Philosophy,
Religion and Class Struggle, Part 10
Philosophical
Battlefield
This week brings the last of the ten parts of
our CU Generic Course called “Philosophy, Religion, and Revolution”. There will
be three items, of which this is the first. The suggested item for discussion
is the last one: Ron Press’s “New Tools
for Marxists”, linked below; but if you can at least skim the other two,
the discussion will be more complete. Hence the change of order.
The
question of the collective human subject has been most concisely and forcefully
expressed in this series by Cyril Smith in the section of “The Communist
Manifesto after 150 Years” called “The
Subject of History”.
The first attached
and linked download for this final part is “Postmodernism & Hindu Nationalism”
by the philosopher Meera
Nanda [pictured]. This work is
given because it shows how several pathological, anti-human strands of
philosophy can play out in concert, mutually reinforcing and amplifying each
other. In the case of India as shown in this article, these were Postmodernism,
Hindu Nationalism (“Hindutva”), “Vedic Science” and reactionary feminism.
Time has
passed since the CU first began using this text. Five years ago it was
cutting-edge, and it is still useful to South Africans because the question of
rational science, of feminism and of “Congress” politics and potential
successors to “Congress” have meaning for us. But Postmodernism has receded. It
is no longer so sure of itself or so hegemonic as in the past.
Meera Nanda
described her purpose thus:
“This essay is more about the left
wing-counterpart of [Yankee] Hindutva: a set of postmodernist ideas, mostly
(but not entirely) exported from the West, which unintentionally ends up
supporting Hindutva's propaganda regarding Vedic science. Over the last couple
of decades, a set of very fashionable, supposedly "radical" critiques
of modern science have dominated the Western universities. These critical
theories of science go under the label of "postmodernism" or
"social constructivism". These theories see modern science as an
essentially Western, masculine and imperialistic way of acquiring knowledge.
Intellectuals of Indian origin, many of them living and working in the West,
have played a lead role in development of postmodernist critiques of modern
science as a source of colonial "violence" against non-Western ways
of knowing.”
The Indian
case is not altogether different to what was, and could again be, the situation
in South Africa, where under President Thabo Mbeki we had Postmodernism
(bourgeois “normality” following the liberation struggle); pseudo-science
around HIV/AIDS (Virodene, African potato, beetroot et cetera); Africanism; and
again, reactionary feminism.
What is
common to all of these aspects, whether in India or in South Africa, is the
evacuation of popular agency and refusal of the mass Subject of History
following the liberation struggle, which in both cases had promised this above
all other things. In India the promise was “Swaraj” and in South Africa,
“Power to the People”.
Independence
and national sovereignty were supposed to be inseparable from mass popular
agency. In practice political independence co-existed with bourgeois
dictatorship and neo-colonialism, and these latter factors trumped and negated
mass popular power. The flight from mass popular agency was a middle-class and
bourgeois betrayal of the workers and the poor.
Revolutionary
organs of people’s power were dismantled in each case. Golden Calves were
raised up for worship, in substitution for the slogans of popular power. The
substitutes were the slogans of bourgeois nationalism and of national mystique.
Postmodernism
is the hopeless, degenerate philosophy of the hopeless, degenerate thing called
Imperialism. The fight for full freedom in a world dominated by Imperialism was
unavoidably a fight against Postmodernism. It is a revolutionary necessity. The
purpose of this CU Generic Course called “Philosophy, Religion, and Revolution”
has been to arm the communists for such battles. Above all what is needed is
devotion to and priority for the human Subject - Power to the People!
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Postmodernism and Hindu Nationalism, 2004, Nanda, Part 1 and Part 2.
- To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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