Articles by Prabhat Patnaik

Empiricisation or the pursuit of a political praxis that is uninformed by the project of transcending capitalism was ultimately responsible for the defeat of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. It is this empiricisation that is far more worrying than the election defeat itself. In a period when many have abandoned the concept of imperialism, the CPI(M) remains steadfast in its adherence to this concept; as long as the concept and the project remain valid, the historical relevance of the party remains unimpaired. But if the party does not arrest the process of empiricisation it has been experiencing and finally ends up accepting the hegemony of bourgeois theory, then it will get supplanted by some other communist formation subscribing to a theoretical position similar to what it has today.

A precondition for the emergence of involuntary unemployment is the fact that substantial labour reserves already exist that make at least a segment of workers price-takers. Not only is "full employment" of all the workers whom capital employs impossible, but a capitalist monetary economy cannot function without such substantial labour reserves as make at least a segment of workers price-takers.

Against the "means-based approach" to development that the bourgeoisie projects, the left must project a "rights-based approach". Since "rights" are guarantors of welfare gains, every winning of rights likewise strengthens them. The acquisition of rights on the part of the people, including rights to minimum bundles of goods, services and security, amounts therefore to winning crucial battles in the class war for the transcendence of capitalism. If the left were to put on its agenda a struggle for people's rights and adopt a rights-based approach to development as opposed to the means-based approach of the bourgeois formations, it would not constitute a retreat into abstract humanism but would be an integral part of the dialectics of subversion of the logic of capital.

There is a theoretical ambiguity in the Left that underlies the crisis that it now finds itself in. On the issue of industrialisation, the real issue is whether it occurs through subservience to the logic of capital or it occurs without compromising the dialectics of subversion of the logic of capital. Subscribing to the view that the only immediate choice is between "development" and an attempt to overthrow the system negates any scope for Left politics. The scope for Left politics arises by rejecting this binary choice, by transcending the problematic that the only immediate choice is between subservience to the logic of capital and attempting to overthrow the system. Transcending this problematic is precisely the resolution of the theoretical crisis of the Left. And the possibility of politics that is created thereby will also resolve the practical crisis of the Left.

A democratic agenda for coming out of the recession must have at least five elements: first, the nationalisation of financial institutions in the leading capitalist countries where they have basically become insolvent; second, controls on cross border financial flows; third, protection introduced to defend peasants and other petty producers of primary commodities (ideally through agreements among producing countries) in the case of all commodities whose world prices are "demand-determined" (as opposed to "cost-determined"); fourth, a coordinated fiscal stimulus to the world economy provided by a group of leading countries; and fifth, a system of grants whereby the increased surpluses generated by such a stimulus are given as grants to the less (or least) developed countries on the condition that they do not merely add these to their reserves.