In trying to speak of New Social Movements via the political developments which emerge in India post-independence one immediately is aware of certain constraints which are bound to make themselves apparent in such a comparison. To begin with what we refer to today as New Social Movements, at least in the context of the United States began primarily as a form of counter-culture bearing more of a resemblance to Bohemianism than it did with how one views the largely formalised sphere of the political which had established itself in the 20th century. And yet one has to admit that (at least in its initiation) many of the genealogies which developed in around the 1950’s in America which later were absorbed into the hippie movement and counter-culture of the sixties were explicitly political in terms of how they imagined possibilities for society. The famous Beat Generation consisting of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and an ensemble of writers who straight out rejected White Anglo-Saxon Protestant standards of what life should be in their drug fuelled experimentations of religions and alternative sexualities helped create a certain kind of scene in San Francisco in the 1950’s which emerged as the hub of the poetic avant-garde. This is the scene in which the hippie movements in the sixties could emerge – or perhaps more specifically a certain kind of imagined geography…
But let us think back a little to the kind of moorings which may have been the precursors of the Beat Generation. American literature provides one with multiple figures which in a sense pre-figure the scene which the Beat Generations inhabited and explored via their writings. Walt Whitman in the mid 19th century writing through the American Civil War in his inimitable free verse depicting the religious plurality and explicit homosexuality which was to echo a century later via the voice of another bearded homosexual poet professing communism from the cold water apartments of the Brooklyn Bay area (Ginsberg in Howl), and of course the Philosopher Hendry David Thoreau in his preachings on Civil Disobedience and the value of a simple life in the woods. Figures such as these in their movement away from the conservatism inherent in a certain mode of Protestantism whose voices awaited others to speak to and of the things which meant something to them.
This voice is still heard, even as late as the music of the 1970’s with Simon and Garfunkel singing of an America they left in search of on a road trip back in 62. The idea of discovering America “On The Road” immortalised as it had been by Kerouac in 57. This in a sense is the heritage I would like to give one a sense of. The history of what counter-culture meant and what it may have been a movement away from. I think this is particularly important if one is to be able to recognize the capitalist appropriation of counter-culture and its commodification which follows even in the sixties itself. This appropriation is something Julie Stephens is well aware of as she speaks of affluence, permissiveness and the ‘youth culture’ of the sixties which by then was already becoming a culture that it may have been possible to commodify and hence profit from as with the cultural commodification of ‘mystical’ India and ‘Karma’, which in all seriousness was not a political proposition in the slightest and even in speaking of it as a ‘cultural’ movement one cannot forget the inherent exoticism such spheres were engaged with.
What one does see however to be the true value which the emerging New Social Movements offered was the re-politicisation of culture and of using culture as a site for political contestations ranging from the sexual liberation following the student movements in France or the various anti-war movements led by students in America during the years of the Vietnam war. Of the varying tendencies which the large number of New Social Movements display, this certainly appears to be a deeply embedded and repeated element.
The reasons for this may be multifaceted. For one, in post-industrial societies such as much of the nations of the first world where we see the emergence of what is referred to as New Social Movements – the conditions which created the impetus for the form of politicisation associated with Communism at the time were largely negotiated with successfully. Workers Unions in the first world had over the course of the sixties and seventies established for themselves minimum wage laws and humane working conditions. Further, this was a time of relative economic prosperity for the nation at large with the only serious political contestation being the developing Cold War. These conditions hence blunted the revolutionary character of the American working class and one can argue that even politically – the Communist Party of America found itself focussing on primarily cultural
contestations such as the question of ethnic minorities, women’s rights and the environment – not very unlike what the New Social Movements at the time were up to. Yet here we see very clearly why Marx insists in The Grundrisse that Capital cannot abide limits, when it encounters one it seeks to turn it into a barrier which is to be bypassed.
This is fundamentally what institutions such as the World Bank enabled for Global Capital via the liberalisation of economies particularly in developing countries such as India and China. Hence allowing Global Capital to bypass the minimum wage and working condition regulations which the Unions in the first world had struggled to establish for their labour. The outsourcing of labour for manufacturing and even service sector enterprises such as software troubleshooting and customer care is a phenomena we are well aware of given its massive proliferation in India since liberalisation began in the early 90’s. This new direction of economic development which was more open to Foreign Direct Investment worked hand in hand with the outsourcing of the labour requirements of industries in the first world which we see emerging in the period leading up to this. The results of these operations at large in the context of India are most visible to students such as us in two ways. 1. The deep enmeshment of commodities produced by such companies at increasingly cheaper rates into our lives. Apple’s i pods being a prime example, being mass produced in their Chinese Foxconn facility under conditions which would have resulted in charges of human rights violations had they been manufactured indigenously in the United States. 2. The arrival of popular American culture via this proliferation of commodities (be it t.v shows, cartoons, toys or electronics) through the commodities now made available to us. One recounts Marx in the Manifesto depicting the mass produced and cheaply available commodities being the battering ram which break down all resistances to the capitalising bourgeoisie culture produced by Capitalism.
It is under such circumstances that one can truly contextualise resistances in the Indian scenario where amidst the emerging middle class post-liberalisation, co-option into the hegemonising bourgeoisie culture is rampant. This is where the militant left locates itself in the country today, amidst the people located outside of the sphere of circulation of capital, who are necessarily displaced in the process of capital establishing its sphere of circulation in India. They are represented in part by the CPI(Maoist). If one were to view New Social Movements as primarily an ‘anti-disciplinary protest’ as Julie Stephens does in her book, as a resistance to some totalising ideology, party discipline or even bourgeoisie culture then one may struggle to see the relation between them (NSM) and the militant left emerging today, however in appreciating how the militant left operates in this new emerging economy that India is becoming one can see how it is in direct opposition to the production of the very culture which the Beat generation sought to escape via their travel writings.
The question of culture is central and here it may be valuable to learn from the position which the Maoists have on it. In their outlook on the Islamic upsurge which has been expressing itself violently since the 1980’s the Maoists don’t think of it as a ‘clash of civilizations’ or cultural incongruities which it is often posited as – they see it as a resistance to U.S Imperialism with Kishenji (the party’s late military leader) stating, “The Islamic upsurge should not be opposed as it is basically anti-US and anti-imperialist in nature. We, therefore, want it to grow”. In speaking of cultural rebellion, it is often easy to overlook resistances which speak in starkly different languages in contexts far removed from those in which one traditionally locates ’60’s radicalism’ and its later influences in – yet if one is speaking of resistance it may be valuable to ask the question what exactly is being resisted, for then there may emerge the space in which one may analyse Islamic militancy and what Julie Stephens refers to as the marginalised ‘Marxist acid heads’ often not dealt with directly when one looks through a paradigm such as ’60’s radicalism’ or ‘anti-disciplinary protests’
But let us think back a little to the kind of moorings which may have been the precursors of the Beat Generation. American literature provides one with multiple figures which in a sense pre-figure the scene which the Beat Generations inhabited and explored via their writings. Walt Whitman in the mid 19th century writing through the American Civil War in his inimitable free verse depicting the religious plurality and explicit homosexuality which was to echo a century later via the voice of another bearded homosexual poet professing communism from the cold water apartments of the Brooklyn Bay area (Ginsberg in Howl), and of course the Philosopher Hendry David Thoreau in his preachings on Civil Disobedience and the value of a simple life in the woods. Figures such as these in their movement away from the conservatism inherent in a certain mode of Protestantism whose voices awaited others to speak to and of the things which meant something to them.
This voice is still heard, even as late as the music of the 1970’s with Simon and Garfunkel singing of an America they left in search of on a road trip back in 62. The idea of discovering America “On The Road” immortalised as it had been by Kerouac in 57. This in a sense is the heritage I would like to give one a sense of. The history of what counter-culture meant and what it may have been a movement away from. I think this is particularly important if one is to be able to recognize the capitalist appropriation of counter-culture and its commodification which follows even in the sixties itself. This appropriation is something Julie Stephens is well aware of as she speaks of affluence, permissiveness and the ‘youth culture’ of the sixties which by then was already becoming a culture that it may have been possible to commodify and hence profit from as with the cultural commodification of ‘mystical’ India and ‘Karma’, which in all seriousness was not a political proposition in the slightest and even in speaking of it as a ‘cultural’ movement one cannot forget the inherent exoticism such spheres were engaged with.
What one does see however to be the true value which the emerging New Social Movements offered was the re-politicisation of culture and of using culture as a site for political contestations ranging from the sexual liberation following the student movements in France or the various anti-war movements led by students in America during the years of the Vietnam war. Of the varying tendencies which the large number of New Social Movements display, this certainly appears to be a deeply embedded and repeated element.
The reasons for this may be multifaceted. For one, in post-industrial societies such as much of the nations of the first world where we see the emergence of what is referred to as New Social Movements – the conditions which created the impetus for the form of politicisation associated with Communism at the time were largely negotiated with successfully. Workers Unions in the first world had over the course of the sixties and seventies established for themselves minimum wage laws and humane working conditions. Further, this was a time of relative economic prosperity for the nation at large with the only serious political contestation being the developing Cold War. These conditions hence blunted the revolutionary character of the American working class and one can argue that even politically – the Communist Party of America found itself focussing on primarily cultural
contestations such as the question of ethnic minorities, women’s rights and the environment – not very unlike what the New Social Movements at the time were up to. Yet here we see very clearly why Marx insists in The Grundrisse that Capital cannot abide limits, when it encounters one it seeks to turn it into a barrier which is to be bypassed.
This is fundamentally what institutions such as the World Bank enabled for Global Capital via the liberalisation of economies particularly in developing countries such as India and China. Hence allowing Global Capital to bypass the minimum wage and working condition regulations which the Unions in the first world had struggled to establish for their labour. The outsourcing of labour for manufacturing and even service sector enterprises such as software troubleshooting and customer care is a phenomena we are well aware of given its massive proliferation in India since liberalisation began in the early 90’s. This new direction of economic development which was more open to Foreign Direct Investment worked hand in hand with the outsourcing of the labour requirements of industries in the first world which we see emerging in the period leading up to this. The results of these operations at large in the context of India are most visible to students such as us in two ways. 1. The deep enmeshment of commodities produced by such companies at increasingly cheaper rates into our lives. Apple’s i pods being a prime example, being mass produced in their Chinese Foxconn facility under conditions which would have resulted in charges of human rights violations had they been manufactured indigenously in the United States. 2. The arrival of popular American culture via this proliferation of commodities (be it t.v shows, cartoons, toys or electronics) through the commodities now made available to us. One recounts Marx in the Manifesto depicting the mass produced and cheaply available commodities being the battering ram which break down all resistances to the capitalising bourgeoisie culture produced by Capitalism.
It is under such circumstances that one can truly contextualise resistances in the Indian scenario where amidst the emerging middle class post-liberalisation, co-option into the hegemonising bourgeoisie culture is rampant. This is where the militant left locates itself in the country today, amidst the people located outside of the sphere of circulation of capital, who are necessarily displaced in the process of capital establishing its sphere of circulation in India. They are represented in part by the CPI(Maoist). If one were to view New Social Movements as primarily an ‘anti-disciplinary protest’ as Julie Stephens does in her book, as a resistance to some totalising ideology, party discipline or even bourgeoisie culture then one may struggle to see the relation between them (NSM) and the militant left emerging today, however in appreciating how the militant left operates in this new emerging economy that India is becoming one can see how it is in direct opposition to the production of the very culture which the Beat generation sought to escape via their travel writings.
The question of culture is central and here it may be valuable to learn from the position which the Maoists have on it. In their outlook on the Islamic upsurge which has been expressing itself violently since the 1980’s the Maoists don’t think of it as a ‘clash of civilizations’ or cultural incongruities which it is often posited as – they see it as a resistance to U.S Imperialism with Kishenji (the party’s late military leader) stating, “The Islamic upsurge should not be opposed as it is basically anti-US and anti-imperialist in nature. We, therefore, want it to grow”. In speaking of cultural rebellion, it is often easy to overlook resistances which speak in starkly different languages in contexts far removed from those in which one traditionally locates ’60’s radicalism’ and its later influences in – yet if one is speaking of resistance it may be valuable to ask the question what exactly is being resisted, for then there may emerge the space in which one may analyse Islamic militancy and what Julie Stephens refers to as the marginalised ‘Marxist acid heads’ often not dealt with directly when one looks through a paradigm such as ’60’s radicalism’ or ‘anti-disciplinary protests’
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