PRAGOTI

 Thanks for the ruthless criticism, which is the project of young Marx. However, such criticisms could have been polite and devoid of over-subjective accusations. I have only acknowledged those pieces which are available in the public domain, particularly in the print and electronic media. In any case, it is not an academic paper and neither pragoti is a site for writing academic papers with long bibliography as I have been told by some. So, I avoided discussing Christian theology, which has many things to say about 'greed', Kojin Karatani's proposal to learn from Gandhi's anti-consumerist boycott strategies, Ernesto Laclau's comments on the gap between the representative and represented, the literature of psychoanalysis and philosophy on consciousness, the literature on consumerism, and the literature on Indian politics that shows how the middle class turns up less to the electoral booths. Since, pragoti has an audience beyond the academic circles, I cannot possibly discuss those academic arguments within an article of less than 1000 words. You are right that there is no original argument but I have just tried to collate several things together to call 'a spade a spade' without any 'hollow phrase-mongering and radical pretensions' that you think. As an ordinary citizen of India, born so late, there are less things to say 'original' because great philosophers, academics, writers, political leaders, commentators etc. have said so many things. Rather, as a commoner with everyday interactions with what common people thinks about a particular issue, we can only repeat those things that have been already written and said in a particular context to better understand an issue. In that case, 'repetition' is a radical task as Marx would argue in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bornaparte" (1852). Perhaps, common people like us, who are exploited and oppressed by Neoliberalism and its eveyday forms of economic corruption needs to 'repeat' the historic task of ruthlessly resisting neoliberal capitalism for a people's democratic revolution in the long run.
regards,
Maidul Islam