From time to time a few books have so wide an impact, eliciting such a large and varied range of responses that are completely or in part laudatory, hostile, and mixed, that one comes to realize that the original text has become a significant intellectual event in its own right. Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (PTSC) is one such event which deserves to be paid the tribute of being followed by a volume—The Debate on Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital—comprised of select commentaries on that original work along with authorial responses to them. This is not the first critique of either the theoretical trajectory of Subaltern Studies or of postcolonial theorizing. So why has it had such an impact? And why have published responses to it been far fewer and academic reception to it quieter in India than elsewhere, even though in many ways Chibber’s book carries a special importance for Indian academia given the direction “critical studies” in India’s social sciences is currently taking? What, more generally, is the importance of the book?
From the mid-1980s onwards, there have been numerous works that criticized the theoretical pretensions of Subaltern Studies as a distinct school of historiography, especially after its alignment with the cultural turn associated with postmodernist, poststructuralist approaches. This gave rise to postcolonial forms of theorizing whose principal bugbear is the “epistemic violence” done by the use of Eurocentric conceptual categories (including much of Marxism) to try and understand what was once called the Third World and even the global history of modernity(ies), for which an “epistemic parity” of sorts is presumably required between European and non-European thought frames. The body of criticism of this turn—in which there has often been an admirable defense of a modest universalism of categories and a theorization of modernity where the identification of causal mechanisms leans more strongly toward changes in political economy than cultural resiliencies—has targeted both Subaltern Studies and postcolonial thought. If PTSC has made waves by making similar critiques, this is partly because the wider political context has been conducive to its favorable reception but more so because of the distinctive and undeniable virtues of the text itself.
CONTEXT AND TEXT
The 1960s and 1970s were a period of such worldwide ferment that revolutionary transformations in which socialism would transcend capitalism seemed possible. These hopes faded in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly after the collapse of Communism, which brought no solace even to those currents on the Left that had been hostile to Stalinism and opposed to Maoism, regarding them as obstacles to the development of a genuinely democratic socialist order. For many disillusioned radicals the subsequent global ascendance of capitalism was accompanied by the narrowing of progressive political possibilities to the achievement of bourgeois liberal democracy now no longer even to be deemed “bourgeois.” Class struggle was no longer central; struggles against oppression of other identities besides class became more prominent. The material circumstances for encouraging both the fragmentation and academization of a progressive radicalism in thought and practice had emerged. Being a post-Marxist seemed better than being an ex-Marxist; the former implied a more benign forward movement, while the latter connoted regrettable wastefulness and stupidity in adherence to past loyalties.
However, the invasions in West and Central Asia and in North Africa by the US and Europe in the first decade of the new millennium, backed directly or indirectly by an expanding alliance network that now includes India, changed all this. Coupled with the biggest and most generalized capitalist crisis (2007/8–12) since the Great Depression (with negative consequences that have endured long past the crisis), these military endeavors threw the effects of a universalizing capitalism and state-backed manifestations of imperialism, not easily explained in cultural terms, into the spotlight. This is the context in which PTSC appeared.
In constructing his study of Subaltern Studies and postcolonial thought, Chibber rejected the use of a wide fish-eye lens. Instead, he analyzed in microscopic detail particular Subaltern Studies texts that sought to provide the theoretical framework for undertaking historical sociological studies of contemporary societies, and which have undoubtedly shaped much of the discourse in postcolonial studies. Postcolonial studies made its mark first in cultural studies but had a greater initial impact on historical sociology, and more specifically the historical sociology of contemporary capitalism and modernity. Subaltern Studies theorization became something of a standard-bearer for how such studies should be carried out. Chibber’s focus on these studies was therefore quite fruitful; never before had key theoretical propositions emerging from the stable of Subaltern Studies that had aimed for and achieved wide influence in postcolonial studies been subjected to such intense scrutiny.
Chibber exercises scrupulous care in laying out the key arguments of the three major figures—Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, and Dipesh Chakrabarty—whose work he chooses to interrogate. He makes the most charitable interpretations where ambiguities exist: the opposing cases are as coherent as possible and his refutations that much more persuasive. His framing of opposing views and his arguments in response are presented with great clarity of expression, avoiding any linguistic or grammatical obscurity. You may agree or disagree with what he is saying, but you will not be confused by it. Michael Schwartz, a contributor to this volume, has even suggested that those seeking to understand the methodological and theoretical presumptions that claim to make Subaltern Studies a distinctive historiography may well turn to PTSC in the future, rather than to the relevant Subaltern Studies texts themselves.
Finally, it is the comprehensive character of Chibber’s challenge to this theorizing that has made his work stand out and has, in a sense, raised the stakes in the subsequent debate that emerged over his book. Some have read PTSC as a “no-holds-barred knockout” aimed at certain forms of postcolonial theorizing; unsurprisingly, this view has provoked dismissive and sharp responses, even though PTSC itself was careful never to substitute rhetorical flourishes for sustained argument.
This introduction will eschew the common practice of providing brief summaries of the various chapters that make up this volume. Chibber, in his detailed responses to the first three interlocutors featured here and his reply to those who contributed to a symposium on PTSC, makes the main arguments of his original work amply clear. Attempting a summary of the chapters in this book would take up too much space, introduce unnecessary repetition, and detract from the intellectual excitement to be gained from reading these exchanges with fresh eyes. Therefore, having described the context for the book’s distinct reception, I now turn to the questions posed in the very first paragraph of this introduction: why has the book met with such a muted response in India? And what, more generally, is its importance? It will become obvious that I have a strongly positive assessment of both PTSC and of the way in which Chibber has answered his interlocutors in this volume.
But before proceeding along that path, a few brief and general comments on the other contributions in this volume may not be entirely amiss. Chatterjee and Spivak see no merit in PTSC, whereas the other contributors, for all their disappointments, reservations, and criticisms, acknowledge the book’s strengths and register some degree of appreciation for it. Unsurprisingly, there is a certain sharpness of tone in the exchanges between Chibber, Chatterjee, and Spivak; both sides recognize the high theoretical stakes involved in this tussle over the validity of the Subaltern Studies/postcolonial thought alignment.
But Chatterjee and Spivak are dismissive of Chibber’s argument in different ways. The former defends not only his own work but that of the other two Subaltern thinkers as well. His principal line of defense, regarding Guha’s foundational (for Subaltern Studies theorizing) argument for “dominance without hegemony” in the East, is not a detailed and systematic dissection of opposing arguments à la Chibber, but an elaborated accusation that Chibber has simply failed to understand Guha’s purpose, and that therefore his criticism on that score is utterly misplaced. Similarly, conceptual failures on Chibber’s part to properly understand capitalism (and Marx on “abstract labor”) as well as the implications of the non-disappearance of the peasantry underlie Chibber’s failed caricatures of his own and Chakrabarty’s work. What Chibber makes of all this can safely be left to the discernment of the careful reader.
But while Chatterjee does engage, in his own way, with Chibber’s text, it is far more difficult to know what to make of the Spivak piece. Here, dismissal arrives through literary flourishes, an attempt at a kind of “intellectual outmaneuvering” rather than any direct confrontation with what Chibber is saying. Spivak’s rebuttal is replete with linguistic obscurities and periodic references to other writings that presumably sustain her point of view, though their links to the framework of her immediate critique are left largely unelaborated. Certainly, one major criticism of postmodernism and its influence in postcolonial thought is that obscurity of presentation tends to find a more honored place there than elsewhere.
In the contributions of subsequent interlocutors and the exchanges that follow, a more productive and thoughtful debate emerges. The problem of infinite cultural regress is cited. History 2’s “conjunctural contingent causality” is not incompatible with the “powers, tendencies, structures” identified by Marxism. By “hegemony,” does Gramsci mean the absorption through habitus of certain ways of reacting/ accepting/consenting which are pre-reflective rather than meaning the active organization of consent? For all the virtues of Chibber’s “ruthless rationality,” does he subscribe to a version of “soft rational choice theory”? And how tricky might this be for the case he makes? What about the planetary dangers immanent within History 1 of Capital and our possibility of transcending this not just through class struggle but through technological advances to end scarcity? In short, there is much rich fare waiting to be consumed.
AN INDIAN SPECIFICITY
Though there is an Indian edition of PTSC which has certainly sold well, it has not created a comparable stir to that which took place in the Anglophone countries. Apart from the text by Partha Chatterjee, who spends part of the year teaching at Columbia University in New York City, there are no other texts in this latest compilation from scholars based in India. This is not because PTSC has gone unnoticed—far from it. But despite having its supporters and detractors, the compulsions to defend Subaltern Studies in the light of Chibber’s assault have been considerably weaker. When the Subaltern Studies project first appeared in the early 1980s, it was much discussed in India but not in the West. The project was born in a dissident Left milieu influenced by growing disillusionment with existing Communist states and orthodoxies, the outburst of Marxist-influenced peasant and tribal insurgencies of the late 60s and 70s, the euphoria generated by the end of Mrs. Gandhi’s Emergency Rule (1975–7), and the general impact of Thompsonian social “history from below” reinforced by Thompson’s own visit to India in 1976–7.
It was really after the imprimatur given to Subaltern Studies by Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in the late 80s that it embarked on its meteoric career in that part of Western, especially American, academia concerned with “Third World Studies” and “Colonial Discourse Analysis.” For those working on Indian colonial history, the emphasis on studying subaltern groups resulted in the emergence of a host of micro-studies. Many were of high quality and did what good history from below does—explicate popular forms of behavior and follow local meaning systems in ways which also illuminated broader processes of change, thus providing wider and deeper insights. Many more practitioners than in the West saw this emphasis on studying the oppressed merely as an acceleration of a preexisting tendency in the field. Theorizing Subaltern Studies as a profound methodological break was more often perceived as a form of pompous self-aggrandizement. After all, the mainstream tradition in post-independence history writing was strongly anti-colonial and certainly aware of if not always immune to problems posed by colonial complicity in Western scholarship. Effectively consigning all or most of Indian historiography before Subaltern Studies into the dustbin of the “colonized mind-set” seemed far too dramatic and unnecessary to many.
Given that the birthplace and focus of Subaltern Studies was India and that the specific works of Guha, Chatterjee, and Chakrabarty were part of a field of study to which many other knowledgeable practitioners belonged, there was bound to be a more critical evaluation of their respective contributions than in the social science and humanities departments of Western academia. But here is where the backlash emerged. Postcolonial thought does have a growing and powerful attraction for Indian scholars in the various disciplines of history, sociology, politics, and international relations that comprise the social sciences today. Therefore the absorption of Subaltern Studies theorizing within postcolonial thought has become highly pertinent, only this time under the sign not of the “Subaltern” but of a “Different Indian Modernity”! Chibber’s PTSC finds itself part of the arsenal in the intellectual-political face-off between the defenders of a cross-cultural universalism and their opponents, among whom are newer adherents from India.
THE SPECTER OF MARXISM: THREE PROPOSITIONS
As the title of the text that initiated this debate makes obvious, the specter of capital is most prominent within the discussion launched by Chibber’s book. But even though Chibber did not attack his three Subalternists in PTSC for “not being Marxist enough” or for being the “wrong kind of Marxist”—indeed he makes no appeal to the supposed authority of “hallowed texts” as a tool for challenging arguments—the specter of Marx and Marxism does hover over his critique. Insofar as he defends the view that capital’s universalizing (but never homogenizing) drive in the non-West is a much more causally relevant factor in shaping those societies than the Subalternists (or postcolonial thought) claim, he is defending the strengths of a particular paradigm of Marxist provenance for the investigation of the specificities of capitalist development in the poorer countries. It defines his characterization of capitalism as market dependence for exploiters and exploited in any society of increasingly generalized commodity production where labor power too is a commodity.
Marxism is not a theory of everything. Yes, there are other fruitful approaches to understanding various aspects of human existence and societies. Chibber would be the first to declare this obvious truth and he himself has pointed to what he considers to be certain flawed propositions within orthodox Marxism. But like any major research agenda, Marxism has the capacity to learn from the outside, to develop its analytical tools, to expand its scope of operation, and to deepen its insights and perspectives. The message then is to tread carefully and honestly. Do not ignore the strengths of Marxist studies at their best. Do not dismiss the capacity for internal correction and development within the Marxist tradition. Above all, do not underestimate the power of Marxism as a general approach to historical sociology, and certainly not its power as a specific theory of capitalism. Otherwise one may end up with a framework that is “post”-Marxist in the very worst sense of the term—not any kind of advance but a bad retreat or detour.
There are in fact three basic and crucial propositions that flow from currents within the broad Marxist tradition, endorsement or rejection of which does constitute a dividing line in the exchanges that make up The Debate on Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital between those who on balance come out in broad support of PTSC and those who do not. Both explicitly and implicitly, they shape the various contributions to this volume. They are: 1) Capitalism’s emergence creates a historically distinctive separation between the economic and the political. 2) Capitalism is inescapably characterized by uneven and combined development. 3) Regardless of cultural diversity, there exists a modest but vital universalism of the human condition that provides a weak foundation for a collective project of human advancement.
By separating the economic and the political, a capitalist mode of production permits the emergence and consolidation of a new kind of civic and political equality in law and practice that we have come to know as liberal democracy. Since it permits but does not enable this, it is not axiomatic or automatic that capitalist development promoted by capitalists will establish a regime that is identifiably on the side of liberal democratic rather than non-democratic forms of class rule. Neither will it automatically produce a system with the basic ingredients of the political culture associated with liberal democratic regimes, namely a political culture of values that can be traced to the Enlightenment. There is great flexibility in this respect; historically, it is struggles from below that have been crucial to the formation of such political regimes and the institutionalization of such values. This feature is central to the discussion about the differences between the bourgeoisies of the West and East and about the nature of social relationships and political orders in these different societies. Testimony to the variant possibilities provided by this separation of the economic and political is actually given by the reality of today’s world. In Iran a theocratic state rules over a capitalist economy; a tribal state controlled by around 7,000 families rules over an extractive capitalist economy in Saudi Arabia; among the newly industrializing countries a “soft Islamic” state prevails in Malaysia and a “soft Buddhist” state in Thailand; there is a “hard Jewish” state in the high-tech capitalist economy of Israel; authoritarian regimes (civilian and military) in a host of countries pursuing a capitalist path of development; a weak secular state under pressure from Hindutva forces in a fast-growing capitalist India; and, irony of ironies, a Communist state in China presiding over the fastest-growing capitalist economy in history!
Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development would also have provided a better understanding of the peculiarities of the political-economic matrices of the countries mentioned in the preceding paragraph. For some reason the key theorists of Subaltern Studies and others who remained loyal to the existing Left parties in India never felt tempted to resort to Trotsky’s insights in the way they willingly turned to Gramsci. It is not unreasonable to believe this had something to do with their past or continuing alignments with Stalinist and Maoist traditions. Whatever the undoubted merits of Gramsci’s work, he has always been in the Indian context the safer political option. One can be a Gramscian without having to repudiate one’s present or past association with Stalinism or Maoism. Appreciating Trotsky will never in the same way represent a purely intellectual choice, for he and his stream of supporters carried the burden of belonging to the Marxist and International Left tradition, the great political enemy of Stalinism in thought and practice and by extension a Maoism that earlier looked to Stalin’s Russia for foreign policy support and also pursued the vision of building “socialism in one country.” Even the reputational cost to be paid in moving away from Stalinist and Maoist doctrines as the bearers of a Marxism that needed to be transcended—that is, drifting toward the “post-condition”—was much less if one could keep silent or ignore the long-standing alternatives presented by the Trotskyist and other anti-bureaucratic traditions within Marxism.
The tragedy, however, is that uneven and combined development is actually a very powerful analytical tool for developing a global historical sociology suited to our times. In postcolonial thought the non-West is said to require postcolonial categories if it is to be properly understood. Here it is “hybridity” that reigns supreme; the most important source for this “Difference” with a capital D is, supposedly, cultural particularities rooted in the distinctive pasts of the social entities concerned. Understanding these postcolonial entities thus requires using newer postcolonial categories, in the search for which there is the tendency to veer close to nativism and ahistorical cultural essences even as many pursuers of this approach insist they are not nativist or essentialist—for doesn’t hybridity imply non-essentialism? But uneven and combined development, where the unevenness is both inherited and created and where the combination operates at all levels—the sociological, economic, technological, political, ideological, cultural, and moral—creates a much more complex set of juxtapositions, re-articulations, interactions, and combinations of the old and new. Here hybridity is not simply the result of cultural factors and sensibilities (inherited and persistent) making each social entity distinctive from all others.
From the time when capitalism took flight on its universalizing mission, hybridity should have never been understood in static terms. Its reproduction has itself become much more dynamic. One must talk of the shaping power not just of “distinctive cultural sensibilities” but of “changing cultural sensibilities.” And those elements responsible for this dynamism will owe much more to capitalism and capitalist-related infusions than to the more static/enduring mechanisms of the precapitalist past. A capitalist modernity creates common processes that unify and differentiate as never before. Capitalism eliminates/ preserves/distorts/limits/combines/originates and therefore, as Perry Anderson has pointed out, all modernity is necessarily hybrid because there is always a simultaneity of different and alternative social, economic, cultural, and political realities and of future trajectories.1
The preoccupation with “difference above all” has expectedly resulted in the declaration that there are multiple modernities. The advocates of multiple modernities acknowledge that there is a special kind of “newness” about modernity as compared to passages of change in the past that justifies it being seen as a distinctive kind of change; hence it is “modern.” And yes, they would accept that there is a common core across differences relating to institutions (mainly economic and political) created by the history and legacies of European colonial expansionism across the world even if these function in ways different from their operation in the West. There are of course a range of disagreements about how much today’s modernity(ies) has/have changed or sped up in the past centuries. However, multiple modernities advocates would not accept that there is anything like a profound rupture between modernity and pre-modernity in that the rate, depth, and scope of change in modernity is qualitatively of an incomparably greater order. That would then focus attention on determining the new entity that would explain this, for which the strongest candidate by far is capitalism.
Rather, the temporal differentiation from the pre-modern past is taken as necessarily less than the spatial differentiation between civilisational-cultural clusters, i.e., the cultural-civilisational continuity within each cluster is the key to explaining the very fact of multiple modernities. Logically enough this leads to a search for those longstanding essences or characteristics that are indigenous to that culture/civilization/society/nation or however else one may wish to describe it. This then is the direction being taken by a small but increasingly influential minority within Indian academia that sees itself as critical and radical and therefore hostile to the mainstream discourse, and wishes to contribute along with counterparts elsewhere to the fashioning of a post-Western wisdom across the social sciences.2 This is a lineage that can in part be traced back to Subaltern Studies. Moving from misunderstanding the subaltern to misunderstanding Indian society, postcolonial thought became applicable for studies of a much wider range of aspects of India, from secularism to IR to political activity to social relationships to elite discourses, and so on. You no longer have to be some kind of anti-capitalist radical to adopt postcolonial thought or even to side implicitly or explicitly with the subaltern. The hallmark of the newer radicalism is a conceptual rejection of Eurocentrism.
What now of the standoff between universalism and cultural particularism? That people are shaped by culture is an undeniable “universal” truth. But how far down do culture and cultural particularity go? Bruce Robbins, a contributor to this volume, has asked if there is a problem of “infinite regress.” There will always be something even more local than the localism many would deem necessary for understanding the shaping effect of culture on a chosen collective entity. Or as William Sewell Jr., another contributor, has suggested, postcolonial historians should view Europe not as a “provincializing” entitity but as one that contains many provinces, each with different histories—the implication being that these historians might embark upon provincializing the provinces in an ever-diminishing direction. What then becomes of the “generalized” statements, claims, and narratives to which even postcolonial thought must resort?
The belief that culture is our nature is equally problematic. The claim here is that different cultures create different natures and mentalities through socialization; therefore neither a universalizing discourse nor the themes emerging from an Enlightenment-inspired universalism can properly make sense of the non-Western world. The point is, as many Marxists and non-Marxists have pointed out, that culture is of our nature. It is only against a shared background of common reference that we can meaningfully talk of difference. Sharing the same species-based bodily dependency for a long period after birth, we cannot survive without nurture—the term that connects nature and culture—which is of course always culturally constituted. There is always mediation by cultural codes. But no matter what the subjective clothing, objectively constituted needs, aspirations, and capacity will express themselves in resistance to exploitation and oppression everywhere and in all times, just as innate capacity for speech and second-order reflection leads to personal and social self-correction, and artistic creativity can be found in all human collectives, big and small. Our human similarities of minimal common rationality/needs/instincts/capacities/ emotions provide enough resources for cross-cultural learning and behavior, or at least a weak but real foundation for working together to fight common oppressions in a universalist project.3 This has now become more necessary than ever before.
PRIME UNIVERSAL NECESSITIES
For the first time in human history, the species itself is threatened by possible mass devastation through dangers humanly created. Now more than ever there is a need for a response that subordinates our differences to what we collectively share as global dilemmas. Even as there exist the most obscene and historically unmatched levels of wealth concentration and inequality, “Basic Needs” (which now go well beyond nutrition to include health, education, leisure, respect and personal dignity, and freedom from fear) for so much of the world’s population are and will remain unmet. This is not because of a scarcity of resources but in spite of the fact that for some time now the age of such global scarcity is finally over! Ecological limits of various kinds are in the process of being crossed with profoundly negative consequences for the delicate metabolism that connects humans with nature. The cloud of a nuclear conflagration and nuclear winter looms constantly over us even as it shifts its geographical positioning.
These three great and universal evils are intimately connected to a globalizing capitalism. In the case of the first two, this is obvious enough and would alone call for the urgent need to overthrow capitalism. Insofar as capitalism requires a mechanism of coordination and stabilization, that unlike the principle of competition is not inherent within its universalizing drive, this can only come from the protections provided to ruling classes from the nation-state as the dominant political unit, and also from the system of nation-states requiring some mechanism of stabilization to prevent competition between the more powerful nation-states (and their ruling classes) from getting out of hand. The fact that some of these states are armed with nuclear weapons adds its own dose of acute tensions. Indeed South Asia is probably the most dangerous zone in this regard. The implication here is that the struggle to transcend the most deadly forms of militarized nation-state rivalries may require challenging the capitalist ballasts of the nation-state system itself.
In these times, surely, a non-controversial and, yes, universal value must act as our principal lodestar for radical thought and practice—a cross-cultural and secularly grounded notion of “human flourishing” whose precondition, of course, must be the survivability of humans everywhere. By analytically downgrading the importance and power of capitalism in shaping our contemporary world order, Subaltern Studies/postcolonial thought acts more as a diversion than as support for a task that an earlier global radicalism saw much more clearly. Capitalism itself must be transcended because its inner dynamics are incompatible with the achievement of an equitable and ecologically sustainable world order, and may even be necessary for a nuclear-free one to emerge. The historical name given to the pursuit of this earthly transcendence has been socialism. This remains a universalism worth fighting for. One hopes that The Debate on Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital can help persuade more people to accept this simple truth.