Category: Unorganised Sector

Rosa Luxemburg: An Introduction

Previous posts have commented on a diverse set of economists ‘ Krishna Bharadwaj, Pierangelo Garegnani, Alfred Marshall, V K R V Rao, Knut Wicksell among others. In a similar manner, this blog post discusses the main ideas of the economic theorist, Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919). Born in Zamosc, she studied philosophy and natural sciences and then moved to economics. Her PhD thesis is an empirical analysis of Poland’s industrial sector which was seen to depend on backward eastern markets. This statistical finding would later develop into a theoretical one.

She studied Marx’s work closely and critically. The three volumes of Capital demonstrate the workings of a capitalist economy characterised by wage labour and profit maximization. According to Marx, a capitalist system is able to reproduce itself by maintaining a sizeable reserve army of labour and by appropriating the surplus value created by the workers. However, Marx sees the possibility of crisis in a capitalist economy where production decisions are unplanned and are coordinated by different markets. Luxemburg asks a related yet different question: how does capitalism survive in the real world’ Or, in her words, ‘what are the objective historical limits to capitalism” This question resulted in her main work, The Accumulation of Capital.

Luxemburg answers this question by extending Marx’s analysis after making certain modification. First, Marx conducts his analysis by examining the fundamental units of capitalism ‘ that of a commodity and the workings of individual capital. This working is succinctly encapsulated in the relation M-C-M^ where M^ is greater in value than M. Second, his theoretical investigation is restricted to that of a capitalist system. Luxemburg looks at the total capital, an aggregate magnitude. Some commentators consider this to be one of the early attempts at a macroeconomic analysis. Moreover, in her attempt to understand the workings of capitalism in the real world, she introduces a real-life facet ‘ that of the existence of both capitalist and non-capitalist systems. These modifications lead her to the conclusion that capitalist systems depend on and exploit non-capitalist systems for their survival. The exchange which takes place between these two systems stops the capitalist enterprise from crumbling.

In The Accumulation of Capital ‘ An Anti-Critique (1972), she clarifies the differences involved in studying individual units versus aggregate ones: ”the standpoint of total capital differs basically from that of the individual employer. For the individual, the luxury of’ high society’ is a desirable expansion of sales, i.e. a splendid opportunity for accumulation. For all capitalists as a class, the total consumption of the surplus value as luxury is sheer lunacy, economic suicide, for it is the destruction of accumulation at its roots’ (p. 56). This important methodological fact has been overlooked by neoclassical economics where the aggregate is seen to behave in a similar way as its individual parts. This is clearly untrue and their reasoning commits the fallacy of composition. Such discussions by Luxemburg were certainly a methodological improvement.

The major (historico-)theoretical insight she provided relates to the manner in which capitalist systems avoid permanent crises. Luxemburg argues that capitalism survives based on its coercive relations with non-capitalist systems. She poses the question thus:

‘After we have assumed that accumulation has started and that the increased production throws an even bigger amount of commodities on to the market the following year, the same question arises again: where do we then find the consumers for this even greater amount of commodities” (p. 57).

Her answer follows.

‘They must be producers, whose means of production are not to be seen as capital, and who belong to neither of the two classes – capitalists or workers – but who still have a need, one way or another, for capitalist commodities’ (p. 57).

She elaborates this further.

‘In reality, capitalist production is not the sole and completely dominant form of production, as everyone knows, and as Marx himself stresses in Capital. In reality, there are in all capitalist countries, even in those with the most developed large-scale industry, numerous artisan and peasant enterprises which are engaged in simple commodity production’ (p. 58).

To conclude, Luxemburg made positive contributions to economic methodology and theory. Her analysis of accumulation can prove useful in countries like India where non-capitalist production systems are very prevalent. In addition, it can enrich the analysis of economic relations between the developed and developing countries.

REFERENCES

(1951), The Accumulation of Capital, trans. Agnes Schwarzschild, intro. Joan Robinson, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

(1972), The Accumulation of Capital ‘ An Anti-Critique, ed. and intro. Kenneth Tarbuck, trans. Rudolf Wichmann, New York: Monthly Review Press.

James Steuart, Strange(r) Economists and the Indian Economy

 

Inflation has been portrayed as the biggest challenge faced by Indian policy makers and its Central Bank, Reserve Bank of India, in recent times. The Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India and Professor of Economics at Cornell University, Kaushik Basu, recently presented his professional views on inflation ‘ understanding and management, at the First Gautam Mathur Lecture on 18 May 2011. This is currently available for download as a working paper at the Ministry of Finance website. Various excerpts from this paper have made its way in some English newspapers and TV media. I will comment on this paper at length on a later date. Reading Basu’s paper makes me wonder whether monetary economists or other policy makers know what India is, who Indians are and what Indians actually do. In more abstract terms, do economists know the structure of the Indian economy’ Do they know what motivates Indians’ Is it primarily region, class, caste, religion, gender, education, self-interest, compassion, sympathy, fame, status’ Although, to be fair to Kaushik Basu, he asks the RBI not to experiment and not to put up a fa’ade of knowledge (which he frequently does). Without having a clear understanding of, what the 18th century economist James Steuart calls, ‘the spirit of a people’, it is impossible to formulate effective policies. Moreover, the focus on employment generation has completely given way to inflation stabilisation, using sophisticated econometric techniques. Therefore, this blog post revisits James Steuart’s views on how ‘the spirit of a people’ influences economic engineering. In the Indian context, the consequences of monetary intervention might not be those which are depicted in conventional models of inflation.

Sir James Steuart (1713-1780) published An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy in 1767 which was and has been overshadowed by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations published in 1776. Steuart acknowledged the importance of devising context-specific economic policies. However, we must realise that context-specific economic policy is not antithetical to general economic theories. In other words, proposing economic theories and models of a general nature is not inherently a problem; but, when applied blindly, they cause havoc, which is often supressed in very clever ways. Steuart writes:

‘Every operation of government should be calculated for the good of the people. . .that in order to make a people happy, they must be governed according to the spirit which prevails among them’ (p. 21).

An ignorance or lack of understanding of this ‘spirit’ can have disastrous consequences. We see some of them in the worsening urban-rural inequality, falling of inflation-adjusted per capita incomes in interior villages [EPW, 2011], agricultural distress and forced migration [P Sainath, The Hindu, 2011]. One of reasons why such skewed policies are implemented is because of the rationale provided by ‘pure economic theory’, which Basu seems to praise for its scientific rigor and [semblance of] truth. To be clear, ‘pure economic theory’ is something which Steuart was against because it assumed a certain ‘spirit’ and claimed to be universal thereby neglecting important specificities and characteristics pertaining to individual economies.

For Steuart, ‘the spirit of a people is formed upon a set of received opinions relative to three objects; morals, government and manners: these once generally adopted by any society, confirmed by long and constant habit, and never called in question, form the basis of all laws, regulate the form of every government, and determine what is commonly called the customs of a country’ (p. 22). That is, education, religion, region, caste, gender, etc would significantly affect the ‘spirit’ of India. Also, important characteristics such as the percentage of Indians employed in agriculture, in unorganised manufacture, in self-employment, in rural areas, using informal sources of finance, who are socially poor (less than 100 rupees a day), who actually invest in stock markets, who read English newspapers and so on affect the outcomes of economic engineering. Not paying heed to these significant characteristics is the same as formulating an inappropriate policy. Let me highlight once instance. The RBI conducts Inflation Expectations Survey to estimate how the expectations of the Indian populace change over time and this result forms an input into monetary policy making. Despite this, the RBI did not survey any Indian living in rural areas; they seem to neglect and forget the fact that the main producers live in rural areas and their chief occupation is agriculture! This certainly deserves to be questioned. Policies should not be formulated ‘at any point which regards the political oeconomy of a nation, without accompanying the example with some supposition relative to the spirit of the people’ (p. 23). If the ‘spirit of the people’ is not taken into account, as the example above indicated, such policies could prove to be harmful. This also calls for greater dialogue between economists and other social analysts (sociologists, cultural theorists, political scientists, anthropologists, social workers, etc) when engineering nation-wide socio-economic policies. Hence, Steuart writes that ‘in every step the spirit of the people should be first examined’ (p. 25).

Often, the attitudes of policy makers indicate how much their academic knowledge is irrelevant for practical economic and social problems. The reliance on ‘pure economic theory’ is nothing but an intellectual looking, mathematically replete and made-difficult-to-understand version of free markets, because efficiency and rationality are our new gods! As Keynes writes in his preface to The General Theory, ‘the difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.’ Today, these ‘old ideas’ are not only fashionable and ‘scientific’ (and often unsuited to India), but they are also communicated relentlessly to the new generations through schools and universities. In conclusion, it is scary to realise that India’s policy making is done by those who are ‘strangers’ to the Indian realities. Steuart warns us that ‘when strangers are employed as statesmen, the disorder is still greater, unless there be extraordinary penetration, temper, and, above all, flexibility and discretion’ (p. 27).

To Economists: please pay attention to the ‘real’ problems

A talk by Arundhati Roy and watching Peepli Live has motivated the contents of this post largely. I have been forced to rethink what ‘economics’ as a discipline should do in a country like India. How can it contribute to economic growth and human development. It is often forgotten that, economics studies the big black box that transforms the labour of the labourers into commodities for consumption by the labourers. People or rather, people who work, appear at both the ends of the tunnel. The black box or the tunnel consists of varied actors, markets, institutions, laws, power groups, social classes, etc.

Some economists try to make sense of this complex interaction using tools such as game theory, which throws light of certain aspects of the interaction. This in turn is supposed to aid in the design of better institutions. A few study labour, the main actor in the whole economic process. Some look at institutions and how various legal arrangements affect the economic outcomes. It remains to be asked: outcomes for whom’ In this manner, the entire profession of economics has been divided into various sub-disciplines, each specialising in a particular aspect of the economy. And it is evident that communication between the above mentioned sets of economists happen rarely. Very often, the larger picture is forgotten. Each group presents their results with a tremendous sense of certainty, which is entirely misplaced. And, the joke that economists love their ceteris paribus clause comes true here. Except that, the clause in this case, assumes as constant the remaining processes or aspects of the economy!

Who are the real producers in an economy’ What role do farmers (small, marginal and large) play in our society’ Do they live in dignity’ When inflation occurs, do these farmers get more incomes’ Or do the intermediaries pocket the increase’ Are proper institutions in place to provide them with adequate credit’ Can these formal institutions compete with the informal ones, such as money lenders and chitti funds’

It is accepted that farming is not a profitable enterprise any more. Policy makers are calling for industrialisation. They want the farmers to come away from their lands and work in industries. And so arises the slums in and around major cities, where their living conditions are perhaps worse than in the villages. Or, most of them are forced to become construction workers. Urbanisation implies buildings, which creates construction jobs in plenty. Once the space in big cities are exhausted, the urbanisation will take place in small cities. Workers will be in demand. In short, labour migration and increasing labour distress, owing to improper housing conditions will become even more intense. It is time, serious attention is paid to farmers and the role of farming in the development of India.

To conclude, it is time we paid more attention to the condition of India and not blindly follow academic fashions. It is the duty of the civil society and especially, the academicians to study the problems and issues thrown up by the society. When the problems of the majority of the population in India –those who live in the rural areas, those who work in the informal sector and those who are farmers– are forgotten and relegated as ‘deviations from the normal’ or ‘problems of the Indian economy’ and not as characteristics of the society we live in, it is indeed a pitiable situation.

The Indian Constitution and Human Dignity: for Economists

The field of law and economics is a glamorous one with economists such as Ronald Coase, Gary Becker and Richard Posner. It was Coase who provided the inspiration to law and economics through his introduction of ‘transaction cost economics.’ And Becker was the one who extended the domain of economics to virtually any social phenomena. Issues such as law, crime, marriage, family, etc came to be studied by economists. Although, the tools used never varied. It was the same old microeconomic baggage of neoclassical economics. Suddenly, neoclassical economics started feeling successful all over again. Their theory of value and pricing started explaining various social and cultural processes in the economy. However, this post is not a commentary on law and economics that is practised. For an excellent commentary on its origins and methodology, see the article by William Davies ‘Economics and the ‘nonsense’ of law: the case of the Chicago antitrust revolution’ in Economy and Society published in 2010.

The content of this post certainly falls under the label of law and economics. However, this post discusses certain aspects of the Constitution of India in the the light of economic policies undertaken-that of liberalization. The quotations in this post are from Dr. Durga Das Basu’s Introduction to the Constitution of India, reprinted in December 2009.

Economic Justice

The banishment of poverty, not by expropriation of those who have, but by the multiplication of the national wealth and resources and an equitable distribution thereof amongst all who contribute towards its production, is the aim of the State envisaged by the Directive Principles. Economic democracy will be installed in our sub-continent to the extent that this goal is reached. In short, economic justice aims at establishing economic democracy and a ‘Welfare State’.

The idea of economic justice is to make equality of status meaningful and life worth living at its best removing inequality of opportunity and of status-social, economic and political.

That is, an increase in growth rate is seen as the way to banish poverty. This principle is certainly based on the idea that growth trickles down. As has been witnessed in India, all that liberalization has achieved is ‘jobless growth’. Hence, the need for policy documents to shout for ‘inclusive growth’.

Now, all those who contribute to wealth by being producers are supposed to be compensated. It is on this class, that the burden of development falls. For, they do not have the adequate social and economic voice to demand for ‘just distribution’.

Can India claim social justice just by making opportunities equal’ Equal opportunities perform their function only in an already just and equitable society, and not in countries where inequality of income and wealth is so skewed. Thus, an active intervention is necessary at the level of production as well as distribution of GDP.

Nehru’s idea of Socialism is that ‘every individual in the State should have equal opportunity for progress.’ However, this idea cannot hold any water until the institutions in the State are examined- judiciary, executive, military, private enterprise, unorganised sector, etc. For instance, some groups of people are exploited as producers, where they are paid less than minimum wages. Therefore, as a consumer, they get exploited as well. This then passes on to their access to health, schooling, sanitation, housing, and so on.

Individual Liberty

The Preamble, therefore, says that the State, in India, will assure the dignity of the Individual. ‘All citizens men and women equally, have the right to an dequate means of livelihood, just and humane conditions of work, and a decent standard of life and full enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural opportunities.’

When economists and policy makers talk of ‘inclusive growth’, it is the dignity of the individual which is at stake. Often, India’s characteristics such as high reliance on agriculture, a large percentage of unorganised sector, immobility of labour and the like are labelled as detrimental to India’s growth and development. One cannot help but ask: Whose growth’ Such perceptions by the academia are largely a result of the manner in which human beings figure in micro and macro economics. If you take a moment to think about it, you will realise that poor people-who are a heterogeneous group- is absent from our theoretical edifice. Why’ Who are we analysing’ And to discuss poverty, we have created a sub-discipline called ‘development economics’.

In any case, human dignity appears to be of lesser importance than the computation of growth rates using yearly and quarterly data. We are satisfied to decipher whether stock market exhibits volatility or not’ Or whether market A is co-integrated with market Z. Does this satisfaction come from the fact that stock market data is easily available’ What about the farmers, the child labourers, the migrant labourers who are forced to leave their place and family, of street vendors, and all the others who actually engage in production’

Until dignity of human life features implicitly or explicitly in economics, it will continue to be a lifeless endeavour. Sadly enough, we are taught economics is the study of choice’ Whose choices’ Those who have the ability to choose’ It is time we discarded such economics and re-visited economists such as Adam Smith, Joan Robinson, Amit Bhaduri, and others whose works show a concern for humans.