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- [00:00]
A
Well, my name's Robin Archer and I'm the convener of the Ralph Miliband program here at the lsc. And I'm delighted to welcome you all to the second last in our public lecture series on the future of the left. And I'm particularly delighted to be able to welcome Professor Jayati Ghosh. Jayati is professor of Economics at Jawaharl Nehru University in Delhi, which, as I'm sure you know, is what of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in India. And she's written extensively in a range of areas on macroeconomics, on international finance, questions of employment trends, and also questions about women and development. And I think it's safe to say that she's been a forthright and lucid critic of neoliberal trends in the last few years. But she's not just a scholar of great repute. She's also been actively involved in numerous social movements and she's served as an advisor to governments, notably to the government of India, where she's one of a handful of people that advise the Prime Minister on the National Knowledge Commission there. And she's a regular columnist who seeks to reach out to a broader audience with her ideas, writing for several newspapers and journals. Particularly notable is the fortnightly Frontline. No Indian intellectual with self respect can be without it. And some of you may know that she's a regular contributor to the Guardian here in the United Kingdom. Her work's been widely recognised. I just want to mention one particular accolade which I think is particularly admirable, speaking for myself, which is that she won the International Labour Organisation's prize for decent work research. And it gives you some feeling of the significance of this accolade to point out that her predecessors in winning this prize included Nelson Mandela and Joseph Stiglitz, who later went on to win the Nobel Prize. So I'm very, very pleased indeed to welcome Jayati here this year to speak to us as part of our Ralph Miller Band program. So please welcome Professor Jayati Ghos.
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B
Well, shall I.
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A
It's up to you. You choose.
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B
Maybe. I don't know, it might be easier if I stand there. Well, thank you very much, Robin, for that very, very warm and in a sense, perhaps undeserved introduction. It's really a great pleasure to be here. For me, it's a great honor, actually, to be invited to deliver a lecture in the Ralph Miliband. I suppose, as we all know, Ralph Miliband was an outstanding social scientist and a very innovative Marxist thinker. I mean, he was In a sense, he was a beacon to progressive people around the world, including in India, because I think his own work and the work that he promoted in the New Left Review and the Socialist Register was very much part of what made, for example, Marxism as a mode of thinking so attractive, because of the spirit of inquiry and questioning, as well as a fundamental commitment to a socialist future. And in a sense, his work also gave us the confidence to interpret the world around us, even when we disagreed with some particular interpretation of his own. I think Miliband showed us that ideas can and should be handled with care and with passion and also without dogma or fear, including the fear of exposing one's own shibboleths. So it is as a tribute to what is a very inspiring combination of personal commitment and intellectual integrity and even fearlessness that I chosen what probably sounds like a very ambitious topic. Because, after all, you can't really talk about one single emerging left in any part of the world. And it's really brave or actually foolhardy to talk about the emerging left in a much broader emerging world, because left politics and left positions have always been extremely diverse and will probably continue always to be very diverse within and across national boundaries. Because given this profusion and variation and the multiplicity of approaches, probably you could justifiably argue that trying to fit all types of progressive thinking in very different parts of the world into one common box is not just over simplistic, but actually misleading. I think this is a perception that is also a reflection of what could be called a kind of accentuated fragmentation of left positions. Because really, for much of the 20th century, it was much easier to talk of what could be called an overarching socialist framework, a kind of grand vision within which you conduct specific debates. Of course, there were many strands of socialism, however you define it, and there were also fierce and often violent debates and conflicts between them. But even so, I think they shared more than a common historical lineage. I think they also shared a fundamental perspective, or, if you like, a basic vision. So let me try to do a crude simplification of this vision. I think it can be summarized as perceiving that the working class is the most fundamental agent of positive change, and that it is capable, once it's organized, of transforming not only existing property and material relations, but also wider society and culture through its own actions. Now, actually, in recent times, even the very idea of a grand vision is in retreat. It's been battered not just by the complexities and limitations of what you could call actually existing socialism, but more recently by the ferocious triumphalism of the opposite. If you think about it, insofar as any grand vision has existed in recent times, it's the one that has come to dominate public life in the late 20th century, that is the market as a self regulating and inherently efficient mechanism for organizing economic life. Now, in fact, this is an idea that has already been there and done that if you look at it in the late 19th century. It had already fallen by the wayside a century before, but it's been resurrected and dusted off for use in a slightly more postmodern format, which has really become the theoretical underpinning of the vast explosion of global economic integration under the aegis of finance capital, which is what we call the period of globalization. In fact, this is not a position that was ever about reducing the economic role of the state, that broad neoliberal position. It is really about changing the nature of state intervention towards more open protection of the interests of large capital in various forms, in ways that Miliband himself would have recognized through his own discussion of what he called the close partnership between capital and the capitalist state. And this generates, of course, a very real and formidable concentration of power. Now, this feature was never really disguised, but it became much more overwhelming and therefore impossible to conceal in the governmental responses to the global crises since 2007. So the association of the ideology of supposedly free markets with strong tendencies to greater concentration of capital and the use of the state to further accentuate these tendencies and aggrandize capital has now been laid bare, I think, for everyone to see. Now, it's also true that the material processes that are unleashed by such a trajectory of unevenly shared burdens of crisis are no longer seen as socially acceptable in much of the world. This is becoming evident not just in the developing world, but also in many parts of the European continent. And there are many places that have therefore experienced, if you like, quiet or not so quiet revolutions. But it's probably fair to say that even as the resistance to global capitalism builds up in the south and in the north, it's tended to be accompanied by sort of gloomy perceptions that the grand socialist visions of the future, if you like, are no longer possible. They're really not anymore something that is considered feasible. If you look at much of the popular protest that is evident today in various places, it's still essentially about resistance, not transformation. And it involves, if you like, rear guard actions to stem the tide of brutal fiscal austerity, measures that deny social and economic rights of citizens, but within the economic system, rather than conceiving and putting in place alternative systems. So there's a basic lack of confidence in anything other than capitalism as a way of organizing economic life, which still permeates popular protest in Europe and the United States. So the purpose of the left is seen to be somehow to exert a restraining influence on the worst excesses of contemporary capitalism. So the left is seen, if you like, as a civilizing and moderating force, not so much as a transformative and certainly not a revolutionary force. But elsewhere in Latin America, Asia, Africa, I think the discourse is becoming quite different. There's much more dynamism in the global left than is currently perceived. And there are also varied moves away from tired ideas of all kinds, really. So the rejection of capitalism is also accompanied not just by imagining alternatives, but by shifting views about what constitutes the desirable alternative. And this has meant the interrogating of what could be standard tenets of socialist understanding in the past. There are several features of these emerging left movements, certainly in Latin America, where they're also associated with state power in many countries, but also in other areas of Africa and developing Asia, which are moving away from traditional ideas associated with socialist theory and practice. I'm not saying that these are very always formulated in very clear theoretical terms, or that they are part of a consistent and holistic analytical structure. Many ideas also keep changing with the rough and tumble of everyday political praxis. But it's also true that in a sense, this lack of a well defined theoretical framework or perspective, and instead the reliance on a set of occasionally vague but well intentioned declarations that generate some practical goals, is a feature of many such left movements. Despite this, I still think that the praxis, and increasingly the analysis, if not always explicit theory, if you like, of various left movements in different parts of the world, are increasingly transcending what could be called the traditional socialist paradigm. What was this traditional paradigm? Well, it had an emphasis on centralized government control over an undifferentiated mass of workers, and it's instead incorporating much more explicit emphasis on the rights and concerns of women, ethnic minorities, tribal communities and other marginalized groups. Recognition of ecological constraints and the social risk necessity to respect nature. There's explicit recognition of all of this, for example, in the new constitutions in Bolivia and Ecuador, but they are also increasingly articulated by groups all over the place. Trade unions in southern Africa, the new left intellectuals who are in China, social movements in India and many other places. So I would like to argue that you can actually identify some critical aspects of commonality, some common threads that appear in these different discourses of the emerging left. And I would like to identify seven of these tendencies in what are otherwise very different political formations and very dissimilar social and economic contexts. These are not always new ideas. Let me also emphasize in many cases they're often not more than just old ideas that appear new simply because of changing context and the collective failure of memory, but at least selective recall in the traditional left. And obviously these are not ideas that are shared by all varieties of leftist thought today. For example, there are Maoists in India, in my own country, who would not accept several of the positions described that I'm going to describe. But let me consider these seven different themes. The first is the attitude to what constitutes democracy. Now you consider some of the older socialist approaches in which the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat was actually misinterpreted, and in some cases it still continues to be used that way to suppress formal democracy. Within the newer emerging Left, there's much greater willingness to engage with and even rely on formal democratic processes and the procedures and mechanisms that were associated with bourgeois democracy, like elections, referenda, laws, delivering rights and related judicial processes. So even as left movements and parties have recognized the limitations of electoral democracy, and in fact the increasing and sometimes alarming potential for the effective takeover of democratic institutions by money, power and corporatized media, which is so evident in the United States, for example. But still the emerging Left relies more and more on using formal democratic institutions in different ways to further the broader cause. For example, the radical governments of Latin America derive their legitimacy from the ballot box. And it's the other way around. Right wing anger is actually directed towards what are derided as populist policies of these left wing governments that provide them with these overwhelming popular mandates. In other countries, the emerging Left is often the greatest champion or defender of these formal democratic institutions, as well as the most concerned with their corruption and manipulation by entrenched interests and corporate power. So there's much more focus on procedural democracy and attempts to go beyond liberal democracy with new experiments in deliberation, consensus building, and so on. This engagement is really quite different from earlier socialist formulations in which all institutions of the bourgeois state were seen as inherently and deeply tainted and incapable of reform, or being used to bring about positive changes, change in favor of the people. And it's also an extension, it's more than an extension, in fact, of the earlier idea of the role of the left as bringing about sort of national democratic revolutions in countries that were still entrapped by feudal and colonial structures, because it embraces, even only if it's only implicitly the idea that the process is not unidirectional. In fact, leftist engagement with democratic institutions and processes can also transform the nature of left parties and organizations themselves. And this is also reflected in the changed approach to democracy within left parties and organizations. The tendency is not universal, but I think there is evidence that within emerging left groups there's increasingly a trend towards the rejection of top down models of party organization, exemplified in the democratic centralism of Communist party parties, for example, and moving towards more open democratic forms of parties and coalition building. So that within an overarching framework and a set of shared goals, there's a much greater tolerance and even respect for a polarity of opinions within the Left. The second big feature, I would say the relatively new feature, is the rejection of over centralization. The centralizing, homogenizing state was a. Was a major element of actually existing socialism in much of the 20th century and even today. It is kind of embedded in the consciousness of many of those who see themselves as socialist. Indeed, in the classical Marxist view, scale itself and the tendency of capitalist production to generate larger and larger scales were seen as paradoxically positive features. They enabled a combination of large groups of workers who could be mobilized to alter production relations, and they allowed the effective and more rapid transformation of these relations to the benefit of all people. That was the perception. And it is also true that there were good reasons for the socialist celebration of largeness, if you like, which are still valid. The social coordination of investment remains an integral feature of a desirable economy, even when this is not explicitly acknowledged. And development in the most essential sense of economic diversification necessarily requires centralized decisions. We have Robert Wade in the audience who knows a lot about these things. And large scale investment must be planned in some degree to be successful. Strategies of accumulation, the encouragement of socially desirable production of goods and services, and the distribution of wealth and income. They necessarily require some and often very substantial degrees of centralization. So it does this. Once you recognize this. This does mean that even in the emerging left, you cannot have a blind or simplistic celebration of everything small. Nevertheless, most tendencies in the newer left praxis typically foreground the need for generating or enhancing the viability of small scale production. So this is a clear reaction against past attempts at centralized control of all aspects of material life, which have been experienced as rigid, inflexible, hierarchical and lacking in accountability, which in effect made them the opposite of what was intended. It's also true that material conditions, I think, have changed to make largeness less desirable or necessary in some respects. For example, there's the recent experience of the downsides of largeness. The banks that are too big to fail, they become unaccountable and untaxable companies, and so on. And also technology, especially the convergence of ICT and energy technologies, is opening up new possibilities for productivity growth in decentralized settings, which increase the possibilities for locally managed, decentralized and globally connected post carbon economies. So emerging left movements and the states in which they dominate do not require or expect centralized ownership and control over all economic activities. Smallholder cultivation, small providers of goods and services, as well as manufactured goods, are recognized as worthy of direct state support and being provided sufficient enabling conditions for their activities. I have to differentiate this from this sort of celebration of informality and of strategies like micro finance, which are so beloved of the international development industry, because it's not about that. Where economies of scale are significant, there is renewed exploration within the left of forms like cooperatives and combinations in different forms. So it's really about trying to find a balance between large and small, which obviously differs according to context. Now, it's already evident that once you have an approach like this, it requires a much more complex approach to property rights. And I would argue that this constitutes the third major difference of the emerging left from earlier forms of socialism that did away with all private property and only recognized personal property. New Left thinking is generally quite vague and even ambivalent about private property, disliking it when it's seen as monopolizing or highly concentrated, for example, in multinational corporations, but otherwise not just accepting it, but even like in the case of small producers, even actually actively encouraging it. So increasingly there is explicit recognition of other forms of property rights, particularly communal property associated with traditional indigenous or autochthonous communities, who in turn are no longer derided as pre modern relics that have to be done away with, which was really part of the earlier socialist conception. Just as these emerging left tendencies in the emerging world engage more positively with formal democratic institutions, institutions and processes, so they also tend to speak more and more in the language of rights, which is in a sense the fourth new tendency. least in the developing countries. These rights are not seen in the individualistic sense of libertarian philosophy, but they're more broadly defined in terms of entitlements as well as recognizing the need for social and political voice, not just of citizens, but of communities and groups. In a sense, when you think about it, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its listings of various rights, can be interpreted as A socialist manifesto, since it requires the recognition of a wide variety of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights to be not only inalienable, but effectively a way of life. The way that various left governments and political groups have interpreted this in practice has been related to demands for citizens or groups entitlement. So from the state there tends to be much more explicit recognition of the rights of the elderly, of children, of young people, of people with disabilities. The acceptance of the rights of indigenous peoples and communities and even nations within the country is also much more common within the emerging left. So it must mean that there is greater recognition of a wider and more diverse character of the classes and groups of the exploited, which in turn requires changing modes of organization and mass mobilization. The fifth new feature, in a sense, is that the emerging left goes beyond traditional Left paradigms in recognizing various different cult and possibly overlapping social and cultural identities that shape economic, political and social realities. The standard left paradigm that emerged in the 19th and 20th century saw class as the fundamental contradiction within societies and imperialism as the defining feature of relations across countries. There was a tendency to see other cultural attributes as certainly less important and anyway more in the nature of subordinate and transient tendencies, pre modern or semi feudal relics of the past, which would be destroyed or at least attenuated by the expansion of market forces and capitalism generally. But the resilience of these socially determined patterns, as well as capitalism's remarkable ability to incorporate patterns of linguistic, ethnic, social exclusion and discrimination as factors in commercial activity and labor markets, has forced a more nuanced understanding. This has led to a realization that addressing issues only in class terms is no longer sufficient. And many strands of the emerging left are now considered much more explicitly and even dominantly, sometimes with addressing the inequalities, oppression and exploitation that arise from these non economic forces. It's not always clear that this shift in focus is inevitably justified, especially as class and imperialism are still such powerful determining forces. But certainly this is an important characteristic of many emerging left movements. The most significant such attribute is gender. And this is the next aspect, in a sense, that is explicitly incorporated into emerging left tendencies. A changed attitude to the woman question, if you like, and associated with this a more complex attitude to the nature of exploitation. I mean, of course, women have always been part of the working class. Even when they've not been acknowledged as workers in their own rights, they've always been essential to the functioning of the system, not only through active involvement in production, but in social reproduction. But even so, it took a very long time for women's struggles to be accepted as an integral part of working class struggles for a better society in general. For more than a century, trade unions and workers organizations were generally male preserves. And this was very true in large parts of the developing world. And the male breadwinner model of the household in which the the husband, father worked outside to earn money and the wife, mother did not get outside income and handle domestic work, dominated even in left thinking. It's really taken prolonged struggle and determined mobilization to generate greater social recognition of the role of women not just as wage workers in different forms, but also in terms of the crucial significance of unpaid household and community based work. Now I do think that these specific social, cultural, political constraints that mold the lives of women are better recognized. I don't mean to say that patriarchy has suddenly disappeared from the ranks of leftist organizations and movements. I think, unfortunately, this is a much longer struggle. But in a sense, the wider perception of the ways in which the gender construction of society affects both men and women in so many aspects of their lives is at least explicitly, if not always in practice, a more serious concern in the emerging left. Finally, the relationship of human societies with nature. I think this is undergoing much more comprehensive interrogation than ever before. Traditional Marxists tended to be technology fans. They would glory in the development of productive forces as expression of the forward movement of society and object to relations of production that thwart or prevent this forward movement. Now, it's true that this need not require an exploitative and aggressive attitude to nature and to the use of natural wealth. But in actual practice this was only too often the case. The requirements of an organic and sustainable attitude to nature were rarely factored into discussions about accumulation and productive expansion. I think all this has changed quite dramatically in the recent past, and it's partly because one of the primary contradictions of capitalism today is expressed in the ecological limits that are increasingly evidenced not just by climate change, but by pollution, degradation over extraction and other destruction of nature. These have created undeniably unsustainable patterns of production, consumption and accumulation, which are generating open conflicts about resources and forcing societies to change, often in undesired ways, and therefore calls for a more humane and just. Societies have to incorporate these critical concerns. So today many of those who call themselves socialists see environmental conservation, the protection of ecosystems, biodiversity, the integrity of a country's genetic assets, the prevention of environmental damage, the recovery of degraded national basis as matters of public interest and strategy. I have said earlier that these positions are not completely new, and certainly there are many strands of earlier left thought that contain some elements or versions of all of these ideas, certainly the concern with women's rights, the recognition of other forms of oppression and discrimination, and even some concerns of the relationship with nature can be discerned even in the writings of Marx and Engels, as well as other socialist thinkers. But it is also true that these seven features of the emerging Left do represent departures from the traditional Left paradigm that became, in a sense, the body of knowledge that many of us inherited. But despite these differences, I think there are also elements of strong continuity that still remain. And there are two that I would like to highlight. The attitude and the significance of the nation state and the attitude to imperialism. I think it's intriguing that despite many cultural, economic, social changes brought about by globalization, these concerns have remained, especially in the developing world. At one level, of course, the nation state. The focus on the nation state is obvious because if there are demands for rights of individuals or communities or nature, you have to define them in relation to the locus whereby such rights will be ensured. And the nation state remains the basic location for such demands and negotiation. It is the terrain in which these demands for rights are actually carried. The struggle is carried out, and the demands generated by the proliferation of current economic forces require state intervention in all sorts of ways. Reigning in finance, generating economies of scale, determining the extent of the use of the products of nature, the redistribution of assets and income, all of these things, things. So how leftists engage with the state, even when they recognize what Miliband would have called it, you know, the executive arm of the bourgeoisie, it is still an arena of constant negotiation. I think there's a fine line that left engagement with the state must tread between compromise that thwarts all progressive intent and an insistence on purity that is not just false, but actually renders Left forces irrelevant. But in addition, the transformation of the state is still seen as necessary, but it's perceived to be possible through a much wider range of strategies than were available to the traditional left of the 20th century, including the participation in democratic processes that I have talked about before, and demands for larger democratic empowerment of the people. But it's also true that material forces have transcended the somewhat limited boundary of the nation state. The cosmopolitan character of capitalist production and accumulation that Marx talked about in the Communist Manifesto has never been more evident, and this has abundant implications for effective popular collaboration and mobilization for change. How that will translate into effective Left practice is, I believe, still an open question. I think it is really a dilemma that hasn't been resolved. This leads, in a sense, to the second continuity. The concern of the emerging left in the emerging world, with imperialism in the broad sense, imperialism not in a very conventional sense, but imperialism in the broader sense of the use of the nation state in the struggle of large capital to control economic territory of different kinds. This can be land and other resources, labor markets, knowledge and technology, and so on. Now, I think this is actually an area of difference with left tendencies in the developed world, or at least some left tendencies in the developed world, which increasingly tend to view imperialism as an outdated concept which has been rendered irrelevant by globalization, and sometimes, at least from the outside, seem to forget or even ignore the material content of much of international relations today. But the struggle for economic territory of different kinds is at least as significant as before, and in fact, the relative decline of the only current superpower has further accentuated it. So the left in the emerging world is not only concerned with these tendencies, but also has to confront it in its quotidian practice, which includes not just standard weapons like war and military aggression, but also newer instruments like the control over privatized intellectual property rights and trade agreements, or economic partnership agreements that fundamentally protect large capital of particular nations. For these and other reasons, the left, and in fact more than the left, a broader public perception in the developing world, tends to be much more cynical about the intent and nature of humanitarian intervention to forcibly export democracy and other attempts to enforce the international rule of law in very selective cases. When I first thought of the subject matter for this lecture, it seemed as if the alternative progressive visions for future organization of economies and societies were both more likely and more prevalent in the global South. And indeed, just as there are those who think that the fulcrum of global power is shifting, however slowly and unevenly, towards the south and some countries in the South. It can be argued that the more exciting and imaginative forms of socialist praxis are increasingly to be found in countries that are currently in the global periphery. But recent happenings in Europe and even the United States suggest a more complex reality in the north, as well. As the established beliefs get challenged and there are more thoughtful formulations of feasible alternatives, as the Occupy movement or the Indignados and other political movements suggest, as more and more people engage and recognize with how current economic structures operate in ways that are fundamentally inimical to their interests, the stronger and sharper becomes the search for economic alternatives. I think that this is inevitable because the fundamental premises of the socialist project remain as valid as ever. What are those fundamental premises? The unequal, exploitative and oppressive nature of capitalism, the capacity of human beings to change society and thereby to alter their own future in a progressive direction, and the necessity of collective organization to do so. The fecundity of socialist alternatives cropping up in different parts of the world suggests that whatever we may think to the contrary, in what are otherwise generally depressing times, this project is still very dynamic and very exciting. Thank you very much.
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A
Thank you very much for that talk. I mean, it was an extremely brave effort to cover a range of different developments in a huge range of different parts of the world, starting with the Global south and then ending even drawing us in here in the North. We're open now for questions, and I am ready to take. In terms of macroeconomic framework, don't you think that the New Left still operates in the neoliberal macroeconomic framework in terms of believing in fiscal discipline and monetary stability?
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B
Yes, but is it okay? Can you hear me if I. Can you hear me here? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Rami, you know it's true. Let me distinguish between what you could call social democracy kinds of New Left and the most self proclaimed radical versions of the New Left. For example, governments in Latin America who also do believe in macroeconomic stability, not because they believe inherently in macroeconomic stability, but because they're operating in a globalized world in which they will be forced to believe in it very quickly if they don't. My limited, I must admit, but still, the little experience I've had with some governments in Latin America, like Ecuador, Argentina and so on, suggests that. They are questioning the fundamentals that require that kind of thing. Not that they're questioning the need for, let's say, for fiscal discipline in the medium term, but short term fiscal discipline. Certainly there is an issue, and certainly pro cyclical fiscal discipline. There is an issue, but they are questioning, for example, patterns of financial structure that reduce the ability for monetary policy to have an effect. So they are questioning the underlying premises which would affect how you view macroeconomic policy. Macroeconomic policy in a world where finance is free and concentrated is very different from one where you're trying to rein it in and where you're preventing it from doing certain things. I don't know if I've made that clear, but.
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A
Yes, the gentleman at the back.
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B
Good evening, my name is Kaustav Bhattacharya.
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A
I have two questions. The first question is in the context of the emerging world, and particularly in India.
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B
We had a lot of democratic left parties and one of them ruled in one part of India for nearly three decades.
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A
And a lot of the leadership of.
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B
This left parties and support base was.
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A
From the Middle class professionals and contemporary Indian middle class is quite cynical of.
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B
Some of these movements.
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A
As evidence from the media, how do you see the middle class in the emerging world, particularly in the Indian context.
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B
Engaging with this emerging left?
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A
And my second question is, do you see emerging left coalescing along the lines of shared language? For example, can we say there's an emerging left among the Commonwealth countries like.
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B
South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, because.
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A
They shared a certain common language? Thank you.
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B
Yeah, these are very interesting question, especially a second. Okay, the emerging. The middle class in the emerging world. Now, this is huge because, you know, as you know, the middle class is not just huge, but growing massively. Let me begin with India. And okay, unfortunately, the history of India suggests that no major political change has been possible without the support of the middle class, which is extremely unfortunate because currently the middle class is very reactionary. Okay. It's a huge beneficiary of this thing about globalization, you know, this whole thing about the exploding Indian market and so on. Even if it is 10% of the population or 15% of the population, that's more than 150 million people, which is reasonably large market, shall we say. So, yes, there is a problem here. The middle class, I would not characterize in India for sure as being part of a movement that would, let's say, support even one of these propositions beyond really, you know, really not particularly interested in any of this. But then remember that the Indian middle class has still been a great beneficiary of this process. It still hasn't been bashed. Okay? Latin America, where the middle class has been bashed, you get a much greater coalescing around certain of the, let's say, around a lot of these propositions. And what is quite interesting, in countries that are highly polarized, Venezuela is the extreme case. So I'm actually leaving Venezuela out. But if you take other countries that are highly polarized, like Ecuador or like Bolivia or like Argentina, you find that the middle class also is split. It's no longer the case that, you know, they see that. That they are direct material beneficiaries of many of these processes. They are often now at the receiving end of the austerity or the adjustment or all the things which are now actually very familiar terms in Europe. I no longer have to explain these in Europe. It's interesting. So I think that there is a change in how what we would broadly call a middle class has been responding to many of these in different countries, depending on what has happened in terms of the benefits. Remember that, you know, the growth process. I mean, China and India are really countries where this middle class has been a huge beneficiary of this pattern of accumulation. There are segments. I think what is happening even in India, certainly to a much greater extent so far in China, is that this process, it's a very unequal process, but it generates aspirations among everyone, including certainly those who have gone in for some education, increasingly privatized higher education with large debts involved and so on. And so when these aspirations come into conflict with a reality that is not going to deliver, then you will get responses. It hasn't happened yet, but yes, there's hope and yes, I think we can look around and see that it is happening in a sense, sense in, in these other countries, the common language, you know, this is a really difficult one. I don't know. By language you mean like English, French, etc. No, no, no. I mean in South Africa they're saying very different things from what they're saying in India, for example. Latin America we tend to lump together because I don't speak Spanish or Portuguese. And then we get what we get from the English language media. But when you visit there, you discover that there are very, very significant differences and a proliferation of alternative views. I'm not. But it is true that Latin America has suddenly a range of governments that is saying relatively similar things, in a sense, you know, also because if you look for the real laboratory for the neoliberal experiment, it was definitely Latin America. So they have been there, done that, and lost their T shirts decades ago, you know, in a sense, therefore they have. The glamour of that particular project is not available to anyone in Latin America anymore, in a sense. So that has created some homogeneity, I would say perhaps, but not. I don't know whether you could call that language. I'm not sure what to call it actually. But it's an interesting point. I have to. Certainly in the English speaking world you get a very, very wide range of responses not quite the same.
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A
Okay, this, the woman here was the grey.
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B
I have a question regarding what falls under the last point we discussed about the relationship with nature and the environment. And this is with reference to the agrarian food crisis. And I guess one of the responses in the emerging left has been this sovereignty, you know, food sovereignty movement. And so, I mean, I don't mind, my knowledge is more about India. So it's fine if you give that as a specific response or in general, what do you think is the possibility of any sort of transformation coming out of that?
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A
And since it's really predicated on delinking from the market.
- [42:35]
B
And that's a problem. Yes. You know, this is a really tough one in India. There is a huge struggle going on around the issue of food security because we have a government, a bourgeoisie and a middle class which actually wants greater integration with global food production structures, global distribution networks and says that the problem, says that there's a problem because we haven't integrated enough, because we still have largely peasant agriculture, which is increasingly less and less viable. So part of the struggle today, even among social movements that don't see it as the solution, is just to make. Just to make basic agriculture commercially viable for the small farmers, which it isn't today. Increasingly, you know, what has happened is that you have a combination of very volatile output prices and dramatically rising input prices associated with falling productivity of the soil, which makes agriculture simply financially not viable. So the first is to just simply make it viable. Whether that can be done through delinking is the problem here is that you're talking about farmers who have already been integrated. So they already have large debts, they already have various features which they cannot simply wish away. And so it's a question of how you address an agriculture that has already been corrupted by the inroads of the market, but in which you want to create sustainable practices that allow the farmers to survive in a situation where delinking immediately is not an available option. You know, they can't simply say, well, I won't repay your debt because tomorrow somebody will come and basically take over whatever property you possess and make you various offers you can't refuse, and so on and so forth. So I think it's a more complex problem, certainly in India, but in a large. In many other countries as well, which is that we are now talking about processes of commercial integration that have gone very deep. Not. And the purpose of a large part of state policy is to make it even deeper. There's a kind of attempt at the destruction of the viability of small farming, which is part of what people have called the predatory commercialization of the countryside in a way to kind of allow large corporates, in a sense, these are still the great large hinterlands. China and India are still the great hinterlands for global capital. We haven't done a whole bunch of things that they rest of the world has already done. So there is a huge attempt to prize open whatever exists already. So some of it is still rear guard action in such a context. Can you go in for the newer kinds of alternatives that you're talking about? I'm not sure it can work quite in the same way. I think that, for example, the various experiments that are there in Europe, alternative farming practices, often based on alternative money and all kinds of things, things are possibly not really applicable right now in many developing countries because the material context is a bit different now. It's an open question. I mean, it's worth thinking about more.
- [45:57]
A
Okay, Robert, thank you very much for the talk. You have spoken at the level of nations and regions. Is this working? Yes. Nations and regions. I'm wondering what you think is happening at the international level, that is the level of international organizations. Do you think that there are international organizations where any of these ideas, or at least the, any of the. The more economic ideas of the emerging left, have some traction? You were at the ministerial meeting of UNCTAD in Doha just a few weeks ago. UNCTAD is the one UN organization where you might say there is some traction of some of these ideas. It's the think tank for developing countries. But you witnessed how ferociously and how effectively all of the Western states pressed to get UNCTAD to stop saying anything about the financial crisis, about the roots of the financial crisis, and get it into subjects like how to get more FDI into developing countries, how to improve governance in developing countries, how to pay more attention to youth and to gender and various other things. I mean, you saw how determinedly the Western countries were to close down this one organization which gave some traction to these ideas. Certainly that's my interpretation. I was also there. So what is your impression of how these ideas have traction or not in international organizations?
- [48:01]
B
I think you're absolutely right. I think, you know, in a sense, there's fierce resistance to a lot of these ideas and also to the elements within the broader global community that are raising these ideas. There's fierce resistance or sometimes even operating by just ignoring them. I mean, Aktad, the attempt of, let us say, the Bretton woods sisters, World bank and IMF is just to ignore what they say, hoping that it'll go away, people won't notice it, even when it has been the most sensible economic voice internationally for two decades now. So you're absolutely right about that. But, okay, if I can put an optimistic spin on what you have described correctly as a very depressing reality, I do believe that the more the international organizations stick to this very reactionary position, the less relevant they're becoming. And, I mean, you look at the imf, they're just out of it, right? I mean, look at, look at the comments of Christine Lagarde on what is Happening in Europe, which is. It's so close to home that you will all understand it. They're just out of it. And. Okay, I think what is likely to happen and is already happening is that newer patterns of certainly aid and investment and certainly trade are meaning that less and less developing countries are spending a lot of time worrying about what, let's say, the Bretton woods sisters say, because the dominant source of finance certainly is not anymore the IMF of the World Bank. For most of the developing world, the dominant source of aid is not G8. The dominant source of thinking, I hope, I hope is no longer Washington Consensus either, because it just increasingly. Even the countries that are not explicitly, you know, wanting to do something different are finding that it doesn't work. And therefore I do believe that what we saw at Doha, what both of us observed quite remarkably, the extent of the fierceness of the resistance, for example, I forget the name of that group of countries with Switzerland and the UK and a number of others, fought till 4 o' clock in the morning to prevent UNCTAD from researching intellectual property rights, fought to exclude that among the list of things that UNCTAD could research in its mandate. So these really very, very fierce and determined struggle of these groups, but apparently the phrasing is such that they can still do it under some other head. They managed to find some legal ruse whereby they can still do this. But I do believe, in a sense this is like a kind of last gasp, if you see what I mean, that we don't want people to talk about these things because, you know, if they tell it like it is, then more people might realize that a lot of this, the intellectual foundations of this argument is a house of straw. So I'm trying desperately, as you can see, to be optimistic. I agree with you. International organizations right now are the pits. Okay? On the other hand, the pits here they become. The more chances there are that they will be less relevant. I hope.
- [51:33]
A
Yes, this person here in the blue and then after that, this person in the group, but one at a time.
- [51:44]
B
Hello, my name's Rachel, I'm a student and I'd like to push you a little bit more on the left wing governments in Latin America. Two issues which are pretty closely related. These countries, a lot of them are.
- [51:56]
A
Exporters, mainly hydrocarbon exports.
- [51:58]
B
And they were, they were before the left wing governments and they still are. And one criticism is that they haven't really done enough to move away from that. And so first question is, is that a fair criticism?
- [52:12]
A
Is it realistic to expect them to.
- [52:13]
B
Have Diversified more or are they just making the best with what they have? And related to that is this issue.
- [52:19]
A
Of integrating the ecological concerns. Because this is also one of the conflicts we're seeing in these countries.
- [52:26]
B
It's one thing to acknowledge ecological limits when the left is out of power, but a very different question when.
- [52:33]
A
When they're in power and very dependent on exploiting oil and gas and things like that.
- [52:39]
B
Yeah, both very good and very tough questions. You know, the diversification. Every country that certainly I have been into or had some experience of interacting with the policymakers there is deeply concerned about diversification. They're obsessed with it. They're all desperately thinking of strategies for diversification. Diversification, yes. They've been relatively. I mean, if you look at the economic structure, it hasn't changed, but they don't change in five years or 10 years. Yeah, these things take time. All of them are trying to institute trade and industrial policies for diversification. And I mean, I can give you details for certain, you know, for particular countries, but all of them are trying to do that. On the resource issue, though, I would like to say, you know, every time people talk about the successes, prices of some country, let's say Ecuador, that is all, well, they've got oil, they've got gas, so, you know, fine, what's the big deal? Or Venezuela, you know, there's no problem. They're just living off their oil. Well, yes, but, you know, Nigeria has oil, has a very large export. Has anything good happened in Nigeria that we know of in the recent past? A number of other countries that are strictly following the Washington consensus have oil. East Timor, I mean, you know, so it's not. You can have oil and you can use the surpluses that you get in a period of rent from the natural resources in ways that benefit your people and lead to some future diversification and avoiding the resource curse or the Dutch disease or whatever you like, or you can have oil and go the other way. All these countries are concerned with diversification. I think some of them are attempting it in particular ways which are not showing in the data. But these are things that take time. You know, whether you're looking at attempts at certain kinds of industrial policy. In Argentina, I mean, you know, certainly they're aggressively into industrial policy. We can argue about whether it's the best way or the worst way, but they're into it. Brazil is ex. Openly talking about industrial policy. South Africa is having a conference, the government of South Africa, Africa next week is having a big conference on industrial policy to share the ideas and the concerns and how to do it and so on. So I think diversification is a central concern. It is something that necessarily requires gestation lags. I do believe that strategies of higher education are also very much part of diversification which have even longer lags. You know, everyone talks about India's software success. It's entirely the product of the Nehruvian setting up of higher education institutions and technical institutions in the 60s and so on. So I'm not so negative about the fact that I think that yes, it's a good. We used to talk about resource curse. I think that these are countries that have shown that it need not be a curse. And the fact that right now the economic structure does not show big change doesn't mean that there are not policies attempted which may cause a change in the economic structure. It's not an overnight thing as I mean as Robert Wade will tell you that even in East Asia these are things that take time in a sense. On the ecological concerns, certainly it is true, and I think both Bolivia and Ecuador summarize this, that you have governments that come into power with the best of intentions. They have constitutions which explicitly give rights to Pachamama, Mother Nature, which is, you know, Kichwa for nature. And they have all kinds of good declarations about how they are going to not over exploit and do everything to protect and conserve and preserve and all of that kind of thing. But yes, on the other hand they are poor developing economies and they need to develop and diversify and et cetera. And they have oil. So what do you do, how much do you extract, how much do you leave and so on. I think it's a constant negotiation and struggle. I don't think it's a one off thing that okay. In Ecuador when I was there, there was this huge struggle going on and there were two things happening. One is that, you know, there is a bio reserve that they've been trying to set up, the Yasuni Forest Reserve, which what they're trying to do is to keep the oil in the ground and create it as a kind of know, eco tourism reserve. That is to say, but obviously this is expensive because every time what you're leaving in the ground, you're losing in terms of current revenue and so on. So they said we are preserving a global heritage, we are contributing to the reduction of global carbon emissions. We are doing all of the following good stuff. So the global community, if you really care about it, you should be part of this by helping us to finance this and a relatively small amount of Finances what they had asked, basically what they're telling the developed world. Put your money where your mouth is. We're doing exactly what you want us to do. We are trying to fund this. We will fund half of it, but for the other half, we are expecting the international community to fund it. So far, zero, nothing, absolute zero has come in the way of any kind of recognition of this even. And what has happened is that as the pressures from the existing bourgeoisie in Ecuador and from the Ministry of Finance and from etc become stronger, they have allowed drilling in neighboring locations to the Yasuni. Not within Yasuni, they've kept Yasuni, but the neighboring location. And there's huge outcry and a whole bunch of indigenous communities and ecological groups and green people, etc have decried it and denounced it and said that it's betrayal and it's on. So we don't know. Finally, it's a constant negotiation. I don't believe there's a one. And this is a government with the best possible intentions, but facing all these contending pressures and which way every one of them goes. I think a very similar thing is going on in Bolivia. Evo Morales, the same groups who were his ardent supporters and et cetera, are blocking the roads in certain states because of some of the drilling and so on. So it's a continuing thing. I don't think there is an easy resolution on it.
- [58:44]
A
Right. I think you had a question there. The person in the green shirt. Is there. Yes, thank you for that lecture. Mine is a follow up of the last question. In fact, you mentioned alternatives at transformation and transcending capitalism. I thought of, in terms of India and development, a place called Kerala State that had a socialist model and that seemed to work at the time. Now you're saying that the left is irrelevant. Is there a chance of a reemergence of the left as an alternative for progressive development in the south?
- [59:24]
B
Absolutely. I don't think the left is irrelevant at all. I think it's completely relevant, actually. And I think. No, really, I mean, I don't think it's irrelevant at all in Kerala. In fact, what's very interesting is that Kerala is a very funny state. Every five years they always throw out the party in power. This has happened for the last 35 years. Just as West Bengal kept the Same party for 35 years in Kerala they changed seven times, okay? In fact, nine times. They've been changing all the time. This is the first time when they lost by a hair's breadth. I mean, really just. It was Almost, I think down to a few thousand votes in certain constituencies. So they were actually winning. But more significant than that is that what has happened in Kerala is that the discourse, the political discourse has completely changed so that the non left coalition which is run by the Congress Party in Kerala is completely different from the Congress Party anywhere else in India. They are completely. If you talk, if you hear them talk, they sound completely left. Okay? The discourse has shifted completely to the left and that is what is seen as the public discourse. Certain things are taken for granted that have to be delivered. The public delivery of essential social etc, etc. And many of the innovations of left practice, including decentralized decision making and decentralized planning, etc. Have also been seen as, you know, as nothing can be changed in those. In other words, no government will dare to touch it. So even if they're not in power, the shadow runs long and deep in a sense, and that's a good thing. It is interesting to note that even in West Bengal, where the left was unseated after 35 years, the new government, which is a very bizarre government run by a very bizarre lady, but the discourse is completely to the left of the previous government. The discourse, the political discourse is all about. It's completely to the left, okay? It's all about the viability of small cultivation, the control of large capital, the prevention of multinationals. And it's very strange because a whole bunch of right wing people piled onto her bandwagon thinking, finally we're throwing out the left and now we're stuck with this woman who is pushing them around and they don't know how to handle it. But I'm saying that the political discourse changes when you have, you know, the. Okay, this young man, right?
- [61:50]
A
Yes.
- [61:50]
B
Oh, and then in the back there as well. Thank you. Professor Ghosh, I'm a student at ucl. I have a question for you. Many economists have pointed out that as a country reaches its middle income income status, it can be quite hard for that country to break out of that. So they call middle income trap. And they really need further political and social reforms in order to break out of that trap. So as countries like China, Vietnam, Indonesia and India gradually reach that point, do you think that, that they will continue reforms or, you know, I mean, where will they go both intellectually, politically and economically? Thank you. Okay. Yeah, this is, you know, to be honest, I have always been quite bemused by this middle income trap concept. Okay? Because this whole notion that the minute you hit, you know, thousand GD per capita gdp, US thousand Dollars per capita gdp, GDP in purchasing power, parity. Suddenly there's some fundamental change in structure and then you can get, you lose competitiveness to poorer countries, but you're not yet significant enough to join the big guys. I found that problematic. And I think it's problematic because there's no underlying analytical reason why this should happen, okay? And let's face it, this middle income is a changing population. Greece is going to join it very quickly. It's already poorer than Mexico, it's already poorer than South Korea. So let's say that this is. It's a room in which people come and go rather than a bunch of people stuck in there unable to get out. I think that the fundamental difficulty in terms of economic diversification today, if you had to ask me one thing, I would say it's intellectual property. I would say that the big problem that is constraining the future expansion of countries that have huge potential, let's say the brics, okay, is not that they haven't done enough reform or that they haven't, I don't know what, you know, which, whenever people say you haven't done enough reform, what they say is let our capital in there. That's basically what they're saying. So I don't think that the problem with a lot of these countries with potential is that they're not doing enough reform. I think the problem is that, well, in India we have our own indigenous. We have lots of problems, okay? Including a political class that is not conducive to sustainable development. Shall I put it mildly? I can think of ruder ways to express it. But, you know, but it is the case that, for example, in China it is now openly acknowledged. In Brazil, it is openly acknowledged. In Argentina, where I was recently, it's openly acknowledged increasingly in countries like South Africa as well, that even when you want to diversify, even when you're willing to put in place trade and industrial policies which you can somehow swing even the WTO to do, you can manage in various ways. You are deeply constrained by inadequate access to knowledge, okay? And let's face it, no country in the world has developed without that access, just as they haven't developed without directed finance. So this is a growing concern. And so there's much more concern. China, for example, has just increased its R and D spending to 7% of GDP. I mean, they can do it, they can do these huge swings, but most other countries can't. And I think that's the big constraint, if you ask me. What's the middle income trap? It's the same trap for everybody. It is that there is this inadequate access to knowledge in different forms that prevents further expansion.
- [66:06]
A
Yes. This gentleman on the right, thank you for a very inspiring talk. Appreciate it very much. Do you have any thoughts on institutional reform at a world level like sort of the UN and World bank and in what way the emerging left can have an impact on that? I mean your comments about Untad is it are very, you know, relevant in that regard and it's a story that's often repeated and I lament the. You know, it's sort of almost archaic in terms of the processes that take place or the framing. Framing of it in some way. So I wondered if you had any thoughts about how these venues or forums may be reformed in some way and how the emerging left, if that's the case or do they need reforming or. I mean, you know, I mean, what's your view on that?
- [67:09]
B
You know, it's so difficult because. Yeah, let me put it this way. Does the world economy need international organizations with the mandate of the IMF and the World Bank? Yes. Okay. Does the world today need the current IMF and the World Bank? No. Does the world today need the current IMF and the World Bank? No. Okay. I mean, yes, of course we do need an international organization. We need, you know, those organizations with that mandate to do those things. The way they operate now is, I would say inimical to the interests of development for sure with that we've known for a while. But it turns out they're even inimical to you guys. I mean they're inimical to everybody. It's a nice even hand out there now. So can they be reformed? Neutron bomb perhaps? I mean, okay, this is not for. This is not the way to say it but what I mean is that the structure of the organization is desirable. The current power relations in these organizations is disastrous. And it's not just a question of the voting shares, which is important, but it's not that. It is that they've been completely taken over by global capital in different ways ways and are furthering the interests of the capital rather than the people in all there. Can they be reformed by making it more of a UN type system? One country, one vote? No, because the WTO is like that, right? So you have a supposedly, you know, level playing field and you have some very large fat sumo wrestlers and a few little, you know, two year olds or something trying to. To fight. So how to reform them is a. I don't know, it's a tough one. It's a very tough one. Sorry, I wasn't of much help on that.
- [69:13]
A
Right. The person in purple's been waiting for a while.
- [69:22]
B
Thank you. I'm an LSE alum and I had two questions. One, sorry, is it easier without the microphone or. No? Okay, sorry. First is that there's been a lot of talk recently in the media about the alternative to neoliberalism not being the left, but being the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism, you know, which is state led. And it's kind of a mixture, but, you know, it's certainly not something the left would consider to be in its own intellectual tradition. I was wondering if the left and developing world had an answer to that or whether it's just seen as, you know, another brand of neoliberalism or what have you. And the other question I had real quick, what would you consider the left in India? Because sometimes in the press the Congress Party is described as being the left wing party in India. And it's pretty obvious from your statements that you would not consider that to be in any way, shape or form the case. I was just curious. Yeah. In terms of the Chinese model, I don't think you would find too many people who, you know, even if they say so explicitly, you cross, you know, you sort of sit them down and give them a drink and ask them, tell me the truth. And they will not say that this is a model of socialism. Certainly nobody I have ever met in China talks about socialism except for the New left and they're talking about something else, not what's going on now. So I think the Chinese model is a very effective model of state led economic diversification. It's very effective because of the advantages that centralized planning and all of that give you. Okay. But it is a model that is very fragile. And in fact, I do believe that that is a system sitting on a powder cake, actually, because it's a system that has been increasingly based on the delivery of higher and higher rates of growth and generating aspirations. So that, you know, in a sense it's a kind of Faustian bargain. You give up on other things so that you keep getting more and more of the goodies, in a sense. And this is what the people have been more and more fed with. And that is coming up against all kinds of problems. One is that there is a general disaffection with that bargain in the first place, but the second is that increasingly the state is finding it hard to meet their terms because, you know, I mean, everywhere else in the world, a 6% rate of growth of GDP would be seen as okay, no big deal, and good. In fact, I mean, wonderful in some places. Okay. In China, it's a disaster because the expectation levels have been raised to such an extent and the employment generation is so low per unit of GDP growth that that kind of slowdown is going to give you political convulsions. And I do believe that, in fact, this is a Communist Party that is well aware of it. And I think that the kinds of things which we get very hidden suggestions of the Bo Xilai case, which is ongoing, I don't think it's over, and so on, are part of a power struggle that actually reflects very different positions on how to deal with what is universally recognized among the elite as a problem. So I don't think the Chinese model is sustainable beyond a point today anymore. I think that it ran its course in a sense, in terms of the poverty reduction. And remember that that poverty reduction was very critically linked to two things, to the improvement in terms of trade in agriculture and the ability to move people out of agriculture. That combination, that was it. That was what determined the poverty reduction. As both of these come under threat, it's really not so clear anymore that it's even economically such a clever model. Right now, the second question was on.
- [73:21]
A
Who'S the left?
- [73:22]
B
The Indian left. Who's the Indian left? Yeah. Well, okay, let me put it this way. The current government, the people in positions of power are not left within the Congress Party. Yes, there are definitely elements that would be called leftist in any other country. And even in India, their positions, as I mentioned to you, the government in Kerala, the positions it takes are very much to the left and certainly unrecognisable in the Congress Party in other parts of the country. So it's a very broad church. Okay, but when I think of the left in India, I certainly think of the major left parties, but I also think of a whole bunch of. I don't know whether this is a common global term, you know, organizations and what I call social movements, which are coalitions of groups of. Sometimes they come together for certain things and then they also come. They join up for something else. And there is a network of these which is important in changing public policy discourse. For example, when we had the Employment Guarantee act or when we had the right to information, these were things that were the product of sustained mobilization by a combination of these forces, that is to say, the social movements and the left parties. And it wouldn't have been possible without them coming together. So that's what I think of In India as the emerging left, if you like.
- [74:44]
A
Okay, can I just get a feeling for how many more people want to ask questions? So two people here. What am I doing? And one up the back there. So what? I.
- [74:55]
B
Well, I'll.
- [74:57]
A
Sorry, fourth one. Okay, well then maybe we'll take them in two. If you just keep some notes first with you and then you. That was you? Yes, sorry. Very quick question. I hope in the emerged world, if you like, a lot of the change in the left recently is coming from movements rather than political parties.
- [75:17]
B
You mentioned Occupy.
- [75:18]
A
I'm thinking things like 38 degrees. To what extent do you think movements are going to be more important than.
- [75:25]
B
Political parties themselves in the emerged world?
- [75:29]
A
And to what extent do you think.
- [75:30]
B
That will be different in the emerging world?
- [75:47]
A
Thank you.
- [75:48]
B
I very much like the argument about United nations institutions and, and the logic of following the money.
- [75:56]
A
So my question would be as.
- [75:58]
B
I find that capital in a sense sort of also defines our conceptual space very much in terms of human capital and social capital. But on the other hand, if we talk about development, ethical or rights based approaches sort of tend to struggle against the economic argument, if I would put it that way.
- [76:20]
A
So I wonder, being an development economist in this sense, and ecological economics is.
- [76:28]
B
Also sort of a counter argument against mainstream economics, do you see other conceptual.
- [76:35]
A
Arguments which might challenge the economical argument, so to say. Thank you.
- [76:41]
B
Okay, thank you very much. Yeah. Movements versus political parties. You know, I think that's also true in India and certainly in many other parts of the world. Even in Latin America, when you think of it, Ecuador is fascinating. You know, this guy Correa got elected. He didn't have a party. He was put up by a combination of social movements and NGOs and various social forces. He was an economist who had been a minister in a previous one of the previous governments and he got thrown out because in his budget he tried to increase taxation or something. So he lasted for maybe three months in the ministry, but then he was seen as this good guy by these progressive forces. So to everyone's surprise, he won the presidential election. He had to then go back and make a party and they made a party again with the assistance of all these various groups which had then swept the, you know, the parliamentary polls and so on so forth, and which is now creating all this angst about this populist kind of movements. And you know, you can imagine what the right wing media is saying about this kind of thing. So I think it's not just in the emerged world, okay, if you look at Greece Right. I mean, Syriza comes up from nowhere. Why? Because the, I mean, look at the disgusting behavior of both PASOK and that Communist, Communist Party, kkr, both of which are just so out of reality in a sense. Right. So I think the politics will throw up alternatives and often they can be much more rapid than people expect. How sustained they are, we have to see. But I think that earlier distinction we would make that, you know, okay, a political party is okay, it's good, it's safe, it's established, it has a network, it has organization, organization, it can mobilize. And then there are all these other riffraff out there, you know, who are sort of the disorganized left. It's valid in some cases, but it's becoming less valid partly because the parties have been relatively rigid. And so a lot of that's why I'm saying a lot of what I'm calling emerging left is not necessarily very clearly defined in party terms. It's often an amorphous thing in which it can include a party but also include others and so on. And it's true for both emerged and emerging worlds. I would say on the other question, you know, the rights based thing, I think it's a complete fallacy that sensible economics is against that. I think that's a myth that we have been fed and which unfortunately is believed only too often because constantly we are battered in the financial press and in the general media and overall by this thing that there is this hard technocratic stuff which economists understand and that, you know, all of you can talk with your feel good stuff, you know, touchy feely stuff about rights and women and ethnic and blah, blah, but you're not really with it in terms of the economy and what makes it work and so on. Now surely after 2007, everybody must realize that that's all crap, you know, I mean, it's not true, okay? In fact, a sustainable economy based on a generalized expansion of demand is much better off with better income distribution, better employment generation, etc. And all the things which are associated with a rights based approach, these are actually, and you know, this whole thing that there's no money for X and there's no money for, for why, but in fact there's money for bailouts, okay? I think it, I don't know, to me it's a source of wonder how this has not exposed the model more thoroughly. So I don't agree that we need an economic argument. I think we have the economic argument. I think it's a stronger economic argument. Definitely, for sure. Because the other side, there is no argument. Right. And it's really the politics which is restraining it and the huge, huge, huge role of the media, which is in a sense the elephant in the room. We haven't mentioned it, but I think the media is massively important in sustaining structures of power well beyond their due date, you know, in all of us as.
- [81:06]
A
Okay, now I think we'll just try and have quick questions and then. So there was two people, one person over there and one person over there and I'm going to ask you a quick question.
- [81:23]
B
No, no, I think it would be good if you could.
- [81:29]
A
Declaration of Human Rights could be read as a socialist manifesto. Isn't it the case that the Declaration of Human Rights is actually more fundamental of the two perspectives or ideologies and that you haven't so much about the United nations as a possible, for all its flaws, as a possible counterbalance relates a bit to the previous question philosophy, which is a basis for intervention in the nation states. I'm wondering if socialism could be, as you described as a much more flexible sofa than it used to be, slightly less grandiose. Maybe the energy is coming from, or can still come from the. Okay, yeah, Very, very briefly, I was thinking initially about the relations between the Naxalite insurrectionists and the previous left front government in West Bengal. And from that, wondering whether there are any trends in terms of the relationships between emerging left and the existing left organisations, whether there are trends in terms of cooperation or antagonism which can be seen across different countries. Ok, I'll just add a third one quickly. And you feel free to ignore it. I mean, really the question is what do you think the role of organised labour is in the industrialising world? After all, there's a standard story about the. The developed world which is that organised labour has declined and other forces have become more important. But there's a sense in which, in the industrializing world the situation is more as Marx described it when he was alive or heading in that direction. So what's your comment on that?
- [83:32]
B
Yes, Robin, another lecture on that one. Okay, yes, you're right. You know, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is like a statement of the ideal society in a way. Okay, so yes, if you want to put it that way, that it's more fundamental. You know, it's the set of goals, but it's goals that really. It's goals specified in terms of outcomes rather than mechanisms and processes. And that's where the hard work is in a sense. I mean, you know, I think the first is that while you will get a lot of people to agree to a lot of the tenets, although I think if everyone read all of them, I'm not sure how many would agree because they're pretty revolutionary, actually. So all the governments that signed on to it, I don't know what they were thinking, you know, because they're fairly revolutionary. But on the other hand, it doesn't really give you a template for how to organize your economy and your society and all of that kind of thing. And I think what socialist praxis, if you like, is trying to do today is get to that template that, okay, fine, there's that goal out there, but how do you do it? How do you. What are the systems, the economic structures, the processes, the mechanisms, the legal context? How do you develop all of that to actually go at least some of the way into achieving that? So, yes, and therefore, it has to be much more flexible. Because the other thing that we haven't mentioned is that for each of these things, there is huge resistance. So anybody who's trying to do anything good and is not able to do it, it's not only because they got it wrong or they were stupid or something, but because there's massive resistance and there are attempts to undermine it at every stage, not just by global capital, but by internal protest and dissent and internal media and all of that kind of thing. So it's not just that socialist. I mean, left is more flexible, but in a sense, they're forced to be because they're operating in a very difficult terrain. So you have to keep moving and doing fancy footwork all the time. In a way, the UN system? Yeah, I mean, you know, I just wish it could be somehow made more powerful. But as long as global power is unequally distributed, I have a feeling that there will be huge resistance. In a sense, the same thing applies, which is that the good of the UN is constantly being thwarted by the bad of. You know, so that while the shell is a very democratic and good shell, inside it, you put in one cage beasts of very different size and power, and therefore, the outcomes are really not always desirable. I mean, the UN Security Council is not always a terribly good instrument for large part of the developing world or for the world, actually, and so on. So, yes, the UN system has huge potential. How would one give it power to make it work better in a more positive way is really the huge question. And in terms of international relations, I really don't know at the moment. In a sense, I think it ties in a little Bit with what Robin was saying though about the working class or the organized labor in, in the developed world and developing. So I come back to that one. Noxilites and the left front, you know, I mean the left has always been great at internecine struggle, okay? Not the first time ever that they have been busy killing their own children or you know what I mean? So it's all the worst and the fiercest battles are fought with each other, the battles to the death, as it were, really. So even when the supposed aim is, you know, the same, it's often, and I think increasingly it's not even clear that the supposed aim is the same. I mentioned earlier that you see the Naxalites, where the Maoists in India would not agree with much of what I have said here, including you know, this whole reliance on formal democracy at all. They would see this as complete example of the non pure revisionists, etc, etc kind of thing. And I think that kind of tension still exists in large parts of the world. Not just in India or in West Bengal, but in many parts of the world where there are extreme variants that think that whatever's going on is a big disaster because it's caving into the system. In a sense, I think the change is that there is a whole bunch. The change in the developing world, I think in Europe and all you had it earlier, but is the sense that you can also work within the system to try and transform rather than from outside. So for us that's a relative novelty. What does that mean in terms of the emerging and the existing? You know, it's a constant change. It's an area of constant flux. So that if we talk about it today for a particular country, it would be very different from if we talk about it even a year from now, because the negotiations are constantly changing. Three years ago you would not find a social movement in Bolivia that was willing to say anything bad about Evo Morales. Today they're not willing to say anything good about Evo Morales. So it's a continuing terrain of negotiation. I don't think one could sort of pinpoint it easily and say, well, here it is in that singular sense, organized labor in the developed world. Yeah, it's dying and so on. But I think the great tragedy of organized labor in the developed world is the degree to which they have been convinced that it's all the fault of all these southern workers. There's all these bad guys in China who are all these exploited guys in China who are set upon by this terrible state and therefore are Working for one fifth of our price. And therefore that's our real problem. I think that's the big disaster for organized labor in the north, which is. I mean, the role of the media is huge in this, of course, but I mean, it's exemplified in so many different ways. It's like the trade unions of the United States, the steel workers putting up a case against China in the WTO because China is giving subsidies for green investment. I mean, this is what we've come to. Okay, so it's an extraordinary case of classic false consciousness, I think, where people have really been persuaded of the opposite of their own interests and in a sense, the situation. But this is actually different from your question. It's just that you're mentioning organized labor in the north has brought this home to me. The fundamental interest of labor everywhere are in greater organizing and in greater protection. But too often it's always been pitted up, you know, this whole labor aristocracy thing. It's very common in India. They say, oh, you know, there's a lucky bunch of trade unionized guys who get all the benefits and everybody is all poor. And that's the real problem. We should prevent them. Every time organized labor has been attacked, there has been an even worse attack on unorganized. In other words, it's directly related. An attack on organized labor is an attack on the working class. And it's only when organized labor is stronger that working conditions for all workers improve or that more and more workers come under the aegis of social protection, of minimum labor protection, and so on and so forth. I think the difficulty is that too often people, it's been pitted against, you know, the organized versus the unorganized, the northern worker versus the southern worker. So that we haven't identified, in a sense, the real enemies. And it's very easy then to take the easy way out. So it's much more that we need to recognize that it's not. This is a wrong representation of the reality and that the way forward is necessary for any kind of sustainable society, economy and global order. Because let's face it, it's not a sustainable global order either at the moment requires much more active, not just cooperation, but active working together of the people across the world. So not just workers of the world unite, but increasingly peoples of the world. We have to recognize that we are facing common threats and we're not facing each other. The more we face each other, the worse we make. Our possibilities for eradicating the government threats, I think.
- [92:27]
A
Well, that's an excellent point on which to stop Let me just say that I think not only has Professor Ghosh given us an excellent talk tonight, but she's given us trenchant answers to an incredibly wide range of questions. And for that, I think we're all grateful. Could you join me in thanking Professor.
- [92:48]
B
It.