Ranabir Samaddar

The Actual Lenin is a fresh and accessible reinterpretation of Lenin by placing his ideas alongside the political realities of the Global South. Ranabir Samaddar, a leading intellectual of the Global South, demonstrates how Lenin broke with conventional ways of thinking about social transformation, and why that break still helps us understand today’s struggles with inequality, conflict, and collective power. Instead of treating Lenin as a fixed ideological figure, Samaddar presents him as a thinker responding to real moments of upheaval, constantly adjusting theory and practice to the demands of his time. Drawing on clear readings of What Is to Be Done?, The State and Revolution, and key episodes in Southern political history, the book explores how Lenin understood crisis, organisation, and political timing. It demonstrates how his method (thinking and acting within conjuncture) offers practical tools for analysing contemporary conflicts across the South. By connecting long-standing debates in Marxism with current Global South scholarship, Samaddar provides an innovative alternative to traditional Lenin studies and expands a field still dominated by Eurocentric perspectives. He also traces Lenin’s global legacy, showing why his analyses of imperialism and uneven development remain vital for understanding sovereignty, democracy, and development today. Written for students and researchers across political theory, international relations, sociology, and postcolonial studies, The Actual Lenin offers an accessible, authoritative guide for anyone seeking to understand crisis, imperialism, and the possibilities of radical politics in the twenty-first century.

The Actual Lenin is a fresh and accessible reinterpretation of Lenin by placing his ideas alongside the political realities of the Global South. Ranabir Samaddar, a leading intellectual of the Global South, demonstrates how Lenin broke with conventional ways of thinking about social transformation, and why that break still helps us understand today’s struggles with inequality, conflict, and collective power. Instead of treating Lenin as a fixed ideological figure, Samaddar presents him as a thinker responding to real moments of upheaval, constantly adjusting theory and practice to the demands of his time. Drawing on clear readings of What Is to Be Done?, The State and Revolution, and key episodes in Southern political history, the book explores how Lenin understood crisis, organisation, and political timing. It demonstrates how his method (thinking and acting within conjuncture) offers practical tools for analysing contemporary conflicts across the South. By connecting long-standing debates in Marxism with current Global South scholarship, Samaddar provides an innovative alternative to traditional Lenin studies and expands a field still dominated by Eurocentric perspectives. He also traces Lenin’s global legacy, showing why his analyses of imperialism and uneven development remain vital for understanding sovereignty, democracy, and development today. Written for students and researchers across political theory, international relations, sociology, and postcolonial studies, The Actual Lenin offers an accessible, authoritative guide for anyone seeking to understand crisis, imperialism, and the possibilities of radical politics in the twenty-first century.

The current social turmoil enveloping the world has produced knee jerk reactions and a plethora of policy declarations. At the same time, the scenario is marked with response of those with low socioeconomic status to the worldwide chaos and precarious living conditions. In this context, how do we make sense of what is being described variously as a breakdown of democracy, its exhaustion, and the new challenges in the form of an alternative politics of life or a phenomenon that we may term as “biopolitics from below”? The theme of the book is crisis, conjuncture, and rupture. It relates to the question of correlation of social and political forces in the emergence of certain events, presents certain events as illustrations, and takes a historiographical-analytical route to argue why certain things happen in the way they happen. Usually, crisis is the explanatory factor. This book seeks to go deeper and find out why some crises and not all produce unexpected outcomes. Or, as this book puts it differently, the essential gradient of a crisis is the correlation of forces at a particular time - and thus the question of conjuncture. The book seeks to open up to new adventures in thought, imagining new openings, and creating exits from the situation we find ourselves in.

The Marginal Nation analyses the realities of transborder migration in the South Asia region going beyond the domains of economics and demography. It provides an in-depth look into the historical, cultural and geographic dimensions of migration across the India–Bangladesh border that challenges fixed definitions of borders, nations and identities.Drawing from extensive fieldwork, the author encapsulates the lives and aspirations of migrants exploring the social affinities and historical ties that bind people across territories and ‘marginalises’ national identity. The book chronicles the lived experiences of migrants and their everyday lives, conflicts and contradictions. It pits these narratives against ‘national’ concerns over security, statehood, and demarcated borders interrogating their immutability in the South Asian context. This revised edition reflects upon the significance and relevance of the book to migration and refugee studies in South Asia and beyond twenty-five years after it was first published.A classic, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of political science, sociology, history, human rights studies, refugee studies, demography and South Asian studies.

The Marginal Nation analyses the realities of transborder migration in the South Asia region going beyond the domains of economics and demography. It provides an in-depth look into the historical, cultural and geographic dimensions of migration across the India–Bangladesh border that challenges fixed definitions of borders, nations and identities.Drawing from extensive fieldwork, the author encapsulates the lives and aspirations of migrants exploring the social affinities and historical ties that bind people across territories and ‘marginalises’ national identity. The book chronicles the lived experiences of migrants and their everyday lives, conflicts and contradictions. It pits these narratives against ‘national’ concerns over security, statehood, and demarcated borders interrogating their immutability in the South Asian context. This revised edition reflects upon the significance and relevance of the book to migration and refugee studies in South Asia and beyond twenty-five years after it was first published.A classic, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of political science, sociology, history, human rights studies, refugee studies, demography and South Asian studies.

This book explores the idea that alternatives to our present condition are available in the present, such that a search for alternatives must involve rigorous study of some of its central texts, events, and thinkers. Through engagement with selected modern thinkers, texts, and events, it imagines a different future from the position of the current postcolonial moment, indicating the possibilities that emerge from the present and which shape contemporary radical thinking. An invitation to imagine a possible future marked with alternative possibilities of conducting struggles, and living through contentions and social restructuring, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social and political theory, political philosophy, colonialism and postcolonialism, and historical materialism.

This book explores the idea that alternatives to our present condition are available in the present, such that a search for alternatives must involve rigorous study of some of its central texts, events, and thinkers. Through engagement with selected modern thinkers, texts, and events, it imagines a different future from the position of the current postcolonial moment, indicating the possibilities that emerge from the present and which shape contemporary radical thinking. An invitation to imagine a possible future marked with alternative possibilities of conducting struggles, and living through contentions and social restructuring, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social and political theory, political philosophy, colonialism and postcolonialism, and historical materialism.

This book critically examines the question of migration that appears at the intersection of global neo-liberal transformation, postcolonial politics, and economy. It analyses the specific ways in which colonial relations are produced and reproduced in global migratory flows and their consequences for labour, human rights, and social justice. The postcolonial age of migration not only indicates a geopolitical and geo-economic division of the globe between countries of the North and those of the South marked by massive and mixed population flows from the latter to the former, but also the production of these relations within and among the countries of the North. The book discusses issues such as transborder flows among countries of the South; migratory movements of the internally displaced; growing statelessness leading to forced migration; border violence; refugees of partitions; customary and local practices of care and protection; population policies and migration management (both emigration and immigration); the protracted nature of displacement; labour flows and immigrant labour; and the relationships between globalisation, nationalism, citizenship, and migration in postcolonial regions. It also traces colonial and postcolonial histories of migration and justice to bear on the present understanding of local experiences of migration as well as global social transformations while highlighting the limits of the fundamental tenets of humanitarianism (protection, assistance, security, responsibility), which impact the political and economic rights of vast sections of moving populations.Topical and an important intervention in contemporary global migration and refugee studies, the book offers new sources, interpretations, and analyses in understanding postcolonial migration. It will be useful to scholars and researchers of migration studies, refugee studies, border studies, political studies, political sociology, international relations, human rights and law, human geography, international politics, and political economy. It will also interest policymakers, legal practitioners, nongovernmental organisations, and activists.

This book critically examines the question of migration that appears at the intersection of global neo-liberal transformation, postcolonial politics, and economy. It analyses the specific ways in which colonial relations are produced and reproduced in global migratory flows and their consequences for labour, human rights, and social justice. The postcolonial age of migration not only indicates a geopolitical and geo-economic division of the globe between countries of the North and those of the South marked by massive and mixed population flows from the latter to the former, but also the production of these relations within and among the countries of the North. The book discusses issues such as transborder flows among countries of the South; migratory movements of the internally displaced; growing statelessness leading to forced migration; border violence; refugees of partitions; customary and local practices of care and protection; population policies and migration management (both emigration and immigration); the protracted nature of displacement; labour flows and immigrant labour; and the relationships between globalisation, nationalism, citizenship, and migration in postcolonial regions. It also traces colonial and postcolonial histories of migration and justice to bear on the present understanding of local experiences of migration as well as global social transformations while highlighting the limits of the fundamental tenets of humanitarianism (protection, assistance, security, responsibility), which impact the political and economic rights of vast sections of moving populations.Topical and an important intervention in contemporary global migration and refugee studies, the book offers new sources, interpretations, and analyses in understanding postcolonial migration. It will be useful to scholars and researchers of migration studies, refugee studies, border studies, political studies, political sociology, international relations, human rights and law, human geography, international politics, and political economy. It will also interest policymakers, legal practitioners, nongovernmental organisations, and activists.

Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India and its companion volume Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo

Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India and its companion volume Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo

This book seeks to explicitly engage Marxist and post-colonial theory to place Marxism in the context of the post-colonial age. Those who study Marx, particularly in the West, often lack an understanding of post-colonial realities; conversely, however, those who fashion post-colonial theory often have an inadequate understanding of Marx. Many think that Marx is not relevant to critique postcolonial realities and the legacy of Marx seldom reaches the post-colonial countries directly. This work will read Marx in the contemporary post-colonial condition and elaborate the current dynamics of post-colonial capitalism. It does this by analysing contemporary post-colonial history and politics in the framework of inter-relations between the three categories of class, people, and postcolonial transformation. Examining the structure of power in postcolonial countries and revisiting the revolutionary theory of dual power in that context, it appreciates and explains the transformative potentialities of Marx in relation to post-colonial condition.

This important and topical volume is composed around the debt and migration crisis in Europe in 2015 (known as the Greece crisis), and written almost concurrently as the two crises developed in quick succession. The central argument here is that Europe’s present crisis suggests a post-colonial bind, or to put in stronger terms, a post-colonial destiny of Europe. The European situation bears remarkable similarity with the post-colonial condition elsewhere in the world and suggests a strong bond between Europe’s present situation and the post-colonial bind in which much of the world finds itself. The purpose of this volume is to examine in the light of 21st century capitalism notions such as debt, crisis, rupture, dialogue, mobilization, neo-liberalism, war and migration, and the old, never to be settled, question of ideology. The volume ends with reflections on Europe’s migration crisis, and reinforces the point that a critical post-colonial sense of history, accumulation, globalization, and the resilience of the nation form will help us reflect on the present European crisis, and draw appropriate lessons.

This book seeks to explicitly engage Marxist and post-colonial theory to place Marxism in the context of the post-colonial age. Those who study Marx, particularly in the West, often lack an understanding of post-colonial realities; conversely, however, those who fashion post-colonial theory often have an inadequate understanding of Marx. Many think that Marx is not relevant to critique postcolonial realities and the legacy of Marx seldom reaches the post-colonial countries directly. This work will read Marx in the contemporary post-colonial condition and elaborate the current dynamics of post-colonial capitalism. It does this by analysing contemporary post-colonial history and politics in the framework of inter-relations between the three categories of class, people, and postcolonial transformation. Examining the structure of power in postcolonial countries and revisiting the revolutionary theory of dual power in that context, it appreciates and explains the transformative potentialities of Marx in relation to post-colonial condition.

Offering a detailed analysis of post-colonial South Asia, The Politics of Dialogue discusses the creation and impact of borders and the pervasive tension between the new nations. Neither all-out war nor complete peace, this fragile condition makes political leaders and strategists feel claustrophobic - a war produces an end result but peace allows the rulers to carry out their policies for governing along their preferred path of development. The book shows how cartographic, communal and political lines are not only dividing countries, but that they are being replicated within countries, creating new visible and invisible internal frontiers. It argues that, in a situation where geopolitics constrains democracy, the political class becomes incapable of coping with the tension between the inside/outside, eg democracy appears as an internal problem and geopolitics appears as a problem related to the 'outside'.

This important and topical volume is composed around the debt and migration crisis in Europe in 2015 (known as the Greece crisis), and written almost concurrently as the two crises developed in quick succession. The central argument here is that Europe’s present crisis suggests a post-colonial bind, or to put in stronger terms, a post-colonial destiny of Europe. The European situation bears remarkable similarity with the post-colonial condition elsewhere in the world and suggests a strong bond between Europe’s present situation and the post-colonial bind in which much of the world finds itself. The purpose of this volume is to examine in the light of 21st century capitalism notions such as debt, crisis, rupture, dialogue, mobilization, neo-liberalism, war and migration, and the old, never to be settled, question of ideology. The volume ends with reflections on Europe’s migration crisis, and reinforces the point that a critical post-colonial sense of history, accumulation, globalization, and the resilience of the nation form will help us reflect on the present European crisis, and draw appropriate lessons.

Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India and its companion volume Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo-liberal age, should be studied as the central question within the history of post-colonial democracy. The volumes offer hitherto unexplored analyses of governance — political and ideological aspects along with technological characteristics — in a historical framework. This volume discusses: ideas and issues at the core of governance in post-colonial India constitution, state-making and government formation the asymmetrical nature of the anti-colonial foundations of governanceIn breaking new ground in the study of what constitutes the political subject, these volumes will be indispensable to scholars, researchers and students of politics, public administration, development studies, South Asian studies and modern India.

Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India and its companion volume Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo-liberal age, should be studied as the central question within the history of post-colonial democracy. The volumes offer hitherto unexplored analyses of governance — political and ideological aspects along with technological characteristics — in a historical framework. This volume discusses: a contemporary history of democracy — ways of governing, resistance and their engagement political economy, development and neo-liberal governance governance as a strategy of accommodating claims and facilitating accumulation In breaking new ground in the study of what constitutes the political subject, these volumes will be indispensable to scholars, researchers and students of politics, public administration, development studies, South Asian studies and modern India.