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Before I start off, I'd like to make it clear that I didn't like the way Patnaik ended his lecture: "I'm Marxist." That just threw everything off-balance for me and I was forced to look at all the notes I'd taken in new light. Anyway, the lecture was, like I said, straightforward, filled with simple cause-effect relationships all over the place.
The rise of capitalism
The rise of capitalism as such was marred by three of its most significant consequences:
- The rise in numbers of the poor in western Europe
- Transitional problems in developing nations
- Institutionalization of equality
In fact, as businesses shifted toward more efficient models, workers began to lose their jobs en masse and were forced to migrate to destinations that promised employment and/or any other such necessities for survival. As a result of this exodus, those labourers who chose to stay back home were in the company of fewer consumers, and so with the same wage could enjoy a slightly enhanced standard of living. In a way, this movement of manpower could be described as the invisible hand of Smith as work, gradually stabilizing a drastically changing system.
Because of the lack of precedence, there was no defence for the argument that capitalism was the sole cause of these debilitating circumstances, and therefore transient economies began to face some resistance from the people of the states. However, in such an evaluation, the loss of jobs featured as a parameter while migration did not, and therefore, the other effects of moving workforce were disregarded. These are:
- Drop in unemployment - If the worker didn't have a job, he didn't stay unemployed in the that place. Instead, he moved to another place where he could be employed.
- Raise in standard of living for domestic workers (already discussed)
- Marketing of capitalist production - Countries slow to the awakening of capitalism suffered the "displacement" of the local markets because commercial proliferation of more-developed countries resulted in the encroachment of local markets
A cause-effect paradox
The first incongruence arises when capitalism, as the herald of modernity, gives rise to modern industrialist capitalist production that does not absorb labour (do artificial intelligence, the Large Hadron Collider, and space exploration seem like a consequence of the proliferation of Communism?).
The decrease in that absorptive power was mostly as a result of the introduction of labour market flexibility: in the words of economist Horst Siebert,
"Labour market institutions [can be] seen to inhibit the clearing functions of the market by weakening the demand for labor, making it less attractive to hire a worker by explicitly pushing up the wage costs or by introducing a negative shadow price for labor."
Furthermore, the high growth rate of industries ensures that divides are accentuated quickly: a man who continues to remain poor becomes too poor in the same time a man who is slightly rich becomes quickly rich. I don't condemn this; in fact, I stand by it.
Now, there's a certain vicious cycle that I've detailed here (with some exaggeration) that widens the gap between the rich and the poor in an economy driven by capitalistic initiatives. Capitalism could be said to add to such a cycle because it displaces the poor, keeps them from being reabsorbed into industries, and in the process renders migration moot. Therefore, while the poor increase in number, all the wealth is localized in smaller and smaller pockets even as redistribution becomes processually more difficult (which is the essence of the abrasive relationship between democracy and capitalism).
Helpless superheroes
To save the thus-displaced, the state intervenes, the position of its intervention resting on the discordant view that irrespective of regional or demographic disparities, the larger collective has its first duty toward the poor. Consequently, reservation was installed in order to safeguard, rather vouchsafe, opportunities for the marginalized and eventually kill marginalization itself. However, the onset of neo-liberalism saw a decline in state-support for the destitute.
(The plot between direct + indirect per capita food grain consumption on the Y-axis and per capita income on the X is logarithmic.)
Now, the idea of a government as such rests on the strength of communities, the oneness that people are capable of establishing as a consequences of concentric and concurrent goals. The notion of community, with the advent of capitalism, was split up neatly into a pre-capitalistic form and a post-capitalist form (although I prefer to call the latter the pro-capitalist form).
Before I continue to rant about the (good) mess that capitalism's landed us in, it'd be appropriate to discuss the one thing that the coming of modernism (as an accompaniment of capitalism) achieved: the penetration of education into the social strata. Education raised the expectations of the people and made them aware of the lack of resources in satiating those expectations. Education awakened the people to the real problems irking them without their knowledge. Education mobilized social frustration.
Soon, individuals began to break away from the pre-cap. community and "enrolled" with the proletariat (and I use the word only because social integration would've taken time). An alternate group of communities were also formed in the name of trade unions, rather as trade unions. Further, the breakup of the pro-cap. communities was exacerbated by the introduction of commodity production, and with it, competition, rivalry, and money.
Interlude: Rise of the Second Serfdom
Unfortunately, a Second Serfdom awaited the poor: just like the failure of the industries to reabsorb the unemployed spelled destitution, the failure of the proletariat to absorb the "countryside" individual gave cause for the pre-cap. communities to persist. When the proletariat shut its gates, the peasantry stayed on with the pre-cap. community it'd come from, and cut into its subsistence.
Again, as a result: persistence of institutionalized inequality (an axiomatic conclusion).
Forces at war and forces at work
The capitalist market is not an equalizing phenomenon, especially when it's known that the profits reaped thereof are directly proportional to the strength of the economic and social powers that engage within its ambit. Because of this tendency to counter any stabilizing agents, inequalities inherited from other bases also become susceptible to accentuation. These are the forces at war.
The interaction between the persistent pre-cap. communities and the rapidly growing pro-cap communities resulted in the engendering of identity politics, structured within the framework of negotiations between the two. Within the capitalist order of things, individuals were being coerced into particular roles that best suited their new lifestyle. Due to the consequent limitation of identity, it's not surprising that it became a battleground for political causes. One way or another, these were the forces at work.
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Notes:
- Superimposition - In those countries that developed capitalism later than the rest, the destruction of the old communities and the formation of the new ones were parallel processes, which was not the case with the early developers. So? So the pre-cap. communities were not fully broken down during the onset of capitalism, leading to a superimposition of the two. The early developers didn't have this problem.
- Fail-safe - Capitalism, when faced with challenges by the new and supposedly "pro-capitalist" community, makes compromises with the pre-cap. communities
- The difference between affirmative actions toward efficiency and affirmative actions toward equity, and why the former is mandated while the latter is not
- Poverty as a social construct
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