Young Master Smeet
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All she did was ask: “Why aren’t we talking about this” referencing a news article about the govt. cutting the internet around Delhi to fight the farmers. The article linked to above is fascinating, massive Indian stars, including Tendulkar have rallied around viciously criticising a popular music entertainer for having a mild opinion on twitter. It seems India gov. is on full patriotic war footing.
Also the article gives notice of a big clash coming this Sunday.
A bit abstruse but with some useful data, and I think says much the same as our article coming up next month:
The Money Theory of the State It has some useful factoids:“The Fed’s staggering expansion of its balance sheet in 2020 has fed a binge of corporate borrowing that has led to a full 20 percent of the 3,000 largest American companies no longer earning enough to pay their interest expenses, mutating into “zombie companies,” de facto wards of the state.”
“The flood of US debt marks a worldwide trend. Japan’s state debt is currently at 230 percent of GDP, while China’s domestic (non-foreign) debt is over 300 percent of GDP.52 Taking the 37 countries of the the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) area, by the end of 2019 sovereign debt had expanded to 72 percent of total GDP, feeding a huge buildup in non-financial corporate debt, the heart of the so-called “real economy” of production and investment, which reached a record high of 13.5 trillion dollars in the same year.53 Overall global debt-to-GDP was already over 300 percent before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in the first quarter of 2020.54″
I was referring back to this:
“Second, and relatedly, food inflation collapsed. While this benefited both urban consumers and the rural poor, particularly small and marginal farmers that do not sell agricultural surpluses on the market and agricultural labourers, it also caused a severe deterioration of farmers’ income”Falling food prices seems to be a part of the background, and I’m not sure that megacorporations buying the farms wouldn’t lower food prices a lot further (they’d certainly have a short to medium term incentive to do so to crush their rivals). The economies of scale and improved technology would lower costs, I’d have thought. The cost in terms of rural unemployment would be horrific.
In conclusion, it looks like there is a political animus against the BJP (possibly Sikhism?) and across the rest of India, the farmers are calling in their chips, the BJP tried to help the big farmers (which seems to be part of its core), but the raw political might of the small farmer seems to be being asserted.
Sorry, I can get access to that article, a few choice quotes:
“Second, and relatedly, food inflation collapsed. While this benefited both urban consumers and the rural poor, particularly small and marginal farmers that do not sell agricultural surpluses on the market and agricultural labourers, it also caused a severe deterioration of farmers’ income”“after not paying particular attention to agriculture during the first years of its tenure, the government quickly changed track in the wake of the protests and of the disappointing results in some of the state elections, particularly in Gujarat in 2017—where the BJP barely obtained a majority—and later in the three Hindi belt states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where the BJP lost to the Congress party. In all these cases, rural distress seemed to have played a significant role.”
“Shortly before the elections, the government also increased steeply the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for the Kharif crops, after years of virtual stagnation” [So are they reaping the harvest for playing silly buggers to win the election?]
Likewise:
“Farmers, on the other hand, while keep struggling for a number of structural reasons that were not seriously tackled by the government, did see some policy response to their grievances. This might have been sufficient to convince farmer-voters that Modi, although not possessing a magic wand that could transform agriculture into a highly profitable economic activity, at least did try to address some of their problems.”“The BJP performed exceptionally well in rural areas.”
“As the table clearly shows, in rural areas, the BJP draws higher levels of support, the higher the economic status of the voter. While this is not surprising, given the historical strength of the party among the wealthiest sections of the society, what is striking is the exceptionally high increase in support for the BJP among the rural (as well as the urban) poor.”
“the robust support that the BJP enjoys among agricultural classes (which, it should be remember, include big and small farmers, tenant cultivators and agricultural labourers). Whereas there is a clear class element that shapes voters’ preferences—the lower the class, the lower the preference for the BJP—it remains that the saffron party was the preferred choice of a very large number of people who depend on agriculture for their livelihood, irrespective of their class. Even for the ‘poor’ and ‘lower’ agricultural classes, ”
“However, the table also confirms that the BJP’s support is lower (although still considerably high) among agricultural labourers and exceptionally high among big farmers.”
“Overall, the data presented so far unequivocally show that the BJP’s performance was in a significant way due to the increased support it received from the lower castes and classes in rural areas. One argument that many analysts made trying to explain the 2019 election result is that the social policies introduced by the government (discussed in section 2) were crucial to win the votes of the weakest sections of the society.”
OK, interestingly, the farmers strike is driven by Punjab, where the BJP’s NDA alliance is actually weakest: according to the conversation although BJP has taken the seats in Haryana (around Delhi).
But, I’ll add a link to this abstract:
“The Indian general elections occurred amid a widespread and severe agricultural crisis. Many analysts thought that this could have a substantial impact on the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prospects to remain in office. This article, using post poll data, analyses the voting behaviour of two key sections of the electorate, the rural poor and the farmers. It shows that the BJP drew substantial support from both categories, across caste and class. Far from being a party of the urban upper classes and castes, the results of the 2019 elections mark the culmination of a decades-long process of ruralization and ‘proletarianization’ of the party.”Interesting here: analysis of BJP vote
“Troubles in the rural economy, such as stagnating farm prices and wages, had led to concerns about disenchantment with the BJP in the hinterland. But in this election, there has been a sharp increase in the BJP’s vote share in rural constituencies of 7.3 percentage points. This has meant a weakening of the urban-rural divide in support for the BJP. The difference between the party’s vote share in urban and rural constituencies reduced from 8.9 percentage points in 2014 to merely 3.5 percentage points in 2019.”
I did wonder if these farmers were the BJPs voters..
Just back to Canada. I’ve often wondered what effect Canada had on the introduction of universal suffrage in the UK. Adult male suffrage existed in Canada, but what happened in the vast rural districts is that the small farmers tended to vote for the local big farmer (who had the best social connections, local economic muscle, etc.) i.e. democracy became a way of entrenching social hierarchy rather than overturning it. I wonder, to what extent that gave the British ruling class the idea that it was safe to extend the franchise (yes, it was demanded from below, but they must have had Canada in view when they conceded).
Anyway, back to struggle: not all struggle has the potential to educate: take the Euston Gardens protestors, yes, they’re coming into contact with state forces, but there is no struggle there as workers, neither as a class for itself nor in itself.
Finally, I often invoke Thompson’s distinction between proletarian and plebeian politics: plebeian politics demands action from the powerful, proletarian says we can do it ourselves. Making trouble that leaves state and social structures in place is not a brilliant learning event.
I’d suggest overall the Indian strike looks to me like a fairly conservative movement: certainly, this is what democracy looks like, and it has reminded the BJP that there is power in the streets.
But, I will add, this is interesting:
Women take a lead role “In addition to protesting, women have taken on the entire responsibility of managing their farms and households back in Punjab.”Similarly, from our home history: the bondagers.
“a system peculiar to the Eastern Borders and Northumberland. A married ploughman (known as a hind) would require to engage another person willing to work long hours in the fields in order to get a contract of employment with a farmer. This was normally a woman. It could be his wife, daughter or a complete stranger. In the case of a stranger being taken on, the hind was required to provide bed and board for the woman and pay her for work done.” So that is one agricultural labourer paying for another, of course, since it was an obligation of his contract, her pay came out of the money advanced by the farmer. Obviously, it was to his advantage when he could get his wife or sister to work the farm.And his cottage often would belong to the farmer, so, yes, agricultural structures can be complex, and in that instance, pushing the wages system forwards was a type of advance (see under Thompson’s “Making of the English working class”, the working class made itself and there are/were progressive elements to the wages system).
When the Countryside Alliance marched through London, many of them were small farmers, and the employees of farmers: they were most certainly not on our side. It is a struggle to preserve the existing conditions, not to overthrow them.
Small farmers are not the enemy, but state subsidy and price fixing is not the answer to their problems, and certainly doesn’t advance socialism.
The social democrat program, and the one in the communist manifesto makes sense: nationalise big estates where possible (even per Marx above) through compensation; form ‘agricultural armies’ (i.e. organised employment for agricultural labourers); offer assistance and inducements to collectivise and co-operativise land-ownership.
This seems to be in the same category as the truckers strikes and Poujadism, not every anti-state movement is progressive.
“Small and marginal farmers with less than two hectares of land account for 86.2% of all farmers in India, but own just 47.3% of the crop area, according to provisional numbers from the 10th agriculture census 2015-16 released on Monday.”
“Further, these 126 million farmers together owned about 74.4 million hectares of land —or an average holding of just 0.6 hectares each—not enough to produce surpluses which can financially sustain their families, explaining the rising distress in Indian agriculture.” (a hectare is roughly a football pitch, just a little bit bigger).
I posted some quotes from Engels I thought were relevant, but the post seems to have gone missing:
It comes back to Engels’ question:
“[the peasant] ought to lend a ready ear in socialist propaganda. But he is prevented from doing so for the time being by his deep-rooted sense of property. The more difficult it is for him to defend his endangered patch of land, the more desperately he clings to it, the more he regards the Social-Democrats, who speak of transferring landed property to the whole of society, as just as dangerous a foe as the usurer and lawyer. How is Social-Democracy to overcome this prejudice? What can is offer to the doomed small peasant without becoming untrue to itself?” (hereAnd further:
” Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and private possession to cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose. And then, of course, we shall have ample means of showing to the small peasant prospective advantages that must be obvious to him even today.”(here)I don’t think Engels ever foresaw the possibility that the capitalist class would pay tribute to the land owners small and large to keep them in business and owning their land.
(As a side note, here is Engels on the compensation of expropriated capitalists: “Marx told me (and how many times!) that, in his opinion, we would get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole lot of them.”)
Possibly, pace Mao, when the city surrounds the countryside the difference between the two will be abolished.
It comes back to Engels’ question:
“[the peasant] ought to lend a ready ear in socialist propaganda. But he is prevented from doing so for the time being by his deep-rooted sense of property. The more difficult it is for him to defend his endangered patch of land, the more desperately he clings to it, the more he regards the Social-Democrats, who speak of transferring landed property to the whole of society, as just as dangerous a foe as the usurer and lawyer. How is Social-Democracy to overcome this prejudice? What can is offer to the doomed small peasant without becoming untrue to itself?” (hereAnd further:
” Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and private possession to cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose. And then, of course, we shall have ample means of showing to the small peasant prospective advantages that must be obvious to him even today.”(here)I don’t think Engels ever foresaw the possibility that the capitalist class would pay tribute to the land owners small and large to keep them in business and owning their land.
(As a side note, here is Engels on the compensation of expropriated capitalists: “Marx told me (and how many times!) that, in his opinion, we would get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole lot of them.”)
