Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present

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by Utsa Patnaik


  24. Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, vol. 3, Fighting for Freedom, 1937–1946 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001), 84–88.

  25. See Table 5, 251, of Geoff Tily, “John Maynard Keynes and the Development of National Accounts in Britain, 1895 to 1941,” Review of Income and Wealth, 55, 2 (June 2009), 331–59.

  26. For Indian national income, S. Sivasubramonian’s estimates adjusted for British India by the present authors.

  27. Some of the data Hunter had compiled was reproduced in U. Patnaik, “Food Availability and Famine.”

  28. Sen, Poverty and Famines.

  29. Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2011).

  30. Skidelsky, Fighting for Freedom, 1937–1946, 413–14.

  14 POSTWAR DIRIGISME AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS

  1. J.M.Keynes, “National Self-Sufficiency,” The Yale Review, Vol. 22, No.4 (June 1933).

  2. Joan Robinson, The Accumulation of Capital (London: Macmillan, 1956).

  3. Arghiri Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972); Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).

  4. V. I. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905), in Selected Works, 3 vols. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977).

  5. Michał Kalecki, “Intermediate Regimes,” in Michal Kalecki, Selected Essays on the Economic Growth of Socialist and Mixed Economies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

  6. Prabhat Patnaik and C. P. Chandrasekhar, “India: Dirigisme, Structural Adjustment, and the Radical Alternative,” in Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy, Dean Baker, Gerald Epstein, and Robert Pollin, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  15 THE LONG POSTWAR BOOM

  1. Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966).

  2. Michał Kalecki, “The Problem of Effective Demand with Rosa Luxemburg and Tugan-Baranovsky,” in Michal Kalecki, Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist Economy 1933–1971 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

  3. Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital; Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942); and Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957).

  4. Nicholas Kaldor, review of The Political Economy of Growth by Paul A. Baran, American Economic Review 48, no. 1 (March 1958).

  5. Andrew Glyn and Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profit-Squeeze (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972).

  6. H. A.Turner, Dudley Jackson, and Frank Wilkinson, Do Trade Unions Cause Inflation? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

  7. Prabhat Patnaik, “On the Economic Crisis of World Capitalism,” in Lenin and Imperialism, Prabhat Patnaik, ed. (Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1986).

  8. Josef Steindl, “On Maturity in Capitalist Economies,” in Problems of Economic Dynamics and Planning: Essays in Honour of Michał Kalecki, Tadeusz Kowalik, ed. (Oxford: Pergamon, 1966).

  9. In general, if the following three inequalities hold: (a) ΔG/ΔY ≥ G/Y; (b)ΔW/ΔY ≤ W/Y; and (c) ΔTw/ ΔW ≥ Tw/W, where G is government expenditure in the initial situation, Y output, W the pre-tax wage bill of productive workers and Tw the taxes paid by productive workers, then, if any one of three holds as a strict inequality, the ex post share of surplus in output would have increased because of government intervention.

  10. R. E. Rowthorn, “Conflict, Inflation and Money,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 1, no. 3 (September 1977).

  11. W. Arthur Lewis quoted in Nicholas Kaldor, “Inflation and Recession in the World Economy,” Economic Journal 86, no. 344 (December 1976).

  12. The pricing formula for manufactured goods is

  where pa is the price per unit of primary commodity, a is the primary commodity input used per unit of manufactured good, w* the wage rate expressed in terms of the manufactured good, l the labor coefficient per unit of manufactured good output, and π and t the profit and indirect tax markup respectively. The terms of trade would move against the primary commodity if the rise in profit-cum-indirect tax margin is not sufficiently offset by a decline in w*.l or a. The share of pre-tax wages in gross value added at market prices will also fall if the rise in profit-cum-indirect tax margin is not offset by a sufficient fall in a/w*.l.

  13. To avoid any confusion, we should make it clear that by “land-augmenting” measures we mean all measures that raise the productivity per unit of physical area (and not “land augmentation” in the sense of driving away existing land owners and augmenting its availability for capitalist producers). We sharply distinguish, in other words, between “land augmentation” and “primitive accumulation of capital.”

  16 THE END OF POSTWAR DIRIGISME

  1. Nicholas Kaldor, “Inflation and Recession in the World Economy,” Economic Journal 86, no. 344 (December 1976).

  2. Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, “Keynesian Chickens Come Home to Roost,” Monthly Review 25, no. 11 (April 1974); Hyman Minsky, John Maynard Keynes (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1975); Irving Fisher, “The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions,” Econometrica 1, no. 4 (1933).

  3. Paul Krugman, “Running Out of Planet to Exploit,” The New York Times, April 21, 2008.

  4. We are grateful to Dr. Shouvik Chakraborty for making this figure available to us.

  5. Of course, imperialism has been fighting wars in the third world of late. Some may argue that these wars are different from interventions that used to occur earlier against third world governments attempting economic decolonization, trying to escape the economic regime politically imposed by imperialism. But the point is that the kind of economic regime that imperialism used to impose politically is now imposed more or less through neoliberalism, a phenomenon that represents a triumph of imperialism, not its negation, as is often suggested.

  17 THE NEOLIBERAL REGIME

  1. Rudolf Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital (Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1910).

  2. Ragnar Nurkse, “International Investment Today in the Light of Nineteenth-Century Experience,” Economic Journal 64, no. 256 (December 1954).

  3. Interestingly only 10 percent of British capital investment came to India throughout the colonial period even though India was its largest colony.

  4. Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957); A. K. Bagchi, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

  5. Michał Kalecki, “Intermediate Regimes,” in Michal Kalecki, Selected Essays on the Economic Growth of Socialist and Mixed Economies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

  6. Prabhat Patnaik, “The Economics of the New Phase of Imperialism,” in Prabhat Patnaik, Re-Envisioning Socialism (Delhi: Tulika, 2011).

  7. We are assuming here for simplicity that the natural rate of growth of the workforce is the same as the rate of population growth.

  8. The reduction in per capita consumption of food grains owing to primitive accumulation of capital can be denoted by c(x) – c(y) where c(x) and c(y) denote food consumption at incomes x and y. Let N be the number of persons affected by primitive accumulation. Then if N{c(x) – c(y)}, the total reduction in food demand exceeds some threshold level S*, then land augmentation slackens, such that gf .≤ n, that is, the rate of growth of food grain production becomes less than or equal to the rate of growth of population (workforce). Since N is large, this condition is satisfied, which means that the displaced peasants neither can be absorbed in the capitalist sector nor even get back to the income level x from y to which it has fallen.

  9. When a peasant goes to an expensive private hospital while earlier he would have gone to a cheaper pubic one, and pays for the greater expense by consuming less food, some may conclude that he is better off, since he is going to a more expensive hospital. This, howe
ver, is misleading as he has no choice in the matter: the public hospital he went to earlier is now run down or wound up under the neoliberal dispensation. Since he is getting the same amount of healthcare as he did earlier and yet consuming less food, the basket of goods he consumes is vector-wise smaller; he is therefore poorer according to us.

  10. In fact, one of the present authors has found an inverse relationship between export-orientation of agriculture and domestic food availability to be a universal phenomenon. See Utsa Patnaik, “Export-Oriented Agriculture and Food Security in Developing Countries and India,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 31, Issues 35–37, September 1996.

  18 INEQUALITY AND EX ANTE OVERPRODUCTION

  1. W. Arthur Lewis, The Evolution of the International Economic Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).

  2. A. K. Bagchi, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

  3. For some evidence on movements in the share of wages in the United States and the United Kingdom from the late nineteenth century to the end of the 1930s, see Michal Kalecki, The Theory of Economic Dynamics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954).

  4. Joseph Stiglitz’s finding that a typical male worker’s real income in the United States in 2011 was marginally lower than it had been in 1968 is highly significant in this context. See his article “Inequality Is Holding Back the Recovery” in the New York Times, January 13, 2013.

  5. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

  6. Luigi L. Pasinetti, “Rate of Profit and Income Distribution in Relation to the Rate of Economic Growth,” Review of Economic Studies 29, no. 4 (October 1962).

  7. A comprehensive critique of Piketty’s theoretical argument is contained in Prabhat Patnaik, “Capitalism, Inequality and Globalization,” International Journal of Political Economy 43, no. 3 (April 2015).

  8. Michał Kalecki, Theory of Economic Dynamics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954); Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966).

  9. W. Arthur Lewis, Economic Survey 1919–1939 (Philadelphia: Blackiston, 1950); Prabhat Patnaik, Introduction to Lenin and Imperialism (Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1986).

  19 CAPITALISM AT AN IMPASSE

  1. Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).

  2. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936), 381.

  3. Palmiro Togliatti, Lectures on Fascism (New York: International Publishers, 1976).

  4. Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (London: Routledge, 1963, originally published in 1913).

  20 CAPITALISM IN HISTORY

  1. R. M. Goodwin, “A Growth Cycle,” in Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth: Essays Presented to Maurice Dobb, C. H. Feinstein, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).

  2. The argument that follows is based on Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, A Theory of Imperialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016) and Utsa Patnaik, “Capitalism and the Production of Poverty,” T. G. Narayanan Memorial Lecture, Social Scientist (January–February 2012).

  3. Anwar Shaikh, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

  4. Marx’s articles on India have been brought together by Iqbal Husain in Karl Marx on India (Delhi: Tulika, 2006).

  5. Marx’s exact words are quoted in Marx-Engels Correspondence, www.marxists.org.

  6. V. I. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905), in Selected Works, 3 vols. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977).

  7. This argument is developed at greater length in Prabhat Patnaik, “Defining the Concept of Commodity Production,” in Studies in Peoples’ History 2, no. 1 (May 2015).

  21 THE ROAD AHEAD

  1. This is borne out at the global level by the decline in per capita cereal output figures mentioned earlier. Since a larger proportion of grain output has been diverted for biofuel production over the period covered, per capita cereal availability for consumption purposes must have declined even more rapidly. In India, per capita availability of cereals and pulses in no subsequent year has reached the level it had reached in 1991, when neoliberal reforms were introduced.

  2. Prabhat Patnaik, “Two Concepts of Nationalism,” in What the Nation Really Needs to Know, Rohit Azad, Janaki Nair, Mohinder Singh, and Mallarika Sinha Roy, eds. (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 2016).

  3. György Lukács, Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought (London: New Left Books 1970 [1924]).

  Index

  The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

  acceleration of inflation; in Keynesian system; long-run supply price and

  accumulation: capacity utilization; increasing supply price and; in Marxist traditions; in money-using economies; primitive

  aggregate demand: high; in Keynesian system for money; in Marxian system for money; in Walrasian system for money, deficiencies in

  agricultural crisis of 1926; colonial arrangement influenced by

  agricultural growth, in Third World dirigiste regimes

  agricultural production: genetically-modified crops; land augmentation through

  agricultural revolution: capitalist demands during; capitalist farming; cereals output, in England; commodified wage goods and; corn imports during, into England; Corn Laws and; corn output during, in England; Enclosure Movement and; in England; ex ante overproduction and; failure of; food deficits and; food price inflation; free workers during; grain imports into England; grain production during, in England; manufacturing workforce after, shift toward; Overton position and; per capita income increases during; proletarianization of peasants and; transition to capitalist agriculture; wheat output during, in England

  Akbar (Emperor)

  alternative pricing-distribution systems

  appreciation of currencies, of rupees

  authoritarianism

  automobile, as epoch-making innovation

  Bangladesh, market competition for, India as

  banks, during Golden Age of capitalism

  Baran, Paul

  Bevan, Aneurin

  Bhattacharya, S.

  booms: see economic booms

  Brazil, as emerging country

  Bretton Woods system: collapse of, in postwar dirigiste regimes; in dirigiste regimes; exchange rate depreciation and; Golden Age of capitalism and; Keynes and; nominal exchange rate system and; war financing and

  British colonialism, before First World War: drain of wealth as result of; global exchange earnings, appropriation of; import-substitutes; production capacity asymmetry

  British Empire: see colonial economies; colonial markets; colonial period; colonialism; India

  British sterling: see sterling

  Bukharin, Nikolai

  business cycles: Juglar; Kitchin; Kondratieff

  Cambridge Economic History of India

  Cambridge Quantity Equation

  canal colonies, of India

  capacity utilization; accumulation and; exogenous stimuli and

  capital: finance; migration of; primitive accumulation of; social legitimacy of; see also capital goods

  Capital (Das Kapital) (Marx)

  capital exports: colonial transfers and; in Great Britain, financing of

  capital goods: employment levels and; income levels and; metropolitan; in money-using economies; new; old; in oligopolistic conditions; price levels of; production rates of

  capital stock, exogenous stimuli and

  capitalism: alternative trajectories to; during colonial period; colonialism and; conceptual representation of; crisis periods; development of; diffusion of; during dirigist
e regime, restructuring of; exogenous stimuli; external market requirements in; fascism and, rise of; finance capital as highest level of; globalization of; globalization regimes and; Golden Age of; ideological justification for; increasing supply price and; inflation and; Keynesian Revolution and; Keynesian system and; Marxian system and; metropolitan; money wage increases and; moribund; petty production and; political decolonization and; poverty and; prehistory of; progressive character of; in Ricardian system, conceptual representation of; socialism and; state intervention and; structural crisis of; Walrasian system and; world; see also isolated capitalist economy; monopoly capitalism

  capitalist agriculture

  capitalist economies: money-using; see also isolated capitalist economy

  capitalist farming

  casual employment

  center of gravity equilibrium prices

  ceteris paribus; in money-using economies

  Chandavarkar, A.

  China: as emerging country; global capital and; Opium Wars and

  Churchill, Winston

  closing of frontier: Great Depression and; see also colonial arrangement

  closing of the frontier cycle

  Clower, Robert

  C-M-C circuit, Walrasian system for money and

  Cobb-Douglas Production Function

  Cole, W. A.

  Collected Writings (Keynes)

  colonial arrangement, unraveling of: agricultural crisis and; colonial economic growth; definition of; deindustrialization and; drain of surplus and; after First World War, unraveling of; global capitalism destabilized by; gold standard and; during Great Depression; Japan emergence as capitalist power as influence on; public investment projects and; source-of-surplus extraction

  colonial economies: conventional accounting in; deindustrialization in; drain of surplus from; emigration as influence on; free trade in; Great Bengal Famine of 1943 and; gross domestic product in; labor sources in; modern mass poverty in, roots of; trajectories of; war expenditures financed through

  colonial markets: in British markets, entrance into; capture of; exogenous stimuli and; imperial instruments in; in India; Japan as competition for; limitations of; long boom in; during long nineteenth century; monopoly capitalism in; pro tectionism for; triangular relationships in

 

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