Prabhat Patnaik’s Blog

Simple analogies can be deceptive, even dangerous. An example is the analogy often drawn between the household and the state. Just as a household cannot “live beyond its means” for ever, and sooner or later its creditors not only stop giving loans but take away the assets of the household for defaulting on loan repayment, likewise, the state cannot “live beyond its means” for ever and go on borrowing ad infinitum; sooner or later its creditors stop giving loans and even attach its assets. This is a very common argument. One has heard it innumerable times, from spokesmen of Bretton…

Many would remember that the Soviet Union and other Eastern European socialist countries used to be characterized by long queues of consumers for several commodities. This was a source of much derision in the West and was attributed to the inefficiency of the socialist system of production, compared to capitalism where one just had to walk into a supermarket and buy whatever one wanted to. As a matter of fact, far from being a symptom of inefficiency, the long consumer queues were a reflection of the highly egalitarian nature of the socialist societies; likewise, the free access to goods under…

The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is a blot on the nation. In no nation reputed to be civilized is there a law that allows the State to pick up literally anybody and keep the person in jail for years, without trial and without bail; and if at the end of the trial, whenever it occurs, the person is found innocent, then there is no question of the State being obliged to pay any compensation for the lost years of the person’s life. But this is exactly what the UAPA does. Even the British colonial government did not arrogate to itself…

It is thirty years since India adopted neo-liberal policies in 1991, though some would date their introduction even earlier to 1985. Newspapers are full of assessments of the impact of these policies on the economy, and liberalizers from Manmohan Singh downwards, have suddenly become visible, lauding their handiwork, while lamenting at best that the benefits of liberalization have been unevenly distributed. Manmohan Singh has recently said that “a healthy and dignified life for every Indian must be prioritised”; one wonders what prevented him from doing so when he was at the helm of affairs. Such an assessment, that liberalization greatly…

On July 19, 1969, 14 major banks were nationalised in the country. Today, after 52 years there is some talk again of privatising the nationalised banks, which naturally raises the question: why were banks nationalised at all? The answer to this question is usually given in terms of the specific advantages of bank nationalisation; this is correct and appropriate, but what needs also to be kept in mind is the overall perspective underlying bank nationalisation. This is important because the issue of privatisation of banks today cannot be discussed without reference to this perspective. Bank nationalisation was neither a socialist…

There has of late been an upsurge of extreme right-wing, fascist, semi-fascist or neo-fascist parties all over the world in a manner reminiscent of the 1930s. Fascist governments invariably serve the interests of monopoly capital in general, and of the newer, less “liberal” and more reactionary section of it in particular, which is why Georgi Dimitrov, president of the Communist International, had, at its Seventh Congress, characterised a fascist State as the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary section of finance capital”; but fascist movements of this earlier era had begun as movements against big business. Having acquired a…

John Maynard Keynes was by far the most insightful bourgeois economist of the twentieth century. He could not afford to be a mere apologist of the system, since he was writing in the midst of the Great Depression and in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. To pretend at such a time that everything was fine with the capitalist system would have been the biggest disservice he could have rendered to that system which he so dearly loved. So, the best hope for saving the system for him was to be honest about its flaws and to try and patch…

In terms of economic policy, the Modi government must be perhaps the most conservative in the world. During the entire period of the pandemic when millions of people lost their incomes and livelihood support, most governments around the world provided universal cash transfers to the people, but not the Modi government. True, many other third world countries too did not provide such universal cash transfers, but their hands were tied; they had contracted heavy external debt and were enjoined to austerity by agencies like the IMF that helped them roll over their debt. But India was under no such external…

The G-7 meeting that has just concluded has promised to donate one billion doses of anti-Covid vaccine to the rest of the world, consisting primarily of the so-called “developing” countries. The US has promised 500 million doses, Britain 100 million doses; the other G-7 countries, Italy, Japan, France, Germany and Canada are supposed to make up the rest. “One billion doses” sounds a lot, but it is extraordinarily paltry in relation to both the rest of the world’s requirements and even with respect to the enormous stockpiles of vaccines that advanced capitalist countries have with them, over and above what…

A spade must be called a spade. The biggest ally of the coronavirus today as it decimates mankind is the institution of capitalist property rights. The Economist estimates that the actual death-toll across the world from the virus so far is not three million as officially claimed but 10 million; and the virus is far from finished. The only way that its march can be checked is through universal vaccination of the entire population of the world. Everybody, including even the IMF, agrees on this; but if universal vaccination is to become a reality before the virus has killed millions…