Radical Notes
Journal
Archive for September, 2009
Posted by Radical Notes September 30, 2009 at 1:10 am in India, Petition, State Repression, West Bengal
To
The Chief Minister
West Bengal
Writers’ Building
Kolkata-700001
Sir,
CHHATRADHAR MAHATO, spokesperson of the PULISHI SANTRAS BIRODHI JANASADHARANER COMMITTEE, has been arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. This is in direct contravention of the previous stand of the West Bengal state government that the Act will apply only to members of the CPI(Maoist). While even this is a debatable policy, Chhatradhar Mahato can in no way fall within its ambit. Moreover, the modus operandi of his arrest was in complete disregard of law and proper procedure. There is no doubt that Chhatradhar Mahato should be released immediately.
In any case, he is the spokesperson of an organization with which the state government was in active dialogue before the government withdrew unilaterally and the joint armed forces were sent in. In this petition we urge you and your government to withdraw the joint armed forces, help create a climate conducive to dialogue, resume talks and sit across the table with Chhatradhar Mahato as a free man.
Please Sign
Mahasweta Devi, the petition sponsor, is a writer, activist and social critic. In this effort aimed at social and political justice for the struggling adivasi people of Lalgarh and adjoining areas in Pashchim Medinipur, West Bengal, she is joined by a large number of citizens deeply worried over the tragic events unfolding in the region.
Posted by Radical Notes September 30, 2009 at 1:04 am in India, Labour, Press Release, Working Class
All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU)
AICCTU holds the incident leading to the death of Mr. George, Vice-president of Pricol Ltd., Coimbatore to be highly unfortunate. Pricol workers have a history of years of consistently peaceful struggles, and such violent incidents can have no place in the trade union movement. AICCTU demands a high-level enquiry into this incident.
However, we condemn the malicious attempt to target AICCTU and its central leadership in patently false cases in this incident. We demand withdrawal of FIR against S Kumarasami, national President, AICCTU.
Pricol management’s consistent violation of the laws of the land:
* For the last two years, Pricol management has blatantly violated labour laws: a fact recognized by the Labour Minister of TN inside the TN Assembly on 30 June 2009.
* In a Calling Attention Motion on 30 June, raised by MLAs of AIADMK, Congress, PMK, CPI, CPI(M), the Labour Minister of TN replied, accepting that Pricol management had indeed violated labour laws and assuring of action against them. Only after this assurance, a hunger fast by Pricol workers including many women workers, ended on the 16th day.
The Government Order 393 dated 29.06.2009 had raised the following instances of violations of labour laws with the Labour Court Coimbatore under Section 10 (1) of the ID Act 1947:
* Violation of the law against engaging apprentices and contract labour in direct production
* Unilaterally declaring holidays and thereby depriving incentive from the wages of the workers
* Denying DA and Wage increase as per 12 (3) Settlements dated 29.09.2004 and 03.03.2004
Locking out the workers, transferring them, depriving them of their earned wages and other statutory benefits – all had become the hallmark of the vindictive actions of this management. The Pricol management has repeatedly threatened and victimized workers that they must either leave the Union or forego their earned wages and benefits and face transfers. The Pricol Management has been openly refusing to recognize or negotiate with the Union.
While incident like Pricol is highly unfortunate, it must be acknowledged that such incidents are occurring in the context of flagrant violation of labour laws and constitutional rights. As described above, at Pricol,
* Workers are victimized for exercising their right to unionise;
* Management refuses to negotiate with unions;
* Even when workers win legal victories (getting orders passed by Government and Courts) after arduous peaceful struggles including hunger strikes even by women workers, the management continues to flout the orders, and even indulges in violence against workers.
In other words a situation is created whereby workers’ legal unions are ignored, workers are forced to wage long and hard peaceful struggles and legal battles even to get the Government to uphold the most basic labour laws; and yet, the entire institution of Labour Departments and Labour Laws is held hostage by the corporate managements. It is this situation that is directly responsible for the incidents at Graziano and Pricol.
While we strongly disapprove of the unfortunate incident of the death of Vice president of Pricol Ltd., Mr. George, we demand institution of a high level inquiry in this incident along with withdrawal of false and fabricated cases against S. Kumarasami, National President of AICCTU and stopping of arrests and witch-hunt of workers in this case. We also demand that the management particularly the MD of Pricol Ltd. should be brought to book for open violation of labour Laws, govt. orders and court orders regarding the workers of this factory.
(Santosh Rai)
National Secretary,
AICCTU
Posted by Paresh Chandra September 26, 2009 at 11:59 am in India, State Repression
Paresh Chandra
The Committee for Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) in India consists of, to paraphrase CRPP’s general secretary, people from all walks of life and different ideological standpoints. The CRPP does not have a well defined ‘line’ and believes simply, that everybody has the right to his or her own opinion and also the right to express it. The CRPP does not follow or oppose the ideology of the prisoners.
At three pm on 25th September, 2009 the CRPP made its first press release in regard to its involvement with Kobad Ghandy’s case. The CRPP was being represented by SAR Geelani, and Amit Bhattacharya. They were accompanied by Rajesh Tyagi, who is to represent Kobad Ghandy in court. The press release will be put on our website as soon as a soft-copy is obtained. Just to put down the facts made public in brief:
After meeting Mr. Kobad Ghandy in Tihar, the CRPP discovered that contrary to the reports in the media, the latter was arrested not on the 21st of September, but was abducted from the bus terminal at Bhikaji Cama Place at about 4 pm on 17th September. For four days he was kept in illegal detention, during which he was interrogated and tortured. His arrest was finally made official on the 21st when Mr. Ghandy refused both food and medicine in protest, as he could not take recourse to a lawyer unless this was done.
Mr. Ghandy had been in Delhi to take medical advice for a kidney ailment. “On 17/09/09 he had received the PSA report which showed high possibility of prostrate cancer. He was advised to take a tablet for 14 days and return for further PSA tests and a possible biopsy.” (CRPP press release) When he was abducted he had still been taking these tablets. In addition Mr. Ghandy had also been suffering from severe diarrhoea and dysentery because of an Irritable Bowel Syndrome, for which he has had to take long term treatment. He has been advised special food and boiled water, both of which are unavailable at Tihar. The CRPP press release deals in detail with the manner in which the ailing man was mistreated and his ailment ignored by the authorities.
In the press conference, Mr. Rajesh Tyagi, who is to fight Kobad Ghandy’s case, brought to the media’s attention what he called ‘the peculiar’ circumstances of this case. According to him neither Mr. Ghandy, nor Mr. Tyagi has been handed over the FIR, and when Mr. Tyagi tried to speak to senior officials he was told that the FIR has been ‘sealed’. This is strange Mr. Tyagi pointed out because unless the FIR is made public, the grounds on which Mr. Ghandy has been arrested will not be known. Since no cases have ever been filed against Mr. Ghandy’s, refusal to make the FIR public, suggests that the authorities have no ‘case’ against him. It is strange indeed, Mr. Tyagi said, that a person is abducted first, and then a case is filed against him. A petition is going to be put into the Delhi High Court, asking the court to direct the police to make the FIR available to Mr. Ghandy and his lawyer. Mr. Tyagi spoke of the manner in which almost everything about this case is an infringement of constitutional provisions. For instance intelligence agencies do not have the authority to abduct, let alone torture a citizen. Furthermore the manner, in which Mr. Ghandy has been projected as a ‘Maoist leader’ by the authorities, makes it seem as if it is illegal to be ideologically inclined in that direction. Since the FIR has not been shown, it is impossible to tell if Mr. Ghandy has been charged for involvement with the CPI (Maoist).
Following are the demands that the CRPP has put forth:
1. Provide immediate medical care to Kobad Ghandy for all his health problems including cardiac and prostrate cancer.
2. Allow him provision for prescribed diet as provided in the hospitals and safe/boiled water.
3. Stop all attempts to transfer him to other states under false charges as this could endanger his life.
4. Allow a team of specialist doctors to take immediate stock of his medical condition and to continuously monitor his health.
5. Stop all attempts to put him under illegal narco-analysis as this could endanger his life.
6. Shift him to a cell which is not overcrowded.
7. Provide him with material to read and write.
8. Allow him the status of being a political prisoner.
The state’s attempt to manufacture consent against the Maoists, works side by a side with an attempt to destroy any possible support base in the country at large, especially among the intelligentsia. A sort of hysteria about the ‘Maoist threat’ has been created through the media and through other means. Following this the state makes the claim that these are ‘special circumstances’ which need ‘special means’ to safeguard democracy. A series of laws, culminating in Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), allow the state to infringe democratic rights of citizens, apparently to protect democracy. People might sympathise with the Maoists because of ideological reasons or on humanitarian grounds, this way or that, they form a support base that is needed for the survival of the movement. The government uses various ‘strong-arm methods’ to destroy this base. This can be seen in the series victimization of left-wing intellectuals (the cases of Binayak Sen and SAR Geelani are only the tip of an iceberg).
The parallels between the situation in India now and US in the McCarthy era are significant. The ease with which the mainstream media can get away with completely nonsensical theories and conclusions is a sign of this. There have been theories for instance of all organizations raising voices against these ‘special laws’ being ‘fronts’ for the Maoists. Ostensibly these laws target people only from certain organizations, but in effect they have very significant implications for anti-hegemonic voices at large. One can be put behind bars, and tortured for having written a pamphlet, or for making a statement, or going to a protest, even if one is not a member of a banned organization. Let alone ideologically motivated dissent, even that on ‘humanitarian’ grounds can lead to trouble. In fact, if we learn from the McCarthy experience, these laws and this atmosphere has implications even for the non-conformist – so those who think that they’re safe, if they take a lukewarm, ‘we are against all violence’ stand, should not be so sure. Eventually they too will be sucked into the mire. A polarization of stands is being aimed at – a situation in which the voices of dissent are so small in number that they can easily be suppressed.
It seems that at the moment at least the battle is being waged mainly on legal grounds. The potential of such a battle (if it remains only this) is limited. This is not to criticize the CRPP in any way of course. This battle is after all very essential, but its importance comes partly from the fact that it gives us a chance to raise this issue as a political question as well. To make it a political question, we will need to look beyond being sympathizers or critics of the Maoists. The anti-democratic nature of the ‘democratic’ state is not a bad thread to pick, since it is an important ‘repressed’ which keeps returning. The totalitarian tendencies of liberal democracy are important to uncover; Carl Schmitt’s sovereign is ever-present in such a state, for it is able to create an eternal state of emergency. The question of our right to dissent can be addressed truly, if and only if we also in the same breath take into account the political nature of problems and the direction of our protest. It is not about condemning or adulating the Maoists, and who are we to do that in any case? We cannot continue to behave as if the Maoists, the state and the state’s hunt for Maoists belong to a different world, and that we can pass judgement on it as if we stand outside it. We breathe the same air, and we need to understand that.
Posted by Radical Notes September 25, 2009 at 8:15 am in India, Labour, Poverty, Press Release
Delhi Shramik Sangathan
The Below Poverty Line (BPL) families living in slums areas, J J Colonies & unauthorized colonies are forced to come on the roads to protest against the “cash for food” proposal of Delhi Government. Delhi CM & Minister of Food & Civil Supplies have announced a scheme of providing cash of Rs. 1100/pm to BPL families instead of ration & kerosene oil. They have proposed the scheme to the Planning Commission. The protest is being organized by Delhi Shramik Sangathan and supported by several other organizations, trade unions and individuals. The protests have been organized in series at Traffic signal, Sector-I, R K Puram & Traffic signal, Uttam Nagar on 23rd & 24th Sept’09. The protest was organized at Peera Garhi traffic signal/crossing on 25th sept’09 by the residents of slum communities of Peera Garhi, Paschim Vihar, Sultanpuri & Jwalapuri. The protest was a symbolic protest from 4 pm to 6pm where around 300 affected poor families assembled and formed human chains demanding
1) Abolition of cash for food scheme immediately as it goes against the basic objective of Food Dept to provide subsidized food to the needy & poor families of the state.
2) The income criteria for identifying BPL families to be changed as it is very old, unrealistic and half of the minimum wages of Delhi. We demand income criteria for identifying BPL families should be equal to the minimum wages of the state. The present criterion is reducing the actual number of BPL families & that the Government wants.
3) Universalization of Public Distribution System (PDS) as 80% of the nation population need subsidized food from PDS. (Refer to the Arjun Sen Gupta committee report)
4) Abolition of categorization of Ration cards as it has divided the poor and left many poor out of its purview.
5) Increased participation of poor in making the system more transparent and poor friendly.
6) Strict action against corrupt politicians, Food Dept officials & ration dealers as it will boost the morale of the poor consumers.
The Government arguments that the corruption is the main basis of withdrawing subsidized food from PDS (means closing or reducing the size of Food Dept) & proposing cash scheme and if it becomes the principle of removing corruption from the institutions then DDA, MCD, slum & J J wing, Delhi Police are the most corrupt institutions in Delhi. Why not these institutions should be shut down? Now why Government has opened 22 new police stations? Do they want to legalize the corruption?
If there is corruption in Food Dept, then we want to know that how many desciplinenary actions have been taken by the Government to check the corruption against the bureaucrats & shop keepers. This should be made to the public. DSS and its members have filed hundreds of RTIs & complaints against the corrupt shop keepers & officials and no actions have taken by the Government. What does it indicate?
The hidden agenda is something else which Government does not want to expose & that is withdrawing support from the welfare measures/schemes. This is being done as part of the New Liberal Economic Policy of the Government under the pressure from the International financial institutions. If this experiment becomes successful then the Government can play the same card for education & health sectors.
Another fact is that only 39% of the BPL families have received BPL cards so far in country. The rest 61% identified BPL families are still waiting for the cards. The poor women & children are the victim of malnourishment & hunger. If the subsidized food scheme is closed down then the poor women & children will be the most affected and there would be no control on market, prices on the basic food products etc.
Another question is that who will control this money & for what use? At present, women go to the fair price shop to collect the food grain & kerosene oil but once this scheme is implemented, the slum women have fear that the money might be used for purposes other than ration & kerosene oil.
Delhi Shramik Sangathan is organizing these protests in series from 23rd Sept to 5th Oct’09 at major traffic signals of the city and it will culminate in a mass rally & public meeting on 8th Oct’09 from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar at 10am. We want a debate on the proposed scheme in the city. Please come & cover the news with photographs.
Ramendra/Anita
Contact Add- Flat No- 231, Pocket-A, Sector-13, Phase-II, DWARKA, New Delhi-110075, Ph-011-28031792, 9868815915. Email- delhidss@gmail.com
Posted by Radical Notes September 24, 2009 at 4:27 am in India, State Repression
Kobad Ghandy, the Indian Maoist leader who has been arrested, worked in Chattisgarh state, a main centre of rebel activity. Suvojit Bagchi of BBC Bengali met him last year. The following are excerpts from his interview:
Has the Maoists’ emphasis on educating the poor contributed to their rise in Chattisgarh?
We are trying to give basic education through mobile schools. We are teaching children basic sciences, mathematics and indigenous languages. Teams involved in the process are specialising in designing courses for the people who are backward, so that they can learn faster.
We are taking extra care to improve health facilities, as well. We have told the tribals to boil drinking water. It has reduced diseases and death by 50%. Even independent NGOs have said so. Child mortality decreased because we have managed to empower women to an extent.
The level of under-development in these areas is worse than, as some indicators suggest, sub-Saharan Africa.
Are you saying you are not killing but helping people to live?
Yes. But we are defined by the prime minister as the deadliest virus… (laughs)
Why do you think so?
We have a clear-cut definition of development. We think the society is in a semi-feudal, semi-colonial state and there is a need to democratise it.
The first step is to distribute land to the tiller. So our fight is against land grab and exploitation of the poor, especially focusing on rural India.
Is that why you have managed to consolidate so strongly in Chattisgarh?
One important reason why we have managed to consolidate is because we talk about dignity of work.
For example, villagers here collect tobacco leaves to make local cigarettes. This industry runs into billions of dollars. But the daily wage of these tribals was less than 10 rupees a day before we came to Chattisgarh.
That is far less than the daily wage defined by even the government of India. We have forced these contractors to increase this daily wage – we have managed to push it up by three to four times. That is one reason why people like us.
But you have armed wings, don’t you?
I can’t tell you much about that. Because I don’t deal with that and don’t even know their members.
You are talking about development. Will you be open to the government extending development to these areas?
Why not? We have not opposed developmental works here. For example, we did not oppose the building of some schools. But if they build schools to convert those to army barracks – which India always did in various places – we will oppose.
So you will do politics on basis of guns?
Guns is a non-issue. Some villages of Uttar Pradesh or Bihar have got more guns than the entire Maoist force in the country.
What the government or some section fears is our ideology and the society we seek to build up. So we are projected as criminals.
Do you think it is possible to hold on to your bastions in face of a state-led offensive against you?
It’s a difficult battle. But with capitalism and the government colliding with each other – with American economy going into recession and increase of exploitation – we do hope to consolidate.
Will you ever participate in mainstream politics?
No. Because we believe a democracy which respects people, cannot be established in this country.
Coutrtesy: BBC
Kobad Ghandy – An Introduction
A Khoja-Parsi by birth, Kobad Ghandy completed his schooling in India’s elite Doon school and St Xavier’s College in Bombay. He went to London to pursue studies in chartered accountancy.
His friend PA Sebastian told the BBC that it was in England that Mr Ghandy first became involved in political activities.
After returning to Bombay, he was active during Mrs Gandhi’s emergency (from 1975-1977), when democracy was suspended.
Mr Ghandy set up the leading rights group, the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR), along with activist friends like Mr Sebastian and reformer Asghar Ali Engineer.
Mr Engineer remembers how they used to meet at the convocation hall of Bombay University once a week at six pm after office hours.
“He was a thorough gentleman and was very strong in his convictions even then. He regarded the ruling Congress party as a clever bourgeois and capitalist party.”
Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s Mr Ghandy’s support of communism seemed to increase.
He married activist-academic Anuradha Shanbag and decided to move to Nagpur with her – dedicating themselves entirely to the cause of tribal rights, women’s issues and campaigns on behalf of lower caste people and women.
Anuradha, also a staunch activist, lecturer and member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) died in April last year after a bout of cerebral malaria.
Her brother, the well-known theatre personality Sunil Shanbag, remembers how the couple made the difficult decision to leave Mumbai as “they felt they were needed more in those areas”.
“The atmosphere of those days was different. There was a great sense of liberation and all of us were swept in. The CPDR used to book tickets in bulk for our plays and there would [always] be a discussion [afterwards]. There was a bridging at this time between art and politics and Anuradha and Kobad were not narrow-minded ideologues. They were very non-judgmental.”
Mr Shanbag said: “His father Adi Ghandy worked in a pharmaceutical company and they lived in an old sprawling flat in Worli. His father was in fact extremely supportive of the cause. He too led a simple life inspired by his son. Kobad had complete support from his family.”
‘Inequality’
Susan Abraham, another long time friend of the couple, said: “He was committed to the revolution and revolutionary ideals. He came from an upper class background but led a Spartan life. He was tuned with his surroundings. When you see so much inequality, you want so much to change things.
“In the days after the emergency everyone was influenced by activism,” she said, explaining the apparent difference between Mr Ghandy’s background and the life he chose to live.
Activist and writer Jyoti Punwani says it was far from obvious that he had had an elite schooling or foreign education.
“We could not have guessed he was from all these places. His behaviour was very normal and he even laughed about his time spent at the Doon school. They had a huge house but never showed off money. He was leftist and committed to changing the system. He did all his work by himself and did not keep a servant.”
While his jhola (cotton shoulder bag), his self-discipline and his commitment come up often in his friends’ memories, they also mention how he loved mixing with people from all walks of life.
“Kobad and Anuradha gave up their lives to work with the poor but never said anything about it. He was always enthusiastic and he liked to mix with people. He could interact with people from every class and make friends and joke about many things. He is the most unlikely revolutionary, he liked to have fun – he was an ideologue but not an intellectual,” Ms Punwani reminisces.
A police official who has investigated several cases in areas of Maharashtra state where Maoist rebels are active said that Mr Ghandy was also known by the names Kamal and Azad.
“He is a strong ideologue. He has organised demonstrations and written articles and other publicity material,” he said.
“He is a senior in their ranks. Cases are registered against him in Nagpur and Chandrapur. However, charges against him are not of a serious nature,” he said.
Mr Ghandy has been remanded in custody and it is not clear if he will be transferred out of Delhi.
Activists who campaign for the release of political prisoners have started rallying to demand that he is given his legal rights.
Mr Shanbag says some sections of the media may have got it wrong about Mr Ghandy.
“Kobad cannot be called a blood-thirsty terrorist as some in the media are calling him. Somebody has to get real.”
Courtesy: BBC
Posted by Radical Notes September 24, 2009 at 3:38 am in Sri Lanka
Latin American Friendship Association (LAFA), Tamil Nadu, India
We, from the Latin American Friendship Association in the Tamil Nadu State of India, strongly condemn the statement made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Libya on 4.9.2009 in appreciation of President Rajapakse of Sri Lanka for “defeating the LTTE Terrorism which was deemed impossible by the world at large. It is a glowing example for the other countries best with the same problem”.
We are sad that President Chavez could believe the Imperialist Media and ignore the fact that what Rajapakse has done in Sri Lanka is the greatest crime against the Tamil Minorities of the Island Nation, killing thousands of people and is now holding 3.5. lakh Tamils in open air barbed wire torture camps where there isn’t electricity, water and food, leave alone medicines and basic sanitary facilities. We don’t believe that Chavez is unaware of the worldwide condemnation of the Sri Lankan State Terrorism on Tamil natives, which is worse than the Nazi holocaust. If Chavez could call the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as terrorists, perhaps he has forgotten the path treaded by him before he was voted to power.
This sends alarming signals to us as we look upon Chavez for liberation from the imperialist yoke, not only of the Latin American Countries, but also of the poor in the third world countries. It is dangerous that the Latin American Leadership which aims at the consolidation of the South against the “Monster in the North” with efficient tools like the ALBA and the Banco De Sur is blind to the following facts:
1. The Tamils in Sri Lanka have been fighting for their rights as citizens for the last 60 years. They have tried out all possible democratic means of fighting but the Sinhala Chauvinist State violently suppressed them by killing them in thousands. The LTTE had no other option except to take up arms to fight for their liberation. Denial of just democratic rights as citizens has given birth to armed struggle in Sri Lanka, whereas in Venezuela, failure of military coup against the oppressive state led Chavez to seek power by democratic means.
2. The Sri Lankan state has so far massacred millions of Tamils in the name of “war on Terror” on the LTTE.
3. About 10 lakh Sri Lankan Tamils live across the globe as refugees.
4. It is four months now after the end of the war on terror, but no media persons are allowed to visit the war zones or the open air barbed wire fenced camps where the displaced Tamils are held in an inhuman state, worse than cattle. Genocide of Tamils was executed with impunity without a witness by the Sinhala Government.
5. U.N. officials have not been allowed to visit the war zones or the camps of the Tamils (The entire world reported the plight of the UN Volunteer who left Sri Lanka yesterday after repeated threats to his life).
6. It is no secret now that young women and men are removed from the camps and are abused and tortured by the army; children are separated from parents and couples are separated and dumped in different camps.
We are disgusted that Chavez could support State terrorism unleashed on Tamils by the Sri Lankan Govt. for whatever gain he is aiming at. If anti-imperialistic moves could include support for state terrorism of individual countries, then the aim is not empowerment of the marginalised, but being selfish in the goal while compromising a poor helpless people for no fault of theirs. It is anachronistic that President Chavez who wants to build 21st century socialism could support and praise Rajapakse who has successfully carried out ethnic cleansing of Tamils in the name of ‘War on terror’. And what is the morality behind his saying ‘wiping out terrorism’ ? Chavez would never want to go down in history as a Terrorist and a Dictator as the Imperialist Media projects him.
We, the Friends of Latin America, are also disappointed by the silence of Latin American Left Intellectuals and left parties for not openly condemning the stand taken by Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela in support of President Rajapakse . How can the left parties of Latin America watch in silence the support extended by their progressive Governments to Rajapakse in wiping out the Tamil race ? Are Tamils excluded from the Socialist world of 21st century being built by Left Parties of Latin America?
We respect the role of President Chavez in the western hemisphere because we go by history and not by what the Imperialist Media projects. We are aware that Chavez has the historical commitment to continue his efforts to make Bolivar’s dream a reality; to continue to honour and strengthen the ethical foundations laid by Jose Marti and Che Guevara in forging international solidarity.
Therefore, we appeal that in aligning themselves with the true spirit of Che’s Internationalism, Chavez, Fidel, Eva Morales and other leftist leaders of Latin America do support and stand by the Tamils of Eelam who have been fighting for their National Liberation for more than six decades and snap their diplomatic ties with the Sri Lankan State, as they have done in the case of Israel.
Posted by Deepankar Basu September 22, 2009 at 8:48 am in Economic Notes, Economy, Marxism
By Deepankar Basu, Sanhati.
On a visit to the London School of Economics last year, the Queen of England, expressed surprise at the apparent failure of the economics profession to predict the financial crisis and the Great Recession that came in its wake. “Why did no one see this coming?” asked the Queen to Luis Garicano, a professor of economics at LSE. Garicano’s colleague and economist Tim Besley and eminent historian of government Paul Hennessy stepped up to the task and attempted to answer the Queen in a short letter [PDF] written to her on behalf of the British Academy. In the letter they concluded that “the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.”
Post-Keynesian economist, Thomas Palley, called out the narrow vision of the Besley-Hennesy letter. According to Palley, the cause of the failure cannot be ascribed to the failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, whatever that might mean; instead the failure should be located in the unique “sociology of the economics profession,” which has hounded out most dissenting voices. This failure, moreover, “was a long time in the making and was the product of the profession becoming increasingly arrogant, narrow, and closed minded” and excluding all who did not adhere to the dominant ideological construction of mainstream economics. Interestingly, Palley also points to a host of articles written from a heterodox perspective which spelt out the seriousness of the problems facing the economy as early as 2006; of course, the mainstream media, the US administration and the mainstream economics profession did not heed their advice.
In July 2009, the London-based Economist, the most sophisticated and well-informed voice of capital, ran a series of articles on the problems ailing the discipline of economics. The series took a hard and critical look, always from the perspective of keeping the long-term inst rests of capital protected, at both macroeconomics and financial economics, the two branches of economics at the very center of the current crisis; it all began, one must remember, as a financial crisis – the bursting of the housing bubble, the collapse of investment banks, the falling stock market, the seizing up of the credit markets – and quickly turned into what commentators have started calling the Great Recession.
Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago is one of the key architects of recent mainstream macroeconomics, the founder and propagator of the so-called rational expectations “revolution” in economics. In the Chicago vision of the macro economy, all economic actors are super rational. How do they display their rational behaviour? By making decisions on the basis of all currently available and relevant information. In other words, all economic agents are magically endowed with unbelievably large computing capacities whereby they gather all the relevant information, process it at lightning speed and arrive at perfect decisions. In this world there are no manias, no panics, no herd behaviour, no contagion, no asset price bubbles, no crashes; there is only smooth and rational adjustments. If the real world of capitalism does not resemble this, so much the worse for the world! Unfazed, therefore, by the recent economic and financial crisis, Robert Lucas jumped in to defend the recent turn in macroeconomics: even mildly critical pieces in as friendly a journal as the Economist needed to be countered. His contribution, of course, started off a Lucas round table, which, by the way, has some interesting posts (for instance Smither’s post on why the Efficient Markets Hypothesis must be discarded).
University of Chicago economists are notorious for their devotion to the magic of the market. In what even then looked like a wacky position, Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago, a colleague of Lucas, had argued in early October that the economy was not doing as bad as it looked; the unemployment rate was only about 6 percent and so there was no need either to worry or for the government to work out a fiscal stimulus. Today when the official unemployment rate is nudging double digits and most sensible economists believe that it will remain high for the next year or so, making this the deepest recession since the Great Depression, Mulligan’s position, and the Chicago position in general, seems so horrendously out of touch with reality.
A detour into some details of how the unemployment rate is measured in the US might not be out of place. To start with, one must recall that one of the most serious problems that any capitalist economy, like the US, faces is to provide well-paying stable employment for its working population. The inherent logic of capitalism usually prevents this problem being solved in any satisfactory manner and for long periods of time. Hence, capitalist economies are typically plagued by serious labour underutilization.
There are several ways to measure labour underutilization and the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) in the US currently uses six measures (U-1 through U-6). Data for these measures come from two monthly surveys conducted by the BLS: (1) the Current Population Survey (which is a survey of about 60,000 households); (2) the Current Employment Statistics Survey (which is a survey of about 160,000 business and government agencies). For both surveys, as explained on the BLS website, the data for a given month relate to a particular week or pay period. For the household survey, “the reference week is generally the calendar week that contains the 12th day of the month.” For the establishment survey, on the other hand, “the reference period is the pay period including the 12th, which may or may not correspond directly to the calendar week.”
It has been known for quite some time now that the official unemployment rate (the U-3 measure) provides us with a seriously underestimated measure of labour underutilization. The reason is simple: U-3 does not count those workers who become so discouraged by long spells of unemployment that they stop looking for work altogether, drop out of the labour force and, therefore, not even counted among the unemployed. To deal with this problem, the BLS provides a more comprehensive measure of labour underutilization, U-6, which takes account of part-time workers (who want but cannot find full time jobs) and marginally attached workers (these are the “persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past”). While the official unemployment rate is 9.7 percent (see chart below), the current value of U-6 is a whopping 16.8 percent! And this despite the massive fiscal stimulus of the Obama administration. How about asking an unemployed worker who has not found a job for the last 15 months (say), and has possibly even stopped looking for one due to sheer discouragement, whether her being unemployed is the result of a “rational” decision she has made on the basis of some inter temporal calculations?
At the other end of the mainstream economics profession, liberal economist, Nobel Laureate and New York Times commentator Paul Krugman has written a balanced and even-handed critique of the recent turn in macroeconomics, precisely the turn that Lucas so painstakingly tries to defend. Krugman makes two points: (1) how the orthodox belief in the efficiency of the markets (and especially financial markets) is neither based on facts nor makes for good policy; (2) how and why fiscal policy, long banished from the realms of mainstream macroeconomics, came to the rescue in the Great Recession, i.e., in preventing the Great Recession from turning into the second Great Depression, and why it should become part of the mainstream curriculum again. Krugman ends with a plea to return to the deep wisdom of Keynes, knowing full well that Keynes’ efforts were all directed at reforming capitalism and not replacing it . Even this mild reproach drew fire from Chicago economist, John Cochrane; in his post, Cochrane has, to my mind, not managed to respond to any of the substantive points raised by Krugman. Much along Krugman’s line is also the recent piece by Robert Skidelsky, Keynes’ biographer and the recent interview of macroeconomist Robert Gordon of Northwestern University; in a similar tone, Richard Posner asks whether economists will escape a whipping; no prizes for guessing the answer. For more debates along similar lines see this page on the Financial Times.
As an interesting aside, there was an earlier round of debate between Krugman/De Long and Cochrane. Early in the year, Cochrane had written a piece on why fiscal stimulus will not work. In that article, he had basically repeated some pre-Keynesian fallacies (like the Treasury View that every dollar of debt-financed expenditure by the government necessarily cuts back the same amount of private investment expenditure and hence that fiscal stimulus is ineffective). Brad De Long of UC Berkeley and Paul Krugman took Cochrane to task for repeating these fallacies; here is Delong’s piece (which has a nice example on a credit economy with four agents) and here is Krugman’s. Cochrane makes the simple mistake, as Krugman points out, of assuming that the pool of savings is fixed (i.e., before and after the fiscal stimulus), which leads him to conclude that when the government dips into this pool of savings that must necessarily deprive some private entity of an equal amount of saving (and hence reduce private investment expenditure by that amount). It is amazing how this simple fallacy persists over time, despite repeated attempts by Keynesian economists to point it out over the last 60 years. When the government takes a part of the pool of savings available to society and uses it for making purchases, the multiplier effect of this government expenditure increases the output of the economy (especially so when there is massive unutilized capacity lying around) and, thereby, also the savings out of that output; when the multiplier has run its course, the economy has a larger pool of savings. Therefore, debt-financed government expenditure need not crowd out private investment, other than in the case when the economy is already operating near full-capacity, a far cry from the state of the US economy today.
Limitations of the Debate
While this debate between the “saltwater economists” (liberal wing of the mainstream economics profession in the US, located mostly on the two coasts) and the “freshwater economists” (conservative wing of the economics profession in the US, located mostly in the central part of the country) is a welcome break from the free market fundamentalism of the mainstream press, one should not overlook the limitations of the framework within which the debate is being conducted. Roughly speaking, that framework is marked by its two boundaries, on the left by a version of Keynesianism (that economists like Krugman uphold) and on the right by Chicago-style economics. That is the space that is provided in this debate, and thus it naturally excludes: (a) any discussion of a much broader and richer heterodox tradition in economics (which includes Post-Keynesians, Ricardians, Institutionalists, Marxists, etc.), (b) any discussion of the material basis of the victory of freshwater over freshwater economics, and (c) any discussion of alternatives to capitalism.
It is surprising that Krugman does not even once refer in his piece to the heterodox tradition in economics, especially so because he devotes so much space to a discussion of macroeconomics. Over the last two decades, heterodox macroeconomists in the Marxian and post-Keynesian tradition have developed an impressive body of research, both theoretical and empirical, that speaks to most of the issues that mainstream macroeconomics so cleverly avoids. The Classical-Marxian theory of long run economic growth complemented by the short run theory of economic fluctuations of the post-Keynesian variety offers a real, comprehensive and coherent alternative to the theoretical sterility of mainstream macroeconomics, and it is indeed unfortunate that Krugman does not care to engage with this body of research.
When Krugman portrays the victory of freshwater economics over saltwater economics as a seduction of truth by beauty, he misses one very important aspect of that victory. The victory of conservative economics coincides beautifully with the rise to dominance of finance capital, the fraction of the global ruling class most closely allied with and deriving their incomes from the financial sector. How can one miss the coincidence of the exhaustion of the postwar temporary and partial victory of labour over capital and the rise of monetarism, mark I and then mark II? As economist Gerard Dumenil had pointed out long ago, the fads and fashions in mainstream economics is determined less by the internal logic of the discipline than by changes in the structure and functioning of the world economy and the changing correlation of class forces. This is an aspect that commentators like Krugman totally miss.
Talking of alternatives to capitalism, while it is obvious to many economists and activists that the current crisis is a crisis of capitalism, and that it necessitates the search for alternatives to capitalism by linking up with the long socialist tradition, the current debate does not even entertain discussion of such alternatives. While it is expected that freshwater economists will not tolerate any criticism of capitalism, saltwater economists are no less conscious about respecting the commonly accepted boundaries of the thinkable. For one must not forget that Krugman, like Keynes fifty years ago, is out to reform capitalism and not to replace it. And that is as far left as the framework will allow the debate to veer; even thinking about an alternative to capitalism is taboo within the terms of reference of this debate. Socialism is not even allowed to wander, if only by mistake, into the terms of the discourse.
That is the fundamental limitation of the discipline of mainstream economics: its inability to adopt a historical perspective and see capitalism as merely one way of organizing social production, a mode of production with a definite historical birth and therefore with a future historical transcendence. Mainstream economics, to the extent that it ever reflects on the philosophical foundations and founding assumptions of the discipline, sees the “laws” that it discovers as natural laws, valid for all historical epochs. The obvious corollary is that capitalism is eternal; the way things are organized today is how they have always been and will always be. Of course there will be technological progress and institutional development, but there never was nor will ever be any radical qualitative change in the way social production is organized, in the ownership of property. Much before Fukuyama, mainstream economics had silently accepted the non-existence of history.
This is where the Marxist tradition of political economy is far superior to what Marx called “bourgeois economics”. Grounded in a materialist conception of history, the Marxist tradition analyses the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system, contradictions which cannot be resolved within the parameters of the capitalist system. These contradictions cannot be dealt with by more or less regulation of the financial or product or labour markets, it cannot be dealt with by fiscal or monetary policy to stabilize business cycle fluctuations, it cannot be dealt with by better regulation of international trade and finance; these contradictions, while changing form according to the changing institutional setting of capitalism, will inevitably and recurrently break out on the surface as long as capitalism survives.
What are these fundamental contradictions of capitalism? The contradiction between social production and private appropriation and control of the product of that production process; the contradiction between use-value and value; the contradiction between the two fundamental social classes, workers and capitalists, of capitalist society. While the first of these is easy to grasp and therefore needs no elaboration, it might be worthwhile spending some time thinking about the other two.
For Marx, capitalism was a type, a sub-class, of commodity producing society and so, to understand the dynamics of capitalism, he started his analysis in Volume I of Capital with commodity production. But what is a commodity? Every society must produce to meet its material needs. Where the products of human labour emerge as the private property of economic agents, and which are then exchanged through a process of bargaining, they are called commodities. Another way to see this is to realize that the products of human labour that emerge in a system of production organized through exchange are precisely what Marx calls commodities.
Come to think of it, there are only two ways that human needs can be satisfied in a commodity producing society, either by consuming one’s own product or by exchanging it for something else that one needs. This simple observation immediately throws up the dual nature of commodities. On the one hand every commodity is a use value because it can satisfy human needs; on the other hand, every commodity can also be exchanged for every other commodity. The aspect of exchangeability of commodities is what Marx terms value. What is the essence of the aspect of exchangeability of commodities? The fact that they are all products of human labour. For Marx, therefore, value is created by labour, properly defined, and is expressed in money (value separated from any particular commodity). What has all this to do with capitalism?
Capitalism is the special class of commodity producing society where labour power (the capacity to perform useful human labour) itself becomes a commodity. While a commodity producing society with owner-producers typically “sell to buy”, the characteristic transaction under capitalism is “buy to sell”. A representative capitalist starts with a sum of money, buys raw materials and labour power with it, brings them together in the production process and then sells the products to end up with a sum of money which is larger than the sum he started out with. If we now recall that money is nothing but the expression of value, we see that the capitalist ends up with more value that he started with, in a word surplus value. Capitalism, therefore, is a system of social production, that is governed by the logic of producing surplus value. The production of use values, things that can actually satisfy human needs, is just incidental; as far as capital is concerned, the aim is to produce surplus value by producing no matter what use values. When those use values cannot satisfy existing needs, new and artificial needs can always be “manufactured” by the capitalist media. Value needs to be embodied in use values and yet it is totally indifferent to the existence of particular use values; this is the sense in which use values and value stand in a contradictory relation under capitalism.
What about the contradiction between the fundamental social classes? Every class divided society rests on the appropriation of unpaid surplus labour by the ruling class (or bloc of classes) from the direct producers. In feudal societies, the ruling class directly appropriates the surplus labour of peasants as “labour services”; similarly, in capitalism, the capitalist class appropriates, but now through the institution of wage-labour, the surplus labour of the workers. The apparent freedom and equality (between the two parties to an exchange) guaranteed to workers through the institution of wage-labour and markets makes the appropriation of surplus labour almost invisible; equality of the relations of exchange make the exploitation of the working class difficult to see. But it exists nonetheless and the tools of Marxian political economy brings it to light.
It is these fundamental contradictions that manifest themselves periodically as crises of the system, the most characteristic feature of which is the simultaneous existence of unfulfilled human needs (unemployment) and unused capacity (idle plant and machinery) to fulfill those needs. Capitalism, as a system, is defined by these contradictions, they are not extrinsic to capitalism; hence, only a positive transcendence of the capitalist system can resolve them. It would have been useful if the current crisis of economics was utilized to focus our attention on the crisis of capitalism, but the way the terrain of debate has been circumscribed by agreed upon assumptions, this seems rather unlikely.
(I would like to thank Amit Basole and Debarshi Das for helpful comments on an earlier version.)
