Essays on Marxism and Asia

Essays on Marxism and Asia explores the humanist theory of civilizations, focusing on the Parsis in India and their contribution to industrial modernity. It argues that caste is a product of capitalism and modernity, and that the liberal approach to caste has failed to address it, leading to the rise of fascism in India. The book proposes two different strands of secularism: liberal or bourgeois secularism and revolutionary secularism.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 170 pages
Publication date: 25 September 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Essays on Marxism and Asia begins with the largely forgotten prophet of ancient Iran, Zarathushtra, remembered and immortalized by Friedrich Nietzsche. Also Sprach Zarathustra. In contrast to the infamous clash of civilizations thesis, this book argues for a humanist theory of civilizations and studies the Parsis or Persians who left Iran to settle in India and make it their home. It claims that Parsis, despite being a migrant community, took strength from their Persian heritage and civilization and rose to become the architects of industrial modernity in India.

This book locates this humanist theory in the larger genre of the Asiatic mode of production with caste as its subtext. It then takes a phenomenological reading of caste in India and says that India is afflicted by a very strange illness called ‘silent blindness, where humanity is silenced and blinded in front of the caste apparatus. It then analyzes how capitalism and modernity fashioned caste in the image of capitalism and how the Indian right-wing imagined its fascistic politics of race and racial superiority based on the image of caste hierarchy. The problem in India has been that the liberals could not take caste seriously so as to confront it and then annihilate this violent apartheid structure. This, the book argues, has led to the rise of fascism in India. The book concludes with positing two different strands of secularism, namely liberal or bourgeois secularism, which merely separates religion and the state (but mixes these when required) and revolutionary secularism, which humanizes religion and politics first in order to find the human and class content in both.

The chapters in this book were originally published in Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory.

Weight: 453g
Dimension: 246 x 174 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367618797