BOOK REVIEW

3 Sunil Khilnani, “Democracy and Its Indian Pasts” Lectures on Equality and Inequality in India, Watson to Indian Sociology, ns 23(1): 1989, 41-58. in Kaushik Basu and Ravi Kanbur (ed.), Arguments­ Institute, Brown University, RI, April 2011. (These 6 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight for a Better World: Essays in Honor of Amartya lectures have not yet been published, but I person- Exercises in Political Thought. Penguin Classics Sen: Volume II. Oxford University Press (2009), ally attended all three.) Sheldon Pollock, The Lan- [2006 (1961)]. The very first chapter, titled “Tradi- Chapter 26, pp 488-502. guage of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, tion and the Modern Age” opens like this: “Our 4 Sudipta Kaviraj, “Ideas of Freedom in Modern Culture and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley, tradition of political thought had its definite I­ndia” in Robert H Taylor (ed.), The Idea of Freedom CA: University of California Press), 2006. b­eginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. in Africa and Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer- 5 A K Ramanujan, “Is There an Indian Way of I believe it came to a no less definite end in the sity Press), 2002. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Three Thinking? An Informal Essay” in Contributions theories of Karl Marx.”

The industrial and labour reforms that Crisis and Class Struggle ensue to satisfy such market regulation of the circuits of capital make employment precarious, and force many households Pratyush Chandra into debt, making them dependent on asset price inflation for satisfying their re- he various papers in the present Socialist Register 2011: The Crisis This Time productive needs, thus financialising and volume of the Socialist Register are edited by Leo Panitch, Greg Albo and Vivek Chibber (New controlling the ­reproductive domain of Tunited in one respect – they show Delhi: Leftword Books), 2010; pp 323, Rs 350. labour. Demand is propped up through how capitalist crises are not simply prob- “Asset Price Keynesianism”, as Saad-Filho lems of positive economics and neutral present crisis was nurtured in the very suggests (p 246), or “truly heroic doses of economic management. The neutrality is successful attempts to overcome the Great credit”, as Henwood argues (p 91), i e, by exposed once you try to unbundle the Stagflation of the 1970s and to sustain lowering interest rates, remortgaging and ­ceteris paribus and the various assump- high rates of profit through neo-liberal accumulating unsecured debts, etc. tions that are made in modelling the econ- means. Deregulation of financial activi- In “Deriving Capital’s (and Labour’s) omy. The realities of class, state, power ties, a sharp drop in interest rates in major Future”, Dick Bryan and Michael Rafferty and conflict provide the socio-historical capitalist countries and the slowdown in present a rigorous analysis of derivatives – matrix that configures the economy and real wages relative to productivity boost- one of the major instruments of financiali- its problems. ed the rate of profit. Normally a wage de- sation, defined by them as an extension of In other words, a main thrust of this celeration would have adversely affected “the calculus of finance and risk into wider collection on the contemporary capitalist consumer spending, but falling interest social domains” (p 204). Further, they crisis is, as Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin rates and credit availability, as Shaikh note that (196): point out in “Capitalist Crises and the (p 45) notes, “buoyed on a rising tide of [Derivatives] are integral to capitalism and ­Crisis This Time”, to look at “the complex debt. All limits seemed suspended, all the expression of its essential property rela- factors that lead to structural crises… laws of motion abolished. And then it tions and its inventiveness. The contradic- through the prism of class and state rela- came crashing down. The mortgage crisis tions of derivatives are the contradictions of capitalism. tions” (p 7). Every essay complements the in the US was only the immediate trigger.” others by accounting for the contingent The phenomenon of financialisation Derivatives establish newer sites of and historical factors that configure the has been crucial to the post-1970s resur- ­accumulation out of the segmentation of terrain for the past, present and future gence of profit and its eventual crisis in the socio-economic world into quantifia- of the capitalist crisis – determining its the 1990s-2000s. Financialisation does ble and commodifiable units. The power specific conjunctural nature at various not distort pure capitalism, nor is it a re- of derivatives to make assets fungible ­moments in the development of capitalism. sult of a coup against productive capital. It ­intensifies the mobility of capital and However, while conjunctural factors do is ­instead, according to Alfredo Saad-Filho capitalist accumulation. As the perpetua- play a major role in determining the his- in “Crisis in Neo-liberalism or Crisis of tion of ­financial instruments or financia­ torical expressions, crises are not black Neo-liberalism?”, “a structural feature of lisation derives from the logic of capital, swans appearing randomly, as Anwar accumulation and social reproduction un- so does the financial crisis. The authors Shaikh explains in “The First Great Depre­ der neo-liberalism” (p 243). The process dub the real/financial dichotomy as ssion of the 21st Century”: “Capitalism’s has tremendous disciplining potential. It faulty. The ­dichotomy is ahistorical and sheath mutates constantly in order for its ­intensifies accumulation by transnation- does not ground the financial in the logic core to remain the same” (p 46). alisation, increasing competition between of capi­ta­lis­t accumulation. Crises are moments in the “turbulent individual capitals and between (and dynamic process” of capitalist accumula- within) national working classes. The Labour Factor tion (p 44), Shaikh argues. Despite tremen- Managers are submitted to sharehold- As indicated above, the collection views dous institutional changes within capitalism, ing interests concerned only with the the crisis from the prism of class struggle its history is witness to intrinsic patterns over- or under-valuation of stocks and and state. It has been time and again that derive from the logic of profit, which shares, Doug Henwood notes in “Before shown how under neo-liberalism, the glo- is central to business behaviour. The and After Crisis: Wall Street Lives On”. bal balance of class forces has shifted

42 june 18, 2011 vol xlvi no 25 EPW Economic & Political Weekly BOOK REVIEW away from labour and from particular workers” (p 224). Thus, workers are so forms of capital. In “The Global Crisis bound to capitalist fate that they see in Manohar and the Crisis of European Neomercan- capital’s ­destruction an extermination of tilism”, Riccardo Bellofiore, Francesco their life savings. Dispossessed workers RECENT BOOKS Garibaldo and Joseph Halevi accurately became more exposed to “the discipli- DiSSENTiNg VOiCES aND encapsulate the political spirit of the nary, demobilising, and individualising TRaNSfORmaTiVE aCTiONS ­collection when they describe the central tendencies of debt” (p 226). Social movements in a globalizing World tragedy in this financial crisis as befalling It is not just competitive calculations Debal K. SinghaRoy (ed.) “traumatised workers, manic-depressive that subjugate labour through workplace 978-81-7304-869-2, 2010, 546p. savers and indebted consumers – all per- discipline; the process of securitisation is Rs. 1250 (Hb) formed by the same actor” (p 124). Most crucial to this subjugation. Securitisation iNTERROgaTiNg SOCial of the essays in this collection tell us how does not simply appropriate labour’s ­income DEVElOpmENT the political economy of neo-liberalism through interest payments. It ­essentially global perspectives and splits the personality of labour into so recasts, as Bryan and Rafferty argu­e, local initiatives many identities. “labour as the provider of income streams Debal K. SinghaRoy (ed.) for securities, to facilitate asset diversi­ 978-81-7304-871-5, 2010, 474p. Rs.1250 (Hb) Agenda of Neo-Liberalism fication and the search of yield” (p 215). The class agenda of neo-liberalism was to Bryan and Rafferty report that the Inter- SuRViViNg agaiNST ODDS break the Keynesian alliance between national Monetary Fund dubs households The marginalized in a capital and labour, which was proving to as shock-absorbers of last resort in its globalizing World Debal K. SinghaRoy (ed.) be a hurdle to profit-making in the early “Global Financial Stability Report 2005” 978-81-7304-877-7, 2010, 412p. 1970s. A thorough financialisation of the (p 216). For capital, labour is an ­asset class, Rs.995 (Hb) real economy of businesses, households like equities, bonds and credit derivatives. and governments was crucial in this Working class aspirations ­become attrac- a NEW ENERgy fRONTiER regard, as Hugo Radice suggests in “Con- tive investments. However, as Bryan and The Bay of Bengal Region Sudhir T. Devare (ed.) fronting the Crisis: A Class Analysis”. The Rafferty explain, this is an ­asset class 978-81-7304-870-8, 2010, 226p. state and the enfeebling of the working which is not risk-managed well by capital Rs.550 (Hb) class were major factors in “generating or the state (216). “In important respects, the conditions that led to the greatest therefore, it was labour, and its failure ThE hiSTORiCal DEVElOpmENT Of ThE BhaKTi mOVEmENT iN iNDia financial crisis since 1929”, according to as an asset class, not its power as a work- Theory and practice Panitch and Gindin (p 13). Increasing ing class, that triggered the global Iwao Shima, Teiji Sakata and labour vulnerabilities through industrial ­financial crisis”. Katsuyuki Ida (eds.) restructuring led to a tremendous increase More than any other crisis in the recent 978-81-7304-884-5, 2011, 300p. Rs.750 (Hb) in industrial profits, and this in turn freed past, the present crisis has exposed the finance for betting on vulnerable labour. vampire nature of neo-liberal capital – not iSlam iN SOuTh aSia, Vol. Vi As Sam Ashman, Ben Fine and Susan losing its hold on labour “so long as there Soundings on partition Newman put it in “The Crisis in South is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be and its aftermath Africa: Neo-­liberalism, Financialisation exploited”.1 As Joanna Brenner shows in Mushirul Hasan (ed.) 978-81-7304-827-2, 2010, 370p. and Uneven and Combined Develop- “Caught in the Whirlwind: Working-Class Rs.950 (Hb) ment” (p 175): Families Face the Economic Crisis”, with fROm fiRE RaiN TO REBElliON The spreading and individualisation of debt, opportunities for collective action dwin- Reasserting Ethnic identity Through in part to compensate for three decades of dling due to the cooptation and destruc- Narrative stagnant or falling real wages, has become tion of traditional working class organi­ Peter B. Andersen, Marine Carrin, critical to maintaining demand…Financiali- sations in the US, workers had to rely Santosh K. Soren (eds.) sation, then, is not just about capital, it is ­increasingly on family survival strategies. 978-81-7304-879-1, 2011, 400p. about labour. Continuous attacks on male workers’ Rs.995 (Hb) Susanne Soederberg calls this situation wage­s, coupled with the dismantling of DiSCOVERiNg BaNDa BahaDuR “cannibalistic capitalism” (also the title of social security networks, have forced Surinder Singh her essay) – a form of financial fetishism women further into the active labour force 978-81-7304-892-0, 2010, 414p. where instead of giving workers inde- and working class families into bankrupt- Rs.995 (Hb) pendence, savings increase worker de- cies and debts, which were readily provi- for our complete catalogue please write to us at: pendence on the economic performance sioned by the deregulated financial sector. Manohar Publishers & Distributors of corporations. It is a set of “processes by While women’s earnings “once kept 4753/23, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-2 which workers’ savings in the form of families afloat, now they are cushioning Phones: 2328 4848, 2328 9100, 2327 5162 pension funds feeds off both their own families with unemployed men from total Fax: (011) 2326 5162 email: [email protected] increased indebtedness and that of other disaster” (p 74). The hardest hit sectors Website: www.manoharbooks.com

Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 18, 2011 vol xlvi no 25 43 BOOK REVIEW are those which are heavily dependent on and exit strategies of the US and various ­prior to the crisis. Here we find the left male labour. Families headed by single European economies shows, these class and radical forces totally marginalised mothers have increasingly plunged into strategies tend to stabilise and sustain the (Julie Froud, Michael Moran, Adriana poverty. The care economy was drastically liberalised financial system and to trans- Nilsson and Karel Williams in “Opportu- affected; seemingly greater equality among fer the burden on to the shoulders of the nity Lost: Mystification, Elite Politics and men and women in the expenditure of un- working class. In fact, the state is taking Financial Reform in the UK”), labour paid labour meant that the women’s work- interventionist measures to ensure that ­activism reduced to shareholder (and ing hours could expand. austerity is imposed on the working class stakeholder) activism and the ideology of However, this was possible only with and the public sector. corporate governance, effectively refocus- the 24/7 economy providing inexpensive As Radice (p 37) notes, “[b]ecause neo- ing political discontent in market-based goods and services based on the low liberalism is a project of class hegemony, terms (Soederberg). wages of a contingent workforce from the current economic and financial crisis This volume of Socialist Register stands among ­immigrants. The crisis has expo­ is only a crisis of neo-liberalism if there is out in providing a comprehensive under- sed both the importance and fragility of a working-class challenge to that hege­ standing of “the crisis this time”. It sweeps family survival strategies. It has deepened mony”. A major part of the volume under away the mists of carefully contrived illu- the segmentation of the working class on review demonstrates through various sion and reveals the stark reality behind the ­basis of the degree to which indivi­ country and regional analyses why the neo-liberal ideologies and politics, a task duals can hold on. Racial and occupa­ barriers to capital accumulation could not which, as Noam Chomsky puts it in his tional ­disparities play a major role in be transformed into its limits. In fact, concluding contribution, is necessary to this ­segmentation. wherever a viable alternative, even if not rekindle the radical imagination. complete structural overhauling, seemed Opportunity Lost feasible, the opportunities were not just Pratyush Chandra ([email protected]) The crisis has definitely exposed the fra- lost, but they were morphed into strate- is associated with Radical Notes. gility of the US economy and its dollar gies for neo-liberal resurgence. So if neo- hegemony, but in turn, it has also exposed liberal strategies and institutions survived Note the structural faults of other economies unreformed, the secret of their resilience 1 Karl Marx (1954), Capital, Vol 1 (Moscow: throughout the globe and their depend- must be found in the balance of forces Progress Publishers), p 285. ence on US growth. The global dominance of the dollar confirms not just the global INDIAN INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION presence and prowess of the American INDRAPRASTHA ESTATE, RING ROAD, ­interests – US multinationals, Wall Street NEW DELHI-110002 and US offshore banking affiliates – but also the extent to which major national The Indian Institute of Public Administration, an apex National Institute for and regional economies are tied to the US the study of Governance, engaged in high end Research, Consultancy and market. Taggart Murphy argues that Training programmes for the Union and State Governments, Public Sector ­Japan and eastern economies are loyal re- Enterprises and not-for Profit Organizations, invites applications from Indian tainers of American dollar hegemony; Nationals for one post of Deputy Registrar (Finance) in the Pay Band ­Bellofiore et al note the neomercantilist Rs. 15600-39100 + GP Rs. 7600/-. The Qualification would be as per the dependence of the economies in the EU on the US as the provider of the last resort of University Grants Commission’s (UGC) norms prescribed from time to time, effective demand. As Karl Beitel shows in in the prescribed form, obtainable free of charge from the Registrar on “The Crisis, the Deficit, and the Power of request accompanied by a self-addressed envelope (25cm x 10cm) duly the Dollar: Resisting the Public Sector’s stamped for Rs.10/-. The form can also be downloaded from our website Devaluation”, there is no viable challenger to www.iipa.ernet.in/www.iipa.org.in the dollar. The euro lost because of “the ‘fractured sovereignty’ that characterises Age limit: Maximum 45 years. the monetary integration of Europe” (p 269) Completed application in the prescribed form only supported by copies of and the remnibi is out for the time being the certificates etc. should reach the Registrar within 45 days from the because China does not have the will and date of publication of the advertisement. Incomplete applications (or not in capacity to replace the dollar. the prescribed from) or those received after the due date may not be The enormous dependence of other considered. economies on the US, facilitated by finan- cialisation, has definitely scuttled statist Registrar, Indian Institute of Public Administration willingness and ability to emerge from the I.P. Estate, Ring Road, New Delhi-110002 neo-liberal framework across the globe. Phone (011) 23702400, Extn. 8363, 8373, Fax: 011-23326916 As Albo and Evans’ analysis of the rescue

44 june 18, 2011 vol xlvi no 25 EPW Economic & Political Weekly