Bipin Balaram
Prabhat Patnaik’s basic premise was that the age of inter-imperialist rivalry was over. He claimed that the emergence of international finance capital, which is not tied to any particular nation-state, has led to the muting of imperialist rivalries. What this means, according to Patnaik, is that the theory of imperialism put forward by Lenin no longer holds true. As a consequence, Patnaik concluded that the ‘Leninist Conjuncture’, which according to him was based on inter-imperialist wars and the consequent ‘imminence of revolution’, has been superseded. Based on this conclusion, Patnaik pointed out that the ‘right way’ for the Indian left is to shun Leninist revolutionary politics and ally with ‘progressive-democratic’ forces. Seeing that all this left the world with no valid theory of imperialism, Patnaik duly obliged us with a brand new one of his own!
Patnaik’s journey to his new theory of imperialism is a story in itself. As I have written about it in some detail elsewhere (Patnaiks’ Theory of Imperialism – A Requiem for (of) the Petty Bourgeois, available at https://revolutionaryspring.blogspot.com/2019/05/patnaiks-theory-of-imperialism-requiem.html), let me restrict myself to the essentials here.
In 2000, in the introduction that he wrote for the Leftword Books edition of Lenin’s ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’, Patnaik vehemently defended Lenin’s theory of imperialism against suggestions that the world is moving towards a conflict-free ‘ultra-imperialism’ of the type suggested by Karl Kautsky. He wrote,
“The fact that globalisation of finance capital has brought about a degree of unity among the imperialist countries, at least in their dealings with the Third World, may create the impression that the world has moved to the Kautskyan vision of ‘ultra-imperialism’ rather than remaining submerged in ‘inter-imperialist rivalries’ as Lenin had prognosticated, that real developments have vindicated Kautsky rather than Lenin. To believe this, however, would constitute a serious misreading … of contemporary reality.”
Thus, back then, Patnaik claimed that to view globalisation of finance capital as leading to a muting of inter-imperialist rivalries would “constitute a serious misreading of contemporary reality”. That was when Indian social democratic left boasted a fair bit of representation in the Parliament and was still considered an important player in national politics.
But in the next 15 years, with the deepening of capitalist contradictions and the consequent growth of Hindutva fascism, the left became an insignificant national force. This was quite natural. Social democracy is based on the illusion that capitalism can be reformed from within. The deepening of capitalist contradictions and the socioeconomic crisis that this leads to, hence, decreases the popular appeal of social democracy. In the absence of genuine revolutionary alternatives, this tends to boost the prospect of fascist dispensations.
With its parliamentary presence dwindling, and its popular appeal restricted exclusively to Kerala (after being wiped out of West Bengal), the social democratic left wanted to ‘resurrect’ itself by striking opportunistic alliances with liberal-bourgeois parties. It was left to the social democratic intelligentsia, of which Prabhat Patnaik is the most prominent representative, to provide the necessary theoretical justification for such brazen opportunism. It is in this context that it suddenly dawned on Patnaik that Leninism has been ‘superseded’.
In 2016, in an article which appeared in The Hindu (Things that the left needs to do right, The Hindu, 24 May, 2016), he claimed that the world has moved “away from what one can call the ‘Leninist conjuncture’” and that the left has to “come to terms with a post-Leninist conjuncture, in order to remain viable.” He also claimed that this was made difficult “by a common but undesirable tendency among revolutionaries to place moral purity above practical politics”. By ‘moral purity’, he obviously meant an insistence on revolutionary orientation of working class politics and by ‘practical politics’ has in mind a willingness to enter into opportunistic alliances.
The surprising thing was the reason given by Patnaik for the supersession of Leninism. He wrote that the present age is one characterised by “… a muting of inter-imperialist rivalries” mainly due to the “… emergence of globalised or international finance capital which saw all partitioning of the world as standing in the way of its freedom to move globally.” This is exactly the position that he equated with Kautskysm 15 years earlier and which he thought was a “ serious misreading of contemporary reality”. But now, he embraced the ultra-imperialist arguments of Kautsky and emphatically concluded that,
“The era of struggles for repartitioning the world among rival nation-based monopoly combines was over since such combines no longer held centre stage. In short, the ‘Leninist conjuncture’ had been superseded; wars of course continued, but they did not express inter-imperialist rivalry, not even by proxy.”
Of course, social democratic intelligentsia are capable of such splendid theoretical volte face, especially when it helps them to justify opportunism.
A year later, he went a step further and came up, along with Utsa Patnaik, with his own theory of imperialism (‘A Theory of Imperialism’, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, Columbia University Press, New York, 2017). Lenin had defined imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism and had characterised this stage as one marked by inter-imperialist rivalries. But the Patnaiks claimed that, with the muting of these rivalries, the Leninist theory of imperialism has been rendered invalid.
According to the Patnaiks’ new theory, imperialism is not a stage of capitalism (the highest stage, according to Lenin) but a specific approach of capitalism to the geographical asymmetry between temperate and tropical zones with respect to the capacity of production of certain agrarian commodities. They claimed that the ‘essence’ of imperialism was the imposition of income deflation upon the tropical countries by the advanced temperate countries with an eye to reduce local absorption of these commodities and make them available in temperate zones at non-increasing prices. I have demonstrated the laughable nature and the myriad inconsistencies and contradictions of this “theory” elsewhere (Patnaiks’ Theory of Imperialism – A Requiem for (of) the Petty Bourgeois, available at https://revolutionaryspring.blogspot.com/2019/05/patnaiks-theory-of-imperialism-requiem.html).
So, we see that the mainstay of Patnaik’s arguments that Leninism has been superseded and that Leninist theory of imperialism has been invalidated is his claim that globalised finance capital has muted inter-imperialist rivalries. Such a claim is the result of an uncritical generalisation of geopolitical appearance. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US found themselves at the helm of a uni-polar world. This was just a particular geopolitical conjuncture and by no means meant that inter-imperialist rivalries were a thing of the past. There were contradictions between the US and the European powers inside NATO, and there were even contradictions among the imperialist powers of the European bloc, namely Germany, France and Britain. But the overarching dominance of the US tended to dampen such contradictions, with everyone more or less constrained to tow the US line. This gave the feeling, to those like Patnaik who are disinclined to see the socioeconomic churning behind the geopolitical appearance, that imperialism has been rendered conflict free.
The 2008 economic crisis and the erosion of the US military dominance in the middle east slowly changed the situation. The astounding economic and military rise of China and increased Russian assertion saw the growth of a rival imperialist bloc. The civil war in Syria, which was nothing but a proxy war between the US and Russia, was a turning point. Patnaik’s claim that “ wars of course continued, but they did not express inter-imperialist rivalry, not even by proxy” was proven wrong in Syria itself. If victory in Syria was not enough, the withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan emboldened Russia to further continue their military assertion. With the invasion of Ukraine, they have directly challenged the imperialist hegemony of the US-NATO axis.
Thus, the Russian attack on Ukraine clearly exposes the fault lines of world imperialism. The relative weakening of the US, the growing contradictions between the European powers (which resulted in the UK pulling out of the European Union) and the growth of the China-Russia imperialist axis show that inter-imperialist rivalries and resulting military conflicts are back on the agenda.
This consigns Prabhat Patnaik’s claims on the muting of inter-imperialist rivalries to the dustbin of history. It also upholds the value of Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Of course, no Marxist would claim that Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is literally valid, 100 years after it was framed. Imperialism has definitely evolved, but the correct framework for understanding it remains that developed by Lenin. Of course, as Patnaik claims, finance capital has become globalised. But this globalisation is mainly with respect to its operation, not its affiliation. In its affiliation, it remains securely moored to the nation-state of its origin and it cannot be otherwise under capitalist relations. Furthermore, it expects the nation-state to facilitate and smoothen its international operations through imperialist policies. Hence, finance capital still has material interest in backing the nation-state’s imperialist policies.
Thus, the Leninist thesis that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism characterised by rivalries between leading capitalist powers leading to incessant military conflicts, sometimes by proxy and sometimes directly, remains true. Prabhat Patnaik’s ‘geographical’ theory of imperialism as arising from asymmetry in agrarian production capacities is a figment of his imagination. This theory was concocted specifically to offer theoretical justification for opportunism. The Russian missiles have destroyed Patnaik’s theory, which now lies buried inside the rubble.
In a critique of Patnaik’s position, I wrote a few years ago that “Leninism is the living, throbbing, motoring force of history right now which the toiling class has to imbibe” (Hands off Lenin! - The ‘Patnaik Conjecture’ and the travesty of Leninism, available at https://revolutionaryspring.blogspot.com/2016/10/hands-off-lenin-patnaik-conjecture-and.html). That the social democrats and their academic representatives are uncomfortable with the revolutionary kernel of Leninism is quite understandable. But their pitiable efforts to consign Lenin to history books keep crashing against the walls of reality.
