Rethinking the Values of the Left

摘要

The position of the marginal people's movements in India is radically different from that of the modernizers, who subscribe to the idea of linear development. The latter is also the position of constitutional Marxist parties in India, who have been in power at the provincial level for considerable lengths of time. Marxist parties are unable to come to terms with the assorted people's movements partly because Marxist political economy, particularly the law of value, cannot accommodate the ethics and values of people's movements. The working class position derived from political economy sustains an individual centric ethics, reflected in value, while the people's movements are sustained by community ethics, reflected in their insistence on social use value. This essay interrogates certain openings in the discourse on value to excavate the ground for understanding the erasure of the notion of community from this discourse. It also discusses a revolutionary experiment that tried to weave together the two ethics.View full textDownload full textKeywordsUse Value, Value, Violence, Community, Primitive Accumulation, Marxist Political EconomyRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2012.657445