DOC TAYROC'S [UNSOLICITED] BOOK RECOMMENDATION

This week's recommendation is Post Colonial Theory and the Spectre of Capitalism by Vivek Chibber, available DRM free here.

This is easily the most technical of the books I've ever covered here. Whilst the title implies that Chibber will be taking on the whole of post-colonial theory, in reality his crosshairs are aimed at one particular branch of post-colonial theory, that of subaltern studies. To fully appreciate this book, therefore, you need to have a bit of background on both broader post-colonial theory as well as subaltern studies itself to fully appreciate the book. Nonetheless, still a good book to read to understand the shortcomings of post-war post-colonial theory, and why many have moved on to various forms of de-colonial and/or anti-colonial thought over more traditional post-colonial thought.

Let's start with what subaltern studies are. As you will begin to see in the Marx and the Death of the Author series I'm running alongside this series at the moment, if there's one thing Marxists, both political and academic, love to do, it's separate and divide into highly technical sects that hold an irrational anger at all the other sects, all the time. Part of these splits inevitably come when a group try to address either the actual shortcomings or the perceived shortcomings of Marx. Again, for more on this, feel free to read the above mentioned series.

One such group was the subalternists. For my money, and Chibber's for that matter, the subalternists are a great example of the old platitude, 'the road to hell is paved with good intention'. There are many founders of subaltern theory, but the single most (in)famous founder may be Gayathri Spivak. Indeed, when I was doing my first Master's degree, in South Asia Studies, Spivak's 1988 essay, 'Can the Subaltern Speak'? was required reading. I will not pretend it was one of my favourite bits of assigned reading. In fact, quite the opposite. For a subfield purporting to study economies and history 'from the bottom up', the language was impractically dense, even by academic standards. I was assured by one of her defenders this was done on purpose, as a critique of academics as elites, but when you start to hear stories of how she treats coworkers and gate keeps the very term 'subaltern' amongst those who wish to become subalternists themselves, you begin to see someone who is uncritically of the elite herself. Her position at Columbia University hardly helps perception either.

Nonetheless, the basic argument behind the subalternist movement is rather simple, history and economy, as we study them, tend to be preoccupied with 'great man' histories that focus on elites, whilst affording the bulk of humanity little room, and little agency, in stating what they actually want out of the various systems around them. The vast majority of humanity throughout history cannot write, cannot read, and even today frequently lacks the distributional capacity to get their thoughts out there. This all means that as we study history, economics, and resultantly politics, that, as Spivak et al argue, 'the subaltern cannot speak'. Thusly, to get a better feel for history, a region, economy, etc., we as the academic must help the subaltern to speak.

Spivak, like Chibber, and like some of my work, centres on the region now frequently identified as 'south Asia', which is variously comprised of present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. (Other countries are added or removed depending on who you ask). This is a part of the world that had fallen entirely under British rule for the better part of multiple centuries. Spivak herself was born five years before Indian independence and the subsequent partition of India. Spivak, academically, was very much a product of both the 'post-colonial' school of thought as well as of the Cold War. Before, during, and after the Cold War, Marxists in the west, and generally outside China and the Soviet Union have had to contend with criticisms (both just and ludicrous) of those states. Whether or not the USSR or Communist China represent Marxism is considerably beyond the scope of this essay, but for Spivak, there was also the perceived failings of the 'Socialist' (or Socialist adjacent depending on whom you ask) Indian National Congress (INC), which had formed government in India's Parliament after independence, and had held the majority of seats until the 1980s and 1990s, when the fallout from Indira Gandhi's lengthy and, well, problematic government was being felt across all India. For Indian leftists, not only did the find themselves explaining the failings of Stalin and Mao, but also Indira Gandhi.

Into this context, comes Spivak, who argues that for the majority of Indians, it made little difference if it was the British Union-flag or Indian tri-colour flying overhead, they were still exploited and ignored by elites. For some reason, she felt that Marxism had not done an adequate job addressing the issues of the subaltern, and certainly did not think Marx's concept of the Proletariat was adequately discussing labour exploitation in India, and that Marx's focus on British and German style capitalism had ignored the uniqueness of India. Chibber disagrees.

Chibber argues that post-colonial theory and Spivak's insistence on India's specialness fits into the on-going projects of mainstream economic thought and the need for capital to 'lift all boats'. Further, Chibber argues that many of the circumstances in India are not that different from their European counterparts. India's landlords, Chibber argues, are not different in their behaviour from their British counterparts. Nor are the Indian 'subaltern' different in scope, strategy, or history than the European proletariat. Historically, both have written history through mass movements, in the case of India, before, during, and after the British Raj. The main argument of Chibber is that the 'universal' language of the Enlightenment and Marx in criticising the landed elite still holds value in the context of India, and decolonising India will take considerably more work than simply removing the union-flag. Rather, it will take removing the vestiges of capitalism, both indigenous and foreign.

Chibber's text is still thoroughly academic in language, but still less dense than Spivak's. He hits at one of the critiques I have long had of area studies, which is the tendency to fetishise the area being studied. This is a very particular trend amongst white academics who study the regions. I've especially noticed it amongst white academics who study different parts of Asia. It is possible to appreciate a foreign culture without elevating the people and history above their humanity. One of the parts of area studies that is in dire need of work is removing the field of its colonial and cold-war tendencies to exotic-ise unobjectively the regions studied. India has a unique culture, but the people of India are still homo sapiens, and repeat many of the same mistakes and crimes that their British counterparts do. This isn't excusing British colonialism, which is still a vast evil, but simultaneously, many of the inequalities existent in modern India stem to a pre-British past, and just as likely would've fostered into their present toxic state with or without the British. India had a landed gentry before the British came and a deeply hierarchical religion before the British came. Whilst the British used both of these pre-existing systems to their benefit, and further entrenched the divisions in order to consolidate power, we also lack the counter-factual to say that these systems would've reformed without the British. India might've had a French revolution, Jai Singh II was certainly an 'enlightenment monarch', but it also might've gone the way of Tsarist Russia. It is wrong that Britain took away the chance for India to do this on its own, but its also wrong to assume that any culture or country is a 'special case'.

That is to say, Marx's insights into the relationship between the aristocracy, the bourgeois, and the proletariat stills hold weight and water in India, and there isn't a need to further subdivide the epistemology further. India's aristocracy shares a remarkably similar back story to their British and European counterparts, and India's proletariat is just as capable of organising as their British, French, German, and (God-forbid) Russian and Chinese counterparts. The subaltern can, in fact, speak, and doesn't need the bourgeois speaking for them.