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A Theory of Imperialism
In A Theory of Imperialism , economists Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik present a new theory of the origins and mechanics of capitalism that sounds an alarm about its ongoing viability. Their theory centers on trade between the core economies of the global North and the tropical and subtropical countries of the global South and considers how the Northern demand for commodities (such as agricultural products and oil) from the South has perpetuated and solidified an imperialist relationship. The Patnaiks explore the dynamics of this process and discuss innovations that could allow the economies of the South to achieve greater prosperity without damaging the economies of the North. The result is an original theory of imperialism that brings to light the crippling limitations of neoliberal capitalism.
A Theory of Imperialism also includes a response by David Harvey, who interprets the agrarian system differently and sees other factors affecting trade between the North and the South. Their debate is one of the most provocative exchanges yet over the future of the global economy as resources grow thin, populations explode, and universal prosperity becomes ever more elusive.
A Theory of Imperialism also includes a response by David Harvey, who interprets the agrarian system differently and sees other factors affecting trade between the North and the South. Their debate is one of the most provocative exchanges yet over the future of the global economy as resources grow thin, populations explode, and universal prosperity becomes ever more elusive.
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Published January 1, 2016
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About the author
Utsa Patnaik
19 books65 followersUtsa Patnaik is an Indian Marxist economist. She taught at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, from 1973 until her retirement in 2010. Her husband is the Marxist economist Prabhat Patnaik.
Utsa Patnaik obtained her doctorate in economics from the Somerville College, Oxford, UK before returning to India to join JNU. Her main areas of research interest are the problems of transition from agriculture and peasant predominant societies to industrial society, both in a historical context and at present in relation to India; and questions relating to food security and poverty.
Utsa Patnaik obtained her doctorate in economics from the Somerville College, Oxford, UK before returning to India to join JNU. Her main areas of research interest are the problems of transition from agriculture and peasant predominant societies to industrial society, both in a historical context and at present in relation to India; and questions relating to food security and poverty.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 9, 2024
Debating “A Theory of Imperialism”…
Preamble:
--Having spent time dissecting this book’s sequel (see: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present), which systematically applies “A Theory of Imperialism” to the major periods of modern history (colonial/inter-war/post-WWII/Neoliberal globalization), I’ll avoid duplicating that review.
--Since I finished the sequel first, my main reason in finishing this dense book is for Marxist geographer David Harvey’s critique of the book, and the Patnaiks’ response, which make up the last 2 chapters; so, I’ll use this review to unpack this academic turf-war.
...TL;DR summary: how central is the legacy of the colonial division of labour (esp. plantation system) to modern capitalism?
Harvey vs. the Patnaiks?:
--I believe I have a balanced approach in unpacking this, given:
a) On Harvey’s side (British-American geographer), I study geography (favourite prof: Jim Glassman); I've also benefited greatly from Harvey’s lectures for A Companion to Marx's Capital, etc.
b) On the Patnaiks’ side (Indian political economists), their Indian comrade/historian Vijay Prashad has inspired my interest in Global South perspectives to re-balance Western-centric Leftism (playlist of Prashad's lectures).
--This confrontation played out like the Western stereotype of the Cold War; a lot of build-up while direct confrontation was avoided. (Note: in reality, the Cold War featured many nasty “hot” conflicts in the “periphery”, many involving Western reactions against the South’s decolonization: The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World):
1) Reluctance to use “imperialism”:
--On the surface, Harvey’s avoidance of conceptualizing “imperialism” for contemporary times actually seems quite useful in avoiding needless divisiveness on the Left (esp. from a Western Leftist), as he wants to avoid mixing the term to describe asymmetrical trade relations of a rising Asia with the West’s colonial legacy. Instead, Harvey wants to focus on “shifting hegemonies” and “uneven geographical development”.
--However, the Patnaiks’ are clear that their “theory of imperialism” is not to completely replace existing theories of imperialism (which primarily focus on surface events like wars/conquest; indeed, Harvey is a prime example of this with his The New Imperialism during the War on Terror/Iraq!), but to extend the concept to the totality of capitalism’s history and re-position theory to include critical Global South perspectives. Hence, the Patnaiks’ presents “a theory” rather than “the theory” of imperialism.
2) “Geographical Determinism”?:
--“Unfortunately, [the Patnaiks] get their concepts of space, place, environment, and geography all wrong.” -Harvey
…Harvey’s nuclear threat against the Patnaiks is “geographical determinism”, probably highlighted by the Patnaiks’ chapters on material asymmetry of the South’s superior resources. Harvey applies Marx’s dialectical approach in his “dynamic geography” that focuses on social relations, rejecting the crude physical geography of an-atlas-is-my-Bible Jared Diamond/Jeffrey D. Sachs.
--However, Harvey’s nukes seem to point straight up, as his characterization clouds his further critiques. He seems to ironically slip into a physical geographer himself as he finds offense by the Patnaiks’ varied use of “tropical”, “sub-tropical”, “periphery”, “South”, demanding precision by considering various physical conditions/exceptions. The Patnaiks shrugs this off in a sentence, but I would be interested in the Patnaiks turning the nukes around and elaborating on the social relations of these terms.
--Harvey of course knows the social relations where the Global South is forced by the Global North to export rather than feed themselves. I’m reminded of Michael Hudson’s stark description of the World Bank as the most evil organization in the world in its attempt to systematically rule the Global South by starvation, forcing cash crop exportation thus dependency on the US's heavily-subsidized food grains (Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance; https://youtu.be/paUgY6SGlgY).
--The Patnaiks’ main response to “geographical determinism” is their position that the South can socially improve their material output via land augmentation, but this requires mass mobilization/infrastructure which contradicts imperialist social relations:
-colonial de-industrialization: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
-decolonization’s social mobilization: Prashad's The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-Neoliberal reaction to decolonization: The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South and The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
--China of course exemplifies the contradictions of the messy real world, but where is China’s equivalence of the World Bank/IMF/WTO intellectual property regime/Wall Street financialization/petrodollar hegemony (not to mention global military bases/media/education/Hollywood)? For someone so focused on dialectics, I did not see enough of weighing the contradictions regarding China in Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism. This is a problem with replacing “imperialism” with “shifting hegemonies”/asymmetrical trade (which can be as benign as between California vs. Nevada).
3) End of drain?:
--“The historical draining of wealth from East to West for more than two centuries has, for example, been largely reversed over the last thirty years.” -Harvey
…This of course reminds me of Vijay Prashad’s open challenges to Harvey; I try to limit my use of individualist identity, but I cannot help being reminded of the Indian-British dynamics here. It is amusing how Harvey muddles his precise-geographical-terms critique by adding in “East”/“West”, but the much-greater blunder here is the crude portrayal of “historical draining of wealth”, which Utsa Patnaik has done important work on regarding colonial India.
--Indeed, Harvey briefly recognizes the Patnaiks’ distinctions for the South’s reserve army of labour (see later), but:
i) Seems to brush aside the Patnaiks’ comparisons with the triangular colonial arrangement (the “ideal” capitalist system where capitalist leader Britain offered its domestic market + colonial loot to its newly-industrializing capitalist rivals of Europe/settler colonies which sustained global capitalist demand, all at the cost of the colonies).
ii) Again focuses on physical materials (“Depriving the metropolis of coffee, tea, bananas, cacao, peppers, and spices might provoke revolutionary thoughts in metropolitan populations who are used to such products, but this is hardly a convincing basis for a theory of imperialism.” -Harvey) and missing the Patnaiks’ social argument on capitalist contradictions: a money-using economy where money serves as both means-of-exchange and store-of-wealth, thus increasing prices of materials (from capitalist growth's demands + imperialist suppression of supply) risks wealth-holders shifting from holding money to holding commodities (esp. gold, due to rising commodity prices) which threatens the money-using system of capitalism.
4) Synthesis?:
--This academic turf war reminds me of the one waging between anarchist anthropologist/archaeologist David Graeber/David Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity) and Marxists anthropologists Chris Knight/Nancy Lindisfarne/Jonathan Neale etc. (“The Dawn of Everything gets human history wrong”); …rhetorical flailing replacing critical synthesis:
i) Strawman distractions: both sides of both debates are clearly more comfortable hammering non-participants in the form of vulgar reductionists (universal bashing of the aforementioned mainstream geographical determinists Diamond/Sachs) than carefully addressing each other. Both Harvey and the Patnaiks distance themselves from Karl August Wittfogel (“Oriental Despotism” on Asian states) and economists (including Marxist economists of the Global North).
ii) Actual agreements: both Harvey and the Patnaiks are contending with the “contradiction between the territorial logic of state interests and the molecular logic of capital flow”, resulting in shared observations particularly for Neoliberal globalization. Harvey refers to World-Systems theory's Giovanni Arrighi, so I would be interested for the Patnaiks to synthesize this with Samir Amin etc.
…See comments below for rest of review…
Preamble:
--Having spent time dissecting this book’s sequel (see: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present), which systematically applies “A Theory of Imperialism” to the major periods of modern history (colonial/inter-war/post-WWII/Neoliberal globalization), I’ll avoid duplicating that review.
--Since I finished the sequel first, my main reason in finishing this dense book is for Marxist geographer David Harvey’s critique of the book, and the Patnaiks’ response, which make up the last 2 chapters; so, I’ll use this review to unpack this academic turf-war.
...TL;DR summary: how central is the legacy of the colonial division of labour (esp. plantation system) to modern capitalism?
Harvey vs. the Patnaiks?:
--I believe I have a balanced approach in unpacking this, given:
a) On Harvey’s side (British-American geographer), I study geography (favourite prof: Jim Glassman); I've also benefited greatly from Harvey’s lectures for A Companion to Marx's Capital, etc.
b) On the Patnaiks’ side (Indian political economists), their Indian comrade/historian Vijay Prashad has inspired my interest in Global South perspectives to re-balance Western-centric Leftism (playlist of Prashad's lectures).
--This confrontation played out like the Western stereotype of the Cold War; a lot of build-up while direct confrontation was avoided. (Note: in reality, the Cold War featured many nasty “hot” conflicts in the “periphery”, many involving Western reactions against the South’s decolonization: The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World):
1) Reluctance to use “imperialism”:
--On the surface, Harvey’s avoidance of conceptualizing “imperialism” for contemporary times actually seems quite useful in avoiding needless divisiveness on the Left (esp. from a Western Leftist), as he wants to avoid mixing the term to describe asymmetrical trade relations of a rising Asia with the West’s colonial legacy. Instead, Harvey wants to focus on “shifting hegemonies” and “uneven geographical development”.
--However, the Patnaiks’ are clear that their “theory of imperialism” is not to completely replace existing theories of imperialism (which primarily focus on surface events like wars/conquest; indeed, Harvey is a prime example of this with his The New Imperialism during the War on Terror/Iraq!), but to extend the concept to the totality of capitalism’s history and re-position theory to include critical Global South perspectives. Hence, the Patnaiks’ presents “a theory” rather than “the theory” of imperialism.
2) “Geographical Determinism”?:
--“Unfortunately, [the Patnaiks] get their concepts of space, place, environment, and geography all wrong.” -Harvey
…Harvey’s nuclear threat against the Patnaiks is “geographical determinism”, probably highlighted by the Patnaiks’ chapters on material asymmetry of the South’s superior resources. Harvey applies Marx’s dialectical approach in his “dynamic geography” that focuses on social relations, rejecting the crude physical geography of an-atlas-is-my-Bible Jared Diamond/Jeffrey D. Sachs.
--However, Harvey’s nukes seem to point straight up, as his characterization clouds his further critiques. He seems to ironically slip into a physical geographer himself as he finds offense by the Patnaiks’ varied use of “tropical”, “sub-tropical”, “periphery”, “South”, demanding precision by considering various physical conditions/exceptions. The Patnaiks shrugs this off in a sentence, but I would be interested in the Patnaiks turning the nukes around and elaborating on the social relations of these terms.
--Harvey of course knows the social relations where the Global South is forced by the Global North to export rather than feed themselves. I’m reminded of Michael Hudson’s stark description of the World Bank as the most evil organization in the world in its attempt to systematically rule the Global South by starvation, forcing cash crop exportation thus dependency on the US's heavily-subsidized food grains (Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance; https://youtu.be/paUgY6SGlgY).
--The Patnaiks’ main response to “geographical determinism” is their position that the South can socially improve their material output via land augmentation, but this requires mass mobilization/infrastructure which contradicts imperialist social relations:
-colonial de-industrialization: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
-decolonization’s social mobilization: Prashad's The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-Neoliberal reaction to decolonization: The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South and The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
--China of course exemplifies the contradictions of the messy real world, but where is China’s equivalence of the World Bank/IMF/WTO intellectual property regime/Wall Street financialization/petrodollar hegemony (not to mention global military bases/media/education/Hollywood)? For someone so focused on dialectics, I did not see enough of weighing the contradictions regarding China in Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism. This is a problem with replacing “imperialism” with “shifting hegemonies”/asymmetrical trade (which can be as benign as between California vs. Nevada).
3) End of drain?:
--“The historical draining of wealth from East to West for more than two centuries has, for example, been largely reversed over the last thirty years.” -Harvey
…This of course reminds me of Vijay Prashad’s open challenges to Harvey; I try to limit my use of individualist identity, but I cannot help being reminded of the Indian-British dynamics here. It is amusing how Harvey muddles his precise-geographical-terms critique by adding in “East”/“West”, but the much-greater blunder here is the crude portrayal of “historical draining of wealth”, which Utsa Patnaik has done important work on regarding colonial India.
--Indeed, Harvey briefly recognizes the Patnaiks’ distinctions for the South’s reserve army of labour (see later), but:
i) Seems to brush aside the Patnaiks’ comparisons with the triangular colonial arrangement (the “ideal” capitalist system where capitalist leader Britain offered its domestic market + colonial loot to its newly-industrializing capitalist rivals of Europe/settler colonies which sustained global capitalist demand, all at the cost of the colonies).
ii) Again focuses on physical materials (“Depriving the metropolis of coffee, tea, bananas, cacao, peppers, and spices might provoke revolutionary thoughts in metropolitan populations who are used to such products, but this is hardly a convincing basis for a theory of imperialism.” -Harvey) and missing the Patnaiks’ social argument on capitalist contradictions: a money-using economy where money serves as both means-of-exchange and store-of-wealth, thus increasing prices of materials (from capitalist growth's demands + imperialist suppression of supply) risks wealth-holders shifting from holding money to holding commodities (esp. gold, due to rising commodity prices) which threatens the money-using system of capitalism.
Citizens must be given grounds to expect that the value of money is going to be stable. To display how well understood this point was among economic thinkers of an earlier era, the Patnaiks unearth a gorgeous quote from Keynes which refers to Lenin: “Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency … Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.” (The Economic Consequences of the Peace). [Emphasis added; from Forward by Akeel Bilgrami]…Part of Harvey’s dismissal stems from US production: “super-efficient and highly subsidized production of sugar, rice, cotton, and citrus allows for a subtropical component within a metropolitan capitalist economy, and this component is highly competitive with tropical producers both at home and abroad”. The Patnaiks counter with the contradiction of “super-efficient” vs. “highly subsidized”, as the latter reveals a glimmer of the high energy costs (on top of capitalism being an externalizing machine of social/environmental costs!). Europe/Japan rely on even greater subsidies, and once again we have to return to social relations of Global North’s astronomical all-seasons demand.
4) Synthesis?:
--This academic turf war reminds me of the one waging between anarchist anthropologist/archaeologist David Graeber/David Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity) and Marxists anthropologists Chris Knight/Nancy Lindisfarne/Jonathan Neale etc. (“The Dawn of Everything gets human history wrong”); …rhetorical flailing replacing critical synthesis:
i) Strawman distractions: both sides of both debates are clearly more comfortable hammering non-participants in the form of vulgar reductionists (universal bashing of the aforementioned mainstream geographical determinists Diamond/Sachs) than carefully addressing each other. Both Harvey and the Patnaiks distance themselves from Karl August Wittfogel (“Oriental Despotism” on Asian states) and economists (including Marxist economists of the Global North).
ii) Actual agreements: both Harvey and the Patnaiks are contending with the “contradiction between the territorial logic of state interests and the molecular logic of capital flow”, resulting in shared observations particularly for Neoliberal globalization. Harvey refers to World-Systems theory's Giovanni Arrighi, so I would be interested for the Patnaiks to synthesize this with Samir Amin etc.
…See comments below for rest of review…
October 28, 2019
“A theory of imperialism” by Marxist economists and Indian JNU nerd couple Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik (Columbia Press, 2017).
It’s a strange, or rather unusual, argument they make but here goes:
Metropolitan capitalism remains dependent on specific goods from tropical and sub-tropical regions (which have, thanks to climatic conditions, a natural monopoly over the supply of these goods, say palm oil, stimulants, fruits all year round etc).
Capitalism as a whole depends on these products remaining ‘cheap’ through suppressing local consumption as a rise in their prices through increased demand by the periphery would threaten the value of money in the advanced countries. A key feature of imperialism, according to their theory, is the structurally coercive political and economic mechanisms of ‘income deflation’ in the global south which ensures that these products continue to flow north in sufficient quantities and stable (and undervalued) prices rather than being consumed in, say, Africa and become more expensive in the core. Imperialist domination over tropical landmass is, therefore, a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital. The other side of the coin is a decline in nutritional status among the working people in the periphery (etc).
As if this book was written for me, it already includes a commentary on this particular theory of imperialism by David Harvey and a response to David Harvey by the Patnaiks. Lol, I don’t even need to google to find out whether or not DH approves of the argument!
Well, apparently David Harvey doesn’t approve. He tears down the entire argument, gently, but still. He notes the ‘bogus debates’ (eg Jeffrey Sachs) that seek to explain capitalism with natural conditions and that they conceive of geography in purely ‘natural’ physical terms. He also accuses the Patnaiks of not accounting for the significant changes that took place in terms of global capital flows and new and emerging centres of production and that core countries such as the US, thanks to insane agricultural subsidies, produce many agricultural products way cheaper than tropical countries. (Fun fact: 80 percent of global almond supply is being produced in California!). He also accuses the Patnaiks of being ‘obsessed’ with agriculture.
Then the Patnaiks respond at which point you just want to get popcorn and follow this back-and-forth. Still, we are all team Marx (and Lenin) so it remains civil and I don’t think there’s fundamental disagreement as to the culprits of global misery and inequality!
It’s a strange, or rather unusual, argument they make but here goes:
Metropolitan capitalism remains dependent on specific goods from tropical and sub-tropical regions (which have, thanks to climatic conditions, a natural monopoly over the supply of these goods, say palm oil, stimulants, fruits all year round etc).
Capitalism as a whole depends on these products remaining ‘cheap’ through suppressing local consumption as a rise in their prices through increased demand by the periphery would threaten the value of money in the advanced countries. A key feature of imperialism, according to their theory, is the structurally coercive political and economic mechanisms of ‘income deflation’ in the global south which ensures that these products continue to flow north in sufficient quantities and stable (and undervalued) prices rather than being consumed in, say, Africa and become more expensive in the core. Imperialist domination over tropical landmass is, therefore, a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital. The other side of the coin is a decline in nutritional status among the working people in the periphery (etc).
As if this book was written for me, it already includes a commentary on this particular theory of imperialism by David Harvey and a response to David Harvey by the Patnaiks. Lol, I don’t even need to google to find out whether or not DH approves of the argument!
Well, apparently David Harvey doesn’t approve. He tears down the entire argument, gently, but still. He notes the ‘bogus debates’ (eg Jeffrey Sachs) that seek to explain capitalism with natural conditions and that they conceive of geography in purely ‘natural’ physical terms. He also accuses the Patnaiks of not accounting for the significant changes that took place in terms of global capital flows and new and emerging centres of production and that core countries such as the US, thanks to insane agricultural subsidies, produce many agricultural products way cheaper than tropical countries. (Fun fact: 80 percent of global almond supply is being produced in California!). He also accuses the Patnaiks of being ‘obsessed’ with agriculture.
Then the Patnaiks respond at which point you just want to get popcorn and follow this back-and-forth. Still, we are all team Marx (and Lenin) so it remains civil and I don’t think there’s fundamental disagreement as to the culprits of global misery and inequality!
December 14, 2021
The Patnaiks' theory of imperialism is formulated as relationship between the metropolis and the periphery (least developed/developing countries/global South/etc; from a definitional perspective it's more akin to porn as in "you know it when you see it") in which the latter is subjected to those sets of income deflating measures by the former whenever supply prices of the latter's products rise. Keep in mind that when we talk about the products of the periphery, we are talking about those types of agricultural or primary commodities for which no substitute in the metropolis exists; that is these are products that are only produced by the periphery. These income deflating measures are put in place to erode the purchasing power of the consumers based in the periphery so that their consumption of the very products they produce diminishes which would leave more of those goods for the consumption of the metropolis. Income deflating measures is just your run of the mill deflationary fiscal policy (higher taxes, reduced spending). These measures need to be imposed because rising supply prices threaten the value of money in the metropolis as well as in the periphery because it would mean the rise of inflation in the metropolis in which case the wealth holders who use money to hold their wealth would switch over to gold or other commodities; even if there is no rise in inflation in the metropolis, the wealth holders of the periphery switching over to gold would also destablize the value of money much to the same effect.
It's a very technical and abstract argument to wrap one's head around. The authors take great pains to differentiate between those products that only the periphery can produce and those that other regions can as well but do not explicitly state whether their argument stands only for such products or more generally to exports of the global South. For instance, let's take product X which is only produced in the Country A which is a periphery country. Also, let's take product Y which is only produced in countries B, C, and D all of whom are also periphery countries. We can presume that in the first scenario if supply prices for product X is rising, then country A will be met by imperialism. But what about the second case? If supply prices for product Y is rising in country C only, but not in country B and D, would imperialism still occur against country C? or would it also occur against B and D? What about those products such as cotton which are produced in a mix-match of peripheral and metropolitan countries?
Also, there is a need for further clarity on whether imperialism under this particular paradigm is to occur only in the instance of rising supply prices of peripheral commodities? Is imperialism only contingent on this one specific pathway of inflation, that is potential inflation from rising supply prices for goods that are only produced by peripheral regions? There is also a lack of exploration of imperialism that may or may not exist in forms separate from this very specific economic relationship. Are we to assume that when military interventions occur in a country by NATO/US/Western allies that is an income deflation measure for...rising supply prices for goods only produced by Syria? Yemen? Iraq? Libya?
This just didn't click for me and read much like any detached economic theory
It's a very technical and abstract argument to wrap one's head around. The authors take great pains to differentiate between those products that only the periphery can produce and those that other regions can as well but do not explicitly state whether their argument stands only for such products or more generally to exports of the global South. For instance, let's take product X which is only produced in the Country A which is a periphery country. Also, let's take product Y which is only produced in countries B, C, and D all of whom are also periphery countries. We can presume that in the first scenario if supply prices for product X is rising, then country A will be met by imperialism. But what about the second case? If supply prices for product Y is rising in country C only, but not in country B and D, would imperialism still occur against country C? or would it also occur against B and D? What about those products such as cotton which are produced in a mix-match of peripheral and metropolitan countries?
Also, there is a need for further clarity on whether imperialism under this particular paradigm is to occur only in the instance of rising supply prices of peripheral commodities? Is imperialism only contingent on this one specific pathway of inflation, that is potential inflation from rising supply prices for goods that are only produced by peripheral regions? There is also a lack of exploration of imperialism that may or may not exist in forms separate from this very specific economic relationship. Are we to assume that when military interventions occur in a country by NATO/US/Western allies that is an income deflation measure for...rising supply prices for goods only produced by Syria? Yemen? Iraq? Libya?
This just didn't click for me and read much like any detached economic theory
September 2, 2020
The current form of capitalism requires continuously increase in the production of goods which have a limit to production capacity. Some products can only be produced in certain regions which have to be bought from those regions. As more of the product is produced, the limitations on land and other resources create escalating costs, an increasing supply price. Rather than to pay a higher price, capitalism uses various methods of income deflation on the regional suppliers who are forced to sell their product, even if they cannot maintain their nutritional amount.
Ricardo’s trade theory of comparative advantage works in mutually beneficial ways if the trading partners can produce the products being generated. Patnaiks express that there are products which can only be produced in certain regions due to various geographic facets. Some regions alone can produce a product which others desperately need. Those regions are then coerced to produce more of that good and to specialize in its production at the expense of other land use. Diverting resources to producing the export crops reduces the availability of food for local populations.
This book is hard to read unless the reader already understands many of the economic reasoning, mostly from the Marxian perspective. This book has a powerful message but it is partly lost in the abstract reasoning. It would be beneficial for the authors to expand this book in terms of more historical development of income deflation before and during capitalism. The way the book is written, it appears that those who are being immiserated have no agency unless they all cooperate together.
Having a monopoly on a product does not necessitate a means to increase the price. Capitalism found ways of maintain the price of products down with income deflation. The immiseration of the people by the system creates an unsustainable trend in production which creates a tendency of crisis.
Ricardo’s trade theory of comparative advantage works in mutually beneficial ways if the trading partners can produce the products being generated. Patnaiks express that there are products which can only be produced in certain regions due to various geographic facets. Some regions alone can produce a product which others desperately need. Those regions are then coerced to produce more of that good and to specialize in its production at the expense of other land use. Diverting resources to producing the export crops reduces the availability of food for local populations.
This book is hard to read unless the reader already understands many of the economic reasoning, mostly from the Marxian perspective. This book has a powerful message but it is partly lost in the abstract reasoning. It would be beneficial for the authors to expand this book in terms of more historical development of income deflation before and during capitalism. The way the book is written, it appears that those who are being immiserated have no agency unless they all cooperate together.
Having a monopoly on a product does not necessitate a means to increase the price. Capitalism found ways of maintain the price of products down with income deflation. The immiseration of the people by the system creates an unsustainable trend in production which creates a tendency of crisis.
January 11, 2020
A very interesting and scholarly study of imperialism, past and present. The Patnaiks present three main propositions:
"First, the stability of the value of money under capitalism, and hence of the entire financial system founded upon money, requires that as capital accumulates, there should be no persistent tendency for a rise in the price of any commodity that is essential for the metropolis and is considered significant by wealth-holders, whether located in the metropolis or in the periphery. Second, given the limited size of the tropical landmass and the fact that capitalism can neither do without nor replicate elsewhere the products of this landmass, the ex ante tendency towards persistent inflation in such products therefore becomes a threat to capitalism. And third, this threat is countered inter alia by imposing an income deflation on the users of these products in the periphery, so that capitalism’s growing requirement for them is met by squeezing the absorption by these users, without the problem of increasing supply price coming into play at all. Such income deflation, imposed on the users of the tropical products located in the periphery, constitutes an essential feature of imperialism" (p.97).
The critique by David Harvey was helpful in allowing the Patnaiks to address misinterpretations of what they were saying regarding imperialism, upon which capitalism is based. There were also some very interesting perspectives on monetary theory as it relates to the dominant currency and gold as a commodity to hold value during inflationary periods.
"First, the stability of the value of money under capitalism, and hence of the entire financial system founded upon money, requires that as capital accumulates, there should be no persistent tendency for a rise in the price of any commodity that is essential for the metropolis and is considered significant by wealth-holders, whether located in the metropolis or in the periphery. Second, given the limited size of the tropical landmass and the fact that capitalism can neither do without nor replicate elsewhere the products of this landmass, the ex ante tendency towards persistent inflation in such products therefore becomes a threat to capitalism. And third, this threat is countered inter alia by imposing an income deflation on the users of these products in the periphery, so that capitalism’s growing requirement for them is met by squeezing the absorption by these users, without the problem of increasing supply price coming into play at all. Such income deflation, imposed on the users of the tropical products located in the periphery, constitutes an essential feature of imperialism" (p.97).
The critique by David Harvey was helpful in allowing the Patnaiks to address misinterpretations of what they were saying regarding imperialism, upon which capitalism is based. There were also some very interesting perspectives on monetary theory as it relates to the dominant currency and gold as a commodity to hold value during inflationary periods.
March 9, 2025
This book by the Patnaiks is a necessary intervention into the ongoing conversation on the role of imperialism in sustaining capitalist structures. Here the Patnaiks argue that imperialism is the modus operandi through which capitalism operates by deflating incomes in the periphery in order to prevent an increase in the value of money in the metropolitan countries. They argue that colonialism was part of the imperialism project which is best shown through their arguments on drain of wealth and deindustrialization. However, they also carry forward these arguments into the post-colonial world, where imperialism as the agent of international finance has managed to sustain these older class relations of exploitation between the periphery and the metropolitan through newer forms of income deflation in order to maintain control the increasing supply price of tropical food exports to the metropolitan regions. This theory may stand on a lot of hypotheticals, but it is still relevant in terms of how it interrogates existing economic relations against the historical background and points to how capitalism thrives on and is sustained by imperialism.
June 27, 2022
A breezy and terse (admitted by the authors) theory of imperialism concentrated on its geographic aspects that asks the question: Is it necessary for metropolitan capital always to enter into a structurl relationship with the people of the periphery, which entails a subjugation of the latter? And by the end of the book fairly, if not thoroughly answers it affirmatively as it is in the nature of capital not to leave any quarter of the globe untouched, thus the subjugation of people of the periphery therefore is an intergral part of its modul operandi
I read the version that included commentary by David Harvey and a response to these comments from the authors, which were both insightful given the short nature of the book
I read the version that included commentary by David Harvey and a response to these comments from the authors, which were both insightful given the short nature of the book
August 14, 2025
This is a challenging read for a non-economist, but I got so much out of reading it. While most of the book spends time describing their theory, the most valuable parts to me were in the later chapters when dealing with data. Their response to David Harvey's critique at the end was actually the most important evidence for their argument.
Definitely recommend, especially for those looking for a non-Western perspective on imperialism in the post-colonial world.
Definitely recommend, especially for those looking for a non-Western perspective on imperialism in the post-colonial world.
December 20, 2023
I want to preface this review by admitting that a reason why this is 4 stars from me is for personal reasons—I had a lot of difficulty reading it and I don't know if it's because of their writing style or my own limits on understanding abstract economic theory— but I do believe that its attempt to reframe how we understand imperialism is absolutely ambitious and if correct, will have a lot of important implications on how we make sense of the world today, and moving forward into the future.
I'll try my best to explain their argument. They are reconceptualizing "Imperialism" in a way that allows it to continue being a useful term in the post-colonial world, by redefining imperialism as a structural relationship between the providers of goods in the periphery (tropical and subtropical countries), and the primary consumers of goods in the metropolis (temperate countries). The colonial era was marked by powers from temperate lands politically and economically dominating those in tropical and sub-tropical lands. There is an imbalance inherent to the lands themselves. Temperate countries can not produce goods from tropical countries. They are reliant on them for specific products, such as stimulants, fibers, cane sugars, oils, tropical fruits and vegetables, etc. And this reliance continues to this day. It's easy to explain how they were able to force colonies to produce goods for them back in the day— a lot of violence and coercion, among other methods. But much has changed after the colonial era, especially after most tropical countries became politically independent. So how is the metropolis able to maintain this constant supply of goods they have become reliant on? How do they make sure the goods stay affordable?
The Patnaiks argue that it is by maintaining a low demand for products in the periphery from the people who live there through "income deflation" mechanisms whenever threat of supply prices increase. In other words, to make sure that the people in the periphery can't consume too much of the products they export, so that the metropolis can continue to have them at a constant supply at low costs. There's a lot more to the book than this, but this is one of its main points. It argues that this process was the basis of imperialism in the past and continues to be so today, although in new forms. An important thing to note is that most of the examples used are of India, though it is meant to be about global imperialism in general.
It's all very theoretical and abstract to process, but I hope it will become clearer to me from reading their follow up book, "Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present" from 2021.
I'll try my best to explain their argument. They are reconceptualizing "Imperialism" in a way that allows it to continue being a useful term in the post-colonial world, by redefining imperialism as a structural relationship between the providers of goods in the periphery (tropical and subtropical countries), and the primary consumers of goods in the metropolis (temperate countries). The colonial era was marked by powers from temperate lands politically and economically dominating those in tropical and sub-tropical lands. There is an imbalance inherent to the lands themselves. Temperate countries can not produce goods from tropical countries. They are reliant on them for specific products, such as stimulants, fibers, cane sugars, oils, tropical fruits and vegetables, etc. And this reliance continues to this day. It's easy to explain how they were able to force colonies to produce goods for them back in the day— a lot of violence and coercion, among other methods. But much has changed after the colonial era, especially after most tropical countries became politically independent. So how is the metropolis able to maintain this constant supply of goods they have become reliant on? How do they make sure the goods stay affordable?
The Patnaiks argue that it is by maintaining a low demand for products in the periphery from the people who live there through "income deflation" mechanisms whenever threat of supply prices increase. In other words, to make sure that the people in the periphery can't consume too much of the products they export, so that the metropolis can continue to have them at a constant supply at low costs. There's a lot more to the book than this, but this is one of its main points. It argues that this process was the basis of imperialism in the past and continues to be so today, although in new forms. An important thing to note is that most of the examples used are of India, though it is meant to be about global imperialism in general.
It's all very theoretical and abstract to process, but I hope it will become clearer to me from reading their follow up book, "Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present" from 2021.
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