Orientalism and the Transition of India
In the Era of Globalisation

Anjan Chakrabarti
Reader, Department of Economics
Calcutta University
56 A, B.T. Road, Kolkata – 50
West Bengal, India
chakanjana@yahoo.com

Stephen Cullenberg
Professor, Department of Economics
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, California, USA

&

Anup Dhar
Fellow, Women’s Studies
The Asiatic Society
1, Park Street, Kolkata 16
West Bengal, India
anup_dhar@rediffmail.com

---

Orientalism and Transition of India
In the Era of Globalisation

Anjan Chakrabarti
Stephen Cullenberg
&
Anup Dhar1

Introduction
Nowadays we are often told: third world is dead. This underlies another
proposition that, with the third world as (the) Other disappearing, the Orientalist
framework is no longer relevant. We consider the pronounced death of third world and
the implied irrelevance of the Orientalist framework as theoretically weak, premature and
politically counterproductive. With the new global order emerging, the third world gets
displaced as its external Other into a new plane. We trace the economic history of India
and deconstruct the mainstream Indian development paradigm to reveal this emerging
contour of Orientalism. Specifically we attempt to read the economic history of India and
its transition through different moments of Orientalism, moments that are distinct but
each nevertheless help one space – West/North/New Global Order - define itself and
protract its superiority by producing an (external) Other.
Following the adoption of New Economic Policy (NEP) in the early 1990s, the
ongoing Indian transition towards a new society has been forwarded in terms of a big
bang progressive move to a free market economy that will encourage high level of
capitalist growth. This transition will also see the merger of the Indian economy into the
global order and thus free another way to rewrite India’s transition from a self-sufficient
economy towards an open competitive economy. We are thus told that India’s transition
to a capitalist market economy can only be relevant and effective in the context of a
global transition. India’s destiny is to be part of the global economy that in turn is
indexed by the unquestioned superiority of (global) capitalism. In other words, the above

1 This paper takes off from Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2003) and an ongoing book project by Chakrabarti,
Cullenberg and Dhar. A Hungarian version of this paper has come out in Eszmelet (December, 2003).

---

representations of India’s transition cannot but accept the superiority of the model of
global transition taking capitalism as the telos of world civilisation. In such a discourse of
transition, capitalism or global capitalism is never forwarded as a question to be
confronted but rather its superior existence is assumed as given.
More recently, many have started questioning the basis of running the story of
India’ transition along this line. Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2001, 2003) elaborate why
the representation of the Indian unilateral big bang transition to capitalism is faulty. They
have used a class-focused approach to disaggregate the Indian economy to numerous
forms of economic practices, not all capitalist. This means that India’s transition in terms
of the transition of its economy and the associated non-economic processes remain
extremely complex making nonsense the reduction of this complexity to simply one
essential form of practice – capitalist. Similar arguments, from slightly different angles,
has made by Gibson-Graham (1996) and Sanyal (2001). On the other hand, Ruccio,
Resnick and Wolff (1990), Hardt and Negri (2000), Resnick and Wolff (2001),
Chakrabarti and Dhar (2002) and Chakrabarti (2003) have argued that the new global
order underwrites a scenario of global capitalist hegemony that functions through the
overdetermined interstices of economic, cultural and political processes. Paraphrasing
their basic argument we can aver that while India goes out to embrace the globe, the
globe in turn is fast imploding into India and sucking the Indian society into its global
webs of relations that, these authors argue, telescopes the instance of global capitalist
hegemony. There are then two impulses. The economy including the Indian economy
comprise of numerous capitalist and non-capitalist practices while the transition of the
Indian economy into a part of the new global order bring into contention – within India –
the instance of global capitalist hegemony, which encapsulates the overdetermined webs
of power relations through which global capital attempts to manage, control and
subjugate non-capital and its forms of life into its regime of truth. Thus the economy
remains complexly constituted by capitalist and non-capitalist forms of social practices
but the knowledge over the economic and the discursive practices the knowledge
produces procreate the global capitalist hegemony. (Global) capitalism is therefore a
fantasy appearing as an all-encompassing closed system. Because (global) capitalism is
incomplete, impossible, lacking in closure, it must be held together by overdetermined

---

webs of power relations in the intersecting space of the economic, cultural and political in
order to enable the fantasy to continue.
The class-focused approach thus provides an alternative way of producing the
truth – another regime of truth - and this language has rich possibilities in disarticulating
and displacing putative representations of the economy into hitherto new ones. Here, in
this paper, we explore one such possibility in analysing the transition of the Indian
economy, especially in the current era of globalisation. We use the class focus
representation to highlight the point that the Indian transition since the time of the British
India has also been the journey of Orientalism. While the forms of Orientalism have
changed, the framework through which the transition of the Indian economy has been
looked at remained Orientalist. This treatment follows closely in the footsteps of the
pioneering works of Chatterjee (1986), and particularly Chaudhury (1994), Chaudhury,
Das and Chaudhury (2000) and Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2003). We are especially
concerned with the current phase of transition of the Indian economy initiated after the
adoption of the New Economic Policies or NEP which, as we mentioned earlier, attempts
to force a transition of the Indian economy into a free market global economy. We ask: is
the problem of Orientalism then finally over as the division between the West/North and
East/South gets blurred through the emerging convergence of many of their axes of
society into a new global order that represents a free market economy with global
capitalist hegemony. We answer: No. Orientalism is still thriving. We only need to see it
differently since, with the emerging evolution of the new global order, the figuration and
place of Orientalism has changed. The Orientalist framework is no longer between the
West and East or the North and South but between the new global order and an excluded
space we call the Third world. In contrast to the usual mainstream development
representations, we then present an alternative class representation of India’s transition
as, among things, also taking place within the Orientalist framework. While much
discussion on Orientalism has taken place over culture and politics there are, to our
knowledge, hardly any that deals with the place of Orientalism through the text of the
economy and none that has tried to deal with the same in the context of India’s ongoing

---

transition following NEP into the emerging global order.2 This foreclosure of the
economy from the discussion of Orientalism is surprising and disturbing if we witness, as
we shall show, the changing place and figuration of Orientalism from its historic site of
culture and politics to the economy. Orientalism, of course, by definition, remains a
cultural phenomena but its effect remains overdetermined by elements of power, that is,
the political and is now profoundly economic in character. In short, the text of
Orientalism has greatly, although not exclusively, shifted to the plane of the economic
even though it remains a complex product of cultural, political and economic processes as
it makes its grip over the economy. In this regard, we emphasize that our focus on class
as an alternative representation of the economy is not due to any narcissist attachment to
it but rather because our point could only be made through a class discourse of the
economy. Our unique reading will not only help shift the focus of Orientalism to the
economy and will help problematise the economy but we believe that such a reading will
additionally open up counter hegemonic possibilities in dealing with India’s transition
that have hitherto avoided the attention of Radical thinkers. While we will not delve into
questions of counter hegemony we will certainly ask the readers to remain sensitive to
their possible openings in the course of the discussion.
Let us begin with a quick discussion of the class-focused approach for that
remains the model – the organising principle – of producing a different language through
which an alternative (politically enabling) description of the economy can be inaugurated
and an alternative discourse on India’s transition can be fashioned. We will then relay the
history of Indian transition in terms of the Orientalist framework. Finally we will produce
what we call the new development paradigm attached inalienably to the production of the

2 Arturo Escobar (1993) remains an important exception. Escobar does talk about the possibility of
integrating Orientalism into the dominant economic project through the discourse of development. His
valuable insights are integrated in our analysis though we remain skeptical about his treatment of the
economy. In Escobar, the economy remains un(der)theorized, detached from class and protracted to the
name “capitalism” with its unchanging motif of capital accumulation as an inexorable process of history
allied to capitalism (see Gibson-Graham 2001, Sanyal 2001). Thus while Escobar gives us the important
insight of associating Orientalism with the economy, the absence of a undeconstructed notion of economy
makes the analysis somewhat incomplete especially when dealing with the changing face of the economy
itself in the era of globalisation (with its associated difficulty brought about through the blurring of the
East-West and North-South dichotomy). However, despite these skepticisms, overall, we remain deeply
influenced by the openings provided by Escobar and definitely share his concerns regarding the “politics”
of the so-called de-politicised discourse of development.

---

new global order that only displaces the problem of Orientalism to a different plane. The
discussion there will focus on producing the Third World in this era of new global order.
Section I

Class, Global Capital and its Hegemony

Our description of society including that of India is based on a decentered class
conception of the economy and society. Such a decentered approach follows the seminal
approach of Resnick and Wolff (1987). Resnick and Wolff’s approach has seen
fundamental extensions in Gabriel (1990), Cullenberg (1992), Gibson-Graham (1996),
Chaudhury and Chakrabarti (2000), Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2001, 2003) and
Resnick and Wolff (2003) regarding the question of class, economy, society and its
transition and development. This Marxian attempt is greatly an effort to mend and
recover the language of class as an alternative exposition of truth.
Resnick and Wolff deploy class as an entry point/standpoint/perspective working
within the overdetermined web of relations to create a new Marxian discourse on society
and change. Building on Althusser’s notion of overdetermination and defining it as
mutual constitutivity of processes that informs the logic of the social, Resnick and Wolff
who pioneered the concept of reading class as an adjective (that is, as process) highlights
two fundamental moments within the economy. The first is the distinction between
necessary labor and surplus labor. The former captures the amount of labor performed to
reproduce the existence of the laborer (and her family) and surplus labor defined as labor
performed over and above necessary labor. Class, and this is the second fundamental
moment, refers to processes relating to the performance, appropriation, distribution and
receipt of surplus labor. Class processes are specific to an enterprise – be they in the
private, state or household sectors. Within an enterprise, class processes can be grouped
into fundamental class as constituting of the performance and appropriation of surplus
labor, and into subsumed class making up the distribution and receipt of surplus labor.
The central category of Marxian exploitation emerges from the notion of fundamental
class process; exploitation is defined as the surplus labor not appropriated by the
performers of that surplus labor, otherwise appropriation is non-exploitative.

---

Fundamental classes can be exploitative as well as non-exploitative and can be mapped
into capitalist, communist, communitic, self or ancient, slave and feudal forms. For
example, feudal fundamental class process refers to the exploitative appropriation of
surplus labor. Exploitation is the contentious category in Marxist theory since it raises the
ethical question: do we accept the theft of labor and of a society dominated by trope of
the theft. Marxist theory is unique for its ethical position against exploitation. Moreover,
each such fundamental class process cannot exist on its own and instead are constituted –
literally brought into existence - not only by the subsumed class processes but also other
non-class processes. While there are other means of articulating the notion of enterprise
(through the goal of profit maximization, for example), Marxists provide a unique
description of enterprise or class structure as being constituted by fundamental and
subsumed class processes, and non-class processes geared towards the reproduction of
the class processes. These non-class processes encompass the economic (other than
class), cultural, political and natural processes. Explanation is thus class (economy)
focused but not class (economy) specific. The putative presence of a self-constituted,
independent and autonomous economy is an impossibility if we read the economy in
class terms. The economy is forever drawing on the non-economy for its oxygen (and
vice versa).
Political practices in such a Marxist theory are class practices or class related
practices sometimes called class struggle. The three fundamental political issues that crop
up around Marxism are (i) to fight for changes in the fundamental class processes with
the goal to end class exploitation in society, (ii) to fight for changes in subsumed class
processes in order to transform the conditions of existence that underlie a fundamental
class process (see Resnick and Wolff [1987, 1992] for details) and (iii) to struggle for
changes in those non-class processes that transform the conditions of existence for
various class processes – fundamental and subsumed. Marxists take the ethical position
of struggling for those class and non-class processes that procreate non-exploitative
practices.
In such a Marxist theory, the society is a complex institutional configuration of
innumerable number of heterogeneous and multi-layered class processes. At any point in
time, all these distinct class processes could potentially co-exist together within a society.

---

A specific configuration of class structure is defined as the social totality. Drawn from a
specific, that is, partial (class) perspective, social totality is decentred (cannot be defined
in terms of a specific form of class such as capitalist) and disaggregated (numerous types
and forms of class processes intersecting, compensating and reinforcing one another)
being pulled and pushed into different directions by the contradictory effects that
constitute it. Moreover, since processes are in a overdeterminist state of change due to,
among others, numerous class struggles occurring in different axes of society, these bring
in contradictory effects causing a transition of the class configuration and, subsequently,
deepening further the de-centering and heterogeneity of society.
This Marxian approach then forces an encounter of unique economic practices
within a decentered and heterogeneous social terrain. At the level of such practices that
significantly determines the formation of (political) subject and the constitution of the
political space, we encounter not simply capitalist practices but also non-capitalist
practices (see Resnick and Wolff (1987, 2003), Gibson-Graham (1996, 2003), Gibson-
Graham, Resnick and Wolff (2000, 2001), Callari and Ruccio (1996), Chakrabarti (1996,
2001), Chaudhury, Das and Chakrabarti 2000, Chakrabarti and Cullenberg (2001, 2003)
for detailed analysis). One thus cannot reduce the economy to the singular substance of
accumulation or forces of production or profit maximization which serves as the imputed
motif of capitalist classes as in standard orthodoxy. Such motif as and when they are
emphasized reflects an almost divine like gravitational pull of the economy to capitalism
which is contested in this Marxism. Indeed, the claim of an all-encompassing storm of
capitalist juggernaut stutters and falters in the face of our non-capitalist existences that
continue to procreate and spawn within the rich web of our complexly overdetermined
society.
The politics of the social play an important role in deciding which types of class
processes would dominate in specific time and space which in turn significantly
determines the historical evolution of society. Take the case of capitalism which,
historically, has lived with intense contradictions between its private and state forms.
Resnick and Wolff (2003) has elaborated how the struggle over the forms of society in
the Soviet Union turned from one between the communist enterprises and the capitalist
enterprises in its early stage into one taking place between state capitalism and private

---

capitalism. They describe the history of how private capitalism came to dominate the
Soviet society at the expense of its private counterpart and other forms of class processes,
and its consequence for the way the Soviet Society evolved. The collapse of Soviet Union
and, with it, the planning system has significantly dented the legitimacy of state capitalist
class processes, and coupled with the discourse of globalisation celebrating the logic of
market/commodity economy, the balance has clearly shifted in favour of private capitalist
class processes. All over the world, class processes pertaining to state capitalist
enterprises are being severely undermined resulting in a slow but steady parcelling out of
these enterprises into private hand. And since these state enterprises are large,
privatisation is in effect leading to a transfer of these into the “global” capitalist class
processes, where the meaning of the global in the context of capitalist class process will
now be elaborated.
What is global capital? Resnick and Wolff (2001) ask us to rethink the existence
of global enterprise from a class standpoint. A global enterprise in India (IN), for
example, would have the following class equation3 to contend with.
∑ IN
SV
+
SSCR
NCR
SSCP
X
Y (a)
i
∑
IN +
i
∑
IN =
i
∑
k +
IN
∑ k +
IN
∑ kIN
where, SV = Surplus Value produced and appropriated by the enterprise;

∑SSCR= Subsumed class revenue;

∑ NCR = Non class revenue;

∑SSCP= Sum of subsumed class payments;

∑ X = Sum of payments made to secure SSCR;

∑Y =Sum of payments made to secure NCR.
The two sides of the equation refer to revenues that flow from variegated
processes – class and non class – to which the enterprise or class structure is articulated.
The left hand side of (a) represents the revenue side of the enterprise while the right hand
side its expenditure required to reproduce the conditions of existence of the components

3 See Resnick and Wolff (1987) for a detailed analysis of the class equation. Also see Ruccio,
Resnick and Wolff (1991).

---

in the revenue side. ∑ SSCP reflect subsumed class payments made by the enterprise to
ensure the flow of SV. ∑ SSCR captures the subsumed class revenues of the enterprise,
that is, any revenue it generates from its occupation of subsumed class positions with
respect to other firms. It might include returns such as dividends, ground rents, merchant
fees, etc. Reproduction of these subsumed revenue class positions, in turn, requires
expenditure or payments for those social positions which will ensure the reproduction of
∑SSCR. Such payments are gathered around ∑ X . Similarly,∑ NCR stands for all
non-class revenues earned by the enterprise, such as return on loans advanced to
productive labourers. ∑Y stands for the expenditure or payments required to reproduce
the conditions of existence of ∑ NCR .
An enterprise or class structure is a complex site of these multiple sources of class
and non-class revenues, and expenditures. In order to bring out the global dimension of
an enterprise, they use the subscript i in the left-hand side to index the various global
locations from where the revenues are drawn and the superscript k in the right hand side
as capturing the global locations of expenditure. In other words, the sites where the flows
of revenue and expenditure occur are splintered across the globe and the enterprise draws
its meaning from this very decentered albeit global existence. Processes of fundamental
classes, subsumed classes and non-classes that globally connect into capitalist enterprise
are the circuits of global capital and the totality of the stocks and flows embodying the
circuits of global capital is what we define as global capital. When, say, a non-capitalist
enterprise gets connected with capitalist enterprise at any level, we say that it has locked
into the circuits of global capital and, by default, into global capital. This is not to say
that, in doing so, non-capitalist enterprises become capitalist but, simply, that these hook
themselves into the circuits of global capital.
It is commonplace knowledge that such decentered global enterprises are almost
exclusively privately capitalist, where we understand their global capitalistic feature as
privately exploitative class process in the context of commodity production that includes,

---

Document Outline

• Bibliography

---