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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).
  • 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.

  • Demonstration against political prisoners

    Remove the stain

    Originally published: Telegraph India on August 6, 2021 (more by Telegraph India)  |

    A blot on the nation.

  • Smell the Fascism

    Neo-Liberalism and the extreme Right

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on July 18, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    Georgi Dimitrov, president of the Communist International, had, at its Seventh Congress, characterised a fascist State as the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary section of finance capital”

  • Keynes

    Is socialisation of investment enough?

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on July 4, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    In Keynes’ words: “It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments, and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary.”

  • Police only (and food delivery boys) during the Covid lockdown in Bangalore (India) (Flickr - Photo by Nicolas Mirguet)

    Destitution, hunger and the lockdown

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on May 23, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    ON March 24, 2020, Narendra Modi had announced that the country would go into a lockdown after four hours! This nation-wide lockdown was to last till the end of May, after which there were local lockdowns but not a general one.

  • In this Dec. 29, 2020, file photo, Pat Moore, with the Chester County, Pa., Health Department, fills a syringe with Moderna COVID-19 vaccine before administering it to emergency medical workers and health care personnel at the Chester County Government Services Center in West Chester, Pa. The Biden administration’s call to lift patent protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help poor parts of the world get more doses has drawn praise from some countries and health advocates. But it has run into resistance from the pharmaceutical industry and others, who say that it won’t help curb the outbreak any time soon and will hurt future innovation. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

    Patents versus the People

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on May 16, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    ON October 2, 2020, even before any vaccines against COVID-19 had been approved, India and South Africa had proposed to the WTO that a temporary patent waiver should be granted on all such innovations.

  • President Joe Biden

    Biden’s package and its pitfalls

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on April 18, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    U.S. President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package is one of the most ambitious measures to revive the U.S. and, with it, the world economy.

  • 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.

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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 […]

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