Prabhat Patnaik’s Blog

The outlook behind the Bretton Woods system, along with which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were born, was to facilitate State intervention in the economy to overcome the limitations of unrestricted capitalism. Both the chief architects of the system, John Maynard Keynes of Britain and Harry Dexter White of the United States, believed in the necessity of State intervention. Keynes had written a classic book advocating it, and White represented an administration, that of F.D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal had been path-breaking. The Bretton Woods system, therefore, permitted countries to impose strict capital controls so that…

One of the most intriguing questions at present is why Europe’s political leadership has become complicit in what appear to be US efforts at undermining European economies. The well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, having already provided evidence that the United States was responsible for the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, has now revealed that this blowing up was not even linked to the war in Ukraine; it was a deliberate move on the part of the Biden administration to ensure that Europe remained dependent on US gas despite its being far more expensive, rather than become…

The Modi government, ever solicitous of corporate interests, has launched a plan whereby real estate developers and other corporates will be allowed to destroy large swathes of India’s forest cover for starting projects that rake in profits. It is amending the Forest Conservation Act to remove those forest patches that are not deemed as such by the government from protection under the Act. It may be recalled that in 1996, the Supreme Court had given an order according to which every patch of forest, no matter who owned it, had to be protected, irrespective of whether the government’s records recognised…

The current upsurge in prices in India is led by food prices. In July 2023 while retail inflation was 7.44 per cent (over July of the previous year), food price inflation, which covers all food items including foodgrains, vegetables, milk products and such like, was 11.5 per cent. Food price inflation came down a little in August to around 10 per cent, largely because of some supply management measures adopted by the government relating to vegetables like tomatoes, and this was responsible for bringing down the overall retail inflation rate to 6.83 per cent; but obviously food price inflation, and…

The G-20 meeting in Delhi was occurring in the midst of an acute economic crisis of the world economy. The advanced capitalist economies are expected by the IMF to witness a growth slowdown from 2.7 per cent in 2022 to 1.3 per cent in 2023; according to an alternative estimate by the IMF their growth in 2023 could even fall below 1 per cent. Since their rate of growth of labour productivity is likely to exceed this figure, it would mean a substantial increase in unemployment in the metropolis. This would be compounded, especially in the case of EU by…

Liberal bourgeois writers tend to explain the problems that arise under capitalism not by the immanent tendencies of the system but by the capriciousness of particular governments. This way they can continue to believe in their own false theories that prettify capitalism, while putting the blame for the travails it generates on political bloody-mindedness. One such instance of prettification is the portrayal of the system as one where international trade is beneficial for all. Centuries of colonialism which played havoc with the economies of the conquered countries, causing poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment, by forcing an exploitative trade relation upon them,…

At the Johannesburg summit of the BRICS countries, it was decided to expand the group beyond its original five, namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, to include six more countries. These are: Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These six it appears were chosen out of a list of twenty-two countries which had been keen to join the BRICS grouping. What is more, government sources in South Africa which currently chairs BRICS have revealed that as many as 40 countries have been interested in joining the group. The question naturally arises: why has…

When BJP rule in the country is dead and gone, a good deal of the damage it has caused to the Indian society, polity and economy will no doubt be reversed. But there are at least two areas where such reversal will be difficult: one is the architectural vandalism it has perpetrated. This vandalism began with the destruction of the Babri Masjid, which, quite apart from stoking communal animosity, was an instance of barbarism: no civilized and sensitive group would wantonly destroy a 400-year old structure; and this vandalism has continued with the insertion of a structure next to the…

Much of the ex-colonial world, having set up dirigiste regimes to wrest control over its natural resources from metropolitan capital and to build up industries behind protectionist walls, was sought to be re-assimilated into imperialist hegemony through the neo-liberal economic order; but in one segment of this world decolonisation itself was never completed. The former French colonies of West Africa belong to this segment. Even though local personnel replaced French administrators, they did not effectively shake off French hegemony, and by implication metropolitan hegemony even temporarily. French troops continued to be stationed in each of those countries; and they were…

Many economists have been advocating a universal basic income for India, an idea that was mooted even in the official Economic Survey for 2016-17. Of course the practical proposals towards this end have varied, some suggesting a common universal transfer to all persons below a certain income, and others suggesting a graded transfer depending on how badly off an individual happens to be. But the vision is of a society where every citizen has a certain basic minimum level of money income through appropriate government transfers which would give the person command over a bundle of goods that assure a…