Peter McLaren and Nathalia Jaramillo, Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism, Sense Publications, The Netherlands, 2007; 200pp.

Over the past decade, the field of critical pedagogy has gradually (re)embraced class-based analyses of what larger political, economic, and social forces perpetuate unjust policies, practices and institutions, which are responsible for the conditions that create oppression, hate, hostility, violence, and domination in schools and other social contexts across the globe. Much of the resuscitation of a Marxist humanist perspective in the world of critical pedagogy is in response to how transnational capitalists and Western politicians employ "an any means necessary approach" to commodify all aspects of life across the planet as well as to suffocate any forms of resistance or dissent launched against the social relations of capital that has led to the ruling elite's unprecedented wealth and power and to the utter "devastation for the ranks of the poor" (Pozo, 2003)   It is also linked to the fact that much of the postmodern scholarship produced by critical pedagogues during the 1980s and 1990s focused on identity narratives, which brought newfound awareness to the discursive systems of power that trivialize or demonize the Other, gave resonance to the voices of peoples oppressed on the axes of race, class, gender and sexuality, and lent space for individuals to cross ethnic, race, class, gender, and sexual "borders" to create empowering forms of selfhood, but arguably this movement failed to account for how the larger power structures used "representations" "to exploit the objective world (as opposed to the lexical universe) of the working-classes" (Ibid).

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Saswat Pattanayak

The high moral ground for American democracy rests on the presumptions of healthy, competitive and fair elections. And holding these traits to be self-evident, the elections are held with utmost pomp and show. The grandeurs associated with US polls are unparalleled and are generally considered as reaffirming symbols of multiparty viabilities in the world.

Countries that do not boast of a multi-party system are considered to be autocratic, and consequently despotic. Whether or not it is important to analyze the rationale behind such a forgone conclusion where fairness is associated with competitive party system is a separate matter. Considering the timeliness of the upcoming polls, it will be prudent to conduct a reality check on the core features that sustain electoral system of American democracy itself.

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And to say now that you are no longer here is to say only that you have entered a different order of things, in that the one we move in here, we latecomers, as insane as it is, seems to our way of thinking the only one in which "god" can spread out all of his possibilities, become known and recognized within the framework of an assumption whose significance we do not understand. -  From Eugenio Montale's 'Visit to Fadin'

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Anil Sadgopal[1]

The debate on Right to Education was initiated by Mahatma Jotirao Phule almost 125 years ago when a substantial part of the memorandum presented by him to the Indian Education Commission (i.e. the Hunter Commission) in 1882 dwelt upon how the British government’s funding of education tended to benefit “Brahmins and the higher classes” while leaving “the masses wallowing in ignorance and poverty.” Mahatma Phule drew attention to the irony that this happens when most of the revenue collected by the British government is generated from the output of the labour of the masses themselves. Things have not fundamentally changed since then. In 1911, when Gopal Krishna Gokhale moved his Free and Compulsory Education Bill in the Imperial Legislative Assembly, he faced stiff resistance. Instead of supporting the Bill, the members representing the privileged classes from Mumbai, Maharajas and other rulers from princely states and the big landlords from feudal areas talked of the conditions in the country not being ripe for such a Bill and that haste should be avoided. The Maharaja of Darbhanga from Bihar collected 11,000 signatures on a Memorandum from princes and landlords expressing concern about what would happen to their farm operations if all children were required to attend the school! The Bill obviously could not be approved. At the National Education Conference held at Wardha (Maharashtra) in 1937, Mahatma Gandhi had to use all the moral powers at his command to persuade the Ministers of Education of the newly elected Congress governments of seven provinces to give priority to Basic Education (Nai Talim) of seven years and allocate adequate funds for this purpose. The Ministers kept on pointing out that there was no money.

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James Petras

Venezuela’s democratically elected Present Chavez faces the most serious threat since the April 11, 2002 military coup. Violent street demonstrations by privileged middle and upper middle class university students have led to major street battles in and around the center of Caracas.  More seriously, the former Minister of Defense, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who resigned in July, has made explicit calls for a military coup in a November 5th press conference which he convoked exclusively for the right and far-right mass media and political parties, while striking a posture as an ‘individual’ dissident. 

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Manish Kumar Shrivastava 

Utsa Patnaik, The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays , Three Essays Collective, New Delhi, 2007. ISBN: 81-88789-33-XX, pp. 232, Price (PB): Rs. 250.

"It is necessary for development…..some people have to pay the price for the time being……Once we are developed and become superpower everybody would be benefitted.”

There can be different reactions to this statement. For somebody following the development discourse from a people’s perspective, this kind of argument doesn’t come as a surprise. Rather, a routine reaction follows—oh, here comes another neo-liberal. But one has to take it with pinch of salt if it comes from a 12 year old boy in a small town of Madhya Pradesh. This boy was arguing in favor of large dams, Sardar Sarovar in particular. The argument then went further, supporting all sorts of displacements of people due to so-called ‘development’ projects. His argument was supplemented by more than a dozen other boys and girls of his age who were visibly excited by the idea of becoming a ‘superpower’ one day. They were convinced that only dams and shopping malls mean development and unless Indian has them it cannot become a superpower. There were also a handful boys and girls, little younger, who didn’t seem convinced with this idea of development and tried to articulate their concerns and doubts, but they certainly lacked the language and information. They could not understand how the electricity produced at the dams would improve the lives of those who have been displaced. Those who don’t have houses anymore wouldn’t need that electricity in the first place. They lost the battle of words despite applying their minds to an extent their parents don’t expect them to (or may even don’t want them to). Those who were dumb otherwise parroted what is available in plenty in electronic and print media, won the battle.

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 Paramita Ghosh

Lal Khan's Crisis in the Indian Subcontinent - Partition... Can it be undone? is provocative not only because it questions the official narrations of the modern history of the Indian subcontinent by analyzing new facts with theoretical tools embedded in Marxism, but mainly because of its activistic programmatic sharpness that backs the revolutionary transformatory politics in the region. It asserts that only a voluntary socialist federation of the subcontinental societies can guarantee peace and prosperity in the region. The following interview with Lal Khan (LK) by Paramita Ghosh (PG) brings out some of the important issues dealt in the book, along with Khan's perspective on the political situation and transformation in the subcontinent . It was originally published in an abridged form in The Hindustan Times on October 21, 2007.

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 Pratyush Chandra  

Jan Breman, Labour Bondage in West India: From Past to Present , Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007, ISBN:9-780195-685213, pp. xii+216, Price (HB) Rs. 525.

The combined socio-economic development in India has been an enigma for the political economists. It defies any strict characterization in terms of a single mode of production. Any alternative analysis needs to provide a coherent semantics of the capitalist adoption and oft-times perpetuation of the 'outmoded' modes of exploitation. Jan Breman's contribution in unfolding the political economy behind the dynamic persistence of labour bondage and other 'non-capitalist' forms of subordination of rural labour has been widely recognized. His conceptualization of 'footloose labour' substantiated by his empirical studies of the phenomenon of rural-to-rural migration and non-agricultural occupations in rural Gujarat provides a formidable picture of how (post)modernity perpetuates informal sector and "neo-bondage" in the age of neoliberalism. 

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 Washington applauds Repression 

E. San Juan, Jr.

With an interview of Dr. Carol P. Araullo, Chairperson of BAYAN, by Dr. Rainer Werning

Except for what may appear to be relatively minor investment of Dutch capital in the Philippines and the presence of 18,456 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in the Netherlands, nothing really connects Filipinos with the land of fabled windmills. But the events of last week may presage a change. The much-touted bonanza of consumerist globalization may have produced its most hackneyed if repulsive scenario yet, this time in the land of state-approved prostitution, where a handful of Filipino political exiles have taken refuge from the brutal regimes back home. The personnel and offices of the National Democratic Front Philippines (NDFP), legally allowed in Utrecht since the late 1970s, were raided on August 27.

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 Michael A. Lebowitz

'Save me from these so-called Marxists who think they have the key to history in their back pocket! Save me from disciples like those who followed Hegel and Ricardo!' Few people understood better than Marx how a theory disintegrates when the point of departure for theoretical work is 'no longer reality, but the new theoretical form in which the master had sublimated it.'

Happily for him, Marx was spared the spectacle of disciples scandalized by the 'often paradoxical relationship of this theory to reality' and accordingly driven to demonstrate that his theory is still correct by 'crass empiricism', 'phrases in a scholastic way', and 'cunning argument'. Lucky Marx who (if Engels is to be believed) was before all else a revolutionary whose 'real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society' - he missed the affirmation by 20th Century scholastics that what the working class really needs for its emancipation is proof that he was right all along about the transformation of values into prices and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall!

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