Debating Left’s internationalism

Prabhat Patnaik on alternative world

Prabhat Patnaik

“The Left has a misconception that fascism only rises when capitalism is in crisis and workers’ movement are strong. That capitalism uses fascism to beat down the challenge by workers. The finance capital finances the petty bourgeois movements (including Adolf Hitler in Germany after World War I) to ward off any potential challenges,” said Prabhat Patnaik, noted macro-economist, delivering the October Revolution centenary lecture on the topic ‘Imagining an alternative world’ at IIT-Madras on Friday.

In the event organised by Chintabar, a student body of IIT, Mr. Patnaik said the Left had also been hegemonised by a certain neoliberal politics.

In substantial parts of the world, the Left itself had been hegemonised by neoliberalism.

Since neoliberalism has led to globalisation, any retreat from globalisation means a retreat into some notion of a nation- worker-peasant alliance. The Left’s commitment to internationalism makes it susceptible to hegemonisation of neoliberalism.

In the absence of a coordinated global working class movement, a workers-peasant alliance is possible only within the boundaries of a country,” Mr. Patnaik said.

Appeal of Trump

He further said that the appeal of U. S. President Donald Trump is that he identified the problem with neoliberalism.

“His appeal is that he identified the crises but he had no solutions to it. Trump wants protectionism, which is against neoliberalism. Trump would be intelligent enough to see that it is not the solution," he said.