Academic, Marxist ideologue and economist Prabhat Patnaik said here on Wednesday that contemporary struggle for a socialist society might not follow the classical path of an armed revolution succeeding in establishing one-party rule of workers.
The former vice-chairman of Kerala State Planning Board said that there were inherent contradictions and injustices within capitalism, calling for the achievement of a socialist system, which he described as the highest form of democracy. The future path to socialism would also be marked by multiplicity of property relationships, he said. He was speaking at a session on Ideas That Changed the World: Revisiting Capital in the Age of Crises at the ongoing International Festival of Books and Authors organised under the aegis of the State Department of Cooperation.
The example of the Soviet Union could no longer be followed, he said, as the one-party rule of the proletariat in the Soviet Union declined into a dictatorship of the party. At the same time, the Soviet Union made significant impacts on the world as a whole. Defeat of fascism was one such achievements, he said. Decolonisation and the conduct of a welfare State were the other achievements. Economist C.P. Chandrashekhar was the moderator at the session in which Anil Bhatti, academic, called for building alliances to fight against capitalism and fascism.
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