Prabhat Patnaik’s Blog

Nobody can claim that the rate of growth of agricultural production, especially of foodgrain production, has been higher in the neoliberal period than during the years of dirigiste development that preceded it; it may have been somewhat lower but let us agree that it is certainly no higher. On the other hand the rate of growth of Gross Domestic Product is estimated to be significantly higher; several economists have argued that this growth rate is exaggerated, but again let us agree that taking the period as a whole it has been noticeably higher. But during the dirigiste period there was…

Donald Trump’s foreign policy has left commentators in a real tizzy. His markedly differing positions with regard to Ukraine and Gaza, in the first case apparently pursuing peace, and in the second asking for ethnic cleansing of an entire population, have left them wondering whether his influence on world affairs is a “positive” one or not. The reason for such bemusement however lies not in anything that Trump has done, but in not cognizing the phenomenon of imperialism. There can be little doubt that western imperialism led by the US had pushed itself into a corner, where the choice was…

Under late capitalism, there is an assault on the working people that is reminiscent of early capitalism and this assault is worldwide, not just in the third world but in the advanced capitalist countries as well. This assault is at three levels, economic, political and ideological. The assault at the economic level has been much talked about, and is the outcome of both higher inflation and greatly enhanced unemployment that currently afflict the capitalist world. The higher inflation was started by a spontaneous increase in profit-margins administered by big capital in the United States in particular, which then spread all…

Georg Lukacs, the renowned Marxist philosopher had once remarked that “even the worst socialism was better than the best capitalism”. That remark made in 1969 and repeated in 1971, no doubt on the basis of Lukacs’ perception of actually existing socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with which he was familiar, had been treated sceptically even in Western Left circles at the time. But the entire recent episode of deportees from the United States, including women and children, being brought back to India and other third world countries, in shackles and handcuffs in military aircrafts, brings back that…

No budget in post-independence India had been as openly cynical about the lives of the vast masses of the working people as the one presented on February 1, 2025. All pundits, from the finance minister downwards, agree that the strategy of the budget is to stimulate the economy by boosting middle class consumption through tax-cuts. Such a strategy however would make perfect sense only if the consumption increase of the middle class on account of the tax-cuts was not going to be offset through expenditure cuts elsewhere in the economy, for in such a case the rise in middle class…

Well-known Marxist scholar, the late Amalendu Guha, had argued persuasively that in modern India there co-existed in the minds of the people a dual national consciousness: a local, regional-linguistic nationality consciousness, of being a Bengali, or a Tamil, or a Gujarati or an Odiya; and also simultaneously an overarching pan-Indian consciousness. This duality, he had argued, had to be cognized and accepted; an over-emphasis on either one to the exclusion of the other would produce a dangerous reaction. In particular, excessive centralisation that emphasizes only the pan-Indian consciousness, will produce a reaction against itself, in terms of local separatism or…

A Chorus of “establishment” voices, from consultancy firms to the financial press, has been demanding a boost to domestic consumption as a means of reviving the flagging growth rate of the Indian economy. The latest to join this chorus is the Reserve Bank of India which in its latest Bulletin has asked for a boost to consumption to “rekindle the animal spirits” of the “entrepreneurs” in the economy. Two points are to be noted about the concern underlying this chorus: first, if India’s growth rate, originally predicted to be 7 per cent in 2024-25 is now expected to be only…

The imperialist countries led by the US have been imposing unilateral sanctions that do not have any backing from the United Nations against countries that dare to defy their diktat. According to one estimate almost one third of the countries of the world have been subject to such sanctions at one time or another. Such sanctions include the freezing of those assets of the sanctioned countries that are held in western financial institutions, as has been the case with Iran, Cuba, and North Korea among others earlier, and with Russia most recently. Even though such freezing of assets is blatantly…

Liberal opinion is invariably opposed to “nationalism”. It treats “nationalism” as a homogeneous term that necessarily entails a non-friendly, non-accommodative and rivalrous attitude towards other countries. This view however is completely erroneous; anti-colonial third world nationalism is entirely different from the nationalism that developed in Europe in the seventeenth century following the Westphalian Peace Treaties. This difference appears in the most unmistakeable form in the difference between the nationalism of a Hitler, which is descended from European nationalism, and that of a Ho Chi Minh, which exemplifies anti-colonial nationalism. There are at least three basic differences between European nationalism as…

The Indian newspapers have been full of stories about the fall of the rupee vis-à-vis the US dollar in the last few days. Just over a month ago, on November 27, the value of the dollar was Rs 84.559; by December 29, it had risen to Rs 85.5. And this fall of the rupee has occurred despite a running down of foreign exchange reserves by the Reserve Bank of India to stabilise the rupee: the reserves which had amounted to $657.89 billion on November 22, had come down to $644.39 by December 20, and yet the fall of the rupee…