Marxist geography: A personal journey

Abstract

I am fascinated by Marx’s openness to learning and engagement with diverse intellectual traditions—political economic, German and Greek philosophy, utopian socialist tradition, and English literature to name a few. Marxism for me, hence, is engagement and conversations with eclectic ideas, with fidelity to the communist manifesto, and in turn, its commitment to equality and justice. In this paper, while highlighting my own journey as a student of Marx’s scholarship, I examine the key role hegemony plays in our society. Formal education, I argue, is hegemonic to the extent that it is geared at producing docile individuals, particularly from oppressed sections of the society, that internalize theories and concepts favorable to elites: it should not surprise us when the oppressed act or vote against their own interest. Yet some centers of learning are also epicenters of counter-hegemonic praxis—one such place is Jawaharlal Nehru University where I unlearn and re-learned my Marxism and began my journey as a Marxist geographer. Additionally, I examine the role of “vulgar Marxism” (unwillingness to engage with contemporary geographically specific challenges) that is often passed off as Marxist orthodoxy and argue that this has been a real threat to the spirit of the Communist Manifesto. I examine the decline of the Communist Party in Bengal in India to highlight how vulgar Marxism can subvert social justice and make the “Communist Party” unpopular.