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Rethinking Working-Class History
Dipesh Chakrabarty combines a history of the jute-mill workers of Calcutta with a fresh look at labor history in Marxist scholarship. Opposing a reductionist view of culture and consciousness, he examines the milieu of the jute-mill workers and the way it influenced their capacity for class solidarity and "revolutionary" action from 1890 to 1940. Around and within this empirical core is built his critique of emancipatory narratives and their relationship to such Marxian categories as "capital," "proletariat," or "class consciousness."
The book contributes to currently developing theories that connect Marxist historiography, post-structuralist thinking, and the traditions of hermeneutic analysis. Although Chakrabarty deploys Marxian arguments to explain the political practices of the workers he describes, he replaces universalizing Marxist explanations with a sensitive documentary method that stays close to the experience of workers and their European bosses. He finds in their relationship many elements of the landlord/tenant relationship from the rural the jute-mill workers of the period were preindividualist in consciousness and thus incapable of participating consistently in modern forms of politics and political organization.
The book contributes to currently developing theories that connect Marxist historiography, post-structuralist thinking, and the traditions of hermeneutic analysis. Although Chakrabarty deploys Marxian arguments to explain the political practices of the workers he describes, he replaces universalizing Marxist explanations with a sensitive documentary method that stays close to the experience of workers and their European bosses. He finds in their relationship many elements of the landlord/tenant relationship from the rural the jute-mill workers of the period were preindividualist in consciousness and thus incapable of participating consistently in modern forms of politics and political organization.
272 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1989
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About the author
Dipesh Chakrabarty
57 books70 followersDipesh Chakrabarty (b. 1948) is a Bengali historian who has also made contributions to postcolonial theory and subaltern studies.
He attended Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, where he received his undergraduate degree in physics. He also received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Later he moved on to the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he earned a PhD in history.
He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Chakrabarty also serves as a contributing editor for Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.
He was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective. He has recently made important contributions to the intersections between history and postcolonial theory (Provincializing Europe [PE]), which continues and revises his earlier historical work on working-class history in Bengal (Rethinking Working-Class History). PE adds considerably to the debate of how postcolonial discourse engages in the writing of history (e.g., Robert J. C. Young's "White Mythologies"), critiquing historicism, which is intimately related to the West's notion of linear time. Chakrabarty argues that Western historiography's historicism universalizes liberalism, projecting it to all ends of the map. He suggests that, under the rubric of historicism, the end-goal of every society is to develop towards nationalism.
In 2011 he received an Honorary degree from the University of Antwerp.
He attended Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, where he received his undergraduate degree in physics. He also received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Later he moved on to the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he earned a PhD in history.
He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Chakrabarty also serves as a contributing editor for Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.
He was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective. He has recently made important contributions to the intersections between history and postcolonial theory (Provincializing Europe [PE]), which continues and revises his earlier historical work on working-class history in Bengal (Rethinking Working-Class History). PE adds considerably to the debate of how postcolonial discourse engages in the writing of history (e.g., Robert J. C. Young's "White Mythologies"), critiquing historicism, which is intimately related to the West's notion of linear time. Chakrabarty argues that Western historiography's historicism universalizes liberalism, projecting it to all ends of the map. He suggests that, under the rubric of historicism, the end-goal of every society is to develop towards nationalism.
In 2011 he received an Honorary degree from the University of Antwerp.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 30, 2018
বড্ড স্পেশালাইজড। মন দিতে পারছিলাম না। মাঝে লাফ দিয়ে ছ'নম্বর (class and community) আর তারপর কনক্লুশন চ্যাপ্টারটা পড়ে ছেড়ে দিলাম। ডিটারমিনিজমের সমান্তরালে একটা সমাজের নিজস্ব সাংস্কৃতিক ব্যাগেজগুলোও যে হায়ারার্কি তৈরীতে বেশ ভূমিকা নেয় সেটা দেখাচ্ছেন। আর একটু বড় হয়ে আবার পড়ব।
April 15, 2025
This is an excellent work of history: thorough, creative and non-dogmatic. Chakrabarty undertakes a meticulous class composition analysis of Bengal's jute industry, attentive to both the perspectives of labour and of capital, and embedded within the particularities of Bengal at the time. This is a useful account of the ways in which the "real abstraction" of capital is always mediated by the real movement of history. Chakrabarty intervenes into teleological Marxian conceptions of history as linear, as producing a uniform working class, by showing how the proletarianisation process did not erase pre-capitalist differences in Bengal. Indeed, such differences were sustained by an array of cultural, social and political practices both exogenous and endogenous to the process of production.
While certain class-reductionist perspectives might take this to be an anti-Marxist text, Chakrabarty is a rigorous and attentive reader of Marx, and shows that it is naive to read history only from the level of abstraction that Marx wrote best in. I think this text is fruitfully read alongside recent non-teleological Marxist texts, such as those that foreground class composition, social reproduction, and surplus populations. Chakrabarty reminds us that as the abstraction of capital descends into history, its universalising drive is not total, nor is emancipation guaranteed. The only inevitability is struggle, though it may take many forms.
While certain class-reductionist perspectives might take this to be an anti-Marxist text, Chakrabarty is a rigorous and attentive reader of Marx, and shows that it is naive to read history only from the level of abstraction that Marx wrote best in. I think this text is fruitfully read alongside recent non-teleological Marxist texts, such as those that foreground class composition, social reproduction, and surplus populations. Chakrabarty reminds us that as the abstraction of capital descends into history, its universalising drive is not total, nor is emancipation guaranteed. The only inevitability is struggle, though it may take many forms.
October 14, 2018
Chakrabarty's famous monograph, which one reviewer referred to as "the most important since E.P. Thompson", argues for a middle ground between Thompson's particularizing and classical Marxists' universal logic. An examination of the Jute industry in colonial Calcutta, this book notes that the Indian labor force did not establish European-style unions due to traditional cultural practices which provided the subaltern workers with their own forms of showing dissent. The management themselves were unable to shift from their Scottish cultural norms which they took to India with them. Chakrabarty also highlights the dissent between Muslims and Hindus prevented both groups from developing a unified class consciousness.
Overall, Chakrabarty gives agency and a voice to a marginalised group and shows ways in which cultural traditions can be used to fight back against capital. He was one of the first historians to note that 'archaic' forms of community can be vital in the fight for emancipation and equality.
Overall, Chakrabarty gives agency and a voice to a marginalised group and shows ways in which cultural traditions can be used to fight back against capital. He was one of the first historians to note that 'archaic' forms of community can be vital in the fight for emancipation and equality.
February 28, 2024
I do think this case study of Calcutta jute-mill workers is very interesting and overall Chakrabarty set out to achieve what he promised, I am just slightly uncomfortable with the insinuation that there is one particular form of organizing that is acceptable?
November 6, 2009
Terribly fascinating, terribly useful, and written with a clarity that separates Chakrabarty from other Marxists, historians, and Chicagoans.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews