On Capital, Not-Capital, and Development

The late Kalyan Sanyal's masterwork, Rethinking Capitalist Development, offers a profound meditation on the essence of contemporary capitalism in India. This review essay summarises the book's most novel qualities and then subjects Sanyal's arguments to a formal critique. It concludes that Rethinking Capitalist Development offers a provocative theory of postcolonial capitalism, one that advances the debate by forcing us to sharpen our conception of what Sanyal calls the "capital - not-capital" complex, a term he uses to characterise the entire complex of capitalist and non-capitalist production activities which coexist in contemporary political economy. While Sanyal's text remains generative to think with, its limitations - particularly concerning its engagements with Marx's theory of capitalism - merit critical scrutiny.