Prabhat Patnaik on why we must destroy Science

There was a time when a PhD in Political Science, or Economics, or even Sociology was as highly regarded as a Doctorate in a STEM subject. Since then, because of rapid technological change, the STEM subjects have risen greatly in esteem while 'Political Economy'- more particularly of the Marxist sort- is considered the preserve of cretins. Thus it was only a matter of time before a Professor of that type shite would come out into the open and say that the Natural Sciences must be destroyed. Otherwise, his students will be unemployed. This may cause them to turn to cannibalism- unless they concentrate entirely on just biting their own heads off. The problem with this panacea is that if even one country refuses to destroy science, then- sooner or later- it will dominate every other. In other words, competition always militates for useful stuff- like STEM subjects- to crowd out and bury worthless shite.

Prabhat Patnaik, perhaps the stupidest economist India has ever produced, nevertheless takes precisely this step. He shares his thoughts on Gandhi with us in the Indian Express. Can he say something stupider than any of his academic rivals? Let us see-

I find Gandhi’s thought in at least three areas of abiding relevance for me: His views on nationalism, on capitalism and on solidarity.

Gandhi viewed nationalism and capitalism as evil and unnecessary. History has shown he was wrong. Solidarity is worthless. Ask the Poles.

The nationalism that Gandhi stood for, which informed India’s anti-colonial struggle, differed fundamentally from the nationalism that came into vogue in Europe in the 17th century, following the Westphalian peace treaties.

Nationalism did not 'come into vogue' in Europe till the second half of the Nineteenth Century. The Westphalian peace treaties did not create Nation States. It was only after the First World War that Nationalism triumphed over Imperialism in Europe.

Gandhi's nationalism was of the Wilsonian type. At any rate, that was the policy of the Indian National Congress which he dominated.

At least three differences stood out. First, Gandhi’s nationalism was inclusive; there were no “enemies within” as with European nationalism.

Nonsense! Gandhi wanted the Brits out. They were the 'enemy within'.

Second, it did not see the nation as standing above the people, an entity for which the people only made sacrifices; rather, the raison d’etre of the nation was to improve the living conditions of the people, or to “wipe away the tears from the eyes of every Indian”.

This was also true of European Nationalism. No European statesman in the Twentieth Century said that the people must serve the State, rather than the other way round. Even Hitler and Stalin claimed to be primarily concerned with improving the lot of the German or Soviet people.

Third, unlike European nationalism, it was not imperialist itself; the people whom the nation was to serve treated other people with “fairness”, which is why Gandhi wanted India to give Pakistan the Rs 55 crore that were its due after Partition, despite the bitterness caused by Partition.

European nationalism was only 'imperialist' if an Empire could turn a profit. This ceased to be the case which is why Empires disappeared. India was in no position to conquer territory save from weaker powers like Portugal.

The Indian people did not want to give that money to Pakistan because it had initiated hostilities. Gandhi blackmailed the Government which, secretly, welcomed his assassination shortly thereafter.

This nationalism was not a mere idealist construct, it was based instead on a very practical understanding of what was required for the people’s freedom.

Nonsense! The Indian Government was refusing to give passports to people who wanted to emigrate to the UK. The Judiciary intervened to protect the people's freedom. Sadly, they did not take similar measures against the Government's curtailment of various economic freedoms they people had previously enjoyed. The truth is the Government had no 'practical understanding' of what was good for the country.

If the people were to be free then that required the formation of such a nation.

Nonsense! Freedom was multiply realizable. Arguably, it would have been better served by the formation of a quite different type of nation or association of nations.

Gandhi was also clear that capitalism as we know it, for which he used the term “the English system”, could not serve such a nation.

But the alternative he promoted was much worse and had to be subsidized by the 'English system'- i.e. the Mills operated by his financiers paid for his Khaddar obsession.

It was incompatible with the people’s freedom.

No it wasn't. That's why Indians paid a lot of money to escape from Indian freedom to the 'English system'. Indeed, they still do so.

He wanted a different economic system altogether, where the capitalists could at best be the “trustees” of people’s property.

Robbers want a different legal system where they would be considered to be the 'trustees' of stuff they steal. Rapists want to be considered the legitimate husbands of their victims and, moreover, that 'No!' means 'Yes!'

It is very easy to say 'Inequality will cease to exist if the haves undergo a change of heart and decide to share everything with the have nots'. Similarly, one may say, Famine will disappear if only Sunlight would convert itself into delicious food and prise open our lips and feed us till we are replete.

Patnaik is supposed to be an economist. Why is he praising mere wishful thinking?

He was not a socialist but, in common with the socialists, he believed that capitalism could never solve the problem of unemployment, and the mental dullness it produced.

Nothing can solve the problem of unemployment save enslavement. Mental dullness is produced by the JNU in industrial quantities. Yet its Professors are not classed as jobless.

Since he saw poverty as inextricably linked to unemployment, capitalism could also never overcome poverty.

Anyone who has visited India can see that there are very poor people who are working their butts off. Those who are unemployed are much better off because someone is paying for their food and clothing and housing such that their living standards are higher than those who lack any similar source of support.

The poverty of the laboring population in India is directly linked to their lack of capital. Gandhi thought people could have an adequate standard of living using very little capital. He was wrong. People forced to do so died young- they had worked themselves to death. There was a 'Malthusian equilibrium' but it was moving towards the extinction of this class of people.

Capitalism can overcome poverty if it increases the amount of physical capital at the disposal of the worker. However, there is no certainty it will do so. The same point may be made about Socialism. Still, it is clear that countries which use markets to allocate capital have climbed out of poverty much faster than those which have relied on paternalistic Government regulations.

What we call “development”, whose essence must be the overcoming of unemployment and poverty, was incompatible, therefore, with the institution of capitalism.

Capitalism wants people- even those who won't work- to have more money to buy cool stuff. Marxists may believe differently, but nobody now believes Marxists.

Gandhi’s views on the relationship between capitalism and unemployment, and hence poverty, were deeply insightful.

No. They were simply wrong. Machines don't cause unemployment. They permit people to be employed at a higher wage in some less boring and mindless occupation. True, rural depopulation may occur. Indeed, demographic transition may mean that the overall population begins to fall. But that is preferable to agricultural involution and either a Malthusian disaster or farmers receiving free imported food because they can't grow enough to feed themselves.

It is commonly believed that even though capitalism initially destroys petty production, the displaced petty producers ultimately get absorbed within the growing capitalist sector, and that too at a higher wage than they earned earlier.

This is the common belief because it is demonstrably true. Patnaik now trots out his crazy theory that South Korea is only rich coz somehow it has forced poor agricultural countries to give away their wealth.

This is neither theoretically valid nor historically borne out. The fact that European capitalism was not saddled with massive unemployment arising from the displacement of petty producers, was not because capitalist growth absorbed all those who had been displaced, but because of massive emigration to the temperate regions of White settlement, such as Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand where they drove out local inhabitants from their land and set themselves up as farmers.

Similarly the South Koreans settled the Antarctic, forcibly expelling the native, peace loving, Penguin population. The same is true of the Taiwanese and Singaporeans and so forth.

It is neither possible nor desirable to repeat this historical experience today, so that Gandhi’s rejection of capitalism acquires pertinence.

Burma did embrace something like 'Gandhian Economics'. That's why it is now so poor. South Korea was a lot poorer than Burma. Now its per capita income is 5 times higher.

China and India rose rapidly when they started to emulate South Korea- instead of North Korea. There is a story about Joan Robinson agreeing with Guy Ranis that the Koreans were making remarkable progress. But Joan was thinking of the North, not the South. Everybody can now agree Robinson was wrong. Not Pattnaik it seems. The JNU exists in a time warp.

Gandhi’s rejection of the capitalist mode of production as exemplified by Europe, his rejection of European-style nationalism, and his linking of the two, was also a product of deep insight.

Gandhi got his money from capitalists following the Western model. He was the subject of European Imperialism and was quite right to reject it. However, European Imperialism in India had existed long before there was any Industrial Capitalism to speak of. Indeed, had the Brits adopted the Portuguese model, we would be ruled by people with names like Smith or Jones. At the lower level, these would be quite dark skinned people. But at the top, English brides and grooms would be brought in to maintain racial purity. Gandhi may have had no personal enmity against the Europeans. But he did get rid of them as an element in Indian politics.

It is not surprising that our embrace of unbridled capitalism in the neoliberal era, which predictably has brought in its train growing unemployment and absolute poverty, manifest in massive under-nutrition, has led to a denouement where the prevailing concept of nationalism has undergone a fundamental change.

India does not have 'unbridled capitalism'. Nor does China. Yet the greater role of the market has lifted hundreds of millions out of absolute poverty. Under nutrition has increased- in Venezuela. But that is scarcely the fault of 'neo-liberalism'.

Has there been a 'fundamental change' in the 'prevailing concept of nationalism'? No. There has been a backlash against migrants and a 'Rules Based International Order'.

Is that what Patnaik is getting at?

The inclusive, people-centred and non-aggrandising nationalism that characterised our anti-colonial struggle has given way to the old European-style “nationalism” that sees “enemies within” (indeed everyone opposed to the government is considered nowadays an “enemy within”), that sees the nation as standing above the people, and that rides roughshod over the people, trampling upon their rights as in Jammu and Kashmir today.

Gandhi was alive when massive ethnic cleansing occurred in India. Ask the Pakistani muhajir about the 'people-centred', non-aggrandising' Congress rule in Bihar from which his ancestors felt they had to flee.

The Brits were seen as 'enemies within' and driven out. But it didn't stop there. Any minority ethnicity which appeared to doing better than the 'sons of the soil' got short shrift.

Since then, things have improved. Only illegal migrants are targeted. But this is true all over the world.

The fact that the same government which unblushingly equates capitalists with “wealth creators” and which considers massive corporate tax concessions as a “win-win” situation for 125 crore people, also imposes an indefinite curfew on the people of Jammu and Kashmir, is not an accident.

Nor is it an accident that previous Governments- including the 2004 UPA administration which the Communists supported- did precisely the same thing. Doing sensible things so as to get re-elected is not a matter of happenstance.

This route, however, leads to a perpetuation of unemployment, poverty, strife, and a break-up of the nation. And Gandhi saw this more clearly than almost anyone else.

Poverty has fallen which is why unemployment can go up. There is zero chance that the nation will break-up because even Supreme Court lawyers will kick the shit out of JNU students who raise secessionist slogans.

Whatever it was Gandhi saw more clearly than anyone else, of one thing we can be certain- it was wholly imaginary and delusive.

Gandhi’s solution to the problem of unemployment was a restraint on the rate of technological change, which of course was impossible under capitalism in its spontaneity.

How could stupid Indians stop Scientists and Engineers in less stupid parts of the world 'restrain the rate of technological change'? They could, it is true, go on hunger strike- but they would have starved in great numbers in any case if the USA had stopped PL 480 food shipments which, Patnaik must know, were made possible because of unrestrained technological change.

Gandhi wanted everybody to give up sex. Just say no. Then the human race would die out and thus Unemployment would stop being a problem.

But Gandhi did not advocate state-imposed restrictions towards this end. He wanted instead a voluntary eschewing of consumerism that always privileges technologically-sophisticated goods.

But people without any money would, quite involuntarily, be eschewing consumerism in any case. No doubt, a few Indians who had some money could have stopped consuming cool stuff. But there were very few such Indians and thus the World would not have noticed.

He wanted the development of a “community” among the people where one foregoes the “fineries of Bond Street” so that one’s “brother” the weaver can get employment,

Very few Indians could afford the 'fineries of Bond Street'. How many khadi dhotis could they buy? Not enough to give employment to any substantial community of weavers.

a “community” where every person sees his or her well-being as dependent upon that of others.

That's a capitalist community. The industrialist's well-being depends on the workers' and the consumers' material well-being. A Saint may be well pleased if everybody goes on fast unto death to protest human rights abuses in Nicaragua. She may believe that if everybody dies in this way, all will gain Paradise. But the 'community' will have disappeared.

The need for restraining the pace of technological change for achieving full employment is undeniable

Nonsense! If a country bans science and engineering, it will have more unemployment- or exist from the labor market- not less. Other things being equal, it will come under the military domination of those who have embraced high tech weaponry.

— the only countries which have achieved full employment, indeed labour shortage, in recent times, are the erstwhile socialist countries which restrained technological change and kept labour productivity growth in check.

There are no such countries. Very poor countries may have low unemployment simply because those who don't work either starve or run away.

Gandhi wanted such restraint to be voluntary, embedded in a sense of solidarity with one’s “brethren”.

But this already obtains. There are plenty of people who don't buy new fangled gadgets. But they represent a declining share of the market.

Gandhi’s emphasis on solidarity, on overcoming self-centred isolation, an emphasis reminiscent of Karl Marx’s stress on overcoming alienation through the formation of working class solidarity that would ultimately lead to a transcendence of capitalism, was crucial for his concept of human freedom.

Marxian alienation is not overcome by 'solidarity' but rather by workers seizing control of the means of production. We now know he was a silly billy. Workers are shit at running things. So are Commissars.

While their visions and analyses differed, Gandhi and Marx had this concept of freedom in common, as the development of a sense of community, which capitalism destroys.

People who are stupid tend to talk similar types of shite. Capitalism depends on Civil Society enforcing contracts. Civil Society depends on a sense of community. Talking ignorant shite does not depend on a sense of community, but getting paid to do so does require a host community which will pay a little money so that idiot sons and ugly daughters can get a Credential of a worthless type.