The ‘theory of the unity of all classes and races against foreign capital’ in Malaya: Socialism, communalism, and uneven development in the thought of James Puthucheary

Abstract

Based on the writings of James Puthucheary in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this article seeks to highlight Puthucheary's contribution to debates within the Malayan Left on the national question. It will highlight Puthucheary's situating of the Malayan Left within a wider transnational flow of nationalist, anti-imperialist, and socialist thought, as well as his attempt—through his own Marxist-influenced assessment of the Malayan situation—to answer the political problem of the relationship between socialist politics and nationalism in Malaya. In doing so the article will highlight the way in which Puthucheary's own position on questions of education and language policy placed him in opposition to dominant trends within the Malayan Communist Party and the left-wing of the People's Action Party, provided a theorizing of the need for nation-building within Malayan socialism, and contributed towards a socialist politics which placed emphasis upon economic development and cultural nation-building from the perspective of the Malay peasantry. The article finally goes on to explore Puthucheary's subsequent disengagement from politics in the early 1960s and the growing limitations of a socialist politics of nation-building in Malaya, which led Puthucheary and others on the Left to contribute towards a programme of nation-building within existing institutions and parties in the 1960s and 1970s.