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Tom Bottomore, Political Sociology. 1979. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Second impression. 136 pp.
Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, A Derivative Discourse. 1986. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Second impression. 181 pp.
These two books intersect in the Third World. By the time they get there, they have both travelled far from their Marxist roots in Europe. They are in the labour pains of giving birth to theory that can live in the post - colonial world. For Chatterjee, this is task enough, for his purpose is to demonstrate the ideological dilemmas of those states. Bottomore, however, pursues an even larger agenda: the reconstruction of Marxism, and in some cases its abandonment, to fit the new, post - industrial and post - Soviet world.
Chatterjee argues that the post - colonial states shed colonialism only to adopt its values, the rationality of state - led capitalism. In so doing, they have cut the throat of their own identity, with culturally impoverishing results. The Third World elite Marxist - nationalist, he argues, in order to fend off the Western perception of Oriental "otherness," succumbed to the "Cunning of Reason," that is, to finding a place in the global order of capital (168). He illustrates these principles with a study of the thought of three Indian nationalists: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru.
In the early stages of the awakening of nationalist consciousness in the Third World, nationalist intellectuals like Bankim attempted to graft Western technology onto the Eastern spirit. This job required the intellectual efforts of a sophisticated elite, the very act of which distanced that elite from the popular, superstitious mind. Chatterjee calls this the moment of departure (51). This elite found its social basis in the frail, emerging Indian bourgeoisie. The major obstacle to this class's economic growth as well as its nationalist aspirations was the British colonial state.
Throwing out the colonizer, Chatterjee calls the moment of manoeuvre. To accomplish this, the elite had to stage a "passive revolution." This is Gramsci's term, derived from his study of the Italian Risorgiomento, when to survive a weak bourgeoisie had to make an alliance with the old order. This distorted Italy's progress toward democracy. Chatterjee finds an analogy...