Centre for the Study of Regional Development
School of Social Sciences, JNU
invites you all to a lecture on
Theory of capitalism as a class relation, and its implications for understanding geographically uneven development
by
Raju J Das
Department of Geography
York University, Toronto
Venue: Cartographic Lab, SSS III (1st Floor)
Date: 12 January 2017 Time: 3.00PM
Abstract : In this lecture, I begin with a critical discussion of the ways in which certain writers in Western and Indian Marxisms conceptualize capitalism. I then deploy dialectical philosophy, and especially form-content analysis, to present an alternative framework for understanding capitalism, a framework that accentuates the relation between capital and labour at the point of production. In doing so, I build on Marx's often-neglected, and often-misunderstood, discussion in Capital volume 1 on hybrid, formal and real subsumptions of labor as forms of the capitalist class relation. Capitalism as a class relation exists even if there is only formal subsumption, and even if instruments of production have not been systematically revolutionized. The transition from formal to real subsumption with associated technological change is not automatic. It is a protracted process, that is mediated by class struggle which occurs in the context of a whole host of geographically-specific factors, including capitalist state interventions. Under the pressure to cut costs, property-owners can respond to class struggle against formal subsumption in multiple ways. Real subsumption is only one. Property owners can also respond by reinforcing formal subsumption, deploying a gender and a spatial fix, and/or introducing hybrid subsumption (which includes mercantile-usury based exploitation). The nature of capitalism is further complicated by imperialism, so I discuss imperialism in terms of its internal relation to the multiple forms of subsumption, both in the context of advanced capitalism and peripheral capitalism. There are several theoretical implications of the subsumption perspective of capitalism as a class relation for understanding geographically uneven development, which I discuss. More specifically, geographically uneven development is caused not only by the contradictorily coexisting tendencies of spatial mobility and spatial fixity of capital as Harvey has stressed, but also by the geographically uneven transition to real subsumption of labour, and geographically uneven co-existence of formal subsumption and islands of real subsumption. The subsumption perspective also has interesting political implications in relation to capitalism and imperialism.
About the Speaker : Raju J Das received an MA degree from Delhi University, and a PhD from the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Following his PhD, he taught in the United Kingdom before joining York University, Toronto, in 2004, where he teaches political economy, and international development. His research interests are in class theory, state theory, capitalist development and its unevenness, social capital, and social movement. He has written articles in academic journals, including Science & Society, Capital and Class, and Review of Radical Political Economics, and is the author of two books, A contribution to the critique of contemporary capitalism, and Marxist class theory for a skeptical world. He serves on the editorial board of Science & Society (Guildford press, New York), and also on its manuscript collective.Hoping to see all of you there.
