Here's an interesting analysis by
Prabhat Patnaik,
Professor of Economics,
Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi,
India
On the current state of the world capitalist economy
www2.cybercities.com
Excerpt:
It is impossible to imagine that the levels of unemployment prevailing in the advanced capitalist world would become a perennial feature of metropolitan life without causing serious social disruptions. And any attempt, no matter what its nature, to reduce the levels of unemployment would necessitate a revival of the nation-State, and controls over financial fluidity. True, such attempts in the context of the advanced capitalist world could well come from the Right, rather than from any radical quarters, in which case such a revival would have a very different complexion, entailing chauvinism and jingoism, from the welfarist and social democratic conceptions of the post-war era: and the tremendous spread of racialism and neo- Fascism all over Europe may be a pointer in this direction. But, no mater what the nature of the revival of the nation-State in the advanced capitalist countries, any such revival would once again create the space required for a similar revival of the nation-State in the third world. This is not to say that one should welcome Right-wing nationalism in the advanced capitalist world, or be indifferent between a radical revival of the nation-State and a chauvinistic revival; this is only to underscore the fact that it is impossible to visualise such a revival not occurring if the world looks somewhat Kautskyite at the moment, that does not by any means signal the victory of the Kautskyite perspective in the debate between Lenin and Kautsky.
Besides, for us in the third world, it is not even the case that we have to sit quietly until the nation-State has been revived in the West. True, the scope for State intervention has been greatly reduced, but it has not disappeared altogether. What is required is that the State has to take the constraints of living in a world with financial fluidity into account in planning its intervention. While I consider any emulation of the East Asian model in the rest of the third world neither desirable (since this entails a neo-mercantilist development strategy that is necessarily accompanied by a degree of authoritarianism which is unwelcome), nor feasible (since it is the product of a very specific domestic class configuration as well as international correlation of forces), East Asia does demonstrate in a way the possibility of successful State intervention in a contemporary world marked by financial fluidity.
In contexts such as ours if the nation is to remain united then the resuscitation of an agenda of development that entails conscious intervention by the nation-State in the interests of the people, as opposed to leaving economic development to be determined as a mere fall-out of the caprices of international speculators are absolutely essential. This requires however an alternative class-alliance underlying the State, one that would both enforce accountability on the State, as well as provide it with sufficient sinews to face up to the challenge of a international finance which is out to undermine its capacity for intervention. The forging of such a class alliance, which would necessarily be centred around a worker-peasant alliance, however is a matter for political praxis.
(This address was delivered at a Seminar on Globalisation of Economy)
Source: The Working Class, Monthly journal of the CITU Vol.27 No.9 May-June, 1997 pages 75-80
You can find the full text in the Essays and Articles (Political Economy) section at
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