ABSTRACT
Karl Korsch’s Marx and Philosophy inquired into the cognitive process whereby revolutionary consciousness was produced. Rethinking the relationship between consciousness and objective reality was crucial to his work. Korsch argued that ideas do not exist in dualism with reality. The Chinese and Indians could return to their own traditions, to Taoism, Buddhism and Sanskrit philosophies, and find the needed sparks for revolutionary conversion of consciousness. These traditions too maintained that ‘everything was unfinished, but developing, and going to be changed’ and that ‘things always develop out of their opposite’. The relationship between M. N. Roy, who was rooted from the start in the German fringe, and Indian communists linked with the Moscow centre, was chiasmatic. Roy’s group began with radical ‘anti-bourgeois’ stance and moved towards collaborationist ‘united front’ politics during the 1920s, while Indians more closely associated with Soviet politics, the group that would be institutionalised as Indian Communist Party, moved from the collaborationist stance to more entrenched oppositional approach.
