Neo-liberalism and the Abridgement of Freedom

This session of the webinar series will feature Prof. Prabhat Patnaik. He is is former professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi, India and currently Professor Emeritus of the same.

Abstract

Neo-liberalism entails the coexistence of globalized capital, including finance, with a nation-state. In such a scenario the nation-state is compelled to accede to the demands of globalized finance for fear that otherwise the "confidence of investors" in the economy will be undermined and finance will move elsewhere en masse causing a crisis. This is why all political parties in a country that dare not look beyond a neo-liberal regime pursue more or less the same economic agenda, which means a substitution of the sovereignty of the people by the sovereignty of globalized finance, and hence an abridgement of democracy.

Speaker's Bio

Prabhat Patnaik is a highly respected Indian political economist known particularly for his advocacy of measures to directly improve the lives of the poor.

He was born in 1945 in Orissa, on the eastern coast of India and after initial schooling in his home town, he moved in 1957 to Daly College, Indore, a public school in central India, on a Government of India Merit Scholarship. Thereafter he obtained a scholarship to study at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he completed BA (Honours) and MA degrees in Economics.

He joined the Faculty of Economics and Politics of the University of Cambridge, UK in 1969 and was elected a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. In 1974 he returned to India as an Associate Professor at the newly established Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) at theJawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He became a Professor at the Centre in 1983 and continued till his retirement.

His specialization is Macroeconomics and Political Economy, areas in which he has written a number of books and articles. His books include Time, Inflation and Growth (1988), Economics and Egalitarianism (1990), Whatever Happened to Imperialism and Other Essays (1995), Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism (1997), and The Retreat to Unfreedom (2003). Also he has been the editor of Social Scientist, which under his stewardship has become a highly effective vehicle for progressive ideas and fertile research.

He was part of a high-power task force of the United Nations (U.N.) to recommend reform measures for the global financial system. Chaired by Joseph Stiglitz, the other members were Belgian sociologist Francois Houtart and Ecuador's Minister for Economic Policy Pedro Paez.

He regularly writes his blog on the IDEAs and several opinion articles on newspapers, including, The Indian Express, and Frontline.

Format

Prof. Prabhat Patnaik will be speaking for the first 45 minutes. We will then be holding a Q&A Session.

This session is part of the larger project:

Season II Dissecting Capitalism: Its past, present and future

This series aims to explore the tenets of capitalism over the fabric of time and examine its influence on the global economy and social classes.

More information on Season I