Abstract
This chapter, on the basis of the discussion in the previous three chapters, examines some of the contemporary theories of postcolonialism. Through an examination of relevant concepts such as abstract labour, concrete labour, need economy and informal conditions of work this chapter attempts to clarify what constitutes the problematic of the postcolonial. It reinforces the argument of this book, namely that without Marx we shall be at a loss to understand the postcolonial problematic and will remain victim of various forms of the postcolonial fetish, such as difference, informal and need. In this background, this chapter picks up few well-known postcolonial works to show how, by neglecting Marx, some of these studies in their efforts to analyse the specifics of postcolonial condition failed in their task.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Readers will recall that in the second chapter, we tried to show how translation is an important part of this operation.
- 2.
Vivek Chibber misses this point in his Postcolonial Theory and the Spectre of Capital (London: Verso, 2013).
- 3.
These are first two chapters of Jane Pollard, Cheryl McEwan, and Alex Hughes (eds.), Postcolonial Economies (London and New York: Zed Books, 2011), pp. 23–35 and 37–61 respectively.
- 4.
Postcolonial Economies, p. 24.
- 5.
Ibid., pp. 26–27.
- 6.
Ibid., p. 32.
- 7.
“Postcolonial Theory and Economics: Orthodox and Heterodox” in Postcolonial Economies, p. 39; see also Zein-Elabd in, “Economics, Postcolonial Theory and the Problem of Culture: Institutional Analysis and Hybridity”, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 33 (6), 2009, pp. 1153–1167.
- 8.
Postcolonial Economies, p. 53.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 58.
- 10.
As a consequence Postcolonial Economies has very, very meagre reference to labour, no reference to peas antry, no use for concepts such as dependency, neocoloni alism, unorganised and informal labour, and a starkly inadequate understanding of neoliberalism in reshaping the postc olonial condition.
- 11.
Dip eshChakrabarty, Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), Chapter 2, “The Two Histories of Capital” (pp. 47–71), and Chapter 3, “Translating Life-Worlds into Labour and History” (pp. 72–96).
- 12.
Provincialising Europe, p. 50.
- 13.
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One, 1867, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (Moscow: Progress Publishers, n.d.), p. 542; I have used this translation of the quoted passage, as it is better known, also reads better; however as readers will note, in this book I have used mostly the Penguin edition, translated by Ben Fowkes and edited by Erne st Mandel.
- 14.
Ibid (Moscow edition)., p. 122.
- 15.
On this see the discussion by I.I. Ru bin,Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, 1928 (Detroit: Black and Red, 1972), https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/Chapter 14, “Abstract Labour”, n. 20—https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/ch14.htm (accessed on 12 August 2016); See also Rubin , “Abstract Labour and Value in Marx’s System”, 1927, trans. Kathleen Gilbert, Capital and Class, 5, Summer 1978, pp. 107–139.
- 16.
See on socially necessary labour time, Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859, trans. S.W. Ryazanskaya, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), Chapter 1. The crucial reasoning here is that: (1) it is an abs tract labour time, not raw or direct labour hours; (2) socially necessary in the sense that it is socially determined, and not any particular labour performed in an exotic style, and (3) it is abstract labour time because different kinds of labour can be reduced to a uniform and homogeneous simple labour, which is abstract la bour time of a uniform quality, whose only difference, therefore, is quantity. We do not know if the postcolonial economy does not create such a picture, or what else does. See on this also Grundrisse (1857–58), trans. Martin Nicolaus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 171–172.
- 17.
Ibid., pp. 643–644.
- 18.
“Only labour which produces capital is prod uctive labour”… thus productive labour, in its meaning for capitalist production, is wage-labour which, exchanged against the variable part of capital reproduces not only this part of capital (or the value of its own labour-power), but in addition produces surplus value for the capitalist.”—Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, trans. G.A. Bonner and Emile Burns (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1951), p. 152.
- 19.
Provincialising Europe, p. 68; Chakrabarty illustrates the point of “affective narratives of human belonging” (p. 71) as distinct from the narratives of labour as the bearer of “the universal history of capital” (p. 66) by discussing the instance of piano-maker and player provided by Marx in Grundrisse (p. 305).
- 20.
Ibid., p. 71.
- 21.
Partha Chatte rjee, “Democracy and Economic Transformation India”, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 43 (6), 19 April 2008, pp. 53–62; see also in this context, Partha Chatt erjee, “Are Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois At Last?” in Chatte rjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), Chapter 7, pp. 131–48.
- 22.
For instance, Ami ta Baviskar and Nandini Su ndar, “Democracy versus Economic Transformation?”, Economic and Political Weekly, Volume 43 (46), 15 November 2008, pp. 87–89; Dipankar Basu and Debarshi Das, “Political Economy of Contemporary India: Some Comments on Partha Chatt erjee’s Theoretical Framework”, Sanhati, 23 October 2008—http://sanhati.com/excerpted/1045/ (accessed on 14 September 2016).
- 23.
Rethinking Capitalist Development, p. 251.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 190.
- 25.
This programme, “Social Insurance and Allied Services”, known popularly as the William Bev eridge Report, was presented to the British Parliament in November 1942; for the full text of the Report—http://www.sochealth.co.uk/national-health-service/public-health-and-wellbeing/beveridge-report/ (accessed on 11 September 2016); for his views, William Beve ridge, Full Employment in a Free Society (London: Allen and Unwin, 1944).
- 26.
Rethinking Capitalist Development, pp. 200–201.
- 27.
Ibid., p. 209.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 221.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 221.
- 30.
See, Paul A. B aran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957); and by An dre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution—Essays on the Development of Underdevelopment and Immediate Enemy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969); also, On Capitalist Underdevelopment (Mumbai: Oxford University Press, 1975).
- 31.
This is a well-documented history. Interested readers may see, Wolf Lad ejinsky, Agrarian Reforms as Unfinished Business: The Selected Papers of Wolf Ladejinsky, ed. Louis J. Walinsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); Francine R. Frankel, India’s Political Economy: The Gradual Revolution, 1947–1975 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); also India’s Green Revolution: Economic Gains and Political Costs, 1971 (reprint, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). On bank nationalisation in India in the same period, Su hit K. Sen, “The Politics of Bank Nationalisation in India” in Iman Kumar Mit ra, Ranabir Samaddar, and Samita Se n, Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism (Singapore: Springer, 2017), Chapter 7, pp. 125–145. Reservation for the small-scale sector was first introduced in 1967, and gradually the number of reserved items was increased. Besides bank nationalisation and reforms in setting agricultural prices, during the same period Clause 5B in the Industrial Disputes Act was introduced in 1976 making difficult for larger firms to close down. During this era coal mines were nationalised. Finally in 1985 the Sick Industrial Companies Act came and the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) was set up. Attempts to stabilise the small holdings are to be seen against this background.
- 32.
Capital, Volume 1 (Penguin edition), p. 306.
- 33.
Ibid., p. 782.
- 34.
Ibid., pp. 783–784.
- 35.
Connected to this, see for instance the study on urban waste recycling by Debrati Bagchi and Iman Mitra , “Life, Labour, Recycling: A Study of Waste Management Practices in Contemporary Kolkata” in Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism, op. Cit., Chapter 7, pp. 149–164.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 248.
- 37.
Ibid., p. 253.
- 38.
On the issue of repair, waste , and the enigmatic role of fixed capital, see the study by Ritajyoti Bandopa dhyay and Ranabir Samaddar, “Caste and the Frontiers of Postcolonial Accumulation” in Iman Kumar Mi tra, Ranabir Samaddar, and Samita Se n (eds.), Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism (Singapore: Springer, 2016), Chapter 9, pp. 189–214.
- 39.
Italics mine.
- 40.
“Caste and the Frontiers of Postcolonial Accumulation” (n. 39) shows that in the decades of the 1950s to 1970s in the industrial city of Howrah in India, skilled workers in lathe machine factories spent crucial time in repairing old machines, and owners of these small and medium-sized engineering units preferred to spend money on labour working to repair the machines rather than buying new machines. While we can understand how this becomes a permanent feature of a waste-reprocessing economy, and with the skill of the worker not being transferred to a machine the rate of surplus value procured may be less than otherwise, there is no way that we can describe this as need economy . Small repair shops with abundant skilled labour form one of the major features of the informal economy.
- 41.
Marx, Grundrisse, 312.
- 42.
Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859, trans. S.W. Ryazanskaya, Appendix 1, “Production, Consumption, Distribution, and Exchange” (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959)—http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/pol-econ/appx1.htm (accessed on 20 September 2016).
- 43.
Jan Brem an calculated that the urban share in the total population rose from 4 to 18 per cent—“Industrial Labour in Postcolonial India I: Industrialising the Economy and Formalising the Labour”. International Review of Social History, 44, 1999 (pp. 249–300), p. 253; also available at https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/publications/clara-wp03.pdf (accessed on 1 July 2016).
- 44.
On the complexity and the interlinked duality of the theme of the origins of informal lab our, we can draw on a series of writings: Jan Br eman, Labour Migration and Rural Transformation in Colonial Asia, Comparative Asian Studies, August 1991; Breman, Beyond Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994); Daniel Tho rner and Alice Tho rner, Land and Labour in India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1965); Danie l Thorner, The Shaping of Modern India (Bombay: Sameeksha Trust, 2005); Tom Brass, “Some Observations on Unfree Labour, Capitalist Restructuring, and Deproletarianisation I”, International International Review of Social History, 39 (2), 1994, pp. 255–275; Also, Robert Higgs, Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), particularly on black labour migration, Chapter 4 (pp. 62–94) ; Utsa Patn aik and Sam Mo yo, The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry (Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011).
- 45.
Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm (accessed on 2 February 2017), Third Manuscript, Chapter 3, “Human Requirements and Division of Labour under the Rule of Private Property”—https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm (accessed on 2 February 2017).
- 46.
It will be important to situate in this perspective the ethnological writings by Marx in old age. Marx avoided the question of higher or lower stage of society in these notebooks. See, Lawrence Krader (ed.), The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co, 1974).
- 47.
Marx’s letter to Vera Zasulich, “The ‘First’ Draft”, February-March 1881—https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/draft-1.htm (accessed on 1 September 2016)—Source: Teodor Sh anin (ed.), Late Marx and the Russian Road, Marx and the “Peripheries of Capitalism” (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983).
- 48.
Thus, if Dipesh Chakr abarty’s intervention mentioned in this chapter tells us of a subjective cast, Partha Cha tterjee’s works on the city occupy the middle ground. The traces of the subjective fury are still there, while the analysis takes on a more objective turn, ready to admit the larger, global forces of capitalism at work. This is because Chatte rjee”s late writings are based on the idea of a structural transformation of the postcolonial societies, particularly of India, and their consequences. With Kalyan Sanyal the journey seems to have reached a point, where the local is perched on the global, and the subjective presence of the postcolonial is out. We have a more objective orientation to the idea of the postcolonial.
- 49.
Interesting view from the beast’s belly, Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani and Davide Furceri, “Neoliberalism: Oversold?”, Finance and Development, International Monetary Fund, Volume 53 (2), June 2016, pp. 38–41.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Samaddar, R. (2018). Theories of Postcolonial Economy. In: Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63287-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63287-2_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-63286-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-63287-2
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)