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About Prabhat Patnaik

Prabhat Patnaik is an Indian political economist and political commentator. His books include Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism (1997), The Value of Money (2009), and Re-envisioning Socialism (2011).
  • PxHere Free Images : chase, money, businessman, follow, greenback, pursuit, banknote, opportunity, jump, dream, entrepreneur, expression

    Why capitalist governments worry more about inflation than unemployment?

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on February 13, 2022 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    Capitalist governments invariably seek to control inflation by enlarging unemployment.

  • The Ugliness of colonial power in India

    Social sciences and the colonised mind

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on January 23, 2022 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    A CRUCIAL component of the imperialist system is the colonisation of third world minds that helps to sustain it. This colonisation is pervasive, but here we shall discuss only academic colonisation and that too relating to the social sciences.

  • Financial Markets Under Capitalism

    Financial Markets under capitalism

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on January 16, 2022 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    One of the most important arguments advanced by John Maynard Keynes, the renowned economist, was that the operation of financial markets under capitalism is deeply flawed.

  • Capitalism is killing us!

    Yet another contradiction of capitalism

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on January 2, 2022 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    In the United States there are still four million persons who remain unemployed compared to before the pandemic; and yet the Biden administration’s attempt to stimulate the economy has already run into a crisis with the re-emergence of inflation not just in that country but elsewhere in the capitalist world as well.

  • More inflation to come?

    U.S. inflation and India’s economic recovery

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on December 19, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    The very day, December 11, when the Indian finance ministry spuriously claimed a robust recovery in the post-pandemic Indian economy, newspapers carried news of an acceleration in the U.S. inflation rate.

  • How has COVID-19 affected India’s economy? (Photo: Shubhangee Vyas / Unsplash)

    India’s post-pandemic economic recovery

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on December 12, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    The pandemic alas is not yet over, but there are no economic disruptions in the current fiscal year in the form of lockdowns or workers’ absence. The economy’s performance therefore can no longer be attributed to the prevalence of the pandemic; whatever it is, it is caused by economic factors.

  • From farm and forest: Long March to Mumbai

    The peasantry’s victory over imperialism

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on November 28, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    One should scarcely be surprised therefore by the fact that the western media have been so critical of the Modi government for its climbdown.

  • Indian summer classroom

    The homogenisation of education

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on October 31, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    Education in post-independence India was supposed not just to provide knowledge and skills to students, but also to facilitate the process of “nation-building” (to use a clumsy word).

  • 15% India is undernourished, as Rs 50,000 crore food goes waste

    Foodstocks, bio-fuels and hunger

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on October 24, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    THE Modi government’s attempt to “explain” away India’s slipping from being 94th on the world hunger index in 2020 to 101st in 2021, a rank well below that of neighbours Pakistan, Nepal or Bangladesh, by questioning the “methodology” of the index, is jejune enough; but even more shocking is its total inability to see the reason behind the acute hunger in the country.

  • Economists Have Long Imagined That the Free Flow of Capital Around the World Benefits the U.S. Economy. It Doesn't.

    Finance capital and the World Economy

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on October 10, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    THE period of neo-liberalism witnesses an increase in the share of economic surplus in total output both in individual countries and also for the world as a whole.

  • Kisan March -

    Peasants and the Revolution

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on October 3, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    MARXIST theory develops with changing times, as capitalism itself develops, which is why it remains a living doctrine. On the question of the role of the peasantry in the revolutionary process that leads to the transcendence of capitalism, there have been significant developments in Marxist theory, which I propose to discuss here.

  • Jallianwala Bagh Memorial

    Everything for sale

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on September 12, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    EVERYWHERE in the world people got vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus without having to pay a penny, but not in India. Everywhere in the world, historic landmarks that define a nation, that constitute the warp and woof of a nation’s consciousness, are held sacred and left untouched in their original shape, but not in India.

  • Europe

    Neo-Liberalism and Nationhood

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on August 29, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    There is a tendency in the West, including even among progressives, to treat all “nationalism” as a homogeneous and reactionary category. They treat even anti-colonial nationalism as if it is no different from European bourgeois nationalism, notwithstanding the several crucial differences between the two.

  • Why Neoliberalism Needs Neofascists

    Why neoliberalism needs neofascists

    Originally published: Janata Weekly on August 29, 2021 (more by Janata Weekly)  |

    It has been four decades since neoliberal globalization began to reshape the world order. During this time, its agenda has decimated labor rights, imposed rigid limits on fiscal deficits, given massive tax breaks and bailouts to big capital, sacrificed local production for multinational supply chains, and privatized public sector assets at throwaway prices.

  • Imperialism Then and Now: Wealth, Unemployment, and Insufficient Demand- Pt 1/3 Prabhat Patnaik

    Imperialism then and now: Capital relocation, inequality, encroachment and protracted crisis – Part 3/3

    Originally published: Global Political Economy (GPEnewsdocs) on August 2021 (more by Global Political Economy (GPEnewsdocs))

    Prabhat Patnaik shows that as capital is relocated, real wages do not rise, inequality widens, and global demand is suppressed. The system remains in protracted crisis; Keynesianism in the North alone is no solution. The struggle is everywhere.

  • Imperialism Then and Now: Wealth, Unemployment, and Insufficient Demand- Pt 1/3 Prabhat Patnaik

    Imperialism then and now: Drain of wealth, depression, the role of the State and globalization – Part 2/3

    Originally published: Global Political Economy (GPEnewsdocs) on August 2021 (more by Global Political Economy (GPEnewsdocs))

    Imperialism which existed in the colonial era persists to this day and the system cannot do without it.

  • Imperialism Then and Now: Wealth, Unemployment, and Insufficient Demand- Pt 1/3 Prabhat Patnaik

    Imperialism Then and Now: Wealth, Unemployment, and Insufficient Demand- Part 1/3

    Originally published: Global Political Economy (GPEnewsdocs) on August 19, 2021 (more by Global Political Economy (GPEnewsdocs))

    Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. Today’s guest is Prabhat Patnaik. He is talking about his read on the history of capitalism that he breaks up into 5 periods from colonialism into the present.

  • The Department of the Treasury (USDT)

    The household and the state

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on August 15, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    Just as a household cannot “live beyond its means” forever, and sooner or later its creditors not only stop giving loans but take away the assets of the household for defaulting on loan repayment, likewise, the State cannot “live beyond its means” forever and go on borrowing ad infinitum; sooner or later its creditors stop giving loans and even attach its assets.

  • Nationalization of Bank in India (Photo: Knowledge Place)

    The nationalisation of banks in 1969

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on July 25, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    ON July 19, 1969, 14 major banks were nationalised in the country. Today, after 52 years there is some talk again of privatising the nationalised banks, which naturally raises the question: why were banks nationalised at all?

  • Leonilo "Neil" Dolirocon's socialist art at National Gallery Manila.

    Equality and scarcity

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on August 8, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    Many would remember that the Soviet Union and other Eastern European socialist countries used to be characterized by long queues of consumers for several commodities.

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Also By Prabhat Patnaik in Monthly Review Magazine

  • The Worker-Peasant Alliance in the Transition to Socialism Today July 01, 2025
  • The Drain of Wealth February 01, 2021
  • Neoliberal Capitalism at a Dead End July 01, 2019
  • The October Revolution and the Survival of Capitalism July 01, 2017
  • <em>Monopoly Capital</em> Then and Now July 01, 2016
  • Capitalism and Its Current Crisis January 01, 2016
  • Imperialism in the Era of Globalization July 01, 2015
  • Capitalism in Asia at the End of the Millennium July 01, 1999

Books By Prabhat Patnaik

  • Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present March 10, 2021

Monthly Review Essays

  • The Migrant Genocide: Toward a Third World Analysis of European Class Struggle
    Iker Suarez A banner at a memorial rally for victims of the 2014 massacre of migrants at Tarajal, 2021.

    Over 10,000 people died in transit to Spain in 2024 alone.[1] On June 2022, the border fence of Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, was witness to a massacre that killed or disappeared over a hundred African migrants.[2]  A recent BBC investigation revealed that Greek border guards systematically repeal immigrants already on Greek […]

Lost & Found

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    Hugo Chávez Mural of Chávez in Caracas. (Univision)

    On October 7th, 2012, after hearing of his victory as the nation‘s candidate with 56 percent of the vote, President Hugo Chávez Frias announced from a balcony in his hometown that a new cycle was beginning the very next day, October 8th.

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