Prabhat Patnaik’s Blog

The tropical region can grow a variety of crops which either cannot be grown at all, or for much of the year, in the cold temperate regions of the world where metropolitan capitalism is located. These include beverages, fibres, vegetables and fruit, and a variety of cereals and oil-crops. The tropical land mass however is fixed in size and already used up; increases in land productivity which could raise the effective supply of this land-mass requires State investment (as Marx had observed with great acuity), which the “fiscal rectitude” demanded by metropolitan capitalism whether under the Gold Standard (when budgets…

There is a massive problem of external debt building up for the third world, of which the recent Argentine debt crisis was only one manifestation. At the root of the problem is the collapse of primary commodity prices in the world market which began in April 2011. In March and April 2020 this fall of course has been precipitous, but even if we leave aside these two months which fall within the pandemic period we find that between April 2011 and December 2019 there has been a 38 per cent fall in the All Commodity Price Index prepared by the…

The issue has nothing to do with one’s being Left, Right or Centre. In fact looking at it in these terms is itself a distraction; it is a simple matter of legality. Whenever the State takes away anyone’s property, then, by the laws of our land, that person is entitled to compensation. Likewise whenever State action deprives anyone of an income that he or she was otherwise earning, then, by the same logic, that person should be legally entitled to compensation from the State. When Narendra Modi announced a nation-wide lockdown on March 24 because of the coronavirus crisis, that…

The Financial Times of London is one of the most “respectable” bourgeois newspapers in the world. Even this newspaper has now come to recognise something which the Left has been saying for quite some time. In an editorial on April 3, 2020, it wrote: “Radical reforms in reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investment rather than as liabilities and look for ways to make the labour market less insecure. Redistribution…

The inhumanity of the Modi government towards the people is matched only by its mendacity. And in both respects the Modi government is far ahead of most other governments in the world. Which other government would have passed off a slew of concessions to foreign and domestic monopolists as a “rescue package” for the people of the country? Which other government would have totted up loan plans for banks, and non-bank financial companies, as succour to the crisis-hit poor? Which other government would have projected abject prostration before globalised finance (and its credit-rating agencies) as a move towards self-reliance? Let…

Even as millions of migrant workers are wearily trudging back to their villages with no money, no food and no shelter, or are locked up en route in shoddy quarantine camps, a war has been unleashed on the rights of workers under the cover of the lockdown. The BJP, true to form, is the political formation leading this class war through its state governments. The Uttar Pradesh government has through an ordinance suspended all labour laws (except just four) for a period of three years. The Madhya Pradesh government has made labour laws inapplicable to new units for a period…

Despite repeated demands by the states the Centre still has not released what is their legitimate due, namely the compensation for their revenue loss owing to the introduction of GST; this has not been paid since August. Meanwhile the Covid-19 pandemic, while adding to the responsibilities of the state governments, has dried up their revenues owing to the lockdown. The main sources of revenue now left to them, leaving aside GST, are taxes on petro-products and alcohol, and stamp duty. Since petro-product sales have plummeted during the lockdown, they can hardly hope to get anything from this source; likewise with…

In an editorial on April 3, The Financial Times of London wrote: “Radical reforms in reversing the prevailing the policy direction of the last four decades will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investment rather than as liabilities and look for ways to make the labour market less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda… Policies until recently considered eccentric such as basic income and wealth taxes will have to be in the mix.” One generally associates such views with…

The current globalization was always legitimized by the argument that capital today, unlike in colonial times, had become blind to racial and other such distinctions across countries in deciding upon its location; it would now flow wherever opportunities for profitable investment existed. Given the lower wages in the third world and hence greater profitability of locating plants there rather than in the metropolis, this would now ensure not a cumulative divergence between the metropolitan and third world countries as had happened earlier, but, on the contrary, an elimination of this divergence. The third world countries were asked to allow foreign…