A Marxist Mosaic. Selected Writings 1968–2022

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Published Jul 2024

Jairus Banaji

Historical materialism as Marx understood this was always an integrated conception or field of research, not one divided into separate disciplines. The essays gathered in this volume are a remarkable example of how this works across a wide range of subjects as diverse as agrarian history, capitalism, Hegel’s influence on Marx, and class struggles in India. They were written over some fifty years of both activism and academic work, embodying Banaji’s lifelong engagement with Marxist theory. His recent papers on merchant capitalism can also be found here, along with a biographical sketch that sets all of his work in context.

Biographical Note

Jairus Banaji, DPhil (Oxon), is with the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University Of London. His earlier books include Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity (2007), Theory as History (2011), and A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism (2020).

Readership

Academic libraries, post-graduate students, lecturers and others interested in social and economic history, Marxist theory, peasant studies, new approaches to fascism, and/or modern India.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Tables

Introduction: A Left-Wing Life

Part 1 Early Interventions (1968–1973)

Anti-Syme

Sartre and the Crisis of Marxism

The Crisis of British Anthropology

Letter to Mandel

Backward Capitalism, Primitive Accumulation and Modes of Production

Part 2 The Platform Group Writings (1977–1979)

A Philosophy of Revolutionary Practice: The First Two Theses on Feuerbach

Dialectic and History: Work, Alienation, Classes and the State in Sartre’s Critique

From the Commodity to Capital: Hegel’s Dialectic in Marx’s Capital

10 Gunder Frank in Retreat?

Part 3 The Peasantry, Rural Labour, Modes of Production

11 The Peasantry in the Feudal Mode of Production: Towards an Economic Model

12 Chayanov, Kautsky, Lenin: Considerations towards a Synthesis

13 Modernising the Historiography of Rural Labour

Part 4 Antiquity, Islam, and the Arab World

14 The Social Background of Some African Martyrs

15 Giuseppe Salvioli’s Capitalism in the Ancient World (with Paolo Tedesco)

16 Islam and Capitalism

17 The Subversive Universe of Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt

Part 5 Issues in Marxist Theory (2009–2019)

18 Reconstructing Historical Materialism: Some Key Issues

19 Seasons of Self-Delusion: Opium, Capitalism and the Financial Markets (Deutscher Lecture)

20 State and Capital in the Era of Primitive Accumulation

Part 6 Merchant Capitalism (2016–2021)

21 Marxism and Merchant Capitalism

22 Merchant Capitalism, Peasant Households and Industrial Accumulation: Integration of a Model

23 Andrew Liu’s Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India

24 The Labyrinth of Capital: Reading the History of Capitalism through Jute and Rubber

Part 7 Fascism

25 The Political Odyssey of Arthur Rosenberg, Germany’s Forgotten Marxist

26 Psychoanalysis under Fascism: Andreas Peglau’s Study of Reich

27 Nationalism Is the Bedrock upon Which All Fascist Movements Have Built Themselves

28 Weimar Themes: Hilferding, Sohn-Rethel, and Hamilton

Part 8 India: The Left and the National Movement

29 The Comintern and Indian Nationalism

Part 9 India: Class Struggles in the Countryside and Cities

30 The Metamorphoses of Agrarian Capitalism

31 Illusions about the Peasantry: Karl Kautsky and the Agrarian Question

32 The Ironies of Indian Maoism

33 A Short History of the Employees’ Unions in Bombay, 1947–1991 (with Rohini Hensman)

34 Multinationals and the Evolution of Industrial Conflict: Bombay 1956–1984 (with Rohini Hensman)
with Rohini Hensman

References
Index