Today's thread. What on earth is the Kosambi Circle which I run?
So to give you all a bit of background, India in 2019 end had a gigantic protest against a potential genocidal process called the NRC. These protests more or less failed and revealed a lot of issues with Indian left orgs, in particular a propensity to capitulate to ethno-nationalism and ideological moribundness
I at that time had decided to spend some time focusing on rereading and refining socialist theory. In 2020 January
1/n
... I over at the birdsite asked if someone is willing to read (and if the future permits, refine and write on) socialist theory with me. I expected a few people to turn up at least, but 40 did. Over two years this thing, the Kosambi Circle, developed
It is a multi-tendency (as in all sorts of socialisms are examined and read), independent (it is not a front org for a socialist party), reading circle running since Jan 2020. It has around a thousand members currently. These members
2/n
not only belong to all kinds of tendencies (anarchists, social democrats, marxist leninists, trots, council communists, orthodox, and yes liberals) willing to read and examine each other texts but are also geographically distributed, though most are Indians
Thanks to the pandemic the circle had only started building regional chapters before the lockdown struck, and it was forced to move to zoom. The transfer back to physical space is in progress. As for organisation, the circle has a
3/n
democratic and a mix of centralism and decentralism on various issues. It is not an activist or agitational org, its focus is analysis and pedagogy, internally and externally. It usually spends two months to read on a topic and has many internal focus groups (caucuses) to read on specific aspects continuously like caste, gender, science, history, tendencies, philosophy, even food etc
The current two monthly theme is Science, Technology, and Labour. If interested in the current and past
4/n
readings, this link
https://www.kosambicircle.com/readings
You might notice something curious about our readings
The circle has its own magazine, though only two issues are out, check that out here
https://www.kosambicircle.com/magazine
The circle is named on Dr. D D Kosambi, one of the best Marxist theorists India had, who is also the father of Indian historiography and social sciences, also a towering physicist and mathematician of the 50s era.
Check out our website to know more about us and if you wish to join
n/n
Oh fine, because people in my mentions are yelling at me to use hashtags (something I find rather cringe), here goes.
#Marx #Theory #socialism #communism #anarchism #rosaluxemburg #kosambi
Anupam Guha