The Specter of Materialism

Since its publication in 2013, Vivek Chibbers book Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of
Capital (PTSC) has generated a lot of scholarly discussion. A new volume, The Debate on
Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, captures this sometimes ornery debate.

PTSC primarily aims to uncover the conceptual and empirical flaws within Subaltern Studies,
an important strand of postcolonial theory. In doing so, Chibber challenges the broader
postcolonial claim that the West and East are so radically different, theories with European
origins, such as Marxism, dont have universal currency.

Chibber finds at least three arguments in the Subalternist literature that support this larger claim.
The first concerns the ostensibly different strategies that the ruling classes, namely the
bourgeoisie, used to gain and consolidate power. In Europe, they argue, the emergent
bourgeoisie ruled by consent, while in India it depended on coercion. The second argument falls
directly out of this: capitalism evolved differently depending on the bourgeoisies governing
style. In Europe, capitalism transformed all social relations according to its logic, but in India
it left some pre-capitalist structures intact. The third argument deals with the social actors
allegedly different psychological makeup. In Europe, peasants and workers internalized a
bourgeois consciousness that made them sensitive to their material interests; in India, such
consciousness never arose, and so Indians didnt concern themselves with their objective
interests when it came to economic or, especially, political issues.

Chibber convincingly argues against Subaltern Studies on all three counts. First, he reminds us
that the belief that French and English capitalism embody democratic values and rest on the
consent of the masses is pure fantasy. For most of capitalisms history both in Europe and
elsewhere consent was conspicuously absent. Democratic institutions only came about
through struggles from below, not thanks to an enlightened capitalist class. Second, while the
Subalternists and other theorists of difference correctly point out that capitalism doesnt look
the same across the globe, Chibber shows Marxism neednt and indeed doesnt deny this fact.

When Marxists claim their conceptual tools apply across the capitalist world, theyre
highlighting a small set of basic properties that are operative in any capitalist society, including
the profit motive, wage labor, and competition. How these properties express themselves or
what sociocultural dynamics exist alongside and shape them remains open a problem to
which Marxism isnt at all blind.

1
Finally Chibber uses the Subalternists own historiographic evidence to disprove the
assumption that people act according to their material interests only when properly socialized
by Western social norms. Indian peasants and workers had as clear an understanding of the risks
and costs associated with collective action as their French and English counterparts. The
Subalternists in fact concocted an unwitting Orientalism by depicting agency in the East as
radically different in nature than in the West.

But Chibbers critique of Subaltern Studies also intervenes usefully in a number of broader
contemporary debates in sociology, historical sociology, cultural studies, and related fields. Its
significance with regards to developing a contemporary, unorthodox Marxist social theory or
combating pervasive culturalism whether it appears as post-structuralism, post-Marxism, or,
ironically, certain versions of New Materialism can hardly be overstated. By realigning
Marxism with its materialist roots, Chibber places human action not only at the center of
capitalism but also in the heart of resistance.

What Kind of Materialism?

Since the beginning, Marxism prided itself on its thoroughgoing materialism, which developed
in strong opposition to ahistorical and methodologically individualist varieties of materialism
what are usually called vulgar, nave, abstract, contemplative, or mechanical materialisms.
Despite Marxs rejection of these schools, he presented his theory as self-consciously
materialist, as historical materialism.

Among many other things, this meant that Marxism views people as having both minds and
bodies and that peoples minds are fundamentally embodied. This foreground humanitys
biological endowments the capacity for self-awareness, intentionality, reflexivity, and
rationality as well as the need for material well-being, meaningful activity, and personal
autonomy. In short, the materialism in historical materialism meant that, alongside historical
conditioning, alongside social structures that enable, constrain, and motivate human activity,
nature also plays a causal role.

Marxisms balance between a wholly naturalist and an entirely historicist paradigm was, for the
most part, lost in the second half of the twentieth century. As Sebastiano Timpanaro noted in
1966:

Perhaps the sole characteristic common to all contemporary varieties of Western

Marxism is, with very few exceptions, their concern to defend themselves against the

2
 accusation of materialism. Gramscian or Togliattian Marxists, Hegelian-Existentialist
Marxists, Neo-Positivizing Marxists, Freudian or Structuralist Marxists, despite the
profound dissensions which otherwise divide them, are at one in rejecting all suspicion
of collusion with vulgar or mechanical materialism; and they do so with such zeal as
to cast out, together with mechanism or vulgarity, materialism tout court.

We can locate at least two phenomena responsible for this shift. First, almost all varieties of
Marxism were trying extremely hard to distance themselves from vulgar Stalinist materialism.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, many also tried to adapt to the linguistic and cultural
turns in academia.

In the postwar era, one prominent critique held that Marxism reduces culture to superstructural
fluff that functions only to secure the reproduction of the economy, the actually important social
sphere. As a result, most varieties of Marxism corrected for any potential mistreatment of extra-
economic social phenomena, either completely rejecting or fundamentally adjusting the base-
superstructure metaphor. Although they had always been important to historical materialism,
culture, discourse, politics, ideology, hegemony, identity, gender, and race became Marxisms
watchwords. Marxism leaned so much in the cultural direction that it started completely
dissociating itself and its studies of culture from materialism altogether. Timpanaro again,
already in 1966! captures this tendency:

The position of the contemporary Marxist seems at times like that of a person living on
the first floor of a house, who turns to the tenant of the second floor and says: You
think youre independent, that you support yourself by yourself? Youre wrong! Your
apartment stands only because it is supported on mine, and if mine collapses, yours will
too; and on the other hand to the ground floor tenant: What are you pretending? That
you support and condition me? What a wretched illusion! The ground floor exists only
in so far as it is the ground floor to the first floor. Or rather, strictly speaking, the real
ground floor is the first floor, and your apartment is only a sort of cellar, to which no
real existence can be assigned. To tell the truth, the relations between the Marxist and
the second-floor tenant have been perceptibly improved for some time, not because the
second-floor tenant has recognized his own dependence, but because the Marxist has
reduced his pretensions considerably, and has come to admit that the second floor is
very largely autonomous from the first, or else that the two apartments support each
other. But the contempt for the inhabitant of the ground floor has become increasingly
pronounced.
3
We still find this contempt for the inhabitant of the ground floor as some Marxist tendencies
and radical social theory more generally dismiss biology and materialism from their analyses.
Diana Coole and Samantha Frost introduce the collected essays in New Materialisms by
describing the eclipse of materialism in recent theory and a corresponding cultural turn that
privileges language, discourse, culture, and values. More specifically, Kieran Durkin observes
in his 2014 book on Erich Fromm that [t]alk of human nature, or of the human essence, is
generally viewed as embarrassing today, as it is associated with sociobiologys dismal project.

Extraordinarily influential scholars from Richard Rorty and Clifford Geertz to Stuart Hall,
Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and many others all share this conviction. Hall writes, echoing
Foucault, that the human body must instead be recognized as infinitely malleable and
contingent. Thus, as students of Foucault, Deleuze and Irigaray, we are lead to the rejection
of all forms of universalism, including the socialist variation. But this unfortunate mistake, as
Lena Gunnarsson perceptively points out, only reinforces the underlying logic behind
sociobiology:

Although denying biology any significance for social matters seems to be aimed at
putting a final nail in the coffin of biological determinism, the move actually depends
on a deterministic notion of the biological. Seeking to avoid biological determinism by
avoiding biology does not challenge the basic sociobiologist conviction that, if biology
is admitted to be a basis of human functioning, then it must determine human behaviour.
. . . The radical constructivist stance may be opposite to biological determinism on a
superficial level, but it operates within the confines of the latters categorical structures,
only in inverted form. What characterizes both camps is reductionism, insofar as that
which is really both biological and socially constructed is reduced to a matter of either
biological or social determinations.

Chibber very ably exposes the unwarranted contempt for materialism and the associated
excessive constructionism in chapters 7 and 8 of PTSC. Nevertheless, this tendency appears in
many of the critiques hes received since the books publication.

Rationality Under Capitalism

In PTSC, Chibber underlines the potential pitfalls of materialist analysis. Assigning rationality
or reflexivity to social actors and emphasizing the power material interests have in motivating
some of their actions can go wrong in a number of ways: if it portrays actors as relentless utility
optimizers or, even worse, pure egoists; if it denies the role of habitual, routine action; if it

4
ignores that almost all if not all human actions are culturally mediated, endowed with
social meaning, and variously expressed in different settings; if it denies that many aspects of
human lives are not only mediated but in fact constructed by culture; if it discounts irrational
behavior, even systematic irrationality in certain spheres of life. And so on.

After charting this minefield, he uses the historiographic evidence provided by the Subalternists
to illustrate his case for materialism. Contrary to the explicit assertions of two leading
Subalternists, Partha Chatterjee and Dipesh Chakrabarty, this evidence shows that when
peoples well-being and autonomy are at risk, they perceive that situation, regardless of their
cultures relationship to European-ness or bourgeois consciousness. Chibbers defense of
materialism boils down almost to a truism: when people experience a lot of stress, they
recognize it and dont enjoy it.

This, of course, doesnt mean that the exploited will spontaneously burst into actual struggle.
Disliking exploitation and actually fighting against it are two different matters. The first must
come before the second, but collective action depends on many factors besides the experience
and recognition of deprivation. Effective struggles need enough material and non-material
resources to carry out a mobilization; they face extreme risks and must weight those against
their chances of success; they must generate solidarity or common cultural identities among the
exploited and oppressed. It should go without saying that these factors remain fundamentally
tied to peoples interests and rationality.

Some of Chibbers critics, even a few sympathetic ones, dont agree on this point. William
Sewell Jr, calls it rationalism and very close to rational choice theory, a concern Bruce
Robbins and Stein Sundstl Eriksen share. For Sewell, Chibbers Marxism lacks cultural
sensitivities. Julian Murphet skeptically views Chibbers attachment to a roster of individual
interests dictating decisions about being. George Steinmetz goes further and claims that
Chibber is implicitly defending an entirely unrealistic vision of a man as a rational machine.
During Chibbers appearance on a Slovenian radio station, the interviewer critically (although
a bit obscurely) made a similar point:

Reducing a human solely to his [sic] naturally given characteristics creates pure
life, which cannot generate social change because it has been, as such, expelled
from society. Pure life, defined as neither human nor beast, cannot be the
common denominator which brings people together as the political subjects of a
workers movement.

5
We might agree with Sewell, who argues that Chibber should have gone farther and provided
an alternative historical and political sociology of the postcolonial world to counter the
Subalternists. But these critiques about the place of rationality in PTSC fundamentally
misunderstand the argument. To claim that Chibber mounts a defense of people as rational
machines or that he reduces humanity to naturally given characteristics or pure life, whatever
that means not only misrepresents the book but also reveals the contempt for materialism
that Timpanaro described.

This position has two major flaws. First, its conceptually and empirically wrong. Subordinated
people everywhere have always recognized the seriousness of their position and have felt
aggrieved by it. As the Verso Book of Dissent attests, humanity has been organizing, resisting,
and generating change for most of its history. How can we explain this without grounding
human behavior in peoples material interests and their capacity to critically distance
themselves from the norms that attempt to justify oppression and exploitation? If people were
nothing but infinitely malleable sociocultural constructs, theyd simply internalize the
prevailing ideology not question, challenge, and subvert it. It is precisely because people
arent infinitely malleable that oppressive sociocultural practices affect, frustrate, and hurt
them.

Furthermore, rejecting the belief that people have material interests and that these interests,
mediated by culture, motivate actors in certain situations makes it almost impossible to make
sense of capitalisms most basic and salient features. Why do property-less workers everywhere
offer themselves up for employment? Why do they compete against their fellow workers? Why
do capitalists constantly work to minimize cost and maximize profit? Are these nothing but
consequences of ideology, habitus, or cultural norms? Do rationality and material interests
bound up with the human needs and blocked by unequal resource distribution have no
bearing on workers and capitalists behavior? If thats true, why do we find the same practices
in vastly different cultural settings? Where do the norms that enforce these structures come
from? Why would people have created the very same norms in all capitalist countries?

Its much more plausible to argue that capitalists minimize costs and maximize profits because
they compete with other capitalists. Refusing to abide by capitalist protocols would force them
into bankruptcy, and they would lose their comfortable class position that grants them material
well-being, autonomy, and so on. Similarly, workers seek jobs and compete with one another
because otherwise their most basic human needs would go completely unsatisfied.

6
Steinmetz claims that the argument about rationality is not a necessary part of Chibbers
arguments about the nature of capitalism. Eriksen says more or less the same: it is not clear
what we gain by insisting on the actors rationality. I beg to differ. Chibbers argument about
rationality represents not only a necessary but perhaps a central part of his analysis of the
workings of capitalism.

Secondly, dismissing materialism disarms socialist politics that emphasize the importance of
struggle from below. If people are to emancipate themselves rather than be emancipated from
above they have to be at least somewhat rational, and theyll have to locate some universal
concerns to bind them together. Without rationality, they cant figure out the problematic
situation theyre in nor can they coordinate appropriate collective actions that move us closer
to a socialist future. In fact, if material interests dont exist or are irrelevant, why dont
capitalists and workers simply join hands and peacefully coexist in the here and now? If there
are no interests, there can be no conflict of interests: why, then, struggle and protest?

A Better Kind of Critique

Many of Chibbers critics characterize his work as either not Marxist enough or far too Marxist.
This has never been a useful argument: critics should instead draw out the materials flaws, not
simply label it and assume the work is done. To be fair, most of Chibbers critics rise above
mere name-calling. Nevertheless, the fact that the assessments of PTSCs intellectual
provenance often take opposing positions tells us something about the quality of these
arguments.

Charles Taylor, for example, insists that the book is one of the least dialectical, most flatfooted
Marxist texts to be published in recent years. He implies that it doesnt really count as
Marxist or that its Marxist in the most trivial of senses. Murphet also bemoans the Weberian
analytic Marxism championed by Chibber and congratulates Chatterjee on his tactical
decision to out-Marx the Marxist. Murphet is referring to Chatterjees complaint, made at the
2013 Historical Materialism conference in New York, that Chibber . . . offers an alternative
account of capitalist production that does not have any recognizable relation to the Marxist
tradition. . . . Chibber rejects Marxs definition of abstract labor. Uday Chandra also
congratulates Chatterjee, writing that his deft reading of Marxs oeuvre outdid Chibbers
efforts and showed the latter to be little more than a Rawlsian liberal devoted to some variant
of social contract theory. For them, Chibbers theoretical framework isnt Marxist enough,

7
relying too much on non-dialectical and bourgeois maneuvers like analysis, disagreement with
Marx, and recognizing contributions from Weberian sociology and Rawlsian liberalism.

Others find Chibbers too Marxist or, rather, find that his Marxism is too narrow and too
orthodox. Spivak dismisses PTSC as Little Britain Marxism, claiming that the books scope
demolishes any attempt at expanding the scope of a general Marxist discourse. In the end,
Spivak claims, Chibber offers nothing more than the usual mechanical Marxist utopian
pronouncement. The Slovenian interviewer I mentioned above complains that Chibber
creates an impenetrable barrier between what he conceptualizes as materialism and that which
is not materialism. . . . With that he generates a universal incompatibility between Marxism and
non-Marxism . . . and forces us to choose one side as correct and the other as false. That is,
Chibbers dogmatic and orthodox Marxist refuses to accept any ideas that lie outside his narrow
theoretical framework.

Now, which one is it? Does Chibber have too much or too little Marxism in his work? Does he
refuse to accept anything outside Marxism or does he include too many non-Marxists, like
Weber and Rawls? Dont answer that: the question itself is too silly.

Allegiance to a paradigm doesnt matter what does is whether Chibbers arguments are
conceptually and empirically sustainable or not. Its surprising how little effort Chibbers most
aggressive critics have expended for this purpose so far.

Tibor Rutar is a teachers assistant at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia,
where he also received his PhD in Sociology.