For a long time it has been regarded by the labor movement and progressive intellectuals around the world as the most important guide to understanding the ills of capitalism, the origins of the working class and the materiality of the exploitation of the workers. As socialism collapsed over the last thirty years and neoliberal capitalism spread to various corners of the world, Capital became a superfluous treatise for many. What are the new questions that demand attention in the same analytical and political spirit in which Capital was written?
It is an account of the historical genesis of capitalism as a global system, which in the same book is placed alongside an analysis of commodities described as cellular forms of capitalism. Not only did it mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Marx's Capital, but it also addressed the questions and concerns raised above, bearing in mind the relevance of Capital in and for our time. This report provides an overview of the entire programme, including details of the pre-conference roundtable held by the Presidency University on 29 January 2018.
The purpose of publishing this report is to provide access to all the ideas presented and discussed over the two days, debates, arguments and conclusions reached during the conference. The papers and abstracts of the participating researchers have also been uploaded to the Calcutta Research Group website and can be accessed by anyone interested.
Section One
RESEARCH BRIEFS
Lectures
Capital did not emphasize any particular class as a condition for preparing the subject for access to the truth. It had not been seen in terms of the historical tenor of existence as an embodiment of conflict, strife and its requirements. Since the colonial period in the early twentieth century, the vicissitudes of the translation and reception of Marx's Capital in Korea have been closely linked to the struggle of the Korean people against imperialist oppression, military dictatorship and capitalist exploitation.
Kim Il-Sung, the founder and long-time dictator of the North Korean regime, was a supporter of Stalinism. After the fall of the Stalinist regimes, Capital's influence in South Korea plummeted. However, the unexpected explosion of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 was a moment when South Korean progressives became aware of the forgotten contradictions of capitalism, as emphasized by Marx's Capital.
Marxist science and politics, which had receded after the collapse of the USSR, began to revive. One of the young independence activists, student leader Thakin Nu, translated parts of Capital into Burmese, but never the complete versions of Marx's work.
Sessions
Taking a cue from the Ideologietheorie Project (PIT), Jan Rehman has argued that a "renewal" of "ideology-critique". Against this background, this paper reviews the trajectory of rent theory in Marx's exposition of capitalism. This paper explores how Marx in his writings constantly moved from the terrain of the class to that of the people and back.
It also speaks the language of maximum possible consent of those affected before forced evacuation. Marx became the harbinger of a liberating modernity, but firmly situated in the idiom of tradition. The paper also examines the translation politics of Capital in light of the connection between the pan-Indian English-educated nationalist elite and the English-educated Telugu regional elite.
Responding to this article, Ghatak (2017) argues on the basis of the Kuznets curve that the relationship between inequality and growth is inverted U-shaped. It is argued that the results of Chancel and Piketty's (2017) paper can be interpreted through a Marxist reading that goes beyond Chancel and Piketty (2017) as well as Ghatak (2017). A Day in the Life of a Plantation Worker: Understanding the Workday and Its Limits Through a Reading of Capital Vol.
The concept of the working day was discussed at length by Marx in the longest chapter of Volume I of Capital, "The Working Day" (Part III, Chapter X). This is because a large part (about 90%) of the production system is in the unorganized sector. And this is outside the jurisdiction of the legal system, everything is determined by the employer - the state has almost no input.
The majority of the productive system in the country is dominated by "unpaid" (sometimes underpaid) work. The semi-developed capitalist system has been able to exploit the legal loopholes and. CRG plans to publish some of the research papers under the CRG Research Paper Series Policies and Practices.
Section Two
PROGRAMMES
Capital after 150 Years A Roundtable Discussion
A pre-Marx Capital conference roundtable was hosted by Presidency University on January 29, 2018 at A.J.C. The round table discussion served as a prelude to the two-day conference on 'Capital in the East'. Three different aspects of Marx's Capital were discussed in the discussion: 'Theories of the surplus-value and the structure of capital: three parts', 'The future of labour' and 'Theories of the surplus-value and the structure of capital: three parts'. to share'.
Programme
Brief Report
Marx’s Capital after 150 Years A Conference on
Institute of Development Studies, Calcutta, University of Calcutta, Department of Economics, Presidency University and Jadavpur University – organized a two-day conference to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Volume I of Karl Marx's seminal text, Capital .
30 January 2018
- am – 09.45 am: Welcome Address
Atig Ghosh (Visva-Bharati University and Calcutta Research Group) – “The Abstract Law of Population Exists Only for Plants and Animals”: Negotiating the Reserve Army of Labor Principle in the Postcolony. Jon Solomon, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, From "Linguistic Context" to "Posinification": Marx, China and Translation in Postcolonial Conditions.
31 January 2018
Maidul Islam (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta) - Land Acquisition and Notes on Combined Accumulation of Capital in Contemporary India. Supurna Banerjee (Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata) - A Day in the Life of the Plantation Workers: Understanding the Working Day and Its Limits Through a Reading of Capital Vol. Chair: Paula Banerjee, Sanskrit University and Calcutta Research Group; Discussant: Ilina Sen, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Calcutta Research Group].
Brief Reports
30 January 2018
- Capital as Critique (Chair: Samita Sen; Discussant: Anjan Chakrabarti) Satyaki Roy: In his paper Global Production Network: The New Template of Power and Profit
- Session 2: Commodities and Value (Chair: Byasdeb Dasgupta; Discussant: Upal Chakrabarti)
- Session 3: Population in Capital (Chair: Arup Sen; Discussant: Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay)
- Session 5: Globalization, Finance, Inequality and Labour (Chair: Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay; Discussant: Arup Sen)
- Session 6: Labour Process and Unwaged Work (Chair: Paula Banerjee; Discussant
These are some of the questions that Professor Samaddar dealt with while reading Marx's Capital. The essence of the exchange problem is the quantitative equalization of unequal goods and the basis of this problem's solution. She also drew attention to Marx's geometric dimensions of goods and his measure of equivalence.
Iman Mitra: In his paper entitled Land and the Theory of Rent in Capital: Method, Movement and Fictitiousness, Mitra tried to trace the trajectory of rent theory in Marx's exposition of capitalism. He stated that the general understanding of the term is limited in the sense that it does not deal with the issue of "coercion, power and violence" associated with primitive accumulation. The next part of the paper addressed the bigger picture of creative and linguistic translation since the late colonial period.
The starting point of the paper was the limitation of the ordinary language of growth theory to understand its dynamics. The figure of the 'Sardar' as pointed out in the paper is the core of the disciplinary mechanism in tea plantations, but he is also negotiable. Ilina Sen: The discussant gave a broad overview of the situation of women's work in India.
Regarding the subject of the conference, he said that the Capital of the East should not be taken literally or in strict geographical terms. It must be understood as moving away from Europe to this part of the world. One of the core areas of capital that the conference addressed was raw materials, value, labor and finance.
According to Chakrabarti, this is one of the most comprehensive interventions in Marx's Capital, but it is also largely ignored. He added more lightly that one of the few people who suffered the worst in Capital at the hands of Marx was Malthus. Chakrabarti characterized Marx's political position as the return of the outside, the return of the closed.
Section Three
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
List of Publications
Section Four
THE RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
RESEARCHERS, DISCUSSANTS AND CHAIRS
List of Researchers, Discussants and Chairs
Subhanil Chowdhury, Department of Development Studies, Kolkata Supurna Banerjee, Department of Development Studies, Kolkata Swati Ghosh, Rabindra Bharati University.
