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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).
  • A 'Nihang' holds the Tricolor during farmers' tractor rally as part of their ongoing protest against the new farm laws, at Dankaur in Gautam Buddha Nagar District, Thursday, Jan. 07, 2021. PTI

    The patriots

    Originally published: Telegraph India on January 13, 2021 (more by Telegraph India)  |

    Protesting farmers are reclaiming the idea of the nation.

  • Epic World History - blogger Epic World History: Peasants' War

    Engels on the Peasant War in Germany

    Originally published: IDEAs (International Development Economics Associates) on January 13, 2021 (more by IDEAs (International Development Economics Associates))  |

    At a time when peasant masses in the country are engaged in a valiant struggle for the repeal of the Central government’s three infamous laws, and have laid peaceful siege to Delhi, braving rains and bitter cold, it is worth recalling Friedrich Engels’ study of the peasant war in Germany in 1525, that also celebrated its outstanding leader Thomas Muenzer. Such a recall becomes necessary for another reason.

  • Indian children seeking food (Photo: Orfonline.org)

    Why are people going hungry in India despite a massive grain surplus?

    Prabhat Patnaik

    The peasants gathered on the Delhi border understand all these issues much more clearly than either Modi or the intelligentsia advocating a shift away from food grains. Ironically, it is the latter group who are suggesting that the peasants are ignoramuses!

  • Wikipedia 2020 Indian farmers' protest - Wikipedia

    A matter of survival of the peasantry

    Originally published: IDEA's on December 28, 2020 (more by IDEA's)  |

    The kisans gathered around the Delhi border have unerringly put their fingers on the real issue confronting them, namely their very survival as peasants.

  • Capitalism (Photo: Plex page)

    Capitalism and inheritance

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on November 8, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    IT is often believed that the ability to pass on property to one’s progeny is an essential element of capitalism, without which the capitalists’ incentives will dry up and the system will lose its dynamism.

  • India flag emblem (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

    India’s move toward a de facto unitary state

    Prabhat Patnaik

    India is being pushed toward a de facto unitary state, with states being kept totally out of the loop in decision-making, as seen in the new agricultural laws, goods and services tax compensation, Jammu and Kashmir bifurcation and new National Education Policy.

  • G7 with Trump and Modi

    How India’s Modi is changing laws to help imperialists dominate the country’s agriculture

    Originally published: Socialist Project - The Bullet / Globetrotter on November 2, 2020 (more by Socialist Project - The Bullet / Globetrotter)  |

    The fact that the Center made unilateral and fundamental changes in agricultural marketing arrangements that fall within the State List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution was a blow against federalism.

  • Medical face mask and money, world coronavirus epidemic and economic damages. Corona virus concept. (Photo: 'Flickr' Jernej Furman)

    Billionaires and the Pandemic

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on October 25, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    WEALTH distribution data are notoriously difficult to interpret. This is because variations in stock prices affect wealth distribution, so that a stock market boom suddenly makes the rich appear much richer, while a stock market collapse makes wealth distribution less unequal overnight.

  • Wikimedia Commons Communist party supporters - (Photo: Flickr - Al Jazeera English)

    One hundred years of Indian communism

    Originally published: IDEA's (International Development Economics Associates) on October 18, 2020 (more by IDEA's (International Development Economics Associates))  |

    The economic programme suggested for such a front included the right to strike, banning reductions of wages and dismissals of workers, an adequate minimum wage and 8-hour day, a 50 per cent reduction in rents and banning the seizure of peasant land against debt by imperialists, native princes, zamindars and money lenders.

  • Arpita Singh (India), My Mother, 1993

    Why Modi’s government is not up to the task

    Prabhat Patnaik

    The Modi regime believes that no matter how impoverished the people are their electoral support can always be won by promoting Hindutva and effecting a communal polarization. It is an utterly cynical view, but then, the present dispensation represents the acme of cynicism.

  • U.S. Dollar

    The protracted crisis of capitalism

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on August 30, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    THERE is a commonly-held view that the current crisis in capitalism, which has resulted in a massive output contraction and increase in unemployment, is because of the pandemic; and that once the pandemic gets over, things will go back to “normal”.

  • 2019 Lebanese protests - Beirut (Wikimedia Commons)

    Lebanese portents

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on August 16, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    Its two major sources of foreign exchange, tourism and remittances from the Gulf and elsewhere, have virtually dried up owing to the pandemic, causing its currency to depreciate massively, its external debt to be impossible to service, and its ability to import essential commodities which are the lifeline of the population to be severely curtailed.

  • Prison, bars, jail, imprisonment (Photo: pxfuel)

    Detainees during the Pandemic

    Originally published: IDEA's (Independent Development Economics Associates) on August 13, 2020 (more by IDEA's (Independent Development Economics Associates))

    It is a common practice all over the world that when those incarcerated face a threat to life, the authorities send them home.

  • Image used for representational purposes only.

    Decline in global poverty is a farce perpetuated by World Bank’s poverty line

    Originally published: Peoples Dispatch on July 19, 2020 (more by Peoples Dispatch)  |

    The real problem with the World Bank’s poverty estimates, is that its International Poverty Line is set at an impossibly low level, which greatly underestimates world poverty.

  • Deccan Herald Doctors protest in Delhi over Kolkata hospital violence | Deccan

    India’s abysmal healthcare system

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on July 5, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    DD Kosambi uses a telling example to illustrate the crisis of Indian feudalism: at the third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the troops on oneside had not had enough to eat, while the troops on the other side just managed to assuage hunger by looting villages in the neighbourhood; neither side in short had arranged provisions for its troops.

  • The Corporatist State 2011 Shankbone - The first day of Occupy Wall Street, September 17, 2011. Wall Street barricaded and Zuccotti Park taken. (Photo: David Shankbone)

    A stock market boom amidst a real economy crisis

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on June 21, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    Altogether, as philosopher Cornel West put it, the U.S. is showing every sign of being a “failed social experiment”. And yet there is a veritable boom in the U.S. stock market. The stock market index Nasdaq has increased by more than 40 per cent since March 23 and is now “within striking distance of all time highs” as one commentator put it.

  • Wallpaper Flare HD wallpaper: poverty, homeless, poor, vagrancy, developing

    Imperialism and India’s food economy

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on June 14, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    The problem before metropolitan capitalism therefore is: how to acquire control over the use of this tropical land-mass in order to obtain the products it needs?

  • Wallpaperflare Bankruptcy 1080P, 2K, 4K, 5K HD wallpapers free download ..

    The problem of external debt

    Originally published: IDEAs (International Development Economics Associates) on June 2, 2020 (more by IDEAs (International Development Economics Associates))  |

    There is a massive problem of external debt building up for the third world, of which the recent Argentine debt crisis was only one manifestation. At the root of the problem is the collapse of primary commodity prices in the world market which began in April 2011.

  • Flickr Crossroads: Success or Failure | Please give attribution to … | Flickr

    The World at crossroads

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on May 31, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    Radical reforms in reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investment rather than as liabilities and look for ways to make the labour market less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda… Policies until recently considered eccentric such as basic income and wealth taxes will have to be in the mix.

  • Wikimedia Commons File:'AMBEDKAR GATE' during conference of Independent Labour Party ...

    The war on Labour

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on May 17, 2020 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    The war on labour is a continuation of the attacks which the BJP has been launching on the religious minorities and dalits; its economic consequences will be disastrous.

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Also By Prabhat Patnaik in Monthly Review Magazine

  • 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

  • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

Lost & Found

  • Journalism, democracy, … and class struggle
    Robert W. McChesney Bob McChesney on Saving Journalism

    Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

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