blitz on Afghanistan—sweep through the West Bank—occupation of Iraq—cordon around Iran—reinvasion of Lebanon—intervention in Somalia. The <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> offensive in the region has dominated the headlines and polarized opinion, domestic and international. A large literature has sprung up around its implications for the flight-path of American power, and of the direction of world history since the end of the Cold War. In the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> establishment itself, fears of a debacle in Iraq worse than that in Vietnam are not uncommon. The analogy, however, should be a caution. Humiliating military defeat in Indochina did not lead to a political weakening of the global position of America. On the contrary, it was accompanied by a tectonic shift in its favour, as China became a de facto ally, while the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">USSR</span> sank into a terminal decline. Little more than a decade after the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>ambassador fled from Saigon, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> president landed as victor in Moscow. In Vietnam today, American companies are as welcome as missions from the Pentagon. Historical analogies can never be more than suggestive, and are often misleading. But such reversals are a reminder of the contrast that can exist between depths and surface in the sea of events.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">1</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Seven or eight years make a short period for dropping a plumb-line. But if we try one, what look like the major developments? Far the largest, by any measure, must be the emergence of China as the new workshop of the world: not just the rapid expansion of one outsize national economy, but a structural alteration of the world market, with a global impact closer to Victorian England than the more parochial settings of Gilded Age—perhaps even Post-War—America. Three consequences of China’s high-speed growth have followed. Domestically, it has created, amid dramatically increasing inequality, a substantial middle class attached to the status quo, and a more widespread ideological conviction, extending well beyond the middle class, of the benefits of private enterprise. Internationally, it has locked the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">PRC</span> into a close embrace with the United States, through a level of economic interdependence surpassing that of Japan. Globally, it has in the past four years helped sustain—or unleash—world growth rates not seen since the sixties.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">2</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">What of Japan, still the second largest capitalist economy? After a decade of deflation and stagnation, it has finally recovered some momentum—in significant part, on the back of Chinese demand—posting a growth rate well above Europe over most of the last period. Politically, its ruling party has sought to remodel itself as a more coherent neo-conservative force. To a more openly right-wing course at home has corresponded an aggressive shift towards a more hawkish foreign policy, in tune with Washington, abroad—dispatching troops to Iraq, screwing up pressure on North Korea, preparing to jettison the peace clauses in the constitution. Currently checked by loss of electoral support, this line has met no consistent alternative from an opposition in large part derived from the same matrix.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">3</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The major European development, overshadowing all other processes, has been the enlargement of the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span> to the East. The successful integration of the Warsaw Pact zone into the Union is now all but complete—an impressive accomplishment of European capital. Privatization of the former Communist economies has been driven through by Brussels and a close watch maintained on local governments to keep them aligned with West European norms. Politically, on the other hand, the expansion of the Union has so far not strengthened but weakened it, as American ability to mobilize support for the war in Iraq, from new as well as old members, and subsequent divisions have shown. The <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span> is now a vast free-trade area, dotted with governments representing a somewhat wider spectrum than in the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> or Japan, but without much external common will or coherent inner direction. Its three leading continental states have drifted sluggishly in a more neo-liberal direction—Schroeder’s Agenda 2010 in Germany, Raffarin’s reforms and Sarkozy’s sequels in France, Prodi’s packages in Italy—without yet matching New Labour in Britain.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">4</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Russia has been stabilized by a neo-authoritarian regime, financed by the world commodities boom. Less dependent on the West than Yeltsin’s government, Putin’s system has a larger margin of diplomatic leeway, and smaller need to simulate democratic niceties. It enjoys a less enthusiastic press in the West, and is a more abrasive partner for the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> and <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span>. But while seeking to restore Russian influence in its near-abroad, the new regime has hitherto been careful never to cross the will of the United States over any significant international issue, and offers a far better basis for capitalist development than Yeltsin’s could do, since it has not only wiped out any traces of serious political dissent, but achieved very high levels of social support, secured by economic recovery. At home, Putin has for some time now been far and away the most popular leader of any major state in the world. Given the demographic collapse of the country, and continuing misery of much of its population, this is an impressive achievement.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">5</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The Indian economy has been growing steadily, if at nothing like the rate of China. The combination of much vaster layers of untouched poverty and popular electoral choice has so far impeded any headlong neo-liberal turn. But there is now a large Indian middle class that has internalized Western consumer and celebrity culture even more avidly than its Chinese counterpart, and sets the basic direction of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">BJP</span> and Congress policies alike. Still fettered domestically by the weight of under-class voting blocs, its aspirations have found expression in the abandonment of India’s neutralist foreign policy for a burgeoning ideological, military and diplomatic rapprochement with the United States. Resistance to this move in parliament is capable of slowing, but is unlikely to deflect, it.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">6</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">In Brazil, the first presidency in the country’s history elected from a workers’ party, buoyed like the Russian regime by the world commodities boom, has consolidated its popular base with more job creation and measures of income support for the poor, while otherwise pursuing with little alteration the neo-liberal policies of its predecessor, adopted at the behest of the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">IMF</span>. Traditional levels of corruption have continued, without affecting its electoral ratings. Internationally, the country’s most conspicuous foreign-policy initiative has been to relay the Franco-American intervention in Haiti, in the hope of being rewarded with a permanent seat in the Security Council, along with Japan, Germany and India—in the event, a tip withheld. Regionally, it has given less priority to deepening trade integration in Latin America than to modifying <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">WTO </span>rules in its favour.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">7</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">What of the United States itself? The Republican Administration elected in 2000 has pushed through successive tax cuts that accentuate still further the regressive redistribution of wealth and income under way in the country since Reagan. Bankruptcy laws have been altered to favour creditors, and systems of regulation diluted. The Supreme Court has become one vote more conservative. Otherwise, although its rhetoric has been radical right, the domestic record—on social security, health, education, banking and the environment—has been unremarkable. Economic growth and job creation have remained much as before. No structural changes comparable to the abolition of Glass–Steagall and traditional welfare arrangements by Clinton have been achieved, or are in prospect. If anything, Medicare and Sarbanes–Oxley fall on the other side of the ledger. Civil liberties have been eroded by the Patriot Act, but on a bipartisan basis and minor scale compared with the days of Wilson. Institutional checks and balances, and electoral pragmatism, have limited what the White House can do at home, in a landscape where voting blocs defined by ‘value’ agendas remain evenly divided. No durable shift further to the right in the centre of gravity of American politics has occurred under Bush, crippled since mid-term Republican defeat in 2006. In the standard pattern for American presidencies since 1945, the activism of the Administration has by way of compensation been concentrated abroad, where its performance in the Middle East has aroused an international furore, giving rise to now familiar rival depictions of the unconcealed emergence of an American empire, or the precipitous decline of one.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">8</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Together, China, Japan, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span>, Russia, India, Brazil and the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> account for well over half of the world’s population, and 80 per cent of global <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">GDP</span>. If the twin objectives of American foreign policy since World War Two have been to extend capitalism to the ends of the earth, and uphold the primacy of the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> within the international state system—the second viewed as a condition for realizing the first—how does the reckoning of the first years of the 21st century look? Overwhelmingly positive, so far as the widening and deepening of the grip of capital goes. Financial markets have advanced at the expense of older forms of social or economic relationship across the board. Regardless of the parties in power—Communist, Liberal-Democratic, Gaullist, New Labour, United Russia, Congress, Workers or Republican—the same basic bundle of property rights and policies has rolled forward, at varying speeds and in differing stages, but with no significant counter-marches in the opposite direction. Rather, with world trade still racing ahead of world growth, there has been a steady increase in the interlocking of all the major capitalist economies in a common dependence on each other.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">9</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Politically, what is the balance sheet? Essentially, what we see is the emergence, still in its early stages, of a modern equivalent of the Concert of Powers after the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. That is: increasing levels of formal and informal coordination to maintain the stability of the established order, accompanied by traditional jockeying for advantage within its parameters, from which there is no radical discord. The decisions of the Security Council are a principal theatre of this process, currently on display in collective resolutions on Iran. There is, however, one large difference between the Concert of Powers after the Congress of Vienna and its counterpart since Nixon’s visit to China and the Congress of Paris. This time a single superordinate power, occupying a position unlike any other, holds the system together. In the days of Metternich and Castlereagh, there was no hegemon comparable to America. With still the world’s largest economy, financial markets, reserve currency, armed forces, global bases, culture industry and international language, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> combines assets that no other state can begin to match. The other powers accept its asymmetrical position among them, and take care not to thwart it on any matter to which it attaches strategic importance. Typically, conflicts remain confined to low-level commercial issues—Airbus, Doha and the like—where stand-offs can occur because so little is at stake; or to intermediate zones where geopolitical ambitions overlap—Caucasus, the Baltic, Turkestan. The other major powers make little attempt to balance against the United States, in traditional fashion, both because of the degree of interdependence linking their interests to its economy—unthinkable in the early 19th century—and because of their common interest in Washington’s policing role in less stable parts of the world, whose costly and sometimes risky tasks they are generally happy for it to shoulder. Thus while the relative weight of America in the global economy is plainly declining, with the rapid rise of alternative capitalist power centres, the political leverage of the United States in a now densely interconnected universe of profit and privilege, all of whose elites regard themselves as fellow-members of the ‘international community’, remains incommensurable with that of any other state.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">10</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">This configuration does not deliver a system without frictions or attritions. Russia and China do not want the United States to entrench itself too deeply in Central Asia, or corner Iran too aggressively. India remains on its guard against <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> patronage of Pakistan. The <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span> toys with a rapid deployment force of its own. American primacy imposes a series of <i style="font-style: italic;">faux frais </i>on its partners that are unlikely to diminish. But just because there is no automatic coincidence between the particular interests of the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> and the general interests of the system, a consciously managed Concert of Powers is required for the adjustment of tensions between them. That adjustment will never be perfect, and the mechanisms for achieving it have yet to be fully formalized: pressure and counter-pressure intertwine within a bargaining process that is unequal but not insubstantial. To date, however, the gaps and rough edges in the system have not seriously threatened the emergent legitimacy of the ‘international community’ as a symphony of the global capitalist order, even with a somewhat erratic conductor.</div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">In such a Concert, inter-state relations can be expected to remain below the threshold of antagonism, as defined in the classical theory of contradictions, because of the universal interlocking of financial and commodity markets in a post-nuclear age. This does not mean that the major powers are all equally capitalist. The shortfall—economic and political—of China and Russia from Western norms constitutes residual sand in the smooth functioning of the system. The wager of the West is that by the time they have achieved full height as world powers once again, they will have evolved into the same forms as itself. Then even superiority of power—all too predictable one day for China—can be gracefully conceded, in the assurance of similarity of being. The most lucid theorists of American imperialism are fully conscious of the fact that <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>primacy and a worldwide liberal civilization are not logically interdependent. They contemplate, calmly and explicitly, the passing of the first as soon as it has accomplished its mission of securing the second—within a generation, perhaps, according to one of the most cold-blooded of estimates.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">11</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">In such conditions, the overall drive of the Republican Administration has been substantially continuous with that of its predecessors. Most significant has been the thrust of its policies towards America’s two great antagonists of the Cold War period, China and Russia, both of whom have been brought without a hitch into the Concert of Powers: coached or assisted—often via<span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>-trained officials—in the development of market-based economies, respected where their most acute local sensitivities (Taiwan, Chechnya) are concerned, and integrated into the festivities of the global spectacle (St Petersburg summit, Beijing Olympics, etc). Issues of contention—planting missiles too close to Moscow, hectoring Beijing on the yuan—persist, but have so far been contained. In the same period, ties with Japan have never been closer. A new alliance has been forged with India, and there has been little friction with Brazil, aside from tiffs over trade, without much consequence on the plane of high politics. In Europe public opinion, more swayed by style than substance, has been irritated by Bush’s straightforward rejection of Kyoto or the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">ICC</span>, as opposed to discreet burial under Clinton. But on matters of substance, the Administration has registered major gains, not only propelling <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span> enlargement behind <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">NATO</span> expansion, but obtaining the admission of Turkey into Europe as a top objective of Brussels to come. In Europe as in Japan, China, India, Russia and Brazil, American strategy has been, not rhetorically, but structurally continuous since the end of the Cold War.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">II. THE HOUSE OF WAR</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Against this background, the military theatre of the Middle East stands out. Here, and here alone, the Republican Administration appears to have broken with the traditions of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> global practice since the end of the Cold War, if not the Second World War, and inflamed key European allies, not just in manner but in harsh substance—the war in Iraq being widely regarded in the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span> as not only gratuitous, but extremely dangerous for the West, with consequences that Europeans risk bearing as much or more than Americans. Virtually all commentary in Europe, not to speak of much in the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> itself, now regards the war as a thoroughly irrational aberration, the product of either one-eyed special interests (oil companies, or corporations at large) or unhinged ideological zealots (a neo-conservative cabal) in Washington. But if the Republican Administration has matched means and ends more or less rationally everywhere else in the world, the explanation of a mismatch must logically start from the Middle East, not the United States. The essential question to ask is: what are the special characteristics of this zone that have generated anomalous policies towards it?</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">1</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Plainly, the region’s huge reserves of petroleum have long made it a major area of strategic concern to the United States. But America was not suffering from any immediate threats to its supply when it invaded Iraq, and has never done so. Client states control the whole oil-rich Arabian peninsula, and even direct acquisition of the Iraqi fields—certainly one strand of calculation in the invasion—would at best have yielded only a moderate increment in its energy position.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn1" name="_ednref1" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('The size of Iraq’s unexplored reserves, a still uncertain multiple of the country’s output, may have loomed larger in long-range thinking about the war, as Greenspan has implied.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [1]</a> By 2002, so far as its role in <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">OPEC</span> went, the Ba’ath regime was no more, in fact much less, of a thorn in Washington’s flesh than Iran or Venezuela. Its earlier attempt to seize Kuwait had, however, caused genuine alarm, since it might then have emerged as a larger petroleum producer than Saudi Arabia itself, as well as a more substantial military power. From Clinton’s time onwards, American policy—with European support—was therefore always to destroy Saddam, by blockade, bombing, coup or assassination. Continuing lack of success in this endeavour, inevitably implying consideration of stronger measures, was another factor of the background to the invasion. The general sense in the American establishment, across the board, was that Iraq was unfinished business, its regime an affront that no Administration was prepared to accept, and all had tried by varying means to bring down.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">2</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Thus a land attack did not come out of the blue. It was a ratcheting up of acts of war raining more or less uninterruptedly on Iraq since 1991. In that sense it was not a ‘break’ as historians would normally understand the term, but an ‘escalation’ of hostilities that had by standards of international law been continuous for over a decade. It is only by minimizing the levels of violence directed at Iraq and its population in the Bush Sr–Clinton years that the thesis of a sudden departure from previous norms can be sustained. Casualties since the invasion have been higher than they were before 2003, but they are of the same order: hundreds of thousands dead. Impunity in the first phase—what in classical military terms amounted to an<i style="font-style: italic;">Ermattungsstrategie</i>—was assured by the removal of any Soviet counter-weight in the region.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn2" name="_ednref2" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('Ermattungsstrategie: ‘strategy of attrition’; Niederwerfungsstrategie: ‘strategy of overthrow’—terms coined by the German military historian Hans Delbrück, a decade after the Franco-Prussian War. For their political uses, see ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci’, <span class="smallcaps">nlr</span> 1/100, November–December 1976, pp. 61–70. ', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[2]</a> Impunity in the second phase—with the shift of gear to a <i style="font-style: italic;">Niederwerfungsstrategie</i>—could rely, it was believed, on a ‘revolution in military affairs’, or the advent of electronic warfare and precision targeting. Clinton’s effortless blitz on Yugoslavia and Rumsfeld’s costless descent on Afghanistan encouraged a belief that the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">RMA</span> could do anything. This attitude was most pronounced among Republican hawks, but not specific to them: it was Albright who asked what was the point of having the most powerful army in the world without using it.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">3</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Such considerations, however, merely indicate why Iraq was for a decade an object of perpetual anxiety in Washington, and how an attack on it could have been conceived as a project without disproportionate risk. They do not explain why the Bush Administration, even by miscalculation, should have launched a war opposed by two leading European allies and a significant minority of the American elite, and so much at variance with its basically conventional stance elsewhere in the world. This can only be understood in the psychological light of 9/11. The attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon enabled national mobilization behind an offensive in the Middle East, rapidly translated into lightning conquest of Afghanistan, to all but unanimous domestic and international applause. Yet once Kabul had fallen—so the general view goes—there was no sensible reason for a march on Baghdad, given the lack of any connexion between Al-Qaeda and the Ba’ath. So the pretext of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">WMD</span> had to be trumped up to justify an irrational enterprise.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">4</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Historically, however, a circumstantial irrationality—typically, some gratuitous yet fatal decision, like Hitler’s declaration of war on the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> in 1941—is nearly always the product of some larger structural irrationality. So it was with Operation Iraqi Freedom. Putting it simply, the reality was—and remains—this. The Middle East is the one part of the world where the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> political system, as presently constituted, <i style="font-style: italic;">cannot</i> act according to a rational calculus of national interest, because it is inhabited by another, supervening interest. For its entire position in the Arab—and by extension Muslim—world is compromised by its massive, ostentatious support for Israel. Universally regarded in the region as a predator state that could never have enjoyed forty years of impunity without vast supplies of American arms and money, and unconditional American protection in the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">UN</span>, Israel is the target of popular hatred for its expropriation and persecution of the Palestinians. By logical extension, America is detested for the same reason. Al-Qaeda’s attack on it was rooted in this context. From the standpoint of American power, rationally considered, a Palestinian state that was somewhat more than a Bantustan would pose no threat whatever, and could have been created at any time in the past half century by merely holding back the flow of dollars, guns and vetoes for Israel. The reason why this has never happened is perfectly clear. It lies in the grip of the Israeli lobby, drawing strength from the powerful Jewish community in the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>, on the American political and media system. Not only does this lobby distort ‘normal’ decision-making processes at all levels where the Middle East is concerned. Until recently—and even then, only incipiently—it could not even be mentioned in any mainstream arena of discussion: a taboo that, as with all such repressions, injected a further massive dose of irrationality into the formation of<span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> policy in the region.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn3" name="_ednref3" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('The outstanding work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has finally broken this silence: first with their essay, ‘The Israel Lobby’, London Review of Books, 23 March 2006, then with the book that has succeeded it, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, New York 2007. See also Michael Massing’s well-documented account, ‘The Storm over the Israel Lobby’, New York Review of Books, 8 June 2006. In striking contrast has been the general pusillanimity of the American Left, prone to emphasizing the role of its bugbear the Christian Right as a more acceptable culprit, when the latter’s function has clearly been in effect a force d’appoint. Israeli politicians are more robust, Olmert straightforwardly describing ‘the Jewish organizations’ as ‘our power base in America’: Financial Times, 30 November 2007. ', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [3]</a></div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">5</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The lunge into Iraq has to be seen in this unstable context. Leading Republican forces had been pressing for stronger measures against Iraq since the late nineties. But the newly elected Bush Administration had also criticized the indiscriminacy of Clinton’s interventions abroad, shown scant interest in human-rights doctrines, and in its first months taken few or no significant foreign initiatives. What suddenly transformed it into a highly activist regime were the attacks of September 11. It was these that allowed it to convert what might otherwise have been a difficult enterprise to sell to American voters, a war to topple Saddam Hussein, into one with all but unanimous congressional backing. But 9/11 too did not come out of the blue, any more than the invasion of Iraq that followed it.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn4" name="_ednref4" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('Within days of the attack, Fredric Jameson was pointing this out: ‘Historical events are not punctual, but extend in a before and after of time which only gradually reveal themselves’, London Review of Books, 4 October 2001. For his full argument, see ‘The Dialectics of Disaster’, South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 2002, pp. 297–304. ', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [4]</a> Rather, with it the structural irrationality of America’s role in the Middle East came home to roost. Decades of support for Israeli expansionism never corresponded to any logical interest of American capital in general, but simply to the critical power of the Israeli lobby—latterly topped up by Christian fundamentalism—over regional policy in Washington. Historically, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> itself had never had to pay any domestic price for this patronage of Israel. With 9/11, it finally did so—not as the only motivation of Al-Qaeda’s attack, but as one without which it is difficult to imagine it occurring: Bin Laden’s first public pronouncement, seven years earlier, gave more attention to the fate of Palestine than any other issue, including the presence of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> troops in Saudi Arabia itself.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn5" name="_ednref5" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('See Bruce Lawrence, ed., Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, London and New York 2005, pp. 9–10.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [5]</a> Once the strike had occurred, it unleashed a popular desire for revenge that could only aggravate the originating irrationality itself—passions easily channelled by the Administration against Iraq, in the wake of apparent triumph in Afghanistan.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">6</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The Israeli establishment, and its arm within the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>, naturally urged an invasion of Iraq, a long-standing foe that had attempted to bombard it during the Gulf War. This in itself, however, is unlikely to have been more than a contributory factor in the drive to Baghdad (though had Israel opposed the war, we can be fairly sure it would not have happened). No such direct causality was necessary. The point is rather that in the Middle East every normal calibration of means and ends has already been so corrupted by the discrepancy between the ostensible and actual determinants of American foreign policy that an arbitrary adventure of some kind was always on the cards. So long as Washington remains affixed to Tel Aviv, there is literally no way that the ordinary rules for a rational exercise of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> power apply. In this case, the survival of the Ba’ath regime was—for reasons quite independent of Israel—a standing affront to the American establishment as a whole, and the hi-tech hardware was at hand to remove it. In these conditions, the underlying spirit of the enterprise was: why not? In the post 9/11 atmosphere, the attack became a bipartisan affair, approved in advance by Congress, unlike the Gulf War, when it split down the middle.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">7</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">A further consequence of the Israeli grip on American policy in the Middle East is that it drops a barrier between policy-makers in Washington and populations in the area, putting the Arab masses out of the range of the normal projections of American cultural power. None of the countries in the region is a liberal democracy—the easiest type of political system to penetrate and usually the most reliable support for Washington. Nevertheless, few regimes have been more staunchly obedient to the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> than the assorted tribal monarchies of the area, or the Egyptian dictatorship. But all these states face the problem of how to square their loyalty to America with the enormities of Israeli conduct, financed, armed and protected by the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>. Characteristically, they try to protect themselves from popular anger by licensing the state-controlled media to pour out a torrent of diatribes against the United States, creating an atmosphere in which it is very difficult for American cultural and ideological agencies to operate freely, or American intelligence to gain an accurate sense of what is going on below the surface in these societies. Hence the shock in Washington when it was discovered that most of the attackers of 9/11 were Saudis. Lacking its normal dosages of ‘soft’ power in the region, the temptation for the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>—when confronted with opposition, as it was in Baghdad—is to resort blindly or impulsively to ‘hard’ power, in the hope of cracking open societies hitherto closed to what the West has to offer. This was another ingredient in the mixture of ambitions that went into the invasion of Iraq.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">8</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Finally, of course, not just petroleum and Israel, but religion too sets the Middle East and its flanking zones apart from the stabilized ecumene of American hegemony elsewhere. Not that Islam, even in its most rigorist forms, has proved incompatible with complete subservience to the<span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> at regime level, as the history of the Saudi kingdom demonstrates. But at a social and cultural level, it has remained the strongest of all barriers to ideological victory of the American way. As a faith, moreover, Islam retains a pointed political charge, for given the long history of hostilities between Christendom and the Umma—much longer than claims for their amicable coexistence—it would be surprising if significant traces of such conflicts, sharply reinforced by modern experience of Anglo-French colonial rule, were not left in popular memory. Since the seventies, the failures of Arab nationalism have reactivated these, displacing anti-imperialist feeling into religious zeal of a new intensity, targeting ‘Crusaders and Jews’—Americans and Israelis—alike. Given that the Muslim world has so far developed only a very weak tradition of explaining away original scriptures—as misinterpreted; meant only metaphorically; intended to be updated; etc—of the sort to which Christians and Jews have long been inured, a literal reading of the Koran has far greater moral force than does one of the Bible or Torah. Since Muhammad clearly enjoins <i style="font-style: italic;">jihad</i> against infidels in Holy Places, latter-day Salafism—notwithstanding every effort of Western, or pro-Western, commentators to euphemize the Prophet’s words—is on sound scriptural grounds, embarrassing though this undoubtedly is to the moderate majority of Muslims. The result is a ready, though not inexhaustible, supply of young, fanatical fighters against ‘global unbelief’, who have made a reality of the clash of civilizations in the Middle East—there being virtually no point of contact between their vision of the world and that of the Western intruders into it.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">9</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The escalation to an invasion of Iraq was thus launched into a zone opaque to the normal calculus by American planners, with inevitable risks of miscuing. But it did not come as a sudden<i style="font-style: italic;">coup de tête</i> in Washington. It was the product of a long-standing, and distorted, imperial force-field in the Middle East, whose irrationality for <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> capitalism finally boomeranged against it on 9/11, setting off a further twist in the spiral of irrationality, since the causes of 9/11 could not be publicly addressed, still less uprooted, in the American political system. In the event, the Pentagon was not wrong in believing that Baghdad could be seized and the regime toppled in a matter of days, with minimum <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> casualties. What it did not bargain for—but in this most critics of the war, underestimating the social base of the Ba’ath regime, were equally mistaken (I was among them)—was the scale and speed with which an effective <i style="font-style: italic;">maquis</i> sprang up afterwards.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn6" name="_ednref6" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('See the judgement of Ali Allawi, Minister of Finance under the American occupation, not one inclined to minimize the tyranny of the regime: ‘The Ba’ath Party had over two million members by the time the regime was overthrown. But it was by no means exclusively, or even predominantly, Sunni Arab. Shi’a, and even Turkomen and a few Kurds were well represented throughout the Party structure’—though, of course, ‘the Party’s upper echelons, and its key organizational and security units, were disproportionately Sunni Arab.’ He concludes: ‘It is insufficient to equate its years in power with the calamities that had befallen Iraq. The Ba’ath Party had metamorphosed into something else. It became a symbolic shorthand that covered more complex loyalties’: Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, New Haven 2007, pp. 148–9.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [6]</a>Within little more than two months after the fall of Baghdad, a nationalist guerrilla, led by survivors of the Ba’athist officer corps, had combined with religious zealots, inspired by Salafism, to organize a resistance against the invaders that for over four years has wreaked havoc on the morale of the occupying armies, and the ranks of their collaborators. Iraq is now the central theatre in the world today where American power is being withstood arms in hand, draining domestic support for the war in the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> itself.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">10</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">But if Washington is now, in the belief of much of its own establishment, trapped in a quagmire in Iraq, a catastrophic downfall of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> positions in the Middle East still looks unlikely. In part, this is because the occupation has divided Sunni and Shi’a communities more ferociously than ever before, making it more probable that a civil war rather than a patriotic victory will end the foreign expedition—so neutralizing any spread effect of the expulsion of the invader. Moreover, however fiercely it fights, the insurgency offers no social or political alternative to the way the world at large is currently run. Elsewhere, none of the bastions of American power in the region has yet been affected by the conflict. All its client regimes remain as loyal as ever: on one side, the long wing of states stretching all the way from Morocco to Egypt; on the other, the entire Arabian peninsula; with Pakistan as the great anchor of the American system to the east. So long as these pillars remain intact, a chaotic and divided Iraq—invigilated from the grid of vast military bases in the country now under construction, not to speak of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">CENTCOM</span> in Qatar and Kuwait—might be left to consume itself, provided oil continued to flow from the wells.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn7" name="_ednref7" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('For a cogently argued case, if tinged with a final irony, that such an outcome would be an optimal arrangement for the US, see Jim Holt, ‘It’s the Oil!’, London Review of Books, 18 October 2007.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [7]</a> Any radical change in Pakistan would, of course, alter the balance of forces across the region, not least in Afghanistan where the local guerrilla, slower to start than in Iraq, has gained momentum. But the long-standing corporate unity of the Pakistani Army, its grip on the country immune to internal rifts or bouts of nominal civilian rule, makes a disagreeable surprise unlikely.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">11</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Ostensibly, Iran remains a joker in the regional pack. An ally of the United States in the overthrow of the Taliban and the Ba’ath, its clerical regime offered Washington, while America was settling into control of Iraq, a comprehensive settlement of outstanding issues between them. The powerful forces in Teheran that are eager for an understanding with the Great Satan—millionaire mullahs, bazaari merchants, westernized professionals, blogging students—have not abandoned their hopes, and continue to press for the local equivalent of a Nixon visit. But conditions have changed since 2003, if by no means completely. A popular revolt against the materially more satisfied classes has elected a less accommodating President, committed to lending somewhat greater substance to the long-standing rhetoric of the regime, at home and abroad. Advance towards the nationalist goal of a nuclear complex, difficult for the various pro-Western milieux openly to disavow, has quickened. Neither development poses any significant threat to the United States. But here the Israeli pressure on American policy in the region has been more intense than over Iraq—Tel Aviv insisting that Iran scrap its nuclear programme. For the moment, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>, with full support from its European allies, is retracing the path of the first phase of its assault on Iraq,<i style="font-style: italic;">Ermattung</i> rather than <i style="font-style: italic;">Niederwerfung</i>, hoping to bring Teheran to reason by sanctions. These failed in Iraq, but in Iran can count on the presence of willing respondents, no less anxious than the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> to remove the president and tame the Supreme Leader.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">12</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The incubus of Israel will remain. In the short term, Washington can hope that the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">IDF</span> has battered Hezbollah sufficiently to be able to install Turkish or French troops indefinitely in Southern Lebanon as border guards for Israel, and Hamas sufficiently to give Abbas a free hand to sign some final surrender, for a split mini-state behind prison walls. Here the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> could rely on the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span>. For Europe—divided at regime level over Iraq, but largely hostile to the invasion at popular level—has always been unified in basic solidarity with Israel: not because of the power of the local Jewish community, as in the United States, but out of guilt at the Judeocide. While readier to deplore the occasional <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">IDF</span> excess in words, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span> has all but invariably followed the lead of the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> in deeds—cutting off aid to the Palestinian population to punish it for voting for Hamas, and colluding with the Israeli re-invasion of Lebanon. Together, Europe and America would have no difficulty in securing the imprimatur of the ‘international community’ for whatever solution Tel Aviv finally resolves upon for dealing with the Palestinians. Among the other powers—China, Russia, Japan, India, Brazil—there is little interest in the Middle East, and no great stake in it, provided oil markets are not roiled. Whether, of course, such an outcome could quiet the anger of the Arab masses in the longer run is another question.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">III. OPPOSITIONS</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">If something like this is the bi-zonal map of contemporary power, what and where are the forces of opposition—if any—to it? Of necessity, such opposition could not be other than ‘anti-American’: that is, antagonistic to the continuing role of the United States as world hegemon. But in itself, this is not sufficient to define a rejection of the <i style="font-style: italic;">system</i> that the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> at once loosely controls and tightly defends. Any aspirant power centre could take up the first stance, <i style="font-style: italic;">en attente</i>, without the slightest inclination towards the second. It is only their combination that indicates real resistance, potential or actual. If we take this dual rejection as a criterion, what does the current scene offer? The two most obvious regions to consider are Europe and Latin America: the first as the homeland of the labour movement as a modern phenomenon, in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and elsewhere; the second as the only continent with a continuous record of radical upheavals across the entire 20th century, from the Mexican Revolution before the First World War and the Cuban after the Second to the Venezuelan and Bolivian experiences today, after the end of the Cold War.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">1</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Not by accident, it is these two regions which gave birth to the World Social Forum, so far the only international movement of opposition to the global status quo. The <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">WSF</span>, after an impressively broad and rapid start, seems itself now winded. Lacking anything like the organization and discipline of the Comintern, which had the resources (and corruptions) of a major state behind it, the Forum has found the task of sustaining an inchoate congeries of protest across six continents, not unnaturally, extremely difficult. Less predictably, the great wave of demonstrations against the impending invasion of Iraq did not give it a second breath, partly because of the shallowness of much of this opposition, which had little or no follow-through once the occupation was installed, but also because of the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">WSF</span>’s own hesitations in transcending its original <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">NGO</span> culture for a more robust anti-imperialism. Given these limitations, it could not perhaps have been expected—short of a system-wide shock—to flourish long. But its legacy is unlikely simply to disappear.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">2</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">That this is so can be judged from France, the land of its conception, where three major social flare-ups shook society within a year, all owing something to its spirit: the popular campaign that blocked the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span> Constitution, the youth riots in the banlieue, and the mass mobilization that destroyed the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">CPE</span>—each a formidable demonstration of collective protest, and the first directly orchestrated by Attac, the architect of the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">WSF</span>. No other country in Europe has come near this level of insurgency. Yet it is also the case that no durable movement has crystallized out of these upheavals. The French electorate has put Sarkozy into the Presidency, with greater power than any ruler since De Gaulle, and a mandate to reshape France in a more fully neo-liberal mould. The other European country with the strongest radical traditions since 1945 offers little consolation. Prodi’s coalition, after narrowly defeating Berlusconi, has overseen a further weakening of the Italian Left, as Rifondazione—self-described rebuilder of communism—votes for fiscal retrenchment and troops to Afghanistan and the Lebanon, and the latest mutation of what was once the party of Gramsci ditches even the word socialism. In Germany, trade-union discontent with the welfare cut-backs of the Schroeder government has issued in a modest breakaway from the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">SPD</span>, and fusion with the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">PDS</span> in a Left Party that has done relatively well at the polls—causing Social-Democracy to draw back from more of the same—but continues to be boycotted by all other parties at national level. Despite plenty of evidence of social discontent throughout Western Europe, and a revival of significant strikes in France and Germany, and demonstrations in Italy, the agenda of the political elites is everywhere moving, at different rates and with different side payments, in much the same direction. Increasing labour flexibility—not only Sarkozy, but Royal called for a roll-back of the 35-hour week in France; further pruning of the welfare state—in Germany, Merkel has targeted the health system; more privatizations—Prodi has local services in his sights in Italy. In Brussels the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">EU</span>, headed by one of the launchers of the war on Iraq, is managed by the most neo-liberal Commission in memory.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">3</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The scene in Latin America is much more diverse—dramatically so. In Brazil, Lula’s regime could from one point of view be regarded as the greatest single disappointment suffered by the Left world-wide in this period. The <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">PT</span> was the last mass workers’ party to emerge in the 20th century—in fact, the only truly new one since the Second World War. In origin it was a militantly radical, in no way social-democratic force, born out of nation-wide popular struggles against a military dictatorship. Coming to power in the largest country of the continent, after eight years of neo-liberal administration it denounced, the party has failed to break with the same orthodoxies, which have made banks and financial institutions the greatest beneficiaries of its rule. No stock market in the world has posted such stratospheric gains as the bourse in São Paulo, rocketing 900 per cent in the space of five years. On the other hand, the regime has not been a mere replica of its predecessor, since it has also distributed some of the windfall from higher world commodity prices—which have yielded more jobs—to the most destitute families, reducing levels of extreme poverty in Brazil’s still staggeringly unequal society. Such improvements have alleviated, but in no way activated the poor. They represent perhaps the most striking contemporary example of a Southern variant of the pattern dominant across the North in the nineties—‘compensatory’ rather than ‘disciplinary’ neo-liberalism: the line of Clinton and Blair, after that of Thatcher or Reagan<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn8" name="_ednref8" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('For this distinction, see Stephen Gill’s penetrating essay ‘A Neo-Gramscian Approach to European Integration’, in Alan Cafruny and Magnus Ryner, eds, A Ruined Fortress? Neo-Liberal Hegemony and Transformation in Europe, Lanham 2003. ', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[8]</a>—as of the differences made by the continental context. Much as Perón achieved a far larger redistribution of income to labour than any social-democratic government in post-war Europe, so Lula has presided over tropical compensations of greater effect than any metropolitan version of Third Way.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">4</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">In the Southern Cone, governments of related complexion hold sway: the Uruguayan and Chilean regimes more timorous than the Brazilian, the Argentinian bolder, if with a narrower margin for economic manoeuvre. In all states, higher prices for raw materials provide a favourable setting for modest social reform. To the north, the scene is much more polarized. In Venezuela, Chávez’s Presidency, based on a formidable series of popular mobilizations in support of a radically redistributive, anti-imperialist regime, has offered a beacon to the left in Latin America and beyond, fighting off repeated attempts to overthrow it, before over-reaching itself in plebiscitary style. The condition of its popular success, however, has lain in the oil market: first the collapse of prices under the previous oligarchy, which brought Chávez to power, then their recovery in the new century that has sustained him. In Bolivia, too, an authentically radical government has emerged from a society that was the original testing-ground for shock therapy, in the wake of its failure and the mass mobilizations and indigenous awakening ultimately unleashed by it. A not dissimilar process is under way in Ecuador. For its part Cuba, released from isolation for the first time since the sixties, has both assisted and been assisted by these Andean upheavals. But any further political contagion has for the moment been stopped, with the narrow defeat of Humala in Peru, the second mandate of Uribe in Colombia and the consolidation of Calderón’s Presidency in Mexico. Politically speaking, Latin America remains the most fluid and hopeful of continents. But for the moment, although there is no closure of the political horizon as in Europe, it looks as if only exceptional conditions—great oil wealth, an Indian concentration—can yet break beyond assorted Latin American variants of what passes for political respectability.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">5</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">What of the rest of the world? In the United States, reversing the post-war pattern, partisan conflict and ideological tension are now much more intense than in Europe. Most of this has to do with America’s schizophrenic value-system—a culture combining the most unbridled commercialization, with the most devout sacralization, of life: ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ in equal extremes—and has scarcely any relevance for opposition to capital. The war in Iraq has led to stirrings of unrest in layers of the Democratic base, capable of causing modest turbulence in the path of an otherwise smooth Clinton restoration, bending it in a somewhat more tokenistic direction. In the small American Left that overlaps with this milieu, the Bush Presidency has had ambiguous effects—on the one hand galvanizing it politically, on the other weakening its endemically frail defences against collapse into the arms of the Democrats, whose leading candidates have made clear their reluctance to evacuate Iraq, and willingness to contemplate an attack on Iran. But should the crisis in credit and housing markets deepen, discontent with two decades of widening social inequality, already vocal, would no doubt curtail their options abroad, forcing measures of local redressment at home.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">6</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">In Russia, it looks as if there could soon be no opposition of any kind to the regime in place. The new electoral laws are designed to neuter rump liberals and communists alike. Under Yeltsin, the catastrophic immiseration of vast sections of the population produced no social protest. Today, even if huge numbers still live in poverty, the overall improvement in standards of living under Putin has been substantial, and generated widespread approval for his rule. The only obvious danger spot for the regime remains Chechnya, where the insurgency has been decimated, but turncoat clan rule is a mechanism that could explode in its hands. National identity will not easily be eradicated. As for Japan, where the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">LDP</span> is still wanly in the saddle, the two main parties are even less distinguishable than in America: the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">JSP</span> is extinct, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">JCP</span> vegetating in a ghetto. There is no advanced capitalist country where the political system is so petrified.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">7</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">India is the very opposite—continual changes of government, electoral instability, mass protests, large-scale strikes, rural unrest (not to speak of religious pogroms). Currently, Congress rule in Delhi depends on Communist parliamentary tolerance, restricting the margin of neo-liberal manoeuvre at the centre. In West Bengal, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">CPM</span> has been re-elected for the sixth successive time, an impressive record for any party in any part of the world. But after delivering land reform in the countryside, unlike other regions of India, under its new leader the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">CPM</span> is reorienting in a business-friendly direction, changing tax laws, cracking down on peasants and unions to attract foreign investment—though it still has a long way to go, compared to the main other Communist party in a capitalist society to survive the Cold War, the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">SACP</span>, nestling within an <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">ANC</span> regime that offers a tragic African pendant to Brazil. The large and lively Indian intelligentsia retains a significant Marxist wing, by no means all subservient to the officialdom of the Left; while in an elongated vertical belt stretching down from Nepal, where the feudal monarchy has been all but toppled by a Maoist insurgency, revived Naxalite guerrillas are in control of the countryside. The size of India is such that all these expressions of resistance coexist within a still stable, and increasingly neo-liberal, state. But this is a much more open political environment than anywhere else in the world outside Latin America.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">8</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Where any collective action is concerned, China remains a ruthlessly repressive regime, in which village protests—against expropriation of lands, gangster officials, environmental degradation—are crushed by the thousand every year, increasingly with fatalities. Alarmed at the levels of rural unrest, the rulers have made fiscal concessions to the peasantry, while beefing up the riot police. Isolated coal towns apart, the cities have so far remained much quieter than the villages. There, when not suppressed outright by officials and managers, labour disputes are typically deflected into the courts. Relying for its support on high-speed growth and appeals to national pride, the government is at once distrusted and widely conceded a passive legitimacy. Much of the intelligentsia, traditionally a factor of power in Chinese society, is disaffected—either as liberal critics of the lack of political freedoms, or as social critics of the rush towards a viciously polarized economic system. The emergence of a Chinese New Left, one of the most hopeful developments of the first years of the century, is now under close watch by the regime.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">9</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">In sum: these years have seen some spectacular demonstrations of popular will—the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">WSF</span> in 2001–02, Venezuela in 2002–03, Bolivia in 2004, France in 2005—and a patchwork of resistances elsewhere, but the overall drift of the period has been a further shift to the right, as a new Concert of Powers has increasingly solidified, the Arab street continues to be paralysed, and the imperatives of financial markets have more and more come to be taken for granted as conditions of social existence, from Europe to East Asia, Latin America to Southern Africa, Australia to remotest Micronesia. Now typically tricked out with ‘social’ concerns of one kind or another—even the Republicans have consented to a rise in the minimum wage; Putin has increased pensions; the<span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">CCP</span> abolished village corvées—neo-liberal doctrines are nearly everywhere the basic grammar of government. The conviction that there is no alternative to them runs deep in popular consciousness. At the limit, as in France, office-holders who implement them are regularly rejected by voters, only to install new rulers, who with equal regularity continue as before. In this becalmed universe, the cry ‘Another World Is Possible’ risks sounding increasingly desperate. Setting aside normative abstractions (such as Roemer’s voucher socialism) or local anaesthetics (such as the Tobin tax or Jubilee movement), what strategic alternatives are currently on offer? The most plausible candidates are proposals like Robin Blackburn’s Global Pension or Philippe Schmitter’s Eurostipendium,<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn9" name="_ednref9" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('See, respectively, ‘Plan for a Global Pension’, <span class="smallcaps">nlr</span> 47, Sept–Oct 2007, pp. 71–92, and How to Democratize the European Union . . . and Why Bother?, Lanham 2000, pp. 44–6.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [9]</a> that are designed to twist establishment headaches—pensions crises; <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">CAP</span>—in an unexpectedly radical and far-reaching direction. But such ingenious schemes are few and far between. What others are discernible? In more stratospheric mode, Roberto Unger’s experimentalism offers a range of ways to increase subjective empowerment,<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn10" name="_ednref10" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('See, most recently, What Should the Left Propose?, London and New York 2006; and for the case on crises, False Necessity, London and New York 2004, pp. 540–6.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [10]</a> whose explicit premise is the lack of any requirement—and diminishing probability—of objective crises in the system such as gave rise to radical or revolutionary movements in the past.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">10</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">It is, however, the validity—economic, social and ecological—of this assumption that is likely to be the key on which the lock of the future turns. Readers of <i style="font-style: italic;">The Economics of Global Turbulence</i>,<i style="font-style: italic;">Planet of Slums</i>, or <i style="font-style: italic;">The Monster at Our Door</i> might not be persuaded so easily. The ultimate vulnerabilities of the system lie in the three domains spelt out by Polanyi sixty years ago: labour, nature, money. These, he argued, formed a trio of ‘fictitious commodities’ created by capital, since although they were exchanged on the market, none of them was produced for sale. ‘Labour is only another name for a human activity that goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons; land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man; actual money is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all, but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state finance’. But once these fictions took full hold, they were capable of demolishing any sustainable social existence. Stripped of any protective covering, and reduced to naked commodities, ‘human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as victims of acute social dislocation’; ‘nature would be reduced to its elements, neighbourhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed’; while ‘shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society’.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn11" name="_ednref11" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('The Great Transformation, London 1944, pp. 72–3.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [11]</a></div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Polanyi, who believed ‘no society could stand the effects of such a system even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill’, looked forward to a renewal of the original impulses of reform he thought had curbed it in the nineteenth century. The ‘great transformation’ since the eighties has moved in the opposite direction. What of its reigning fictions? Labour at the disposal of capital has multiplied at a rate never seen before. In 1980 the global work force in the capitalist economies was just under a billion strong, increasing to a bit less than one and half billion in 2000. By that date, however, China, the former Soviet Union and India had added slightly more than the same figure to the total number of workers employed by capital. This doubling of the world’s working class to 3 billion in the space of a few years, in conditions often as harsh as in the early nineteenth century, is the largest structural change of the period. Its long-term consequences remain to be seen. In the short run, it is an asset rather than a threat to capital, weakening the bargaining power of labour—cutting the global capital/labour ratio, according to the most authoritative estimate, by 55–60 per cent.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn12" name="_ednref12" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('For these estimates, see Richard Freeman, ‘What Really Ails Europe (and America): the Doubling of the Global Workforce’, The Globalist, 3 June 2005. Freeman, a leading Harvard economist, directs the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [12]</a> On this front, the system looks for the moment safe enough, as the inventory of oppositions to it suggests.</div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Nature remains more unpredictable. If the scale of its potential threat to the stability of the system is now generally conceded, the proximity of different dangers is less clear cut, and measures to avert them continue to be disputed. Manifestly, a system-wide shock capable of altering all calculations of the future is a possibility. Chernobyl was a small glimpse of what effects a man-made disaster could have. Ecological catastrophes of planetary scope, now increasingly feared, have so far failed to bring states together in any common preventive programmes. Capital, united against labour, remains divided against nature, as rival businesses and governments attempt to shift the costs of redeeming it onto each other. Eventually, the logic of action in common is likely to prevail, and in that sense the system can no doubt adjust to confront carbon emissions, rising sea levels, deforestation, water shortages, neo-epidemics and the like—in principle. In practice, there is no guarantee it can do so within the necessary time-scales. On this front, complacency is less warranted: looming conflicts over who should foot the bill for cleaning the earth could prove the nearest counterpart to inter-imperialist antagonisms of old, which knocked the system off balance in their time.</div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">In all probability, money remains the weakest link, at any rate in a tangible future. Imbalances in the global financial order, as the United States continues to run up heavy trade deficits, China and Japan accumulate vast piles of dollars, Europe suffers from cheap Asian imports and a depreciating American currency, are now a staple of alarmist commentary in the world’s business press. Blind expansion of credit has fuelled a housing bubble in one leading capitalist economy after another—the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>, <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">UK</span>, Spain, Ireland, Australia—while even those still without much of their own—Germany—have become entangled in the labyrinths of securitization. The mechanisms of inter-state coordination that have developed since the seventies, headed by the G-8, and more recent informal understandings between central banks, remain on guard to prevent a meltdown of capital markets. But by common consent the contemporary speed and scale of financial crises risks overwhelming them. Behind the turmoil of money lie, in any case, huge tectonic shifts in the real economy, of which they are the most volatile expression. There the unresolved question is plain. In world markets beset by over-production in many key industries prior to the entry of China and India, will the expansion of global demand they represent outweigh the potential for further over-supply they bring, or will the one so far exceed the other as to intensify strains in the system as a whole? Whatever the answer, in the short run the realm of money appears the most likely to trigger such instabilities as are to come.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">IV. OPTIMISM OF THE INTELLIGENCE?</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Such considerations aside, the rapid survey sketched above is limited to a brief span of time, no more than seven years, and clings to the surface of events. But if a longer-range optic is adopted, can deeper transformations in train be detected, pointing to different political conclusions? At least four alternative readings of the times—there may be more—offer diagnoses of the directions in which the world is moving that are substantially more optimistic. Three of these date back to the early-to-mid nineties, but have been further developed since 9/11. The best known is, of course, the vision to be found in Hardt and Negri’s <i style="font-style: italic;">Empire, </i>to which the other three all refer, at once positively and critically. Tom Nairn’s <i style="font-style: italic;">Faces of Nationalism</i> and forthcoming<i style="font-style: italic;">Global Nations</i> set out a second perspective. Giovanni Arrighi’s <i style="font-style: italic;">The Long Twentieth Century</i> and<i style="font-style: italic;">Adam Smith in Beijing</i> constitute a third. Malcolm Bull’s recent essays, culminating in ‘States of Failure’, propose a fourth. Any reflection on the current period needs to take seriously what might superficially appear to be counter-intuitive readings of it.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">1</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Tom Nairn’s account goes roughly like this. Marx-<i style="font-style: italic;">ism</i> was always based on a distortion of Marx’s own thought, formed in the democratic struggles of the Rhineland in the 1840s. For whereas Marx assumed that socialism was possible in the long run, only when capitalism had completed its work of bringing a world market into being, the impatience of both masses and intellectuals led to the fatal short-cuts taken by Lenin and Mao, substituting state power for democracy and economic growth. The result was a diversion of the river of world history into the marshlands of a modern middle ages. But the collapse of Soviet Communism in 1989 has now allowed the river to flow again to its natural delta—contemporary globalization. For the core meaning of globalization is the generalization of democracy around the world, fulfilling at last the dreams of 1848, crushed during Marx’s life-time. Marx, however, himself made one crucial mistake, in thinking class would be the carrier of historical emancipation, in the shape of the proletariat. In fact, as the European pattern of 1848 already showed, and the whole of the 20th century would confirm, it was nations, not classes, that would become the moving forces of history, and the bearers of the democratic revolution for which he fought.</div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">But, just as a counterfeit democracy would be constructed by Marx-<i style="font-style: italic;">ism</i>, so nationality too was in due course confiscated by national-<i style="font-style: italic;">ism</i>—that is, imperialist great powers—in the period after the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. In the second half of the 20th century, however, the decolonization of the Third World and de-communization of the Second World potentially allow nations without nationalism to come into their own—the only possible frameworks for ‘the generalization and deepening of democracy as the precondition of whatever social forms the open ocean ahead may make possible’.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn13" name="_ednref13" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('‘History’s Postman’, London Review of Books, 26 January 2006. Other key texts include ‘Out of the Cage’, ‘Make for the Boondocks’, ‘Democratic Warming’ and ‘The Enabling Boundary’: <span class="smallcaps">lrb</span>, 24 June 2004, 5 May 2005, 4 August 2005, 18 October 2007, and ‘America: Enemy of Globalization’, openDemocracy, 2003.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [13]</a> After 9/11 a revived American great-power nationalism and neo-liberal economania have temporarily hijacked the progressive momentum of globalization. Yet it will not propel us into any market uniformity. Its deeper logic requires, on the contrary, a diversity of democratic nations to be humanly bearable, as an anthropological necessity—on pain of a boundary loss incompatible with any kind of identity. No social or cultural homogeneity awaits us at the supposed end of history. ‘We are still in the middle of the rapids of modernity.’</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">2</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Hardt and Negri concur that globalization is essentially a process of emancipation, but reach a diametrically opposite verdict on the role of nations within it. Their story starts earlier, in the 16th century, when the liberating spirit of the Renaissance was crushed by a Baroque counter-revolution that erected Absolutism as the originating form of modern sovereignty. Inherited essentially unaltered by the nation-states of the industrial epoch, it is the passing of this legacy, with the dissolution of nation-states themselves into a single, uniform ‘Empire’, that marks the dawn of a new era of freedom and equality. The turning-point here was not the overthrow of communism in 1989—barely mentioned—but the decade 1968–1978, when anti-imperialist victory in Vietnam and revolts by workers, unemployed and students in the West forced a reconfiguration of capitalism into its contemporary universal guise. With the advent of universal Empire, classes too—like nations—fade away, as capital generates the increasingly ‘immaterial’ labour of a single, and no less universal multitude. The days of national liberation, of the working class, of revolutionary vanguards, are over. But just as Empire was created by resistance from below, so it will fall to such resistance, as spontaneous networks of opposition to it proliferate across the earth. Out of the spiralling actions of this multitude—demonstrations, migrations and insurrections—driven by a common biopolitical desire for peace and democracy, will flower a post-liberal, post-socialist world. Without the mystifications of sovereignty or representation, all will for the first time rule in freedom and equality. It could happen at any moment. ‘Today time is split between a present that is already dead and a future that is already living—and the yawning abyss between them has become enormous. In time, an event will thrust us like an arrow into that living future’.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn14" name="_ednref14" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('Multitude, New York 2005, p. 358.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[14]</a></div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">3</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Arrighi’s narrative starts in the Renaissance too, if with the rise of Genoese banking in the 14th century, rather than of Spanish Absolutism in the 16th century. Its form is cyclical. Capitalist expansion is always initially material—an investment in the production of goods, and conquest of markets. But when over-competition drives down profits, there is a switch to financial expansion—investment in speculation and intermediation—as an escape-hatch. Once this in turn runs out of steam, a ‘time of systemic chaos’ ensues, in which rival territorial capitals fight it out through their respective states, on a military battlefield. Out of these wars, the state that emerges victorious establishes a system-wide hegemony that enables a new cycle of material expansion to start again. Such hegemony typically involves a new model of production, combining capitalism and territorialism in unprecedented ways, capable of persuading all other states that the hegemonic power is ‘the motor-force of a general expansion of the power of all ruling classes vis-à-vis their subjects’, resting on a wider social bloc. Out of the Thirty Years War came Dutch hegemony (global finance plus trade monopoly); out of the Napoleonic Wars, British hegemony (global finance, free trade dominance, early factory system); out of the two World Wars, American hegemony (global finance, free trade and the industrial corporation). Today? Like Hardt and Negri, Arrighi sees the anti-imperialist and worker revolts of the sixties and seventies as the modern turning-point, bringing the cycle of post-war material expansion to an end, and forcing capitalism into the <i style="font-style: italic;">fuite en avant</i> of financial expansion. That cycle is now in turn petering out, just as American hegemony enters into mortal crisis in Iraq.</div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">What next? World labour has been steadily gathering strength,<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn15" name="_ednref15" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('See Beverly Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870, Cambridge 2003.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [15]</a> but the big development is the rise of East Asia. In the early nineties, focusing on Japan, Arrighi thought there were three possible futures for humanity: a world empire—a final reassertion of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> imperial control over the globe; a world market society, in which an East Asia led by Japan would so counter-balance the<span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> that no single state could exercise hegemony any longer; or a descent into generalized warfare, in a terminal bout of systemic chaos capable of destroying the planet. A decade later, with the still more consequential rise of China, he rules out the first scenario, leaving only the hopeful second and—diminuendo—the catastrophic third.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn16" name="_ednref16" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, London and New York 2007, pp. 7–8.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [16]</a> The emergence of a world market society, predicted long ago by Adam Smith, would mean the end of capitalism, since the nexus between the state and finance, born of inter-state rivalry, that defines it would have disappeared; and the arrival of that long overdue equalization of wealth between the peoples of the earth, to which he looked forward.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">4</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Bull’s story, by contrast, begins in the 17th century, with the first intimations of an involuntary collective intelligence, as distinct from conscious collective will, in the political thought of Spinoza. Descending through Mandeville at once to Smith, as the invisible hand of the market, and to Stewart, as the natural origin of government, this tradition eventually issued into Hayek’s general theory of spontaneous order—perhaps the most powerful of all legitimations of capitalism. Today it has resurfaced in the ‘swarm intelligence’ of Hardt and Negri’s multitude, counterposed to the state that supposedly embodies popular sovereignty, descending from Rousseau.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn17" name="_ednref17" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('‘The Limits of Multitude’, <span class="smallcaps">nlr</span> 35, September–October 2005, pp. 19–39; sequel in ‘States of Failure’, <span class="smallcaps">nlr</span> 40, July–August 2006. Subsequent texts: ‘Vectors of the Biopolitical’, <span class="smallcaps">nlr</span> 45, May–June 2007, and ‘The Catastrophist’, London Review of Books, 1 November 2007.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [17]</a> The dichotomy to which Hardt and Negri revert, however, is effectively an expression of the impasse of contemporary agency, which has become a stalemate between the pressures of the globalizing market and defensive populist reactions to it.</div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">In his time, Bull suggests, Hegel offered a resolution of the antinomy. For <i style="font-style: italic;">The Philosophy of Right</i>constructs a passage from the spontaneous intelligence of civil society—the market as theorized by Scottish political economy—to the orderly will of a liberal state. Dismantled in the early 20th century by adversaries from Right to Left, this is the legacy of which a metamorphosis is needed. For what has happened in the interim is the disintegration of the global state whose overlapping incarnations have been the European, Soviet and American empires: first decolonization, then de-communization and now, visibly, the decline of <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span> hegemony. Does this mean, then, the unstoppable release of a global market society: collective intelligence stripped of any collective will? Not necessarily. The entropy of the global state could release, instead, dissipative structures inverting the Hegelian formula: not subsuming civil society into the state, but—in the opposite direction—reconstituting civil society, on a potentially non-market basis, out of the withering away of the state, as once imagined by Marx and Gramsci.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">5</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">These constructions form a set of imaginative enterprises, which seek to look beyond the epiphenomenal headlines of the period at longer-term logics of the world-historical changes we are living through. However remote from the patina of current events one or other may appear to be, each can point to empirical features of the period as evidence for its case. Representative democracy has spread round the world since the late eighties, from Eastern Europe to East Asia and South Africa, with no obvious reversal or stopping-place in sight; new nation-states have been born, from the Caucasus to the Pacific, and no form of democracy has yet been invented that exceeds them. Popular networks have coalesced without central direction, at Seattle or Genoa. American shares of world trade and output have declined. China—and East Asia more generally—is likely to become the centre of gravity of the global economy within a few decades. Populist reactions have so far indeed been the principal response to the expansion of the globalizing market.</div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">6</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">Intellectually speaking, all four versions take as their points of departure thinkers prior to the emergence of modern socialism: Spinoza for Negri, Smith for Arrighi, Hegel for Bull, Marx before Marx (the young Rhineland democrat, prior to the <i style="font-style: italic;">Manifesto</i>) for Nairn. All have an Italian background, but in some measure too, could say with Negri: ‘I have washed my clothes in the Seine’. This is plainest in the case of Hardt and Negri, much of whose vocabulary—the planar Empire; the nomad; biopower—comes directly from Deleuze or Foucault. But it holds equally for Arrighi, whose vision of capitalism depends centrally on Braudel. For Nairn, it is Emmanuel Todd who has fathomed most boldly, if somewhat crazily, the anthropological premises of modernity. The last thinker cited by Bull, and descriptively nearest to his resolution, is Sartre. Politically, all four versions agree that globalization is to be welcomed, and has already brought us the first or last death-rattles of American hegemony.<a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_edn18" name="_ednref18" onmouseout="nd();" onmouseover="return overlib('The major difference between Empire and Multitude is the casting down of the idol of the <span class="smallcaps">us</span> Republic in the latter.', FGCOLOR, '#E3E3E3', BGCOLOR, '#000000')" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title=""> [18]</a></div><h3 style="display: block; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase;">7</h3><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The major line of division between the different versions lies along the axis of the state. For Hardt and Negri, Arrighi and Bull, it is the extinction of the state—national in the first case; hegemonic in the second; global in the third—that encompasses the eclipse of capital. For Nairn, it is the other way round: only the full emancipation of the nation-state can universalize democracy, and assure the cultural diversity necessary for the invention of new social forms, yet to be imagined, beyond the neo-liberal order.</div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">The questions that can be put to each of these constructions are clear enough. Nairn: democracy may be extending round the world, but is it not becoming ever thinner as it does so, not accidentally but as a condition of its spread? Fresh nation-states have risen, but nearly all the newcomers are weak or marginal. Boundaries of some kind may be an anthropological <i style="font-style: italic;">a priori</i>, but why should these be national, rather than civilizational, regional, cantonal or other? Hardt and Negri: is the multitude not just a theological figure, as its promised ‘exodus’ implies, and the ‘event’ that will install universal democracy in place of Empire a miraculism? Arrighi: world empire or world market society could only spell the end of capitalism if Braudel’s definition of the latter as no more than the sphere of high finance—not trade or production—generated by inter-state rivalry, made sense. But does it?—and is it really the case that world labour insurgency has been rising since the eighties? Bull: an impasse between the globalizing market and populist reactions to it implies that they are of equivalent weight, neither advancing at the expense of the other: is that what the last twenty years suggest? If the current version of the global state (<i style="font-style: italic;">sc</i>: <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>hegemony) is dissolving, why should not it issue into Huntington’s patchwork of regional market powers, delimited by civilizational spaces, rather than a global civil society, market or not?</div><div class="artbody" style="display: block; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;">But these are benchmark visions for discussion of the future. Arguments put up against them require equivalents.</div><br />
<hr style="border-bottom-style: inset; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-left-style: inset; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-style: inset; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-style: inset; border-top-width: 1px; display: block;" /><br />
<div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[1]</a> The size of Iraq’s unexplored reserves, a still uncertain multiple of the country’s output, may have loomed larger in long-range thinking about the war, as Greenspan has implied.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[2]</a> <i style="font-style: italic;">Ermattungsstrategie</i>: ‘strategy of attrition’; <i style="font-style: italic;">Niederwerfungsstrategie</i>: ‘strategy of overthrow’—terms coined by the German military historian Hans Delbrück, a decade after the Franco-Prussian War. For their political uses, see <a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/A68" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;">‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci’</a>, <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">NLR</span> 1/100, November–December 1976, pp. 61–70.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[3]</a> The outstanding work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has finally broken this silence: first with their essay, ‘The Israel Lobby’, <i style="font-style: italic;">London Review of Books</i>, 23 March 2006, then with the book that has succeeded it, <i style="font-style: italic;">The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy</i>, New York 2007. See also Michael Massing’s well-documented account, ‘The Storm over the Israel Lobby’, <i style="font-style: italic;">New York Review of Books</i>, 8 June 2006. In striking contrast has been the general pusillanimity of the American Left, prone to emphasizing the role of its bugbear the Christian Right as a more acceptable culprit, when the latter’s function has clearly been in effect a <i style="font-style: italic;">force d’appoint</i>. Israeli politicians are more robust, Olmert straightforwardly describing ‘the Jewish organizations’ as ‘our power base in America’: <a href="http://www.ft.com/" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i style="font-style: italic;">Financial Times</i></a>, 30 November 2007.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[4]</a> Within days of the attack, Fredric Jameson was pointing this out: ‘Historical events are not punctual, but extend in a before and after of time which only gradually reveal themselves’, <i style="font-style: italic;">London Review of Books</i>, 4 October 2001. For his full argument, see ‘The Dialectics of Disaster’, <i style="font-style: italic;">South Atlantic Quarterly</i>, Spring 2002, pp. 297–304.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[5]</a> See Bruce Lawrence, ed., <i style="font-style: italic;">Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden</i>, London and New York 2005, pp. 9–10.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[6]</a> See the judgement of Ali Allawi, Minister of Finance under the American occupation, not one inclined to minimize the tyranny of the regime: ‘The Ba’ath Party had over two million members by the time the regime was overthrown. But it was by no means exclusively, or even predominantly, Sunni Arab. Shi’a, and even Turkomen and a few Kurds were well represented throughout the Party structure’—though, of course, ‘the Party’s upper echelons, and its key organizational and security units, were disproportionately Sunni Arab.’ He concludes: ‘It is insufficient to equate its years in power with the calamities that had befallen Iraq. The Ba’ath Party had metamorphosed into something else. It became a symbolic shorthand that covered more complex loyalties’: Allawi,<i style="font-style: italic;"> The Occupation of Iraq</i>, New Haven 2007, pp. 148–9.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[7]</a> For a cogently argued case, if tinged with a final irony, that such an outcome would be an optimal arrangement for the US, see Jim Holt, ‘It’s the Oil!’, <i style="font-style: italic;">London Review of Books</i>, 18 October 2007.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[8]</a> For this distinction, see Stephen Gill’s penetrating essay ‘A Neo-Gramscian Approach to European Integration’, in Alan Cafruny and Magnus Ryner, eds, <i style="font-style: italic;">A Ruined Fortress? Neo-Liberal Hegemony and Transformation in Europe</i>, Lanham 2003.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[9]</a> See, respectively, ‘Plan for a Global Pension’, <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">NLR</span> 47, Sept–Oct 2007, pp. 71–92, and <i style="font-style: italic;">How to Democratize the European Union . . . and Why Bother?</i>, Lanham 2000, pp. 44–6.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref10" name="_edn10" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[10]</a> See, most recently, <i style="font-style: italic;">What Should the Left Propose?</i>, London and New York 2006; and for the case on crises, <i style="font-style: italic;">False Necessity</i>, London and New York 2004, pp. 540–6.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref11" name="_edn11" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[11]</a> <i style="font-style: italic;">The Great Transformation</i>, London 1944, pp. 72–3.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref12" name="_edn12" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[12]</a> For these estimates, see Richard Freeman, ‘What Really Ails Europe (and America): the Doubling of the Global Workforce’, <i style="font-style: italic;">The Globalist</i>, 3 June 2005. Freeman, a leading Harvard economist, directs the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref13" name="_edn13" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[13]</a> ‘History’s Postman’, <i style="font-style: italic;">London Review of Books</i>, 26 January 2006. Other key texts include ‘Out of the Cage’, ‘Make for the Boondocks’, ‘Democratic Warming’ and ‘The Enabling Boundary’: <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">LRB</span>, 24 June 2004, 5 May 2005, 4 August 2005, 18 October 2007, and ‘America: Enemy of Globalization’,<a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i style="font-style: italic;">openDemocracy</i></a>, 2003.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref14" name="_edn14" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[14]</a> <i style="font-style: italic;">Multitude</i>, New York 2005, p. 358.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref15" name="_edn15" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[15]</a> See Beverly Silver, <i style="font-style: italic;">Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870</i>, Cambridge 2003.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref16" name="_edn16" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[16]</a> <i style="font-style: italic;">Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century</i>, London and New York 2007, pp. 7–8.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref17" name="_edn17" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[17]</a> <a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/A2578" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;">‘The Limits of Multitude’</a>, <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">NLR</span> 35, September–October 2005, pp. 19–39; sequel in <a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/A2623" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;">‘States of Failure’</a>, <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">NLR</span> 40, July–August 2006. Subsequent texts: <a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/A2667" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;">‘Vectors of the Biopolitical’</a>, <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">NLR</span> 45, May–June 2007, and ‘The Catastrophist’, <i style="font-style: italic;">London Review of Books</i>, 1 November 2007.</div><div class="footnote" style="display: block; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 32px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify; width: 588px;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2695#_ednref18" name="_edn18" style="color: #1e5c97; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;" title="">[18]</a> The major difference between <i style="font-style: italic;">Empire</i> and <i style="font-style: italic;">Multitude</i> is the casting down of the idol of the <span class="smallcaps" style="text-transform: uppercase;">US</span>Republic in the latter.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-39205137930441095442010-03-08T16:20:00.000-08:002010-03-08T16:22:58.609-08:00Reply to a comrade who thinks Dalit Marxism is reactioneryThere are many things true in your post. We can identify a single or a combination of more than one mode of production as ‘dominant’ in any given system at any given time. Such mode of production is either in decline or being ascendant. And, Marxists are supposed to locate this thing and form their strategy most suitable to it. All of it is perfectly alright. Dalit Marxism doesn’t say or imply or find any difficulty in making the best of this point — one of the most fundamental political insights of Marx.<br />
As you know, this point is as political as economic, though, strictly speaking, such distinction is meaningless beyond a point in Dalit Marxist analysis just as in any Marxist analysis. I am not clear what do you mean by “specificity or uniformity of labor form or labor process,” There has never been a uniformity of labor form or even labor processes either in pre-capitalist or capitalist or even in the post-capitalist economies.<br />
In fact, one of the principle attractions Marx had for the communist ideal is its ability to free human beings from the monotony or unlovable nature of labor performed under conditions of exploitation or compulsions external or internal and retain or elevate it to what he thought it surely was: an expression of the essence of humans. Marx imagined a world, and argued that such a thing was possible, in which you write poetry in the evening and fish in the afternoon and repair machinery in the night and do all of it out of your own free will and a sense of responsibility for the society. Some of the principle evils in the capitalist economy and society Marx locates, and also of course, in other forms of society, is the division of labor of a kind that fragments the vision of the worker.<br />
But there is something common to all forms of labor, which he called abstract labor. Not that there could be any labor whatsoever which could be ‘abstract.’ But at one level it is a simple analytical devise we need to use to grasp the commonalities of all forms of labor, the products of which could be exchanged. But at a much fundamental level the very process of exchange is what makes this bizarre process of abstraction not just mental but something that happens in the objective reality. Well, you know how difficult it is to talk about this ‘objective process of abstraction’ the inexorable exchange advanced levels of capitalism involves. But, the point is, at no point, labor is abstract in any simple sense.<br />
And, as you should know, one fundamental feature of Hindu society is, it doesn’t allow for any straight forward exchange between the products of labor of different kinds. For example, it insists that certain forms of labor, like manual scavenging, is open only to dalits. Very often, it says not only that only dalits can do it but also that dalits have to do it.<br />
If one bothers to look up from their study of debates among the European and U.S. Marxists about the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe and bother to see what is happening to Dalits, I think s/he may accept that after all capitalism is not uniform, nor are its forms of labor. Probably, the ‘nuance’ you have in mind doesn’t allow for any such negligible distinctions between the labor of, say, an employee of Treasury and a manual scavenger on contract for the last 15 years or an MPhil student back home in summer holidays who was forced to carry the dead animal from the backyard of a small peasant.<br />
If this MPhil student fails to appreciate the essential commonality of all labor from the postal workers of Deutsche Post and Satyam Employees threatened with cut down on perks and his own work to clear the corpses of his upper-caste village mates, we might still blame him for being a ‘subjective empiricist’ (whose knowledge is derived solely from his own experience) missing the larger picture. But, can we say anything against him if insists that there is no UNIFORMITY of different forms of labor and there is no possibility of exchange in the first place if there is such a state of affairs. He has every right to further mock us that except God, who supposed to have created everything and run all of them and provides customer care without even any pretence of multi-tasking, nobody could imagine the ‘uniformity of labor.’<br />
Unfortunately, you description of Marxism as something which tells us that there is only one kind of working class is simply not true. If you are tribal in Africa or India, it is most likely that you will be raped routinely and lucky if you are not killed and you are either driven out of your land first to be able to be robbed of your land or first be relieved of your land and then driven out of it and then further exploited when you go and seek work somewhere else. I did not read much of Das Capital, but one chapter from it, on ‘Primitive Accumulation,’ describes similar process in the making of Capitalism, rubbishing the myth which said frugality and hard work of the capitalists provided them with capital. Probably, Marx was being deviant here from the Party line( though I suspect he was the only lucky Marxist to have escaped it while not formulating it) or failed to foresee the dangers of noting such variations that could divide proletarian unity and let himself to be played into the hands of business class.<br />
“Dalit does not embody any uniform labor process in India.” “Dalits may represent a subjugated labour but…” I am not sure what could these assertions possibly mean. If you mean to say that all Dalits don’t belong to a single class, you are absolutely right. They don’t. It is no news to anybody that caste and class, despite all their overlapping, intersecting and resembling each other, are in some crucial ways, simply, different things.<br />
While an individual can move upwards of his class of origin or fall out of one, such is not possible for any Individual from her caste. Some castes as collectivities could move upwards or downwards over longer periods of time but individually it is not possible. Here, you are introducing this Hindu principle of caste into understanding class and class struggle. If you and me, definitely no longer belong to working class, could join working class struggles, why can’t the dalits from other classes join the struggle of working class(which includes those denied work) for emancipation? If you say that intellectuals can transcend their class by studying Marxism and ‘declassifying’ themselves, why do you think that the very small section among the dalits who are no longer in the working class can’t do so?<br />
It is also surprising that you think the labor of dalits MAY REPRESENT subjugated labor (or, did you mean Dalits as a subjugated labor force?). Marxism, for all I know, shows all labor, including the one for which workers struggle to get, is subjugated without exception. You are unwilling even to give that status to the labor of Dalits. What prevents you from acknowledging the labor of dalits to be subjugated? At a different level, one is surprised that you think Dalits should embody a uniform labor process in India. You seem to think the fault with the category of Dalit, if not the Dalits themselves, is its incapacity to embody uniform labor process. It is like blaming your mail for its inability to give me a single cigarette when I read it. How can, and why should, a political category embody a ‘labor process’? Isn’t it somewhat similar to the joke about the inability of a poetry anthology to make a set of boot laces?<br />
Since you are a comrade from Mars, let me introduce this peculiarity in one of the planetary systems far away from your abode: we have here something called Earth revolving around sun on which is a country called India which houses nearly twenty percent of humanity of which more than twenty percent are Dalits. Most of us have no option to choose which work we can do. Not just individually but also as a collective. Moreover, many of us, like rest of the non-dalits, cannot hope to get any work at all.<br />
“By introducing such sweeping category like 'Dalit' which does not embody the uniform labour form or labour process in India and also has no legitimate reference to the theoretical nuances of Marxism, you ultimately intend to distort Marxism and in the process pay to the interest of corporate class in India.”<br />
Now, you relent and give some promotion to the category of dalit. It is now “sweeping.” A moment ago it was divisive and distorting the essential unity of this entity called the working class. But, each and every category is much bigger than any of its constituent elements or particularities whose abstraction it is. And, naturally, it is more specific and concrete than even bigger category. “Dalit journalists” is a bigger category than “Dalit Women Journalists” while being smaller than “Dalit professionals” which in turn is smaller than “Dalit employees.” The point is, if a category is both inclusive and exclusive enough to serve the concrete task for action or analysis, frequently for the both. I want you to throw some light on that aspect.<br />
Comrade, there are many more things. I shall respond to them later. Meanwhile, waiting for your response, so that we can sharpen our formulations further, and naturally, together.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-2057319292307363042010-03-08T08:56:00.000-08:002010-03-08T08:56:06.127-08:00Women on march in support of Chitralekha in PayyanurThanks CK Vishwanath for sending this. From: bharadwaj reshma <reshubh@yahoo.com><br />
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To: rekhaethamma@gmail.com; feminists kerala <feminists-kerala@googlegroups.com>; green youth <greenyouth@googlegroups.com><br />
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Sent: Mon, 8 March, 2010 12:10:38 AM<br />
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Subject: [GreenYouth] Vahana pracharana jadha<br />
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Hi Friends<br />
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On March 9th and 10th, two day 'vahana pracharana jadha' by women supporting Chitralekha will go around Payyanur and nearby areas. We hope to open up dialogue with local people about the politics of this incident and gather support for Chitralekha's resistance.<br />
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jadha will highlight slogans:<br />
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Stop slander campaign against Chitralekha<br />
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Ensure a job atmoshphere where she can engage in her job with dignity and without fear<br />
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Accept women's right to choose their job.<br />
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Rekha Raj (Panchami Dalit Women's Collective), K.Ajitha (Anweshi), Ammini (Adivasi Vikasa Samithi), Praveena(Panchami Dalit Women's Collective), Jaseela, Beena Appu (Sahayatrika), Deepa V.N (Sahayatrika), V.P Suhara (Nisa), Sulochana(Kerala Sthreevedi), Reshma Bharadwaj(Sahayatrika), Amala (Kerala Sthreevedi) - will be participating in the jadha. I am listing jadha route below. <br />
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Cheers, come to any(if not all of these) points and join us. And if you know any others at these places please inform them.<br />
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Reshma<br />
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Sthree vahana jadha<br />
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Route and time<br />
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9/03/2010<br />
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09.30 AM: Karivalloor<br />
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10.15 AM: Onakkunnu Junction<br />
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11.00 AM: Samimukku<br />
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11.45 AM: Mathil<br />
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12.20 PM: Chooral<br />
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01.10 PM: Aravanchal<br />
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2.30 PM: Peringom<br />
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3.30 PM: Kankol<br />
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4.15 PM: Kothaimukku<br />
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5 PM: Perumba (near KSRTC)<br />
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6 PM: Edattu <br />
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10/03/2010<br />
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9.30 AM: Ezhilode<br />
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10.15 AM: Pilathara<br />
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11 AM: Pariyaram (in front of medical college)<br />
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12 PM: Pazhayangadi<br />
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12.45 PM: Mandooru<br />
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1.30 PM: Kunjimangalam<br />
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2.45 PM: Kunnaru<br />
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3.30 PM: Ramanthali<br />
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4.15 PM: Kotti railway gate<br />
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6 PM: Payyanoor (old bus stand)<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-8119011210857981692010-03-08T06:54:00.000-08:002010-03-08T16:25:16.209-08:00ZIZEK ON Avatar, Naxalism and Fantacy<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2010/03/avatar-reality-love-couple-sex">http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2010/03/avatar-reality-love-couple-sex</a><br />
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James Cameron's Avatar tells the story of a disabled ex-marine, sent from earth to infiltrate a race of blue-skinned aboriginal people on a distant planet and persuade them to let his employer mine their homeland for natural resources. Through a complex biological manipulation, the hero's mind gains control of his "avatar", in the body of a young aborigine.<br />
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These aborigines are deeply spiritual and live in harmony with nature (they can plug a cable that sticks out of their body into horses and trees to communicate with them). Predictably, the marine falls in love with a beautiful aboriginal princess and joins the aborigines in battle, helping them to throw out the human invaders and saving their planet. At the film's end, the hero transposes his soul from his damaged human body to his aboriginal avatar, thus becoming one of them.<br />
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Given the 3-D hyperreality of the film, with its combination of real actors and animated digital corrections, Avatar should be compared to films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) or The Matrix (1999). In each, the hero is caught between our ordinary reality and an imagined universe - of cartoons in Roger Rabbit, of digital reality in The Matrix, or of the digitally enhanced everyday reality of the planet in Avatar. What one should thus bear in mind is that, although Avatar's narrative is supposed to take place in one and the same "real" reality, we are dealing - at the level of the underlying symbolic economy - with two realities: the ordinary world of imperialist colonialism on the one hand, and a fantasy world, populated by aborigines who live in an incestuous link with nature, on the other. (The latter should not be confused with the miserable reality of actual exploited peoples.) The end of the film should be read as the hero fully migrating from reality into the fantasy world - as if, in The Matrix, Neo were to decide to immerse himself again fully in the matrix.<br />
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This does not mean, however, that we should reject Avatar on behalf of a more "authentic" acceptance of the real world. If we subtract fantasy from reality, then reality itself loses its consistency and disintegrates. To choose between "either accepting reality or choosing fantasy" is wrong: if we really want to change or escape our social reality, the first thing to do is change our fantasies that make us fit this reality. Because the hero of Avatar doesn't do this, his subjective position is what Jacques Lacan, with regard to de Sade, called le dupe de son fantasme.<br />
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This is why it is interesting to imagine a sequel to Avatar in which, after a couple of years (or, rather, months) of bliss, the hero starts to feel a weird discontent and to miss the corrupted human universe. The source of this discontent is not only that every reality, no matter how perfect it is, sooner or later disappoints us. Such a perfect fantasy disappoints us precisely because of its perfection: what this perfection signals is that it holds no place for us, the subjects who imagine it.<br />
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The utopia imagined in Avatar follows the Hollywood formula for producing a couple - the long tradition of a resigned white hero who has to go among the savages to find a proper sexual partner (just recall Dances With Wolves). In a typical Hollywood product, everything, from the fate of the Knights of the Round Table to asteroids hitting the earth, is transposed into an Oedipal narrative. The ridiculous climax of this procedure of staging great historical events as the background to the formation of a couple is Warren Beatty's Reds (1981), in which Hollywood found a way to rehabilitate the October Revolution, arguably the most traumatic historical event of the 20th century. In Reds, the couple of John Reed and Louise Bryant are in deep emotional crisis; their love is reignited when Louise watches John deliver an impassioned revolutionary speech.<br />
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What follows is the couple's lovemaking, intersected with archetypal scenes from the revolution, some of which reverberate in an all too obvious way with the sex; say, when John penetrates Louise, the camera cuts to a street where a dark crowd of demonstrators envelops and stops a penetrating "phallic" tram - all this against the background of the singing of "The Internationale". When, at the orgasmic climax, Lenin himself appears, addressing a packed hall of delegates, he is more a wise teacher overseeing the couple's love-initiation than a cold revolutionary leader. Even the October Revolution is OK, according to Hollywood, if it serves the reconstitution of a couple.<br />
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In a similar way, is Cameron's previous blockbuster, Titanic, really about the catastrophe of the ship hitting the iceberg? One should be <br />
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attentive to the precise moment of the catastrophe: it takes place when the young lovers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet), immediately after consummating their relationship, return to the ship's deck. Even more crucial is that, on deck, Winslet tells her lover that when the ship reaches New York the next morning, she will leave with him, preferring a life of poverty with her true love to a false, corrupted life among the rich.<br />
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At this moment the ship hits the iceberg, in order to prevent what would undoubtedly have been the true catastrophe, namely the couple's life in New York. One can safely guess that soon the misery of everyday life would have destroyed their love. The catastrophe thus occurs in order to save their love, to sustain the illusion that, if it had not happened, they would have lived "happily ever after". A further clue is provided by DiCaprio's final moments. He is freezing in the cold water, dying, while Winslet is safely floating on a large piece of wood. Aware that she is losing him, she cries "I'll never let you go!" - and as she says this, she pushes him away with her hands.<br />
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Why? Because he has done his job. Beneath the story of a love affair, Titanic tells another story, that of a spoiled high-society girl with an identity crisis: she is confused, doesn't know what to do with herself, and DiCaprio, much more than just her love partner, is a kind of "vanishing mediator" whose function is to restore her sense of identity and purpose in life. His last words before he disappears into the freezing North Atlantic are not the words of a departing lover, but the message of a preacher, telling her to be honest and faithful to herself.<br />
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Cameron's superficial Hollywood Marxism (his crude privileging of the lower classes and caricatural depiction of the cruel egotism of the rich) should not deceive us. Beneath this sympathy for the poor lies a reactionary myth, first fully deployed by Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous. It concerns a young rich person in crisis who gets his (or her) vitality estored through brief intimate contact with the full-blooded life of the poor. What lurks behind the compassion for the poor is their vampiric exploitation.<br />
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But today, Hollywood increasingly seems to have abandoned this formula. The film of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons must surely be the first case of a Hollywood adaptation of a popular novel in which there is sex between the hero and the heroine in the book, but not in its film version - in clear contrast to the old tradition of adding a sex scene to a film based on a novel in which there is none. There is nothing liberating about this absence of sex; we are rather dealing with yet more proof of the phenomenon described by Alain Badiou in his Éloge de l'amour - today, in our pragmatic-narcissistic era, the very notion of falling in love, of a passionate attachment to a sexual partner, is considered obsolete and dangerous.<br />
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Avatar's fidelity to the old formula of creating a couple, its full trust in fantasy, and its story of a white man marrying the aboriginal princess and becoming king, make it ideologically a rather conservative, old-fashioned film. Its technical brilliance serves to cover up this basic conservatism. It is easy to discover, beneath the politically correct themes (an honest white guy siding with ecologically sound aborigines against the "military-industrial complex" of the imperialist invaders), an array of brutal racist motifs: a paraplegic outcast from earth is good enough to get the hand of abeautiful local princess, and to help the natives win the decisive battle. The film teaches us that the only choice the aborigines have is to be saved by the human beings or to be destroyed by them. In other words, they can choose either to be the victim of imperialist reality, or to play their allotted role in the white man's fantasy.<br />
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At the same time as Avatar is making money all around the world (it generated $1bn after less than three weeks of release), something that strangely resembles its plot is taking place. The southern hills of the Indian state of Orissa, inhabited by the Dongria Kondh people, were sold to mining companies that plan to exploit their immense reserves of bauxite (the deposits are considered to be worth at least $4trn). In reaction to this project, a Maoist (Naxalite) armed rebellion exploded.<br />
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Arundhati Roy, in Outlook India magazine, writes that the Maoist guerrilla army<br />
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is made up almost entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan Africa. They are people who, even after 60 years of India's so-called independence, have not had access to education, health care or legal redress. They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of right by police and forest department personnel. Their journey back to a semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadres who have lived and worked and fought by their sides for decades. If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have - their land . . . They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated . . . their ragged, malnutritioned army, the bulk of whose soldiers have never seen a train or a bus or even a small town, are fighting only for survival.<br />
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The Indian prime minister characterised this rebellion as the "single largest internal security threat"; the big media, which present it as extremist resistance to progress, are full of stories about "red terrorism", replacing stories about "Islamist terrorism". No wonder the Indian state is responding with a big military operation against "Maoist strongholds" in the jungles of central India. And it is true that both sides are resorting to great violence in this brutal war, that the "people's justice" of the Maoists is harsh. However, no matter how unpalatable this violence is to our liberal taste, we have no right to condemn it. Why? Because their situation is precisely that of Hegel's rabble: the Naxalite rebels in India are starving tribal people, to whom the minimum of a dignified life is denied.<br />
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So where is Cameron's film here? Nowhere: in Orissa, there are no noble princesses waiting for white heroes to seduce them and help their people, just the Maoists organising the starving farmers. The film enables us to practise a typical ideological division: sympathising with the idealised aborigines while rejecting their actual struggle. The same people who enjoy the film and admire its aboriginal rebels would in all probability turn away in horror from the Naxalites, dismissing them as murderous terrorists. The true avatar is thus Avatar itself - the film substituting for reality.<br />
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Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher and critic<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-53343155374431337282010-03-07T11:00:00.000-08:002010-03-08T06:50:51.540-08:00Response to Shankar<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Dear Shankar,</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Same here, I too got excited when I first read this document. It is not very flashy and very down-to-earth but thoroughly sensible. Your question "why should we follow the traditions of Jesus and Mohammad?," is slightly misplaced. Actually, a considerable portion 'us' are already followers of them. The idea is to retain and even reinforce whichever good is in those traditions. For example, the idea of ‘all human beings are equal’ is in Islam and Christianity, while Hinduism's defining feature is fundamental inequality of humans. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">I don't think anybody in this world is a genuine believer. There may be some. I have not come across a single person who actually believes in God. It is a different matter that they follow rituals, abide by many of the religious prohibitions, if not always in practice but at least in principle.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Atheists like you and me can and should reject all religions. Let me remind you what our Old Gramsci once wrote: "I don't go to church. I am not a believer. We must be aware of the fact that those who believe are the majority. If we keep on having cordial relations with atheists alone we shall always be minority."</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Balijan Cultural Movement recognises the need to work with the existing traditions. It does so at two levels. Firstly, it traces and connects our emancipatory ideals from our own history and traditions. Secondly, it also seeks to provide a reinterpretation, reformulations of the traditions that oppress us. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In this way, it avoids the oft committed mistake of parochialism. It is much easy to locate and own up our own traditions and go ahead on our own. But, not every time we could afford to be so sectarian. We have to have a common cultural project with the others, particularly with those who oppress us. We have to work through the symbols and sensibilities that humiliate and alienate us. Making them historical, finding and showing how, many of our traditions and symbols and ideas have been appropriated and twisted, we can have a wider project of engaging with what is 'mainstream,' hegemonic and mass mediatised brand of brahmanical Hinduism. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">To historicize is to subvert anything more fundamentally than the mere rejection can achieve. Through historicizing we can retain whatever is good and productive in the religious while stripping it of the aura and mystic and authority the timelessness or very ‘ancientness’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>gives it. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Sanghis cannot yet completely silence any criticism of essential inhumanity and stupidity of Hinduism. Particularly because there is no such single thing on the one hand and the Parivar is not yet that powerful. They say, ‘Okay, you can criticise if there is anything wrong with our religion, but don’t do it by being in the company of Christians and Muslims. They have no right to criticise our religion. We can criticise them, of course, because it is our country and our religion is majority here. This argument we need to strongly reject. Even a religion has a right to criticise another religion. In fact, the religions like Islam and Christianity with their principle of equality of humans before God should attack Hinduism strongly. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">What is our problem with Christians and Muslims who are not dalits in this country? They don’t criticise Hinduism enough. They compromised with it. To appease Hinduism, they violated their own religious creed and started following untouchability and other Hindu practices. We should reject this logic of ‘my religion and your religion.’ Once we accept it, we are not far away from further succumbing to the Hindu fascist argument that ‘right or wrong, other religions cannot criticise our religion.’ This is again a variation of the standard Hindu theme. It is not the nature of the actions but stature of the person which determines its value. Rama killed Shambuka, why? Not for committing any crime. He was just educating himself and leading a decent life. Because Shambuka was a Dalit he could not lead a decent life. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We reject this line of brahmanical thinking and say that it is the content of the criticism not the beliefs of the critic which matters. We should further pressurise the people of universal religions like Islam and Christianity that they should mount more criticism of Hinduism. One must not be disqualified to use her reason just because of birth or belief.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">And, what is this idea of MY religion? Hinduism is my religion just as polio is MY affliction. I don’t have to love it, I must do everything in my capacity to get rid of it. It is my moral responsibility to prevent it to happen to anybody else. We should treat Hinduism as OURS, just as we treat our deseases. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">One good thing about the document is that it doesn’t simply argue for rejecting the Hinduism. I don’t think Hinduism is capable of internal reform the way Islam or Christianity are. Hinduism is incompatible with the age of democracy. The authors of the document wisely provide us a way out from this deadlock of either isolating ourselves by simply rejecting Hinduism or falling into the trap of avoiding the question altogether until the revolution comes (communist formula). Bahujan Cultural Movement opens up a way out by urging us to work through Hinduism. Reformulating it by reclaiming whatever was appropriated from our traditions and distorted or made subservient. In doing this, the document is clear-sighted enough not to fall into the trap of making it an internal affair of Hinduism but everybody’s right and responsibility to destroy this scourge of humanity. </span><br />
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-29838100376187506832010-03-06T15:28:00.000-08:002010-03-06T15:58:01.670-08:00On Balijan Cultural Movement<div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>I received this in 2009 September. I don't know what happened to this Manifesto or the movement it supposed to start. In humanhorizons yahoo group there seemed to be a short-lived discussion on this. </b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>I consider this to be the most important document of our times on the most important transformatory task of all progressive politics. It is unfortunate that it doesn't seem to attract much attention from any of the constituencies it appeals to. </b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>I nevertheless agree with most of it and abide by the spirit of it. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>I hope to offer critical commentary on it in the coming days. </b></span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>I don't know what has happened after the issuance of this document. I remember somebody once telling me that there was some meeting in Osmania University releasing this document. </b></span></b></span><br />
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2678760029812642783&postID=2983810037618750683" name="OLE_LINK1">For the Press:</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">It has been decided to launch a national-level cultural movement known as the “Balijan cultural movement.” The following is a statement of aims and objectives of the movement.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Balijan Cultural Movement</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">We are men and women from various suppressed and exploited castes, adivasi communities and religious communities coming together in the Balijan Cultural Movement in order to develop the cultural foundations of the fight against Brahmanism, casteism, and Hindu fundamentalism which support the social, religious, political, and economic exploitation in India.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Following the lead of the great social revolutionary Jotiba Phule, we take the name of “Balijan” to commemorate our roots in ancient traditions of the great and good ruler sacrificed to the greed of Brahmanism. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Just as peasant women and men still say, “Let troubles and sorrows go and the realm of Bali come!” so we aim to build a society of freedom, equality and prosperity for all.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We also follow the traditions of Buddha, Thirumavalavar, Jesus, Mohammad and the Sufis and Bhakti saints such as Kabir, Ravidas, Tukoba, Nanak and Basava. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Jotiba and Savitribai Phule, Tarabai Shinde, Karl Marx, Iyothee Thass, Periyar, Babasaheb Ambedkar and many others are our heroes and icons.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We aim to promote and develop the self-respect, dignity, creativity, and truth seeking centered around the productive culture of the Balijan communities. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Just as Brahmanism and caste are taking new forms in the globalized society in the modern imperialist era, so we also need to develop new alternative development models, new understanding, new creativity.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We also take note of the complexity of caste. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Within the caste system, there is a major antagonistic contradiction between the oppressing and oppressed castes. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Among the oppressed castes, there are important and rampant non-antagonistic contradictions. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>These have to be overcome with those oppressed castes higher in the hierarchy taking a lead in reconciliation; out of the unity developed from this will come a strong movement for caste annihilation.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The Balijan Cultural Movement will take action in the following fields:</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Women’s Liberation</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: The earliest society of Balijans was matrilineal, and like Bali, Nirruti is a symbol of this original equalitarian society. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Balijan culture and religions, though affected by patriarchy, carries the seeds of this true gender equality. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The end of all inequality is impossible without ending gender inequality. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We will strive to bring liberation from gender oppression in all our activities and work for this in the cultural field.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Education</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: we will work towards debrahmanising education and building an educational system in which the Balijan peoples’ contribution to culture, science and language is brought forward. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We oppose the two-stream educational system in which an elite gets quality education in English and the masses are bound in badly taught vernacular medium schools. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We fight for the establishment of the common access of all children between the ages of 3 and 18 to quality education in English as well as their regional (recognized and unrecognized) languages. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We support a 60-40 scheme where 40% of the curriculum is decided by local needs, 60% by common national standards. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Sanskrit universities should be transformed into peoples’ universities and there should be at least one central university using the regional language in each state.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Festivals</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: we will promote the celebration of Balijan cultural festivals, including historical festivals related to the productive lives of the people (e.g. Nagpanchami, Mahasankrant, Pongal, Balipratipada, Ghatochav) and will remove their vestiges of brahmanic domination. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We will also commemorate the birth and death anniversaries of Buddha, Jesus, Ambedkar, Phule and others and the historic dates of balijan tradition, such as the burning of the Manusmriti (December 25), the battle of Koregaon (January 1), 3 January (the birthday anniversary of Savitribai Phule) as teachers’ day and 1 June (founding of the Satyashodhak Samaj) as global anti-slavery day.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Symbols</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: We will ensure the removal of all symbols of violence, religious and otherwise, from public places and media, and have them replaced by symbols of the productive culture of the people. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>In national awards, the Brahmanic names used for sports and other awards (e.g. the names of Dronacharya) will be replaced by awards in the name of Balijan heroes such as Ekalavya.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Census</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: We will agitate for the inclusion of caste in the 2011 Census.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Marriage</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: We will promote intercaste and interreligious marriages among Balijans and provide protection for those who make such marriages.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">History</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: Liberating Balijan history from its distortion by brahmanic thinking and reconstructing the true history of the people will be a major task.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Language</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: we will work towards desanskritizing, in vocabulary and spelling, the existing languages of India and develop these as true peoples’ languages.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Spirituality</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: We endorse and seek to strengthen and develop the spirituality of truth-seeking monotheism, humanism and rationalism.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Ecology</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: The culture of production was environmentally enriching and maintaining ecological balance. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Now there is an environmental crisis at a global level. Enriching the environment and sustainability can only take place on the basis of the productive culture of Balijans. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>We will strive to develop and widely promote this Balijan productive culture.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 16pt;">·<span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Diversity</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: The main social groups among the Balijans should be represented in all social, political, religious and economic institutions in proportion to their number in the population.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">The Balijan Cultural Movement will organize people’s movements on their cultural demands and on the basis of these we will pressurize the state and its administration to concede these demands. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Beyond this we will work for social transformation and the building of a new, prosperous and ecological society without cultural, economic, political and religious exploitation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Organizational Structure<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">President: Kancha Ilaiah<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Acting President: Gail Omvedt<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Convener: Sunil Sardar<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">General Secretary: Braj Ranjan Mani<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Treasurer: Dinesh Kumar<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Steering Committee Members:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Bharat Patankar<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">R.K. Nayak<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Rama Panchal<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Dilip Ghawade<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Than Singh Josh<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Nagesh Chaudhuri<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Sudhakar Gaydhani<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">S.P. Singh<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">John Dayal<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">V.B . rawat<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Shamim Ahmad<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Hukum Singh Deshrajan<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Waharu Sonavane<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Cynthia Stephen<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Raj Kumar<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Neela Lodhi<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Ram Singh<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Lalita Vijay Dhone<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Bal Krishna Renke<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Jayram Singh Jay<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Motilal Shastri<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Vimalkirti<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Subhash Savarkar<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Ram Avadhesh Singh<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Chandrabhan Boyar<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Committee on Caste</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">: Hukum Singh Deshrajan<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Committee on Gender:</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> Waharu Sonavane <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Committee on Language:</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> Nagesh Chaudhuri<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Committee on Religion:</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> Bharat Patankar, Sukhvinder Singh siddhu<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Committee on Fundraising;</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> Dinesh Kumar<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Committee on Arts and Media;</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> Ivan Kostka, Sagar<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Committee on Research and publication:</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> Braj Mani, Gail Omvedt<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;">Committee on Youth:</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 16pt;"> V.B. Rawat, Viduy Roy Malaviya, Avinash Nimkar, Pramod Mool </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-65877838275130772932010-02-23T08:23:00.000-08:002010-02-23T08:23:57.586-08:00Dalit unity is undermined’ Karthik interveiws GorringeD. KARTHIKEYAN <br />
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Interview with Hugo Gorringe, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. <br />
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In the recent past, there has been a lot of debate on the emergence of Dalit parties in Tamil Nadu’s political sphere on the basis of Dalit identity. A larger identity constructed by the Dravidian movement has not only failed to transcend caste identities but has also suppressed the Dalit question through its hegemony. In this interview to Frontline, Hugo Gorringe, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh and author of Untouchable Citizens: Dalit Movements and Democratisation in Tamil Nadu (Sage 2005), talks about the emergence of Dalit movements, Dravidian hegemony and the future of Dalit politics in Tamil Nadu. <br />
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Gorringe has written several articles on caste, violence, protest and policing. He was in Madurai recently. Excerpts:<br />
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How did the idea of doing research on a Dalit movement in Tamil Nadu evolve? <br />
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My father worked in the Tamil Nadu Theological Seminary (TTS) in Madurai, so I grew up in Tamil Nadu between the ages of 4 and 11. During these years, I was able to make good friends. After we left, I had the opportunity to visit Madurai once every three or four years to keep up the connection with my friends, maintain my Tamil and meet people. The TTS is a place where Dalit theology is very important and I was exposed to dialogues between Gandhi and Ambedkar on untouchability as well as the social inequalities prevalent here. For my bachelor’s degree, I wrote a 10,000-word project about my experience with Dalits in India. I thought that the project was easy to do and also would give me opportunities to meet my friends. <br />
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During that project, though, I met more people and learned more about persistent caste inequalities. Following up on that experience, and realising that not much work had been done about Dalits and their movements in English, I thought of filling that gap. That was how my PhD project came about. Scholars like Michael Moffat (An Untouchable Community in India: Structure and Consensus; Princeton University Press, 1979) had argued that caste was based on structural consensus and that groups at the lower order replicated the forms and relationships of those at the upper strata. <br />
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Others argue that the lower caste groups in fact fight against caste. The situation has changed dramatically since Moffat’s work was published, and Dalit movements have mobilised across the State. I wanted to understand these contemporary caste relations and chart the challenges to caste hierarchy. <br />
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How important was your PhD in developing your understanding of caste and exploitation that continue to frame the lives of Dalits? <br />
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My PhD introduced me to the everyday life of Dalits. Once I got to know members of the movement, my PhD research took me into villages and urban slums that I had not visited before and opened my eyes to the subtle manifestations and the everyday practical difficulties of Dalits and how they are discriminated against both in civil as well as political society.<br />
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One of the significant features of your work was the concept of production of space and reclamation of rights to public space. How important is this concept in the case of Dalits? <br />
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The notion of space is the central social idiom of the Dalit struggle. At least superficially, the transformation of Puthiya Tamizhagam (PT) and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) as political movements has enabled them to claim space within urban areas on par with other parties as can be seen in wall posters, flagpoles and murals. Likewise, few towns and villages in the urban periphery remain untouched by the symbols of Dalit politics. Given the immense struggles and battles that ensued to gain acceptance for these symbols, the fact that they are now commonplace in itself is extremely significant. On a more concrete level, Dalits in urban areas continue to live predominantly in slums or particular enclaves. Urban space in that sense is still marked by caste; people seeking homes for rent are often asked about their caste or are asked to get references from upper caste people before being offered a place. In rural areas, Dalits still reside in cheris outside the village and must struggle for access to roads and common resources. <br />
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Even in the case of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government’s Samathuvapuram project, [a residential area] where people of different castes live side by side, lack of engagement between them in common cases and spaces indicate the continuing resilience of caste sentiment. <br />
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How important do you think is the emergence of Dalit parties such as the VCK and the PT in Tamil Nadu’s political sphere? <br />
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The rise of parties like the VCK and the PT is precisely about compelling the Dravidian parties to accept Dalits as political players. In the case of the VCK, so far they seem to have achieved that but the accusations that they levelled against other Dalit politicians – as being non-representative and out of touch with the realities of untouchability – are now being levelled against the VCK. Dalits I have spoken to felt that there are so many pressing issues that need to be addressed, but the VCK leaders have failed to address them in their pursuit of larger issues like the Sri Lankan conflict. <br />
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Whilst it is a real sign of progress that a ‘Dalit Party’ can speak out on wider issues, the failure to engage with the concerns of their core constituents can foster disillusionment. <br />
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Dravidian hegemony, achieved through the Dravidian parties’ investment in symbolic capital such as social honour and trust and creation of symbols, idioms of glorious past, was one of the major reasons for the suppression of the Dalit question. How far do you think the Dalit parties are able to challenge the hegemony? <br />
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The Dalit parties’ failure to challenge Dravidian hegemony is one of action rather than analysis. If one listens to [VCK leader] Thirumavalavan in Dalit circles or reads his work or that of D. Ravikumar [Member of the Legislative Assembly representing the VCK], they offer an insightful analysis of brahminism and of the influence of Dravidian movement and they explain how Dalits buy into that rhetoric. Despite this, the VCK has allied itself with both main Dravidian parties rather than attempting to consolidate a Third Front. The pertinent question is whether the decision to ally with Dravidian parties is pragmatic or principled. <br />
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Initially it was a pragmatic move to escape persecution and establish the VCK as a political player, but increasingly they seem to be buying into the system. Yes, they have gained some concessions and have given a voice to marginalised people to some extent, but when leaders of resistance movements fall at the feet of Dravidian leaders, you see the transformation of figures of liberation to establishment figures. <br />
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There is an accusation that the inclusive rhetoric of the Dravidian movement bypassed Dalits only to empower the regionally dominant middle castes who oppress Dalits and commit atrocities against them? How far is this true? <br />
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The Dravidian movement was always anti-Brahmin but was never systematically anti-brahminical as a philosophy and never has campaigned for that. In fact they never challenged the structural hierarchy except in symbolic ways, meaning that we still have caste oppression both at village and urban areas by dominant castes who have supplanted the Brahmins as power holders but follow brahminical policies. Brahminism continues to hold sway.<br />
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The egalitarian ideology of Periyar has not come into fruition. Even Vanniyars and Thevars had to struggle for inclusion into Tamil politics. Indeed, the history of Tamil politics has been one of successive struggles by marginalised sections in society. The failure of Dravidian parties is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that political contestation is still articulated and carried out on caste lines. <br />
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Still the struggle continues? <br />
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Yes, after Vanniyars and Thevars, it was Pallars (Devendrars) and Paraiyars (Adi Dravidars) and now it is Arunthathiyars who are struggling for political inclusion. This happens precisely because caste continues to have symbolic and material substance and remains an important category of practice. This is not to say that social relations have been static. By and large, there is a widespread decline of dependency among Dalits. But the advancement of marginalised communities is largely incidental to, rather than a product of, Dravidian policies. <br />
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Even Dalit movements are mobilising on caste issues, and it is a paradox to see that anti-caste movements are reinforcing the social structures they want to eradicate. There are a number of reasons for that; firstly, Dravidian hegemony is so strong that whatever the leaders say and think, Dalits cling to a Tamilian identity. The failure of parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Communist Party of India and the CPI(M) testify to that. <br />
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Secondly, it reflects a lack of democracy among Dalit movements. The focus on big leaders, which reflects the dominant form of Tamil politics, itself leads to division and status competition. Thirdly, movements have tended to be particularly sensitive to atrocities, which is important in itself, but perhaps also entails a failure to work systematically against caste divisions. Even as the VCK recruits members from the backward castes, thus, they struggle to gain a foothold amongst Pallars and Arunthathiyars. The result is that now each caste has its own heroes and mass figures that are inimical to Dalit unity. <br />
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Talking about “heroes”, Dalit movements of late have been involved in reinventing their own caste histories and glorifying “heroes” from the past. Could this be seen as discourses of empowerment? <br />
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Dalit movements started off as autonomous political forces but have succumbed to Dravidian hegemony in the belief that they cannot stand alone. <br />
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Caste histories can well be seen as discourses of empowerment and we shouldn’t belittle their importance because they provide at least symbolic forms of capital and have been instrumental in altering the aspirations and self-perceptions of the subaltern groups. <br />
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But do you not think that there is a danger of this form of symbolic capital not turning into social action? <br />
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Yes, there is a double-edged character for this as they detract the movements from any sense of common struggle and they can lead to status competition among Dalits as in the case of Devendra Kula Vellalars. From that perspective, campaign strategies which are formed on common issues such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1999, World Conference Against Racism facilitate cross caste mobilisation.<br />
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Perhaps, the best example of such awareness and mobilisation is Ambedkar’s Birth Centenary, which made him a leader of pan-Indian stature and took him to the remotest corners as champion of the oppressed. If Dalit movements can build on such platforms, or those of land rights, there is more hope for Dalit liberation than the advancement of particular communities. <br />
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Most Dalit scholars believe that the idea of resistance politics identified with the VCK has become a casualty after its entry into electoral politics. <br />
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The compulsions of electoral politics, which engender compromise and hinder spontaneity, are the reasons for that. Thirumavalavan could rush to villages during the 1990s and interact with people; now it’s not happening and he cannot do that. Many are disillusioned with this professionalisation and bureaucratisation and the focus on Tamil nationalism. The seeming desire to become a general party rather than focussing on issues largely affecting Dalits is rather depressing for some cadres though others revel in the party’s strength. But having said this, all the movements suffer from this malaise. <br />
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We have to ask whether the Dalit struggle can be advanced by espousing Tamil nationalism. The VCK has been able to gain some concessions and goodwill from its political partners through this strategy, but we must ask at what cost these gains have been won. The VCK mobilisation in Karnataka, for instance, is resented by other Dalit parties who see them as primarily a Tamil party. Dalit unity is thus undermined.<br />
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What are the significant areas where the VCK still wields a lot of influence? <br />
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In some key areas, the VCK continues to inspire people to follow them, and some shades of women’s empowerment are also taking place. One notable thing is that in Madurai, R. Pandiammal – whom I mentioned in my book – has risen to become the district secretary from being a grass-roots worker. This move needs to be applauded as not many parties have elevated active women to positions of responsibility. <br />
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Secondly, they continue to carve out spaces in terms of book launches, art festivals and conferences. One VCK member told me that Thirumavalavan talks about Dalit issues in these platforms in a way that is no longer possible on political platforms. Finally, there is a suggestion by many people that the VCK is now engaged in the murkier forms of politics like katta panchayats (kangaroo courts). On the one hand this heralds the party’s arrival as a significant political player – either because rumours are spread about them or because they are powerful enough to engage in such activities. On the other it raises questions about the party’s ultimate objectives. If the aim is a share of political power then this is a step in the right direction, but if the aim is to transform politics and challenge caste hierarchies, then this is a retrograde step. <br />
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Your view on the question of compartmental reservation… <br />
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Dalits feel that there are so many pressing issues that need to be addressed, but the VCK leaders have failed to address them in their pursuit of larger issues like the Sri Lankan conflict. <br />
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I am deeply sceptical about the Arunthathiyar reservation. For a start, if the State filled the 18 per cent available [to the Scheduled Castes] fully and properly there would be no need for compartmental reservation. Although it is true that the Arunthathiyars are the weakest of the main Dalit castes, this move can be seen as a form of ‘divide and rule’ that channels Dalit mobilisation into caste-based struggles rather than anti-caste struggles. <br />
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Furthermore, the issue of reservation is particularly important because the persistence of caste in contemporary Tamil Nadu, for me at least, rests less on ‘purity and pollution’ and more on the question of identity, honour and caste pride. Compartmental reservation feeds into this dynamic and fuels the logic of identity-based politics. It does not help to overcome the dialectic between honour and humiliation, whereas general schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme at least have the potential to transcend caste boundaries. <br />
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Is there any scope for Dalit parties to become politically self-autonomous? <br />
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Dalit movements here started off as autonomous political forces but have succumbed to Dravidian hegemony in the belief that they cannot stand alone. The Third Front in 1999 and actor Vijaykant’s limited success signals that there is scope for non-Dravidian politics, but there have been no sustained attempts to build up such a campaign. This indicates that Dalit parties are caught up in the workings of everyday Tamil politics, with the result that the options open to them are limited to Tamil nationalism, idolisation of Periyar at a rhetorical level and the symbolic occupation of space. Only if Dalit movements stand apart from the Dravidian parties will we get a sense of their autonomy. <br />
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What are your current projects? <br />
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I am currently reading a lot of literature to think more theoretically about the underpinnings of caste and caste conflicts, thinking through workings of social power and the way in which everyday interactions form the basis of caste structures. <br />
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Such a bottom-up perspective offers an insight into why caste continues to inform everyday life even 60 years after Independence. I am also considering the possibility of carrying out a follow-up study on Dalit politics in Tamil Nadu that would chart the changes in Dalit mobilisation over the past decade. The vibrant Dalit movements that I studied in 1999 are now established political parties and I am keen to tease out the implications of this shift.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-1946435485187008932010-02-22T23:12:00.000-08:002010-02-23T08:16:18.131-08:00Politics and the English Language by George Orwell<h3><br />
</h3><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">This is one of the greatest articles ever written on writing. Not that even in my dreams I could aspire to conform to great Orwell's well-argued rules, but nevertheless I consider this piece is inspiring and revealing. </span></h3><h3><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;">Suddu has come to a point where he should give up his arcane academic prose and settle for less frightening but more communicative forms of writing. I advised him- I don't have the superstitious belief that you have to follow the things you preach to others - to read and follow this article. He, in his Emperor-like way, asked me to send it to him. I am posting it here. </span></h3><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px; font-weight: bold;">George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946</span></div><hr />Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.<br />
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.<br />
These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad -- I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen -- but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that i can refer back to them when necessary:<br />
<ul>1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.
<ul>Professor Harold Laski (<i>Essay in Freedom of Expression</i>)</ul>2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic <i>put up with</i> for <i>tolerate</i>, or <i>put at a loss</i> for <i>bewilder</i> .
<ul>Professor Lancelot Hogben (<i>Interglossa</i>)</ul>3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But <i>on the other side</i>, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?
<ul>Essay on psychology in <i>Politics</i> (New York)</ul>4. All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.
<ul>Communist pamphlet</ul>5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's <i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i> -- as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English." When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!
<ul>Letter in <i>Tribune</i></ul></ul>Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of <i>words</i> chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of<i>phrases</i> tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:<br />
<i>Dying metaphors</i>. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. <i>iron resolution</i>) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: <i>Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed</i>. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning withouth those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, <i>toe the line</i> is sometimes written as <i>tow the line</i>. Another example is <i>the hammer and the anvil</i>, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.<br />
<i>Operators or verbal false limbs</i>. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are <i>render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc</i>. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as <i>break, stop, spoil, mend, kill</i>, a verb becomes a <i>phrase</i>, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as <i>prove, serve, form, play, render</i>. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (<i>by examination of</i> instead of <i>by examining</i>). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the <i>-ize</i> and <i>de-</i> formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the <i>not un-</i> formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as <i>with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; </i>and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as <i>greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion</i>, and so on and so forth.<br />
<i>Pretentious diction</i>. Words like <i>phenomenon, element, individual </i>(as noun), <i>objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate</i>, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like <i>epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable</i>, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: <i>realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion</i>. Foreign words and expressions such as <i>cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung</i>, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations <i>i.e., e.g.</i>, and <i>etc</i>., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like <i>expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous</i>, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.* The jargon peculiar to<br />
<hr />*An interesting illustration of this is the way in which English flower names were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, <i>Snapdragon</i> becoming <i>antirrhinum</i>, <i>forget-me-not</i> becoming <i>myosotis</i>, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning away from the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific.<br />
<hr />Marxist writing (<i>hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard</i>, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (<i>deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary</i> and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.<br />
<i>Meaningless words</i>. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.† Words like <i>romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality</i>, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in<br />
<hr />† Example: Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness . . .Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bull's-eyes with precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs more than the surface bittersweet of resignation." (<i>Poetry Quarterly</i>)<br />
<hr />the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like <i>black</i> and <i>white</i> were involved, instead of the jargon words <i>dead</i> and <i>living</i>, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word <i>Fascism</i> has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words <i>democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice</i> have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like <i>democracy</i>, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like <i>Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution,</i> are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: <i>class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.</i><br />
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from <i>Ecclesiastes</i>:<br />
<blockquote>I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.</blockquote>Here it is in modern English:<br />
<blockquote>Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.</blockquote>This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into the vague phrases "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing -- no one capable of using phrases like "objective considerations of contemporary phenomena" -- would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from <i>Ecclesiastes</i>.<br />
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say <i>In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that</i> than to say <i>I think</i>. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like <i>a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind</i> or <i>a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent</i> will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in <i>The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot</i> -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip -- alien for akin -- making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase <i>put up with</i>, is unwilling to look <i>egregious</i> up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning -- they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another -- but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-20552914662576128622010-02-22T21:20:00.000-08:002010-02-25T03:48:13.736-08:00A Dalit Activist's Fascist thinkingThis is a response to a Dalit activist's theoretical musings. I inserted my comments in red fonts in Shrikant Borker's response to a mail informing of the cut-up of the elected canditdates to the Students Union elections at Tata Instituate of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Please find the original mail and then Mr. Borkar's comments and then my response to it at the end.<br />
CBP<br />
<br />
On 18 February 2010 04:53, shweta barge <myway.shweta@gmail.com>wrote:<br />
<br />
Jaibhim all of you !!!<br />
<br />
<br />
Here I take opportunity to heartily congratulate and celebrate the HISTORY which students have carved in Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai STUDENT UNION ELECTIONS.<br />
<br />
This is the first time in STUDENT UNION of TISS where all members belong to Dalit, Tribe and Minorities.<br />
<br />
<br />
President : ST<br />
Vice-Prez: SC<br />
Gen.Sec : SC<br />
Treasure : Minority women<br />
Cultural Sec : SC<br />
Literary Sec : ST<br />
Sports Sec : ST.<br />
<br />
This success is a huge victory for us and a pioneer of building more self esteem and our say in TISS campus. This has happened first time in history of TISS.<br />
<br />
I humbly congratulate all those students, faculties, alumni, well wishers without whom this victory would not be possible.<br />
<br />
<br />
Love n Faith,<br />
<br />
Ms. Shweta Barge<br />
MSW,<br />
TISS,Mumbai. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Responding to this mail Shrikant Borkar wrote the following mail. </span></myway.shweta@gmail.com><br />
<myway.shweta@gmail.com><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: black; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"></span></span></myway.shweta@gmail.com><br />
<span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Why separate terms Dalit and Tribes ?</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Dear Shweta,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Hearty Congratulations on this achievements at TISS, however I am confused about your usage of terms Dalits and Tribes ? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Do you mean that tribal are not Dalit and vice versa ? Is it possible for us to reach or evolve some comprehensive 'term' signifying the common victims of Brahiminical Social structure and exploitative system,with due consideration to the degree and context of degradation and victimization in our Indian society.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">No person thinking on the lines of Ambedkrite nationalistic perceptions would agree to call himself Dalit if it is breaking him away from rest of the common victims of antagonistic anti-national brahminical design, even if it is drawing her/him some economical and political benefits.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">The term Shakti used 'Bahujan' is good to start with. However, even the 'Bahujan' term should not be adulterated with 'Dalit-Bahujan' or more confusing ' Mulniwasi-Bahujan' as 'Dalit' is inherent in Bahujan and Bahujan is essential component of 'Mulniwasi'.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Here if some intellectual makes a critique of it and says that it is political term and is value leaden, not proper social scientifically, then my question would be 'What is political and apolitical ? I would ask 'is social devoid of political ?' And those who are little read in politics of knowledge, epistemology or politics of pedagogy would know what I mean.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Drawing on the lines of Shakti 'that our ancestors were once ruler of this country', in the wake of recent massive misappropriation and hijacking of even term 'Bahujan', which has been interpolated by RSS that hindus means Bahujan and Muslims means 'Alpajans' , I would propose that 'Mulniwasi' would be highly appropriate term to use for all of us who have been stigmatized, degraded and ostracized in some way or another by Brahminical Culture and religion.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">As it is one of the universal phenomenon which results from the conflict between protagonist and antagonist groups i.e. the degradation and stigmatization or name calling of each other. Hence, it proves that, it could be concluded that all those communities which are socially considered low like OBCs, excluded like STs and stigmatized like SCs including the Muslims and Christian and recent convert Buddhists from all these communities must have been at odd with main stream Hinduism aka Brahminical social structure and hence they were degraded.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">This warrants a practical solution and comprehensive term which will represent the pan-Indian common victims to raise common conscience against their arch enemy.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">And I am quite confident that 'Mulniwasi' is the term which satisfies the crucial-social-political need of our emancipatory movement</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">.<br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Yours in struggle for equality and fraternity</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">Shri</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br />
</span> <br />
<div><span style="font-family: 'arial narrow', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><br />
</span> </span></div><br />
<br />
<br />
On 20 February 2010 04:46, Shrikant Borkar <shri24@gmail.com> wrote:<br />
<br />
Why separate terms Dalit and Tribes ? <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">I too feel one single word, Dalit, is enough when we are not particularly talking about issues specific to SCs or STs. But, this should not be at the cost of sidelining the tribal issues. When the greatest combined attack on Tribal lives and livelihood was launched- taking away tribal lands,- and when it encountered problems- the Indian government started first taking tribals away from their lands so that giving away their land to corporations and wealthy sections will be easy. When all of this is happening- it is ongoing and increasing- "Dalit" leaders don't seem to remember that tribals are dalits. Dalit leaders are not at the forefront of the struggle against uprooting and killing and mass raping of tribals. They are not even writing petitions against it holding protest in cities, let alone organizing tribal resistance. We should use Dalit to refer to both Tribals and SCs as long as we don't consider Tribal issues are the area of NGOs, Naxals and Government. </span><br />
<br />
Dear Shweta,<br />
<br />
Hearty Congratulations on this achievements at TISS, however I am confused about your usage of terms Dalits and Tribes ? <br />
<br />
Do you mean that tribal are not Dalit and vice versa ? Is it possible for us to reach or evolve some comprehensive 'term' signifying the common victims of Brahiminical Social structure and exploitative system,with due consideration to the degree and context of degradation and victimization in our Indian society. <br />
<br />
No person thinking on the lines of Ambedkrite nationalistic <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">What is this? Why should we be nationalists? We should be internationalists. Solidarity and a capacity for siding with the all suffering peoples and catagaries irrespective their place of origin or residence should be part of our politics. Era of progressive nationalisms is over. What we now have here is a fascist form of nationalism.</span> perceptions would agree to call himself Dalit if it is breaking him away from rest of the common victims of antagonistic anti-national brahminical design, even if it is drawing her/him some economical and political benefits. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">"Brahmins" could be accused of anything but anti-nationalism. They played an important part in the ideology of nationalism and probably the biggest beneficiaries of it. </span><br />
<br />
The term Shakti used 'Bahujan' is good to start with. However, even the 'Bahujan' term should not be adulterated with 'Dalit-Bahujan' or more confusing ' Mulniwasi-Bahujan' as 'Dalit' is inherent in Bahujan and Bahujan is essential component of 'Mulniwasi'. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">This simply means that we should not use the word Dalit even. Why? You seem to suggest, though don't argue clearly, that since the idea of Bahujan is inclusive of Dalits, the very word Dalit is divisive. </span><br />
<br />
Here if some intellectual makes a critique of it and says that it is political term and is value leaden, not proper social scientifically, then my question would be 'What is political and apolitical ? I would ask 'is social devoid of political ?' And those who are little read in politics of knowledge, epistemology or politics of pedagogy would know what I mean. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">I don't know enough about these things either. But, I think common sense, and reasoning any of us can afford, is enough to settle these matters of terminology. First, you argue that Tribe idenity should be absorbed into Dalit, then you further prescribe the absorption of Dalit into bigger Bahujan identity. </span><br />
<br />
Drawing on the lines of Shakti 'that our ancestors were once ruler of this country', <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Our ancestors are NOT rulers of the country. First it is not historically accurate to see a single ruling community or cluster of communities through out the history. Second, there was no "country" in the first place until very recently- say later period of colonialism. Even if any of our ancestors were rulers, we should be ashamed of that. Not proudly remember it. We should track that history if we were ever rulers and apologize for atrocities we must have committed and exploitation we must have perpetrated.</span> in the wake of recent massive misappropriation and hijacking of even term 'Bahujan', which has been interpolated by RSS that hindus means Bahujan and Muslims means 'Alpajans', I would propose that 'Mulniwasi' would be highly appropriate term to use for all of us who have been stigmatized, degraded and ostracized in some way or another by Brahminical Culture and religion. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Though a moment ago argued like a quasi-RSS person in mentioning nationalism as a positive thing, it is good to hear that you too oppose their designs of appropriating these labels. But what you are proposing is an equally false catagory called Mulnivasi. </span><br />
<br />
As it is one of the universal phenomenon which results from the conflict between protagonist and antagonist groups i.e. the degradation and stigmatization or name calling of each other. Hence, it proves that, it could be concluded that all those communities which are socially considered low like OBCs, excluded like STs and stigmatized like SCs including the Muslims and Christian and recent convert Buddhists from all these communities must have been at odd with main stream Hinduism aka Brahminical social structure and hence they were degraded.<br />
<br />
This warrants a practical solution and comprehensive term which will represent the pan-Indian common victims to raise common conscience against their arch enemy. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">We don't need 'comprehensive' words when the purpose is not comprehensive. For political purposes, to forge a broad coalition of forces of all victims of Hindu order, there is nothing wrong in highlighting Bahujan idenity. But it doesn't have to erase or reject the specificity of Dalit identity. Elections and activities related to securing enough votes is only on sphere of our lives. We want to retain our specific identities in many walks of our lives. Just because we ask for votes we have no right to ask people to give up their identities unless we find any inhuman elements in it. We ask Brahminal people to give up some elements of their identities because they humiliate others and de-humanise themselves. My Dalit identity or Bahunjan identity or even my mala(caste) identity are not such and I don't want to give them up. Can anybody write a 'Bahujan' novel set in a village? Impossible. </span><br />
<br />
And I am quite confident that 'Mulniwasi' is the term which satisfies the crucial-social-political need of our emancipatory movement. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">I am afraid, this is a most dangerous idea. It is doubly fascist. First it is based on the argument that other identities are to be just deleted because we want to achieve majority votes and seats in politics. Why should anybody want to sacrifice their painstakingly constructed and defended identities? The very idea of coalition is DIFFERENT forces coming together for COMMON MINIMUM goals. Second fascist idea is linking 'origin' to identity. 'Mulnivasi' means autochtonous or at least aboriginal. It is not wrong to talk in those terms when Colonials occupied them and ousted them and denied the survivors any right to live as equal partners of society. But, the idea of rights has nothing to with the place. It is, and must be, based on the idea that each individual is a human being therefore entitled to human rights. Dear Shrikant, you are appropriating the same RSS arguments and reasoning but luckily you are on our side. We should reject not only the authority of the Brahmanical forces but also their ways of thinking. I request you look in that direction.</span> <br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> Waiting for your response,<br />
<br />
<br />
Chittibabu Padavala, Chennai</span> <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Yours in struggle for equality and fraternity<br />
<br />
Shri<br />
<myway.shweta@gmail.com><br />
</myway.shweta@gmail.com></shri24@gmail.com><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-54814685696521208082010-02-20T01:35:00.000-08:002010-02-22T20:06:26.601-08:00Reply to Karandeep SinghKarandeep Singh wrote:<br />
sir, i saw your community dalit marxism. with dew respect i want to say that Marxism is about equality to human beings without discrimination on any basis. Dalit Marxism fails the basic concept of marxism. kindly remove dalit from it and help make India a discrimination free nation. <br />
<br />
The due respect you were talking about is as misplaced as it was misspelled. Marxism's "basic concept" is that there is no equality. And, that there cannot be. Neither in nature and society nor in human thought. Kindly get this point right. It is fundamental to Marxism.<br />
Things would have been simple if your idealism is practical: eliminating discrimination, by deleting words. It is also good that world is not like the MS word because someone with your well-meaning but ultimately meaningless idealist enthusiasm would delete good things along with, or even instead of, the bad ones. <br />
I am assuming that you are sympathetic to Marxism if not much familiar with it. If so, let me argue this way: you might be aware that Marxism wants to side with Working classes as opposed to exploitative-parasitical classes. It is partisanship, not siding with the whole humanity but only a portion of it. It is discrimination. Bias. Could you accuse Marxism of bias for this? You can't, because what Marxism questions is the very ‘bias-is-bad-always’ idea. It further denies the possibility of neutrality. In other words, it is simply not possible to be unbiased, non-discriminatory, to be neutral, in anything. If such is not even possible, Marxism says, the talk about non-discrimination is mistaken or downright misleading. You might have known about this writer, Bertolt Brecht. Look up for him, if you haven't. He said something to the effect that, ‘on an uneven surface the shortest route from one point to the other is necessarily crooked.’ According to Geometry of abstract and even spaces, the shortest line between two points must be a straight one. Brecht is a Marxist and understood it and found a striking, memorable way to put this point across. In the exploitative world, you need to build a discriminatory mechanism to eliminate unfair, unnecessary discrimination. How absurd it would be to expect a doctor to give same medicine in same measure to all patients for all complaints? Marxism says we need to have a highly biased and discriminatory principles and practices to correct the existing inhuman discriminations and equally ‘inhuman non-discriminations.’ The second point is as important as the first one. Marxism is not an argument for indiscriminate actions or thinking. <br />
For example, nationalism talks as if everybody in the nation is equal and all in a nation have common interests. Marxism says it is a ‘false ideology’ as far as it is spread by sections with vested interests and ‘false consciousness’ of those without them. Marxism says, the interests of the exploiting, the oppressing classes are different from those of the working/exploited class (including those denied work). Therefore, the idea of a common nation is absurd logically and dangerous politically. When Marxism calls nationalism a danger, it is taking only the point of view of the losers of nationalism, and, refusing the perspective of the beneficiaries of nationalism. Marxism is always already biased and open about it. <br />
Now, let us come to your objection to calling ‘our’ Marxism Dalit. Why not? <br />
Do Dalits have no right to be Marxists? Can’t Dalits read Marxism, practice it and develop it? You may still say, ‘you can, but not AS Dalits but as the oppressed, or the workers or simply communists. It is as absurd as the advice to earlier Marxists by liberal nationalists that “ask for more justice to the poor and the weak but do it from a nationalist point of view. Tell those in power that our fellow French men, they are suffering, let’s do something about them.’ This approach was not acceptable for Marxism then and not for Dalit Marxists today. <br />
You might again counter it by saying that by calling ourselves Dalit Marxists we still allow caste to define our identity or self-understand and perception of others. But the point is to eliminate the caste. <br />
Marxists want elimination of not only caste, but also nation, wage-labour, family and many more things. Yet, if you notice, Marxists are the first to take up the demand for raising the wages. Why? Is it inconsistency ?<br />
Marxism is a philosophy of practice, it takes the permanent dynamism of everything into account, views things as part of processes and not as a fixed set of rules followed like ritual or chanting hymns. You build a movement and consciousness by taking up the issues of the toiling, oppressed and excluded people they feel and in the process of strengthening, refining the demands, aspirations. <br />
The most oppressed community, Dalits, in the country need to be the lead-agent of change for better. Of course, no communism is worth its name if caught up permanently in a nation-state. Yet, we begin with Communist Party of India (A, B, C, D) and first work within the existing borders, however unnatural or irrational they may be, toward the final goal of communism across the globe. We are for elimination of gender discrimination but we start that process by women organizing themselves independently, separately. <br />
There are good liberals who refuse to see criminal side of governments and capitalism, feudalism, patriarchy, caste system, plunder of tribal lives and livelihoods. Not all of them are idiots or criminals. But we reject their solutions because they think the above mentioned list of oppressive-exploitative mechanisms are in need of reformation. They cannot be. They can only be re-formulated. Marxism differs from good liberalism or liberal nationalism, philanthropy in seeing that there are certain things which we can’t be controlled for too long but can only done away with. Capitalism is one such, Caste is another. If you agree with this, it is not difficult to understand that you MUST first see, accept as real, the things you want to destroy. <br />
We should not be like that proverbial cowardly cat. This cat, for fear of seeing humans, drinks milk eyes closed. Many Upper-Caste Communists behave exactly like this cat, they close their eyes to the reality of caste and assume that it is just in the eyes of the beholder. Caste is no more a superstition than capitalism is. Just as some pre-Marxist socialists thought oppression and exploitation was caused by the “greed” of capitalists, our own 21st Century Upper Caste Indian Marxists imagine that “caste feeling” is an inability to overcome a backward feeling. They say: forget about your caste and mine, it will go away. Somehow, they don’t say that about Capitalism or family system. Imagine telling workers, overcome your feelings being a worker, think like a human being. You will not be seen as a worker in cinema hall. All are equal there. Same movie for those in the balcony or in in cheaper, lower front-row. Probably, it does work as long as worker could still spare some money for going to movies or they are not killed for sitting in the same row as an upper-caste man. <br />
Some of them don’t stop there. They think those of us, Dalits, are themselves to be blamed for using ‘caste’ in discussions and politics, thus prolonging it. There are people who naively believe that many people are poor because they did not study well in the school. Or, lazy people, not good at their work, not disciplined, or victims of misfortunes. Such a thing may be true in many individual cases in the immediate sense. This line of thinking is known as “blaming the victim.” Seeing and fighting against “victimization” is Marxism’s method. It wants human beings who refuse to be victimized or victimize. It says such human beings could be born in a society without triaining in victimizing or being victims or both. But, such society could be built only by asserting ourselves proudly as Muslims, Women, Workers, Dalits and Kashmiris, so on. Dalit Marxism says that Marxism in India, just like Russian Marxism of intellectuals before it gained currency among the working class, hitherto was caught up in the hands of upper-caste people and sensibilities, a kind of monopoly, similar to education in earlier times. And time has arrived now when it should be taken up by those who are proper agents of it- Dalits.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-13204287039253587872010-02-19T06:54:00.000-08:002010-02-19T06:54:03.992-08:00Gul Nawaz's piece on Media and KashmirFebruary 19, 2010<br />
<br />
<br />
Their master’s bootlickers<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The Indian media is definingly at peace with itself and its lords in the establishment. Look at its priorities in Kashmir<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Srinagar <br />
February 19, 2010<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The place is not too far from the centre of the Srinagar city, it’s just a 15-minute drive and well inside the summer capital of J&K. But Nishat’s residential interiors are completely unremarkable – narrow tortuous roads, random lanes and by-lanes, cluttered, poor and unplanned construction all around, and with hardly any affluent inhabitants anywhere. Amir Khan, with eyes closed and in complete bliss with his bottle of coke, on top of a small shop shutter seems to be the only object that reminds you what the rest of the world is busy with. Though the Dal, which is a short walk away, provides a rather familiar but stark contrast in aesthetics.<br />
<br />
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Why would India’s “national” media give a bother if some unprovoked troops of the Border Security Force murder in cold blood a young boy of 16, in broad day light, in this sleepy locality of Srinagar? It doesn’t serve the on-screen aesthetics a so called national news channel demands for its bulletins. It doesn’t serve the national interests of the holy Central establishment cow, so why would the papers bother either? So what forces meant to secure have turned murderers. Perhaps it’s been too long – the truth doesn’t shock anymore.<br />
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Last few weeks, Kashmir was boiling over with street protests over the death of a 13-year-old, Wamiq Farooq, whom the police had shot in the head with a tear gas shell in close range during anti-India protests – stone-throwing battles that have lately come to look more like one-on-one street fights between young Kashmiri boys and the police. Just that the police reply with fatal bullets and tear gas shells when people throw stones at them. The summer capital had already been in complete coma for a week. Another 16-year-old Inayat Khan had been similarly killed last month. The national media didn’t give a damn.<br />
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But on February 5, a Friday, 16-year-old Zahid Farooq was shot dead by the troops at what could easily be termed point-blank range. While he was returning along with his friends from a rain-affected cricket pitch, he jeered at some security personnel. People refused to bury the body of the teenager before an FIR was registered and a post mortem done in video and in front of local residents. Hindustan Times called the killing “mysterious”. Perhaps it needed Omar Abdullah and P Chidambaram as witnesses to the murder. It wasn’t a matter of concern if Zahid’s friends – eye witness to the incident – had poured their hearts out narrating what had actually happened. Later on Monday, it was The Indian Express that went ahead and published on the front page of its Delhi edition in detail the findings of the government probe ordered over the incident. The findings suggested that a BSF officer shot the boy with a jawan’s Insas rifle: <br />
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“...a BSF officer in civvies was travelling along with his guards while another vehicle with securitymen was following them when the incident took place... The vehicles crossed the Nishat neighbourhoods which were unaffected by protests... Zahid [and his friends] were on their way home after rains had forced them to abandon a cricket match. When they saw the BSF vehicles approaching, they began booing. Suddenly, the two BSF vehicles stopped and jawans jumped out. So did the officer in the civvies... There was a verbal altercation. The boys hurled abuses at the BSF men and began running. This is when the BSF officer, according to the probe, took an Insas rifle from a jawan and shot Zahid Farooq in the chest. He was hit by a single bullet and police have recovered the cartridge.<br />
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The only problem with the eye witness account, and this report, was this: Zahid’s friends had maintained that Zahid was shot in the chest while they were running away. He should have got shot in the back. But that was precisely what had happened. The boys were wrong. Zahid was hit in the back. The range was so close that the bullet had pierced his body creating a much larger exit wound on his chest. The boys felt he was shot in the front. <br />
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The BSF had all along refuted the claim of the eye witnesses saying none of its soldiers were patrolling the area on that day. And now the state government was begging the Centre to force the BSF to come clean on the incident.<br />
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News channels, which shamelessly present the day’s newspaper reports as “breaking news” every morning, obviously brushed aside the Express report. Well. On Twitter: <br />
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Barkha Dutt: “The Mumbai police is making the right noises about securing the release of My name is Khan. But why am I not convinced? What a shameful situation this is.” And Rajdeep Sardesai: “Just when we thought it was a slow news day, [SPS] Rathore gets stabbed. CNN-IBN has a special [report] at 8.30 pm... Rathore may have got away with a crime, but nothing justifies this kind of reaction. We in the media too need to show restraint.” <br />
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But all this ignoring Kashmir was to change within hours for each and every national channel, and newspapers alike. Heavy snowfall in the higher reaches of the valley led to fatal avalanches killing more than a dozen army men. What were they doing there when the government had already given out warnings and evacuated even the last tourist from the areas? Well, 400 men were undergoing training at a high altitude warfare camp at Khilanmarg in Kashmir. What a contrast from Nishat’s sleepy neighbourhood. Spectacular visuals were here for the TV. And patriotic fodder for the papers abound.<br />
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So here were the media finally in Kashmir, but going paranoid over a disaster turned into a mark of a macho nation. Chief Editors came out tweeting in horror over what had happened. CNN-IBN’s Rajdeep didn’t miss the opportunity to tell us his reporter went to capture the images “in the spirit of ‘whatever it takes’”. The thought of something called “high altitude warfare” gave the news editors a high anyway. None other than the chief minister of J&K, Omar Abdullah, came on live in national news to answer why the army men had not vacated after being warned of hostile weather. He replied: The men are meant to do precisely this… it’s their job… But we are doing everything we can and the rest of that. <br />
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So what the protectors had day-old blood on their hands still unwashed. They have had it since decades in a valley that still looks on, stunned.<br />
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PS: The reluctant admission by the Border Security Forces more than a week later was carried in the news headlines for a few hours by some Indian news channels, before the story was pushed back and removed. Ditto the newspapers. The fact remains that, when it comes to Kashmir, the Indian media like a faithful dog won’t talk about the filth of the Indian establishment before the government itself has given it a nod to do so. And that of course seldom happens. So when the Security Forces admit murder in a press briefing, the media flashes it since there’s hardly a choice. When innocent boys recount the same horror, it is quietly brushed aside. That it is the duty of the media to proactively investigate and find out the truth is an idea long abandoned and forgotten.<br />
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Meanwhile, the more recent killing of two militants in an encounter in Kulgam was given live coverage by all the so called national news channels. None spoke about the fact that the funeral of the two which was carried out by the local people was openly fired upon leaving eight wounded with bullets, one of them critically, and scores injured in the clashes thereafter.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-21897341695910873902010-02-18T02:46:00.000-08:002010-02-18T07:56:01.609-08:00NEW LEFT REVIEW is at 50; Stefan Collini's tribute<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/13/new-left-review-stefan-collini">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/13/new-left-review-stefan-collini</a></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">What a marvelous article is this? </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Sobering articles are supposed to be the least exciting. See this piece to know how wrong such belief is. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">What an inspiring story told so modestly!</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Great thing about the this article is the values the later New Left Review has self-consciously advocated and came to embody are maintained in this piece about the great journal, probably the greatest we have. </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">If you are unaware of Collini's other work and read it casually, you may mistake him to be an ordinary journalist by reading this profile and miss the analytical depth achieved through calm rigor, traces of which are carefully erased from the prose.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Well-deserved praise Collini denies to the NLR, a journal he loves passionately and assesses objectively. Because, he takes the lesson of NLR's manner seriously, perhaps too seriously.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Respect and respect alone and no celebration, jubilation, nostalgia, good-wishes, settling personal scores, writing autobiography in the name biography, none of such familiar constants of profile-writing are present here. Collini's attitude towards NLR is similar to the polite indifference and unfussy distance we can afford towards the seniors whose continued availability is secure. Over the top statements, moving portraits are possible only if what is described is lost. In this way, Collini pays the greatest tribute to NLR: its continued, may be enhanced, relavence and importance for today as guide to future.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">It comes as a surprise that NLR's circulations no more than 10,000!! while New Yorker sells in Millions.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Still, what a connector of the world NLR is!</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">What a "dialectic of defeat" the NLR expresses and exposes and fearlessly prepares the process that hopefully overcomes it.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Stafan Collini’s piece is not a particularly flashy story. No memorable lines, stunning formulations, nor even this piece tries to make a show of being simple and down-to-earth. Its point is, come what may, we need tough-minded analytical rigor and there is no point in falling to the temptation of shunning the rigor in the time of retreat. In this sense, NLR is a form of true Leninist practice. More discipline is needed during the retreat than in times of victorious advance. There is no remotely comparable rival and or assistent or comrade among the journals to NLR in providing such discipline in the world of Leftist ideas. Eclectic libearl journalism may not understand the difficulty of being open while knowing too much about the workings of the world. NLR's inclusiveness plus global perspective plus quality plus principledness are a unique combination. Any one of these virtues are so difficult to maintain. NLR has managed and continues to be so.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I have always thought it is obscene to see eagerly sought articles on NLR website are not open to non-subscribers. I always wanted to see NLR's content free to at least in the unfortunate parts of the world. But, seeing that it's circulation is so less, I tone down my aversion to this sad limitation.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Well, not all is well with NLR. For example, its reliance on party apologists like Aijaz Ahmed, though a towering intellect, activists like Achin Vanaik whose passion and jeal are not matched by intellectual capacities, to report on India has definitely diminished scope for greater understanding, among the activists of the world, of dynamics of leftist movements in India.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Here, a word about Perry Anderson is in order. Though it is not much remarked upon, he is the most influential organiser of leftist discourses in the world. Not just through his writings or simply the kind of influence one gains by being the editor of a magazine. He and his successive teams seem to have perfected a method of mobilising the ablest thinking on the most important things in the world under the condition of an unlikely combination of freedom and commitment. Anderson does it without any airs of being an intellectual kingmaker. His background presence is not one of those celebrated and curiousity-inspiring withdrawals or humility. He is a prolific writer and keeps writing.</span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I don't know of anybody who is so actively engazed from the Left yet so near-universally respected. Not even Hitchens seems to be interested in attacking Perry Anderson. Nor you can find any committed Marxist without an itch to hurt political opponents like him. He is not just an organiser of high-quality leftist thinking on global scale but also an artist of mobilising the best thinking of the poltical opponets to enrich the understanding the Left. He performs all these improbable feats without compromising his Marxism or falling into the illusions of non-partisan truths of things political. I think of no other Marxist who so consistently refuses to pretend to claim Marxists know better about everything every time. Perry Anderson is that improbable Marxist who is escapes delusions and dilutions yet remains relevant without being silent. His 'pessimism of the intellect' is one of the greatest resources of hope of our times! </span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Link to New Left Review: </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.newleftreview.org/">http://www.newleftreview.org/</a></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Link to Collini's article: </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/13/new-left-review-stefan-collini">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/13/new-left-review-stefan-collini</a></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-26596063965943090542010-02-18T01:31:00.000-08:002010-03-08T16:26:25.738-08:00Worst thing that can happen in Telangana<div class="MsoNormal">Telangana students are walking into a trap cynically crafted by the media and government. The police are just getting impatient with what they forgot decades ago in Telangana: taking orders from and reporting to, the government. The police are unhappy with two things they eliminated in Telangana for decades before the present bout of movement for Statehood changed it: 1. spectacular mobilization of people with relatively less repression 2. A severe dent in the police autonomy (autonomy very often means unaccountability and with it, arbitrariness). </div><div class="MsoNormal">It is the media which convinced the effectiveness of using the "logic of provocation" to justify police highhandedness in handling Osmania students. Eenadu, biased news papar, but very rarely distorts publicly available facts, experimented and demonstrated the success of this argument. Government picked it up. Yesterday, the Home Minister said students provoked the police. And, the Opposition did not fight it back, if not reinforced it. While the point is that the police were illegally (courts repeatedly ruled that the security forces must get out of the campus) present on the campus, now student protest against it will increasingly be projected as ‘provocation.’</div><div class="MsoNormal">Alas, one expects that Osmania student leadership is wise enough to change the strategy and invent some agitational forms that go beyond the emphasis on protest and demand for justice. They could have done so had the police not systematically destroyed any possibility of stable, planned conduct of agitation. The police kept on arresting student leaders and even any student with leadership qualities. This created a bizarre situation in which Osmania students could afford only spontaneous, unplanned outbursts. This crooked plan designed to destroy discipline, expansion of the student agitation and degenerate it. Though this police plan successfully prevented Osmania struggle remain spontaneous, leadership-less, without stable Joint Action Committees and collective decisions the campus is known for, it failed to degenerate it. Mind-boggling achievement of Osmania students in continuing protests yet remaining peaceful deserves our deference and defense. Yet, they need to change strategy to frustrate the government's barely-disguised plan to force the students to do something which the media-government combine can use to justify the worst- what the police have been arguing for and government is not yet ready for- shooting down some students.</div><div class="MsoNormal">TRS, actually a marginal force in terms of appeal but media, governments and opponents bent on seeing as the leader of movement, or even the ‘instigator’ is cynical enough to see some more of martyrs. </div><div class="MsoNormal">Actually, the real gain of the movement for statehood has already been achieved. It is the restoration of democratic, public and large-scale protests in Telangana. With killings we not only lose the invaluable lives of some young men but also the restoration of democratic right to protest, mass mobilization for achieving demands. </div><div class="MsoNormal">This must be avoided by all means. It is necessary but not enough to assert that actual provocation was the government’s own. Even if students don’t provoke but are only provoked, still victims will be students. If the ‘right to protest without risking life’ is retained, Statehood could be achieved later. If it is lost, even a separate State is not going to much good for Telangana people. </div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-66342701788840235382010-02-17T05:43:00.000-08:002010-02-17T07:32:36.564-08:00A bit of Marxism, eclecticism, Post-Modernism, Post-structuralism, Hegel, Derrida and a lot of SHITAs even the mere viewers of cricket know very well, it is not only the unmanageably brilliant balls but relatively easy ones with misleading bowling action that get many a batsman out. Darling B delivered one such which requires time even for the umpire to take some time to lift his finger. Just as the clueless Batsman leaves for the pavilion even without realizing how it happened, let me offer my explanation. But, thanks again B for making me read a couple or so of Dan Brown's novels once so that I can play Professor Longdon here to crack the coded insults he showers on me. <br />
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The serious charge is that I have a "secret affair with Postmodern literature." Even more damagingly, that "most of the Marxists have a tendency of being secret admirers of post-modern eclectics. Even as they project themselves that they are reading `dry’ Marxists commentaries and writings and keep talking about them in open, the unquestionable source of pleasure or the scholastic libido is achieved only in post-modern school of writings." Now, it is more than one allegation. A series, if you like. Whether or not they are coherent is, for time being, I leave out. I address each of them as if they are separate ones. Firstly, it assumes that only post-modernism is eclectic while Marxists are not so and should not be so. Second is I have an unacknowledged affair with Post modern literature. And, thirdly, that all Marxists are like this. I reject all these as baseless. <br />
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<strong>Eclecticism</strong><br />
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Eclecticism means gathering up ideas, propositions and formulations from different philosophies, theories without a regard for, in violation of, the need for coherence. Eclecticism involves the sin of two levels of incoherence. First is, the ideas, concepts, and elements borrowed from different theories make sense only in their parent systems and not outside of them. Second is, thus gathered elements do not fit in with each other. Problems arising from any or both of these could result in, or results of, eclecticism. I shall argue in a moment why Marxism itself is eclecticism and that eclecticism is a good thing.<br />
Before "deconstructing" the very idea of eclecticism, let me point to the slight of hand B performs here. It is true that eclecticism involves borrowing elements from different theories. But, not all borrowing from different sources and recombining them becomes automatically eclectic. The casteist understanding of eclecticism is: simply assuming that if a concept originally from a particular theory it should belong to it and can't be transferred to other theories. I called this illusion(when believed) or tyranny( when imposed) 'casteist' because, in Hinduism you have to inescapably remain in the caste you were born in. Well, I am for eclecticism, here. I am for cross-fertilisation of persons as well as ideas. In fact, this analysis is itself an example of eclecticism. I am using the model of caste system to explain knowledge production.<br />
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<strong>Marxism has multiple sources</strong><br />
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Let's take Marx as example. It is well-known that he derived and recombined 3 utterly unconnected intellectual traditions: British classical economics, German Idealist philosophy and French Socialism. And, of course, added something of his own and reprocessed the whole thing. I think it is enough to establish that Marxism is fundamentally eclectic(in B's mislead and misleading sense), like any other meaningful body of knowledge. Marxism is not alone. It is one thing come up with hot potch of things cut out of diverse sources and an entirely different matter to forge a meaningful system from multiple sources. The point about eclecticism is coherence. B mistakes it for plurality. <br />
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Let me give one more example from Marxism. Hegle is very important for Marxism, Marx and Engels respected him more than any thinker. As you know, Hegel is an idealist. His system is known to be the most elaborate, therefore very complex, philosophical system. In that system, as Hegel and his interpreters never tired of telling us, everything is connected with everything else. Even his different books are said to be different stages or explanations of a single system and not genuinely self-contained books. What is more, Hegel himself considered all previous philosophies, from the Greeks to his time, were different stages and aspects of a single onward march of philosophy, he asserted, that culminates in his philosophy and ends there. Hegel's interpreters keep telling us that to understand Hegel, it is crucial that each element in it is a part of the whole system, whose full meaning is clear only in retrospect, in the light of the totality. Considering this, it appears that Hegel is the most unlikely philosopher to be selectively appropriated. You have to take all of it or no part of it. <br />
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Now, what did Engels say about Hegel, who in turn was a reactionary and thought the Prussian monarchy was the ultimate thing to happen in the history of humanity?<br />
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Engels said, Hegel's SYSTEM was bad but METHOD was revolutionary and it was appropriated by Marxism. Well, to keep jargon to a minimum and not to overreach myself, given my very basic and crude knowledge of Hegel, I tried to use journalistic simplifications than philosophically accurate vocabulary or explanation. But, I hope this is enough to demonstrate that Marxism takes many things from other systems and theories and that there are workable ways of picking and choosing. If this is what B wants to tell us eclecticism, yes Marxism is eclectic and I am a Marxist. <br />
And, so are every system of knowledge. Even cultural or religious sysytems which are supposed to be less open to external influences and known for their attempts to remain 'pure,' can be shown to be made up of borrowing from other pools. <br />
Another danger with B's idea of self-containing and closed nature of theories and systems is that it covers up one thing common to all knowledge systems: they don't remain static. They keep adding new things and very often it involves shedding old ones. Very often, old things are dumped even before new ones come. Revivals and reconfigurations are not new. More over, there is this thing called paradigm shift- incidentally I don't know of any other word which fascinated B more than this this. It's altogether a different model to explain the development of knowledge. It is not necessary for me to explain to B that one of the features of this idea of paradigm shift is that, in science, elements( individual verified facts) increasingly come in conflict with the system they belong to, until it becomes a crisis, which eventually results in and resolved by, replacing the system with a new paradigm that arranges the elements in much coherent fashion. And, how is the better paradigm chosen? From among the competing paradigms(read systems)! <br />
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So much for B's theory of (anti) eclecticism! It is even worse than Hindu idea of marriage with its insistence on permanent, exclusive faithfulness. What he is advocating is similar to obligatory incest and incest alone.<br />
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<strong>Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism</strong><br />
Let's go back to his charge. My alleged clandestine affair with post-modernism loses most of its power if the crucial crime of being eclectic is withdrawn. But, still, lets consider being post modernist is itself is a wrong thing. Here, I must admit that B is right. It is wrong to be a post modernist though each of us have a right to be so. But, the only weakness of B's allegation now is that I am not a postmodernist secretly or openly. The only hint B provides us as to his idea of post modernism is the mention of Derrida{I am here using 3 different things- Postmodernism, Post-modernism and postmodernism as if they are interchangeable. I must confess that I am not sure what exactly is the difference the punctuation or different adjectivisations(Postmdoernism/Postmodernity) mean. To vulgarise things a bit to the point of distortion, there is always a danger of being asked by a postmodernists why should anything and everything should mean something or the other? Probably, B will explain to us in detail in his response to this humble submission}. <br />
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Derrida is, in his own words, NOT a postmodernist. At any rate, he said whatever he said was in a certain Marxist spirit! Derrida's denial of being a postmodernist or his espousing of Marxism could well be disputed. Though, I don't. I emphasis it. However, self-descriptions are not necessarily be accepted as the final word. Just think of the arguably 20th century's greatest and most famous positivist philosopher Karl Popper. He lamented, in vain, that he was not only a non-positivist but one who waged a life-long fight against positivism!! <br />
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Here again, one crucial distinction is to be made. There are a variety of thinkers, not necessarily in agreement with each other and frequently more disputed or disregarded each other's views than thought of themselves being partners of a common intellectual project, whose new ways of doing philosophy and theory came to be known as Post-Structuralism. This label too was not liked by most of those who practiced those new ways of thinking. But, it was broad and loose enough a title. It simply means, an intellectual attitude which depends on, and also departs from, "structuralism." Though such dependency can be defined relatively easily, not least because structuralism is mostly a clearly defined set of concepts and also amenable to easily organizable corpus of key terms. But, "departure" is a different ball game altogether. It can, and indeed did, vary considerably. Even then, the new sensibilities arising from the work of these diverse thinkers could still be clubbed and called Post-Structuralism without violating the rule of keeping each individual work in its uniqueness and integrity and still managing to see the common concern of the thinkers involved and thinking they inspired. All of it is a matter of thinking while the post-modernism is a political attitude and a set of arguments against other political philosophies and also a word commonly given to a range of doing and speaking about politics. To summarize, somewhat crudely, while Post-Structuralism is a movement in philosophy, post-modernism is mobilizing it for doing (or not doing) politics. Conflating them is what you call catagorical mistake. <br />
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Of course, some forms of art and literature too are called postmodernist. For example, Sahriar Mandanipour's famous novel is known as post-modern novel. B, knowingly or unknowingly, conflating these distinctions. <br />
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But B's style seems to be one full of cryptic allusion than clear illustration. <br />
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He was trying to get back at me in a more cryptic and convoluted way than in which I arguably mocked him. If my nastiness lies in attacking Raymond Williams, whose books B was in possession of, His counter-offensive lies in insulting me exactly the way Eagleton was insulted recently by Zizek. B, since he is B, knows that insinuations rather than incendiary remarks would hurt his targets. <br />
<br />
Eagleton was known as the most famous, influential and formidable enemy of postmodernism. The terror- ya, that is the word- created by Terry Eagleton among the post-modernists is stuff of legend. He ripped the post-modernists apart while leaving the readers in stitches. This terror was unleashed not by means of cruelty but through clarity. Let me tell you one anecdote. <br />
There used to be a Professor in EFLU(previously CIEFL) who was considered by a portion of her students as a big academician. She built that reputation over a period of 3 decades of untiring work- not of scholarship but of scheming, as the gossip goes. From my experience, I testify that she could say the most baseless and banal things or outright lies in the most confident of the tones. I couldn't imagine even Einstein explaining his discovery so confidently as this Professor saying things as outrageous as this one: John Calvin invented conscience- not the concept, the conscience itself! Human beings did not have conscience before Calvin invented it!!<br />
<br />
I am not the kind to rise my voice too frequently in the class room (though surely being moron enouch to turn blogs into such places, B would mock me) and definitely not the type to waste words discussing with such fake intellectuals, I did not in the least interested in debating with her. But, a sweet idiot of a classmate really caused immense discomfort to her and also to me. He brought one of Terry Eagleton's books to the class room itself. I forewarned that chap not to discuss that book with her while giving it or recommending it to him.<br />
<br />
That fool brought the bomb stright to the class room and even asked unsuspecting me to sit next to him on the fist bench and opened it and held it in such a way as to catch her attention. Terry Eagleton's book caught, not her attention but herself off guard. It was pretty visible to the whole class that she was not in her element that day. She concluded the class slightly early and did not waste time to stop at our bench and made such a face at the book. As soon as this fool realized that the Professor didn't see it as very funny, out of confusion than out of malice, though, told her that I gave that book to him. Her look to me was what Frank Kohler might have given to the cops when he was captured, in Gourvitch's A Cold Case.<br />
<br />
And, if you want to see the taste of a bit of Eagleton: <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n10/terry-eagleton/in-the-gaudy-supermarket">http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n10/terry-eagleton/in-the-gaudy-supermarket</a><br />
<br />
or, in the same journal: <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching">http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/terry-eagleton/lunging-flailing-mispunching</a><br />
<br />
This much of talking about Eagleton may sound unwarranted when it was me who brought him into this debate whose role should be - if I have any decency expected of honorable bloggers which surely I am not - at the most be one of a "vanishing mediator." Because obviously, nothing in the first bout of this exchange itself called for his presence. It is favouritism, B smacks his lips in annoyance, when he thinks of it, I am sure. But, my friend B is no less malicious in making use of such innocent presence of Eagleton against me. And, he does so with tongue in cheek seriousness and even with a pose of a wounded saint. <br />
<br />
It was Zizek, whom B met recently while I failed to do so, who humiliated his friend Eagleton by calling him as unconscious postmodernist. Lifting that line straight from Zizek(another of my idols) to abuse me is an extraordinary feat of multiple benefits for B. <br />
<br />
If I disparaged Williams to annoy B, he could do so by doing the same to me, only with multiplied effects, by invoking Eagleton's humbling in his own frind Zizek's hands. <br />
<br />
Consider: B knows very well that Eagleton doesn't have qualms to admit that he did nothing other than rediscovering, reinstating Williams and becoming a readable Williams for our times and guarding the discipline Williams helped founding -Cultural Studies- from the dumbing down effects, unMarxian twists by fakes of the kind I described earlier. <br />
And, recently I gave him a lecture he did not ask- greatness of Derrida.Not that I know much about Derrida. But, lecturing happens not when you know something but when you feel that the listener doesn't know about it. It is an inexorable law of nature. Expecting otherwise is like blaming the naughty kid who fell from the top of the dining table when he tried to dance on it. You can't blame a poor kid for the law of gravity. <br />
<br />
Finally, he picks a case of one icon of mine humiliating another and invokes it without actually mentioning their names and apparently directs a similar charge at me. As if to prevent the possibility of these associations being taken as accidental, he warns us in advance of the 'nuance' in which only the writer(god) and the stupid B can decipher it in entirety."<br />
<br />
It is like blaming god for forcing poor devotees to offer Prasadam. As if god is the one who eats it. But, the worst of all is his description of himself as "poor" just before rendering my situation "poorer" by forcing me to first decoding and then disputing his cryptic insults. It is worse than the state of a battered victim having to undress himself in public to establish the severity of wounds inflicted. <br />
Well, let me take a break. I hope to resume my response soon.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-82773301504865166602010-02-15T08:36:00.000-08:002010-02-15T08:36:06.377-08:00Real Face Of ChidambaramThis heart-wrenching and conscience-shaking story by Priyanka Borpujari ( <a href="http://www.nowpublic.com/world/youngest-maoist-nabbed">http://www.nowpublic.com/world/youngest-maoist-nabbed</a>) should be read on the the original website. It has a shocking photograph. I am unable to get the photograph onto this blog. I could manage to paste the text alone here but this "story" must be read along with the photo and deserves to be given widest possible circulation and discussion. <br />
<br />
<br />
Check out the murderous rage on his face!<br />
<br />
<br />
Check out the hand that has bludgeoned many heads!<br />
<br />
Check out the strained forehead that explain his years committed to bloodshed!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
When Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh referred to Maoists as being the “single largest threat to the nation”, did he mean this child, whose fingers were brutally chopped off while his family was massacred? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Even before this 'Maoist' could be sent in for a narco-analysis, let's understand where he comes from.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Name: Madvi Mukesh<br />
<br />
Age: Two years old<br />
<br />
Tribe: Muria<br />
<br />
Residence: Gompad village, police station Konta, district Dantewada (on the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border)<br />
<br />
Family: Maternal grandfather Madvi Barjar (50) – dead; grandmother Madvi Subhi (45) – dead; mother Kartam Kunni (20) – dead; maternal aunt Madi Mooti (8) – dead; father (21).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Mukesh was with his family on the morning of October 1, 2009, when several men wearing military fatigues – SPOs (special police officers), police and other security forces – pointed their guns at these 'Maoists' and shot at them. Mukesh's neigbours were killed – Muchaki Handa, Markam Deva, Tomra Mutta, newly-married couple Soyma Subba and Soyam Jogi. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Mukesh's family was found to be crying near a pool of blood, oozing from the chopped body of his aunt. His wails were uncontrollable – did he understand the meaning of the loss of his family, or was it because his three fingers were chopped during the carnage that wiped out his family?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
His 'Maoist' father wasn't at home at that time and so he was saved.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Houses were burnt down. Paddy, pulses, brass pots, poultry and cash were taken away. In all, the villagers found that 10 of their people were dead. Some youths were missing. Mukesh Madvi, the 'Maoist', disappeared into the jungles with his father. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
About 200 kms north of Gompad, news about an encounter was being circulated in the press. Operation Green Hunt had officially begun on October 1, 2009, and it was declared that some Maoists were killed near the Andhra Pradesh border. Journalists were told that the bodies of the Maoists were disposed off by the villagers.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
On January 3, 2010, when I met Amresh Mishra, Superintendent of Police (SP) of Dantewada, and had asked him about the Gompad massacre, he denied of such an incidence. “There was only a firing from both the sides. There was no casualty; only some explosives were found.” <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
January 7, 2010, would have been the day when, like Mukesh, many other 'Maoists' would have come to Dantewada for a Jan Sunwai (public hearing), so that they could put forth their case. Home Minister P Chidambaram had promised Himanshu Kumar of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, who had planned the Jan Sunwai, that he would be present to hear the woes of the people. However, the Governor of Chhattisgarh ESL Narasimhan prevented the Home Minister from making that visit. The Jan Sunwai was bound to have opened a can of worms before the national media, if the Home Minister had attended the meeting. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Mukesh did arrive for the Jan Sunwai along with his father, and several other optimists, on January 5. They were about 25 of them. No sooner did they arrive at Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, they were surrounded by SPOs. About 30 minutes later, they were all packed into three Boleros which bore no number plates. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It has been 10 days since those 'Maoists' were taken to an undisclosed location and there has been no news about them. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So that is the government's definition of a 'Maoist', whom I encountered personally – the tribal carrying logs of firewood who starts walking through jungles since 3 am, and reaches the nearest town by 7 am, to sell the firewood for Rs 60 (which is a little more than US $1 - and that's his daily earning). The tribal who walks about 100 miles to reach the police station, to complain that the forces stationed in his village killed the only hen that he had, is a Maoist for the government. The two-year-old Suresh is a Maoist for the government.<br />
<br />
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/youngest-maoist-nabbed<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-75250250649045701772010-02-15T08:22:00.000-08:002010-02-15T08:22:47.383-08:00Ekalavya: If you are a Muslim, you are not safe even if you are a journalist<a href="http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=72203">http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=72203</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-19132557811985229482010-02-15T08:20:00.000-08:002010-02-15T08:21:42.066-08:00If you are a Muslim, you are not safe even if you are a journalistIt is good to see the journalists of Mangalore- among whom the warrior-reporter Sudipto Mondal- come on to streets asking for rights and denouncing injustices. <br />
When did you last hear journalists on street in the BJP-ruled States?<br />
It is inspiring and hopes-sustaining to see our sisters and brothers doing it. They deserve our greatest solidarity and support. Rahim was just standing at the bus stop waiting for his bus. As soon as he said his name was Rahim the sub-inspector thought he could just arrest him without much further thinking. Had the reporter been a Hindu it would have ended in apologies, or even bonhomie, as soon as he reveals that he was reporter. <br />
What a shame! <br />
It is not difficult to understand why the Congress not doing anything against these Criminal Against Humanity, leaders and cadre of BJP, ShivaSena. But, why even the Left and Secular forces don't demand such things is beyond comprehension. The left is concerned only with avoiding the possibility of their State government's being dismissed by the Centre. It principally opposes imposition of the President's rule anywhere no matter what. Nor does it entertain any idea of handing over the Shiva Sena, Ram Sena and BJP and RSS criminals( Pichikukkalu, in Yogendra Kalavalapalle's unimprovable description) to International Criminal Court. <br />
When will the Liberals( does anybody except Ramachandra Guha seriously believe that such a catagory exists?) and the Left will realise that no fascist force ever was defeated, after securing power, by forces from within?<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-65020352792195284272010-02-14T23:15:00.000-08:002010-02-14T23:19:35.580-08:00Erich Fried's Was es ist?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', 'lucida grande', 'lucida sans unicode', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"></span><br />
<div class="post" id="firstpost" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 1px; border-width: initial; clear: both; padding-bottom: 15px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: 620px;"><h2 class="title" style="font-size: 1.85em; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">What it is</span></h2><div class="content" style="clear: both;"><span class="imgright"></span><br />
It is nonsense<br />
says reason<br />
It is what it is<br />
says love<br />
<br />
It is misfortune<br />
says calculation<br />
It is nothing but pain<br />
says fear<br />
It is hopeless<br />
says insight<br />
It is what it is<br />
says love<br />
<br />
It is ridiculous<br />
says pride<br />
It is careless<br />
says caution<br />
It is impossible<br />
says experience<br />
It is what it is<br />
says love<br />
<br />
(translation M. Kaldenbach) </div><div class="content" style="clear: both;"><br />
</div><div class="content" style="clear: both;">This is its much beautiful original, without offense to Kaldenbach's beautiful rendering: </div><div class="content" style="clear: both;"><br />
</div><div class="content" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Was es ist</span><br />
<span class="imgright"></span><br />
Es ist Unsinn<br />
sagt die Vernunft<br />
Es ist was es ist<br />
sagt die Liebe<br />
<br />
Es ist Unglück<br />
sagt die Berechnung<br />
Es ist nichts als Schmerz<br />
sagt die Angst<br />
Es ist aussichtslos<br />
sagt die Einsicht<br />
Es ist was es ist<br />
sagt die Liebe<br />
<br />
Es ist lächerlich<br />
sagt der Stolz<br />
Es ist leichtsinning<br />
sagt die Vorsicht<br />
Es ist unmöglich<br />
sagt die Erfahrung<br />
Es ist was es ist<br />
sagt die Liebe </div><div class="content" style="clear: both;">Thanks to <a href="http://my.opera.com/bertrain/blog/2008/01/19/was-es-ist-what-it-is">http://my.opera.com/bertrain/blog/2008/01/19/was-es-ist-what-it-is</a></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-66302184820757766132010-02-14T21:35:00.000-08:002010-02-14T22:02:21.293-08:00Guru does it again!This is yet another ripping-apart Kancha Ilaiah is known for. With characteristic clarity and his well-known(and widely-hated) instinct for going beyond the appearances, propaganda and jubilation, he follows up his earlier analyses of Telangana movement. This is a story of a betrayal foretold.<br />
<br />
<div class="source_url">Published on Deccan Chronicle (<a href="http://www.deccanchronicle.com/">http://www.deccanchronicle.com</a>)</div><h2 class="title">Telangana dream sours</h2><div class="submitted">By By Kancha Ilaiah</div><div class="created">Feb 13 2010</div><div class="content">The movement for Telangana has now touched a peak. It has also become a movement with unique characteristics. Masses belonging to all walks of life have come out to the streets with their cultural symbols. We can see dalit-Bahujans beating drums and dholaks, the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) with their ploughshares and bullock carts, shepherds with their flock, toddy tappers with their moku (rope assembly used to climb palm trees) and muttadu (the belt they wear to keep their hatchet) and stone-breakers with their own iron artefacts.<br />
The festive game of Bathukamma (a women’s festival celebrated mainly during Dasara, pro-Telangana activists are performing the Bathukamma on the highways as a form of protest and to highlight their Telangana identity) was also enacted. It was being projected as a cultural symbol.<br />
During the age of Nizam, Bathukamma used to be enacted by the Shudras — mostly OBCs. Dalits were not allowed to participate as they were seen as pollutants even by the OBCs of lower order. And the upper caste women — particularly Brahmins, Komatis, Reddys and Velamas — would not participate as it was seen as a Shudra festive game. They thought it was below their dignity.<br />
Now suddenly some Dorasanlu (women of dominant castes) went to this play as a symbol of the agitation. Is it for Telangana or for power?<br />
The most interesting thing is that while the lower castes are using their cultural symbols to achieve a separate Telangana, the members of former feudal families are playing the politics of agitation. We also see a surprising unity between some Reddy and Velama political lords.<br />
The whole attempt by these two caste forces is to control the political joint action committee (JAC) that is driving the Telangana agitation. Some academicians have also been drawn in to mediate between those two otherwise politically warring castes.<br />
It is as if the stereotype of future Telangana is being played out — “We will play politics and you should play Dhoom Dham, Bathukamma and drums”.<br />
And some of these leaders are collecting huge amounts of money, mostly to build their family’s “political economy” while distributing pittance to ring leaders from the lower castes.<br />
As the balladeer Gaddar rightly says “kanche kaada nuvvu, collection kaada neenu” (you should protect the fields and I will reap the crops). But some intellectuals keep on saying, “Let us not talk about any immorality — after all to achieve Telangana such small things need to be done”.<br />
The most surprising aspect in the movement is the entry of the Maoist upper caste elements in this “more collection, less distribution” model of political economy.<br />
In the name of achieving Telangana all ideological battles have been set aside. One upper caste Maoist intellectual went to the extent of saying that the JACs from village upwards were working like “Maoist communes”.<br />
What this really means is that the sons — even some daughters — of upper caste landlords have come back to the villages to head and lead the JACs by “usurping” the legitimate village sarpanchs. Now Telangana has come under the raj of the upper caste JACs.<br />
Some former Maoist activists have become leaders of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and are praising their leader for conducting Yajnas, Yagas and Kratus in the party office. He also walks around with a huge Bal Thackeray type bottu (tilak) on the forehead and they seem to be enjoying the neo saffron style of the leader.<br />
But the Muslims are scared of these visuals and the Bharatiya Janata Party probably sees a new rival in the region if it becomes a state.<br />
The emergence of the Shiv Sena or of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena kind of political entity in the region does not seem to be a problem for the Maoists and they too seem to think that there is just one point agenda — we must achieve Telangana and hand over power to “our people”.<br />
What really worries all of them is the student movement mainly headed by the dalit-Bahujan youth. This has become an inconvenient factor. There is competition to buy them off or to make them foot soldiers.<br />
There is a resistance from the students but one does not know for how long the youth can sustain that resistance.<br />
We also see the political JAC compromising with Centre and welcoming the Srikrishna Committee without it making any reference to Telangana state formation. Mr K. Jana Reddy welcomes the committee and K. Chandrasekhar Rao approves it in silence. The Telugu Desam keeps playing the double game quite skillfully. The Union home minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, is doing some arm-twisting as he has a clear understanding about “the unholy alliance between Maoists and money collectors”.<br />
What is really painful are the deaths of about 300 youth and the cases lodged against 10,000 students.<br />
All these parties together have done is to put forth a chekka bomma — a wooden doll — to speak for them.<br />
For the failure of the 1969 Telangana movement we had someone to blame — Marri Chenna Reddy. Now we cannot blame anybody.<br />
At least those who played politics with a wooden doll in their hands got sufficient money to flight the next election in the name of Telangana.<br />
Do the Maoists think that their class enemy has now become a class friend because of Telangana’s cut-throat politics?<br />
Let them explain this to the people — the real people who played Bathukamma, cooked their food on the roads, beat their chests and drums and lost 300 of their children as well.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-64756242001977166562010-02-14T21:01:00.000-08:002010-02-14T21:11:12.771-08:00Ethnic federalism will further marginalise Dalits - Mitra PariyarAn opinion piece from Nepal Times. Thanks to ZESTCASTE email group.<br />
See original with the author's photo: <a href="http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/component/content/article/13-top-column/4137-dalit-doubts-.html">http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/component/content/article/13-top-column/4137-dalit-doubts-.html</a><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"></span><br />
<strong><span style="color: #333399;">Ethnic federalism will further marginalise Dalits.</span></strong><br />
<strong><em>By Mitra Pariyar</em></strong><br />
In his Kantipur column of 20 December Hari Roka, a pro-Maoist commentator and lawmaker, argued that part of the reason why India opposed the Maoists promoting a federal state was that it feared "the establishment of a new social system based on the redistribution of property and freedom from untouchability would have consequences on its states close to Nepal".<br />
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The statement is, inter alia, representative of how the Maoists continue to use Dalits in their propaganda. They have always claimed that theirs is a movement of the oppressed masses, and indeed many Dalits have sacrificed their lives for the cause. However, Roka's claim about untouchability rings hollow because there is little evidence to show that the ex-rebels actually care about the deeply entrenched problems of low castes.<br />
<br />
On the contrary, Dalits increasingly feel they have had the rug pulled out from under them, not least because of the Maoists' unilateral declaration of autonomous ethnic states. Firstly, Dalits are not going to have their own autonomous state; they will be a tiny minority in all states. More importantly, Dalits suffer indignities and injustices not only at the hands of Bahuns and Chhetris, but also from Rais, Limbus, Madhesis, Gurungs, Magars, Newars, and others.<br />
<br />
A 2006 report in Nepali Times stated: "In the hotbed of Tarai ethnic politics, mainstream Madhesi rights activists, anti-hills-people vigilantes, Maoist splinter groups and Tharu groups are demanding everything from greater autonomy to secession. But Madhesi Dalits are nowhere in the equation". The parties' attitude to Dalits in the Tarai and the hills remains the same, despite the pressure of massive political changes.<br />
<br />
Hugo Gorringe, a British anthropologist who studied Indian Dalits, observes: "untouchability, it is clear, is irreconcilable with nationhood, and undermines the democratic project". The Nepali Congress and UML, despite their democratic credentials, have always refrained from taking Dalit issues seriously; their own workers and supporters regularly practice untouchability. The former rebels' initial enthusiasm about doing away with caste-based subordination has also been ephemeral. For instance, the Maoist government didn't, despite the popular expectation, start anything concrete to help Dalits; neither did it attempt to include them in important positions. Although they have been insisting on federal states named after particular groups, they have not yet articulated their policies on how untouchability can be effectively tackled.<br />
<br />
Whilst Dalits are still struggling to become bona fide citizens of Nepal, they will have to fight separately to become the citizens of autonomous states as well. Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar's prescription for the Dalit movement was: "educate, agitate, organise". The implementation of autonomous ethnic states is likely to hinder these strategies, not least because the Dalit movement will then be dispersed and consequently further weakened.<br />
<br />
Some believe that untouchability cannot be tackled until caste is annihilated; others think it can be challenged by emphasising the socioeconomic relationship between castes on the basis of modern national laws over customary ones. We should attempt to integrate low castes with other castes or ethnic groups to pave the way for a more egalitarian society. Ethnic federalism will only institutionalise and solidify caste or ethnic boundaries, instead of undermining them.The Maoists are likely to lose the support of many Dalits and others by pushing for their retrograde demand for ethnic federalism, even if it helps them in the short term. Like most Nepali citizens, Dalits want to live in peace with more dignity and better economic opportunities. This simple dream cannot be fulfilled if the powers that be don't give up their stance on ethnic federalism under the facade of revolutionary change.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2678760029812642783.post-14388817191389101042010-02-14T18:05:00.000-08:002010-03-09T17:02:03.523-08:00Honoring "B"A friend of mine- I will be very happy to mention his name but for some reason refrain from doing so - sent me photocopies of a huge four volume collection on Nationalism, published by I.B. Tauris, London, New York. This is a publishing house which has the distinction of publishing the debut novels of Derrida, Foucault, Aristotle, Tom Hanks and even Kurt Goedel.<br />
It was very nice of him in many ways. Photocopying was not on unbookly A4 size spreads. In a4 size, even Terry Eagleton reads like Raymond Williams. In other words, any author in A4 size becomes unreadable. If you are an academician, therefore do not know about these matters, imagine your partner in double her present size.<br />
They were bound in the size and shape of a book, exactly like the originals except in color and font size. It must have cost him a fortune and he said he was unhappy only with the huge postal charges. It is again, as justified as finding your partner's cloths more offensive than he himself.<br />
However, it was not the collection I asked him to send. I had in mind John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith's(Editors) Nationalism in five volumes published by Routledge.<br />
This generous gentleman, who sacrificed his weekly-off to go to somewhere 35 km away from his place and went through the pain of issuing a book from the university he was no longer a student of, and then took the trouble of finding the best xerox and binding service in Hyderabad and then underwent the not so entertaining experience of standing in the queue at the post office to parcel them, surely deserves a public acknowledgement of my sympathetic concern about his masochism..<br />
As many of you know very well, though I am a bloody bastard but not an ungrateful kind. I forwarded the announcement of the book- the one I wanted, not the one he divinely sent- to this generous gentleman as a token of my indebtedness.<br />
I shall refer to my philanthropic friend as 'B,' for no particular reason than to derive from its diminutive quality and the lovely immunity from libel. I may mention that he is a journalist. It is only those who are jealous of our friendship (or a 'nexus' in Sundar kaka's immortal words) might suspect that I am scandalizing B. Their jealousy is based on the mistaken belief that journalists are more known for things they don't write than the academicians for the things they write. I take such feeling no more seriously than I would of those fans of Madhuri Dixit who consider her a great singer for her song 'ek do teen'. <br />
I also know that Cultural Studies morons will see only a potential rift between me and B in the reference to Raymond Williams which they find designed to humiliate the possessor of the greatest number of Williams' books among the journalists I know of.<br />
For those Cultural Studies critics my answer is just noting that 'perceptions differ.' B is surely mature enough to see that, when it comes to readability, the gangs known for an inability to read are the least reliable guides.<br />
Moreover, I consider Raymond Williams's 'Key Words' is eminently readable. In fact, you can even say that it is the best book among its kind. I don't know of any any other etymological dictionary whose entries are so easy to complete. Size matters in such matters.<br />
Here, I refuse to offer my comments on the vexed debate among the Marxists as to which of William's work, his fiction or theory, is more boring. I attribute this unfair debate partly to Terry Eagleton's malicious influence. Eagleton on his own read Williams, his teacher and later a colleague, and still entertains grudge against him as if his still remembered pain of having read William's work was not self-inflicted. These Marxists are like the Hindus, for whom everything has to be higher or lower to every other thing.<br />
Or, these groups have read only either his fiction or theory and assumed that the master's other genres can't beat the one they read. I am mentioning these things not to dishonor the first great Marxist theorist from the working class, but to highlight the B' scholarship. When B was a research student, he refused to read either fiction or theory of Raymond Williams. As a journalist, he tasted both of them without partiality and found both were equally boring. Not many journalists are so exhaustive and impartial.<div class="blogger-post-footer">The point, however, is to change it</div>Ekalavyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09550571870524859101noreply@blogger.com3