A Marxist Mosaic: Selected Writings 1968-2022

by Jairus Banaji

Overview

This new volume from esteemed Marxist historian Jairus Banaji collects his reflections on historical materialism from over fifty years of activism and academic research.

Historical materialism as Marx understood it was always an integrated conception or field of research, not one divided into separate disciplines. The essays gathered in this volume are a remarkable example of how this works across a wide range of subjects as diverse as agrarian history, capitalism, Hegel’s influence on Marx, and class struggles in India. As such, they embody Banaji’s lifelong engagement with Marxist theory. The collection includes his recent papers on merchant capitalism, as well as a biographical sketch contextualizing Banaji’s work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798888905357
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	09/02/2025
Series:	Historical Materialism
Pages:	857
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Jairus Banaji, DPhil (Oxon), is with the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University Of London. His earlier books include Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity (2007), Theory as History (2011), and A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism (2020).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Tables

1 Introduction: A Left-Wing Life



2 Anti-Syme

3 Sartre and the Crisis of Marxism

4 The Crisis of British Anthropology

5 Letter to Mandel

6 Backward Capitalism, Primitive Accumulation and Modes of Production



7 A Philosophy of Revolutionary Practice: The First Two Theses on Feuerbach

8 Dialectic and History: Work, Alienation, Classes and the State in Sartre’s Critique

9 From the Commodity to Capital: Hegel’s Dialectic in Marx’s Capital

10 Gunder Frank in Retreat?



11 The Peasantry in the Feudal Mode of Production: Towards an Economic Model

12 Chayanov, Kautsky, Lenin: Considerations towards a Synthesis

13 Modernising the Historiography of Rural Labour



14 The Social Background of Some African Martyrs

15 Giuseppe Salvioli’s Capitalism in the Ancient World (with Paolo Tedesco)

16 Islam and Capitalism

17 The Subversive Universe of Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt



18 Reconstructing Historical Materialism: Some Key Issues

19 Seasons of Self-Delusion: Opium, Capitalism and the Financial Markets (Deutscher Lecture)

20 State and Capital in the Era of Primitive Accumulation



21 Marxism and Merchant Capitalism

22 Merchant Capitalism, Peasant Households and Industrial Accumulation: Integration of a Model

23 Andrew Liu’s Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India

24 The Labyrinth of Capital: Reading the History of Capitalism through Jute and Rubber



25 The Political Odyssey of Arthur Rosenberg, Germany’s Forgotten Marxist

26 Psychoanalysis under Fascism: Andreas Peglau’s Study of Reich

27 Nationalism Is the Bedrock upon Which All Fascist Movements Have Built Themselves

28 Weimar Themes: Hilferding, Sohn-Rethel, and Hamilton



29 The Comintern and Indian Nationalism



30 The Metamorphoses of Agrarian Capitalism

31 Illusions about the Peasantry: Karl Kautsky and the Agrarian Question

32 The Ironies of Indian Maoism

33 A Short History of the Employees’ Unions in Bombay, 1947–1991 (with Rohini Hensman)

34 Multinationals and the Evolution of Industrial Conflict: Bombay 1956–1984 (with Rohini Hensman)
 with Rohini Hensman

References
Index