File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 627


Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 17:45:43 -0500 (EST)
From: Siddharth Chatterjee <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Genocide against the Yanomami




On Thu, 30 Oct 1997, Louis Proyect wrote:

> In the course of the discussion, somebody has just posted the following:
> 
> In the last two years of his life Marx was engaged in an intensive study
> of pre-industrial cultures coming under colonial rule.  The first
> comprehensive collection of his so-called "ethnological notebooks" will be
> published next year by Yale, under the title "Property and Patriarchy."
> The editor is David Smith, a sociologist at the University of Kansas.
> Smith, who recently lectured here about this, finds that Marx frequently
> expressed his dismay at the social destruction underway, and his sense
> that something valuable was being wiped out by European civilization.
> According to Smith, Marx was especially impressed by the gender equality
> he found in tribal societies.  This text will represent Marx's most mature
> thinking on colonialism.  Smith's editing project is huge, since
> apparently Marx composed these notes rather chaotically in six languages.
> I think this may be a very important resource from an historical and
> political standpoint, and may require us to revise our thinking about what
> a "marxist" position is on this subject.
> 

There is a chapter called "Marx on India" in the book "The Indian Big
Bourgeoise" by Suniti Kumar Ghosh. In this chapter, Ghosh writes that
Marx was changing his views about the "civilizing" effects of the
colonialism being practiced in India during the last years of his life.
He condemned both the British and their Indian agents, e.g., he referred
to the Maharaja of Patiala as the "dog-man of the British". Thus, he
appeared to be  recognizing that this type of capitalism (introduced ext-
ernally)was increasingly turning into a fetter on the forces of production
Ghosh severely criticizes authors like Shlomo Avineri (one of the
heroes of Andrew Austin) who try to emphasize the positive aspects
of colonialism by the claim that Marx advocated a certain kind of
"dialectical" approach. But dialectics is not one half + one half = 1.
We  have to consider which aspect is prevailing at a particular moment
of time. The history of the legacy of colonialism in India can be
found in Ramakrishna Mukherjee's book "The Rise and Fall of the
East India Company" (Monthly Review Press).

Unfortunately, both of these books are out of my hands at the moment.
If and when they are returned, I will post some materials from them to the
list. This should certainly clear up some of the confusions.

 



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