Patnaiks’ Theory of Imperialism – A Requiem for (of) the Petty Bourgeois

Bipin Balaram

 

“What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits that the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter in practice.” – Karl Marx (18^th Brumaire of Louie Bonaparte)

The Patnaiks are out to disprove Lenin and to improve Marx. The theory of imperialism put forward by Prabhat Patnaik and Utsa Patnaik[1] attempts to do this by proving that Lenin’s theory of imperialism is no longer valid. They also assert that Marx’s (and everyone else’s until now!) analysis of capitalism is incomplete because it failed to include the analysis of imperialism. Of course, these serious flaws shall be put right by the theory of imperialism proposed by the Patnaiks. In the beginning of the book itself, the Patnaiks make the purpose of their book clear:

“The purpose of the present book is to argue … that there is an abiding relevance to the concept of “imperialism”. It seeks to establish that there is a continuity between the colonial period and now … This continuity arises from a certain structural relationship that characterises capitalism but that, surprisingly, has received very little attention until now. Put differently, in addition to the capital – wage labour relationship, capitalism is characterised by an additional structural relationship, and “imperialism” refers to that structural relationship … its essence lies in the fact that capitalism, … must, in its “spontaneous” operation, act in ways that tend to immiserate the traditional petty producers of the third world, who constitute the overwhelming bulk of the working population of these countries.”[2]

Poor Marx could only fathom the first of the two structural relationships that characterise capitalism, about the second one he had no inkling! But Lenin’s sin, contends the Patnaiks, is much greater as, in his over enthusiasm to explain the conjuncture of the First World War, he put forward a theory of imperialism which has lost its validity now:

“When Lenin was writing about imperialism, his perception was of a set of rival imperialist powers, each characterised by a financial oligarchy that presided over a coalition of banks and industrial capital, was closely integrated with that country’s state personnel, and was engaged in partitioning and re-partitioning the world in the quest for ‘economic territory’ … These features have been largely superseded by the emergence, through further centralisation of capital, of international finance capital that is globalised, is not tied to any particular nation-state, …, is more financial in nature, and is engaged in massive speculation for capital gains, rather than being with the promotion of industry … International finance capital therefore specifically wants a muting of inter-imperialist rivalry … which has been a feature of the scenario sketched by Lenin.”[3]

We shall enter into the merits of Patnaiks’ above assertions about Lenin’s theory of imperialism later in this article, but it is very clear what the Patnaiks are asserting - the emergence of international finance capital and the ‘muting’ of inter imperialist rivalries has proved Lenin wrong and has vindicated the Kautskian thesis of ‘ultra-imperialism’. That the Patnaiks never considers it important to mention the uncanny similarity between Kautsky’s ultra-imperialism and their analysis and makes no effort even to delineate their position vis-à-vis that of Kautsky’s tell us a lot!

Even when the real aim of the book is to disprove Lenin and to improve Marx, there is a conscious effort to camouflage this aim with false modesty. This starts from the name of the book itself. It has been named ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, the suggestion being that it is advanced only as one among many worthy theories of imperialism (Lenin’s included?) and not as substitute for others. The authors themselves make this clear in their preface to the book:

“It is not our intention to present this theory as a substitute for, or as an alternative to, the existing theories of imperialism. We are simply attempting to draw attention to certain phenomena that have always characterised capitalism and continue to do so even now. These phenomena underlie capitalism but have not received the attention they deserve. They are ensconced within a universe that has been much studied by writers on imperialism; our concentration on them alone while not discussing these other studies, should not be construed as detracting from the worth of these theories.”[4]

The Patnaiks’ argument that they are only trying to highlight certain aspects of capitalism which have not received enough attention and that this should not be seen as effort to present an alternative to other existing theories of imperialism is patently false. For example, as we shall see in detail later, the Patnaiks offer a definition of imperialism which is completely at odds with Lenin’s definition of imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism. They define imperialism as a particular way in which capitalism deals with a fundamental geographical asymmetry between the temperate and tropical regions of the world. If this definition is the correct one, then it means that Lenin’s is absurd. Patnaiks’ definition implies that imperialism has nothing what so ever to do with the monopoly stage of capitalism; it had existed in all stages of capitalism. If, on the other hand, Lenin’s definition is correct, then the Patnaiks’ whole theory is false. Such conflicting definitions cannot lead to theories which can lie beside one another and complete each other, they lead to conflicting theories out of which only one can be correct. Hence, one would do well not to be fooled by this false modesty, it is a sham. The Patnaiks want to radically revise all the basic positions of Marxism – Leninism regarding imperialism but still want to retain the tag of Marxists; hence the effort to “ensconce”[5] their theory within Marxist-Leninist ideas on imperialism and to declare it as not at odds with them. The main aim of this article is to drive out the Patnaiks’ theory from where it wants to “ensconce” itself, to unmask its untenable character from a Marxist perspective, to unearth the authors’ main motivation in presenting such a flimsy theory and to consign it to where it belongs – the dust heap of history.

1. The Context of Patnaiks’ Theory – Blatant Reformism of Indian Social Democratic Left

In his hard hitting commentary on the Patnaiks’ theory of imperialism, included in the book itself, David Harvey wonders[6] why the Patnaiks have put forward a theory based on such obviously wrong premises and which gets the “concepts of space, place, environment, and geography all wrong”[7]. The Patnaiks’ enthusiasm to advance laborious and obviously false (and sometimes even bordering on ridiculous) premises and results can only be understood by taking a look at the class basis of Indian left’s (academic and political) current political positions[8]. It will be seen later that the main motivating factor of the book is to conjure up a theoretical framework which can implicitly defend the reformist and social democratic positions that the Indian left professes and which are completely untenable from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. The flimsy theoretical tweaks that the Patnaiks’ make have only one overriding purpose: to render the reformist ideology and regressive politics of Indian left progressive. So, we have to begin our analysis by having a look at Indian left’s current positions and we shall do so by using some typical and illuminating examples.

It is first useful to see how the left approach imperialism in practice; that is, what is their anti-imperialist stance on the ground? In actual political practice, on the ground, it can be observed that the main form that the left led anti-imperialist struggles take is against the destruction of the petty bourgeois by 'imperialist corporates'. The left no longer recognises any difference between a wage labourer, a shop keeper, an auto-rickshaw driver, a small farmer or a state clerk; all are subsumed under the name of worker, all are characterized as poor, and anti-imperialism takes the form of 'protecting' their interests (yes, interests of all of them, simultaneously!) against the vile designs of the international giants. Of course on the ground, this 'classless', 'pro-poor', populist approach gives the left rich dividends in the form of votes till it runs against its own contradictions and bursts asunder. But the fact that this benevolent pro poor strategy is diametrically opposed to the classical Marxist approach to the destruction of petty production gives a head ache or two to the left academicians. Not only in the question of imperialism, but on all fronts, the social democratic left in India has long since forsaken class analysis of social problems and have succumbed to the vulgar form of petty bourgeois populism. In the case of imperialism, it means that the left now squarely see it as an affair between countries alone and not one between classes; Patnaiks’ theory attempts to give this vulgar populist approach a theoretical foundation. A classic example of this populist approach is provided by a recent facebook post by M. A. Baby, a PB member of the CPIM. On the occasion of Argentina’s victory over the US in Copa America football championships, Baby wrote:

“I congratulate the Argentinian national team on entering the finals of the Copa America football tournament after defeating the US. For communists throughout the world like me, it is thrilling to see the US being defeated, in whichever field. That thrill increases this time as they were defeated by Che Guevara’s countrymen.”[9]

This shows us the extent to which the reformist left has stooped; for them anti-imperialism essentially means hating the US, wailing about how their corporates are destroying our small shopkeepers and wishing earnestly that the US is defeated in football matches!

Return to ‘Welfare State’

Even Irfan Habib, otherwise a very perceptive historian and someone who has used the Marxist method very creatively on questions of Indian history, cannot resist arriving at reformist conclusions when analysing concrete political questions. In his recent analysis of the growth of Hindutva fascism in India, he arrives at the conclusion that:

“A serious task awaits parties that are committed to a different future for the country, envisaging a truly secular democratic India, where reason and science might serve to sustain a welfare state. Perhaps the conflict over whether such a state would be socialist or a free market one can be postponed until the present crisis is over.”[10]

In many ways, this is a typical reaction of the Indian social democratic left.

Three points should immediately be highlighted:

1     A welfare state, which aims at looking after the welfare of all the people, including the bourgeois and the proletariat, can never be socialist. A proletarian state is the dictatorship of one class over another which do not intend to look after the welfare of the bourgeoisie. So a welfare state is a bourgeois state conceived to pacify the proletariat before switching over to full blooded capitalist loot.

2.      The typical reaction of the Indian left on the face of crisis, political or economic, is to go back. The nostalgia for welfare state and Nehruvian socialism is so strong that it is practically the only solution the whole left has to offer – back to ‘secular democratic India’. Going back to ‘crisis less’, state administered, safe capitalism with its security net for the petty producers is a petty bourgeois illusion.

3.      Welfare state is never a solution to fascism; fascism has come precisely because of the implosion of the welfare state. Capitalism in perpetual crisis breeds fascism and the solution is not an illusionary retreat to crisis less, state managed capitalism, but transcendence of capitalism itself.

In their critique of the neoliberal economic reforms in India[11], JNU economists and left academicians C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh try to demonstrate the failure of neoliberalism in India. And their solution is, again, an ‘activist state’!

“There are two prerequisites for such a state. It should be willing to launch an alternate strategy that permits a degree of autonomy from the agenda imposed by international finance. And it should be able to undertake the progressive structural reforms which would be necessary to create the social base and sanction for such an effort. India awaits the emergence of such a state.”

Degree of autonomy from international finance has since then become a general solution for the left and goes by the name of ‘de-linking’ now. The second point calls for the creation of a welfare state. So the solution is nothing but a welfare state free from the clutches of international finance; a modern incarnation of Nehruvian state. The contradictions of the welfare state have given rise to neoliberalism but the only solution that is offered is to go back to the petty bourgeois bliss of the welfare state; going forward from neoliberalism to socialism does not even enter the minds of Indian left!

When the current BJP government dismantled one of the last relics of the welfare state era by disbanding the planning commission, the feelings of the Indian left were hurt, they were wounded. Nostalgia for the comfortable days of crisis free capitalism was at its peak and C. P. Chandrasekhar expressed it emotionally[12]: “… India’s planners served as the conscience-keepers in a market driven environment that privileges profit and power.” Needless to say that this is a completely wrong reading of the welfare state interlude of Indian capitalism[13].

De-linking and Nationalism

Following the left front’s crushing defeat in the parliamentary elections and in the Bengal state legislature elections following that, Prabhat Patnaik himself detailed the ‘things the left needs to do right’[14]. He came up with the revelation that the slide of communism world-wide after WWII was caused by its ambivalent attitude towards globalisation and democracy. So he urged the left to shed this ambivalence and to espouse ‘de-linking’ from globalisation and to embrace democracy.

“… uniting with others in struggles and on platforms, and even in government, against the Hindutva and semi-fascist forces and on the basis of concrete alternative agenda to neoliberalism, will serve the people better.”[15]

For Patnaik, “shedding” ambivalence towards globalisation and democracy means ‘de-linking’ from globalisation and embracing liberal democracy. This cannot be reconciled with the Leninist ideas on globalisation, imperialism and democracy. Patnaik knows that fully, but has an ingenious plan. He declares that Lenin, with whatever he has to say, is irrelevant to us right now:

“But already at the end of the second world war, the world had started moving away from what one can call the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ … the Leninist conjuncture has been superseded … because the premise upon which it was founded no longer held, the premise of an imminent world revolution.”

I have argued elsewhere why this fading away of Lenin is just wishful thinking from a professor who is uncomfortable with the revolutionary kernel of Lenin’s writings. I have also argued that actuality of revolution and not its imminence is the premise of Leninism and that Leninism is the living, throbbing, motoring force of history right now which the toiling class has to imbibe. I shall not repeat them here[16].

But Patnaik do realise that his call to de-link from globalisation may be construed as a return to nationalism. He says that this fear is at the root of European left’s ambivalence towards globalisation.

“… no matter how objectionable it finds the hegemony of finance capital which characterises globalisation, it cannot contemplate shaking off this hegemony through a delinking from globalisation , because it sees any such delinking as revival of ‘nationalism’ which it abhors.”

During the Kanhaiyya Kumar episode, when the debate on ‘nationalism’ raged, Patnaik had the opportunity to develop this point further and to assure us that in the Indian context we need not have any qualms about nationalism, because the Indian version of nationalism is ‘democratic and egalitarian’.

“European nationalism in short was an aggrandising nationalism … the concept of “nationalism” that developed in countries like India during their anti-colonial struggle was of an altogether different kind … it had to be inclusive … had to have a fraternal rather than an aggrandising relation with other Third World countries. And finally, it had to put the welfare of the “people”, as distinct from the greatness of the “nation” per se, as its central focus … This was a nationalism which was sui generis, an altogether new phenomenon the like of which the world had not seen earlier. It was essentially a democratic and egalitarian nationalism as opposed to the aggrandising European nationalism.”[17]

So the Indian left need not worry like their European counterparts, their nationalism is progressive. But he realises that “…the democratic nationalism of the anti-colonial struggle is not easy to realise”, and that “…The shift to an aggrandising nationalism is clearly linked to the emergence of neo-liberal capitalism in the country.” So, in order to realise the progressive and egalitarian version of Indian nationalism, we obviously need to shun neoliberalism and to delink from globalisation to build a welfare state. Hence, we need not have any misgivings about going back to ‘good’ nationalism!

It is amusing to see how Patnaik, who calls himself a Marxist, divorces the analysis of nationalism completely from material conditions and history. Marxism studies every social phenomenon, including nationalism, by looking at the material conditions that breeds them and situating them in the concrete historical context. Thus, to compare European nationalism that arose during the consolidation of capitalism with its third world variety which arose much later in the context of anti-colonial struggles is in itself unhistorical. But to maintain that European nationalism always had and will have an aggrandising character and that the Indian variety always was and will be progressive is stooping to newer depths. Patnaik implies that the character of nationalism remains fixed and do not evolve in history or change with changing material conditions. Thus, Indian nationalism was born progressive and shall remain so, forever. 

    

Lenin had anticipated this petty bourgeois fixation of the social democrats towards nationalism and had clearly delineated the Marxist approach towards national movements and nationalism.

“The principle of nationality is historically inevitable in bourgeois society and, taking this society into due account, the Marxist fully recognises the historical legitimacy of national movements. But to prevent this recognition from becoming an apologia of nationalism, it must be strictly limited to what is progressive in such movements, in order that this recognition may not lead to bourgeois ideology obscuring proletarian consciousness.

The awakening of the masses from feudal lethargy, and their struggle against all national oppression, for the sovereignty of the people, of the nation, are progressive. Hence, it is the Marxist’s bounden duty to stand for the most resolute and consistent democratism on all aspects of the national question. This task is largely a negative one. But this is the limit the proletariat can go to in supporting nationalism,   for beyond that begins the “positive” activity of the bourgeoisie striving to fortify nationalism. 

To throw off the feudal yoke, all national oppression, and all privileges enjoyed by any particular nation or language, is the imperative duty of the proletariat as a democratic force, and is certainly in the interests of the proletarian class struggle, which is obscured and retarded by bickering on the national question. But to go beyond these strictly limited and definite historical limits in helping bourgeois nationalism means betraying the proletariat and siding with the bourgeoisie. There is a border-line here, which is often very slight …”[18]

It is exactly this slight border-line that is invisible to theorists like Patnaik because of their petty bourgeois orientation. He is theorising about ‘progressive’ and ‘aggrandising’ nationalisms with no reference to the stage of capitalism. What we have before our eyes is the form that the progressive, democratic and egalitarian nationalism has taken in the time of capitalist decay. If one refuses to see this dynamic nature of nationalism – from progressive to chauvinistic – and its necessary change with the change in the nature of capitalism, then he is never a Marxist – Leninist.

 We know that the same mistake was committed by the left in the JNU affair. The left built their case on the distinction between good and bad nationalism, i.e. between democratic, people-oriented nationalism and the chauvinist variety. The class essence of this distinction is simple. The left positioned themselves on the side of bourgeois-democratic nationalism and the far right was (correctly) pictured as chauvinist nationalists; the former thought of as being progressive and the latter reactionary. This meant that the left had only one practical prescription: shun chauvinism and embrace ‘good’ nationalism, a nationalism whose spirit was thought to be imbibed from the freedom struggle. Needless to say that such a line had nothing to do with historical materialism which locates nationalism as a strictly bourgeois ideology. This ideology can be a progressive force only till bourgeoisie remains a progressive class or till capitalism is still in its progressive phase. As capitalism enters its decaying, moribund phase, nationalism, being a bourgeois ideology, turns into its chauvinistic twin. Proletarian movements support national struggles only in the progressive phase of capitalism, that too in a qualified sense. Going back to ‘good’ nationalism is an illusion as it needs progressive capitalism to be brought back. This political line betrays the social democratic orientation of Indian parliamentary left which seeks to ameliorate capitalism, rather than to transcend it. But, in their over enthusiasm to reform capitalism, they forget that zombies cannot be brought back to life! Left failed to explain the bourgeois-democratic class nature of nationalist ideology, its metamorphosis into chauvinism as a necessary consequence of the decay of capitalism and the need to espouse proletarian internationalism in its stead. The practical fallout of left’s line became evident very soon. The left’s embrace of bourgeois-democratic nationalism robbed them of the possibility of putting forward the platform of genuine solidarity between the toiling masses across the borders. Arun Jaitley was correct when he said that the sangh parivar won the battle of JNU as the left was forced to convert themselves to ‘nationalists’ overnight! 

Democracy and Parliament

Now that delinking has been thoroughly theorised and the misgivings on nationalism dealt with, what remains is to explain why we should embrace ‘democracy’. Orthodox Marxist – Leninist positions on ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, as political facades of capitalism, are too well known to be evaded. Hence, Patnaik and the left feels the need to theorise the ‘return to democracy’. This he does when analysing widespread corruption and the resultant erosion of popular faith in Parliament.

“… “corruption” discourse also has some Left adherents. They argue that the discrediting of the institution of Parliament by the corruption discourse need not be lamented. Parliament after all is a bourgeois democratic institution and if the “people” are disillusioned with it, and thus the Left should be with the “people” rather than defending this institution. But idealising the “people” in this manner is wrong for two obvious reasons: first, the “people” who are vocal in their anger against Parliament constitute a subset, which is by no means representative of the people at large… Second, even the people at large as they are, should not be apotheosised by the Left which is concerned with changing people’s consciousness rather than bowing before it.”[19]

He continues:

“Further, since Parliament, such as it is, is based on a formal principle of equality (“one person one vote”), which is alien to the consciousness inculcated by millennia of institutionalised inequality embedded in the caste system, its being discredited as an institution can be used for discrediting this principle itself, for reinforcing a culture of inequality which feeds into fascism. To believe the contrary, namely, that a discrediting of this bourgeois democratic institution would strengthen the revolutionary rather than the fascist forces, is an illusion. Neo-liberalism, it was mentioned earlier, tends to produce a “closure” of politics, a snuffing out of any transformative agenda that goes beyond neo-liberalism itself. The stasis that such a closure generates is not overcome by, and indeed is quite compatible with, the prolonged existence of an armed insurgency, based on a particular segment of the oppressed corralled into a particular region, and itself in a state of stagnation or recession. Fascism attempts to use the popular anger against this stasis: it gives the impression of breaking out of it, while actually strongly reinforcing neo-liberalism through a merger of corporate and state power. A discrediting of Parliament as an institution, in this context, removes a potential bulwark against such a shift.”

I have quoted this argument in full because it is a great example of the abuse of language by the academicians to give us the semblance that a seemingly untenable position has much more to it than what meets the eye and that it is justified based on a deeper logic. This deeper logic is so deep that it is buried somewhere inside this verbal diarrhoea so that we ordinary mortals are incapable of deciphering it!

As stated by Patnaik himself, parliament is based on ‘formal’ equality, not real equality. ‘One person, one vote’ has nothing to do with real equality. Even this ‘formal’ equality was progressive during nationalist struggle when India had to break down the colonial yoke and feudal backwardness. It is no longer now when capitalism is in crisis. The contention that it is progressive for ever arises out of a complete absence of historical dialectics in his analysis. Discrediting the institution is discrediting the principle, but it is time to discredit a principle which no longer retains its progressive potential and have become regressive. And discrediting the institution and the principle should be accompanied by a proper dialectical and revolutionary call to take it forward, not backward, as Patnaik implicitly assumes. His petty bourgeois class instincts can fathom only two movements, either status quo or backward. But there is one more movement, professor, and that is forward! 

     

It is said that neoliberalism produces closure of politics, doesn’t capitalism produce that per se? Yes. It is the historical duty of the proletarian vanguard to help the toilers to break out of this closure and to realise the foreword march of history. Patnaik further says that fascism will try to make use of this stasis to effect a merger of corporate and state power to reinforce neoliberalism. So what should we do? We should not discredit parliament and should prolong and cultivate the illusion that change is possible through it. Pathetic! It is amusing to see Patnaik remarking that “…even the people at large as they are, should not be apotheosised by the Left which is concerned with changing people’s consciousness rather than bowing before it.”  So, how exactly does he want the left to change peoples’ consciousness regarding the parliament and bourgeois democracy? Obviously not by explaining their class roots to them. Instead, he wants the left to drag back the spontaneous anger against liberal democracy and to explain to the people why it is important to sustain it; he evidently abhors the idea of the left channelling this anger to explain to the toilers the need to take non-performing liberal democracy forward to real proletarian democracy. This is the same petty bourgeois logic that the Mensheviks advanced during the 1905 revolution when they said that criticising the bourgeois institutions will help the reactionaries to roll back democracy. An effort by the fascists to ‘go back’ by smashing the parliament cannot be countered by trying to retain it, it is the decay of parliament that is giving legitimacy to the fascist call to destroy it. It can only be met in a revolutionary way by pulling it in the opposite direction, i.e., by standing for the transcendence of decaying bourgeois democracy and with it, capitalism

.

Lenin demolished the same reverence for parliament which was espoused by Kautsky:

“Take the bourgeois parliament. Can it be that the learned Kautsky has never heard that the more highly democracy is developed, the more the bourgeois parliaments are subjected by the stock exchange and the bankers? This does not mean that we must not make use of bourgeois parliament (the Bolsheviks made better use of it than probably any other party in the world, for in 1912–14 we won the entire workers’ curia in the Fourth Duma). But it does mean that only a liberal can forget the historical limitations and conventional nature of the bourgeois parliamentary system as Kautsky does. Even in the most democratic bourgeois state the oppressed people at every step encounter the crying contradiction between the formal equality proclaimed by the “democracy” of the capitalists and the thousands of real limitations and subterfuges which turn the proletarians into wage-slaves. It is precisely this contradiction that is opening the eyes of the people to the rottenness, mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism. It is this contradiction that the agitators and propagandists of socialism are constantly exposing to the people, in order to prepare them for revolution! And now that the era of revolution has begun, Kautsky turns his back upon it and begins to extol the charms of moribund bourgeois democracy… To fail to see this one must either deliberately serve the bourgeoisie, or be politically as dead as a doornail, unable to see real life from behind the dusty pages of bourgeois books, be thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices, and thereby objectively convert oneself into a lackey of the bourgeoisie.”[20]

Lenin is as straight as an arrow regarding this, revolutionary movements should make use of the parliament; they should make use of the parliament to expose its limitations and to call for its transcendence. No wonder Patnaik maintains that Lenin is irrelevant, because if he is relevant, Patnaik is ‘as dead as a doornail’.

So, we have seen, by way of examples, the regressive nature of the cure prescribed by social democratic left and its intellectual representatives for the twin malice that India is facing now: the alarming growth of fascist forces and the state of decay of capitalism. A partial list of these proposals would include the following steps:

a.       Return to an activist welfare state

b.      Autonomy from international finance capital and de-linking from globalisation

c.       Shunning aggrandising nationalism, embracing its democratic, egalitarian variety

d.      Re-envisaging a truly secular democratic India

e.       Embracing democracy, strengthening parliament

f.       Uniting with other ‘progressive’ parties.

We have already seen how these steps are untenable from a Marxist perspective and how they betray a complete lack of understanding of materialist and revolutionary dialectics of history. The Patnaiks, even though their class instincts never allow them to espouse Marxism’s revolutionary kernel, are too well read in Marxism not to be aware of this fact. So it is not a surprise that they felt the need to conjure up a new theory of imperialism which will render all these steps apparently progressive! In the following, we shall come across myriad exotic ways taken by the Patnaiks to fulfil this arduous task: that of rendering social democracy anti-imperialist and hence progressive.

2. The Patnaiks’ Theory of Imperialism

We shall now take a look at the main aspects of the Patnaiks’ theory of imperialism. I shall present these aspects using extensive direct quotes from the book. This is necessitated by the fact that many of the premises and conclusions of the book are so ludicrous that if I attempt to paraphrase them in my own words, many readers may find it hard to believe that the authors actually advanced such theses.

Tropical Commodities and Geographical Asymmetry

Let us hear from the Patnaiks themselves what the purpose of their book is:

“Its purpose has been altogether different and rather sui generis. It has asked the question: Is it necessary for metropolitan capital always to enter into a structural relationship with the people of the periphery, which entails a subjugation of the latter? … The purpose of this book has been to argue that there is indeed a compelling economic reason for metropolitan capital to subjugate, and to maintain continuous ascendancy over, the people of the periphery.”[21]

This subjugation is neither on account of the rising predominance of export of capital vis-à-vis export of commodities in the age of imperialism and the need to defend the interests of the capital exporting core, as pointed out by Lenin, nor on account of the need for markets for core capitalism as asserted by Luxemburg. This need for expansion has also nothing to do with the fall in the rate of profit in advanced capitalist countries. In fact, it has nothing to do with capitalism at all! It is indeed sui generis.

“Metropolitan capitalism requires a large range of commodities that are necessary for it (including not only for the subsistence of the workers it employs but for consumption by all classes) but that it cannot produce in the geographical space within which it exists; nor can it develop substitutes for all of these commodities. It must obtain them from outside of its space, i.e., from the periphery constituting the global South, where they are produced by a host of pre-capitalist petty producers and typically in conditions that entail an “increasing supply price.”[22]

Thus, Patnaiks’ theory suggests that the original sin of imperialism is to be sought not in capitalism, but in spatial or geographical asymmetry with respect to the availability of certain commodities. Imperialism is the way in which capitalism deals with this asymmetry. This point gives the authors a lot of theoretical problems throughout the book and they are at pains to prove that their theory does not rest on geography but on capitalism. Another point to be noted here is their assertion that these commodities are “produced by a host of pre-capitalist petty producers” in the periphery. This is a central tenet of their theory, the correctness of which we shall examine later. But what exactly are these commodities?

“These goods include today not only the traditional imported crops (such as cane sugar, spices, tea, coffee, cereals, and fibres) but also all those perishable vegetables, fruits, and flowers that cold temperate lands can grow only in their summer but not in their winter when the land is frozen, hence, the necessity of imports to avoid seasonal lack of supply. So fresh carrots, tomatoes, fruit, and flowers in December–January are, analytically speaking, to be conceptualized as “tropical goods” for northern populations.”[23]

So, this geographical asymmetry means that:

“…despite all technological advances, import substitution is not possible at all as regards a large range of tropical products in the temperate-region advanced economies—where the definition of “tropical products” includes strawberries and roses in December. The products of the tropical landmass, along with energy, are an essential, taken-for-granted part of the daily requirements of advanced countries, both as current inputs into production and for the consumption basket of their populations.”[24]

Geographical characteristics mean that advanced capitalist countries of temperate zone have to forever rely on tropical landmass for these commodities. These primary commodities, the authors further assert, have two main characteristics.

“The first is that they are produced in distant outlying regions and typically by petty producers who, though linked to capitalism and therefore no longer retaining their original character, are nonetheless outside of the capital-wage labour relationship.”[25]

So the Patnaiks maintain, unequivocally, that these commodities needed for the core are produced by petty producers who are ‘outside of the capital-wage labour relationship’. What is more important is the fact that they make no attempt what so ever in the book to see whether this situation is changing, i.e., they do not attempt to trace the possible growth of capitalism in the production of these commodities. They maintain throughout that petty production is the only one that produces these commodities and do not attempt to see whether the material basis of this petty production is breaking up. It is amusing to see, further on in the book, the arguments they advance to prove that capitalism cannot penetrate these sectors of production. This should not be surprising as it is a common characteristic of ‘academicians’ that they tend to abstract in their brains and expect reality to correspond to their abstraction. Hence the complete absence in the book of any real data pertaining to the state of affairs in these sectors. Please note that this is the beginning of the love story between the Patnaiks and petty production that shall ‘live happily forever’ even after the book is over.

Let us dwell a little bit on this first characteristic before proceeding to the second one. At this point, one yearns for examples and the Patnaiks oblige. “Mineral resources, in the absence of the discovery of new and more easily exploitable sources, are a clear example of such a commodity.”[26] Ah, nice! Here is our example. So, as mineral resources are examples of such commodities, it is obvious that it has the first characteristic that the Patnaiks said such commodities possess. No, it’s not that simple folks, seems that you are not very familiar with the higher logic prevalent in academia. “They may not be produced by petty producers, but they are produced in distant outlying regions, and without supplies from these regions, the growing demand for them cannot be met.”[27] So, they are not produced by petty producers which means that they do not have one characteristic out of two which the authors said they had, but that doesn’t count; can’t you see that they are “produced in distant outlying regions”. And all this happens in two adjacent pages!

So what do we do? “While the argument of this book will also hold with suitable modification for the case of mineral resources, we shall be concerned in what follows primarily with products of the tropical landmass.”[28] It was that simple, we shall concentrate on examples that suit us and just claim that, ‘with suitable modification’, the arguments shall hold for other examples too. How that can be done is not clear at all because if these commodities are not produced by petty producers, then they follow a completely different course; but that’s not a hindrance for the Patnaiks.

Let it be. What is the second characteristic?

Increasing Supply Price, Threat to the Value of Money and Income Deflation

“The second characteristic is that these commodities are subject to the phenomenon of increasing supply price, which means that if an increase in the demand for them were to be satisfied by greater production, then even at the existing level of money wage rate per efficiency unit of labour at the point of production, or money income of the producers per unit of their labour (measured in efficiency units), their unit prime cost of production would increase.”[29]

The Patnaiks make their point a bit more clear later:

“Since the tropical landmass is more or less fully used up, and since its products are required in the metropolitan core located in the temperate world, capital accumulation that enlarges the demand for such products must lead to a rise in the price of such products. Such a rise in the price of these products will not elicit larger outputs of these products from the tropical lands (on this more later). But additionally, such a rise has serious implications for the stability of the metropolitan economy.”[30]

So, when the demand for the tropical products increase in temperate metropolitan core because of capital accumulation, their price goes up. The Patnaiks’ argue that such a rise in prices is going to effect the stability of metropolitan economy itself. Before we see how, we need to realise that the authors have slipped in a rather innocuous looking assumption here; they base their arguments on the wish (as we shall see, it is no more than that) that the tropical landmass is more or less fully used up. If it is not used up and if there is a possibility of bringing more landmass under the plough, then the Patnaiks’ argument that an increase in demand will lead to a rise in prices, falls flat. So, the whole of Patnaiks’ theory is based on this assumption. But, typically, there is no attempt in the book to substantiate such a crucial assumption with even rudimentary empirical data. In chapter 7, where the authors claim to be presenting the empirical picture corresponding to ‘metropolitan demand on tropical landmass’, they carefully stay clear of data pertaining to two of their cardinal assumptions, that these commodities are produced by petty producers and that tropical land mass is fully used up. If the authors had conceived their theory to follow from reality, they would have checked the validity of these two assumptions before presenting them. Their approach is the opposite here, these assumptions seem to be tailor made to make their theory of imperialism real and are in need of no further validation!

So, how, according to the Patnaiks, is a rise in the price of these commodities going to effect the stability of metropolitan economy?

“Money constitutes not only a medium of circulation, but also a form in which wealth is held. Indeed, even in playing its medium of circulation role, money simultaneously plays the role of being a form of wealth-holding… But the role of money as a form of wealth-holding, which in real life it is, gets threatened if its value is expected to fall vis-à-vis commodities, i.e., if wealth-holders expect inflation to occur in commodity prices. In such a case they would be tempted to shift from holding money to holding commodities.”[31]

Such a shift from holding money to holding commodities, which arises because the holders are not sure about the former’s value, will destroy the value of money in the core, according to the Patnaiks. That is catastrophic for metropolitan capitalism, as David Harvey remarks: “…prices in the metropolis would skyrocket, the value of money in the metropolitan capitalist economies would be destroyed, and the capitalist system would crumble.”[32]

If this is true, then it is an alarming situation for core capitalist countries. So, how according to the Patnaiks, have the metropolitan capitalist core been warding off this threat to the value of money? They argue that the primary mechanism for this has always been ‘income deflation’ in the periphery.

“The commonest means of coping with the threat historically has been through a reduction in the absorption of the products of the tropical landmass within the periphery itself by the population of the countries located on this very tropical landmass. And the primary instrument of this has been the imposition of an “income deflation” upon them, through a curtailment of their purchasing power so that, out of a relatively unchanging output of the fixed tropical landmass, they are obliged to release more and more goods for use in the metropolis. This happens either directly, in that the same goods that are released from local mass absorption are then absorbed in the metropolis; or it happens indirectly in that land that was previously devoted to the production of goods for which mass demand declined because of income deflation is now diverted to the production of other types of goods demanded by the metropolis. In either case, any threat to the value of money in the metropolis is warded off, and supplies are obtained from the tropical landmass to meet metropolitan demand without the problem of increasing supply price coming into play at all.”[33]

So the story is simple. The core capitalist countries use “a set of non-market coercive political and economic mechanisms” to deflate the income of peripheral populations so as to bring about a reduction in the absorption of these commodities in the periphery. Since the absorbing power is limited at the periphery, they will be forced to release more and more portion of these commodities to the core. Or, because the demand for commodities used in tropical areas are less owing to income deflation, periphery may shift to production of commodities needed for the core. Either way, asserts the authors, the excess demand in the core is met without any increase in the supply price and the threat to the value of money is warded off. The authors restate the argument later and in the process attempt to define imperialism:

“To maintain the value of money and yet obtain its requirements of products from the tropical landmass, metropolitan capital must impose “income deflation” upon the people of the periphery, entailing compression of their demand, so that commodities are snatched away from being absorbed by them for use in the metropolis. The structural arrangement for such income deflation is an essential component of imperialism and is as central today as ever… Imperialism is concerned in short with the imposition of income deflation by metropolitan capital on the people of the periphery in order to squeeze out larger and larger supplies of a range of commodities required in the metropolis, without bringing into play the problem of increasing supply price that would threaten the value of money in the metropolis.”[34]

So, according to the Patnaiks, imperialism is not the highest stage of capitalism as Lenin thought, nor is it necessitated by monopoly capitalism and the growth of finance capital. It is merely the way in which capitalism deals with a geographical asymmetry. The increasing demand for certain commodities which can only be produced in the tropical countries can only be met in the core temperate capitalist countries by an increased supply price. Such an increase in the supply price leads to a decrease in the value of money and this decrease would be catastrophic for capitalism. So it imposes income deflation in the periphery which reduces the absorption of these commodities in the periphery and makes them available to the core countries without an increase in price. According to the Patnaiks, the set of non-market coercive mechanisms which are used to impose income deflation is called imperialism. So, imperialism has been a feature of capitalism throughout its existence and is not a stage of capitalism at all! It is very obvious that the Patnaiks’ theory attempts to completely debunk the Leninist notion of imperialism; it also means that Marx’s analysis of capitalism was at best partial because he never examined this mechanism of income deflation which has been a structural component of capitalism from the very beginning. This is how the Patnaiks disprove Lenin and improve Marx!

How is it that this income deflation is imposed on the periphery? The authors distinguish between two techniques of income deflation. The first one is to impose it with the help of the state and the second one is to effect ‘spontaneous’ income deflation. Their relative importance have changed from colonial to neoliberal imperialism.

“In the colonial period the chief instrument of the former was the colonial system of taxation, which, for much of the period, fell heavily upon the peasantry… The “spontaneous” income deflation in the colonial period, by contrast, arose from the fact of “deindustrialization”[35]

What about now?

“Income deflation of the colonial period had a directness. A similar process occurs in a more indirect manner under neoliberalism. Public finance in a neoliberal regime takes the form of keeping the fiscal deficit controlled while giving tax concessions to the domestic and foreign corporate- financial elements. This necessarily entails either a rise in taxation upon other classes or a reduction in government expenditure that would have otherwise put purchasing power in their hands. What fiscal policy achieves, therefore, is a redistribution of purchasing power from the other classes to the domestic and foreign corporate financial elements in the country. Since the “propensity” to absorb tropical goods per unit of income in the hands of these corporate financial elements is lower than the corresponding propensity of the other classes, such redistribution has the effect ceteris paribus of reducing the domestic absorption of tropical products within the periphery.”[36]

So, fiscal policy is the main mechanism which is used by the neoliberal state to impose income deflation. Purchasing power is robbed from the people of the periphery mainly by two means: increase in taxes and reduction in government expenditure. So it emerges from Patnaiks’ theory that neoliberalism resorts to fiscal prudence primarily in order to deflate the purchasing power of people in the periphery. This is completely at odds with the prevailing Marxist analysis of the growth of neoliberalism and why it resorts to fiscal prudence. The crisis of post war welfare capitalism along with increasing liquidity and severe reduction of profitable investment opportunities because of the fall of the rate of profit in advanced capitalist countries prompted the growth of cut throat neoliberalism. One of the main characteristics of neoliberalism was its propensity to find (or to create, if it cannot be found) investment opportunities around the globe which led to the opening up of the whole world to metropolitan capital. In this context, reduction in government expenditure has a very important role to play. It would open up sectors which were the monopoly of state to private capital, both domestic and international, thereby giving them new and profitable investment opportunities. Likewise, the transfer of the burden of taxation from the big bourgeoisie to the toiling class is a desperate effort by the state to keep these investments profitable. So these mechanisms, from a Marxist point of view, are desperate attempts by the bourgeois to perpetuate and to expand capitalist relations. But the authors do not consider these mechanisms as part of capitalism’s effort to stay afloat by expanding capitalist relations to newer and newer areas and to preserve profit margins in existing ones. Instead, they consider these mechanisms as prompted by capitalism’s need to deflate the income of the periphery so as to keep the price of tropical commodities and value of money under check. Their theory is indeed sui generis!

The difference between Marxist approach and that of the Patnaiks’ to the same phenomenon can be explained with the help of an example. It is a very well documented fact that the neoliberal state withdraws itself from the health and education sectors leaving the toiling population to the mercy of private hospitals and private educational institutions. This withdrawal means that common people have to spend much more on education and health care than what they would have spent previously. This would definitely curtail their purchasing power drastically, that is true. But the Patnaiks elevate this effect to the main motivation itself of fiscal prudence under neoliberalism. They argue that curtailing the purchasing power of majority of the population is itself the aim of these measures and that this is done for maintaining the value of money in the metropolis. This, they declare, is what imperialism is all about! In contrast to this rather far-fetched conspiracy theory, Marxism sees the withdrawal of state from these sectors as prompted by the need for bringing them under capitalist relations. There are two aspects to this withdrawal. The state withdraws from capital intensive large scale sectors as the bourgeoisie has acquired the economic and political clout to manage these sectors; in fact they are keen to make a foray into these sectors as they know that there are large profits to be had. International capital is also enthusiastic about this withdrawal as they also see their chance to invest in, or even to capture, these sectors. The second aspect is the withdrawal from social services like education, health, communication and the discontinuation of various types of subsidies in food and agriculture. These have a common aim; to facilitate the expansion of capitalism into these areas and to change them into profit making businesses. This follows directly from the basic characteristic of capitalism to bring anything and everything under capital-wage labour relationship and to suck out surplus value. This expansion of capitalism to service sector was necessitated by the dropping rate of profit worldwide in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. Thus, the withdrawal of the neoliberal state from health care is aimed at opening up the health care sector to private capital and to allow it to make profit from this sector too. It is not directly aimed at pauperising the population, its primary motivation is to facilitate capitalist takeover of everything from health to education, sport to poetry and from love to death. In their theory, the Patnaiks perform a sleight of hand to turn the effect into essence and then christens it imperialism.

Impossibility of Land Augmentation According to Patnaiks

Core capitalism would have been spared all these devious plots of imposing income deflation on the periphery if the metropolitan demand for tropical commodities could have been met just by producing more of these commodities. In short, imperialism, as the Patnaiks define it, would have been unnecessary for capitalism if the production of these commodities could be increased. This can be done by two ways; either by bringing more and more land under cultivation or by increasing the productivity of already cultivated land. The former course is closed to history as the Patnaiks have, in the beginning of their analysis itself, assumed that the “tropical landmass is more or less fully used up”. Reality, I am sure, will stay clear of the course that has been assumed by the Patnaiks as not possible. So that leaves only one option to avoid imperialism; increase in production of these commodities by land augmentation. But this time the Patnaiks do not wish away the problem by making an assumption, instead they tells us why land augmentation was not possible under colonialism and why it is impossible under neoliberalism.

Patnaiks contend that land augmentation, which they define as “increase in output per natural unit of land”, requires “appropriate water availability, better farm practices, high-yielding varieties of seeds, heavier dosages of fertilizer use, and other such measures” which are impossible without “state action in the form of investment in public irrigation works; investment in research and development; a public extension service network to make the results of research available to peasants; and assured profits to peasants so that they can embark on the adoption of these new land- augmenting farm practices”. In addition to these assertive state measures, it also needs “land reforms that break the hold of landlordism and the “rent barrier” to which it gives rise and which reduces the incentives on the part of both the landlords and the tenants to introduce better farm practices”. In short, according to the Patnaiks, proactive state support is essential for land augmentation to take place. They further argue that such state support was not forthcoming in colonial times, because “when tax revenue was used as a means of siphoning off the surplus from the colonies to the metropolis … hardly any resources were left for the state to undertake any investment in irrigation, let alone in research and development for improving agricultural practices”. The colonial state was also incapable of carrying out radical land reforms since “the whole colonial regime needed the support of landlords and local feudal elements”. The book argues that, due to the above mentioned reasons, land augmentation never materialised during the colonial era and capitalism had to resort to imperialism to deflate the income of the periphery to make sure that the prices of tropical commodities did not go up. But what about the post-colonial era, especially the neoliberal one?

“…the neoliberal state works directly and exclusively in the interests of international finance capital, which is the lead actor in the current epoch. The state acting directly and exclusively in the interests of the lead actor of the world capitalism of the time is what capitalism in its “spontaneity” demands. This precludes “land augmentation” as a means of coping with the threat of increasing supply price of products of the tropical landmass to the value of money in the metropolis.”[37]

Or, in other words,

“Since land- augmenting investment can be done primarily by the state located on such land mass, and since state activism in undertaking investment is typically frowned upon by capital (which prefers “sound finance”), the supply of such goods cannot be augmented, ceteris paribus to match the growing demands of metropolitan capital, as accumulation is undertaken.”[38]

Hence, according to the authors, what rules out land augmentation in neoliberal times is the character of the state which prefers ‘sound finance’ over state activism and professes the ‘withdrawal of state’. Hence, imperialism remains the only option for capitalism in neoliberal times too for protecting the value of money in the core. But these arguments immediately beg many questions. Why should state support for peasant agriculture be the predominant mechanism for land augmentation, why not the growth of capitalist agriculture? The growth of capitalism in agriculture, at the expense of peasant farming, will definitely have a land augmenting effect as it will be forced to bring in large scale mechanised farming practices. But the authors argue that such a shift to capitalism in agriculture was prevented in colonial times due to the ‘rent barrier’; the landlords were prevented from moving to capitalist farming because of the high rents which prevailed.

“…the landlords themselves were also hamstrung by this “rent barrier,” which can be understood as follows. Any yield-raising investment on land would typically require the resumption of the land from petty tenants for direct cultivation by hired labour so that the landlords could be sure of actually getting the benefits of such investment. But in such a case, the investment that the landlord now had to make, had to earn not only the going average rate of return on capital (in its alternative uses), but an additional amount to cover the rent foregone. The higher the rent per unit area the greater of course was this additional amount that had to be earned, which meant that the high rents that actually prevailed as a consequence of colonial deindustrialization erected a formidable barrier against land-augmenting technological change, over and above the factor of state apathy mentioned earlier.”[39]

Because de-industrialisation of the country was not accompanied or even followed by modern industrialisation in the earnest, the rent on the land increased and this became a barrier for the shift to capitalism in agriculture. But this does not explain why such a shift was not possible in the years of welfare economy after independence or why it is not possible now, under neoliberalism. What is at stake here is obvious, if such a shift to capitalist agriculture is a possibility, then there is no need for imperialist practices (as they are defined by the authors). The authors understand this perfectly well and hence tries to hush the matter up by providing reasons which are, at best, amusing. We shall encounter them later in this article in the critique of the Patnaiks’ theory.

Main Aspects of the Patnaiks’ Theory of Imperialism

We shall let the authors themselves sum up the whole argument.

                                                       

“The argument presented until now can be restated as follows. Capitalism cannot do without a whole range of goods produced by peasants located in the tropical and subtropical areas that have a fixed landmass - goods that either cannot ever be produced in temperate lands or cannot ever be produced in adequate volumes. As the ex-ante demand for such goods increases with capital accumulation, it cannot be met by increased output from this fixed landmass without threatening the value of money in the metropolis because of the increasing supply price of such output at any given money wage rate. If land- augmenting investment and land-augmenting technological change could occur in the tropical periphery for raising this output, then increasing supply price could be kept in abeyance. But that requires a relationship between the capitalist state (which has to play a crucial role for such change) and the peasantry, which, other than a brief period of dirigisme in the postcolonial era, simply cannot exist: the tendency under capitalism is to pursue inter alia a fiscal policy characterized by “sound finance” that precludes state activism in this regard.

As a result, this ex ante excess demand for tropical and subtropical goods is met by the imposition of income deflation upon the periphery itself, in order to squeeze out larger supplies from a given output at the expense of local absorption. The alternative route of a profit inflation combined with exchange rate depreciation in the periphery threatens the value of money within the periphery and is unsustainable; besides, it does not remove the threat to the value of money in the metropolis, apart from arousing political opposition from the metropolitan working class. An income deflation upon the workers in the metropolis itself is unlikely ever to be imposed, if it is imposed at all, to an extent that does away with the need for income deflation on the working people in the periphery. In short, squeezing local absorption in the periphery to meet the demands of capital accumulation in the metropolis is an essential feature of capitalism, and this, far from being obviated by capital accumulation (and the development of capitalism) within the periphery, only makes the problem even more serious. Reducing such local absorption by poor populations through income deflation is the essence of imperialism.”[40]

So, let us list the main aspects of the theory of imperialism presented by the Patnaiks.

1. Geographical asymmetry between the temperate and tropical zones with respect to the capacity of production of certain commodities.
2. These tropical commodities are produced by peasants or by petty producers.
3. The tropical land mass is more or less fully used up.
4. Increasing supply price of these commodities because of increase in demand due to capital accumulation.
5. This increase threatens the value of money in the core and the periphery.
6. Impossibility of land augmentation in the periphery for raising the output of these commodities.
7. Imposing income deflation upon the periphery with an eye to reduce local absorption of these commodities and making them available to the core at non-increasing price as the only way to protect the value of money; this is the ‘essence’ of imperialism.

3. David Harvey’s Critique

David Harvey, in his commentary which is included in the book itself, has offered a critique of the theory. Even though his critique makes no effort to trace the main motivations of presenting such an obviously flawed theory or to link the theory to the reformist, social democratic politics professed by the academic left in India, it raises some pertinent questions. Hence, we shall have a quick look at the main points of this critique.

Harvey on Looseness of Definitions

Harvey starts by pointing out the vagueness in the definition of ‘tropical landmass’ in the book.

“There is, however, a damaging looseness in the way they articulate this physical proposition… This would not matter were it not for the fact that it is the very specific productive capacities of the tropical landmass that grounds what their theory of imperialism is all about.”[41]

Harvey has a valid point here, especially given the fact that the whole theory bases itself on the asymmetrical productive capacities of the ‘tropical’ and ‘temperate’ land masses. If the claim is that there is an asymmetry between tropical and temperate land masses, the least that should be done is to properly enlighten us as to what is temperate and what is tropical. So it is only fair that one would expect this ‘tropical landmass’ to be properly defined. As Harvey asks,

“So where this “tropical landmass” and what are the climatic conditions that create the monopoly over the supply of certain agricultural inputs to metropolitan capitalism? Again, there is a lot of looseness of definition here. Sometimes the Patnaiks talk exclusively about tropical regions, while elsewhere they include the subtropics. So where is this region exactly and what are its geographical characteristics?”[42]

Harvey points out the difficulties in neatly categorising nations as tropical or temperate and the difficulties that this will cause to Patnaiks’ theory of imperialism. Harvey is right when he says that “There is some awkwardness in this classification because many states (like China, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the United States, and even India itself) straddle climatic zones, and the trading patterns occurring between countries and currency blocks do not correspond to climatic configurations. This is particularly the case in China, where a vast subtropical southern zone contrasts with a temperate continental climate north of the Yangtze River.”[43] It is abundantly clear from this short discussion itself that the tropics vs temperate dualism, utilised by the Patnaiks, is hardly an air tight basis for a theory of imperialism. Contrast this to Lenin’s analysis of imperialism which rests on the rock solid basis of an analysis of the monopoly stage of capitalism. But it is just ‘conjunctural’ and therefore irrelevant as far as the Patnaiks are concerned. It is normal for us to expect that the Patnaiks would clarify their idea about the tropical zone in their response to Harvey’s commentary. But instead they arrogantly dismiss it with a gem of an obfuscating argument.

“We do not enter into definitions of what is north and what is south, what is the centre and what is the periphery—matters with which Harvey makes much play. As Joan Robinson famously remarked, it is possible to define a point in mathematics in one sentence, but we cannot so define an elephant; it hardly matters, however, for we know an elephant when we see it—unless we happen to be blind.”[44]

This is, it has to be said, a particularly convincing reply! Tropics are like elephants, for we shall know a tropical landmass when we see it!!!

Is the Tropical Landmass Fully Used Up?

Harvey then swiftly proceeds to his next query.

“Is all the land in the tropical landmass already used up? The answer is a resounding “no.” There is abundant “open land” in sub-Saharan Africa, and the recent pace of invasion of Amazonia by the soybean planters, the cattle interests, and the loggers defines a vigorous frontier of conversion of tropical rainforests to commercial agriculture”[45]

Harvey asserts that the claim ‘tropical landmass is more or less fully used up’ is not true, there is a movement towards that scenario, but we are nowhere near it now. This is a serious problem for the Patnaiks as they have based their theory on the assumption (more of a pious wish) that increasing demand for tropical products cannot be met by simply bringing more land into cultivation. If it is not, it is not clear why income deflation, and with it imperialism is needed! Moreover, it is amusing to see that the Patnaiks’ have used the above assumption not just to the neoliberal times, but to the colonial one too. This is so since their theory is qualitatively the same for colonial and neoliberal times, the only difference is in the modus operandi of the core states in imposing income deflation. To say that metropolitan states needed to impose income deflation on the periphery in 1850 to ward off the threat to value of money arising due to the increasing demand for tropical commodities, when they could have just brought new land under the plough, is indeed amusing!

Geographical Determinism

By far the most serious objection that Harvey makes against the Patnaiks’ theory is that it succumbs to “crude environmental determinism”. He notes that, in spite of their claim “that the foundation of their whole analysis lies in class relations”, their theory argues that “these class relations play out across the immutable and fixed geographical environment of the tropical landmass in such a way as to make its imperialist domination and exploitation both necessary and inevitable to the survival of capitalism”. Harvey is here alluding to the fact that the Patnaiks’ theory is based on a strict and fixed opposition between temperate and tropical geographical regions, the characteristics and production capacities of which do not change in any qualitative way in the course of centuries[46]. What changes is merely the way in which capitalism imposes income deflation to deal with this fixed problem. As Harvey says, this means that,

“…the Patnaiks here choose to follow a whole line of economists who conceive of “geography” in purely “natural” physical and immutable biotic terms as if the social production of space and the long history of human modifications of environments do not matter. Our relevant geographical environment has in large measure been modified and produced by human action and, particularly over the last few centuries, by capitalist imperatives… The tropical landmass as it is now constituted is completely different to that of the last century… Geography, I insist, is far more than a bunch of data about climate and soil types, and I object strenuously to the Patnaiks’ antiquarian conception of it”[47]

This fixity and immutability of concepts is a characteristic of the whole theory put forward by the Patnaiks and is not limited to their analysis of geography. As we have seen before, the Patnaiks’ theory premises that the tropical landmass has been fully used up from the colonial times itself and that it remains so to this day. No effort what so ever is made in the book to study the pattern of land usage in backward capitalist countries across the world. Furthermore, Patnaiks’ theory, to be plausible, needs the tropical commodities to be produced by peasants or petty producers. They argue this to be the case, and again, makes no effort to investigate the possible disintegration of the material basis of peasant agriculture and petty production. This is especially surprising because that is the natural course followed as capitalism matures. Instead, they advance speculative arguments to try and prove that these commodities shall continue to be produced through petty production. This fascination with fixity and immutability, this reluctance to engage with dynamics, may it be of geography, tropical land usage or petty production, has its roots in the non-dialectical nature of the Patnaiks’ analysis. We shall have more to say about this later when we analyse their method in detail.

In their response, the Patnaiks try to defend themselves from the charge of ‘geographical determinism’ by shifting the goalposts; that is, by shifting the stress of their theory from geography to economics!

“Central to our theory is not some geographical determinism but the concept of increasing supply price, which implies an undermining of the value of money under capitalism, and reflects the fact that certain commodities under certain circumstances are producible only at an increasing supply price - a fact that no economist can deny and that even Keynes underscored in his classic The Economic Consequences of the Peace.”[48]

If only the Patnaiks had informed us earlier itself that their basic premise is ratified ‘even’ by Keynes Himself, we would not have dared to entertain any doubts on their theory! It is very representative of their class character that they are out to correct Marx, but consider Keynes as the final word. In the response, they continue to disown the geographical basis of their theory which they were stressing in the main text:

“Our theory of imperialism is about capitalism as it behaves in the context of certain undeniable facts relating to production possibilities of different regions. It is about capitalism not geography.”[49]

It takes much more than peppering the book with words like ‘spontaneity’ to prove that the theory presented is about capitalism and not geography. Granted, for argument sake, that imperialism according to the Patnaiks theory, is not an inevitable product of geography. It arises from the way in which capitalism tries to overcome a deprivation outside of it. But, is it a consequence of the characteristics of capitalist mode of production? Does it arise from the inherent contradictions of capitalism? Unlike Lenin’s theory which tells us how imperialism grows out of capitalism’s unresolvable contradictions, the Patnaiks’ theory reduces it to capitalism’s strategy in dealing with a problem outside if it. They argue that the prime motivation for the practice of imperialism does not come from inside capitalism but from outside, from geography. The authors knows that this is a serious handicap of their theory and tries to sidestep it by proposing that this strategy itself is a structural relationship that characterises capitalism, alongside the capital – wage labour one! Ingenious are the ways in which ‘academicians’ spin out their theories, more so if they happen to be trying to thrust their petty bourgeois illusions on the world.

4. Patnaiks’ Imperialism – A Critique

The Method

First, let’s cast a glance at the method employed by the Patnaiks. In his generous forward to the book, fellow social democrat Akeel Bilgrami praises Patnaiks’ method thus, “At each step of the argument, the book considers a number of objections to the argument at that stage or considers claims that are alternative to their own claims at that stage of the argument; and it addresses these objections and alternatives before it moves to the next step. This dialectical method…”. So, this is the dialectical method! Bilgrami, true to his class loyalties, naively confuses objections with contradictions here, and assume that dealing with a lot of (self-conjured) objections and addressing each of them amounts to dialectics! If Marx had used this ‘dialectical’ method in his capital, his first sentence “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity” would have been followed by the answers to the objections, why not money, why not capital, why not factories, why commodity? Instead, Marx plunges into the two contradictory aspects of commodity. A dialectical analysis of imperialism would have tried to unearth its dynamics, whereas it is evident that the Patnaiks are interested in its statics. The authors claim that imperialism is an invariant structural aspect of capitalism. Even if it were true, dialectics would have followed the dynamics of such invariance. Materialist dialectics would have investigated the origin of imperialism in the structural contradictions of the mode of production (that is exactly what Lenin did) and not just pictured it as a strategy of capitalism with no structural connection to its contradictions. The Patnaiks’ method, in spite of their friend Bilgrami’s generous praise, is anything but dialectical.

This is immediately obvious when we try to wade through its different aspects. For instance, in his commentary, Harvey wonders,

“So where, then, do we find tropical and subtropical land that can grow temperate region crops and is fully occupied under conditions of non-capitalistic, peasant agrarian production? The best answer I can come up with is much (but by no means all) of the Patnaiks’ India (and perhaps the African Sahel zone). If all the tropical world were like India, then they might have a case, but it is not.”[50]

I shall remark immediately that even if we take India, the above assertions of the authors that Harvey alludes to are wrong! But nevertheless it is clear, as Harvey says, that whenever they say tropics the authors’ picture India. This is why when asked to ‘define’ the tropics, Patnaiks’ had to evoke the elephants! Marx too wrote Capital mainly after a thorough study of English capitalism, but the method employed was very different. As Lukacs remarked,

“Marx never ‘generalised’ from particular experiences limited in time and space. On the contrary – true to the methods of genuine historical and political genius – he detected, both theoretically and historically, in the microcosm of the English factory system, in its social premises, its conditions and consequences, and in the historical trends which both lead to, and in turn eventually threaten its development, precisely the macrocosm of capitalist development as a whole.”[51]

It is precisely such uncritical generalisation of particular experiences, which is the very opposite of dialectics, that underlies the method of this book. Much of what the Patnaiks have to say about the ‘tropics’ are fully invalid if we take Africa or even China. Such generalisation of the Indian experience is bound to give wrong results. Here, it is exacerbated by the fact that their interpretation of even that particular Indian experience is wrong!

We have already seen that the Patnaiks’ basic argument is that capitalism is characterised by two structural relationships. One, the capital – wage labour relationship, and two, imperialism. Marx, in spite of studying capitalism in the heydays of colonialism (which is, according to the Patnaiks, imperialism in colonial times and nothing more) based his study only on the first relationship. Marx studied colonialism deeply and wrote about it profusely; so, if he did not accord colonialism the status of a basic structural aspect of capitalism, it was because he was convinced it did not belong there. This is clear from his plan of study which he alludes to in Grundrisse:

“The order obviously has to be (1) the general abstract determinations which obtain more or less in all forms of society… (2) the categories which make up the inner structure of bourgeois society, and on which the fundamental classes rest, capital, wage labour and landed property. Their inter-relation. Town and country. The three great social classes. Exchange between them. Circulation, credit system (private). (3) Concentration of bourgeois society in the form of the state – viewed in relation to itself. The ‘unproductive’ classes. Taxes, state debt, public credit. The population. The colonies. Emigration. (4) The international relations of production. International division of labour. International exchange. Export and import. Rate of exchange. (5) The world market and crisis.”[52]

It becomes clear from this plan, and also from his finished works, that Marx envisioned the questions of colonialism, international relations of production, international exchange and world market to be the derivatives of “the basic categories which make up the inner structure of bourgeois society”. The Patnaiks’ are definitely not happy with this plan and wants imperialism to be made a ‘basic category’ of capitalism. This amounts to a complete revision of Marxism, even though they try to hide this fact as well as they can in the book.

Imperialism as a ‘Structural Relationship’ that Characterises Capitalism

We have already seen how the Patnaiks define imperialism as “… a certain structural relationship that characterises capitalism but that, surprisingly, has received very little attention until now …in addition to the capital – wage labour relationship, capitalism is characterised by an additional structural relationship, and “imperialism” refers to that structural relationship”. It is very instructive to study the diametrically opposed ways in which Marx arrives at capital – wage labour relationship and in which the Patnaiks arrive at imperialism, which they contend is an additional structural relationship which characterises capitalism. The essence of Marx’s method is captured by Ernest Mandel in his celebrated introduction to Marx’s Capital, vol. 1.

“It is no accident that Marx starts Capital Volume 1 with an analysis neither of ‘the capitalist mode of production’, nor of capital, nor of wage labour, nor even of the relations between wage labour and capital. For it is impossible to analyse any of these basic concepts or categories – which corresponds to the basic structure of capitalist society – scientifically, totally and adequately without a previous analysis of value, exchange value and surplus value. But these latter categories in turn hinge upon an analysis of the commodity and commodity producing labour.” [53] 

So, the relationship between wage labour and capital, which is a basic structural element of capitalism, unfolds ‘scientifically, totally and adequately’ from an analysis of commodity and commodity producing labour. The exploitation immanent in the capital – wage labour relationship reveals itself only upon a dialectical analysis which starts from commodity. In Marx’s analysis, this structural relationship between wage labour and capital is not a given, not even a starting point of analysis, but is the ‘material concrete’ which is reproduced by the analysis of elementary material phenomenon – the commodity. Thus, while in Marx’s analysis, the wage labour – capital relationship emerges from the dialectical analysis of the commodity, the Patnaiks’ analysis posits imperialism as another structural relationship characterising capitalism, at par with wage labour – capital relationship, in a rather casual manner. The Patnaiks’ analysis does not give us any clue as to how this second structural relationship emerges, it is obvious that it does not unfold from an analysis of the basic Marxian categories of capitalism.

The Patnaiks seems to suggest at many places in the book that imperialism emerges out of the ‘spontaneous’ way in which capitalism deals with geographical asymmetry. As they say towards the beginning of their work, “… its essence lies in the fact that capitalism, … must, in its ‘spontaneous’ operation, act in ways that tends to immiserate the traditional petty producers of the third world”. With this assertion, the situation becomes amusing. Imperialism, assert the Patnaiks, is one of the two basic structural aspects of capitalism, the other one being the capital – wage labour relationship. Then, these should determine the character of capitalism as a social mode of production. In particular, capitalism’s ‘spontaneity’, which the authors evoke repeatedly in this work, should emerge from these structural characteristics. So, capitalism’s ‘spontaneity’ is at least partly determined by imperialism as one of the structural characteristic of capitalism. But in the book, the Patnaiks assert that it is this ‘spontaneity’ of capitalism that leads to imperialism! The book describes capitalism’s unplanned and spontaneous nature as the biggest impediment to the solution of the geographical asymmetries by non-imperialist means. So, capitalist spontaneity, which is partly caused by imperialism, is identified by the Patnaiks as the main cause for imperialism! When Proudhon put forward the thesis that ‘property is theft’, Marx characterised it as eating one’s own tail because theft cannot be defined without recourse to the idea of property. The Patnaiks’ logic belongs to the same league; imperialism is a structural element of capitalism, so capitalism’s ‘spontaneity is determined by it, this spontaneity is the basic driving cause of imperialism!           

The Patnaiks’ Love Story with Petty Producers

We have already seen how the Patnaiks adamantly maintains that tropical products are produced by petty producers. When it comes to products of tropical landmass, the authors assert that they are produced almost exclusively by peasants. It is as if they are mortified at the prospect of having no one whose income can be deflated! We have seen how they theorise the persistence of petty agricultural production in the periphery in colonial times. The colonial regime’s refusal to undertake any investment in irrigation or in research and development for improving agricultural practices coupled with their inability to carry out land reforms were identified as reasons for this. Moreover, the ‘rent-barrier’, according to the Patnaiks, acted as a major hindrance to modernising agriculture during the colonial era. But after independence, the Patnaiks note that there were efforts from the newly independent states to promote the growth of capitalist agriculture.

“While the colonial period saw little land augmentation, there was a change in this respect after decolonization. The dirigiste regimes that came to power as legatees of the anticolonial struggles were committed in a sense to providing some relief to the peasantry. While they by and large eschewed any radical land redistribution (except in East Asia under American occupation as a means of breaking the power of Japanese landlords, or where Communist regimes came to power), they did carry out land reforms up to a point, usually to facilitate a transition to capitalist farming, which would typically be an admixture of both peasant capitalism and landlord capitalism. Such measures included giving ownership rights to rich tenants who could then take to capitalist agriculture. Additionally, the dirigiste regimes did undertake several important measures, such as protecting agriculture against world market price fluctuations, providing subsidized credit and other inputs, carrying out some research and development, setting up a wide extension network, investing in irrigation, and providing assured remunerative prices. No doubt the bulk of the benefits of these measures accrued to the emerging capitalist class in the countryside, but some also went to other sections of the peasantry.” [54]

So, the authors concede that the efforts of the bourgeois welfare state to promote capitalism in agriculture did bear some fruits. The state’s protection against price fluctuations, subsidies and credits that it provided, research and development, investments in irrigation and remunerative prices, did lead, according to the Patnaiks, to the constitution of an “emerging capitalist class in the countryside”. So the first impediment in the colonial era, namely the absence of state support, was overcome. What about the second hindrance, the ‘rent barrier’? They assert that this was overcome following the ‘green revolution’.

“At any rate, owing to the sharp rise in yield permitted by “green revolution” technology, the rent barrier was overcome, and land augmentation did occur. As a result, there was a considerable increase in agricultural output under the dirigiste regimes, even in countries with fixed and fully utilized tropical landmasses, compared to the colonial period.” [55]

The two major barriers for the development of capitalism in agriculture, namely, the absence of infrastructure in irrigation and the ‘rent barrier’, both were overcome during the dirigisme regime itself, says the Patnaiks. But they go on to argue that under the neoliberal state, the situation is different.

“…the neoliberal state curtails “land-augmenting” expenditure and investment, just as it curtails welfare expenditures and transfer payments to the poor. At the same time, subsidies to the peasants are cut, cheap credit is no longer made available, input prices are raised, public extension services dwindle, protection against world market price fluctuations is removed, and even procurement operation at assured remunerative prices is wound up (since it also falls foul of World Trade Organization rules). “Land augmentation” therefore, as had been the case in colonial times, takes a back seat… It is also not surprising that large numbers of peasants find even “simple reproduction” impossible to carry on. In countries like India they are leaving agriculture in considerable numbers and are also resorting to large- scale suicides (over 240,000 peasant suicides have occurred in India over the first decade and half of the present century)” [56]

Because of their training as bourgeois academicians, the Patnaiks cannot help presenting the facts as they are, but owing to their petty bourgeois orientation their interpretation of these facts are almost always regressive. This is exactly because “in their minds they do not get beyond the limits that the latter (petty bourgeois) do not get beyond in life”, as Marx so succinctly observed. This present discussion is an excellent example of this. They correctly locate the barriers that existed in the path of the development of capitalism in colonial India, they also detail the ways in which these barriers were overcome by the assertive action of the welfare state which lead to the development of capitalism in Indian agriculture, albeit that of a Junker variety. They also see what is happening in neoliberal era when support measures are being removed one by one. All these are correct and incisive, but what follows is horrendous petty theorising of the petty bourgeois:

“…the neoliberal state works directly and exclusively in the interests of international finance capital, which is the lead actor in the current epoch. The state acting directly and exclusively in the interests of the lead actor of the world capitalism of the time is what capitalism in its “spontaneity” demands. This precludes “land augmentation” as a means of coping with the threat of increasing supply price of products of the tropical landmass to the value of money in the metropolis.” [57]

The Patnaiks vehemently refuses to draw conclusions which are staring at their faces from their own arguments. Their logic is a very good example of evasion and proceeds like this: land augmentation and growth of capitalism in agriculture were prevented in colonial times by the absence of state support and rent barrier. But, after independence, both of these were reversed under the watch of the post-colonial welfare states. State support was forth coming and green revolution accounted for the rent barrier. Capitalist growth and land augmentation began to occur during this phase in the periphery. This was followed by the neoliberal era in which the return of the dogma of fiscal prudence meant that state support was again withheld. From this, the Patnaiks reason that land augmentation is no longer possible under neoliberalism. But they carefully evade the central question here: what about the growth of capitalism in agriculture which they themselves theorise to have commenced during the welfare state regime? One would expect this growth to intensify in the neoliberal phase because of the destruction of peasants and petty producers following the withdrawal of state support and subsidies. In that case, there can be capitalism induced land augmentation too. The Patnaiks refuse to engage with this question at all in the book and instead hurriedly concludes that as the neoliberal state cannot undertake state funding land augmentation is ruled out. By out rightly refusing to engage with the issue of growth and spread of capitalism, they maintain that the products needed by the core are produced exclusively by petty producers in the periphery. God only knows what happened to capitalist production which the authors themselves conceded had grown in post-colonial era. I guess it evaporated, unable to withstand the heat of Patnaiks’ theorising. There is no other plausible reason for the sudden disappearance of capitalism!

What is the primary conclusion to be drawn from their own analysis, which the authors are unable to draw because of their class orientation, and from which they are steering clear? It is this: The welfare state had made sure that the important barriers to the growth of capitalism in peripheral countries were overcome. Capitalist agriculture was fast beginning to stand on its feet. Under these circumstances, the neoliberal rolling back of state interference can only expedite the shift towards capitalism as it makes peasant agriculture untenable. The roll back of dirigiste measures which Patnaik detail above show exactly that they are specifically aimed at finishing off peasant agriculture. And these measures are having the desired effect, they are making sure that even simple reproduction is impossible for the peasants, as noted by the Patnaiks themselves. This is an expected step from the bourgeois state to help the bourgeoisie to finish off petty production in every field. And in this sense, in Marxist – Leninist terms, they are objectively progressive and have to be politically approached in a dialectical manner. Petty bourgeois Patnaiks cannot follow this approach as it will directly lead them to revolutionary conclusions. To avoid these conclusions, they refuse to even engage with the obvious and pertinent questions which their own analysis throws up. Hence their absolute refusal to trace the further route of capitalist agriculture in neoliberal era.

As the Patnaiks document emotionally, petty production is being destroyed by the actions of the Indian state, but what is happening to the capitalist production? Their analysis does not even pose this question. Instead, they conclude that the refusal to continue land augmenting measures is specifically followed at the behest of international finance capital for coping with the threat of increasing supply price by imposing income deflation on petty producers. Here, the Patnaiks are performing a brilliant sleight of hand. They claim that the withdrawal of state is at the direct behest of core capitalism and is aimed at imposing income deflation on petty producers and thus to preserve the value of money, when the truth is that it is done by the bourgeois state to crush petty production by withdrawing all support structures that propped it up and by exposing it to the vagaries of the competitive market. This is done to aid the growth of capitalism (not only in agriculture, but in all fields). International finance capital, conscious of the lack of investing opportunities in the core due to the fast declining rate of profit, is bent upon the creation of investment opportunities in the third world, for which it needs the unbridled growth of capitalist relations in every field. So, normally, it pushes for such measures in the third world states. The result of all this is the growth of capitalism and the destruction of petty production in all areas (even in areas such as education, health, human relations etc.). The peasants and other petty producers are being destroyed because of this, but such destruction is not aimed at decreasing their purchasing power, decrease in purchasing power is the result of their destruction which was done to expedite the growth and reach of capitalism. The Patnaiks know fully well that Marxism sees such destruction of petty production as objectively unavoidable and progressive and desists from advancing any argument for its reversal. Defining imperialism the way they do allow them to picture this destruction of petty production as a part of the imperialist plot for income deflation, rather than as a consequence of growth of capitalism. Thus they get to argue, as they did before, that such destruction is very different from that which happened in Europe during the heydays of capitalism. In this manner, they carve out space to argue for the preservation of petty production and the petty bourgeois which revolutionary Marxism does not allow them to do.  Petty production has to be preserved as a part of the fight against imperialism because what we are seeing in peripheral economies is the destruction of petty production by imperialism for reducing the periphery’s purchasing power. Petty bourgeois aims have become miraculously progressive! Now the Marxist-Leninist stand on destruction of petty bourgeois can conveniently be ignored. It is in this sense that this article maintained at the beginning itself that the Patnaiks’ theory of imperialism is tailor made to render the petty bourgeois social democratic politics of the left progressive.

To give their argument further weight, the Patnaiks detail the differential treatment meted out to the peasantry in core and peripheral areas.

“One can see the impact of capitalism on the pre-capitalist petty producers, especially the peasantry, in terms of two sharply contrasting scenarios. In the heartland of capitalism, namely within the metropolis itself where capitalism first developed, the peasantry was largely destroyed as a class (with certain obvious exceptions like France where it survived but kept reducing in relative size over time); the erstwhile peasants along with other segments of the workforce, including displaced artisans, who were not absorbed by capitalist activities at home, migrated to the temperate regions of white settlement… But in lands far from the cold temperate metropolis, the dispossession of local petty producers in the tropical and subtropical regions was not accompanied by a destruction of the peasantry as a class. It was effected through the setting up of “colonies of conquest,” to which relatively little migration took place from the metropolis. The object of the expropriation of peasants in such colonies of conquest was not to introduce capitalist agriculture in lieu of peasant agriculture. On the contrary, the peasantry in these countries lingered on, even when losing its rights over land and being reduced to the status of inferior tenants.” [58]

Here again, they strictly restrict their analysis to the colonial times in which it is correct to maintain that the destruction of peasantry followed different paths in the core capitalist countries and the colonies. The reader yearns to know what happened after that, after the dirigiste regimes lead to the growth of capitalism and after neoliberal reforms took over. Did the shift to capitalist agriculture begin in the earnest in the post-colonial societies too, or was there any new movement? But the Patnaiks won’t oblige; in fact they can’t, because if they do, they will have to concede that the destruction of petty production is fast progressing in post-colonial world in neoliberal era. Then alas, whose income they shall deflate!

We have already seen that the Patnaiks evade the question of further development of the destruction of petty production because they want to ‘arrive’ at some different conclusions. For them, the destruction of petty production in third world has nothing to do with the development of capitalism here, instead it is the result of a devious plot etched by the metropolitan capital, a plot which they call imperialism. Thus we come to the Patnaiks’ one main pet conclusion. In fact, their whole theory of imperialism is devised so that this conclusion can be successfully drawn. Behold…  

“The fact that big capital of the third world itself is complicit in this process of undermining and squeezing the traditional petty producers, viz., the peasants, craftsmen, fishermen artisans, and so on—is not germane to the argument, just as the fact that metropolitan capitalism also squeezes its own residual petty producers, not to mention the workers directly employed by it, is not germane to the argument. What is important is the fact of this compression of income and livelihoods exercised by metropolitan capitalism upon the traditional petty producers of the third world, especially of the tropics. This occurs for a very specific reason and must be distinguished from the general tendency of capitalism to destroy the basis of petty production everywhere.” [59]

So the destruction of petty producers in countries like India is predominantly due to imperialism which should be distinguished from general tendency to destroy petty production in capitalism. The latter is progressive, but the former is not progressive and hence should be, and can be, stopped and fought. Hurray… the petty bourgeois left can now talk about stopping the destruction of petty production without a prick to their ‘Marxist’ soul, all due to the Patnaiks’ carefully crafted theory of imperialism! Further, the authors have also devised a very original strategy for evading uncomfortable questions. Reading this para, one get the feeling that Harvey got it exactly correct: “All such questions would be swept aside as ‘not germane to the argument’, as happens throughout their text whenever they encounter an awkward conundrum.”

The Benevolence of Capitalism!

We have already seen that the Patnaiks traces the ways in which the barriers to development of capitalism in agriculture in the periphery were more or less overcome in the welfare state interlude. They have themselves explained how the peasantry is getting destroyed as a consequence of the neoliberal reforms. Now a crucial question presents itself which even academicians with the dexterity of Patnaiks shall find hard to evade. Even if there is a problem of increasing supply price of tropical commodities which leads to a threat to the value of money in the core, and even if it cannot be circumvented by land augmentation due to the refusal of neoliberal state, can’t such a land augmentation be brought about through development of capitalism in agriculture? This shall definitely lead to a marked increase in the agricultural yield and shall also push the state, even the neoliberal one, to invest in agricultural infrastructure as now it is being done for the rural bourgeoisie and not for the peasants. Patnaiks explain why the colonial state did not resort to this route instead ‘chose’ the income deflation one.

“…wholesale appropriation of peasant lands for the development of capitalism in the tropics, would have caused no land augmentation per se and hence brought about the same result, viz., mass income deflation in the periphery, which occurred anyway. But it would have brought about this result in a far more violent form for capitalism, in a far more socially and politically unsustainable form, than the actual forms of income deflation that were resorted to.” [60]

The benevolence of capitalism!!! Such kind heartedness! The same goodness of heart that Marx famously noted in Capital:

“If money, according to Augier, ‘comes into the world with a congenital blood stain on one cheek’, capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt”

And then again commented about in his writings on colonialism:

“Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation?”

But suddenly, capitalism, in its colonialist avatar, becomes so accommodating that it chose the painless route of income deflation to the violent route of development of capitalism in the tropics, something that it never even contemplated doing in its own backyard. I say we erect a monument in honour of colonial capitalism’s kindness, and one, just besides it, for the Patnaiks’ cunningness. To suggest that capitalism (in its ‘spontaneity’, of course) shall willingly forego a chance for its expansion because it doesn’t want this process to be violent is to completely forget capitalism’s history spanning half a millennium which is dipped in blood. The Patnaiks further tell us that, had the ‘development of capitalism in the periphery’ route been taken, imperialism would have been unnecessary as this would have solved the problems arising out of geographical asymmetry.

“No doubt, if capitalism had supplanted peasant agriculture in the tropical lands, then the reluctance on the part of the colonial (or semicolonial) state to undertake land-augmenting expenditure might have been less, since the beneficiaries of such expenditure would have been not tropical peasants but (realistically at the time) a group of capitalists largely drawn from the metropolis itself. But, if there had been capitalism in tropical agriculture, then the massive income deflation it would have meant in the form of dispossession of the peasantry would have made it unnecessary for the state to undertake any large- scale expenditure on land augmentation anyway. This is because supplies from the tropics for the requirements of metropolitan capitalism would have been available aplenty by this very fact of dispossession and hence the extraordinarily massive income and demand deflation that such dispossession would have entailed.” [61]

But, as we have seen, this route was not taken as capitalism, in the illusionary form in which it appears in the authors’ minds, abhors violent means. So,

“The capitalist sector’s demand for tropical products therefore was met historically, and continues to be met today, through an income deflation imposed on the periphery, even while retaining broadly the framework of a peasant agriculture (notwithstanding the more recent development of capitalism, both landlord capitalism and peasant capitalism, at the margin, from within such agriculture).” [62]

Two questions readily emerge. One, even if, for the sake of argument, one concedes the ridiculous point that metropolitan capital shunned the ‘development of capitalism’ route in the periphery in colonial times because it would have been too ‘violent’, it escapes me completely why it would do the same in neo liberal era. Why on earth would it want to preserve petty production now also and take the strenuous route of income deflation rather than the development of capitalism route? Evidently because this income deflation plot is only a figment of Patnaiks’ imagination and follows the diktats of no one else but the Patnaiks; it takes the route that allow the authors to argue that preserving petty production is a progressive act, simple! Two, given the fact that their whole theory of imperialism rests on the premise that tropical products are produced by petty producers and that capitalist production is not the main mode, why are the authors not investigating the consequences of this ‘recent’ development? What shall happen to the strategy of income deflation when capitalist production takes over in tropics? Such an analysis alone is capable of sketching the dynamics of the process the authors claim is happening. They evidently don’t inquire into it as such an inquiry will blow their carefully concocted theory to pieces.

Spontaneous Choice or a Devious Plot?

The authors state, ad nauseam in their work, that income deflation imposed on the periphery is a spontaneous process and not a planned plot, it is the result of the ‘dark urges’ of capitalism. But, despite their statements, their analysis suggests otherwise.

A good example for this is the Patnaiks’ argument on core capitalism’s preference for income deflation of petty producers rather than their complete pauperisation by the development of capitalism. We were informed that this is because the latter course is too violent and unsustainable. If we assume that Patnaiks’ argument is correct, then this is an informed choice taken after weighing the pros and cons of each option. There is nothing spontaneous about such a choice. Especially because, in its spontaneity, capitalism would always choose to spread itself to facilitate accumulation. Hence, this is a choice which is completely at odds with the basic character of capital itself. This is one among the many instances in the text at which the authors try to circumvent the difficulty to explain what seems like a well thought out plan by declaring that it is the result of ‘spontaneity’ of capitalism! We will have occasion to see other interesting consequences of this a little later.

Transcending Capitalism – The Need to Invent Scenarios

So, if imperialism actually is what the Patnaiks have defined it to be, what can be done about it? It is not surprising that the Patnaiks devote only a single page of their book to this question. The 9^th and the last chapter of their book has a subsection which is titled ‘Transcending Capitalism’, which is only a single page long. The importance that the Patnaiks ascribe to this question and the difficulty that they evidently face in answering it is in stark contrast with Lenin’s analysis of imperialism. Lenin has a whole chapter in his book on imperialism dedicated to the question of ‘the place of imperialism in history’, which starts with the following words:

“We have seen that in its economic essence imperialism is monopoly capitalism. This in itself determines its place in history, for monopoly that grows out of the soil of free competition, and precisely out of free competition, is the transition from the capitalist system to a higher socio-economic order.”

Imperialism is itself preparing all the objective conditions needed for its transcendence and the establishment of a higher socio-political order and Lenin discerns this movement in his study of imperialism. Hence, Lenin does not have to ‘search’ for a solution to the imperialist problem, the solution is suggested by imperialism itself, it just has to be discerned. This solution presents itself to Lenin because he was true to the dialectical method. The same happens with Marx too when he studied capitalism using materialist dialectics.

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”

The situation is very different with the Patnaiks. Imperialism, defined and studied the way they have done, does not suggest a solution at all. The objective conditions for the transcendence of imperialism is not forthcoming by tracing its movement. It is a definite way in which capitalism has always dealt with the problem of geographical asymmetry which exists outside of it. In this sense, it won’t be an overstatement to say that imperialism does not show any movement at all, its modus operandi changes, but that is it. Hence, the Patnaiks have to break their heads to find a way of transcending capitalism and even then, all they can come up with are half-baked propositions.

“The fact that capitalism necessarily imposes income deflation and poverty upon the peasants and petty producers of the periphery underscores both the need for transcending the capitalist system for human progress and the difficulty of doing so. This difficulty arises from the fact that a world-level worker-peasant alliance for overthrowing the system is not practicable in the foreseeable future… the alternative scenario of transcendence of capitalism that might be visualized is one where in particular countries, especially of the periphery, worker- peasant alliances are forged and advance politically by de-linking those countries from the web of globalization, and hence from the hegemony of international finance capital. But such delinking makes these attempts extremely weak and vulnerable to imperialist counterattacks.” [63]

It can be seen that in the absence of a dialectical theory of imperialism, Patnaiks are left with no other option but to conjure up different ‘alternate scenarios’ or to suggest different strategies. At the end, they concede defeat.

“Imperialism, in short, not only oppresses the working people in the periphery but also makes any challenge to such oppression by its victims that much more difficult.” [64]

But, true to their petty bourgeois credentials, they never fail to offer us fantasies. The Patnaiks close their book with a flourish which offers nothing but pious wishes.

“But imperialism is bringing the world to such an impasse at present—an impasse characterized by economic crisis, stagnation, and unemployment both in the metropolis and in the periphery; by unprecedented and intolerable levels of oppression of peasants and petty producers in the periphery … and by an acute threat to our ecosystem —that mass resistance to it, as had happened in the context of the world wars that provided the backdrop to the previous round of revolutions, can suddenly erupt anywhere. That could usher in a whole new era of resistance and revolutions through which all existing social conditions, including levels of consciousness, could alter with astonishing rapidity.” [65]

Be positive, the authors say! Even though there is nothing in our theory which suggest that imperialism, and with it capitalism, can be transcended, even though our theory could not even trace such a movement at all, still, revolutions can ‘suddenly erupt’ anywhere. One just have to wait for it. Hope is what the Patnaiks have to offer, hope which is devoid of any theoretical basis.

Welfare state and the ‘cooperative’ solution

For Lenin, imperialism develops in the course and evolution of capitalism, when the growth of capitalism leads to monopolisation, i.e., it is a stage of capitalism. But for the Patnaiks, imperialism is a way in which capitalism tries to resolve a geographical contradiction. The contradiction itself is not due to capitalism but is out there, was always there, and will always be there, independent of any mode of production. The Patnaiks say that imperialism arises because capitalism, in its ‘spontaneity’, resolves this contradiction in a particular way. Imperialism for the Patnaiks is “linked to capitalism as a social system”, but it is not a direct consequence of capitalism, nor does it develop from inside capitalism. As it is a reaction to something outside of it, this reaction attains, in Patnaiks’ work, a planned nature, however much they try to dress it up as ‘spontaneous’. They declare these reactions as spontaneous, but they increasingly take the concrete form of plots and ploys in the book. The question that arises is whether such a reaction of capitalism to a geographical asymmetry is unavoidable; Patnaiks argue that this reaction is spontaneous, but is it inevitable? Their answer to this question is not in the affirmative.

“Our theory of imperialism therefore is based on the recognition of a basic trait of capitalism: namely, when it is faced with two alternatives, one of which can be described as a “cooperative solution” effected through state activism to the benefit of all, and the other at the expense of the working population, it invariably chooses the latter.” [66]

They reiterate here concretely what they had already said implicitly when analysing why land augmentation is impossible. There is another alternative to imperialism, a ‘cooperative solution’, one which capitalism refuses to take in its ‘spontaneity’. So it emerges that if you can rein in the ‘spontaneous’ and ‘anarchic’ nature of capitalism, then this problem may have another solution. And all reformists and social democrats have a readymade mechanism for exactly doing this: the Welfare State.

We have already seen the Indian left’s approach towards such a state; such a state is the only tangible solution they have to offer to all the ills of capitalism. And these ‘illusions’ regarding the nature and possibilities of welfare state has left its mark on this book also. The authors characterise the neoliberal regime as follows in the book.

“…whereas during the dirigiste period, the bourgeois state, even while promoting the development of capitalism, appeared to be standing above classes and “looking after” the interests of all (and hence making concessions to other classes as well, and controlling to an extent the operations of the bourgeoisie), now the state becomes far more tied to promoting the exclusive interests of the corporate- financial elite, which is integrated with international finance capital” [67]

We know that the welfare state was not a mechanism which tried to control capitalism against the wishes of the bourgeoisie, it was an arrangement which put a tab on capital at the behest of the bourgeoisie. A passing acquaintance with the Bombay plan is enough to make this clear.  So, the underlined part of the above quote, which implies that the operations of the bourgeoisie can be controlled by an ‘activist state’, is a pure illusion. It was done at a particular conjuncture of world and Indian capitalism in which even the vanguard of the bourgeois was favourable to it.

“The phenomena noted above, namely the withdrawal of the state from its role of supporting, protecting, and promoting peasant agriculture (and petty production in general), its apotheosizing “sound finance” as demanded by international finance capital, and its reversion on this pretext to a policy of imposing income deflation on the working people are all indicative of a change in the class orientation of the state. Instead of being an entity apparently standing above classes and mediating between them (even as it promoted a relatively autonomous capitalist development, as the dirigiste regime did), the state in the period of globalization becomes associated almost exclusively with promoting the interests of international finance capital and the domestic corporate-financial elite that becomes integrated with it. The undermining of petty production that occurs is just the other side of this coin.” [68]

The Patnaiks are indulging in a subtle form of duplicity here; they stop short of claiming that the dirigisme state was above classes, but state that it ‘appeared to be standing above classes’ and that it was ‘apparently standing above classes and mediating between them’, even when it was promoting capitalist development. But they also claim that the state was ‘making concessions to other classes as well, and controlling to an extent the operations of the bourgeoisie’. So we are given a feeling that the welfare state was doing this against the wishes of the bourgeois class. But that is completely wrong, this was the route of Indian capitalist development selected and ratified by the Indian bourgeoisie as per the Bombay plan. The Indian big bourgeois correctly gauged that capitalism in India cannot be developed without state support, state funding, protective regime and an assertive state policy to enhance the living, educational and skill standards of the population. Support for petty production was the bourgeoisie’s need because the living standards and purchasing power of the population needed to increase. After the bourgeois have developed enough strength to stand on its legs, they shall take over and the state can withdraw. So it is not that the state was above the bourgeois class before and now it’s ‘class orientation’ has changed and it has become ‘associated almost exclusively with promoting the interests of international finance capital and the domestic corporate-financial elite’, it was always a bourgeois state which was bent upon realising the bourgeois strategy before and now. The point is that the strategy has changed!

The impression that emerges from the authors’ pronouncements is that dirigisme state was able to and can reign in the anarchic and spontaneous excesses of capitalism. In particular, it can try and resolve the geographical asymmetry in a ‘cooperative’ manner that does not lead to imperialism. A single more step in this direction and you can claim that if Sanders is the president of the US and Corbyn the PM of Brittan, then imperialism can be reined in and the ‘cooperative’ solution embraced instead! This is very much in keeping with the welfare state social democratic fantasies of the Indian left.

Two Zones, Two Capitalisms!

We have already seen that the only solution to imperialism that the Patnaiks have to offer is that of ‘de-linking’ from the web of globalisation. Let us dwell on this solution a little. Let us say a tropical country like India delink from the clutches of imperialism. What then? By Patnaiks’ own admission, petty production is pervasive in these lands but it is fast decaying. So delinking will give rise to development of capitalism as they agree happened under dirigisme regime. What will be the character of this capitalism which develops “undisturbed” in a tropical third world country? Here, one argument by Patnaiks become very important.

“The tropical and subtropical regions were both historically self-sufficient and are potentially capable of being self- sufficient even today. The temperate regions neither were historically self-sufficient nor are potentially self- sufficient even today. The living standard of people living in the temperate region simply cannot be met through the production within this region alone. They have to rely on imports of tropical and subtropical products. The same, however, is not true of the latter regions, which do not have to rely on imports of temperate products.” [69]

The geographical asymmetry is advantageous to the tropics and hence the capitalism which shall develop in the tropics after delinking need not be imperialist! In fact, a much stronger conclusion follows from the Patnaiks’ argument; tropical capitalism, under whatever conditions, cannot be imperialist (as per the definition of imperialism by Patnaiks). Temperate capitalism had to resort to imperialism to procure the products which could not be produced there, but there is no need for such a strategy for tropical capitalism because they were self-sufficient and are potentially capable of being self-sufficient even today, according to the Patnaiks.  That is very convenient; no matter the development of monopoly in India, no matter how much capital it exports to neighbouring countries and to Africa, no matter the level of concentration, no matter the naked collusion between the Indian state apparatus and its biggest business houses which is becoming clearer day by day, Indian capitalism can NEVER BE IMPERIALIST according to the Patnaiks. A really consoling thought to the Indian big bourgeoisie and the Indian reformist left; imperialism is of temperate origin and the imperial virus does not stand a chance against the self-sufficient tropical capitalism!

But that introduces a problem, as the Patnaiks had already characterised capitalism in a particular way at the start of the book, aiming to correct Marx.

“… in addition to the capital-wage labour relationship, capitalism is characterized by an additional structural relationship, and “imperialism” refers to that structural relationship. That relationship necessarily has a spatial dimension and was as much a feature of the colonial period as it is of contemporary capitalism: its essence lies in the fact that capitalism, within which of course metropolitan capitalism has the predominant position, must, in its “spontaneous” operation, act in ways that tend to immiserate the traditional petty producers of the third world, who constitute the overwhelming bulk of the working population of these countries.”

But we have already seen that the capitalism which develops in tropics, following the Patnaiks’ own admission, need cannot be imperialist at all. This leads to a particularly awkward situation: temperate capitalism is characterised by two structural relationships, the capital – wage labour one and imperialism. But the tropical capitalism can only be characterised by the former alone as it has no need for imperialism owing to its self-sufficiency brought about by a favourable geographical disposition.  So we see that the geographical asymmetry envisaged by Patnaiks is so all pervasive that there are even two capitalisms! A temperate one which is structurally imperialistic and a tropical one which is not! So we see where ‘fantastic’ theorising has got the authors to, they are now suggesting the existence of two types of capitalism. Of course, I have no plan of testing the patience of the reader by discussing this ludicrous suggestion anymore.

But I cannot but help wonder what will happen to the peasants and petty producers of the tropical countries if the Patnaiks solution of ‘de-linking’ is resorted to. Such de-linking will lead to relatively autonomous national economies, we are told. Then, capitalism shall grow and flourish in these national economies with no imperialist aspirations, as tropical capitalism is not structurally characterised by imperialism, according to the theory presented in this book. Thus, such a capitalism will be similar to the one Marx studied, characterised only by capital – wage labour structural relationship and shall follow the path that Marx studied. This means that in its ‘spontaneity’ such a capitalism will immiserate the petty producers and peasants and make capitalist production all pervasive. What shall be the reaction of the Patnaiks to such a destruction of petty bourgeois in tropical lands after de-linking? Now this destruction is not caused by imperialism, but by the growth of an autonomous capitalism. So, the Patnaiks can no longer argue that arresting this petty bourgeois slide is progressive. In such a case, will they characterise the petty bourgeois destruction as objectively progressive, as Marxists ought to do? If that is so, then their main argument in the book seems to be suggesting something really amusing. The current impoverishment of petty producers is to be halted because it is caused by imperialism. In order to resist imperialism, we have to de-link and that will lead to the growth of an autonomous version of capitalism. This version of capitalism has no need of imperialism and will develop along the lines predicted by Marx. This means that it will immiserate the petty producers. But this time such destruction of petty production is progressive and should not be attempted to be reversed. So, essentially, the argument is to prop up petty production now so that it can be destroyed later in the proper scientific way. You save petty producers now from the clutches of imperialism to deliver them to the national bourgeoisie to be crushed, later. The Patnaiks may disagree saying that they envisaged the de-linking process to be accompanied by strong welfare state measures which will make sure that even the indigenous version of capitalism cannot immiserate petty producers. Then, they are advancing an unabashed reformist position which argues that destruction of petty production and wholesome development of capitalism has to be curtailed to protect the petty bourgeois. This works against the basic tenant of revolutionary Marxism which sees such destruction as objectively progressive as they prepare the material conditions for advancement to a higher stage of production.

However one looks at it, the Patnaiks’ theory runs into myriads of problems as soon as we start analysing it. If one tries to take the Patnaiks’ arguments to their logical conclusion, then they yield self-contradictory and amusing results, as we have seen many times. In advancing a new theory of imperialism, the Patnaiks noted at the beginning of their book itself that Marxism lacked a unified theory of imperialism which is valid for both colonial and imperialist eras and that the conjuncture in which Leninist theory of imperialism was valid has long past. First, Marxism does not have a theory of imperialism valid for both colonial and imperial phases because it recognises the qualitative difference between these two phases. It asserts, with Lenin, that the political economy of the imperialist phase is completely different from the colonialist one and that the category of imperialism is only valid for the former phase. Second, the conjuncture in which Lenin’s theory of imperialism is valid is not that of the First World War, as the Patnaiks wrongly assumes, but that of monopoly capitalism. In this sense, Lenin’s theory has lost none of its pertinence. But, in trying to devise a theory which will account for all phases of capitalism and will also solve many of the reformist left’s theoretical problems, the Patnaiks have come up with arguments which are plain false in any conjuncture. Their book’s only importance is that it shows the devious ways which petty bourgeois theorists are capable of taking to evade the revolutionary conclusions of Marxism.

5. Raison d'être of Patnaiks’ Theory

We have already seen the sheer untenable character of Patnaiks’ theory of imperialism. Harvey, in his commentary to the Patnaiks’ book, wondered: “…why, in the face of all this evident dynamism in the global economy do the Patnaiks insist on the unreal concept of a fixed and immutable “dead” agrarian space of a tropical landmass populated by non-capitalist peasant producers destined for perpetual exploitation of metropolitan capital as the latter’s primary lifeline to survival? Only the Patnaiks can answer that question”. As we have detailed, the theory of imperialism contrived by the Patnaiks is so full of glaring inconsistencies that the question posed by Harvey is sure to occur to almost every intelligent reader. Based on the critique presented, their theory’s raison d’etre becomes very clear. Prabhat Patnaik and Utsa Patnaik are prominent representatives of the reformist left political outfits in India, especially the CPI(M). But, in spite of being reformists in ideology and social democrats in politics for many decades now,  neither these political outfits nor their academic representatives like the Patnaiks have relinquished the tag of ‘Marxists’ which they continue to use to fool their cadre and sympathisers. It is evident that reformism, being a thoroughly petty bourgeois trend, in impossible to be reconciled with Marxism which is thoroughly revolutionary in its spirit, method and content. In section 1 of this article, we analysed and listed out the political proposals advanced by the reformist left and their intellectuals including the Patnaiks and pointed to the petty bourgeois character of each of these proposals. These proposals and the politics based on them cannot be justified based on Marxism. The real motivation behind the theory of imperialism conjured up by the Patnaiks is that it effects a revision of Marxism which drags it down to the petty bourgeois level. This revision allows the Patnaiks to justify all the proposals of the reformist left by picturing all of them as anti-imperialist!

The central point is the approach towards petty production, especially in agriculture. The Marxian approach towards small scale peasant farming is very well known and Marx and Lenin has written about it extensively. But, the Indian left’s approach towards the agrarian question has been completely different. The left has completely forsaken class struggle in agrarian issues and now routinely fights for the ‘farmers’, the label under which they club together large capitalist farmers, small and medium farmers along with subsistence farmers and even agricultural labourers. The left no longer base their agrarian analysis on the class differentiation of farmers and peasants and their politics obfuscates the class struggle in the country side between rural proletariat and the capitalist farmers. The left pictures the whole farming community as a single entity which has common goals and demands for which they bargain with the state. Needless to say that this approach has nothing to do with the Marxian one, which is solidly based on class struggle. The left’s class-less approach and its reformist politics complements each other perfectly. The most regressive side of this politics is shown in the question of petty peasant production. The disregard for class analysis allows the left to categorise petty producers simply as ‘poor’ in need of support. Lenin has castigated this type of class-less approach and has in the process delineated the class root of the petty producer[70]:

“In the Populist newspapers and magazines we often meet with the assertion that the workers and the “working” peasantry belong to the same class. The absolute incorrectness of this view is obvious to anyone who understands that more or less developed capitalist production predominates in all modern states—i.e., capital rules the market and transforms the masses of working people into wage-workers. The so-called “working” peasant is in fact a small proprietor, or a petty bourgeois, who nearly always either hires himself out to work for somebody else or hires workers himself. Being a small proprietor, the “working” peasant also vacillates in politics between the masters and the workers, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.”

Lenin clearly understood the consequences of the reformist obfuscation of the class nature of the peasant and hence, he correctly underlined the Marxist approach to agrarian petty production[71]:

“The peasant question in modern capitalist states most frequently gives rise to perplexity and vacillation among Marxists and to most of the attacks on Marxism by bourgeois (professorial) political economy. Petty production in agriculture is doomed to extinction and to an incredibly crushed and oppressed position under capitalism, say the Marxists. Petty production is dependent on big capital, is backward in comparison with large-scale production in agriculture, and can only keep going by means of desperately reduced consumption and laborious, arduous toil. The frittering away and waste of human labour, the worst forms of dependence of the producer, exhaustion of the peasant’s family, his cattle and his land—this is what capitalism everywhere brings the peasant. There is no salvation for the peasant except by joining in the activities of the proletariat, primarily those of the wage-workers.”

This approach derives from Marx’s insight that the petty bourgeois is progressive only when they join the ranks of the proletariat in the fight against capital. But the reformist left envisages a completely different type of salvation for petty production. They argue that petty production has to be sustained on state support and by protection from national and international competition from big capital. In supporting petty production, they lower their politics to the petty bourgeois level and ends up raising petty bourgeois slogans rather than proletarian ones. This doesn’t give the left any problems on the ground, as the whole of their cadre base has been converted to petty bourgeois orientation by decades of reformist politics. But this pricks the soul of ‘academic’ representatives of the left who find it very difficult to justify the political support of petty production. It is exactly this problem that the Patnaiks’ theory addresses. By maintaining, as we already saw, that the impoverishment of peasants in the periphery is not due to the growth of capitalism but due to imperialism, the Patnaiks are attempting to build theoretical justification for the left’s petty bourgeois politics. This is the overriding purpose of their concocted theory of imperialism. The Patnaiks are trying to build a theoretical edifice which will justify the reformist left’s descent to petty bourgeois level. But, as we have seen, their effort comes a cropper.   

6. Conclusions

In the first section of this article, we saw that the practical prescriptions espoused by the reformist Indian left against the twin threats of a decaying capitalism and growing fascism are thoroughly petty bourgeois in character. Instead of theorising the forward march of the proletariat towards socialism, the Indian left envisages the return to calm, crisis-less capitalism. Return to an activist welfare state, autonomy from international finance capital, embracing a ‘democratic’, ‘egalitarian’ variety of nationalism, unqualified acceptance of liberal democracy and uniting politically with other ‘progressive’ parties are the left’s important strategies to achieve this. But in the age of global decay of capitalism, it is becoming clearer every day that the capitalist mode of production is unsustainable. It is also clear that the objective conditions needed for transcending capitalism is ripening. Hence, from a Marxist view point, the left’s above prescriptions and strategies are untenable and smacks of crass reformism. The Patnaiks’ theory of imperialism is specifically designed to solve this theoretical difficulty; it makes the left’s strategies seem progressive. In defining imperialism as ways in which the metropolitan core impoverishes petty producers in the periphery including India, their theory renders a return to an activist state and autonomy from international finance capitalism, anti-imperialist in character. Return to an activist welfare state makes the embrace of liberal democracy desirable and the plan for de-linking from globalisation means that an egalitarian form of nationalism is progressive. Support of petty production becomes anti-imperialist and so does uniting with petty bourgeois movements and parties. With a single inspired definition of imperialism, the Patnaiks sweep away all of the Indian lefts’ theoretical misgivings about lowering itself to the petty bourgeois level. This definition and the theory based on it, converts all of the left’s petty bourgeois positions into anti-imperialist ones. Their ingenuity is indeed admirable. But there remains a minor catch; the definition advanced by the Patnaiks is wrong, the theory that follows is ludicrous. The book, true to its petty bourgeois orientation, is a sorry heap of inconsistencies, self-contradictions and basic theoretical howlers. But when has such minor considerations stopped real academicians from giving their fantasies free rein!?

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[1] ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017. Emphasis mine.

[2] Ibid, p. 6.

[3] Ibid, pp. 3 – 4.

[4] Ibid, Preface, p. xxvii.

[5] The dictionary defines ‘ensconce’ as ‘to establish or settle in a comfortable, safe place’.

[6] ‘A commentary on A Theory of Imperialism’, David Harvey, included in ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017.

[7] Harvey wonders, “…why, in the face of all this evident dynamism in the global economy do the Patnaiks insist on the unreal concept of a fixed and immutable “dead” agrarian space of a tropical landmass populated by non-capitalist peasant producers destined for perpetual exploitation of metropolitan capital as the latter’s primary lifeline to survival? Only the Patnaiks can answer that question”, ibid, p. 172. 

[8] It has to be kept in kind that the Patnaiks are prominent academic representatives of Indian left.

[9] The original post was in Malayalam, translation is mine.

[10] ‘Inventing history to inculcate hatred’, Irfan Habib, Frontline, September 1, 2017.

[11] ‘The market that failed – Neoliberal economic reforms in India’, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh, Leftword Books, New Delhi, 2002.

[12] ‘Un-planning, Modi Style’, C. P. Chandrasekhar, Frontline, Vol. 31, No. 18, 2014.

[13] For my detailed take on the correct interpretation of this interlude, see ‘Planning Commission - Right's Intentions, Left's Reaction and the Way Forward’, available online here: http://revolutionaryspring.blogspot.in/2015/01/planning-commission-rights-intentions.html

[14] ‘Things that the left needs to do right’, Prabhat Patnaik, The Hindu, 24 May, 2016.

[15] So the left is to serve the whole of the people, not the proletariat class! Lenin had something to say about such bourgeois use of the word ‘people’: “Social democracy has fought, as is quite rightly fighting, against the bourgeois-democratic abuse of the word ‘people’. It demands that this word shall not be used to cover up the failure to understand class antagonisms within the people.”

[16] ‘Hands off Lenin! - The ‘Patnaik Conjecture’ and the travesty of Leninism’, Bipin Balaram, available online at:

http://revolutionaryspring.blogspot.in/2016/10/hands-off-lenin-patnaik-conjecture-and.html 

[17] ‘What it means to be ‘national’’, Prabhat Patnaik, The Hindu, 27 February, 2016.

[18] ‘Critical remarks on the national question’, Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 20. Emphasis mine.

[19] ‘Neo-liberalism and democracy’, Prabhat Patnaik, EPW, April 12, 2014.

[20] ‘The proletarian revolution and the renegade Kautsky’, Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 28. Emphasis mine.

[21] ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017. Pp. 142, 144.

[22] Ibid, p. 144.

[23] Ibid, p. 175.

[24] Ibid, Preface, p. xxv.

[25] Ibid, p. 8.

[26] Ibid, p. 10.

[27] Ibid, p. 10.

[28] Ibid, p. 10.

[29] Ibid, p. 9.

[30] Ibid, p. 14.

[31] Ibid, pp. 15-16.

[32] ‘A commentary on A Theory of Imperialism’, David Harvey, included in Ibid, p. 154.

[33] ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017. Pp. 33-34.

[34] Emphasis mine.

[35] Ibid, p. 34.

[36] Ibid, p. 36. Emphasis mine.

[37] Ibid, p. 33.

[38] Ibid, p. 144.

[39] Ibid, pp. 30-31.

[40] Ibid, pp. 45-46. Emphases mine.

[41] ‘A commentary on A Theory of Imperialism’, David Harvey, included in ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017, pp. 155-156.

[42] Ibid, p. 156.

[43] Ibid, p. 157.

[44] ‘A response to David Harvey’s comments’, included in ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017, p. 180.

[45] ‘A commentary on A Theory of Imperialism’, David Harvey, included in ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017, p. 157.

[46] This has to be so as the authors claim to be presenting a unified theory of imperialism which incorporates colonial and post-colonial phases.

[47] ‘A commentary on A Theory of Imperialism’, David Harvey, included in ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017, p. 162.

[48] ‘A response to David Harvey’s comments’, included in ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017, p. 173.

[49] Ibid, p. 194.

[50] ‘A commentary on A Theory of Imperialism’, David Harvey, included in ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017, p. 159.

[51] ‘Lenin – A study on the unity of his thought’, Georg Lukacs, Verso, 2009.

[52] ‘Grundrisse’, Karl Marx, Penguin Classics Edition, 1993.

[53] ‘Introduction’ to ‘Capital Volume 1’ by Karl Marx, Penguin Classics Edition, 1990. Pp. 13. Emphasis mine.

[54] ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017. Pp. 31. Emphasis mine.

[55] ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017. Pp. 31.

[56] Ibid, Pp. 32-33.

[57] Ibid, Pp. 33.

[58] Ibid. Pp. 148.

[59] Ibid. Pp. 6, emphasis mine.

[60] Ibid. Pp. 59. Emphasis mine.

[61] Ibid. Pp. 59-60.

[62] Ibid. Pp. 60. Emphasis mine.

[63] Ibid. Pp. 152.

[64] Ibid. Pp. 152.

[65] Ibid. Pp. 153.

[66] ‘A response to David Harvey’s comments’, included in ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017, p. 193.

[67] ‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017. Pp. 32. Emphasis mine. 

[68] Ibid. Pp. 106. Emphasis mine.

[69] Ibid. Pp. 151. Emphasis mine.

[70] ‘The peasantry and the working class’, V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19.

[71] ‘Petty production in agriculture’, V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19. Emphasis mine.