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    Critical [ Volume 43 - Number 4-5 - 2017 ] Article —— Cra Socelogy Postcolonial Theory re aNe F ina persons and the Making of the varias World Working Class Touralsagepub.con/homelers @SAGE Lucia Pradella King's College London, UK Abstract This article addresses the two main roots of postcolonial criticisms of Marx as a Eurocentric thinker, that is, the closely interrelated views that his value theory is restricted to a national level and that his concept of AMP implies the inferiority of Asia. The article first investigates how classical political economy set the stage for a materialist understanding of capitalism and of history, while contradictorily grounding methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism. Drawing cn the still partially unpublished Marx’s London Notebooks (1850-53), the article then argues that Marx consistently developed the labour theory of value at the international level. In the summer of 1853, moreover, he put in question Bernier’s theory of Oriental despotism, paying increasing attention to the concrete situation of the population in India and to forms of anti- colonial resistance. By overcoming atomistic and unilinear views of development, the article argues, Marx was able to recognize the material seeds of interdependence and collective power of an emerging world working class. Keywords Asiatic mode of production, Karl Marx, political economy, postcolonial studies, value theory, working class Introduction Postcolonial studies have managed to make visible the history and legacy of imperialism, showing that decolonization changed, but did not eliminate, this relationship (Loomba, 2005: 2, 22). One of their main contributions consists in their critique of Eurocentrism: a way of thinking that they have shown has profoundly influenced modern Western thought. Even Marxism has not been immune from this. Indeed, many strands of Marxism have de-emphasized or rejected the importance of Corresponding author: cia Pradelia, Department of European and International Studies, King's College London, Virginia Wool Building, 22 Kingsway, London WC2B 6LE, UK. Email luca pradella@kel ac.uke Gritical Sociology 43(4-5) colonialism and imperialism, declared the end of the peasantry, and separated struggles in the Global South and in the North. seat the early subaltern studies emphasized the potential of Marx's emancipatory Projet postcolonial studies have developed a relation of critical distance from, if not an open polemic deainst Marx, reading his thought in continuity with the colonial discourse of the West (Chaturvedi, oe 10: vii), Various Marxist scholars have engaged with these criticisms, pointing fo ‘Marx(ism)’s aoacitent ant-imperalst critique (e.g., Bartolovich and Lazarus, 2002; Loomba, 2005; Parry, 2004).' In the English-speaking world, prominent scholars like Aijaz ‘Almad (1992), August Nimtz. (2002) and Pranav Jani (2002), among others, have highlighted important but underestimated Sepects of Marx’s writings indicating his atention to imperialism and anti-colonial movements. Mote reeently, Kevin Anderson (2010) has presented Marx's waitings andl late notebooks on non- Mester societies under publication in the new historical-crtcal edition of Marx's and Engels’s complete works (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe), proving the increasing centrality of non-Western societies in Marx’s own research. ‘These engagements with postcolonial studies have highlighted erucial aspects of Marx's work, showing its continuing relevance to social emancipatory practices: In my vie} however, they have not been able radially to undermine the roots of criticisms of Mars #8 & Eurocentric thinker In her Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999: 69, 71), Spivak formulates what I deem tebe the two main premises of these criticisms, related to Marx's analysis of the value form and to the Asiatic mode of production (AMP). In her view, firstly, Marx's value theory is “restricted or the narrative of the development of its forms of appearance in Britain’ and yields results in voc ieterests of Britain; but the value form also allows comprehension of colonialism and the in international division of labour under neoliberalism (Spivak, 1999: 99). Marx's concept of TEMP, secondly, would be far removed from the reality of Asia and imply an idea of its inferior ity, although it can also operate as a deconstructive lever and show the limits of teleological approaches. Spivak’s claims, in my view, express a misunderstanding of Marx's analysis of these two inter- related issues, Crucially, the labour theory of value is not restricted to @ self-enclosed national Teonomy but encompasses capitalism as an imperialist system, and provides ns with tools for developing an immanent critique of Eurocentrism. In order to prove this, the second section locates, geveloP Thiam theoretically and historically by examining its link with ‘methodologicat national- sam looking at the origins of these two interrelated approaches within classical political economy, the section also identifies the conceptual resources within classical political economy itself able to question them (see Lazarus, 2002: 61). T then turn to the analysis of Marx's critique of political economy, drawing on my research om Marx's writings on colonialism and his London Notebooks. Although these notebooks (1850-53) are still partially unpublished, 1 consulted their transcriptions at the Berlin- Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.” In the light ofthis new material, in Section # I diseuss the international aspects of Marx’s value theory and question the interpretat ot still prevailing also among prominent Marxist scholars like Samir ‘Amin (1976), Kevin Anderson (2010) and David Harvey (2004), that Marx looked at Britain as @ national economy. Mar’s Snalysis of capitalism as an imperialist system, I then argue, allowed him o elaborate the non- teleological understanding of history that informs his concept of AMP. This article thus ques- tease the interpretation, advanced also by leading Marxist scholars like Pemy Anderson (ag74) fand Jairus Banaji (2010, 2012), that the concept of AMP implies @ Eurocentric idea of the inferiority of Asia. This article rather argues that by overcoming atomistic and unilinear views fof development Marx recognized the seeds of interdependence and class power able to under mine the material sources of Eurocentrism. Pradella Eurocentrism and Methodological Nationalism In the field of political economy, litle research has been done so far on the origins of Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism: a reflection that requires the overcoming ofthese interrelated approaches, Since the 1970s, a growing number of scholars have pointed out that the nation-state, wile being historically relatively recent development, hasbeen naturalized and assumed as the Xtarting point of the analysis and felos of history. Society is thought of as coinciding with the state snd the national teritory, while international investment and migration appear as variations from a rational developmental path (Van der Linden, 2008). Merging state and society results in an under- ‘estimation of the importance of colonialism and imperialism in capitalist development. International inequalities, products of this development, ae naturalized and the West is portrayed as a model for the rest of the world, This view leads to a stageist understanding of development, according to wifich each people, considered in isolation, has to go through the same stages in order to reach {evelopment or achieve ‘socialism’, understood as a national alternative to capitalism.‘ As a result denon Wentem world is considered ina way that has less todo with the real conditions prevailing there than with what Sai called the “European Westem experince’ This approach downplays the collective agency of ‘subaltem’ peoples, and justifies, directly or indirectly, European and Western domination over the rest of the world. : ‘While Edward Said traced the origins of Eurocentrism already in the European Middle Ages, amis Amin (1989; vi, 101-2) defined it asa specifically modem phenomenon, different from pre-modern forms of ethnocentrism. For Amin, Eurocentrism emerged inthe 19th century as a Uefensive response to the critique of bourgeois society (see also Lazarus, 2002: 49-50). In this sec- tion [argue that classical politcal economy a the same time set the stage for a materialist under standing of capitalism and of history, and grounded methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism, Differently from what is usually assumed, the nation-state has not always been the starting point of political economy reflections, Looking at European economies as colonial systems, mer- poiilist economists identified the historial origin of industrial capital with te international pro- cesses of commercial and usurious dispossession that took place after the European “discovery” tnd colonization ofthe Americas, and in the context of commercial expansion in Asia and Aiea ‘The elaboration of the labour theory of value by Adam Smith (1961 [1776]) and David Ricardo (2004 {1817]) then laid the premises for understanding the origin of capital in the sphere of pro- duction, Focusing on the historical specificity of capitalism, Smith and Ricardo looked at the system as a whole, and identified the antagonism between capital and wage labour. They recog- nized the international mobility of capital and labour, and laid the basis for conceiving accumula: tion as an imperialistic process leading to the concentration end centralization of the more competitive capital internationally (Pradella, 2014a) ‘This understanding of capitalism as an antagonistic, international system excludes the view of societies as isolated wholes andthe corresponding stageist understanding of history, making it pos- sible theoretically to incorporate inter-societal interactions as a driving foree ‘of change. This txplains why clasieal politcal economists conteibuted to the elaboration ofa materialistic eoncep- fon of history. They did not only apply @ materialist approach in the analysis of pre-capitalist seis: by enposng the economic antag of RS they also discovered ‘the root of the orca srugae and development (Mrs and Engels, 1989a: 392). They thus created the condi- tons orang clas stugl ah cent of eenomis end historical analysis. The frst attempt analyse the political economy of Asian societies, Smith’s Wealth of Nations, laid the basis for a Sige ofthe theory of Orel despots hat had emerged in the wake of the expansion of European wade wih Avis lloing Esopene to roc Heit moral and political superiority \¢ civilizations of the Ottoman Middle East, Persia, India, and China (Krader, 1975: 11! 576 Gritical Sociology 43(4-5) Rubiés, 2005: 111). Despite his lack of explicit historical interpretation, moreover, Ricardo’s anal- ysis of the antagonism between capital and wage labour also laid the foundations for understanding the antagonisms shaping Asian societies. Since they naturalized the capitalist mode of production, however, Smith and Ricardo did not develop the labour theory of value consistently and did not clearly formulate a theory of history and social change based on the centrality of class antagonisms. They instead affirmed the validity of the view that capitalist production is aimed at the consumption of the population at the national level. They thus formulated an economic model that presupposes the international immobility of capital and labour, and divides the process of capital accumulation from the expansion of the mar- et and the empire. The resulting vision of international trade is based on the assumption of the circulation of commodities between presupposed independent nations, which could all prosper in a system of perfect competition. Within Ricardo’s theory of international trade, money appears to be only a means of circulation, and not a means of payment, hoard, world money and universal measure of value. As a means of circulation, money would flow between countries in a way that ‘guarantees their equilibrium in the world market (Ricardo, 2004: 1367; see also Moseley, 2005). Based on a lack of analysis of social antagonisms, the free-trade doctrine also implies a teleo- logical and unilinear approach to the study of human societies. Classical economists like Adam Smith at the same time affirmed and denied the importance of colonialism and the expansion of markets for Western European industrial development. They thus affirmed the necessity of the same stages of development forall peoples, considered in isolation: from primitive societies to the agricultural stage, from the combination of agriculture and handicrafts up to modem industry. As Europe appeared to be the height of civilization, bourgeois relations were “quietly smuggled in as the inviolable natural laws’ of society in the abstract (Marx, 1973: 87), against which pre-capitalist societies were interpreted. This approach resulted in serious misrepresentations of Asian societies ‘and in a naturalization of existing inequalities. In what Marx will define as a ‘myth of primitive accumulation’, ‘intrinsic’ characteristics of individuals and entire peoples explained their position in the international division of labour. Value Theory ‘The elaboration of the labour theory of value therefore laid the conditions for examining the antag- nisms shaping global capitalism and for developing a materialist understanding of history and pre-capitalist societies. If Eurocentrism is a way of thinking that stems from and legitimizes an exploitative, imperialist system centred in the West, classical political economy contributed to both the foundation and the critique of Eurocentrism. Correspondingly, Marx’s critique of political economy is in no way confined to the national level, and provides us with tools for developing @ critique of Burocentrism as well. Marx’s notebooks show that he investigated European expansion- fem, colonialism and unequal exchange from the very beginning of his economic studies. Viewing European economies as colonial systems, he examined the link between industralization in Europe and deindustrialization and impoverishment in colonized and dependent countries (Pradella, 2014b: 68-91). Denouncing the imperialist nature of liberal cosmopolitanism, moreover, Marx ‘raced a link between class and international antagonisms. His understanding of capitalism as an imperialist system discounted stageist visions of development, which he explicitly ejected in his 1845 draft article on Friedrich List (Marx, 1975). Contrary to what Spivak (1999: 9) argues, therefore, Marx did consolidate ‘a specifically schol- arly control ofthe matter of imperialism’. In the 1840s, however, Marx had not theoretically over ‘come the main contradictions of classical political economy. Although he adopted the labour theory sf value, his adherence to the quantity theory of money made it impossible for him to overcome the Pradella ‘underlying assumptions of Ricardo’s theory of international trade (see Shaikh, 1979, 1980). What is more, following Ricardo’s theory of rent, Marx also believed that the increasing prices of pri- mary commodities pushed workers’ wages down towards the physiological minimum. He there- fore underestimated the economic consequences of imperialism and the possibility of real wages increasing as a result of technological development and workers’ struggles. This ‘economic pessimism’ helps us to explain Marx’s excessive optimism during the 1848 revolutions, and the resulting limits of Marx’s and Engels’s national policy in this period. In their eyes, proletarian struggles in industrialized countries could not achieve any significant economic results, necessarily leading to a struggle for the abolition of capitalism as such. This view did not take into account the agency of colonized people, and implied that social revolution in Western Europe could lead to the emancipation of all peoples in the world (Pradella, 2014b: 85-9). Thus, although Marx was never an organic intellectual of European imperialism, as Spivak believes,> in the 1840s his vision of intemational revolution retained an implicit Eurocentrism. This reflected Marx’s inability to overcome the limits of classical political economy and its contradictory national approach. ‘The London Notebooks, in my view, represent a real turning point in Marx’s elaboration of the labour theory of value (Pradella, 2014b). Studying carefully the debate between the currency prin- ciple and banking theory, Marx came to criticize Ricardo’s quantity theory of money. This allowed him to take into account the different functions of money and coherently to assume as the starting point of his value theory abstract, universal labour, substance of the value of the totality of pee ‘modities. Marx could thus integrate into his concept of capital the worldwide processes of ‘primi- tive accumulation’ and the expansionist tendencies of industrial accumulation. In the light of his critique of the quantity theory of money, Marx questioned Ricardo’s theories of comparative advantage and of ground rent, and completely demolished Malthus’s theory of population. Along with his studies of the labour movement, technology and capitalist expansionism, these achieve- ‘ments allowed him to undermine the view that wages tend towards the physiological minimum, Marx also studied the Ricardian socialists’ formulation of the concept of surplus value, whose extraction requires a continuous expansion of foreign trade and the empire. He then further inves- tigated the relation between industialization and colonialism by excerpting the first theorists of free trade imperialism’ like Henry Brougham, Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Herman Merivale. Crucially, these achievements allowed Marx to develop his theory of surplus value, presuppos- ing not only the historical but also the logical primacy of the world market, If in his historical and economic studies from the early 1840s onwards Marx had identified the centrality of processes of colonialism and market expansion for Western European industrialization, only in the London Notebooks did he theoretically incorporate the world market into his critique of political economy. Itis in the London Notebooks, therefore, that Marx laid the premises for fully integrating an analy- sis of imperialism into his conceptualization of capital accumulation. In Capital Volume 1, Marx maintains that capital derives from world money: accumulated through the processes of usurious and commercial dispossession examined in the part on so-called primitive accumulation, world money is transformed into capital by means of labour exploitation Inits incessant reproduction, moreover, capital is resolved into surplus value: it is entirely a prod- uct of the exploitation of the working class. The working class, in turn, is not conceived of as a national class, but as a continuously evolving world working class. In Capital, in fact, Marx pre- supposed the British system to be completely globalized (Marx, 1976 [1867-90]: 727). This abstraction allowed him to conceptualize the expansionist tendencies of industrial capital and the txveme limit of capitalist development allowing identification ofits general avs. In this model, the unveraiztion ofthe capitalist mode of production tends towards the conrete eduction of individual to simple and socially necessary labour that is the substance of the value of the 578 Critical Sociology 43(4-5) commodities. Capital appears as a global system that gives rise to a multiplicity of pattems of uneven and combined development, which are nevertheless subordinate to its overall logic, to the absolute law of impoverishment of the working class in particular. This interpretation questions the readings of Marx's concept of class prevailing in the early subaltern studies, which saw it as Eurocentric and hence inapplicable to the Global South. ‘Marx’s model of a society composed exclusively of capitalist and wage labourers does not imply, as Marcel Van der Linden maintains (2008: 19-20), a ‘narrow conception of the working “lass” focused on the North Atlantic region and disregarding the many different forms of labour exploitation existing internationally. On the contrary, this model made it possible to conceive of the capitalist system as a totality and to identify its overall rendency of development, Since the separation ofthe produeers from the means of production is the normal elation in capitalist society, Marx presupposed its existence even where production was not formally capitalist This abstraction allowed him to take into account the fact that, as Jairus Banaji (2010) high- lights, in its worldwide expansion, in the colonial world in particular, capital integrates and subsumes forms of exploitation different from the wage labour relation. This abstraction also reflects the fact that capitalist accumulation involves an, albeit non-linear, process of proletari- ‘nization of peasants, artisans and the self-employed through competition and/or direct state intervention. In this framework, the objective and subjective conditions of these social strata, in their racialized and national dimensions, are understood against the backdrop of the class struggle internationally. Asiatic Mode of Production Contrary to Spivak’s first criticism, therefore, Marx’s value theory laid the conditions for devel- oping a concrete analysis of the international division of labour under capitalism, from historical colonialism to contemporary neoliberalism. In this section I discuss Spivak’s second, related, ‘criticism, namely the argument that Marx’s concept of AMP implies an idea of the inferiority of ‘Asia, Like Said’s, Spivak’s critique of Marx is informed not only by a lack of detailed analysis of the vast corpus of his writings on Asia, but also by ‘indifference to ~ possibly ignorance of — how the complex issues raised by Marx’s cryptic writings on India have actually been seen in the research of key Indian historians themselves’ (Ahmad, 1992: 222). As a detailed analysis of his ‘writings on India is beyond the scope of the present article (see Pradella, 2010, 2014b), inthis Section I focus on the early sources of the concept of AMP within Marx’s unpublished London Notebooks on India (Notebooks 21~23). Written in the summer of 1853, these notebooks prove that Marx’s analysis of capitalism as a global system proceeded along his materialist investiga: tion of world history and pre-capitalist societies. They also put in question some consolidated ‘Marxist interpretations of the concept of AMP that partially converge with Spivak's eriticism of it being Eurocentric. ‘in Banaji’s (2010: 15-18) view, for example, the concept of AMP is based on a series of false assumptions starting from the myth of the self-sufficiency of the Indian village, and the false Claims, formalized by Francois Bemier, about the absence of private land property and of any sig- nificant types of class formations in India, Marx’s concept of AMP would thus entail continuities ‘vith Bernier’s vision of Oriental despotism, according to which in Asia sovereigns retained an absolute property of land, there existed no private property, and peasants lived in poverty and fear ‘The concept of AMP, moreover, would draw on early 19th-century English accounts, which were fat remove from the reality of most Indian villages, and served to legitimate the colonization and dispossession of indigenous communities. For Banaji, only in the 1870s did Marx question some of these assumptions. Pradella on It is clear that by the 1870s, when he read Kovalevsky, he had abandoned his earlier view about the goverment asthe original owner ofl the land, denouncing its doting charcter andthe oe it playod in legitimating the dispossession of indigenous communities by the French (in Algeria) northem India), (Banaji, 2010: 20) ° heatgcen) nee basyin This influential interpretation overlooks that while Marx initially di " Oriental despotism (letter to Engels, 2 June 1853; Marx and Engels, 198%e: 390) inde summer ‘ 1853 he put this theory radially in question (Brentjes, 1983). Crucial inthis development was his reading of the third volume of AHL Heeren’s De la politique et du commerce des peuples de Tantquité (1833) [B63], This work documented te existence of commana property mainy in th south of India, which had not been subject to continual territorial conquests like the north, Mark Wilks’s Historical Sketches of the South of India etc. (London, 1810-17) described each village as a commune or a small republic reproducing the image of primitive communism. Wilks also ae tioned the idea of an absolute land property, because it was incompatible with the existence of society. Wilks challenged those who attributed the property of the land to the sovereign, fro: Diodorus Siculus and Strabo to Bernier, De Thévenot, Chardin, Tavernier, ete: al of them in Wilks’s view, had considered the imaginary consequences of despotism to be real, If in central India the existence of private property was almost completely forgotten, Wilks documented its traces in the south, while in other area it was in as perfect a condition asin every part of Europe In History of Java (1817), Thomas Stanford Raffles, governor of Java and its dependencies affimed that the island of Bali had maintained the ancient communal constitution andthe judiciary of Porails, called ‘Parnakas’, subjected to a rajah with unlimited power [B65 Heft LXVI} Rafes argued persuasively that the sovereign was no universal landowner, and the soil was almost invari- ably redistributed annually as inalienable property of individual families, that cultivated it sepa- rately He also documented that inthe village in districts east of Surabaya there existod electoral practices that had previously been general on the island. Apart from elections, the village constitu- tion in Java strongly resembled that of the Hindus. Also, for George Campbell (Modern India, 1852) before British conquest there existed in any part of India village communities in which col- lective ownership coexisted with individual possession, comparable withthe structure of German, Roman and Greek communities. Campbell examined the different levels of democracy of the com ‘munities which, in his view, was substantially limited by the strict caste division of labour. He also peste the land reforms introduced by the British, who introduced the zamindari system in Bene the "ynwar in Madras, and the village system in Punjab, and dissolved the communities - . I, sal i rac fone nee opium and other revenues extorted a huge portion of ‘rucially, Marx noted in his notebooks that the existence of communes reful ’ that the sovereign owed the land (B63 Heft LXIV). Reading Patton’s The Prine of deat -Monarchies (1801), moreover, Marx came to know an interpretation ofthe peasants’ situation that fevered Bernie's, For Patton, in India and Egypt the rt enjoyed a ‘possessory property’ ~2 Periry Fiht to possession in exchange for the obligation to cultivation — which was distinet fom the absolute property ofthe sovereign, who had the right to transferor assign the land, “In rect positon, to the practice and prejudices of Europe, the immediate labourers of the soil Be sci Hiaorien were the most favoured subjects of government, being the only permanent In the summer of 1853, therefore, Marx became aware of the existence in India linked to the common ownership of land and also recognized the nists of indvideal bropertyof land. This laid the conitions fora more articulated analysis of coneret cass forma- ns in countries like India. Anticipating key Indian historians such as Ranajit Guha and Partha 580 Critical Sociology 43(4-5) Chatterjee, moreover, Marx examined different levels of democracy of Indian communities, their non-egalitarian elements and caste divisions. In his letter to Engels of 14 June 1853 (Marx and Engels, 1983a: 344), Marx distanced himself from Bernier’s view of Oriental despotism. He also argued that it was the East India Company that had reclaimed an absolute right onthe land, previe susly inconceivable inthe country, thereby causing a process of impoverishment and expropriation of the population. ‘Thanks to Patton's distinction between ‘possessory right’ and ‘proprietary right’, in the Grundrisse Marx distinguished the concrete communal property from the abstraction of property right in the sovereign’s hands (Levine, 1977: 77, 81). In his view, the unity ofthe communities appeared to be something particular beyond them, but the communities were the effective owners ofthe land. The Sovereign appropriated the surplus agricultural product of communities or families by means of taxevrents, and could make use of their collective labour for public works. The organization of public works by the state was linked toa specific form of surplus-labour extraction and exploitation, marking the AMP as first antagonistic mode of production. Contrary to what scholars like Ahmad (1992: 241) and Banaji (2010: 16) believe, therefore, in the early 1850s Marx questioned the Orientalist thesis of the lack of private land-ownership in India, This awareness marked a real turning point in his understanding of history. Property now appeared to be a secondary relation, presupposing an original unity between labour and its material resources, from which different forms of possession and community derived. Contrary to Said’s argument (1993: 156, 325), the idea of a dual mission of British colonialism that Marx presented in his 1853 New York Tribune articles on India was not based on a deeply rooted belief in-an ontological difference between East and West. On the contrary, if anything, in 1853 Marx overcame the then prevailing dualistic representation of the West and the East, and laid the prem- fees for elaborating the unitary scheme of human development presented in the Grundrisse, In this, Marx located pre-capitalist formations in a historical process whose unitary dynamics lie, fas Partha Chatterjee argues (1983), in the progressive breakdown of the original unity between human communities and the land. ‘Marx’s concept of AMP, moreover, does not imply the inferiority of Asian societies, nor does it ignore the achievements ofthe pre-capitalist civilization. It is certainly true that, in Marx's eyes, the structure of the communities prevented the development of a more complex division of labour, but this was not synonymous for Marx with a lack of development fout court ora stagnant technol- ay, and did not exclude the existence of exchange networks between communities, as Ahmad (1992: 241) and Banaji (2010: 16) maintain. Marx was well aware that, since the beginning ofthe modern epoch, money circulation had developed between America, Europe and Asia. He believed, however, that in India commodity exchange had not penetrated the internal bases of the commun!- ties and was primarily connected with excess production (Mars, 1973: 227). This separation between production and trade prevented the development of an internal tendency towards strue- tural transformation (Krader, 1975: 168).” For Marx, however, the high level of productivity of the ‘AMBP constituted a barrier to the expansion of European markets. This explains why the colonizers timed at using state power to destroy the union between agriculture and domestic industry, and to force indigenous producers to specialize in the primary sphere. With this increasing attention to the conerete situation of the population in India, we could sa swith Guba (1983), that the “subalterns’ become not only a subject of historical and sociological enquiry, but also the makers oftheir own history. Marx’s analysis ofthe communities was related to his interest in the forms of peasants’ consciousness and resistance later investigated by scholars like Partha Chatterjee (2000: 13). Often underestimated in postcolonial debates is the fact that, from the early 1850s onwards, Marx attributed a growing importance to anti-colonial resistance, 1b January 1850, Marx (Marx and Engels, 1978: 267) greeted the first steps ofthe Taiping Revolution Pradella ella ane 581 (1850-64). Overcoming his previous ‘unidirectional’ view of international revolution, he traced a relation between proletarian struggle in the metropolis and anti-colonial movements in the colonies.8 Marx was the first major European intellectual and political activist who supported an Indian national liberation ‘attained through their struggle by the Indian people’ (Habib, 1995: 58). In the much debated article on ‘The Future Results of British Rule in India” he expressed his hope for an Indian anti-colonial revolution that could break up the caste system, explicitly arguin, for the centrality ofthe mobilization of the Indian masses for reaching national independence and shaping India’s developmental path (Marx and Engels, 1979: 217). Ifthe British had created the conditions for the emergence of a unitary anti-colonial movement in India, this movement could accelerate the factors of crisis and react on Britain as well, where the conditions were ripe for a socialist revolution. The outbreak of the Sepoys’ uprising (1857-£ i pe -poys’ uprising (1857-8) four years later partially con- Making the World Working Class Marx’s value form analysis and his conceptualization of the AMP, therefore, are part and parcel of his overall extique of capitalism as an imperialist system that ceates both unevenness and inte connection between specific social formations. In this section I argue that Marx’s value theo yand his concept of AMP can only be understood in the light of the essential link between theo and praxis informing his work His immanent xtgue of eapitalism,in fac, investigates the origins and reproduction of capital along with the conditions for its supersession. For Marx, while in i capitalist societies production is simed at the reproduction ofthe community, unde capitalism th increase in productive forces dissolves the community, bu, since itis based on labour cooperation, it lays the premises for a new synthesis between the individual andthe “human community” as 2 whole (Marx, 1973: 488). This revolutionary logic radically undermines the teleological ad age ist conception of history characteristic of classical politcal economy, which translates the exist. ence of different stages of social and economic development into a criterion for the subjugation of ezonomial ls developed societies. This antagonist developmental logis replaced by aview ote iene interconnections between revolutionary processes and their potential for uni- spat therefore id not understand the derent mods of produto sted in Comrbution to 1e Critique of Political Economy as isolated, self-contained wholes, but against the backdrop of the worldwide process of capitalist accumulation, in is continuous interaction with previous social formations (Krader, 1975: 177). He certainly did ask himself whether mankind could “fulfil its Beaty without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia’ (Marx and Engels, 1979; 132), ba te dso in onder to identify the necessary conditions forthe victory of international revolution, tthe sages tht every people, considered in slo, tnd to go trough in oder foreach a intel wy, inte one fie retech, Ma clboste aote andor dfn tz of pre-capitalist soil formations, keying the oil antagonism shaping them and - baat ae Pane Potential (Anderson, 2010: 162-3). As San Juan argued (2002b: 63), the concept of AMP fntioned a a “euris foo liminating any teeologcal determinism in Mar’ undending of his. The omulton of tis concept was closely is ro ing avarees of te importance of antcoloil sugges within te intmatinal evoltionary movement. This overall perspective, in my view, question the decades-long debate on Man's = ay a : linearity, which rests on an atomistic interpretation of development and fuses on he formal sequence of foms, witht relating content to Man’ perspective beyond pital (Currie, 1984: 253), The concept of AMP surely ‘shows the limits of teleological approaches? 582 Critical Sociology 43(4-5) but not as a ‘kind of deconstructive lever’, as Spivak believes (1999: 97), This concept shows the limits of teleological approaches because itis part and parcel of Marx’s immanent critique of capi- tal accumulation on a world scale, and is thus inextricably linked to his view of international revolution. Tn the 1850s Marx re-elaborated his perspective of ‘permanent revolution’ incorporating peas- ant and anti-colonial movements in pre-capitalist and colonized countries (Nimtz, 2002). If Engels had previously weleomed the defeat of the Algerian resistance and the US annexation of Mexico, he then supported anti-colonial resistance led by religious forces in Algeria (see Nimtz, 2002: 68). Marx changed his attitude towards Russia, a society he previously judged as hopelessly conserva- tive, and greeted the movement for the emancipation of the serfs as one of the “most momentous things happening in the world’ (Marx to Engels, 11 January 1860, in Marx and Engels, 1983b: 3). In January 1859, for the first time, Marx referred to the mir, the traditional village community, as a possible point of revolutionary resistance (Marx and Engels, 1980: 146-7; see Anderson, 2010: 55). As his 1882 preface to the second Russian edition of the Manifesto shows, moreover, Marx consistently thought that such a movement needed to link with a social revolution in Europe in order to have a socialist outcome. This inherently political dimension excludes generalizations about the potential of societies belonging to the AMP itself, making a more precise contextualization necessary. In his first draft letter to Vera Zasulich (written between late February and early March 1881), for example, Marx repeatedly counter-posed the commune in Russia and in India, arguing that Russia was the only European country where the commune was still widespread at a nationwide scale; differently from India, moreover, Russia was more integrated in the world market and had not been invaded by a foreign power (Marx and Engels, 1989b: 349, 352). In my view, these passages prove that, despite his later in-depth studies on Indian communities, Marx did not discern in India similar revolution- ary possibilities as in Russia, as Kevin Anderson argues (2010: 236). If this were true, it would confirm that Marx's idea of a ‘dual mission’ of British colonialism in India was not based on an Eurocentric vision of the AMBP, but on his analysis of the specific political situation in the country and, in particular, of the difficulties due to its internal divisions. Although discussing this conten- tious argument is beyond the scope of the present article, it is worth stressing that, according to Partha Chatterjee (2000: 20; see also Habib, 1983), these divisions help explain why, despite their considerable numbers, local revolts in India did not have the same political impact as they did in China. And yet Marx’s writings on China are often underestimated in debates on the AMP. During the second Opium War, however, Marx supported the Chinese resistance unconditionally and pre- dicted that, even despite a third war of aggression, the British would never be able to conquer the country. Unlike in India, the British in China had failed to seize state power and overturn the basis of its economy. Because of its high productivity, this managed to keep prices competitive and to guarantee the rural populace comfortable living conditions.? Conclusion This article contributes to Marxist engagements with postcolonial studies by presenting a new interpretation of Marx’s critique of political economy that draws on his still partially unpublished notebooks on India and pre-capitalist societies. While many Marxist scholars have recognized the insights generated by postcolonial critiques of the spread and pervasiveness of Eurocentrism, they have questioned that these criticisms apply to Marx and highlighted the relevance of his thought for contemporary emancipatory practices. In this article, I focus on two contentious aspects of Marx's critique of political economy: his value theory and his concept of the AMP. I question two main interpretations, dominant also among Marxist scholars, that I believe are the real roots of the Pradella see criticisms of Marx as a Eurocentric thinker: the view that Marx’s value form analysis is restricted toa national level, thus excluding an analysis of colonialism and imperialism, and the view that his concept of AMP implies the inferiority of Asia, In order to discuss these two interrelated interpretations, I analyse the link between value form analysis and understandings of history within classical political economy. I argue that the elabora. tion of the labour theory of value allowed Smith and Ricardo to conceptualize capitalism as an imperialist system, and to recognize the class struggle as a fundamental factor in social and histor cal change. Because oftheir lack of consistent analysis of labour exploitation, however, the classics took the nation as the unit of analysis, developing a uni-linear model according to which each people has to go through the same stages in order to reach development. The roots of Eurocentrism therefore lay in the harmonious representation of capitalism contradictorily proffered by the clas. sics, Crucially, Marx’s critique built on the scientific achievements of the classis, but put in ques. ion the system of classical political economy in its entirety. His revolutionary approach allowed him to consider capitalism as a historically determined and surpassable mode of production that, precisely for this reason, can be conceived of as a o‘ality : This revolutionary approach made it possible for Marx consistently to develop the labour theory of value at the international level. By questioning the quantity theory of money in his London Notebooks, he could incorporate into his concept of capital the processes of colonial and market expansion that underpinned industrialization in Western Europe. Presupposing the British system as completely globalized, moreover, in Capital Volume 1 Marx examined capital as an imperialist ever-expanding system. He saw forms of ‘primitive accumulation’, such as colonial wars and the Violent dispossession of direct producers, as part and parcel of the process of capital accumulation ona world scale. Capital appears asa global system that combines different relations of exploita. tion and oppression, but, since it is based on the universalization of labour cooperation and of the working class, also creates the conditions for its own supersession. Mars eritique of politcal economy thus laid the basis for recognizing the different forces constituting the international revo- lutionary movement and overcoming teleological interpretations of history, This interpretation of Marx’s value theory sheds new light also on his concept of AMP. This article stresses a crucial point, still underestimated also in the Marxist literature: in the summer of 1853 Marx put in question Bernier’s theory of Oriental despotism which, he now understood, reflected European interests of colonial dispossession and exploitation, Marx recognized the exist. ence of different forms of land property (including private property) in India and of a democratic tradition linked to the common ownership of land. He thus undermined a long-established dualistic conception of a democratic West and a despotie East, laying the premises fora unitary understand. ing of history and human development. In this framework, communal forms of social organization showed the limits of teleological and uni-linear approaches both at theoretical and political levels Marx came to understand that ant-colonial and peasant-based struggles were not external to the class struggles in the centres of global capitalism, but active forces within the international revolw. tionary movement, This reading creates new openings for thinking about the complementarities between Marxism and postcolonial critiques of Eurocentrism, Marx’s notion of a world working class illuminates the interdependence between labour and social movements that opposes capitalism and imperialism today, and shows the centrality of international solidarity for their advancement. His continuous ftempts to update his analysis, responding to the specific and evolving conditions ofthese move- ents, moreover, points to the necessity of elaborating a critique of Eurocentrism that is grounded in politcal praxis. Only by linking withthe struggles ofa diverse but unitary world working clas, ec is it possible to develop a political project capable of going beyond Eurocentrism because al ipable of overcoming the imperialist system underpinning Eurocentrism. 584 Gritical Sociology 43(4-5) Funding “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency inthe public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Notes 1. The more recent book by Vivek Chibber (2013) seeks to develop a Mardst HE of the theoretical tre tions ofthe project, but doesnot ground tis eitque nan analysis of imperialism and colonialism. >. Jains article Tiake reference tothe classification of Marx's Notebooks as in the International Institute rf Social History archives. The complete index of Marx’s and Engels’s notebooks is available at: http! ‘wus isg.nV/archives/en/files/n/ARCHOO86OfUIL php#N 11241 See, in particular, Hobson (2013), Matin (2013) and Pradella 2014®). ‘The process of nationalization of the revolution in the Soviet Union contributed to ‘the merging of world fistoryand national histories asa sequence of universal stages (Bailey ahd Llobera, 1981: 52). Spivak describes Marcas an organic intellectual of European capitalism ‘but also as a global thinker ina sense that Kant and Hegel were not. aaa ore detailed diseussion of this approach see Prada (2010: 64-9; 2013 124) Contemporary scholars of tributary empires speak of “development” without ‘evolution’: in empires cofiatat in ame and space asthe Roman, the Mughal and the Ching, similarities wore 0% offset by « jevelopment of the productive forces that transformed the structure of society decisively (Bang, 2003: 213). 20 Marx, ‘Revolution in China and in Europe’, published inthe New York Daly Tribune on 14 June 1853 (Marx and Engels, 1979: 93) Marx “Trade with China’, article published inthe New York Daily Tribune on 3 December 1859 (Marx and Engels, 1980: 539). References “Ahmad A (1992) In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures. 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