radicalblogger

In tribute, Kunal Chattopadhyay* writes about his father’s life and times. *Email: soma1kunal@airtelbroadband.in Goutam Chattopadhyay was born on December 9, 1924. His father, Kshitish Prosad Chattopadhyay, was an eminent anthropologist, a student of W.H.R.Rivers and the founder of the Department of Anthropology, University of Calcutta. Goutam’s mother was Manjushree. Though he never flaunted his pedigree, Goutam was proud of being descended from reformers and modernisers like Raja Manmohun Roy, Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar (on his father’s side) and Dwarkanath Tagore (on his mother’s side). Goutam’s induction to politics, Indian nationalism, and leftism were partly through his father. Kshitish Prasad had been a friend of Subhas Chandra Bose, and when Bose decided not to be an ICS, his friend followed suit. Returning to India, Kshitish joined Calcutta University, but after the Swarajya Party won the Calcutta Corporation elections, became Education Officer at the request of his frien...

Trotsky’s greatest sin, it seems, was that he often disagreed with the “general line” of the party. Or so the contemporary devotees of Joseph Stalin would still like us to believe. Perhaps this should be viewed, rather, as Trotsky’s continuing commitment to the pre-Stalinist Marxist tradition, for which commitment to working class democracy, viewed as more expansive than the best that bourgeois democracy could afford to offer, and hence as his greatest legacy for socialists in the twenty-first century if they do not want to bow movingly to market forces, yet want to be relevant. For the days when one could say in a commanding tone, “this is the party line”, and expect everyone to lie down and play dead like tame dogs, are gone forever. When Karl Marx started his political career, he began as a democrat. Unlike many earlier and contemporary socialists and communists, he did not advocate aneducational dictatorship of the party (or a group of wise and enlightened elite, by whatever name) ...

Permanent Revolution and Left Social Democracy In the revolution of 1905, the term permanent revolution cropped up quite often. It, or related terms, were used by Franz Mehring, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, various Socialist Revolutionaries and even on one occasion, by Lenin. But the content Trotsky put into it was quite specific, and unique in the Social Democratic camp. Mensheviks like Martynov counterposed permanent revolution to the struggle for democracy, and carried away by revolutionary euphoria, championed this ‘vulgarised’ version as Trotsky characterised it. [i] Discussion on the term and its origins, implications, etc, have often been confused. They have even been muddied with deliberate intent by generations of Stalinists, beginning with Stalin who asserted that “Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg … invented the utopian and semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution….subsequently, this semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution was caught by Trotsky”. [ii] Even scholars who d...

As we all know, West Bengal is a progressive state. This is not simply a claim by the Left Front. It is a claim by every honest to goodness Bengali who does not believe in such pathetic measures like actually examining reality, preferring to look back to the Bengal renaissance and the golden age of Indian cricket, when Ganguly was king. That is why, it is worth looking at some of the voices of progressive Bengal concerning reservations, and use these voices as a peg to present some arguments. I have in mind three sets of incidents. The first concern posters put up in my own University campus by the All India Democratic Students Organization. When the reservation issue came up early in 2006, their first poster charged the ruling class of seeking to fragment students’ unity by raking up the non-issue of reservations. When the agitation by the anti-reservation activists met police violence they simply condemned police violence. There was no condemnation of the politics of the YFE. So let ...

For several days I have been seeing the media go gaga in its annual US worship. I do not support the killing of innocent people anywhere, and that includes New York. Indeed, I have relatives and close friends in new York, and shudder to think that some of them might have died. But why must we compulsorily mourn every year the death of a few thousand Americans? Because they hail from the richest part of the world? My friend Steve Bloom, a non-jewish Jew who pointed to his nose to make that point, showed me the skyline (at that time with the World Trade Centre) and said, that small portion is the financial heart of the world. He also admitted to a slight vested interest. As a revolutionary socialist he is commited to overthrowing it. But he makes his living by painting the houses of the rich. No, it is not what you might think. Steve does not just take brush and paint a bedroom light yellow. He paints walls so they look like other things. You can have a brick and mortar will looking like...