The History of Capital and Modernity: Marxism, Postcolonialism, and

Universalism

Preface

Vivek Chibber’s new text, ​Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital​, has

produced some rather interesting plaudits, criticisms, and analyses, which are both

illuminating and obscuring. Many commentators had plenty to say regarding the text,

some going as far as to claim that the book is “not even Marxist.”1 Regardless of one’s

position, the book certainly generates important ideas and discussions in the continuing

debate of India’s coming to modernity and more generally, social theory. The Historical

Materialism NY Conference even invited Chibber and Partha Chatterjee, one of the

founding members of the Subaltern Studies Group, whose work is one of the subjects

analyzed in the book, to debate the merits of the work.2 I intend to do several things in

this review: First, I would like to provide an overview of the longest sections of the book,

that being an analysis of the main arguments from Ranajit Guha’s 1997 text ​Dominance

without Hegemony ​and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s conceptualization and criticism of

“historicism” in his 2000 text ​Provincializing Europe​, as well as give some context of

Subaltern Studies; second, I would like to provide an overview of the criticisms leveled

against these particular sections and see what holds between them; and lastly, I offer

my own conclusions suggesting that there are merits in the criticism towards Chibber

but find that his position is the strongest due to his own exhaustive and very careful

analysis of the Subaltern Studies’ ourve. The text not only gives way of reconsidering

1
See Chris Taylor, “Not Even Marxist: On Vivek Chibber's Polemic against Postcolonial Theory​,”​
http://clrjames.blogspot.com/2013/04/not-even-marxist-on-vivek-chibbers.html
2
The debate can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xbM8HJrxSJ4
1
social theory, but considering how we, as subalterns in relation to the nation-state and

the 1%, can recapture our agency by understanding the historical processes of capital,

regardless of what region they may land.

Introduction

Before outlining and summarizing the book it is helpful to explain what exactly

Subaltern Studies refers to, both now and historically. Subaltern Studies can be seen as

an emergence of postcolonial studies. Therefore, in order to understand any definition

of Subaltern Studies, one must first ask: what makes something postcolonial? Because

of the discipline’s roots predominantly in English-language literature, postcolonial

literature sought to speak for itself against the narratives that were previously

established by colonial forces in regions that are now referred to as the Global South.3

As such, postcolonial literature and the discipline of postcolonial studies is interested in

representation. Writers such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Franz

Fanon, and Aimé Césaire were interested in being voices of their respective regions4

but also provide a voice of unity regarding the symptoms of the Global South.

3
Such regions include Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the greater Pacific and Atlantic. Also referred as
the “Third World.”
4
See Fredric Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital” ​Social Text​, No.15
(Autumn, 1986), 65-88. The article is taken up to task in Aijaz Ahmad, “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness
and the ‘National Allegory’ ​Social Text​ , No. 17 (Autumn, 1987), 3-25. Ahmad contends with Jameson’s
notion of “Third World Literature” and, particularly, the line “All third-world texts are necessarily, I want to
argue, allegorical, and in a very specific way: they are to be read as what I will call national allegories,
even when, or perhaps I should say, particularly when their forms develop out of predominantly western
machineries of representation, such as the novel” (Jameson 69). For Ahmad, this is another example of
ethnocentric Othering and Orientalism because it suggests that writers from the “Third World” have the
same “motives” of writing about their nation unlike their Western counterparts. And when a work from the
“Third World” is praised by Western outlets, it stands to “speak for” the author’s nation of origin as a
whole. This isn’t an endorsement of ‘postcoloniality’ but rather, that Jameson’s approach isn’t rigorous
and falls into scholarly traps.

2
Postcolonial studies has integrated itself across a variety of disciplines such as

sociology, anthropology, literary theory, feminism, and other related fields. While

Marxism is another school of thought that has often been intertwined with and an

influence upon postcolonial theory, it has also often been at odds with it. Many

postcolonial theorists, including those in the Subaltern Studies group, came from such

theoretical milieu. The main contentions, as Crystal Bartolovich notes, are that:

Marxism is said to be indelibly Eurocentric, complicit with the dominative

meta-narratives of Modernity (including that of colonialism itself) and, in its

approach to texts, vulgarity reductionistic totalizing; postcolonial studies, in turn,

is viewed as complicit with imperialism in its contemporary guise as globalization,

oriented exclusively to metropolitan academic adventurism, and, in its approach

to texts, irredeemably dematerializing and unhistorical.5

In other words, postcolonial studies accuse Marxism as Eurocentric, that its theories

about society are an end all to everything and just reduces social problems to its

concepts (Class, Capital, Surplus, Etc). Thus, Marxism offers a grand-narrative itself

and leaves no room for the possible other narratives in response to it. Marxists, in

return, accuse postcolonial studies of being a “polished form” of imperialism and racism,

that its development as a theory is limited to academia rather than activism, the

language that it uses for its theorizing is self-indulgent, and the arguments and concepts

5
Crystal Bartolovich, “Introduction: Marxism, modernity, and postcolonial studies” in Crystal Bartolovich
and Neil Lazarus, ed., ​Marxism, Modernity And Postcolonial Studies (​ Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002) 1.
3
that it generates lack any sort of substance and are not guided by any historical

precedents. Some of these accusations against the theoretical schools are explored in

Chibber’s text.

Before we delve into the text, some background of the Subaltern Studies group

should be offered. The word subaltern, originally a military term, means to be of an

inferior rank. Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci used the word to mean those that were

underneath the power structure (hegemony) of the ruling classes. So a subaltern is

anyone who does not have immediate access to that power structure.6 The term was

adopted by one of it’s founders Ranajit Guha in his “manifesto” ​On Some Aspects of the

Historiography of Colonial India​. The essay inveighs elite history and historiography of

colonial India derived from the British. By elite he means, “Dominant groups, foreign and

as well as indigenous.”7 Dipesh Chakrabarty, another founding member of the group,

explained that the aim of Subaltern Studies was “to write the subaltern classes into the

history of nationalism and the nation, and to combat all elitist biases in the writing of

history.”8 Subaltern Studies sought to reveal that history does not only belong to the

“victors.” The Subaltern Studies group intended to provide a space for the voices that

have been marginalized by history and historiography so that their own histories can be

told. With that, the Subaltern Studies group can be seen as an extension of postcolonial

studies given the fact that both theoretical frameworks seek to represent voices lost in

6
This can include peasants, indigenous, worker of service labor e.g.custodians, cleaners, landscapers,
and the like of any age, sex, race, and cultural group.
7
Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” ​Selected Subaltern Studies
(Oxford University Press, 1988), 44.
8
Dipesh Chakrabarty, ​Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference ​(Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000), 102
4
colonial history and postcolonial elite historiography.

The Subaltern Studies group also emerged out of a need. A few years

(1967-1977) before the inaugural issue, India’s polity was undergoing a few crises. A

split occurred within the Communist Party of India (in which the Communist Party of

India (Marxist) was created), peasant uprisings in the Indian states of West Bengal and

Andhra Pradesh were organized by other Communist parties that mostly identified as

Maoist9, and in 1975 India’s Prime Minister at the time Indira Gandhi declared a state of

Emergency which suspended the Constitution and gave way for various forms of

political repression. In India’s general election of 1977, Gandhi’s party, The Indian

National Congress, for the first time, were voted out of parliament. This marked an end

of an era for the Congress Party and its hegemony since 1947. To understand such

political and social crisis, Ranajit Guha wanted to see how these events related to

India’s colonial past. How did nationalism, during the anti-colonial period, make way for

crisis in India’s civil society and polity? In order to tackle the problem, Guha wanted to

look at India’s history or, more specifically, historiography. What sort of discursive

structures were at play? Was India’s colonial experience and its emergence as a

modern nation-state post-independence any different from other modern-nation states

vis a vis Europe? Were India’s aspirations merely derivative? Can modernity be realized

9
The collective term is Naxalite which is derived from a village in West Bengal called Naxalbari. The
village is the site where the insurgency began in 1967 and continues to this day across other states in
India. For a recent, general overview of the uprising and its eventual spread to other regions see Stuart
Corbridge, John Harriss, & Craig Jeffery, “Why Has Maoism Become Such a Force in India?,” in ​India
Today: Economy, Politics and Society​ (Cambridge: Polity, 2013); for a historical overview of the Naxalite
movement itself, see Biplab Dasgupta, ​The Naxalite Movement​ (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1974); for a
political and social commentary, see Nirmalangshu Mukherji, ​The Maoists in India: Tribals Under Siege
(London: Pluto Press, 2012).

5
in India? Is there a way out?

Because history and historiography is crucial to the Subaltern Studies project,

debates surrounding the history of India and South Asia’s political development would

be another factor in the group’s academic development. Some of the main questions

were mostly to do with its colonial history.10 Subaltern Studies in this case can be seen

as a negation to what was known as the Cambridge School of Historiography.11 In their

article “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson begin to

describe British Imperialism as an “informal empire.”12 They justify this position by

arguing that Britain’s colonial expansion is simply an economic one and coercion is only

to be used when “the polities of these new regions fail to provide satisfactory conditions

for commercial or strategic integration and when their relative weakness allows, that

power is used imperialistically to adjust those conditions.”13 Such an understanding of

empire suggests that there is always some sort of political vacuum and that the British

are benign in their “encounter” with the land and the population until such a population

resists or the land is not “productive enough.” In other words, empire will find a way to

make their economic expansion work. So in this view, imperialism is constantly a

“productive force.” Nevermind the social and structural implications it had on the the

actual population there.14 The colonial enterprise is just to expand the home country’s

10
For a brief overview of the Subaltern Studies group intellectual history see Dipesh Chakrabarty, “A
Small History of Subaltern Studies” in Henry Schwartz and Sangeeta Ray, ed., ​A Companion to
Postcolonial Studies ​(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000)
11
See Vinay Lal, T​he History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India​ (Oxford University
Press, 2003), 19. Lal summarizes the Cambridge School quite well in the chapter “Subalterns in the
Academy.”
12
John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” ​The Economic History Review,
New Series, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1953), 1.
13
Ibid.,6.
14
For a discussion on the social implications of such economic expansion in India please see, Amiya
6
economic base. Robinson, in another article, suggests that what informs and develops

imperialism are the non-Europeans or “natives” themselves. They are collaborators.

This collaboration is what would build and define European colonial history. As

Robinson defines it, “the choice of indigenous collaborators, more than anything else,

determined the organization of colonial rule.”15 Such a claim suggests, as Vinay Lal puts

it, that with such a definition of imperialism, the natives can be seen as imperialists

themselves.16 This suggests that if imperialism is defined by establishing and expanding

an economic base, then that could mean the natives were interested in doing the exact

same thing. The natives themselves would have to go beyond “their borders” in order to

be imperialists if we are to follow the logic of Robinson’s definition. What is missed is

that the “collaborators” were often put in place by the colonial power by disrupting the

current political economy. The cultural forms, especially in the case of expanding

European colonialism in Africa, became compromised. Authority was legitimized by

bureaucratic reorganization.17 “Divide and Conquer,” was applied as the European

powers created ethnic division among disparate groups, “chiefs” were often installed in

places where they never ruled and the people who “belong” to the the “tribe” that the

European powers had created could not leave, which was a polity that did not exist prior

to the arrival of the Europeans.18 So while there were “collaborators” in a practical

Kumar Bagchi, “Colonialism and the Nature of ‘Capitalist' Enterprise in India,”​ Economic and Political
Weekly​ , Vol. 23, No. 31 (Jul. 30, 1988), especially 38, second paragraph.
15
Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of
Collaboration,” in ed. William Roger Louis (New York: New Viewpoints, 1976). 147
16
Lal, ​The History of History,​ 196.
17
A very brief, but helpful insight in Europe’s colonial expansion into Africa can be found in Robert C.
Allen, ​Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction,​ (Oxford University Press: 2011). A more
extensive analysis can be found in Walter Rodney, ​How Europe Underdeveloped Africa​ (Washington:
Howard University Press: 1982), especially 135-45.
18
Allen, ​Global Economic History,​ 103-104. For a similar view of economic reorganization in the context
7
sense, they cannot be defined as imperialist in Robinson’s sense because the

collaboration was never mutual. The Europeans always had something to extract from

the land and peoples, but the peoples, be it in Africa or India, did not want anything from

the Europeans. The Europeans really had nothing to offer them except power and

remittance.

In contrast, Ranajit Guha, wanted to negate the problematics of colonial rule in

India from these “elite” historiographical narratives. As mentioned earlier, the Subaltern

Studies group was about rethinking colonial history in terms of its narratives and way of

theorizing such history. So the negation to the Cambridge School was one way of

responding to the “elite.”

With such a noble intention, why is Chibber so interested in critically examining

the extensive work of a group that claims to speak for the unspoken and positions itself

as a radical school of thought? In his introduction, Chibber has a difficult time discerning

the “theory” behind postcolonial theory because the way in which postcolonial scholars

theorize is somehow beyond the conventions of argument and rhetoric. As he sees it,

“many postcolonial intellectuals have eschewed developing the kind of clearly

constructed propositions that would normally accompany a research agenda.”19 The

sentiments are shared among postcolonial scholar Leela Gandhi, “While [postcolonial

theory] has enabled a complex interdisciplinary dialogue within the humanities, [it]

confounds any uniformity of approach. As a consequence, there is little consensus

of colonial India, see A.K. Bagchi “Globalising India: The Fantasy and the Reality,” ​Social Scientist​, Vol.
22, No. 7/8 (Jul. - Aug., 1994), 20.
19
Vivek Chibber,​ Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital,​ (New York: Verso, 2013), 3. Henceforth
as PTSC.
8
regarding the proper content, scope, and relevance of postcolonial studies.”20 The

elusiveness of postcolonial theory is what bothers Chibber the most. He finds that while

Marxism too has had it’s run in with various, eclectic theories, it always retained some

sort of coherence in form and structure. So, no matter the diversity of thought, Marxism

always had something coherent to latch onto. Postcolonial theory in turn, lacks that

coherence. Because of such lack it can fit in various academic trends without much

substance to account for. So in turn, because postcolonial theory is so disorganized in

its own practice, criticising it may prove to be a challenge. Any attempt to criticize it can

allow an immediate response of intellectual obtuseness or misunderstanding.

One might be tempted to say that Chibber accuses the Subaltern Studies group

of not being “rigorous” enough in their use and eventual dismissal of Marxism. Even

Chibber himself claims he has “nothing at stake”21 if the Group was Marxist enough.

What Chibber wants to try to reveal that their antagonism towards Marxism is

counterproductive because the Marxist (and Enlightenment) theories they dismiss can

very well explain the sort of theories and problems of capitalism’s development in India.
22

Dominance without Hegemony: The Bourgeoises in India

​To begin with, the Subaltern Studies Group was interested, not only in a “history

from below” but also in rethinking certain knowledge systems or narratives. The

20
Leela Gandhi, ​Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction,​ (New York: Columbia University Press,
1998) 3.
21
He states this at the Historical Materialism NY 2013 conference. The panel can be heard here,
http://wearemany.org/a/2013/04/post-colonialism-and-specter-of-capital
22
Though Chibber does say that the Subaltern Studies Group’s use of Marxism “...is a particular ​kind,​ and
would scarcely be recognized by many contemporary Marxists” seems to suggest comparison. See
PTSC, 10. Emphasis original.
9
Subaltern Studies Group felt that certain theoretical lens, such as Marxism, were not

adequate enough to describe the conditions of colonialism particular to India and to the

“East” or Global South as a whole. So Subaltern Studies had to reconsider and reflect

on the difference of colonial and postcolonial experiences.

One of the texts that Chibber begins to look at extensively is Ranajit Guha’s

Dominance without Hegemony​. The book explores the historiography of colonial rule in

India. Particularly, the bourgeoisie, and its relation to capital, in India. Guha’s

formulations on the bourgeois is something that Chibber also sees as a major

theoretical construct for Subaltern Studies. The story, so it goes, is that the bourgeoisie

in Europe, particularly, after the revolutions in England in 1642 and France in 1789,

consolidated the other lower classes and sought to “speak for them.” Such a coalition

would lead to the granting of individual rights, dignity, and sense of individual

sovereignty within the nation-state. The bourgeoisie in India failed such project and thus

exercised “dominance” but not “hegemony.” Another theoretical position of the

Subaltern Studies group that Chibber looks at is the question of capital and capitalism’s

“universal drive”23 to see if such phenomenon developed in colonial India. Because

India’s bourgeois failed to consolidate the “subaltern” classes in the postcolonial,

independence project from the British, is also an indication of capital’s failure in the

colonial world. Capital’s “universalizing project” was not realised in colonial India

because capital must “speak for” the nation and give way for subaltern agents to have a

voice and express themselves within the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. The reason this

23
A recent work that also attempts to break from what is seen as “the universal history” of capital is Ritu
Birla, ​Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India​ (Durham: Duke
University Press 2009). 7-10.
10
did not happen was because of Britain’s own capacity of rule at home and in the

colonies. Because the notion of rights, voting, and autonomy are politically liberal

qualities, such liberalism was not practiced at all in the colonies but was practiced at

home. Thus, the form of liberalism practiced by the bourgeois in India was ​mediocre

because it still had an active relationship with non- or pre-capitalist entities like

feudalism as opposed to the ​vigorous liberalism that gave way for democracy in the

West.24 This, for Guha, is seen as the ultimate paradox that liberal historiography did not

account for.

Chibber’s main issue with these arguments is that they are counterfactual to

Europe’s, particularly English and French, own bourgeois revolutions. Chibber

concedes that, in the case of England’s “revolution” of 1642, it “unleashed an avalanche

of popular initiatives, which, for a while, did expand the the political order” but was not

because the bourgeois’ “commitment to cobbling together a broad social coalition”

rather the “intention of parliamentary leaders was to keep social coalitions on their side
25
as narrow as possible.” So here the bourgeoisie were not even interested developing

a collaborative coalition with the subalterns in an attempt to “overthrow” the ancien

regime. Another issue is a semantic one. Chibber disagrees with Guha’s formulation

that the events of England in 1642 and France in 1789 were “revolutionary.” As

aforementioned, Guha argues that the Indian bourgeoisie accommodated for feudalism

while the European counterpart was antagonistic towards it. Chibber explains that,

24
Ranajit Guha, ​Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India​, (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press 1997) 5.
25
​PTSC,​ 59.
11
 In the English case, by the the early decades of the seventeenth century, the

English country side had been largely transformed , so that feudal agrarian

relations were a thing of the past all across the kingdom. Rural surplus

appropriators were, in general, committed to market-dependent forms of

productions, feudal dues having been replaced by capitalist rent or profits.

Hence, there was simply no questions of the revolution being antifeudal, since

there was quite simply no feudalism to shift away from.26

England’s political economy by 1642 was already capitalistic in its agrarian relations. So

as Chibber points out, it wasn’t a question of overthrowing feudalism in order to install

capitalism but rather a question of what sort of capitalist order to have.27 So for the

bourgeois, it was a question of political reorganization rather than radical economic

change. In the French case, Chibber agrees with the revolutionary locution applied by

Guha, “To be sure, the revolution did culminate in the end the centuries-old signorial

rule in the agrarian economy, and in that, sense, yet, it was genuinely anti feudal. And

true, it also opened up a space for political contestation in the direction of liberalism to a

greater extent than any preceding revolution.”28 But that is where Chibber and Guha’s

agreement ends. The French Revolution in of itself was not antifeudal nor did it lead to a

major transition into capitalism. What gave way for rights and voting for the subalterns

26
​PTSC,​ 57. Chibber cites the work of Robert Brenner, in T.H. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin, eds., ​The
Brenner Debate: Agraian Class Structures and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe
(Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1985); and his ​Merchants and Revolution: Commercial
Change, Political Conflict and London’s Overseas traders 1550-1653​ (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993) as being helpful of this analysis.
27
Ibid., 58.
28
Ibid., 67
12
was popular movements such as peasant uprisings and not the bourgeoisie developing

a political coalition considering that France’s national assembly delegates “crafted

legislation that ​minimized the blows to the existing power structure.”29 This, Chibber

concludes, that Guha’s characterization of the bourgeoisie as a dynamic force that

brought in the interests of the subaltern classes to “speak for them” is imaginary. It was

popular mobility from the subalterns to create a create the shift of their largely reformist

coalition into one that could genuinely be called revolutionary.30

Chibber concludes that Guha’s use of the English and French Revolutions are

counterfactual. India’s experience does not deviate all that much when seen that the

bourgeoisie, in any space, was not interested in in developing a political coalition that

could “speak for” the nation. So capital’s development in India does not deviate from

how capital would develop in the Europe. More importantly, capital’s development

emerges without having to necessarily rupture or “revolutionize” the entire political

economy of a particular area. Thus, Guha’s attempt to critique “liberal and elite

historiography” is, unintentionally, a defense for a “romantic” notion of the bourgeoisie

as modern crafters of liberalism, democracy, and perhaps, civility.31 Guha’s chief

complaint is that capital to be hegemonic, it must garner the consent of the governed.

Because India’s bourgeoisie “failed” to do this, they were simple “dominant” but not

“hegemonic.” But as Chibber has shown, the bourgeoisie In England and France were

not particularly interested in gathering consent of the masses, but rather expanding their

29
Ibid., 73
30
Ibid., 75
31
For a rather extensive and, in my judgement, romantic view of the bourgeoisie as the harbingers of
modern economy and society, see Deirdre N. McClosky, ​Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t
Explain the Modern World​ (Chicago: Chicago University Press 2010).
13
own class base through the state. So Guha’s conception of “hegemony” and

“universalization” is flawed because he relies on a “liberal” or “Whig” view of the

bourgeoisie’s role. Because of this view Guha concludes that India’s development into

a capitalist society is “incomplete” due to the “non-heroic” role of India’s bourgeoisie.32

Now we will look at some particular criticisms leveled towards Chibber regarding

his understand of Guha’s arguments in ​Dominance without Hegemony.​ Bill Crane, in his

blog, That Faint Light, offers a “third view” of the bourgeoisie in India.33 Crane, using

Gramsci, states, “Gramsci in fact argued that both consent and coercion were

necessary in creating the hegemony of any ruling class: coercion used toward the

antagonistic classes, and consent solicited from the allied classes”34 So both consent

and coercion are used for statecraft. Crane does agree with Chibber’s critique of Guha

misconceiving “hegemony” but does not agree that the subalterns are the sole sources

of social change within the bourgeois polity. There must be a combination of consent

and coercion in order to develop democratic rights within capitalism. Crane also takes

issue with Chibber not addressing why India did not develop into a “bourgeois oligarchy”

like the West. Chibber does note that there was a difference in that India’s bourgeois

32
Vinay Lal is also critical of Guha in this way when he notes that, “Thus the history of India, a land of
immense fertility and embarrassing fecundity, is itself conceptualized as a ‘lack,’ a ‘want’ for something
better---call it the bourgeoisie that could have, to quote Guha again, led to nation to a ‘decisive victory’
over colonialism, or call it a revolution of the ‘classic nineteenth-century type.’ If only India had been like
France, we might have been a fulfilled nation; indeed, we wouldn’t need a history, since someone else’s
history would have served us better.” Indeed, if we agree with Chibber’s critique of Guha’s view of the
bourgeoisie, the history between India and France is more shared than perhaps even Lal recognized. See
Lal,​ The History of History​, 206.
33
See Bill Crane, “The Bourgeoisie Revolution in India​ ​(Part 1),”
http://thatfaintlight.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/the-bourgeois-revolution-in-india-part-1/​ To my knowledge,
there has yet to be a part two posted.
34
Bill Crane, “On Vivek Chibber’s Critique of Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies,”
http://thatfaintlight.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/on-vivek-chibbers-critique-of-postcolonial-and-subaltern-stu
dies/
14
was less “oligarchical” than their European counterparts. But since coercion is used by

both bourgeoisies, as both Crane and Chibber acknowledge, it must also resolve itself

through consent. So Crane concludes that Chibber uses a unilinear that is “antithetical

to the Marxist to the Marxist tradition.”35 Crane believes that Chibber is being

non-dialectical in his observation of India’s bourgeoisie. In my view, it is not a question

of Chibber being non-dialectical or not following in the “Marxist” tradition, but rather

finding that capital has developed in very similar lines. That is why Chibber concedes, to

an extent, that the Indian bourgeoisie was, indeed, more democratic and less oligarchic.

He is accounting for difference of capital in India. The political order in India after 1947

may have very well been more “advanced” or “progressive” than Europe because of it’s

own mass movements that the bourgeoisie could not suppress. So it would not be until

the bourgeoisie established a partnership with the Indian National Congress in which
36
would then organize to curb leftist movements. So the question of consent and

coercion that Crane employs could very well apply to the Indian case as Chibber finds

that India inherited a flawed system, but a system that took its European counterparts

much longer to develop. I do not think that Chibber just simply attributes subaltern

agents as the bearers of social change, but that rather, it required their actions in order

for the “hegemonic” bourgeoisie to respond with both consent and coercion. What I

think Chibber is just simply pointing out is that the qualities of both Europe and India’s

bourgeoisie were not all that different because their shared hostility to the subaltern.

That is the difference he is accounting for. A question of political capacities instead

35
Ibid.
36
​PTSC,​ 88.
15
whether capital developed different in India compared to Europe.37 So I think Crane

offers an interesting “alternative” of hegemony, but nothing that Chibber was not already

aware of. Chibber is very well of the coercive tendencies of both Europe’s and India’s

bourgeoisie. So we can use Crane’s analysis of a “necessary dialectic” between

consent and coercion in regards to hegemony to Chibber’s point about India’s political

order being less oligarchic because of the system it inherited, as previously pointed out,

was not as coercive.38

Another major critique of the work comes from Partha Chatterjee, a founding

member of the Subaltern Studies group. In their debate at the Historical Materialism NY

conference, Chatterjee faults Chibber for misunderstanding Guha by saying, “It should

be obvious from a reading of Guha’s longish essay that it was intended as a critique of

liberal historiography and the liberal ideology it represented and not as a historical

sociology of bourgeois revolutions of Europe as Chibber understands it to be.”39 What is

most strange about this line is that Guha’s critique of liberal historiography is not

actually all that “obvious.” Granted, Guha considers liberal historiography to be elite

historiography but Guha’s critique is not simply centered on on the writing of European

history, but also the events of that history. Guha cannot avoid the actual “historic

triumphs,” as he calls them, of the European bourgeoisie. If he was simply complacent

with simply writing a critique of liberal or elite historiography, he still needs to consider

37
Ibid., 89.
38
It is difficult to really “measure” coercion, but I think Chibber is just trying state the simple historical fact
that parliamentary democracy as practiced now was adopted and implemented much quicker in India than
its European counterparts.
39
Partha Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies and ​Capital,​ ” ​Economic and Political Weekly,​ Vol. 48,
No.37,(Sept 14, 2013), 69.
16
the events themselves. He needs to rely on some example to show that India’s

bourgeoisie did indeed “fail” in their attempts to “speak for the nation.” Chibber is critical

of Guha’s characterization of the Indian bourgeoisie because it relies on a “romantic”

view of the European bourgeoisie. His romantic view of the European bourgeoisie

cannot be reason enough that India’s relationship to capital failed to universalize.

Chatterjee also counters Chibber by saying that “Chibber’s elaborate exercise in the

real history of the English and French revolutions [...] are entirely beside the point. This

demonstration does nothing to Guha’s argument.”40 As excessive as it would appear to

be, Chibber very well needed to demonstrate the “real” histories of these events

because Guha’s critique of the Indian bourgeoisie and its failure to be hegemonic, thus

the failure of capital to universalize, is very much dependent on a counter-factual of the

actual experiences of European bourgeoisie. What also makes Chatterjee’s claim more

uncomfortably problematic is from Guha himself,

Much of the specificity of Indian politics of this period derives precisely from the

failure of nationalism to assimilate the class interests of peasants and workers

effectively into a bourgeois hegemony. Nothing testifies more clearly to the

predicament of a bourgeoisie nurtured under colonial conditions and its

difference from its opposite numbers in Western Europe[. . .]In other words, it

was initially as an acknowledgment of the connection between its own interests

and those of all the other nonruling classes that the bourgeoisie had led the

40
Ibid. 69-70
17
 struggle against feudalism and established its hegemony over the peasantry,

whereas in India the influence it gained over the rural population in the 1920s

and 1930s did not develop into a full-fledged hegemony because of its reluctance

to break with landlordism. Again, in Western Europe, the conditions prevailing

under the ancien regime did not allow the interests of the bourgeoisie to be

reduced at once to “the particular interest of a particular class.”41

What we have is Guha making a historical observation on how the bourgeoisie

functioned in Europe compared to that of India. This is exactly what Chibber is critical

of. Guha insists that Europe’s bourgeoisie spoke for the nation while India’s failed to

“assimilate the class interests” of the subalterns. As previously demonstrated by

Chibber, this assumption is deeply wrongheaded and required a historical evaluation in

order to contend with such assumptions.

To make a final remark, Achin Vanaik, in his review of Chibber’s text, reiterates,

“The bourgeoisie of the west were never the principal agent of stabilizing a liberal

democracy whose crucial elements such as universal suffrage, certain rights of

association, etc, came about over a prolonged period, above all through class struggle

and pressures by the lower orders.”42 Chibber demonstrates, with remarkable

thoroughness, that Guha’s view of the west’s bourgeoisie is indeed romantic, Whigish,

and above all, misconstrued. This misconstruction would lead Guha to an already

impoverished path in his judgement of India’s own bourgeoisie.

41
Guha, ​Dominance without Hegemony,​ 133-134.
42
​ ol. 48, No.
Achin Vanaik, “Powerful Critique of Postcolonial Theory,” ​Economic and Political Weekly, V
28, (July 13, 2013), 28.
18
 Provincializing Europe: History’s Discursiveness

The next and final section of this review will look at what Chibber calls the “most

demanding chapter in this book.”43 This chapter looks at how Dipesh Chakrabarty in his

book ​Provincializing Europe,​ conceptualizes the notion of history and “historicism.”

Chakrabarty’s view of historicism is quite distinct from how the term is understood. Paul

Hamilton defines Historicism as “A critical movement insisting on the prime importance

of historical context to the interpretation of texts of all kinds.”44 So Historicism, in this

sense, is a lens or tool of critical analysis that was applied in literary theory and other

disciplines in the Humanities. Chakrabarty conceptualizes Historicism a little differently.

For him, Historicism has more to do with totalizing history in a deterministic sense as

opposed to the hermeneutic sense defined by Hamilton. Chakrabarty offers that

Historicism “tells us that in order to understand the nature of anything in the world, we

must see it as an historically developing entity, that is, first, as an individual and unique

whole---as some kind unity at least in potentia---and, second, as something that

develops over time.”45 Historicism, thus, is a process in which a subject develops

through historical time and can be unified through the narratives of history. In other

words, Historicism tries to stabilize, unify, and codify history as a coherent unit of

objective fact. Sociologist and cultural critic Ashis Nandy is also critical of history as a

defining and complete way of understanding subjects, “Historical consciousness is very

nearly a totalizing one, for both the moderns and those aspiring to their exalted status;

43
​PTSC,​ 212
44
Paul Hamilton, ​Historicism,​ (London: Routledge, 1996.) 2.
45
Chakrabarty, ​Provincializing Europe, ​23.
19
once you own history, it also begins to own you.”46 So history is incomplete unless it

consumes every aspect of life. Chakrabarty analogizes this problem with that of capital.

That once capital enters a cultural space, it will alter its relations and capitalism will

develop like any other industrialized nation. Chakrabarty wants to rectify this problem

by accounting for historical difference. He suggests the terms, History 1, which means

“histories posited by capital” and History 2, “histories that do not belong to capital’s “Life

Process.”47 History 1 can be seen as the “totalizing” force of history while History 2 can

be seen as the history that accounts for the local processes and difference. Chakrabarty

accepts that capital does indeed develop differently depending on the context. What he

is critical is that such narratives are still “historicist” or attempting to totalize and does

not account for historical difference. So Chakrabarty finds Marxist analysis of capital’s

development in a non-western space to be unuseful. Chibber finds Chakrabarty’s

objection to Historicism to be a non-problem. By this I mean, the way Chakrabarty

defines Historicism. Chibber appreciates Chakrabarty’s distinction between History 1

and History 2, but finds that his conclusions on such distinctions are heavily flawed.

Chibber finds the use of difference by Chakrabarty to be a sort of misnomer. Like

Guha before him, saying the the bourgeoisie in India developed differently from the

bourgeoisie of England or France, expresses a misjudgment in the conclusions. Chibber

is critical of Chakrabarty for a similar offense. Chakrabarty argues that there is an

inherent antagonism between History 1 and History 2. For Chibber, this appears to be a

non-problem. Besides Chibber complaining of Chakrabarty’s theorizing as being

46
Ashis Nandy, “History’s Forgotten Doubles,” ​History and Theory,​ Vol. 34, No. 2, Theme Issue 34: ​World
Historians and Their Critics ​(May, 1995), 45.
47
Chakrabarty, ​Provincializing Europe​, 50.
20
abstruse48 he also makes the point that History 2

does not mean that universalization is never incompleted History 2 does not

mean that universalization is never complete; it does not follow that the source of

instability for capital is History 2; it is not the case that there is an inbuilt

antagonism between History and History 2; and finally, it is not at all the case that

History 1, through the agency of capital, is committed to the subjugation or

erasure of History 2. Hence, we find ourselves confronted with quite different

implications concerning the viability of the abstract, universalizing categories of

the Enlightenment tradition, and are led to the view that these frameworks are

not only quite defensible but also a great deal more robust than Chakrabarty

seems to think.49

While History 2 modifies or disrupts History 1, Chibber contends that this does not mean

that capital has failed to universalize. One of the major examples he uses are the

agents in History 1. Whether it is workers, capitalists, landowners, they are expected to

follow a certain outcome or “logic of reproduction” being in the realm of History 1. If

those agents begin to, under now, the realm of History 2, alter those expectations, the

basic integrity of History 1 is left intact because those alterations, be it local cultural

practices, are only type-preserving. So just because workers are still performing their

cultural practices, say, before they go to work in a factory does not account for the

48
​PTSC, ​220.
49
Ibid.,224.
21
failure for capital to fully universalize. What has simply happened is that the workers are

only responding to both their own practices in their culture as well as the new market

forces that have developed.50 So History 1 can very well accommodate for History 2 just

so long that it does not interfere in History 1’s process of capital accumulation. So in

Chibber’s view, there is no antagonism between the local practices, that of History 2,

and the logic of capital in History 1. What one finds is that History 2 is ‘encouraged,’ if

you will, so that History 1 can continue within its logic. Chibber uses an excellent

example of the relationship between managers and workers reproduce such logic of

History 1,

A far more reasonable argument is that managers will initiate measures to

"subjugate or destroy" elements of History 2 only in those instances where they

do conflict with the extraction of socially necessary labor power. But, in those

instances where the elements are neutral to the labor effort, managers will

simply be indifferent to them. In other words, ​capital simply does not care about

workers' local culture as long as it does not interfere with the accumulation

process.​ Managers' attitude toward the manifold elements in History 2 will

therefore be indifference, not hostility, as long as they are able to acquire the

labor effort they seek. As long as capitalists are able to transform this particular

dimension of the workers' culture, they are content to let the other dimensions

50
PTSC, 226. See Chibber’s footnote n39 as he provides a wonderful example of Chakrabarty’s Bengali
workers offer prayer to the machines. For Chibber, this does not account for a failure of History 1 because
their History 2 “alterations” did not drastically change the market practices of History 1. This is essentially
Chibber’s main point about the non-problem of History 1 and History 2.
22
 persist in all their glory. Indeed, management may even patronize these other

dimensions if they feel this will help inure workers to their authority. It has been

a staple of human resource management for some time now to pay homage to

local cultures as a way of reducing friction on the shop floor. Business schools

often encourage and offer training in multiculturalism, not as a sign of resignation

against the proud resistance of History 2 but as a savvy realization that the

valorization of the neutral dimensions of local culture can help in the

domestication of the problematic ones.51

This is perhaps the most crucial part of Chibber’s argument. He is explaining that

History 1 can always already accommodate for the attempted “rupturing” of History 2.

That business schools and jobs themselves will teach about multiculturalism as a way of

not only appeasing workers, but that it can help the internal reproducing, accumulating

logic of History 1. This is Chakrabarty’s critical failure. That he could not consider

capitalism’s own flexibility. If we accept that capital is part of the reproducing logic of

History 1, all that it needs to do to “resist” History 2 is accept it into its logic.52 Capital, in

this case, is ductile. A flexible, economic, and social logic that can fit any mold it needs

to in order to build capital accumulation. This is the discourse that surrounds ideas of

globalization. Despite what cultural practices or entanglements may exist, once they

become “workers” they are also subscribing to market logic.53 Cultural practices need

51
Ibid., 236-237. Emphasis added.
52
For a similar critique of Chakrabarty, see Vinay Gidwani, ​Capital, Interrupted,​ (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota, 2008), 222, 227-228. It should be noted, however, that Gidwani’s assessment of
Chakrabarty’s notion of Historicism is generally favorable.
53
For an ethnographic work on the coexistence of History 1 and History 2, though of course, without
23
not submit to History 1. History 1 needs History 2 in order for capital to fit into the mold

of whatever cultural practices are taking place. If, indeed, History 1 did obliterate History

2 everywhere on the planet would look exactly the same. As Chibber points out, “To be

sure, practices internal to economic reproduction will be transformed along capitalist

lines—this is where the "waiting room" metaphor is apt, and entirely defensible. But this

transformation will not entail a corresponding erasure of all the elements in History 2.

They will face no similar pressures to conform to a universalizing logic.”54 Chibber

concedes that capital has entered the fold of a particular space, the logic of capital

accumulation will indeed alter, if not transform certain economic and even cultural

practices, but these are more intersectional and diverse than even Chakrabarty even

considered. That is why Partha Chatterjee’s attempt to criticize Chibber conception of

capitalism as “so capacious that it would bring a blush even to the pale cheeks of Adam

Smith”55 is weak because it is that “capaciousness” that helps capitalism survive. If not,

on at least an abstract level, capitalism may have not survived this long and be able to

travel the world and reproduce its market logic.56

Conclusion: History as Agency

referring to it as such, see Aihwa Ong, ​Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in
Malaysia​ (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987). Ong argues that Malay women, who transition from rural to
industrial life, resist by disrupting through “spirit possession” in way of hysterical episodes while in the
factory. This could be seen as another example of History 2 making way to attempt to interfere in History
1’s reproductive logic, but this does not disrupt the workers continuing proletarianization nor disrupt
capital accumulation and commodity production. So I find Ong’s work to be emblematic of Chibber’s
counterargument.
54
PTSC, 243.
55
Chatterjee, “Subaltern Studies and ​Capital​,” 74.
56
Of course, there are other aspects to capitalism’s fluidity and flexibility such as the nation-state, which I
find to be one of the biggest factors in its survival and legitimization. For an excellent discussion on
capitalism’s rigidity see Geoff Mann, ​Disassembly Required: A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism,
(Oakland: AK Press, 2013).
24
 Chibber’s ​Postcolonial Theory and The Specter of Capital ​is a welcome

addition to the ongoing debates of Marxism and Postcolonial studies. The work is

a thorough investigation of the Subaltern Studies group’s central arguments and

why they should be reconsidered. Certainly, Chibber may not find much value in

the Groups work as theory, but what I find more crucial in Chibber’s text is not a

complete discrediting of the central tenants of the Subaltern Studies school, but

rather a critical reevaluation. I also find that such a reevaluation can also be

merited towards Chibber's use of Marxism. He shows that Marxism is more

flexible than what is taken for granted by the Subaltern Studies group. He also

shows, with deep historical analysis, that the bourgeoisie in both India and

Europe are indeed more similar that what was thought. I think this is also

important not only for Marxists and Postcolonial theorists, but for anyone

interested in democracy, law, and the development of civil society. the

demystification of the “revolutions” of both England and France can give agency

to those feeling powerless to stand up against the might of the nation-state as the

recent Occupy Wall Street Movements and the Arab Spring have attempted to

demonstrate. Let the Subaltern, indeed, speak for themselves.

25
26