স্বাভিমান:SWABHIMAN

https://www.frontierweekly.com/views/may-20/13-5-20-The%20Pandemic%20and%20the%20state-1.html?fbclid=IwAR30gcti_fdH6q3g3HIL8SdF7yKpTqYCjtGTVHR2AHF2kvORL1lz-9Tfx1E


The Pandemic and the state : Part-I : Domestic situation and the task of the left

The Pandemic and the state
Part-I: Domestic situation and the task of the left

Arup Baisya

Introduction

The best part of Marxist discourse is that it teaches us to dig deep below the surface to uncover the underlying relationship and process and that’s why Marxism itself is a process. In this context, it is not incongruous when G. A. Cohen asks “If Physics, the science of matter, cannot be designated by any ism against any particular name of the scientist because it’s a progressive discipline, is it pertinent question to ask why the social science be designated by any such ism? Is it not a progressive science?” Marxism unveils the surface relation of commodity exchange, where the labour-power becomes a commodity for exchange in a Capitalist society, is the manifestation of the social relation of production which is dynamic and always in motion. But even after a prolonged period of demise of really existing socialism in erstwhile Soviet Russia and entire Eastern Europe, the dominant discourse of Marxist praxis is revolving around the surface categories and confines the working-class movement within the domain of the game of bargaining within the capitalist system.

The Plan Vs. the Market

This dominant and parliamentary left in India focuses on Plan Vs. Market contradiction and the state-planned economy prevailing over the Market rule as the point of departure as well as a qualitative change. This obscures the fact that capital and its process of accumulation and profit plays as the constant category in the contradictory denomination of plan and market and the real question of the class character of the state goes beyond the political imagination of the working class. They shift their coordinates of observation and rests on Galilean transformation and conveniently forget that the capital with its profit and accumulation is the constant from whatever coordinate one observes and that’s why the observer must opt for Lorenz transformation for relativity, the relativity of class position i.e. the dynamics of the social relation of production and the intervention of the class whose interest is served by the power of the state. Charles Bettelheim cogently said, “The effective process of work, production, distribution, consumption which take place in the workplace, in the production units, in the consumption units, and which the plan is supposed to determine, can only have a very distant relation to what the plan anticipates, a circumstance which can transform the latter into a “myriad reality”. Such a process of mythification can itself be analysed only in terms of class and ideological relations.” The long drawn out history of capitalism has revealed the fact that the ‘Leissez faire’ economy is a misnomer and capitalism cannot survive without the support of the state. The distinction between the neoliberal phase of the economy and its earlier phase is the mere domination of the market over the state. The plan and the market can pari passu exist and also one may prevail over the other. But the moot question is the dynamics of the social relation of production and the regulation of its movement by the political class power. So, the vision of the left to go beyond capitalism primarily depends on the empowerment of the toiling masses as a whole and proletariat in particular.

So programme for radical change must begin with a question of ‘who is in control’ of the production process. Revolution does not only mean the dislodging or overthrowing ruling class from the control of the state but also the change of relation between state, capital, and labour in a radical way. It means the revolution is also a social revolution. From the global perspective, it also means bridging the metabolic rift between labour and nature to ensure the existence of an individual in nature through creatively controlled productive activity and that can be only be ensured by replacing the productive activity destructively dominated by capitalist-expansion or globalization of capital. The process of proletarianisation in a developing country cannot be articulated in isolation. The conditions of labour in developing countries are incomparably worse than the developed countries. But the countries concerned are an integral part of the system of capital and labour. The conditions of the labour market were deteriorating everywhere, including the western capitalist countries before the unprecedented Covid19 Pandemic.

Capitalist Crisis and the lockdown

The Kondratieff crisis of capitalism started in the late 1960s or early 1970s that led to the neoliberal policy paradigm which has traversed its full cycle to reach the cul-de-sac. Though the meteoric rise of speculative financial market and the process of labour arbitrage and the accumulation through displacement, the rate of falling profit due to change of organic composition of capital for capitalist competition leading to monopoly capitalism could somehow be managed from time to time, the crisis of overproduction due to the unabated accumulation of capital prevail across the capitalist global system. The Capitalist policymakers strived to keep the capitalist machine running through a bubble economy. The debt bubble followed by the US Subprime crisis in 2008-09 which was mitigated by quantitative easing (QE) and based on the logic of “too big to fail” was on the verge of bursting before the eruption of Covid19 Pandemic and the lockdown thereon.

The concept of ‘Market Justice’ and ‘Money illusion’ that has been created during neoliberal restructuring has now come to a halt by the Corona lockdown, the root cause of this catastrophe being capitalism itself due to the complete metabolic rift between labour and nature. But this inevitable consequence of the journey of capitalism also gives rise to the opportunity of building new relation between human beings and nature in contradistinction to the primitive communism where men were part of nature as well as a part of the animal kingdom too as unintelligent unconscious being. Due to the Corona lockdown, the global supply chain and massive revenue-generating private productive and service sectors have almost been completely disrupted, and wealth destroyed. Due to a fall in consumption, oil shock and Russia – US tug-of-war on curtailment on production is looming large, but the revenue saved by oil-importing countries like India can be expended on health-sector. The offensive stance of the US against China necessitates closure ties between Russia and China for their mutual benefit.

Due to the breaking down of the global supply chain, production, and circulation of most of the essential FMCG products for exchange value are now operative on a very limited scale within the domestic market. Another such booming market is in the health sector and that too mostly confined in domestic requirement. Health and food are the two things that are required most now. The farmers’ produced needs to be reached to the people and exchanged. But an exchange cannot be possible as people who lost their jobs do not have money and due to disruption in the market-driven supply chain. One option for the Government in power is the intervention of state through large scale purchase of agricultural goods with support price and ensure delivery to the consumers, universal ration system, community kitchen, and putting money in the hands of the people. A similar massive intervention of the state in the health sector is the only option.

Two options for the ruling class

The illusory and anti-people ‘Market Justice’ took its toll on the people and then its Capitalist production process itself entered the blind alley of crisis due to overproduction and now collapsed by this Corona catastrophe. This should revive the concept of ‘Social Justice’ where the state acts for the welfare of the people. Indian Govt is making its move through baby steps without giving any sign of a paradigmatic shift. It allocated a very meager amount of money for people’s welfare, transferring some amount of funds to the states respecting the federal spirit. But to take a giant stride, the Govt needs to change its policy decisions which the govt is hesitating to take to keep the corporate private players, who are visualising this catastrophe as an opportunity due to wealth destruction, in good humour.

CII is still advising austerity and asking govt to keep the money for the bailout of banks in case of failure or run. Vedanta chairperson posing himself as a great philanthropist, upholding the plight of daily wage earners, and making a huge charitable donation is advocating a theory of “the state has no business in business” and advising the govt to withdraw from its business which is still under govt control. Private hospital owners started nudging the govt for fiscal support for their revenue loss. This indicates a new kind of nationalism is on the platter now whereby the rate of exploitation will increase with a new restructuring of the working class. In this policy framework, both the ruling class parties, BJP and Congress, may converge on policy issues.

But the most reactionary forces of the power-that-be are still eyeing on the neoliberal policy framework. The defining feature of the neoliberal era is the large-scale shift of this production process to low-wage countries. The rate of exploitation and accumulation of profit is increased through a low investment of fixed and variable capitals i.e. transfer of capital. Rising surplus-value through expanding the exploitation of Southern low-wage labour is the wage-arbitrage driven globalization of capitalist production process which directly corresponds to the reduction of wages below their value. The neo-liberal regime of monopoly capital has thus taken the full control in the production process of developing countries and to ensure the super-exploitation of labour and nature of third world countries and the abundant supply of cheap labour and wealth, the accumulation through dispossession or continuation of primitive accumulation is increasingly important for capitalism’s survival in its present phase of capitalist crisis. This accumulation through dispossession is creating a reserve army of labour which creating downward pressure on the wages. By uprooting of hundreds of millions of workers and farmers in Southern nations from their ties to the land and their jobs in protected national industries, neoliberal capitalism has accelerated the expansion of a vast pool of super-exploitable labour.

Global labour arbitrage or super-exploitation is forcing down the value of labour-power. The proletarians of the developing countries are its first victims, but broad masses of working people in the imperialist countries also face destitution.

The rate of exploitation (the ratio between necessary labour time and surplus labour time) is increased by increasing the absolute surplus value (lengthening working day) and by increasing relative surplus value (increasing the productivity of labour through technology). But the global labour arbitrage, the driver of the global shift of production to the low-wage nation, is the form of surplus-value for super-exploitation which is ensured in the global south for rising unemployment due to the inability of modern production method to soak up enough labour, a much harsher labour regime, political repression, etc.

The Pandemic lockdown has displaced the migrant workers back to their rural base. The huge retrenchment of workers is going on and thus raising the rate of unemployment. The huge social cost that needs to be expended for engaging the living labour with the productive machine for kickstarting the production process necessitates the intervention of the state with a policy of generating domestic market instead of export-driven growth only model. Though the export market has drastically shrunk due to the lockdown, demand crunch, and the global tendency of the countries for a shift towards inward-looking domestic economic policies, the corporates are averse to such paradigmatic shift from export-led growth only model to the domestic national economy. The most reactionary forces within powers-that-be consider it as an opportune moment to attract the FDI of the corporates to shift their investment from China to India when China is imposing state control over the market rule. These foreign private players may shift their production unit to India only when the cheap labour, ownership rights with 100% stake or by other means, land grabbing through forced displacement and other facilities are extended to them provided other factors like global scenario for export demand, etc. are favourably changed post-lockdown economic reconstruction. This entails curtailment of workers’ rights, enhancement of pre-capitalist repression based on caste and community, etc. But the ruling class is also aware of the fact that such a policy framework not only fail to resolve the crisis but also aggravate the crisis and class conflict and militant protest.

Ideological front

Indeed, the “theories” peddled by the Hindutva outfits for the treatment coronavirus like cow-dung and cow urine are met by people with contempt at this time and the crisis itself is a good teacher for building scientific temper. It is also naïve to ask the question to Mr. PM’s “Dia Jalao” program, “Where is the science in it?”. It is like asking “Where is the science in Space, Time or Spacetime?”. The argument that science is defeated in Mr. PM’s program is an unreasonable argument and self-defeating.

But an attempt has been made to transform it into an imaginary construction of “Patriotism” which reifies or fetishises the real social solidarity and thus obscures the real social consciousness which leads us to be patriotic to the people belonging to a territory defined as India.

What Mr. PM did was an attempt to take it to an imaginary plank to epitomise the meaning of patriotism within himself to arrogate the power of people as an icon who can rule and thus serve the interest of India Inc and corporates and becomes their darling.

The patriotism with a herd popular mindset behind an icon is a transient phenomenon and may be effective for a very short term. But the herd mentality, if not reversed very quickly, has its adverse ramification. The loss of rationality and good sense may even confuse the long drawn out battle against the invisible enemy through a misleading signal. The counter-narrative of patriotism needs to be built from below by the power of the toiling masses and educated rational minds. Everything does not go as smoothly as the ruling class envisages, this is now unfolding itself.

https://nayaganatantra.wordpress.com/2020/05/11/pandamic-and-the-state-ab/?fbclid=IwAR3UC0acO_y-yAhi9KH3y3zuDRGrVko5A2htOkL1vB69U70LVpamPUDq8oM

https://www.frontierweekly.com/views/may-20/20-5-20-The%20Pandemic%20and%20the%20state-2.html?fbclid=IwAR1s4eZZDhFpF5Q-Y8bqf8EQsvEYQSKAYIW47uVoClljYkEVKER6jLhPiOg


The Pandemic and the State Part-II: Politics Commands: Why Vacillate?

Arup Baisya

This revolution is necessary not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in riding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. (Marx in German Ideology)

Freedom and capitalism

Engel reiterated Hegel in Anti-Durhing, “Freedom is the recognition of necessity”. What is this necessity? The answer to this question is unveiled in how Marx dealt with Capitalism as a process. The capitalist world as delineated by Marx is an inverted world where everything is objectified by the dynamic process of capitalism. Capitalism appears to be the subject that mediates through the human labour objectified as the productive force along with other material objects like a machine and raw material i.e. means of production. The capitalist law of value drives the relation between the Capital and labour, and within the domain of this relation, Capitalists become the capital personified.

The transcendence of the Capitalism is the journey from unfreedom to freedom, freedom of humanity through a transitional phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship which, in essence, the evolution of democracy to its highest form surpassing the bourgeoise democracy through withering away of the state. The moment at which this journey to freedom can begin is the moment of revolution which precedes by a paradigm shift in the normal theoretical discourse. The Paradigm as defined by Thomas S. Kuhn “On the one hand, it stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community. On the other, it denotes one sort of elements in that constellation, the concrete puzzle-solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.”

The Paradigm shift and the revolution

Once the capitalist paradigm through which to view the society has been found, the theoretical endeavour goes on adjusting any systemic anomaly which comes in conflict with the observation. If one fails to adjust the anomaly, it is the “the carpenter (the theorist) who blames his tools”, not the capitalist paradigm. This dominant paradigm is rejected only by substituting it with another. This substitution or a paradigm shift begins when the anomalies are so strong that it leads to crisis and those who adhere to reform or revisionism within the capitalist system resist or ridicule such paradigmatic shift. They are determinists and at the same time voluntarists who think that at any given time, the range of possibilities is determined by what has gone before, but within this range genuine choices are possible. This very general principle, however, by no means exhausts the Marxian position. It is more important to consider Marxism as the revolutionary idea which can emerge as a dominant paradigm after a prolonged period of stability of a given capitalist social order to be followed by a revolutionary transition to a new social order.

The proletarian character of a revolution, in fact, depends more on the dominant role of the proletarian ideology and of the party which embodies this ideology, than on the “numerical” strength of the proletariat. Despite the example of a proletarian revolution in a backward country like Russia under the leadership of a Bolshevik Party, the demise of the organised working class in large industries during the neo-liberal restructuring instilled a defeatist mindset within the practicing Marxists who interpreted the Marxist philosophy more as an idea to adjust working-class position within the paradigm of capitalism than as a philosophy to transcend capitalism. But at this given moment, the anomalies which have emerged within the system and surfaced for the observer to visualise are so strong that the paradigmatic shift for a radical politics of change can challenge the efficacy of the capitalist paradigm and grab the imagination of the masses to become a formidable force to break the notion of TINA factor to transform the working class into a ruling class for a new social order.

The Indian development and the working class

In the first part of this series “The Pandemic and the state”, the options before the ruling class and the communist parties are dealt with. This part of the series deals with a revolutionary political line that can emerge mot only through ruthless criticism of capitalism but also revisionism. This necessitates the brief mention of the history of the development of the Indian economy to keep it in perspective.

From the experience of the colonial period and the Chinese experience of ‘erosion and retention’ of feudalism under imperialism and the Chinese revolution, it was presumed that the intertwining of feudal class and the capitalist class alliance of imperialism and feudalism thereon provides the best conditions for imperialist super-profits. So, the battle against caste or feudal class is the battle against feudalism and as such, this struggle by itself is the struggle against imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. The real manifestation of this struggle in the vast expanse of the agrarian sector is the struggle against the ownership of land and other means of agricultural production of the upper castes.

The objective reality of the rural and urban landscape of India has already undergone a drastic change. After long post-independent dirigiste Nehruvian development strategy under uneven and combined global development model and especially after neo-liberal development spree post-eighties, there has been a long haul of concomitant proletarianisation and pauperisation. The migrants who were only represented as dry data for the policymakers and analysts to make them fit in capitalist law of value have now struck a decisive blow to the mass social consciousness by their passive rebellion of exodus against the systemic capitalist rules of disciplining labour. The workers in the service sector who sells their labour-power to the capitalists who in turn sell the service of the labour to the consumers also deserted their site by defying the order of the state and thus temporarily snapping ties with capitalist relation of submission and discipline. This exodus and strenuous journey to their home by itself is a rebellion on their volition. They find themselves in a cultural and political void where there are strong anomalies in the prevailing system, but the absence of any radical political endeavour for a paradigm shift. This itself challenges the myth ingrained in the defeatist mindset of a section of the left that the politics and ideology of a proletarian party cannot bring the revolutionary agenda into fore in absence of large-scale industrial workers who are really subsumed into capital.

The Govt policy and the Indian big bourgeoisie

Now it is amply clear that the Indian ruling class is settling down for a policy of “Privatised Keynesianism”. Both the rate of unemployment and the rate of exploitation are increasing in real terms. New sectors have indeed opened for the capitalists for trillion-dollar business and accumulation of profit. But the menacing crisis of overproduction due to accumulation of wealth is not going to be resolved in near future, rather it is deepened further due to Pandemic and lockdown. The new opportunities of investment with the strong support of the state are not going to compensate for the job losses before and after lockdown, the unemployment rate which indicates a capitalist crisis beyond a threshold is not only going to prevail, but also deepen. Unlike previous instances of capitalist history, the new technology Cybernetics instead of generating new employment opportunity retrenched workers, this time the Robotics or AI is going to play the same role.

A balancing act between the market and the state in which the present dispensation in power is envisioning to serve the interest of the domestic bourgeoisie is not going to generate the domestic market in the backdrop of the high unemployment rate. The rural agricultural economy can be revamped only in the backdrop of an industrial and urban earning population whom the agricultural produces feed. In the backdrop of the breaking down of the global value chain, large scale FDI in India cannot be expected at this moment. The foreign manufacturers of spare-parts may shift their production to Vietnam and Mexico for labour arbitrage, but not in India in the immediate future, at least before economic revival. When US President Donald Trump imposed import tariffs, the Indian big bourgeoisie Jindal’s JSW invested one billion dollars for establishing a steel manufacturing plant in the US. Mittal, Jindal, Adani et el invest in foreign countries in steel, mining, etc. Indian big bourgeois is a partner in mining activities with Chinese companies in Africa and they adopt the form of colonial exploitation in African countries.

The Pandemic and productive restructuring

Due to the lockdown and the Pandemic, the focus on productive sectors has been undergoing a shift towards the manufacture and as a result, the old manufacturing capitalists are once again coming to the limelight surpassing or reducing the one-sided influence of capitalist like Ambanis, etc. In this crisis situation when both production and labour processes have been drastically disrupted, the diverse section of the big powerful bourgeoisie is keen on grabbing the opportunity to exploit the domestic market and unitedly putting their weight on the govt to create pressure for the domestic policy of “Privatised Keynesianism”. But this policy of the Govt is going to face popular resistance from the masses including the middle classes because this will not only fail to address the systemic crisis but also aggravate the crisis. The certain belated gesture of addressing the grievances of migrants and popular classes through a small bit by bit measures is the sign of vulnerability of the powers-that-be too, but it is logical to conclude that these positive gestures will revolve around the domain of dominant paradigm and will be reversed in case the increasing pressure from the masses challenges the very foundation of the dominant paradigm itself. The rhetorical stance of the Govt by delineating this policy as “vocal for local” and “country going global” instead of the Nehruvian model of import substitution actually bears the essence of this “privatized Keynesianism” with an eye on FDI in future with a focus on export. Will the popular resistance transform itself into a political struggle for radical change under the pedagogic guidance and leadership of a proletarian party?

Critique of revisionism and Marxism

For this to happen, a ruthless critique of both capitalism and revisionism needs to be launched while leading the proletarians for the broadest popular unity. To achieve this broadest unity of the masses, we must also understand that like combined development (in the center and periphery), the uneven development is ingrained in capitalism and the unevenness is ubiquitous throughout the system. The unevenness is accentuated when capitalism reached its imperialist stage of exploitation. This unevenness is marked by the presence of pre-capitalist relation which is moulded and shaped by the combined development under capitalism to ensure its profit and accumulation.

Karl Marx dwelt on the dual nature of labour under capitalism. On the one hand, argues Marx, labour is abstract labour, involved in producing commodities for the market, objectified as value, expressed in the exchange of commodities for money, from which capital extracts profit. On the other hand, labour is also involved in the production of use-value, concrete labour, both individual and social. Under capitalism, the two forms of labour are, he argued, in constant tension with each other. The creative, purposeful activity is subordinated to labour disciplined for the maximisation of profit. According to Marx, capitalism encounters an extreme variety of forms of land ownership, such as feudal, clan, communal (and primitive), state, etc., when it makes its appearance on the historical scene. Capital subordinates to itself all these varied forms of land ownership and remoulds them after its own fashion. If one is to understand, evaluate, and express this process, the contradictory movement of acceleration and retardation must be the starting point in understanding the development of capitalism in India in the era of imperialism.

Contradictions and revolutionary party

we can delineate the different contradictions which are at play in the present Indian society. These are (1) Capital vs labour & nature (1) Imperialist domination vs. nation (2) Competition within the compradors. (3) Compradors vs the people (4) Comradors vs the regional bourgeoisie (5) Landed gentry vs. the peasants. (6) Upper caste vs lower castes (7) Men and women (Patriarchy). But at a moment of time, one contradiction manifests itself as a principal contradiction. The Pandemic and the lockdown have changed the polity in such a way that the contradiction between Indian comprador bourgeoisie vs. the people has emerged as the principal contradiction which can be resolved in favour of the people only under the leadership of a proletarian party leading the masses. This leadership emerges from a paradigmatic shift to bring the Marxism as a revolutionary doctrine which also underlines the importance of praxis to establish the rights of the working class and their class empowerment through workplace democracy, organize the peasantry through peasant productive and organisational association for grassroot democracy and to ensure people’s participation through popular resistance movement and all these must be spearheaded with a vision to transform the working class into a ruling class, the idea of which becomes a material force when it grabs the masses. The migrants by their passive rebellion have sent a message loud and clear that this is the moment of history when the working class rises from the slumber for revolution by the slightest of internal or external shock riding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. The migrants by dint of their migration interacted with the world around them and unconsciously came out of the petty domestic wall of caste-community and language barrier. Are they destined to fail, or the communists will fail them? The History will answer in a decisive way.

https://nayaganatantra.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/pandemic-and-the-state-ii/?fbclid=IwAR1EVJA5xxi5jS4jpVXb44Me-SMEe9MihANNL0r0hsRoKAXmH4DC0nmjhmI

https://www.frontierweekly.com/views/may-20/23-5-20-The%20Pandemic%20and%20the%20state-3.html?fbclid=IwAR1nVSTN4MG3SIDOmUfVQlzpDBTfGhJtX8w0s25e_m-ofi_FLxyDgCrBzVk


The Pandemic and the State: Part-III: Multipolar World: The task of the communists


Arup Baisya
(baisya_arup@rediffmail.com)


Introduction

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power with an overwhelming majority in 2014 with a political agenda of supra-nationalist ‘Hindu Rastra’ through a socio-cultural mass movement of ‘Hindutva’. When they came to power and reelected in 2019, globalisation projected as ‘deregulated’ but actually regulated by dominant capital and the G7 group of states politically beholden to it, was the dominant feature of global capitalism. This is also true that this dominant feature has been facing serious political challenges from Russia-China which started advocating the idea of the Multipolar world since 1997 to extend their global sphere of influence to combat Pax-Americana. In modern capitalism under globalisation, the whole earth is considered an area of market exchange so that the economic side of social reproduction acquires the quality of the ‘world economy’. This space for social reproduction does not completely fit well with the project of the Sangh Parivar or Modi Government. Throughout the BJP’s rule to date, it has been a strenuous journey of the Modi Govt to adjust the national economic agenda to support supra-nationalist political agenda of ‘Hindu-Rastra’ and the agenda of an overarching social identity of Hindutva devoid of any diversity with the process of globalization. The inherent conflict within this broad adjustment leads the BJP Govt to keep an eye on the development of multipolar world order and project India as one of the rising powers in the global power politics. The BJP’s project is a continuation of the populist national plan of Nehru and Indira Gandhi but is different from the policy framework under the non-aligned movement during the Bandung era of Bi-Polar world. In right-wing nationalism, they ostensibly and routinely claim that efforts spearheaded by sinister external forces is a threat to the political community of Hindutva and within this discourse, they find the alibi to crackdown all forms of civil society activities and oppositional voices. This right-wing nationalism needs to shield it from the pressure to protect human rights, maintain the rule of law, and respect domestic pluralism. But this, in turn, accentuates the contradictions within the domestic bourgeois class and becomes an impediment for a smooth ride to achieve their supra-nationalist or popular nationalist political goal on the one end and on the other, the globalization that marginalises the large section people becomes antithetical to the people under the hegemonic ideological fold of Hindutva.

US Global Hegemony and Russia-China axis

The Pandemic and the lockdown which disrupted both the production and labour process in a big way have created the space for reconstruction of politics, economy, and culture anew. The US president Trump’s China-bashing has nothing to do with China’s much-hyped misinformation on the Corona epidemic, but rather with China’s bold move a step further away from the dollar-economy. The pandemic propaganda war between the US and China is an addition to the ongoing geopolitical competition that gave rise to the United States-China trade war, sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea, and the battle over Huawei’s access to Western fifth-generation communications networks. If the dollar domination in the global market is adequately challenged, the loosening grip of the US to arm-twist the domestic politics world-over will be in jeopardy and the US can no longer hold its super-power position. The main immediate task to frustrate Washington in its military project has already been achieved to a great extent. Military partnerships and security cooperation with the United States has always been an object of political contention. The US military adventure in Afganistan, Iraq, etc. and the politics of regime change in Syria have met with strategic retreat. The nuclear arm-twisting with false-flag and mala fide propaganda blitzkrieg against Iran and North Korea faced befitting counter-offensive stance ignoring the US military threat and power of economic sanctions. The renewed plot of the Trump administration to destabilize the leftist Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro supported by the people and to replace him with the US puppet and traitor Juan Guaido has been foiled this time. Though the US sanction on Venezuela, sabotage on infrastructure, and stealing of its asset continue, the shrewd business move by the Russian company has offset the US sanction on Venezuelan oil trade. The partnership with US which was once viewed as an important aspect of foreign policy for security cover by the leaders of various countries like Duterte, Erdogan, Orban et el and even the US’s western allies are no longer considered as indispensable and all have found alternative potential security and economic relation with Russia and China. The cooperation between Russia and China has deepened during the Pandemic crisis for their mutual benefit and to combat the aggressive stance of the US.

Since October 2016, the Chinese currency, Renminbi is part of the basket of IMF currencies which have Special Drawing Rights (SDR) and thus has the status of the world’s ultimate virtual reserve currency. An IMF capital increase is overdue and a quota adjustment in favour of China and the corresponding adjustment in the SDR basket would enhance China’s currency vis-à-vis the rest of the world. For retaining the super-power status and hegemony over the world market, the US is desperate in maintaining the dollar domination in global trade. Only, for this reason, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein for trading with Euro, Libya’s Gadhafi for introducing Gold-Dinar as a Pan-African trading currency was killed in the pretext of exporting democracy.

Pandemic and the US-China tussle

The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and disruption of the global value chain due to lockdown strengthens and fuels these dynamics. The closing of borders and the curtailment of international economic exchange increased the appeal of nationalist narratives. The US government has not focused on the policies of global cooperation in health and prevention. The US president Trump started blaming the WHO for its alleged favour towards China and threatened to discontinue its funding if WHO, which is receiving fund and other support from China, does not make the course correction, but this was rebuffed by the Director-General, WHO downplaying the US image of supremacy over the world body. The US package for economic revival is more of the nature of pumping liquidity into the system than of rescuing the distressed people with fiscal support. “The Fed can lend money, but it doesn’t give away money. … These are not liquidity issues. They’re solvency issues,” said Stiglitz, the Nobel Laurette economist, who fears that with the deficit climbing to upwards of 15 percent of GDP, Congress will be reluctant to add more funds to the rescue (https://tbsnews.net/analysis/tale-two-rescue-plans-73675, site visited on 20th May 2020). The US president is eyeing on monopoly business in shifting the focus of the productive sector to health and especially on the vaccine. In the health sector, the US production industries are dependent on the Chinese supply. President Trump has appointed the former Big Pharma executive and a four-star General to lead a Manhattan project style effort to develop a vaccine for novel coronavirus. The effort, called Operation Warp Speed, has set a goal to create 300 million doses of a non-existent vaccine by January 2021. After the initial denial of any major impact of the pandemic in the US, when Trump was busy mending his own fences in the domestic front due to the sudden spurt in the viral spread, both China and Russia have made a public showing of providing medical supplies, equipment, and trained personnel to Italy and other ravaged European countries. While doing so, they have promoted the narrative that they have stepped in where the United States has failed. The viral spread from China and the Chinese help followed the old Silk Route or the route of the Chinese Belt and Road project. The ancient trade routes to Europe and the Middle East originating from China ultimately converged in Italy. Vietnam can’t close its border with China. The Chinese have put immense pressure on the Koreans, Vietnam, etc. Asian countries cannot act as they want vis-a-vis China because it’s the big power in the neighbourhood. While Cambodia closed its borders to several Western countries in mid-March, it started military drills together with hundreds of Chinese soldiers (https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Cambodia-sticks-by-China-as-it-shuts-out-West-over-coronavirus, the site visited on 20th May 2020). The Chinese diplomacy and maneuvering during this pandemic crisis have outsmarted the US in influencing many countries to feel comfortable within the club headed by Chinese big power for support and help. But the main threat to US global hegemony has come from the Chinese move to extend the influence of Chinese currency over dollar domination in global trade.

China has successfully introduced the new crypto-currency e-RMB (Yuan) in its domestic market. When the Chinese central Bank-backed cyber-currency will be launched internationally, it will make the Yuan even more attractive among trading partners and as a reserve currency. China is also emphasizing state-controlled domestic production and market with a trend-reversal from export-led growth and in that event, China may divest its huge reserve of US treasury to the tune of about 1.2 trillion US dollars into purchasing assets abroad paid in US-dollars. The growing strength of Chinese currency within the countries where China is investing for Road and Belt project will reduce the need for dollar reserve in China. If a large proportion of world trade and reserve are denominated in Yuan, the dollar hegemony will be jeopardized.

This threat to the US hegemony both in Military strategy and dollar trade has agitated the US for China-bashing on the issue of Corona Pandemic. The Chinese trend-reversal in the policy of productive activity may increase the value of labour-power in the Chinese market and this may lead to some relocation of foreign industries making various components to the destination of cheap labour in Vietnam and Mexico, but not the industries of final products for the attraction of Chinese domestic market.

European Model

Is there any European model for meeting the economic crisis due to Pandemic for economic revival?

Washington led neoliberalism was already discredited after the 2008 financial crisis and its appeal has been further lost its impact during the pandemic crisis due to the US’s inability to help mitigate the deepening economic distress by the Pandemic and lockdown in Europe. When the millions of workers are thrown out of their jobs because of the pandemic and lockdown which halted many activities, nearly all European countries are reimbursing workers’ income directly through their employers at levels from about 60 to 90 percent of wages. Germany launched a very successful programme called Kurzarbeit during the last financial crisis during 2007-08. This programme allowed the companies to keep workers on reduced hours, with their reduced paychecks underwritten by the state and thus averted the joblessness.

Since the pandemic began, Germany has fine-tuned the program to offer more benefits and make sure more companies qualify. France’s work support programme has also swelled. Most of the European countries have undertaken a huge state-funded programme to address the labour market shock as an immediate fiscal measure. But heavily indebted countries and southern Europe with rapidly growing unemployment are pressing for ambitious Pan-European programme with large EU funds and “Coronabond”. For an effective European project, Germany and too some extent France must play the leadership role. Germany, for continuing with the center-periphery relation with its backward backyard, is still hesitant and resisting the call of the Southern European countries. Both the US and China also do not want that Europe emerges as one of the global powers in Euro-Zone to sustain their sphere of influence and dominance over the European countries which are economically weak and badly affected by the Pandemic. It is to be seen how long Germany can resist the pressure for a European bailout package. But the overall thrust of the European model to face the economic crisis due to Pandemic and lockdown is the state intervention to protect their labour-force and to address the rising unemployment rate.

The Indian scenario and the communists

The Indian big bourgeoisie is visualizing this crisis and the global situation as an opportunity to restructure the domestic production process and the productive activities for the accumulation of profit and to become the leader of the subcontinent. But their strategy to restructure the labour process to lower the wage rate and deepening the rate of exploitation will be counter-productive and will not give any leeway to bargain with the world powers. The Indian Government in power with its philosophy of “Hindu Rastra” is hesitant to tread the path of democracy for self-reliance to become a big power in the changed global scenario. To be a self-reliant big power, Indian needs to empower its peasantry and working-class and that necessitates abandoning the Hindutva Supra-nationalist project. The BJP Government has become a prisoner of indecision from the two diametrically opposite pressure from the rising unemployment and distressed agriculture on the one end and its political agenda to promote “Hindu Rastra” on the other. So far India’s policy thrust to revive the economy is somewhat in between the US model of crisis management of pumping liquidity in the system and the European model of rescuing the workforce but tilted in favour of the private capitalists while responding to the workers’ pressure with hiccups, and BJP government is still gerrymandering for electoral political space. It is indicative of a trend of diluting the Hindutva politics to some extent to opt for building and strengthening a regime of authoritarian national populism for which space has opened for them due to a shift in the focus of global politics and breakdown of global value chain due to lockdown. But this policy drive of the BJP Government will face popular resistance due to rising unemployment and distress. The success of the BJP vis-à-vis Shangh-Parivar’s project is dependent on the failure on the part of the communists and democrats to formulate an alternative project to be built from within the dynamics of people’s resistance. This is the opportune moment for the communists too for building mass resistance movement with a vision for raising the working class to the status of the ruling class and for a developed self-reliant democratic India. It necessitates the communists to adopt an alternative political agenda diametrically opposite to the national populist or ultra-nationalist project.

Alternative political Agenda

(1) To create a united workers’ front to build a radical movement and to opt for a radical programme for the solution of India’s peasant problem.

(2) To build co-ordination among all the people’s movement in the subcontinent and to oppose regional big-brotherly expansionism.

(3) To build fraternal coordination among all working-class parties of all countries with a focus on world socialism and to mount pressure for the working class rights, the democratic restructuring of international institutions, for funding of developed countries to meet the challenges of climate change and finally, for building alternative federal democratic institutions as an international center for the communists.

(4) To oppose the imperialist policy of expansionism and the attempt to destabilise the left party rule in Venezuela, Cuba, etc.

https://www.frontierweekly.com/views/jun-20/6-6-20-The%20Pandemic%20and%20the%20state-4.html?fbclid=IwAR1Miud8P77bJV247jTuTGB5Pc16Pm52qEFl1lMqGnzLgN8mUukidjoA1vg



The Pandemic and the State : Part-IV: The cultural renaissance and the left




Arup Baisya






Time is money


The Pandemic and the lockdown stopped the clock, the clock which stepped into the world of Faust in the Elizabethan stage. The anti-Semitic Antonio’s argosies finally came back to the shore because the Christian merchant enrobed the sea with his silk. Shylock, the Jewish merchant, submitted before the rising power when his trick grudgingly adopted against Antonio failed. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice told us the story of the rising English power and the mechanism of debt bond. Shylock’s property was forfeited, but he was accommodated through his daughter’s marital relation. Shakespeare stopped here without telling us the story of the Jews fishermen who were ghettoized. The Elizabethan values and culture did not rest on the plebeian life; it changed and redefined the time. Sidereal time, which has been present since literature began, had moved at one step from the heavens to the home. Time is money and is precious. The restless urgency which controlled the work through the movement of the hands of the clock segregated the life and the work. This, in turn, drives the dominant social value and culture in contradistinction to the popular culture which lies within the domain of contradiction between exchange value and use-value. The practicing culture which focuses only on the symbolic forms has its petitio principii. The Pandemic and the lockdown have disrupted the necessity to consume time purposively, most people now carry a watch on their wrists, but without any urgency to run fast to keep track of the set work-schedule or disciplining the labour. Does this disruption allow rebuilding the popular culture for the renaissance or revolutionary change?


E. P. Thompson said Culture is “a system of shared meaning, attitudes and values, and the symbolic forms (performances, artifacts) in which they are embodied”. But culture is also a pool of diverse resources, in which traffic passes between the literate and the oral, the super-ordinate and the subordinate, the village and the metropolis; it is an arena of conflictual elements, which requires some compelling pressure – as, for example, nationalism or prevalent religious orthodoxy or class consciousness – to take form as a system. And indeed, the very term “culture”, with its cozy invocation of consensus, may serve to distract attention from social and cultural contradictions, from the fractures and oppositions within the whole. …. The plebeian culture becomes a more concrete and usable concept, no longer situated in the thin air of “meanings, attitudes, and values”., but located within a particular equilibrium of social relations, a working environment of exploitation and resistance to exploitation, of relations of power which are masked by the rituals of paternalism and deference. In this way, “popular culture” is situated within its proper material abode.


Imagined reality and history


In the first part of this series, I mentioned how the attempt was made to suppress the inner diversity based on differential exploitation to an imaginary plank of patriotism and nationalism in the name of combating the menace of the corona pandemic. The cultural nationalism is a constituent of all nationalism. The compelling pressure to suppress the conflictual elements of diverse contradictions is built by the reconstruction of the ancient history in such a way that it fits into the present time, the time of disciplining labour and the time conceptualise as money. Indian nationalism is a political construct based on the premise of the two-nation theory and the insistence on religious identities being primary historical identities. According to the renowned historian Romila Thapar, the transition from clan-based societies to the kingdom is seen as seminal to the societies described in the early texts such as the Vedas, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana as well as the early Pali Buddhist Canon. She emphasized, “The Religion was an unlikely primary factor in the initial emergence of the state that required more utilitarian resources. But in the welding of segments into an empire, as in the policies of Ashoka, the Mauryan ruler, and Akbar, the Mughal, there was recourse to certain facets of religion.” The nation-state that the Sangh Parivar propagates is a political religion that amalgamates the state with religious nationalism. But this religious nationalism has nothing to do with the religion beyond paternalism and deference because it must be compatible with the present time, the time that disciplines the labour and is precious for money; it is something more than the religion that supports the ancient empire building.

Though the Nineteenth Century Indian Renaissance just emulated the European Renaissance which rejected the dominance of the Christian Church and adopted the notion of Humanism in every aspect of life, though the institutional reconstruction of the past sought legitimacy from Roman Civilisation instead of the democratic past of the Greek city-states. But unlike the European Renaissance, the Nineteenth-century renaissance in India did not emerge from the creative energy released due to the internal class conflict to give birth to bourgeois society. This renaissance occurred in India in the second half of the British colonial rule due to certain changes in the functioning of capitalism.


Imperialism and periodic changes


The transition of competitive capitalism into imperialism occurred through the colonial expansion in underdeveloped countries for the extraction of raw materials by cheap labour for capitalist production. The history of capitalism tells us that uneven development is ingrained in capitalism and its inner dynamic of contradiction between the abstract capital in general with many concrete capitals defines its motion. The underdevelopment is ultimately always underemployment and low productivity of labour. Due to the increased productivity of labour, the proportion of raw materials in the commodities in comparison to the depreciation of machines and added new labour is also increased. This necessitates the shifting of production of raw materials from low labour productivity areas to high productivity areas of developed countries. The character of imperialism changes by exporting capital for manufacturing of certain commodities to the peripheries, but the export of machines is accompanied by the increase of productivity of labour, though lower than that of the developed countries. Earnest Mandel said in Late Capitalism, “The Exchange of commodities produced in conditions of higher productivity of labour against commodities produced in conditions of lower productivity of labour was an unequal one; it was an exchange of less against more labour, which inevitably led to a drain, an outward flow of value and capital from these countries to the advantage of Western Europe”.

The internal dynamics of uneven development and the manifestation of the contradiction of low and high productivity labour in changing the character of the imperialism changed the Indian social polity twice during British colonial rule, albeit under a capitalist world system. The plunder of raw material and destruction of artisanal production was followed by capital investment in the manufacture, new plantation, infrastructure development, developing market for European finished products in the mid-Nineteenth Century when the elementary division of labour between manual labourers, greater work discipline and more rational organization and accounting were introduced.

The same logic was repeated during and after World War II when the production of raw materials was shifted on a massive scale to the metropolis due to the reduced cost of production based on a huge increase in productivity of labour backed by technological innovation. The third world suffered a decline in the export of raw materials. The political weakening of the imperialist and the exacerbation of the internal socio-economic crisis within the colonies gave rise to anti-colonial rebellions.

The nineteenth-century renaissance in India was a product of the intermingling of the culture that was exported along with the British Capital and the pre-capitalist culture which was reshaped and moulded to get accommodated within the alien bourgeois culture which gave primacy of human identity and privacy over communitarian identity to severe the ties and control of Christian Churches. The Indian renaissance did not emerge as new values and culture challenging and decimating the old. In the nineteenth century India, the emergence of the middle class required new forms of expression but was hamstrung by its ties to upper caste origins. The religion used as a category to unite and build the concept of the nation and the state. The political community that emerged without giving birth to any civil society relatively unconnected with the state was overwhelmed by the influence of the proponents of the two-nation theory.

The new turn in the imperialist world system post-colonial period was marked by the transfer of machinery. The transfer of fixed capital accentuated the productivity of labour and the use of modern consumer goods. The policy of catching up or dirigiste development for particular Indian capital was not formulated to challenge the world capitalist system of extracting surplus-profit for the metropolis, but it deepened the contradiction between abstract global capital and concrete national capital. This necessitated another shift in the imperialist system for global capitalist hegemony. This time the entire manufacturing was shifted to low-wage countries for global labour arbitrage and the production process was brought under global supply and value chain. This shift had proletarianised and pauperized the whole landscape of emerging nations. But this had also increased the reserve army of labour in the metropolis and thus created the downward pressure on the entire global wage structure. The skilled labour in the global south also creates downward pressure for skilled labour in the global north.


The new middle class and culture


In these two phases of development under the capitalist world system, the new middle class who is drawn from a wider spectrum cutting across caste and religion and surpassing the old almost homogeneous upper-caste structure has emerged in the Indian social milieu. The new middle class and the labour need new values and culture for a new form of expression. But they are accommodated and co-opted within the framework of two diverging trends. One is old religious nationalism derived from European orientalism and Brahminical text, the other is the disciplining of labour and hedonistic culture that conceptualizes the time as money. The dichotomy between the two is transcended to an imagined plank of patriotism. As the new middle class is drawn from the diverse pre-capitalist socio-cultural background, this kind of obscurantist narrative gives rise to apparent counter-narrative of fundamentalism and sectarianism. This narrative and counter-narrative which are based on an imagined reality and an imagined enemy for the middle class fit well within the global dynamic of capitalism for disciplining labour and hedonistic culture. All these narratives are built primarily to legitimize the power which is not antithetical to the capitalist accumulation and super-profits, rather perpetuates the exploitation.


Pandemic and economic dislocation


In Engel’s metaphoric term the Covid19 pandemic is ‘revenge’ of nature. The unabated capitalist plunder of both nature and labour and the resultant metabolic rift between them is the root cause of the ecological and epidemiological disaster. The segregation of work from life in the capitalist mode of production, neoliberal global supply and value, or commodity chain, the ecologically disastrous global agribusiness have given rise to the Covid19 pandemic. The neoliberal capitalism has created its demon to fall back heavily on its structure. The pandemic and the lockdown disrupted the entire system of global production shutting down production in key sectors and breaking the global supply and value chain. The governments in power across the globe are compelled to spend in public health undermining the austerity measures prescribed by the global neoliberal regime of monopoly-finance capital. The entire edifice of labour-arbitrage or exploitation of labour and valorization of capital through the transfer of value to the monopoly capital through the commodity chain has been abruptly disrupted. The production is dropping, unemployment is soaring and the economic crisis is all-encompassing. The disruption in the whole chain of global labour arbitrage engenders the financial meltdown of the global economy. The variables like rate of surplus-value i.e. the rate of exploitation of the working class and the reserve army of labour make possible mediation between abstract ‘capital in general’ and the concrete ‘many capitals’.


The new radicalization and culture


Most of the world witnessed lockdown due to Covid19 Pandemic. Post-lockdown the corporations are in a race to pull in their commodity chain. Extraordinary dislocation of the global economy is not going to be mended very soon. The retrenchment of workers will go unabated, the billions of migrants workers have undergone reverse-migration. The rate of surplus-value – i.e. the rate of exploitation of the working class – is a function of the class struggle. But in the backdrop of the massive increase in the reserve army of labour, both rate of surplus-value and rate of accumulation may increase for few corporate investors in few sectors, but economic meltdown will cause the toiling masses to be restless and to lose faith on the entire system. In the absence of a global commodity chain and the backdrop of a global economic meltdown, the religious-nationalist narrative, and the similar reactionary counter-narrative, in all likelihood, will lose their plot. The working class and the social classes will be more and more assertive. The class-caste already seamlessly woven together will be objectively prepared to burn the fuse of revolution. India witnessed a similar situation post-World War-I when there was a massive increase of reserve army of labour to increase both rates of profit and rate of accumulation, but the social polity was agog with people’s assertions which were channelized for radical anti-colonial movement. This time, the popular assertions need to be channelized for radical change for building an alternative society transcending capitalism.

The objective condition is ripe to delegitimize the dominant values and culture. But the dominant values and cultures do not leave the space for a long period of vacuum which needs to be filled by alternative values and cultures. The bourgeoisie has no creative energy left to generate any progressive value and culture. The new radical value and culture can only be built from a working-class perspective. But this does not mean a deterministic approach. The working-class perspective means the ideological and philosophical positioning that negates the segregation of work from life, the disciplining as well as dehumanization of labour and this perspective cannot be complete without focusing on bourgeois life too where bourgeois also gets alienated from life through the personification of capital in capitalists. We can take a cue from the failure and success of the literary movement in Soviet Russia and cultural movement in China and take up the cudgels for building the foundation of a new cultural renaissance in pre-revolutionary India.


https://nayaganatantra.wordpress.com/2020/06/05/pandemic-and-the-state-pt-iv/?fbclid=IwAR2qgrkBws6YSnNAgmBDV2rNHHkGF1PqEydhAck-pgMq-nqH29RqsUWLzMw

https://aparjan.com/2019/01/10/january2019-arbapr-2/