Articles by Randhir Singh

Notes in Defence of a Commitment Randhir Singh It is necessary to make a point which is often obscured in the current despair or euphoria over the 'crisis of socialism' we are witnessing. Though diversely damaging in its consequences the crisis takes nothing away from the historic significance of the world's first socialist revolution or from the achievements of 'historical communism' as it is being described in certain epitaph-like pronouncements these days. Without historical communism the world would have been a far more inhuman and hopeless place.

The Tradition of Marxism At a time when anything and everything claims the fashionable mantle of Marxism, and so many Marxists are busy revising it out of existence, a certain orthodoxy a commitment to 'Marxism of Karl Marx' is not only in order, it is necessary if one would take the issues of socialist theory and practice seriously We do not set ourselves up against the world in doctrinaire fashion with a new principle: Here is the truth! Here you must kneel! We develop new principles for the world out of the principles of the existing world. .. It is the great advantage of the new movement that we do not seek to anticipate the new world dogmatically, but rather to discover it in the criticism of the old. . . It is not out task to build up the future in advance and to settle all problems for alt time; our task is ruthless criticism of everything that exists, ruthless in the sense that the criticism will not shrink either from its own conclusions or from conflict with the powers that be. , .

A Fragmentary Note in the Marxist Mode Randhir Singh Most contemporary thinking, writing or theorising on communalism is seriously flawed by an ideological error on the one hand and a methodological limitation on the other. The ideological error which has virtually pre-empted the entire field of thought or study on communalism in this country lies in understanding communalism from the standpoint of nationalism. And the methodological limitation lies in studying contemporary communalism in an essentially empiricist and often a historical manner