Re: Re: Kerala (was Re: Vandana Shiva)
A very interesting post. I assume extreme LACK of unregulation should have been extreme LACK of regulation. No? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Ben Day [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2002 11:18 PM Subject: [PEN-L:28702] Re: Kerala (was Re: Vandana Shiva) At 04:38 PM 7/26/2002 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: I completely agree with that. But to do all these things, you need more industry, and more industry means transforming the division of labor and socializing production now done in the household. You can do the good things that Kerala did, but Kerala is still poor. The only way to make India less poor is to industrialize somehow. I don't think Shiva, or her fans in the West, agree. Doug Well, Kerala was also the only Indian state, to a great extent, to successfully implement land reform. This seems to me a basic prerequisite of industrialization of any sort, but almost impossible elsewhere in India since the Congress Party - like the parties that drove independence and dominate the political landscape in so many developing countries - is inextricably bound up with landed elites. Kerala was able to carry out land reform due to the strength of its two Communist Parties (but particularly the Communist Party--Marxist, which split from the CP during independence when Stalin backed Nehru, and the rest of the CP followed the Moscow line by taking an accomodationist tack with the Congress Party), and the fact that labor unions (most affiliated witht he CPM) had great success organizing agricultural labor, particularly in the informal sector (this is a rare form of success, in any country). So, although we usually single out Kerala's welfare policies, and the debate over the Kerala model in developmental economics hinges on whether a welfare state is a viable (or more importantly, a sustainable) road to development - I think we tend to miss Kerala's real accomplishments, which involve the successful commodification of land and labor. Most developing countries have, or are gaining, at least /nominally/ capitalist relations - capitalists and wage labor. But wage labor here is embedded in despotic social relations, and extensive power inequalities, that function to tie labor to the land. Or, in Marxist terms, without effective land reform most agricultural production attempts to improve productivity by increasing absolute surplus: producers in the informal sector, facing a supine working class, and essentially beyond any meaningful regulation by the state, will tend to improve productivity through labor-squeezing tactics (driving down wages, extending the working day/week/year, etc.). With less unequal power structures governing the wage relation, with greater labor mobility, and a state presence in the labor market (e.g. the ability to enforce national minimum wages), producers are more likely compete by introducing new technologies, or other means of increasing relative surplus. Of course, neoliberals tend to target State intervention in developing countries' markets, but the bulk of most developing countries' economies are informal, and growing even more informal. The informal sector is characterized in most places by extreme LACK of unregulation - usually without even the enforcement of existing laws governing market interactions, and accepted by most neoliberal theory as fundamental for the preservation of markets. Neoliberal developmental economists have a tendancy, I think, to myopically focus on the formal sector in justifying policy prescriptions. The east asian tigers - who have had the greatest success in industralizing - were able to carry out land reform successfully due, in large part, to their top-heavy State apparatuses (the legacy of colonialism) and weak social classes - there was no landed elite strong enough to resist land reform imposed from above. But this solution is simply not viable for most developing countries, either because of the third wave of democratization, or due to a state implicated in the interests of landed elites. And even if it were, this model's reliance on fairly autonomous State control and weak social classes has its own problems of long-term sustainability. So I think Kerala presents a viable model of development from below in this respect. This doesn't exactly explain why Kerala is still poor though (and, in particular, with lower per capita income than the average in India). It's clear, though, that international markets have punished Kerala for its labor militancy, as has the national State in India. There is also the issue of time, suggested by Ulhas, and I think there's a good case to be made that Kerala is in a better position to grow than most developing states (or States) in a similar position. In any case, if any of you haven't heard of or had the chance to read Patrick Heller's _The Labor of Development: Workers and the Transformation
Re: Re: Kerala (was Re: Vandana Shiva)
Ben Day wrote: Well, Kerala was also the only Indian state, to a great extent, to successfully implement land reform. Land reforms have taken place in West Bengal (Pop. 75 million), where the CPs are in power for last 25 years without a break. Land reforms have taken in other parts of India, though they have not been as thorough as Kerala (Pop. 35 million) and Bengal. This seems to me a basic prerequisite of industrialization of any sort, but almost impossible elsewhere in India since the Congress Party - like the parties that drove independence and dominate the political landscape in so many developing countries - is inextricably bound up with landed elites. The share of agriculture in India's GDP has declined from 55% in 1950 to 26% in 2000. The growth of industry and particularly services is reducing the importance of agriculture in relative terms. The Congress Party's programme was a programme of Indian industrial capital, though the mass base of Congress Party was to be found in all classes and strata of Indian society. Though services have grown at a faster rate, it is not correct to say that industrialisation has not taken place. Kerala was able to carry out land reform due to the strength of its two Communist Parties (but particularly the Communist Party--Marxist, which split from the CP during independence when Stalin backed Nehru, and the rest of the CP followed the Moscow line by taking an accomodationist tack with the Congress Party), The Indian CP split in 1964 long after Stalin's death. So, although we usually single out Kerala's welfare policies, and the debate over the Kerala model in developmental economics hinges on whether a welfare state is a viable (or more importantly, a sustainable) road to development - I think we tend to miss Kerala's real accomplishments, which involve the successful commodification of land and labor. Kerala's achievements are admirable, but other states moving in the same direction with some time lag. But then uneven and combined development is the norm everywhere. You take all India data, literacy has gone up from 18% to 65% (against 90% in Kerala) in 50 years. Male literacy is 75% on all India basis. It's due to lower female literacy (55%) that the average comes down. The lower female literacy is due to gender inequality. There is also the issue of time, suggested by Ulhas What was the population of say, Germany, when Germany began to develop industrially in later half 19 the Century? Compare that with the population of China, India and Indonesia at the corresponding stage economic development. Elimination of poverty of 2.5 billion people and of 25 million people are not comparable challenges. Ulhas
Re: Re: Re: Kerala (was Re: Vandana Shiva)
Ulhas Joglekar wrote: What was the population of say, Germany, when Germany began to develop industrially in later half 19 the Century? Compare that with the population of China, India and Indonesia at the corresponding stage economic development. Elimination of poverty of 2.5 billion people and of 25 million people are not comparable challenges. Implicit in this is the assumption that imperialist powers, especially the USA, would tolerate India, China or Indonesia having the capacity to compete with them in the world market. My reading of history indicates that this would not be tolerated. As I tried to point out in my series of posts on Argentina, Great Britain sabotaged that country's bid to become a sovereign industrial power after WWII. If anything, dependency has deepened. Japan was the last Asian nation to try to join the imperialist club. Look at the price it paid: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In many of Ulhas's posts, I find an odd indiffererence to the global setting as if India's economic development was entirely a function of internal needs and rules. The one thing that seems obvious about the successful capitalist nations in Europe is that their economies were determined at the outset and still rely on vast holdings overseas. I find it hard to imagine India muscling its way into Latin America or the Middle East. Finally, on the question of India's rising status as an industrial power. The comparison with Germany is instructive. Germany has 82 million people but produced 42 million metric tons of steel in 1999. By comparison, India produced 24.9 million tons around the same time but with a population over 12 times the size of Germany. One website puts it this way: Although the grand total of 24.9 million MTPA places India among the top ten producers of steel in the world, the per capita steel production of only 26 Kg/person is much below the world average of 150 Kg. http://www.corporateinformation.com/insector/Steel.html So, then while India's steel production might be impressive in absolute terms--it is in the top ten worldwide--from the standpoint of capitalist modernization, it seems rather less promising. Germany's capitalist economy was able to absorb vast numbers of peasants during the 19th century, but with India and China we cannot expect the same sort of internal primitive accumulation process, can we? Furthermore, those who could not be transformed into wage earners in Germany simply got on the next boat to America. Will this be the case for India or China? I don't think so. There are already signs that the strained economies of the first world will be increasingly offlimits to immigrants, no matter Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's rather daft belief in the possibilities of nomadism. All in all, the PEN-L'ers who seem most hostile to Vandana Shiva's rather illusory brand of neo-Ghandianism appear just as committed to another kind of illusion, namely that capitalist modernization or industrialization as they put it in rather classless terms can be ultimately achieved across the board by any nation, just as a child eventually and naturally reaches puberty. My reading of history tells me that the ruling powers would rather blow up the world than allow newcomers into their club. The world capitalist system is predicated on advanced development in one sector and underdevelopment in another. Any upstart that threatens to bust down the door will soon be challenged militarily. Even if in the unlikely event that India began to catch up with the West, I doubt that the USA would accept demotion into the second tier. If India's bid to become a world industrial power is somehow connected with the emergence of the ultraright BJP, whose program is reminiscent of German and Japanese nationalist parties before WWII, our future is dim. -- Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Kerala (was Re: Vandana Shiva)
It was indeed - thanks for the correction. At 09:42 AM 7/28/2002 -0700, ken hanly wrote: A very interesting post. I assume extreme LACK of unregulation should have been extreme LACK of regulation. No? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Ben Day [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2002 11:18 PM Subject: [PEN-L:28702] Re: Kerala (was Re: Vandana Shiva)
Re: Re: Re: Kerala (was Re: Vandana Shiva)
Thanks for the reply, Ulhas - I'm interested in drawing out the implications of the figures you give us here: At 11:13 PM 7/28/2002 +0530, Ulhas Joglekar wrote: Land reforms have taken place in West Bengal (Pop. 75 million), where the CPs are in power for last 25 years without a break. Land reforms have taken in other parts of India, though they have not been as thorough as Kerala (Pop. 35 million) and Bengal. The Communist Party Marxist (CPM) has not been in power constantly in Kerala. Coalition govs built around the Congress Party (Congress) have been swapping the seat of government w/coalitions built around the CPM for the last 50 years or so, pretty regularly every 3 or 6 years. I think the importance of the Communist parties and affiliated unions have not been necessarily their holding of office - although this is really important - but rather their grassroots strength and ability to coerce state action, regardless of who is in power. Remember - it was actually a Congress coalition that implemented land reform in Kerala, after a CPM coalition had passed it into law and subsequently dissolved. It was working class militancy in organizing the submission of land claims, and following claims up, that made land reform successful - not necessarily the passing of a land reform law. As you mention, land reform has been passed in many states in India, and we need only look to Mexico, for example, to see how insufficient this can be for effective redistribution. So I'd tend to think that the example of West Bengal supports the notion that a strong working class and viable political power not beholden to landed elites is key for effective land reform. The share of agriculture in India's GDP has declined from 55% in 1950 to 26% in 2000. The growth of industry and particularly services is reducing the importance of agriculture in relative terms. The Congress Party's programme was a programme of Indian industrial capital, though the mass base of Congress Party was to be found in all classes and strata of Indian society. Though services have grown at a faster rate, it is not correct to say that industrialisation has not taken place. You'll forgive me if I don't buy the statement that the mass base of [the] Congress Party was to be found in all classes and strata of Indian society. This either doesn't tell us much, if you mean that all classes/strata are simply represented in the Congress Party's base, or it's inaccurate, if you're implying that the various classes/strata are equally influential, equally powerful, or equally control the agenda and provide the resources and political-economic influence for the Party. I don't think, when we refer to industrialization, we mean primarily the growth of an industrial sector; or in other words, I'm not sure that your figures here for the changing distribution of production (or employment) in the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors necessarily tell us about India's level of industrialization - although this is part of the picture. The reason is that much of the employment and growth of employment in the industrial sector is still informal, i.e. in very small-scale establishments (under 10 employees), largely unorganized, and largely below the radar of State monitoring/data collection, as well as State intervention. According to the 1991 Census, only 9.3% of the 286 million main workers in India (those working at least 183 days of the year) worked in the formal sector, and only 28.2% of nonagricultural workers. The Census also shows that only 2.9% of workers and 8.8% of nonagricultural workers worked in factories. My comments about the informal sector stifling productivity-enhancing innovation or reorganizations apply equally to informal work in the industrial sector, and I think this is what Doug Henwood was getting at in emphasizing large-scale production. Although the putting-out system is production in the industrial sector, we wouldn't consider a society based on putting-out labor industrialized at all. But this is the point I was getting at: many industrialization initiatives in developing countries are actually explicit attempts to develop a dual economy and to nurture an industrial sector (which, in practice, is often just as much or more of a service sector). This isn't the same thing as industrializing the economy, though, which includes industrializing agricultural production, for which land reform is fundamental (although, I think, land reform is fundamental for much more than this). It also ignores the extremely dynamic ways in which different sectors feed off of one another in the process of development. -Ben
