Prabhat Patnaik: "The basic difference between then and now is that the Congress Party has now abandoned all allegiance to an anti-imperialist nationalism. It has done so not because of its Hindu mindset but because of the nature of evolution of world capitalism that has led to the globalisation of capital, especially of finance. This has brought in its train a number of developments: the unviability from the point of view of the Indian bourgeoisie of the earlier trajectory of capitalist development, within a dirigiste regime, in relative autonomy from imperialism; its consequent progressive integration with globalised capital and, towards this end, the adoption of a neo-liberal regime; a change in the nature of the State, paralleling this change in economic regime, which has entailed its closer enmeshing with big capital and international finance, and its withdrawal of support and protection from petty producers and the peasantry; the precipitation, as a result, of a crisis in petty production, in particular an agrarian crisis that has led to large-scale peasant suicides; the unleashing with much greater fury than before of a process of primitive accumulation of capital; a vast increase in inequalities in income and wealth; and, during the years of bubble-sustained boom in metropolitan capitalism, a high growth rate in the Indian economy that has brought palpable economic benefits to wide sections of the urban middle class who have thereby become votaries of neo-liberalism (a situation that, in consequence of the world capitalist crisis, is already changing in economic terms and is likely to change in political terms as well)... If the Left is to propose an anti-imperialist national agenda, then it must relate itself, howsoever critically, to the anti-imperialist nationalism of the earlier, colonial, period, of which in any case it was itself an integral component, and claim a certain continuity with it."
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 09:24:03 +0000
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