Musings in Ideology – part –3 Development, Democracy & third world perspective.

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(Are we living in a time different from the time of November revolution? Are we in the same space-time continuum? ….. Politically it is the Leninist scheme of thing and it’s the time of imperialism described by Lenin – argues the writer.)
Written for and published in November, 2010 issue of Pragyan.

The previous part of this article ended with the comment that the organisational practice of the communist till date is not in keeping with the Marxist concept of withering away of state and politics. So keeping in view the Lenin’s theoretical concept of consciousness to the masses from without and proletarian vanguard, Stalinist practice, Gramsci’s concept of organic intellectual and Rosa Luxembourgian critiques, this organizational question needs to be discussed & debated at length in ideological musing. But prior to doing that, few more important parameters left untouched are discussed in this part of my article considering practicing & dominant ideology of the masses.

 Development & democracy are such ideological constructs in the sense that these terminologies bear different connotation depending on the balance of forces within really existing power structure. The ideological concept is as defined by the design of the type of society the development process is supposed to bring about. As Samir Amin puts it “the history of the dominant ideology as a series of successive discourses, whose types I have termed liberal nationalist, then social and national, finally globalised neoliberal,”1. Within the really existing capitalism having capital/labour contradiction permanently operational throughout the system, the diverse conflicting social thoughts bearing ideological values for or against the labour are always at play. The conflicting ideas emanating from really existing balance of forces or social milieu influences and determines the dominant ideology of any period and in that sense the theoretical basis of idea/ideas is different from both deterministic as well as post-modernist (so called pluralist) approach.

Sub-prime crisis and crisis of capitalism

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Written & published in newspaper/magazine in January/2009

( Communist manifesto in 1848 …. In this crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production …)

A World Bank report states – “ the number of malnourished people with a record rise of 44 million  in the year 2008, is estimated to be total 967 million. The number of most hungry people is 1.4 billion and that of hungry people is another 3 billion. The hungry people in India, that claims to be largely free from the impact of global economic crisis, is 200 million. The situation of hungry people in the so called developed states of India are worse than Sub-Saharan Africa.” These are the official figures. The real situation is more horrifying than the official figures reveal. These figures are rising rapidly with every passing time. Thousands of working people are losing their jobs regularly. The factory shutters are getting down one after another. The unemployment rate and the number of unemployed are increasing leaps & bounds. The common toiling masses, the people of backward communities and countries, since long, have been facing the brunt of this crisis of the system in this way in their own lives. In the case of recent American Sub-Prime crisis also, the backward Afro-American, Hispanics in the American society have slided down further in socio-economic ladder. Those people, who do not have own roofs over their heads, also availed the sub-prime loan with a desire to have their own home.

THE FINANCIAL GLOBALISATION AND ITS IMPACT

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Written and published in newspaper/magazine in the last part of  2008

Globalisation or Biswayan or Bhubonayan in local parlance are the words which are very familiar nowadays. According to some commentators there is nothing new in it as globalisation of capital is ingrained in capitalism. But as the present phase is new, there are some new features. Amongst these features, a radical structural change in the finance capital is one of most striking features. The deregulation of capital is the buzz-word in this phase of globalization process beginning from the eighties. The use of new instruments in financial market has created the scope for a handful of financial institutions to extract profit to the range of million-trillion dollars. This trade which is dependent on market sentiment has already gone beyond the control of any kind of existing regulatory mechanism. In the face of the growth of this trade in meteoric speed, global regulatory institution like IMF too is facing difficulties. This capital is not being directed towards productive investment. The players from underdeveloped or developing countries are not noteworthy stake-holder in this trade. The liberalized economy and the policy of taking more foreign debt for servicing outstanding debt will result in havoc in the economy of those countries in case of any dwindle or collapse in the global financial system. Profit and more profit, and for that no long-term productive investment but to make investment for quick instantaneous profit is rule of the day. Enormous growth of this quick profit market has already made the market volatile. The imbalances in the financial market may result in the situation like cyclonic storm to crash the market and formant deeper crisis in the already imbalanced global economy. Prior to analysing this situation in detail, let us see what the new financial instruments are and how they are operated.

স্বাভিমান:SWABHIMAN Headline Animator

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