Capital and Labour Redefined: India and the Third World

Front Cover
Anthem Press, 2002 - Biography & Autobiography - 336 pages
This book provides a historical background to the formation of the Indian capitalist class from before British colonial rule in India. It analyses the nature of that class, the ways in which it changed under colonial rule, and the state of independent India; it also sets some of the peculiarities of capitalist organization in India and the ideology of big capital in their historical context. The evolution of the working class in India is analysed in its dialectical interaction with global capital and Indian capitalism. The author challenges the view that the tensions within working class movements caused by caste, communal divisions or gender discrimination are to be attributed to primordial loyalties, emphasizing instead the influence of the deliberate strategies adopted by capitalists and of changes in the structure of global and Indian capitalism. Finally, the book investigates the impact of capital-friendly liberalization on the fortunes of the working class in the Third World.
 

Contents

Acknowledgement
7
History and Nature of the Indian Bourgeoisie
33
Merchants and Colonialism 17
49
Reflections on the Nature of the Indian Bourgeoisie 71
103
Colonialism and the Nature of Capitalist
123
Labour in the Toils of Colonial and Global Capital
169
18601921 156
188
WorkingClass Consciousness 176
208
Dualism and Dialectics in the Historiography
233
Neoliberal Economic Reforms and Workers
273
Multiculturalism Communalism and the Bourgeoisie
293
Multiculturalism Governance and
324
Index 321
353
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About the author (2002)

Amiya Kumar Bagchi is the RBI Professor of Economics at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta.