DOCSLIB.ORG

British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion Sheshalatha Reddy British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion Sheshalatha Reddy British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion Sheshalatha Reddy British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects Sheshalatha Reddy Department of English Howard University Washington, DC, USA ISBN 978-3-319-57662-6 ISBN 978-3-319-57663-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57663-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940349 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover Design by Jenny Vong Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS No work is produced in isolation and many people deserve thanks for their support throughout the process: Ji-Hyae Park who took time from a very busy schedule to read extensive drafts and offered brilliant suggestions that helped me clarify the argument of the book; Curdella Forbes, without whose invaluable expertise on the Caribbean in gen- eral and the Morant Bay Rebellion in particular I would be well and truly lost; Parama Sarkar for her thoughtful questions on South Asian literature and the Sepoy Rebellion; Christopher Shinn and Elisa Oh for their considered and thought-provoking comments on the Abstract and Introduction; and Alice Weinreb for her continual advice and sugges- tions during the entirety of the process. The critiques of the anonymous reviewers here and elsewhere provided crucial guidance for revision. I would like to thank my colleagues at Howard University more gener- ally, especially our always supportive chair, Dana Williams, and the always encouraging Thorell Tsomondo. Thanks are also due to the Summer Faculty funding opportunities pro- vided by Howard University, which allowed me to spend uninterrupted time researching and writing this book. The University of Pennsylvania Mellon Humanities Forum seminar “Color,” under the guidance of Chi- ming Yang and Jim English at the University of Pennsylvania, provided me a forum for discussion for the literature of the Fenian Rebellion and afforded me the opportunity to rethink and revise my work on it. I am grateful to the panelists and audience at a number of conferences I attended as well to all the graduate students I have had the pleasure of teaching these v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS last few years; their comments helped me think through various aspects of the texts under study and brought much-needed fresh perspectives. I am also more grateful than I can say for a loving family whose sup- port has always been evident in ways both large and small. I would like to thank the extended Reddy clan on the West Coast and all along the upper East Coast, as well as the Matthews in California and the Mathais in Arizona. I would not be where I am today without my parents, Vanamala and Srinivasa Reddy, whose unconditional love and understanding, food and comfort sustained me throughout the many years that I have spent on this project. My sister Veena always allowed me to vent when I became frustrated and always reassured me that the book would someday come to fruition. This book is dedicated to my best interlocutor and my true partner, Sabu Mathai, whose “Pandora’s box” of questions forced me to question my own presuppositions and talk through ideas I found especially diffcult and challenging, and without whose help in reading, editing, formatting, designing, and listening, this work would never have taken on its fnal shape. This book is also dedicated to another labor of love, our daughter Kaavya, who was also born this year. CONTENTS List of Figures ix Introduction: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects xi Imperial Biopower and Biopolitics xiv The Revolting Body and the Laboring Subject xvii Reform, Resistance, Rebellion, Revolution, and Failure xxii Why Rebellion, Why Now? xxiv Organization of the Book xxvii 1 Rise of the Machines: The State, Its Subjects, and the Sepoy Rebellion 1 Historical Background 6 Technê/ology: Plotting, Emplotment, and Machinations 13 The State Is War 24 The Debt Trap 35 Rage Against the Machines 44 Coda 58 2 Inspiriting Flesh/Fleshing Out Spirit: Bodies, Bondage, and the Morant Bay Rebellion 73 Historical Background 78 Gothic Hauntings 85 vii viii CONTENTS Shadows and Spirits 101 Spirit of the Age: Creole Nationalism 114 Coda 128 3 Cellular Structures, Boundaries, and Networks: Tracing the Fenian Rebellion 145 Historical Background 150 Biological as/and Commodity Cells 157 Framing Prisons 173 Terrorist Mutations 186 Coda 199 Conclusion: Bodies in Labor, Bodies as Revolt 213 Feminism and Marxism 217 Producing the Disposable Re/Productive Woman 219 Embodying Resistance 232 Bibliography 239 Index 263 LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1.1 Felice Beato, Henry Hering [Interior of Secundrabagh After the Massacre], 1858–1862 32 Fig. 1.2 Felice Beato, [Retribution, Hanging Mutineers], 1858 34 Fig. 3.1 Thomas Larcom Collection, “Photograph #56” 174 Fig. 3.2 Thomas Larcom Collection, “Photograph #51 [John Byrne]” 175 Fig. 3.3 Thomas Larcom Collection, “Photograph #43” 175 Fig. 3.4 Thomas Larcom Collection, “Dennis Duggan; James Byrne; John Devoy; Thomas Chambers” 177 Fig. 3.5 Thomas Larcom Collection, “Jerh. O’Donovan Rossa; Bryan Dillon; Thomas Duggan; Chas. Underwood O’Connell” 178 ix INTRODUCTION: REVOLTING BODIES, LabORING SUBJECTS Published only a year after the end of the Indian Sepoy Rebellion of 1857–1858, The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expedition to Persia, China, and Japan, 1856–7–8 by George Dodd begins by recount- ing the supposed motivations and conspiracies of the “native sepoys” when Indian soldiers (sepoys) defed their British offcers and, along- side Indian peasants, princes, and escaped prisoners, rose up against the British Empire. Discussing “the spread of disaffection” across North India, Dodd pauses to show that the key sites of the holy city of Benares (present-day Varansi) and the Ganges River, which fows through that city, were relatively unaffected by the events of that year, despite their strategic military importance. In the midst of disparaging the Indian “mutineers” for underestimating that region’s signifcance as a cen- tral route of commerce and “military movement” during the rebellion, Dodd pauses to note that the landscape of the Ganges in Benares has been, in a parallel vein, foolishly overestimated by Indian artists, who “have delighted to portray the beauty and animation” of life on the ghats (steps) of this holy river.1 Yet in so doing, these artists “cannot, if they would, reveal the hideous accompaniments—the fakeers and ascetics of revolting appearance” that blight its landscape.2 Almost midway through his monograph, Dodd briefy summarizes his history thus far: he has shown his reader various “tribes of India revolting against British author- ity”; native princes uncertain of their role in the rebellion; formerly trusted native soldiers betraying their British superiors by rising against them in search of plunder; and English women and children hunted “like xi xii INTRODUCTION: Revolting BODIES, LABORING SUBJECTS wild beasts” through roads and forests by those very native soldiers.3 Such perfdy on the part of the Indian sepoys is summarily dealt with after some 200 pages, which meanwhile detail the various outbreaks, bat- tles, and military expeditions of the year-long campaign. Dodd is then fnally able to recount the murderous “justice” meted out to the rebels by the British military after the fnal suppression of this “mutiny.” His narrative ends with the British Parliamentary hearings in the metropole that would determine the transfer of this colony from the possession of the East India Company to the British Crown. While Dodd’s second-hand account, full of righteous indigna- tion against the temerity of the colonized in resisting imperial rule, is not unique in its depiction of the Sepoy Rebellion or the actors involved, it highlights a key term for British Empire and the Literature of Rebellion: Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects (hereafter referred to as Revolting Bodies, Laboring Subjects). Dodd’s use of the word “revolting” describes not only the Indians themselves (their appearance, their beliefs, their habits, their idleness), but also the colonized Indians’ active rebellion against British authority. British imperial ideologies had long constructed colonial populations as repellent (revolting) for reasons of race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, abilities, and appearance, thereby justifying rule over them. Colonized populations at key moments actively and collec- tively resisted (revolted against) imperial control of their labor and their land. In other words, “revolting” functions in these imperial discourses, as well as in this book, as both adjective (an imperial descriptor of the colo- nized) and verb (an action against imperial authority by the colonized).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Global Social Fascism: Violence, Law and Twenty-First Century Plunder
    Global Social Fascism Violence, Law and Twenty-First Century Plunder Lara Montesinos Coleman Working Paper No. 15 May 2018 CENTRE FOR GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9SN United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0) 1273 872735 Fax: +44 (0) 1273 723 673563 E-Mail: [email protected] Website: www.sussex.ac.uk/cgpe CGPE WORKING PAPER SERIES The Series aims to publish innovative research that attempts to shed light on and advance our understanding of the forces that influence the production, reproduction and change of our social universe, and thus our multiple ways of being and becoming in the international. To meet this aim the Series will try to foster the inter- and multidisciplinary study of International Political Economy by bringing together scholars, ideas, issues, methods, methodologies, problematiques from different social science disciplines. INFORMATION FOR SUBMISSION Papers should be submitted to the series editor Julian Germann <[email protected]>. All papers will be refereed by CGPE staff or external referees. Changes may be required before publication. The copyright remains with the author(s). Submission specifications: 1. Papers should not exceed 12,000 words. Shorter policy oriented papers of up to 5,000 are also welcomed. 2. A cover page should be included with the title, abstract and author name(s), as well as postal address, telephone and e-mail information. 3. A biographical note of the author(s) should be attached as a separate file. 4. Both the Chicago and Harvard referencing styles are acceptable. Global Social Fascism Violence, Law and Twenty-First Century Plunder Lara Montesinos Coleman is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Sussex and Co-Director of the Law, Ethics and Democracy Project.
    [Show full text]
  • Meaningful Transitions: How Education Shapes Young Working Class Individuals’ Perceptions of Work in Austerity Scotland
    Duffy, Seán (2019) Meaningful transitions: how education shapes young working class individuals’ perceptions of work in austerity Scotland. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/81524/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Meaningful Transitions: How education shapes young working class individuals’ perceptions of work in austerity Scotland a dissertation presented by Seán Duffy to the School of Education, College of Social Sciences, University of Glasgow in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Education January, 2019 Funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) 1 “A crisis arises when capitalists face a fall in their realised profit which can arise for all manner of reasons, but the precipitating cause of any particular crisis is inconsequential. Although all three aspects of disproportionality, underconsumptionist and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall play a role in determining the vulnerability of capitalism to crisis, the underlying cause of all crises remains the fundamental contradiction on which the capitalist mode of production is based, the contradiction between the production of things and the production of value, and the subordination of the former to the latter.” Simon Clarke (1994), Marx’s Theory of Crisis “Who needs me?” is a question of character which suffers a radical challenge in modern capitalism.
    [Show full text]
  • Seim Sociology 658 Syllabus Fall 2020
    Sociology 658: Sociology of Health and Medicine Units: 4.0 Fall 2020 | Monday | 2:00pm to 4:50pm Location: Zoom Syllabus last updated: July 22nd, 2020 Professor Josh Seim Office: Hazel and Stanley Hall Building (HSH) 218 Office Hours: by appointment Contact: [email protected] or 213-764-7930 Course Description This is a graduate-level course in the sociology of health and medicine, an incredibly broad and fragmented field that frequently overlaps with medical anthropology, public health, and other disciplines. The first half of this course focuses on the social roots of sickness. The second half concerns the social relations of medicine. While we’ll treat these as relatively autonomous topics, we’ll also spend time addressing the mismatches between the forces that make people sick and the organized reactions to sickness. We’ll also study a number of general structures and processes that simultaneously affect health and care. For example, we’ll study how capitalism, racism, and sexism make people sick. We’ll then study how these same systems shape, and are shaped by, medicine. While we are obviously unable to cover every important topic in the sociology of health and medicine, this course aims to introduce you to some core themes in the subfield. It is also my hope that this course helps advance graduate student development as it pertains to the assigned material (e.g., qualifying exam prep, research proposal drafting, and article writing). Learning Objectives 1. Understand the social roots of sickness and its relevant sociological scholarship 2. Understand the social relations of medicine and its relevant sociological scholarship 3.
    [Show full text]
  • Fuck the Plague-Pit Or, Abolition for Communists
    Fuck the Plague-Pit or, Abolition for Communists Fuck the Plague-Pit or, Abolition for Communists Mark Steven March 2021 say no justice no peace and then say fuck the police — Sean Bonney If 2020 were a poem it would be Sean Bonney’s (2015) ‘Letter Against the Firmament’ and especially the bit where he says ‘every cop, living or dead, is a walking plague-pit’ (115). Published around five years earlier, this poem finds its antagonistic social substance in the riots that erupted after the police murder of an unarmed Black man named Mark Duggan in Tottenham, London, on 4 August 2011. While the familiar call-response of murder to riot has repeated many times and in many places since 2011, perhaps its most explosive rendition yet took place after the killing of George Floyd in the United States, on 25 May 2020. Within weeks, hundreds of thousands of comrades and their fellow travellers had taken to the streets in a potent expression of collective rage and systemic unmaking: fighting under clouds of tear gas, reclaiming cities on foot and horseback, smashing and looting, putting fire to precincts, establishing autonomous zones. Through the summer, a popular movement modulated in force from protest to insurrection. Uniquely, all of this took place during an ongoing global pandemic, at a time when governments – serving capital, served by the police – actively coerced working and buying in adequate proportion to ensure profitability and accumulation, no matter how many get sick and die because of it. As even the bourgeois press made abundantly clear, COVID-19 has exposed market ideology as a death cult, with capital demanding human sacrifice, and the police have performed their apostolic duty in this unholy ritual.
    [Show full text]
  • Organizing in the Working-Class: Contradictions, Learning & The
    The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Education ORGANIZING IN THE WORKING-CLASS: CONTRADICTIONS, LEARNING & THE MAKING OF LEFT ORGANIZERS A Dissertation in Lifelong Learning & Adult Education by Keon Mercedes-Liberato © 2017 Keon Mercedes-Liberato Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctoral of Philosophy December 2017 ii The dissertation of Keon Mercedes-Liberato was reviewed and approved* by the following: Fred M. Schied Associate Professor of Education Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Mark S. Anner Associate Professor of Labor and Employment Relations Center Director, Center for Global Workers’ Rights Leland L. Glenna Associate Professor of Rural Sociology and Science, Technology, and Society Community, Environment, and Development Program Coordinator Adnan Qayyum Associate Professor of Adult Education Susan M. Land Associate Professor of Education (Learning, Design, and Technology) Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Learning & Performance Systems *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT This study synthesizes Marxist theory of movements and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to explore social movement learning within movement organizing activity. The study poses and answers the following questions: how do Leftists learn through social movement organizing activity? What activities constitute movement organizing? What are the contradictions and learning that occur within these activities? In this critical ethnography, data was collected over a four-year period using participant observation, informal interview, and semi-formal interviews with twenty-seven Left organizers involved in working-class organizing projects. Audio-visual, and written documents also served as important sources of data. The use of field notes, and theoretical memos were instrumental in aiding in reflection and analysis of the data (Charmaz, 2014).
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Big Society, Philanthropy and Domination: on the 'Lumpen' Need
    Big Society, Philanthropy and Domination: On the ‘lumpen’ need for Universal Basic Income Matthew Thomas Johnson1 Abstract: The UK Coalition Government’s Big Society policy sought to fill the void left by the rolling back of the state. Drawing heavily on Mauss’ account of the gift, I examine ways in which this actively reduced the agency of those supposed to benefit most by subtracting authority from recipients of philanthropy. I do this by analysing engagement with an Australian philanthropist during a participatory project involving community members from Ashington, Northumberland, and Aboriginal groups around Brisbane, Australia. I argue that the apparent aims of Big Society can only be realised through introduction of statutory entitlements, such as Universal Basic Income. Keywords: Big Society; philanthropy; gift giving; lumpenproletariat; domination; Universal Basic Income The dissolution of traditional impediments to action, such as shared understandings regarding gender relations and work, is widely regarded as widening the range of life choices for citizens of modern, liberal societies. At least until the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, modern technology, consumerism and social liberalism fostered, in many, a post-modern mindset in which possibility was limited only by the imagination of the individual. In the UK, the Conservative-led Coalition Government of 2010-2015 provided the fullest articulation of this perspective in diagnosing the cause of the Crisis and prescribing neoliberal courses of treatment. The Labour Governments from 1997-2010 had, they argued, coupled poor deregulation of the economy with ‘big government’ largesse, funding an ever-expanding welfare system that promoted individual passivity and societal inefficiency. The remedy was small government and efficiency-promoting deregulation coupled with a renewal of civil society through the Coalition’s flagship social policy: Big Society.
    [Show full text]
  • Friedrich Engels and Digital Capitalism. How Relevant Are Engels's Works 200 Years After His Birth?
    tripleC 19 (1): 15-51, 2021 http://www.triple-c.at Engels@200: Friedrich Engels and Digital Capitalism. How Relevant Are Engels’s Works 200 Years After His Birth? Christian Fuchs University of Westminster, [email protected], http://fuchs.uti.at, @fuchschristian Abstract: This paper takes Friedrich Engels 200th birthday on 28 November 2020 as occasion to ask: How relevant are Friedrich Engels’s works in the age of digital capitalism? It shows that Engels class-struggle oriented theory can and should inform 21st century social science and digital social research. Based on a reading of Engels’s works, the article discusses how to think of scientific socialism as critical social science today, presents a critique of computational social science as digital positivism, engages with foundations of digital labour analysis, the analysis of the international division of digital labour, updates Engels’s Condition of the Work- ing Class in England in the age of digital capitalism, analyses the role of trade unions and digital class struggles in digital age, analyses the social murder of workers in the COVID-19 crisis, engages with platform co-operatives, digital commons projects and public service Inter- net platforms are concrete digital utopias that point beyond digital capital(ism). Engels’s anal- ysis is updated for critically analysing the digital conditions of the working class today, including the digital labour of hardware assemblers at Foxconn and Pegatron, the digital labour aristoc- racy of software engineers at Google, online freelance workers, platform workers at capitalist platform corporations such as Uber, Deliveroo, Fiverr, Upwork, or Freelancer, and the digital labour of Facebook users.
    [Show full text]
  • Death by Capitalism: Quantifying ‘Social Murder’ Using Cross-Country Data on COVID-19 Fatalities*
    Death by Capitalism: Quantifying ‘Social Murder’ Using Cross-Country Data on COVID-19 Fatalities* Mukesh Eswaran* & Thorsten Rogall** *[email protected] **[email protected] University of British Columbia June 22, 2021 Abstract We empirically evaluate whether capitalism is implicated in the deaths of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic using data from January 2020 through March 2021. We separate out the effects of the economic regime (extent of capitalism) from that of the political regime (extent of democracy) and control for a whole host of relevant factors. We find a significantly positive and robust correlation between the extent of capitalism and COVID-19 fatalities, which rises over the 14 months of the pan- demic. In terms of mechanisms, we show that capitalist governments are less likely to impose stringency measures that potentially hurt profits. Further analysis shows, however, that stringency measures alone are unlikely to explain the fatalities. Thus, we then isolate a number of factors that magnify the deleterious effect of capital- ism on pandemic deaths and some that attenuate them. Among the former, income inequality proves to be a factor that greatly enhances the effect of capitalism; also, globalization, the deregulation of labor markets, and military spending are enablers of capitalism. In contrast, strong kinship ties in society dampen the harmful effect of capitalism. In sum, to our knowledge this paper provides the first rigorous statistical evidence to substantiate the concept of social murder that Engels coined 175 years ago. JEL classification: F01, I14, I18, I31, P10 Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, capitalism, democracy, inequality, social murder *We thank Kevin Milligan for his input and acknowledge useful conversations with Nisha Eswaran.
    [Show full text]
  • The Social Lives of Superfoods
    The Social Lives of Superfoods Jessica Loyer Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Discipline of History School of Humanities University of Adelaide February 2016 2 Table of Contents Abstract 7 Thesis Declaration 8 Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 10 Thinking with Superfoods 10 Developing a Working Definition of Superfoods 12 Development of Superfoods Discourse 16 Functional Nutritionism 16 Primitivism and the Natural 19 Critical Consumption 21 History of Superfoods Discourse 23 Early Uses of the Term ‘Superfood’ 24 Superfood Books, 1987 – 2012 26 Map of Thesis 32 Chapter 1 – Theoretical and Methodological Foundations 34 The Biography-of-Things Approach 35 Studying Global Commodities-in-Motion 36 Multi-Locale Ethnography 41 Ethnohistory 42 Contextualizing Superfoods Within the Global Food System 43 Research Design and Methods 45 Research Design: Case Studies 45 Criteria for Selection of Cases 46 Methods 50 Chapter 2 – Cranberry as Food, Health Food, and Superfood: Foundations of Nutritionism 54 Botanical Background 55 Native American Cranberry Use Pre-Contact 55 Cranberry as Diplomatic Symbol 56 Culinary Uses 56 Medicinal Uses 57 The Place of the Cranberry in Wampanoag Culture 58 Cranberry During the Colonial and Early American Periods 60 Adoption and Adaptation: Integration of Cranberries into American Food and Medicine 61 Industrial Transformations 63 Cooperation 64 Industrial Processing 66 Marketing and the Foundations of Nutritionism 67 The Relationship Between Research, Product Development, and Health Marketing:
    [Show full text]
  • Social Murder, the Reserve Army of Labour and Social Security
    1 Violent proletarianisation: social murder, the reserve army of labour and social security ‘austerity’ in Britain Abstract This article examines social security policy for working age people in Britain in the ‘age of austerity’. Drawing upon critical approaches to understanding social policy and violence, the article argues that severe cuts to benefits and the ratcheting up of conditionality for, and the sanctioning of, benefit recipients can be understood as ‘violent proletarianisation’ – using socio-economic inequality and injustice to force the commodification of labour power, and a consequential creation of diswelfares that are known and avoidable. The article suggests that violent proletarianisation is a contradictory process, one that helps constitute the working class, but in a way that socially murders some of its reserve army members. Keywords: class; commodification; death; labour power; poverty; surplus population 2 Introduction Let’s start with the welfare system… It was fundamentally broken… benefits so generous, that people found they were better off on the dole than they were in work. …That’s why we’re building a benefit system that means you’re always better off in work.1 In this speech, the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, argued that the extant social security system (described as ‘welfare’) was morally indefensible because it trapped people in poverty, penalised wage-labour and was too costly when the economic imperative was budget deficit reduction. The veracity of Osborne’s claims is not important for this article, although they are problematic. What is important is his critique of the social security system as discouraging working age people from doing wage-labour and his proposed solution, cutting social security provision.
    [Show full text]
  • A Critical Enquiry Into Digital Labour and Its Alienation
    tripleC 19 (1): 52-67, 2021 http://www.triple-c.at Engels’s Theory of Social Murder and the Spectacle of Fascism: A Critical Enquiry into Digital Labour and its Alienation Aishik Saha Independent Researcher, Kolkata, India, [email protected] Abstract: In this paper, I shall attempt to respond to the charge that the digital labour theory, as developed by Christian Fuchs, doesn’t faithfully stick to the Marxist schema of the Labour Theory of Value by arguing that Marx’s critique of capitalism was based on the social and material cost of exploitation and the impact of capitalist exploitation of the working class. En- gels’s analysis of The Condition of The Working Class in England links the various forms of violence faced by the working class to the bourgeois rule that props their exploitation. I shall argue, within the framework of Critical Social Media Studies, that the rapid advance of fascist and authoritarian regimes represents a similar development of violence and dispossession, with digital capitalism being a major factor catalysing the rifts within societies. It shall be fur- ther argued that much like the exploitative nature of labour degrades social linkages and cre- ates conditions of that exaggerates social contradictions, the “labour” performed by social media users degenerates social relations and promotes a hyper-violent spectacle that aids and abets fascist and authoritarian regimes. Keywords: digital labour, society of the spectacle, fascism, filter bubbles, alienation Acknowledgement: Criticisms and suggestions provided by Dr. Utsa Ray, Assistant Profes- sor at Jadavpur University, Department of History, and Ayan Chandra, researcher at IIT- Kharagpur, have been extremely helpful with writing this paper.
    [Show full text]
  • The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto
    Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 12, Number 4—Fall 1998—Pages 151-174 The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto George R. Boyer he Manifesto of the Communist Party, published 150 years ago in London in February 1848, is one of the most influential and widely-read documents of the past two centuries. The historian A. J. P. Taylor (1967, p. 7) has Tcalled it a "holy book," and contends that because of it, "everyone thinks differ­ ently about politics and society." And yet, despite its enormous influence in the 20th century, the Manifesto is very much a period piece, a document of what was called the "hungry" 1840s. It is hard to imagine it being written in any other decade of the 19th century. The critique of capitalism offered by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto is understandable in the context of economic conditions in Britain from 1837 to 1848, and it is not that different, in places, from the conclusions reached by other social critics during the 1840s. This paper attempts to place the Manifestos analysis of capitalist economic development in historical perspective. I begin by summarizing the economic ar­ guments of Marx and Engels. While the Manifesto-was written by Marx, its economic analysis was strongly influenced by Engels's "practical experience of capitalism" in his family's cotton firm in Manchester, England, in 1842-44. Upon his return to Germany, Engels published in 1845 a scathing indictment of early industrial capi­ talism, The Condition of the Working Class in England. Much of Engels's critique of British capitalism reappears in greatly condensed form in Section I of the Manifesto.
    [Show full text]