Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Politics is thought, thought is real, people think
- Part 1 Thinking political sequences: From African history to African historical political sequences
- Part 2 Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
- 9 Theoretical introduction: Social representation, modes of rule and political prescriptions
- 10 Marxism and the politics of representation: The ‘agrarian question’ and the limits of political economy – class, nation and the party-state
- 11 Thinking beyond representation, acting beyond representation: Accounting for worker subjectivities in South Africa
- 12 Renaming the state in Africa today
- 13 Domains of state politics and systemic violence: The concept of ‘uncivil society’
- 14 The domain of civil society and its politics
- 15 The domain of traditional society and its politics
- 16 Towards a politics of solidarity: Feminist contributions
- Conclusion: Reclaiming the domain of freedom
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Marxism and the politics of representation: The ‘agrarian question’ and the limits of political economy – class, nation and the party-state
from Part 2 - Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Politics is thought, thought is real, people think
- Part 1 Thinking political sequences: From African history to African historical political sequences
- Part 2 Opening up the thought of politics in Africa today: Exceeding the limits of sociology: Beyond representation
- 9 Theoretical introduction: Social representation, modes of rule and political prescriptions
- 10 Marxism and the politics of representation: The ‘agrarian question’ and the limits of political economy – class, nation and the party-state
- 11 Thinking beyond representation, acting beyond representation: Accounting for worker subjectivities in South Africa
- 12 Renaming the state in Africa today
- 13 Domains of state politics and systemic violence: The concept of ‘uncivil society’
- 14 The domain of civil society and its politics
- 15 The domain of traditional society and its politics
- 16 Towards a politics of solidarity: Feminist contributions
- Conclusion: Reclaiming the domain of freedom
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The most serious problem when it comes to dealing with the poor from above – from government, NGOs, universities, etc. – is the perception that we cannot think for ourselves. This problem has even led some individuals and other sectors of our society to think that it is their own job, a job that they must be paid for, to think, represent, speak and decide for the poor.
– S'bu Zikode, ‘The Power of Organizing the Urban Poor’, 2013[During May 1968] militant experiments … in their will to leap over and circumvent systems of representation that produced or defined images of the worker for the middle class, show an acute awareness of the domain of representation as one of the determining factors of inequality.
– Kristin Ross, May ‘68 and Its Afterlives, 2002In truth, the question of politics boils down to this: how to escape from representation.
– Alain Badiou, Sarkozy, 2012 (my translation)THE ‘POLITICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY’ AND THE ‘AGRARIAN QUESTION’
What has become known as the ‘agrarian question’ was a central concern for Marxism in thinking emancipation in the 20th century, because the relatively small proletariat, which was meant to be the subject of history in overwhelmingly rural countries such as Russia, China, Vietnam or Cuba, of necessity had to convince the masses of the rural poor in the countryside that ‘its’ revolutionary politics were also in the interest of the peasantry. The proletariat was thus seen by theory as ‘leading’ politically (i.e. subjectively) a much broader coalition of social forces than itself. Political activists and militants had therefore to understand the oppression of the peasantry as well as its reactions to such oppression. Other than the ‘national question’, which was directly concerned with the liberation of peoples (including minority nationalities) from colonial oppression, it was the ‘correct resolution’ of the ‘agrarian question’ that held the key to a successful ‘transition to socialism’; in fact, both the national and agrarian questions were often thought simultaneously in the context of what was eventually known as the Third World and its ‘development’. In Africa, that question was to be resolved through ‘rural development’ everywhere – in other words, by state action.
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- Information
- Thinking Freedom in AfricaToward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics, pp. 263 - 308Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2016