By Dilip Simeon NB: This is an extended reminiscence of a conversation about Ranajit Guha and the Naxalite movement. The conversation was arranged at the request of the Bangla journal Anustup; and took place between me and a History honours student at the University of Delhi. (I am obliged to Anustup for having prompted this… Read More A Political Man: Memories of Ranajit Guha
Yanis Varoufakis On 7th February 2023, I returned to the Chamber to discuss a wide variety of issues, beginning with a Europe-at-war, post-Brexit Britain, the New Cold War that marks capitalism’s global transition to (what I call Technofeudalism), the state of the Left in Eastern Europe and more. Thanks Cambridge Union! https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2023/03/24/britain-europe-the-new-cold-war-finance-technofeudalism-at-the-cambridge-union/
We’re now in servitude to the fiefdoms of our new global masters, Lord Zuckerberg of Facelandia and Sir Musk of the rotten borough of X… Technofeudalism feels like an important new book. It’s a big-picture hypothesis rooted in a historical account of how capitalism came into being that describes what is happening in terms of an… Read More ‘Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’: Yanis Varoufakis on extremism, Starmer, and the tyranny of big tech
It may well be that the future of the world, and thus the sense of the present and the significance of the past, will depend in the last analysis on contemporary interpretations of Hegel’s work – from Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (1947) by Alexandre Kojève Alexandre Kojève was an immense influence on many… Read More The scar of identity
NB: What enables someone who has been a communist all his life become an ultra-chauvinist overnight? What lies beneath the slippery nature of ideology, and what is the difference between political philosophy and ideology? Why do Leninist parties in power enforce single-party dictatorships? What is the communist understanding of law and justice – is it… Read More Multipolarity, the Mantra of Authoritarianism
I value George Orwell’s writing for his devotion to truthfulness and his recognition of all the ways that truths get corrupted. This is why, even if his private mores are of his time, his public writing still gives us tools to think about ours. By Rebecca Solnit The feminist writer Moira Donegan recently mocked contemporary social… Read More George Orwell in an age of moralists
By C. M. Naim First posted January 15, 2012 Hasrat Mohani was not just a maverick when it came to publicly championing the radical thinking of Tilak. He also wrote verses expressing deep love for Krishna, and often went to Mathura to celebrate Janmashtami. He was a true maverick. In 1908 he published an anonymous… Read More The Maulana Who Loved Krishna
DENNIS DALTON When Michael Borodin baptized Roy into Marxism in 1919, Roy came from Indian nationalism to the new faith with the zeal commonly found amongst fresh converts. ‘Marxism is a wonderful philosophy, is it not?’ he exclaimed to a fellow comrade in 1923. ‘It has made of history such an exact science. Roy’s first… Read More MN Roy was to Marxism what Vivekananda was to Hinduism. He separated spirit and form
After the truth-shower 