Vivek Chibber introduces this issue of Jacobin by saying the following: "the ties between the Left and laboring people have been largely severed, with the Left mainly housed within the professional classes and the working class both atomized and set politically adrift from the socialist tradition." But he gives hope to "Labor's Long March" forwards.

Labor's Long March

Edward Said's famous book "Orientalism" posited that there were two critical relationships between Western imperialism and its justifying discourse. The first is that the discourse was a "rationalization" for colonial rule, meaning that once rule was established, its cultural acceptance throughout society was rationalized to maintain power. The second argument is that the "cultural conditions" of the West were a direct cause of colonialism. In this article, Chibber looks to refute the second argument, claiming that the theory of political economy, not that of culturalism, is the correct one to explain Western colonialism.

The Commons

Vivek Chibber

Reviewed work