SACW - 30 April 2013 | Pakistan Elections / Bangladesh: Worker Protections; backlash against bloggers / India: bigger unions; Koodankulam scam; Romila Thapar on Communalism / After neoliberalism / How Does the Subaltern Speak? / Dissent and Repression in Vietnam

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 30 April 2013 - No. 2781
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Contents:
    Pakistan Elections 2013: Labour Rights and Land Reforms Not on the Agenda of Political Parties - selected press reports
    Pakistan: Interview with Pervez Hoodbhoy - On elections, extremism and science
    Backlash against Bangladeshi bloggers
    Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey and Michael Rustin: After neoliberalism: analysing the present
    Interview with Vivek Chibber: How Does the Subaltern Speak?
    Upinder Singh: On the Politics of War and Violence in Early Medieval India
    Mihir Srivastava: How Big Business Gets Its Way in India
    South Africa: The Runaway Union
    Bangladesh: Tragedy Shows Urgency of Worker Protections
    Sri Lanka: Commonwealth Should Relocate November Meeting (Human Rights Watch)
    Democracy Now: Survivor of Bangladesh's Tazreen Factory Fire Urges U.S. Retailers to Stop Blocking Worker Safety
    Audio:'Mazdoor' Jawad Ahmed's Tribute To Workers Who died in Karachi Factory Fire
    India: Shadows of Trident - Modi as Prime Ministerial Candidate
    Indian trade unions are getting bigger, coinciding with slowdown
    Bangladesh: Boomerang
    Bangladesh's battle of principles: Awami League must not dilute its secular credentials
    Bangladesh: Bad moon rising
    India: Protest Posters & Badges appear to oppose Delhi university's forced introduction of a 4 year undergrad programme
    Audio: Romila Thapar Speaking on communalism and secularism 18 April 2013
    India: Set Up Enquiry into Koodankulam Scam - Letter to the PM from Admiral Ramdas
    Sami Zubaida: Women, democracy and dictatorship
    Bangaldesh: Entering the era of anti-politics
    Nilanjana S. Roy: "Stopping rape" isn't possible unless we change the way we tackle and think about ordinary violence
    A TV Discussion on Pakistani Hindu migrants in India
    Saudi Arabia: Bangladeshi labor becomes less “docile”
    Recent Posts from Communalism Watch:
    In Hard Times, Open Dissent and Repression Rise in Vietnam
    Call for papers: The HM 2013 'Making the World Working Class'

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PAKISTAN ELECTIONS 2013: LABOUR RIGHTS AND LAND REFORMS NOT ON THE AGENDA OF POLITICAL PARTIES - SELECTED PRESS REPORTS
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The political parties have ignored workers and peasants while allocating party tickets for contesting polls. Only 28 election candidates belong to the working class and all the other candidates of political parties either come from the traditional landlord families or the business community. “Elections have become a domain of the elites with those from modest backgrounds unable to access the system,” read the statement issued from PILER
http://sacw.net/article4376.html

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PAKISTAN: INTERVIEW WITH PERVEZ HOODBHOY - ON ELECTIONS, EXTREMISM AND SCIENCE
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We deceive ourselves that Pakistan can thrive as a religious state. At best it can survive and that too for the short term. When the state stands silent to the murder of its citizens just because their particular variant of Islam is not that of the majority, it is the beginning of the end. The military is calmly watching Shia neighborhoods being devastated by suicide attacks, and men identified by Shia names are dragged from buses and executed Gestapo style. The police shrug aside the murder of Ahmadis, or when their graveyards are dug up and desecrated by the local powers-that-be. Although Sindh was traditionally much more tolerant than Punjab, Hindus have fled Sind en masse. We are witnesses to religious fascism, plain and simple.
http://www.sacw.net/article4381.html

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BACKLASH AGAINST BANGLADESHI BLOGGERS
by Gita Sahgal
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The bloggers of Shahbagh are facing a backlash – hunted by fundamentalists, denounced in mosques as atheists, arrested by the government. Those abroad are under threat. Meanwhile activists are still demanding justice and cyber movements are using their mobilising power to deal with disasters.
http://www.sacw.net/article4380.html

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STUART HALL, DOREEN MASSEY AND MICHAEL RUSTIN: AFTER NEOLIBERALISM: ANALYSING THE PRESENT
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Excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Kilburn Manifesto
With the banking crisis and the credit crunch of 2007-8, and their economic repercussions around the globe, the system of neoliberalism, or global free-market capitalism, that has come to dominate the world in the three decades since 1980, has imploded. As the scale of toxic debt became evident, credit and inter-bank lending dried up, spending slowed, output declined and unemployment rose.
http://www.sacw.net/article4386.html 

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INTERVIEW WITH VIVEK CHIBBER: HOW DOES THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?
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Postcolonial theory discounts the enduring value of Enlightenment universalism at its own peril.
http://www.sacw.net/article4385.html

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UPINDER SINGH: ON THE POLITICS OF WAR AND VIOLENCE IN EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIA
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Arguing for a need to move beyond the dominant concerns of the historiography of early medieval India, this article emphasises the importance of historicising and incorporating the ideas of political theorists into the historical construct of the polity of this period. Its focus is a close textual analysis of Kamandaka’s Nitisara, an influential political treatise composed at the advent of the early medieval, which offers a graphic morphology of the monarchical power politics of its time
http://www.sacw.net/article4383.html

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MIHIR SRIVASTAVA: HOW BIG BUSINESS GETS ITS WAY IN INDIA
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Ratan Tata, weeks before relinquishing control of the Tata Group, has warned India of crony capitalism. In a recent interview with PTI, asked if the problem was getting worse, he replied, “Yes. It's just an observation, I have no facts or figures to prove it.” Asked about a statement he made on the erosion of values and ethics in India, especially within the business community, he said, “I hold that view.”» Indian Parliament has come to a standstill again as reports surface that the US-based (...)
http://sacw.net/article4368.html

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SOUTH AFRICA: THE RUNAWAY UNION
by Aman Sethi
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Turmoil at the legendary National Union of Mineworkers is indicative of the unresolved contradictions in post-apartheid South Africa
http://sacw.net/article4365.html

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BANGLADESH: TRAGEDY SHOWS URGENCY OF WORKER PROTECTIONS
Human Rights Watch - Press Release
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Given the long record of worker deaths in factories, this tragedy was sadly predictable. The government, local factory owners and the international garment industry pay workers among the world's lowest wages, but didn't have the decency to ensure safe conditions for the people who put clothes on the backs of people all over the world. Brad Adams, Asia director
http://sacw.net/article4350.html

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SRI LANKA: COMMONWEALTH SHOULD RELOCATE NOVEMBER MEETING 
Human Rights Watch - Press Release
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A senior Commonwealth advisory group should recommend the organization shift the venue of its November 2013 Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) from Sri Lanka unless the government makes prompt, measurable, and meaningful progress on human rights, Human Rights Watch say's in its press release
http://sacw.net/article4343.html

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DEMOCRACY NOW: SURVIVOR OF BANGLADESH'S TAZREEN FACTORY FIRE URGES U.S. RETAILERS TO STOP BLOCKING WORKER SAFETY
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Video reportage on Democracy Now. This week's Bangladeshi factory disaster comes five months after a massive fire killed at least 112 garment workers at Bangladesh's Tazreen factory, which made clothing sold by Wal-Mart, among other companies. Earlier this month, Wal-Mart refused to compensate victims and their families, even though it was apparently the factory's largest buyer. We're joined by Sumi Abedin, a worker who survived the Tazreen fire by jumping from the factory's third story, breaking both her arm and foot in the process. She is currently touring the United States to call on retailers like Wal-Mart, The GAP and Disney to take the lead on improving working conditions in Bangladesh. We also speak with Kalpona Akter of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity and Charlie Kernaghan of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.
http://sacw.net/article4339.html

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AUDIO: 'MAZDOOR' JAWAD AHMED'S TRIBUTE TO WORKERS WHO DIED IN KARACHI FACTORY FIRE
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Song by the acclaimed Pakistani singer Jawad Ahmed written in memory of workers who died in a devastating factory fire killings hundreds of workers in Karachi. The song was publically released by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research in Karachi in December 2012
http://sacw.net/article4338.html

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INDIA: SHADOWS OF TRIDENT - MODI AS PRIME MINISTERIAL CANDIDATE
by Ram Puniyani
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Modi has, more than others become the darling of big business and the IT-MBA class. This section of middle class were also the fulcrum upsurge of Anna-Kejriwal-Ramdev trio, which tried to create distrust in the parliamentary democracy and hyper projected the symptom of corruption rather than looking at the system which gives rise to this abominable phenomenon. The Tata's, Adani's and Ambani's are all gaga about Modi as he has been gifting away subsidies and land to them in a manner which shows a clear collusion between big business and Modi.
http://sacw.net/article4337.html

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INDIAN TRADE UNIONS ARE GETTING BIGGER, COINCIDING WITH SLOWDOWN
by Sreelatha Menon
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Early data emerging from the ongoing survey of trade unions in India have revealed they are growing by leaps and bounds from what they were five years ago, contrary to popular belief they are losing their sheen and diminishing by size with the rapid contractualisation of labour.
http://sacw.net/article4336.html

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BANGLADESH: BOOMERANG
by Naeem Mohaiemen
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When you ask an already powerful state to expand their powers further, so as to pummel those you oppose, don't be surprised if the state also decides to use that power against you.
http://sacw.net/article4335.html

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BANGLADESH'S BATTLE OF PRINCIPLES: AWAMI LEAGUE MUST NOT DILUTE ITS SECULAR CREDENTIALS
by Rudroneel Ghosh
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Bangladesh today is in the throes of an internal churning. What started in February as a movement to press for justice for war crimes committed during Bangladesh's Liberation War in 1971 has now metamorphosed into a greater battle over the founding principles of the Bangladeshi state. This has led to the crystallization of two forces – the secular-minded Bangladeshi intelligentsia, activists and the progressive Bangladeshi youth on the one hand, and the Islamist socio-political formations on the other.
http://sacw.net/article4322.html

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BANGLADESH: BAD MOON RISING
by Garga Chatterjee
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The Shahbag protests in Dhaka, which were held recently to condemn Bengali Islamists' collaboration with the Pakistani Army in 1971, have found both allies and critics in India's West Bengal region. Ironically, the Indian state is exploiting the anti-Shahbag narrative - led by Islamist forces within India - to earn brownie points with what it sees as a valuable minority. But at what cost? By Garga Chatterjee
http://sacw.net/article4320.html

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INDIA: PROTEST POSTERS & BADGES APPEAR TO OPPOSE DELHI UNIVERSITY'S FORCED INTRODUCTION OF A 4 YEAR UNDERGRAD PROGRAMME
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Posters and badges released at a protest on 23 April 2013 by Delhi university teachers against the undemocratic ways of Delhi university . . . .
http://www.sacw.net/article4319.html

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AUDIO: ROMILA THAPAR SPEAKING ON COMMUNALISM AND SECULARISM 18 APRIL 2013
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Talk by Romila Thapar on 18 April 2013 at the Delhi conference 'India's Descent into Fascism'. 
[To listen use an external speaker to increase volume] 
http://sacw.net/article4317.html

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INDIA: SET UP ENQUIRY INTO KOODANKULAM SCAM - LETTER TO THE PM FROM ADMIRAL RAMDAS
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I seek to highlight the mounting evidence available [see annexures] regarding the fears expressed in countless forums, about safety and in particular, allegations of corruption associated with the shoddy manufacture and supply of sub standard materials by the Russian suppliers to the KKNPP over a period of time publicly articulated in a newspaper article by Dr AK Gopalakrishnan, a former head of the AERB. This is shocking to say the least. Even worse however, is the studied silence from the highest office in the land – namely the PMO.
http://sacw.net/article4310.html

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SAMI ZUBAIDA: WOMEN, DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP
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In the early and middle decades of the twentieth century it was always dictators who embarked on policy and legislation which liberated and empowered women in both family and society. Ataturk started the process in Turkey, followed by Reza Shah in Iran a model followed less boldly by some Arab leaders in later decades. And they did so against strong popular opposition, religious, conservative and patriarchal. It is unlikely that such reforms would have passed electoral ‘democratic' processes. In societies based on communal, kinship and patronage allegiances ‘democracy' is never liberalism. Are we witnessing the effects of this principle in present day situations? Agitation/revolution initiated by movements for liberty and social justice by the urban young usher in elections, in which the vast hinterlands of populations to whom these concepts are alien or secondary then vote for patriarchal and conservative forces. It is never too often repeated that Tahrir Square is not Egypt.
http://sacw.net/article4312.html

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BANGALDESH: ENTERING THE ERA OF ANTI-POLITICS
by Farid Bakht
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We have to wonder where the subalterns are? The forgotten ones, talked about but not spoken to, ordered around but never consulted, wheeled in for a democratic charade and then dumped outside once the discourse on power actually begins.
http://sacw.net/article4315.html

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NILANJANA S. ROY: "STOPPING RAPE" ISN'T POSSIBLE UNLESS WE CHANGE THE WAY WE TACKLE AND THINK ABOUT ORDINARY VIOLENCE
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If we're serious about “stopping rape”, or at least bringing down the high incidence of sexual violence in India, we should start with the violence we can attempt to control. That implies tackling our own homes and communities.
http://sacw.net/article4314.html

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A TV DISCUSSION ON PAKISTANI HINDU MIGRANTS IN INDIA
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India's World - Pakistani Hindu migrants in India Rajya Sabha TV - April 22, 2013
Guests: Rajiv Dogra (Former Diplomat) ; Chinmaya R Gharekhan (Former ambassador to UN) ; Dilip Simeon (Historian) Anchor: Bharat Bhushan
http://sacw.net/article4311.html

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SAUDI ARABIA: BANGLADESHI LABOR BECOMES LESS “DOCILE”
by jrahman
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BD labour used to be fairly cheap and docile in earlier decades. but over the past decade, it has become more vocal, partly because their numbers have risen, and partly because their opportunities have become brighter elsewhere.
http://sacw.net/article4309.html

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INDIA: RECENT POSTS ON COMMUNALISM WATCH 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/
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Deccan Herald - April 20, 2013
Secular mask - Editorial 

The Gujarat government's decision to seek death penalty for 10 convicts, including a former state cabinet minister Maya Kodnani and a senior Bajrang Dal leader, in the Naroda Patya massacre case will not be seen as prompted by a sense of justice but by politics. The government has also decided to ask for enhancement of the prison terms awarded to 22 other convicts and appeal against acquittals of some others. They had been found guilty last year and convicted for their roles in the massacre of 97 Muslims in the post-Godhra violence in 2002. Though it may be claimed that the government's decision is largely procedural, as it is the SIT which decided to appeal the verdict, chief minister Narendra Modi's prime ministerial ambitions probably have much to do with the government's move.

Modi's biggest handicap in the campaign for acceptance as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate is the taint of the 2002 communal killings. He faces charges of not only not doing enough to prevent and control the attacks on Muslims but also inspiring them. Many NDA partners, and some leaders even in the BJP, are uncomfortable with the communal image of Modi. The JD(U) has clearly said that it would support only a secular leader for the prime minister's office. The decision to seek harsher punishment for the Naroda Patya convicts might be intended to project Modi as a secular leader. It would show Modi as a leader who is fair and just and ready to invoke the provisions for maximum punishment for those involved in communal killings. Who could claim greater secular credentials?

But the attempt at image makeover will not appeal to many as convincing. Maya Kodnani was a minister in the Modi government even when she faced serious charges. The government had supported her and the other accused during the time of investigation and trial. The sudden realisation of their guilt and the move to seek stronger punishment for them will be considered opportunistic and even treacherous in some quarters. The credibility of a leader who is willing to sacrifice his supporters in order to promote his personal interests is bound to be questioned. On the other side, the secular image being projected will also be dismissed as sham. Modi might end up alienating at least a section of the Sangh parivar following without getting value in return in terms of a secular image. Delayed raj dharma is alloyed raj dharma.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/327117/secular-mask.html 

On the Purge and Sanskritization of Khari Boli Hindi between 1939 and 1969 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/on-purge-and-sanskritization-of-khari.html

Narendra Modi's prime-ministerial candidature hurts Nitish Kumar the most 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/narendra-modis-prime-ministerial.html

Mainstreaming Modi - Edit EPW
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/mainstreaming-modi.html

The Language of Narendra Modi 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/the-language-of-narendra-modi.html

Gujarat: Probe Modi's call records / 74 calls to Modi's office during december 2006 encounter / Amit Shah, IPS officers face triple murder case
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/gujarat-proble-modis-call-records-74.html

Karnataka: Now this blast near the BJP office just before elections; what could be behind this; 50 KGs of explosives explosives seized near Shimoga
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/karnataka-now-this-blast-near-bjp.html

High Court cancels bail of ex RSS members accused in Mecca Masjid blast 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/high-court-cancels-bail-of-ex-rss.html

Bangladesh: Buddhists face the brunt this time, Editorial, The Daily Star 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/bangladesh-buddhists-face-brunt-this.html

Modi’s Pals
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/modis-pals.html

Dr. Akshay Desai prominent US supporter of Narenda Modi in hiding, running from law in $25M defrauding case
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/dr-akshay-desai-prominent-us-supporter.html

Why hardline Hindutva is a national security issue 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/why-hardline-hindutva-is-national.html

Madhu Kishwars, Spin Doctors, Propagandists and the Modi Make-over (Aditya Nigam) 
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/madhu-kiswars-spin-doctors.html

Gandalf And His Flo Chart (Kingshuk Nag)
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2013/04/gandalf-and-his-flo-chart-kingshuk-nag.html



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IN HARD TIMES, OPEN DISSENT AND REPRESSION RISE IN VIETNAM
by Thomas Fuller
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New York Times April 24, 2013

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam - His bookshelves are filled with the collected works of Marx, Engels and Ho Chi Minh, the hallmarks of a loyal career in the Communist Party, but Nguyen Phuoc Tuong, 77, says he is no longer a believer. A former adviser to two prime ministers, Mr. Tuong, like so many people in Vietnam today, is speaking out forcefully against the government.

"Our system now is the totalitarian rule of one party," he said in an interview at his apartment on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. "I come from within the system - I understand all its flaws, all its shortcomings, all its degradation," he said. "If the system is not fixed, it will collapse on its own."

The party that triumphed over American-backed South Vietnamese forces in 1975 is facing rising anger over a slumping economy and is rived by disputes pitting traditionalists who want to maintain the country´s guiding socialist principles and a monopoly on power against those calling for a more pluralist system and the full embrace of capitalism.

Perhaps most important, the party is struggling to reckon with a society that is better informed and more critical because of news and opinion that spread through the Internet, circumventing the state-controlled news media.

Since unifying the country 38 years ago, the Communist Party has been tested by conflicts with China and Cambodia, financial crises and internal rifts. The difference today, according to Carlyle A. Thayer, one of the leading foreign scholars of Vietnam, is that criticism of the leadership "has exploded across the society."

In an otherwise authoritarian environment, divisions in the party have actually helped encourage free speech because factions are eager to tarnish one another, Dr. Thayer said.

"There´s a contradiction in Vietnam," he said. "Dissent is flourishing, but at the same time, so is repression."

As dissident voices have multiplied among Vietnam´s 92 million people, the government has tried to crack down. Courts have sentenced numerous bloggers, journalists and activists to prison, yet criticism, especially online, continues seemingly unabated. The government blocks certain Internet sites, but many Vietnamese use software or Web sites to maneuver around the censorship.

"Many more people are trying to express themselves than before, criticizing the government," said Truong Huy San, an author, journalist and well-known blogger. "And what they are saying is much more severe."

Mr. San, who is on a fellowship at Harvard, is the author of "The Winning Side," perhaps the first critical, comprehensive history of Vietnam since 1975 by someone inside the country. Widely read in Vietnam, the two-volume work, written under the pen name Huy Duc, was printed without a permit from the government and describes such acts as the purges of disloyal party members and the seizure of south Vietnamese business owners´ assets.

For casual visitors to Vietnam, surface evidence of economic progress may make it hard to understand the deep pessimism that many express in the country. Millions of people who a decade ago had only bicycles now speed around on motor scooters past factories and office towers.

The economy blossomed in the 1990s after reforms gave birth to Vietnam´s awkward mix of a market economy closely chaperoned by the Communist Party. Even now, the Vietnamese economy is still projected to grow at about 4 percent to 5 percent this year, thanks in part to strong exports of rice, coffee and other agricultural products.

But the real estate market is frozen by overcapacity, banks are saddled with bad loans, newspapers are running articles about rising unemployment, and the country is ranked among some of the world´s most corrupt by Transparency International, a global corruption monitor. (The country ranks 123rd on a list of 176, in which those with low numbers are the least corrupt.)

Vietnamese business people complain of overbearing government regulations imposed by a party that believes it can be the vanguard of capitalist enterprises.

And many say that Vietnam is directionless, despite its seemingly irrepressible industriousness and youthful population.

"In my 21 years here I´ve never seen this level of disenchantment with the system among the intelligentsia and entrepreneurs," said Peter R. Ryder, the chief executive of Indochina Capital, an investment company in Vietnam. "There´s very meaningful debate within the business community and within the party - people who are superconcerned about the direction that the country is going."

At the Spring Economic Forum, a conference held in early April that is organized by the economic committee of the National Assembly, participants "were fighting to have a chance at the microphone," according to Le Dang Doanh, a leading economist who attended the forum, which he described as "stormy."

He said there was widespread criticism that although the economy needed profound restructuring, "almost nothing has been implemented."

"It´s a crisis of trust," Mr. Doanh said. "Better times have been promised every year, but people don´t see it."

At the center of the political storm is Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who has been in power since 2006. Mr. Dung´s brash style and ambitious program for the economy initially won him supporters because he broke from the mold of the stodgy party apparatchik.

But he alienated many party members by dismantling an advisory board that had been a leading force behind the reform program (and that board included Mr. Tuong, the Marxist scholar, among many other senior party members).

More important, Mr. Dung´s trademark policy, his forceful push to build up state-run companies along the lines of South Korea´s private conglomerates, backfired.

Run by executives with close ties to the Communist Party hierarchy, the enterprises expanded into many businesses they were unqualified to manage, economists say, and speculated in the stock market and in real estate. Two of the largest state enterprises nearly collapsed and remain close to insolvency.

Mr. Tuong, the Marxist scholar, says the tensions in the Communist Party have been heightened by the troubles with the economy.

In February, he helped write an open letter to the party´s general secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, urging changes to the country´s Constitution that would "ensure that real power belongs to the people." He has yet to receive a response.

Mr. Tuong says he has been eager to promote change since his days as adviser to Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, who helped overhaul the economy in the 1990s.

But today he feels the pressure of time. He has cancer, though it appears to be in remission, and he talks about the disease as a sort of intellectual liberation spurring him to tell what he now views as the truth.

"In a nutshell, Marx is a great thinker," he said. "But if we never had Marx it would have been even better."

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CALL FOR PAPERS: THE HM 2013 'MAKING THE WORLD WORKING CLASS'
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The HM 2013 Tenth Annual Conference 'Making the World Working Class' will take place in Central London, November 7th to November 10th.
 
Deadline for submission of abstracts: May 1, 2013 
To submit papers go here: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual10/submit

Panels can also be proposed but we reserve the right to disaggregate them and accept only some papers. 

Call for papers

HM 2013: Making the World Working Class

7-10 November

Central London

‘Capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons’ - and between classes. The complex task of analysing class structures and, at the same time, transforming and transcending them is at the core of Marx's legacy. 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of CLR James’s "The Black Jacobins" and the 50th anniversary of EP Thompson’s "The Making of the English Working Class". Wary of all reifications of class, Thompson showed how the working class was not only made by capital, but made itself in everyday struggles and political agitation. James affirmed the need to look at the international division of labour in the context of race and imperialism, and gave voice to the revolutionary agency of the ‘black Jacobins’ and other historically neglected enemies of capitalism and colonialism.

In the wake of the new conflicts thrown up by decolonisation and more recent processes of neoliberal ‘globalisation’, research in the field of labour and working class history has acquired an increasingly global dimension, and become more attentive to the critical role played by race and gender in the formations of working classes. Social struggles and resistance – from Latin America to Eastern Europe, from the Arab-Islamic world to East Asia – continue to show that working classes worldwide have not ceased remaking themselves, at the same time as they struggle against capitalist strategies to turn class composition into class decomposition, to unmake a world working class. Significantly, in order to understand this changing reality and the roots of the crisis of the neoliberal system, a growing body of scholarship questions the representation of labour as a passive factor in production, and investigates how workers’ struggles co-determine processes of capitalist development, as well as cultural mutations and political transformations.  

Despite rising levels of class struggle - from a growing working class movement in China to the Arab uprisings and mobilisation against austerity in Southern Europe - discourses of class remain largely marginal to political debate and action. Class struggle is often recognised, namely through the language of inequality, but is being increasingly filtered, also on the left, through notions of ‘the people’ or ‘the 99%’. The tenth annual Historical Materialism aims to provide a forum for debating  the descriptive and prescriptive roles that concepts of class and class struggle can have today. More generally, we seek contributions that account for how Marxist theory, historiography and empirical research can explain and intervene in the contemporary conjuncture. We will be hosting a stream on "Race and Capital" (for which a separate call for papers is forthcoming, along with a CFP building on last year's "Marxism and Feminism" stream), and we especially welcome papers that address the following themes:

· class, imperialism and migration
· class and gender
· Marxism and feminism
· geographies and spaces of class
· class, capitalism and environment in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa)
· changing geographies of accumulation and resistance
· working class movements today
· class strategies against the crisis and 'austerity'
· revisiting Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class
· revisiting the legacy of CLR James
· history of the international communist movement
· Marxism and theories of intersectionality
· class struggle and political organisation, party and class
· theories of class formation and class composition
· crisis, austerity, and proletarianisation
· class and the agrarian question
· class, literature and literary theory
· cultures of class
· 'class struggle without classes'
· class, poverty, inequality
· representing class and capital in art and culture
· proletarianisation, pauperisation and precarity

We are, of course, open to proposals on other themes as well.

Abstracts (100-200 words) should be submitted at www.historicalmaterialism.org (shortly to go online). Panels can also be proposed but we reserve the right to disaggregate them and accept only some papers. Deadline: 1 May 2013

Please note: the HM conference is not a conventional academic conference but rather a space for discussion, debate and the launching of collective projects. We therefore discourage "cameo appearances" and encourage speakers to participate in the whole of the conference. We also strongly urge all speakers to take out personal subscriptions to the journal.

Organised in collaboration with the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Committee and Socialist Register

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