World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital: Between Marx and Freud 3031250168, 9783031250163

Table of contents :
Titles Published
Titles Forthcoming
Preface
Contents
1 (Un)doing Marxism from the Outside
Introduction
Rethinking Marxism
Between Marx and Freud
The Moebius of Inside-Outside
Capital, Capitalism and Hegemony: Between Suture and Delusional Veil
World of the Third: Beyond Global and Local
The Hegemonized
References
2 Class and Overdetermination
Overdetermination, Contradiction and Entry Point
Class, Economy, and Society
Modes of Appropriation and Exploitation
Class Matrix and Class Set: A Detour on Method
Class Matrix and the Forms of FCP
Introducing Capitalist FCP and SCP
The Working Class and Capitalist Class
Productive and Unproductive: Workers
Productive and Unproductive: Capitalists
Capitalist Class Enterprise
Introducing Class Sets: The Decentred and Disaggregated Economy
Class Struggle and Marxian Struggle
Conclusion
References
3 The Secret Abode of Need: From Hegemonic Need to Radical Need
Introduction
Class and Need: A Marxian Approach
Need I: Surplus and Need
The Idea and Importance of Social Surplus
Overdetermination and Contradiction of Class and Need Process
Universal Basic Income
Need II: From Class to Classlessness
Hegemonic Need, Nodal Point and the Delusional Veil
Marx on Need and the Invocation of Radical Need
Expanded Communism
Conclusion
References
4 Foreclosure, Delusional Veil, and the Lacanian Real
Introduction
Unexpected Help from Lacan
Reality as Disaggregated yet Hegemonic
An Encounter with the real: The real in an Encounter
Real and Language
Real Before Language
Real as Noumena
Real After Language
The Hegemonic Symbolic
View from World of the Third
References
5 Global Capitalism as Hegemonic: World of the Third as Outside
Introduction
Substitute Signifiers: The Realm of the realvictim - realdystopic/evil - realutopian/Dark Continent
The Logic of Two: The Logic of One and the Absent Third
From Third Worldism to World of the Third: A Detour from the realvictim to the real
Hegemonic, Nodal Signifiers, and Foreclosure: Global Capitalism and WoT
Foreclosure of Class
Foreclosure of World of the Third (WoT)
Differänce: From Limits to Delusion
References
6 Political Economy of Development: From Critique to Reconstruction
Introduction
The Epistemology of Economic Dualism
Disinterring the Lewis Model
The Unmaking of the (In)Formal Sector
Development in Transitional Crisis
References
7 Global Capital and Its Circuits
Introduction: Global Capitalist Hegemony
Global Capitalist Enterprise
Global Capital and the Hegemonic
Productive and Unproductive Capitalist: What Is Global Capitalist?
Circuits of Global Capital
Circuits of Global Capital and Markets
Circuits of Local Capital
Nodal Signifiers of Global Capital
Agriculture and Informal Sector, Encore
Value Chain in the Circuits of Global Capital and Value Capture
Global Capital and Reconfiguration of Space
Hegemonization: Unconscious Interpellation to Global Capital
Conclusion
References
8 World of the Third as Foreclosed: Third Worldism as Delusional Veil
Introduction
The Being of World of the Third
The Home Sector In-Between Circuits of Global Capital and World of the Third
Contradictions in WoT and the Hegemonic
From World of the Third to Third World
Foregrounding of the Marginalized
World Bank in World of the Third
References
9 World of the Third: Encounters with the Hegemonic
Introduction
Encounter I: Adaptation and Adoption as Internal Change Within WoT
Encounter II: Violence of Global Capital on WoT
Displacement: The Delusional Veil Over Original Accumulation
Two Forms of Original Accumulation: Classical and Non-Classical
The Classical Form of Original Accumulation
Example 1: Original Accumulation and Forest Rights Act
Example 2: Hawking and the Right of Space
Encounter III: The Non-Classical Form of Original Accumulation
Plachimada: Original Accumulation Without Expropriation
Encounter IV: Hegemonic Pro-Poor Practices and NGOs
Environmentalism and WoT
Ethico-Politics of WoT
References
10 Expanded Communism: From World of the Third Subject-Positions
Introduction
Marxian Ethics
From an ‘Ethics of the Impossible’ to an ‘Ethics of the real’
Interpretation Hits the real
Marxian Justice
Class, Need, and Expanded Communism
Class, Need, and the Question of Justice
World of the Third and Transformative Political Praxis
Hegemony, Third World, and World of the Third
The Counter-Hegemonic Subject
In Lieu of a Conclusion
References
Author Index
Subject Index

Citation preview

MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital Between Marx and Freud

Anjan Chakrabarti Anup Dhar

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms

Series Editors Marcello Musto, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada Terrell Carver, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Wherever the critique of capitalism re-emerges, there is an intellectual and political demand for new, critical engagements with Marxism. The peer-reviewed series Marx, Engels and Marxisms (edited by Marcello Musto & Terrell Carver, with Babak Amini, Francesca Antonini, Paula Rauhala & Kohei Saito as Assistant Editors) publishes monographs, edited volumes, critical editions, reprints of old texts, as well as translations of books already published in other languages. Our volumes come from a wide range of political perspectives, subject matters, academic disciplines and geographical areas, producing an eclectic and informative collection that appeals to a diverse and international audience. Our main areas of focus include: the oeuvre of Marx and Engels, Marxist authors and traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, labour and social movements, Marxist analyses of contemporary issues, and reception of Marxism in the world.

Anjan Chakrabarti · Anup Dhar

World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital Between Marx and Freud

Anjan Chakrabarti Department of Economics University of Calcutta West Bengal, India

Anup Dhar The Hans Kilian and Lotte Köhler Center (KKC) for Cultural Psychology and Historical Anthropology Ruhr-University Bochum Bochum, Germany

ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic) Marx, Engels, and Marxisms ISBN 978-3-031-25016-3 ISBN 978-3-031-25017-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Orbon Alija/E+/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book is dedicated to Steve—our friend, philosopher, and guide.

Titles Published

1. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, A Political History of the Editions of Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts, 2014. 2. Terrell Carver & Daniel Blank, Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the “Feuerbach chapter,” 2014. 3. Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The History and Theory of Fetishism, 2015. 4. Paresh Chattopadhyay, Marx’s Associated Mode of Production: A Critique of Marxism, 2016. 5. Domenico Losurdo, Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History, 2016. 6. Frederick Harry Pitts, Critiquing Capitalism Today: New Ways to Read Marx, 2017. 7. Ranabir Samaddar, Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age, 2017. 8. George Comninel, Alienation and Emancipation in the Work of Karl Marx, 2018. 9. Jean-Numa Ducange & Razmig Keucheyan (Eds.), The End of the Democratic State: Nicos Poulantzas, a Marxism for the 21st Century, 2018. 10. Robert X. Ware, Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals: Retrieving Marx for the Future, 2018. 11. Xavier LaFrance & Charles Post (Eds.), Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism, 2018.

vii

viii

TITLES PUBLISHED

12. John Gregson, Marxism, Ethics, and Politics: The Work of Alasdair MacIntyre, 2018. 13. Vladimir Puzone & Luis Felipe Miguel (Eds.), The Brazilian Left in the 21st Century: Conflict and Conciliation in Peripheral Capitalism, 2019. 14. James Muldoon & Gaard Kets (Eds.), The German Revolution and Political Theory, 2019. 15. Michael Brie, Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution and Metaphysics of Domination, 2019. 16. August H. Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism: Comparative RealTime Political Analysis, 2019. 17. Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello and Mauricio de Souza Sabadini (Eds.), Financial Speculation and Fictitious Profits: A Marxist Analysis, 2019. 18. Shaibal Gupta, Marcello Musto & Babak Amini (Eds), Karl Marx’s Life, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary, 2019. 19. Igor Shoikhedbrod, Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality, and Rights, 2019. 20. Juan Pablo Rodríguez, Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile: The Possibility of Social Critique, 2019. 21. Kaan Kangal, Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature, 2020. 22. Victor Wallis, Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories, 2020. 23. Alfonso Maurizio Iacono, The Bourgeois and the Savage: A Marxian Critique of the Image of the Isolated Individual in Defoe, Turgot and Smith, 2020. 24. Terrell Carver, Engels before Marx, 2020. 25. Jean-Numa Ducange, Jules Guesde: The Birth of Socialism and Marxism in France, 2020. 26. Antonio Oliva, Ivan Novara & Angel Oliva (Eds.), Marx and Contemporary Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Real Abstraction, 2020. 27. Francesco Biagi, Henri Lefebvre’s Critical Theory of Space, 2020. 28. Stefano Petrucciani, The Ideas of Karl Marx: A Critical Introduction, 2020. 29. Terrell Carver, The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels, 30th Anniversary Edition, 2020. 30. Giuseppe Vacca, Alternative Modernities: Antonio Gramsci’s Twentieth Century, 2020.

TITLES PUBLISHED

ix

31. Kevin B. Anderson, Kieran Durkin & Heather Brown (Eds.), Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation, 2020. 32. Marco Di Maggio, The Rise and Fall of Communist Parties in France and Italy, 2020. 33. Farhang Rajaee, Presence and the Political, 2021. 34. Ryuji Sasaki, A New Introduction to Karl Marx: New Materialism, Critique of Political Economy, and the Concept of Metabolism, 2021. 35. Kohei Saito (Ed.), Reexamining Engels’s Legacy in the 21st Century, 2021. 36. Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism in Marx’s Capital: Towards a Dealienated World, 2021. 37. Marcello Musto, Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation, 2021. 38. Michael Brie & Jörn Schütrumpf, Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary Marxist at the Limits of Marxism, 2021. 39. Stefano Petrucciani, Theodor W. Adorno’s Philosophy, Society, and Aesthetics, 2021. 40. Miguel Vedda, Siegfried Kracauer, or, The Allegories of Improvisation: Critical Studies, 2021. 41. Ronaldo Munck, Rethinking Development: Marxist Perspectives, 2021. 42. Jean-Numa Ducange & Elisa Marcobelli (Eds.), Selected Writings of Jean Jaurès: On Socialism, Pacifism and Marxism, 2021. 43. Elisa Marcobelli, Internationalism Toward Diplomatic Crisis: The Second International and French, German and Italian Socialists, 2021. 44. James Steinhoff, Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry, 2021. 45. Juan Dal Maso, Hegemony and Class Struggle: Trotsky, Gramsci and Marxism, 2021. 46. Gianfranco Ragona & Monica Quirico, Frontier Socialism: Selforganisation and Anti-capitalism, 2021. 47. Tsuyoshi Yuki, Socialism, Markets and the Critique of Money: The Theory of “Labour Notes,” 2021. 48. Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello & Henrique Pereira Braga (Eds.), Wealth and Poverty in Contemporary Brazilian Capitalism, 2021. 49. Paolo Favilli, Historiography and Marxism: Innovations in MidCentury Italy, 2021.

x

TITLES PUBLISHED

50. Levy del Aguila Marchena, Communism, Political Power and Personal Freedom in Marx, 2021. 51. V Geetha, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India, 2021. 52. Satoshi Matsui, Normative Theories of Liberalism and Socialism: Marxist Analysis of Values, 2022. 53. Kei Ehara (Ed.), Japanese Discourse on the Marxian Theory of Finance, 2022. 54. Achim Szepanski, Financial Capital in the 21st Century, 2022. 55. Stephen Maher, Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power, 2022. 56. Rémy Herrera, Confronting Mainstream Economics to Overcome Capitalism, 2022. 57. Peter McMylor, Graeme Kirkpatrick & Simin Fadaee (Eds.), Marxism, Religion, and Emancipatory Politics, 2022. 58. Genevieve Ritchie, Sara Carpenter & Shahrzad Mojab (Eds.), Marxism and Migration, 2022. 59. Fabio Perocco (Ed.), Racism in and for the Welfare State, 2022. 60. Dong-Min Rieu, A Mathematical Approach to Marxian Value Theory: Time, Money, and Labor Productivity, 2022. 61. Adriana Petra, Intellectuals and Communist Culture: Itineraries, Problems and Debates in Post-war Argentina, 2022. 62. Kolja Lindner, Marx, Marxism and the Question of Eurocentrism, 2022. 63. Marcello Mustè, Marxism and Philosophy of Praxis: An Italian Perspective from Labriola to Gramsci, 2022. 64. Lelio Demichelis, Marx, Alienation and Techno-capitalism, 2022. 65. Terrell Carver, Smail Rapic (Eds.), Friedrich Engels for the 21st Century: Perspectives and Problems, 2022. 66. Alexandros Chrysis, The Marx of Communism: Setting Limits in the Realm of Communism, 2022. 67. Paul Raekstad, Karl Marx’s Realist Critique of Capitalism: Freedom, Alienation, and Socialism, 2022. 68. Marcello Musto, Rethinking Alternatives with Marx, 2022. 69. José Ricardo Villanueva Lira, Marxism and the Origins of International Relations, 2022. 70. Bertel Nygaard, Marxism, Labor Movements, and Historiography, 2022.

TITLES PUBLISHED

xi

71. Marcos Del Roio, Gramsci and the Emancipation of the Subaltern Classes, 2022. 72. Marcelo Badaró, The Working Class from Marx to Our Times, 2022. 73. Jean Vigreux, Roger Martelli, & Serge Wolikow, One Hundred Years of History of the French Communist Party, 2022. 74. Vincenzo Mele, City and Modernity in George Simmel and Walter Benjamin: Fragments of Metropolis, 2023.

Titles Forthcoming

Vesa Oittinen, Marx’s Russian Moment Spencer A. Leonard, Marx, the India Question, and the Crisis of Cosmopolitanism Joe Collins, Applying Marx’s Capital to the 21st century Jeong Seongjin, Korean Capitalism in the 21st Century: Marxist Analysis and Alternatives Marcello Mustè, Marxism and Philosophy of Praxis: An Italian Perspective from Labriola to Gramsci Shannon Brincat, Dialectical Dialogues in Contemporary World Politics: A Meeting of Traditions in Global Comparative Philosophy Francesca Antonini, Reassessing Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: Dictatorship, State, and Revolution Thomas Kemple, Marx’s Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology Xavier Vigna, A Political History of Factories in France: The Workers’ Insubordination of 1968 Attila Melegh, Anti-Migrant Populism in Eastern Europe and Hungary: A Marxist Analysis Marie-Cecile Bouju, A Political History of the Publishing Houses of the French Communist Party Mauro Buccheri, Radical Humanism for the Left: The Quest for Meaning in Late Capitalism Tamás Krausz, Eszter Bartha (Eds.), Socialist Experiences in Eastern Europe: A Hungarian Perspective

xiii

xiv

TITLES FORTHCOMING

Martin Cortés, Marxism, Time and Politics: On the Autonomy of the Political João Antonio de Paula, Huga da Gama Cerqueira, Eduardo da Motta e Albuquer & Leonardo de Deus, Marxian Economics for the 21st Century: Revaluating Marx’s Critique of Political Economy Zhi Li, The Concept of the Individual in the Thought of Karl Marx Lelio Demichelis, Marx, Alienation and Techno-capitalism Salvatore Prinzi, Representation, Expression, and Institution: The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and Castoriadis Agon Hamza, Slavoj Žižek and the Reconstruction of Marxism Éric Aunoble, French Views on the Russian Revolution Patrizia Dogliani, A Political History of the International Union of Socialist Youth Alexis Cukier, Democratic Work: Radical Democracy and the Future of Labour Christoph Henning, Theories of Alienation: From Rousseau to the Present Daniel Egan, Capitalism, War, and Revolution: A Marxist Analysis Emanuela Conversano, Capital from Afar: Anthropology and Critique of Political Economy in the Late Marx David Norman Smith, Self-Emancipation: Marx’s Unfinished Theory of the Working Class Tomonaga Tairako, A New Perspective on Marx’s Philosophy and Political Economy Matthias Bohlender, Anna-Sophie Schönfelder, & Matthias Spekker, Truth and Revolution in Marx’s Critique of Society Mauricio Vieira Martins, Marx, Spinoza and Darwin: Materialism, Subjectivity and Critique of Religion Aditya Nigam, Border-Marxisms and Historical Materialism Fred Moseley, Marx’s Theory of Value in Chapter 1 of Capital: A Critique of Heinrich’s Value-Form Interpretation Armando Boito, The State, Politics, and Social Classes: Theory and History Hira Singh, Annihilation of Caste in India: Ambedkar, Ghandi, and Marx Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, An Introduction to Ecosocialism Mike Berry, A Theory of Housing Provision under Capitalism Maria Chehonadskih, Alexander Bogdanov and Soviet Epistemologies: The Transformation of Knowledge After the October Revolution

TITLES FORTHCOMING

xv

Peter Lamb, Harold Laski, the Reluctant Marxist: Socialist Democracy for a World in Turmoil Raju Das, Marxism and Revisionism Today: Contours of Marxist Theory for the 21st Century Gary Teeple, The Democracy That Never Was: A Critique of Liberal Democracy Alfonso García Vela & Alberto Bonnet, The Political Thought of John Holloway: Struggle, Critique, Emancipation Erick Omena, Urban Planning as Class Domination: The Games of Land Dispossession

Preface

Given that Marx provided an analysis of nineteenth-century western European capitalism, what conceptual handles or windows can Marx offer today? Can he offer anything? Would we at all turn to him for an understanding, interpretation, and explanation of contemporary capitalism? Or would he be irrelevant in the Southern situation, given the birth of his theory in a western context? Do concepts travel? Would his concepts be relevant in another culture and another time? How do we conceptualize Marxism in the South, if at all and why at all? Could we at all conceptualize a Marxism that was turned to the South? How would we attend to the scorn of the cultural difference theorist who would say that Marxism’s western moorings impart a certain incommensurability to its invocation in non-Western realities? How would we do away with the near religio-scientific belief of the Universalist who would see the possibility of a core applicability of Marxism transcending (non-Western) particularities? Would a rethinking of Marxian questions and concerns in the South mean a radical displacement of much of Marxism; such that Marxism becomes ab-original —that is, both, ‘other than the Original form’ (say, for example, other than the historical materialist form) as also ‘singed with a certain subalternity-indigeneity’? Would it also mean a rethinking of the very description of the South that has hitherto hegemonized us? Would it mean a rethinking of the category of ‘third world’—third world as the representative category for any description of the South?

xvii

xviii

PREFACE

Taking off from questions as to why and how Marxism could matter in the context of the South, it appeared to us that both western Marxism and third world as is usually deployed in classical and conventional renditions are deeply problematic. Even the bulk of the so-called critique of modernity, whether they be postmodern or postcolonial, falter when faced with the third world. A culturalist critique would tend to forget capital; and an economistic critique is inclined towards putting aside the question of modernity and culture (as also the psychic, including questions of need, desire, phantasy and delusions that interpellate us and hold us hostage). Resultantly, the specificity as also the burden of the history and the experience of colonial modernity and the evolution of capitalism, all of these in their overdetermined and contradictory imbrications, remain unaccounted for at a more theoretical level. We wondered: how does one bring to dialogue questions of economy, culture and power (and nature)? How does one bring to dialogue questions of political economy and concerns of libidinal economy? How does one rethink class, capitalism, third world in their mutual constitutivity and not one by one, turn by turn? How does one rethink all of them at a conceptual level and not just at an empirical level? How does one leave no stone unturned? Because it is only after rethinking all the conceptual ‘given’-s, all the theoretical a priori-s that one can rethink the relationships among them. This was Marx’s methodology in Capital. This theoretical problem, by no means peculiar to Marxism, acquires additional urgency in a Marxian space since western Marxism has never really faced up to the category of third world; nor has it come face to face with the experience–language–logic–ethos of the South. Rather, it has often turned away from this encounter; such a turning away is perhaps reflective of an implicit Orientalism. Whether in the North or South, wittingly or unwittingly, irrespective of ideological dispositions, the efforts to rethink Marxism and third world in the Southern space have, with few exceptions, remained forestalled. For us, therefore, the more pressing questions are related to how Marxist theory would encounter the specificity of third world. In turn, how would third world encounter Marxism? How do the understandings of Marxism and third world change because of this encounter? This book deals with these questions; it proposes in the process the inauguration of a counter concept ‘world of the third’. This work thereafter fleshes out a description of world of the third and of its encounter with global capitalism, with India as the background of analysis and in the context of the present phase of globalization. Indeed,

PREFACE

xix

globalization has been a recurring sub-theme in the encounter of the ‘rest’ with the West throughout the history of capital and the current phase represents another passage, with its own unique effects, of this ongoing encounter. By virtue of its unique disposition, Marxian questions tuned to world of the third enunciate a quite different trajectory of explaining and understanding this encounter. However, one may still ask: Why invent a new name world of the third? Does a change in name solve the problem? Naming has to it the suspicion of a colonizing burden, especially in the South. Nobody has borne the consequences of the cultural imputations involved in naming more than the Southern people. Southern thinkers, to name a few, Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Aimé Césaire, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Krishnachandra Bhattacharya (author of Swaraj in Ideas ) have struggled against the stifling grip of markers coming to their homeland like metonymic meteors from the West. For them, the purpose of social struggles was never to just win political independence, but primarily a struggle over mindsets-attitudes, over worldviews; decolonization meant decolonization of minds; swaraj meant ‘swaraj in ideas’. That is why language (whether oral, written, practical, ethical or aesthetic) was so important to all these thinkers and resultantly their struggles became a struggle over the symbolic orders as also over subject positions. These currents of intellectual and social opposition to discourses of colonialism and then modernization have subsequently taken various forms and have continued to redefine the intellectual and practical landscape of social resistance and at times social reconstruction in the South. In many ways, these intellectual and social movements talk not simply to their own people, but to the West as well by pointing out that what seemed obvious to the latter was only a particular construction of the ‘rest’ by the West. They argued that the lived experience of the South could not be reduced to the conceptual frame (explanatory or interpretative) generated in and by the West. The problem is also of reducing (cultural, economic, and political) difference to frames of discrimination; it is one of organizing worlds that are different in terms of step-ladder hierarchies, where one is not different from the other, but where one is either superior or inferior to the other (in this case it is all about reducing the difference that world of the third institutes into the hierarchy of first and third worlds). The problem is, therefore, about being sensitive to a fundamental dissonance that has appeared as a result of the encounter of the ‘rest’ with the West. In this context, the deployment of world of the third (as different and

xx

PREFACE

as outside) against the given of third world (as the lacking inside of the developed First World) is crucial. Our endeavour takes us to a provisional conclusion: the foreclosure of world of the third is produced through a foregrounding of third world. The hegemonic (here, global capitalism) is then a product of foreclosure (here, world of the third) and foregrounding (here, third world). Critiquing western Marxism and various other strands of ‘post’ thoughts for having missed this crucial mode and node of modernist thinking that motored the conceptualization of and intervention in the so-called third world societies, we offer an interpretation of how this conceptualization of and intervention in the so-called third world societies is a process constitutive of global capitalism. Further, by defamiliarizing and denaturalizing the given of global capitalism and third worldism (as also development–globalization), we propose a language of resistance premised on the return of the foreclosed world of the third. Consequently, resistance to the hegemonic cannot but be founded on the return of the foreclosed, on the return not of the third world but of world of the third. A world of the third Marxian approach thus not only provides a distinctly different language/worldview for analysing the hegemonic, but in the same turn lays down the contours of a possible world of postcapitalist living beyond the hegemonic. Parts of the book have appeared in journals and edited volumes. We thank the referees/reviewers for their inputs. Number of ideas has been put to test in seminars and in refresher courses. Chapter excerpts have been taught in MSc, MPhil, and PhD Courses (titled Political Economy of Development, Economics of Marx, Indian Economics, Idea-Knowledge-Ethics, Politics-ResistanceTransformation, Deconstructing Normalcy, Philosophy of Development Practice, Listening-Communicating-Relating and Gender and Development) in the Department of Economics, Calcutta University, and at the Centre for Development Practice at Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi. In the process, the book has taken many unpredictable turns. We are indebted to the students of these courses for their interest in the project and the critical lens through which they have scrutinized our analysis of the contemporary economic. The book was written, rewritten and given final form during a Fellowship at the Hans Kilian and Lotte Köhler Center (KKC) for Cultural Psychology and Historical Anthropology, Department of Social Theory and Social Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany between 2022 and 2023; where a

PREFACE

xxi

Course titled ‘Hegemony: Between Marx and Freud’ was also taught; the Course has contributed significantly to the making of this book. We would like to thank Jürgen Straub, Leon Brenner, Dieter Haller, Christian Gudehus and Bent Ole Schiemann of KKC. The intellectual richness and kind hospitality at KKC made the book possible. Special thanks are due to Pradeep.Chakkarath, who is not just a supportive colleague, a caring host and a sharp interlocutor, but a true friend. The political space of Kolkata is a challenging one and we were privileged to have been provided with ample space (both in the written form and in the form of formal-informal discussions) by numerous organizations, both party and non-party, to share some of our thoughts with people who showed no mercy to our often uncomfortable questions regarding the received field of left activism, regarding what was already consensus among Marxists. However, this encounter was for us (and hopefully for them as well) stimulating and gainful since it forced us to face and address many disconcerting questions. It convinced us beyond doubt that Marxism, development and the idea of third world need to be rethought. Our immersion in postcapitalist praxis in indigenous spaces in India with Bhavya Chitranshi, Swarnima Kriti, Namrata Acharya, Neeraj Kapoor, Gautam Bisht, Arunopaul Seal, Sindhunil Chatterjee, and Ashutosh Kumar helped us appreciate the need to theoretically produce a Marxian language of world of the third and a world of the third language of Marxism. Three Courses taught to the Practical Philosophy Research Collective titled (i) Reading Lacan’s Seminar VIII , (ii) Reading Lacan’s Seminar XVII , (iii) Reading Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Between Capitalism and Schizophrenia and the fourth Course that is currently being taught titled (iv) Psychoanalysis in Practice: Between Philosophy and Neuroscience have also shaped the ideas that have been developed in this book. Numerous people have become close associates in the process of this rather long journey; some have become friends; some critics; and some have empathized with the project. The names below certainly do not exhaust the list of people who have heard, read, commented upon, confronted, praised, and critiqued portions of the book. Some have added important insights. It is an understatement to say we have benefited from this exchange. Without naming them, we thank them all. Serap Kayatekin, S. Charusheela Ceren Özselçuk, Maliha Safri, Antonio Callari, Joel Wainwright, Pranabkanti Basu, Yahya Madra, Seongjin Jeong,

xxii

PREFACE

and Satyaki Roy have reviewed our work with kindness. We can’t thank them enough. Ajit Chaudhury, who is our teacher, and who has been at the forefront of rethinking Marxism and the idea of third world in the Southern setting, who raised questions pertaining to Brown Orientalism and Need, and who has been in search of a Subaltern Lenin, has provided us with necessary encouragement and conceptual openings that turned out to be important for taking our project forward over the long term. No amount of gratitude could be enough for our family, mainly our parents and of course, Mahua Chakrabarti, who bore through our maddening and at times idiosyncratic schedule for such a long time with a sensitivity that made possible our journey. We are honoured to be members of the group on Advances in Marxian Theory which has been meeting every Sunday for the last two years for intense discussion on Marx’s writings and whose inputs have helped clarify and deepen our understanding of Marxism. We are intellectually indebted to the members of the group, Anirban Chattopadhyay, Byasdeb Dasgupta, Deepro Majumder, Sayonee Majumder, Kaustav Saha, Anandamoy Sinha, Prithwiraj Saha, Subham Kanjilal, Aryaman Roy, Bodhisattwa Sarkar, Nilanjan Ghosh, and Mekhla Bhowmick. We are particularly grateful to Kaustav Saha and Anandamoy Sinha for offering direct inputs on a few chapters of the book. To Sayonee Majumdar we owe a special gratitude for minutely going over the Chapters, offering sharp criticisms and suggestions. Needless to say, it helped us enormously. Finally, this book would not have seen the light without the help and support of Aryaman Roy who read and commented on the entire book. He also helped us collate, correct, and structure the contents of the book. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2021S1A3A2A02096299). Special mention though must be made of Stephen Cullenberg (Steve) who was Anjan’s Supervisor, then our common friend and collaborator in many nascent ideas, articles, and books we published. His untimely passing away on 28 February 2021 was an emotional, intellectual, and political blow to us. The cruel reality is that this is the first book we will not be able to gift to him. West Bengal, India West Bengal, India

Anjan Chakrabarti Anup Dhar

Contents

1

1

(Un)doing Marxism from the Outside

2

Class and Overdetermination

21

3

The Secret Abode of Need: From Hegemonic Need to Radical Need

59

4

Foreclosure, Delusional Veil, and the Lacanian Real

85

5

Global Capitalism as Hegemonic: World of the Third as Outside

125

Political Economy of Development: From Critique to Reconstruction

149

7

Global Capital and Its Circuits

171

8

World of the Third as Foreclosed: Third Worldism as Delusional Veil

207

9

World of the Third: Encounters with the Hegemonic

241

10

Expanded Communism: From World of the Third Subject-Positions

277

6

Author Index

311

Subject Index

315

xxiii

CHAPTER 1

(Un)doing Marxism from the Outside

Introduction In contemporary analysis of the relation of psychoanalysis to [Marxian] politics, the real has place; the psychical and the social are conceived as a real tight unit ruled by a principle of pleasure. I propose to show that it is the real that unites the psychic to the social. —Joan Copjec, Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists

The book’s focus is on the outside, as also on hegemony. The urgency of rethinking an outside to capitalism stems from the need for critical reflection on two sets of ideas incumbent upon the South: one set marked by (capitalist) globality and the other marked by a continuum of terms such as local, third world, underdeveloped, backward, and especially, precapital. Such a critical reflection takes the book to also a rethinking of the given script of historical materialist Marxism from the outside, reengaging with advanced Marxian reflections on questions of hegemony and psychoanalytic exegeses on questions of repression (Verdrängung ),

‘(Un)doing Marxism from the Outside’ is the title of the paper by Chakrabarti, Dhar and Cullenberg (2016). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_1

1

2

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

negation (Verneinung ), disavowal (Verleugnung ), foreclosure (Verwerfung ), and the missing signifier (Verworfen) in the subject’s affective economy (Lacan 2017: 132, 139).1 Interrogation of extant theorizations on hegemony and foreclosure leads to more abstract considerations on the Lacanian Symbolic and the ‘real’ and also to apparently more concrete reflections on global capitalism and its outside: the world of the third. Other than defamiliarizing the given script of capitalist development, this move, we feel, also has the potential to tease open new avenues to think of the question of the political and the subject. We have designated such an imagination of political praxis in terms of postcapitalist transformation (not transition as in historical materialist Marxism) and postcapitalist reconstruction of both the subject and the social. This book is about writing debt or debt-writing: debts that were incurred between 1978—the date of publication of Orientalism by Said (followed by “Colonial Hegemony: A Critique of Brown Orientalism” by Chaudhury in 1994)—and 1987—the date of publication of Knowledge and Class by Resnick and Wolff (followed by The End of Capitalism by Gibson-Graham in 1996); “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Spivak (in 1983) and “In Search of a Subaltern Lenin” by Chaudhury (in 1987) came in between. We are thus indebted to two largely parallel intellectual traditions—the post-orientalist (including the postcolonial and the decolonial) and the postcapitalist (including anti-capitalist critique), and it is also an attempt at bringing the largely parallel two into dialogue. First, the postcapitalist tradition. Building on a neo-Althusserian2 political philosophy, we are making the process of writing critical Economics [or critically writing/righting Economics] fundamental to the “task of winning proletarian hegemony” (Wainwright 2016: 271). Building on a deconstruction of the economy, a taking apart of the givenness of the economy—a givenness which existed only as a conceit of capitalist 1 Verwerfung “is not simply what is inaccessible to you, that is, what exists in the Other as repressed and as signifiers. That is Verdrangung, and it is the signifying chain.” … Verworfen is a “missing signifier or a missing letter in the chain of signifiers, one that is always missing in the typography. The space of the signifier, the space of the unconscious, is effectively a typographical space, which we must try to define as being constituted of long lines and little squares, and as corresponding to topological laws” (Lacan 2017: 132). 2 The idea of the “Althusserian” is intimately tied to a dialogue between Marx and Freud/Lacan; in fact, that dialogue forms the conceptual and methodological framework of the book (see Dhar and Chakrabarti 2015).

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

3

hegemony—the book addresses “the question of the subject and of the geography of the subject from the outside” (Callari 2016: 268). Second, the post-orientalist tradition. Building on postcolonialdecolonial and postdevelopment literature, which in turn designates the “various twists and turns of hegemony and governmentality—the two nodal concepts that have dominated most of postcolonial discourse in India” (Basu 2016: 260) and the Global South, we are making the process of writing the language of non-capitalist economic cultures fundamental to the task of extricating Marxism from third worldism. The tradition Basu marks as postcolonial is also the tradition of thinking from the outside, of thinking an outside, if not the outside. The Lacanian Real (Lacan 1997, 2006) emerges as a difficult shorthand of the outside in this book (see Chapters 4 and 5); the turn to the Lacanian Real also inaugurates in postcolonial economies an appreciation of the (constitutive) outside. In the absence of a theory of the outside in the discipline of Economics, as also in Marxism, postcolonial economies look not just transparent and non-resistant but emerge as easily assimilable clusters of lacking others. Postcolonial societies require such a theory of the outside so as not to remain altogether outside Theory. It is largely the theory of Verwerfung /foreclosure in Lacan that offers theories a way of not remaining foreclosed in Theory any longer (see Chapter 4). Where, in what form, and through what kinds of impasses does the question of the postcolonial and the outside come to dialogue in our understanding of the economy and of development? They come to dialogue over the question (among many other questions) of the “relationship between capital and its others (‘precapitalist’ and ‘noncapitalist’)” (Wainwright 2016: 272). This question of pre-capital and non-capital has haunted Marxism for a long time and in many ways: Marx analyzed capital’s relation with not-capital in the Grundrisse (1857), and the concluding section of the first volume of Capital (1867) links primitive accumulation with slavery and colonialism (and the destruction of precapitalist societies) Yet it was not until 1913 that Rosa Luxemburg, in The Accumulation of Capital , proposed that there is a determinant relationship between the expansion of capitalism [an expansion that has taken an urgent form in conditions of global capitalism], the destruction of precapitalist societies, and the realization of surplus value. (Wainwright 2016: 272)

4

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

In addition to the question of capital and pre-capital–non-capital, the vexed question of the relationship between global and local (see Hardt and Negri 2000; Gibson-Graham 2003), and between global capitalism and the third world (see Chapter 8) has served as an impasse in contemporary Marxism: … the historical evolution of a theoretical system, especially one like Marxism, is in terms of … impasses produced by some confrontation between the script of the particular system of thought as it exists at a moment in time and “other” developments: at some point, new characters seem to enter the scene, some characters seem to have vacated it, continuing characters seem to have new personalities, and so the script no longer seems to work. (Callari 2016: 263)

Which script no longer works? We have argued in this book that third worldism—that is, the tragic (self-)description of otherwise heterogeneous non-capitalist experiences that are in actuality deeply decentred and disaggregated—as pre-capitalist—that is, as homogeneous and as lower, lacking, or lagging steps of a ladder of economic maturation/development—is a script that no longer works for Marxists. Building on the redundancy of the script of capital–pre-capital and third worldism that has dominated historical materialist and developmental thinking, this book asks: how do we (re)conceptualize capital’s outside (to reconceptualize capital’s outside, we, however, need to reconceptualize capital and capitalism)? Post Hardt and Negri’s theorization in Empire, is there an outside anymore? Is pre-capital the outside? Or is non-capital the outside? Or is it neither? Does one, then, need to think a third, to think the new script? World of the third (and circuits of global capital)—as against the dualism of first worlds and third worlds, developed and underdeveloped worlds, global and local—is for us the new script. The emergence of the new script is thus tied to a reconceptualization of (global) capitalism as a hegemonic formation and world of the third as the constitutive outside. World of the third (WoT) and circuits of global capital provide in this book a new geography. The old cast of economic characters is thus displaced and re-anchored; what is inaugurated in the process is the WoT subject position as marking contingent outsidedness with respect to the circuits of global capital. This outsidedness is not an a priori outsidedness. It is also not marked by any kind of identitarian metaphysics. It is contingent upon evanescent subject positions that are

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

5

birthed in an overdetermined and contradiction-ridden milieu. One such subject position is the world of the third subject position. Such a subject position is the Grundrisse for postcapitalist becomings.

Rethinking Marxism Resnick and Wolff (1987) inaugurated rethinking on and around class, understood as processes of performance, appropriation, distribution, and receipt of surplus labour. Gibson-Graham (1996) opened space for the Other of capital (i.e., disaggregated non-capital) through critiques of capitalocentrism. The class-focused approach challenged the old script of national or third world economies and mode of production through the fragmentation of the economy into an originary multiplicity of class processes; consequently, both the first and the third world became heterogeneous entities (see Basu 2016: 257). In this book, they are found to be split further in terms of capitalist and non-capitalist (not pre-capitalist) class processes (more on class in Chapters 2, 6, 7, 8, and 10). We show how the capitalist class process, however, comes to hegemonize our appreciation of economic reality. Or in other words, the work of the hegemonic is engendering the belief that the 1/11th of the iceberg (i.e., the capitalist form) visible above water is the whole iceberg. The whole of economic reality thus looks to be just capitalist. The 10/11th of the iceberg below water (i.e., the multifaceted non-capitalist class processes) is relegated to the realm of pre-capital. Pre-capital works as a delusional veil over non-capital. Such a delusional veil is in turn engendered through the foreclosure of class (see Chapters 2 and 4). The decentred and disaggregated space of non-capital is found to be split further, not just between exploitative and non-exploitative forms, but also between those that are hooked to the circuits of global capital, and those that are not.3 The (lived) space and experience, especially subject position, marking contingent outsidedness with respect to the circuits of global capital, have been designated as world of the third in this book (see Chapters 7 and 8); the world of non-capital, however, requires further

3 See Chapter 7 for the way certain noncapitalist class processes are hooked to the circuits of global capital through the “local-global market” and for how certain others remain within what we have called “local” or “world of the third market” or nonmarket kinds of transaction.

6

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

disaggregation under conditions of global capitalism. Hence, this book can also be read as the archaeology of non-capital. But then, as Chapters 4 and 5 show, the work of hegemony involves a perspectival shift, and the insertion of an angularity to this picture of capital and non-capital, especially if the privileging of “something”— something related to capital—is to be secured. This requires a redrawing of the map of otherwise decentred and disaggregated social spaces and class existences, including postcapitalist possibilities they may harbour; the otherwise disaggregated space of non-capital harbouring diverse noncapitalist class processes gets redrawn as the homogenous other of capital, and homogeneous non-capital is designated as pre-capital (or third world) in the South. The space of specific non-capitalist class forms, in particular, and the space of non-capital, in general, hence required rethinking in the South and, why not, even in the North as well. Hence, one needed a critique of continuing orientalism, especially in developmental discourse, both white and brown, in addition to a critique of capitalocentrism. In that sense, this book is lamellar in nature and spirit; three mutually constitutive lamellae remain in a kind of difficult communication: (1) the homogenous third world (as lacking other of capital or as the victim subject of structural poverty in the Global South) and heterogeneous world of the third; (2) homogenous pre-capital/non-capital and the disaggregated “what are not capitalist processes and experiences”; and (3) the inside and outside of the circuits of global capital. Of the above, (1) and (2) are perspectival; it is a matter of how we see or perceive. The axis of (3), however, is spatial. Of the above, (1) and (2) are descriptions of the same space. The axis of (3), however, is about two spaces: one marking contingent outsidedness to the circuits of global capital, and the other hooked to those circuits. Chapters 6, 7, and 8, as also 10, show which subject positions are marking outsidedness and which are hooked to the circuits of global capital—subject position and not subject, because the same subject may occupy a position within the circuits of global capital at one moment and be outside the circuits of global capital at the next moment. This book is also being written on how the otherwise disaggregated space of non-capital could create conditions for the rethinking of the question of the postcapitalist subject in Marxism, thinking it perhaps a little differently from the way it has been hitherto thought in terms of (1) collective identity (i.e., the working class, peasant communities) and (2)

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

7

the individual in the noun form (i.e., the worker, the peasant, the subaltern). We argue—in the tradition inaugurated by Gibson-Graham (1996, 2006) and taken forward by Madra and Özselçuk (2010)—that the disaggregated perspective of non-capital in general, and world of the third in particular, could take us to the doorstep of the question of postcapitalist subject formation, which is one of the most fundamental impasses in Marxism (Callari 2016: 264). Basu’s questions also become relevant in this context: “What about the question of leadership once the concept of class as physical existent (noun) position is abandoned in favour of class as a qualifier of a particular process? How does the foreclosed return? How do you turn outward from within? Is that possible?” (Basu 2016: 257). We remain sensitive to the Lacanian leash, to Lacan’s (in)famous ethico-political binder he placed upon us all in his Ethics of Psychoanalysis: “Imagine There is No Poland”. What would the Poles (who would now no more be Poles) do if there were no Poland? What would the Poles do, how would they form a collective if they were stripped of the transcendental refuge: Poland? Or perhaps to put the Lacanian leash in our context: Imagine there is no Working Class (Working Class with a capital W and a capital C). How would we think class politics once we are stripped of the transcendental refuge: Working Class (more on this in Chapter 10 in the section titled ‘The Counterhegemonic Subject)?

Between Marx and Freud This book sub-titled Between Marx and Freud has drawn on the Althusser-Lacan dialogue to engage with these questions incumbent upon contemporary Marxism (not necessarily answer them) through an examination of the relation between a philosophy of structure and a philosophy of the subject. The philosophy of structure is, in turn, marked by the philosophy of the inside in Althusser and the philosophy of the outside in Lacan. Althusser’s philosophy of the inside—marked by unconscious interpellation to both repressive and ideological apparatuses, especially hegemonic ideological apparatuses—thus comes to speak with Lacan’s philosophy of the outside, marked by foreclosure and the Lacanian Real (Dhar and Chakrabarti 2015). Questions like ‘can the world of the third as outside speak?’, or ‘can the world of the third be ground for counterhegemonic (ideological) production?’ has remained a running footnote to this dialogue between Marx (and Althusser) and Freud (and Lacan).

8

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Chapter 10 is a reflection on these questions. This chapter, however, argues that the different geography of world of the third is not the immediate cause or natural author of counterhegemony; it is only the ground: ground for a philosophy of outsidedness, a possible outsidedness to (global) capital that in turn creates possible conditions for counter-hegemonic subject production. The writing of this book is driven by a bifocal impulse, partly obstinate. On the one hand, it is about a search for “Swaraj in Ideas”. It is about working through two kinds of impulses: one kind marked by a “rootless [Western] universalism” and the other by a “clinging [Indian] particularism” (see Bhattacharya 1954: 107). The first impulse, rootless Western universalism is marked by contemporary attempts to globalize developmentalism, which in the process also pathologizes the Global South; at work here is a developmentalist discourse that sees the South (or the third world) as the lacking/lagging other of an always already developed West/North. The second impulse, clinging Indian particularism, is an attempt to culturalize development and to celebrate local processes that mark the provincial particularity of the South. The danger here is of “national conceit and the unthinking glorification of everything in our culture and depreciation of everything in other cultures” (Bhattacharya 1954: 107). Swaraj in Ideas thus meant an (im)possible liberation from both rootless universalism (championed by growth and poverty alleviation models) and clinging particularism/localism (championed largely, though risking reductionism, by some strands of the postdevelopmentalist and postcolonial school) in contexts of global capitalism and inclusive development. On the other hand, this book is about a third: a third that is neither first world nor third world, but one that always walks beside first and third worlds; one that always walks alongside the two; one that is both present and absent—present in terms of forms of life but absent in discourse: the discourse of global capitalism and inclusive developmentalism in the Southern hemisphere, a discourse which is marked by both capitalocentrism and orientalism. It is about a third kind of world: a world beyond what are conventionally known as first worlds and third worlds. It is about a third perspective: a perspective beyond capitalocentrism and orientalism. It is about a third kind of experience: an experience that is neither capitalist nor pre-capitalist, but disaggregated non-capitalist (it could also be the ground for postcapitalist revolutionary subject formation and praxis). It is about a third location: a location that is not

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

9

imbricated within the logic of local–global markets, and even if imbricated in an abstract or notional sense, it is a location that is not within the actual circuits of global capital. It is hence about that which is outside, marking outsidedness to the circuits of global capital in terms of capital’s language-logic-experience-ethos. The process of working through the question of the outside (i.e., foreclosure and the Lacanian Real as concepts) led to the realization that, at one level, there are no two spaces. There is just one space. It is a matter of how one looks at it. Looked at from a capitalocentric-orientalist perspective, the world looks third worldish, lacking, underdeveloped, precapitalist, and hence in need of either rescue, uplifting, benevolence, or annihilation—that is, in need either of a certain presencing as victim or absencing as the object of primitive/original accumulation, where original accumulation is historically inevitable.4 Looked at from a postcapitalocentric post-orientalist perspective, the same world looks to be the dance of the lived world of the third, a disaggregated non-capitalist (at times postcapitalist) third, beyond the familiar dyad of capital and pre-capital. Third world is a (underdeveloped) space on a global map. World of the third is an existent in the human geography; it is a contingent experience of being outside; it is also a form of life with perhaps its own worldview or its own lokavidya/know-how (Basole 2015). We shall see in Chapter 8 how the world of the third comes to be conceptually located in a spatial sense, once one engenders a class-focused decentring (and a hegemonic recentring, albeit contingent) through (i) crypted nodal points/anchors and (ii) delusional veils, of what looks to be the all-encompassing Leviathan of global capitalism. It looks like there is an incitement to discourse around and on the question of the third world; one thus has knowledge of the third world. One, however, does not have the truth of the outside; the truth of the world of the third eludes us; the

4 “The ‘Third World’ began as a loose political alliance (‘non-alignment’) between nation-states in the context of US-Soviet rivalry after World War Two. At least one tendency had evolved by the 1960s into a revolutionary ideology committed to movements of national liberation on three continents. At the same time the ‘Third World’ rapidly came to be more than a description of governmental coalitions and/or allied revolutionary movements in the context of the Cold War. The apparent gulf between the industrialized nation-states (where ‘development’ was understood not to be a problem any longer) and the rest of the world in the 1950s suggested that a distinguishing characteristic of ‘Third World’ countries was a shared ‘underdevelopment’” (Berger 1994: 269).

10

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

third world as lacking underside works as a delusional veil on the truth of the world of the third as outside. In the framework of capital/precapital, there is only one history, or perhaps no history, because history is always already scripted to the teleology of capitalist development. When one inaugurates thinking around a disaggregated understanding of noncapital, on the non qua non of capital, then the question of ethics and politics—and by default, of the subject—is inaugurated. “Both the first and the third world become heterogeneous entities. If history loses its teleology, then no transition is inevitable. There is no objective or ‘scientific’ meaning of progress, and so the need for ethics, of value judgments, of deciding what path to espouse” (Basu 2016: 257). One can then inaugurate thinking around anti- or postcapitalist politics (we would like to distinguish sharply between anti- and post-): the first gestures towards (class and need) struggle and the second towards community reconstruction (à la Gibson-Graham 2006); the first looks primarily at subject and power; the second looks at the troubled interstices of subject, power, and desire in the creation of a contingent, emergent being-in-commons. The inauguration of the question of the subject brings psychoanalytic depth to the dialogue between the first and the second.

The Moebius of Inside-Outside This book is about a rewriting of the logic of inclusion/exclusion and inside/outside as foregrounding-foreclosure: that is, as the foreclosure of world of the third through a foregrounding of third world. It is in this context that the idea of the “constitutive inside” and the “constitutive outside” of global capitalist hegemony emerges, where the Lacanian Real understood as foreclosed (and not just as inassimilable) is the constitutive outside of the hegemonic (in Chapter 4). A glimpse of this method is found in Marx: ‘there is also … a case of foregrounding and foreclosure by the hegemon: capital foregrounds and absorbs labour-power as the other within its logic (the logic of exchange/commodities), therefore enabling an apparatus of containment and a regulation of labour … The meek labourer, “timid and holding back, like the one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but—a hiding”, following the “one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business” (Marx 1990: 280) is the other of capital, and is capable of being just as “suffering” or “evil” or “utopian” as the third-world other’ (Callari 2016: 269).

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

11

We have designated this foregrounded other as the small “other”, as the appropriate[d] other, i.e., as the meek labourer; we have designated the foreclosed other as the big Other, as the inappropriate[d] Other, i.e., as the revolutionary labourer. The Global South also finds itself in a Moebius of the foregrounded other (i.e., the third world as victim/evil/utopian) and the foreclosed Other (i.e., the world of the third). Further, just like the meek labourer and the revolutionary labourer could be one and the same person but different in terms of their respective subject positions, different in terms of their subjective geography or cartography—third world and world of the third could be the same space but different in terms of how we look at it, as also different in terms of the subject position: one (i.e., the third-world subject) is the meek insider of global capitalist hegemony; the other (i.e., the world-of-the-third subject) is the potential revolutionary outside(r). With respect to the related question of capital’s inclusiveness and/or exclusiveness, Wainwright (2016: 272) is correct in pointing out that “there is a determinant relationship between the expansion of capitalism, the destruction of pre-capitalist societies, and the realization of surplus value—that is, to the essence of capital’s reproduction”. There is. But it is not the destruction of pre-capital; capital need not destroy pre-capital; capital would love to include pre-capital as its lacking other; it is postcapitalist praxis and postcapitalist imagination that troubles capital. It is postcapitalist futurities that make capital anxious. Pre-capital is capital’s dead remainder; disaggregated non-capital is a living reminder of difference and Otherness. Capital’s inclusiveness or exclusiveness hence requires a deeper and a more complex theorization. Perhaps we need to move beyond the question of capital’s inclusiveness and capital’s exclusiveness; capital is neither inclusive nor exclusive; capital foregrounds certain subject positions (e.g., the meek labourer, pre-capital, or the third world as lacking other) and forecloses others (e.g., the revolutionary labourer, non-capital, or the world of the third as marking outsidedness to global capital). The question of inclusion/exclusion (usually reduced to the question of who, i.e., who is included/excluded) also cannot be addressed without relating it to the theorization of inclusion/exclusion— that is, without asking what (and why/how) is inclusion/exclusion (see Dhar 2021)? Devoid of the what (and why/how) question, and despite claims of being radical or non-mainstream, discussions on inclusion/exclusion will remain merely empirical or incidental (in the first or last instance), open to being relocated into the domain of World Bank

12

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

discourse, or what we have designated as hegemonic need in Chapter 3 (to be accommodated and recast in the teleology of capitalist development).

Capital, Capitalism and Hegemony: Between Suture and Delusional Veil In the process of engaging with the question of the outside (or noncapital), this book has engaged once again with the question of what is capitalism (as also, what is global capitalism), primarily because the inside and the outside are in a constitutive relation: one needs an understanding of the inside (à la Althusser) to understand the outside (à la Lacan). One has to ask: is capitalism a homogeneous economic reality and a stage in economic history? Or is capitalism decentred and disaggregated in terms of class processes? Is capitalism then a complex ensemble of capitalist and non-capitalist class processes, where capitalist class processes form only a part and not the whole of what has come to be known as capitalism? What then is capitalism? Is it a hegemonic formation? How do we understand the hegemonic? As (i) contingent suturing of the open-ended reality as Laclau and Mouffe (1985) suggest, through what Lacan calls the point de capiton, or (ii) as a delusional veil over something secret, something cocooned yet crypted (see Chapter 4)? As Lacan (1997: 45) avers, Many passages in Freud’s work show that he felt the need for a complete articulation of the symbolic order, for this is what is at stake for him in neurosis, to which he opposes psychosis, where at some time there has been a hole, a rupture, a rent, a gap, with respect to external reality. In neurosis, inasmuch as reality is not fully rearticulated symbolically into the external world, it is in a second phase that a partial flight from reality, an incapacity to confront this secretly preserved part of reality occurs in the subject. In psychosis, on the contrary, reality itself initially contains a hole that the world of phantasy will subsequently fill. (as cited in Chaudhury 2012: xv–xxvi)

This book argues, however, that the question of hegemony, especially capitalist hegemony, is to be predicated both in the image of the Lacanian model of neurosis and also in the image of the Lacanian model of psychosis. The hegemonic’s operations find form through contingent suturing of an open-ended economic reality; Lacanian point de capiton or nodal points impute anchorage to such an open-ended economic reality.

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

13

The hegemonized, on the other hand, is unconsciously interpellated to a delusional veil . This raises the question: is capitalism a concrete reality? Or is capitalism, as Marx (1969: 77–78) suggests, “a delusional appearance of things?” Is it a kind of delusional veil over the performance and appropriation of surplus labour and its constitutive relations and effects? Capitalism, in this book, has not been taken as given, or ubiquitous, or historically inevitable, nor is it seen as an all-encompassing Leviathan. We have theorized reality as disaggregated and decentred yet hegemonic, where hegemony is not just the subaltern’s simple accrual/consent to, or collaboration with, the elite’s persuasive principles (this being the classical understanding of hegemony) but is rather an unconscious interpellation into a “delusional cosmology” called capitalism. Taking off from Marx, conventionally misread as an arch materialist, we have seen capitalism (not the capitalist class process) more as a delusional appearance of things wherein the delusional cosmology is what covers up the tear (in the symbolic order) created due to foreclosure. We have thus moved away from a realist rendition of capitalism. This is, however, not to suggest that the delusional cosmology is antithetical to what could be called materiality. Rather, such delusions are a constitutive component of a deeper understanding of the materiality of the subject. We have also argued for an expanded understanding of realism by invoking foreclosure and the Lacanian Real. The foreclosed is neither present (in a simple sense, in the Lacanian Symbolic) nor absent (in a simple sense, in the subject world). It is both absence and presence: presence in the sense that it has real subject effects and absence in the sense that the hegemonic structure resists it. What one had conceived of as reality is a world of fantasy (as in Lacan), or a delusive appearance of things (as in Marx). It is in fact a delusional cover over that which has been foreclosed. What has been foreclosed, on the other hand, is real. What has been foreclosed—class and, by default, world of the third—is a necessary but disavowed fragment of reality and could be the ground for subject formation. But such subject formation grounded in the Lacanian Real or the foreclosed is not obvious or automatic, because the crux of the hegemonic is premised on the interminable keeping at bay, “putting to burial”, or keeping in a crypt the foreclosed (Abraham and Torok 1986). Overdetermination takes us beyond simple rationalism-empiricism (Resnick and Wolff 1987, Chapter 1). This work is an attempt to move beyond the simple distinction of real/unreal. Marx’s methodology in Capital is premised on the dual play of, on the one hand, defetishizing

14

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

the fetish (the location of the critique) and, on the other, of working through the dialectic of real and unreal, commodity as material and sensuous, concrete labour and abstract labour, and so on. Marx thus moves beyond the watertight compartmentalization of object-subject, thing-idea, and concrete-abstract, or the strict bifurcation of idealismmaterialism. To miss the methodology of Marx is to reduce the proposed delusional nature of reality, and the real nature of the delusional, into simple matter/idea and true/false-consciousness frameworks. It is also to miss the process by which the capitalist class process as particular takes the form of a hegemonic universal: capitalism. This book hence asks: can capitalism then be rethought as the Moebius strip of what Lacan calls the neurotic phenomenon (i.e., as buttoning a multiplicity, even if contingently) and the psychotic phenomenon (i.e., as productive of a delusional appearance of things), where “foreclosure” (à la Lacan) and the production of the delusional appearance of things (à la Marx) are the grounds that resist the return of the real?

World of the Third: Beyond Global and Local We have already referred to class-focused reality as decentred and disaggregated yet hegemonic. But instead of asserting the presence of the hegemonic, the burden on this book is to demonstrate how the hegemonic is engendered out of the decentred and disaggregated class-focused reality. It is only through an alternative conceptualization of the economy (rather than taking it as given, in a homogenous and universal sense) that we can show how a particular—the capitalist class process—takes the appearance (albeit delusional, as Marx suggests) of the universal—capitalism. The work of Resnick and Wolff (1987) and Gibson-Graham (1996, 2006) has decentred (from) the North by way of first disaggregating the economy and then arguing that the centrality of the capitalist class process (which in turn remaps the economy into a simple dualism: capitalist and non-capitalist) constitutes a capitalocentric remapping of the economy. But this, in and by itself, does not lead to the hegemonic reconstruction of the otherwise decentred and disaggregated economy in the South. We need to decentre (from) the South as well; we need to first engage with extant renditions of the pre-capitalist (i.e., orientalist) positioning of large parts of the South and examine two conduits of sanctioned violence: (1) the historical inevitability thesis and (2) the necessity of original accumulation. The decentred rendition of the Southern economy (see

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

15

Chapters 7–9) and its relocation to the simple dualism of capital/precapital through capitalocentric-orientalism (see Chapter 6) takes us to the doorstep of the world of the third-third world (foreclosed-foregrounded) couplet and to global capitalism as hegemonic. This outside is world of the third, a complex and contradictory ensemble of exploitative and non-exploitative class processes. No kind of value—ethical or nonethical, competitive or shared, violent or tolerant, rich or poor—can be imputed to world of the third a priori. World of the third can be located in the rural and the urban; it can span across sectors, regions, and nations. World of the third is not located in just the South; even the North is studded with large pockets of world of the third, including the metropolis. It is conceptually akin to what Foucault (2006) called the “hollowed-out void” that, through the mutually constitutive effects of class processes and other socio-economic processes, takes diverse forms in concrete scenarios. Hardt and Negri’s (2000) Empire lacked this conceptualization of an outside to (global) capital; this book in that sense is a response to Empire. Our rendition takes us beyond the familiar and hitherto dominant cartography of national economies, of third-world economies. It also takes us beyond the now fashionable global-local and even beyond what we have provisionally called the North–South (to ultimately tease out what we called earlier the world of the third perspective). We thus end up with indeed a different geography that actually and as a possibility, displaces the extant cast of Marxian characters. But this spatial outside to the circuits of global capital does not appear as a space of difference; instead, depending on how one is (inter)subjectivized, it emerges paradoxically as a devalued, decrepit other in postcolonial conditions. This involves a further transmutation of the capitalocentric rendition of the economy through orientalism. If capitalocentrism turns the diverse “what are not capitalist” into a homogenous other qua non-capitalist, then orientalism captures the further turning of non-capital into the devalued, pathological, decrepit other: pre-capital. World of the third as outside thus slides down the stepladder of progress and emerges as a lacking pre-capitalist underside qua third world. This slide in turn legitimizes the project of management and social engineering of world of the third, all in the name of the development of the third world; it also legitimizes violence over world of the third via original accumulation. From the perspective of capital, original accumulation looks

16

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

justified, even needed. From the perspective of world of the third, original accumulation looks to be unjust (Chapter 9). What is hegemony then? Is hegemony a provisional or contingent clumping (à la Laclau and Mouffe) of the multiple non-capitalist class processes around the capitalist class process? Or is it a delusional veil of the subject positions pertaining to the capitalist class processes over the rest, the varied non-capitalist class processes? Perhaps a new balance will have to be struck between understanding hegemony through the allegory of clumping and through that of the veil. Consequently, global capitalist hegemony works through three nodal signifiers in the South—(i) private capitalist surplus value appropriation, (ii) local–global market, and (iii) hegemonic need—which is anchored by and in turn, provides anchorage to a host of floating signifiers (such as profit, competition, efficiency, individualism, capital accumulation, market, private property, social capital, community, informality, the poor, the indigenous, the third world woman, and the third world child). The hegemonized, however, is under the spell of the delusional veil of third worldism.

The Hegemonized In this context, we also consider the question of the lived experience of world of the third important, because in much of the Global South, we “either accept or repeat the judgments passed on us by Western culture, or we impotently resent them but have hardly any estimates of our own, wrung from an inward perception of the realities of our position”. This becomes either a kind of “unthinking conservatism” or “an imaginary progressiveness merely imitative of the West” (Bhattacharya 1954: 104). This is why we think that Marxian theory is required to be premised on a bidirectional or dual critique of both the West’s hegemonic principles and principles (emanating from either the West or the East) that hegemonize the Orient. The attention to dual critique took us to the doorstep of the concept of world of the third. Can the theory of world of the third inaugurate in turn a critique of capitalocentric-orientalist theory as also a theory of critique from the Global South, including of conditions within world of the third? How to arrive at (pro)positions when our theories are being adapted to our lived experiences and not our lived experiences to a Theory?

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

17

The auto/bio-graph (Derrida 1987: 336) of world of the third that we have found-founded need no longer be exclusively class focused. Third worldism is essentially structured around the needs discourse pertaining to distribution of social surplus whose operations produce a displacement of WoT into a platform that is under the hegemonic control and management of institutions including the World Bank and the organs of the state. Such a set of needs, call them ‘hegemonic need’ (see Chapter 3), is conceptualized as emanating from the basic human rights paradigm, which then becomes the nodal signifier for a certain third worldism. This is secured and reiterated through, among others, the production of an array of needs that enables the hegemonic to encounter, confront, displace, control, and subdue the platform of world of the third into a different domain—that of third world. In this way, third worldism is essentially produced through the repudiation of a chain of fundamental signifiers that govern the social life of world of the third, a repudiation that is secured through the production of another chain of signifiers— substitute signifiers—that anchor the need-related conceptualization of the hegemonic.

References Abraham, N., and M. Torok. 1986. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy, trans. N. Rand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Badiou, A. 1992. Conditions. Paris: Seuil. ———. 1999. Manifesto for Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2009. Theory of the Subject, trans. B. Bosteels. London: Continuum. Basole, A., ed. 2015. Lokavidya Perspectives: A Philosophy of Political Imagination for the Knowledge Age. Delhi: Aakar Books. Basu, P.K. 2016. “Inclusive Growth”: A Lacanian Reading. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 28 (2): 255–262. Berger, M. 1994. The End of the “third world”? Third World Quarterly 15 (2): 257–275. Bhattacharya, K.C. 1954. Swaraj in Ideas. Visvabharati Quarterly 20: 103–114. Bosteels, B. 2009. Translator’s Introduction. In Theory of the Subject, ed. A. Badiou. London: Continuum. Callari, A. 2016. Marxism from the Outside: A Take on World of the Third and Global Capitalism. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 28 (2): 263–270.

18

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2009. Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: From Third World to World of the Third. New York: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A., A. Dhar, and S. Cullenberg. 2006. (Un)doing Marxism from the Outside. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 28 (2): 276–294. Chaudhury, A. 1994. On Colonial Hegemony: Toward a Critique of Brown Orientalism. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 7 (4): 44–58. ———. 1995. In Search of a Subaltern Lenin. In Subaltern Studies, No. 5: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed. R. Guha. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2012. Introduction: Hegemony in Contemporary Context. In World of the Third and Global Capitalism, ed. A. Chakrabarti, A. Dhar, and S. Cullenberg. New Delhi: Worldview Publications. Copjec, J. 2015. Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists. Verso Books. Derrida, J. 1987. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. A. Bass. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Dhar, A. 2021. What If, One Is Always Already Included: Ambedkar and the Politics of Radical Exit. In State of Democracy in India: Essays on Life and Politics in Contemporary Times, ed. M. Ray. New Delhi: Primus Books. Dhar, A., and A. Chakrabarti. 2015. The Althusser-Lacan Correspondence as Ground for Psycho-social Studies. Psychotherapy and Politics International 12 (3): 220–233. Dolar, M. 1998. Cogito as the Subject of the Unconscious. In Cogito and the Unconscious, ed. S. Žižek. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Foucault, M. 2006. History of Madness, trans. J. Murphy and J. Khalfa ed. J. Khalfa. New York: Routledge. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 1996. The End of Capitalism (as we knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2003. An Ethics of the Local. Rethinking Marxism 15 (1). ———. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hallward, P. 2003. Badiou: A Subject to Truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ——— (Ed.). 2004. Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy. London: Continuum. Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lacan, J. 1966–1967. Seminar xiv: The Logic of Phantasy, trans. C. Gallagher. Unpublished Manuscript. ———. 1997. The Psychoses (1955–1956). Vol. 3, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, trans. R. Grigg, ed. J.A. Miller. New York: W. W. Norton.

1

(UN)DOING MARXISM FROM THE OUTSIDE

19

———. 1998. On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge … Encore (1972–1973). Vol. 20, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, trans. B. Fink, ed. J.A. Miller. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 2006. Écrits, trans. B. Fink. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 2013 [1959–1960]. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959–1960: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII , trans. D. Porter, ed. J.A. Miller. New York: Routledge. ———. 2017. Formations of the Unconscious: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book V, trans. R. Grigg, ed. J.-A. Miller. London: Polity. Laclau, E., and C. Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, trans. W. Moore and P. Cammack. London: Verso. Marx, K. 1969. Value, Price and Profit. New York: International Company. ———. 1990. Capital, Vol 1. London: Penguin Books. Madra, Y.M., and C. Özselçuk. 2010. Jouissance and Antagonism in the Forms of the Commune: A Critique of Biopolitical Subjectivity. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 22 (3): 481–497. Resnick, S.A., and R.D. Wolff. 1987. Knowledge and Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Spivak, G.C. 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak? In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Wainwright, J. 2016. Is the World of the Third Counterhegemonic? Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 28 (2): 271–275.

CHAPTER 2

Class and Overdetermination

Overdetermination, Contradiction and Entry Point Following Resnick and Wolff (1987, 2006), the basic analytical unit of Marxian theory is process, i.e., an entity in a state of ceaseless change (also see Madra 2017). Overdetermination captures a specific kind of relation among processes. It suggests that each process, including class process, constitutes and is constituted by other processes; they mutually constitute, i.e., bring one another into existence. No process can exist independent of the rest and hence be outside of (mutual) constitution. There is a related way to state overdetermination. Each process is constituted by the combined effects of all other processes, some even unknown; these constituting processes are the conditions of existence of the process that they constitute. What is true for one process is true for all the other processes. Properties of mutual constitution and mutual conditions of existence require that a process always occurs together with and in relation to a group of other processes. Relationships (say, a relationship of friendship), practices (say, organizing a trade union in a factory), activities (say, cooking food at home), or events (say, a social movement) are to be seen as the combined effects of mutually constituting processes. No social relationship, practice, activity, or event can thus be reduced to one

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_2

21

22

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

or a few processes; all are the result of a constellation of processes (known and unknown) imparting their effects in combination with one another. The concept of contradiction is embodied in overdetermination.1 This is not the conventional, simple, and dualist concept of (simple) contradiction, say, between positive and negative. Here, contradiction signifies the differences in terms of the institution of distinct and opposing effects of the various processes that, as they operate in combination with one another, bring a particular process into existence, making possible its particular and contingent state of being. Consequently, the combination of these contradictory effects entails that the process they constitute gets pulled and pushed in various ways and directions, putting it in a constant state of change. The change in the constituted process will, in turn, induce change in other processes that it constitutes. Every process being a bundle of contradictions produces a condition of ceaseless change, with all processes being in a state of flux that cannot be pre-predicated or forecasted. Change and becoming as against fixity and identity is therefore what overdetermination emphasizes, which is also why it stands opposed to positivism, rationalism, and empiricism (Cullenberg 1996; Chakrabarti and Cullenberg 2003; Madra 2017). Overdetermination and contradiction have serious consequences for our understanding of whole and part. Since any and every process, say A, is the end result of an ensemble of the combined effects of contradictory processes (of B, C, D, E, and so on), A is a whole—a ‘contingent whole’. It is contingent since changes in its ever-moving constituting processes change the whole. Further, and at the same time, in so far as A’s distinct effect contributes to bringing into existence other (contingent) wholes, say B, C, D, and so on, A is also a part—it is a constituent part of another whole. Each process by virtue of being both the cause and effect is simultaneously a whole and a part; change in any is then evidently a change in both whole and part. Marxists sundered between Cartesian and Hegelian philosophy have had much ado about the relationship between whole and part, which is subservient to, subsumed within or emanate from which. This methodological schism created tension and even long drawn struggle among Marxists, as is revealed in case of the unending debate between humanism (individuals as parts determining the structure/whole) and structuralism 1 See Wolff (1996) for a dialogue and possible reconciliation between Hegel and Althusser on the issue of contradiction.

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

23

(structure/whole determining the individuals/parts). Either way, both these approaches share something in common. They end up producing a centred totality, a totality centred on either the whole (Hegelian) or the part (Cartesian). In contrast, the anti-reductionism of overdetermination renders the whole or totality decentred (Cullenberg 1996). We define site as a space where groups of overdetermined and contradictory processes forming a set of relationships, activities, and practices occur, and whose combined effects constitute the site and the embodied subjects in it (Cullenberg 1994). An individual, enterprise, household, economy, nation, etc., are all examples of a site. Because each site is uniquely constituted by a confluence of combined effects of contradictory processes, each site will be changing in a unique, uneven, and unpredictable manner. There is no one central site to which the other sites can be reduced to or mirrored. It also follows from the above that it is impossible to produce a knowledge of this overdetermined reality from the web of infinite number of interconnected processes that are forever in transit and are moving in a non-teleological manner. Where does one begin and end? One way to produce a partial knowledge of reality is by choosing a process or a combination of processes as an entry point (Resnick and Wolff 1987, 2006). Entry point is thus needed to produce a theory. Different entry points create different theories, each capturing the border and order of what they seek to focus on. Given its understanding of reality as an overdetermined web of contradictory processes, a Marxian theory distinguishes itself from other theories through its unique entry point of class as process of surplus labour. If we classify, for convenience, the overdetermined reality into economic, cultural, political, and natural processes, albeit existing in their mutual constitution, then the entry point of class as process of surplus labour is an economic process. This focus on class, an economic process, is a discursive privilege (to make the entry possible in order to produce knowledge), but it does not imply any epistemological and ontological privilege; it does not confer upon the entry point an autonomy (relative or otherwise) from overdetermination (Resnick and Wolff 1987, Chapters I and II; Spivak 1994). Courtesy overdetermination, no class process occurs alone in any concrete scenario; it always occurs in a mutually constitutive relation containing non-class processes. In so far as it is class focused and not class centred, Marxian theory becomes the rigorous explication of how the class process of surplus labour constitutes and is constituted by

24

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

non-class processes. As the relation between class and non-class processes change so does the argument in and of Marxian theory and with it that of the Marxian standpoint.

Class, Economy, and Society The concept of class process arises in association with labour process which involves the use of labour-power (mental-physical-emotional capacity to labour) with the help of means of production (raw materials, tools and machines) to produce use value (goods and services, material or immaterial). In the labour process, the total labour time embodied in the production of use value (goods and services) can be divided into necessary labour time and surplus labour time; together, they define the working day. Labour exerted during necessary labour time, i.e., necessary labour, is equivalent to what is socially required to reproduce the performers of use value, and the labour exerted above necessary labour time is surplus labour. Those who directly perform surplus labour in a working day are referred to as direct producers. Surplus labour can take the form of either surplus produce or surplus value, depending upon whether the fruits of labour are in use value or in value, form respectively. Further, we classify class into fundamental class process (FCP), as comprising of the performance and appropriation of surplus labour (the realm of production), and subsumed class process (SCP), as encompassing the distribution and receipt of surplus labour (the realm of circulation). The rest of the processes—consisting of various economic, political, cultural, and natural—are classified as non-class processes. Those who personify the FCPs as performers and appropriators of surplus labour occupy fundamental class positions. Similarly, those who personify SCP as distributors and receivers of surplus labour occupy subsumed class positions. As occupiers of positions, subjects personify processes; relation between processes produces a social relationship between subjects and the scenario of procreation of their diverse class and non-class positions (to follow later).2

2 “As we proceed to develop our investigation, we shall find, in general, that the characters who appear on the economic stage are merely personifications of economic relations; it is as the bearers of these economic relations that they come into contact with each other” (Marx 1990: 179, 191). We extend this insight here.

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

25

To be more precise, following Marx (in Capital, Vol 1), it is the FCP that differentiates the economic forms of society in Marxist theory and becomes its entry point. What distinguishes the various economic formations of society – the distinction between for example a society based on slave labour, and a society based on wage-labour,is the form in which this surplus labour is in each case extorted from the immediate producer, the worker. (Marx 1990: 325)

The choice of FCP as entry point is not to infer that SCP and nonclass processes are any less important than FCP in either the ontological (understanding of the being-in-the-world) and epistemological (what and how of knowledge) sense, but rather to merely emphasize the importance of the concept of entry point. This choice of Marxian entry point has an additional implication as we shall explain later. Recall that relationships, activities, and practices are all combined effects of contradictory processes. No FCP can exist on its own. SCP and other non-class processes are FCP’s conditions of existence; their contradictory effects constitute FCP. Likewise, FCP constitute SCPs and non-class processes. As an extension of the problematization of class essentialism, we surmise that since the economic process of class and the relations of production it embodies constitute and get constituted by other non-economic processes, economic determinism too gets problematized. Those position holders who personify the FCPs, SCPs, and non-class processes come to be socially related through these processes, which they are subjected to (getting effected by) and which they are subject of (do effect); thus, individuals are social beings a la Marx. The varied set of relationships, practices, and activities that exist around different FCPs, SCPs, and non-class processes make society all the more decentred and disaggregated. The ‘economy’ can also be perceived as an originary multiplicity of coexisting and interdependent class enterprises. Class enterprise is an overdetermined and contradictory site of FCP (processes of performance and appropriation of surplus labour), SCP (distribution and receipt of surplus labour), as well as of numerous non-class processes (pertaining to the market exchange that takes place, the property relations, the rules of authority and power in the workplace, and so on). The adjective ‘capitalist’ is deployed before an enterprise if it is marked by a capitalist FCP;

26

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

feudal if marked by a feudal FCP; and so on. Notwithstanding its identification in terms of class, an enterprise cannot be reduced to one process, say FCP, or a combination of prioritized processes such as FCPs, SCPs, capital accumulation, and profit, which could be preconceived as the rational or most essential element; nor can it be reduced to any underlying law of existence or a telos that serves as deus ex machina to underpin the relations and their transition. Rather, as the site of diverse effects of contradictory processes, class enterprise is a decentred totality that is constitutionally unstable. These contradictory effects will change the class enterprises they constitute in unique, unpredictable, and uneven ways, even to the point that some may even become extinct. The ‘economy’ if perceived as a configuration of varied, coexisting, and interdependent class enterprises (which is the overdetermined constellation of FCPs, SCPs, and non-class processes) is likewise irreducible to the centrism or logic of capital.

Modes of Appropriation and Exploitation Unpacking the entry point concept of FCP at a basic level, we can identify three modes of appropriation of surplus labour: (i) exploitative, (ii) selfappropriative, and (iii) collective. Exploitation occurs when the surplus labour is appropriated not by its performers, but by non-performers; this scenario entails exclusion of direct producers from appropriating the fruits of their surplus labour, whether in use value or value form. Non-exploitation rules out such an exclusion; this can be of two types— self-appropriative, if the surplus labour performed by the individual is appropriated by the same individual, and collective, if the appropriation of surplus labour is done in a shared manner without any exclusion of direct performers from the process of appropriation. We shall describe in the following section how the three basic modes of appropriation can be further deployed to classify the FCP into a variety of its forms: capitalist, slave and feudal, communist, communitic, and independent.

Class Matrix and Class Set: A Detour on Method The next section introduces six FCPs through a class matrix and then, at the end of the chapter, the concept of class sets which will take twentyfour forms. These will play an important role in the book. One note of

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

27

caution: we are not suggesting that the class-focused economy can now be reduced to just six FCPs or twenty-four class sets. The six FCPs in the class matrix and the twenty-four class sets presented are just a limited representation of the economy, which would become more complex with the consideration of other processes pertaining to the distribution and receipt of surplus labour, income distribution, as also questions of property, power, race, gender, etc. The class-focused economy is much more intricate than what the matrix or class sets represent. Class matrix and class sets are just an expression of a slice of the whole economy deployed for analytical illustration. They are like a moment’s still photograph of an economy, while the whole economy is more like a conglomeration of moving and shifting images. The six FCPs and twenty-four class sets are to an economy what a photograph is to a film. Their analytical power and utility lie in illustrating the object that is being studied; the descriptions and conclusions the class-focused analysis engenders will only deepen by bringing into consideration additional processes.

Class Matrix and the Forms of FCP Following Chaudhury and Chakrabarti (2000), the preliminary classification of FCP can be sharply presented by identifying three broad types of positions with respect to performance and appropriation of surplus labour: (i) individual labour (symbolized by A), (ii) non-labour (B), and (iii) collective labour (C). In the production of a good or service, while B signifies non-performers, A and C refer to direct labour performed individually and collectively (via certain division of labour), respectively. The rows indicate surplus labour performed individually (A) and collectively (C) while the columns capture the appropriation of surplus labour by A, B, and C. The first and second letters of the alphabet stand for performance and appropriation of surplus labour, respectively. As indicated in the Table 2.1, whether the mode of appropriation is self-appropriative, exploitative, or non-exploitative will depend upon the manner in which the performers of surplus labour, either individually or collectively, are excluded or not excluded from the process of the appropriation of surplus labour. Considering all the class processes and their modes of appropriation, AA and CC designate independent and communist FCP, respectively; AC and CA represent two forms of communitic FCP, and the rest AB and CB map out into different kinds of exploitative class processes to be further classified as capitalist FCP, feudal FCP, and slave FCP.

(example: Uber - taxi operated individually by the driver/worker but surplus appropriated by the non-performing company capitalists) CB (performance by a collective of labourers but appropriation by non-performers); Exploitative (exclusion of labourers from appropriation) (example: Microsoft or KFC)

Non-exploitative (no exclusion of labourers from appropriation) (example: workers self-directed enterprise – Mondragon Cooperative Complex)

CC (performance and appropriation done by the same collective);

(example: community farming)

Exploitative (exclusion of the labourer from appropriation)

Self-appropriative/non-exploitative (no exclusion of the labourer from appropriation, but involving no sharing either) (example: individual directed farm)

CA (performance collectively (C) but appropriation by only one member of that collective (A)) Exploitative (exclusion of labourers from appropriation) (example: family farm)

Collective Labour (C) AC (individuals performing labour on their own (A), but appropriation done by all individuals collectively (C)); Non-exploitative (no exclusion of the labourer from appropriation)

Non-labour (B) AB (individual performance, but appropriation by non-labourer);

Source Chakrabarti et al. (2020: 509)

Performance of surplus labour

Individual Labour (A) AA (performance & appropriation by the same individual)

Fundamental class process and modes of appropriation

Appropriation of surplus labour

Table 2.1

28 A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

29

As explained earlier, class enterprise as the site of overdetermined class and non-class processes gets its name from the type of FCP (independent enterprise, capitalist enterprise, feudal enterprise, and so on). Given FCP’s vital importance as an entry point and for analytical purpose, it is apt to briefly summarize each of its forms; we shall then examine capitalist FCPs in detail as it comprises an important component of this book. Independent FCP (sometimes referred to as ‘ancient’) represents a selfappropriating scenario where the individual performing surplus labour is also the one appropriating it (Gabriel 1991). This is neither a case of exploitation as in slave, feudal, and capitalist FCP, nor that of collective appropriation under communist FCP. By default, it excludes sharing in both performance and appropriation. Much of what comes under ‘selfemployment’ would pertain to independent FCP (Chakrabarti et al. 2015, Chapter I). Slave FCP is defined as the appropriation of surplus of slaves by their non-performing masters in a setting where the slave is the ‘property’ of the master in perpetuity (Weiner 2003); here, the embodied slave herself is a commodity, not her labour-power. Slave class process can take place under commodity or non-commodity conditions, although the nature of its produced commodity is very different from that of the capitalist commodity by virtue of its distinct mode of exploitation and the absence of wage labour. Feudal FCP refers to another exploitative arrangement where the surplus labour performed by serfs is appropriated by the non-performing lords in a personalized relation of ties and attachment rooted in organic, religious, or familial settings. The serfs could also be tied to a higher authority or entity such as the Czar, personifying the Russian state (Resnick and Wolff 2002); feudal FCP in household could also transpire under a traditional family set-up in contemporary society, where the woman may be bound to the husband through non-economic ties and attachment, including by way of loyalty and obligation (Fraad et al. 2009). The serfs are neither the property of lords as in slavery nor do they sell their labour-power for a wage as in capitalist relations. Feudal production of use values could also take place in a commodity or non-commodity setting. While both AB and CB are exploitative class processes, further qualification is needed for differentiating the exploitative mode of capitalist process from the feudal and slave forms. To isolate and state the definition of capitalist class process, it is important to recognize the specificity

30

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

of its organization of exploitation in value form, which we will do in detail in the next section. At this point, it suffices to define capitalist FCP as the appropriation by non-performing capitalists of the surplus value created by direct producers through a unique combination of commodity values of inputs (labour-power and means of production) and outputs. The commodity form could be market driven or state-sponsored, and the capitalist appropriators could be private individuals or connected to the state. Communist FCP entails a non-exploitative arrangement where the collective appropriates the surplus labour that they perform; here, labourpower can be in wage-labour form or alternatively procured as part of other social arrangements. Resnick and Wolff (1988, 2002) have talked about two kinds of communist class process—type I, where “all adult individuals in society participate collectively in that class process as appropriators of surplus labour, but only some individuals (a small number) perform surplus labour” (1988: 21), and type II, where “only those particular individuals who perform surplus labour collectively appropriate it” (1988: 21). Cullenberg (1992) pointed to a middle ground and a third possibility, where rather than the entire society (type I), or the direct performers of surplus labour (type II), what makes a class process ‘communist’ is its feature of “shared appropriation” of direct performers with those whose labour provides non-class conditions of existence to the FCP within an enterprise. Whatever their variations, the minimum condition of a communist FCP is that the direct performers of surplus labour are not excluded from the process of appropriation. Marxian theory connects the character of commodity to FCP which in turn also helps to remove many misconceptions about communist class process (Resnick and Wolff 2002). Let us explain. One can have communist FCP with commodity value that embodies the component of surplus value, the value of labour-power and value of the means of production. The commodity then takes the name of communist commodity signifying the attachment of the commodity values to the collective mode of appropriation of surplus value. Moreover, if the communist appropriation of surplus value embodied in commodity value is mediated by private exchange, then this commodity is a market communist commodity. On the other hand, if the commodity value is not market determined, then the form of communist commodity undergoes a change. For example, if the commodity values are administered by the state, then the commodity

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

31

becomes a state communist commodity. One needs to extract the communist existence from the rather sterile state-market dichotomy that has hitherto determined and stifled the debate and fate of communism. Capitalism and communism’s respective association with private and state appropriation too needs to be revisited. Capitalist FCP often gets tied to ‘private’ appropriation disconnected from the state, and communist FCP tends to get bracketed with ‘state’ appropriation. Any such correspondence based on necessarily reducing the communist FCP to a rigid private-state dichotomy is mistaken. For instance, as long as the private direct producers are not excluded from the process of collective appropriation, that FCP qualifies as being communist. Likewise, as long as the collectives of direct producers are excluded by stateappointed appropriators, that FCP despite being a part of state enterprise is state capitalist. In case of state administered commodity values, we would have state capitalist FCP if the surplus value embodied in the state capitalist commodities is appropriated by state-appointed directors. State capitalist enterprises in the erstwhile Soviet Union functioned principally on the basis of state capitalist commodity. On the other hand, one could have state capitalist FCP with market capitalist commodity if the commodity values are mediated by the market, even as the state sponsors the appropriation of surplus value through its appointee—by excluding the direct performers from the process of appropriation. Many state capitalist enterprises all over the world have operated and continue to operate in connection with market capitalist commodity. The point remains that Marxist theory looks at commodity from a class-focused perspective and emphasizes upon producing meanings and nosology of commodities, depending upon its specific articulation with FCP. Communitic class process is a scenario where sharing holds in only one instance, either at the level of performance of surplus labour or its appropriation. Accordingly, communitic class process could be of two types—CA type and AC type. CA type communitic FCP signifies a situation where work is done collectively in the sense of being shared, but one member of the collective appropriates the total surplus labour performed, including his own. CA class set is exploitative since all except one performer are excluded from the process of appropriation. An example would be a family farm where the entire family (‘head’ of the family, spouse, children, relatives, etc.) takes part, through some division of labour, in producing a crop, but only one person, say, the “head of the family”, appropriates the fruits of surplus labour of all including that of

32

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

his own, which he then distributes according to some, usually traditional patriarchal, norms. AC type community class process symbolizes a situation where the ‘community of collective’ producers appropriate the ‘fruits of labour’ collectively, while surplus labour is performed individually in distinctly different labour processes. Consider a situation where the production of a homogenous use value, say, a crop, is performed individually (A) by many independent farmers on their respective plot of land. Given this, further suppose that these individuals then form a cooperative, so as to pool in and sell their produce through it. From the received commodity value, they collectively (C) appropriate the surplus value, after deducting by some agreed-upon criteria, the payments to the respective producers. It is to be noted that there is a fine distinction between the communitic class process and communist class process (CC). By definition, communist FCP is characterized by non-exploitation which makes it different from exploitative CA communitic FCP. Despite both being non-exploitative, in AC communitic FCP the performance of surplus labour is individually separable even though it shares with communist FCP the feature of collective appropriation. Communist FCP is collective at both the levels of performance and appropriation of surplus. Once we bring into contention the SCPs and the other non-class processes that constitute these variegated FCPs, the depth of decentring and the width of the disaggregation of class-focused society only increase. Our analysis leads us to one of the central questions of the book (Chapters 4–6): how can we conceptualize capital-ism as a hegemonic formation from within an otherwise decentred and disaggregated class-focused economy? What could be the possible nodal signifiers that will anchor the otherwise decentred and disaggregated economy into the master signifier ‘capitalist’—with all the attendant affective, fetishistic, and delusional associations? Evidently, if the hegemonic is to be capitalist, the nodal signifiers holding it together must reside within the womb of the capitalist class process. This then requires us to undertake the preliminary task of defining capitalist class process and specify the nodal signifiers.

Introducing Capitalist FCP and SCP All labour processes do not entail a corresponding class process. Some do, and even within them only a subset satisfy the conditions of a capitalist class process. These are ones which create new value (what Marx calls the

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

33

valourization process) through commodity production. Capitalist process of production is a process of commodity production through the “unity of labor process and the process of creating value” (Marx 1990: 304). Consider a labour process where both inputs (means of production and labour-power) and produced output are mediated by exchange value, i.e., through the market. A commodity is measured by value or socially necessary abstract labour time (SNALT) which acquiring exchange value can be expressed in money form, i.e., price.3 The money price therefore expresses a magnitude of value or SNALT. This value of produced commodity, W, is the summation of three values—value of labour-power (V), value of means of production (Cc ), and surplus value (SV). Under a scenario where inputs and produced output are in value form, capitalist FCP (could be AB or CB) is defined as the process of appropriation by non-performers of surplus value produced. Therefore, the adjective ‘capitalist’ before a class process refers to a distinct exploitative mode of appropriation of surplus labour in value form, i.e., as SV in FCP. It also shows an inalienable connection of capitalist commodity with capitalist FCP. Let us explain briefly how this particular exploitative mode of appropriation is situated. The embodied SNALT/value contained in constant capital Cc (means of production produced earlier by other enterprises) is transferred via market exchange from its sellers to the buyer who—the productive capitalist—then directs its use by labourers in a labour process to produce a new commodity. Cc adds no new value in the labour process. In contrast, 3 The aspect of ‘socially necessary’ in the definition of value captures the point that

value is a sign—a socially determined number capturing the worth of a product—socially determined in the sense that it results from the overdetermined web of economic, cultural, political, and natural processes. The aspect of ‘socially necessary’ is a social construction of an average amount of labour time considered necessary to produce one unit of the commodity. Thus, while value or SNALT seems to be located in the realm of production, it is not simply determined by the conditions of production alone. Rather, SNALT is like a social estimation, a kind of socially determined standard or property to express the ‘doings’ and income (capturing the components of paid and unpaid labour). Far from reducing value and value relations to an economic content and getting into the trap of economic essentialism, Marx understood value and value relations as an overdetermined product of varied kind of social processes, and not simply the economic ones. Economic processes related to the presence or absence of market or planning, technical conditions of production, strategies of appropriators, of managers, of workers, role of buyers and sellers; political processes and cultural processes related to trade union activities, corporate groups, state, gender, race, caste, and even desire; natural processes such as climate are only some of the factors that go in the determination of value of a commodity.

34

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

a market for labour-power is an arrangement between the sellers and buyers of labour-power to exchange (via a contract, written or unwritten) the labourer’s capacity to labour. Against a promised wage (value of labour-power), the purchasers of labour-power buy it because it has the following use value: when deployed in the labour process, the labourpower has the capability to add new value in the production of commodity (V+SV), greater than the value at which it is purchased (V). The wage labourers are the direct producers whose labour creates this new value npaid Labor and the SV contained in it; SV/V ( NS LL = UPaid Labor ) indicates the rate of surplus value or rate of exploitation; surplus value can be expanded by lengthening the working day (absolute surplus value production) or by technology-driven productivity increase and labour intensification/speedup (relative surplus value production).4 Therefore, commodity inputs of Cc and V bought with initial money (M) beget through the production of a new commodity (C/ ) the generation of more money (M/ )—a process depicted succinctly as M-C-P-C/ -M/ . This money form of surplus value (some magnitude of SNALT that is the value form of surplus labour) is defined as capital; this capital must not be confused with the elementary forms of capital—money and commodities. From the standpoint of capitalists, capital is the monetary expression of the self-expansion of value (SV) in FCP; that capital, from the standpoint of the workers, is manifestation of unpaid labour time. As the director of the process of self-expansion of value through commodity production, the (productive) capitalist gets possession not only of the produced commodity value, but 4 A much-discussed case is the garment and textile industry in the Tiruppur regional

cluster that contributes to nearly 90% of total cotton knit wear exports from India. At the heart of its success is the Sumangali system of contractual labour recruitment of tens of millions of lower caste, women workers from adjoining rural areas as apprentices against lump-sum payments for a specific period (say, 3 years) and housing them in hostels that allows total control over the living labour in production. Capitalists’ control over labour market to continuously gain access to this form of waged labour-power and over its consumption process in the labour process was a result of the combined effects of many conditions of existence that favoured them—flexibility to alter the conditions of capital-labour ratio, gender and caste composition of productive and unproductive workers they employed, labour supply arrangement, apprentice system, payment mode, mandatory hostel for the workers, etc. These conditions were facilitated by the regional state policy that legalized and allowed such a system to emerge and flourish. The systemic and enduring high rate of surplus value the capitalists achieved through its control of the working day (i.e., the necessary and surplus labour time) helped the employer/industrial capitalists to successfully create one of the biggest industrial clusters in India that firmly placed itself within the circuits of global capital.

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

35

also in the process, after deducting for the cost of production (Cc +V), of the surplus value embodied in it too. At a preliminary level, this monetary form of gross surplus value in capitalist FCP is alternatively referred to as congealed/undifferentiated profit; this class-focused interpretation of profit as an expression of SV or unpaid labour time is obviously occulted in non-Marxian approaches. However, this is only an initial concept of profit invoked in Volume 1 of Marx’s Capital that gets further modified with the consideration of additional SCPs and non-class processes, to which the capitalist FCP is related. Analytically, in Marxian theory, the usage of profit depends on the specific set of class and non-class processes taken into consideration (more on this later); indeed, historically, the usage of the term profit has varied. Unlike in mainstream approaches which look at capital as a thing, Marx conceptualized capital as a relationship between a set of processes and subjects, as the occupiers of these processes get interlocked. To highlight the relations of exploitation specific to capitalist FCP, Marx names the surplus value creating wage labourers as ‘productive labourers’ and those who personify its process of appropriation as ‘productive capitalists’. These two subjects are two different but related capitalist fundamental class position holders in capitalist FCP, and are locked in an exploitative class organization of surplus. The struggle between productive capitalists and productive labourers over the type, arrangement, and magnitude of capitalist FCP is one of the loci and axes of class struggle. Evidently, class struggle is applicable to any FCP with class divisions between performers and appropriators of surplus labour—master-slave, lord-serf, etc. Therefore, if one takes the minimum condition, we can identify capitalist surplus value appropriation (exploitative mode of appropriation in capitalist FCP) and capitalist commodity (the commodity connected to capitalist FCP and that which belongs to the productive capitalist) as the two defining nodal signifiers of capitalist FCP. Notwithstanding all variations, the structure that gets constituted in overdetermined relation to it must, at the minimum, refers to its presence (Chapters 3–6). As discussed in the earlier section, the capitalist FCP and its associated capitalist enterprise can acquire state or private form; private and state capitalist FCP/enterprise can occur with market or planning, or a mix of both. To keep our focus on the corpus of concepts needed for the book, it is sufficient to consider only its market form.

36

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

The connection between capitalist FCP and SCP can be alternatively summed up in this way. Every commodity has two inescapable encounters with performed labour (Roberts 1987). First, every commodity incorporates performed labour under specific material and social conditions. Second, each commodity (with embodied labour) is a market claim on other commodities (i.e., an entitlement on performed labour contained in other commodities). When the commodities are sold, revenues and incomes are generated. There is then a relation between labour performed and income generated—wage income of productive labourers is the value portion of paid labour time contained in the total performed labour time. An allied relation of the amount of unpaid labour time (surplus value) with wage incomes other than that of productive labourers (referred to as unproductive labour) and non-wage incomes (tax, rent, interest, etc., as will be explained) appears; these are the numerical expressions of the distribution and receipt of surplus value. It is the latter connection between capitalist FCP and SCP that we will briefly explain now. The surplus value generated and appropriated in capitalist FCP cannot be wholly retained by the productive capitalists. Rather, they must distribute a part of it to those delivering the necessary non-class processes that secure the FCP: this constitutes the rent (tax) to landlord (state) for the leased land; the interest to banker/financier for loans; the trading fee to merchant for selling the product and realizing the value of the commodity; the dividends against ownership capital provided by the shareholders; the wages to the employed managers and supervisors who monitor workers, and devise and implement enterprise-level policies, strategies, marketing, and sales; the funds to managers for capital accumulation to fight competition; the payments to media (print and social media and government) to advertise its product or build its brand; the tax to the state for securing legal and police protection; the contributions to the political parties to do its bidding; and so on. The distribution and receipt of surplus value to these non-class processes constitute another set of class processes—the subsumed class process (SCP); note, conceptually, the non-class process of leasing of land must not be conflated. With the process of subsumed payments against it (rent); that is, nonclass processes and SCPs must not be conflated. With all such SCPs caught amidst the pull and push of the contradictory effects of non-class processes, the formation of any capitalist FCP or the enterprise associated with it becomes inherently uneven and unpredictable. Instability is weaved into the capitalist system comprising of the web of capitalist FCPs,

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

37

SCPs and non-class processes. If any of these non-class conditions of existence do not materialize or fail to do so satisfactorily (say, banks failing to advance loans due to financial crisis), then the extant FCP is undermined; and if the negative effects are widespread across enterprises, industries, and sectors, their combined effect may even lead to a crisis of the economy as a whole. That these SCPs encapsulate distinct contradictory processes implies that the aspect of distribution of surplus value cannot be a priori reduced to any one of these claimants, or even be ranked as more or less important. Ergo, we find deeply questionable any assumption of capital accumulation (ΔCC +ΔV) that is construed as a deeper-level drive, a kind of gravitational force, miming a law of motion that is deployed to define an enterprise or an economy or the essence of a crisis. Productive capitalists who distribute appropriated surplus value, and those who receive a portion from that same pool, by virtue of occupying different subsumed class positions, could well be engaged in a struggle over the distribution and receipt of that surplus value. Moreover, conflict might also erupt between the subsumed class position holders themselves, like those between different receivers of surplus value, each of whom provides different critical non-class conditions of existence to the enterprise; thus, subjects occupying all those subsumed class positions remain engaged in another axis of class struggle over subsumed class payments. For example, the funds used by managers to activate the process of capital accumulation (ΔCc +ΔV) depend not only on the quantum of created capital, but also on the competition between the various contending claimants of surplus value. This kind of class conflict is unavoidable since capitalist enterprise cannot do without capital accumulation (say, to stave off competition), just as it cannot do without the land that the landlord (or the state) supplies it with, or the share capital provided by the owners, the credit by the banks, the legal permissions, security and political protection the state guarantees, and so on. They remain locked in a struggle, both with the productive capitalists and with one another to secure their respective positions. Our emphasis from time to time on capital accumulation in the book, crucial as it is for capitalist development, must not be conflated with any conferred privileged or essential property assigned to it. All processes are subject to contradictory effects that, among other things, undermine and strengthen the class enterprise itself. Capital accumulation is no exception. In this regard, Norton (2017) foregrounds the difference in the treatment of capital accumulation in Marx as compared to that in Adam

38

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Smith whose framework has no place for or sense of overdetermination and contradiction (a tradition continued by his modern followers). As he does with other concepts (commodity, money, property, income and original accumulation), Marx views capital accumulation in relation to the class process of surplus labor. Using this method, Marx and later Marxists showed that the very process of capital accumulation propelling repeated waves of productivity increase through technological development and cheapening of wage goods produced the contradictory effects of (i) “accumulation of excess population, labor market distress and renewed entrapment of workers in an unfair and unreliable position of dependence” (Norton 2017), (ii) a tendency for market concentration and monopolization (Baran and Sweezy 1966), (iii) of colonisation, imperialism and extractivism (Ruccio 2003, Gago and Mezzadra 2017), (iv) of systemic instability and business cycle (Cullenberg 1994, Resnick and Wolff 2006, Norton 2013), and (v) an ecological crisis (Saito 2018); their combined effects enable and undermine at the same time the capitalist system. In Chapter 9, we shall further explore the contradictory effects of capital accumulation on the world of the third (WOT).

The Working Class and Capitalist Class Productive and Unproductive: Workers Adam Smith uses productive and unproductive to differentiate between the material and perishable. J.S. Mill distinguishes them in terms of the effects of activities on human beings (e.g., education and health being productive). In sharp contradiction, the productive/unproductive distinction Marx introduced has nothing to do with the physical nature of the produced commodity or of the effects of human activities; the conceptual distinction is purely with reference to the class process of producing SV. Confusing this distinction is a categorical mistake which often leads people to wrongly attribute to Marxian theory all service-related labour as unproductive or unnecessary. ‘Sectors’ are not the units of Marx’s economic analysis and, like in every sector, what goes off as ‘service sector’ should primarily be deconstructed into activities that produce surplus value and those that do not (Tregenna 2011); “he [the unproductive labourer] performs a necessary function, because the process of reproduction itself includes unproductive functions” (Marx 1992: 2, 209). Marx’s intent in using these terms and their distinction was to specifically classify

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

39

the location of subjects within class and non-class processes and to focus on the relations they are involved in (Olsen 2017).5 The term “productive” labour refers to direct producers, who are engaged in creating surplus value in capitalist FCP. Apart from the productive labourers, the rest of the condition providing labourers intended to reproduce the capitalist FCP is classified as “unproductive”. This displaces and problematizes any a priori inference of the term ‘working class’ as a homogenous category. To exemplify the difference between productive and unproductive workers, consider the case of a capitalist enterprise, say, an industrial corporation. In it, the board of directors constitute the productive capitalists who directly personify the process of appropriation and distribution of the surplus value created by industrial, productive workers. Let us further classify the conditions of existence of the FCP of this industrial capitalist enterprise into ‘external’ and ‘internal’ conditions. The external conditions of existence may include processes that are reproduced by subjects not directly employed, i.e., not on the payroll of the enterprise. This would include shareholder capitalists, bank capitalists, merchant capitalists, the state, etc. For providing various non-class conditions of existence, these condition providers receive a distributed amount of the surplus value. However, the subsumed class positions of bank capitalists, merchant capitalists, state, etc., must not be confused with those of the labourers who work for them. For example, to successfully negotiate and complete the non-class process of advancing loan to industrial capitalists and receive in return the contracted subsumed payment, the bank capitalists must employ a host of people such as managers, risk analytists, accountants, auditors, security personnel, and lawyers. In this bank enterprise, these employees are unproductive labourers who participate in reproducing various nonclass processes of the bank enterprise: they help secure the non-class loan of bank capitalists to the industrial capitalist and the successful reproduction of the subsumed class position of the bank capitalists. They receive in return for their labour time a wage and/or commission that involves further redistribution of surplus value from the bank capitalists; by virtue 5 The Marxian discussion on productive and unproductive is rich, complex, and often at odds with another (Resnick and Wolff 1987, Chapter III; Savran and Tonak 1999; Shaikh and Tonak 1994; Roberts 2011; Tregenna 2011; Olsen 2017). We follow Resnick and Wolff’s interpretation.

40

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

of not being the direct receivers of subsumed class payments, the unproductive workers’ wage is a non-class income. Just as the bank capitalist is different from the industrial capitalist, the unproductive bank workers must also not be confused with the productive workers who produce surplus value for the industrial capitalists in capitalist FCP. Other than the external conditions of existence, a range of subjects may be internally employed by the industrial capitalists to facilitate the reproduction of other non-class economic, cultural, political, and natural processes that help secure the capitalist FCP. Examples of internal nonclass processes needed for the reproduction of capitalist FCP include purchase of constant capital and variable capital, monitoring the sale of produced commodities, the process of capital accumulation, the cultural processes of advertising the product, or of educating the workforce in the workplace about the company culture and product, the political process of controlling the behaviour of workers and their work time, and natural processes of maintaining the legally mandated environment in the shop floor. Against these non-class conditions of existence, a host of subjects (such as, to name a few, accountants, clerks, security, supervisors, human resource managers, and top management) may have to be employed by the industrial capitalists. Because the wages of these ‘internal’ unproductive workers are paid out of the appropriated surplus value, they—from managers to workers—occupy subsumed class positions. Depending upon the class and non-class processes, the workers may even occupy multiple positions simultaneously, including both productive and unproductive positions. Let’s say, the workers—productive and unproductive together—in a capitalist enterprise organize themselves into a trade union (a non-class process); through class struggle (collective bargaining or successful strike)—another non-class political process—they achieve a wage above the necessary labour equivalent value of their labour-power, where the difference between the two is a portion of the surplus value distributed by the productive capitalists. In this instance, the productive workers in addition to fundamental class position also occupy a subsumed class position of being recipients of distributed surplus value; the internal unproductive workers in addition to their existing subsumed position as wage recipient occupy an additional subsumed class position of receiver of negotiated extra surplus value. What and who is productive and unproductive will depend upon the class and non-class positions the workers and others occupy; the undifferentiated wage too needs to be

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

41

situated in terms of the connection of its various components with class and non-class processes.6 Productive and Unproductive: Capitalists The subject ‘capitalist’ is closely associated with ‘capital’ which, following Marx, is understood as the monetary expression of the self-expanding value, capturing the relationship of a set of processes. As explained, Marx defines productive capitalist as non-performers who (as board of directors, partners, or sole proprietor depending upon the legal specification) appropriate the surplus value in capitalist FCP. As the appropriators of surplus value, the productive capitalists also occupy the additional class position of directly distributing SV, i.e., personify SCP too. However, the term capital and capitalists are not peculiar to the process of self-expansion of surplus value in capitalist FCP. Unproductive capitalists personify self-expansion of value in circulation process, using initial money in processes disconnected with FCP, to procure more money than what they started out with (say, through interest bearing capital M-M/ by using the financial market, or by using initial money capital to buy cheap a produced commodity, CP , from producers and sell it dear for a premium, i.e., M-CP -M/ ). We define the possessors of the surplus value generated in the circulation process of trading and finance as merchant capitalists and financial capitalists, respectively; these kinds of capital and capitalists have predated productive capital and productive capitalists. Merchant capitalists and financial capitalists as occupiers of SCP provide capitalist FCP with important non-class conditions of existence and therefore forge a social connection with productive capitalists. The three circuits of capital—M-C-P-C/ -M/ (productive), M-CP -M/ (merchant), M-M/ (financial)—are interlocked and so are the capitalists. Further, these might forge relations with other non-capitalist enterprises (say, independent or CA communitic ones) to facilitate the process of expanding value, as is the case with the circuits of value chain (see Chapter 7). Finally, the unproductive capitalists might generate value expansion through non-FCP-related processes (stocks and other financial securities, second-hand trading, and so on). For the time

6 On Marxian theory of wage, profit, and income, see Resnick and Wolff (1987, 2006).

42

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

being, our focus remains on the relation of merchant and financial capitalists with the productive capitalists. The distinction of productive capitalists from unproductive capitalists enables Marxian theory to clearly point out that exploitation as a mode of appropriation of surplus value is associated with productive capitalists, and not with capitalists generally. Unproductive capitalists such as the merchant capitalist or financial capitalist neither appropriate surplus value in capitalist FCP nor do they distribute it; hence, they do not exploit even though they provide crucial non-class conditions of existence to exploitative FCP, including capitalist ones. In other words, just as the working class is disaggregated into productive and unproductive workers, so too is the capitalist class. The capitalists, after all, are not just brothers but ‘hostile brothers’. Our above exemplification shows that, alongside a host of other social actors like state, landlord, managers, etc., the ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ capitalists and labourers reveal the irreducible, multi-varied, simultaneous web of subject positions they occupy, and the relations they forge through the combination of class and non-class processes. At this point, it may be appropriate to flag the issue of the connection of the capitalist class and the working class per se with our class-focused analysis, based on the unit of process. Class process and classes are not the same; classes are subdivisions between people based on the positions they occupy in class processes (Resnick and Wolff 1987: 117–124). Following our analysis, the invocation of capitalist class as a group is predicated upon those who personify self-expansion of value—through commodity production in capitalist FCP (M-C-P-C/ -M/ ) and through circulation process in trading, finance, and land. It also means that the term capitalist class when invoked (which Marx did in the Communist Manifesto and at times in Capital ) cannot and must not assume away, or underplay its disaggregated form into diverse productive (a la fundamental classes) and unproductive capitalists (a la subsumed classes), locked in overdetermined and contradictory relations, and often engaged in class struggle (which Marx also elaborated in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value). Likewise, using the term ‘working class’ as a group cannot assume away its disaggregated presence into productive workers (a la fundamental classes) and a diverse array of unproductive workers (a la subsumed classes and nonclasses), locked in overdetermined relations; further breakdown of these into permanent, casual, and contractual workers will only make the idea of working class even more disaggregated. Reduction of working class to

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

43

productive workers or an assumption of a pre-given working class unity or of a uniform ‘class interest’ embodied in and derived from a structural location is a spurious move; to use these to jump to working class as a social actor is equally problematical (Hindess 1986; Chakrabarti and Cullenberg 2003). As is common knowledge, this problem of class formation was potent enough to have consumed the work of many frontline Marxists (beginning with Lenin, Lukács, Luxemburg, Gramsci, etc.) for over a century now. It also tells us that with time attempts to achieve even a semblance of progress towards working class unity have to be considered as a work in process marked by contingency, fragility, impermanence wherein the embodied contradictions in such attempted unity tend to, like is true for any process, also undermine it, and the uncertainty that the guarantee of progress such attempts uphold could become tenuous with time. Our focus in this book remains on class processes and class positions; the term capitalist class and working class would be invoked with the caveat of being subjected to overdetermined and contradictory pulls and pushes.

Capitalist Class Enterprise A capitalist class enterprise is conceptually a site qua location of the combined effects of capitalist FCP, SCP, and non-class processes that are in overdetermined and contradictory relations with one another. One can provisionally view the complexity of the capitalist enterprise by its value flows in terms of three steps. First, the appropriated surplus value (SV) would not be retained in its undifferentiated form by the productive capitalist, but will be distributed as subsumed class payments (SSCP) to different agents/enterprises who provide a wide range of non-class internal and external conditions of its existence. As already described, those who are receivers of subsumed class payment (SSCP) include, to name a few, financial capitalists, merchant capitalists, state, landlords, managers, etc. Indeed, the enterprise can be the site to produce various kinds of use values for its buyers and extract SV from each one of them; for production of each one of them, it will have to make the necessary subsumed class payments. It is not surprising to come across a conglomerate constitutive of a group of companies/enterprises; in India, the Tata group is one such example of a conglomerate of twenty-nine publicly listed independent enterprises (with their respective board of directors).

44

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Generally, Σ

SV =

Σ

SSC P

The LHS is class revenues and the RHS class expenditures. Secondly, an enterprise is also constituted by the receipt of the subsumed class payments in exchange for providing numerous conditions of existence to FCPs—capitalists and non-capitalists—of other class enterprises. Typically, class enterprises are interlocked and interdependent, say through the supply chain; capitalist enterprises are no exception. For example, a capitalist enterprise may additionally occupy the non-class position of a lender, providing finance capital (from its retained funds) to other class enterprises (with capitalist or non-capitalist FCP) in order to enable them to purchase their means of production against which they would be receiving a certain amount of subsumed class payment from these enterprises. Such payments enter into Σ the capitalist enterSSC R. Likewise, prise’s revenue side as subsumed class revenue or a capitalist enterprise may expand its operation to trading (buying low and selling high a commodity produced by other capitalist and noncapitalist enterprises) and therefore occupy the additional subsumed class position of merchant capitalist. Then, again when a state enterprise disinvests through initial public offering, the private capitalist enterprise may acquire ownership by buying its shares (a non-class process) against which it will receive as dividends a portion of the surplus value from the state capitalists of that enterprise. For securing various subsumed class positions as receivers of surplus value for providing these non-class conditions (credit ownership, trading, etc.) to secure FCPs of other enterprises, our referred capitalist Σ enterprise will be incurring non-class expenditures to X (e.g., maintaining a group of employees who deal the amount of with finance and trading). Consequently, Σ Σ SSC R = X Finally, the capitalist enterprise may be receiving non-class revenues for providing other non-class conditions of existence as well; expenditures in various financial assets unrelated to any FCP exemplify exposure to such non-class processes (in the form of shares, bonds, etc.) which would lead to a different processes of revenue return. Summing such non-class Σ N C R. To secure the revenues from all non-class processes would give

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

conditions of such revenue generation, another set of expenditures of are incurred, Σ Σ NC R = Y

45

Σ

Y

Collating the terms, we get a generalized representation of the revenue-expenditure side of a capitalist enterprise in class-focused terms: Σ Σ Σ Σ Σ Σ SV + SSC R + NC R = SSC P + X + Y ....... (2.1) This representation can help us to draw some quick observations:

(i) While we attach the name ‘capitalist’ to a class enterprise by virtue of it satisfying the qualifier capitalist FCP, the capitalist class enterprise cannot be reduced to only capitalist FCP or even to class process alone. The equation is a generalized expression of this point. If an enterprise participates only in SV and SSCPs, then the other components in (2.1) will drop out. The more the enterprise expands into varied class and non-class operations, the deeper is its decentred structure. (ii) A logical corollary of (2.1) entails that the capitalist enterprise cannot be reduced to a deeper essence, such as that of the nonclass process of capital accumulation, or that of capitalist rationality. Being a bundle of contradictory, albeit necessary, processes, whose combined effects constitute it, makes such an assertion impossible. (iii) The equality sign in (2.1) only captures a particular case used to illustrate the overdetermined relation between FCP, SCP, and non-class processes and positions. Mathematically, depending upon the combined effects of class and non-class processes, one would expect a capitalist enterprise to swing in an uneven and unpredictable way such that LHS could be less/equal/more than RHS. A crisis of capitalist enterprise entails LHS < RHS. Enough number of capitalist enterprises running into crisis may lead to an overall crisis in the capitalist system.

46

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

(iv) As occupiers of FCP (appropriator of SV), SCP (distributer and receiver of SV), and various non-class processes, a productive capitalist is not a mere profit maximizer or one who accumulates capital as part of his innate ‘human nature’; he like the unproductive capitalists and the unproductive workers, is the combined effect of all such class and non-class positions, being constantly subjected to the contradictory effects their processes generate. (v) Equation (2.1) can be used for depicting any enterprise with value flows, whether capitalist or non-capitalist. For example, with inputs and outputs as commodity values, a change in the mode of appropriation from, say, capitalist to communist would change the class nature of FCP of the class-focused enterprise from capitalist to communist. On the other hand, a change in appropriation from, say, state capitalist to private capitalist (say, due to privatization) produces only a change in the form of capitalist FCP. (vi) There are other ‘financial’ enterprises, such as banks, which do not create surplus value in FCP. In that case, the bank enterprise does not have a FCP, but rather encapsulates a non-class condition of existence—for example, loan—to the capitalist (as also non-capitalist) enterprise against which the bank/unproductive capitalist receives subsumed class payment. The relevant class equation for such ‘financial’ enterprise would be: Σ Σ Σ Σ SSC R + NC R = X + Y A likewise relation would hold for the merchant enterprise. (vii) Marxian class-focused analysis points to the difficulty of attributing a single unified meaning to profit. Indeed, the meaning of profit would be modified depending upon the specific articulation of capitalist FCP with class and non-class processes. Sometimes, the entire surplus value is taken as (congealed) profit. At other times, as in the critique of the Trinity Formula by Marx, surplus value after deduction for ground rent is defined as profit for capital (profit of enterprise plus interest) (Chakrabarti 2021). Finally, before-tax profits are also seen as an amount left to be distributed by productive capitalists for those chosen to be profit seekers (say, the state, the shareholders, and top managers for capital accumulation), after deducting for all other subsumed

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

47

payments from surplus value. In this regard, profit maximization ascribed in the dominant literature as the rational objective/desire of any enterprise is from a Marxist perspective simply a mechanism to channelize the highest flow of residual fund in the hands of these groups who qualify as profit claimants (see Chapter 9). Generally, we can define Σ Net Profits = (SV + SC R + N C R) − Z Σ

Z includes a myriad of expenditures required to generate these revenues. What exactly Σ these expenditures comprise of will depend upon Z , which is a changing component resting upon what comes under accounting practices, tax laws, class struggle, competition, and so on (Resnick and Wolff 1987, Ch. 4). With these multiple meanings of net profit, the associated profit rates can also be gleaned. Their differences testify to the manner in which the specific class and non-class processes constitute the class enterprise. If we define profit in terms of SV and SSCP, then the (simple) rate of profit is ρ = CSV + V . However, in case of (2.1), the rate of SC R + N C R profit is modified to the complex form of ρˆ = CSV . +V + C+V SCR + NCR Because of the presence of (i.e., subsumed class and non-class C+V processes/positions), there can be no necessary correspondence between the simple rate of profit and the complex rate of profit and the two rates can move in opposite directions.7 Only when the complex rate of profit falls, the enterprise corresponding to Eq. (2.1) can get into a crisis; if the fall in the complex rate is widespread across capitalist enterprises and sectors, then it may be taken as an indication of a crisis for the existing capitalist economy. Thus, what is analysed as the conditions of crisis of enterprises and economy change depending upon the class and non-class processes that are accounted.

7 See Resnick and Wolff (1987, Chapter IV) for a full-fledged discussion on profit.

48

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Introducing Class Sets: The Decentred and Disaggregated Economy One technical issue, however, remains regarding the class matrix we have earlier introduced: while the class matrix allows us to use the distinction between exploitative, non-exploitative and self-appropriative forms of FCP that are classified as independent FCP (AA), communitic FCP (AC and CA) and communist FCP (CC), it does not per se allow us to distinguish between feudal, slave, and capitalist (all we have are AB and CB exploitative). Having clearly specified by now the characteristic of capitalist FCP, we now venture to present a competing analytical picture of the class-focused economy. To this end, we introduce the method of class sets (Cullenberg 1992; Chakrabarti and Thakur 2010; Majumdar 2021). Class sets would in ways that will become apparent throughout the book serve to rewrite and reconfigure the ‘economic reality’ of the capitalocentric-orientalist dual economy model; the idea and illustration of development as a delusional veil masking class process and exploitation in Chapter 6 and masking WOT in Chapters 8 and 9 will also become apparent. What are class sets? We identify class sets in terms of the (i) FCP of performance and appropriation of surplus labour as depicted in the class matrix, (ii) distribution of only two forms of output distribution to keep the matter simple—commodity and non-commodity—and (iii) workers’ remuneration in its two forms—wage and non-wage. Their combination gives us 24 class sets which characterize the diverse institutional arrangements in which the class processes may be taken as existing in an economy.8 The table 2.2 consisting of twenty-four class sets helps us posit an alternative snapshot analytical space that is decentred and disaggregated, irrespective of geography or temporality. Can this economy be reduced to capitalism? Because of its feature of generalized commodity form in an exploitative mode of appropriation, class sets {5, 17} are consistent with capitalist class process; the combined effects of capitalist class process and non-class processes constitute the capitalist enterprise and considering the totality of capitalist enterprises will give us the capitalist economy. Other class sets indicate 8 The constitution of class set as a slice or a snapshot of economy would vary depending upon the object of analysis [e.g. see class set in Majumdar (2021) for analysis of Indian agriculture].

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

49

Table 2.2 Class sets Sl. no

Performance of surplus labour

Worker’s access to appropriated surplus

Output distribution

Worker’s remuneration

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

A A A A A A A A C C C C A A A A C C C C C C C C

A A A A B B B B A A A A C C C C B B B B C C C C

Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com Com Non-Com

Wage Wage Non-Wage Non-Wage Wage Wage Non-Wage Non-Wage Wage Wage Non-Wage Non-Wage Wage Wage Non-Wage Non-Wage Wage Wage Non-Wage Non-Wage Wage Wage Non-Wage Non-Wage

diverse kinds of class existences; for example, class sets (21–24) and (1– 4) resemble communist enterprises (since non-exploitation holds) and independent enterprises (since self-appropriation holds), respectively; class sets {6, 7, 8} and {18, 19, 20} resemble the feudal and slave enterprises (since exploitation holds), while class sets (9–16) encapsulate an assortment of communitic enterprises (could be exploitative and nonexploitative). Evidently, ‘economy’ exceeds ‘capitalism’ or ‘feudalism’; it is misleading to reduce the economy to capitalism (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006). Moreover, this decentred and disaggregated economy is both constituted by and constitutes distinctive micro-changes taking place on a plateau of ever-changing, uneven, and disaggregated class sets. This is due to changes not only within and across class sets but also across

50

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

other subsumed and non-class processes that evidently, when brought into the picture, will render the class-focused economy and its transition even more uneven, contingent, and unpredictable (Chakrabarti and Cullenberg 2003). How do we arrive at the dual economy from this decentred and disaggregated economy? Two arbitrarily posited givens can be discerned; these then serve as the essence of the ontological world being described. The first being the pre-determined, privileged centre of a particular economic form of society which, in this case, is the capitalist class process or in class set terms {5, 17}; more specifically, it will be true of the technologydriven relative surplus value capitalist enterprise embodying class set 17. This signifies capitalocentrism that transmutes the otherwise decentred and disaggregated economy into two homogenous wholes—capitalism and the Rest, capital and the remainder, capital and non-capital. The second a priori given is orientalism which comes against the backdrop of a (post)colonial history that first hegemonized through the trope of colonialism and then through development. Interweaving its way into third worldism in the postcolonial phase (Escobar 1995), orientalism turned the dualistic frame into one that not only differentiated between capitalism and non-capitalism (the hallmark of capitalocentrism), but where non-capitalism is additionally rendered pre-capitalist—hence deformed, devalued, lacking (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009). Consequently, the term ‘pre’ replacing ‘non’ indicates backwardness in a social and historical sense; backwardness in a social sense is epitomized by the term ‘traditional’ seen as lagging behind the ‘modern’ and backwardness in historical sense is symbolized by its warped image of being stuck in an archaic time–space. These two mutually reinforcing moments have powerful connotations and consequences in how the dual economy and its transition are posited, as we shall illustrate in Chapter 6. One more clarification is necessary. The class-focused analysis has helped unpack the term ‘population’ in terms of class and non-class positions that the subjects occupy by virtue of participating in class and non-class processes. Classification of population in excess of the capitalist form {5, 17} is approached differently in Marxian theory, by situating them in terms of the rest of the 22 class sets. This is important because

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

51

one cannot enter into a discussion on postcapitalist politics or on postcapitalist reconstruction of the subject and the social without creating the necessary, differentiated class-focused space as a prelude to such a transformation.

Class Struggle and Marxian Struggle As explained earlier, class process and classes are not the same. Class struggle is not fundamentally a struggle between two homogenous groups; classes as such cannot struggle in unison; parties or trade unions can act on behalf of classes, but that does not imply that classes are ex officio historical actors, automatically (Hindess 1987; Resnick and Wolff 1987; Chakrabarti and Cullenberg 2003). Instead, class struggle refers fundamentally to the struggle over the performance, appropriation, distribution, and receipt of surplus labour, i.e., struggle over FCP and SCP. Being a process itself, class struggle will not only change the type and form of FCP and SCP qualitatively and quantitatively but also induce through its effects changes in other non-class processes. There are two more points that need to be flagged. The first is that the class struggle is over an object of society—here, class, i.e., processes pertaining to surplus labour. Because exploitation is a theft of surplus labour having wide ramifications for the distribution of income, Marxism takes a stand in favour of appropriative justice (end of exploitation) and distributive justice (end of unfair distribution) (Cullenberg 1992; DeMartino 2003; Chakrabarti and Cullenberg 2003; Wolff 2007); in Chapters 3 and 10, we shall discuss the third axis of justice: development justice. Class struggle must not be conflated with other non-class objects of struggle such as over property and power although they, being in a constitutive relation with class process, are no less important (Resnick and Wolff 2006); power and property remain in an intimate relation with class process in an overdetermined site. We can extend the argument of these non-class objects of struggle to other factors—economic (pension, food security, taxes, interest rate, etc.), political (workplace democracy, trade union rights, etc.), cultural (education, etc.), and natural (soil, climate change, body, etc.)—that provide conditions of existence to FCP and SCP. By virtue of their overdetermination, these non-class struggles

52

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

will alter the FCP and SCP. These are not strictly class struggles but certainly carry implications regarding the Marxian objective of appropriative justice (end of exploitation) and distributive justice (end of unfair distribution); for example, non-class struggles over the right to form trade union constitute the FCP and SCP as well and one reason as to why capitalists generally attempt to circumvent, subvert and destroy it. In this sense, we can say that class struggle is a subset of Marxian struggle. Marxian struggle too is class focused but not class specific. This caveat reminds us that it will be a misinterpretation to collapse and conflate the ‘effects’ of class struggles on class and non-class processes with the ‘effects’ of non-class struggles on non-class and class processes. To illustrate, changing the property structure in the erstwhile Soviet Union did transform its society in important ways, including its class structures, but it did not achieve its stated objective of ending exploitation (as was misleadingly claimed by CPSU in the 1930s) as an automatic fallout of the nationalization of property. What it achieved instead was the transformation of the extant industrial FCPs in 1917–1930s from one kind of capitalist form to another—private capitalist to state capitalist FCP—thereby undercutting its central claim of end of class exploitation; SV created by the productive workers was now appropriated by state capitalists (Resnick and Wolff 2002). Change in FCP could only have been achieved with a fundamental change in its class structure from exploitative towards non-exploitative ones. Reduction of the object of class struggle to other non-class objects of struggle—say, change in property relations— and then to make an unsubstantiated claim about the former on the basis of the latter is faulty and counterproductive; any claimed isomorphism between the two processes is spurious. It could and did, as the Soviet and Chinese experience show, leave its indelible imprint on what we mean by Marxism, socialism, and its politics. The second point is that class struggle as the struggle over FCP and SCP is fundamentally different from arguing that class struggle is primarily between groups of conscious subjects who represent different classes. Marxian theory has extracted the meaning of class from its problematic mooring in a “noun” like setting—class as group of people—to that of an “adjective” like setting—class as a process, likewise for class struggle. As history shows, class struggle conceived as primarily a struggle between people can quickly slip into a struggle against bodies—the class enemy— and a vicious cycle of class annihilation or badla (revenge) (Chakrabarti

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

53

2012); what gets missed or buried is the necessity of badlao (transformation) pertaining to a change in class process. Other than the human and social costs, it has also been counterproductive in terms of achieving the goal such struggles had projected. To illustrate, elimination/annihilation of a group of people construed as exploiting/ruling class does not guarantee an elimination of exploitation or even of a particular type of exploitation; annihilation of feudality upholding French Monarchy only changed in due course the mode of exploitation—feudal to capitalist— while the annihilation of private capitalists around Czarist monarchy only changed the capitalist FCP from private to state. Foregrounding the object of struggle—over process as against between people—matters. But, how can we have an imagination of class struggle without getting involved into a struggle between people? We cannot, but that does not call for conflating struggle over process with struggle between people, especially when subjects—individual and social—occupy multiple, interdependent but contradictory, class and non-class positions; they are social beings who, being overdetermined, are simultaneously ‘subjects of’ and ‘subjected to’. Reduction of subject to any essential position deemed more important than others is no valid understanding of subject or interest. Inference to classes as groups of people (working class, capitalist class) based on the class and non-class positions they occupy, which are diverse, does not mean that these classes will automatically become homogenous class actors in struggle against one another. Groups with contingently produced interest form to struggle over (class and non-class) process, but classes do not struggle; individuals too can engage in class struggle, say in household. Such class struggles can and do appear at the more micro-level; they also can and historically do transpire in a societal movement (such as over the working day) whose object of struggle is in changing the content, structure and trajectory of FCP (like in case of the working day) and/or SCP. Finally, it is important to emphasize that nothing in Marxist theory requires that the ‘effects’ of class struggle are to be considered as more or less important than those of non-class struggles. Nevertheless, what Marxist theory does say is that since exploitation is ethically unacceptable and harmful to the well-being of both human and nature, ending exploitation by definition is a progressive goal. In this regard, class struggle that is undertaken to overcome feudal exploitation inside the

54

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

household or to create new communist households (i.e., where adult members collectively perform and appropriate surplus labour) is equally important as ending capitalist exploitation inside an industrial enterprise. Its importance is also very potent for economy-wide struggle against all forms of exploitation, as also over the presence of exploitation as a concept itself (just as struggle against the conception of slavery itself for centuries ended with the legal abolishment of slave FCP/enterprise although it does persist illegally in many modified forms). Likewise, class struggle to change SCPs to make distribution fairer (say, by pursuing some goal of equality or need-based distribution) in various spheres (from household to enterprise to the economy per se) and non-class struggle over condition-providing processes to FCP and SCP are all important ingredients of Marxian struggle. Collapsing all such distinct struggles to either an undifferentiated, all-encompassing black-box of class struggle, or some other equally undifferentiated non-class struggle that demotes/erases class struggle and its value only magnifies the politics of conceptual confusion.

Conclusion Marxist theory is unique in developing and engendering a knowledge of the economy and society in terms of the articulation of various nonclass processes—power, property, income, capital accumulation, profit, efficiency, competition, market, race, gender, etc.—with class process of surplus labour. It is only in their overdetermination and contradiction— what we call the class-focused economy—that these and their relations acquire meaning. For example, the connection of class process with commodity leads to a particular concept of surplus value and then to capital and furthermore profit. Capital and profit are devoid of class relations, including of exploitation, in mainstream discourses—which is the precise connection that the class-focused approach makes visible. Keeping this as the backdrop, we may ask: what happens if class as process of surplus labour is foreclosed? Answer: the repudiation of one chain of signification in connection with class process, by another chain disconnected with class process, and of the experience and history from that

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

55

context. This process of foreclosure represents and resets the knowledge of what reality is, which then can be claimed as the truth; the delusional cover it provides is not just regarding what the truth of the being is (the ontological) but also of how and by what means to arrive at it (the epistemological). Social discourses and institutionalized practices lend political support and credence to those conditions and that obfuscated understanding of reality, which procreate the classless order of things. In this context, the role of substitute signifiers like power, property, income, capital accumulation, profit, efficiency, competition, market, etc., detached from class process in creating the delusional veil that obfuscates and makes invisible the class relations of society and crypts class exploitation cannot be underestimated. As we shall explicate in Chapters 4–6, one of the fundamental propositions of this book is that capitalist hegemony is produced through the foreclosure of class as process of surplus labour and hence of the class-focused economy that is decentred and disaggregated. All the more why the return of the Marxian entry point of class should also be seen as pointing to a political standpoint and a postcapitalist praxis.

References Baran, P.A., and P. Sweezy. 1966. Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order. New York: Monthly Review Press. Chakrabarti, A. 2012. The Indian Communist Movement at Crossroads: A Marxian Assessment. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 24 (3): 458–474. ———. 2021. Class, History and Value Theory: Marx’s Critique of Trinity Formula. MARXISM 21 18 (4): 258–285. Chakrabarti, A., A.K. Dhar, and B. Dasgupta. 2015. The Indian Economy in Transition: Globalization. Capitalism and Development: Cambridge University Press. Chakrabarti, A., A. Dhar, A., and S. Majumdar. 2020. “India’s Transition: A New Complex of Capitalism and Hindu Nationalism. In Challenges of Globalization and Prospects for an Inter-civilizational World Order, ed. I. Rossi. Springer: Cham. Chakrabarti, A., and S. Cullenberg. 2003. Transition and Development in India. New York: Routledge. Chaudhury, A., and A. Chakrabarti. 2000. The Market Economy and Marxist Economists: Through the Lens of a Housewife. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 12 (2): 81–103.

56

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Chakrabarti, A., and A. Thakur. 2010. The Making and Unmaking of the (In)formal Sector. Critical Sociology 36 (3): 415–435. Cullenberg, S. 1992. Socialism’s Burden: Toward a ‘Thin’ Definition of Socialism. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 5 (2): 64–83. ———. 1994. The Fallings: Recasting the Marxian Debate. London: Pluto Press. ———. 1996. Althusser and the Decentering of the Marxist Totality. In Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in the Althusserian Tradition, ed. Antonio Callari and David Ruccio. Wesleyan University Press. DeMartino, G. 2003. Realizing Class Justice. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 15 (1): 1–31. Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fraad, H., S. Resnick, and R. Wolff. 2009. For Every Knight in Shining Armor, There’s a Castle Waiting to be Cleaned: A Marxist-Feminist Analysis of the Household. In Class Struggle on the Home Front, ed. G. Cassano. Palgrave Macmillan. Gabriel, S. 1991. Individual Household Production: A Reply. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 4 (4): 155–158. Gago, V., and S. Mezzadra. 2017. A Critique of the Extractive Operations of Capital: Toward an Expanded Concept of Extractivism. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 1996. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hindess, B. 1986. Actors and Social Relations. In Sociological Theory in Transition, ed. M.L. Wardell and S. P. Turner. Allen & Unwin. Hindess, B. 1987. Politics and Class Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Madra, Y.M. 2016. Late Neoclassical Economics: The Restoration of Theoretical Humanism in Contemporary Economic Theory. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2017. Process: Tracing Connections and Consequences. In Knowledge, Class, and Economics, ed. T.A Burczac, R.F. Garnett Jr., and R. Macintyre. Oxford: Routledge. Marx, K. 1990. Capital: Volume I . London: Penguin Books. Marx, K. 1992. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 2. London: Penguin Books. Majumdar, S. 2021. A Class-focused Theory of Minimum Support Price and Agricultural Distress in India. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 33 (1): 71–97. Norton, B. 2013. Economic Crises. Rethinking Marxism 25 (1).

2

CLASS AND OVERDETERMINATION

57

Norton, B. 2017. Accumulation. In Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics, ed. D.M. Brennan, D. Kristjanson-Gural, C.P. Mulder, and E.K. Olsen. New York: Routledge. Olsen, E.K. 2017. Productive and Unproductive Labor. In Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics, ed. D.M. Brennan, D. Kristjanson-Gural, C. P. Mulder, and Erik K. Olsen. London: Routledge. Resnick, S.A., and R.D. Wolff. 1987. Knowledge and Class: A Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1988. Communism: Between Class and Classless. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 1 (1): 14–42. ———. 2002. Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. New York: Routledge. ———. 2006. New Departures in Marxian Theory. Oxon: Routledge. Roberts, B. 1987. Marx After Steedman: Separating Marxism from ‘Surplus Theory.’ Capital & Class 11 (2): 84–103. ———. 2011. Exploitation, Appropriation, and Subsumption. Rethinking Marxism 23 (3): 341–351. Ruccio, D. 2003. Globalization and Imperialism. Saito, K. 2018. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press. Savran, S., and E.A. Tonak. 1999. Productive and Unproductive Labour: An Attempt at Clarification and Classification. Capital & Class 23 (2): 113–152. Shaik, A.M., and E.A. Tonak. 1994. Measuring the Wealth of Nations: The Political Economy of National Accounts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spivak, G.C. 1994. Responsibility. boundary 2 21 (3):19–64. Tregenna, F. 2011. What Does the ‘Services Sector’ Mean in Marxian Terms? Review of Political Economy 23 (2): 281–298. Weiner, R. 2003. Power Hitters Strike Out: New Perspectives on Baseball and Slavery. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 15 (1): 33–48. Wolff, R. 1996. Althusser and Hegel: Making Marxist Explanations Antiessentialist and Dialectical. In Post-Modern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in the Althusserian Tradition, ed. A. Callari and D.F. Ruccio. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press. ———. 2007. Why Communism? Rethinking Marxism 19 (3): 322–336.

CHAPTER 3

The Secret Abode of Need: From Hegemonic Need to Radical Need

Introduction In confronting capitalism as a hegemonic formation, Marxism seems to have stumbled into two interconnected traps put in place by development, which together has created a delusional veil; this delusional veil in turn helps cloud the foreclosure of class and world of the third (henceforth, WoT) and make their interrelated language inaccessible. These two traps are (i) economic dualism and (ii) hegemonic need. The former allows for the legitimization of the violence of original accumulation, while the latter rationalizes benevolence (in Chapter 10 we have designated this kind of benevolence ‘ethics to the world of the third’), all in the name of developing the third world. An array of dispersed hegemonic operations concentrates on shaping, modifying, and solidifying the two traps. Their combined effects produce the hegemonization of the inside and the outside of capital. A Marxian take therefore, which this book is about, must situate its postcapitalist imagination via a critique of these traps, to unpack the anatomy of the hegemonic we refer to as capitalism (Chapters 4 and 5). Before entering into a discussion on hegemony with its secrets and traps, we need to, like we did for the concept of class in Chapter 2, lay bare the complexity of the question of need from a Marxist perspective; this in turn will reveal the difference in treating need with and without connection to class process. As will be explicated in later chapters, the declassed version of need becomes a nodal signifier of the hegemonic, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_3

59

60

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

posited by us as the hegemonic need. The Marxist ethic of need on the other hand seeks to explore the radicalness of need from the class-need overdetermined space that challenges the hegemonic version of need. We initiate the discussion by pointing to two broad paths of development, paths that are not always considered complementary to one another but which are accommodated in the hegemonic approach to need. Taking off from the model of economic dualism, the classical path contemplates capital-driven economic growth as the basic indicator of capturing the progression in standard of living (either measured as GDP per capita or GDP per worker); thus, poor and rich countries are differentiated in terms of, say, the level of GDP per capita and resultantly, the path to development of poor countries lies in relatively expanding the latter as fast as possible. In this vision, the other aspects such as education and life expectancy are seen as functions of capitalist growth in the sense that growth helps expand investments in education, health, etc., that further facilitate growth through productivity increase. The second and a contesting revisionist development approach does not deny the relationship between growth and social sector nor does it make growth unimportant. Instead, it shifts the evaluative terrain from a growth-centric perspective to a consideration of standard of living as comprising of many aspects of life including GDP per capita; for example, it would, in addition to GDP per capita, consider life expectancy, literacy, etc., as constituents of analysing standard of living and find multidimensional ways of measuring it. GDP per capita stands in a relation of equivalence with these other elements: well-being is a result of their combined effects. Marx referred to social investments as the common satisfaction of needs, i.e., social needs. As we shall explore, there are other kinds of social needs, such as poverty need, which are completely disengaged from any income-related activities. Our understanding of need is not referring to a naturalized space or register, consisting of some predefined objective ends. What emerges as need and in what form is socially determined and remains open to interpretation and change (more on this later); need is process too, need process . From a Marxian perspective, if we are to refer to the domain of growth, then logically, we are focusing on the FCP and the generated surplus; if directed at social needs then to distribution of the surplus. However, the problem is that thus far the surplus is connected to distribution via subsumed class payments to condition providers of FCP and not to social needs which is, as we shall see, a different kind of non-class process

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

61

that demands a very different idea of distribution than what we have furnished in Chapter 2. We thus need to theoretically rework the production-distribution-redistribution space. The problem before Marxism (and we believe that it is a very important problem) is simple but profound: can the question of class be related to the development space of social needs? Can distribution for social needs process be distinguished from distribution on account of subsumed class process? Does class matter for development-related issues such as poverty-related need? Moreover, can we think of need in a classless scenario where the category of surplus does not exist? How would then a Marxian ethico-political standpoint stand up to the operations of the hegemonic which tries continuously to implant its rendition of need as need per se? This set of questions inspired a new area of research on ‘need’ that was pioneered by Chaudhury (2001) and Chakrabarti (2001) and later expanded and formalized by Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2003).1 This chapter builds on their work. At stake in this chapter is the relevance of Marxian theory in the Southern context and indeed of accounting for public policy (of state, international agencies, etc.) in general.

Class and Need: A Marxian Approach In presenting a distinctly Marxian conception of need, two versions of need are posed. Consider an exclusively surplus producing economy, in which the onus of satisfaction of need is always on the surplus economy. Call this Need I. Next, consider as its other a non-surplus economy through which certain needs could also be accounted for. Call this Need II. While we conceptually separate the two versions of need, they operate in close tandem in concrete everyday reality. Our discussion on each proceeds sequentially. Need I: Surplus and Need Suppose we start by asking: why can’t all payments out of surplus be taken as subsumed? If that were to be the case then, as we depicted in Chapter 2, every payment would have to be construed as somehow connecting the condition providers to the FCP. After all, subsumed class

1 See Chakrabarti et al. (2008), Chakrabarti and Dhar (2013) and Chakrabarti (2013).

62

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

process (SCP) is defined as payments for securing the non-class processes that provide conditions of existence of FCP. Let us call this class distribution. The difficulty is that these payments per se does not address the issue of maintaining what Engels (1974: 16) called the non-working members of society or of natural conditions. Indeed, Marx (1977: 13–30) himself pointed to the need to further divide the surplus into a distributive component related to production and another distributive component that had nothing to do with production, capturing, in his own words, “the general costs of administration not belonging to production”, “that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc.”, and “funds for those unable to work, etc., in short for what is included under the so-called poor relief today”. From our vantage point, while subsumed class payments may partly, but not totally, capture the administrative expenditure and common satisfaction of needs, it will most certainly not capture the payments on account of socially determined needs of the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, preservation of nature, and so on, who or which may not necessarily provide conditions of existence to any FCP. Let us call such distribution for social needs developmental distribution. By reducing development distribution to class distribution (subsumed payments), we will be obscuring and misinterpreting the effects that meanings, struggles, and practices in relation to the process of social needs produce. Our reframing suggests that any possible relation between surplus distribution and social needs, say poverty need, must follow from the conceptual premise that surplus distributed to the point of production (FCP) and those away from it, while not independent, are distinct. Only through this distinction can we make sense of the relation between class and need, as also open the space for locating and analysing public policy and developmental struggle from a Marxian perspective. The Idea and Importance of Social Surplus To differentiate between these two forms of distribution, the concept of surplus is split between production surplus and social surplus. Production surplus (PS) consists of subsumed class payments to the point of production, required to meet the non-class conditions of existrnce of FCP. In contrast to class distribution (capturing the relation of FCP with SCP), social surplus, SS, represents the socially determined needs of the people (such as relating to poverty, environment, unemployment, children, and the old) who provide nearly no conditions of existence to the FCP.

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

63

Put in another way, the surplus over and above the production surplus (subsumed class payments) is social surplus. Social surplus represents the fact that a part of the total surplus moves beyond the point of appropriation to another point of social axis in order to be distributed and received by socially determined criteria of needs that are dissimilar to the ones which are channelled for class-related conditions of existence. Although related, possession, distribution, and receipt of social surplus are an altogether different set of processes as compared to that of class processes. Consequently, their effects are diverse also. The development space, as we understand, is the domain of need— containing its meanings and associated flow of possession, distribution, and receipt of social surplus destined for specified social needs; we designate development distribution as referring to this flow of social surplus for social needs. By connecting social needs with distribution and receipt of social surplus, which in turn is related to class process, this alternative terrain helps shape a radically different meaning of development space in comparison with what mainstream economics, institutions, policy-makers, and politics like to offer. Consequently, it is bound to give rise to a different kind of interpretation, intervention, and transition politics. Overdetermination and Contradiction of Class and Need Process Considering only a commodity producing economy, we sum up the total surplus value (TSV) produced by various enterprises—capitalist and noncapitalist—to arrive at the total surplus value. TSV, as per our analysis, is divided into two components, production surplus and social surplus. Define SV1 as the sum total of surplus value directed towards production surplus (subsumed class payments, SSCP) and SV2 as the remaining surplus value directed towards social surplus. Accordingly,   n  1 SSCPi SV = (3.1) i=1

where SV1 is the total appropriated surplus value and SSCPi represents the i th payment of the ‘n’ distributions of production surplus (PS). On the other hand, SV2 = SS =

m  k=1

SSk

(3.2)

64

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

where SV2 is the sum total of surplus value distributed as social surplus SS, and SSk represents the kth payment of the ‘m’ distributions of social surplus. Putting (3.1) and (3.2) together,     n m   SSCPi + SV2 = SS = SSk Total Surplus Value = TSV = SV1 = i=1

k=1

(3.3)

Recall that Eq. (3.1) accounts for the portion of surplus labour in value form. However, we have seen that many use values may not be traded in the market and could be, say, directly consumed. For example, the cooked food produced inside the household is consumed directly. Because the surplus produce materializing as food is not exchanged, but appropriated and distributed through consumption, the surplus product equivalent of surplus labour here is not in value form. Let SUV be the appropriated use value and let, for such cases, the subsumed distributions be specified by SSE.2 Accordingly, Eq. (3.3) is modified into:     n s   1  Surplus = SV = SSCPi + SUV = SSE i=1

 ⎧ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎨



r =1



Production Surplus

⎫ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪   ⎪ g m ⎬   2  + SSk + SUV = SSE (3.4) SV = SS = ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ z=1 k=1 ⎪ ⎪ ⎪ 

 

⎪ ⎭ ⎪ ⎩ Social Surplus



Both (3.3) and (3.4) are workable equations depending upon the type of problem that needs to be addressed. We shall only focus on (3.3) because the hegemonic tends to operate in the development space via value distribution. Social surplus and the space of development it opens up mark an operational terrain that is able to combine questions of class

2 Of course, the non-value items cannot be measured in SNALT, and therefore, the two parts cannot be technically added. The addition sign in (3.4) is only indicative of the relation between different FCPs and its associated various kinds of subsumed and need distribution.

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

65

and need, creating in the process a unique plane of overdetermined and contradictory effects to contend with. Need-related development struggles are over the meaning of need (what qualifies as need and why) as also over the manner, mechanism, and form of appropriating and distributing social surplus, and who should be considered as the rightful recipient of social surplus. The players converging in the need space as also confronting one another over the appropriation, distribution, and receipt of social surplus include, to name a few, the central governments, local governments, local bodies, NGOs, international agencies such as the World Bank, class enterprises (such as state class enterprises, private class enterprises, and household class enterprises), the political parties, and the social movements. If the struggle over class distribution (realm of production surplus) is class struggle, then the struggle over the meaning-content of need process and over development distribution (realm of social surplus) is need struggle. By virtue of the fact that each affects the other, both struggles become integral components of Marxian analysis. The development space is thus constitutionally political.

Necessary Labor

Surplus Labor

(remunerated)

(un-remunerated)

Production Surplus

Class Struggle

Social Surplus

Need Struggle

The class-focused development space that we have engendered connects three distinct nodes of struggle: (a) over class processes (pertaining to various aspects of FCP and SCP), (b) over need processes (pertaining to meaning of need and struggles over the distribution of social surplus between and within the various need components), and (c)

66

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

over non-class, non-need processes (in economic, political, cultural, and natural registers). Struggles do take place at these different levels, and yet due to their connectivity, each constitutes and transforms the other in important ways. For example, class struggle, need struggle, and other non-class, non-need struggle (especially struggle over processes that effect the class and need processes) constitute one another in the process of determination of the amount of social surplus to address the need for poverty reduction; clearly, class matters for poverty need (Chakrabarti et al. 2008). Marxian politics consequently must become complex and attentive to multiple levels of such struggles. By drawing attention to the unavoidable articulation of FCP, SCP and need of FCP, SCP, and social surplus, our analytical space of production surplus and social surplus opens the route to a unique rendition of public policy. Any public policy pertaining to social need, say over food security, would have to contend with the class-need space which not surprisingly, given the nature of this space, makes its appearance, form, and continuation open to various kinds of class and non-class effects, some over which even the policy-makers would not have control over or even know of. These effects may not appear merely from the hegemonic quarter intent on defining and displacing social need in ways which secure the position and power of capitalists and their cohorts. They may instead come from various other directions and sources, not least following social movements from below. It shows that policy formation, especially in the progressive direction, may not be always top-down; social movements too play a role in bringing their influence to bear on the policy menu to be considered. This is not to suggest that these movements would get what they want in ways they sought; this may not happen due to the other contending positions that may have emerged to oppose the demands. Therefore, the demand for universal coverage on account of Food Security in India could not be met and the enacted law on it was, to the disappointment of many activists, a watered-down version of what was sought. What emerged in The National Food Security Act, 2013, was a re-construed social need palatable to the hegemonic—hegemonic need.3 A specific social need is made, remade, or unmade through the contradictory process and struggles over it. This reveals the contingent nature of public policy and its

3 Chakrabarti and Sarkar (2019).

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

67

non-teleological trajectory, facets that are instilled by virtue of its location in the class-need overdetermined and contradictory plane and the ensuing complexity of diverse and contesting positions with respect to class distribution and development distribution that emerge and clash in any specific context. It is also by intervening within it that the hegemonic tries to implant its version of social need as a natural form. Universal Basic Income Building on the importance of the class-need dynamic (see Chakrabarti 2022), we deconstruct the text of Universal Basic Income. Suppose in a country all of SS distributed by the state goes to meet (a) food security need of the poor (SSFC ) and (b) unemployment benefits (SSUB ). Further suppose that the government is now mulling whether to introduce the Universal Basic Income (UBI). By definition, UBI implies an entitlement of the wealth of a nation for those, rich or poor, who are its citizens; the basis of this claim is neither poverty nor unemployment benefits. In the Indian context, debates have risen about the justification of UBI (i.e., whether it should at all qualify as a social need in a country with high inequality), the form it should take, the magnitude of required redistributed value for this purpose, its possible distortionary effects on economic activities (i.e., domain of produced value, FCP and SCP) and budgetary pressure on the state (see the symposium in the Indian Journal of Human Development 2017). The class-focused interpretation gives a different angularity to this debate. Denoting social surplus for UBI by SSUBI , the explicit form of Eq. (3.3) becomes: SSUBI = TSV (FCP)−SSCP (SCP)−SSFC −SSUB

(3.5)

The Marxist perspective to UBI brings to attention the importance of the overdetermination and contradiction of class and need processes and their struggles. The debate on UBI is very much a class issue (even if the word ‘class’ is tabooed in the debate), containing the complexity of class and development struggle, say regarding how far and how much of the produced TSV needs to be channelled for it rather than for PS. Moreover, it raises the vexed question of whether introducing UBI will

68

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

lead to a reduction in other kinds of programmes (here, SSFC + SSUB ) and therefore epitomizes need struggles even within the need space.4 Need II: From Class to Classlessness Marxists have long talked about the idea of classless social arrangements. What happens if class qua surplus labour as a concept disappears from history, where the difference between necessary labour and surplus labour in FCP no longer exists (Resnick and Wolff 1988). This non-class scenario is what Chaudhury (2001), Chakrabarti (2001) and Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2003) referred to as need-based economy, as a space of production and distribution defined from a need-based standpoint. Need-based space looks at production from a need standpoint, where the objective of production is not to alienate the produced use value for sale. This is unlike the surplus-focused space that looks at the economy from a production-based standpoint (that, in its capitalist form, tries to relate to surplus value or profit). That is, production and consumption are overdetermined in both types of economy, but the discursive focus of the two is different. A need-based economy is something which even the seemingly all-powerful surplus economy can neither discount nor dispel; sometimes, the hegemonic refers to this segment as the non-profit sector with survival need (Chapter 8). Need II directs us to analyse the overdetermined moments of the need-based economy and surplus economy. As the hegemonic faces up to WOT, surplus must face up to need, with both social needs under Need I and social needs masquerading as survival, subsistence need under Need II. The hegemonic encounter with WOT is also the encounter to transform the need space to its rule and benefit that engenders the foreclosure of WOT through the foregrounding of third worldism (Chapters 5 and 8). That is why the hegemonic must invent its own need discourse so as to foreclose the semantic articulation or discursive inauguration of need arising from WOT space/perspective/subject

4 The class-need framework has been re-construed to analyse specific overdetermined

and contradictory relations of class with poverty (Chakrabarti et al. 2008), with resettlement (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009), with social funds (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2013), with food security (Chakrabarti and Sarkar 2019), and with public distribution system (Sarkar and Chakrabarti 2022). These works also document the formation of and modification in hegemonic needs in the case of the nation-state, here, India.

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

69

position. In Chapters 8 and 9, we shall illustrate in detail this process of the hegemonization of WOT. Let us explain why one must not read Need II as part of a teleological journey, heading into oblivion. The distinction between necessary labour and surplus labour, i.e., class, remains because one major goal of society is the process of surplus appropriation. What if the goal of surplus appropriation emerges as insignificant in a certain phase/moment of history? But equally importantly, what if it is insignificant in a certain space within the present? The conceptual distinction between necessary labour and surplus labour, and that of social surplus would then not make sense therein. Need—expressed in this case through a variant of needbased economy—displaces class/surplus as the focal point of addressing the economy. The social agreement, if any, among subjects-collectives takes a different form: every subject is entitled to her need, whether it is in individual, family, or in public/shared/collective form; the objective and purpose of production, rather than exchange value or profit, get reoriented towards fulfilment of needs. It should be noted that we are not talking of equal income or equal share of resources as part of fair distribution. Here, the agreement between subjects is on a shared ethical plane worked out by them; it has to be worked out because it always involves accepting the possibility that someone is going to get a bigger basket than the others. It also involves accepting the viewpoint that needs may be different within and between groups and hence distribution may be skewed; rather, one is aiming at ‘to each according to her need’. Let us invoke India: The Big One ‘Mahabharat’ here to drive our point. The mother of the Pandava: Kunti, when distributing the gathered food among her five sons, Yudhishthir, Bhim, Arjun, Nakul and Sahadeb, would keep aside half of the whole booty for Bhim alone, and divide the rest among the others. It is the commonsense of the primitive—who knows that the consumption of a big-bodied warrior like Bhim can never be equal to the intake of semi-ascetic and intellectual Yudhishthir. (Chaudhury and Das 1999–2000: 3)

The concept of fairness in distribution arises because there is a surplus to be distributed. With the disappearance of the concept of surplus, fairness becomes moot. It is in this sense that community as being-incommon, as being-in-a-shared-yet-contingent-and-changeable-common bears fruition (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009: 120–133). Where sharing

70

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

overflows the narrow domain of cost–benefit and homo economicus ; where collectivity means shared vulnerability and interdependence; where sharing is embodied in what Gibson-Graham (2003) calls respect for difference; where sharing is marked by ethics (not morality/normativity); as also by responsibility (not duty) towards the Other. This is again not to say that contradictions disappear here, or that sharing may not have its sore points (Chapter 8), but to point out that they will not appear in the way they did in the class-need overdetermined space; the contradictions within a classless social formation will have its specific forms and the non-class conflicts too will be irreducible to the class-focused economy. Need I and Need II, which can and do coexist, offer to Marxian theory a paradigmatic break, since, even in the context of class analysis, it allows us to defetishize surplus and further disaggregate and decentre the economy. It is also critical in the unravelling of the need space from a class-focused perspective because the hegemonic weaves its tentacles and operations by interfering in both the forms, and that too through a need discourse of its own: hegemonic need.

Hegemonic Need, Nodal Point and the Delusional Veil Modern need theories have been understood in two forms—the ‘thin version’ and the ‘thick version’ (Fraser 1998: 14–16). In the thin version, need as a universal principle is abstracted out of culture and subjectivity; the World Bank discourse is an example of this approach. The thick version, in contrast, sees need as more particularized, as arising from cultural or individual experience, and hence is subjective. The postdevelopmental discourse represents this perspective of need. According to Fraser, this difference between the thick (subjective/particular) and thin (objective/universal) approach has driven much of the current debate on need; the two opposing tendencies of World Bank and postdevelopmental discourses, with many others placed in between, present us a fractured space of approaching the question of need. What is common, however, in this diverse literature is class blindness and therefore the failure to account for class effects on social needs. In the thin version, class blindness in turn makes the association of capitalism with social needs a non-starter; capitalism is accepted as given and not discussed. In the thick version, while a general critique of capitalism is present, an absence of the perspective of class entails a lack of a rigorous theorization of both capital (the

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

71

concrete-real form) and capitalism (the hegemonic form); the alternative to development that it proposes is likewise fragile. As opposed to these two versions, a robust relation between rigorously theorized conceptualizations of class and need, between capitalism and need is what makes Marxian theory’s understanding of ethico-politics different from all the above approaches. Indeed, as the subsequent chapter shows, the occlusion of the language of class from discussions on need is one condition of the foregrounding of hegemonic need; the other intersecting condition being the foreclosure of WOT through the foregrounding of third world. In so far as the set of social needs constitute the development space, Marxian theory would consider the terrain of need to be flexible, contingent, unstable, and open to interventions and articulations rather than being closed off into a universal set of needs handed down from the top, say, by the World Bank, or the state. Within a contested need space, the set of needs epitomizing the thin version of need can be represented in terms of what we have called ‘ethics to the world of the third’, all in the name of civilizing, developing, and uplifting of the realvictim (see Chapter 10). These practices of need form the compass of hegemonic need. However, even if the varieties of hegemonic needs are posed as universal and natural, they can only emerge and be established from within the space of development struggle (and associated class struggle). There is no social need, which is natural, pre-given, or obvious; it always appears in a historical context or a time–space curvature that is conflictual. Given such a contesting need space that in turn is continually affected and transformed by overdetermined class and non-class processes/struggles, it is no surprise that what constitutes need, even hegemonic need, tends to change over time. The thin version of need based on universal, objective needs is not merely that of the World Bank, but has seen it branching out into a number of nuanced theorizations. For example, Sen’s capabilities approach is not the same as that of Rawls’ primary goods approach, or Dworkin and Roemer’s resource-based approach or Van Parjis’s basic income approach. We don’t discuss the differences in these important theorizations in this book. We just make the general point that, notwithstanding their own theoretical positions (Sen’s capability approach for example being a distinct and rich theorization), many of the insights these approaches provide have been incorporated, as per the requirement, in the broader development strategy of combining growth with the social programme of redistributing benefits of growth to the poor and fulfilment

72

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

of other social needs; the World Bank and the nation states in general epitomize this strategy of accommodation and appropriation (World Bank 2000, 2018). What is generally revealing about the thin version of need is its attempt to naturalize and depoliticize the dimension of need by subsuming differences with the realm of ‘universal common humanity’, and, in this universal pursuit, one finds absent any consideration of class and capitalism. For example, Martha Nussbaum uses the notion of a ‘universal common humanity’ as a basis for universal needs; “her concern is to dispel the arguments of the cultural relativists by positing Aristotelian essentialist virtues of what it means to be human universally and across cultures” (Fraser 1998: 17). In these schemas, need is objectively determined as a universal set of requirements and is seen as intimately connected to the achievement of their well-being. A sense of the humanist imperative underlying the thin version of need can be gauged from the following: Human beings, as human beings, need these things, for that claim is not a universal generalisation but a statement about our biological and psychological nature as human beings … It is because we are constituted as we are, as human beings, because we function as we do, that we have certain objective basic needs. These facts also make it possible to identify a condition of objective well-being which is linked to the notion of objective needs… There is an obvious intuitive plausibility to the idea that if all people have enough to eat, are housed and clothed, are healthy, and (perhaps more problematically) have been educated up to the level necessary for them to participate fully in their society, they are in these respects in a condition of equality. A society in which this had been achieved would, one might think, have made a substantial advance in the direction of equality. (Norman 1992: 144)

Need is construed in terms of certain elements some humans or the society they live in lack; needs tend to become synonymous with preconceived qualities people must possess to become ‘human’. Ethics flowing from this version of need is an ethics to the realvictim and for all its variations that is what the thin version of need represents. Further, for the hegemonic, this version of need is a nodal point. However, for the hegemonized, it is a delusional veil. More on this in subsequent chapters. The humanist universalism embedded in the thin version of need was critiqued as a Euro-ethnocentric (sometimes referred to as Orientalist) model of universalizing white male power, as cultural imperialism, and

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

73

as civilizational charge with no respect for the culture-nature continuum, autonomy and democratic politics, human rights, social justice, and the complex vicissitudes of a planetary world as a whole (Esteva 1987; Esteva and Escobar 2019). This critique has come from those who argue for adopting a thicker and culturally relative/subjective version of need that the postdevelopment school, among others, has epitomized (Chakrabarti 2022). Their position is that if need is a product of culture, context, lived experience, and subjective contingencies, then any conception of need and its listing imposed from above is in contradiction with the particular subject’s need and the subject’s particular needs. Such a representation of need that comes from above is somebody else’s formulation of need that demotes the needs of particular cultures and individual subjects, specifically, in our terms, the needs of WOT. One critique launched by the postdevelopmental school addresses a particular thin version of need—‘basic needs’—that has played an important role in World Bank’s intervention in WOT. Basic needs, as encapsulating the biological reproduction of the ‘victim third’ (real victim ), are predefined, pre-given in the thinner version. Shiva (1989, 1994) considers such an objectively defined intervention into the domain of the biological need (or even social need) problematical. More than anything else, within WOT, what constitutes biological need is not a metaphysical or pre-given lexicon of necessities but instead is subjected to polymorphous modes of articulation within WOT. Need, even if biological, is subjectively and contingently produced and cannot be determined outside of the social and economic effects constituting the subjects of the economy (Esteva and Escobar 2019). Even in the domain of the biological one needs to move from an ethics to the real victim to an ethics of the real, move from ‘ethics to’ (a top-down approach) to an ‘ethics of’ (an approach that learns to learn from below, as also from the subjective particularities of cultures and experiences). As a general critique of the thinner version of need, postdevelopmentalists such as Illich (1992) argue that it defines need as a lack in WOT (in)humans—the lack being objectively defined—which then creates a differentiation between humans, between those with more capability (more humans) and others with less capability (less humans—WOT [in]humans); in the process, it spatially-temporally bifurcates the world and societies into two. The proposed lacks are collected and compiled in the form of objectively defined needs of lagging/lacking societies

74

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

vis-à-vis advanced/progressive ones. In Illich’s scheme, while the literature on need took shape in the late 1960s replacing the then existing concept of development that was premised primarily on growth, the revisionist turn effectively redraws a space for economists and technocrats to continue their social experiments through a discourse of reaching out to the poor. By sticking to the logic of the uplifting of third world poor victims, the World Bank’s needs-based discourse is, as if, a continuation of the old Eurocentric (i.e., Orientalist) development discourse. In their critical perspective, postdevelopmentalists depart sharply not only from mainstream development approach typified by the World Bank, but even from those residing in its fringes such as the human development approach. The politics of postdevelopmentalism increasingly becomes anti-development: getting rid of economic development understood in a Euro-ethnocentric sense; getting rid of the Eurocentric conception of progress, of the enumerated conception of poverty, and of the thin version of need. Three problems have been attributed to the thick version of need (Fraser 1998: 15–16). The first relates to the fact that the absence of a universal or objective criterion means that there is no way we can compare and mediate conflicting needs between cultures. Though we must confess that we do not know for certain whether this is at all a problem. The second critique is more serious. The thick version holds on to a homogenous characterization of culture in a society (emphasizing thus pre-existing cultural difference) that, as Marglin (1990) avers, is held together by a ‘power of belief’. To this, Amartya Sen retorts, “The normative claims by cultural relativists tend to operate with broader units, to wit, an entire society, seen as a whole … The normative demands of cultural relativism include deference to each society and an internal culture —an immunity, as it were, to criticism coming from outside” (Sen 2003: 476). For us, it would not just mean immunity from questions coming from the outside, but immunity from an examination of differences-hierarchies within, differences-hierarchies internal to WOT. This homogenization is a form of cultural essentialism that reduces other aspects, governing the forms of life, to the centrality of culture. One can’t consider cultures, however traditional, to be a priori homogenous; the problem is theoretical and not empirical. Moreover, no society is determined solely by culture; just as the economy as an independent and autonomous entity is an impossibility, so is culture. Culture is overdetermined by noncultural processes, including class processes. The third problem of the

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

75

thick version of need might be related to a surreptitious universalism (one can call it the universalism of the ‘local’) in the invocation of cultural particularity. Marglin invokes the example of the perceived need of circumcision of females in some African cultures. This cultural practice flows from the belief that the offspring of uncircumcised females are inferior. This belief is imposed on particular subjects whose need in this regard is not a matter of consideration; due to hierarchies pertaining to seniority-gender, children in general and the girl child in particular would not be in a position to speak against such practices (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2007). When ‘thick’ descriptions enumerate particular cultural attributes, don’t they leave out other opposing attributes? Thus, within a particular culture, a ‘thick’ description might actually and in the last instance be ‘thin’, in terms of how it leaves out other cultural features/subjectivities. The cultural particular or the local thus contains a form of the surreptitious universal; at times, it is the universal of the male; at times, that of the upper caste Brahmin; cultures are power-ridden; an ignorance or demotion of the element of power in the local introduces universalism through the backdoor; consequently, the thick version’s attempt to escape universality fails. Having raised the question of cultural essentialism, let us now move to the problematical understanding of the economy that afflicts much of the postdevelopmentalist renditions of need. To begin with, we consider Illich’s claim of need replacing growth as the new form of colonial discourse misplaced. Need is neither an anathema to growth nor is development and need substitute for one another. Growth and need, in tandem, constitute the hegemonic form of capitalist-led development (we shall show in subsequent chapters how private capitalist surplus value appropriation, local–global market, and hegemonic need constitute the nodal points of hegemonic capitalism). Given this, contesting the contending hegemonic readings of need is an essential component of the struggle and movement towards a reconstruction of the social. Escobar identifies the problem: Social movements necessarily operate within dominant systems of need interpretation and satisfaction, but they tend to politicize interpretations; that is, they refuse to see needs as just “economic” or “domestic” … It is a problematic “moment,” since it usually entails the involvement of the state and the mediation by those who have expert knowledge… It is clear that in the Third World the process of needs interpretation and satisfaction is inextricably linked to the development apparatus…The challenge for

76

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

social movements—and the “experts” who work with them—is to come up with new ways of talking about needs and of demanding their satisfaction in ways that bypass the rationality of development with its “basic needs” discourse. The “struggle over needs” must be practiced in a way conducive to redefining development and the nature of the political. (Escobar 1992: 46)

It is our contention that to struggle over needs so as to redefine both development and the political, it is not enough to be antiorientalist, one needs to be anti-capitalocentric as well; because hegemonic need is not just a product of orientalism, it is also a product of capitalocentrism. As Gibson-Graham and Ruccio (2001) rightly argue, postdevelopmentalist positions often falter on the question of capitalocentrism. In postdevelopmentalist renditions, there are two types of economy, which are independent and autonomous of one another: a market/global economy founded on the logic of capital and a traditional/local economy founded on subsistence. The major problem in this reiteration of economic dualism is that the economy, unlike our class-focused economic cartography, is fixed onto capitalism, taken to be its interpellating centre. Consequently, capitalism as an extra-discursive presence remains undertheorized; it is also the centre, in terms of which the economy, including the existence of traditional/local components, is represented. Even as postdevelopmentalists critique capitalist development, their own understanding of the economy remains capitalocentric. Secondly, the reduction of the traditional economy to nature or culture is as monist as the reduction of the modern economy to capitalism. In class-focused terms, the so-called traditional economy often projected as third world is actually a complex of both exploitative and non-exploitative processes, both fair distribution and unfair distribution of surplus, where modern abuse [may be grafted] onto ancient injustice, hateful racism onto old inequality (Césaire 2001); see Chapter 8. In our framework, unlike the postdevelopmental approach, the centre a la the circuits of global capital are constructed from within the decentred and disaggregated class-focused economy as part of demonstrating the operations of capitalocentrism in the hegemonic formation. The absence of a theorization of capitalocentrism in the postdevelopment framework would mean that they would fail to distinguish between world of the third and third world (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, 2017; Chakrabarti 2022). Therefore, Escobar (who otherwise offers a profound critique

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

77

of development) notes that “the development discourse…has created an extremely efficient apparatus for producing knowledge about, and the exercise of power over, the Third World” (Escobar 1995 [2012]: 9). At the same time, he deposits faith in rescuing the ‘third world’ by arguing that “the Third World is contested reality whose current status is up for scrutiny and negotiation” (1995: 214–215) (also see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009: 96–99). The problem is that “development discourse constructs an economic/social reality within which third world has a particular place and there is no third world outside of that reality. Escobar is urging us to resist the negative representation of third world without quite realizing that one cannot but have a negative representation of third world; third world is the representation of that which has to be projected as negative. There is no third world except in its denigrated representation; there is nothing to salvage of third world” (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009: 98); to criticize and defend the same third world is a logical contradiction. It is also a problem of theorizing the outside in the context of the hegemonic. Interrogating and resisting development within the compass of third worldism (i.e., as a devalued constitutive inside of the hegemonic) are one thing, while doing the same from its constitutive outside of world of the third is quite another. Unable to make this distinction, postdevelopmentalists conflate and collapse world of the third and third world into hegemonic third worldism, which in a rather circular matter they both criticize (because it is constructed from a Eurocentric perspective as a lacking other) and defend (because of the resistance to capitalism from within that space). In our work, traditional societies—re-theorized and represented as WOT—are understood as neither lacking nor complete. Instead, WOT remains the space of the complex play of class–caste–gender–sexuality– nature and other processes, we have no clue of—considerations that are at work in an overdetermined and contradictory manner. As we shall show, the two lips of ‘class-need’ (Irigaray 1977) operate as much in the circuits of global capital as in WOT. WOT too is a site of class-need struggles and of the hegemonic operations to generate consent and collaboration within WOT. The struggle (i) against forms of hegemonic need unleashed by the hegemonic within WOT to protect and expand the operations of the circuits of global capital and the struggle (ii) against injustices within WOT would have to be confronted by the complex of class and need struggles; the invocation of radical need in this context is pivotal from a Marxian ethico-political standpoint.

78

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Marx on Need and the Invocation of Radical Need The unique feature of Marx’s version of need (Heller 1988; Fraser 1998) is its movement away from the universal-particular or the objectivesubjective dichotomy into a plane where the objective (thin) notion of need becomes overdetermined by the subjective (thick) notion of need. Collecting the somewhat dispersed encounter of Marx with need, Fraser (1998) delivers a quite comprehensive and systematic study of Marx’s rendition of need. Following Fraser, we arrive at various notions of need in Marx—natural need, necessary need, luxury need, socially created need, social need, and true social need. Fraser reads Marx as dividing need between the abstract and the concrete or between need and need form. Natural need presents the abstract form of need while the rest—necessary need, luxury need, socially created need, social need, and true social need—are all concrete forms of need. Need cannot exist without the need forms. The need space is decentred and disaggregated into concrete need forms. Another critical feature of Marx’s rendition of need is his endeavour to link the conception of need with class and capital. Marx hammered home the necessity of locating the origin of any specific need form in the spatial–temporal context in which it arises. That is why Marx saw the importance of understanding the workings of capital and locating the need form in the context of a materializing capitalism. This is not to say that all needs are reducible to the capitalist logic—that would be crass capitalocentrism—but one must remain wary of needs that are procreated in and through the functioning of capital and of the operations of the hegemonic in general to secure the rule of capital. In this context, one can ask, which form of need is a product of capitalist hegemony? Which form of need is a critique of the capitalist hegemony? Which need threatens capitalist hegemony? In fact, in this context, Marx poses what Fraser calls a notion of radical needs that will encapsulate need forms and which, in turn, will form a counter-hegemonic moment in the struggle against capitalism. Those need forms in Need I and Need II space are radical which question the rule and working of capital and of hegemonic capitalism in general; radical needs thus are in opposition to hegemonic needs. Thus, struggles for radical need forms and struggles against exploitation (and subjection-subjectivation of WOT) must complement and converge if we are to contemplate a challenge to the hegemonic in favour of a postcapitalist social. That is how we respond to Escobar’s call (given in an earlier quote) to politicize the notion of need.

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

79

Fraser reads capitalism as a closed entity without any cracks, ruptures, or fissures. Within such a rendition of capitalism, Fraser offers human need for free time as an example of radical need, a need radicalized through absenteeism, strikes, go slows, sabotage of machinery, or say even class struggles to reduce working time. Andre Gorz’s (1980) work epitomizes this impulse. In contrast, for us (global), capitalism appears from within a space that is decentred and disaggregated, yet hegemonic. We thus read Fraser’s radical needs as articulated, at best, from within the circuits of global capital; hence in what sense these needs are radical is not clear; for without an alternative economic cartography and without a counter-hegemonic imagination, the idea of radical need as representing a challenge to the hegemony of (global) capital remains somewhat less groundbreaking. We further ask: what about needs and their radical articulation outside the circuits of global capital and within WOT? The radicalness of need arises from the need space itself that connects need to certain counter-hegemonic ethical criteria in the realm of both Need I and Need II. Radical need is a form of need that, by its very nature and manner of being posed, confronts capital and the hegemonic. The question of need cannot be divorced from the class-focused economy where the subject-object division melts; each is overdetermined by the other as the need form gets shaped. While need may arise, say, due to culturally specific necessities, it cannot be posited outside the question of distribution, and since distribution is intrinsically linked with production, need is thus not outside of production either. Changes in need towards radical needs would require that the process of performance, appropriation, distribution, and receipt of surplus labour be transformed for both the system of production and distribution to be subjected to the concerns of radical needs. Marxian ethico-politics would thus demand an articulated understanding of class and radical needs (hegemonic need disarticulates the two); even our Need II space, where surplus is absent, is specified from a class-focused perspective. Building on Marxian ethicopolitics, expanded communism entails a complex social combination of non-exploitative class processes and fulfilment of radical needs.

Expanded Communism In terms of the class-need overdetermined space, communism is a much broader concept and a more expansive ethico-political view than that circumscribed by just the communist class process. To take a minimalist

80

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

condition and perspective, we begin with Resnick and Wolff’s insight that “Communism denotes a social formation in which communist fundamental class processes and classless production arrangements predominate (in varying proportions) in the production of goods and services” (1988: 38). In the light of the discussion in Chapter 2 and here, we modify this arrangement to include both the communist class process and the AC communitic class process. The two qualify because both are nonexploitative; this is in addition to the non-surplus space of classless arrangement that we referred to as need-based economy. We rename this complexity of arrangements as ‘expanded communism’ (Chakrabarti 2001; Chakrabarti and Cullenberg 2003; Chakrabarti, et al. 2008). The template of expanded communism consists of: Expanded Communism under class process: a social arrangement pertaining to those types of non-exploitative class processes (AC and CC) with class sets ranging from {13–16, 21–24} producing social surpluses that are capable, likely and striving to satisfy or meet the contingently produced radical needs of society in whatever form and at whatever level. Expanded Communism as classless society: a social arrangement in the absence of the distinction between necessary and surplus labour, existing for satisfying the contingently produced (radical) needs of society in whatever form and at whatever level. This form of expanded communism is akin to the need-based economy. The above template introduces its own complexity in our framework. From a Marxian perspective, radical needs entail some socially determined understanding of fair distribution. Since economic fairness is described in the socially determined context of need, fairness like need is in a continual state of change and annulment; what emerges as radical need too is in a state of flux. Also, neither non-exploitation nor fair distribution are means to an end, but are ends in themselves. The focus on ending exploitation requires a movement towards a particular set of FCPs depending upon the acceptable criteria chosen, while the focus on fair distribution requires a specific direction of distributional change depending on the relevant criteria of need. A Marxian point of view requires the simultaneous movement towards the two goals, which necessarily may not be compatible with one another. We can imagine the case of a hideous

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

81

communist system. In that system, class processes may be communist, but distribution highly unfair if the collective appropriators are reluctant to share their surplus with others. In contrast, we may have a benevolent capitalist system where exploitative (especially exploitative capitalist) organizations are not questioned, but where distribution is fair (as in the welfare states of the Nordic countries). The former celebrates the end of exploitation but lives with the blight of an unfair society. It takes care of the ethic of sharing in, but not that of sharing out; hardly an attractive or a long-run option. The latter, on the other hand, celebrates the ethic of fairness, but is governed by rules and rights that generate an exploitative society based on wage slavery. This takes care of sharing out, but not that of sharing in. Expanded communism must live through this tension, and chart out its path, as will be described in Chapter 10. One final point on expanded communism under class process needs to be mentioned. If class-based expanded communism is to be the desired objective and if it is achieved, then we need to explain the problem of exclusion in it of independent class process with its class set forms {1– 4}. Self-appropriation is based on an individualistic logic and has nothing in common with the aspect of sharing that governs the two forms of expanded communism—the class and the classless one. While individuals may show some arbitrary social commitment, there is no mechanism to guarantee these acts and the benefits to be received from them. We have read self-appropriation only in the light of exploitation and have found it to be non-exploitative. However, if we read self-appropriation as part of expanded communism or as helping in the imagination of expanded communism, which requires the simultaneous fulfilment of the two above-mentioned arrangements, then it turns out to have some limitations. Given the ethic of sharing that binds the theme and arrangements of expanded communism, not all non-exploitative classes are desirable as ends-in-themselves; at best, they could be means to an end or coexist as supplementary arrangements. Instead, CC and AC class processes with class set forms (21–24) and (12–16), respectively, satisfy the first arrangement of expanded communism and are also conducive to paving the way for classless arrangements, which satisfy the second arrangement of expanded communism. We do not take forward this discussion in this chapter. Instead, we would just like to suggest that a Marxian ethico-politics within a class-need interface would have to encounter the template of expanded communism and confront the social justice question pertaining to it. We will revisit the question of expanded communism

82

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

in Chapter 10 to discuss the interface of ethics, social justice, and politics from a Marxian standpoint.

Conclusion The hegemonic trope of developing an undeveloped third world is essentially structured around and foregrounded in terms of the needs discourse pertaining to the distribution of social surplus. Hegemonic third wordlist operations produce a displacement of WoT into a platform that is under the control and management of institutions including the World Bank and the organs of themodern state. Such a set of needs—‘hegemonic need’—is conceptualized as emanating from a universalist, rights-based paradigm and becomes the nodal signifier of the hegemonic. However, while for the hegemonic it is a secret nodal point, for the hegemonized it operates as a delusional veil. The delusional veil works as a cover over the foreclosure of the relationship between need and class. Stripped of the language of class, third wordlist subjects become objects of developmentalist benevolence. Consequently, as we shall explore in Chapter 5, global capitalist hegemony works through three nodal signifiers—private capitalist surplus value appropriation, local–global market, and hegemonic need. Chapter 10 will reinvoke the question of the relationship between hegemonic need and radical need in terms of the relationship between class and need, and address the question of ethic-politics of world of the third, as also trace out a possible path of Marxian transformation of the social and the subject in directions that cater to questions of social justice.

References Césaire, A. 2001. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: NYU Press. Chakrabarti, A. 2001. Class and Need: Towards a Post-Modern Development Economics. Margins 1 (2). ———. 2013. Class and Need: Social Surplus and Marxian Theorization of Development. Available at https://philosophersforchange.org/2013/11/05/classand-need-social-surplus-and-marxian-theorization-of-development. Retrieved July 2, 2021. ———. 2022. Class and Social Needs: A Marxian Approach to Poverty. In Global Poverty: Rethinking Causality, ed. R.J. Das and D. Mishra. Brill: Studies in Critical Social Sciences. Chakrabarti, A., and S. Cullenberg. 2003. Transition and Development in India. New York: Routledge.

3

THE SECRET ABODE OF NEED: FROM HEGEMONIC NEED …

83

Chakrabarti, A., S. Cullenberg, and A. Dhar. 2008. Rethinking Poverty Beyond Non-Surplus Theories: Class and Ethical Dimensions of Poverty Eradication. Rethinking Marxism 20 (4): 673–687. ———. 2009. Orientalism and Transition in India in the Era of Globalization. In Immigration and Migration, Social Change, and Cultural Transformation, ed. E. Elliott, J. Payne, and P. Ploesch. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Chakrabarti, A. and Dhar, A. (2007): ‘Children’s Working World through the Lens of Class’, Journal of Social and Economic Development, 9 (2). Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2009. Rethinking Dislocation and Development. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2013. Social Funds, Poverty Management and Subjectification: Beyond the World Bank Approach. Cambridge Journal of Economics 37 (5): 1035– 1055. ———. 2017. Economic Development. In Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics, ed. D.M. Brennan, D. Kristjanson-Gural, C.P. Mulder, and E.K. Olsen, 310–323. London and New York: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A., and S. Sarkar. 2019. An Examination of Indian State in the PostPlanning Period. In Changing Contexts and Shifting Roles: New Perspectives on the Indian State, ed. Anthony P. D’Costa and Achin Chakraborty Singapore: Springer. Chaudhury, A. 2001. Western Marxists’ Commodity Fetishism: Looking for an Exit. Margins 1 (2). Chaudhury, A., and D. Das. 1999–2000. Interrogating the Primitive: A Reformulation of Smith’s Theory of Value. Working Paper # 3. Department of Economics, Calcutta University. Engels, F. 1974. Engels on Capital, 2nd ed. New York: International. Escobar, A. 1992. Imagining a Post Development Era? Critical Thoughts on Development and Social Movements. Social Text 31/32. ———. 1995 [2012]. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Esteva, G. 1987. Regenerating People’s Space. In Towards a Just World Peace, ed. S.H. Mendlovitz and R.B.J. Walker, 271–298. London: Butterworths. Esteva, G., and A. Escobar. 2019. Postdevelopment@25: On ‘Being Stuck’ and Moving Forward, Sideways, Backward and Otherwise. In Postdevelopment in Practice: Alternatives, Economies, Ontologies, ed. E. Klein and C.E. Morrero. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Fraser, I. 1998. Hegel and Marx: The Concept of Need. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2003. An Ethics of the Local. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 15 (1): 49–74. Gibson-Graham, J.K., and D. Ruccio. 2001. ‘After’ Development: Re-imagining Economy and Class. In Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism,

84

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

ed. J.K. Gibson-Graham, S.A. Resnick, and R.D. Wolff, 158–181. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Gorz, A. 1980. Farewell to the Working Class. London: Pluto Press. Heller, A. 1988. Labour and Human Needs in a Society of Associated Producers. Interpretations of Marx, ed. T.B. Bottomore. Oxford: Blackwell. Illich, I., ed. 1992. ‘Needs’ in Sachs. In The Development Dictionary. Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman. Indian Journal of Human Development. 2017. Symposium on Universal Basic Income 11 (2): 139–209. Irigaray, L. 1977. This Sex Which Is Not One, Eng. trans. 1985. New York: Cornell University Press. Marglin, S.A. 1990. Towards the Decolonization of the Mind. In Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance, ed. A.F. Marglin and S.A. Marglin. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Marx, K. 1977. The Critique of the Gotha Programme. In Marx: Selected Writings, ed. D. McLennan. New York: Oxford University Press. Norman, R. 1992. Equality, Needs and Basic Income. In Arguing for Basic Income, ed. P.V. Parijs. London: Verso. Resnick, S.A., and R.D. Wolff. 1988. Communism: Between Class and Classless. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 1 (1): 14– 42. Sarkar, S., and A. Chakrabarti. 2022. Rethinking the Formation of Public Distribution System: A Class-Focused Approach. Review of Radical Political Economics. 54 (1): 26–43. Sen, A. 2003. Rationality and Freedom. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Shiva, V. 1989. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books. ———. 1994. Development, Ecology and Women. In Paradigms in Economic Development: Classic Perspectives, Critiques, and Reflections, ed. Rajani Kanth. New York: M.E. Sharpe. World Bank. 2000 [2001]. Attacking Poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.

CHAPTER 4

Foreclosure, Delusional Veil, and the Lacanian Real

Introduction A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

This chapter takes a close look at the picture that has held us captive, the picture of global capitalist hegemony; how it, that is, global capitalist hegemony, has held us captive; and how we could not get outside it; and why we could not get outside it. Global capitalist hegemony lay in our language, and that language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. Was global capitalist hegemony then secured through a putting outside of some other language (here the language of class; class as the primordial signifier of capitalism; see Chapter 2), as also the language of the Other (here world of the third [WoT])? Was it secured through the repudiation of a fundamental ‘signifier-jouissance complex’? Was our captivity then secured through processes of repression (Verdrangung ), negation (Verneinung ), disavowal (Verleugnung ), foreclosure (Verwerfung ), and the missing signifier (Verworfen) (Lacan 2017: 132, 139), as we have suggested in Chapter 1? Especially, foreclosure; foreclosure of the possible exposition of an Other language; or language of the Other?

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_4

85

86

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

To think the picture and the outside, to think captivity and escape, to think captivity within a certain language and an escape from given language, to think hegemonic language and foreclosed language, and to think hegemony and foreclosure, this chapter works at the interface of post-Lacanian psychoanalysis1 and post-Althusserian Marxism. It asks whether there could be a relation between the two, between (postLacanian) psychoanalysis and (post-Althusserian) Marxism, or for that matter between the psychoanalytic mindset-episteme and Marxist ethicopolitics (see Dhar and Chakrabarti 2015 for the Moebius between surplus and unconscious). This chapter relates, in other words, to the possibility of a psychoanalytic Marxism, a Marxism that is overdetermined by the psychoanalytic unconscious and the psychoanalytic subject-affects.2 Does such a possible rubbing of shoulders, between Marx and Freud, and between Lacan and Althusser enable us, offer us ground, to understand the workings of the unconscious in hegemony in general, and global capitalist hegemony in particular, and question in turn the presuppositions of global capitalist hegemony? Such a rubbing of shoulders, such a forging of a relation, is perhaps made possible through a radical displacement of much of psychoanalysis and at least some of Marxism as well, through a radical displacement of both the picture and its outside, of both the idea of picture and the idea of an outside. This chapter thus works on the radical displacement of one concept in the space of psychoanalysis—the concept that relates to the notion of an outside—the concept of the Lacanian Real, and one concept in the space 1 The authors of this work have arrived at the understanding that psychoanalysis, as such, would not be habitable for a class focused post-structuralist rendition of Marxism. It is never enough to put to use Freudian or Lacanian concepts in their unaltered form, in their original form in the space of Marxism. Psychoanalysis would have to be fundamentally displaced so as to make it habitable for Marxism. Psychoanalysis would have to be turned ab-original. Ab-original psychoanalysis is to a large extent post-Freudian and post-Lacanian. “Psychoanalysis has its metaphysics – its name is Oedipus. And that a revolution - this time materialist - can proceed only by way of a critique of Oedipus, denouncing the illegitimate use of the syntheses of the unconscious as found in Oedipal psychoanalysis, so as to rediscover a transcendental unconscious defined by the immanence of its criteria, and a corresponding practice that we shall call schizoanalysis” (Deleuze and Guattari 1984: 75; also see Dhar 2016). 2 Spivak speaks of a deconstructive mindset. She also speaks of working at the overdetermined interstices of Marxism, feminism, deconstruction and psychoanalysis (Spivak 1996: 54).

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

87

of Marxism—the concept that relates to the notion of the hegemonic— the concept of Capital-ism (in this book, we distinguish between Marx’s Capital—the book, capitalist class set and capitalist system—the concrete process and capital-ism—the hegemonic formation). We also argue that the ‘subject’ of capitalism—both the hegemonic subject and the hegemonized subject—comes into existence through the Moebius of the play of language/signifiers and affect/jouissance. We see the symbolic order of capitalism as imbued with processes of power and hence as hegemonic; we look at the possible suture of a symbolic order—even if contingent— through crypted nodal signifiers, rather than the impossibility of suture. We argue that capitalist hegemony is grounded on the “foreclosure of the impossibility of totalization”—an impossibility that marks the other Four Discourses in Lacan, as also on the delusion of “self-sufficiency, completeness and vitality” (see Lacan’s Seminar XVII for a full elaboration of the Four Discourses and the ‘impossibility of mastery’; also see Tomšiˇc 2015: 220). Hence, one needs a dialogue between Marx and Freud to make sense of the delusion, as also the question and “exploitation of [the] desire” for consumption (see Tomšiˇc 2015). The concept of the hegemonic (here global capitalist hegemony) and the concept of the Lacanian Real are redesigned in this chapter in terms of two categories—‘reality’ and ‘real’. We work on the close and near inalienable relation between reality and real. We show how a Marxist understanding of reality comes to be related to a Freudian-Lacanian understanding of the real—how the space of reality and the space of the real are produced at one and the same time, in one turn. We show how reality as both a hegemonic system (a Marxian notion) and/or a fantasy construction (a Freudian-Lacanian notion) with libidinal investment come to be produced through the process of foreclosure, through the production of what we designate as the real. The process of foreclosure in turn leads to the production of a delusional veil which would cover the tear produced (in language) by foreclosure. The process of foreclosure, the process of the production of the real, does not come about as isolated but, somewhat paradoxically, in relation to processes of inclusion, inclusion of the real within the hegemonic, within the Lacanian Symbolic, albeit in displaced forms (Dhar 2021). The real, however, is included not as real but in a circumscribed and habitable form, in forms habitable for the hegemonic. The real is, as if, put outside through the inclusion of substitute real-s. Substitute real-s come

88

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

either as the victim version of the real (we have represented the substitute version, the victim version as realvictim as against the real) or the evil version of the real (we have represented the substitute version, and the evil version as realevil or as realdystopic as against the real). The founding as also the foregrounding of both versions—realvictim and realevil —as the constitutive inside of the hegemonic protracts further the process of foreclosure. The somewhat paradoxical language of inclusion—the language in which the real is assimilated—the language of the victim/evil is complicit in the reproduction of the hegemonic. The other process that protracts further the process of foreclosure is the process of projecting the real as the Dark Continent, a certain primitivization of the real, a certain substitution of the real by the real-as-utopian, by the purportedly utopian version of the real (we have represented the substitute version, the utopian version as realutopian or as realDark Continent ). This is the moment of further excision of the real; this moment of excision finds fruition through a displacement of the real into an impossible, unviable, unlivable, unachievable, and distant dark utopia, displacement of the real into an absolute outside of the hegemonic. The substitute real-s come to form a delusional veil over the tear produced by foreclosure. In our theorization, the received rendition of the Lacanian Real is first split into two—the Real (the unknowable, the unspeakable remainder) and the real (the knowable unknown, the speakable unspoken, the rem[a]inder); the real is further disaggregated into substitute real-s (the realvictim , the realevil , the realutopian , and so on). Taking off from a deconstructed rendition of the outside, an outside which is not only decentred and heterogeneous, but is accessed in polymorphous fragments by the hegemonic, we offer a theory of the foreclosed outside and the foregrounded form of the foreclosed outside— where the foregrounded forms form the delusional veil—and the delusional veil covers the tear produced by foreclosure. This particular theory of hegemony through foreclosure-foregrounding and the delusional veil (as also crypted nodal points; more on this later) will hereafter guide our description of global capitalist hegemony and world of the third (WoT). Our rather painstaking search for a theory of the outside was driven, on the one hand by our desire to distance ourselves from the logic of third wordism, as also to find, on the other hand, the real or the foreclosed outside (which we designate in this work as WoT). We take off from the understanding of reality as that which necessarily lacks in closure/finitude and then move over to an understanding

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

89

of reality as structured through the secret or crypted work of contingent nodal moments or points de capiton. Moments of contingent nodal closure give to an otherwise open-ended, dis-aggregated reality the look of a hegemonic system. Hegemony is seen by us as a desperate response to the “lack of experienced inner consistency” and an attempt, however paradoxical, of “trying to resemble an idealized version” (of say Capitalism or the Capitalist Subject)—supported in turn by crypted nodal signifiers and the foregrounded delusional veil. Capitalism or the Capitalist Subject is thus not One coherent or consistent whole. “It is decomposed, in pieces. And it is jammed, sucked in by the image, the deceiving, and realized image, of the other, or equally by its own specular image”. The work of hegemony is to institute this “idealized version” of the Self, this “specular [self] image”, and produce a fetishistic excess out of class sets 5 and 17, primarily class set 17. The labour of analysis in this book is to “work through” this “idealized version”, this “specular image”, this “delusional veil”—in a word, and this “unconscious discourse” (see Lacan 2006: 569) in the world of the hegemonized, where the “unconscious discourse” is about not-knowing that one knows. The hegemonized hence has to work through her own misrecognition of reality (because of the delusional veil) as also tease out the crypted nodal signifiers. This moment of closure through crypted nodal signifiers in an otherwise open (yet antagonistic) field of free-floating signifiers is decoded-deciphered in this book. We also ask in this book: if a particular reality as a hegemonic system is produced through foreclosure, would not the perspective or perhaps the standpoint of the foreclosed particular, if made to bear upon the said reality, reality posing as the universal, inaugurate in turn a counterhegemonic moment? But to make sense of such a counter-hegemonic moment one needs to initiate two moves: 1. First, one needs to read reality not as an insurmountable Leviathan—but instead produce a disaggregated rendition of reality. One needs to produce a disaggregated rendition of Capitalism. From such a disaggregated rendition of reality surfaces the hegemonic rendition of reality and the foreclosed real. 2. Second, one needs to produce thereafter a disaggregated rendition of the outside of such reality. More precisely, one needs to distil out from within the received understanding of the outside, the many moments of the outside. In this chapter, we take a close look at the category of the Lacanian Real. We tease out from within the given

90

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

understanding of the Lacanian Real the conceptual couple Real-real; we produce a further breakdown of the real into substitute real-s. On the one hand, we relate hegemony not to a seamless understanding of the Lacanian Real, but to the real. On the other, we also relate the hegemonic to substitute real-s. We relate it to the displaced renditions of the real—the realvictim , the realevil , and the realutopian as moments within the discursive perimeter of the defined reality. We relate counter-hegemony to the return of the real within the discursive terrain, and not to the delusional veil of the substitute real-s: realvictim , the realevil , and the realutopian .

Unexpected Help from Lacan This section asks: how does one arrive at “an ethics or politics truly contemporary with psychoanalysis”? What would such an arrival mean for Marxian ethics and politics? Would it be to see hegemony as not just the subaltern’s simple accrual/consent to or collaboration with the elite’s persuasive principles (this being the classical understanding of hegemony), but as an unconscious interpellation, and a kind of irrationally motivated passionate attachment to the phantasmagorical (somewhat like Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project ), the spectral (somewhat like Derrida in Specters of Marx), or what Marx calls the “delusional appearance of things” in Wages, Prices, Profit that works as a cover over the tear created due to foreclosure (Lacan 1997a: 45)? Would this take us beyond the extant “a-psychoanalyticism” of Marxism (Dhar 2017b)? Taking off from Lacan, one can now think of two ways of conceptualizing the hegemonic in Marxism. On the one hand, the hegemonic can be conceptualized in terms of what Lacan calls the neurotic phenomenon (i.e., through the contingent suture of an incomplete and open-ended totality replete with antagonisms). On the other, the hegemonic can be conceptualized in terms of what Lacan calls the psychotic phenomenon (i.e., through the production of a spectral/delusional appearance of things premised on the lurking feeling that something is amiss and a lid or a cloud cover is what can hide the rent in reality produced by foreclosure. Hence there are two closures: one, foreclosure, which is not a closure but a tear, i.e., an opening, a kind of primal/primitive opening, an opening caused before the actual/delusional closure; two, the closure of the rent of foreclosure through the production of a delusional cosmology). It is with respect to the Wolf man Case (Aus der Geschichte einer infantilen Neurose; Der

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

91

Wolfsmann; 1918 [1914]) that Lacan speaks of foreclosure or primitive Verwerfung 3 : The progress of the analysis of the subject in question [i.e., the Wolfman] … point to a Verwerfung , a rejection … We have been led to locate this rejection on the level, I would say, of the non-Bejahung,4 because we cannot, in any way, place it on the same level as negation… In a general way, in fact, the condition such that something exists for the subject is that there be Bejahung; this Bejahung which isn’t a negation of a negation. What happens when this Bejahung doesn’t happen, in such a way that nothing appears in the symbolic register? Just let’s look at the Wolf Man. There was no Bejahung for him, no realization of the genital plane. There is no trace of this plane in the symbolic register … it really is a psychotic phenomenon that we are dealing with. (Lacan 1997a: 58–59)

Building on Lacan’s re-reading of the Wolfman, this book marks a few departures from standard or classical psychoanalysis; it questions ‘original’ formulations in psychoanalysis; and in that sense it renders psychoanalysis ‘ab-original’. First, the book argues that the “psychoanalytic effects that are determinant for the subject” are not one and not the paradigmatic one designated repression; “effects such as foreclosure (Verwerfung ), repression (Verdrangung ), and negation (Verneinung ) itself – and I add with the appropriate emphasis that these effects follow the displacement (Entstellung ) of the signifier so faithfully that imaginary factors, despite their inertia, figure only as shadows and reflections therein” (Lacan 2006: 11) contribute in, perhaps, unequal measure, in both a diachronic and synchronic sense, to overdetermine the subject.

3 Lacan translates Verwerfung as rejet (rejection) and retranchement (excision, suppres-

sion, subtraction, deduction, retrenchment, or entrenchment) in the initial years; then more consistently as foreclosure. Freud’s discusses foreclosure in “The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence”; Strachey translates the verb form verwirft as “rejects.” 4 ‘In his ‘Reply to Jean Hyppolite’s commentary on Freud’s “Negation”’ (1954), Lacan describes a primordial act of affirmation which is logically prior to any act of negation. Lacan uses Freud’s German term, Bejahung to denote this primordial affirmation. He posits a basic alternative between Bejahung and the psychotic mechanism he later calls ‘foreclosure’. Bejahung designates a primordial inclusion of something in the symbolic, whereas foreclosure is a primordial refusal to include something… in the symbolic’ (Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Available at: http://nosubject. com/index.php?title=Bejahung).

92

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Second, this book is also an attempt to move away from the paradigmatic understanding of foreclosure—the foreclosure of the Name of the Father or the paternal metaphor (as ground and cause of Shreber’s psychosis) (Lacan 1997a; 1977 [1998]: 179–225) to other moments of foreclosure, say (i) “Verwerfung [foreclosure] of castration”, (ii) “Verwerfung, a rejection (and not Verneinung: ‘repression’)” of “as if the genital plane” in the Wolfman, as if, “there is no trace of this plane in the symbolic register” (Lacan 1997a: 58–59), (iii) “rejection (Verwerfung) of the commandments of speech” (Lacan 2006: 298), etc. It is not a question, he says, of repression (Verdrangung), for repression cannot be distinguished from the return of the repressed in which the subject cries out from every pore of his being what he cannot talk about. Regarding castration, Freud tells us that this subject “did not want to know anything about it in the sense of repression”. And to designate this process he uses the term Verwerfung , for which, on the whole, I would propose the term “excision” [retranckement ]. Its effect is a symbolic abolition: “one cannot say that any judgment regarding [the] existence [of castration] was properly made, but it was as if it had never existed.” (Lacan [1954] in “Reply to Jean Hyppolite’s commentary on Freud’s “Negation”; see Lacan 2006: 323)

Lacan’s reading of the case of the Wolf Man in turn give way to four readings of the ‘psychotic phenomenon’ (Lacan 1997: 85; Vanheule 2014): psychotic phenomenon understood in terms of (a) impasses in Imaginary identification (early Lacan in the 1930s), (b) foreclosure (verwerfung ) of a fundamental signifier from the Symbolic (Lacan after the linguistic turn in the 1950s; focus on subject of the signifier), (c) object a and jouissance (focus on subject of drive) as marking limits to the Symbolic and the subject’s non-separation from object a (Lacan after Seminar X [1962–1963]), and (d) the logic of the knotting of the Imaginary-Symbolic-Real in sinthoms-psychical reality (Lacan after Seminar XXIII [1975–1976], where the distinction between neurosis and psychosis is problematized and is rendered Moebius-like; it is a movement from dyadic structures to triadic structures). In this book, we build on later Lacan’s problematization of the strict distinction between neurosis and psychosis to make sense of hegemony in general: what is important in Lacan’s later work is how the real, symbolic, and imaginary registers are knotted via a symptom, while Lacan’s earlier work on neurosis and psychosis holds to the “Aristotelian presumption that one is

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

93

either a member of a class or not, his later reflections demonstrate that the boundary between neurosis and psychosis should be thought of as fluid” (Vanheule 2014: 164; also see Brenner 2020). Our understanding of the hegemonic, thus, has two components: One, it is neither merely real nor unreal; it is irreal ; and it is spectral; however, that of course does not mean that it has no subject effects (Dhar 2015b). Two, it is delusional; it is productive of a delusion; and the delusion of the interpellating “American Dream”, for example, however, once again, does not mean that it has no subject effects. In fact, delusions or the world of phantasy can have subject effects far stronger than what could be called real perceptual–conceptual apprehensions or comprehensions of the world. Marx called it the ‘delusional appearance of things’; the task of the political is to work through this delusional appearance of things in the everyday and in every pore of life (we would, however, desist the reduction of this formulation to the appearance/reality, false/true consciousness model so rampant in some variants of Marxism). We, thus, move away from a realist rendition of the hegemonic to an irreal understanding of the hegemonic, an irreal (combining real-unreal) that has deep-seated subject effects. This is an understanding of the hegemonic that is ‘phantomatic’ (see Marx in The German Ideology). It is, as if, premised on the ‘mystical character of the becoming-fetish’. It is the ‘ghost [that] gives its form, that is to say, its body, to the ideologem’; it is as if one will have to reckon with the ‘invincible force and the original power of the “ghost” effect’ (Derrida 1994: 186). This is, however, not to suggest that the delusion cosmology is not real or is an absolute outside to what could be called materiality. Rather such delusions are a constitutive component of a deeper and expanded understanding of materiality, produced through practices in as much as it also produces practices. The dream-like nature of hegemony does not make it unreal. It puts it at the cusp of the real–unreal. We also argue for a deeper and expanded realism by invoking foreclosure and the Lacanian ‘real’, a notion that is placed once again at the cusp of the real-unreal-irreal. The foreclosed is neither present (in a simple sense in the Lacanian Symbolic), nor is it absent (in a simple sense in the subject world). It is both absence and presence: presence in the sense that it has real subject effects; absence in the sense that the discursive structure resists it. What one had conceived of as reality is a world of phantasy (as in Lacan), and a delusional appearance of things (as in Marx). It is

94

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

in fact a veil or a cover for that which has been foreclosed. What is foreclosed is real. On the one hand, what is foreclosed is a necessary fragment of reality. Thus, its absence creates a ‘hole’ in the perception of reality, which the world of phantasy concomitantly fills. On the other hand, it continues to haunt, torment, and threaten the hegemonic; the crux of the hegemonic is, thus, constitutive of, or is premised on, the interminable ‘keeping at bay’, ‘putting to burial’, ‘rendering dead’, ‘tabooing’, ‘silencing’, and ‘keeping in a secret crypt ’ the real; in a word, the hegemonic must resist the return of the real; it must mutate, transit, and change form in order to keep the crypt a secret, or keep the secret of the crypt a secret; and this is where Derrida (or the perspective of the Derridean psychoanalytic: cryptonymy) comes to supplement Lacan. Spectrality (a la Derrida) and delusion (a la MarxLacan) on the one hand, and foreclosure (a la Lacan) and secrecy (a la Derrida) on the other, are two concept couples through which we access the question of hegemony (see Dhar 2017b). The thinking of the political post-psychoanalysis thus takes us beyond the simple distinction realism/idealism. Dreams, huantologies, spectrality, delusions, hallucinations, the Lacanian Real, fetishism, and phantasy are all attempts at making sense of representing the cusp of the real–unreal, or of occupying the hyphen between the two through the invocation of the irreality of the hegemonic. Hegemony is then about a secret script; it is also the script of a crypt; or that which remains crypted in a script. It is, as if, a kind of scrypt —if we can risk a neologism—bringing together the angle of the script (i.e., the written) and the angle of the crypt (i.e., the hidden). The angle of the hidden or of “secrecy is essential,” to make sense of hegemony; whence the crypt becomes, “a hidden place, a disguise hiding the traces of the act of disguising” (Derrida, 1994: xvii); the crypt is however also and at the same time, “a [kind of] commemorative monument”, “the [secret] vault of a desire”; and where a “world of phantasy” or a “delusional appearance of things” is covering, clouding the crypt. Counter-hegemony is a politics involving an encounter with the crypted, with the ‘tombstone of the illicit’, with that which is walled up, or buried alive’. One could call it the politics of the living dead (Chitranshi and Dhar 2016), or the politics of an encounter with tabooed key words in the hegemonic’s Verbarium.

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

95

Reality as Disaggregated yet Hegemonic In this section, we move from a rendition of Reality as Leviathan-like to a rendition of reality as disaggregated; we thereafter move from such a disaggregated reality to a rendition of reality as hegemonic. This begs the further question: why and how does hegemony comes into being; how does such a disaggregated reality become hegemonic; and how does hegemony become operational and how does it reproduce itself? In our work we look at the concept of hegemony not in its classical Gramscian rendition but in the way Laclau-Mouffe (1985) formulate the notion of hegemony. Laclau-Mouffe tries to theorize a notion of hegemony in a conceptually post-structuralist space—a space where both ‘subject’ and ‘structure’, both Althusserian ‘interpellation’ and the structural closure of the social, are impossibilities. Paradoxically LaclauMouffe’s notion of hegemony articulates a conceptual space beyond the general impulse of post-structuralism (if, of course, one could talk of such a general impulse), beyond the lack that haunts both structure and subject. Structuralism did away with the traditional identitarian-substantialist metaphysics of the subject. The structuralist approach to the founding limits of the subject was problematized by post-structuralism. Poststructuralism did away with structure, albeit never to rehabilitate the subject. In fact, post-structuralism carried us well beyond organizing our allegiance around any one arm of a binary of apparent opposites—here subject and structure. Instead, it introduced the notion of lack, of incompleteness—lack and incompleteness of both subject and structure. Both the structure and the subject were conceptualized as barred, as split, as fundamentally and perpetually fissured—in other words, and as haunted by a founding—a near foundational lack in being. Derrida stresses the moment of ‘limit’5 and moves from the Order of the Symbolic to dissemination that escapes from and disorganizes the very Order—from the

5 Derrida’s emphasis is on the “self-dividing action”, on the “cleavage and torment interior to meaning in general”, on the fact that the big Other lacks, on the limits of the big Other. Foucault’s stress is on the excluded—i.e., on the banished small ‘other’. Derrida’s stress is on repression. Foucault focuses on the forgotten. It is difficult to choose between Foucault and Derrida. “One side’s legitimacy does not imply the other’s lack of legitimacy. … applying a single rule of judgement to both in order to settle their differend as though it were merely a litigation would wrong (at least) one of them …” (Lyotard 1988: xi).

96

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

primacy of the signified or from the primacy of the signifier (Lacan’s phallus as the signifier of lack is yet the privileged signifier) to the differänce between signifier and signified—from truth to the non-truth of truth. For Derrida, who is “at once inside and outside a certain Heideggerian tradition … the authority of the text is provisional, the origin is [always already] a trace” (Spivak 1976). Keeping with the spirit of post-structuralism, Lacan (1977a, 1977b) would also stress the fact that the subject lacks; the Other also lacks; there is no Other of the Other which shears off this lack; there is no metalanguage; the letter always arrives at its destination not because of some hidden teleology that regulates its wanderings; the arrival is “always a retroactive construction founded upon the fortuitous erring of the letter”; the more the Phallus shows off the more it lays bare its impotence; the supposed consistency of the Symbolic is also a fiction, an utopia, a cover up for the Real that forever rocks the boat; and thus the origin is always already lacking. Thus, post-structuralism, especially, the turn in theory provided by both Lacan and Derrida, does not simply dis-member the subject; it dis-members the structure as well. However, Lacan simultaneously tries to re-formulate a theory of both structure and subject, even if both are conceptualized as barred from their very founding. This other Lacan would simultaneously talk of a journey from fictionality to contingent positionality—from dissemination, i.e., from the spilling of the seed of meaning to contingent in-semination—from metonymic slides to metaphoric cuts—from an interpretation-penetration that is perpetually deferred to a contingent “collapse of the chora”—from trace to contingent origin(s)—from the letter perpetually “purloined” to the Letter that provisionally “arrives at its destination”. Here, Lacan moves, as if, from a founding lack to an origin, even if phantasmatic—from the fiction of “The Purloined Letter” to the truth of the letter (see Dhar 2006). This particular impulse of Lacan makes possible a theorization of hegemony. It makes possible a closer look at the production of truth—at the origin of the ‘origin’, even if phantasmatic—at the suture that gives the subject of capitalism performative force, at hegemonic closure, at what covers up the violence of hegemonic closure, and at what makes the hegemonic ‘hegemonic’. Laclau-Mouffe, in a particularly Lacanian/Derridean vein, start from the basic proposition of an “impossibility of society”—of a society that lacks—of the Other that lacks—of the fact that there is no Other of

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

97

the Other; there is also no meta-Other which shears off this lack. And yet, they predicate the possibility of hegemony in an ever-open field— hegemony as that which contingently closes society—closes society as a totality—albeit with cracks and fissures—in order to build up a provisional hegemonic formation. In this scheme, impossibility of society is coterminous with the impossibility of totality—and this impossibility is in tune with the general post-structuralist impulse. Their analysis results in the conception of a relational space (a system of differences without positivist terms) unable to constitute itself as such. The sign is the name of a split, of an impossible suture between the signifier and signified. The impossibility of society/totality therefore arises from the infinitude of floating signifiers, each one overflowing in its meaning, such that they cannot be collapsed to a transcendental signified. The provision of closure in this ever-open field—closure in the infinite play of floating signifiers, of proto-ideological elements, is brought about, as if, through the intervention of a certain “nodal point”—an anchoring signifier that sutures or quilts them—i.e., halts their metonymic slide and fixes their meanings. This constructed closure is what Laclau-Mouffe define as hegemony. However, hegemony as an articulation does not signify a closure that is complete unto itself. Closure is contingent. Conceptually, surplus meanings disrupt the full presence of any articulation, relation, identity, or objectivity. Thus any objectivity such as a hegemonic formation is (un)real—an impossibility. The contingent that will have to be secreted out for hegemony to be operative is thus both inside and outside a hegemonic articulation. When the contingent erupts, shows its face, and reveals —exposes the impossible state of objectivity, we call it antagonism. For us ‘antagonism’ is akin to the inassimilable Lacanian Real in the sense that both share the property of exceeding, of showing up the limit of language and as such resisting any attempt at symbolization. It is, as it were, the metaphor for a beyond—a beyond that is never wholly hemmed in by the logic of the hegemonic. The hegemonized on the other hand has unconscious identification with the delusional veil. What structures the sedimentation and solidification of hegemonized identities, of subjects, and of structures? Why does interpellation work? How does one get interpellated—unconsciously albeit—to the crypted nodal signifiers? Does it work through the institution of guilt in the hegemonized subject, through the institution of a guilt-ridden conscience as constitutive of our consciousness? Is the third world subject a subject of guilt; a guilty subject; and always already guilty—guilty for being underdeveloped, backward, and pre-capitalist? Is

98

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

the subjectivity of the hegemonized all about guilt? Or is there something more to it? How would the subject overcome guilt? What would undermine/displace the solidifying principles of the hegemonic structure? The hegemonized subject’s identity is also sutured—contingently albeit— through the relegation of a certain register of existence to the domain of the culturally impossible (in this case, non-capitalist existence). A suture organized through the Lacanian points de capiton. But that is about the hegemonic formation, a formation that, as it were, manages to keep secret its fundamental lack in being in order to appear as ‘natural’. And yet a hegemonic construction secured through reiterative performative gestures is not just about quilting. It is also about foreclosure and the delusional veil. How, however, are we to understand the limits of such production, the constraints under which such production occurs? Are there social and political limits to such production? To think the contours of the variable boundary set and reset by specific political investments, to think, in other words, the operations of hegemony that set and reset such boundaries one needs to stress simultaneously the fact that the Lacanian subject is a barred subject, and that the structure of Althusserian interpellation is necessarily haunted by a certain incompletion. The Lacanian ‘Real’ (not the ‘real’) is another name for this ‘incompletion’, and that every subject is liable to the same postulate of inconclusiveness. However, in the Leviathan-like rendition of reality, the institution of capitalism is so complete unto itself, so edificial that capitalism can either collapse under its own weight or that capitalism can be aimed at only from outside. Zizek’s understanding of capitalism is Leviathan-like; hence his call to overthrow capitalism becomes less meaningful. As Laclau observes, Zizek had told us that he wanted to overthrow [the Symbolic] … to be replaced … by a thoroughly different regime which he does not have the courtesy of letting us know anything about … with Zizek … the only thing one gets from him are injunctions to overthrow or to abolish liberal democracy, which have no meaning at all. (Laclau 2000: 289–290)6 6 Lacan suggests capitalism is “enough for it to run as if it were on wheels, it can’t run

better, but it actually runs too fast, it runs out, it runs out such that it burns itself out” (Lacan 1972: 48) as translated and quoted by Vanheule (2016: 1948). Zizek’s faith in the ‘crisis of capitalism’ or ‘crisis of overproduction’ and the consequent fall of capitalism— falling under its own (over)weight—perhaps stems from Lacan’s “burns itself out” maxim. We however do not see capitalism as falling due just to the ‘falling rate of profit’ (a

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

99

For us, on the other hand, because of the very incompleteness of any subject-constitution, and because of the provisional nature of the systematicity of any structure that poses naturally as a structure, or as the ‘natural structure’, we are able to think and conceptualize politics, politics of a counter-hegemonic re-articulation of the hegemonic. A politics organized around a certain historicity of signs—that offers possibilities for contestation over signifiers-significations—that can open up ever new options for re-signification. Such a theorization makes possible a revised rendition of the immutable, a-historical, and apolitical Lacanian Real into what we have conceptualized as the real. The real, which, though secreted out, though externalized, is in a way internal to the Order and which thus encapsulates within its very theorization the possibility of a return. In terms of our narrative, this enables us to think of a politics of radical change. The very construction of the hegemonic that we produce contains an impulse of counter-hegemony. This hinge between hegemony and counter-hegemony revolves around two conceptual registers—points de capiton and delusional veil on the one hand and the foreclosed real on the other. Points de Capiton and foreclosure are once again related to two moments—nodal point and touchy entry point—that we arrive at through an analysis of the space of the hegemonic (as also the counter-hegemonic that lurks, sticking tenaciously to the hegemonic) as is described below: 1. Nodal point offers contingent suture to the hegemonic in a space of both the ‘barred subject’ and the ‘barred Other’, where both subject and structure are haunted by a necessary incompletion or lack; in other words, where both subject and structure are haunted by the Real—the Real understood as the Kantian thing-in-itself; the Real as an impossibility that resides at the heart of the Symbolic; and the Real as a traumatic tip, a spur that could rock perpetually the smooth operations of the Symbolic. And yet the symbolic ensures a certain closure/suture; reality is hegemonic. The closure/suture is ensured through nodal point(s), or for that matter through the

crisis in capitalism does not mean it will fall; crisis could also be an opportunity for it to reorganize) but getting micro-transformed into postcapitalist futurities because of (a) anticapitalist resistance within the circuits of global capital and (b) painstaking longstanding human endeavour in world of the third contexts to conserve non-exploitative relationships and transform exploitative ones into non-exploitative processes.

100

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

points de capiton. The nodal suture is secured through foreclosure, through the production of the real as the constitutive outside of nodal articulation. We relate foreclosure to hegemony—one is impossible without the other. We thereafter relate the foreclosed, the constitutive outside of nodal articulation, the real of hegemonic reality to the touchy entry point. 2. Touchy entry point as the category that gives, however partial/limited, an epistemic access, to the force and field of hegemonic operations. In our work we try to relate the notion of touchy entry point to the notion of the real—the real as the foreclosed of nodal articulation—the real as disruptive of nodal articulation. Consequently, the touchy entry point relates to the counter-hegemonic moment. Here, nodal point and touchy entry point are inalienably conjoined in an overdetermined relation such that one hits upon 7 both at one and same time (one is not the cause of the other) such that both surfaces together. We have thus tried to forge a connection between a Marxist rendition of Reality and a Freudian-Lacanian rendition of the Real. The Marxist rendition of Reality and the Freudian-Lacanian rendition of the Real have gone through several conceptual detours (i.e., original formulations in both have been put to question or put under erasure; both have been turned ab-original, in the process). In fact, such detours have enabled us to forge the connection further. From a rendition of Reality moored to a metaphysic of presence and from a rendition of the Real moored equally to a metaphysic of absence, we have moved to a post-structuralist rendition of both Reality and Real. We have thereafter forged a connection between Reality and the Real—where both Reality and the Real are deconstructed. Here f oreclosure is the “repudiation” (Verwerfung ) of a fundamental signifier (Lacan 1977a), repudiation of a fundamental signifier with

7 We use the phrase hits upon in a robust sense—hitting upon signifies a chance encounter. For Lacan, however, hitting upon is not simply a matter of chance; it is a way in which we think of a partial and contingent taming of chance, however impossible such a move might appear. Lacanian psychoanalysis tries to think how interpretation would hit upon the ‘real’ and the nodal constitution of hegemonic ‘reality—how interpretation would then hit upon the twin ‘reality’—‘real’ or for that matter nodal point-touchy entry point at one and the same time.

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

101

respect to points de caption (or nodal signifiers ). Represented symbolically foreclosure, delusional veil , and points de capiton would perhaps take up or fall in place in Fig. 4.1. Taking off from point de capiton as also from foreclosure, we look for an escape from the fly-bottle; an escape from the hegemonic; and here, in this book, an escape from global capitalist hegemony, however partial it may be. The category we invoke in this work to conceptualize the possibility of an escape is the category of the Lacanian Real. We reproduce in this chapter an ab-original (ab-original in the sense that it is different from the Original formulation) rendition of the category of the Lacanian Real. This ab-original rendition constitutes our theorization of foreclosure. In our ab-original rendition, we rewrite the category of the Lacanian Real as an ensemble of two overdetermined categories ‘Real-real’ (Fig. 4.2). The real is found to be further refracted-displaced into substitute categories: 1. the realvictim 2. the realevil 3. the realutopian …

Foreclosure: “repudiation” (Verwerfung) of a fundamental signifier; repudiation of a fundamental signifier with respect to points de capiton.

Points de Capiton: for Lacan signifier do not refer to any specific signified in a

one-to-one correspondence but rather to other signifiers so as to constitute a signifying chain. As a result, we are forced … to accept the notion of an incessant sliding [glissement] of the signified under the signifier. But there are certain privileged moments when the signifying chain comes to fix itself to some signified, and these are “anchoring points” (points de capiton), points like buttons on a mattress or intersections in quilting, where there is a ‘pinning down’ (capitonnage) of meaning, not to an object but rather by ‘reference back’ to a symbolic function. (Lacan, 1977a (1960): 154)

Fig. 4.1 Delusional veil (Source Self-constructed)

102

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Lacanian Real :

‘Real’

‘real’

realvictim – realevil - realutopian

(as the displaced forms of the ‘real’)

Fig. 4.2 Real-real (Source Self-constructed)

In the literature that inhabits us, the Lacanian Real is deployed with too many connotations, at times with contradictory connotations. In this work, we rewrite the Lacanian Real as the conceptual couple Realreal; the realvictim –realevil –realutopian are substitute real-s. In this book, when we invoke ‘Lacanian Real’ we refer to its usage by other scholars and distinguish it from the conceptual couple Real-real which would be paradigmatic of the ab-original rendition of the Lacanian Real. Of the two sub-categories, the Real (somewhat akin to the Lacanian Real) is the unspeakable limit. The Real is the remainder. The real on the other hand is the unspoken of the hegemonic. The real is the reminder of what was put outside by the hegemonic. The conceptual couple Real-real is akin to the conceptual couple ‘unspeakable-unspoken’. The conceptual couple Real-real can also be represented in terms of the couple ‘remainder-reminder’; remainder and reminder can be represented together as the ‘rem(a)inder’. This marks a beginning; this is perhaps the groundwork (Wolfenstein 1993) for our version of psychoanalysis as also of Marxism. This is our version of a psychoanalysis moored to Marxism and a Marxism moored to psychoanalysis (i.e., the Real and the real). This is possible because a particular version of both Marxism and psychoanalysis would be selfconscious critiques of Western metaphysics.

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

103

Marxism and psychoanalysis are this-worldly theories. For each of them, however, there is a distinction to be drawn between the world as it appears and the world as it really is. Appearances, moreover, conceal realities. In each instance the analytical task is to pierce the veil of appearance and bring the concealed reality into view. The synthetical task is to interpret, explain, or determine the play of appearances from the perspective of the revealed reality. (Wolfenstein 1993: 6)

The revealed or the unveiled version of reality comes with the veiled real, the foreclosed real. Hence the invocation of the two sub-categories of the Lacanian Real in the space of Marxism: of the two sub-categories, the Real is our shorthand for the Kantian thing-in-itself , that is, the realm of the unknowable. The real is our shorthand for the outside that can never be included as such; whose form as such haunts the hegemonic (say, Capitalism); which is an anachronism within the hegemonic; whose presence within the four walls of the hegemonic puts into doubt the very logic and language of the hegemonic; and whose discursive pro-creation out of a concern for “the more difficult task of counter-hegemonic ideological production” (Spivak 1988) within the hegemonic dismantles the very structure of the hegemonic. The “ego8 refuses [the real], either because it is paralyzed by the magnitude of the demand or because it recognizes it as danger. The former of these grounds is the more primary one; both of them amount to the avoidance of a situation of danger” (Freud 2003 [1938]: 420). The ego fends off the danger by the process of repression. The dangerous impulse is in some way inhibited; its precipitating cause, with its attendant perceptions and ideas, is forgotten. This, however, is not the end of the process. The danger is retained in its forces; it collects them again; it is reawakened by some new precipitating cause; thereupon it renews its demand; and since the path to normal acknowledgement of the danger (here the real) remains closed to the ego (here, the hegemonic) by what we may call the scar of repression, somewhere at a weak spot, it opens

8 Brennan (1993) understands ‘modernity’ as the era of the ‘ego’—as that which recon-

stitutes itself infinitely through a certain foreclosure of the ‘real’. Lacan through his critique of American ego-psychology shifts attention from the perpetual reconstitution of the ego in modernity (as also in the clinic) to the ‘real’ (as also to the ‘Real’) that could possibly perturb the smooth functioning of the ego—that is crucial in putting to doubt the hegemony of that which emerges as the hegemonic.

104

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

another path for itself to what is known as substitute danger. The substitute danger or the substitute real (we name it realevil ) comes to light as a sinthome, with or without the acquiescence of the ego, and with or without its understanding. All the phenomena of the formation of the sinthome have at times been described as the ‘return of the repressed’. “Their distinguishing characteristic, however, is the far-reaching distortion [the displacement of the real into the realvictim - realevil - realutopian ] to which the returning material has been subjected as compared with the original” (Freud 2003 [1938]: 420). The realvictim is our shorthand for the outside that the hegemonic includes, albeit in a circumscribed form; the circumscribed form lends weight to the organizing principle of the hegemonic. The realvictim is hence the constitutive inside of the hegemonic. The realutopian is our shorthand for the outside the hegemonic posits as the dungeon of darkness—as the dark continent, such that one cannot think of counter-hegemonic ideological production out of such an outside, an outside that remains elusive in principle. The realutopian is hence the absolute outside of the hegemonic. The realvictim as the constitutive inside of the hegemonic and the realutopian as the absolute outside of the hegemonic are foregrounded in the same turn as the production of the real. Foreclosure is thus produced through the process of foregrounding.

An Encounter with the real: The real in an Encounter … we must have [il faut ] truth. (Derrida 1987 [1972]: 105) I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there’s no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it’s through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real. (Lacan 1990: 4, italics ours)

Through this very impossibility the truth holds onto the real; not that we are surpassed eternally by an insurmountable impossibility; and not that we do not have any access to any truth; we know something, at times what we know we cannot explain it for sure; but we feel it. We have felt it our entire lives. There is something wrong with the hegemonic. One does

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

105

not know for certain what it is but it’s there, like a spur, a traumatic spike in our minds, driving us mad. It is real; one can set up an encounter with the real. Or perhaps, one can know with some certainty—one can touch upon—at least touch upon some enabling perspective, however partial— even in this world and age, of, following Zizek, the ‘pragmatic-relativist New sophists and New Age obscurantists’. Each time philosophy faced a loss of foothold, each time there emerged within philosophy and within thought in general, a certain sense of sophism, someone surfaced to face up to the situation. Lacan surfaces amidst postmodern neo-sophists—when the postmoderns went about questioning all forms of foundationalism—when they went about questioning essence, questioning universals, questioning the subject, questioning science, and questioning truth. Lacan accepted the postmodern motif of radical questioning; he accepted the postmodern motif of radical contingency but in turn turned this motif against itself, using it to assert his commitment to “truth as contingent” (Zizek 1993: 4); such that one could ask: what happens to truth “when the metaphysical value of truth has been put into question?” (Derrida 1987 [1972]: 105); and such that one can ask: what happens to the political when naïve optimism (as also debilitating fatalism) has been put into question? In this work, we think of the political in terms of the perspective of the real. Of the real; an ethico-politics of the real. An ethico-politics of the real is not an ethico-politics oriented to the real; it is instead an attempt to re-think the traditional domain of ethico-politics by recognizing and acknowledging the dimension of the real, by setting up an encounter with the dimension of the real. It is an attempt to try and retrieve, even to an extent, the very thing excluded—excluded not just from the traditional field of epistemo-ontology but from the traditional field of ethics as well, and turn it, i.e., the hitherto excluded, instead “into the legitimate territory of ethics” (Zupancic 2000: 3). In Chapter 10, this work thus moves away from the foreclosed to an ethics of the foreclosed (not ethics to or for the foreclosed); it moves from the real to an ethics of the real. Ethics of the real is an ab-original rendition of ethics flowing from an ab-original rendition of the Lacanian Real. Unabashedly ab-original. The book invokes ‘ab-originalization’ in a two-fold manner. The first is about the much-critiqued history of the aboriginalization of the ‘rest of the world’ by the West and the consequent homogenization of such lifeworlds and worldviews into the lacking other of a modern civilized West.

106

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

The first is about the hegemonization of the rest of the world into a selfimage and a self-perception of being ‘aboriginal’, especially the Southern, colonized, and indigenous life-worlds and worldviews. This led to a degradation and devaluation of the ‘know-hows’ and cultures of the rest of the world, including (non-capitalist) economic cultures. The first is about continuing orientalism (both white and brown). The reduction of noncapitalist economic cultures to pre-capitalist economic cultures is a form of aboriginalization. Third worldism is an aboriginalization of WoT, at large. The second is about a possible post-orientalist philosophy of life, including economic life. The first is about how third wordlist economic cultures were made from WoT economic cultures. The second is about what new cultures, including economic cultures can be produced. The second is about creating new knowledge of WoT as against an extant knowledge of third worldism. This also requires putting under erasure (as in Derridean deconstruction) the original formulations of Marxian and Freudian praxis. The rewriting of the Lacanian ‘inassimilable Real’ as the ‘foreclosed real’ and the symbolic order as hegemonic are ab-original renditions of classical psychoanalysis. The rewriting of ‘historical materialism’ as ‘class-focused Marxism’, ‘class as power-property’ with ‘class as processes of surplus labour’, modes of production as 24 class sets, and transition as micro-transformative postcapitalist praxis are ab-original renditions of classical Marxism. The ab-original renditions of Marx and Freud take us to the doorstep of WoT. Or conversely, immersion in WoT take us to the doorstep of an ab-original rendition of Marx and Freud (see Dhar 2015a, 2017a, 2018 for “genealogies of aboriginalization”). Aboriginal ethics also refuses to be based and premised on what the Master’s Discourse passes off as categorical imperative, moral law, or the superego injunction (Zupancic 2000). Aboriginal ethics questions the reduction of ethics to merely the personal (Zupancic 2000: 5). For us the ethico-political question is to be articulated from the point of view of the location of the subject in relation to the real. The question that haunts us further: how do we set up an encounter with the real? Where do we meet this real? Where do we meet this real? For what we have in the discovery of psychoanalysis is an encounter, an essential encounter – an appointment to which we are always called with a real that eludes us. That is why I have put on the blackboard a few words that are for us, today, a reference-point

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

107

of what we wish to propose. First, the tuche,9 which we have borrowed from Aristotle, who uses it in his search for cause. We have translated it as the encounter with the real. The real is beyond the automaton, the return, the coming back, the insistence of the signs, by which we see ourselves governed by the pleasure principle. The real is always that which lies behind the automaton … (Lacan 1977b: 53)

Lacan translates tuche, tuche as Aristotle’s search for the cause, as an encounter with the real in his work, an encounter in so far as it may be missed, in so far as it is essentially the missed encounter. How do we search for the cause? Lacan would not search for the cause in an Aristotelian sense. The search for the cause would essentially mean for Lacan an encounter with the real; this is the movement in Lacan from the ‘real 9 “The function of the tuche, of the real as encounter – the encounter in so far as it may be missed, in so far as it is essentially the missed encounter – first presented itself in the history of psycho-analysis in a form that was in itself already enough to arouse our attention, that of the trauma. Is it not remarkable that, at the origin of the analytic experience, the real should have presented itself in the form of the trauma, determining all that follows, and imposing on it an apparently accidental origin? … In effect, the trauma is conceived as having necessarily been marked by the subjectifying homeostasis that orientates the whole functioning defined by the pleasure principle. … The trauma reappears, in effect, frequently unveiled … if not its very face, at least the screen that shows us that it is still there behind[.] … [T]he reality system, however far it is developed, leaves an essential part of what belongs to the real a prisoner in the toils of the pleasure principle. It is this that we have to investigate, this reality, one might say … To this requirement correspond those radical moments in the real that I call encounters, and which enable us to conceive of reality as unterlegt, untertragen, which, with the superb ambiguity of the French language, appear to be translated by the same word – souffrance [In French, the phrase ‘en souffrance’, means ‘in suspense’, ‘in abeyance’, ‘awaiting in attention’, ‘pending’. ‘Souffrance’ also means ‘pain’ – the ‘pain’ of life within the four walls of the prison]. Reality is in abeyance there, awaiting attention. … The place of the real, which stretches from the trauma to the phantasy – in so far as the phantasy is never anything more than the screen that conceals something quite primary, something determinant in the function of repetition – this is what we must … examine. This, indeed, is what, for us, explains both the ambiguity of the function of awakening and of the function of the real in this awakening. The real may be represented by the accident, the noise, the small element of reality, which is evidence that we are not dreaming. But, on the other hand, this reality is not so small, for what wakes us is the other reality hidden behind the lack of that which takes the place of representation – this, says Freud is the Trieb. … How can we fail to see that awakening works in two directions – and that the awakening that re-situates us in a constituted and represented reality carries out two tasks? The real has to be sought beyond the dream – in what the dream has enveloped, hidden from us, behind the lack of representation of which there is only one representative” (Lacan 1977b: 55–60).

108

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

cause’ to the ‘unconscious and uncanny causality of the real’. How do we set up an encounter with the real, an encounter in so far as it is essentially the missed encounter? Before we try and answer such questions, before Lacan turns ab-original, we must first go through the existing understandings of the Lacanian Real—not to criticize existing readings (instead we would honour deeply the merit of those readings)—but to mark out our difference with the existing readings.

Real and Language Taking off from existing readings-renditions of the Lacanian Real, one could mark out the following positions: 1. Real as a priori—Real as existing before the process of symbolization—Real before Language. 2. Real as after Language: 2a. Real as the left over, the caput mortum of the process of symbolization; Real as the remainder of the process of symbolization; Real as also the unspeakable limit of the process of symbolization; Real as that which could not be symbolized; hence the Real remains as the inassimilable remainder of the process of symbolization; the Real remains as the perpetual spur that could possibly rock the smooth operations of the Symbolic. 2b. Real as the by-product of the process of symbolization; Real as that which is secreted out by the process of symbolization; Real as that which is put outside by the process of symbolic; Real as the unspoken of the Symbolic; Real as that which is repudiated in the process of the formation of the Symbolic; Real as reminder of repudiation. Ragaland in “An Overview of the [Lacanian] Real” invokes JacquesAlain Miller’s periodization of Lacan’s teachings in three phases—the 1950s and early 1960s, 1964–1974, and 1974–1981. Miller’s periodization establishes for us a basis from which to work with Lacan’s evolving theory of the Real. In the first period of his teaching Lacan described the real as concrete and already full, a brute, pre-symbolic reality … as an intractable materiality … a ‘primitive undifferentiated All’.

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

109

In the 1960s and the early 1970s, the second period of his teaching, Lacan defined the real as “it” or das Ding.10 … In this second period, Lacan described the real as the traumatic material of unassimilated memories and meanings that block the dialectical movement of symbolization … By the third period, as he gradually differentiated one order from the other – “the tripartition of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real … those elementary categories without which we would be incapable of distinguishing anything within our experience” (Seminar I: 271) – he was able to attribute a series of properties to the real, as well as a structural causality. The past returns as if from the future, introducing conflict into symbolic reality.11

Taking off from Miller’s periodization, we now distinguish among the many renditions of the Lacanian Real. Real Before Language The Lacanian Real is at the beginning. It is an a priori “material” of the world, a primordial Geist, a formless Form from which our entrance into language has forever severed us. Only as neo-natal children, as four-legged mammals were, we are close to this state in which there is nothing but innocent need. This formless Form is lost through our entrance into the logic of the Totem and the Taboo or into Law, as also through a certain imposition of the geography of spaces and the history of time over this inchoateness and the rewriting of pure need as desire. The Lacanian Real hence exists before representation and discourse. Conceptual oppositions such as inside and outside, interiority and exteriority, subject and object, and self and Other, only come after the seamlessness of the Lacanian Real that has been fractured. A return to this ‘real at the beginning’ is impossible. It is impossible in so far as we cannot express it in language because our very entrance into language marks our irrevocable separation from the Real. Still, somewhat curiously, the Real continues to exert its influence throughout our adult lives since it is the rock, the impasse against which all our fantasies and linguistic structures ultimately fail. 10 “Lacan’s emphasis on das Ding as the excluded Other beyond mediation is Kantian not only in the explicit replication of Kant’s own language” (Cornell 1997: 204). 11 See https://nosubject.com/Jacques_Lacan:Real; m14/the-experience.html.

https://www.lacan.com/sympto

110

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Real as Noumena Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is similarly concerned with the limits or impasses that haunt and traumatize perpetually the secure certainty of knowledge—with knowledge that is beyond both human experience and human reason. Does Kant try to point towards the contradictions that develop, and the limits that show up, once experience or reason alone attempts at answering questions about knowledge? Are not Kant’s writings remarkable for the way in which they systematically refute any claim to know what the truth is, or where it lies? Kant called his philosophy the “critical” method. His three main books, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of Judgement (1790) raise three questions: Three questions summarize for Kant (see the Canon of the First Critique) what he calls “the interest of our reason”: “What can I know? [What I cannot know? (theoretical)] What ought I to do? [What I ought not to do? (ethical)] What may I hope for?” [What may I not hope for? (judicial)]. (Lacan 1990 [1974]: 35)

Of the three we focus on the first question: what are the things that can and cannot be known. Kant thought that philosophers assume that the objects experienced through the senses are things “in itself”. However, Kant claimed that things-in-itself must be thinkable, but not actually knowable.12 Kant stated that all a person can actually know are states of his or her own mind, which he called “phenomena,” literally meaning “things that appear.” Beyond the phenomenal, Kant described the “noumenal” (things that are thought, “ding an sich”). The noumenal cannot be known because humans have no way to sense it. It is merely what produces experiences; it can never be experienced. Noumena, as we understand it in Kant, has two senses: the positive sense which states that any knowledge of noumena is non-sensible; a negative sense in which there cannot be any knowledge of noumena through sensible means. Things-in-itself can be thought about as noumena in the negative sense but have no relation to the positive sense of the word. 12 The debate about appearances and the thing-in-itself is therefore essentially this: are appearances something in the mind that is caused by something outside the mind, the things in itself, or are appearances and things in itself different aspects of the same thing; one, things as they appear and the other, things as they are?

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

111

Noumena in the negative sense is akin to what we have designated as the Real, while noumena in the positive sense is what we have designated as the real. While we remain sensitive to the phenomena-noumena separation producing the noumena (or the Real) in the negative sense, we are particularly animated by the phenomena-noumena separation producing the noumena (or the real) in the positive sense. Understood in a positive sense, phenomena and noumena are two constitutive aspects of the same reality. We understand appearances and things in themselves, phenomena and noumena, delusional veil and foreclosure as aspects of the same reality—both the hegemonic and the counter-hegemonic reside (as somewhat overdetermined) in the double reality-real. Real After Language The other rendition of the Lacanian Real understands the register of the Real as that which the symbolic is unable to symbolize. The Real is thus the residue of symbolisation—the caput mortum, as also the register of the impossible. Impossible: because it remains impenetrable to the subject of desire, and yet it has irreal effects on the subject of desire. The Real is the remainder that cannot be eliminated in the complex articulations of signification, that which can be approximated, but never captured. The Real resists the symbolic; the Real insists, en souffrance, waiting, and lurking, to bump into the symbolic. One can perhaps appreciate from the above that the Lacanian Real has been conceptualized in several (un)related forms. Others have added to existing conceptualizations. Some have understood the Lacanian Real as that which remains unknowable to itself. Here one can ask: how is it possible to describe our knowledge of something that is unknowable? Others have found a close counterpart to the Lacanian Real in Heidegger’s understanding of the role of the Nothing in his critique of metaphysics. Reflection on the Real has been continued further, through another concept, “the Thing”, the Thing as the locus of nonrepresentability. The Thing is particularly intertwined with the use of language: language recalls what is absent, and, in fact, allows the speaker to glimpse that something is essentially missing. The Thing (das Ding ) is represented in Lacan’s work as a ‘void space in being’, precisely because it cannot be represented by anything else. It is denoted by an algebraic x,

112

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

the object petit a. Given that the object a is resistant to symbolization, it can be discerned only through its effects: The object a is at once impossible to possess and impossible to live without. Object a is [thus] no being. Object a is the void presupposed by a demand, and it is only by situating demand via metonymy … that we can imagine a desire that is based on no being – a desire without any other substance than that assured by knots themselves. … it is as substitutes for the Other that these objects are laid claim to and made into the cause of desire. (Lacan 1998 [1972–1973]: 126)

Through these concepts, Lacan (somewhat like Kant) wants to capture an algebraic x beyond experience, speech, and language. The failure of or the limits to symbolization is an universal experience, rather than a product of trauma. For Lacan, the limits to symbolization is fundamental to the experience of being human—hence, his concern with the Real , the Thing, and object a.

The Hegemonic Symbolic The political potential of the Lacanian Real lies in examining who is the third who walks always beside us, beside both ‘Capitalism’ (‘p’) and the ‘third world’ (‘~p’), ‘third world’ as the lacking other of a Modern Capitalist Industrialized West (‘p’)? When I count, there is only Capitalism (‘p’) and the third world (‘~p’) to be found. But down the dark alley, there is always another one; an Other one, walking beside Capitalism (‘p’) and the third world (‘~p’); and walking, head bent, and hooded. Some say I can never know who this third is, who is that on the other side of Capitalism (‘p’) and the third world (‘~p’) … We relate our ethico-politics to this third who walks always beside us, beside both Capitalism (‘p’) and the third world (‘~p’), who never figures in the count, and yet on account of it who counts the most. But to arrive at the ‘real’ one must understand the Lacanian Symbolic as not a value-neutral battery of signifiers. It is produced and reproduced hegemonically. It remains suffused with webs of power. A re-reading of the Lacanian Symbolic as hegemonic, as not just operative at the plane of signification but also as being suffused simultaneously with the play of power, produces in our understanding a thicker and a politically more enabling engagement with the Lacanian Symbolic. In our

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

113

discussion on capitalocentrism, we have tried to demonstrate how the Lacanian Symbolic is imagined and reproduced through a privileging of Capital—Capital as the privileged signifier in the signifying concatenation that generates and anchors further significations but is itself not the effect of a prior signifying chain. Free from other overdetermining effects or processes, Capital thus becomes the centre “which by definition is unique”, which while constituting (and while being constituted by) structure escapes structurality. The centre [i.e., Capital] is, “paradoxically within the structure and outside it. The centre [i.e., Capital] is at the centre of the totality, and yet, since the centre [i.e., Capital] does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its centre elsewhere. The centre is not the centre; the entire history of the concept of structure must be thought as a series of substitutions of centre for centre, as a linked chain of determinations of the centre. Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the centre receives different forms or names [Capital, Phallus, West, Christian, Brahmin …]. The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies” (Derrida 1978). We do not see the process of the substitutions of [one] center for [another] center as innocent. We see in them the perpetual play of power; a particular symbolic thus emerges as the hegemonic. We are now in a position to put down our rendition of the Lacanian Real. It takes off from several original renditions. It differs somewhat from such renditions. It displaces somewhat the original renditions. It inaugurates in the process an ab-original rendition. In the ab-original rendition, the original rendition of the Lacanian Real is found to be split conceptually into: 1. The more static notion of the Real: Real as the Kantian thing-initself . 2. The more Freudian or (psycho)dynamic notion of the Real: real as the effect of the hegemonic constitution of the symbolic, where the symbolic and the real are produced simultaneously. One could conceptually split further the Freudian or (psycho)dynamic notion of the real—real as secreted out in the process of the hegemonic constitution of the symbolic (here we must keep in mind that an a priori symbolic system does not secrete out the real; the symbolic is also constituted as hegemonic in the process of the production of the real; and once again, an uncanny redoubling brings both into existence) into a number

114

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

of substitute real-s, where substitute real-s are the displaced forms of the real: 2(a) The realvictim as circumscribed, as retained, within the hegemonic. 2(b) The realutopian as the Dark Continent, the unknowable, and the unnamable. The metaphor of the dark continent becomes at times a convenient trope for the cosy co-habitation of non-reason, of woman, of the racial other, of blackness, of communism, of negritude, and of the untouchable. Taking off somewhat from Cornell (1992) and from the psychoanalytic challenge to Logocentrism and Ethnocentrism, we would like to ask in this work: “What Takes Place in the Dark?” What happens when some Thing is designated as dark? 2(c) The realevil 2(d) …

The static notion of the Lacanian Real—the Real as the Kantian thing-in-itself and the dynamic notion of the Lacanian Real—the real as foreclosed, constitutes in turn the overdetermined knot of the Realreal. Our somewhat elaborate conceptualization of the outside is never an absolute outside but simultaneously inside and outside, present and absent, touchable and distant, knowable and uncanny, and limited and infinite; it is simultaneously the Freudian fort/da of the domain of the static and the dynamic, the structural and the historical, the domain of the epistemological and the political, and the domain of knowledge (savoir) and power (puvoir). The realvictim , the realutopian as also the realevil , gives shape and consistency to the hegemonic. In other words, they constitute the hegemonic. The realevil is in our understanding, the cause and kernel of the constitutive sinthome of the hegemonic—the trauma, the wound that the hegemonic displays, flaunts, and makes a show of—the televised spectacle of the dis-membered twin towers, the rubble after an attack by ‘suicide squads’, and the mutilated bodies. In contrast, the real—the real as the foreclosed—is what the hegemonic disavows, disavows doubly. The realvictim , the realutopian , and the realevil as constitutive of the hegemonic and the real as disruptive of the hegemonic, constitute together what we understand as the Lacanian symptom. On the one hand, the real is made to look realutopian , look impossible and distant, and look like a thing of the past; communism is made to look primitive (primitive communism as realutopian ); matriarchy is made to look

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

115

mythical (the myth of matriarchy as realutopian ); tradition is made to look obscurantist; and Gandhian non-violence is made to look un-natural. Making the real look realutopian also secures the hegemonic. On the other hand, the task of the hegemonic is to make the real look realevil ; make communism look Stalinist; make feminism look hysteric/bra-burning; and make Islam look terrorist. It is also to make the real look realvictim ; make tradition look backward-superstitiousunproductive; and make the South look third worldish, as if it is the realvictim or the realevil that it has to contend with; the realvictim or the realevil is that hapless or grotesque face of the real that it has to protect or contest and conquer; and that it has to tame. The radical theorist is all too often a prey to this trap. The point is that if one wants to prevent the formation of an outside, one must not, … avoid any negation for fear that it would cause a domain to emerge that would limit power from the outside … but must rather inscribe in the interior a negation that says “no” precisely to the possibility of [a particular] outside.… a certain self-imposed impotence of the signifier itself, a kind of active retardation of its own power. Far from positing the existence of an elsewhere, the real as internal limit of the symbolic … is the obstacle that scotches the possibility of rising out of or above the symbolic. It is as if the symbolic increased its power [– organized its hegemony] by checking itself, by actively holding back from positing an outside [– by actively holding back from a positing of the ‘real’ and positing instead the realvictim , the realutopian or the realevil ]. (Copjec 2002: 95)

To summarize, what ultimately emerges as the outside of the hegemonic is partly inside the hegemonic as the delusional veil of the realvictim –realutopian –realevil . It is this moment of foreclosure that makes the closure of the hegemonic impossible. This foregrounding of the real as realvictim at one and at the same time, stabilizes and destabilizes the hegemonic. It stabilizes the hegemonic because the real is now included in a deformed form, an acceptable and habitable form; it destabilizes the hegemonic because the real, the language of the real, or the real of language is not included, and its obdurate presence as the outside is an important moment in the constitution of the hegemonic. The production of the realvictim is, as if, an “encircling of an immanent outside” (Copjec 2002: 95); the real at the heart of the hegemonic as if forces the nodal signifiers suturing the hegemonic to split off from and turn around on itself as the “trajectory of a folded

116

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

back force” so as to encircle an immanent outside. This encircling, this circumscribing of the real that we have represented in terms of the foregrounding of the realvictim , helps the hegemonic extend itself way beyond its concrete circuits (we explicate upon this extension in terms of the hegemonic rendition of need [we call it ‘hegemonic need’] in Chapters 3 and 5). The hegemonic can now move on as if oblivious of that which has been foreclosed, which has been put outside. Second, even as the hegemonic sleeps over the real, it is at the same time haunted by a horrific dream; the dream of the return of the real. While the hegemonic cannot face the outside as the real, it cannot also ignore the outside. The outside is recast as the realutopian or as realevil (Fig. 4.3). In Fig. 4.3 the large dotted circle represents the delusional veil. The delusional veil is constitutive of the three substitute real-s. Of the three substitute real-s, the realvictim is the ’constitutive inside’ of the hegemonic. The realvictim is also that register of the delusional veil that is retained with ease within the hegemonic. The three arrows represent foreclosure. They represent the rather (im)possible secreting out of the real—the real that matters—that could rock the Titanic. The dense dark third circle in Fig. 4.3, present at a distance, represents the realutopian . The hegemonic posits the realutopian as the Distant Dark Continent. But the real is neither

Crypted Nodal Signifiers

realvictim

Constitutive Inside

realutopian

Absolute Outside

Fig. 4.3 The hegemonic symbolic (Source Self-constructed)

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

117

distant nor dark. It resides within the hegemonic as the foreclosed. In Fig. 4.4 the somewhat greyish circle within the hegemonic, at the very heart of the figure below, represents our understanding and rendition of the real. The two arrows represent the disruptive dimension of the real. In Fig. 4.4 even the symbolic (and not just the delusional veil) has been represented through dotted lines so as to highlight the contingent and crisis-ridden nature of the suture of crypted nodal signifiers. It is only the real that makes the hegemonic susceptible to counterhegemonic reconstitution. Because, [i]t is the real that permits the effective unknotting of what makes the symptom hold together, namely a knot of signifiers. Where here knotting and unknotting are not metaphors, but are really to be taken as those knots that in fact are built up through developing chains of signifying material. (Lacan 1990: 10—italics mine)

Some say one can never know the real. For them there is no escape from the Wittgensteinian ‘fly-bottle’. The real for them is “[n]othing perhaps ”. Lacan, on the contrary, conceptualizes the real as “not perhaps nothing ”, as “not nothing ” (Lacan 1977b [1964]: 64). The real for them is “impossible” in a quasi-transcendental sense. They conflate “impossible” in a quasi-transcendental sense with “impossible” in and within a particular hegemonic masquerading as the Universal. Crypted Nodal Signifiers

real

realvictim - realutopian - realevil - … Fig. 4.4 The counter-hegemonic real (Source Self-constructed)

118

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

The conception of politics that we defend is far from the idea that ‘everything is possible’. Like Freud we remain menaced by the Real. “For [us, like] Lacan there is no Aufhebung, there is no utopian solution to human suffering: ‘when one gives rise to two (quand un fait deux), there is never a return. They don’t revert back to making one again, even if it is a new one. The Aufhebung is one of philosophy’s pretty little dreams’ (XX: 86)” (Stavrakakis 1999: 95). “In fact, it’s an immense task to propose a few possibles, in the plural – a few possibilities other than what we are told is possible. It is a matter of showing how the space of the possible is larger than the one we are assigned – that something else is possible, but not that everything is possible” (Badiou 2001: 115). To arrive at such a space of the possible, one needs to move beyond 1. “the paralyzing recognition of a generalized ‘impossibility’” of knowing and relating with WoT 2. “the whole tangled body of doctrine variously associated with the Other” - the WoT 3. the “abject register of ‘bearing witness’, of a guilt driven empathy or compassion ultimately indistinguishable from a distanced condescension” towards WoT 4. the “anguished musings of an irreplaceable’ subject confronted with the impossibly demanding needs of the Altogether-Other”. It is also a matter of showing how the space of the ‘political’ is larger than the space of ‘politics’. This is important because political reality, as all reality, is, first, constituted at the symbolic level and, second, supported by fantasy. But if reality in general can only make sense in its relation to a real which is always exceeding it, what can that real associated with political reality be? If reality cannot exhaust the real it must be also the case that politics cannot exhaust the political; the political is not reducible to political reality; and the institution of political reality presupposes a certain repression of the constitutivity of the political. The political seems to acquire a position parallel to that of the real; one cannot but be struck by the fact that the political is revealed as a particular modality of the real. The political becomes one of the forms in which one encounters the real. “Lacan himself, in his seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis uses noise and accident as metaphors … of our encounter

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

119

with the real. … Lacan’s schema of socio-political life is that of a play, an unending circular play between possibility and impossibility, between construction and destruction, representation and failure, articulation and dislocation, reality and real, politics and the political ” (see Stavrakakis 1999: 71–98). Having arrived at the real, an arrival that was never easy, the question that haunts us further is: how can the real be turned into a legitimate territory for Marxist ethics and Marxist politics? How can Marxist ethics and Marxist politics be turned to the real? This turning to the real is important because the realm of the political relates to the real; or perhaps the real relates to the realm of the political. This arrival at the real was crucial. It is only after having arrived at the real that psychoanalysis can be put to use for Marxism. It is only after having turned Lacan ab-original that psychoanalysis can be meaningfully related to Marxism. To summarize: the field of the economy or for that matter the social is decentred, heterogeneous, complex, and polymorphous. We have taken care of this disaggregation in Chapter 2. But at the level of the hegemonic, the force-field is constituted through secret nodal articulations/anchors (crypted capitonnage) and politically salient repudiations (foreclosure), as also through delusional veil(s). Further, the constitution of the hegemonic is not a process that is complete unto itself. It cannot be since the overdetermined and contradictory processes are always constantly rearranging the concrete in diverse ways and that in too in quite unpredictable ways. Consequently, the process of constituting the hegemonic must be a constant and precarious process—constant in its reconstitution/reiteration—so as to keep the foreclosed as foreclosed. This book is focused on the polymorphous non-capitalist class processes and the possibilities that inhere in and inhabit reality. But then these polymorphous possibilities (say, those in WoT)—possibilities that are not radical in itself —lack in a fundamental sense. They lack language. Can world of the third speak? No. Not because it cannot speak; it cannot speak because the language that matters most for WoT is foreclosed. The hegemonic emerges as hegemonic out of the repudiation of a fundamental signifier—of the signifier that matters: class. Bereft off, stripped off crucial significatory articulation, these polymorphous possibilities are reduced within the hegemonic to third world victims (say, third world woman lacking in Human Development Indices) in need of First World benevolence. They are reduced to figures—either that of the marginal

120

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

other in need of the capabilities approach, or that of the evil other in need of International Action Against Terrorism.

View from World of the Third Instead of a view from above, a God’s Eye View (a modernist impulse), or a view from nowhere (presumably a postmodern impulse) can we as WoT Marxists argue for a view from the perspective of the foreclosed real? Instead of an aggressive totalitarianism (a modernist impulse) and a nihilistic nothingness (presumably a postmodern impulse), instead of a position between a grasp over everything and a clue/hint of nearly nothing, can we still look for some meaningful invocation of late Marx’s theorization of the Russian commune, theorizations that would in turn be a prelude to a postcolonial reading of Capital and that would perhaps and possibly inaugurate the humble beginnings of a postcolonial logic of (non)capital (Dhar 2020)? To think about a postcolonial logic of non-capital, we have tried to forge a connection between Freud and Marx. Which Freud and which Marx? Post-metaphysical Freud and post-metaphysical Marx. Freud and Marx menaced by the Real; Freud and Marx menaced by the remainder, by the unspeakable. Freud and Marx menaced by the real; Freud and Marx menaced by the reminder, by the unspoken.

References Badiou, A. 2001. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. P. Hallward. London: Verso Books. Brennan, T. 1993. History after Lacan. London: Routledge. Brenner L, S. 2020. The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language. Palgrave Macmillan. Chitranshi, B., and A. Dhar. 2016. The Living Dead. In From Death Drive to State Repression: Marxism, Psychoanalysis and the Structural Violence of Capitalism (De la pulsión de muerte a la repression de Estado: marxismo y psicoanálisis ante la violencia estructural del capitalism), ed. D. Cuéllar-Pavón and N. Lara Junior. Mexico: Porrúa. Copjec, J. 2002. Imagine There Is No Women: Ethics and Sublimation. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Cornell, D. 1992. The Philosophy of the Limit. New York and London: Routledge. ———. 1997. Comment on Felski’s “The Doxa of Difference”: Diverging Differences. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 23 (1): 41–56.

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

121

Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1984. Anti-Oedipus, trans. R. Hurley and M. Seem. London: Athlone. Derrida, J. 1978. Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. In Writing and Difference. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. ———. 1987. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. A. Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York and London: Routledge. Dhar, A. 2006. Lacanian Theory: Beyond or Within the Linguistic Turn. In Post-structuralism and Cultural Theory, ed. F. Manjali. New Delhi: Allied Publishers. ———. 2015a. Critical Psychology in Asia: Four Fundamental Concepts. In Handbook of Critical Psychology, ed. I. Parker. New York and London: Routledge. ———. 2015b. What if, the Hurt Is Real. In The State of Hurt: Sentiment, Politics, Censorship, ed. R. Ramdev, S. Devesan, and D. Bhattacharya. New Delhi: Sage. ———. 2016. The Schizo-Political: Repression, Liberation and the Beyond. CUSP 1 (2): 1–17 (Special issue: ‘Psychoanalysis and the Political’). ———. 2017a. The Other Father: Oedipus, anti-Oedipus and the an-Oedipal. In Imperial Maladies: Literatures on Healthcare and Psychoanalysis in India, ed. P. Kundu. New York: Nova Science Publishers. ———. 2017b. Cryptonymy: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Politics. In Philosophy, Language and the Political: Poststructuralism in Perspective, ed. F. Manjali and M. Crépon. New Delhi: Aakar Books. ———. 2018. Genealogies of Aboriginalizaton: Psychoanalysis and Sexuation in Cultural Crucible. In Psychoanalysis in Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood, eds. M. Kumar, A. Dhar, and A. Mishra. Washington, DC: Lexington Books. ———. 2020. The Real (of) Marx: Adivasi Worlds as Tombstone of the Illicit. In After the Revolution: Essays in Memory of Anjan Ghosh, ed. P. Chatterjee. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. ———. 2021 [2015]. What if, One Is Always Already Included: Ambedkar and the Politics of Radical Exit. In State of Democracy in India: Essays on Life and Politics in Contemporary Times, ed. M. Ray. New Delhi: Primus Books. Dhar, A., and A. Chakrabarti. 2015. The Althusser-Lacan Correspondence as Ground for Psycho-Social Studies. Psychotherapy and Politics International 12 (3): 220–233. Freud, S. 2003. The Origins of Religion, vol. 13. New Delhi: Shrijee’s Book International.

122

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Lacan, J. 1972. Du discours psychanalytique. In Lacan in Italia 1953–1978. En Italie Lacan, ed. G. B. Contri. La Salamandra: Milan. ———. 1977a. Ecrits: A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 1977b. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 1977 [1998]. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 1990. Television/A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, trans. D. Hollier, R. Krauss, A. Michelson and ed. J. Copjec. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 1997a. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, ed. Jacques–Alain Miller. Book III. The Psychoses (1955–1956), trans. with notes Russell Grigg. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 1997b. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, ed. Jacques–Alain Miller. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–1960), trans. with notes Dennis Porter. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 1998. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, ed. Jacques–Alain Miller. Book XX. On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge … Encore (1972– 1973), trans. with notes Bruce Fink. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 2006. Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink. New York and London: W. W. Norton. Laclau, E. 2000. Power and Social Communication. Ethical Perspectives 7 (2): 139–145. Laclau, E., and C. Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London and New York: Verso Books. Lyotard, J.F. 1988. Le différend, vol. 46. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Spivak, G.C. 1976. Translator’s Preface. In Of Grammatology, J. Derrida. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. ———. 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak? In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education. ———. 1996. The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean. New York and London: Routledge Stavrakakis, Y. 1999. Lacan and the Political. New York and London: Routledge. Tomšiˇc, S. 2015. The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan. New York and London: Verso Books. Vanheule, S. 2014. The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2016. Capitalist Discourse, Subjectivity and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Frontiers in Psychology 7 (December 9): 1948. Wolfenstein, E.V. 1993. Psychoanalytic-Marxism: Groundwork. London: Guilford Press.

4

FORECLOSURE, DELUSIONAL VEIL, AND THE LACANIAN …

123

Zizek, S. 1993. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press. Zupancic, A. 2000. Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. New York and London: Verso Books.

CHAPTER 5

Global Capitalism as Hegemonic: World of the Third as Outside

Introduction In the previous chapter, we have tried to think through questions of hegemony and foreclosure in general. In this chapter, we would like to think through the question of global capitalist hegemony and the foreclosure of world of the third in particular. We would also like to show how the foreclosure of world of the third (WoT) is protracted through a foregrounding of substitute thirds—substitutes that are representative of a certain third worldism. We rethink the relationship between hegemony and foreclosure through the forging of a connection between Marx and Freud: “too many things link them together … there must be something in common between Marx and Freud. But what?” (Althusser 1996: 107). Marx and Freud would be close to each other through a rigorous take on materiality and the dialectic, more precisely through the concept of overdetermination and contradiction. Marx and Freud would be close to each other through the invocation of a reality (material, economic/social, psychic, etc.) that is “necessarily conflictual ”. Marx and Freud would be close to each other through the invocation of a “conflictual science”—“the conflictuality of Marxist [and Freudian] theory is constitutive of its scientificity, its objectivity” (Althusser 1996: 10). Both introduce conflict in received sciences—be it the science of the social, be it the science of the psyche, be it the philosophy of classical political economy, be it the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_5

125

126

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

idealist tradition of a philosophy of “consciousness” (empirical or transcendental), be it the idea of “homo economicus ”, and be it the “ideology of [wo]man”. Marxian and Freudian theories are scissionist sciences (see Dhar and Chakrabarti 2015). Both also “take a position in the conflict” so as to show what the hegemonic necessarily conceals: class exploitation on the one hand, and the unconscious1 on the other. Both show what the hegemonic necessarily forecloses: the language of surplus labour on the one hand and the language of life outside the circuits of global capital on the other. Marx and Freud would be close to each other through a theorization of the hegemonic inside and the foreclosed outside.2 Yet their respective theorizations on the inside and the outside, on hegemony (through the delusional veil for the hegemonized [see Chapter 7] and secret/crypted nodal signifiers for the hegemonic [see Chapters 7 and 8]), and the tear in the symbolic that the foreclosure of fundamental signifiers produce, cannot be put to use without a displacement of their respective theorizations, without turning both Marx and Freud ab-original (Dhar 2018). A putting to dialogue of ab-original Marx 1 “In elaborating his theory of the unconscious, Freud in fact touched on an extraordinarily sensitive point of philosophical, psychological, and moral ideology, calling into question, through the discovery of the unconscious and its effects, a certain “natural” and “spontaneous” idea of “man” as a “subject ” whose unity is ensured or crowned by consciousness” (Althusser 1996: 114). Further, if Freud “broke with physiology and medicine, it was because he was educated by his own hysterical patients, who literally taught him and allowed him to see that there existed a language of the unconscious inscribed in their bodies” (Althusser 1996: 119). 2 How would Marx and Freud not be close to each other? “Marx was unable to go beyond a theory of social individuality or historical forms of individuality. … there is nothing in Marx that can ground a theory of the psyche” (Althusser 1996: 118). Psychoanalysis grounds a theory of the psyche; it grounds the “myriad substances of subjectivity as a supplement to identity”. For psychoanalysis, there is a ‘subject’ and a theory of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘subjection-subjectivation’ beyond the objectifying process of being spoken and produced by discourse, beyond discursively constituted subject positions (Graham and Amariglio 2006: 201–202). However, for psychoanalysis, there is also a “relation between the signifier and the subject”. Hence, in this book, we work instead on the “most radical determinants of [wo]man’s relation to the signifier” (Lacan 2006: 449). We work on the determinants of the subject’s relation to the nodal signifier as also to the repudiated signifier. We work on the relation so as to think the ethico-political, so as to think what stands in the way as also what would possibly inaugurate the subjective process of (communist) becoming, so as to think the possibility of radically displacing our relation to the interpellating call, to the hold of hegemonic ideology, as also to a traversing of the hegemonic fantasy.

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

127

and ab-original Freud would show how (hegemonic) reality and the (foreclosed) real are produced in one turn. It also shows how if hegemonic reality is what tries to maintain status quo, foreclosed real as touchy entry point is what could offer a conflict, a scission in the status quo; it would offer a meaningful and transformative conflict, a scission, if, and only if, the imagination of the ethico-political is premised on the foreclosed real, on the language of the repudiated signifier. This focus on the real is important because “in a necessarily conflictual reality … one cannot see everything from everywhere, one can discover the essence of that conflictual reality only on the condition of occupying certain positions in the conflict itself and not others, since to allow other positions [the position of the nodal signifiers or of substitute signifiers (the realvictim and/or the realdystopic/evil and/or the realutopian/Dark Continent )]3 is to allow oneself to be led into … the dominant ideology” (Althusser 1996: 111). The “condition of positivist objectivity”, on the other hand, “is precisely to occupy a null position, outside of conflict ” (Althusser 1996: 111). Taking off from a deconstructed Marxism—Marxism sans its essentialist and historicist kernel (Chakrabarti and Cullenberg 2003; Chaudhury et al. 2000; Chakrabarti and Dhar 2005, 2006; Dhar 2003)—and an ab-original rendition of the ‘Lacanian Real’ (Dhar 2002, 2006), we ask in this chapter: what links an epistemo-ontology of the foreclosed (the third who always walks beside you and I and yet who is never there) to an ethico-politics of the foreclosed? This link to ethico-politics is crucial for any counter-hegemonic imagination of the foreclosed third. Working our way towards a counter-hegemonic imagination of the foreclosed (world of the) third in intimate embrace with class as foreclosed, we ask: 1. What is foreclosed? Where is the tear? What covers the tear? 2. How do we know what is foreclosed? How do we work through the delusional veil over the tear? 3 This is never to say that these three exhaust the list of substitute signifiers. There could well be other substitute signifiers. The list is perhaps endless. New ones could crop up. New ones could possibly be invented to protract further the process of foreclosure. In this work, we have highlighted those substitute signifiers that have emerged as relevant in the context of our work. Perhaps we have missed some.

128

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

3. Which signifier (with respect to the nodal signifier or points de caption) is foreclosed, so as to engender the tear in the symbolic? How do we know which signifier is foreclosed? How do we foreground foreclosure? How would interpretation hit foreclosure? How would interpretation hit the real? 4. This hitting the real is all the more important because the foreclosed is perpetually amenable—vulnerable to being represented by the delusional veil of substitute signifiers , by the realvictim and/or the realevil and/or the realutopian/Dark Continent . Our counterhegemonic political praxis forever gets displaced, gets skewed by the substitute signifiers ; enticed, ensnared, and beguiled as we are by the substitute signifiers, our political praxis tends to go awry. 5. This is not to say that by doing away with all that perturbs and displaces a-somewhat-secure access to the real we get to the real in its full presence. This is never to assert that we, in the process, get to the whole of the real—that we get to truth, that we get to the whole truth. We understand the space of the outside as an overdetermined knot of the Real-real—of both remainderreminder. Although the stress of this work has been on the aspect of the reminder in the knot of the rem(a)inder, this is never to deny the element of the remainder—of the Real that inheres in the rem(a)inder. Our real—our reminder therefore remains forever menaced by the Real—the remainder—the somewhat unanticipatable and elusive remainder that haunts whole truth. The truth of the real that we arrive at by resisting the lure of the substitute signifiers is thus always already a partial truth. 6. Yet this resisting of the lure of the substitute signifiers is something ‘one cannot not want’. In the space of this work, we would try to resist the lure of, say, the destitute figure of the third world as substitute for world of the third. Or, for that matter, we would like to resist the singularly needy and poverty-ridden representation of the pre-capitalist South. We would resist the victim figure of the ‘poor third world woman’ as the lacking underside of the World Bank’s discourse of development; where World Bank sponsored ‘poverty alleviation programs’ and ‘capitalist industrialization induced growth’ are the substitute ideals for ‘world of the third’ (WoT); and where the violence of original accumulation over WoT is substituted by a discourse of compensation and resettlement (more on this in Chapters 8 and 9).

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

129

7. Having resisted the lure of the substitute signifiers we would like to think ethics. 8. How would we be ethical to/with the real? 9. Or, would we look for an ethics of the real? 10. How do we turn the recovered real into a legitimate territory not just of and for ethics but also of and for politics? Do we achieve this through an invocation of the language of the real? What do we mean by an invocation of the language of the real? Does an invocation of the language of the real mean a radical displacement of the “relation between the signifier and the subject”, as also desire4 ? What do we mean by a radical displacement of the relation between the signifier and the subject? We mean that whereas hitherto the subject was related to the nodal signifier, whereas hitherto the subject was related to substitute signifiers (say, third worldism, say the realvictim - realevil realutopian ), as also to the delusional veil, would the subject now work towards a traversing of the fundamental fantasy and be related to the repudiated signifier? It is our contention that a shift in the subject’s relation to the signifier (as also to affect or jouissance), a shift in the word-view (Freud calls it “word-idea” in the “The Unconscious” [1915]), would produce a shift in the worldview.

Substitute Signifiers: The Realm of the realvictim - realdystopic/evil - realutopian/Dark Continent Even before we take any particular note of world of the third, the hegemonic asserts: the (world of the) third can never be known; the third is too dark to be known5 ; forget the third; forget the fact that the third 4 We are hinting at an attention to the “relation between the signifier and the subject”, to the “most radical determinant’s of [wo]man’s relation to the signifier” (Lacan 2006: 449). We are also hinting at an attention to undisclosed language, at language that is neither known nor unknown, and at language that has been dimmed over, that has been occluded, and that remains buried, at covered up language, as also to the language of that which was hitherto unspoken, to repudiation, “repudiation of a fundamental signifier”. 5 To recover lost ground: the category of the realutopian was designed as a conceptual shorthand for the outside the hegemonic posits as the dungeon of darkness—as the dark continent; one cannot think counter-hegemonic ideological production out of such an absolute outside; and an outside that remains elusive in principle.

130

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

was forgotten; a foreclosure of the third or the third is what is foreclosed; and the hegemonic refuses the third, or more precisely refuses the real of the third. For the hegemonic the realvictim (as also the realevil ) is the third; the hegemonic desires the realvictim (as also the realevil ); and the realvictim - realdystopic/evil constitutes in turn the hegemonic. For the hegemonic rendition of development, third world is the third. One therefore needs to contest third worldism; one needs to extricate the third from the maze of substitute signifiers; and one needs to hit the real. As if to traverse the fundamental fantasy, the fundamental fantasy of third worldism and as if to hit the real, Chaudhury et al. (2000: 62–63) have engaged with the question of naming. In the theoretical space available to “an unrepentant postcolonial collaborator”, they have spoken of a possible reinscription of the “third world” on the “margin, as a followup” to the closures to the postmodern totality introduced by “somebody in the West” (see Achuthan 2004). “Separating from traces of essentialism and denied possibilities of political realignment on a global scale”, they have contested the received concept of an empirical third world in order to “build up a discursive space for the third that is neither the North nor the South, neither the West nor the East”. As Marxists they have tried to offer “competing perspectives” to produce a discursive space for the world of the third (Chaudhury, Das, and Chakrabarti 2000: 80–81, italics ours). The hegemonic resists the production of this discursive space. The hegemonic “is paralyzed by the magnitude of the demand [of the real] or because it recognizes it as danger. The former of these grounds is the more primary one; both of them amount to the avoidance of a situation of danger” (Freud 2003 [1938]: 420). The hegemonic fends off the danger of the real. The real is in some way inhibited; its precipitating cause, with its attendant perceptions and ideas, is forgotten. This, however, is not the end of the process: the real (as danger) has either retained its forces, or collects them again, or it is reawakened by some new precipitating cause; thereupon it renews its demand, and, since the path to normal acknowledgement of the real remains closed to it by what we call foreclosure, somewhere there opens another path for the real to what could be known as the substitute real, that is, the realvictim and/or the realevil which comes to light as a sinthome. All the phenomena of the formation of sinthome

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

131

may justly be described as the ‘return of the repressed’. “Their distinguishing characteristic, however, is the far-reaching distortion6 to which the returning material has been subjected as compared with the original” (Freud 2003 [1938]: 420; italics ours). Too often, we fall prey to this trap; we think the realvictim and/or the realevil to be the real. We imagine an ethics and a politics flowing from the realvictim and/or the realevil . We think the realvictim and/or the realevil to be disruptive of the logic and language of the hegemonic. We forget: the hegemonic at times desires the danger (and the retaliation) flowing from the realevil . The hegemonic desires the violent or ‘terrorist’ invocation of the third. Others look for a more responsible engagement with the real of the third. Ethical responsibilities towards the third make them count their steps more carefully. While they would never relegate the third to being absolutely unknowable—while the third would never be an absolute outside for them—they remain wary of both an easy knowledge of the third or an easy delivery of justice, through liberal jurisprudence and rights to the third; justice for them remains tied less to law and more to ethics; and they also remain wary of an easy imagination of an ethicopolitics of the third. The third, for them, is not too easily known; the third is not too easily represented as well. A certain radical alterity and a radical impossibility haunt their project. They remain menaced by the Real within the Real-real couple; they remain menaced by the remainder within the rem(a)inder. Remaining acutely aware of such a Levinasian leash on an easy knowledge and an easy representation of the third (for that would reduce the ‘other of the other’ a la Irigaray to the categories of the ‘other of the same’), we would still like to expand the scope of our enquiry and ask in a somewhat obstinate activist impulse: why does the third too often become inconsequential in our discussion? Is it because the third is absent in representation; is it because the third does not find representation? Or

6 In this work the realvictim was designed as a conceptual shorthand for the outside

the hegemonic includes, and assimilates, and appropriates, albeit in a displaced form, in a circumscribed form, in a form that is bracketed out to suit the hegemonic; the farreaching displacement and distortion to which the returning concrete has been subjected as compared with the foreclosed form lends weight to the organizing principle of the hegemonic.

132

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

is it also because the absent third, the third that was (in actuality) absent happened to be present in the register of the represented? This is somewhat akin to the case of the student who was never present in class. But the roll-call register of the Master showed that the student was indeed present. Somebody had answered for the absent student when the Master called her name. Thus, she found a place in the roll-call register of the class while she was never present in the class. Someone else, the realvictim or the realevil , had answered the interpellating call of the hegemonic. She found a place in the (colonial) archive. However, she was never there. Someone else answered for her and in place of her. The problem with the third is not just that she does not find representation. The problem with the third (at present) is not just whether she can get herself represented or not; the problem with the third is not just whether she can speak or not; the problem with the third lies also in the fact that she is sometimes present(ed) in the register of the hegemonic; her name figures; someone else (re)presents her; and she comes to be (mis)represented in the register of the hegemonic through numerous ‘substitute signifiers’. The much (ab)used figure and trope of the third world comes to represent (in a rather reductionist manner) in the register of Development, the lived experiences of women in the informal sector, as well as in WoT households not tied to the circuits of global capital; NGOs funded directly by global capital come to represent the eco-sensitive economies of the woman-nature continuum of WoT societies in environmental activism; thus the third is there as raw data in this age of data-retrieval while all the while she was or is never there; and someone else sees to it that she, she as the absent third, is (re)presented in the register.

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

133

The problem is therefore threefold:

1. Who represents her; her being represented by another carries within the very process of re-presentation, a certain mis-representation; and how can she (however much impossible it may seem) represent herself or get herself represented? 2. How does the hegemonic secure the presence of the absent third? How does the hegemonic make possible this somewhat proxy (re)presentation? Does it secure it through the substitute signifier, the realvictim and/or the realevil that inheres in the Borromean Knot as the constitutive inside of the hegemonic symbolic? 3. How does the hegemonic secure the absence of the third? How does the hegemonic make possible this erasure? Does it secure it through another substitute third—the realutopian that inheres in the Borromean Knot as the absolute outside of the hegemonic symbolic? Further, how would we think ethics in terms of (world of the) third? This question is important because there is always a possibility that we would end up thinking ethics in terms of substitute thirds that would protract further the foreclosure of the third. Which in other words is a giving in, a giving in to the idea(l) of ‘politics’ offered by the hegemonic. In turn, it is a giving up of the idea of the ‘political’ in terms of the language of the real. Thus, one could be ethical to the third world as victim (the realvictim ). Alternatively, one could also think an ethics of the real—think an ethics of ‘world of the third’.

The Logic of Two: The Logic of One and the Absent Third Why do we miss the third? Why do we remain complicit in the foreclosure of the third? Is it because we are too accustomed to think the two—the two of ‘p’ and ‘~p’—the two of a hegemonic ‘P’ (the ‘P’ as ideal) and a lacking ‘~p’—which in actuality is not the logic of the two—but the logic of the One. Logic of the One: because the second is only a dependent first —a lacking first. The second (~p) is the displaced and substitute form of the foreclosed third. Our world comes to be colonized by the finitude of ‘p’ and ‘~p’. We find

134

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

our thought-world breaking down into two. We find our thoughtworld being circumscribed and restricted by the logic of the two— Human/nature, Man/woman, White/native, Colonizer/colonized, Civilized/savage, Developed/primitive, Normal/mad—which is never really two, which in actuality is one and is driven by the logic of the One. This is because one arm of the binary (nature, woman, native, colonized, savage, primitive, mad…), is the negative, the dark, the derogatory, the lacking underside of the other arm (Human, Man, White, Colonizer…) of the binary. This follows from Modern forms of thought where the world is divided into two—‘p’ and ‘~p’, where ‘p’ is valued and the other (~p) is devalued: (a) This p-centered account positions ~p at the periphery, as the background. Translated into practice, p becomes a centre of power. (b) p is the only independent description when the other is defined as~p; there is only room for interaction between the One and the dependent other. (c) Since, ~p is homogenized, classical [two-valued] logic fails to make further discriminations (in ~p). (d) This way of defining ~p leads to radical exclusion. A maximal distinction is maintained between p and ~p in comparison to other systems of logic (Paraconsistent Logic for example), which speak of weaker exclusion relationships. (Moitra 2002: 66—italics ours)

In this work we take off from the moment of radical exclusion; we ask: radical exclusion of what in (p, ~p)? The construction of ‘~p’ leads to the exclusion of what? From the two of modernism (p, ~p), we thus arrive at the excluded third, at a conceptual third. We thus arrive at foreclosure, at what the structure of the two of (p, ~p) repudiates. Foreclosure is akin to (radical) exclusion7 and occlusion, (radical) exclusion and forgetting, a forgetting of the already forgotten, a disavowal of the disavowed, double disavowal to be precise. We, however, remain in search of a possibility beyond the simple cutback of the violence of ‘p’ on ‘~p’. This is because we remain deeply aware of a conceptual space beyond the two of ‘p’ and ‘~p’. We therefore work out a conceptual space—we 7 Derrida, while remaining visibly critical of radical exclusion, tries to show, on the one hand, how radical exclusion never works well enough to produce a somewhat closed system of the excluded and the included; how the apparently excluded is always already within the text. On the other, he is also in search of weaker exclusion relationships.

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

135

call it the space of the third—the space of the third as the space beyond the space of the first (p) and the second (~p). To continue our discussion on substitute thirds: too often we (as internal others, as ~p, as the lacking p of the hegemonic [P]) come to believe that we are the third. Our communities in the womb of the hegemonic [P]—communities marked at times by merely culturalist moments—multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, hybridity, diaspora, and so on—constitute the third. Too often and too easily, we come to believe that we do constitute moments of rupture within the hegemonic; we forget the hegemonic desires our disruptive invocations; and they secure in turn the hegemonic. It is only with difficulty that we (as internal others of the hegemonic) come to realize at times that we are not the third. We are only the other the hegemonic desires, as an inalienable yet alienated constituent. It is only with difficulty that we come to realize that the third even if it is all over us, within us, and among us, is elsewhere; the third is elsewhere; and that is why it is the third. Too often, we come to believe that the realvictim is the third. The realvictim is the fragment and figment of the third, but the third is not just the realvictim . The third is more than the realvictim . The work of the delusional veil is in making us believe that the realvictim is the third; that a certain developmentalism is, as if, the necessity; that a certain aspiring to-be-modern, to-be-industrialized, and to-be-western is, as if, the necessity; and that a participation in capitalist development somewhat like the west is, as if, the necessity. The third itself believes at times that the third as desired, constituted, and concocted by the hegemonic, by the World Bank, is the third. The third reflected by the desiring gaze (of the hegemonic), by the flat Lacanian mirror, comes to believe that there it is; there it is in the mirror; and this is the reconstituted I of the third. Too often the third itself remains oblivious of the fundamental mis-recognition that haunts the modicum of I the third secures, while being reflected in the desiring gaze of the hegemonic.

From Third Worldism to World of the Third: A Detour from the realvictim to the real Sans a psychoanalytic perspective, sans a theory of the outside, sans an accounting of foreclosure, the dual template (p, ~p) of {global capitalism, and third world} will appear somewhat like a Leviathan, as a closed

136

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

self-contained whole, a whole that purportedly subsumes the whole of reality within its fold. In representations, in terms of the dual template {global capitalism, third world}, third world would look like an undivided perspective, a homogeneous Pre-Capitalist Dark Continent (realvictim – realutopian ) waiting to be rescued and assimilated-appropriated within the logic of global capitalism. This reminds us of the developmental exigency of encountering the so-called excluded, an exigency we discussed in Chapter 1. In this encounter, a progressive transition of the so-called excluded was proposed in terms of a movement from exclusion to inclusion (where the excluded is represented in terms of the attributes of third worldism, ~p), inclusion of the third world within the norms of global capitalism (see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2012). In {global capitalism, third world}, the decentred and disaggregated nature of the globe is lost; the processural nature of global entities, which are in a process of incessant flux, is also lost. The polymorphous nature of global processes and the contradictions within (as represented in Fig. 5.1) would thus be missed. Or, perhaps this would not be an innocent process of forgetting; the polymorphous nature of the globe would be put aside so as to secure the hegemony of global capital, so as to generate the delusion of a unified and near homogeneous global order. How is this putting aside of the polymorphous nature of the globe secured? It is secured through, among many other processes, a putting outside of the language of class. Faced with the Leviathan of {global capitalism, third world}, we are thus missing out on two things. One, we are missing out on the conceptual couple hegemonyforeclosure, on the fact that the belief of the Leviathan is in actuality built on the putting outside of two constitutive processes—the process of hegemony and the process of foreclosure. Two, we are missing out on the decentred and disaggregated nature of the class-focused global and local economy. We are missing out because the process of foreclosure (of class) ensures that the decentred and disaggregated nature of the global and local economy remains unsaid, and ensures that the splitting of the globe into the circuits of global capital and world of the third also remains unsaid. Thus, without an appreciation of hegemony and foreclosure, as also the decentring-disaggregation flowing from the return of the foreclosed, Global Capitalism and the New Global Order all coalesce into One, and in the womb of the One resides the Dark Continent (realutopian ) of the third world. The ab-original rendition of the Lacanian Real with its consequent breakdown into the

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

137

Hegemony Foreclosure

Lacanian Symbolic

Lacanian Real

Real-real Remainder-reminder Unspeakable-unspoken (1) Delusional Veil over rent/tear for the

Hegemonic Spaces

hegemonized (2) Nodal Signifiers for the secret operations of the hegemonic

Circuits of Global

Substitute real

Capital WoT

realvictim – Informality / Local Community / Child Labour / Woman (1)

Private capitalist surplus value appropriation

(2)

Local-global market

(3)

Hegemonic Need

realevil – Communism / Maoism real Dark Continent - Primitive communism/ Gandhian non-violent socialism/ Tagore Cooperation Principle/

THIRD WORLDISM

Fig. 5.1 The hegemonic: between the delusional veil and nodal points (Source Self-constructed)

138

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

conceptual couple Real-real helps deconstruct the logic of the One and explicate through deconstruction the polymorphous encounters of the global capitalist hegemonic with its constitutive outside.

Hegemonic, Nodal Signifiers, and Foreclosure: Global Capitalism and WoT The summarized and schematized account of the relation between the multi-faceted existence of the ‘Lacanian Real’/’Foreclosed Outside’ and the ‘Lacanian Symbolic’/’Hegemonic Inside’ within a decentred and disaggregated class-focused space is represented in the chart below. The rest of this chapter is an explication of the chart that will unpack the capitalist hegemonic in terms of its rather complex and dualness/twoness of operations: (1) through the delusional veil and (2) through nodal signifiers. To recover lost ground: in Chapter 2 we stressed on a class-focused decentred and disaggregated terrain, what then would be its possible point de caption or nodal signifiers we asked. We showed that the two nodal signifiers that anchor capitalism and the capitalist class enterprise are capitalist surplus value appropriation and capitalist commodity. In the context of the global capitalist enterprise and global capitalism, the two nodal signifiers get modified into private capitalist surplus value appropriation (we are emphasizing the centrality-nodality of the private form of capitalist appropriation) and local–global market (where capitalist commodity is nodal as a form but which also incorporates other commodity forms as well through a chain of local–global markets). A host of other floating signifiers—individualism, private property, capital accumulation, profit, efficiency, competition, and so on—prop up further the two nodal signifiers. For (global) capitalist class process or, for (global) capital to occupy the centre/hub within a decentred and disaggregated field, the two defining signifiers of private capitalist surplus value appropriation and local–global market must be transmuted into nodal signifiers. How do the above-mentioned signifiers emerge as nodal signifiers, that is, in turn, a fundamental condition for the emergence of the hegemony of global capital? First, global capitalist hegemony that produces the circuits of global capital is founded on the foreclosure of class; the foreclosure of class is representative of the occulting of the language (not an occulting of the concrete process, because the concrete process continues unabated; in fact, capitalism depends on the continued procreation of the

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

139

concrete process) of performance, appropriation, distribution, and receipt of surplus labour. Foreclosure of class also perpetuates the occulting of non-capitalist class practices from the realm of language. The only relevant economic practice—that could be articulated and discussed—are, de-facto, those of the capitalist form, while the rest have no significance; even if they have, they have it only in relation to the centrality of capitalism, that is, as part of the global hegemony of capitalism. In the capitalocentric reconfiguration of an otherwise decentred and disaggregated economy, processes pertaining to the real are inside the terrain of practices but the language of the real is put outside; the foreclosure of the language of the real is founded-foregrounded on the turning of the real into substitute real-s—into the realvictim , the realdystopic/evil , and the realutopian/Dark Continent (see Dolar 1998: 36). The hegemonized is interpellated into consent-collaboration by the delusional veil of the substitute real-s, in a word, by third worldism. The hegemonic on the other hand negotiates through its instabilities, through contingent suturing through nodal signifiers. The mutual constitutivity of both the delusional veil and contingent suturing through nodal signifiers constitutes the hegemonic. This naturalized ‘body’ of the capitalocentric economy is, as if, an objectified body of medical science that can be experimented with through policies, experimented with in an effort to guide it ‘properly’ and in directions considered ‘desirable’. Given this natural-scientific body of the economy, there is an element of certainty, which guides extant policy-making, and the attempted process of transition of this economy. In Chapter 7, we name the materializing circuits viewed and produced in terms of such a process of homogenization-hegemonization, ‘circuits of global capital’. Global capitalist hegemony, even as it produces the circuits of global capital through a foreclosure of class, forecloses at the same time, another space—WoT. At an abstract level, the whole of the hegemonic is thus split into the circuits of global capital and WoT. One would manage to locate the WoT only in the event of a return of the class-focused terrain, not otherwise. Foreclosure of class helps displace the WoT economy through a repudiation of any possible value that could be conferred to non-capitalist practices into the realm of the “traditional,” as a relic of stagnation and poverty; its associated forms of life are consequently deemed and doomed to be archaic, uncivil, and bordering on lifelessness with no future; and

140

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

in a word, non-capitalist praxis is represented as pre-capitalist—i.e., as a prior stage of capital. A note of caution: one must not reduce our produced two-ness—the two of the circuits of global capital and the WoT—to something similar to the centre-periphery model. Both circuits of global capital and WoT are decentred and disaggregated, and pulled and pushed through contradictory class and non-class effects formed not only from within but through the effects of one on the other. Moreover, the above-mentioned circuits of global capital and WoT can be broken down further into an originary multiplicity, which is dealt with only partially in this book. However, given our endeavour at hitting the real of global capitalism, the model of circuits of global capital and WoT is perhaps a beginning. This is never to deny that the (b)order of the two is in a state of flux, who is within which of the two changes constantly. Thus, due to the repudiation of fundamental signifiers, the “relation between the signifier and the subject” is fundamentally skewed. Further, through this repudiation, the repudiation of both the language of class and the language of WoT, what is achieved is the hegemony of global capital and the subjugation, management, and control of the space of WoT. The hegemonic engages with WoT not as WoT but as the third world—as either the realvictim or the Dark Continent (the realutopian ) or the face (the realevil ); though it must be said that, in recent times, the importance of realvictim as the substitute signifier has only been increasing. However, one must not underestimate the importance of the overdetermined existence of realvictim , the realevil and the realutopian/Dark Continent especially when it comes to the sovereign interventions in which case the metaphor of evil or of a Dark Continent—the realm of the uncivilized, of the barbarians, is particularly effective (as in Communism, Maoism and so on). Since the circuits of global capital and WoT are overdetermined principally through the interventions within WoT, what the production of a single, unified globe fundamentally masks, masks through foreclosures, is the imperial encounter, the encounter of WoT with the organs of the hegemonic, including the mechanisms of global capital that produces in turn the plunder, marginalization, and colonization of WoT. Thus, in the end, it is the logic of the One that sustains the circuits of global capital. The rest of the chapter focuses just one more time on the foreclosure of class and on the foreclosure of WoT which will be the subject for the rest of the book.

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

141

Foreclosure of Class … Marx replaces the object that political economy was alleged to be with an entirely different reality that becomes intelligible through entirely different principles … in which class struggle becomes determinant for understanding so-called economic phenomena. (Althusser 1996: 113)

We have highlighted the importance of the foreclosure of class in the process of turning an otherwise decentred and disaggregated economy into a naturalized Leviathan. However, the foreclosure of class serves another purpose. It helps global capitalism thrive on the perpetuation of ever-increasing inequality, marginalization, plunder, and colonization/imperialism. This banishing of the language of exploitation sets up a different relation between the signifier and the subject. Sans class, the setting up of a skewed relation between the signifier and the subject, makes one believe that forms of life outside of the circuits of global capital are an impossibility. Life outside of the circuits of global capital—life premised in and around non-capitalist class processes—are made to go through a series of displacements, and the non-capitalist economic form emerges as in terms of substitute signifiers of ‘small scale’, ‘informal sector’, or ‘social sector’. The non-capitalist economic is now understood as backward, holding value only as an employment safety valve, as non-progressive and sometimes, more importantly, as being on the ‘life support’ of capitalist benevolence, as its metaphoric surplus, which is what the trope of ‘third worldism’ does. Through the foreclosure of class, first, the decentred and heterogeneous space of non-capitalist class processes is displaced and turned into a quite different homogenous whole (~p); second, this homogeneous non-capitalist space is policed in terms of the centricity of (global) capital, in terms of signifiers pertaining to the circuits of global capital. What we see in the process is a skewing of the relation between the signifier and the subject. It is in terms of this idea(l) of capitalocentrism that capital’s hegemony over non-capital is mapped. In that hegemonic plane, even as non-capitalist class processes exist, they cannot speak; they cannot speak as non-capitalist class processes (see Chapter 6). Their voice is either turned into the cry of the victim, into the language of the realvictim , or into the shriek of the violent, into the language of the realevil . Having thus displaced the non-capitalist into an aberration that needs to

142

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

be included within the ‘normal’ economic realm, the foreclosure of class reduces the economy into a naturalized a-social field that, in turn, secures ‘capitalism’, as a natural preordained order—a unified One. Let us take note of a paradoxical moment. Capitalism is founded on class processes, at a concrete level. At the same time, somewhat paradoxically, capitalism is also founded on the foreclosure of class, on the repudiation of the language of class, on the occulting of the language of surplus labour, on the occluding of the language of exploitation. The loss of language is a fundamental loss for the exploited; it is loss of the fundamental language of labour, the language of exploitation. If the repudiation of the language of class/exploitation from the realm of the hegemonic sustains the widening and deepening patterns of capitalist exploitation, plunder, marginalization, and colonization/imperialism, the repudiation might also leave somewhere a reminder, a reminder that is so displaced that one can only look up at it in horror. Even as the hegemonic forecloses class, and makes it look impossible, it engages with the despicable real of class—communism. Communism, in its more evil rendition (or for that matter Stalinist ‘socialism’), is the fundamentally displaced-distorted face of the real qua class. Through the production of the substitute signifiers (here communism as evil), the hegemonic is able to transmute the politics of class—the politics of the real—into communism as the realevil —as either a distant utopia or a dystopia. With communism stripped off its ethicopolitical language, with communism turned into the realevil , it is made to lose much of its ethical charge. “Failed” Marx, “Evil” North Korea, “totalitarian” Fidel, “coup” leader Lenin, “brutal” Stalin, “rustic” and “unpredictable” peasant leaders (Mao and Uncle Ho), and ultimately the “anti-developmentalists” and “anti-globalization brigade” are all caught in a chain of equivalence. The language of class, the language of exploitation, of the moments of private capitalist surplus value appropriation, and all the altered meanings harboured in the social terrain, and of the still other occlusions that the foreclosure of class masks, is wrenched out of the analytical terrain, leaving it only with the shrivelled utopic or dystopic image of communism. Utopia dystopia Communism without the language of surplus labour is thus a grossly displaced-distorted face of the real; it is the product of an engagement bordering on scandal, vilification, half-truths, outright lies, and deceit—but effective nevertheless. Such a face of communism (the face of the realevil ) protracts further the foreclosure of class. It also sets up a skewed relation between the signifier and the

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

143

subject; instead of the subject’s relation to the real, it sets up a relation with the realevil . We have been held witness to so much debate over the death of Marx(ism) and the demise of communism. We find this debate meaningless. Communism cannot die; it shall never be allowed to die. For class to be foreclosed, to be kept as foreclosed, communism as evil (realevil ), at times as utopian (realutopian ), must be kept alive.

Foreclosure of World of the Third (WoT) While WoT is present at the level of experience, it is absent at the level of the language. Its place is taken, on the one hand, by third worldism as a discourse of victimhood (the realm of the realvictim ) and, on the other hand, by a discourse of evil (the realm of the realevil ). The repudiation of the language of class lends further weight to the erasure of the language of forms of life in WoT; it lends weight to the erasure of the knowledge of activities, practices, and relationships fundamentally different from those celebrated by the hegemonic and that which procreates within the circuits of global capital. Instead, the very erasure of the language of class with the subsequent reduction of WoT economy into a certain third worldism, in turn, symbolizes an orientalist moment.8 Because of the occlusion of the vast space of non-capitalist activities, practices, and relationships, including that in WoT, this space by default is not given any economic value and is simply clubbed, depending upon convenience, into the traditional, informal, arcane, and so on. This displacement-cum-deformation connects immediately to WoT economic practices procreating in a space governed by the absence of global capital or its variegated circuits. Even if WoT is not sensitive to the internal principles of the circuits of global capital, including its points de capiton, it cannot be left alone. It cannot be left alone because the Ego/hegemonic “is paralysed by the magnitude of the demand” of the real, or perhaps because it recognizes the real as danger. To prevent the impending danger, to prevent even the possibility of this impending danger, the hegemonic intervenes at the level of realevil and realutopian . 8 Postcolonial theorists, who occupy the realm of third worldism in fashioning their theory even as they ignore or deride Marxism, are very much complicit in this orientalist turn.

144

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

The realevil threatens the stability, security, and progress of ordinary people—the victims—of its own citizens within the WoT and those within the circuits of global capital. Gandhism, on the other hand, is an example of the realutopian (of the real turned utopian). However much Gandhi is revered, the unalienated life he proposed (Bilgrami 2009) is turned into an object of ridicule, as something impossible to achieve. Even though Gandhian forms of life can be re-read as signalling certain WoT-ist procreation of social life, the hegemonic rejects it at two levels: first, by clubbing it as utopian, as the realDark Continent , as simply unachievable, or as impossible; second, by turning the Gandhian way of life into the category of tradition, into victimhood, and into the realvictim waiting to be uplifted by the hegemonic and its organs. Both the realvictim and the realDark Continent contribute to the repudiation of fundamental signifiers of Gandhism, a perspectival loss for the WoT so profound, that even in the midst of global reverence, Gandhism as an alternative standpoint of Non-violent Socialism seems to have been erased (see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2019). A similar erasure awaits Tagore’s vision of postcapitalist forms of rural reconstruction and the Cooperative Principle (samavaya) Dhar and Chakrabarti 2021). To invoke victimhood (realvictim ), several tropes are put to work under the broader category third world (see Chapters 5, 8 and 9). The development sector practitioners and the Left radicals, more often than not, end up working in the domain of the realvictim. The proliferation of the discussion on marginalization is a testimony to this incitement to discourses on victims. Once one enters into the realm of realvictim and accepts it as the domain of analysis, one ends up virtually accepting the categories of victimhood (as also evil). Thus, both development practice and Left radicalism end up working within the realm of the realvictim .

Differa¨ nce: From Limits to Delusion In our imagination of expanded communism, WoT emerges as the wor(l)d of differance (Derrida 1986: 9), differance with respect to the circuits of global capital. Our class-focused decentring of (economic) reality puts under erasure the metaphysic of One Globe. It also inaugurates the thinking of a wor(l)d of differance. Differance represents in one turn the moment of difference-differing-deferring. Differance is not “conceived on the basis of opposition presence/absence. Differance is the systematic play of differences, the traces of differences, of the spacing by

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

145

which elements relate to one another” (Derrida 1981: 27). It represents a passive difference already in place as the condition of signification, and an active act of differing, which produces-introduces differences as also deferral as silent, secret, and discreet suspension. The metaphysic of full presence qua closed identity/reality is menaced by difference and deferral, is menaced by the remainder, by that it resists from being said. “The sign … is deferred presence … the classically determined structure of the sign … presupposes that the sign, which defers presence, is conceivable only on the basis of the presence that it defers and moving toward the deferred presence that it aims to reappropriate” (Derrida 1982: 9). In this respect, global capitalism is provisional, contingent, always already lacking through its constitution by the triad difference-differing-deferring with reference to WoT that it seeks to reappropriate through the discourse of third worldism. While Derrida focuses on the limits of full presence, an impulse we put to use in our class-focused decentring of the economy (class-focused decentring shows the limits of the Leviathan ‘global capitalism’), we have, in this work focused somewhat paradoxically on the delusion of full presence, on how global capitalism emerges as hegemonic, and on how it masks differance. We have thus looked at both limits as well as delusional possibilities, about how delusional possibilities put under wraps the limits. We have looked at decentring as also delusional centrisms; how delusional centrisms work; how delusional centrisms mask decentring; and how delusional centrisms are produced. Are they produced through the repudiation of fundamental signifiers? Does such repudiation mask differance? We have thus worked at the interface decentring-centrisms or perhaps disaggregation-hegemonic. We have worked at the interface ‘Derrida-Lacan’, Derrida-Lacan as the two lips of the impulse that informs this work “disaggregated yet hegemonic”. Through our focus on not just decentring-disaggregation but also on centrisms-hegemonic, we have moved from the Lacanian Imaginary to the Lacanian Symbolic. We have shown how the hegemonic symbolic is secured through foreclosure. We have thus moved to the Lacanian Real in general; more particularly to the real; and through the reverse gaze of the real we impute perhaps an ab-original turn to Derrida. Derrida is displaced from the original, from the focus on decentring to centrism, to homo-hegemonization, and to hegemony through foregrounding (Derrida calls it “reappropriation”) and foreclosure. Derrida is further displaced to an active act of differingdeferral, to the moment when the reverse gaze of the real, when the

146

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

language of WoT marks its difference-differing-deferral with respect to the circuits of global capital. Through this return of the repressed, return of repressed language, and return of the unspoken, the wor(l)d of the third marks difference. Further, from a WoT position, how will WoT view the circuits of global capital? What sense will it make of its “reappropriative” moves that attempts to usurp the language of WoT to a form of de-classed third worldism? The next chapter demonstrates the process of reappropriation in the hegemonic development theories. The following chapters 7–9 explicate upon the nature of the hegemonic as constitutive of two concrete moments—the circuits of global capital and WoT—as unveiled from within a deconstructed WoT Marxian field. It also explicates upon processes of reappropriation as also upon moments of marking differance. The final chapter shows how taking off from the wor(l)d of differance that the WoT is, differance with respect to the circuits of global capital, one can think the ethico-political of expanded communism.

References Achuthan, A. 2004. Women and Midwifery in the Indian Context: Between the Practical and the Propositional. In Women’s Education and the Politics of Gender. Kolkata: Bethune College Press. Althusser, L. 1996. Writings on Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. Bilgrami, A. 2009. Value, Enchantment, and the Mentality of Democracy: Some Distant Perspectives from Gandhi. Economic and Political Weekly 44 (51): 47–61. Chakrabarti, A., and S. Cullenberg. 2003. Transition and Development in India. New York: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2005. Imperialism in the Age of Empire: Global Capitalist Hegemony and the Foreclosure of Class. Other Voice 4 (January). ———. 2006. Modernism and the Lacanian Real. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 3. ———. 2019. Poor (Wo)man’s Socialism: Marx and Gandhi in Dialogue. In ‘Capital’ in the East: Reflections on Marx, ed. A. Chakraborty, A. Chakrabarti, B. Dasgupta, and S. Sen. Singapore: Springer. ———. 2012. Interrogating Inclusive Development in India’s Transition Process. Coll. Anthropology 36 (4): 1089–1099. Chaudhury, A., D. Das, and A. Chakrabarti. 2000. Margin of Margin: Profile of an Unrepentant Postcolonial Collaborator. Calcutta: Anustup. Derrida, J. 1981. Positions, trans. A. Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

5

GLOBAL CAPITALISM AS HEGEMONIC: WORLD …

147

———. 1982. Choreographies. Diacritics 12 (2): 66–76. ———. 1986. Glas, trans. John P. Leavey and Richard Rand. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Dhar, A. 2002. Beyond or Within the Lacanian Turn: Sexuation … Sexual Difference… Melancholy Gender. From the Margins: Bodies, Beings and Genders, 7. ———. 2003. Other Marx-s: Marx’s Others. In Other Voice. Kolkata: Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). ———. 2006. Lacanian Theory: Beyond or within the Linguistic Turn. In Post-structuralism and Cultural Theory, ed. F. Manjali. New Delhi: Allied Publishers. ———. 2018. Genealogies of Aboriginalizaton: Psychoanalysis and Sexuation in Cultural Crucible. In Psychoanalysis in Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood, ed. M. Kumar, A. Dhar, and A. Mishra. Washington, DC: Lexington Books. Dhar, A., and A. Chakrabarti. 2015. The Althusser-Lacan Correspondence as Ground for Psycho-Social Studies. Psychotherapy and Politics International 12 (3): 220–233. ———. 2021. Tagore and the Marxian Political: From Critique to Reconstruction to Askesis. In Beyond Capitalism and Neoliberalism, ed. V.S. Pejnovi´c. Belgrade: Institute for Political Studies. Dolar, M. 1998. Cogito as the Subject of the Unconscious. In Cogito and the Unconscious, ed. S. Zizek. Durham: Duke University Press. Freud, S. 2003 [1938]. The Origins of Religion, vol. 13. New Delhi: Shrijee’s Book International. Graham, J.K., and J. Amariglio. 2006. Subjects of Economy: Introduction. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 18 (2): 199–203. Lacan, J. 2006. Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink. New York and London: W. W. Norton. Moitra, S. 2002. Feminist Thought: Androcentrisim, Communication and Objectivity. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.

CHAPTER 6

Political Economy of Development: From Critique to Reconstruction

Introduction In the annals of the dominant theories of the twentieth century, whether of the mainstream development economics or the variants of classical Marxism, ‘agriculture’ and ‘rural’ came to be construed as the lacking and devalued other of the modern, industrial, capitalist economy, and urban society, respectively. In such dyadic representations, the peasantry personifying the rural came to be considered as backward and regressive in comparison to modern social actors such as the industrial working class and the bourgeoisie. This representation of peasantry as a devalued figure helps justify and facilitate the discourse of development as a movement from the rural-dominated economy to an industrial service-dominated economy.1 In such a scenario, even the disintegration of the rural and peasantry, through the use of violence, force, and submission, was considered to be a justifiable cost for the pursuit of progress, high growth rate, 1 Primary (agriculture, mining), secondary (manufacturing), and tertiary (services, retail) are the three sectors; a linear sectoral ladder of development often gets adjudged as a transition from predominantly primary to industrial and then to service though, as in case of growing India where service is large segment, this linearity by no means is always true. The crucial jump in the development ladder seems to be a movement from predominantly agrarian to substantially large industrial sector, and that is where the development discourse concentrates. As noted in Chapter 2, in Marxian theory, class process of surplus labour operational in industry, agriculture, or service is the entry point to be used for reclassifying composition and analysis of data in mainstream discourses.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_6

149

150

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

and poverty reduction. On this count, alongside well-established capitalist societies, even socialist societies like the erstwhile Soviet Union or post-Mao China are touted as success stories. The predestined, inexorable arrow-like movement of history from ‘agrarian rural’ to ‘industrializing urban’ symbolizing the disintegration of peasantry (and of indigenous subjects) was held to be a necessary step in the progressive transition of economy and society. Even as there were critical engagements, such as over the manner of disintegration of peasantry (say, through the violence of original accumulation), over the role of the capitalists in facilitating the historical transition (as depicted in the underdevelopment thesis or the centre-periphery theories), or over the failure to absorb the migrating, rural population into the formal industrial sector, they generally did not question the ultimate fate of the peasantry in the transition process. In the field of development economics, taking off from Classical Political Economy (CPE), the script of the conceptual location and fate of the rural was theorized by the Lewis and Ranis-Fei models (1954, 1963), and followed thereafter by the Harris-Todaro model (1970). With its ‘unlimited labour supply’ theory based on the marginal productivity principle, it initially rationalized in its transitional logic the worthlessness of the excess labour force in relation to the industrialized worker, lending legitimacy to the representation of the rural, especially rural and forest societies inhabited by indigenous and Dalit communities as the register of the “living dead”; Adivasi and Dalit worlds had thus become the “tombstone of the illicit” in development (Chitranshi and Dhar 2016; Dhar 2020). The a priori logic of transition to an industrialized capitalist society personified by the capitalist class (bearer of, according to Lewis, the ‘passion of capital accumulation’) and the working class, became the prototypical representation of an advanced society completing the utopian process of development. But then, moving on, development economics soon discovered that the transitional economies undergoing rural to urban migration faced the problem of absorption of the migrating ‘peasantry’ within the industrial workforce (the Harris-Todaro problem), which in turn is said to have accentuated the problem of ‘informalized’ workforce within an industrializing, urbanizing, and modernizing society. The informalized workforce is not so homogenous or even engaged in industrial activities; a large number of them tend to procreate in the distant end of a value chain whose centre is (global) capital and, even larger numbers, outside of that circuit. As if, by a historically exceptional act/event of social engineering, the erstwhile body of peasantry in the rural has being

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

151

transmogrified into a body of informalized workers, populating the urban world of the third that multiplies outside the circuits of (global) capital, and acquires a socialized life-form of their own. From the categorizations of world organizations like the International Labor Organization (ILO), to almost all mainstream discourses, Right and Left, the category of the ‘informal’, like that of the ‘peasant’, symbolizes the existence of an unproductive population. The consensus among both Right and Left: ‘informal’ is a historical problem in need of rectification, leading to an aligned historical project of facilitating its formalization within the circuits of (global) capital. ILO has been an advocate of this position, and nation states have subsequently followed it. In this context, the strategy of formalization of the informal is indispensable for completing the developmental utopia of absorbing the agricultural/rural workforce within the industrial/urban space. Resultantly, the twin logic of transition, from the agricultural to the industrial and from the informal to the formal, has got telescoped into a singular rationale in the contemporary development utopia. Squeezed between the developmental utopia driven by the inexorable advancement of capital accumulation and the ‘surplus population’ that transpired, the literary class of the world for nearly a century has been struggling to account for and resolve the historical impasse in this transitional crisis of capitalism. It is not that the historical problem of surplus population in the form of this peasant-informal group was first discovered by the discourse of development. Marx theorized the same in terms of relative surplus population (latent, stagnating, and floating) and reserve army of unemployed in relation to capitalist mode of production (Marx 1990: 781–802; Bhattacharya 2019).2 Other contemporary 2 Following Sanyal (2007) and Bhattacharya (2019) argue that ‘surplus population’ should be emphatically distinguished from the ‘reserve army of labour’ which is a condition of existence of what is usually known as the capitalist mode of production; we agree with Bhattacharya. Indeed, the clubbing or collapsing of surplus population and reserve army of labour problematically subsumes the ‘outside’ consisting of other non-capitalist class structures (which Sanyal takes as geared towards need economy [this idea of need economy is however radically different from the idea of need economy we develop in Chapter 3 of this book]) to capital and its accumulative logic. From a class-focused perspective, this capitalocentric subsuming of surplus population into the logic of capital reduces what is otherwise a complex, disaggregated, and de-centred class-focused rendition of the economy to the language and logic of capital. However, any notion of the outside does not take us outside the language and logic of capital. There are outsides that are to the liking of capital. There are outsides that justify and legitimise the rule of capital.

152

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

dissenting voices like Mahatma Gandhi in India and Mao Tse-Tung in China had, to no avail, flagged the problem of unemployment, and of the precarity and inequality produced on account of unbridled, capitalintensive industrialization, as an unsolvable, immoral, and destructive recipe for the future.3 Despite a century of capitalist developmentinduced transition, increased rate of mechanisation (handloom to manufacturing to industrialisation to automation to AI), high-income growth, natural population growth, and unprecedented urbanization accompanied by many rounds of continual original accumulation and wanton destruction of the individual, social and ecological life, the problem still persists, so, do the warnings of Marx, Gandhi and Mao in our contemporary times. The recalcitrant existence of the ‘peasant-informal’ despite the long-swing towards capitalism, becomes even more solidified during economic and financial shocks. Let us give two examples of such adverse effects. A long-drawn and irreversible shock whose future effects are not all known, comes in the form of climate change that displaces the central question of sustainability, from that of for-profit-driven sustainable growth towards that of the preservation of human existence i.e., sustainable life. What happens if sustainable life becomes the defining question and a constraint based on it becomes the baseline on which institutions, technologies, practices, and ethics would have to be reshaped? Merely including the natural process as one variable in the growth-driven objective function in order to achieve the developmental goal of sustainable growth becomes challenging since the epistemology, logic, and practice of economic development-driven growth propels, rather than impedes, the collective human extinction (see Chapter 9). Another example is the transitory shock, from a historical point of view, in the form of the present pandemic that we are living through. It has showcased the destructive effect of living through Our effort in this book has been to look for that outside that is anathema to capital logic. That makes capital anxious. An outside that opens space for political resistance and political reconstruction of life. We were guided by the perspective of the political in our search for the outside. The political and the outside are related in our work. It is an outside that puts to question the hegemonic and its nodal signifiers. It is an outside that offers a glimpse of liberation to the hitherto hegemonized. In our framework, the population thus is, to begin with, disaggregated into various class and non-class processes (including need related ones), positions, and relations (even intersecting and reinforcing ones) that they may occupy. 3 For a possible counter hegemonic future of the rural see Chitranshi and Dhar (2021).

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

153

the developmental imagination in quite a number of ways. One such consequence, transpiring in some countries like India, can be gleaned through the reverse migration (during the initial lockdown period) back to the villages, of tens of millions of informal-peasant workers, that is indicative of the inhumane character of the rural to urban migration, though such migration is projected in these transitional economies as proof of development (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2020). It also shows that for mainstream development economics, the peasants and informal workers are not subjects but objects of development; in its analytical space, the subjects—facing exploitation, force, violence, state-capital subterfuge, utter disregard for life, humiliation, unemployment and underemployment, precarity at or below poverty line, and what not—get reified into pawn-like objects in a top-down logic, that works inexorably and with breathtaking speed towards ‘liberating’ these subjects from the curse of the backward past. These two instances only exemplify the consequence of economic development, and the contradictions it has ushered in, as also that of its incapacity to resolve them. Marx referred to capitalism as a delusional veil. The deconstruction of the delusion was the objective of Capital —the book. Such a deconstructive critique could lay the ground for postcapitalist politics and reconstruction of the social. Post the history of orientalism (whatever its form, white, brown, black, yellow), one needs to further deconstruct the delusional veil of development. Confronting both capitalocentrism and orientalism is hence the essential condition for the Marxian politics of resistance-reconstruction-transformation: anti-capitalist resistance to the circuits of global capital, postcapitalist reconstruction of subaltern life-worlds and worldviews, and transformation of subjects towards postcapitalist futurities.

The Epistemology of Economic Dualism Economic dualism follows from an apparent structure of two (p and ~p); but which on a deeper examination looks to be the logic of One; One because the second (~p) is only a dependent second, a lacking-lagging second, defined in terms of the first (p). Our thought-world breaks down into the structure of p/~p, Human/inhuman, Man/woman, Colonizer/colonized, White/native, Developed/underdeveloped, Normal/abnormal, etc.—which is never really two, and in actuality is the logic of the One. When the structure is

154

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

produced through ‘Capital’ as ‘p’, as a centre or as nodal signifier, it births capitalocentrism or capital-centric epistemologies and ontologies (as also capital-centric paths to ethics, justice, and politics) (Gibson-Graham 1996; Ruccio and Gibson-Graham 2001); when it is constructed with (western) ‘Europe or West as centre’, it is generative of Euro-centrism or orientalism (Hall 1992; Chaudhury 1994; Escobar 1995).4 We have argued that this economic dualism and the development discourse such dualism produces, is the outcome of capitalocentric-orientalism (see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, Chapter II; 2017). Capitalocentricorientalism entails that the already homogenised register non-capitalism (courtesy, capitalocentrism) is further displaced into the derogatory rendition pre-capitalist where pre-capitalist is not simply a subordinate space in relation to the capitalist space but is also viewed as abnormal, reflective of, and in turn reflecting, the abnormality of what is known as the ‘third world’. In this way, the “battery of signifiers” ‘Traditional-pre-CapitalistThird World’ forms a chain of equivalence which come to symbolize economic backwardness; agriculture, the informal, and the household sector, the indigenous subjects, peasant families, informal sector workers, the poor, the poor women, and the poor children then emerge as harbingers of pathology, as victims of a so-called traditional structure, as figures of a ‘third worldliness’ as a whole, and as subjects for external interventions, or for civilizing missions. In mainstream development discourse, such economic dualism is ubiquitous and tends to become the main point of reference and departure for everything that materializes—the economic models, the modes of philosophical reasoning, insights, policy menu, and the institutions engendered. By the very process of reducing the otherwise de-centred and disaggregated class economy into the logic of One, capitalocentricorientalism engenders a monism and a monotheism of capital, following which the transition of the economy in the image and telos of capital is justified and normalized. In the words of a leading development economist,

4 The West is not a geographical but a historical construct. In its historical dimension, the globe is a sphere in rotation—there is no east and no West to the globe. They are historical constructions imputed, imparted to a geo-sphere in uninterrupted rotation. Chaudhury (1994) foregrounds the importance of ‘Brown Orientalism’ in this context. The postdevelopment approach refer to this as Euro-ethnocentrism.

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

155

The assumption of duality is merely for analytical convenience. If fragmentation – irrespective of the number of parts – in itself causes some problems and we wish to examine these, then the simplest assumption to make is that of dualism. There is nothing methodologically disturbing in that. And anyway, beginning with a dual labor market assumption, many economists have gone onto explore the problems raised by existence of submarkets. The increasing attention which the urban informal sector is receiving is an example of this. (Basu 1997: 152)

The “simplest assumption” to make is that of “dualism”, and there is “nothing methodologically disturbing” in that. Economic dualism gets normalized in the process as an approximation of reality; heterogeneity then comes to be erased or accommodated from within the dual frame. However, the vexed point is that, unlike what Basu suggests in the above quote, there is nothing innocent or benign about the assumption of dualism.

Disinterring the Lewis Model Let us begin with the archetypical delusional veil in the global South that covers the rent/tear in the symbolic produced by the foreclosure of class: Lewis Model (1954) developed further by Ranis-Fei (1963) (henceforth, LRF model). In this ‘model’, the economy is archetypically reduced to two watertight compartments—agriculture symbolizing the traditional/subsistence economy and industry symbolizing the modern economy. The stereotypical ‘third world’ economy/country gets identified by the presence of a predominantly traditional sector comprising of agriculture and a small modern industrial sector; the artisanal, small-scale industrial economy that exist alongside these may be ignored to focus on conventional economic dualism. Our questions: how does this representation and its effect appear, and what do they produce? Is there an underlying epistemology, and if so, is it political? Our analysis assumes the knowledge of Chapter 2, particularly the understanding of class sets . The following table condenses the set of images which strikingly stand against one another in a relation of opposition, such that one side gets portrayed as being devalued (Chakrabarti 2013). Through this hierarchical and discriminatory differentiation, the meaning of the modern economy and its Other, the traditional economy get conceptually placed (Table 6.1).

156

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Table 6.1 The traditional/pre-capitalist and modern/capitalist dual frame Characteristics

Traditional/pre-capitalism

Modern/capitalism

Production Input Technique Form of labour Motive

Agricultural output Labour and land Labour-intensive Family labour Non-profit such as need

Distribution

Output distributed as equal shares—wage—to the members of the family which implies the average product of labour

Industrial output Labour and capital Capital-intensive Wage labour Profit-maximization where all profit is reinvested Distribution to workers through the market which means that real wage, while constant, is higher than in the traditional sector

Source Chakrabarti (2013)

Aspects like the ‘irrational’ non-profit motive, the production of traditional output such as staple food (and not, say, cash crops), the use of family labour, labour-intensive method of production, and non-market allocation of resources helps produce a stereotypical set of images through which agriculture/rural comes to be defined and depicted as a lacking space, as a marker of subsistence living and a repository of the poor in the classical economics sense of mass structural poverty. Agriculture/tradition lacks self-definition; its features are defined by what it lacks of industry/modern, which now constitute the norm(al), the more valued space. In this model, the images that processed the above-mentioned moments of stereotyping were fixed vis-à-vis their association with capitalism and pre-capitalism. Thus, the dual economy—consisting of the modern and the traditional sectors—is also simultaneously dual in another respect—modernity wrapped in capitalism, and tradition rolled over into pre-capitalism. Given that modern capitalism epitomized by industry has come to represent the higher economic form and the pursuit of profit making rather than subsistence becomes the dominant disposition, the fate of tradition became pre-determined and with it, the place of agriculture/rural within the overall logic of development. The influence of this representation on the policy paradigm, and over institutions and practices, has played a seminal role in organizing and justifying an extraordinary social transformation exercise on a global scale, which is sometimes explicitly violent, in the name of uplifting/developing the

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

157

third world (something that Lewis himself recognizes). At this point, two issues need further elaboration. First, how is this delusional veil produced? To cover what? Is it the rent/tear engendered by the foreclosure of class? Put bluntly, the Lewisian-type categorization of capitalism and precapitalism have foreclosed the class process of surplus labour; sans surplus labour, the capitalist class is only recognized as “a group of men who think in terms of investing productively” (Lewis 1954: 159–160) i.e., as accumulator of capital. Not only does Lewis treat class as noun but he confuses between capitalist class as appropriators of surplus value with its being an accumulator of capital (Norton 2001, 2017). What would the return of the foreclosed language of class entail? How would it rewrite and reconfigure the delusional veil that the Lewisian Model engenders? In class-focused terms elaborated in Chapter 2, the R.H.S of the Lewisian framework should represent class sets {5, 17}, particularly the relatively surplus value production form. Let us demonstrate. The modern side of this dual model making up the wage form of labour, the market form of final produce, coupled with the objective of profit maximization, points to a money-wage contract economy. From the perspective of class-focused theory, the wage form signifies the value of labour-power (variable capital) and the price of constant capital that of the value of means of production. Together, they comprise the cost of production (CC + V); the marketed produce signifies the value of the commodity (W). The difference in the value of the commodity from its cost is the surplus value or SV (the value form of surplus labour), which, in the Lewis model, is absent. ‘Profit’ replaces surplus labour as a substitute signifier, rendering the latter invisible; capital accumulation appears only as distributed portion of profit (and bank credit), a somewhat superficial reading of Marx. Recall, in Marx, it is surplus labour which, in the form of surplus value, is the principal register from which profit is derived as one of the many distributive components, so is capital accumulation. In the Lewisian-type epistemological construct of a dual economy and its inherent language game, the presence of surplus labour/value is made inoperative by the de-classed foregrounding of ‘market’, ‘profit’, ‘wage’, ‘capital accumulation’, and other associated signifiers. However, the process of making class inoperative has a deeper connotation. This is because what is disabled must also be foreclosed. Foreclosure is more than just the disabling of a signifier; it is the process of occulting the concept and the language of class itself. It is not a mere exclusion. Even as class as process of surplus labour and the associated

158

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

organization of exploitation is a definitional component of capitalism, its foreclosure is essential for the representation of capitalism à la the Lewisian dual economy. It is essential because if class is acknowledged, it will be impossible to reduce the economy to such a homogenous and mutually exclusive dyad; recall from Chapter 2, the class-focused economy entailed a de-centred and disaggregated economy, which ruled out capitalocentrism. The implication of foreclosure of class is true for non-/pre-capitalism as well. In the class-focused Marxian approach, via a de-centring of the economy, difference is traced not simply between capitalism and non-capitalism, but in the further dis-aggregation of non-capitalism into various non-capitalist class processes—both exploitative and nonexploitative. Class analysis reveals how a multi-layered horizontality of differences—between capitalist and ‘what are not capitalist’ class processes—comes to occupy the economic landscape. Foreclosure of class banishes ‘what are not capitalist’ class processes, as also class politics and the possibility of the reorganization of the economy and society in terms of ‘what are not capitalist’ class processes. This also renders impossible both a pluriverse world (Kothari et al. 2019) and a postcapitalist politics within it (Gibson-Graham 2006). The displacement of an otherwise de-centred and disaggregated economy deepens further when an already homogeneous ‘non-capitalism’ is turned into an equally homogeneous ‘pre-capitalism’ through a displacement of the world of the third (Other) into the third world (other), which involves an Orientalist moment. The heterogeneous space of ‘what are not capitalist’ (existing in overdetermined relation with nonclass processes)—the Other—in effect is translated into a lacking, underdeveloped other, further translated into the ‘victim other’ (poor, marginalized, excluded, ignorant, etc.), the ‘evil other’ (hysterical, irrational, archaic, etc.) and the ‘utopian other’ (projects of Gandhism, postcapitalism, postdevelopment, socialism/communism, etc.). This conceptual violence in turn renders absent/absurd the language-logic-knowledgeethos-experience of the Other propping up instead a representationrendition of other that is produced from the perspective of the centres— here, capitalism and modernity; the ~p (other-third world) is foregrounded in relation to p (capital, west) by foreclosing the Other (world of the third) (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, 2012). The de-centred and disaggregated economy now reconfigured into two homogenous complexes of {capitalism, pre-/non-capitalism; modern, tradition} and

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

159

constituted by, as explained, the foreclosures of class and world of the third, exorcise any alternative space from where a different viewing of the economy and its transition could be possible. Theoretical epistemology transmogrifies into a deterministic political epistemology, even before we start to speak of transition and development. Given this dualism, development embodies an inexorable logic of progress achievable through the big bang transition of a predominantly traditional agricultural pre-capitalist economy, towards one dominated by continually modernizing industrial capitalism. Development discourse boils down to a set of arguments that try to: ● bolster this form of dualism and ● let loose mechanisms that make the transition or ‘progress’ possible. Take an example crucial to the justification of transition. The dual economic model pointed out that the transition from traditional agrarian society to a modern industrial society would require a transfer of people from villages/agriculture to the cities/industry. Asked why this transfer is necessary, the Lewisian model invokes another idea of surplus labour comprising of those labourers who are in excess of what is required in the agricultural sector (notably, this is not Marx’s surplus labour). Identification of excess labourers is based on the principle of marginal productivity—i.e., increment in output by the addition of one unit of labour. Following the Lewisian model, it is assumed that a large segment of the traditional agricultural sector, dominated by labour-intensive family farming, is facing, at worst, a zero marginal productivity or, as others argued, a marginal productivity lower than in the modern industrial sector. Taking zero marginal productivity is sufficient for making our case. By the criteria of efficiency, these labourers by virtue of adding nothing to output are useless; these surplus labourers are as good as unemployed, an instance of ‘disguised unemployment’. This is because employment makes sense only in the ‘productive’ and ‘efficient’ sense; it implies that the presence of disguised unemployment is hampering growth and poverty reduction as well. An ensemble of signifiers such as productivity, efficiency, employment, and growth get tangled in a chain of relations producing a representation in which a large segment of farmers and labourers in agriculture is now deemed as dispensable. The term

160

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

‘tradition/pre-capitalism/agriculture’ by itself sparks the imagery of ‘surplus labour’ and ‘disguised’ unemployment, as no labour at all; nowhere is the vigour of this imagery better portrayed than in the defense of land acquisition (and some such instance such as privatization) where the argument of disguised unemployment is advanced as a justifiable rationale for the dismantling of rural forms of life. Finally, the markers deployed to pass judgement on labour in the traditional sector belong to the modern/industrial/capitalist sector. How can labour in the traditional sector be judged in terms of attributes of the modern sector is a question addressed neither by Lewis nor the thousand variants of the dual economy model that followed it. How can one side be valued in terms of characteristics of another side except by a naturalization of the capitalocentric-orientalist epistemology (this is like assessing a camel in terms of the attributes of a horse; see Dhar and Chakrabarti 2022)? Suppose, the ‘traditional’ sector values sharing, harmony, and cooperation over self-seeking behaviour, efficiency, and competitiveness; indeed, there has to be some other organizing rationale for such an economic life to make sense to itself. It is of course another matter that the aspect of rationalization of the so-called traditional sector—its language-logic-knowledge-ethos-experience—has no analytical value or role in how the development experience comes to be located in a dualistic frame. In contrast, it is productivity and efficiency that not only dominates the representation of the modern capitalist sector, but the consequent dynamics in the dual economy. To claim that these are value-neutral ‘economic tools’ misses its politics in both the structuring of economic dualism and the rationalization of economic transition in the p-centric logic.

The Unmaking of the (In)Formal Sector Voyager’s perception matters in economics just as it did in the formation of the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’ (Hall 1992). During his work carried out in the 1960s, anthropologist Keith Hart stumbled into a large sector in Ghana which he called ‘informal,’ to differentiate it from what is ‘formal’. In a paper in 1973, characterizing the informal sector as containing the ‘survival activities of the poor’ he suggested that poor people join the informal sector not to reap profit, but to survive with the goods and services produced therein. Informality was a matter of bare subsistence and hence may be construed as abnormal, if the profit motive is

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

161

the norm. At about the same time, the International Labor Organization sanctified the term and its meaning with respect to a study in Kenya. Since then, alongside the economic dualism of industry-agriculture, the discourse of formal-informal became common in academic and policy circles as representative of third wordlist existence. It has served as a signpost of backwardness and fettering; it has also helped justify and shape extraordinary modernization exercises and top-down experiments of social engineering across the emerging economies. Our focus in this section is on the making and unmaking of the informal sector within the development discourse (Chakrabarti and Thakur 2010). Take ‘p’ to be One criterion representing the formal sector. Then not having ‘p’, let’s call it ‘−p’, represents informality. Now ‘−p’ can be expressed in a number of ways: ‘−p1’, ‘−p2’, ‘−p3’, up to infinity. In this structure of representation, ‘p’ acts as the centre and ‘−p1’, ‘−p2’ up to infinity act as the lacking face(t) of ‘p’; here ‘−p1’, ‘−p2’ are reducible, albeit negatively, albeit as lack, to ‘p’. For a specific example, take the case of ‘wage’, fixed wage as the defining criterion for formal sector stand for ‘security’. The lack of fixed wage is, in turn, treated as the defining characteristic of informal sector. Now there exists many types of wage systems, like wage in kind, subsistence wage, and contractual wage, all of which can be treated as forms of the lack of fixed wage. In true sense, the informal sector has no criteria of its own; the criteria of the formal sector are used as the defining characteristics of the informal sector. Consequently, the purportedly dualistic structure (the structure of ‘p’ and ‘−p’) is in fact the logic of One, the logic of ‘p’. The numerous definitions of the informal sector are all hostage to this logic of One (‘p’) (Harding and Jenkins 1989; De Soto 1989; Majumder 1976; Papola 1981; Sethuraman 1976 [1981]; Tokman 1978, Bienefeld 1975, Moser 1978; Breman 1976). Papola, however, has expressed a certain discomfort regarding the homogeneity of the category ‘informal sector’. He has stressed the need to take into account the phenomenon of heterogeneity within what has come to be known as the informal sector; he has also stressed the need to appreciate the blurring of certain activities that seem to be present in both the formal and informal sectors (see the above references of Harding and Jenkins; Sethuraman; Tokman). Though the critiques of the homogeneity of the informal sector and the need to consider its heterogeneity have raised some valid questions regarding the formalcentric (‘p’-centric) definition of informal sector, the problem is that such approaches are not free of formal centrism either. Rather the tendency

162

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

is to work with the given definition of the informal sector, considered as a homogenous whole centred on the formal sector, and then think about heterogeneity within such a pre-constituted homogeneity. This means that the thinking behind heterogeneity remains incapable of problematizing the formal-centric structure that shapes the very meaning and perception of informality in the first place. The mainstream literature on the informal sector gives a positive value to the ‘formal’ which, in its representation, is taken to be the capitalist class process, either singularly or as the central hub of a circuit; at the same time, what gets enacted is first the devaluation of the other noncapitalist class processes and, second, positioning of the devalued class processes in relation to capitalist class processes. This way the otherwise diverse non-capitalist class processes (22 class sets other than {5, 17}) are homogenized into ‘pre-capitalism’ or by its substitute category of informal sector. Not only is the heterogeneous economy reduced to two homogenous wholes, the de-centred economy in turn is now posited in terms of the privileged centre of the formal sector à la the capitalist sector. Once this capitalocentric-orientalist view is accepted, it becomes all but impossible to deviate from the picture of an economy in which the formal sector (qua capitalism) is presumed as the norm(al). The production of such a norm is accelerated further through subjective evaluations (like decent work, protection, security, etc.) that refer to the process of normalization based on the orientalist impulse. While the ILO discourse brings into contention the lack of formalcentric aspects of rights and law, recognition, decency, security, and so on, in its characterization of the category of informal, other important economic distinctions considered particularly important are made with respect to productivity (value added) and competitiveness. Once this view is accepted, the logic of transition with respect to the formal-informal dual model is laid bare as an attempt to govern the relocation and reconstruction of the socio-economic contours of informality, through the lens of, and in favour of, privileged entities of the capitalist and the modern. The arguments forwarded by La Porta and Shleifer (2014) entailing that those informal enterprises are tout court unproductive and stagnant exemplifies this position. For a medium sample country, informal enterprises add 15% of value per employee of formal enterprises. This means that the informal sector is overwhelmingly clogged by non-capitalist enterprises and simple capitalist reproduction enterprises unable to generate substantial surplus

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

163

value for reinvestment in capital accumulation, which makes them incapable of growing and competing. This difference in productivity reflects in differences in income, quality of product, and competition, making them conclude the following for informal sector enterprises: “Far from being reservoirs of entrepreneurial energy, they are swamps of backwardness. They allow their owners and employees to survive, but not much more” (La Porta and Shleifer 2014: 118). Attempts to valorize informal sector or to rethink long-run development by building on it are futile and counterproductive, a position that is widely shared by policy-makers across the world and India. In addition to being seen as a victim of its own structural deficiencies that needs overcoming (as the ILO and World Bank claims), the recalcitrant presence of informality amidst industrialization also emerge as a fetter to the transition of underdeveloped economies towards a modern capitalist one. The ‘informal’ represents a historical impasse in the march of capitalist led development. The logic of transition stemming from the delusion of development entails that the informal sector must (be made to) wither away. Having disputed the privileged position ascribed to the formal sector, let us now with the help of the ILO definition of the informal sector, exemplify two more effects of the class-focused analysis: (i) why the secured theoretical position of formal and informal sector as capitalist and non-/pre-capitalist, respectively, tends to get disturbed, and (ii) why any form of conceptual division of formal and informal becomes moot. The international symposium on the informal sector organised by ILO/ICFTU in 1999 classifies the informal sector workforce into three major groups: (a) owner-employers of micro-enterprises employing a few paid workers, with or without apprentices; (b) own-account workers owning and operating one-person businesses, who work alone or with the help of unpaid workers, generally family members and apprentices; and (c) dependent workers, paid or unpaid, including wage workers in micro-enterprises, unpaid family workers, apprentices, contract labour, home workers, and paid domestic workers. Evidently, the different social settings named by the ILO could potentially map out into the 24 class sets, from exploitative class sets of capitalist, feudal, slave, and CA communistic types, respectively (5–12, 17–20), to independent class sets (1–4) and non-exploitative class sets of AC communistic and communist type (13–16, 21–24). Similarly, whatever be its specified features, the formal sector would typically map out into various kinds of class sets. Suppose we rule out from the definition of formal sector the possibilities: (i) unpaid

164

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

labour and labour payment in kind, and (ii) non-commodity form of use value. In that case, then, the formal sector could potentially be comprised of class sets (5, 9, 13, 17, and 21), wherein capitalist class set is only one type among many. This follows from our theoretical framework in which varied kinds of modes of appropriation (and not exclusively capitalist) can exist closely with market forms of distribution. This implies that any reduction of the formal sector to the capitalist sector and the informal sector to the non/pre-capitalist sector is immediately displaced; even if, for argument’s sake, the category of formal sector is reformed to broaden to the circuits of (global) capital that may include non-capitalist class sets at the margins, it still, in a class-focused economy, cannot serve as the centre. Moreover, it is equally possible that many of these class sets could be within the informal sector as well (in terms of characteristics defined by ILO). For example, with similar cultural and political conditions of existence, class set 9 can belong to both the formal and informal sector; with dissimilar conditions of existence, the problem of a secure conceptual division can only aggravate. The possibility of similar kinds of class sets being in both formal and informal sector make the division between formal and informal, at best hazy and, at worst, impossible. With formal sector losing its privileged position, with the association of formal sector with capitalist class set getting dislocated, and with similar class sets possible for both formal and informal enterprises, what cannot be sustained any longer is the secured division between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sector or the connotation of the informal sector as the devalued other of the formal sector, or of its teleological fate in terms of the formal sector. Once unmoored from capitalocentric-orientalism, the received terms ‘formal sector’ and ‘informal sector’ dissolve into the irreducible multiplicity and heterogeneity of the class-focused economy. Insistence on using the terms ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ can only be justified in the context of the de-centred economy that paves the way for a radically different idea of transition and development. Faced with the teleological idea of ‘progress’ telescoped in the formalcentric logic that proposes a unidirectional process of formalization of the economy (ILO 2016),5 the class-focused Marxist approach would render 5 ILO. 2016. R204—Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy Recommendation, 2015 (No. 204). January. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/employment/ units/emp-invest/informal-economy/WCMS_443501/lang--en/index.htm (accessed on January 20, 2021).

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

165

such a process of development incapacitating and illogical. Since it is not possible to either pose homogeneity or centricity, any purported logic of transition built on either can only be considered as an ideological trope to reconstruct the social contour in favour of a privileged centre—capitalist or formal. In terms of our class-focused frame, the formation of the categories of formal and informal sector makes possible the governance of an otherwise de-centred and heterogeneous economy from the centricities of capital and modernity. Challenging the dualistic structure of formal/informal, our class-focused approach unlocks a different way to posit and describe the economy and its transition. As we argue, at the least, it is possible to have all 24 class sets co-existing within an economy. Given the features of de-centring and heterogeneity, the transition of this economy is uneven and contingent, signifying not only a movement across the types of various class sets (say, from feudal to capitalist), but also in the form of the class sets (say, a movement from state capitalist form to private capitalist). One cannot predict or claim a teleological movement of the de-centred and disaggregated economy towards a specific type of class set. To struggle, in terms of the Marxian ethico-political standpoint of expanded communism (or any other competing standpoint), becomes interminable.

Development in Transitional Crisis The logic of {p, ~p} propels a narrative of transition in which the dissolution of informal becomes logical and complementary to the Lewisian transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy. East Asia countries in the 1960–1980s are often upheld as successful examples of such a kind of transition to an urbanized, industralized society; that are showcased as having bypassed the informalization scenario; though recent studies have shown that their economic structures following neoliberal globalization have dramatically reversed in the opposite direction with rapidly increasing insecure, irregular and self-employed employment in East Asia and South East Asia (Lee 2015, Kalleberg, Hewison and Shin 2021). While the so-called ’developing’ nations like India have stumbled into the initial impasse of formalizing the vast informal sector, the workforce of the so-called ’developed’ nations like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan saw the unravelling of much of the formal sector into informal employment and precarious work conditions; PostMao China after the rapid dimantling of the state sponsored urban

166

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Danweis with their ’iron rice bowl’ and job security guarantee regime from the 1997 onwards saw a massive rise in informal employment in the industrial sector and then from the mid 2000 onwards a slow reversal towards more formal employment with real wage rise (Sheenan 2011, Chen and Xu 2017). Despite their different contexts, conditions and histories, capitalist reorganization of production process under neoliberal globalization seems to have generated two effects: (i) unleash a wave of mechanisation by allowing the capitalists to adopt new competitive technology and restructure the labour process and (ii) flatten the labor market to enable a relative low wage regime and precarious work condition regime (alongside ever growing body of surplus population). These structural changes in labour market and labour process clearly helped maintain the competitive condition of generating higher surplus value appropriation for the global capitalists (more on this in the next chapter). This overdetermined relation between class, capital, labour, technology and market is also perhaps why, notwithstanding the consternation of ILO and other conscience keepers in the West protesting against the perilous condition of the workers, the epicentre of global capitalism, certainly its industrial form, has tended to shift to Asia in the last three decades, to old East Asian industrialized areas and newer ones like China, India and South East Asia. Taking stock of this scenario that is repeated, with local variances, elsewhere in the world, it will not be farfetched to conclude that the Lewisian transitional logic has run into problem in many parts of the world. Acknowledgment of the historical impasse of ’informal’ by official discourses have led to a call to modify the development strategy accordingly. Take the case of India itself. The fact that people are leaving the rural economy en masse is considered an opportunity in the development discourse. This is despite the fact that, even with high economic growth in the last two decades, those same people are not able to find jobs in an apparently labour-absorbing formal sector (resulting in the rapidly burgeoning informal sector). This is said to present a scenario of jobless growth or job deficit which signals a transition crisis (World Bank 2018; CSE, Azim Premji University 2019; Chakrabarti and Saha 2019). Therefore, Raghuram G. Rajan, former Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, summed up the problem for India, which we believe depicts the general and recurring problem of development for a century, thus:

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

167

More than half our population depends on agriculture, but the experience of other countries suggests that the number of people dependent on agriculture will have to shrink if per capita incomes in agriculture are to go up substantially. While industry is creating jobs, too many such jobs are low-productivity informal and non-regular jobs in the unorganized sector, offering low incomes, little protection or benefits. Services jobs are relatively high productivity, but employment growth in services has been slow in recent years. India’s challenge is to create the conditions for faster growth of productive jobs outside of agriculture, especially in organized manufacturing and in services, even while improving productivity in agriculture. (Economic Survey 2012–2013: 2)

Driven by the telos encased in the capitalocentric-orientalist logic of {p, ~p}, the formalization of informal sector is indispensable for completing the development utopia. Resultantly, the two big bang logics of transition, from agricultural to industrial economy and from informal to formal economy, get telescoped into a singular rationale of transition in the contemporary development paradigm. What though is missed in all of these templates, analyses and observations is the acknowledgment that any adopted development strategy to this end will induce contradictory effects on class and non-class processes that will simultaneously bolster and undermine the capitalist system (example, facilitating new technology may generate greater job insecurity and surplus population in one turn) thereby undercutting the objective of ending the historical impasse of informality.

References Basu, K. 1997. Analytical Development Economics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bhattacharya, R. 2019. Primitive Accumulation and Surplus Population: A Critique of Capitalocentrism in Marxian Theory. In ‘Capital’ in the East, ed. A. Chakraborty, A. Chakrabarti, B. Dasgupta, and S. Sen. Singapore: Springer. Bienefeld, M. 1975. The Informal Sector and Peripheral Capitalism: The Case of Tanzania. Institute of Development Studies Bulletin 6 (3): 53–73. Breman, J. 1976. A Dualistic Labor System? A Critique of the Informal Sector Concept. Economic and Political Weekly 11 (48): 1870–1879, 11 (49): 1905– 1908, 11 (50): 1939–1944. Chakrabarti, A. 2013. A Post-colonial Critique of Economic Dualism and Its Politics. Journal of Contemporary Thought. Forum on Contemporary Theory 40: 158–167.

168

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2009. Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: From Third World to the World of the Third. New York, NY and London: Routledge. ———. 2012. Interrogating Inclusive Development in India’s Transition Process. Collegium Antropologicum 36 (4): 1089–1109. ———. 2017. Economic Development. In Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics, ed. D.M. Brennan, D. Kristjanson-Gural, C.P. Mulder, and E.K. Olsen. London: Routledge. ———. 2020. The Condition of Working Class in India. In A RETHINKING MARXISM Dossier: Pandemic and the Crisis of Capitalism, ed. V. LyonCallo, Y.M Madra, C. Özselçuk, J. Randall, M. Safri, C. Sato, and B.W. Shear. Brighton, MA: ReMarx Books. Chakrabarti, A., and P. Saha. 2019. Beyond the Prism of Rural to Urban and Voluntary-Involuntary in India: A Class Focused Theory of Migration. Labor and Society 22: 807–834. Chakrabarti, A., and A. Thakur. (2010). Making and Unmaking of (In)formal Sector. Critical Sociology 36 (3). Chen, Y., and Z. Xu. 2017. Informal Employment and Chinea’s Economic Development. In The Chinese Economy 50 (6). Chitranshi, B., and A. Dhar. 2016. The Living Dead. In From Death Drive to State Repression: Marxism, Psychoanalysis and the Structural Violence of Capitalism (De la pulsión de muerte a la repression de Estado: marxismo y psicoanálisis ante la violencia estructural del capitalism), 59–77. Porrúa: Mexico. ———. 2021. What if, the ‘Rural’ Is the Future; and Not the Past? In Remembering India’s Villages, ed. S.K. Singh, 46–73. Delhi: Aakar Books. Chaudhuri, A. 1994. On Colonial Hegemony: Toward a Critique of Brown Orientalism. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 7 (4): 44–58. CSE. 2019. State of Working India. Azim Premji University. Available at: https://cse.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/state-of-working-india/ (Last accessed May 25, 2019). De Soto, H. 1989. The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World, trans. J. Abbott. New York: Harper and Row. ———. 2020. The Real (of) Marx: Adivasi Worlds as Tombstone of the Illicit. In After the Revolution: Essays in Memory of Anjan Ghosh, ed. P. Chatterjee. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. ———. 2022. Eleven Theses on the Humanization of Development: Praxis Philosophy in World of the Third. In Quest of Humane Development, ed. B. Dasgupta, P. Sarkhel, A. Ghosh, and B. Ghosh. Singapore: Springer. Escobar, A. 1995. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

6

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT: FROM …

169

Fei, J.C., and G. Ranis. 1963. Innovation, Capital Accumulation, and Economic Development. The American Economic Review 53 (3): 283–313. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 1996. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. London: Blackwell. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Government of India. (2012–13). Economic Survey 2012–13. Ministry of Finance. Government of India. Hall, S. (1992). The West and the Rest. In Formations of Modernity, ed. S. Hall and B. Gieben. Cambridge: Polity. Harding, P., and R. Jenkins. 1989. The Myth of the Hidden Economy: Towards a New Understanding of Informal Economic Activity. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Harris, J.R., and M.P. Todaro. 1970. Migration, Unemployment and Development: A Two-Sector Analysis. American Economic Review 60 (1): 126–142. Hart, K. 1973. Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana. The Journal of Modern African Studies 11 (1): 61–89. Kalleberg, A.L., K.A. Hewison, and K-Y. Shin. 2021. Precarious Labor: Global Capitalism and Work in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kothari, A., A. Salleh, A. Escobar, F. Demaria, and A. Acosta. 2019. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. New Delhi: Tulika Books. La Porta, R., and A. Shleifer. 2014. Informality and Development. Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (3): 109–126. Lee, Y. 2015. Labor after Neoliberalism: The Birth of the Insecure Class in South Korea. In Globalizations 12 (2). la China’s. Lewis, A. 1954. Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour. Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies 22: 139–191. Majumder, D. 1976. The Urban Informal Sector. World Development 4 (8): 655–679. Marx, K. 1990. Capital: Volume I . London: Penguin Books. Moser, C.O.N. 1978. Informal Sector or Petty Commodity Production: Dualism or Dependence in Urban Development? World Development 6 (9/10): 1041– 1064. Norton, B. 2001. Reading Marx for Class. In Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism, ed. Kathy Gibson et al. Durham: Duke University Press. ———. 2017. Accumulation. In Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics, ed. D.M. Brennan, D. Kristjanson-Gural, C.P. Mulder, and E.K. Olsen. London: Routledge. Papola, T.S. 1981. Dissecting the Informal Sector [Review of The Informal Sector in Research: Theory and Practice, by J.C. Breman]. Economic and Political Weekly 16 (31): 1272–1274.

170

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Ruccio, D., and J.K. Gibson-Graham. 2001. After Development: Negotiating the Place of Class. In Re/Presentating Class: Essays in Postmodern Political Economy, ed. Kathy Gibson, Julie Graham, Stephen Resnick, and Richard Wolff. Durham: Duke University Press. Sanyal, K. 2007. Rethinking Capitalist Development: Primitive Accumulation, Governmentality and Post-colonial Capitalism. New Delhi: Routledge. Sethuraman, S.V. 1976 [1981]. The Urban Informal Sector: Concepts, Measurement and Policy. International Labor Review 114 (1): 69–82. Sheenan, A. 2011. Labor Representation and Organization under State Capitalism in China. In State Capitalism, Contentious Politics and Large-Scale Change, ed. V, Pollard. Leiden: Brill. Tokman, V.E. 1978. An Exploration into the Nature of the Informal-Formal Sector Relationship. World Development 6 (9/10): 1065–1075. World Bank. 2018. India- Systematic Country Diagnostic: Realizing the Promise of Prosperity. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/ 629571528745663168/India-Systematic-country-diagnostic-realizing-thepromise-of-prosperity.

CHAPTER 7

Global Capital and Its Circuits

Introduction: Global Capitalist Hegemony Global capitalist hegemony is premised on twin foreclosures, that of class and that of world of the third (WOT). It is produced in our work out of a disaggregated rendition of the class-focused economy; for us the economy is disaggregated yet hegemonic. In producing the hegemonic out of a class-focused disaggregated rendition of the economy, we explicate in this chapter ‘global capital’ and ‘circuits of global capital’; we also identify the outside of the circuits of global capital; we define the WOT as the outside, whose elaboration we will go into in the next chapter. In other words, we displace the given and received rendition of the economy into the hegemonic inside and the foreclosed outside. The return of the foreclosed (here the language of class) further shows the disaggregated nature of the economy. It also shows how the language of class could serve as a language for questioning and critiquing global capitalist hegemony. But first, let us tease out further the class-focused conception of the economy and its relation to global capital.1 1 A note of clarification regarding the ongoing changes in the geopolitical structure, the redrawing of the relation of global capital with the state, and whether that will affect our analysis of the circuits of global capital. The answer is both yes and no. It won’t change the importance of circuits of global capital which have always been a part of capitalism since its inception; nevertheless, contradictory effects emanating from the more assertive state based on nationalist upsurge will certainly change the structure of the circuits of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_7

171

172

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Global Capitalist Enterprise Expanding on the discussion on enterprise forwarded in Chapter 2, we begin by defining the global capitalist enterprise as a complex body that encompasses FCP, SCP, and non-class processes under the two headings, revenue and expenditure (Resnick and Wolff 2001). This global enterprise can be either state or private. A global capitalist enterprise in India (IN), for example, can be construed in terms of the following value equation:       k k SViI N + SSCRiIN + NCRiIN = SSCPkIN + X IN + YIN (7.1) where, SV = Surplus value produced and appropriated within the enterprise,  specific to capitalist FCP; and,  SSCR = Subsumed class revenue;  NCR = Non-class revenue;  SSC P = Sum of subsumed class payments;  X = Sum of payments made to secure SSCR; Y = Sum of payments made to secure NCR. This class-focused classification in value terms is one way of representing the overdetermined and contradictory class and non-class processes subsumed under the enterprises’ balance sheet of revenue and expenditure. We designate an enterprise ‘capitalist’ if productive capitalists appropriate the surplus value of productive labourers in the M-C-P-C/ M/ process. In order to bring out the global dimension of a capitalist enterprise, we use the subscript i in the left-hand side to index the various global locations from where the revenues are drawn, and the superscript k in the right-hand side to capture the global locations of its expenditure. As an institution, such kinds of enterprises then are truly ‘globally and functionally decentred capitalist corporations’ (Resnick and Wolff 2001: 67). Needless to say, to systematically reproduce (7.1) across the economy global capital. Post-Trump, post-pandemic, and post-Ukraine war, while global capitalism in the context of a stable and unified neoliberal global economic order as we knew it may be over, the template of commodity and money chain structuring the circuits of global capital and the value chain in connection to it would continue to function. That would not make capitalism any less global. It can, at most, make it differently global. The methodology we are presenting here to study the larger structure of capital—at concretereal and hegemonic-delusional levels—at immanent and phantasmatic planes—would retain its significance in whatever new world order that is presently taking form.

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

173

would require an international division of labour, a condition which the new global order intended to secure. If the global locations i and k are circumscribed to one specific country or region (that is, i = k), then that enterprise is a local/national enterprise and not a global enterprise. In case if any of the elements of the equation are not applicable for a specific enterprise, it will simply drop out. If, suppose, an enterprise is not involved in processes pertaining to SSCR, NCR, Y , and X, its relevant class enterprise equation would be solely constituted by SV and SSCP. Depending upon the site of the FCP, global capitalist enterprises would take on the adjective of industrial, agricultural, health, education, technology, entertainment, real estate, digital, sports, etc.; these may be large, mid-size, or small.2 Also, if the mode of appropriation turns out to be different, then the enterprise would undergo a change in class character. The appropriation, for example, could be of communist type and the enterprise would then be called a global communist enterprise, and so on. However, as per our objective in this chapter, the focus is on the global capitalist enterprise. As a preliminary step of analysis, assume a global capitalist enterprise restricted to SV and SSCP. In this instance, the performance of surplus labour takes place in different countries even as appropriation transpires in a city where the headquarter of the enterprise is located. Indeed, some global behemoths (such as Apple, Toyota Motor Corporation or family owned Chaebols like Samsung) are focused on generating revenues from spatially dispersed capitalist FCP out of the specialized use values that they produce. The appropriated surplus value could as well be distributed to various global locations, especially when the internal and external conditions of existence of FCP are globally disarticulated (facilitated by, among others, subcontracting, outsourcing, offshoring, body shopping, as also by changes in composition, quality, and quantity of means of production in the form of new modes of telecommunication, digitalization, robotics, artificial intelligence, and so on). Capital’s ‘global-ness’  is thus SV = SSCP. a feature of spatial disarticulation materializing across Capital’s global-ness is however not about spatial disarticulation. It is

2 While analysis of industrial, agricultural, minerals, technology, and entertainment capitalist enterprises are well known, the recent class analysis of digital space and pay per click business models has highlighted the fast-paced entry of capitalist enterprise within that segment in the last two decades (Azhar, 2021).

174

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

about the self-expansion of value (Verwertung )—i.e., about the facilitation of the intensification and expansion of surplus value appropriation through spatial disarticulation into multiple global locations/sites. Capital has no obligation to be either global or local. Capital only begets capital; capital is value in motion, as Marx puts it. While mostly private corporations, the capitalist form nevertheless does not exclude the existence of giant state corporations such as China Mobile, ONGC in India, PJSC Gazprom in Russia, and Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia. However, global capital can acquire a much wider scope for such enterprises. We would also include all kinds of value (money) flows achieved from taking spatially disarticulated class and non-class positions, which fetch the global capitalist enterprise subsumed class revenues (SSCR) and non-class revenues (NCR); against it the enterprise incurs expenditures (X and Y ) accordingly. Reliance Industries Limited, the first Indian multinational conglomerate company to cross $100 billion in revenues, is engaged in operations across a variety of sectors, including energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, telecommunications, mass media, textiles, and retail. Its aggressive acquisition and partnership in different M-C-P-C/ M/ processes, and its fierce competitive and legal conflicts with Amazon over the retail market in India to dominate the M-CP -M/ trading process, stand testimony to the importance that its capitalists qua board of directors attach to its subsumed revenue position as a merchant capitalist, alongside that of its fundamental class position as an industrial capitalist. These aspects are only an extension of our discussion in Chapter 2, which reveal that the subject, including the capitalist subject, can, and often does, occupy multiple class and non-class positions (be it, the combination of productive and unproductive capitalists) in a single site (say, an enterprise), or across multiple sites (say, across various enterprises). More on this will follow later. To further illustrate, the so-called India Inc. is now mostly global in character,3 a transmogrification as a result of neoliberal globalization; Tata group, Reliance Industries Limited, Infosys, Cognizant, and JSW Group are only some of the known names of giant Indian global capitalist enterprises. For example, the Tata group in 2020–2021, operated in more

3 For details of the meaning of neoliberalism, of India’s adoption of neoliberal globalization and of global capitalism respectively, see Chakrabarti et al. (2015 Chapters V, VII, and VIII).

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

175

than 100 countries across six continents, employing 800,000 people4 ; as of 2015–2016, its international revenues were at around $70 billion which constituted nearly 69% of the group’s revenues.5 These global private capitalist enterprises are complemented by a few global state capitalist enterprises (such as IOC and ONGC). In China, along with private global capitalist enterprises, some of the biggest global enterprises are state-owned and party-directed. There are other exclusively unproductive global capitalist enterprises which do not create value through the FCP. Since such enterprises are in the business of generating surplus value through (M - M/ ) and (MCP -M/) we name them, depending upon their specific activities, as global ‘financial’ capitalist enterprise (banking, insurance, brokerage, etc.) and global merchant capitalist enterprise. These are varied kinds of unproductive global capitalist enterprises, albeit connected in overdetermined and contradictory relations with productive capitalist enterprises (Chapter 2). For such global capitalist enterprises, the value equation gets modified into:     k k SSCRiIN + NCRiIN = X IN + YIN (7.2) where, the terms carry their usual connotations. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Bridgewater Associates, Citi Bank, Japan Post Holdings Co. Ltd., HSBC, State Bank of India, etc., are examples of global financial enterprises, which again could be both private and state. Here, the board of directors will receive as revenue a portion of the surplus value from productive capitalists (SSCR) of other enterprises; they will also receive non-class value from unproductive sources or NCR (such as interest payment and commission fees from loans on account of purchase of housing, automobiles, education, and so on, or interest return or commission fee from arranging credit or transactions in currency, stocks, bonds, derivatives, insurance, etc., for other banks and financial enterprises). While receiving this revenue to the equivalent of M-M/ from these varied sources, the board of directors will also take the 4 Available at: https://www.tata.com/business/overview (accessed on 20 May 2022). 5 Zee Business, July 30, 2016. Available at: https://www.zeebiz.com/companies/news-

70-revenues-of-tata-group-came-from-overseas-in-fy16-4329#:~:text=International%20reve nues%20at%20around%20%2470,%25%20of%20the%20group’s%20revenues.%E2%80%9D (accessed on 20 May 2022).

176

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

decision to distribute the revenue (as its own expenditures) for activating the conditions of existence for its revenue generation. These will include not only the internal condition providers such as managers and accountants of the financial enterprises, but also to external condition providers such as creditors, stockholders, landlords, security agencies, the state, and so on. Payments will also be incurred for further expansion of constant capital and variable capital they employ. On all these counts, the board makes the decision of allocating non-class expenditures between X and Y. Likewise, the merchant capitalist enterprises like Amazon, Walmart, Aldi, Future group, JD com, etc., too would fit Eq. (7.2) although their core process of generating revenue and expenditure by buying use values low and selling them high (M-CP -M/ ) would differ from that of the financial enterprises. Bringing our arguments together, we refer to global capital as the globally articulated self-expansion of value through M-C-P-C/ -M/ , MCP -M/ , and M-M/ in the above-described sense, not necessarily as disjointed but in mutual constitution with one another; these values and their flows combine through FCP, SCP, and non-class processes. Central and commercial banks, money market (short-term lending or borrowing), capital market (medium and long-run lending and borrowing through public equity markets), currency market (foreign exchange trading) and international reserves, debt, and trade are some of the major financial and commercial conduits, i.e., conditions of existence of productive capital and also unproductive capital; because all capitalist enterprises are linked to one another through money and commodity markets, disruption following private actions by one or some will reverberate across the three circuits of capital and global capital as such.6 In exploring global capital and its circuits, it is important to emphasize the contribution of the position from where one views and speaks. Ours is not a view from nowhere in three senses. First, we consider any approach that bifurcates productive from unproductive capital as misplaced. Perhaps, the money power of financial and trading capital from parts of the North looks overwhelming to some Marxists and other

6 For a non-class historical account of complexities within capitalism in the last 500 years and the rise, fall and rise of Empires in the changing world order—Dutch, British, USA, and China—see Dalio (2021: 242–422). Colonialism, imperialism, and wars can be identified as constant instruments of settling both the presence and transition of capitalism and of determining which nations would dominate.

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

177

heterodox scholars, but this representation of the disjointed existence of the three circuits of capital (productive, financial, and merchant) is miles away from Marx’s insight of their overdetermined and contradictory relations that is an integral part of any class-focused analysis of the capitalist form (Resnick and Wolff, 1987; Bhattacharya and Seda-Irizarry 2017; Roy 2020). The question of dominance of one relative to the other circuit cannot and should not subsume the question of the overdetermined relation between the three circuits that the class perspective delivers.7 Lest it be forgotten, the capitalists from the three circuits are brothers but, like in the series Animal Kingdom, hostile brothers locked in the same house. Despite much squabbling with one another, what they have in common is that the income and wealth they get is largely a portion of the total surplus of living labour, whether they get it through its appropriation, distribution, or further redistribution of values through circulation. On this ‘right and might’, the classes of capitalists unitedly and fiercely defend capital. Secondly, we remain firmly grounded in the Southern context/question and ultimately to the WOT perspective that we are developing in this book. That context and perspective makes us acknowledge in the Southern countries the presence of M-C-P-C/ -M/ within the global structure of commodities and value flows containing the overdetermined triad of M-C-P-C/ -M/ , M-CP -M/ , and M-M/ . Finally, from the same location, the importance of M-C-P-C/ -M/ in the formation of global capital and of state policy surrounding it in these countries cannot be underestimated. A cursory look at the billionaires list in Forbes for India and China reveals the overwhelming presence of productive capitalists and/or capitalists who are a combination of productive and unproductive capital. Unravelling the biograph of capital from the South is perhaps a different experience. Looked at from above—by a six-foot-tall man—a table is a top on four legs. Looked at from below—by an infant, barely two feet in height—the same table is a roof on four pillars.

7 In fact, even in the so-called high noon of financialization, in some productive industries such as oil and gas, state enterprises like Saudi Aramco and PJSC Gazprom in Russia as also the state-sponsored cartel of OPEC have retained enormous power over energy price and supply; through such control, in the past and in the very present, they have shown their ability to influence and generate effects to bring even the so-called powerful financial markets (stock, currency, etc.), not to speak of the rest of the productive sector of the economy, to their knees.

178

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Global Capital and the Hegemonic From a class-focused perspective, global capital emerges as the centre of the hegemonic structure that paradoxically escapes structurality, as if, it is located outside the structure, appearing as being structure-transcendent. The ‘hub’ of global capital signifies the fortress consisting of the various conditions of existence that immediately, and directly, surround and secure global capital. We have argued elsewhere that the hegemonic, as part of neoliberal globalization, has attempted to mould the form of global enterprise to that of a private capitalist class set, that is, one where the right of appropriation will reside with private productive capitalists (Chakrabarti, et al. 2015, Chapter 4); here, we are particularly pointing to the capitalist class 17 set with expanded reproduction type, with its history of mechanization right down to the phase of automation. While the nodal signifiers of capitalist existence are capitalist surplus value appropriation and market capitalist commodity, for the capitalist enterprise to acquire a global form in the era of globalization, the nodal signifiers modifies to private capitalist surplus value appropriation and the local-global market form of commodity. They in turn structure the hub of global capital. Other floating signifiers (private property, power, profit, capital accumulation, efficiency, competition, individualism, etc.) work to provide further anchorage to these nodal signifiers of global capital; this is the first step in the creation of the circuits of global capital. Let us start by discussing who the ‘global capitalist’ is.

Productive and Unproductive Capitalist: What Is Global Capitalist? Depending upon the context of possession of surplus value, the productive and unproductive capitalist subject-positions typically materialize through legal forms in the enterprise, such as through sole proprietorship, partnership, and the corporation (involving board of directors). Global capitalists are extensions of this basic idea of capitalists being the direct possessors of surplus value (through production or circulation) in a globally differentiated space. As explained, they could personify productive and unproductive global capital separately, or through the combination of both. To illustrate, Indian billionaires and centimillionaires (net worth of over hundred million units of a currency) today are commonly called

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

179

global capitalists. These global capitalists are spread across various industries, to name a few, Petroleum, Pharmaceuticals, Real Estate, FMCG, IT and ITeS, Jewellery, Media, and Steel. Even amidst the pandemic and a weakening economy, India’s number of billionaires increased from 140 in 2021, to 166 in 2022,8 numbering only behind USA and China. The combined net worth of India’s billionaires comes to a staggering net worth of $750 billion; the same net worth of Indian billionaires in 2021– 2022 when expressed as a percentage of India’s GDP comes to an equally staggering 28.19%.9 However, even many mid-level and small capitalists are global capitalists by virtue of personifying global capital. The system facilitating the expansion of value in favour of global capitalists has an important bearing on the quite dramatic income and wealth inequality in the globe, not only between the circuits of the global capital and WOT, but also within the circuits of global capital. In case of corporations, the processes of appropriation, distribution, and receipt of surplus value by global capitalists (board of directors) occur in their respective headquarters. These global capitalists would typically congregate in certain cities (London, New York, Frankfurt, Shanghai, Singapore, Dubai, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul and so on). These global cities are not necessarily the hub of production (where the performance of surplus value is transpiring—those are industrial cities, clusters, SEZs, etc.) but definitely the hub of the concentration of values. Courtesy the transportation (especially colossal growth of maritime and air traffic connected by logistics cities), communication, and informal technology revolution (from mechanization to automation), colossal amount of values created all over the world are congregating in such cities at a breathtaking pace and are getting further distributed from there to the other immediate condition providers in those cities or to other condition providers in different parts of the globe.

8 Forbes, April 5, 2022. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/naazneenkarm ali/2022/04/05/indias-10-richest-billionaires-2022/?sh=575484b17617 (accessed on 20 April 2022). 9 Ibid.

180

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Circuits of Global Capital The global economy comprises of a complex configuration of global capitalist enterprises and other forms of enterprises, capitalist and noncapitalist, that are ‘local’. Does it mean that these ‘local’ enterprises are necessarily outside the circuits of global capital ? The answer is no. In this sense, global capital is inclusive; it includes local enterprises, capitalist and non-capitalist alike within its fold. In another sense, global capital is exclusive; it does not include, it cannot include the language of class and non-capital within its fold. Global capital includes the capitalist and the non-capitalist local in terms of the logos and principles of capital, in terms of a privileging of its nodal signifiers (Chakrabarti et al. 2009). In the hegemonic construction, the capitalist and non-capitalist local is considered as subsumed under the material substratum of capital’s theories, capital’s language, capital’s transactions, and capital’s philosophy of life. It is never the ground or language for an alternative rethinking of the economy. To see how global capital is inclusive as also expansive, we take off from the definition of global capitalist enterprise in order to flesh out our understanding of the circuits of global capital, and differentiate the circuits of global capital from global capital itself. To begin with, the value flows stemming from the global capitalist enterprise are the centrifugal force of the circuits of global capital. Sans global capital, the circuits of global capital cannot be defined. Moreover, the processes that form the conditions of existence of global capitalist enterprise constitute a critical node in the circuits of global capital. For one, non-capitalist enterprises and local capitalist enterprises that are intertwined within the global production system (for example, by supplying the global capitalist enterprises with intermediate means of production) constitute the processes of global capital. Reversibly, these non-capitalist and local capitalist enterprises can be affected by global capitalist enterprises as well (say, through the supply of credit to the non-capitalist or local capitalist enterprises to produce the required goods or services). Moreover, merchant enterprises buy cheap and sell high finished global commodities to consumers or semi-finished goods as input to other enterprises. Against this, they receive a portion of surplus value as merchant fees or commission fees. By virtue of this linkage, such enterprises are also a part of the circuits of global capital. The merchant enterprises may also be engaging in financial market activities likestocks, insurance, currency

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

181

and commodity swaps, etc., against which they will receive non-class revenue or payment. Likewise, against providing credit for the production of the commodity, the financial enterprises receive interest payment. Financial enterprises might also invest and take part in activities, practices, and relationships pertaining to non-class process of stocks, bonds, insurance, currency, and commodity swaps, etc. Even the corporations with M-C-P-C/ -M/ may be involved in all these non-productive activities through managed disbursement of the retained surplus value as ‘financial’ capital in non-class directions. Financing of the circuits of global capital might not just pertain to capitalist enterprises, but also to a vast array of non-capitalist enterprises connected to the circuits of global capital (Bhattacharya and Seda-Irizarry 2017; Roy 2020); that is, once we conceive of the circuits of global capital, it becomes clear that finance capital operates way beyond the shores of global capitalist enterprises into the very heart of a variety of non-capitalist enterprises. This is especially true for global financial enterprises operating in newly industrializing areas in the South. Without such services, and the processes they activate, the production, appropriation, and distribution of surplus value in the global terrain will not materialize, nor will other forms of revenue and expenditure flows that make up global capital transpire. Sans class, any “fetishization of financial capital renders invisible living labor as the source of surplus value” (Bhattacharya and Seda-Irizarry 2017: 330) and therefore forecloses the class effects. Apart from the three circuits of capital that co-constitute global capital and its circuits, the landlords too play an important role by monopolizing land, intangible knowledge-capital (like Monsanto seeds), patent, brand, etc., against which they receive a portion of surplus value as rent (more on this later); this rent-bearing capital is a crucial condition of existence for the circuits of global capital, the protection of which is the responsibility of the state and the international institutions (like WTO). Finally, few reflections on the state. In providing security to income, wealth, and property in general, creating legal frameworks, maintaining money supply, markets (debt and currency), degree of competition and trade, and delivering financial benefits (interest subsidies or write offs, tax cuts, etc.), the state has always been considered an indispensable condition of existence for capitalist enterprises. In addition to these, its strategy in charting out policies and modifying them has also been crucial for facilitating the direction of capitalist development. Globally, the last four decades, save a few exceptions, have seen the role of state shift from state

182

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

to private capitalism, from planning to market, in so far as the degree of importance in shaping the national economy is concerned. The role of the state was crucial in planting global capital, especially its private form, at the centre of the economy and to adopt neoliberal reforms to ensure the creation and expansion of the present form of the circuits of global capital; it was instrumental in putting into operation the competitive market conditions under the free trade regime (backed up by the institution of WTO). The change in these and other conditions transformed the state in turn; the state now saw itself in partnership with global capital rather than with national capital (whose state form has been privatized to a great degree, and which the state now wants to be global competitors). One has resultantly witnessed a systemic transition in which global capitalists have come to be perceived as pioneers of economic growth and higher standard of living, and hence been catapulted as societal leaders. Other than the usual ‘reforms’, any tangible or intangible benefits (access to land, forest and minerals, land subsidies, cheap credit and credit restructuring, tax cut on corporate profit, deregulation, etc.) provided by the state to global capitalist enterprises are rationalized in terms of this overall requirement of facilitating economic growth for society, which it is claimed can only be achieved through the stability and expansion of the circuits of global capital. The relation that emerged between the state, neoliberal globalization, and global capitalism, is then systemic rather than ad hoc. Other roles of state will be indicated in due course. We define the “circuits of global capital ” as comprising of all those processes and relations that are directly or indirectly connected with the global capitalist enterprises, particularly class set 17; these include class and non-class, capitalist and non-capitalist processes linked in one way or another to global capital. Rather than being reduced to transnational/MNCs/corporations/global capitalist enterprises, the circuits of global capital thus have a much wider scope than that specified by the physical reach of all the global capitalist enterprises combined. This overflow is crucial for the existence of global capitalist enterprises or, for that matter, for global capital itself. This is then a curious stage of capitalism— where it is the adulteration, the blemish, the defilement of the global capitalist enterprise by non-capitalist enterprises, or by local capitalist enterprises, that provide crucial conditions of existence to help secure global capital. We are now in a position, perhaps, to look at the circuits of global capital in terms of the centricity of global capital 7.1.

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

183

Fig. 7.1 Circuits of global capital. Source Chakrabarti and Dhar (2012)

The ‘hub’ of global capital—the circular dotted line—is constituted by processes flowing from the global capitalist enterprises, as also by processes directly related to enterprises that constitute global capital. Institutions, which are within the hub of global capital, are said to be ‘distance close’ to global capital. The rest are considered a ‘distance away’ from global capital, including the vast array of non-capitalist enterprises. To illustrate the relations of overdetermination among those processes involved in the chain that form the circuits, consider Kolkata Leather Complex (KLC) which is a leather-based cluster of tanning enterprises near Kolkata in West Bengal. Global capitalist enterprises like Gucci, Pierre Cardin, Coach, Guy Lorche, La Martina, Le Tanneur, Radley, Prada, Delsy, Armani, Samsonite, and Marks & Spencer procure finished leather as well as products (bags, wallets, footwear, industrial gloves, saddle, and harness) from these tanneries which are mostly capitalist enterprises. These capitalist enterprises, primarily medium-size enterprises, in turn depend upon a host of micro, small, and medium-size enterprises10 (capitalist as also non-capitalist) spread in KLC, parts of Kolkata, and its 10 By Government of India classification, micro-enterprises consist of those having investment below one crore and turnover of less than five crores, small enterprise of investment below ten crores and turnover of less than fifty crores, and medium enterprise of investment below fifty crores and turnover of less than two hundred and fifty

184

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

surrounding towns, and even outside West Bengal for a variety of operations for each such produce.11 The leather and accessory industry as a whole employs 2.5 million people as direct producers of surplus or as condition providers, and a large part (nearly 60–65%) of the labour force is in the small/micro sector.12 These operations carried out by the capitalist and non-capitalist enterprises right down to finished product sold to global manufacturing capitalist enterprises or to the foreign costumers (global merchants or directly the consumers) form the circuits of global capital. An example of the value chain in terms of value added in each stage of operation for a use value may proceed from raw hide and skin, to finished leather, to design, sampling, and approval of foreign buyers, to cutting of leather and lining as per design, to skiving of leather, to assembling and stitching, to checking and packing, and finally to finishing, and making the product ready for despatch.13 From its vantage point, Gucci measures its Digital EP&L (Environmental Profit and Loss account) by considering four tiers in its entire circuits of commodity production: “Tier 0 (our direct operations of stores, offices and warehouses) and Tier 1 (our final product manufacturing and assembly); to Tier 2 (our manufacturing and preparation of subcomponents like cutting, knitting, …) and Tier 3 (raw material processing); all the way to Tier 4 (the production and extraction of raw materials)”.14 The role of the state, both central and particularly state government, in creating the Leather complex and the industry, proved to be crucial; it provided credit access, reduced import duties (like wet blue, crust leather, etc.), helped in design, and created

crores. Available at: https://msme.gov.in/sites/default/files/MSME_gazette_of_india.pdf (accessed on 15 February, 2022). 11 Sanjay Pal and Rohita Kumar Mishra. 2015. Internationalization of Kolkata Leather Cluster: A Case Study. Conference paper. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/278961873_Internationalization_of_Kolkata_Leather_Cluster_A_Case_Study (accessed on 18 June 2022). 12 The Times of India, February 2, 2021. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes. com/articleshow/80639229.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text& utm_campaign=cppst (accessed on 14 June 2022). 13 Diagnostic Study Report of Kolkata Leather Cluster. 2014. Implementing BDS in the Kolkata Leather Cluster. Available at: http://www.kolkataleatherbds.com/Final%20DSRLeather%20Cluster,%20Kolkata.pdf (accessed on 12 June 2022). 14 Gucci Equilibrium, 13 July, 2021. Available at: https://equilibrium.gucci.com/res ponsible-supply-chain/ (accessed on 12 June 2022).

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

185

the centralized effluent treatment plant to meet necessary environmental standards for the complex. The enterprises that are distance away from the hub of the circuits may take credit (M) from financial enterprises (could be global financiers, local moneylender, or even state-run banks as part of government schemes) to purchase the needed means of production (hide, cutting machines, chemicals, and so on). Assuming that labour-power recruitment could be family-based, wage labour, or apprentice, the labour-power (L) is deployed over the means of production (MOP) in a labour process ‘P’ that produce the commodity C/ which is then sold (through the local merchant) as intermediate goods to the Indian global capitalist enterprises as per specification; the latter then produce the goods, as per specification and design, and sell it, again possibly via the merchants, to the foreign global capitalist enterprises. A foreign global capitalist, say G, occupies a non-class position by purchasing the produce (leather or finished product) from the Indian global capitalist enterprise (via the merchant) which it then uses to advance the manufacturing process to impose its patent right to sell the branded produce. It is of course a different question to inquire about the mechanism of the distribution of the share of total surplus value among the appropriators of the value chain (more on this later). At each stage of production of any C, the appropriator of surplus value (whoever it is) distributes a portion of it to the merchant and financier for providing critical conditions of existence for their respective FCPs. As such, the moneylender and merchant occupy subsumed class positions, receiving a distributed amount of surplus labour. If the financier and merchant are the same entity, then that entity occupies two subsumed class positions. There could be possibly other subsumed class position holders—designers, merchandisers, CAD/CAM operators, quality control supervisor, managers, accountants, etc.—who, depending upon the requirement at each stage of FCP, either directly (in the workplace) or indirectly (through outsourcing or subcontracting) provide other conditions of existence; against that they receive a cut as payment from the surplus value from the respective appropriators. When defining the circuits of global capital, we identify the various processes that allow such a global chain to take place; those who personify processes that are part of this circuit are subjects operating within it. In our example, the merchants, financiers, the global capitalists, the local capitalist and non-capitalist appropriators, the performers of surplus labour, and the

186

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

various condition providers including the state, participate and help to make possible the formation of the circuits of global capital. Coming back to our general discussion, the overdetermined processes within the circuits of global capital embody contradictory effects, which could result in various types of conflicts. For example, conflicts may break out between capitalists within the ambit of global capital—pitting say, the financial capitalists (who want the world to be rid of any protection against movement of capital) against a section of productive capitalists (who may want some protection from foreign competition) (see Soros 2004). Marx’s disaggregation of capitalists into productive and unproductive is enormously helpful in understanding and describing such conflicts from a class standpoint. Similarly, intense contradictions and conflicts may exist between capitalist appropriators and non-capitalist appropriators regarding the total share of the surplus value or between capitalist appropriators and the performers of surplus labour inside the global capitalist enterprise. Or, we may have a conflict-like situation between the direct performers of surplus labour and their appropriators in those non-capitalist enterprises which operate within the circuits of global capital. We can even think of conflict between labourers—productive and unproductive—in the global capitalist enterprise, and labourers in other equally exploitative non-capitalist enterprises where the former could be perceived as occupying a privileged position (income-wise) compared to the latter. Class and class-related processes are in a state of endless transition brought about by, among others, class struggle and struggle over non-class processes that effect the circuits of global capital.

Circuits of Global Capital and Markets We have seen that the functioning of global capital and its circuits require a special connection of class enterprise with that of the market. Indeed, global flexibility and mobility of capital demands a semblance of internationally supervised impersonal system of commodity market through which capital can function globally. Consequently, establishing an impersonal system of market that is tuned to the global movement of capital, becomes an important task to be fulfilled by such international agencies

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

187

like the IMF, the WTO, or the World Bank and the various regional blocs that get formed. This market is designated local-global market.15 Let us begin by defining the local-global market and contrasting it with what we designate as WOT market. We start with the importance of market in its global form vis-à-vis market in its local form. Suppose one enterprise interacts with another enterprise where none fulfil Eq. (7.1) in their global form, that is, their i and k’s are identical. This exchange is then a local market exchange. When exchange takes place in a setting where one or both of the enterprises are global enterprises, then the market as a site of trading comes to constitute a global market. Market exchanges of local and global nature have been there for a long time in history and there is nothing innovative in saying that globalization celebrates the principle of market or, say, that of global market. What made contemporary globalization special is the particular way in which the local market gets hooked to the global market, forming what we define as localglobal market, and how this in turn makes possible the circuits of global capital and its mutations. (i) Local-Global Market and WOT Market Let us start with an example. Tata Steel Limited’s interaction with the outside world (say, the selling of steel to China) is a transaction that is part of the global market. In contrast, ancillary enterprises (capitalist and non-capitalist) interacting with Tata Steel Limited are strictly speaking local market interactions, that is, they are interactions materializing within the national border. However, since Tata Steel Limited is a global capitalist enterprise, its interaction with ancillary enterprises through the local market represents an ingredient of the circuits of global capital. Local markets and global markets are part of the same market chain—locallocal….global-global—as long as they connect to the circuits of global capital. Markets that connect to the circuits of global capital are named local-global market because the exchanges, whether in local or global settings, constitute the circuits of global capital. Markets of both local and global type enable the circuits of global capital to materialize, and their contradictory effects render the circuits of global capital dynamic and in 15 As the geopolitical structure change, so too will the structure of internationally supervised systems change; it will be associated with a concomitant alteration, not dissolution, in the structure of local-global markets.

188

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

flux; competition based on economic parameters (price, quality, productivity, etc.) becomes the norm through which winners and losers from the beginning to the end point are sorted out; at times, state regulations (say, state or internationally imposed banning of sourcing of intermediate or final products from certain regions) effect the circuits of global capital but by only modifying the chain of local-global market without dismantling it. In contrast, there are local markets that do not form part of the circuits of global capital in the sense that none of the exchanges are connected to the circuits of global capital. Such markets are defined as world of the third markets (WOT markets). One can likewise go back to our earlier example of the leather industry to highlight another example of local-global market. A host of markets, from local-local to global-global (depending upon the stages in the value chain) allow for the creation of the circuits of global capital. This happens if, say, a distant family-based non-capitalist enterprise producing components of a leather bag is connected through the value chain to the shops and stores of a global capitalist enterprise in the making of the localglobal market of leather bag; so do all processes, enterprises, and agents connected to this chain. However, a large portion of Indian leather and accessory commodities are for the domestic market; to illustrate, when the same family-based non-capitalist enterprise produces a leather bag that is sold by the local merchant in the domestic market, the local-local exchange falls under the purview of WOT market because this exchange does not connect to the circuits of global capital. The contradictions that can appear at any stage of the production process can have far-reaching consequences on the local-global market and indeed render the circuits of global capital unstable. For instance, the shutdowns, accumulating debt and falling demand, following the COVID-19 pandemic (a natural process) had a devastating impact on the chain of leather-related enterprises (capitalists and non-capitalists) in India.16 Then again, the ban on slaughtering old or unproductive cattle by the Indian government (legal process based on a cultural process of protecting the ‘sacred’ cow) that was implemented by twenty regional states has had a devastating impact on India’s domestic hide supply, not only in the states like Uttar Pradesh which saw the 16 The Print, October 15, 2021. Available at: https://theprint.in/economy/shutdo wns-debts-layoffs-bengal-tanners-pushed-to-the-edge-say-3rd-covid-wave-will-finish-us/ 749477/ (accessed on 12 June 2022).

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

189

tanneries close down, but also in other leather clusters like in Kolkata which previously procured a large portion of its hide as input from such regional states.17 It had a deleterious effect on the WOT circuits of leather industry that were mostly small and micro (many were home sector units; see Chapter 8) as also on the global capitalist enterprises located in Kolkata Leather Complex including those connected to the circuits of global capital. The latter, to survive, had to import the costlier hides from other countries that in turn made their products relatively less competitive in the global market for their respective produce. Thus, while the Indian state seeks to increase leather exports by supporting the industry through various measures that we have earlier discussed, certain policies of the same state impart contradictory effects. (ii) Capitalist Commodity versus Non-Capitalist Commodity We have already described in Chapter 2, that Marxist theory defines market capitalist commodity in terms of the relation of commodity values to market exchange (involving labour-power, means of production, and final produce) and the capitalist appropriation of surplus value. Depending upon the connection of the type of FCP with commodity, we have the class-focused nosology of various kinds of commodity—feudal commodity, slave commodity, communist commodity, and so on. Local-global market is constitutive of exchanges involving global capitalist enterprise, local capitalist enterprise of expanded type, and local capitalist enterprise of simple reproduction type, as well as a vast array of non-capitalist enterprises; local-global market institutionalizes their overdetermination through the circuits of global capital and holds it together. Moreover, exchanges involving banking and merchant enterprises, the state, and other agencies that help to reproduce the web of this circuit, are also part of the local-global market. Put in another way, the threads and the overall matrix of the different types of market, capitalist and non-capitalist, that nourish the circuits of global capital, make up the local-global market. Just as without capitalist commodity there cannot be any capitalist FCP and vice versa, without the local-global market there cannot be any

17 https://www.leathermag.com/features/featuresacred-cows-6708073/ (accessed on 18 June 2022).

190

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

circuits of global capital either. Local-global market and circuits of global capital literally bring one another into existence. WOT market remains outside the circuits of global capital. In this case, we consider all those market transactions that are in no way connected, directly or indirectly, to it as a component of WOT market. Other than non-capitalist enterprises, there are local capitalist enterprises that are involved in such WOT exchanges. That is, local capitalist enterprise could be involved in either the local-global market or WOT market depending on its location within, or outside the circuits of global capital. Of course, within WOT, the aspect of distribution and the relation between buyers and sellers are not simply of a market form. Non-market exchanges too play a significant role in forming the circuits within WOT.

Circuits of Local Capital We have defined the outside of the circuits of global capital as WOT. WOT contains not just non-capitalist enterprises but also capitalist enterprises. While leaving the detailed discussion of WOT to the next chapter, we focus here only on the capitalist enterprise and the circuits it can form within WOT; the objective is to highlight its tense relation with the circuits of global capital and the effect of hegemonization it often encounters. We start with the local capitalist enterprise (where i and k in [7.1] drop out). In that case, the value equation of a local capitalist enterprise becomes:       SV + SSCR + NCR = SSCP + X+ Y (7.3) The capitalist enterprise could be of two types: expanded reproduction (which accumulates capital) and simple reproduction (which does not accumulate capital). Indeed, a large number of capitalist enterprises would fall within the spectrum of this rather strictly defined end, some tilted more towards simple reproduction and others towards expanded reproduction. Thus, there are three types of capitalist enterprise: global capitalist enterprise (which is of expanded reproduction type), local capitalist enterprise of expanded reproduction type, and local capitalist enterprise of simple reproduction type. These can be further subdivided into state and private forms depending upon the connection or non-connection of their mode of appropriation with the state.

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

191

We now know that local capitalist enterprises whether of simple or expanded variety (say, the ancillary enterprise for Tata Steel), could very well be connected to the hub of global capital. If we leave out such local capitalist enterprises, the rest of local capitalist enterprises outside the circuits of global capital, populate the WOT. Now consider local capitalist enterprises of the expanded type. We define local capital as comprising of revenue and expenditure flows from such local capitalist enterprises. Just as global capitalist enterprises have circuits, so does local capital. The circuits of local capital encompass all those processes that, directly or indirectly, make such local capitalist enterprises of expanded type function. Accordingly, non-capitalist enterprises and local capitalist enterprise of simple reproduction type that supports the local capitalist enterprise of expanded type are part of the circuits of local capital. Similarly, financiers, merchants, and so on, also provide important constituting conditions of existence to the expanded reproduction type of local capitalist enterprise. The proponents of self-reliance who are always a major force in the Southern countries (and now perhaps in the North too) often defend such a notion of local capital and its circuits in the name of nation-building project. Indeed, for a long time, policies in many Southern countries and even in some Northern countries focused on laying down conditions that would ensure the creation and expansion of the circuits of local capital. That was particularly true during the planning and welfare state regime of the Cold War era, of what we may call nation-centric capitalism. As should be clear by now, self-reliance is not a defence against capitalism, but an argument against a specific form of capitalism—that is against the hegemony of global capital and its circuits, and in favour of local capital and its circuits. The pre-globalization debate between import-substitution (say, epitomized by India and many Latin American countries) and export promotion (epitomized by East Asian countries) highlighted this division. The struggle between local capitalists and global capitalists, as well as between other constituents (that includes the workforce) making up the various circuits of capital (local and global) ought not to be underestimated. However, we believe that globalization has shifted the balance in favour of global capital; that was the clear intent of the neoliberal global architecture. Whether by considerations of wealth, scale, and scope of operation, access to resources including raw materials, technology, and labour-power at a competitive rate, and to the proximity to power centres within the national and international agencies, the wheels and spokes of

192

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

global capital have acquired a definite advantage over local capital. This in turn had a telling effect on the struggle between those who defend and forward self-reliance of local capital and its circuits, and those who argue for the unfettered flourish and blossoming of global capital and its circuits. Let us take a closer look at this shifting balance. With the slow but sure modification of economic boundaries that has been actively encouraged by the state and the post-1980s international order, the local capitalist enterprises can no longer be protected from raids by their global counterparts, whether in terms of takeover or competition (in price, quality, or simply market power). We have seen global capitalist enterprises entering the South by simply buying the local capitalist enterprises (say, Coca Cola, Pepsico for the local soft drinks industry, or UniLever in the case of the local ice-cream industry in India). At other times, they take recourse to a short-term strategy of incurring losses in order to expand the market for themselves (this could take place through different means such as limit/predatory pricing or dumping) and, in doing so, drive out the local capitalist enterprises in the long run. At times, the state encourages through its policies the creation of joint ventures of local capitalist enterprises with global capitalist enterprises or to become the latter’s subsidiaries or simply to relocate the formers’ manufacturing or service position within the circuits of global capital. Even in areas in which global capital has not yet arrived within the national border, the local capitalist enterprises remain subjected to the constant threat of its global competitors. Further, because of the hooking of numerous sectors, say, the banking sector into circuits of global capital, these local capitalist enterprises who also take loans from these banks, face the overpowering influence of the principles of global capital on whose basis the banks now function (Basel norms forming the present basis of banking and financial system). These banks are, at one and the same time, occupying the local circuits of capital as provider of loan capital to local capitalist enterprises; and occupying the circuits of global capital by providing the same to global capitalist enterprises. The terms by which these banks operate are more often not discriminatory vis-à-vis the local and global capitalist enterprise, unless the state adopts discretionary policy favouring the local capitalist enterprises in certain sectors (such as with priority sector lending, to protect it from global competition or to promote it for export promotion) to reposition them. An analogous argument can also be directed at global merchant enterprises (we shall exemplify later with respect to agriculture).

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

193

This means that the circuits of local capital are, in this case, more often than not, under the scrutiny of the circuits of global capital; even if they function locally, the local capitalist enterprises are often forced to adjust and succumb to the ‘discipline’ of the nodal signifiers of global capital.18 Given that local expanded reproduction capitalist enterprise is part of the complex space of WOT, there is not only a tension and struggle, potentially and actually, between the circuits of global capital and the circuits of local capital but also within the WOT itself, a matter we don’t take up in this chapter.

Nodal Signifiers of Global Capital We discussed earlier the question of the ‘button tie’ or point de capiton (Lacan 2006: 681), or for that matter, the question of the nodal signifiers of ‘private capitalist surplus value appropriation’ and ‘local-global markets’. It is obvious that these nodal signifiers of private capitalist surplus value appropriation and local-global market are further anchored through a number of floating signifiers (efficiency, competitiveness, profit, private property, individualism, etc.). These floating signifiers serve at times as the substitute signifiers of nodal signifiers; these substitute signifiers provide further anchorage to nodal signifiers. Thus, these floating signifiers provide a critical closure—closure in the form of a structured chain of signification to the circuits of global capital. The complex of circuits, disaggregated, and polymorphous as they are in character, start to acquire the presence of a hegemonic order, through a putting to a contingent halt “the otherwise indefinite sliding of signification” (Lacan 2006: 681). It is only with the return of the language of class that the nodal signifiers on which the hegemonic order rests become visible. Our class-focused analysis has revealed that market is disaggregated into local-global market connected to the circuits of global capital and WOT market decoupled from the circuits of global capital. How the process of 18 The present disarticulation of the erstwhile global order has been accompanied by ongoing attempts by nation-state to carve our favoured groups and regional bloc for global capital to readjust and in some cases for the circuits of local capital to gain relative prominence. Popularity of terms such as decoupling in Europe, Aatmanirbharta in India (roughly translated as “self-reliance”), Make America Great Again in USA, etc., stand testimony to capitalism’s ongoing attempt to readjust and reshape itself. Whatever form emerges from it, the capitalist circuits and its outside qua world of the third will continue to procreate as long as capital occupies the centre stage.

194

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

hegemonization of the circuits of local capital, particularly of expanded reproduction form capitalist enterprise, within WOT is procured through an array of substitute signifiers (discussed in the previous section) and that of the hegemonization of WOT per se is secured through an array of substitute signifiers of third wordism and marginalization (to be discussed in Chapter 8) needs to be carefully delineated. What about the local-global market? This question acquires significance if we remember that while the category of surplus labour or class is foreclosed, the discourse on market or commodity exchange has acquired, as in the past, extraordinary importance in neoliberal discourses. This global role of market also makes Hardt and Negri announce, “…there is no outside to the world market; the entire globe is its domain” (2000: 190). Neither Hardt and Negri, nor the mainstream discourses seem to disaggregate market in class terms, thus ending up subsuming all marketrelated class relations to its global form, not to speak of the suppression of non-market-related class forms. But, the hegemonic cannot but have an outside; it is through a putting outside of the inhospitable and the inhabitable that it emerges as an universal reality. The presence of local-global market too masks the centrality of ‘capitalist commodity’ that underlies the connection of commodity exchange with the capitalist organizations of surplus labour. Thus, the local-global market which represents relationships among various kinds of commodities—capitalist and non-capitalist—is structured around the primacy of the capitalist commodity form through which capital acquires its global form. Through that, the local-global market helps to secure the primacy of private capitalist surplus value appropriation and the primacy of global capital. It is interesting how the mainstream (hegemonic) discourses, including the neoliberal variant, discuss market without referring to its connection with class. What such discourses produce is a meaning of market radically different from the one that we produce in the form of local-global market that is based on the centricity of capitalist commodity exchange. These renditions of global capital disavow their roots; they disavow an encounter with the definitional kernel—private capitalist surplus value appropriation. Just like in the case of the deployment of (substitute signifiers of) profit, capital accumulation, competition, efficiency, and so on, the foregrounding of the mainstream discourse of market away from its class-focused rendition, helps to secure the foreclosure of class.

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

195

While market continues to have a hallowed presence in its representation, the existence of capitalist FCP remains repudiated; it is an extension of the repudiation of even its primary moment, the conception of FCP itself. This is akin to Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism where the hegemony of the money-form displaced and indeed masked the class relationships associated with commodity exchanges. Unravelling market in terms of class relations, allows us to see how the disengagement with class alters the meaning of market, whereby we end up legitimizing global capitalist hegemony. With the foreclosure of class, with the putting outside of something primordial regarding the subject’s being, with the inauguration of the possibility that in the subject’s relationship to the symbolic there is a primitive verwerfung (that something would not be symbolized and would appear in the real—here class understood in terms of surplus labour), private capitalist surplus value appropriation and local-global market emerge as the undisputed/unquestioned centre or nodal point. Embodying the nodal signifiers of private capitalist surplus value appropriation and local-global market, the hegemonic discourse of commodity/market ends up espousing a de-classed notion of circuits of global capital. Let us give an example. With the hegemonic celebrating the idea of well-being in terms of income generation, production is preferred if tuned more towards profit in contrast to what is often depicted as, say, need which could be the organizing signifier for many non-capitalist class enterprises. Such ‘abnormal’ economies thus get translated and displaced into shades of agriculture or informality, into social sector malaise, into retained and obdurate traditionality. The non-capitalist enterprises working within the circuits of global capital are called on to abandon their moorings in such abnormal economies and embrace instead the signifiers of profit, efficiency, competition, and so on (Chapters 8 and 9). At the least, even if they are unable to shed their “abnormal” economic beliefs and practices, they should end up acknowledging the superiority of these floating signifiers—signifiers that help to secure both the nodal signifiers and foreclosure at one and the same time.

Agriculture and Informal Sector, Encore Given the centricity of global capital, and its circuits from within a decentred and disaggregated class-focused economy, the devalued status of the agricultural-informal sector in the context of third worldism

196

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

that we explored in Chapter 6, passes through a displacement in our representation. Both can now be further split into two components: (i) part of the agricultural-informal sector I connected to the circuits of global capital through the local-global market and, (ii) part of the agricultural-informal sector II languishing in the world of the third (WOT). In the aftermath of globalization, the informal sector II (in both rural and urban) consisting of diverse, interdependent class sets including capitalist ones, is represented as ‘abnormal’, as ‘indecent’ (ILO 2002: 8–9), as ‘unproductive’, and as a swamp of ‘backwardness’ (La Porta and Shleifer 2014); such a sector is hierarchically situated with respect to informal sector I; informal sector I (both in rural and urban) is, in turn, rendered backward with respect to the global capitalist (formal) sector breeding within the hub of global capital. A transition of informal sector II to informal sector I, and further to the hub of global capital, is a sequentially ordered journey, a linear journey to progress (ILO 2002: 8–9). In this regard, the later phase of the so-called informalization of formal sector jobs with casual and contractual labour replacing permanent labour, would be looked upon by the ILO as a progressive movement along the chain of the job continuum. From today’s vantage point, the state management of Informal Sector I turns out to be, as if, an ‘economic’ problem encouraging its placement under the purview of the nodal signifiers of global capital and for that sector to be attached to the global capitalist enterprise through the local-global market; the objective of state policy (as has been the case in India and elsewhere) has been to enact this structure (Chakrabarti et al. 2009). In contrast, the management of Informal Sector II, the component outside the circuits of global capital, has essentially been about addressing a ‘social’ malaise to be taken care of by the state, international agencies (like the World Bank), Microfinance NGOs, and so on, through programs of credit subsidies and grants, human capital development and social protection (more in Chapter 8). Combining both, informal sector per se thus becomes part of the hegemonic articulation that leaves unchallenged the centricity of the signifiers of private capitalist surplus value appropriation and local-global market.

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

197

In the case of agriculture, it is not just a matter of ‘economization’ of the rural social, of ‘industrialization’ of agriculture through mechanization, but of the ‘commodification’ (some say colonisation) of food cultures through ongoing attempts at shifting land use to agribusiness and in the pattern of cropping from food grains to cash crops. To illustrate, corporatization of a segment of Indian agriculture has emerged through the circuits of global capital that require the presence of local-global markets connecting capitalist and non-capitalist agricultural enterprises with the foreign-based global capitalist enterprises, such as, Pepsico, Cargill, etc., as well as India-based global capitalist enterprises, such as, Reliance and ITC. Needless to say, such global enterprises have considerable organizational, technological, and financial power as well as market reach, creating both output (for food grains, cash crops, and food processing) and input (such as seeds, fertilizers, farm machineries, bio-technologies, agro-chemicals through integrated nutrients and pest management) linkages between industrial and agricultural sector, linkages that expand the scope within and between the circuits of global capital; global capitalist enterprises, such as, Hindustan Lever, Cargill, Seedtech International, HI-Bred International, Sandoz, Monsanto, etc. have already entered the seed market (which normally involves a package of seeds with fertilizers and pesticides). Another important route to create this linkage has been through single brand product retail trading (SBPRT) and multi brand retail trading (MBRT) in wholesale and retail markets, not all without controversy and conflicts. The rapid rise of derivative markets in agricultural products stands testimony to the penetration of financial capitalists in the agrarian circuits of global capital. As a whole, the global industrial, financial, and merchant capitalists (capitalists in all the above corporations personify one or a blend of those positions) are combining to try to reshape the human being’s relationship with food (both in production and consumption sphere as also the distributional channels) through the circuits of global capital. Beyond the agrarian circuits of global capital lies of course the vast span of WOT agriculture, including the local capitalist ones, populated by mostly rural and forest societies. Agrarian transition, driven by capitalocentric-orientalist policy, is therefore uneven and multidirectional.

198

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Value Chain in the Circuits of Global Capital and Value Capture Taking off from class-focused reality, we needed to define the circuits of global capital through the local-global market in order to theorize the outside, the space of WOT. One of the questions aligned to the hegemonic is that of value capture from the value chain embodying the circuits. The contrast in our point of inquiry to what is discussed in mainstream discourse must be drawn first. The mainstream study of capitalism has moved from centre-periphery models to global commodity chains (GCC), to global value chains (GVC) (Gereffi 2018). Despite its theoretical richness and its empirical, evidence-based detailing in terms of macro (global), meso (country and industry), and micro (firm and community) level studies, as also the issues of value added and governance structure, what this literature lacks is its inability to draw a relationship between the class process (capitalist and non-capitalist) with GCC and GVC (Bhattacharya and Seda-Irizarry 2017; Roy 2020). Rather than distil out the difference and connection between value added and value capture within the commodity chains, the literature tends to conflate it by reducing the problem to value added (Smith 2016). To rectify that deficit, one group of Marxist scholars, by no means uniform in their approach, have stressed on the importance of Marxian value theory in order to distil out the connection of class with value added and value capture embodied in the governance structure of the value chain. We only flag some of the explanations: value capture by global capitalists in the North through super-exploitation of Southern low-wage workers (wage or piece rate payment below the value of labour-power) (Smith 2016); value capture in the form of ground rent by global capitalists, principally located in the North, through monopolizing certain conditions of existence of surplus value commodity production (Basu 2008; Bhattacharya and Seda-Irizarry 2017); value capture based on the power hierarchies of capital within the global value chain which, depending upon the contribution of individual capitalists (as also non-capitalists) to the total pool of capital, constitutes the magnitude of value capture from living labour for each appropriators in the chain (Roy 2020). Perhaps, all three mechanisms of value capture are working, in conjunction or separately as the case may be but what remains common is their attempt to relate the question of GCC and GVC to its embodied class structure of surplus labour. Let us briefly sum up the last two arguments which explicitly adopt a

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

199

variant of the class-focused approach of the kind followed in this book but give divergent explanations in their favour. In addition to the usual interest-bearing capital, Bhattacharya and Seda-Irizarry (2017) refers to the monopolization of specialized operations (patented design, logistics, branding, knowledge-capital, etc.) in certain locations of the value chain of commodity production embodied in the circuits of global capital that serves as an instrument of extracting rent (logic being the same as proposed by Marx for ground rent from monopolizing land access); their argument being that the final price of commodity in M-C-P-C/ -M/ (containing all the intermediate stages) contains a disproportionate portion of produced surplus value distributed as rent on these account (also see Basu 2008). The role of financial and merchant capital in investment, in generating this rent-bearing capital as an instrument of value capture of the larger portion of surplus value produced by living labour, including in the intermediate stages by noncapitalist enterprises, is not insignificant. The repositioning of financial and merchant capital in the productive sector can be discerned in the change in the tagline of Walmart, one of the biggest merchant capitalist corporation in the world, from its “Buy American” program till the 1980s to the post-globalization “Low prices. Every day. On everything” as it radically shifted its investment and mode of operation to purchase (low-priced) commodities from low-wage labour regions elsewhere in the world for retail sales (high-priced) in USA and other developed nations. The massive profit from the final price that followed can be construed as a result arising from, in addition to its usual merchant fee of M-CP -M/ , a portion of surplus value extracted as ground rent (on account of its monopoly in logistics, sales destination, branding, etc.). Roy (2020) highlights the element of power in the form of structural hierarchies of capital within the global value chain. Who will get what in terms of the share of surplus within this global circuit of capital—value capture—would depend on the contribution of individual capitalists to the total pool of advanced capital, which favors the global capitalists in the North. Despite the manufacturing base shifting to the South, this hierarchy of capital in the value chain ensures that the share of value added (the golden goose from labour-power) appearing as surplus in the value chain continues to be captured in greater proportion by capitalists and their immediate cohorts in the North than those in the South. Global dispersion of production and centralization of capital have gone hand in hand. To be careful, it is not unequal exchange that Roy is emphasizing,

200

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

but the unequal share of capital, that in turn will determine who gets what portion of the produced surplus value, no matter where they are produced. Like Bhattacharya and Seda-Irizarry, Roy too is sceptical of the financializaton thesis which, according to him, makes it sound like capitalists’ profit-making process is independent from the process of exploiting labour in the production sector. On the contrary, financial capitalists too obtain a share of the captured value from the exploitative organization of production. Financialization includes the integration of exploitation in the sphere of production; it contains the global process of financial accumulation, involving credit to enterprises (capitalist and non-capitalist) in the distant end of the value chain; any attempt to posit finance capital per se as more or less delinked from the process of exploitation is misplaced. Both these theories of value chain in their respective way reiterate Marx’s framework by emphasizing the mutual interaction of productive and unproductive capital. In its unencumbered pursuit of surplus value and of any benefit from its further redistribution, capital—productive and unproductive—shows no loyalty to nations; such is the history of capitalism; when the nationstate join hands with this pursuit the extant international laws are shred and the order of things get recast to its advantage, as the history of exploration, trade, colonialism, imperialism, and globalization shows. Unless restricted by external forces (by the state or by struggles, class and nonclass), capital follows the logic of profit from the self-expansion of value in ways (however insidious and destructive), in processes (however exploitative, unfair, abusive, and speculative that may be), and in places (across continents), wherever it finds an opportunity, by its own making or by the fortuitous turn of events. That is in essence its dharma. Despite a growing Marxian literature on value chain and value capture, what remains to be answered satisfactorily is the question of the fast-paced rise of home-grown global capitalist enterprises and capitalists (productive and unproductive) in the countries of the South such as China, India, Southeast Asia, South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere. After all, as history shows, competing countries do change their relative economic rankings. We however don’t pursue the problem any further in this book.

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

201

Global Capital and Reconfiguration of Space The global capitalist enterprise depicted in Eqs. (7.1) and (7.2), shows the creation and movement of values across the globe through a continual, albeit uneven, wave of reterritorialization (with new spaces being conquered), and de-territorialization (with old spaces being abandoned). Intrusion of capital into hitherto untouched spaces “make it increasingly murky to seek to demarcate large geographical zones as center and periphery” (Resnick and Wolff 2001: 65). All countries passing through capitalist development under neoliberal globalization have seen their economic map and social milieu redrawn in fundamental ways, as a result of the combined effects of these processes, relationships, and value flows. New economic regions were restructured and re-signified, as global and potentially global, breeding alterations in both the idea and texture of cities, cultures, and political morphologies; recasting of forms of life followed suit. New waves of migration of population, domestic and international, hitherto residing in villages, towns, and small cities into these places of opportunities also transformed the idea and content of urban space; not surprisingly, urbanization (and urban planning) then has become one of the key goals, as also a challenge, facing policy-makers all over the world. Beyond the state-sponsored development paradigm that is focused on comparing and promoting inter-regional performance (among regional states) based on development indicators, such as income, mortality/morbidity, literacy, etc., the lure of global capital generates a different conception of spatiality with its own associated set of indicators; political and industrial peace, subsidies and support of the state to capital, labour costs, creation and presence of clustering with externality benefits, transportation facilities and costs, availability of quality human capital, health care, etc., are some such factors. Alongside industrial cities, a few global ‘financial’ cities (say, Mumbai in India) have emerged as a cluster of corporate headquarters, where the board of directors (personifying the capitalists) would literally meet to appropriate and distribute the revenues including surplus value; the distributed portions are received in different globally dispersed spaces where the conditions of existence of these capitalist enterprises are secured. While Mumbai has emerged as one of the fastest growing global cities, as one of the most expensive office markets, home to most billionaires in India, over half of its population are still slum dwellers; that speaks of the procreation of the WOT space besides

202

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

that being shaped by the circuits of global capital. Such transformation of regions and cities following the reorganization of space by global capital perhaps inadvertently also opens in WOT, new processes and possibilities of further rethinking and recasting of the idea of the urban and the city, through alternative perspectives, and grassroots resistance against the power and reach of global capital; struggles for commons, shared environment, and for new composition of urban reconstruction as against enclosure, private property, unemployment, and precarious living, may be construed as representing such kinds of contesting fields (Harvey 2013).

Hegemonization: Unconscious Interpellation to Global Capital Social life gets procreated through an array of activities, practices, and relationships surrounding the circuits of global capital. Spaces which were once tuned to self-reliance including that of preserving national capital, got reconfigured to suit and facilitate the procreation of global capital and its circuits. This reconfiguration encompassed the entire gamut of the social terrain—from the legal structure included labour-laws, state apparatuses, educational institutions, body and health, modes of communications, notions of entrepreneurship and consumerism, sexual and gender relations, food habits, customs and mores, etc. These are typically backed up by state support, with additional investment (state and private) in smart cities, super highways, gated housing complexes, wide pathways, golf courses, huge shopping malls, seven-star hotels, educational institutions, hospitals, entertainment including gambling and sleaze, natural wilderness without the peeking and probing life of WOT in it, and so on. Existing signifiers pertaining to the cultural, political, and natural processes undergo a change and new processes with their specific signifying effects are put in place. These signifiers work in tandem with the economic signifiers such as individualism, private property, efficiency, profit, competition, market, etc., which function within the circuits of global capital, to protract and render further anchorage to the nodal signifiers of private capitalist appropriated surplus value and the local-global market, that secure the sanctity of the hub of global capital. As global capital gets formed through the (overdetermined) working of (nodal and) floating signifiers, the social complex sustaining it, materializes. For the hegemonic to succeed, capital must be assimilated into the production of social life, subduing political differences, and integrating itself into

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

203

the everyday language that we (mis)recognize as our own. The hegemonic interpellation of the group/social unconscious to such a language of capital is however never complete. It’s never complete because overdetermined effects generate contradictions that undermine the process of unconscious accrual to the nodal signifiers (class struggle being one such enactment). The seemingly de-centred, heterogeneous and overlapping cultural, political, economic, and natural registers pertaining to the diverse apparatuses/institutions play important roles in defining the subject of the unconscious, especially, hegemonized subjects. In as much as the ‘circuits’ of global capital get interiorized in us, the hegemonized subjects also internalize the language-logic of capital. The hegemonized subjects live and reproduce the fantasy of what the hegemonic (here global capitalist hegemony) is and wishes to be; through consent-collaboration. This participation (through our various beings-doings ) sustains the secret operations of the nodal signifiers and helps to procreate the circuits of global capital. It is as if a “freedom enmeshed in servitude”; to come out of such servitude, one needs to traverse the fundamental fantasy that global capitalist hegemony is.

Conclusion Taking off from the class-focused approach, we have proceeded to theorize the circuits of global capital which is structured by the nodal signifiers of private capitalist appropriated surplus value and the local-global market. The secret operation of the nodal signifiers are precisely what would be shrouded and cloaked by the delusional veil of substitute signifiers dished out by a plethora of theories, discourses, and constructed facts, often at work in opposition to one another. Despite some disagreements, they serve the common purpose of the production of the delusional veil (of the Leviathan of capitalism, of developmentalism, of third worldism) so as to secure the foreclosure of the real of class as processes of surplus labour. Working through the delusional veil, one arrives at the return of the lost object: the real of class. The return of the real: class, open up space for the rewriting of what has hitherto been known and naturalized as (global) capitalism, as (global) capitalist hegemony, i.e., as the hegemony of class sets 5 and 17, largely 17. We have shown in this chapter how two nodal signifiers of private capitalist appropriated surplus value and local-global market constitutes global capitalist hegemony. The next

204

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

chapter is on the outside to the circuits of global capital: WOT and how the third nodal signifier, hegemonic need, operates in WOT.

References Azhar, S. 2021. Consumption, Capital, and Class in Digital Space: The Political Economy of Pay-per-Click Business Models. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society 33 (2): 196–216. Basu, P.K. 2008. Globalization: An Anti-Text. New Delhi: Aakar Books. Bhattacharya, R., and I.J Seda-Irizarry. 2017. Problematizing the Global Economy: Financialization and the “Feudalization” of Capital. In Knowledge, Class, and Economics, ed. T.A Burczac, R.F. Garnett, and R. Macintyre. Oxford: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A., and A.K. Dhar. 2012. Gravel in the Shoe: Nationalism and World of the Third. Rethinking Marxism 24 (1): 106–123. ———. 2013. Rethinking and Theorizing the Indian State in the Context of New Economic Map. In Development and Sustainability: India in a Global Perspective, ed. A. Chakrabarti and S. Banerjee. Springer: New Delhi Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London. Chakrabarti, A., A. Chaudhury, and S. Cullenberg. 2009. Global Order and the New Economic Policy in India: The (Post) Colonial formation of the Small Scale Sector in India. Cambridge Journal of Economics 33 (6): 1169–1186. Chakrabarti, A., A.K. Dhar, and B. Dasgupta. 2015. The Indian Economy in Transition: Globalization, Capitalism and Development. Cambridge University Press. Chang, H.J. 2002. Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective. London: Anthem Press. Dalio, R. 2021. Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order. London and New Delhi: Simon & Schuster. Gereffi, G. 2018. Global Value Chains and Development: Redefining the Contours of 21st Century Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. 2013. The Political Economy of Public Space. In The Politics of Public Space, ed. S. Low and N. Smith. New York: Routledge. ILO. 2002. Decent Work and the Informal Economy: Sixth Item on the Agenda. Report VI, International Labour Conference, 90th Session, Geneva. Geneva: ILO. La Porta, R., and A. Shleifer. 2014. Informality and Development. Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (3): 109–126. Lacan, J. 2006. Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Co.

7

GLOBAL CAPITAL AND ITS CIRCUITS

205

Resnick, S.A., and R.D. Wolff. 1987. Knowledge and Class: A Marxist Critique of Political Economy. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2001. Empire and Class Analysis. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society 13 (3–4): 61–69. Roy, S. 2020. Contours of Value Capture: India’s Neoliberal Path of Industrial Development. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Smith, J. 2016. Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, SuperExploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis. Monthly Review Press. Soros, G. 2004. The Alchemy of Finance. New Jersey: Wiley.

CHAPTER 8

World of the Third as Foreclosed: Third Worldism as Delusional Veil

Introduction Having worked at the interface of hegemony and foreclosure, we have arrived, on the one hand, at the circuits of global capital; we have arrived in the process at the doorstep of world of the third (WoT). The ingress of arriving at WoT by deploying the perspective of the local–global market is one thing; to theorize it from a class-focused perspective is quite another. Procreating outside the circuits of global capital, we unpack WoT as a decentred and disaggregated totality of varied capitalist class processes (of both the expanded and simple reproduction type) and non-capitalist class processes occurring in overdetermined and contradictory relations with all the non-class processes (Dhar and Chakrabarti 2019; Chakrabarti and Dhar 2022). The circuits of global capital are secured through the foreclosure of WoT. The process of foreclosure is secured through a foregrounding of WoT in a substitute language—the language of third worldism. Third worldism is the delusional veil that covers the tear produced by the foreclosure of WoT. The foregrounding of WoT in the language of third worldism (social capital, community, marginalization, poverty, social protection, etc.) protracts further the foreclosure of WoT. The realm of the foreclosed (the real), the foregrounded delusional veil (the realvictim –realevil -realdystopic –realutopian -realDarkContinent ) and the hegemonic, are produced in one turn, and not sequentially. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_8

207

208

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

WoT is in that sense a concept-metaphor that resists the collapse of varied, interdependent class processes and the associated forms of life into a pre-given category, the third world; and, in the process, enables a clearer look at the somewhat muted presence of the underlying centrality of global capital in the hegemonization of WoT. We shall explore the World Bank-led development discourse as an attempt to enact a displacement of WoT into a certain third worldism.

The Being of World of the Third Let us take off from the 24 class sets laid down in Chapter 2 and recast it in the context of our analysis of the circuits of global capital to demarcate clearly the space, perspective and subject position designated world of the third (WoT). Table 8.1 presents a still photograph of an otherwise dynamic and ever-changing economy. The still photograph helps us to locate with precision WoT as the outside to the circuits of global capital. We expand upon earlier discussion on class sets to include the axis of two kind of markets—local–global and local—in two additional columns (columns 6 and 7). The three possible modes of appropriation are accordingly laid down in the last column (column 9). Building on additional information, we can mark the outside to the circuits of global capital—the WoT (column 8). From the FCPs (columns 2 and 3), class sets 5 and 17 designate capitalist class sets (both are exploitative; and in both labour-power and output distribution are in the commodity form meaning that surplus value is appropriated by productive capitalists). Nevertheless, it is highly improbable that class set 5, given its limited size and reach, would constitute the hub of the circuits of global capital. Rather, the hub would in all likelihood be populated by forms of capitalist class set {17}—both private and state. Recall that one at least needs the presence of local–global market to be part of the circuits of global capital; this means that the circuits must have the minimum condition of harbouring a commodity form. Now observe that the rest (i.e., the twenty-two class sets from 1–4, 6–16, and 18–24) are multi-varied non-capitalist class sets by virtue of either their output or input being in the non-commodity form. Of the 22 “what are not capitalist class sets”, at least twelve (i.e., class sets 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, and 24) are necessarily outside the circuits of global capital by virtue of their output distribution being in the non-commodity form;

Performance of surplus labour

A A A A A A A A C C C C A A A A C C C C C C C C

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

A A A A B B B B A A A A C C C C B B B B C C C C

COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM COM NON-COM

Appropriation Distribution of surplus labour

Class sets and World of the Third

No

Table 8.1

WAGE WAGE NON-WAGE NON-WAGE WAGE WAGE NON-WAGE NON-WAGE WAGE WAGE NON-WAGE NON-WAGE WAGE WAGE NON-WAGE NON-WAGE WAGE WAGE NON-WAGE NON-WAGE WAGE WAGE NON-WAGE NON-WAGE

Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible

Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible

Local markets

Possible

Worker’s Local–Global remuneration Markets

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

World of the Third (WOT)

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

(continued)

Non-E Non-E Non-E Non-E E E E E E E E E Non-E Non-E Non-E Non-E E E E E Non-E Non-E Non-E Non-E

Modes of appropriation

8

209

A= individual, B= none, C = collective, com: commodity, non-com: non-commodity E: Exploitation; Non-E: Non exploitation

Performance of Appropriation Distribution surplus labour of surplus labour

(continued)

Source Dhar and Chakrabarti (2019: 94–95)

No

Table 8.1 Worker’s Local–Global remuneration Markets Produce Sold in Local–Global Markets—Hence Class Set Hooked to Circuits of Global Capital

Local markets

Produce Not Sold in Market—Hence Class Sets is outside Circuits of Global Capital

World of the Third (WOT)

Modes of appropriation

210 A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

211

they cannot be linked to the local–global markets. By default, they are part of the WoT. The other ten non-capitalist class sets—even if they are non-capitalist, could be either inside (i.e., fastened to) or outside the circuits of global capital, depending on whether their produce is hooked to global capital via exchange in the local–global market (see column 6 above), local market (see column 7 above), or non-market (implied in column 8 above) site. Interestingly, class sets 5 and 17, if they are not global capitalist enterprises, could also be inside (i.e., hooked to) or outside the circuits of global capital. When such class sets are outside the circuits of global capital, they are part of WoT. Thus, depending on the concrete context, the odd-numbered class sets in the above matrix can be outside or inside the circuits of global capital. However, with output distribution not in commodity form, the evennumbered ones are outside. Thus, an outside to the circuits of global capital, marked by the even-numbered class sets and a few of the oddnumbered class sets, including (interestingly) even capitalist class sets, can be conceptualized as ‘world of the third as space’. It is evident that all the possible varieties of FCPs, capitalist and non-capitalist, with exploitative, non-exploitative, and self-appropriative modes of appropriation are procreating in WoT. Putting the same slightly differently, the above table also reveals the overdetermined and contradictory nature of WoT as in it varied FCPs (columns 2 and 3) can, possibly and actually, co-exist and combine with diverse non-class conditions of existence (indicated by the rest of the columns). Once one brings in other SCPs and non-class processes, the larger societal form of WoT can be discerned. World of the third can be located in the rural and the urban; it can span across sectors, regions, and nations. World of the third is not located in just the South; even the North is studded with large pockets of world of the third, including in the metropolis and townships. Classification of the extant North–South, Centre-Periphery divide, as also the West–East divide is hereby rewritten as the overdetermined and contradictory dynamic between the circuits of global capital and world of the third. WoT subjects no longer see the North as necessarily a foreign entity, but rather as an everyday presence mutating at its doorstep, confronting it, tailing it, and intruding into it; and that too, as part of what is often claimed as nation-building project. This gives a further push to our argument that one needs to rethink the idea

212

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

of WoT and its politics in the context of a terrain that is not circumscribed by the geographically driven North–South/East–West/Centreperiphery/Global–local division. No kind of a priorivalue can, however, be imputed to world of the third as space (ethical or nonethical, competitive or shared, violent or tolerant, rich or poor). Indeed, lest we forget, alongside non-exploitative and self-appropriative class sets, WoT space is also replete with repositories of exploitation (at least, non-capitalist class sets 6, 8, 10, 12, 18, 20); it is appropriate to conceptually treat WoT as a space that, through the mutually constitutive effects of class sets and other socio-economic processes, takes varied shapes in concrete scenarios. The subjects within the circuits of global capital and WoT are however in a dynamic relationship. They form a kind of a Möbius strip. There is a continuous process of turning into the other. The WoT subject can enter the circuits of global capital. Subjects within the circuits of global capital could land in WoT. The same subject may be within WoT at a particular moment and be hooked to the circuits of global capital at the next moment. However, what we would like to stress in this chapter is that this spatial outside to the circuits of global capital does not appear as a space of differänce; instead, depending on how one is (inter)subjectivized in the economy, it emerges paradoxically as a lacking and devalued other. World of the third as the outside of circuits of global capital thus slides down the stepladder of progress and emerges as its lacking underside qua “third world”. This slide in effect legitimizes the project of management and social engineering in WoT space, all in the name of the development of third world; it also legitimizes violence against WoT via original accumulation, as a necessary ingress for the liberation of the third world from its decrepitude state (see Chapter 9). One needs to be mindful of the fact that attention to the markers of exploitation, oppression, or marginalization within WoT is an argument of a different logical order than that of the co-option, manipulation, and violence that WoT is subjected to by the hegemonic.

The Home Sector In-Between Circuits of Global Capital and World of the Third In class-focused Marxian theory, household is a site of the production of use values for domestic consumption that captures the manner in

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

213

which FCP, SCP, and non-class processes combine in different configurations (Fraad et al. 1994; Cassano 2009). All kinds of class sets (with slave, feudal, communist, independent, and communitic FCP) may exist although, sans absence of wage labour and/or commodity production, a capitalist household FCP is a remote possibility (Dhar and Dasgupta 2013). However, conceptually distinct from household class set, another set of production process of use values destined for non-household consumers could occur simultaneously in the perimeter of home. To avoid any confusion, we name the latter as home-based class process . From a classfocused perspective, the home sector then is a site where household class process and home-based class process would occur simultaneously. With this classification, we argue that it is very difficult to imagine the household class process to be part of the circuits of global capital although, as we shall explain now, the home-based class process sector within the home sector could certainly be a part of it. Pataka Industries Private Limited is one of the largest producers of Bidi (a type of tobacco product) located in the district of Murshidabad in the Indian state of West Bengal (Sen and Dasgupta 2009; Dhar and Dasgupta 2013). Given its expansion into international markets (particularly in South Asia), Pataka Industries Private Limited has tended to morph into a global capitalist enterprise. However, much of the Bidi is produced within thousands of homes, in that district (employing close to 1.7 million people; in India the employment is close to 7 million people). To avoid any formal contact with bidi workers, the industrial capitalists of Pataka Industry initiate an agreement with middlemen (known as the Munshi) to get the following service against a promised commission. The Munshis are provided with raw materials (say, non-timber forest produce like Tendu leaves which in turn is procured from elsewhere with a different production structure) who in turn forward them to the homebased direct producers (principally women, daughters and nieces often working 12 hours daily, seven days a week) against a predetermined piece rate for a produced bundle of 1000 rolled bidis or in whatever form it may be sought; without a wage structure, these home-based production systems in the household are almost overwhelmingly non-capitalist in form. Once procured, the Munshis would then forward the produce to the industrial capitalists of Pataka Bidi (as its constant capital) which in turn employ workers to do the checking, final packaging, and branding over the wrapped rolls (note: the branded bidis are diverse). The difference between the unit price of branded Bidi sold to consumers and

214

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

what the home-based producers get from Munshis is huge. On top of the massive appropriation of surplus value by industrial capitalists, the Munshis find ways to not even pay (by simply declaring a portion, say 50 bidis, of the 1000 bidis as spoilt) the contracted price to the home-based producers; by selling these 50 bidis in the open market, i.e, through this theft, Munshis earn a non-class income in addition to the usual commission from Pataka Biri. Surmising, what is true for Pataka Bidi is true in general for the other capitalist Bidi enterprises as well. The Bidi industry implodes right into the perimeter of the Southern homes, and both into the circuits of global capital. The circuits of global capital grows within the home. The nature of home-based class set would depend greatly on the framework by which the household class set is organized. For example, not too uncommon, a feudal household class set would imply a male member as the head of home who would be appropriating the surplus labour of others within the household production process. This may have a significant effect on the mode of appropriation of the home-based Bidi class set—which could be of CA type communitic class set when all or some members of the family perform surplus labour while, due to the socially determined right to appropriation, the male head of the home would solely appropriate the surplus labour as well as distribute it. The class set could alternatively be of AB feudal class type where the female member alone performs surplus labour and the non-performing male member appropriates it; CB feudal class set if all female members perform surplus labour while the male appropriates the surplus. It is also not too common to find families where the female would be in charge of Bidi production while the male member would be a migrant wage labourer working elsewhere. Many among these migrants, and this is true for migrants in general, end up within the urban circuits of WoT, getting themselves employed as casual or contract workers in the circuits of global capital, some into local capitalists enterprises; others even working within the home sector in the cities, to be employed as wage labourer in various capacities (in household class set or home-based class set). This evergrowing reservoir of immigrant labour force at the disposal of the home sector is all too welcome to the hegemonic, to keep the wage rate in the productive sector down and facilitate the reproduction of the home sector. Besides being integrated within the circuits of global capital, the home could often be the site of producing goods and services that have no

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

215

connection with the circuits of global capital. Indeed, the Indian market for Bidis is huge, and a large number of capitalist enterprises in this industry cater to exclusively local markets. Therefore, the circuits of global and local capital would often compete for the market as also over the highest return from their respective value chain. It also tells us much about the journey of ‘indigenous capital’ in India and the appearance of new cast of historical characters (capitalists—global and local—and their employed workers, home-based direct producers mainly women and girl, migrant male workers and their employers and the middle men Munshis). Starting in the 1930s (Pataka Bidi itself started in the 1950s), the home-grown capitalists of the Bidi industry have been generating massive profit from the circuits of local capital; the successful and growing ones in turn used the ever-increasing funds to diversify into other industries, some even becoming global capitalist enterprises. For example, with diversification into tobacco, tea, biscuits, silk fabric, health care, and infrastructure, Pataka Bidi was transformed into an incorporated Pataka Industries Private Limited in 1986. Finally, not only does WoT markets continue to operate in the form of circuits of local capital held together by the hub of expanded type local capitalist enterprises, but much of the Bidi produced in the home sector, instead of going to the large industrial enterprises, in fact flows directly or indirectly through small/medium enterprises into other condtuits of WoT markets. The above-mentioned capitalist and non-capitalist enterprises in the home-based sector are also common in other industries such as digital, IT-related knowledge economy, education (say, the booming private tuition), food (say, home cooked meals for working people), and part of what has come to known as the gig economy; these could be part of the circuits of global capital or WoT. Finally, homes could also serve as an extension of the disaggregated production process of an enterprise. Suppose an individual at home is not an independent producer of a good or service but is an employee of the IT-related global enterprise, she helps to create surplus value for the enterprise (therefore, occupying a fundamental class position) or provide a variety of non-class conditions of existence (occupying subsumed class positions). In addition to wage payment or commission to the worker for these roles, a part of the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist may be disbursed as subsumed class payment as rent and compensation to the employee for

216

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

using domestic space and infrastructure (furniture, electricity, etc.) needed for the concerned labour process and class process. In this case, alongside the non-class processes, home becomes a site which harbours simultaneously, say, a household FCP (could be of any variant), capitalist FCP and, diverse SCPs needed to sustain both FCPs. We conclude with two observations on home sector, the first regarding the site of the complexity of capital and non-capital. The cheap reservoir of labour and cheaper-shared environment (that bundle many economic activities in a non-monetized plane) have historically made home sector attractive to local capitalist enterprises and susbequently global capitalist ones. However, from the perspective of home sector, the difference between the circuits of global capital and that of local capital may not be so material since the rules of capital would seem to be somewhat similar in both cases; both systematically secure higher rates of profit through a higher rate of exploitation and exercise considerable control over the labour process and its conditions of existence. Secondly, the home sector discussed above represents a thick (spatial) line between the border of the circuits of global capital and WoT. It is as if representative of a certain inbetween-ness, of an apparent hybridity as also contradictions of (b)orders, that helps to mark out and secure somewhat paradoxically the circuits of global capital and the circuits of WoT. Sometimes, these homes would be serving the circuits of global capital and at other times these would be outside the circuits of global capital and hence serving the vast economy of WoT; even within WoT, they would take diverse forms. Consequently, the signifiers of capital and non-capital, WoT and global capital often work in tandem in these settings. As the circuits of global capital and WoT are materializing, so is the borderline, the space of the in-between. This then is very different from the discourse of another age that called for the destruction of such a repository of backwardness.

Contradictions in WoT and the Hegemonic This section is focused on the hegemonic reconstitution of WoT. Depending upon the specific combination of class and non-class processes, WoT societies will also be composed of familiar-familial recognition and reach of “concepts,” “events”, “mental states”, and “identities” (Lear 2007), with perhaps its own worldview and its own lokavidya/ ‘know-how’ (Basole 2015; Dhar 2018). It points to the presence, for absence of a better description, a kind of shared environment.

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

217

What constitutes a shared environment? The river offering water, the air one breathes, the land one tills, the birds, the animals, the insects, the vegetation, the forest nearby, the (kinship) relationships, know-hows, extant institutions, shared identities, habits-habitats, totems, taboos, affective continuums—all these and much more, together, through their combined effects constitute a shared environment. This environment is shared because members can draw upon this configuration of natural and social networks without ‘excluding’ any member in order to reproduce their own life, including the reproduction of their economic livelihood. In sharp contradistinction to third worldism, we invoke the term shared environment to posit the distinct set of conditions of existence, and of forms of life, as also worldviews that constitute WoT class sets; as against those that remain hooked to the circuits of global capital. It is also to take a position against the story of a cooperative, concordant, and selfcontented ‘tradition’ or ‘pre-capitalism’ as part of an emotive/cultural discourse of the third world, and one that with modifications (such as through categories like social capital or community) serve as part of the chain of substitute signifiers that shape the delusional veil of development and help in legitimizing an array of interventions within WoT. Such spaces of shared environment tied to WoT societies are punctuated by numerous contradictions and antagonisms related to ecological questions, as also to questions of class, gender, caste, and race and their multi-layered effects, which in turn are brought to bear on the meaning of, and one’s relationship with, nature. The relation of shared environment with nature does not only vary across WoT societies, but may even vary within the same WoT societies as diverse groups come to hold different understandings of the relation of nature with that of shared environment. For example, it is not enough to say that WoT has common access to forests. What is equally important is who within WoT has access to forests and in what form. Do some (say, the subaltern) have limited access to the forests or water resources than some others (say, the upper castes or the priestly elite)?1 Formed by relationships stemming from the overdetermined processes of class, caste, and gender, certain groups could have relatively greater access to deities which are, say, worshipped by all in WoT. Or, if the Dalits are, say, not allowed access to a deity worshipped

1 For example, in Indian villages, water, a natural resource, often emerges as a major site of political struggle among constituents cutting across class, caste and gender.

218

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

by upper castes, they could have a different nature-god. All these possibilities could affect the very way different groups within WoT view nature. Shared environment, among other things, is thus marked by these contradictory meanings of nature. As the relations of class, gender, caste, race and religion change, so does the meaning of nature; this in turn helps shape the relation of nature with shared environment, and thus the latter’s idea itself. Despite such contradictions cutting across class, gender, caste, race and religion, it is important to understand that they co-exist without questioning subjects’ connect and access to nature, access towards which is a minimal condition of reproducing social life in such societies. Such shared environment span a vast expanse of WoT from the rural to the urban, and, wherever they exist, they form the virtual lifeline for the members drawing upon its network. To reiterate an earlier point, in the process of conceptualizing the space designated WoT and of its associated concept of shared environment, we make no claim regarding its economic status (it could be rich or poor, exploitative or non-exploitative), its cultural ethos (it could be fundamentalist in some axis or more than liberal in others), its political institutions (it could be closed or open-ended with regard to rules of authority), and its relation with nature (it could be friendly or non-friendly towards its surrounding environment). One of the objectives of the hegemonic is to disarm any possibility of a challenge to its nodal signifiers and the capitalocentric-orientalist metaphysics that underpins them. It is in this context that the third nodal signifier of the hegemonic pertaining to the WoT—hegemonic needs—is invoked, where the process of hegemonization is covered up by the production of an alternative chain of substitute signifiers that displaces the manner in which the WoT views itself, such that they become hegemonized as third world subjects. We have shown that along with the non-capitalist forms ranging from independent, feudal, communitic, slave, communist, the space of WoT may contain capitalist class sets (expanded and simple reproduction type) as well. The distinction between the circuits of global capital and WoT is hence not at all a distinction between ‘surplus-centered economy’ and ‘need-centered economy’. Questions of surplus and need are alive both within the circuits of global capital and outside in the WoT. The distinction between global capital and WoT can only be understood in terms of capitalist and non-capitalist class sets, in terms of those class sets that are hooked to the circuits of global capital through the local–global market

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

219

and those that are not, as also in terms of hegemonic need and radical need (see Chapter 3), but definitely not exclusively in terms of surplus and need. Surplus and need—both require further disaggregation—in terms of space, perspective and subject position. While Chapters 2 and 3 had decentred and disaggregated our understanding of surplus and need, this chapter engenders a multiplicity in the register of hegemonic need. To analytically drive home our point, hegemonic need is split further into social need—which is the perspective of need that is operationally closer to the circuits of global capital but not within (for example, risk management in cases of purging out of the circuits of global capital through job loss)—and survival need—which is the perspective of need that is operational at a site distant from the circuits of global capital. Social and survival need perspectives could be operational in both Need I and Need II space. Hand holding by the hegemonic (through a complex combination of structural and microlevel interventions) is not just a matter of a top-down structural project of uplifting of WoT but to incentivize the subjects themselves, as if of their own free will, to conduct themselves in such a manner so as to extend themselves to the offered hand of help, to embrace the hegemonic needs (even if it involves the destruction of their shared environment or their modes of being), to lift themselves from what they would acknowledge as their existential decrepitude. Multifaceted forms of structural and subjectivity objectives hegemonize the WoT through largely the developmentalist discourse of what we have designated in Chapter 4 as the realvictim . The rest of this chapter and part of the next chapter will focus on the relationship between the hegemonic and the realvictim .

From World of the Third to Third World WoT has always been described by capitalocentric-orientalist discourses as containing inefficient practices and activities; as nurturing excess labour, labour that is presumed to be unproductive, and hence a burden on society; WoT is the figure of lack. For us, however, WoT emerges as a world of differance; as the language of differance; a differance the hegemonic must discipline, manage, and control, even punish at times; but never acknowledge. The world of differance that WoT is can never be hosted by the circuits of global capital. It is, as if, the difference of language is real (see Chapter 3), and such a real threatens the hegemonic; hence the real must be foreclosed (or in other words, the foreclosed is

220

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

the real). In this context, one can well appreciate that the differences celebrated in the discourse of the hegemonic—differences pertaining to hybridity, to multiculturalism, as also to the diasporic, are differences that are constitutive of the circuits of global capital; these are differences that do not put into question the hegemonic; the hegemonic lives at ease with such differences. On the other hand, the real difference, or the difference of the real (here WoT) can never be included within the circuits of global capital; it must be foreclosed. What follows is a politically salient foreclosure (and not just a clinically salient one); WoT emerges as the contingent outside of the circuits of global capital—an outside whose displaced form (qua third world) is to be managed by the World Bank, state, supportive NGOs, and other organs of the hegemonic through the discourse of third worldism. All that remains to be known about WoT is what the hegemonic produces through its displaced representation in terms of its own development imagination. While WoT is spatially everywhere, the repudiation of fundamental signifiers pertaining to WoT means that it becomes in effect absent in language. What is thus remarkable about the foreclosure of WoT is that the space of WoT is talked about, interrogated, but it is through this incitement to discourse, through this paradoxical foregrounding, that the moment of foreclosure takes shape; world of the third is not talked about as WoT but as third world—third world as realvictim . The production of marginalized sites—rural, agriculture, informal sector, etc., and of marginalized figures—poor women, girl child, racially oppressed, Adivasis, Dalits, displaced, and so on—produce a distinct chain of signification that dislocates the received chain of signification within WoT. Repudiation of the latter via its displacement by the former engenders the foreclosure of WoT. In being reduced to the marginalized, the perspectives, practices, and forms of life of WoT thus get rewritten in terms of the hegemonic logic of development that begets and defends global capitalism. Here the point is not to annihilate WoT, neither subdue it to coercive submission, but through the repudiation of its fundamental signifiers, secure the sanctity and rule of the hegemonic.

Foregrounding of the Marginalized In many regions poverty and inequality are often biased against ethnic minorities or women, or disfavored geographical areas. Marginalized from

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

221

public discussion and excluded from the broader economy and society, such groups are fertile ground for violence and instability, as many parts of the world are increasingly learning. (World Development Report 1997: 4)

The striking feature of this quote, which is typical of the World Bank and other such institutions, is the invocation of the perspective of marginalization. The discourse is not tuned to a turning away or a putting aside of the marginalized; rather, its very invocation inaugurates a process of foreclosure of WoT. In fact, the World Bank functions through the very production of the ‘marginalized’, as figures of third world victimhood. One needs to distinguish the foreclosed (WoT) from the marginalized (third world). One needs to distinguish the constitutive outside of the hegemonic from the constitutive inside of the hegemonic (see Chapter 4). One needs to distinguish the real from the realvictim . Every intervention in the name of a civilization requires an initial contempt for the situation as a whole, including its victims. And this is why the reign of ’ethics’ coincides, after decades of courageous critiques of colonialism and imperialism, with today’s sordid self-satisfaction in the ’West’, with the insistent argument according to which the misery of the Third World is the result of its own incompetence, its own inanity – in short, of its sub-humanity. (Badiou 2001: 13)

We further ask whether the World Bank is talking about marginalization in general. No. The reference is towards those who are marginalized by virtue of belonging to groups or geographical areas considered as excluded from the normalized modernist version of the economy, i.e., being outside the circuits of global capital. What is WoT; how does it function or what holds it together; or how do we distinguish this society from the society surrounding the circuits of global capital; these are not questions which fundamentally bother the hegemonic. It is not even concerned with the complicity and at times the explicit role of capitalism and modernity in fostering the fertile ground of ‘violence and instability’ to which it wants to draw attention. It does not want to accept that the contact of WoT with West/North has often turned into a historical tragedy when “modern abuse [was grafted] onto ancient injustice, hateful racism onto old inequality” (Césaire 2010: 45). World Bank’s (and such modernist institutions’) objective of invoking marginalization is not to situate the question of freedom of the marginalized

222

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

WoT from the vicious, circular trap of “rootless universalism” (championed by “growth and poverty alleviation” models) which it champions and from the “clinging particularism”/localism (championed largely by some strands of the postdevelopmentalist and postcolonial school; or even by nationalist discourses) which it opposes (Bhattacharya 1954). When invoking marginalization as a component of the sphere of realvictim , it seeks instead the hegemonization of WoT; its hallowed objective of achieving equality in WoT has a certain hollowness to it. In a rather curious way, the frontal organizations of the hegemonic such as the World Bank are, as if, Foucauldian in their philosophy, as if their invocation of marginalization is a turn to Foucault. But paradoxically the Foucauldian invocation of marginalization was to critique the One—for example, Western Reason, Capital, State, Family, Party, as also micro-processes of Christianization-in-depth and Normalization—that marginalizes; it was a critique of the Normative World (Escobar 1995; Chakrabarti et al. 2015: 73–85). The World Bank on the other hand, invokes marginalization without a critique of the One who marginalizes. It invokes marginalization without a critique of normalization. It invokes poverty without a critique of capitalist development that causes poverty through dislocation-displacement (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009). In fact, it makes the structural backwardness of the third world responsible for poverty in the third world; a clever move, that invokes the marginalization of the displaced without questioning or challenging the cause of the displacement—Development (more on this in the next Chapter). Foucault’s work is a critique of normalization procedures, whether of the economic, or of sexuality, or of grammar-language. He, in fact, would be critical of what has emerged as centralized as against the marginalized; he would look at the historical production of such centrality or perhaps, centrism; he would show how such centrism, of say Reason, Heterosexuality, Development, Western-Whiteness, Humanness would marginalize the ‘mad’, the ‘homosexual’, the ‘South’, the ‘oriental’, the ‘brownblack’, the ‘animal-insect’. Yet, in the World Bank genealogy of the poor, discourses on the marginalized and its ‘required’ needs within the socalled third world abound and continue to procreate at will. You ask for one and the hegemonic will give you a handful. To see what even the Foucauldian turn cannot give us, we must extend the purview of our analysis from marginalization to foreclosure. To start with, the relation between foreclosure and marginalization underscores the importance of the question of the subject once again. Foucault

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

223

would say, “we should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects” (1980: 97). Modernism is in a way the organization of knowledge turned towards the subject, say the homosexual as subject/Identity; the subject as an object of analysis. Power thus functions through knowledge to make individuals not simply functions of power, but as carriers of power, as both the effect and vehicle of power so much so “power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourse, learning processes and everyday lives” (1980: 39). To quote Foucault again, they “are not only its inert or consenting target; they are always also the element of its articulation” (1980: 98). Thus, the objects of knowledge are always already the subjects of knowledge. This process of the production of subjects includes all forms of societal norms, cultural values, law, and consciousness. That is, the Moebius of knowledge-power produces the ‘normal’ and its conditions, excluding the rest as abnormal/marginalized. Individuals or groups are not born marginalized but rather become one through technologies of the self and ‘games of truth’. Third world discourse such as that propounded by the World Bank expands itself through the production of marginalization, as also the invocation of resistance that it bends to suit its purpose, inviting subject’s resistance against its own backward structure or networks of exploitation-oppression in lived WoT space; the current incitement to discourse on empowerment of rural subaltern women is a trope to turn them against their own societies/communities and in the process insulate capital-state-developmentalism from critique and resistance. This marginalized yet resisting subject is the subject who is celebrated and made into both the effect and vehicle of power. What is then produced by the hegemonic is an alternative support system within WoT, which gives the subjects the option to turn World Bank’s provided technique to use its knowledge into the ground for their ‘self-empowerment’ and ‘liberation’, as to partner the hegemonic in challenging their extant shared environment within WoT. This World Bank inspired strategy of production of modernist subjects in WoT can be taken as a rough model followed by most nation-states bent on modernizing the WoT. What goes missing in all of this, however, is the moment of foreclosure as also the language of the foreclosed (or perhaps the foreclosed [of] language). Through the repudiation of fundamental signifiers and the foregrounding of the delusional veil of realvictim –realevil –realDarkContinent

224

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

instead, a radically different relation is set up between the signifier and the subject, a relation that sustains global capitalist hegemony. This is not to stress on the reduction of WoT to the old problem of consciousness—marginalized state as representing false consciousness, but assuming it to have the repository of true or actual consciousness; and progressive WoT politics as constituting a voyage from the former to the latter. Some postdevelopmentalist positions could be shown to be tantalizingly close to such a position. We would, however, like to mark our steps with care. First, we are emphasizing that both the dimensions of marginality and foreclosure constitute WoT and its subjects. This brings in an element of dissonance in WoT subjects stemming, as it is, from its constitution flowing from two platforms; in terms of what the hegemonic does to it and also in terms of what constitutes it from within. Further, this element of dissonance has one important historical association—colonial modernity. The subject as a complex knot of the imperial/global discourse and the local discourse, speaking in two voices, continues to procreate in the post-globalization era. Our analysis through an attention to the foreclosed WoT helps us to see this dissonance that is at the kernel of the subject’s experience—subject in both senses—subjectification/subjectivation and subjection. Finally, we do not attach any ethical value to WoT as already described; we do not attribute any ‘spontaneous consciousness’ to the subject in question. Many third world thinkers have long brooded over the issue of marginalization. In terms of our analysis, they often end up dealing with the third world and third world subject, discovering and rediscovering their marginality (in some form), and thus in the end remain locked in the realm of the realvictim . They remain locked into what we call the ‘discourse of survival’—trying to make life as humane as possible for the marginalized. The discourse of survival paradoxically secures the hegemony of the circuits of global capital. This revelation, however, does not mean giving up on the marginalized as a category even if the category is suffused with hegemonic intervention. Instead, we emphasize the point that any counter-hegemonic discourse must discuss the marginalized, but in relation to the foreclosed WoT. Finally, through the invocation of the category marginalized versus the foreclosed, as also third world versus WoT, we have been hinting at an attention to language, language as not just representing reality, but rather the subject; language as not just setting up a relation between

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

225

the word (word-presentation) and the world (thing-presentation), but as setting up a relation between and among subjects; we are hinting therefore at an attention to the “relation between the signifier and the subject”, to the “most radical determinant’s of [wo]man’s relation to the signifier”, to the “essentially linguistic structure” that underlies every possible form of the question of the subject (Lacan 2006: 449; Borch-Jacobsen 1992: 85). Thus, the invocation of the fundamental relation between marginalization and WoT subject colonizes the world, the language of WoT subject. To question our continuing colonialism, to rethink the counter-hegemonic, the subject needs to set up another relation—a relation where the subject is related not to the third wordlist language of marginalization but perhaps, to the language of shared environment and class, class and need, Need I and Need II (with all its contradictions that we have discussed), and from there proceed to an ethico-political standpoint that questions not just the hegemonic but also the modes of exploitation-oppression and hegemonic need within WoT. Through an incitement to discourse with respect to the category of marginalized, we are also hinting at what such an incitement puts outside. We are hinting at undisclosed language, at language that is neither known nor unknown, at language that has been dimmed over, that has been occluded, buried; we are hinting at covered-up language (Lacan 2006: 449). We are hinting at the language of that which was hitherto unspoken (Moitra 1984). We are hinting at repudiation, “repudiation of a fundamental signifier”. In a word, we are looking for an imagination of development that is attuned to effects such as foreclosure, repression, negation, and disavowal.

World Bank in World of the Third Escobar (1995) elaborated on the discourse of development and the construction of the third world. He showed how the World Bank appropriates at will, large areas and groups/communities in the Global South into its ‘scopic regime’. The category ‘marginalization’ (and the objectification of the marginalized) serves the purpose of not only appropriation and disciplining of such areas and groups/communities but also a largescale transformation of the extant “condition under which they live into a productive, normalized social environment” (Escobar 1995: 156)—where the terms of human productivity and the micro-normalization of life are defined by the World Bank. Building on Chapter 3, one can argue that

226

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

the World Bank’s span of operations extends from the sphere of Need I to Need II so as to implant the language and praxis of hegemonic needs within WoT. The World Bank has played a significant role as a self-proclaimed knowledge-institution for the developing nation-states and private institutions, to nudge and convince them to follow and fine-tune their development strategies of uplifting of third world through a discourse of poverty. The dissemination of concepts (targeting, cost–benefit, risk management, social protection, inclusion, community, social capital), operational manuals, models, practices, and slogans (‘shared prosperity’ being the latest) by this knowledge bank that serves as a guidebook for action is, from a Marxian perspective, an integral component of the hegemonic apparatus that aims to command, coerce, and normalize WoT in terms of the sibling signifiers of third worldism—especially the register of the realvictim . Is World Bank really a spoke in the hegemonic? It is commonplace knowledge that the post-Washington Consensus was structured by a neoliberal template that reorganised the circuits of global capital—a competitive market regime based on private decision-making, rule-based fiscal policy, inflation targeting monetary policy, open market free trade and competitive policy, changing legal structures favourable to private property and privatization.2 This neoliberal package, discounting for the moment the country wide variance, has since come to be known as ‘economic reform’. In setting down its principle and role, the World Bank strongly affirms the centrality of the neoliberal reform. The current development strategy of the World Bank is two pronged, designed to put in place growth-enhancing, market-oriented policies (stable macroeconomic environment, effective law and order, trade liberalization, and so on) and ensure the provision of important public services that cannot be well and equitably supplied by private markets (infrastructure services and education, for instance). (World Bank 2000: 89)

While the self-proclaimed pro-poor image of the World Bank may seem to be a far cry from the neoliberal template of global capitalism, this apparently paradoxical position of the World Bank (a position which 2 See Chakrabarti et al. (2015, Chapters IV and VI).

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

227

helps it acquire legitimacy so as to function within WoT) is vital for the hegemonic to materialize. Its menu of policies and interventions may seem to be apparently outside the realm of the circuits of global capital, and yet reinforces its expansion in no uncertain terms. After all, for global capitalist hegemony to be successful, the hegemonic must work in the seemingly contradictory sites of growth and need/poverty, structural adjustment program and poverty eradication in order to traverse the circuits of global capital and WoT. Long before critics were spilling ink over whether growth trickles down or not, the hegemonic had already internalized this contradiction in its strategy. For example, the World Bank recognized that its approach must be “market-oriented policies to support growth, together with well-targeted social programs” that addresses what it calls “human development and poverty alleviation” (World Bank 1991: 36). But it also recognizes that this seemingly dispersed set of discursive practices cannot be operationalized in isolation; it needs a global architecture to operate. All concerned international institutions—the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the ILO, etc.—are supposed to intersect, complement, and reinforce one another to construct and operationalize such a global architecture (which of course is in movement as the world moves) that upholds the unquestioned centrality of global capital and the market-driven growth process enabled by its expansion. … we know that nations are dependent on one another. We know that nations are no longer the sole masters of their destinies. We need global rules and global behavior. We need a new international development architecture to parallel the new global financial architecture. (World Bank 2000: 17) …our partnership must be inclusive—involving bilaterals and multilaterals, the United Nations, the European Union, regional organizations, the World Trade Organization, labor organizations, the NGOs, foundations, and the private sector. With each of us playing to our respective strengths, we can leverage up the entire development effort. (World Bank 2000: 13)

A clear illustration of the manner in which this architecture works can be viewed by looking at the perceived relation between the World Bank and the IMF:

228

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

World Bank and IMF staff will work to give each government their views on the core impediments to poverty reduction and growth within the country, and on the policy options for overcoming these obstacles… It is crucial that each institution, as part of this joint support, focus on its traditional areas of expertise. Accordingly, World Bank will take the lead in devising on the design of poverty reduction strategies, including the necessary diagnostic work such as poverty assessments, the design of sectoral strategies, institutional reform and safety nets. The IMF will advise governments in areas of its traditional mandate, including promoting prudent macroeconomic, exchange rate, and tax policies. In areas where the World Bank and the IMF both have expertise – such as fiscal management, budget execution, budget transparency, and tax and customs administration - we will co-ordinate closely. Closer co-ordination between the World Bank and the IMF will not only help provide more useful assistance in the short run, but also clarify the relationship between the macroeconomic framework, growth, and poverty reduction over the medium and long run. (World Bank 2000, 2000/2001: 37–38)

The development initiative of the World Bank therefore must be seen as part of a concerted effort to create an intricate network of global and local agencies in the Southern countries; however, the fear of instability and violence stemming from what the excised philosophy of WoT entails, and what it can do, stalks the hegemonic. This fear is also important when one realizes that the World Bank, working at the border of global capital and WoT, knows fully well that the functions of global capital can and do spawn further transitions in WoT that may not be fully welcome within WoT, and even among segments within the circuits of global capital. Such problems could also arise as a result of policies taken by its fraternal agencies, such as the IMF which is explicitly committed to the cause of privately driven expansion of the circuits of global capital through market, trade and policy reforms to be adopted by the state. The World Bank, as an institutionalized broker between global capital and WoT appears as the most crucial actor in the process of hegemonization. There are at least two direct ways in which the World Bank has intervened in facilitating the creation and expansion of the circuits of global capital. One, it generates consent by operationalizing the delusional veil of compensation, resettlement, and safety nets to mask the coercive process pertaining to M-C-P–C/ -M/ and its accumulation process—both

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

229

capital accumulation and original accumulation. The other clear connection to the circuits of global capital comes in the form of the standard IMF policy prescriptions, the so-called Structural Adjustment Program (SAP); SAP is part of the overall process of neoliberal reform, which the World Bank and the development agencies as a whole flag as sound macroeconomic management. Against the conditionality of market-driven reform and privatization, some countries have voluntarily adopted SAPs, some countries have been forced to do so either by circumstances of economic meltdowns (signalling a crisis in the hub of capitalism itself) and/or arm-twisting; countries prone to debt, foreign exchange or hyperinflationary problems, are particularly susceptible to such breakdown. Whatever the variations, the hegemonic accepts that the social cost of transition involved in SAP or some such reforms cannot be ignored. The Fund approach to adjustment has had severe economic costs for many of these countries in terms of declines in the levels of output and growth rates, reductions in employment and adverse effects on income distribution. A typical program prescribes measures that require excessive compression of domestic demand, cuts in real wages, and reductions in government expenditures; these are frequently accompanied by sharp exchange rate depreciation and import liberalization measures, without due regard to their potentially disruptive effects on the domestic economy. (G-24, 1987: 9 as cited in Killick 1995: 12). Market reforms can indeed boost growth and help poor people, but they can also be a source of dislocation. (World Bank 2001: 32)

SAP as part of the process of ‘reform’ could produce new social conditions or change existing ones that may throw a large section of the population outside the circuits of global capital and into the heart of WoT.3 It may also induce policies that may turn existing WoT forms of life upside down. From the perspective of the hegemonic, while essential, SAP can be dangerous for it. In this context, the World Bank created the Social Funds (SF) program that emerged in the 1980s as an instrument of its social protection strategy to temper and mitigate the social costs of IMF imposed SAP (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2013); it has since been applied for SAP eligible 3 The mass migration of labourers back to the rural from Indian cities during the COVID-19 lockdown has done something similar (see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2020).

230

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

countries who are facing economic crisis (from post-Soviet systemic collapse as in Eastern Europe, or from economic crises emanating from debt, hyperinflation, or balance of payment). SF was conceived as a mitigating force, transpiring chiefly in the form of public works (principally infrastructural projects), social services (health, education, etc.), and compensation for layoffs following privatisation (TendlerSerrano 1999, 2000). A closer look at the class nature of the flow of funds for SF betrays the World Bank’s secret politics of working on behalf of the hegemonic. Various projects concerning hegemonic social needs are sponsored by nation-states, private trusts, charity, and religious organisations, corporations, regional blocs (e.g., the European Union) and other known global agencies such as the World Bank and DFID. Generally, it is the international conduit of social surplus that funds the global agenda of the World Bank. The sources of financial resources of SF are the following: International Development Association (IDA) credits, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Arab Fund, the European Union, Japan, the US Agency for International Development, the Netherlands, French Development Agency, global corporations, government of the host country, donations from private and public sponsors, etc. (see Garnier and Imschoot 2003: 29– 32). Class-focused analysis shows how a flow of global surplus for SF derived from appropriated surplus value (principally of the richest countries, as the donor list shows), which after deductions for subsumed class payments (to meet all non-class conditions of existence) and social surplus expenses for other need purposes (see Chapter 3), gets deposited with the donors (state agencies, international agencies, regional blocs, corporations, etc.), who then forward it to the World Bank (or similar such institutions) for the agreed-upon project. At times, international agencies such as the World Bank may borrow from global financial institutions for the purpose of lending for projects (signifying further flow of global financial capital), though this route is not popular in the case of SF. Instead, as an investment bank, intermediating between investors and recipients, a large sum of the World Bank loans on account of social protection, including SF, come from grants from its rich member countries and the other above-mentioned sources; for example, large sums of funds are typically routed through The International Development Association to poor countries at zero or low interest rates. Due to the financial reliance of social surplus on global capital, it is hardly surprising that the philosophy of SF and its programmes, rather than being inimical to global

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

231

capital, should be in sync with it. At the least, it would be farfetched to imagine that international agencies such as the World Bank would initiate programmes that undercut the image and function of the global capitalist enterprises on which it (and other donors in the integrated global conduit of finance) depends for its existence. This connection of global capital in poverty management via the World Bank in general, and SF in particular, should dispel any doubt about the possibility of reconciling the contradiction between economic growth (propelled by the expansive logic of global capital) and poverty management (secured to a large extent from the distributions of global capital as social surplus) in so far as the World Bank’s two-pronged strategy of development is concerned. Attempts to reign in the dislocated are fraught with possibilities of even more dislocation following the expansion of the circuits of global capital. “To discuss ‘needs’ today requires acknowledging that more than ever they are created through dispossession, in the classical tradition of the enclosure of the commons that marked the beginning of capitalism. The commoners, dispossessed of their means of subsistence, became people in need of jobs, shelter, food, everything” (Esteva and Escobar 2019: 28). The development process of uplifting of third world in the name of poverty eradication contains the seeds of creating new poverty, a contradiction that the World Bank then attempts to govern through its apparatuses and networks, by forwarding an ever-accumulating spectrum of needs as the needs of these societies, i.e., as hegemonic needs. If the hegemonic cannot stop the materialization of WoT, it must therefore confront WoT—in a totally different platform, so as to incorporate it in its rule. Development discourse must therefore undergo a change from its one-sided emphasis on capitalocentricism to poverty management and need fulfilment. Ironically, doing so does not question capitalocentrism, but rather helps to secure it. …our experience has shown the need for a new, integrated conceptual framework that builds on previous knowledge but better reflects the world situation at the beginning of the 21st century—a situation where risks and opportunities are on the rise, here it is recognized that neither the state nor the market alone will provide the best solution, and where the plight of more than 1 billion poor people poses the question of how to manage risk better, not merely providing handouts after a shock has occurred. For the World Bank, this implies an even stronger need to incorporate social protection subsectors within an overall framework. It also indicates the

232

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

urgency of integrating social protection with other sectors and themes at the World Bank. (World Bank 2001: 7) Growth does not trickle down; development must address human needs directly. (World Bank 2000: 57)

As explicated in Chapter 3, the need-focused space is not given, but is a contested terrain beset with social struggles. In this context, we have been arguing that the World Bank-sponsored needs discourse is appealing to a set of needs it deems appropriate from its objective. Other agencies such as the ILO or rights organizations have defined quite other kinds of needs. Such seemingly varied needs compensate, reinforce, and complement one another. The chain of such needs is so invoked that they do not in any way unsettle the surreptitious operations of the circuits of global capital. A host of substitute signifiers—social capital, community, voices of the poor, shared prosperity, etc.—are invoked that help to anchor the defined set of needs. As such, this chain of needs can be called ‘hegemonic need’ since it further anchors the process in terms of which the hegemonic projects WoT as the third world. In this sense, hegemonic need is a nodal signifier. Social surplus gets parcelled out for different kinds of defined needs. Of particular importance in this regard is the struggle over poverty-related needs. But what makes it possible for the World Bank discourse of poverty to emerge as the dominant discourse and descriptor of poverty? What must be foreclosed, what must be crypted for the World Bank’s poverty need to emerge as hegemonic need as against other more radical versions of need? Further, what kind of delusional veil—the developmentalism of realvictim and realutopian , for example, covers foreclosure? How does such a delusional veil complement the secret operations of the nodal signifier: hegemonic need? Poverty need has been defined in numerous ways—mass structural poverty by the World Bank, material poverty in the postdevelopmentalist discourse, poverty as capability deprivation in the capabilities approach, and poverty in Marxian approach (Chakrabarti 2008; Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009; Chakrabarti 2022). Such approaches profess different understandings of poverty as also of the subject of poverty: the ‘poor’ and these tend to highlight distinct effects. However, it is the World Bank’s theory of poverty which comes to occupy centre stage as really the need of the poor. What makes this possible? Among many reasons, two are worth mentioning. First, the World Bank in alliance with the nation-states

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

233

that sponsor similar capitalocentric-orientalist paradigms of development, controls an enormous flows of social surplus destined for those segmented as the poor. It is not that the other approaches to view poverty are not operational; indeed, the distinctly different effects pointed out by other theories of poverty are also impacting upon the concrete process of the production of poverty. For example, whether the mode of appropriation is exploitative or not, or whether social surplus is available for distribution for poverty eradication as against, say, investment in social infrastructure, matters for poverty. However, this does not tell us as yet how the World Bank’s discourse on poverty has come to acquire such prominence; why is it that its take on poverty and its adopted poverty eradication program have come to be considered as valid, such that other discourses of poverty highlighting other social causes-effects pertinent to the production/eradication of poverty, have remained non-consequential, and have been consequently purloined? This takes us to the second reason of the dominance of the World Bank’s discourse of poverty. It concerns the extraordinary command of the global architecture that enables developmentalist institutions like the World Bank to enter, organize, and channelize the terms of discussing and assessing poverty, that makes its notion of poor and its proposed needs to be the only way to define and discuss poverty. This it does by building a common purpose with the corporations, academia, research institutes, think tanks, NGOs, and even governments—a vast ensemble of institutional apparatuses—that enable the creation of a rainbow of ideas, facts, and figures (in short, knowledge) tuned to the World Bank notion of the poor. This helps subsume, displace, and why not, in cases such as the class focused theory of poverty, purloin altogether the other notions of poverty-related need. This need struggle over the terms of discussing poverty and fixing its meaning is an indispensable cultural condition for World Bank’s poverty need to emerge as hegemonic need. To illustrate the World Bank’s development discourse of poverty as a process of hegemonization of WoT, we take recourse to its concept of Social Protection (we have already seen Social Fund as one of its instruments). Given prominence since the 1980s and finally institutionalized in the form of a sector group in 1996, Social Protection is defined as “public interventions that assist individuals, households, and communities to manage risk better and that provide support to the critically poor” (World Bank 2001: 9). Social protection intersects, compensates, and reinforces policies concerning social risk management and income

234

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

distribution in order to be linked to the broader discourse of poverty centring on survival need, so as to transform WoT through market and productivity-driven income activities. Along with its policy of intervention following SAP, the World Bank has now made social protection its nodal program that empowers it to move in and out at will, imperiously picking on territories and targets. To drive home our point, we make a distinction for convenience between social needs and survival needs . Much of the social programs emphasized in the 1980s and 1990s, such as those related to social needs of education and health care were considered to have a positive externality on growth and have potentially a positive impact on the vitality and expansion of the circuits of global capital; other such SF and compensation programs were supposed to mitigate the fallouts of structural shifts. In contrast, survival needs refer to the set of needs that have no immediate or necessary impact on growth, being exclusively addressed to a space of WoT without possibility of connection with or into the circuits of global capital. Our focus in discussing social protection is on survival needs. World Bank traces such survival need in the archetypal marginalized WoT space, consisting of those social segments perceived to be backward institutions and cultures with so-called extreme forms of poverty and deprivation. Where production and class processes are driven neither by market-oriented profit consideration nor by accumulation motive but rather by fulfilment of basic needs. From the Marxian perspective, this invocation of survival needs can be partly seen as what we, following Chapter 3, refer to as the hegemonic reconstitution of Need II space, a space in which where surplus related activities may be absent or minimal (Fig. 8.1). While the register of social protection may somewhat compliment the zones of social risk management and income distribution, it has to be treated as conceptually distinct. On the shaded area, the World Bank avers: Advocates of policies to combat social exclusion argue that modern social protection should not be limited to traditional forms of income support but should include measures to promote social cohesion, solidarity, and inclusion. On the one hand, an income support system for the unemployed may not only enhance individual welfare by reducing vulnerability but also help to achieve social stability. On the other hand, social protection

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

235

Fig. 8.1 Social protection sector 2001 (Source Social Protection Sector Strategy: From Safety Net to Springboard, The World Bank: 10)

may extend well beyond mere financial and income-oriented considerations. This broader approach would include investments to support informal arrangements and upgrade the non-profit sector, strengthen the “social rights” aspects of social policy, and extend the view of social risk management to include the broader concept of “social capital” … Promoting social inclusion is an important objective of the World Bank. While the social, cultural, and political determinants of social inclusion may be beyond the scope of social risk management, it is essential to recognize the causes and consequences of social exclusion and to design strategies that address these issues. (World Bank 2001: 11)

The above is an acknowledgement of the remainder that cannot be included into the circuits of global capital, effectively announcing the presence of a border. However, at the same time, the need to support and upgrade the non-profit sector, and its associated informal arrangements (including the non-capitalist class processes) characterises the attempt to intervene and control the excluded. This is an acknowledgement of a space that cannot be accounted for in terms of global capital’s internal principles but which nevertheless must not be left on its own; it must be included (see Dhar 2021 [2015] for the fundamental philosophicopolitical doubt that haunts this book: what if, world of the third is always already included—included in terms of third worldism—included as realvictim ). Social protection-led discourses on survival need function

236

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

through an array of substitute signifiers—social capital, community, and so on. Previously, the logic of survival need and the logic of growth were considered inimical to each other; the former was considered a remnant of an archaic age that needed to be battered down by the march of capitalist growth. Since the late 1960s onwards, it was gradually felt that this teleological reasoning was deeply problematic, as the population in their multiple personifications of non-capitalist FCPs that could not be accommodated/included within the so-called modern capitalist economy refused to disappear. Figure 8.1 is the World Bank’s reminder to itself of the impossibility of including everything in the circuits of global capital and that the vast remainder qua WoT persists with extraordinary resilience in the social terrain; yet, it also signals the World Bank’s need to include WoT in terms of fundamentally displaced third worldist apparitions. It is also the case that the rapid expansion with unprecedented speed and scope of the circuits of global capital (with its capital accumulation and job substituting mechanization process) and the local–global market (with all its unevenness and turbulence), through dislocations and reconfigurations, changed the process of formation of WoT, both in the rural and urban areas. As in earlier decades, WoT in contemporary times too can no longer be left alone. Questioning the hegemonic from this axis, that is, WoT, would amount to questioning the very logic of the hegemonic, or more specifically, the circuits of global capital and more dangerously perhaps the nodal signifiers. This underwrites an anxiety over the reaction of the people occupying WoT space and their possible transformation into a fundamental resistance against the hegemonic. In this regard, we bring two important aspects of the World Bank discourse to attention. The first is the need to include the inappropriate(d) Other as the appropriate(d) Other, i.e., include WoT (the Other of capital) as third world (the underdeveloped pre-capitalist other of capital). The second aspect demanding attention is the need for control, stability, and social harmony in the process of including the excluded. To see development simply as need management, or as motoring the logic of market, is to miss the story of how global capitalist hegemony (over WoT) works. Need-based discourse of development works in both areas—within the circuits of global capital with the intention of suitably reconfiguring its growth (especially at the margin of the circuits of global capital, say through delivery of education and health needs), and outside the circuits of global capital, by controlling life forms therein in order to subdue their

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

237

subversive potential and maintain social harmony. One way it does so is to appropriate the language of WoT in line with its policy target of survival needs. However, it is also the case that fear stalks the civil shield of the hegemonic and its self-professed goal of peace and order; from time to time, they are reminded that this fear is not unfounded. That is why along with the poverty-focused discourse of need, the delusional veil of hegemonic need needs to be backed up by a sovereign moment. This sovereign moment is not that taking place with respect to the circuits of global capital, but is related to the “wholly Other” of the circuits of global capital. All these together are strategies of encircling and circumscribing the WoT to the hegemonic of global capital in this high-tech age. The method of doing so is time-tested and to which we draw attention now. Crucial in this method is the accounting of the Other as split into the ‘bad other’ (explosive, violent, unpredictable, etc.) as the realevil – realutopic and the ‘good other’ (emotional, passive, helpless, etc.) as the realvictim . One can indeed read some of the current geopolitical turmoil in terms of rethinking the mechanisms of dealing with the materializing WoT, of trying to protect the good hapless Other from the stifling grip and coercive violence of the bad Other. The right of the hegemonic to unleash sovereign violence over WoT is thus derived from a moral rationale of preventing harm on WoT by itself, and to help in its uplifting towards modernity and democracy; third world discourse encapsulates this latent civilizing mission as a basis of legitimizing sovereign intervention. The hegemonic thus places WoT in a stage of siege through three key moments: expansion of the circuits of global capital that directly impacts WoT, the discourse on need that attempts to displace WoT’s own social existence, and the sovereign moment encapsulated in the imperialmilitary machine that attempts to control and subjugate WoT in the name of protecting the good Other from the bad Other. Placed under siege, WoT people are forced to rethink their resistance strategies, as also their strategies of survival and reconstruction.

References Badiou, A. 2001. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward. London: Verso. Basole, A. 2015. Lokavidya Perspectives: A Philosophy of Political Imagination for the Knowledge Age. New Delhi: Aakar Books.

238

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Bhattacharya, K.C. 1954. Swaraj in Ideas. Visvabharati Quarterly 20 (2): 103– 114. Borch-Jacobsen, M. 1992. The Emotional Tie: Psychoanalysis, Mimesis, and Effect. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Cassano, G., ed. 2009. Class Struggle on the Home Front: Work, Conflict, and Exploitation in the Household. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Césaire, A. 2010. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Chakrabarti, A. 2022. Class and Social Needs: A Marxian Approach to Poverty. In Global Poverty: Rethinking Causality, ed. R.J. Das, P. Kumar, and D. Mishra. Bril: Studies in Critical Social Sciences. Chakrabarti, A., and S. Cullenberg. 2013. Transition and Development in India. New York: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A., S. Cullenberg, and A. Dhar. 2008. Rethinking Poverty: Class and Ethical Dimensions of Poverty Eradication. Rethinking Marxism 20 (4): 673–687. Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2009. Rethinking Dislocation and Development. London and New York: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2013. Social Funds, Poverty Management and Subjectification: Beyond the World Bank Approach. Cambridge Journal of Economics 37 (5): 1035–1055. Chakrabarti A., and A. Dhar. 2020. The Condition of Working Class in India. In A Rethinking Marxism Dossier: Pandemic and the Crisis of Capitalism, ed. V. Lyon-Callo, Y.M. Madra, C. Özselçuk, J. Randall, M. Safri, C. Sato, and B.W. Shear. Brighton, MA: ReMarx Books. Chakrabarti, A., A.K. Dhar, and B. Dasgupta. 2015. The Indian Economy in Transition: Globalization, Capitalism and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2022. ’Rethinking Postcapitalist Praxis. Marxism 21 19 (2). Dhar, A. 2018. Melancholy Philosophy: Polis-Praxis-Phronesis and the Slave’s Know-How. In Abandonment and Abjection: Melancholy in Philosophy and Art, ed. S.B. Das. New Delhi: Aakar Books. Dhar, A. 2021 [2015]. What If, One Is Always Already Included: Ambedkar and the Politics of Radical Exit. In State of Democracy in India: Essays on Life and Politics in Contemporary Times, ed. Manas Ray. New Delhi: Primus Books. Dhar, A., and A. Chakrabarti. 2019. Praxis in World of the Third Contexts: Beyond Third Worldism and Development Studies. In Postdevelopment in Practice, ed. E. Klein and C.E. Morreo. Oxford: Routledge. Dhar, A., and B. Dasgupta. 2013. When Our Lips Speak Genderlabor Together. In Development on Trial—Shrinking Space for the Periphery, ed. S. Sen and A. Chakrabarti. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan.

8

WORLD OF THE THIRD AS FORECLOSED: THIRD …

239

Escobar, A. 1995. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Esteva, G., & A. Escobar. 2019. Post-development@ 25: on ‘Being Stuck’ and Moving Forward, Sideways, Backward and Otherwise. In Postdevelopment in Practice: Alternatives, Economies, Ontologies, ed. E. Klein and C. E. Morreo. Oxford: Routledge. Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books. Fraad, H., S.A. Resnick, and R.D. Wolff. 1994. Bringing it All Back Home: Class, Gender, and Power in the Modern Household. London: Pluto Press. Garnier, P., and M. van Imschoot. 2003. Social Funds: Lessons for a New Future. Geneva: ILO. Killick, T. 1995. IMF Programmes in Developing Countries. London: Routledge. Lacan, J. 2006. Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink. New York and London: W. W. Norton. Lear, J. 2007. Working Through the End of Civilization. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88 (2): 291–308. Moitra, S. 1984. Silence: ‘The Unspeakable and the Unspoken’. In Communication, Identity and Self Expression: Essays in Memory of SN Ganguly, ed. S.P. Bannerjee and S. Moitra. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sen, S., and B. Dasgupta. 2009. Unfreedom and Waged Work: Labour in India’s Manufacturing Industry. New Delhi: Sage. Tendler, J., & Serrano, R. 1999. The Rise of Social Funds: What Are They a Model Of? Prepared for the MIT/UNDP Decentralization Project, Management Development and Governance Division. New York: United Nations Development Programme. Tendler, J., and R. Serrano. 2000. Why Are Social Funds So Popular?. In Local Dynamics in an Era of Globalization: 21st Century Catalysts for Development, Ed. S. Yusuf, W. Wu, and S. Evenett. New York: Oxford University Press. World Bank. 1991. World Bank Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Bank. 2000. Entering the 21st Century—World Bank Development Report 1999/2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Bank. 2000/2001. Attacking Poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Bank. 2001. Social Protection Sector Strategy: From Safety Net to Springboard. Washington, DC: The World Bank Group. World Development Report. 1997. The State in a Changing World: Overview. The World Bank, IDS Bulletin 29(2).

CHAPTER 9

World of the Third: Encounters with the Hegemonic

Introduction The class-focused economy of WoT and its associated forms of life may undergo fundamental transformations following the four encounters with the hegemonic: 1. the already explored internal dynamics within WoT, which may include, through the critical internalization of some of the principles of the circuits of global capital, an adoption of, adaptation to, and assimilation into such principles, 2. the violent impact of the classical form of original accumulation in which the existing WoT is literally destroyed and reconfigured into something else, 3. global capital’s intervention within WoT by changing the latter’s conditions of existence; in this non-classical form of original accumulation, unlike 2, no attempt is made to intentionally dismantle or displace WoT per se but the effect would nevertheless induce its dislocation, 4. the pro-poor intervention within WoT as elaborated in the last chapter through the role of NGOs therein.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_9

241

242

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

The materializing WoT is an outcome of numerous processes that emanate from these four broad encounters. Because we have touched on 1 and 4 earlier, our focus will be on 2 and 3 in this chapter. This is because we would not like to miss the process of violence, theft, and plunder— what is called original accumulation—that come down heavily over WoT, at times through the rationale of uplifting it (as realvictim ), and at other times when in resistance (as realevil ) by crushing it. In all of these four encounters, the facilitating role of state will be revealed. Finally, we briefly discuss the question of nature from a class-focused WoT perspective.

Encounter I: Adaptation and Adoption as Internal Change Within WoT By adoption, adaptation, and assimilation we refer to the process of internalizing certain aspects (i.e. parts) of things (of the whole) occurring elsewhere. WoT’s adoption of and adaptation from the circuits of global capital could take the form of technology transfer, learning by doing (via people working in the circuits of global capital migrating back to WoT), educational methods, and curriculum imbibing notions of calculations, ethics and justice, and even insights from its class organizational forms and managerial techniques. Such adaptations could have various kinds of effects on WoT economy and WoT livelihood; this could lead to an eventual integration of segments of WoT economy with the circuits of global capital. In the process of long-term adoption and adaptation (as also assimilation), WoT could become the appropriate(d) other of the hegemonic: third world. It could also be the inappropriate(d) Other. It could, on the contrary, emerge so strong that it is able to bypass the circuits of global capital, so as to fashion alternative means of engagement with the forces of globalization. For example, it is possible for WoT farmers to form an agricultural cooperative (akin to CC or AC type non-exploitative class enterprise) in order to then sell the product in the national or world market. Indeed, in this case, the agricultural cooperatives could be using modern techniques and contemporary organizational structures, and be accessing the global market, in order to subvert the grip of the extant circuits of global capital. Such kinds of transformation could also be discerned in the urban space, say, through the formation of industrial cooperatives or community/solidarity economies outside the circuits of global capital. The possibility of the postcapitalist ethico-political is in emerging as, or

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

243

becoming, the inappropriate(d) Other of the hegemonic. WoT stands at a crossroad. It could get subsumed into third worldism as the realvictim . It could also be the ground for a possible postcapitalist future and praxis. Moreover, such alternative possibilities would challenge the hegemonic organized around the nodal signifiers of private capitalist surplus value appropriation, local–global market, and hegemonic needs. But then, these three nodal signifiers would undermine the importance of non-capitalist class processes, especially the non-exploitative forms. Such non-capitalist organizational forms, that question the centrality of global capitalist enterprises, are rendered an impossibility through the foreclosure of “something primordial [here class] regarding the subject’s being”; such that class “does not enter into symbolization and is not repressed, but rejected…In the subject’s relationship with the symbolic there is [thus] the possibility of a primitive verwerfung , that is, that something is not symbolized and is going to appear in the real” (Lacan 1997: 73–88; also see Chapter 4); this is true for radical needs as against hegemonic needs as well. The moment of the invocation of the ‘political’ lies in turning the process of adaptation into one of questioning global capitalism; and such a questioning is premised on the return of the repudiated language of class.

Encounter II: Violence of Global Capital on WoT Violent encounter of WoT with global capital can take two forms. First, directly, resulting from the attempt by the hegemonic to literally expropriate or annihilate WoT. Second, indirectly, where the functioning of global capital produces moments of theft and plunder, where, by plunder we mean the process of ‘taking without any recognition of doing so.’ The second encounter transpires not by expropriating the whole of WoT, but one or a few conditions of existence therein so as to make reproduction of means of subsistence in WoT difficult if not impossible (see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, for the two forms of original accumulation: classical and non-classical). Here, intervention within WoT is rather a tangential effect of the workings of global capital supported by the state that nevertheless has a profound and lasting impact on WoT. Both of these, the direct and the indirect mechanism, create the scenario of a continuous creation of potential labour-power as a commodity, a condition of existence of the capitalist class process; whether that labour-power finds employment in the circuits of global capital is another matter.

244

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

These two phenomena are part of what Marx called ‘original accumulation’. Before getting further into the discussion on original accumulation it is important to acknowledge that the process of force and violence mentioned in original accumulation come to be recognized and thoroughly analysed in economics, sociology, and policy circles, but as a part of development-induced displacement (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, mark a distinction between displacement and dislocation). “The prevalence of certain concepts signifies not just a desire to communicate meanings but also to frame a problem in a particular manner” (Dwivedi 2002: 715). The concept of displacement contains its own repertoire of associated concepts, and together they generate through an incitement of discourse, the delusional veil to cover up the process of original accumulation. We briefly touch upon the role of displacement as delusional veil before proceeding to discuss in detail the two forms of original accumulation.

Displacement: The Delusional Veil Over Original Accumulation Beginning with a framework for ‘economics of compensation’ (from Kaldor-Hicks compensation principle to Little and Mirrlees’ social cost– benefit approach to Ravi Kanbur’s compensation plus safety net), the analysis of displacement has ended up with resettlement via the Improvement Risks and Reconstruction (IRR) socio-economic model of Michael Cernea and the World Bank (which, in accepting Cernea, criticized monetary compensation as inadequate to improve or maintain predisplacement levels of income and livelihood) (see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, Chapter 1, Chapters 3–5). This so-called reformist-managerial discourse of compensation and resettlement, separately or in conjunction, is based on an a priori assumption, namely that the development process propelled via the expanding circuits of global capital, or its condition providing investment to secure this expansion (through creation of roads and highways, industrial platforms, cities and townships, roads and highways, irrigation systems, etc.) will inevitably cause displacement of people in WoT by expropriating their lived space, which is justified and legitimized as part of the capitalocentric-orientalist project of developing the underdeveloped third world subjects. The reformist-managerial approach of compensation and resettlement emerges as an alternative chain of signifiers to legitimize displacement and its associated category ‘involuntary resettlement’ as part of, in a somewhat Social Darwinian sense, a natural

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

245

progression of human history that development entails. The force and violence over the lived space of WoT (the real victims of capitalist development) is hereby turned into an act of emancipation of the third world from its self-imposed decrepitude state (the realvictim ). The foregrounding of compensation and resettlement covers up and sanitizes the embodied force and violence by delinking the cause of expropriation of WoT—the original act of capitalist development—from its effect, and then turning the discourse towards the governance of effects; resultantly, the focus being now the expropriated body of population—to be shifted out and reallocated (if at all) in a relatively humane and efficient manner. The latest attention on “involuntary resettlement”, as aptly summarized by Dwivedi, “simply conveys that the movement of people in displacement is not voluntary. But what the concept achieves is perhaps nothing short of a political objective. It engulfs the act of displacement and all questions on it. Displacement is cast as an operation of physically relocating people” (2002: 715–716). What, therefore, this chain of signifiers surrounding displacement does is to disguise the original act/sin of capitalist development. In contrast to the emphasis on ‘involuntary resettlement’ or on ‘physically relocating people’ that the concept of displacement foregrounds, and with the intent to remove the veil from a depiction of bloodless capitalist development (told, according to Marx (1990: 873), as the bourgeois tale of “diligent, intelligent and above all the frugal elite”), we want the focus to shift back to the original act of development per se, the actual history of the notorious fact of conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, plunder—in short, the force and violence surrounding the appearance of capital and its accumulation. This is because the original act itself underscores the phenomenon of expropriating space so as to usher in the historical process of capitalism by subjugating the working people into wage enslavement, ushering it by providing the delusional cover of (capitalocentric-orientalist) development. Being precisely the concept that captures this act/point of dislocation in all its multi-faceted forms,

246

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Marx’s original accumulation1 encapsulates the violent act of expropriation of WoT space, of the separation of subjects from the conditions of existence of FCP (capitalist and non-capitalist) that secure their means of subsistence. The dual process of the destruction of WoT societies, and of the delinking of its people from their means of subsistence, creates the historical condition of commodification of labour-power; and indeed, the last few centuries have witnessed large-scale displacement and forced migration of large sections of humans—sometimes as peasants, sometimes as slave and bonded labourers, sometimes as planation workers, sometimes as informal workers, sometimes as causal workers and contractual workers in (global) cities, sometimes as seasonal agricultural labourers in faraway capitalist farmlands, sometimes as refugees, sometimes as vagrants and beggars, sometimes as underclass, and sometimes as evicted due to home foreclosure and gentrification, and so on; behind every such movement lies the imprint of original accumulation. As Marx noted, “If money, according to Augier, ‘comes into the world with a congenital bloodstain on one cheek’, capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt” (Marx 1990: 925–926). Behind every Wall Street and every Wolf of the Wall Street2 lies the history of the disintegration of WoT across the rural and urban spectrum as a result of original accumulation, involving a “loss of concepts”, a “loss of events”, a “loss of mental states”, and at least a “threatened loss of identity” (Lear 2007: 295–298); the delusional veil of capitalism (with all the highs and lows of booms and busts), and all the incitement to discourse around it covers up for the blood and dirt of ruined people and ruined societies.

1 Following the German text of Marx (where the term original was deployed) as against the translated English text (where original was translated as primitive), we have reconceptualized the birth of capitalism in terms of original accumulation and not primitive accumulation, all the more, because such a moment/process does not just refer to the distant pre-history or the eighteenth or nineteenth century past of capitalism, but also, the blood-soaked every day and the violent present of capitalism. In that sense, original accumulation is not simply a temporal concept. It also encapsulates a logical step, a somewhat necessary logic in the birth of capitalism. In terms of the difference between third world and WoT, the distinction between primitive accumulation and original accumulation matters (see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, 130–177 for details). 2 Who after all in the Wall streets of the world is not a Wolf?

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

247

Two Forms of Original Accumulation: Classical and Non-Classical The reformist-managerial school prescribes development-induced displacement without naming it as original accumulation. Critiques describe original accumulation often couched as primitive accumulation. However, Marx is a critique of original accumulation, because, for Marx, the point is ‘not to describe’, ‘never to prescribe’ but to have a world without original accumulation. Taking off from earlier work based on Marx’s Capital and the writings of Late Marx, we briefly summarize our understanding of original accumulation and then turn our focus for explanatory purposes to a few examples from India.3 Original accumulation is a historical process, as also a logical step, of creating one of the conditions needed to start capitalist production (M-C-P-C/ -M/ ) and capital accumulation (ΔC + ΔV); that condition being the formation of labour-power as a commodity—resulting from the expropriation of subjects from their extant means of subsistence. Unlike merchant and usury capital, labour-power as a commodity (like the generalized process of M-C-P-C/ -M/ or of its accumulation) does not have a long history (Marx 1990: 267); moreover, given other non-capitalist class enterprises procreating besides capitalist ones, its presence is not ubiquitous. Therefore, original accumulation is a historical and logical (by whatever means the logic is established, say development, for example) condition of its existence. Our discussion here is organized with a specific object in mind: how original accumulation can be construed as a continual historical process that unfolds over WoT, by changing its conditions of existence or through its outright destruction, both of which make it partially difficult or completely impossible for the affected subjects to reproduce their socially necessary means of subsistence. To capture this complex unfolding, original accumulation is organized into two forms— classical and non-classical; typically, both tend to unfold simultaneously in an uneven way with telling effect on WoT.

3 For further discussion, see Shanin (1983), Dhar (2003), Basu (2008, 2012); Chakrabarti and Dhar (2009); Chakrabarti et al. (2015); Chakrabarti (2017); Bhattacharya and Seda-Irizarry (2017); Dhar (2020).

248

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

The Classical Form of Original Accumulation Following Marx’s Capital, original accumulation in its classical form appears through the expropriation of means of production that the direct producers had access to; resultantly the direct producers cannot reproduce their means of subsistence; it transforms them (i.e. peasants attached to land-agriculture, artisans and independent producers attached to their tools, fishermen attached to the natural waterbodies, indigenous people attached to forests, etc.) into wage labourers. Crucial here are the twin moments of separation of direct producers from the means of production and the means of subsistence; the first separation guarantees the second separation. In the case of England, Marx emphasized the expropriation of land as an integral part of original accumulation; since then, land has remained the pervasive theme in discussing original accumulation, not least because its importance remains potent and topical. This act of separation takes place via multiple sources, including colonialimperialist plunder and developmental projects, and is accompanied by “bloody legislation” to impose stern control over those disenfranchised producers and the normalization exercise that “obliterates the memory of the past modes of production as well as any traces of the violent foundation of the new mode of production” (Read 2002: 45). In the contemporary scenario, rather than sequentially, these three aspects— separation via expropriation of means of production-disciplining carried out through legislation-normalization—occur in tandem in any process of original accumulation. In our rendition, expropriation of WoT space and forms of life (such as through land acquisition for mining) captures the classical route of original accumulation that the hegemonic represent as displacement to be dealt with only through compensation and resettlement. Let us give two examples from India of the classical form of original accumulation. Both highlight the role of the triad of separation-disciplining-normalization. Both exemplify the critical role of the delusional veil of capitalist hegemony in literally shaping our perspective and our politics to mask the original sin of capitalism. Example 1: Original Accumulation and Forest Rights Act This concerns an unfolding non-class struggle over a ‘legal’ condition of existence that in turn has the potential to open up the ‘event’ of

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

249

the separation of forest dwellers from their means of production and means of subsistence. We draw attention to the recent Supreme Court verdict on 13 February 2019 (that has since been stayed on 28 February on account of a review petition) which rejects the traditional rights of nearly one million indigenous dwellers from forestlands across numerous regional states (some of whose ancestor’s ties to their forests date back perhaps to a millennium). It ruled that indigenous dwellers have failed to establish their individual claims in paper as forest dwellers under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006.4 It was delivered on the basis of a petition filed in 2008 by an NGO ‘Wildlife First’ (showing how an environmental fetish of wilderness, a typical Eurocentric understanding, can turn into an argument for the eviction of a predominantly world of the third forest dwellers) and few retired forest officials (originally involved in the implementation of Eurocentric colonial law, the state personals, despite modifications in the law, have often been in conflict with forest dwellers) which in effect challenged the spirit and validity of Forests Rights Act (FRA). The NGO’s underlying position seems to suggest an argument that, in the name of giving the indigenous forest dwellers rights over forest, FRA is encouraging deforestation and encroachment of forest land (indicating the implied outcome of tragedy of commons in the behaviour of forest dwellers). One can clearly discern here the production of a chain of categories of liberal law (based on individual rather than collective rights), rationality and utilitarianism (wastage of scarce resources for human gain) and cowboy environmentalism (use of environment to disenfranchise the very people who have had the know-how of what the forest is, and how to live with it, and not just on it or in it, and conserve it); the underlying claim that the forest dwellers are incapable of relating with or conserving the forests, and conservation can only be realized through the actions of the modern state; this captures a live and ongoing process of the third worldification of world of the third subjects in forest societies, who see the ‘forest’ as a “living relative” mutating at its doorstep and not as natural resource. These, and many more, constitute the weaving of the cultural processes into a normalization exercise. 4 Live Law, February 21, 2019. Available at: https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/scorders-eviction-forest-dwellers-tribes-whose-claims-under-forest-rights-act-stand-rejected143060, (accessed on 27 February, 2022). Also see Mookherjee et al. (2020) for further discussion.

250

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Coming as a departure from old colonial Eurocentric ideas of and legal tropes around the forest which had persisted in post-independent India, FRA recognizes two groups of people—Forest Dwelling Scheduled Tribe (members of scheduled tribe living in forests) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (persons residing in forest, or dependent on forest produce for 75 years)—on the basis of the two criteria of subjects traditionally residing in forests or forest land and traditionally dependent on forest produce for livelihood. Whatever its shortcomings (such as keeping the footprint of the state alive), an implicit supposition of FRA seems to be that indigenous dwellers are the best conservers of the forest. On the basis of this supposition, it allows for the claim of such forest dwellers to be legally ratified and consequently to provide them with land rights, use rights, and rights to conserve and protect forestland. The contradiction here is that while, on the face of it, FRA was proposed as a piece of legislation allowing ‘collective’ rights over forest, the Indian legal framework seems to be based on ‘individual’ rights. On grounds of environmentalism and property rights, the recent verdict strives to make a case for the latter to triumph over the former and worse, negation of the former. Because of the failure on the part of a large number of indigenous forest dwellers to individually vet their legal claim (due to reasons like the political economy of the forest whose power equation discourages this entire process, the inability of the dwellers to understand modern law and/or provide proof of their claim, the callousness of the regional state government to take the necessary initiative, etc.), tens of thousands of original inhabitants and perhaps many ‘encrochers’ (who arrived following original accumulation elsewhere) find themselves facing the prospect of mass-scale eviction. In case the review petition fails, and the original order stands, this may open the route for the wholesale usurpation of forest dwellers from their lived space, as also from where they derive their means of subsistence. Further, if the review petition fails, the two apparatuses of the state—the court which can usurp the legal condition of existence of the forestbased class process and forms of life, and the administration, including the policy-making bureaucracy, forest officials, and security force, which is empowered to expropriate their means of production (the assigned physical space of forest itself now recovered as state owned property)—would combine to complete the process of original accumulation.

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

251

Example 2: Hawking and the Right of Space With the changing concept of city that liberalization and globalization have ushered in, one position that has become popular among a section of the Indian elite in the last few decades is that the hawkers are a nuisance, an eyesore for investors of both domestic and foreign capital, and a deterrent for tourism. The argument being that while getting rid of the hawkers from their claimed urban space that provided them with access to their means of subsistence will rob them of their livelihood in the short run (by dispossessing them of their current but contested ‘rights’ over common public space), it will also act as a ‘signal creation’ to invite global capital and tourists. The evicted people will be compensated in the long run with jobs that would be created with the entry of domestic and foreign capital as also flourishing tourism. Hawkers were hardly considered as a problem till the 1980s in a place like Kolkata, but liberalization and the advent of globalization changed all that. The Communist-led Left Front government (that ruled the regional state of West Bengal from 1977 to 2011 under political democracy) inaugurated ‘Operation Sunshine’ in 1996 with the intent of evicting the hawkers from the streets of Kolkata to make the city more commuter, tourist, and investment friendly. A non-class struggle erupted between the state government and the hawkers, because the hawkers saw it as an operation of expropriating their means of subsistence. The two examples of forest dwellers and hawkers show that a host of signifiers associated with the workings of global capital converge to constitute the subjects in WoT (hawkers, agricultural subjects holding or not holding land, forest dwellers, slum dwellers, street beggars, illegal immigrants, the homeless, etc.); attached as these people are to images of third worldization (sometimes projected as realvictim and when in resistance as realevil ) the hegemonic develop and disseminate reasons as to why the expropriation of their means of production is necessary. What was once WoT may disappear; yet the people remain. The hegemonic could leave them, as it often happens, to their own fate, to wander, migrate and shift to new pores of WoT, say, in the so-called informal sector. At other times, it tries to cover up, through a discourse of compensation and resettlement, the violent act of the original accumulation process by sending their agents—state organs, development experts, and NGOs— to prop up an alternative support system as a supplementary measure to help the dispossessed and dislocated. The hegemonic is not fortified

252

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

or secured simply through plunder and devastation, but is supplemented through acts of benevolence. While original accumulation is the historical starting point of capital that creates and recreates ongoing waves of potential wage labourers, it is the developmentalism that provides capital with the delusional veil of covering up (that includes legitimizing) its ‘blood and dirt’; as a historical process, capital cannot form itself without this capitalocentric-orientalist remaking of WoT as third world awaiting its redemption through its destruction.

Encounter III: The Non-Classical Form of Original Accumulation Faced with the historical inevitability of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in the non-Western part and context of Russia (which sat between West and East), the later writings of Marx (Late Marx in short) not only rejected the historical inevitability thesis, but in doing so, led us to the non-classical form of original accumulation. We start by asking whether expropriating land (means of production) from the peasantry ought to be a necessary condition for original accumulation? In order to expropriate the tillers of the land it is not necessary to drive them from their land as was the case in England and elsewhere; nor is it necessary to abolish communal property by an usake. Just go and deprive the peasants of the product of their labor beyond a certain point and you will not be able to chain them to their fields even with the help of your police and army. (Marx 1970: 159)

Taking this as point of departure we revisit the idea of separation. Separation no longer means only direct and complete expropriation from the means of production as it transpires in land acquisition, enclosure and other such moves. It entails indirect and partial expropriation of one or a few conditions of existence governing the WoT class sets, in order to bring about a major dislocation such that the reproduction of socially necessary means of subsistence becomes impossible for WoT subjects. In the history of capitalism, the processes related to modifications in terms of trade, debt—private and public, knowledge and patent, technology, water, forest, climate, soil fertility, etc. have led to various kinds of separation of direct producers of FCP and condition providing enablers of FCP from

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

253

their means of subsistence, even if there was no overt attempt to expropriate the means of production of the direct producers. For example, the state-sponsored changes in the terms of trade—by suppressing the ratio of agricultural versus industrial prices—played a crucial role in the history of capitalist-led industrialization (whether private or state capitalist driven) and in urbanization5 ; likewise, the role of debt in causing farmers distress in India has been much discussed and so has the role of public debt (funded through what Marx called the credo of private capital—public credit to state) in expropriating the social wealth and means of production of entire nations and turning the condition of working population therein into a ruinous skeleton of their former self (some East Asian countries, Argentina, Greece and Sri Lanka represent some extreme examples in recent decades). Without any pretext of immediate conquest of means of production, such changes in one or few conditions end up producing serious dislocation of the affected WoT class enterprises, and of their societies, which may lead ultimately to the migration of people therein (for seasonal work or permanently) as wage labourers. Class-focused analysis has revealed that there is nothing that prevents a subject from holding multiple class and non-class positions, in an enterprise and across enterprises, sectors, and regions; the non-classical form of original accumulation incorporates, and not erases such polymorphisms. Consider a person who owns an agricultural plot of land together with other assets. Even with land and other property in rural areas (which would typically be held as insurance), driving the means of subsistence below the socially accepted average is enough to transform him into a potential wage labourer (in rural or urban landscape). As intricate interlinkages develop between agriculture and rural non-farm employment or between agriculture and industry, the multiplication of varied interlinked class and non-class positions occupied by a segment of rural individuals should not surprise us. Original accumulation that emphasizes the exclusivity of pure wage labour based on complete separation from means of production, as in the classical rendition, would run into trouble in capturing and explaining the complexity of such phenomena. In contrast, alongside the classical form, our framework is able to consistently integrate multiple subject positions and their shifting interlinkages in theorizing original accumulation. 5 For the role of terms of trade in erstwhile Soviet Union see Resnick and Wolff (2002, Chapter 8).

254

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

We now exemplify the non-classical case of original accumulation against the backdrop of a series of events in Plachimada, a village in the Palakkad district of Kerala. This particular process of original accumulation transpired without any attempt to expropriate land or any other property in WoT. Plachimada: Original Accumulation Without Expropriation Having acquired land through lease, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Ltd. (HCCBPL), a Subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Company, had set up in 1999, a coke bottling plant covering over 34 acres in a predominantly agriculture-dependent indigenous community in Plachimada. This plant represented, from the side of HCCBPL, a process of capital accumulation (ΔCc + ΔV). The received logic of development would consider the setting up of such a global capitalist enterprise in a perceived third world backwater as progressive, since it allows global capital and its circuit to prize open WoT territories for a project of development. Using the example of Plachimada where HCCBPL makes a claim on a critical condition of existence, namely water (needed for cola), we would like to analyse how this seemingly progressive step could turn out to be a nightmare for WoT societies. Such intervention typically sets off a series of contradictory effects tantamount to a process of theft and plunder that places these societies in the means of subsistence crisis even as they retain their property and there is no pretext of any direct physical displacement. Theft, because it involves an unacknowledged distribution of surplus value in the guise of profit, and plunder, because that process of theft is related to a process of dislocation of society. The theft and plunder co-constitute one another. For setting up its bottling plant and activating the processes of performance and appropriation of surplus, the state government has provided HCCBPL land against which it pays rent. This site of production must be in close proximity to clean water; availability of clean water from natural sources is then a critical natural condition of existence for the process of coke production and, in class terms, for the performance and appropriation of surplus in HCCBPL. HCCBPL had selected a site in the rain shadow region of Plachimada, which had a large reservoir of underground water, and to get the requisite amount of water/means of production, HCCBPL dug six bore wells as deep as 750 to 1000 feet. Water had hitherto provided an indispensable condition of existence to innumerable agricultural and household class enterprises in WoT, whose village wells go

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

255

down to about 150 to 200 feet. Water was accessed in a shared manner in this WoT society; water formed an integral part of its shared environment. Though there was no expropriation of land, the process of extraction of water by HCCBPL altered the composition and availability of water for agriculture and household class enterprises. Other than clean water, the HCCBPL enterprise would be constituted by, to name a few, non-class processes pertaining to (i) land-lease, and other legal conditions provided by the state, (ii) supervision, strategizing, advertisement, capital accumulation activated by managers, (iii) loans provided by banks, (iv) money capital provided by shareholders, and (v) the selling of manufactured coke through merchants. In this capitalist enterprise, the productive workers perform surplus labour, while the productive capitalists in the form of the board of directors appropriate the surplus value embodied in the value of produced commodity which then they distribute as subsumed payments to the mentioned condition providers. All these non-class processes, including the natural conditions of existence, constitute the process of capitalist FCP. Collating the FCP and SCP of HCCBPL, SV = SSCPState + SSCPMan(sup,skills,adv,cap−accu) + SSCPBank + SSCPShare + SSCPMer + SSCPNp (9.1) where SV = surplus value produced by productive workers and appropriated by productive capitalists. SSCPState = Subsumed class payments to the state for providing land and for ensuring the safe reproduction of property and other legal conditions. SSCPMan (sup, skills, adv, cap-acc) = Subsumed class payments to the managers for purposes of supervision, strategizing, and for disbursing funds for advertisement and capital accumulation. SSCPBank = Subsumed class payments to the bank enterprises for lending capital. SSCPShare = Subsumed class payments to the shareholders for lending capital. SSCPMer = Subsumed class payments to the trading enterprises for enabling the sale of the commodity. SSCPNp = Subsumed class payments for natural processes.

256

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

In the case of Plachimada, while all ‘conditions of existence’ are paid against their respective roles, no payment is made against the process of drawing clean water (SSCPNP ) that helps sustain HCCBPL. Water as ‘natural resource’ is consumed free. One can clearly see that if a subsumed payment against this non-class process was to be made, the subsumed payments destined for the other processes would fall. This immediately indicates that there are gainers from this unpaid natural process. Who gains from this and how? The question of gain can be deciphered by looking at the profit of HCCBPL, which is derived from the following value equation (see Chapter 2): W = Cc + V + SV

(9.2)

where CC is constant capital, V is the value of labour-power, SV is the surplus value, and W is the value of the commodity. There are two cases to consider, one in which payment for the natural process is acknowledged and the other in which it is not. Taking the latter case first, by considering (9.1) and (9.2), W = Cc + V + SSCPState + SSCPMan(sup,skills,adv,cap−accu) +SSCPBank + SSCPShare + SSCPMer Suppose, in terms of our specific case, the component of profit (before tax) is the portion of surplus value directed towards the shareholders, the state, and the managers for the purpose of accumulating capital. After deducting from the surplus value, the payments made to the moneylenders, merchants, and managers for purposes other than capital accumulation, Reported Profit = Π = W−(Cc+V+SSCPBank +SSCPMan(sup,skill,adv) + SSCPMer ) = {W − (Cc + V)} − {SSCPBank + SSCPMan(sup,skill,adv) + SSCRMer } As W – (Cc + V) = SV, ) ( Reported Profit = Π = SV− SSCPBank + SSCPMan(sup,skill,adv) + SSCPMer = SSCPState + SSCPMan(cap−accu) + SSCPShare

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

257

This reported or bookkeeping profit, however, masks the process of not paying against the natural condition of existence. Had it been accounted for, the value of the commodity would have been: ,

UNPAID

W = W + SSCPNP

= (Cv + V + SV) + SSCPUNPAID NP

And, Πreal ( ) RealProfit= = W, − ( ) Cv + V + SSCPBank +SSCPMan(sup,skill,adv) +SSCPMer real Π

( = SV −

SSCPBank + SSCPMan(sup,skill,adv.) + SSCPMer

)

− SSCPUNPAID NP

= SSCP,State + SSCP,,Man(cap-accu) + SSCP,,, Share where the difference between real profit and reported profit is W, − which is added to the claimed profit. If the unpaid W = SSCPUNPAID NP amount is counted, that is, paid, then the subsumed class revenues to the state, shareholders, and managers for capital accumulation would be reduced. By aggregating the profit volume of all capitalists from such kinds of theft and plunder the globally appropriated surplus values can be summed. The importance of non-payment lies in the fact that it leaves a greater amount of appropriated surplus value to the board of directors. However, non-recognition of the class language of surplus value means that one only encounters and counts profit, thereby erasing the moment of the non-paid component of surplus value appearing as profit. This implies, as the accounting relation for HCCBPL clearly reveals, the receivers of surplus value (productive and unproductive capitalists, state, and other subsumed claimants) stand to lose together as a group in case the natural process of drawing clean water is recognized as a provider of an indispensable condition of existence and, accordingly, is remunerated. In what is reported by the enterprise, credit rating agencies, and the market (in the stock market, for instance), there is no recognition of the extraction of clean water as a condition of existence. What gets reported is that the profit appears as a result of increased efficiency of HCCBPL which, if looked at from a class analysis, turns out to be an illegitimate claim.

258

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

‘Maximization of profit’ thus encapsulates distributed gains of wealth for some at the expense of others; such class struggles over subsumed class payments are integral to the capitalist enterprise. On the other hand, higher profit could also be generated without reducing (and, why not, even increasing) the other distributive components if greater amount of surplus value is produced and appropriated. The scenario where this comes with increasing working hours, or greater intensification of work, or reduction in wage rate, might lead to a class struggle between productive workers and productive capitalists over FCP. Where the claimants of surplus value are united is with regard to the legitimacy of unpaid processes. This is because, as the above accounting relations show, all the claimants of surplus value have the possibility of gaining from such non-payments for drawing upon the service of certain processes (here, natural processes). This theft, and especially when accompanied by a process of original accumulation akin to plunder, could very well set off a resistance against not just global capitalist enterprises like HCCBPL, but the capitalocentric-orientalist form of development as well. Let us explain, keeping the case of Plachimada in the backdrop. Clean water drawn out of the natural world may very well be affecting the availability and quality of such water itself if, as is usually the case, such expropriation of resources for free—without any subsumed class payments—is conducted by a host of capitalist enterprises. Given that such global capitalist enterprises have no stake in what subsequently happens to the quality of water and its availability for other purposes, the use of natural resources by such enterprises can be indiscriminate. This is in sharp contrast to the use of water by other enterprises geographically located in the same space, whose shared reproduction depends critically on the availability of water. While water (or ecological) conservation is integrated into the WoT economic and social life in Plachimada, the same is not true for global capital. Even as the approach of WoT is geared towards the preservation of nature, which is also a condition for their self-preservation, the primary matter of concern, from the perspective of global capital, is the maximum extraction of surplus value and profit making. The latter would at times show concern for the environment (a concern that is radically different from concerns within WoT), say, by compensating for the disruption of the ecological system, but such acts of ‘benevolence’ are accidental to capital’s self-expansion process. In Plachimada, farmers complained that the qualitative alteration in the critical condition of water not only changed their class enterprises but

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

259

also had a profound impact on their required means of subsistence, their health, and on the very forms of life: The Coke plant’s alleged indiscriminate extraction of local ground water sharply lowered the water levels where the surrounding communities live and farm. The ground water has become contaminated and undrinkable … poor, farm-labouring Dalits and tribals have had to stop cultivating paddy because of this shortage of water, and migrate elsewhere to look for work. (The Telegraph, 06. 05. 2004) … things have turned against the company after it was found that sludge flushed out by the company had toxic material, which allegedly polluted the wells in the vicinity. (Financial Express, 31. 10. 05)

Two subsequent developments—groundwater depletion and surface pollution—further point to the contradictory effects of the process of capital accumulation of HCCBPL. First, it is claimed, that the water table dropped sharply; village wells started drying up; and toxic matter such as cadmium, chromium, and lead began showing up, which contaminated the whole watershed. The village wells as also the agricultural land started feeling the brunt of the pollution. Second, as part of its ‘corporate social responsibility’, HCCBPL had begun repaying Plachimada with sludge from its filtering and bottling plants (carried by 36 trucks every day each with six 50-gallon drums) which it dumped in the fields and on the banks of the irrigation canal with the claim that these were ‘fertilizers’. Later, reports from Kerala State Pollution Control Board suggested that the ‘fertilizer’ contained dangerous levels of cadmium and nickel and hence were useless as fertilizers. Further, the stink from the sludge made people sick and gave rise to skin ailments. This demonstrates once again how the intervention of global capital in the shared condition of existence of WoT could create in it a crisis for agricultural class enterprises (because of the non-availability of water for cultivation and because of the presence of toxins) and household class enterprises (because of the scarcity of drinking water and because available water is no longer fit for human consumption). The process of the plunder of (unpaid) natural resources that secure reproduction of global capitalist enterprise and the class revenue of productive capitalists, shareholders, income bankers, managers, and merchants comes into existence

260

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

by creating a virtual crisis of existence for WoT class enterprises en masse— exploitative as well as non-exploitative, for their means of subsistence, and finally even for their existing forms of life, and all this happens without any intended expropriation of forms of life in WoT. If one counts for all the overdetermined effects of altering this one condition for coke production—quality of water—on agricultural and household class enterprises within WoT, on the health of the people, on the ecology and on society per se, the subsumed payment that HCCBPL Σ SSC PNUPN P AI D even should be paying ought to be much greater than if the company did pay for water. Even if the payment is made, the private payment still would not and does not reflect the social cost and its effects (some uncountable and some unknown) on WoT. That would also put to question any policy measure that seeks to enforce a calculated amount (to be) paid for water, since no such calculi of cost–benefit can possibly identify, let alone measure, all the effects of this process of extracting water on the overdetermined reality transpiring in a WoT settlement like Plachimada.6 The true cost or payment is not simply the value of water or other such specific non-class conditions (such as forest and natural ravines), but must account for the combined loss from all such effects that have required decades or even centuries to take shape. Finally, the conceptualization of plunder deepens through what Chaudhary et al. (2000: 92) call ‘sanctioned violence’. Sanctioned violence entails a scenario of consent. The classic example is that of the proletariat who when entering into the wage contract, sanctions, by the very nature of the contract, to his/her subsequent exploitation. Here, sanctioned violence takes the form of sanctioned exploitation. Similarly, sanctioned violence could take the form of sanctioned colonization, sanctioned exclusion, and so on. In the above example, the subjects in 6 Any attempt for monetary compensation (or, even resettlement) based on cost–benefit analysis would have to consider choosing a few effects as important, usually the more visible effects, effects that are transparent and effects that are impacting the present. This is a bogus argument based on reductionist calculi since, in an overdetermined reality: (i) any assertion or claim of one or a set of effects as relatively more important than others requires that we need to know all the effects (which are infinite, some in the future that we don’t know) in order to make a comparison of cost–benefit, which is impossible, and (ii) because each of the immediate/identified effects has an infinite number of causative influences (past, present and future weaved together) that manifest in combination with one another; no ‘effects’ of a change in process proposed by efficiency analysis is reduced to exclusively the proposed ‘effects’ chosen in efficiency analysis (Wolff, 2002; Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, 104–109).

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

261

WoT could consent to the intervention of global capital. Interpellated to and subjectivated by the delusional veil of developmentalism, some in WoT may desire to change their own conditions of existence to facilitate the entry of global capital (or its developmental co-operator, the World Bank). They could be seeking what is perceived to be a better standard of living within the circuits of global capital and the glitters unfolding along its border. This brings forth an important moment, that the encounter of WoT with global capital is not necessarily without its consent or collaboration (as in Plachimada); what WoT volunteered, but not what it sought. And, quite often, this aspect of sanctioned violence may clash with those forces in WoT who do not accept this sanctioned violence and may have opposed it. Mylamma is a tribal widow and agricultural labourer in her fifties. She lives in the Vijaynagar colony in Plachimada village, adjacent to the coke plant. She wants the plant to shut down immediately. On the other side of the road, Vijayan, in his forties, is the plant’s lift operator, and lives in Palakkad town. He is picketing to defend his job, in case Mylamma succeeds in shutting the place down. Both feel “robbed” of what they are entitled by right: Vijayan of employment, and Mylamma of a vital natural resource – water. (The Telegraph, 6 May 2004)

Vijayan’s struggle represents the moment of sanctioned violence; for the job he has to consent to the destruction of shared environment of Plachimada, probably consent even for its wholesale destruction (since as reports say, most people will be migrating to other places) which he probably did not foresee. Mylamma’s struggle is built on not giving in to sanctioned violence. She wants the plant to be closed so that the conditions from where she and the others draw their source of livelihood can continue to thrive. The space of WoT remains torn between sanctioned violence and resistance to sanctioned violence. Various kinds of struggle, class and non-class, pull WoT into contradictory directions and there is no a prior road to the future. This again highlights our point of a disaggregated third and the problem of reducing it into a homogenous figure/space or path. The idea of ethic-politics too must remain open to the contradictions, ruptures, and fissures within WoT.

262

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Encounter IV: Hegemonic Pro-Poor Practices and NGOs As a social actor, the World Bank seeks to implant itself between the nation-state and the people by persuading both to be followers of its universal standard of conceiving, managing, and implementing povertyrelated ideas and development projects; rather than centralisation, the ideal universal standard it seeks is decentralisation of a certain kind. Given this connection, we now need to analyse the nature of the World Bank’s intervention in WoT. As one of its important functions to strategize and control the process of the uplifting of the realvictim , the World Bank too needs a global ‘army’ of managers, technicians, educationalists (largely economists, sociologists, political scientists, ecologists, etc.), developmental professionals and practitioners, as also grassroots level workers, even empowered SHG women from the underdeveloped community— a rather civil and civilian army with dreams of do—goodism, civilizing mission, modernization—to implement and supervise its third wordlist discourse on WoT. Most Non-Governmental Organizations or NGOs belong to that army (World Bank 1995; Kamat 2001; Chakrabarti and Dhar 2013). The World Bank formally defines NGOs as “private organizations that pursue activities to relieve the suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development”.7 Specifically targeting the WoT space which it sees as a reservoir of poverty, the World Bank sets up an encounter with WoT such that it can never turn its voice or resistance into a challenge to the hegemony of global capitalism. To ensure that, it foregrounds some qualifications regarding NGOs, qualifications that betray its political agenda. The objective is to suspend the possibility of alternative political imaginations, institutions, and praxis at the ground level and instead leverage the transition process through a capitalism-driven development. Constituting a huge segment by now, NGOs per se do not comprise a unitary space that, by definition, serves the World Bank or likewise global agencies uncritically. It is disaggregated and heterogeneous too, open to contestation and conflict; it is open to rethinking and re-articulation (Kamat 2001; Gibson–Graham and Ruccio 2001). In fact, NGOs or 7 World Bank (1995). Available at: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/ 814581468739240860/pdf/multi-page.pdf. (Accessed on May 29, 2022).

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

263

similar such versions, without the official label, have existed all over the world. Here, in India, non-party political formations such as various Gandhian organizations, religious organizations like the Ramakrishna Mission, and other social/cultural institutions (including organizations related to the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha as also Left-wing ones) have always carried out, in their respective and contradictory ways, so-called pro-people services, rural transformation and the work of microlevel changes. Many of them do profess (through their micro-level and bottom-up interventions) ethico–political considerations that are in turn ideals of social transformation and change. These non-state, non-party organizations, whether called NGOs or not, can very well happen to be politically oriented. It is also worth remembering that, particularly with the rise of neoliberal globalization, the growing importance of World Bank-inspired NGOs in terms of grassroots intervention that challenged non-state, non-party political NGOs, or some such variants went hand-in-hand with a demotion of the role of state as an implementer. The centrality of the role of NGOs is acknowledged by the World Bank in the implementation of poverty-related programmes: In most developing countries NGOs are central actors in anti-poverty policies and programs. The social and educational background of many NGO staff enables them to interact easily with the staff of national institutions, and they can help create bridges between these institutions, outside agencies, and grassroots organizations. NGOs can also be very effective in delivering technical assistance to poor people. (World Bank 2000/2001: 110)

But then the World Bank also marks a difference between desirable NGOs and the non-desirable ones. As a general rule, collaboration should be limited to NGOs which are non-political and do not engage in overt partisan political activities. (World Bank 1995) Sometimes NGOs reflect the political system in which they thrive, or local interest groups, and thus may not serve the interests of poor people as well as they might. (World Bank 2000/2001: 111)

264

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

It remains an open question as to what the World Bank means by the ‘politics’ of NGOs. It could be referring to old style non-party micropolitical formations (like say Gandhian or left-wing organizations or rightwing RSS) that were always already opposed to the World Bank paradigm; it could also mean conventional interventions by political parties through NGOs. But what is important for our discussion is the acknowledgement that the space of the NGOs is contested, pulsating with possibilities that may be inimical to the hegemonic. What is also undisputed is the effort of the World Bank to rearticulate the space towards a conception of NGOs that is desirable, meaning hegemonic friendly. This involves its attempt to sideline the undesirable NGOs and displace the category of NGOs in such a manner so as to disqualify them as NGOs. More specifically, the desirable NGOs would be the more depoliticised NGOs, which focus upon managerial, technical, and execution aspects—aspects that serve the pro-poor political agenda of the World Bank which in turn is tied to the march of capitalist development. The ‘desirable’ NGOs (with their trustees and CEOs) have now emerged as a nodal figure in carrying out within WoT societies, against the receipt of social surplus funds, the well-planned hegemonic needs as defined and designed by the World Bank and other hegemonic institutions (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2013). More often than not, the World Bank allies with the organs of the state to fix policy in line with the World Bank paradigm; but it then prefers to handover the micro-level enforcing of policies to the NGOs. The appearance of neoliberal forms of globalization was accompanied by the acceptance of the following problems of government bureaucracy as an implementation agency: (i) inefficiency at gathering information, (ii) long time-gap in adjustment to ground level changes, (iii) information gap between layers of government hierarchies, (iv) ‘soft-budget’ constraint with the implication that individuals and agencies can afford to fail without any accompanying cost for such failure, (v) rent-seeking behaviour, (vi) the distance between the centre (where decisions and strategies are taken) and the periphery (where benefits are received), etc. To fix these implementation problems, the NGOs, formally beholden to nobody at the local level, became substitutes to government bureaucracies. This is not to say that government bureaucracies or the state apparatuses do not play a role in the delivery of social surplus. What we are trying to stress is the rise of the NGOs as an institutional form for the enforcing of development policies alongside

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

265

government agencies. And, in the case of the World Bank-led developmental paradigm, the NGOs have emerged as the preferred enforcer, its third wordlist foot soldiers in WoT. At times, tensions may also arise, as in case of India presently, between the state and the international agencies over the NGOs; the state tries to control the influence of the ‘foreign’ ideas or programmes being propagated through the NGOs by coming down hard on its financial routes (fragments of global social surplus). The state would not be too averse to forge a partnership with international agencies to get a portion of global social surplus for projects in WoT, but it may express disagreement over who ought to be the appropriate private delivery agency at the ground level—the NGOs connected to international agencies like the World Bank or the non-party agencies connected to or under the supervision of the ruling disposition in the country. The distribution of social surplus for hegemonic needs is only one side of the contestation that takes place; the other side being about who is to be seen as the pro-poor deliverer to the WoT people. Need struggle thus plays out in many different ways. Interventions within WoT through NGOs are engendered through the trope of hegemonic needs that will, through the distribution of social surplus, try to deliver social ‘sustainability’ and ‘community’ building in these societies. The objective is to pull WoT subjects out of culturally rooted (unequal) systemic ‘traps’ by recasting them as ‘entrepreneurs’— sensitive to the markers of self-gain, market, competition, productivity, commercialization, and profit (all signifiers of capitalism) (see Chakrabarti and Dhar 2013). Recent examples of concrete interventions to this end range from gathering experiential information from ‘voices of the people’ to mindscaping through behaviourally informed policies. For instance, following the rise of behavioural economics backed by the localized randomized controlled trials (RCTs), there has been a globally articulated hegemonic effort to shift the problem from structural aspects to cognitive deficiencies (biases, misconceptions, etc.) and trappings at the level of individuals in WoT. Based on the results of the RCTs, addressing poverty would require externally pushed, planned, and funded strategies to induce behavioural changes in the poor through shifting social norms, introducing choice possibilities and ‘nudging’ in market and credit-related activities, restructuring their roles based on conditionalities, etc. (World Bank 2015; Chakrabarti 2022). With the circuits of global capital and its associated local–global market expanding in reach and depth, and with a systemic shift of state focus

266

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

towards facilitating capitalist development, the importance of shared environment that has traditionally sustained WoT economies gets diluted, and the elements of risk, protection, and income that were hitherto integrated in the reproduction of such societies become issues of concern. This is where the World Bank steps in with its support system and to emerge as pro-poor. The World Bank discourse on need/poverty converts the victims of capitalist development into beneficiaries, who now as the displaced, dwarfed, dwindled third wordlist version of WoT are open to the clandestine moves of the hegemonic. When there is resistance from WoT, the effort is to negotiate and displace the terms of resistance towards a certain third worldism that encourages accommodation-assimilation through measures like compensation, resettlement, social protection, and social funds. When accommodation-assimilation fails, the resistance comes to be designated as evil (realevil ) and the sovereign apparatuses of the hegemonic are then called upon to restore peace; in its aftermath, the army of NGOs will re-enter the WoT once again.

Environmentalism and WoT The post-enlightenment axiom of ‘alienated life’ generated a scientific outlook that precipitated the hyperseparation of ‘human’ and ‘nature’, thought and practice, politics and ethics.8 In the process, it displaced the concept of nature into the concept of natural resources, without which the birth of capitalist production system geared towards human utility/gain could not have taken form. According to Bilgrami (2009), this was one of the central points of resistance of Gandhi to the post-enlightenment thought that came to dominate capitalism and to its expansion through colonialism (and later development); he considered this instituted rift between ‘human’ and ‘nature’ as unsustainable and immoral. Bilgrami also sees in the critique of alienated life the intersection between Marx and Gandhi; both considered unalienated life to be essential for sustainable living. Building on the writings of Marx, eco-Marxists have shown that capitalism creates an “irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism” (Marx 1991: 949). Foster (1999) theorized and coined it

8 For a problem of the hyper-separation of ‘thought’ and ‘practice’, see Dhar (2018).

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

267

as ‘metabolic rift’. Along with Foster, Saito (2018) carefully constructed and extended Marx’s critique of the Political Economy of Nature by unravelling a clear connection of the expansive role of M-C-P-C/ -M/ and capital accumulation in the process of industrialisation of agriculture with destructive effects on soil and biodiversity; this occurs in conjunction with the creation of city/town and village/country divide. Recent eco-Marxist scholarship has developed and extended the analysis of the metabolic rift to agricultural, atmospheric, climatic, oceanic, hydraulic, and forest systems, so as to reveal the connection of capitalism with a fulsome earth system crisis that places human existence in jeopardy (Foster 2003, 2020; Angus 2018). The challenge of an uncontrollable natural crisis, deep economic crisis from capitalism and ever-growing income, wealth, and social inequality has even led some eco-Marxists to join hands with radical environmentalists to seek a socialist/communist project of degrowth coupled with deaccumulation of capital (Kallis et al. 2020; Akbulut 2021; Kallis et al. 2022). For all the above-described reasons, the eco-Marxists tend to also remain critical of socialist experiments built on unbridled capital accumulation. In an important intervention, Vlachou (2001, 2017) theorized the overdetermined and contradictory relation of class process with natural process, and specifically of capitalist class process with natural process, of how each constitutes and transforms the other. In this regard, decades ago some Marxists warned eco-Marxists to remain watchful of the flexible quality of the hegemonic in displacing the terms of approaching the question of nature to its advantage; this quality might deflate and undercut any prediction regarding the incapacity of capitalism to address the contradictions of fossil-fuel-driven ecological crisis. “Contrary to the dominant understanding of Marxist environmentalists, green capitalism is not only possible but is already on the agenda…The vast and far-reaching ecological reconstruction of material infrastructure and production technologies, I believe, will help constitute the next capitalist restructuring. As capitalism becomes more green Marxists who believe in GOD will have been caught crying ‘wolf’ yet again, and the Marxist critique of capitalism will be less attractive to social reformers” (Sandler 1994: 39, 55). The subsequent rapid growth of green technology, finance capital, and environmental regulation (with active role of state) in the backdrop of a slogan of a new green deal of capitalism (riding on scepticism of fossil fuels) has only highlighted the plasticity of the hegemonic response. That response seems to be based on a supposition that capitalism need not be

268

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

reduced to only fossil-fuel-driven modernization; the earth system crisis can be overcome without changing the capitalist class structure and its profit-making objective. This supposition underpinning the green/ecocapitalist proposal has been subsequently challenged by eco-Marxists from many angles. One argument, for example, states that the “development of science and technology cannot guarantee ecological sustainability in capitalism, since the knowledge produced about nature is not only fragmented and incomplete but also class-biased”; in addition, the celebration of the consumerist culture in a contradictory way undermines the moral ecological calls on individuals to respond to constrictions on wants (Vlachou 2018: 486). Vlachou (2005) also shows that the solutions of environmental regulation, market pricing, and subsidies in relation to the capitalist production and appropriation of surplus value in turn produce contradictory effects that undermines the proposed policy objective—sustainability. The stronger view highlights “an insuperable conflict between Capital’s Time and Nature’s Time – between the cyclical Earth system processes that have developed over millions of years, and capital’s need for rapid production, delivery and profit” (Angus 2018: 170). We greatly value the commendable critique of the political economy of nature under capitalism. Further, to their credit, the eco-Marxists also recognize and question severely the imperialistic practice of the global capitalist system led by the ruling disposition of the North that cause perturbation of existing ecological systems in the South. (Angus 2018; Saito 2018; Foster et al. 2019) Not surprisingly, they lack the language of WoT and therefore the conceptual resources to produce an ecoMarxist theorization of nature from a WoT perspective. Matters become even more hazy since, given the focus on growth and poverty reduction through capitalist/socialist development, the critique of the earth system crisis has come not typically from Southern Marxists but social movements of other varieties9 ; in recent times, Latin America remains perhaps an exception where a radical socialist movement could to an extent integrate ecological concern from a WoT perspective. Overall, a theoretical

9 For example, in India, one of the growing economic superpowers, much of the radical environmental movement, has come from the Gandhian organizations and movements (intellectually, Ramachandra Guha being a forerunner) rather than Marxists; the SangharshNirman of Marxist revolutionary Sankar Guha Niyogi led Chattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh (CMSS) is among few exceptions (Basu 2008, 2012).

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

269

deficit to account for WoT becomes a fetter to where we believe the ecoMarxist approach can possibly traverse and in doing so deepen its analysis and insight. To better grasp the problem, let us approach by summarizing the hegemonic response to the question of nature. 1. Viewed from within the {p, ~ p} human-nature dualism, systemic exploitation of nature has historically taken the form of fossil-fueldriven capitalist development. In the hegemonic response, this repositioning of nature as realvictim specifically transpired with respect to fossil-fuel driven capitalism and not capitalism per se. After constructing a meaning of earth system as a common social need for the world that needs to be salvaged to secure human existence, the hegemonic gears towards a new mode of exploitation of nature through a recasting of for-profit capitalism that combines green technology, green market, green finance, and environmental regulation. Questions regarding the riskiness as also the futility of this reorientation are raised from different angles, including eco-Marxism. 2. Both the generation of the natural crisis and its redressal are viewed from within the {p, ~ p} framework of the human-nature dualism. At times, nature is looked upon in its extreme wilderness, represented as a distant Dark Continent; nature is, as if, realutopia . Here, the perceived solution to the crisis takes the form of valorisation of an unadulterated nature which is devoid of humans, as described in the earlier example of the forest rights act; to the point of facilitating the expropriation of WoT indigenous population from their natural habitat. Given the state control of nature that such original accumulation enables, and the equally common phenomenon of state thereafter delegating the use of resource extraction process to industrial giants to feed the expansion of the circuits of global capital, one is left wondering whether such an approach itself might be the reason for the natural crisis. 3. At other times, given that the {p, ~ p}-based epistemology of alienated life that is very much alive, nature is understood as an impediment and threat—as if, as realevil —which needs to be controlled and subjugated, i.e. hegemonized for the purpose of capitalist or socialist development based on profit (for enterprise) and

270

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

growth (for economy per se). In 1–3, the nature-woman connection qua the {p. ~ p} frame is noteworthy; either nature/woman is evil/ hysteric, she needs to be domesticated; or nature/woman is a victim, she needs to be protected (Plumwood 1993). Finally, the contemporary role of ecological movements in shaping the delusional veil of the new green deal is important to flag: the present effort for a green deal is an exemplary imitation of all such previous exercises of hegemonization based on the foreclosure of class process of surplus labour, crypting of capitalist exploitation, and occlusion of profit as a distributive form of surplus value from the discourse of the earth system crisis. In its place enters a reformed capitalism, green capitalism, with a new wave of green technology-driven capital accumulation seeking to overthrow the dominance of fossil fuels and save both human civilization and nature, and yet magically keep the capitalist wealth creation process alive. 4. The incitement to the word ‘green’, sans class and WoT, is for all to see. Nature is rarely understood as part of the lived life-experience of WoT; the woman-nature continuum within much of WoT is thus missed. The process of relating nature to the shared environment and the lived experience of WoT are uniquely framed in these societies, in terms of what the late Marxist Shankar Guha Niyogi, called ‘our environment’10 ; ‘our environment’ can be construed as a living organism and a sentient being in which the non-human world is presumed to be feeling entity, which is speaking and communicating with humans, a transhuman space containing music and stories as part of the embodied existence (Ghosh 2021). Through the foreclosure of class and WoT that the {p, ~ p} frame institutes, nature is relegated to the realm of the real through a certain foregrounding of nature as victim, evil, or utopian. This is then a matter not simply of

10 According to Niyogi, “the truth is that we will have to protect our earth and our planet. The trees, plants, clean drinking water, clean air, birds and animals and human beings – together all of us form part of this world. Through sensitive ideas and flexible programmes we will have to maintain a balance in nature and in science and this can be done on the basis of the development of people’s consciousness” (Available at: https://vikalpsangam.org/wp-content/uploads/migrate/Resources/shanka rguhaniyogi-hiswork.pdf). From our vantage point, this people’s consciousness is that of ‘our environment’ built from a WoT perspective that rejects unalienated life and metabolic rift as anti-people and any assault on ‘our environment’ of WoT in the guise of development and environmentalism as suspect.

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

271

a critique of Baconian science, but of an articulation of that critique with a contesting, in our case, a class-focused understanding of the economy as well. In some radical environmentalist movements, we find an argument that since the corporations are enemies of nature, that by default makes the employed workers complicit in it too; after all, the Vijayans fearing job losses would stand in opposition to any movement against the corporations. However, Foster (2000: 105–136) points out that such a position tends to conflate the working force employed by the corporations as enemies at par with capitalists who, in their corporatist form, are concerned with extracting the maximum surplus value and profit. The struggle over the approach to nature question is consequently turned into an inevitable struggle between the environmentalists-protectors (representing Mylamma) and the corporations–workers (represented by Vijayan). On the contrary, the bone of contention is the connection of natural process with the capitalist extraction of surplus value with an objective of profit-making (whose quantum is maximised by depriving both Mylamma and Vijayan). The problem is systemic, no less.11 We have described in this chapter how through moments of violence— sovereign and sanctioned—the hegemonic succeeds in breaking down the symbiotic relationship between natural ecological processes and the economy of WoT, creating in the process fresh bodies waiting to be exploited, managed, and subsumed under the great new green age of 11 During the 1970–90s, Sankar Guha Niyogi led Chattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh

(CMSS), a registered trade union of the mine workers, challenged through a project of concrete action (operationalizing Niyogi’s famous Sangharsh (resistance)-Nirman (construction) thesis) the onslaught of nature-blind capitalist-led industrialization. This onslaught impacted, on the one side, the industrial mine workers through its contradictory effects on working and living conditions in a polluting environment; on the other side, capitalist industrialization unleashed an original accumulation process that generated an existential livelihood crisis for the indigenous community. These two effects intersected not only geographically, but also because many of the indigenous subjects had (to) become mine workers. Bringing the class and indigenous question together in the discussion of nature helped CMSS to attempt a remarkable construction of a people’s movement encompassing the Mylammas and Vijayans that questioned and challenged the onslaught of soulless capitalist-led development, not only through organized opposition to it, but also by way of attempting to reconstruct community based on an alternative episteme of cooperation and non-exploitation (Basu 2008, 2012). For him and the CMSS that he led, industry per se is not the enemy of people, but profit amassing industry run on class exploitation is; such an industry will neither be sensitive to people nor to nature.

272

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

capitalist hegemony; how the World Bank-led pro-poor discourse could have the effect of displacing the extant signifiers underpinning the social metabolism in WoT by invoking another chain of signifiers (profit, competition, cost–benefit, efficiency, productivity, etc.) that lay down the subjective conditions of encouraging a culture of metabolic rift through the creation of conducive new practices and institutions in it. To be careful, this is not to say WoT is by default associated with an imprint of unalienated life only; it is only the outside of the circuits of global capital containing a tension-ridden site of contradictory pulls and pushes of philosophies and practices of alienated and unalienated life. As we showed in the case of Plachimada, the advent of global capital by opening new contradictions clearly put the conditions of existence of shared environment in WoT, and subsequently, the production of life in these societies, at-risk. An eco-Marxist view of nature, therefore, must account for the conditions of existence within WoT, encouraging rather than dismembering the transformation of those conditions in a direction that sustains the metabolic interaction between humans and nature; in which technology is embodied in ecologically sustainable ways that reproduce the shared environment and unalienated life of WoT. Is the root of the problem of climate change in global warming or does its secret reside in the hidden abode of the millions of real victims of thousands of Plachimadas, across the South and North, due to capitalist development? Can one discuss the earth system crisis without accounting for the commission and enactment of centuries’ long, continual informal warfare of original accumulation that not only keeps on destroying the Plachimadas for-profit objective all over the world but with that also seeks to annihilate the conceptions, memories, and imaginations of/from Other knowledges beyond the {p, ~ p} frame? Can the governance of effects without governing the cause be considered as a magic solution for the crisis of human species and the earth system crisis? Any green–blue or green–red deal that remains blind to the presence of class as processes of surplus labour, WoT and of its pluriverse of shared, unalienated and sustainable life and which remains perpetually trapped in the delusional veil of realvictim , realutopian , realevil will in the end find it difficult to resolve the earth system crisis.

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

273

Ethico-Politics of WoT We now turn our attention to two aspects relating to the question of ethico-politics that become vital in light of the arguments forwarded so far: i. There is to begin with, the question of intrusion and violence— epistemic and physical, ideological and repressive—over WoT in the name of third worldism. The justification of this intrusion and violence is rooted in the presumed centricity and superiority of capital and modernity; both presumptions are constitutive of the hegemony of global capital. Such forms of intrusion and violence are to be opposed as part of an ethic emerging from a WoT Marxist perspective. ii. While the intrusion and violence over WoT are to be opposed, considerations of ethico-politics would make us vigilant at the same time to the presence of exploitation, unfair distribution, oppression, and marginalization within WoT societies. The ethico-politics must be based on a dual critique of both; one must carefully mark the steps of resistance and transformation without falling into the trap of either unbridled universalism or parochial particularism. The next chapter builds on a possible overdetermination of questions of ethics, social justice, and politics within and outside WoT, keeping thought and practice, anti-capitalist critique and postcapitalist praxis, as also postcapitalist praxis and postdevelopment praxis in dialogue (Dhar 2022).

References Angus, I. 2018. A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism. Delhi: Aakar Books. Akbulut, B. 2021. Degrowth. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society 33 (1): 98–110. Basu, P.K. 2008. Globalisation An Anti-Text: A Local View. New Delhi: Aakar Books. ———. 2012. Rethinking the Values of the Left. Rethinking Marxism 24 (2): 221–239. Bhattacharya, R., and I.J. Seda-Irizarry. 2017. Problematizing the global economy: financialization and the “feudalization” of capital. In Knowledge,

274

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Class, and Economics, ed. T.A Burczac, R.F. Garnett Jr., and R. Macintyre. Oxford: Routledge. Bilgrami, A. 2009. Value, Enchantment, and the Mentality of Democracy: Some Distant Perspectives from Gandhi. Economic and Political Weekly 44 (51): 47–61. Chakrabarti, A. 2022. Class and Social Needs: A Marxian Approach to Poverty. In Global Poverty: Rethinking Causality, ed. R.J. Das, P. Kumar and D. Mishra. Bril: Studies in Critical Social Sciences Chakrabarti, A., S. Cullenberg, and A. Dhar. 2017. Primitive Accumulation and Historical Inevitability: A Postcolonial Critique. In Knowledge, Class, and Economics, eds. T.A Burczac, R.F. Garnett Jr., and R. Macintyre. Oxford: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2009. Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: From Third World to the World of the Third. New York, NY and London: Routledge. ———. 2013. Social Funds, Poverty Management and Subjectification: Beyond the World Bank Approach. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 37(5): 1035– 1055. Chakrabarti, A., A.K. Dhar, and B. Dasgupta. 2015. The Indian Economy in Transition: Globalization, Capitalism and Development. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Chaudhury, A., D. Das, and A. Chakrabarti. 2000. Margin of Margin: Profile of an Unrepentant Postcolonial Collaborator. Calcutta: Anustup. Dhar, A. 2003. Other Marx-s: Marx’s Others. Other Voice. Kolkata: Publication of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). ———. 2018. Melancholy Philosophy: Polis-Praxis-Phronesis and the Slave’s Know-How. In Abandonment and Abjection: Melancholy in Philosophy and Art, ed. S.B. Das. Aakar Books: New Delhi. ———. 2020. The Real (of) Marx: Adivasi Worlds as Tombstone of the Illicit. In After the Revolution: Essays in Memory of Anjan Ghosh, ed. P. Chatterjee. Orient Blackswan: Hyderabad. ———. 2022. Practical Philosophy, Encore: The Prop Roots of Postdevelopment Praxis. In Rethinking Development: Approaches and Practices in South Asia, ed. F.U. Ahamed and M.S. Islam. Cambridge Scholars Press, UK. Dwivedi, R. 2002. Models and methods in development–induced displacement. Development and Change 33 (4): 709–732. Foster, J.B. 1999. Marx’s theory of metabolic rift: Classical foundations for environmental sociology. American Journal of Sociology 105 (2): 366–405. ———. 2000. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press. ———. 2003. A planetary defeat: The failure of global environmental reform. Monthly Review 54 (8): 1–9

9

WORLD OF THE THIRD: ENCOUNTERS …

275

———. 2020. The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology. New York: Monthly Review Press. Foster, J.B., B. Clark, and H. Holleman. 2019. Capitalism and Robbery. Monthly Review 71 (7): 1–23. Ghosh, A. 2021. The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. Gurugram: Penguin Random House. Gibson–Graham, J.K., and D. Ruccio. 2001. After’ Development: Re-imagining Economy and Class. In Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism, ed. J.K. Gibson–Graham, S.A. Resnick and R. D. Wolff. Durham: Duke University Press. Kallis, G., S. Paulson, G. D’Alisa, and F. Demaria. 2020. The Case for Degrowth. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kallis, G., A. Varvarousis, and P. Petridis. 2022. Southern Thought, Islandness and Real-Existing Degrowth in the Mediterranean. World Development 157: 105957. Kamat, S. 2001. Development Hegemony: NGOs and the State in India. New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lacan, J. 1997. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, ed. Jacques–Alain Miller. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–1960). Trans. with notes. Dennis Porter. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Lear, J. 2007. Working Through the End of Civilization. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88 (2): 291–308. Marx, K. 1970. First Draft of the Reply to V.I. Zasulich’s Letter. In Selected Works, Vol. 3, ed. K. Marx and F. Engels. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ———. 1990. Capital Volume 1. London: Penguin Books. ———. 1991. Capital Volume 3. London: Penguin Books. Mookherjee, U.K., S. Raj, and M. Subin. 2020. Whose Forest Is It after All? NALSAR Student Law Review 14 (33). Plumwood, V. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge. Read, J. 2002. Primitive Accumulation: The Aleatory Formation of Capitalism. Rethinking Marxism 14 (2): 24–49. Resnick, S.A., and R.D. Wolff. 2002. Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. New York: Routledge. Saito, K. 2018. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press. Sandler, B. 1994. Grow or Die: Marxist Theories of Capitalism and the Environment. Rethinking Marxism 7 (2): 38–57. Shanin, T. 1983. Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and ‘the Peripheries of Capitalism. London, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge and Kegan.

276

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Vlachou, A. 2001. Nature and Class: A Marxian Value Analysis. Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism, ed. J.K. Gibson–Graham, S.A. Resnick and R. D. Wolff. Durham: Duke University Press. ———. 2005. Environmental Regulation: A Value-Theoretic and Class-Based Analysis. Cambridge Journal of Economics 29 (4): 577–599. ———. 2017. Ecological Challenges: A Marxist Response. Knowledge, Class, and Economics: Marxism without Guarantees. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2018. Ecological Challenges: A Marxist Response. In Knowledge, Class, and Economics: Marxism without Guarantees, ed. T. Burczak, R. Garnett, and R. McIntyre. London and New York: Routledge. Wolff, R.D. 2002. Efficiency: Whose Efficiency? Post-Autistic Economics Review 16. World Bank. 1995. Working with NGOs: A Practical Guide to Operational Collaboration between The World Bank and Non-governmental Organization. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. ———. 2001. World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2015. World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behaviour. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.

CHAPTER 10

Expanded Communism: From World of the Third Subject-Positions

Introduction Injustice is clear, justice is obscure. Those who have undergone injustice provide irrefutable testimony concerning the former. But who can testify for justice? Injustice has its affect: suffering, revolt. Nothing, however, signals justice. … justice is [not] merely the absence of injustice. … justice is … more than the empty neutrality of a double negation. … Injustice is not the immediate disorder of that for which justice would provide an ideal order. Alan Badiou, “Philosophy and Politics”1

The first section of this chapter takes off from the question of what could be considered unethical or what could emerge as injustice with respect to a Marxian perspective. For example, exploitation is at the same time both unethical and unjust. Having thought the unethical and the unjust, we invoke three possible approaches to the question of ethics with respect to world of the third (hereafter WoT). We represent them as (i) ethics to world of the third, (ii) ethics with world of the third, and (iii) ethico-politics of world of the third—where the ethical relation or the relation of ethics with respect to the invocation of the ‘ethics 1 Radical Philosophy, July/August 1999. Available at: https://www.radicalphilosophya rchive.com/issue-files/rp96_article3_philosophypolitics_badiou.pdf.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0_10

277

278

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

to’, ‘ethics with’ and ‘ethics of ’’ carry three distinct connotations. The second section tries to think what would constitute justice from a Marxist standpoint. This section invokes three tentative approaches (by no means exhaustive) to the question of justice: (i) appropriative justice, (ii) productive justice, and (iii) development justice. In this section, we lay down our partial and contingent understanding of the justice criterion with respect to a Marxist standpoint from a WoT subject position. We name this critical engagement with the {Capitalism-Development} complex in general, and the {Global Capitalism-Third World} complex in particular, the discourse of WoT Marxism.

Marxian Ethics We put forward our general position on ethics as an ethico-politics of the real , which in other words, is an ethico-politics of the foreclosed. At a more particular level, it would be ethico-politics of WoT. ‘Ethics of the Real’ is the title of a work by Zupancic (2000). We reproduce through the phrase ethico-politics of the real, a displaced version of the same to (1) acknowledge the import and importance of Zupancic’s rather incisive work and (2) to mark out despite such an acknowledgement, the specificity of our rendition of the Lacanian Real as real—once again a displaced rendition— an ab-original rendition.2 In our rendition Zupancic’s Ethics of the Real is rewritten as the ethico-politics of the real.

2 The book invokes ‘aboriginalization’ in a two-fold manner (see Dhar, 2015, 2017a,

2018a). The first is about the now-known history of the aboriginalization of Southern cultures during the colonial era. The first is about the characterisation of Southern cultures as aboriginal and the consequent degradation and devaluing of such cultures, as also representing them as the lacking other. The first is about Orientalism (both white and brown). Third worldism is an aboriginalization of WoT. The second is about a possible post-Orientalist episteme. The first is about how third wordlist cultures were made out of WoT space. The second is about what new cultures of knowledge (as against the Orientalist knowledge of WoT cultures) can be produced. The second is about creating knowledge of WoT as against an extant knowledge of third worldism. This also required putting under erasure (as in Derridean deconstruction) the original formulations of Marxian and Freudian knowledge. The rewriting of the Lacanian ‘inassimilable Real’ as the ‘foreclosed real’ is an ab-Original rendition of classical psychoanalysis. The rewriting of ‘historical materialism’ as ‘class-focused Marxism’ is also an ab-Original rendition of classical Marxism. The ab-Original rendition of Marx and Freud takes us to the doorstep of WoT. Immersion in WoT takes us to the doorstep of an ab-Original rendition of Marx and Freud.

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

279

We have arrived at an ethico-politics of the real through a working at the overdetermined interface of a displaced version of psychoanalysis (i.e. when psychoanalysis is turned ab-original) and a displaced version of the Marxism (i.e. when traditional Marxism is “sufficiently deconstructed”3 [Laclau, 2000: 205]). In Chapters 2–5, we have worked towards and have re-produced, respectively, a deconstructed rendition of Marxism and an ab-original rendition of psychoanalysis. Having laid the ground for a reworked rendition of both Marxism and psychoanalysis, we, in the subsequent chapters, have tried to work at the overdetermined interstices of Marxism and psychoanalysis—of their respective focus on hegemony and foreclosure—on reality (as hegemonic) and real (as foreclosed)—of global capitalist hegemony and the attendant foreclosure of class-WoT. In this chapter, we think ethico-politics to/with/of WoT, WoT as the foreclosed real of global capitalist hegemony. 1. Ethics to World of the Third For some there is nothing difficult in the thinking of ethics. For them the relation between global capitalism and WoT is a hierarchical relation; WoT is lower down the slope of hierarchy and hence amenable to First World do-goodism. What one does in this context is measure WoT in terms of the principles of the circuits of global capital. The logic of this measure is such that WoT never measures up to the parameters of the circuits of global capital. WoT is always already the lacking-lagging other. WoT, therefore, needs to be included in the circuits of global capital; as if, to survive, WoT needs to get included. It is altogether a question of access. Include WoT either in the civilizing missions of the colonizing west (as in nineteenth-century colonialism); or in the development programmes of international funding agencies (as in a twentieth-century postcolonial world); or in the democratic release of the repressed initiated by the hegemonic in the aftermath of 1989, include her in the circuits of the universal human rights programme. If inclusion within the circuits of global capital is the economic imperative upon WoT in the age of globalization, inclusion in the circuits of the universal human rights programme 3 “It is not just that deconstruction cannot found a politics, while other ways of thinking can. It is that deconstruction can make founded political programs more useful by making their in-built problems more visible. To act is therefore not to ignore deconstruction, but actively to transgress it without giving it up” (Spivak, 1989: 206).

280

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

is the political imperative upon WoT.4 The above impulses, civilizational, developmental, rights-based democratization, are inter-related; they constitute the present in their mutual constitutivity. In all three impulses, the anchoring signifier that sets to work the liberal agenda puts aside the particular complexities of WoT. In all three moments there is also a certain “fetishizing of the ‘ought’” (Lucas, 1980: 68). Ethics (to WoT) becomes nothing more than a convenient tool for the Master’s Discourse to pass off its own economic commandments, its own version of development as economic growth and human need as the truly authentic and honourable (Zupancic, 2000: 1). This is observable in the case of Kantian ethics. The Kantian philosophy investigates human practice only in connection with the highest forms of morality. … As in all consistent idealist philosophies, Kant sets up a hypostasizing fetish of reason. In world-views of this kind, necessity loses, even at the epistemological level, the ‘if… then’ character which alone can render it concrete; it simply appears as something absolute. The most extreme form of this absolutizing of [western] reason is naturally enough displayed in morality. The ‘ought’ is thus torn away from the concrete alternatives facing men—both subjectively and objectively. These appear instead, in the light of this absolutizing of moral reason, simply as adequate or inadequate embodiments of a kind of absolute commandment, a commandment, which therefore remains transcendent towards man himself. As Kant puts it, ‘In a practical philosophy, where it is not the reasons of what happens that we have to ascertain, but the laws of what ought to happen, even though it never does …’ The [categorical] imperative that calls forth these ‘ought’ relationships in man thus becomes a transcendentally absolute (crypto-theological) principle. (Lucas, 1980: 68–69)

We have seen in this book how the trope of Development (as growth + hegemonic need) emerges as one such crypto-theological principle, transcendentally absolute, something that ought to happen to WoT.5 4 The above impulses, civilizational, developmental, rights-based democratization, all three are not to be understood in a simple diachronic manner, as one following the next in historical time or in a simple chronological mode, as the next superseding the previous altogether, but as inter-related, as constituting the present in their mutual constitution. 5 The crypt (see Abraham and Torok, 1986) is our theoretico-political shorthand for the experience and phenomenon of the “secret” in transition, the invariant within the variant; it signifies the unchanged in the changing phases; it is the secret static under the

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

281

How WoT or for that matter the WoT subject responds to the (interpellating) call of this crypto-theological principle is another question; a no less important question, however. Does the WoT subject give in to the imperatives of global capitalism? Does a giving in to the imperatives of global capitalism erase in the process the language of WoT? Does it keep in repudiation the language of WoT, a language premised on the fact that WoT is the space outside of the circuits of global capital, a space that could concurrently be speaking the language (albeit partial) of nonexploitation, sharing (in the form of shared environment and surplus) and culturally contingent contextual need: radical need? Does it inaugurate, in turn, that language of third worldism that sustains the hegemony of global capitalism? Does third worldism reduce WoT subject to silence? How could WoT subject speak? How could she speak the language of WoT? Ethics to WoT, even while being ethical to WoT, reduces WoT to silence; somewhat paradoxically the (apparent) concern for ethics, ethics to WoT, reduces WoT to the crypto-theological principles of Global Capitalism. WoT remains unspoken of in the process. What we have in the end is an ethics of the real turned victim, an ethics of the victim real, or realvictim ; an ethics circumscribed by the given-known language of third worldism, an ethics so circumscribed by the World Bank’s interventionist politics, that there is hardly any space for the ethical. 2. Ethics with World of the Third For some others devoted to the “phenomenology of the other”, to the Altogether-Other, to a kind of “ethical radicalism”, the relation between global capitalism and WoT is never a hierarchical relation. For them, WoT is not reducible to the principles of global capitalism. WoT is a world of difference. The difference is such that it is never too easy to know the third; it is never too easy to know the being of the third; let alone the otherness of the third; it is never too easy to be ethical to the Other, to the radical otherness of the Other. Hence, a certain impossibility haunts the possibility of an ethical relation to the third. Levinas (1979 [1961]: condition of apparent and incessant movement; as we shall see in a later section, while class is foreclosed, the secret that it hides as the world moves relentlessly is exploitation (one cannot access exploitation without class as processes of surplus); for it to have any political sense, Marxism, therefore, cannot but be an encounter with the crypt (Chakrabarti, Dhar, and Dasgupta 2015: 145–167; Dhar, 2017b).

282

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

21) places the ethical above the naïve politics of inclusion; for Levinas as also for us, the politics of inclusion suspends ethics; it rescinds ad interims the unconditional imperatives; it renders ethics derisory; it strips politics of the difficult work of ethics. It is to Levinas, that we owe our kind of ethical radicalism. Levinas remains to this day, one of the foremost philosophers to have raised the problem of Sameness, to have raised the question of the ethical primacy of the Other over the theoretical ontology of the Same (Kayatekin and Amariglio, 2020). He maintained that metaphysics, imprisoned by its Greek origins, has subordinated thought to the logic of the Same. It is for us to devote ourselves to the Other, to a principle of alterity, to the principle of the Altogether-Other, which transcends mere finite experience. We remain sensitive to Levinasian ethics, to the Levinasian leash on thought conceived ontologically under the dominance of self-identity [identite-a-soi]. For us Levinas inaugurates an ethics of the Real, an ethics circumscribed by the limits of knowledge as also by the limits of love (see Lacan, 1998), an ethics circumscribed by the unspeakable, an ethics so circumscribed by the remainder, so menaced by the impossible that there is hardly space for the political. While the authors of this work do remain menaced by an ethics of the Real, we are also in an obstinate search for an ethico-politics of the real , an ethico-politics of the foreclosed; we remain in search of not just ethics, but also an ethico-politics. Ethico-politics of the real thinks ethics and politics in their mutual imbrications, without reducing one to the other, as also without giving up on either. 3. Ethico-politics of world of the third: In this section, we rewrite ethics to the real and ethics with the Real as ethico-politics of the real. We ask: Why can’t the third or the perspective of the third be a ground for ethics and politics? How could we come to respect the Other as the foreclosed real, not just as the inassimilable Real? By making the Other matter? By making the Other the legitimate territory of and for ethics? By making the Other the ground for an Other episteme? By making the language of the Other the language of and for ethics? By making foreclosed language the language of ethics? By making the language of (a) non-capital, (b) non-exploitation, (c) fair distribution, and (d) radical need, the language of ethico-politics?

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

283

In a word, by making the postcapitalist language—cocooned (yet crypted) in WoT (not the whole of the language of WoT) the language of ethico-politics? By making particular postcapitalist moments in the language of WoT the ground for a partial perspective on ethico-politics? For us we could not be ethical or political to WoT, or for that matter, WoT could not be ethical or political in itself. One can’t be ethical or political without an epistemo-ontological explication of the truth of WoT. One needs to retrieve the third from foreclosure as also from its representation as either the real as victim, or the real as evil, or the real as utopian, or the real as the Dark Continent. One needs to retrieve the truth of WoT—retrieve both the truth of Otherness as also the Other truth (albeit partial) that WoT is. That links epistemo-ontology to ethico-politics. While we would never deny that the Otherness of WoT is at one and the same time overdetermined in terms of of class, race, caste, gender, and sexuality, in this work, we explicate the dimension of Otherness of WoT that inheres in and through the question of class. It inaugurates in turn the initial beginnings of a class-focused-discourse-of-WoT. We have named it WoT Marxism. The section of this chapter titled ‘WoT and transformative political praxis’ is an elaboration of an ethico-politics of the WoT.

From an ‘Ethics of the Impossible’ to an ‘Ethics of the real’ This work thus moves from the foreclosed (Chapter 4) to an ethics of the foreclosed. It is trying to retrieve to an extent the very thing excluded—excluded not just from the traditional field of epistemoontology, but from the traditional field of ethics as well and turn it, i.e. the hitherto excluded, instead “into the legitimate territory of ethics” (Zupancic, 2000: 3). But then, such a turning of the hitherto illegitimate/excluded/the-not-considered into the legitimate territory of ethics would mean a moving out from the prevailing ethical ideology to a certain ethics of the real that relates, in turn, to an ‘ethic of truths’ (Badiou, 2001). The prevailing ‘ethical ideology’ has two ‘philosophical poles’. First, a (vaguely Kantian) universalizing pole which, indifferent to the particularity of any given situation, proscribes in advance any possibility of an organized … situated intervention in the name of collective ‘Good’: ethics

284

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

here is grounded in the abstract universality of general ‘human’ attributes or rights. And second, a (vaguely Levinasian) differential pole, attuned to the irreducible alterity of the Other: ethics here is expressed in an equally abstract respect for mainly cultural differences. Neither this universality nor this alterity, Badiou suggests, can be rigorously founded without tacit reference to theology, either way, the [prevailing] ethical ideology conceives of ‘man’ as a fundamentally passive, fragile and mortal entity—as a potential victim to be protected (most often, as a ‘marginalized’, ‘excluded’ or ‘Third World’ victim, to be protected by a dutiful, efficient, and invariably ‘Western’ benefactor/exploiter.6 (Hallward, 2001: xiii)

In contrast, Badiou’s ethic of subjective truths7 would presume that WoT can be active; WoT is indifferent to established or state-sanctioned differences, it operates in the realm of practical division (for or against the event,8 for or against the real) and situates its affirmation precisely there where the stay of the situation can see only the non-known and the non-obvious (Badiou, 2001). This is thus a journey from the prevailing ethical ideology, from classical ethico-political philosophy to a psychoanalytically informed ethico-political philosophy. One could ask: Why do we need to make this journey from classical ethico-political philosophy to a psychoanalytically informed ethico-political philosophy? Is it because psychoanalysis’ understanding of the ‘unconscious’ as also the real is important for the patient and painstaking praxis of postcapitalist reconstruction of the subject and the social (Dhar and Chakrabarti, 2021)? 6 Badiou “rejects the almost universally accepted argument that ethics should essentially concern the Other as such (as potential victim of violence or misrecognition) … Perhaps nothing is more orthodox today than a generalized reverence for the other qua other … the alterity of the other … Couched most notably in terms of the logic of the gift, Derrida’s ethical reflections circle obsessively around notions of inaccessibility and secrecy, around that which is beyond [re]presentation or identification, around subjective impossibility …” (Hallward, 2001: xv–xxiv). Badiou tries to provide an “inspiring, rigorously argued alternative to the tired moralizing truisms of neo-Kantian universalism on the one hand and a more or less tolerant liberal communitarianism on the other” (Hallward, 2001: xxx). 7 “Access to the real m of truth … is wholly subjective: it is founded only on the subjects who ‘bear’ its trajectory” (Hallward, 2001: ix). 8 “… a truth procedure can begin only with some sort of break with the ordinary situation in which it takes place—what Badiou calls an event. An event has no objective or verifiable content. Its ‘happening’ cannot be proved, only affirmed and proclaimed” (Hallward, 2001: ix).

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

285

Does it have a certain significance for “politics implied by the ‘science of imagining difference’ (Geertz, 1986) and specially for how we conceive of the possibilities of change consistent with the psychoanalytic emphasis on the unconscious” (Cornell, 1993: 171) and the real? Is it because psychoanalysis is an encounter with the real ? Is it because the ethics of psychoanalysis is also an ethics of the real ? Is it because there is in psychoanalysis no turning away 9 from WoT? In this work, we have tried to show how reality as always already a hegemonic order is produced through foreclosure—through a simultaneous production of the real. In this chapter, we would like to relate our particular imagination of counter-hegemony and of its ethicopolitics, to the perspective of the real. Our imagination flows not from peripheral re-configurations of existing reality (we would designate such re-configurations ‘capitalist alternatives’; green capitalism, for example) but from the real (we would designate such praxis ‘alternatives to capitalism’), flows not from the Real but from the real. We name it an ethico-politics of the real; it is an attempt to re-think the traditional domain of ethico-politics by recognizing and acknowledging the dimension of the real, by setting up an encounter with the dimension of the real. Ethics of the real is an ab-original rendition of ethics flowing from an ab-original rendition of the real. Ab-original Freud-Lacan meets aboriginal Marx-Althusser in our work. We have shown above how (a) the rewriting of the inassimilable Real as the foreclosed real and (b) the symbolic order as hegemonic is an ab-Original rendition of FreudianLacanian psychoanalysis. We have also shown how the rewriting of (a) historical materialism as the micro-transformation of 24 class sets and (b) class as power-property with class as processes of surplus labour is an aboriginal rendition ab-Original rendition of Marx-Althusser (see Dhar, 2015, 2017a, 2018 for genealogies of ab-originalization). The ab-original rendition The ab-Original rendition of Freud-Lacan and Marx-Althusser took us to the doorstep of foreclosure, delusional veil, crypted nodal signifiers, and the constitutive outside of the hegemonic: WoT (Chapter 2,

9 Freud returns to ‘non-reason’ at the level of its language; this time one would resume a dialogue with non-reason and lift, as if, the Cartesian interdiction. Freud returns to non-reason, to the outside of Western philosophy, returns to the radically Other (Derrida, 1994). We remain predicated by this return—by this attitude of not turning away—by the psychoanalytic attitude to be—such that there is no turning away from the foreclosed.

286

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

4, and 5). Ab-original Freud-Lacan meets ab-original Marx-Althusser in this chapter to inaugurate an ab-original ethico-politics. Unabashedly aboriginal. Ab-original ethics is ethics that refuses to be based and premised on the Original capitalocentric-orientalist discourse and desire of the World Bank and nation-states; it refuses to be based on what passes of as (categorical) imperative—whether in desire, in imagination, or in reality. This is because “what philosophy calls the moral law—and more precisely, what Kant calls the categorical imperative—is in fact nothing other than the superego. … In so far as it has its origins in the constitution of the superego, ethics becomes nothing more than a convenient tool for any [master or] ideology which may try to pass off its own commandments as the truly authentic, spontaneous and ‘honorable’ inclinations of the subject” (Zupancic, 2000: 1). Ab-original ethics “equally refuses the unsatisfactory option of a ‘(post)modern’ ethics based on the reduction of the ultimate horizon of the ethical to ‘one’s own life’” (Zupancic, 2000: 5). For us the ethico-political question is to be articulated from the point of view of the location of the subject in relation to the real. And since our ‘normal’ conscious everyday life, our psychological status quo—the “ego’s era”10 —is structured around foreclosure, access to the real must be achieved through an “essential encounter” (Hallward, 2001: xvii). But then how do we set up an encounter with the real? Where do we meet this real? In the next section—the section titled ‘Interpretation Hits the real’ we explicate on the contours of an encounter with the real (see Biswas and Dhar, 2010). We show how faced with the real—faced with the lack of harmony between the ‘word’ and the ‘world’—how faced with ‘Quinian underdetermination’ both Marx and Freud (in a historical sense) had set up conceptual encounters with the real. We harp on the need to do the same

10 “Like Max Weber, Lacan makes the psychological conditions under which capital could gather steam pre-date its social eminence, although he does so with a very different understanding of ‘psychological conditions’, one which is centered on the ego. But although the ego’s era begins before the advent of capital, it is accelerated by it. … Lacan’s theory of the ego’s era … provides us with a lever … for thinking through the trajectory of modernity. … But the trend is to concentrate on Lacan’s polemic against ego psychology (and other ‘sciences’) while neglecting his polemic against the social order, which produces them. As Gallop points out, Lacan does not limit his attacks to American psychoanalysis. There is a more general attack against the ‘American way of life’” (Brennan, 1993: 7–8).

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

287

with WoT. Thus having set up class as real in the context of capitalist hegemony, we work further on the lack of harmony between the ‘word’ (of Western Marxism11 ) and the ‘world’ (of the third). Marx would work at the overdetermined interstices of the ‘analytic’ and the ‘synthetic’, of the ‘rational’ and the ‘empirical’, of the subjective and objective. A number of new conceptual moments (Marx, 1993 [1857–58]: 472–479) would, therefore, surface out of such encounters with the ‘world’—with Other worlds. Such conceptual detours make conceptual room for a possible Marxism of WoT. Marxism of WoT is a Marxism that does not shy away from an encounter with the real and then tries to think an ethico-politics of the real. In the process it also makes the hegemonic (here global capitalist hegemony) come face to face with the real (here class and WoT) it itself forecloses. This is, of course, no going back to the unsullied innocence of the ‘community’—“A [wo]man cannot become child again, or [s]he becomes childish. But does [s]he not find joy in the child’s naivete, and must [s]he … not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm?” (Marx, 1993 [1857–58]: 111).

Interpretation Hits the real If Cleopatra’s nose changed the course of the world, it was because it entered the world’s discourse, for to change it in the long or short term, it was enough, indeed, it was necessary for it to be a speaking nose. (Lacan, 1977: 123)

In the analytic situation, Lacan moves from the Imaginary to the Symbolic and then to the real. For Lacan the subject would have an Imaginary, a Symbolic, and a real face—each of which predominates at a certain point in analysis. The aim of analysis would be to bring the

11 This is not to say that Western Marxism is One—Western Marxism has moved over the years through a number of conceptual detours—both at the level of the communist parties as also at the level of non-party pronouncements and theorizations.

288

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

analysand through these different moments to the point where interpretation hits the real —where the subject comes to be related to the real. This is possible because something anomalous always shows up in language, something unaccountable, unexplainable: an aporia; aporias point to the presence within the Symbolic of the real, as kinks in the symbolic order. This work, somewhat in a Lacanian vein, tries to seize upon the real, the real as a kink in the symbolic order. This work tries to occupy throughout the act of writing, the space of the real. The aim of this work is thus to produce the hegemonic Signifier (‘Capital’ for example), to render visible its “produced” character (Zizek, 1993: 2), and to show at the same time that it is produced through repression, negation, disavowal, and foreclosure. The aim of this work has also been to show that the real has been reduced to the triplet realvictim (real as victim), real’evil (real as evil), and realutopian (real as a utopia); that WoT (the classed third) has been reduced to the third world (the non-classed third). This work moves from the other’s Demand to the Other’s Desire to the subject as Drive. As demand the subject is stuck in the Imaginary register; as desire the subject is essentially a stance with respect to the Symbolic Order; as drive there is a “subject in the real”. It moves from alienation in the Other to separation from the Other to a traversing of the fundamental fantasy—a traversing of the fundamental fantasy of Capital-ism - of the delusional veil called Capitalism through a setting up of an encounter with the real—where the hegemonized hits upon the real—where interpretation hits the real. The question that still haunts us: Does analysis end here? Do we find the truth? Do we find the truth here? We started with Kant’s categorical imperative and Levinas’ ethics of the impossible as the two philosophical poles of the hegemonic ethical ideology. We had then somewhat parted company with Kant and Levinas (although one can never deny the importance and import of their respective understanding of ethics) and moved over to Badiou and his ethic of (subjective) truths. This we had done to set up an engagement with an ethics of the real, that this work wishes to propose as an alternative to the hegemonic ethical ideology, a radical ethical imaginary that draws heavily from Lacan and links up rather explicitly Badiou and Lacan; that links up, on the one hand, an ethic of truths, and, on the other, an ethics of the real. Ethics of the real is thus an articulation of the ethical question from the point of view of the location of the (exploited/classed) subject with respect and in relation to the real—the real as foreclosed—as that which is disavowed doubly in the normal conscious life of the psychological status

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

289

quo. The real, rejected from any stable assignation of place within the symbolic, is what seems ‘empty’ or ‘void’ or the ‘dark continent’ (as realutopian ) from the perspective of those who represent or hegemonize the situation. Access to the real is achieved through an ‘essential encounter’ (Hallward, 2001: xvii). Badiou would call this enduring encounter an event —an event that as if tries to escape all structuring normativity. But then having hit the real one needs to keep going. There is thus no end to analysis; there is no end to our engagement with the real, with truth. In order to keep going, the subject of truth must resist the temptation to impose an absolute definitive order of truth. Such an imposition would effectively objectify the truth. “A truth compiles, step by step, everything that affirms the strict generic universality of all members of the situation. The point is that any such generic affirmation cannot be made ‘in theory’ or a priori, as the basis for an established consensus. It can take place only through an ‘evental [evenementiel ]’ break with the status quo [break with the sinthome that holds the Borromean knot … a radical repudiation of all merely consensual social norms], a break sparked by an event that eludes classification in the situation … ‘The’ ethic of truth, then, is fully subordinate to the particularity of a truth. There can be no ‘ethics in general’, no general principle of human rights, for the simple reason that what is universally human is always rooted in particular truths …” (Hallward, 2001: xii–xiv). There is thus no end to our engagement with the real; with truth; one needs to keep going in one’s communist becoming in an interminable manner. Marxian Justice For all the different turns in radical thinking, the most enduring challenge to capitalism in the last century has come from communism. Despite suffering many defeats, the ideal of communism has endured; communism remains to this day the most puissant yet the most feared imagination. It was precisely this fear that propelled the need to displace communism into an epitome of evil —into the real turned into evil, or the evil as the substitute or the displaced form of the real—in short, the realevil ; or into something that was dark and distant—primitive communism as a thing of the far away past—as realutopic —as unachievable, as impossible. However, we remain committed to another truth of communism. Not the truth the hegemonic is forwarding. Ours is a fidelity to a

290

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

contrasting truth; truth of the face of communism that aspires to a world free from exploitation, plunder, and marginalization; communism as a ground to think justice; as a ground for imagining a new global order; as a ground for articulating counter-hegemonic social imaginations and practices, however much impossible it appears. In Chapters 2 and 3, we have highlighted the importance of articulating social practices from an ethico-politics that flow from the discursive terrain of both class and need—class and need in their overdetermined existence as neither collapsed into One nor split into Two. Our understanding of Marxist justice is premised on an ethico-political imperative that explores an overdetermination of class and need, namely a form comprising of non-exploitation and radical needs. As indicated in Chapter 3, we visualize such an alternative conception of justice in terms of what we call expanded communism.

Class, Need, and Expanded Communism We have already touched upon the foregrounding of the mainstream or hegemonic notion of need by the organs of the hegemonic (e.g. the World Bank) against a concurrent foreclosure of WoT. The mainstream notion, often dubbed the ‘thin’ version of need, however, was put to trenchant critique by the postdevelopmentalist school who subscribe to what we could call the ‘thick’ version of need (Fraser, 1998: 14). Postdevelopmentalists describe the emergence of need from its contingent meanings flowing from subjective necessities and desires in subsistence economies. Their ‘thick’ theory of need focuses on how people experience their needs either in a culture, or individually, and is, therefore, particular; as against the conventional development rendition that puts down need as universally defined lacks common to all humans, and hence one that can be objectively defined, defined without recourse to any cultural content and subjectivity. In this context, we have argued in Chapter 3, that defining and satisfying need constitutes the quintessential objective of the hegemonic discourse so much so that life in WoT societies becomes nothing but need-based development. Need-based development is designed to ensure the continuing metamorphosis of a space, the space of WoT from its contingent and subjective moorings of need to a paradigm of need tied to the concern of the hegemonic. The mainstream notion of need thus operates like a crypto-theological principle that sets to work the agenda

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

291

of an ethics to WoT, or perhaps, an ethics of the realvictim , an ethics of the real as victim. However, while postdevelopmentlists criticize such a transcendental notion of need, they underplay the more difficult task of counterhegemonic ideological production pertaining to need; their difficulty in deconstructing the economy, capitalism, and in the inability to differentiate third world from WoT, makes this task difficult. Counter-hegemonic notion of need, as against the mainstream or hegemonic notion of need, is premised on a critique of that version of development that embodies the hegemony of global capitalism. In Chapter 3, we have argued that one could radicalize the notion of need in the tradition opened up by Marx; we have called it radical needs. As explained radical need span the realm of both Need I (where the axis of surplus is present) and Need II (where the axis of surplus is absent). One can now work at the overdetermined interstices of radical need and class (i.e. non-exploitation) to produce the standpoint of expanded communism. The invocation of the notion of radical need as anathema to (capitalist) exploitation, as stripped of the concerns of global capital and as tied to the concerns of WoT instead, sets to work the agenda of an ethics of WoT or perhaps ethics of the real. We thus take off in this work from two critiques of the discourse of development. One, the Marxist critique premised on the demonstration of a class-focused decentred and disaggregated economy, and the other, the postdevelopmentalist critique premised on the conception of a ‘thick’ rendition of need. We have argued for the necessity of working at the overdetermined interstices of the two—class and need—so as to announce a paradigmatically different discourse—WoT Marxist discourse. This is important because even though the economy is problematized in the class-focused Marxist frame, development premised on need has remained less important in its rendition of the economy. And since development as need is the quintessential third worldist discourse, classfocused Marxism, despite its powerful anti-Euro-centric impulse, remains unmindful of the third world discourse of development that works over WoT. Consequently, the urgency of providing an alternative theorization of need from this concern is not felt either. We, therefore, raise the question of need in the class-focused Marxian frame. We ask how one can theorize the question of development as need in a disaggregated class space? We develop an articulation of class with development (as need) in the form of non-exploitative class processes and radical needs. Premised on the overdetermination of non-exploitative class processes

292

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

and radical needs (both are possibilities in the space of WoT) we produce a non-essentialist and non-historicist imagination of development. This alternative imagination of development is possible because the idea(l) of a class-focused discourse of non-exploitation and culturally contingent contextual need (that moves away from the universally defined objective and immutable need that the hegemonic espouses) are anathemas to the idea(l) of global capitalism. In Chapters 7 and 8, we have already shown how the hegemonic uses a complex ensemble of practices to reconfigure non-capitalist class enterprises into its hegemonic rule and rearticulate the space of contingent need to displace existing conceptions of need; as also displace possible radical needs into a platform that construes need as a pre-given, universal set of deeper level necessities. This turns the real into the realvictim . The possibility of an ethics of the real is put outside through a foregrounding of an ethics of the realvictim that in turn gives shape and consistency to the hegemonic. The foregrounding of an ethics to WoT purloins the possibility of an ethics of WoT . Expanded communism is premised on ideas-practices that are against the hegemonic’s principles of growth and welfarism. Further, as an imagination, expanded communism is premised on an ethico-politics of WoT ; as an imagination, expanded communism steers clear of any third worldist impulse, an impulse that could be termed Orientalist; this is in addition to its anti-Capitalocentric impulse. As an imagination, expanded communism requires a rethinking of many issues, both at the micro and macro levels, which must materialize into what Gibson-Graham (2003) describe as the construction of new forms economic practices overdetermined by the political-cultural-natural processes, as also the production of new forms of subjectivity.12 At the macro-level, it would involve a rethinking of the very meaning of the global order, and how local existences are to be conceived in a global context. Perhaps a new international that could collectively deliberate on such issues is required. For us, expanded communism provides the ethico-justice criterion of living in a Marxian way.

12 It is our contention that WoT subjectivity premised on the praxis of non-exploitation and radical need could be a crucial clue to thinking communist subjectivities.

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

293

Class, Need, and the Question of Justice In Chapters 6, 7, and 8, we had rethought the social in terms of the twenty-four class sets comprising of capitalist, feudal, communist, independent/ancient, slave, and communitic class processes. That helped us pose the notion of a decentred and disaggregated economic and social totality, that remains open to equally decentred possibilities of microtransformation (not big bang transition). Three features mark out our differences from the concept of big bang transition deployed in classical Marxism (Chakrabarti and Dhar, 2017). First, we adopt a decentred conception of transition (we call it transformation) that is predicated in turn on a decentred totality. We are concerned with both diachronic and synchronic shifts in the originary multiplicity of class sets within a society. In our understanding of a decentred theory of transition, history is not driven by either the Hegelian teleology of reason or the preordained succession of modes of production. History is not the progressive unfolding of a universal truth that can be deciphered by theory (such as historical materialism). Rather it is non-linear and is contingently produced. Second, our decentred Marxian approach to transition is not indifferent to the direction of societal change it favours. We advocate a transformation in economy and society that. (i) replaces exploitative class sets with non-exploitative class sets, so that those who produce surplus labour are not excluded from process of the appropriation of surplus labour and (ii) works towards a fairer and ‘just’ distribution of produced wealth. Third, what happens to the retained surplus? If it is further distributed, then to whom is it distributed and by what criteria? Fair distribution is not a question of natural right. From a class perspective, fair distribution pertains to political contestation and is a moment of justice. Let us recast the above discussion in terms of a dialogue between Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2003) and DeMartino (2003). DeMartino asks radicals to acknowledge three justice criterions: productive class justice, appropriative class justice, and distributive class justice. Productive class justice refers to Marx’s principle of “from each according to [their] ability” which entails principally individuals’ obligations to their communities. Productive justice has an intimate relation

294

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

with appropriative justice, which is achieved when the forms of appropriation become non-exploitative. Productive justice is guaranteed if by the non-exploitative organization of class enterprises, direct producers are aware that they will appropriate and distribute the surplus labour, and their decisions as product of collective deliberation are going to have a profound impact on the development and well-being of the community as a whole. Not only is this obligation to the communities different from what we would have under an exploitative organization of surplus labour (in which the surplus value is appropriated by a few non-performers) but, reversibly, the community, as part of the social articulation, may in fact have an important role in deciding how much, how to, and whom to distribute, and also for what purpose. The ethical plane in which the producer functions, as well as the social pressure, helps create a sense of obligation on the part of the producers to produce socially desirable surplus, as also to produce according to the principle of from each according to [their] ability. In so far as the pressure of distribution of surplus works backward on the production of surplus, productive justice could be understood as a justice criterion arising from the pressure of fair distribution. Appropriative class justice calls for the condition whereby those who produce the surplus should also appropriate the surplus. Exploitation— the exclusion of those who produce surplus from the process of appropriating the surplus—is considered unjust for two reasons that we have discussed in Chapter 2: (i) exploitation is a form of social theft and (ii) exploitation denies one their rightful right to participate in the process of distributing the appropriated surplus. The former point leads to an argument calling for the producers not to be denied the right to participate in the process of appropriation, and the latter point signals to the fact that those who appropriate the surplus should also distribute it. Exploitation is unjust not simply because producers are denied the right to possess the surplus, but also because producers are at the same time denied the right to decide on the distribution of the surplus. Since the axes of distribution are numerous, the authority acquired to distribute the surplus via appropriative justice becomes a valuable asset. It is valuable principally because it helps one to cross the limited domain of surplus and participate in the creation of what Luc-Nancy (1991) designates as “being-in-common”. But this begs the question: By what criteria should the surplus that is appropriated, be distributed? This immediately takes

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

295

us to the aspect of distributive class justice. Distributive justice encapsulates the principle: “to each according to [their] need”, which according to DeMartino, “requires that the allocation of that share of the social surplus that is destined for consumption be based on people’s distinct needs: those with the greatest needs should receive the greatest shares. This proposition entails a strong obligation on the part of the community as a whole to its individual members” (DeMartino, 2003: 13). Class justice must incorporate the aspect of fair distribution à la distributive class justice. We are now in a position to expand on DeMartino’s rendition of distributive justice. The departure is premised on the argument that distributive justice, while intimately related to the question of class, is not per se class justice. Taking off from the concept of social surplus (see Chapters 2 and 3), we aver that distributive justice pertains to the aspect of need which arises in the milieu of development. Processes pertaining to the performance, appropriation, distribution, and receipt of surplus labour are not the same as processes pertaining to social surplus. That is justice pertaining to the issue of the distribution of social surplus is conceptually not a matter of class justice. Thus to differentiate our conception of distribution from that of DeMartino, we replace, following Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2003), the third justice criterion of distributive justice by the notion of developmental justice. In this work, we focus on the criterion appropriative class justice (as a criterion focused on the question of surplus labour, a criterion that works towards eliminating exploitation) and developmental justice (as a criterion focused on the question of radical need, a criterion that works towards ensuring fair distribution) in producing the conceptual space of expanded communism. We show in the course of our work, how the moment of productive class justice too is ingrained within the space of expanded communism. Conceptually, expanded communism is the Borromean Knot of appropriative, developmental, and productive class justice. (Fig 10.1) This knot is important because there is no one-to-one correspondence between non-exploitative class processes and fair distribution. One can imagine a non-exploitative class society with an unfair distribution of surplus. For example, the workers who appropriate the surplus may not want to give away any portion of the surplus to the unemployed and those whose necessities and desires remain unfulfilled. One can also imagine a situation where most of the surplus appropriated by the workers is

296

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

Appropriative Class Justice

Developmental Justice

Productive Class Justice

Fig. 10.1 Appropriative, developmental, and productive class justice (Source Self-constructed)

paid as subsumed class payments to government bureaucracies who do not spend money in the ways that are considered part of a process of fair distribution. Because of the possibility of such a society dominated by non-exploitative class sets, there is a need to articulate a concept or concepts of fairness to go along with the non-exploitative class sets. In this context, transformation towards non-exploitative class sets, accompanied by the transformation of class sets as well as of their conditions of existence leading towards a fair redistribution of wealth, is what we mean progress/development/well-being/ quality of life. In the above rendition of “progress”/ “development”/ well-being/ quality of life, we impute no teleological meanings. Nothing in Marxist theory can assert that the journey of the social follows some pre-given pattern, such that it will move inexorably towards a non-exploitative and relatively fair society. What it says, in contrast, is that it is a desirable movement, and one should work towards it. Hence Marxism is a question of transformative social praxis. But a praxis of non-exploitation and fair distribution, of course, does not guarantee that it is going to happen or stabilize. Further, even if we assume that such a social situation is reached or achieved, the concept of overdetermination and contradiction precludes the situation from being a permanent one. Constitutive processes and political actions may force some class sets to move back to exploitative forms and the social distribution of wealth may again become extremely unfair. In this context, class struggle and need struggle to maintain the (counter-)hegemony of non-exploitative class sets and fair

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

297

distribution are part of a ‘permanent revolution’: it is a never-ending and interminable-inexhaustible praxis. Finally, the Marxian praxis of expanded communism cannot be restricted merely to the interface of class-need. As explained in Chapter 3, it is important to recognise the realm of need that is not applicable in a non-surplus, need-based economy. There is a difference between the question of expanded communism in the context of the presence of class and surplus as concepts (even if class division and exploitation are absent as in the communist class process) and in a classless scenario where class and surplus as concepts are redundant. We have also seen that the perspective of radical need is active not just in the space of what we have designated Need I in Chapter 3, but also in the space of Need II, where the classless, need-based economy—with its production, distribution and consumption considerations—may be organized based on ‘each according to his need’. Along with radical need in Need I space, Marxian ethicopolitics will have to account for radical need in Need II space when one is positing development justice from a Marxian perspective. Radical need and expanded communism traverse both of these arrangements. Weaving through contradictions and conflicts, expanded communism is, therefore, about creating new non-exploitative class processes, and transforming existing class processes from exploitative to non-exploitative forms; it is also about struggles over fair distribution based on radical needs in the spheres of co-existing exploitative and non-exploitative scenarios. Evidently, the struggle for expanded communism that we have depicted in Table 10.1 will only become more complex; but more importantly, it will require a careful consideration of the questions of transformative political praxis.

World of the Third and Transformative Political Praxis Having discussed a possible ethico-politics of WoT and a possible contour of an expanded praxis of communism, this section of the chapter shall take up the question of transformative political praxis—and shall bring to dialogue in such praxis postdevelopment and postcapitalist strands (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2019, 2022; Chitranshi and Healy, 2022; Dhar and Chakrabarti, 2019, 2021, 2022; Dhar, 2020, 2022). In this section, we focus only on class-based society and expanded communism to make our point regarding the cocooned yet crypted presence and importance

298

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

of transformative political praxis. Additionally bringing the classless, needbased economy into the discussion will need careful consideration; we do not pursue that angle any further in this chapter. Recall from Chapter 8, by taking the possible combination of class as processes of surplus labour, output distribution, and worker’s remuneration into consideration, we have represented economic reality as decentred and disaggregated in terms of 24 class sets as reiterated in Table 10.2. We have thereafter derived WoT as space from Table 10.2. We begin by summarising our discussion in Chapter 8 regarding the WoT space: (i) leaving out simple reproduction type class set 17 would occupy the centre of the hub of the circuits of global capital, (ii) of the 22 “what are not capitalist class sets”, at least twelve (i.e. class sets 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, and 24) are outside the circuits of global capital and hence part of WoT, (iii) class sets 5 and 17 could also be inside (i.e. hooked to) or outside the circuits of global capital; when outside, they are part of WoT and (iv) the other ten non-capitalist class sets—even if they are non-capitalist—could be either inside or outside the circuits of global capital, depending on whether their produce is hooked to global capital via exchange in the local–global market (see Column 6 above), local market (see Column 7 above), or non-market (see Column 8 above) site. Let us now focus on extracting out the ethico-politics from the WoT space. What is cocooned inside WoT? Of the twelve non-capitalist class sets that are outside the circuits of global capital, six of them (i.e. class sets 2, 4, 14, 16, 22, and 24) are non-exploitative in addition to being noncapitalist. Moreover, among the twelve class sets (i.e. the odd-numbered Table 10.1 Marxian politics in a class frame Marxian Politics in a Class Frame

Exploitative Classes

Fair Distribution – Accounts for radical need Strategically situated

Non-exploitative Classes

Political goal of expanded communism - class based

Source Self-constructed

Unfair Distribution - Does not account for radical need Unacceptable

Strategically situated

Performance of surplus labour

A A A A A A A A C C C C A A A A C C C C C C C

No

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

A A A A B B B B A A A A C C C C B B B B C C C

Appropriation of surplus labour COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM NON−COM COM

Distribution

Table 10.2 Class sets and World of the Third

WAGE WAGE NON−WAGE NON−WAGE WAGE WAGE NON−WAGE NON−WAGE WAGE WAGE NON−WAGE NON−WAGE WAGE WAGE NON−WAGE NON−WAGE WAGE WAGE NON−WAGE NON−WAGE WAGE WAGE NON−WAGE

Worker’s remuneration Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible

Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible Possible

Postcapitalist Politics

Possible

Anti−Capitalist Politics

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

WoT

World of the Third (WoT)

(continued)

Non−E Non−E Non−E Non−E E E E E E E E E Non−E Non−E Non−E Non−E E E E E Non−E Non−E Non−E

Modes of Appropriation

10 EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

299

Performance of surplus labour

Appropriation of surplus labour

Source Dhar and Chakrabarti (2019: 94–95)

com: commodity, non−com: non−commodity E: Exploitation; Non−E: Non−exploitation

24 C C A = individual, B= none, C =collective,

No

Table 10.2 (continued)

NON−COM

Distribution

NON−WAGE

Worker’s remuneration

Anti−Capitalist Politics

Postcapitalist Politics WoT Class sets are outside Circuits of Global Capital

World of the Third (WoT) Non−E

Modes of Appropriation

300 A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

301

ones) that could be hooked to the circuits of global capital via local–global markets, once again, six (class sets 1, 3, 13, 15, 21, and 23) are nonexploitative. Therefore, class sets 2, 4, 14, 16, 22, and 24 constitute (and class sets 1, 3, 13, 15, 21, and 23 could also constitute) the cocooned fragment of the (a) non-capitalist and (b) non-exploitative sets in WoT as space. What, however, is crypted13 by the hegemonic, is the possibility of a postcapitalist politics of reconstruction; it is crypted to even classical Marxian praxis (Chakrabarti, Dhar and Dasgupta 2015, 145–157; Chakrabarti and Dhar 2022; Chitranshi and Dhar, 2021; Dhar and Chakrabarti, 2019, 2021; Dhar, 2017b). The finding-founding of WoT as space creates ground for a politics of place; politics of place as the “site and spur of [possible] becoming”, which is “not a politics of identity per se, but a politics of the co-production of subjects and places. A politics of becoming in place” (Gibson-Graham, 2016: 288). Rather than an assumed place of politics, it is only reconstructive praxis that can give birth to WoT as place. WoT as space births the necessity of a transformative praxis. Transformative praxis in turn births the possibility of WoT as place. It is the appreciation of the re-creative political as painstaking praxis of reconstruction that is crypted in classical Marxism; the return of the crypted has to supplement the return of the foreclosed WoT, so as to create the ground and condition for a ‘possible’ postcapitalist future. What is not crypted in classical Marxism is class struggle over capitalist class sets 5, 17 so as to transform their class form to non-exploitative ones, such as 21–24 or 13–16. This is crypted in Economics or Development Economics but is recognized in classical Marxism; it continues to have an enduring presence in our imagination of anti-capitalist struggle. However, what is crypted not just in Economics or Development Economics but also in classical Marxism, are non-exploitative class sets 2, 4, 14, 16, 22, and 24, which are cocooned within WoT space; as also class sets 1, 3, 13, 15, 21, and 23, which are cocooned within the circuits of global capital, but are non-exploitative. The latter means that in addition to the class resistance against {5, 17}, class struggle in favour of non-exploitation in non-capitalist class sets must transpire within the circuits of global capital too, as part of politics of place for contesting and reconstituting its interior. Finally, alongside non-exploitative class sets 2, 4, 14, 16, 22, and 24

13 See Footnote 3.

302

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

there must be a place of class struggle over exploitative class sets (noncapitalist class sets 6, 8, 10, 12, 18, 20, as also capitalist ones) within the WoT space. Praxis is not just about resistance to capitalist hegemony, which operates by securing and facilitating the expansion of circuits of global capital, through the operations of capitalist class exploitation and original accumulation. We have demonstrated through the WoT Marxism, that the register of praxis conjoining resistance and reconstruction, opens up the realm of politicized social transformation, including that within WoT. Radical politics—Marxian and non-Marxian—may ultimately never get to the point of politicized social transformation. It is so because politics addressing the crypt (which even if secret is very much real) is rare. On the other hand, Marxism is about the politics of breaking into the crypt; breaking into the crypt by working through the delusional veil. It is the politics of the ‘progressive elaboration’ of capitalism’s ‘personal dictionary’, the politics of the cataloguing of ‘deciphered hieroglyphics’. One could call it the politics of decipherment. One could also call it the politics of the secret , about the secret, around the secret, on the secret. Because what is at stake [in politics] is what takes places secretly [i.e. that which deludes], or takes a secret place [i.e. that which is foreclosed], in order to keep itself [i.e. the hegemonic] safe. Marxian politics is about breaking not only into the crypt of capitalism, but the crypt of all class divided societies, class exploitation as such; and this breaking into the crypt of class exploitation would inaugurate in turn, and somewhat paradoxically, the breaking out of class division per se. Marxian transformative praxis encapsulates the process of breaking into and breaking out of the crypt, rather than getting circumscribed, wittingly or unwittingly, by the preservation of the crypt (the transition of Soviet Union from private to state capitalism is an example that preserved the crypt of exploitation through change in its forms). From a Marxian standpoint, transformation could then perhaps be the logic-language-ethos of a post-transition imagination not reduced to historical materialism or liberal gradualism or such imaginations that do not address the question of the foreclosed real and the crypted (Chakrabarti and Dhar, 2017).

Hegemony, Third World, and World of the Third Through a conceptualization of an outside to (global) capital, our rendition takes us beyond the familiar and hitherto dominant cartography of

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

303

national economies, of third world economies. It also takes us beyond the now fashionable global-local and even beyond what we have provisionally called the simple difference of North–South/West–East (to ultimately tease out what we earlier called the WoT perspective). We thus end up with indeed a different geography that actually and as a possibility, displaces the cast of given characters. But this spatial outside to the circuits of global capital does not appear as a space of differance; instead, depending on how one is (inter)subjectivized in the economy, it emerges paradoxically as a devalued, decrepit other in postcolonial conditions. This involves a further transmutation of the capitalocentric rendition of the economy through Orientalism. If capitalocentrism turns the diverse “what are not capitalist” into a homogenous other qua non-capitalist, then orientalism captures further turning of non-capitalist into the devalued, pathological, decrepit other: pre-capitalist. WoT as the outside of circuits of global capital, thus slides down the stepladder of progress, and emerges as its lacking pre-capitalist underside qua third world. This slide in effect legitimizes the project of management and social engineering of WoT space, all in the name of the development of third world; it also legitimizes violence against WoT via original accumulation as liberation of the third world from its decrepit state. The true intent and content of original accumulation are thus ‘crypt’-ed in the substitute trope of third worldism. From above the table, original accumulation looks justified, even needed; it is a logical extension of the historical inevitability thesis. From below the table, the same original accumulation looks to be unjust wounding and violence on WoT. The realm of ethico-politics cannot but be a contested space; hence contestation and resistance. Within the hegemonic, third world (as the lacking/lagging inside of global capital) embodies the substitute signifier of WoT (WoT as the foreclosed outside), where the third world is the appropriate(d) other— appropriate for capital—and WoT is the inappropriate(d) other. Third world is capital’s constitutive inside, what it can foreground, even as it forecloses WoT. The foreclosure of WoT by foregrounding third world is what reaffirms the hegemony of global capital; it is the foundation which makes possible development. Working through the substitution, or what Marx calls the delusional appearance of things, helps one to arrive at the WoT and thus attend to the question of the postcapitalist subject. In much of the global South as also the East, we “either accept or repeat the judgments passed on us by Western culture, or we impotently

304

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

resent them but have hardly any estimates of our own, wrung from an inward perception of the realities of our position”. This grows into either a kind of “unthinking conservatism” or “an imaginary progressiveness merely imitative of the West” (Bhattacharya, 1954: 104). This is why a Marxian theory must be premised on a bidirectional critique of both the West’s hegemonic principles and principles (emanating from either the West or the East) that hegemonize the Orient. It was this attention to the dual critique that took us to the doorstep of the concept of WoT and to politics as possible place of transformative becomings. Can the theory of WoT unveil in turn a critique of capitalocentric-orientalist theory as also a theory of critique from the South as also the East, including of conditions within WoT? How to arrive at (pro)positions where our theories could be adapted to our lived experiences and not our lived experiences to a Theory?

The Counter-Hegemonic Subject The question of the subject of counter-hegemonic praxis is indeed an impasse in contemporary Marxism. For us this involves a defamiliarization of the familiar—that is, the hegemonized subject position. The process of the constitution of the counter-hegemonic subject position as elaborated in this book consists of a turn to the foreclosed outside (of class and WoT) so as to inaugurate within, the (impossible) return of the foreclosed outside. The turn to the foreclosed real, however, is not spontaneous; the encounter with usually the inassimilable Real is the precondition for the turn. It is also contingent upon an overdetermined and contradictory multiplicity, including those elements marked by effects from party politics, social movements, revolutionary upsurge, and alternative social/community reconstructions; hence, there is an unpredictability to the turning, and it is irreducible to telos, to consciousness, or to pure rationality. Badiou’s “Meditation Thirty-Five” in Theory of the Subject can be instructive to imagining a post-Cartesian doctrine of the (Marxian) subject: “A subject is not a substance … A subject is not a void point either … A subject is not, in any manner, the organization of a sense of experience … every subject is rigorously singular … A subject is not a result—any more than it is an origin” (2009: 391–2). It is the local configuration of a generic procedure, a configuration in excess of the situation, from which a truth is supported. Badiou thus offers a somewhat

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

305

thin understanding of the subject (not just the revolutionary subject), but a subject nevertheless as “local configuration”, “configuration in excess of a situation”, and locus of “a truth”. “Every subject is political. Which is why there are few subjects and rarely any politics” (2009: 28). What does Badiou mean by “every subject is political”? Of course, he does not mean every subject, that each and every subject is political; he means, perhaps, that the political, in excess of the given consensus, is the condition of the becoming of subject; the subject is in excess of the “human animals” that we are otherwise in our daily procreation; the political sutures the subject into being. Bosteels shows how this is developed further in Badiou’s Conditions: “Every subject is induced by a generic procedure, and thus depends on an event. Which is why the subject (not existence, or individuality) is rare” (Bosteels in Badiou, 2009: x). Badiou thereafter connects or brings to co-implication subject and truth; for him, a theory of the subject, “at the farthest remove from any purely experiential or moral account, is always the theory of the formal conditions for the emergence of a universalizable (not universal) truth” (Bosteels in Badiou, 2009: x). Badiou takes care of the possible tautology of subject and the political (the political sutures the subject; the subject sutures the political) through the invocation of a third: truth. In this book, in contrast to Badiou, the third is the (Lacanian) real, the foreclosed real. Finally, in Manifesto for Philosophy, Badiou (1999: 108) renders the domain of truth as fourfold: (1) politics (nonvulgar Marxism), (2) art (poetry and tragedy), (3) science (mathematics), and (4) love (psychoanalysis)—and all four, according to Badiou, are all equally capable of bringing into existence a subject (Bosteels, 2009: x). Hence, the question before us is: Does the experience and truth of the foreclosed real (i.e. the WoT), the near universalizable truth of outsidedness induce the possibility of the birth of a subject? We foreground, therefore, a connection of the political with the psychoanalytic. We bring the “canonical teachings of Althusser” into dialogue with Lacan (Badiou calls it “unexpected help” from Lacan for Marxism), but the project cannot be completed without the very concept of the subject that classical materialism (a materialism Marx critiques in the first of the Eleven Theses on Feuerbach; see Dhar and Chakrabrati, 2016; Dhar, 2018b) had previously debunked as “sheer idealist humbug”. Marxism, for Badiou, is the discourse with which the proletariat sustains itself as

306

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

subject. Badiou does not wish to let go of this idea. But how to retain the idea (in a post-Cartesian form) is the question. Once again there is “unexpected help” from Lacan. In his Seminar XIV on the logic of fantasy, Lacan moves from accepting Heidegger’s critique of the Cartesian cogito to the paradoxical and counterintuitive embrace of the cogito—but cogito this time as the subject of the real. The Lacanian subject is thus the subject of the real and is not necessarily the really real subject. It is as if Lacan at first accepts Heidegger’s point that the Cartesian cogito inaugurates the forgetting of being, but for Lacan the real is external to being so that what is for Heidegger the argument against the cogito is for Lacan the argument for the cogito—the real for Lacan can only be approached when we put being under erasure. This is why, for Lacan, not only is the cogito not to be reduced to pure thought but, paradoxically, the cogito is the subject of the real: that is, the cut in being in which the real breaks through. Early on, Lacan decentred being with regard to thought: “I am not where I think”; the core of being is not in (self-)consciousness; however, this takes being beyond thinking or language, a proposition that runs counter to Lacan’s thesis that the unconscious is “structured like a language”. Later on, Lacan moved to “I think where I am not”, which decentres thinking with regard to being. Lacan’s stress is on the gap that separates cogito from sum, thought from being. Lacan thus undermines the illusion of their simple or conscious overlap by pointing to the fissure in the apparent and assumed homogeneity of thinking-being (see Dolar, 1998). The subject is thus paradoxically in the gap: the gap of the real, the real as the foreclosed of conscious thought. Lacan thus moves to “It— the real thinks: therefore I am subject/political” (given that the subject is where the political is and the political is where the subject is).

In Lieu of a Conclusion One note of caution in lieu of a conclusion: the real as the touchy entry point (the entry point of class and need) does not serve in our work as ground for another hegemonic nodal articulation complete unto itself with its own attendant foreclosures. There is no denying the fact that our counter-hegemonic imagination could produce other nodal articulations. But there would be a radical difference between a counter-hegemonic nodal articulation and a hegemonic nodal articulation. The counterhegemonic nodal articulation would not be hegemonic in the sense that

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

307

it would have nodal signifiers as well as foreclosed signifiers. The nodal signifiers in a counter-hegemonic formation would not be nodal in the sense that it/they would have attendant foreclosed signifiers; at its worst it could have ‘purloined signifiers’. Further, such purloined signifiers would not remain perpetually purloined in the counter-hegemonic nodal articulation, that would produce once again a totalitarian closure; such an articulation would thus not be ethical. A counter-hegemonic articulation would not have strong exclusion systems, the way in which a hegemonic system is exclusionary; at its worst it could be a weaker exclusion system; for example, exploitative class processes are excluded, are an impossibility in the imagination of expanded communism. In the counter-hegemonic articulation, the purloined are purloined contingent to particular nodal signifiers; the very fact that some signifiers are purloined would also be open to contestation in a new counter-hegemonic nodal articulation; none of the nodal signifiers, however, contingent (along with its/their purloined signifiers) could be taken as given in the counter-hegemonic nodal articulation. In the hegemonic articulation both nodal signifiers and foreclosed signifiers are secure in their respective articulations. In the counter-hegemonic nodal articulation both nodal signifiers and purloined signifiers are un-fixed in their articulation—un-fixed in the sense that both remain locked in an overdetermined constitutivity—un-fixed in the sense that the particular nodal reality remains menaced perpetually by its own purloined letters. This is just how a non-metaphysical Marx and a non-metaphysical Freud meet in this book. For both there is no end to their engagement with the real; with truth; they keep going’; their realities remain menaced by their purloined letters, as also by the inassimilable Real. There is thus no end to our engagement with WoT ; with processes of transformative political praxis; praxis of both self and social transformation; one needs to keep going …

308

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

References Abraham, N. and Torok, M. 1986. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy. Trans. N. Rand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Achuthan, A. 2004. ‘Women and Midwifery in the Indian Context: Between the Practical and the Propositional.’ In Women’s Education and the Politics of Gender. Kolkata: Bethune College Press. Badiou, A. 1999 [1989]. Manifesto for Philosophy. Trans. N. Madarasz. Albany: SUNY Press. ———. 2001. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Trans. P. Hallward. London: Verso Books. ———. 2005. Infinite Thought. Trans. O. Feltham and J. Clemens. London and New York: Continuum. ———. 2009. Theory of the Subject. Trans. B. Bosteels. London and New York: Continuum. Bhattacharya, K.C. 1954. Swaraj in Ideas. Visvabharati Quarterly 20: 103–14. Biswas, R. and Dhar, A. 2010. ‘Rights of the ‘Mad’ in Mental Health Sciences’. In Human Rights and Ethics: Conceptual Analysis and Contextual Applications. (Ed.) S. Motilal. London: Anthem Press. Brennan, T. 1993. History after Lacan. New York and London: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A. 2001. ‘Class and Need: Towards Postmodern Development Economics.’ From the Margins: Of Development, Critique and Beyond, 1(2). Chakrabarti, A., and A. Dhar. 2009. Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: From Third World to the WoT . New York and London: Routledge. ———. 2017. ‘Transition’ in Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics, (Ed.) David M. Brennan, David Kristjanson-Gural, Catherine P. Mulder, Erik K. Olsen. New York: Routledge. Chakrabarti, A., and A, Dhar & S, Cullenberg. 2016. (Un)doing Marxism from the Outside. Rethinking Marxism 28 (2): 276–294. Chakrabarti, A., and S. Cullenberg. 2003. Transition and Development in India. New York: Routledge. Chitranshi, B., and Dhar, A. 2021. ‘What If, the ‘Rural’ is the Future; And Not the Past?’. In Remembering India’s Villages. (Ed.) S.K Singh. New Delhi: Aakar Books. Chitranshi, B., and S, Healy. 2022. Shared Survival and Cooperation in India and Australia. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 63 (1): 151–162. Cornell, D. 1993. Transformations: Recollective Imagination and Sexual Difference. New York and London: Routledge. Derrida, J. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning, and The New International. New York and London: Routledge. DeMartino, G. 2003. Realizing Class Justice. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society 15 (1): 1–31.

10

EXPANDED COMMUNISM: FROM WORLD OF THE THIRD …

309

Dhar, A. 2015. ‘Critical Psychology in Asia: Four Fundamental Concepts’. In Handbook of Critical Psychology (Ed.) I. Parker. New York and London: Routledge. ———. 2017a. ‘The Other Father: Oedipus, anti-Oedipus and the an-Oedipal’. In Imperial Maladies: Literatures on Healthcare and Psychoanalysis in India. (Ed.) Pritha Kundu. New York: Nova Science Publishers. ———. 2017b. ‘Cryptonymy: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Politics’. In Philosophy, Language and the Political: Poststructuralism in Perspective. (Eds.) F. Manjali and M. Crépon. New Delhi: Aakar Books. ———. 2018a. ‘Genealogies of Aboriginalizaton: Psychoanalysis and Sexuation in Cultural Crucible’. In Psychoanalysis in Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood. Washington, D.C: Lexington Books. ———. 2018b. ‘Melancholy Philosophy: Polis-Praxis-Phronesis and the Slave’s Know-How’. In Abandonment and Abjection: Melancholy in Philosophy and Art. (Ed.) S.B. Das. New Delhi: Aakar Books. ———. 2020. ‘The Real (of) Marx: adivasi worlds as tombstone of the illicit’. In After the Revolution: Essays in Memory of Anjan Ghosh. (Ed.) P. Chatterjee. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. ———. 2022a. ‘Practical Philosophy, Encore: The Prop Roots of Postdevelopment Praxis’. In Rethinking Development: Approaches and Practices in South Asia. (Ed.) F. U. Ahamed and M. S. Islam.UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. Dhar, A., and A. Chakrabarti. 2016. Marxism as Asketic, Spirituality as Phronetic: Rethinking Praxis. Rethinking Marxism 28 (3–4): 563–583. ———. 2019. ‘Praxis in WoT Contexts’. In Postdevelopment in Practice: Alternatives, Economies, Ontologies. (Eds.) E. Klein and C.E Morreo. London And New York: Routledge. ———. 2021. ‘Tagore and the Marxian Political: From Critique to Reconstruction to Askesis.’ In Beyond Capitalism and Neoliberalism. (Ed.) V.S. Pejnovi´c. Belgrade: Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade. ———. 2022b. ‘Eleven Theses on the Humanization of Development: Praxis Philosophy in World of the Third’. In Quest of Humane Development. (Eds.) B. Dasgupta et al. Chennai: Springer Nature. Dolar, M. 1998. ‘Cogito as the Subject of the Unconscious.’ Cogito and the Unconscious. (Ed.) S. Zizek. Durham: Duke University Press. Fraser, I. 1998. Hegel and Marx: The Concept of Need. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Geertz, C. 1986. ‘The Uses of Diversity.’ In Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Ed. S.M. McMurrin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2003. An Ethics of the Local. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society. 15 (1): 49–74.

310

A. CHAKRABARTI AND A. DHAR

———. 2016. ‘Building Community Economies: Women and the Politics of Place.’ In The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development. (Ed.) W. Harcourt. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hallward, P. 2001. ‘Introduction’, Ethics. An Essay on the. Understanding of Evil by A. Badiou. London New York. Verso Books. Kayatekin, S.A., and J, Amariglio. 2020. “Reading Marx with Levinas”. In Marx, Marxism and the Spiritual (Eds.) A. Chakrabarti, A. Dhar and S. Kayatekin. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Lacan, J. 1977. Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. A. Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. ———. 1998. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. (Ed.) Jacques–Alain Miller. Book XX. On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge … Encore (1972–1973). Trans. With notes. Bruce Fink. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Laclau, E. 2000. Power and Social Communication. Ethical Perspectives 7 (2): 139–145. Lear, J. 2007. Working through the End of Civilization. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88 (2): 291–308. Levinas, E. 1979. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. A. Lingis, Boston: Massachusetts: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Lucas, J. 1980. On Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Luc-Nancy, J. 1991. The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marx, K. 1993. Grundrisse. Penguin Classics. Spivak. G.S. 1989. “Feminism and Deconstruction, Again: Negotiating with Unacknowledged Masculinism.” In Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis. (Ed.) T. Brennan. New York and London: Routledge. Zizek, S. 1993. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press. Zupancic, A. 2000. Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan. New York and London: Verso Books.

Author Index

A Abraham, N., 13, 280 Achuthan, A., 130 Althusser, L., 7, 22, 86, 125–127, 141

B Badiou, A., 118, 221, 283, 284, 288, 289, 304–306 Basole, A., 216 Berger, M., 9 Bhattacharya, K.C., 8, 16, 151, 177, 181, 198–200, 247, 304 Bhattacharya, R, 151 Bilgrami, A., 144, 266 Bosteels, B., 305 Breman, J., 161 Brennan, T., 103, 286

C Callari, A., 3, 4, 7, 10 Césaire, A., 221

Chakrabarti, A., 7, 22, 27, 29, 43, 46, 48, 50–52, 61, 66–69, 73, 75–77, 80, 86, 126, 127, 130, 136, 144, 153–156, 158, 160, 161, 166, 178, 180, 183, 196, 207, 222, 229, 232, 243, 244, 260, 262, 264, 265, 284, 293, 295, 297, 301, 302 Chaudhury, A., 2, 12, 27, 61, 68, 69, 127, 130, 154, 180, 196 Chitranshi, B., 94, 150, 152, 297, 301 Copjec, J., 1, 115 Cornell, D., 109, 114, 285 Cullenberg, S., 1, 22, 23, 30, 43, 48, 50, 51, 61, 66, 68, 80, 127, 180, 196, 232, 247, 293, 295 D Dalio, R., 176 DeMartino, G., 51, 293, 295 Derrida, J., 17, 90, 93–96, 104, 105, 113, 144, 145 De Soto, H., 161

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0

311

312

AUTHOR INDEX

Dhar, A., 1, 2, 7, 11, 29, 50, 61, 66, 68, 69, 75–77, 80, 86, 87, 90, 93, 94, 96, 106, 120, 126, 127, 136, 144, 150, 152–154, 158, 160, 174, 178, 183, 207, 213, 216, 222, 226, 229, 232, 235, 243, 244, 246, 247, 262, 264–266, 273, 278, 281, 284–286, 293, 297, 301, 302, 305 Dolar, M., 139, 306

E Escobar, A., 50, 73, 75–78, 154, 222, 225, 231 Esteva, G., 73, 231

F Foster, J.B., 266–268, 271 Foucault, M., 15, 95, 222, 223 Fraad, H., 29, 213 Fraser, I., 70, 72, 74, 78, 79, 290 Freud, S., 7, 12, 86, 87, 91, 103, 104, 106, 107, 118, 120, 125–127, 129–131, 278, 285, 286, 307

G Geertz, C., 285 Gibson-Graham, J.K., 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14, 49, 154, 158, 292, 301 Gorz, A., 79

H Hallward, P., 284, 286, 289 Hardt, M., 4, 15, 194 Heller, A., 78 Hindess, B., 43, 51

I Illich, I., 73–75 Irigaray, L., 77, 131

K Kallis, G., 267

L Lacan, J., 1–3, 7, 12–14, 85–87, 89–94, 96, 98, 100, 103–105, 107–112, 117–119, 126, 129, 145, 193, 225, 243, 282, 285–288, 305, 306 Laclau, E., 12, 16, 279 La Porta, R., 162, 163, 196 Lear, J., 216, 246 Levinas, E., 281, 282, 288

M Madra, Y.M., 7, 21, 22 Marx, K., 2, 3, 7, 10, 13, 14, 24, 25, 32, 33, 35, 38, 41, 42, 46, 60, 62, 78, 86, 87, 90, 93, 94, 106, 120, 125, 126, 141–143, 151–153, 157, 159, 174, 177, 186, 195, 199, 200, 244–248, 252, 266, 267, 278, 285–287, 291, 293, 303, 305 Mouffe, C., 12, 16

N Negri, A., 4, 15, 194

R Resnick, S.A., 2, 5, 13, 14, 21, 23, 29, 30, 39, 41, 42, 47, 51, 52, 68, 80, 172, 177, 201, 213, 253 Roberts, B., 36, 39

AUTHOR INDEX

Roy, S., 177, 181, 198–200 Ruccio, D., 76, 154, 262 S Saito, K., 38, 267, 268 Savran, S., 38 Seda-Irizarry, I.J., 177, 181, 198–200, 247 Sen, A., 71, 74, 213 Shaik, A.M., 39 Shiva, V., 73 Spivak, G.C., 2, 23, 86, 96, 103, 279 Stavrakakis, Y., 118, 119 T Tendler, J., 230 Tomšiˇc, S., 87 Tonak, E.A., 39 Torok, M., 13

313

Tregenna, F., 38, 39 V Vanheule, S., 92, 93, 98 Vlachou, A., 267, 268 W Wainwright, J., 2, 3, 11 Wolfenstein, E.V., 102, 103 Wolff, R.D., 2, 5, 13, 14, 21–23, 29, 30, 39, 41, 42, 47, 51, 52, 68, 80, 172, 177, 201, 213, 253, 260 Z Zizek, S., 98, 105, 288 Zupancic, A., 105, 106, 278, 280, 283, 286

Subject Index

A Ab-original, 91, 100–102, 105, 106, 108, 113, 119, 126, 127, 136, 278, 279, 285, 286 Accumulation, 3, 9, 15, 16, 26, 36–38, 40, 45, 46, 54, 55, 59, 138, 150, 157, 163, 178, 194, 200, 212, 228, 229, 234, 241, 243–248, 251–257, 259, 267, 269, 270, 302, 303 Adivasis, 220 Alienation, 288 Alternative economic cartography, 79 Antagonism, 90, 97, 217 Anti-capitalist, 2, 153, 273 Anti-capitalocentric, 76 Antiorientalist, 76 Apparatus hegemonic, 7, 226 ideological, 7 repressive, 7, 273 Appropriation of surplus capitalist, 13, 25–27, 29, 31–33, 42, 189, 214, 268

communitic, 26, 27, 31, 32, 41, 48 exploitative, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 293 feudal, 26, 27, 29, 53 independent, 26, 27, 29, 41, 48 non-exploitative, 27, 30, 32, 48, 293 self-appropriative, 26, 27, 48, 211, 212 slave, 25–27, 29 Appropriators, 24, 30, 31, 35, 41, 81, 157, 185, 186, 198 Aufhebung , 118 B Backward, 1, 97, 115, 141, 149, 153, 196, 234, 294 Backwardness, 50, 154, 161, 163, 196, 216, 222 Barred other, 99 subject, 98, 99 Basic needs, 72, 73, 76, 234 Battery of signifiers, 112, 154

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, World of the Third and Hegemonic Capital, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25017-0

315

316

SUBJECT INDEX

Being-in-common, 10, 69, 294 Bloody legislation, 248 Borromean Knot, 133, 289, 295 Bourgeois, 245 C Capabilities approach, 71, 120, 232 Capital constant (Cc), 33, 40, 157, 176, 213, 256 global, 4–6, 9, 11, 15, 76, 77, 79, 126, 132, 136, 138–141, 143, 144, 146, 153, 171, 174, 176–199, 201–204, 207, 208, 211–221, 224, 226–232, 234–237, 241–244, 251, 254, 258, 259, 261, 265, 269, 272, 273, 279, 281, 291, 298, 301–303 human, 196, 201 social, 16, 207, 217, 226, 232, 235, 236 variable (V), 40, 157, 176 Capitalism, 1–4, 6, 8, 9, 11–15, 48–50, 59, 70–72, 76–79, 85, 87, 96, 98, 135, 136, 138–142, 145, 152, 153, 156–159, 162, 182, 191, 198, 200, 203, 220, 221, 226, 229, 231, 243, 245, 246, 248, 252, 262, 265–270, 279, 281, 285, 289, 291, 292, 302 Capitalist financial, 41–43, 186, 197, 200 merchant, 39, 41–44, 174, 176, 199 private, 16, 44, 46, 52, 53, 75, 82, 138, 142, 165, 175, 178, 193–196, 202, 203, 243 productive, 33, 35–37, 39–43, 46, 172, 175, 177, 178, 186, 208, 255, 258, 259

state, 31, 35, 44, 46, 52, 165, 175, 253 unproductive, 41, 42, 46, 174, 178, 257 Capitalist accumulation, 3, 16, 36, 37, 270 Capitalist development, 2, 10, 12, 37, 76, 135, 152, 181, 201, 222, 245, 264, 266, 269, 272 Capitalocentric-orientalism, 15, 154, 164 Capitalocentric-orientalist discourse, 219 Capitalocentrism, 5, 6, 8, 15, 50, 76, 78, 113, 141, 153, 154, 158, 231, 303 Caste, 75, 77, 217, 218, 283 Centre-periphery, 150, 198 Circuits of global capital, 4–6, 9, 15, 76, 77, 79, 126, 132, 136, 138–140, 171, 178–182, 184–193, 195–199, 202–204, 207, 208, 211, 212, 214–216, 218–220, 224, 227–229, 232, 234–237, 241–243, 261, 265, 269, 272, 279, 281, 298, 301, 303 Circulation, 24, 41, 42, 177, 178 Civilizing mission, 154, 237, 262, 279 Class distribution, 62, 65, 67 Class enterprise, 25, 26, 29, 43–45, 47, 138, 173, 186, 253–255, 258–260 Class-focused analysis, 27, 42, 46, 50, 163, 177, 193, 253 Class focused cartography, 76 Class-focused economy, 158, 164 Class-focused Marxian theory, 21, 23, 30 Classless society, 80 Class matrix, 26, 27, 48

SUBJECT INDEX

Class-need, 60, 66, 67, 70, 77, 79, 81, 297 Class-need struggles, 77 Class process AA, 27, 28 AB, 27–29, 33, 48, 214 AC, 27, 28, 31, 32, 48, 80, 81, 242 capitalist, 5, 12, 14, 16, 29, 32, 42, 48, 50, 138, 162, 207, 243, 267 CB, 27–29, 33, 48, 214 CC, 27, 28, 32, 48, 80, 81, 242 communist, 27, 30, 32, 79, 80, 293, 297 communitic, 27, 31, 32, 80, 293 feudal, 26, 29, 214 fundamental (FCP), 24–27, 29–37, 39–46, 48, 51–54, 60–62, 65, 67, 68, 80, 172, 173, 175, 176, 185, 189, 195, 208, 211, 213, 216, 236, 246, 252, 255, 258 independent, 27, 32, 74, 81, 213, 293 slave, 29, 48, 213, 293 subsumed (SCP), 24, 36, 61, 62, 172, 256 Class set, 26, 27, 31, 48–50, 80, 81, 89, 106, 155, 157, 162–165, 178, 182, 196, 203, 208, 211–214, 218, 252, 285, 293, 296, 298, 301, 302 Class struggle, 35, 37, 40, 42, 47, 51–54, 65, 66, 71, 141, 186, 203, 258, 296, 301, 302 Closure, 89, 90, 95–97, 99, 115, 193 Collectives, 7, 26, 28–32, 40, 69, 81, 152, 249, 250, 283, 294 Colonialism, 3, 50, 200, 221, 266, 279 Colonization, 140–142, 260

317

Commodification, 197, 246 Commodity capitalist, 31, 33, 35, 138, 178, 189, 194 communist, 30, 189 market communist, 30 state communist, 31 Communism, 31, 79, 81, 114, 115, 142, 143, 146, 158, 289, 290, 292, 295, 297 Community, 10, 16, 69, 198, 207, 217, 226, 232, 236, 242, 254, 262, 265, 287, 294, 295, 304 Compensation, 128, 215, 228, 230, 234, 244, 245, 248, 251, 266 Competition, 16, 36, 37, 47, 54, 55, 138, 163, 178, 181, 186, 188, 192, 194, 195, 202, 265, 272 Conditions of existence, 21, 25, 39, 40, 44, 51, 62, 63, 164, 173, 176, 178, 180, 182, 185, 191, 198, 201, 216, 217, 241, 243, 246, 247, 252, 255, 256, 261, 272, 296 Constitutive inside, 10, 77, 88, 104, 133, 221, 303 Constitutive outside, 4, 10, 77, 100, 138, 221, 285 Consumption, 64, 68, 69, 87, 197, 212, 259, 295, 297 Contingent, 4–6, 9, 10, 12, 16, 22, 50, 66, 69, 71, 87, 89, 90, 96, 97, 99, 105, 139, 145, 165, 193, 220, 281, 290, 292, 304, 307 Contradiction, 22, 38, 43, 54, 67, 70, 77, 110, 125, 136, 153, 186, 188, 203, 216–218, 225, 227, 231, 250, 261, 267, 272, 296, 297 Contradictory process, 22, 23, 25, 26, 37, 66, 119

318

SUBJECT INDEX

Corporation, 39, 178, 179, 181, 182, 197, 199, 230, 233, 271 Cost-benefit analysis, 260 Counterhegemonic Subject, 7, 8, 304 Counterhegemony, 8 Credit, 37, 44, 157, 175, 180–182, 184, 185, 196, 200, 257, 265, 268 Crisis, 37, 38, 45, 47, 166, 229, 230, 254, 259, 260, 267–270, 272 Crisis of enterprises, 47 Crypt, 13, 55, 94, 302 Crypto-theological principle, 280, 281, 290 Culture, 8, 16, 40, 70, 73–76, 106, 197, 268, 272, 290, 303 D Dalits, 217, 220, 259 Debt, 2, 176, 181, 188, 229, 230, 253 Decentred, 23, 25, 32, 45, 48, 49, 76, 78, 79, 119, 195, 291, 293, 298, 306 Decolonial, 2 Deconstruction, 2, 106, 138, 153 Delusional veil, 5, 10, 12, 13, 16, 48, 55, 59, 72, 82, 87–90, 97–99, 101, 111, 115, 119, 126–129, 135, 139, 153, 155, 157, 203, 207, 217, 223, 228, 232, 237, 244, 246, 248, 252, 261, 270, 272, 285, 302 Democracy, 51, 237, 251 Determinism, 25 Determinist, 159 Development, 3, 4, 8, 15, 48, 50, 51, 59–65, 67, 71, 74–77, 128, 130, 144, 146, 149–151, 153, 154, 156, 159–161, 163–167, 196, 201, 208, 212, 217, 220, 225–229, 231–233, 236, 244,

245, 247, 251, 254, 258, 262, 264, 266, 268, 269, 278, 279, 290–292, 294–297, 303 Developmentalism, 8, 74, 135, 203, 223, 232, 252, 261 Developmental struggle, 62 Development economics, 149, 150, 153, 301 Differänce, 96, 212 Direct producers, 24, 26, 30, 31, 34, 39, 184, 213, 248, 252, 253, 294 Disaggregated, 4–14, 25, 32, 42, 48–50, 55, 76, 78, 79, 88, 89, 95, 136, 138–141, 154, 158, 165, 171, 193, 195, 207, 215, 219, 261, 262, 291, 293, 298 Disavowal (Verleugnung ), 2, 85, 134, 288 Discourses, 54, 55, 70, 144, 151, 194, 203, 222, 233, 235 Dislocation, 229, 231, 236, 241, 244, 245, 252–254 Displacement (Entstellung ), 91, 158 Distribution class, 62, 65, 67 developmental, 62, 65 fair, 69, 76, 80, 282, 294–297 unfair, 51, 52, 76, 273, 295 Distribution of surplus, 36, 181, 254, 294 Dual economy, 48, 50, 156–158, 160 E Ecological, 38, 152, 217, 258, 267, 268, 270, 271 Economic dualism, 59, 60, 76, 153–155, 160, 161 Economy agricultural, 159, 165, 167 formal, 167 global, 76, 136, 171, 180

SUBJECT INDEX

industrial, 165, 167 local, 76, 136 market, 76 need-based, 68, 69, 80, 297, 298 need-centered, 218 pre-capitalist, 106, 159 surplus, 61, 68 surplus-centered, 218 traditional, 76, 155 Efficiency, 16, 55, 138, 159, 160, 178, 193–195, 202, 257, 272 Empire, 4, 15 Employment, 142, 159, 167, 213, 229, 243, 261 Enterprise capitalist, 29, 35, 37, 39, 40, 43–45, 47, 48, 50, 138, 172–175, 178, 180–193, 197, 201, 211, 215, 243, 254, 258 communist, 49, 173 feudal, 26, 29, 49 financial, 41, 43, 46, 175, 176, 181, 185, 201 global, 138, 172–175, 178, 180–183, 185, 187–192, 196, 197, 200, 201, 211, 213, 215, 231, 243, 254, 258, 259 independent, 29, 41, 43, 49 local, 173, 180, 182, 189–193, 214–216 merchant, 39, 41, 43, 46, 176, 180, 185, 189, 192 national, 173 slave, 49 Entry point, 23, 25, 29, 55, 99, 100, 127, 306 Epistemology, 152, 155, 159, 160, 269 Ethico-politics of the foreclosed, 127, 278, 282 of the real, 105, 278, 279, 282, 285, 287

319

Ethics of world of the third, 82, 282 to world of the third, 212, 277 with world of the third, 277 Ethnocentrism, 114 Eurocentric, 74, 77, 249, 250 Exchange, 10, 25, 30, 33, 34, 44, 69, 176, 187–190, 194, 199, 228, 229, 298 Exclusion, 10, 11, 26, 28, 134, 136, 157, 234, 235, 260, 294, 307 Expanded communism, 79–81, 144, 165, 290–292, 295, 297, 307 Expanded reproduction, 178, 190, 191, 193, 194 Exploitation, 26, 29, 30, 35, 42, 48, 51–54, 78, 80, 81, 126, 141, 142, 153, 158, 200, 212, 216, 260, 269, 270, 273, 277, 290, 294, 295, 297, 302 Export promotion, 191, 192 Expropriation, 245–248, 251, 252, 258, 269 F False-consciousness, 14 Fantasy, 13, 118, 203, 288, 306 Fetish, 14, 249, 280 Feudalism, 49, 252 Food security, 51, 66, 67 Foreclosed outside, 88, 126, 171, 303, 304 Foreclosure (Verwerfung ), 2, 3, 85, 91, 92, 100, 195, 243 Foregrounding, 10, 53, 68, 71, 104, 115, 116, 125, 145, 157, 194, 207, 220, 223, 245, 270, 290, 292, 303 Forest rights Act (FRA), 249, 250, 269 Formalization, 151, 164, 167 Formal sector, 161–165, 166, 196

320

SUBJECT INDEX

Freedom, 221 Free market, 182 Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, 285 G Gender, 27, 54, 77, 202, 217, 218, 283 Global, 2–6, 8–12, 15, 16, 75–77, 79, 82, 85–88, 101, 126, 130, 132, 135, 136, 138–141, 143, 144, 146, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 164, 171–204, 207, 208, 211–221, 224–237, 241–244, 246, 251, 254, 258, 259, 261, 262, 265, 268, 269, 272, 273, 279, 281, 290–292, 298, 301–303 Global capital, 4–6, 9, 11, 15, 76, 77, 79, 132, 136, 138, 140, 141, 144, 146, 153, 171, 174, 176–197, 202, 203, 207, 208, 211, 212, 214, 216–221, 226–229, 231, 234–237, 241–244, 251, 254, 258, 259, 261, 265, 268, 269, 272, 273, 279, 281, 298, 301, 303 Global capitalism, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 15, 135, 136, 138, 140, 141, 145, 182, 220, 226, 243, 262, 278, 279, 281, 292 Globalization, 174, 178, 182, 187, 191, 196, 200, 201, 242, 251, 263, 264, 279 Global South, 16 Governance, 165, 198, 245, 272 Government, 36, 65, 67, 184, 185, 188, 229, 230, 233, 250, 251, 254, 264, 296 Growth, 8, 60, 71, 74, 75, 128, 149, 152, 159, 166, 167, 179, 182, 222, 226–229, 231, 234, 236, 267, 268, 270, 280, 292

Grundrisse, 3, 5 H Harris-Todaro model, 150 Hegemonic inside, 126, 171 Hegemonization, 59, 69, 106, 145, 190, 194, 208, 218, 222, 228, 233, 270 Hegemony, 1–3, 6, 10–13, 16, 55, 59, 78, 79, 82, 85–90, 92–101, 115, 125, 126, 136, 138–141, 145, 171, 191, 195, 203, 207, 224, 227, 236, 248, 262, 272, 273, 279, 281, 285, 287, 291, 302, 303 Historical materialism, 106, 285, 293, 302 Home-based class process, 213 Homo economicus , 70, 126 Household, 23, 29, 53, 54, 64, 65, 132, 154, 212–214, 216, 254, 259, 260 Hub of global capital, 138, 178, 183, 191, 196, 202 Human capital, 196, 201 Human development, 74, 119 Human rights, 17, 73, 279, 289 I Imperial, 140, 224 Import-substitution, 191 Inclusion, 10, 11, 87, 136, 234, 235, 279, 282 Income, 36, 51, 69, 71, 177, 181, 195, 229, 233, 234, 266 Income distribution, 27, 229, 234 Indigenous, 16, 106, 150, 154, 248–250, 254, 269 Industrialization, 152, 163, 197, 253 Inequality, 67, 76, 141, 152, 179, 267

SUBJECT INDEX

Injustice, 76, 77, 277 Institutions, 17, 63, 82, 152, 154, 156, 181, 202, 203, 217, 218, 221, 226, 227, 233, 234, 262–264, 272 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 187, 227–229 Interpellation, 7, 13, 95, 97, 98, 203 Investment, 60, 87, 98, 199, 202, 230, 233, 235, 244, 251 Irreal, 93, 111 J Jobless growth, 166 Jouissance, 87, 92, 129 Justice appropriative, 51, 52, 278, 294 development, 51, 278, 295 distributive, 51, 52, 295 social, 73, 81, 82, 273 L Labour necessary, 24, 40, 68, 69 paid, 36 surplus, 5, 13, 23–27, 29–34, 51, 54, 55, 106, 126, 139, 142, 173, 185, 186, 194, 195, 203, 214, 255, 270, 272, 285, 293–295, 298 unpaid, 34–36, 164 Labourer productive, 35, 36, 39, 172 unproductive, 36, 38, 39 wage, 34, 35, 185, 214, 252, 253 Labour-power, 24, 29, 30, 33, 34, 40, 185, 189, 191, 198, 199, 243, 246, 247, 256 Labour process, 24, 33, 34, 185, 216 Labour time paid, 36

321

socially necessary abstract (SNALT), 33, 34 unpaid, 34–36 Lacanian real, 3, 7, 9, 10, 13, 94 Lacanian symbolic, 2, 13, 112 Leviathan, 9, 13, 89, 95, 98, 135, 136, 141, 145, 203 Lewis Model, 155, 157 M Marginalization, 140–142, 144, 194, 207, 212, 221–225, 273, 290 Marginal productivity, 150, 159 Market, 10, 16, 25, 30, 31, 33–36, 38, 41, 54, 55, 64, 75, 76, 82, 155, 157, 164, 174, 176, 178, 180, 182, 186–190, 192–198, 202, 203, 207, 208, 211, 215, 218, 226–229, 231, 234, 236, 242, 243, 257, 265, 268, 269, 298 Marxian ethico-politics, 79, 81, 297 Marxian struggle, 52, 54 Marxian value theory, 198 Marxism, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 51, 52, 59, 61, 86, 87, 90, 93, 102, 103, 106, 119, 127, 149, 278, 279, 283, 287, 291, 296, 301, 302, 304, 305 Means of production (MOP), 24, 30, 33, 44, 157, 173, 180, 185, 189, 248–254 Metabolic rift, 267, 272 Metaphoric cuts, 96 Metaphysical, 105 Metonymic slides, 96, 97 Migration, 153, 201, 246, 253 Mode of production, 151 Modern, 50, 76, 105, 135, 149, 155–160, 162, 163, 234, 236, 242, 249, 250 Modernism, 134, 223

322

SUBJECT INDEX

Moebius, 11, 14, 86, 87, 223 Money, 33, 34, 40, 174, 176, 181, 296 Monopolization, 199 Multinational corporations (MNCs), 182 Munshi, 213, 214

N Need hegemonic, 12, 16, 17, 59, 60, 66, 70, 71, 75–79, 82, 116, 204, 218, 219, 226, 231–233, 237, 243, 264, 265, 280 luxury, 78 natural, 78 necessary, 78 poverty, 60, 66, 232, 233 radical, 77–80, 82, 219, 225, 281, 282, 291, 295, 297 social, 60–63, 66–68, 70–73, 78, 219, 234, 269 socially created, 78 subsistence, 68 survival, 68, 219, 234–237 true social, 78 Need I, II, 61, 68–70, 78, 79, 219, 225, 226, 291, 297 Need process, 60, 65–67 Need struggle, 65, 66, 68, 77, 233, 265, 296 Negation (Verneinung ), 2, 85, 91 Neoliberal, 174, 178, 182, 191, 226, 229, 263, 264 Neurosis, 12, 92, 93 Neurotic phenomenon, 14, 90 NGOs, 65, 132, 196, 220, 227, 233, 241, 251, 262–266 Nodal point (point de capiton), 12, 72, 75, 82, 88, 99, 100 Non-capital, 3–6, 10–12, 15

Non-class conditions of existence, 30, 37, 39–42, 44, 211, 215, 230 Non-class process, 23–26, 29, 32, 35, 36, 39–48, 50–52, 54, 62, 71, 158, 172, 176, 186, 207, 211, 213, 216, 255 Non-class struggle, 51–54, 248, 251 Non-commodity, 29, 48, 164, 208 Non-market, 156, 190, 194, 211, 298 Normative, 74, 222 O Object petit a, 112 Oppression, 212, 273 Orientalism, 2, 6, 8, 15, 50, 76, 106, 153, 154, 303 Original accumulation, 9, 14–16, 128, 152, 241, 242, 244, 246–248, 250, 252–254, 258, 272, 303 Outside, 1–4, 6, 7, 9–12, 15, 21, 59, 73, 74, 77, 79, 85, 86, 88, 89, 93, 96–98, 102–104, 108, 109, 113–116, 126, 133, 135, 136, 141, 150, 151, 167, 171, 178, 180, 184, 187, 190, 191, 194–196, 198, 204, 207, 208, 211, 212, 216, 220, 221, 225, 227, 229, 236, 242, 263, 272, 273, 281, 292, 298, 302, 303 Overdetermination, 13, 21, 22 P Paradigm, 17, 82, 92, 156, 167, 201, 233, 264, 265, 290 Particularism, 8, 273 Partnership, 174, 178, 182, 227, 265 Peasantry, 149, 150, 252 Per capita income, 167 Performance of surplus, 31, 32, 173, 179 Permanent revolution, 297

SUBJECT INDEX

Planetary, 73 Plunder, 140–142, 242, 243, 245, 248, 252, 254, 257–260, 290 Plurality, 118 Political, 2, 7, 23, 24, 36, 37, 40, 51, 55, 61, 65, 66, 76, 77, 79, 93, 94, 98, 105, 106, 112, 114, 118, 119, 127, 128, 130, 133, 141, 155, 159, 164, 201–203, 218, 235, 243, 245, 250, 251, 262–264, 268, 282–284, 286, 290, 293, 296, 298, 305, 306 Politics, 1, 7, 10, 51, 52, 54, 63, 66, 73, 74, 82, 86, 90, 94, 99, 105, 118, 119, 127, 129, 131, 133, 142, 153, 154, 158, 212, 230, 248, 261, 264, 266, 273, 279, 281–283, 301, 302, 304, 305 Post-Althusserian Marxism, 86 Postcapitalist, 2, 5–11, 51, 55, 59, 78, 106, 144, 153, 242, 243, 273, 283, 284, 297, 301, 303 Postcolonial, 2, 3, 8, 15, 50, 222, 303 Postdevelopmental, 70, 73, 74, 76 Post-Lacanian psychoanalysis, 86 Post-orientalist, 2, 3, 9, 106 Post-structuralist, 95, 97, 100 Poverty, 6, 8, 60–62, 66, 67, 74, 139, 150, 153, 156, 159, 207, 220, 222, 226–228, 231–234, 237, 262, 263, 265, 266, 268 Power, 10, 25, 27, 51, 54, 55, 66, 72, 75, 87, 106, 112–115, 134, 157, 176, 178, 191, 192, 197–199, 202, 208, 223, 250 Praxis, 8, 11, 55, 106, 128, 140, 226, 243, 262, 273, 284, 285, 296–298, 301, 302, 304 Pre-capitalist, 50, 106, 140, 154, 164, 303 Primary goods, 71 Process

323

cultural, 188, 249 economic, 23, 25 natural, 23, 40, 152, 188, 202, 256–258, 267, 271 political, 40 Producer, 25, 32, 41, 213–215, 248, 294 Production, 7, 8, 14, 17, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32–35, 42, 43, 61–63, 65, 68, 69, 79, 80, 87, 90, 96, 98, 100, 103, 104, 106, 140, 142, 156, 157, 162, 178–181, 184, 185, 195, 197–200, 202, 203, 212–215, 218, 220–223, 233, 234, 247–249, 254, 260, 266–268, 272, 285, 292, 294, 297, 301 Productive capitalist, 33, 35–37, 39–43, 46, 172, 175, 178, 186, 208, 255, 259 Productivity, 34, 60, 159, 160, 162, 163, 167, 188, 225, 265, 272 Profit, 16, 26, 35, 46 Progress, 10, 15, 43, 74, 144, 149, 159, 164, 212, 296, 303 Proletariat, 260, 305 Property rights, 250

R Race, 27, 54, 217, 218 Racism, 76 Ranis-Fei model, 150 Rate of exploitation, 34 Rate of profit, 47 Real, 86–88, 90, 92, 96–103, 105, 108, 109, 111–114, 118, 131, 136, 145, 285, 304 real realDark Continent , 88, 127, 128, 139, 140, 144, 207, 223, 283 realdystopic , 88, 130, 139, 140, 207

324

SUBJECT INDEX

realevil , 88, 90, 101, 102, 104, 114–116, 127–133, 139–143, 207, 223, 237, 242, 251, 266, 269, 272, 288, 289 realutopic , 237, 289 realvictim , 71–73, 88, 90, 101, 102, 104, 114–116, 127–133, 135, 136, 139–141, 143, 144, 207, 219–224, 226, 232, 235, 237, 242, 243, 245, 251, 262, 269, 272, 281, 288, 291, 292 realvictim –realutopic –realevil , 88, 90, 101, 102, 104, 114, 115, 129 substitute real-s, 87, 88, 90, 102, 114, 139 Reality, 95, 100 Real-real, 90, 101, 102, 114, 128, 131, 138 Receipt of surplus, 5, 24, 25, 27, 36, 37, 51, 79, 139, 179, 295 Remainder-reminder, 138 Rent, 12, 36, 46, 90, 155, 157, 181, 198, 199, 215, 254 Repression (Verdrängung ), 1 Reserve army of unemployed, 151 Resistance, 153, 202, 223, 236, 237, 242, 251, 258, 261, 262, 266, 273, 301–303 Revenue non-class, 44, 174, 181 subsumed class, 44, 172, 174, 257 Risk management, 219, 226, 233–235 Rural, 15, 144, 149, 150, 153, 156, 160, 166, 196, 197, 211, 218, 220, 223, 236, 246, 253, 263 S Secret, 59, 82, 89, 94, 98, 119, 145, 203, 230, 232, 272, 302 Sector agricultural, 159, 197 agricultural-informal, 195, 196

formal, 161–164, 166, 196 home, 189, 213–216 household, 154 informal, 132, 141, 154, 155, 160–167, 196, 220, 251 Self-reliance, 191, 192, 202 Serf, 29 Sexuality, 77, 222, 283 Shared environment, 202, 216–219, 223, 225, 255, 266, 270, 272 Sharing, 29, 31, 69, 70, 81, 160, 281 Signification, 54, 99, 111, 113, 145, 193, 220 Signifier anchoring, 97, 280 crypted nodal, 87, 89, 97, 126, 285 floating, 16, 97, 138, 178, 193, 195, 202 missing, 2, 85 nodal, 16, 17, 32, 59, 82, 101, 115, 127–129, 138, 139, 154, 178, 180, 193, 195, 196, 202–204, 218, 232, 236, 243, 307 substitute, 17, 55, 127–130, 132, 133, 140–142, 157, 193, 194, 203, 217, 218, 232, 236, 303 Signifier-jouissance complex, 85 Simple reproduction, 189–191, 207 Sinthome, 104, 114, 130, 289 Site, 23, 25, 26, 29, 43, 51, 77, 173, 174, 187, 211–214, 216, 219, 254, 272, 298 Slavery, 3, 29, 54, 81 Socialism, 52, 142 Social protection, 196, 207, 226, 229–231, 233, 234, 266 Social surplus (SS), 17, 62–67, 69, 82, 230–233, 264, 265, 295 Sole proprietorship, 178 South, 1, 3, 6, 8, 11, 14–16, 115, 155, 177, 181, 192, 199, 200,

SUBJECT INDEX

211, 213, 222, 225, 268, 272, 303 Sovereign, 140, 237, 266, 271 Spectral, 90, 93, 94 Standard of living, 60, 182, 261 State, 17, 21, 22, 29–31, 35–37, 39, 42–44, 46, 52, 53, 61, 65, 67, 71, 75, 80, 97, 109, 140, 165, 172, 174–177, 181, 182, 184–186, 188–192, 196, 200–202, 208, 212, 213, 220, 223, 224, 228, 230, 231, 242, 245, 249–251, 253–257, 262–265, 267, 269, 302, 303 Structural adjustment program (SAP), 227, 229, 234 Subject, 2–8, 10–14, 16, 25, 41, 42, 51, 53, 68, 69, 73, 82, 91–93, 95–99, 106, 109, 111, 118, 129, 140, 141, 143, 174, 195, 203, 208, 212, 219, 222–225, 232, 243, 253, 278, 281, 284, 286–289, 303–306 Subjectification, 224 Subjection, 224 Subjectivity, 70, 98, 219, 290, 292 Super-exploitation, 198 Surplus production, 62 social, 17, 62–67, 69, 82, 230–233, 264, 265, 295 Surplus economy, 61, 68 Surplus population, 151 Surplus value (SV), 3, 11, 16, 24, 30–47, 52, 54, 63, 64, 75, 138, 142, 157, 172–175, 178, 180, 181, 185, 189, 193–195, 198–200, 202, 203, 214, 215, 230, 255–258, 270, 271 Sustainable, 152, 266, 272 Suture, 87, 90, 96–100, 305

325

Symbolic order, 12, 13, 87, 106, 285, 288

T Taboo, 109, 217 Technology, 34, 50, 173, 179, 191, 242, 252, 267–270, 272 Teleological, 69, 164, 165, 236 Telos, 26, 154, 167, 304 Thick version of need, 74, 75 Thin version of need, 71–74 Third world, 1, 4–6, 8–11, 15–17, 59, 71, 74, 76, 77, 82, 97, 112, 119, 128, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 140, 154, 155, 158, 208, 212, 217, 218, 220–222, 224–226, 231, 232, 236, 237, 242, 244, 245, 252, 254, 288, 291, 303 Third world economy, 5, 15, 139, 143, 242, 266, 291 Third worldification, 249 Third worldism, 3, 4, 16, 17, 50, 68, 77, 106, 125, 129, 130, 136, 139, 141, 143, 145, 146, 195, 203, 207, 208, 217, 220, 226, 235, 266, 273, 281, 303 Third worldliness, 154 Third world woman, 16, 119 Trade, 51, 176, 181, 200, 226, 228, 253 Trade union, 21, 40, 51, 52 Traditional, 29, 32, 50, 74, 76, 77, 95, 105, 143, 154–156, 159, 160, 228, 234, 249, 279, 283, 285 Transition, 26, 50, 106, 136, 139, 150–152, 154, 159, 160, 162, 163, 165–167, 186, 196, 197, 228, 229, 262, 293

326

SUBJECT INDEX

U Unconscious, 7, 13, 86, 97, 126, 203, 284, 306 Unconscious discourse, 89 Universal basic income (UBI), 67 Universalism, 8, 72, 75, 273 Urban, 15, 149–151, 153, 196, 201, 202, 211, 218, 236, 246, 251 Urbanization, 152, 201, 253 Use value, 24, 26, 34, 43

V Value, 10, 15, 24, 26, 30–44, 46, 54, 63, 64, 67–69, 82, 105, 138, 139, 141, 143, 150, 157, 160, 162–164, 172–181, 184–186, 188, 190, 193–196, 198–201, 208, 212, 215, 224, 243, 254–258, 260, 268, 271, 294 Value added, 162, 184, 198, 199 Value capture, 198–200 Value chain, 41, 150, 184, 185, 188, 198–200, 215 Violence, 14, 15, 59, 96, 128, 134, 149, 150, 153, 158, 212, 221,

228, 237, 242, 244, 245, 260, 261, 271, 273, 303 W Wage contractual, 161 in kind, 161 subsistence, 161 Welfare, 81, 191, 234 Worker productive, 39, 40, 42, 43, 52, 255, 258 unproductive, 39, 40, 42, 46 Working class, 6, 39, 42, 43, 53, 149, 150 Working through, 8, 9, 14, 302 World Bank, 11, 17, 65, 70, 71, 73, 74, 82, 135, 163, 166, 187, 196, 208, 220–223, 225–236, 244, 261–266, 281, 290 World of the third (WoT), 2, 4–7, 9–11, 13, 15–17, 59, 71, 77, 82, 85, 88, 119, 128, 129, 133, 136, 151, 158, 159, 196, 207, 208, 211, 212, 220, 235, 249, 277 market, 187, 188, 190, 193