Lou:
I am still confused by:
> The real culprit in all this teleological
> totalitarianism was not Marx, nor Hegel. Nor the Enlightenment thinkers
> before Hegel. Nor Descartes who got the whole totalitarian rational-thought
> campaign going. You have to go back to Plato who put Reason on a pedestal
> and started the mechanisms that led to the Gulag Archipelago.
(1) Are you opposing all teleological theories? I may be missing
nuance, but you seem later on to endorse the notion that an imperialism
that imposes capitalist relations does help to move a society toward
socialism. Could you spell this out a bit more?
(2) Isn't it just a bit forced to blame this all on Plato? Does
teleology really follow from rationalism? Why?
On interpretations of Indian history in general, the main point to add
is that "India" should not be assumed to have been static before British
colonialism. In other words in addition to putting the "Asiatic Mode"
in the trashcan, we should also be skeptical of other stagnationist
theses. It can be argued that the Brits delayed industrial capitalism
through suppression of industry and indigenous finance, and that in
many regions they actually stabilized and reinforced a crumbling
feudalism.
Best, Colin
PS Ajit seems right in challenging Michael's exculpation of Marx on
India. If you think about it you can get anybody off the hook for
anything they write by this kind of maneuver. Marx was not a careless
writer and did think about the political impact of what he published
so it's surely appropriate to hold him accountable.
