Utsa Patnaik

Prabhat Patnaik

A comprehensive survey of capitalism's colonialist roots and uncertain future Those who control the world’s commanding economic heights, buttressed by the theories of mainstream economists, presume that capitalism is a self-contained and self-generating system. Nothing could be further from the truth. In this pathbreaking book—winner of the Paul A. Baran-Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award—radical political economists Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik argue that the accumulation of capital has always required the taking of land, raw materials, and bodies from noncapitalist modes of production. They begin with a thorough debunking of mainstream economics. Then, looking at the history of capitalism, from the beginnings of colonialism half a millennium ago to today’s neoliberal regimes, they discover that, over the long haul, capitalism, in order to exist, must metastasize itself in the practice of imperialism and the immiseration of countless people. A few hundred years ago, write the Patnaiks, colonialism began to ensure vast, virtually free, markets for new products in burgeoning cities in the West. But even after slavery was generally abolished, millions of people in the Global South still fell prey to the continuing lethal exigencies of the marketplace. Even after the Second World War, when decolonization led to the end of the so-called “Golden Age of Capitalism,” neoliberal economies stepped in to reclaim the Global South, imposing drastic “austerity” measures on working people. But, say the Patnaiks, this neoliberal economy, which lives from bubble to bubble, is doomed to a protracted crisis. In its demise, we are beginning to see—finally—the transcendence of the capitalist system.

Theory, History, and the Present

Capital and Imperialism

David McNally

Heather Brown

Vijay Prashad

Neil Faulkner

Korkut Boratav

Michael A. Lebowitz

Erkin Özalp

Haluk Gerger

E. Ahmet Tonak

Yeşim Dinçer

Taner Timur

Metin Çulhaoğlu

Sungur Savran

August H. Nimtz

Aijaz Ahmad

Nail Satlıgan

Cem Eroğul

Haluk Yurtsever

Ellen M. Wood

Marksizmi öğrenmek için öncelikle hangi eserlerden başlamalı? Doğru anlayıp yorumlamak için Marksist klasikleri nasıl okumalı? Merakla sorulan, daima tartışılan bir konudur bu. Ne soru yersizdir, ne de bu konuda yapılan tartışmalar. Zira Marksizm, hayatın tüm alanlarını kucaklayan, devrimci pratikle tamamlanan, sınırsız, çok yönlü, karmaşık bir zenginliktir. Bu devasa Marksizm edebiyatı içinde, okurların yollarını bulabilmesi kolay değildir. Marksist Klasikleri Okuma Kılavuzu, bu soruları gündemine alan özgün bir çalışma olarak, her düzeyde Marksizm okuru için bir başucu kitabı olmayı hedefliyor. Türkiye’den ve dünyadan yetkin Marksist kuramcıları bir araya getiren bu kitapta, Marksizmin kurucu ve geliştirici teorisyenleri Marx, Engels ve Lenin’in yirmi yapıtı, yirmi farklı yazar tarafından tanıtılıp değerlendiriliyor. Bu yazılarda, Marksist klasiklerin doğum iklimi, içeriği, öteki klasiklerle ilişkisi, etkileri, bugün için önemi parlak şekilde değerlendiriliyor. Böylece, okura öncelikli bir okuma listesi önerilirken, bu eserlerin nasıl okunacağına dair bir rehber de verilmiş oluyor. Yazarların bu kitap için kaleme aldıkları yazılar, Türkiye’nin önde gelen Marksist yazarlarından Taner Timur’un giriş yazısıyla sunuluyor. Kitaba makaleleriyle katkıda bulunanlar: Aijaz Ahmad, August H. Nimtz, Cem Eroğul, David McNally, E. Ahmet Tonak, Ellen M. Wood, Erkin Özalp, Haluk Gerger, Haluk Yurtsever, Heather Brown, Korkut Boratav, Metin Çulhaoğlu, Michael A. Lebowitz, Nail Satlıgan, Neil Faulkner, Prabhat Patnaik, Sungur Savran, Taner Timur, Vijay Prashad, Yeşim Dinçer

Marksist Klasikleri Okuma Kılavuzu

A concise theory of historical and contemporary imperialism based on the prices of agricultural products and their movement from the underdeveloped to the developed world.

A Theory of Imperialism

The papers in this volume are informed by a perception that can be summarized as follows. A capitalist economy is a self-driven or 'spontaneous' system. State intervention in its functioning, driven by political compulsions, tends to make it dysfunctional. This necessitates either further interventions, leading to a transcendence of the system itself, or a progressive slide-back to the pre-intervention state. To say this is not to suggest that capitalism does not need the state. It does, not only for the maintenance of capitalist property relations and for providing it with the external, precapitalist surroundings that are necessary for its functioning; but also for accelerating, through its intervention, its immanent tendencies. But state intervention that is contrary to its immanent tendencies makes capitalism dysfunctional, setting up a dialectics either of subversion of or subservience to the logic of capital. It follows that all the shibboleths of capitalism, namely freedom, democracy and individual subjectivity, are actually unachievable under capitalism. They can be realized only if the spontaneity of the economic terrain is broken through the coming into being of socialism, where the nature of property relations is such that people can shape their economic lives through collective political intervention. The case for socialism arises precisely because capitalism is not a malleable but a spontaneous system.

Re-Envisioning Socialism

Whatever Happened to Imperialism and Other Essays

Why is money more valuable than the paper on which it is printed? Monetarists link the value of money to its supply and demand, believing the latter depends on the total value of the commodities it circulates. According to Prabhat Patnaik, this logic is flawed. In his view, in any nonbarter economy, the value we assign to money is determined independently of its supply and demand. Through an original and provocative critique of monetarism, Patnaik advances a revolutionary understanding of macroeconomics that highlights the "propertyist" position of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Unlike the usual division between "classical" economists (e.g., David Ricardo and Marx) and the "marginalists" (e.g., Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, and Léon Walras), Patnaik places "monetarists," including Ricardo, on one side, while grouping propertyist writers like Marx, Keynes, and Rosa Luxemburg on the other. This second group subscribes to the idea that the value of money is given from outside the realm of supply and demand, therefore making money a form in which wealth is held. The fact that money is held as wealth in turn gives rise to the possibility of deficiency of aggregate demand under capitalism. It is no accident that this possibility was highlighted by Marx and Keynes while going largely unrecognized by Ricardo and contemporary monetarists. At the same time, Patnaik points to a weakness in the Marx-Keynes tradition namely, its lack of any satisfactory explanation of why the value of money, determined from outside the realm of supply and demand, remains relatively stable over long stretches of time. The answer to this question lies in the fact that capitalism is not a self-contained system but is born from a precapitalist setting with which it interacts and where it creates massive labor reserves that, in turn, impart stability to the value of money. Patnaik's theory of money, then, is also a theory of imperialism, and he concludes with a discussion of the contemporary international monetary system, which he terms the "oil-dollar" standard.

The Value of Money

Jayati Ghosh

C. P. Chandrasekhar

On the night of 8 November 2016, at 8:15 pm, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, announced in a televised broadcast to the nation that with effect from midnight, currency notes of denominations Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 would no longer be legal tender. In one stroke, this involved the de-recognition of over 86 per cent of the value of Indian currency in circulation with only four hours’ notice. This important book provides a quick and concise explanation of the goals, implications, initial effects and the political economy of this major demonetisation move by the Government of India. It clarifies key concepts and offers astute economic analysis to guide the reader through the various claims, arguments and critiques that have been made; highlights the complexities of the processes that have been unleashed; and examines the likely outcomes in the long term as well as those that are immediately evident. Timely and lucid, this book will interest students and researchers in the fields of economics, finance, management, law, politics and governance as well as policy makers, legislators, civil society activists and the media.

A Critique of India's Currency Experiment

Demonetisation Decoded

In A Theory of Imperialism, economists Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik present a new theory of the origins and mechanics of capitalism that sounds an alarm about its ongoing viability. Their theory centers on trade between the core economies of the global North and the tropical and subtropical countries of the global South and considers how the Northern demand for commodities (such as agricultural products and oil) from the South has perpetuated and solidified an imperialist relationship. The Patnaiks explore the dynamics of this process and discuss innovations that could allow the economies of the South to achieve greater prosperity without damaging the economies of the North. The result is an original theory of imperialism that brings to light the crippling limitations of neoliberal capitalism. A Theory of Imperialism also includes a response by David Harvey, who interprets the agrarian system differently and sees other factors affecting trade between the North and the South. Their debate is one of the most provocative exchanges yet over the future of the global economy as resources grow thin, populations explode, and universal prosperity becomes ever more elusive.

Prabhat Patnaik

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