Events of Adri society
International Conference
Karl Marx – Life, Ideas, Influence: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary
June 16-20, 2018, Patna (Bihar), India
Conference on Karl Marx - Day-1
Patna, June 16. Delivering the Paul M Sweezy Memorial Lecture on the inaugural day of the five day international conference on ‘Karl Marx- Life, Ideas, Influence : a Critical Examination on the Bicentenary’ under the aegis of the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) in Patna on Saturday, Professor Dipankar Gupta highlighted the irony of the formation of political parties by communists. “Marx in his Communist Manifesto did not favour the formation of political parties by communists, neither did he approve the formation of their own sectarian principles. This would disqualify all Communist parties,” he said.
In answer to a question from the audience, Professor Gupta said that neither Marx nor Friedrich Engels ever propounded the concept of violence for social change. Marx, in fact, particularly propounded the vanguard role of women in social revolution. He lamented the misinterpretation of Marx’s ideas over time. Attributing this tendency of scholars to their spontaneous association of Marxism with Communist dictatorships like those of Stalin, Mao, Ceausescu and others, Professor Gupta pointed that popular critiques by Hanna Ardent, Max Weber and Milton Friedman were scathing in their criticism of Marxism even though much of it was based on weak grounds.
The conference is being held in the memory of Pijushendu Gupta and Radha Krishna Choudhary, who were the chief organisers of the national seminar on the sesquicentennial of Karl Marx convened in Begusarai in 1967. The inauguration of the conference was marked by the presentation of shawls to Dr Ushasi Gupta, the daughter in-law of Pijushendu Gupta, and Mr Pranav Kr Chaudhary, son of Radha Krishna Choudhary. ADRI Treasurer Dr Sunita Lall read the citation and later presented mementoes to the eminent speakers on this occasion.
Delivering the keynote address Lord Meghnad Desai said Marx’s theories hold great lessons for the contemporary world, mainly the role of capitalism in the context of globalisation. He said Marxism has gained a new lease of life since the financial crisis of 2008.
Interestingly, analysts have pointed out that greater economic freedom and the rise of a dominant middle class would ultimately lead to situation where greater political freedom would be demanded, culminating in the flowering of democracy in China. Lord Desai pointed out that such an outcome had already been visualised by Marx in his writings.
In the inaugural session, Dr Shaibal Gupta, Member-Secretary, ADRI, said in his welcome address that in the conference “we are not only remembering Marx, but have dedicated 38 memorial lectures to philosophers, economists, academics and political figures who had either influenced him or were influenced by him”.
Prof P P Ghosh, Director ADRI, said the reason why Marx’s ideas still draw scholars from diverse fields is that there are several elements in Marxian methodology that lend it an analytical strength that was not there prior to Marx.
The inaugural session was presided over by Prof Anjan Mukherji, Chairman, ADRI.
Delivering the Karl Marx Memorial Lecture, Deepak Nayyar, Professor Emeritus (JNU) and former VC, Delhi University, spoke about the historical evolution of globalization. He pointed out that globalization was a multidimensional phenomenon which was not only limited to the flow of trade in goods and services and capital but also about the exchange of ideas, technology and information. Historically, globalization has been a fragile process that has witnessed periodic ups and downs.
Globalization requires a hegemon who can ensure the security and stability of the world order. Currently, this role is being played by the United States of America. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, globalization has seen a major backlash in European countries and also America which has seen the rise of Donald Trump.
Among the other prominent speakers on Day-one of the five day international conference, Professor Seongjin Jeong from Gyeongsang National University, Republic of Korea, presented the Marxian view over the capitalist development in South Korea from 1970 - 2014 . He delivered the Rajani Palme Dutt Memorial Lecture.
Professor Satish Jain, former JNU professor, delivered the Adam Smith Memorial Lecture. He spoke on the ‘Normative Elements of Marxism’.
Dr. Shannon Brincat, Senior Lecturer, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, highlighted aspects of ‘Ancient Indian Dialectics and Marx’ while delivering the Shapurji Saklatvala Memorial Lecture.
International Conference on Karl Marx Day-2
Patna, June 17. Delivering the Joan Robinson Memorial Lecture, ADRI Chairman Anjan Mukherji, also Professor Emeritus, JNU, New Delhi, on Sunday said the flow of information has led to greater expectations for higher wages among the working class. This, in turn, has led to more repressive measures from the powers that be. The concept of subsistence wages was given in the Marxian theory. But an enhanced flow of information with the advent of radio, television and now, the social media, has raised the aspirations of the working class who now want to acquire modern gadgets and so higher wages. This has led to regimes being more repressive rather than sympathetic to the demands of the wage-earning work force. Mukherji’s lecture was titled ‘Marxian Economics: Notes from a Neo-Classical Viewpoint’.
It was the seventh in a series of 37 lectures which will be delivered in the course of the five-day International Conference on Karl Marx, being organised by the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) here. The conference began Saturday.
Kipton Jensen, Associate Professor, Morehouse College, Atlanta, US, delivered the D D Kosambi Memorial Lecture by quoting Martin Luther King regarding his visit to India in 1959: “To other countries I go as a tourist, to India I go as a pilgrim.” The Black rights crusader was obviously speaking in deference to Mahatma Gandhi. The topic of Jensen’s lecture was ‘The History of Black Marxism in the USA’. Saying that the ordeal of slavery accelerated the economic power of Europe, he traced Marxism’s 150-year journey in the US through different phases – the Reconstruction Period in 1868; the aftermath of the Civil War; the heights of the Socialist Party in 1918; the poor people’s campaign in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King; and the use of Marxism by different scholars to explain the meaning of the present geopolitical moment in 2018. Drawing an analogy between the Blacks in the US and untouchables in India, he added that the Blacks still haven’t got much in terms of their legitimate rights.
In an earlier session, Ish Mishra, Associate Professor, Hindu College, Delhi, said the failure of Indian communists to fulfil the unaccomplished task of bourgeois democratic revolution subsequently led to the growth of identity politics. He said in India’s current political scenario, the invocation of caste identity by a section for social justice groups is as big a speed-breaker as the invocation of religious identity by communal forces by way of spreading class consciousness among workers, peasants, Dalits, Adivasis and others on the road to their emancipation.
Other key speakers included Craig Brandist, Professor, University of Sheffield, UK, who delivered the Friedrich Engels Memorial Lecture titled ‘The Origins of Marxist Oriental Studies in the USSR and its Stalinist Distortion’. Riccardo Bellofiore, Professor, University of Bergamo, Italy, delivered the Maurice Dobb Memorial Lecture titled ‘Is There Life on Marx? The Critique of Political Economy as a Macro-Monetary Theory of capitalist Production’. Barbara Harriss White, Emeritus Professor, Oxford University, delivered the Otto Neurath Memorial Lecture titled ‘Science and Policy in the Era of Globalisation’.
Presenting her paper ‘Revolution, Emancipation and Social Reproduction’, Chirashree Das Gupta, Associate Professor, JNU, concluded that assuming the growth of productive forces as the focus of extensive transformation rather than egalitarianism of social reproduction can undermine the objective of revolutionary objective.
Seven lectures were delivered and four papers were read on the second day of the five-day conference. On the inaugural day on Saturday, six lectures were delivered and four papers read. As many as 17 papers will be read and 37 memorial lectures will be delivered before the conference comes to an end Wednesday.
International Conference on Karl Marx Day-3
Patna, June 18. Delivering the Jean Paul Sartre Memorial Lecture on the third day of the five-day International Conference on Marxism, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor, Columbia University, US, on Monday said “we have to re-imagine Marxism to make it relevant today by thinking flexibly. We should not only interpret Marxian philosophy but also try to change it.” The topic of Spivak’s lecture was ‘How Can We Use Marxism Today?’ She mentioned that Marx and Engels had said in 1872 itself that Communist Manifesto had become outdated.
Monday was the third day of the five day international conference being organised by the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI).
Taking potshots at corporate financing, she said the problem with development efforts aided by corporate funds is that they report good results, hide bad ones and the good results are often based on bad evidence.
Giving examples from rural West Bengal, she said some of the school buildings built by UNDP funds were never used for schools but for cowsheds. Students never went to those schools except during “advertised visits by officials”, who were responsible for using funds. There was no system to know that whether the students had the right background to receive education in the way it was provided to them.
She emphasised that we must understand that “to be equal is not to be the same”. “We can make Marxism relevant for us by developing ourselves into folks who not only know how to regulate capitalism but also to contain it,” she added.
Delivering the Rudolf Hilferding Memorial Lecture, Cynthia Lucas Hewitt, Associate Professor, Morehouse College, Atlanta US, said that China’s economic progress is a good example of synthesis of Marxism and centralisation of capital. She said that China’s capital, unlike that of some of the Western economies of today, is not a product of slavery but of socialisation. Also, unlike them, China’s capital has not been acquired through colonialism and rabid militarism. The topic of her lecture was ‘Karl Marx’s Prescient Theory of Centralization of Capital, Crisis and an Africentric Response’. Analysing International Monetary Fund’s Financial Access Survey (FAS) data, she tried to show how accurate was Marx’s projection of the global saturation of the capital, its relationship in expansionary cycles and the inevitability of contradictions. She looked at possibilities of African countries which can follow alternatives to Eurocentric revolutionary processes.
The M N Roy Memorial Lecture, which was scheduled to be delivered by Cherif Salif SY, Managing Director, Cherif Salif SY International Consulting Services, Dakar, was read by Jean Joseph Boillot who was the chair for this session. Cherif could not reach Patna due to some unavoidable circumstances. The lecture’s title was ‘Capitalism, Neoliberalism and Development in Africa: The response of the African Union’.
Other notable speakers on the third day of the conference included Andrew J Douglas, Associate Professor, Morehouse College, Atlanta, US, who delivered the Frantz Fanon Memorial Lecture on ‘King, Marx and the Revolution of Worldwide value’; Julio Boltvinik, Professor, El Colegio de Mexico, who delivered the Gyorgy Markus Memorial Lecture on ‘Developing Marx’s Critical Theory: Two Lines of Thought’; Ajit Sinha, Professor, Azim Premji University, Bangalore, who delivered the Piero Sraffa Memorial Lecture on ‘My Sraffa’.
While Miguel Vedda, Professor, the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, delivered the Bertolt Brecht Memorial Lecture on ‘Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx as Essayists: On Genesis and the Function of the Critic Intellectuals’, Riccardo Petrella, Professor Emeritus, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, delivered the Oskar Lange Memorial Lecture on ‘ Marxism and the Commons: The New Challenges for the Humanity’.
Four papers were also read by Navyug Gill, Babak Amini, C Saratchand and Spencer Leonard on the third day.
The end of the proceedings on the third day was marked by the release of the book ‘Another Marx’ authored by Marcello Musto. The book was released by Lord Meghnad Desai.
In earlier sessions, the Nikolay Bukharin Memorial Lecture was delivered by Eugenio Lo Sardo, General Director, National Archives, Rome on ‘Karl Marx and the Opium Wars’ and the S A Dange Memorial Lecture was delivered by Mikhail Yu Pavlov, Associate Professor, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia on ‘Marx-XXI: The Reactualisation of the Philosophical Heritage’.
International Conference on Karl Marx Day-4
Patna, June 19. In this era of globalisation, the destructive side of capitalist production such as degradation of forests, global warming, disrupting of nitrogen cycle and extinction of species have made ecology one of the central fields of Marxism today. This was said by Kohei Saito, Associate Professor, Osaka State University, Japan, on Tuesday at the International Conference on Karl Marx being organised by the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI). The five-day conference comes to an end on Wednesday.
Saito was delivering the Gyorgy Lukacs Memorial Lecture on the topic ‘Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship Revisited from an Ecological Perspective’. Saito said Western Marxism never developed a Marxist critique of ecology because of less than a clear perception of “intellectual relationship” between Marx and Engels. Western Marxism regarded natural science as the domain of Engels’ expertise.
According to Saito, Marx was very much conscious of the danger of serious global disruption in the inter-dependent processes between ‘social metabolism’, that is production, circulation and consumption, and the natural world.
Since capitalist production cannot fully take into account complex dimensions of the social and natural metabolism, it destroys nature, annihilates the possibilities of co-evolution of humans and nature and even threatens human civilization. All that capital cares about is whether accumulation can be somehow achieved, so it does not really matter even if most part of the earth becomes unsuitable space to live for humans and animals. So, instead of waiting for the collapse of capitalism thanks to nature’s revenge, it is indispensable that individuals confronting the global ecological crisis take a measure for the conscious and active control over the metabolism with their environment.
Delivering the Pablo Neruda Memorial Lecture, Roberto Massari, President, International Che Guevara Foundation, Italy, said Che Guevara was never intoxicated with power. Massari traced the journey of Che from medicine to communism as he realised that the problems of Latin American people could be solved only through a revolution. When Che was the minister of industries in the Cuban government, he visited factories and lived with workers to understand their problems.
The expert on the revolutionary said Che was a harsh critic of the New Economic Policy of the Soviet Union and his book on the subject was kept secret till 2006. Che maintained that we cannot advocate violence against those who speak against us, Massari added. The topic of his lecture was ‘Che Guevara and Marx’.
Other key speakers on the day included Elvira Concheiro, Professor, UNAM, Mexico, who delivered the Georgi Plekhanov Memorial Lecture. Her topic was ‘Notes on a Dispossession: How Have we Read Marx’.
Michael Brie, Senior Fellow, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin, delivered the Michal Kalcki Memorial Lecture on the topic ‘Marx’s Capital as Future-Oriented Science for Practical Purposes’.
Shapan Adnan, Associate, Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme, University of Oxford, delivered the Leon Trotsky Memorial lecture on the topic ‘Marx’s Innovative Notion of Primitive Accumulation and its Contemporary Relevance’.
The Henri Lefebvre Memorial Lecture was delivered by Ramaa Vasudevan, Associate Professor, Colorado State University, US on ‘Marx, Money and Capitalism’.
Five papers were presented during the day. The speakers were Paula Rauhala, Helene Fleury, Maryam Aslany, Kumari Sunitha V and Alessandra Mezzadri.
International Conference on Karl Marx Day-5
Patna, June 20. Delivering the Paul Lafargue Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, the last day of the five-day International Conference on Karl Marx organised by the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Kevin M Sanders, Vice-President, People Programme International and Palmer Institute, USA, said “the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself”. “And this is exactly what the capital production is doing through the decades for maximisation of profit by means ethical and unethical, legal and illegal,” he said. The topic of his lecture was ‘Artificial Intelligence and Exponential Technologies as Fundamental Game Changers: What Might the Future Hold?’.
The capitalist world system is going through a significant phase through development in information and communication technologies. This has huge implications for the way goods and services are produced across the globe. As things stand today, it can be predicted that robots would replace human beings in the production process, creating huge unemployment in its wake.
Without naming any Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies, he said for the past three decades, the world has been witnessing the rise of “digital oligarchs” in the information and communication sector.
Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor, Oxford University, in her special address on ‘Petty Production and India’s Development’, said Petty Commodity Production (PCP) is a theoretical problem for those who attempt to theorize capitalistic development. Giving an example, she said if a weaver does not own the loom and produces for the merchant who owns the loom, he is disguised; if he owns the loom instead, he is a petty producer.
She said PCP provides the core not only in agrarian and manufacturing production processes in India but also in commercial and even (rural) financial sectors. She added that the contribution of agriculture in the Indian GDP has been consistently falling over the years. However, those dependent on agriculture for livelihood continue to remain disproportionately very high.
PCP is actually persistent not only in South Asia including India but also in parts of Europe. Marx did handle petty production but his treatment of it was scattered, not in one place. He used terms like peasant, household, craftsman to describe petty producer.
Peter Beilharz, Professor, Curtin University, Australia, said capital production assigns everything an exchange value whether it is a commodity or love, sex, landscape or beauty. But it is the sociability of the individual, rather than possessive individuality, which enables her to have a peaceful coexistence with her surroundings. Marxism needs to be re-thought, re-constructed and re-imagined to suit modern times. Answering a question from the audience, he said Marxian utopia is not different from utopia that everyone seeks to achieve. In answer to another question, he said the tendency to turn Marx against Marxism, something which gained currency after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, is unnecessary and should be avoided. Commenting about ‘Marxism of Ecology’, he said public discussion should focus on the extractive form of capital accumulation so that cities continue to live with proper housing, water availability and other civic infrastructure. He delivered the E M S Namboodripad Memorial Lecture on ‘Circling Marx’.
Other key speakers during the day included Peter Hudis, Professor Oakton Community College, USA, who delivered the Herbert Marcuse Memorial Lecture on ‘The Intimation of a Post-Capitalist Society in Marx’s Capital’.
Tian Yu Cao, Professor, Boston University, USA, delivered the Che Guevara Memorial Lecture on ‘Marx’s Ideas and Conceptions of Socialism in the 21st Century’. He said the collapse of the Soviet model along with the decline of Keynesianism since the 1970s has posed a serious challenge to socialists.
Dipak Gyawali, Chairman, National Water Conservation Foundation, and former minister, Government of Nepal, delivered the Vladimir Lenin Memorial Lecture on ‘Is Communist-Ruled Nepal Red, Pink or Blue?’.
While Jean Joseph Boillot, Senior Economic Advisor, CEPII, France, delivered the P C Joshi Memorial Lecture on ‘Marx and Economics of Wisdom’, Chun Lin, Professor, London School of Economics, delivered the Kozo Uno Memorial Lecture on ‘Marx and Asia: How did Asia Reshape Marx’s Conception of Revolution and History?’.
Samuel Hollander, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada, delivered his valedictory address on ‘Karl Marx’s Revolutionary Credentials and the Marx-John Stuart Mill Intellectual Relationship’.
Lord Meghnad Desai summarised the conference. Neeraj Kumar of ADRI gave the vote of thanks.
Concept note
Marxism is not as alive today as it was during the two preceding centuries. But even now ideas of Karl Marx continue to engage intellect, imagination and conscience of human minds across the world from perspectives that are understandably very diverse. Thus, as we approach 2018, the bicentenary of the great scholar, it is certainly an apt moment not just to remember him, but to rethink and interrogate all that is sourced to him, both academically and in terms of political practice. Sharing this perspective, the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), Patna would organize an International Conference entitled on 'Karl Marx-Life, Ideas and Influence: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary' during June 16-20, 2018 in Patna (Bihar), India.
The theme of the conference is indeed broad and its deliberations could encompass many strands - his life struggles; he and his lifelong collaborator Engels; enormous span of his writings covering economics, history, sociology, political theory, literature and other social issues; his political activities starting from, say, First International; or the continuation of his academic and political legacy by scholars and political leaders, opening new frontiers of Marxism. With a futuristic perspective, it would also be interesting to speculate what would have been the international political scenario now had the USSR not imploded in 1991. From this wide canvas, it is expected that the participants in the Conference would choose their own themes, matching their interest and expertise and weave their own pattern, keeping Marx at the centre.
The objective of the Conference, however, would be best attained if the participants appreciate that a critical examination of Marx should be divided first into two broad spheres - ideas and praxis, each having a wide span. In the realm of ideas, it is well known that much more is known of Marx's work today than was the case while he lived. He published only a fraction of his work in his lifetime and left it to Engels and some other scholars to clean up the manuscripts, decipher them and then finally publish them. Apart from the Communist Manifesto, written jointly with Engels (1848), he had published only two books during his life time - A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) and Capital, Volume 1 (1967). Thanks to the patient efforts of concerned friends and scholars, there are now 49 volumes of collected work and many more texts are yet to be published. Secondly, the sphere of Marxian ideas now also contain the contributions of those who, utilizing the Marxian framework of social analysis, have investigated some economic and political phenomena that was absent from Marx's own writings. Some of these important scholars are Lenin, Trotsky and Mao. Finally, one may note that Marxian ideas touch nearly every discipline of social science and in an inter-disciplinary framework. But four disciplines that jointly dominate the Marxian ideas are probably - Sociology, Feminism, Philosophy and Arts/Literature. This leads to 6 sub-themes of the Conference under the broad sphere of Marxian ideas - (i) Laws of Social and Economic Dynamics; Mode of Production and Historical/Dialectical Materialism, (ii) Marx and Variants of Marxism, (iii) Marxism and Sociology : Theory of Class and Social Formation, (iv) Marxian and Feminism, (v) Marxism and Philosophical Issues, and (vi) Marxism and Arts & Literature.
In the sphere of praxis, the canvas is as wide as the world itself. It is difficult to think of a country whose economic and political trajectory in the last century or so have escaped the influence of Marxian ideas, though the extent of such influence is indeed varied. The countries that draw immediate attention in the context of Marxian influence are those where communists have held power, starting from the USSR. At one point of time, these communist countries had covered nearly one-third of the world. Since 1991 with the imploding of USSR, the scenario has changed, but the political experience of those communist countries provides us with enough materials to critically examine the Marxian thoughts. One should also remember here the experience of those countries where Marxism had implied the worst forms of dictatorship. The influence of Marxism, however, has not been limited to the communist countries alone. The idea of 'social democracy' which many countries of the world are now trying to establish as the most desired form of governance can be easily traced to the Marxian critique of a capitalist order, at least the way it functioned in the nineteenth century Europe. This indeed is an indirect appreciation of the ideas of Marx not just in words but in practice. The world under is not as unfair today as it would have been in the absence of Marx. An examination of the Marxian praxis should cover all these aspects. Although one can identify certain global commonalities the way Marxism has influenced economic and political treads in different countries, it will probably be analytically advantageous to analyse these influences, using a geographical grouping. These groups could be - (i) Marxism in the Indian Context, (ii) Marxism in Asia, (iii) Russian and European Experience, (iv) Latin American Scenario and (v) Broad Global Trends.
Topics include, but are not limited to:
Ideas
- Laws of Social and Economic Dynamics: Mode of Production; Historical/Dialectical Materialism
- Marx and Variants of Marxism
- Marxism and Sociology: Theory of Class and Social Formation
- Marxism and Feminism
- Marxism and Philosophical Issues
- Marxism and Arts & Literature
Praxis
- Marxism in the Indian context
- Russian Experience
- Marxism across Asia
- Latin American Scenario
- Broad Global Trends