Bill Mitchell — The pandemic is demonstrating that we can resist neoliberalism

Good read on neoliberal, the scourge of our time, as the state is directed to the furtherance of the interests of capital over public purpose, disadvantaging people and the environment. It is a reminder that capitalism as a socio-economic system is based on the state favoring capital (accumulation of real and financial private property) over labor (the vast majority of people) and land (the environment and ecology). The consequences are now leading to disaster.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The pandemic is demonstrating that we can resist neoliberalism
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

See also

This post reviews Ntina Tzouvala’s recently published Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

MR Online
Capitalism and the Telos of the Neoliberal Civilizing MissionOriginally published: Legal Form by Jessica Whyte (January 14, 2021)

Also at MR

Largest protests on record globally have resulted from farmer resistance to this policy of the Indian government.

We are witnessing a bizarre situation. One comes across instances where consumers want growing of food crops for supplying to the public distribution system, while producers, lured by the apparent gains of shifting to cash crops, are reluctant to do so. The government has to mediate between these conflicting interests. But in India at present, the farmers have no desire to shift from food crops, even as consumers want food crops to be supplied through the public distribution system. There is no conflict of interest among them that the government has to mediate between. And, yet, it is imposing a shift on farmers from food to cash crops that would destroy the public distribution system.

Such a shift is precisely what the agricultural legislations aim to bring about. Government economists defending the laws have been emphasizing the benefits of such a shift. The government here is not mediating in a conflict of interests among the people; it has, apparently, its own interest, which it is imposing on the people, on farmers and consumers alike, against which the farmers are agitating in the bitter cold of Delhi. It is a bizarre case of government versus the people at large, not people versus people.

Likewise, the farmers are unanimous in rejecting contract farming; and, yet, the government is pushing contract farming through these bills, ostensibly in the farmers’ interest. Again, it is a case not of the government responding to the demand from any section of the people; it has apparently its own interest which it is imposing on the people.

But what could be its own interest?...

Neoliberalism.

While it is obvious that its own interest coincides with the interest of corporates and international agribusiness, the government’s answer would be that it is upholding the ‘national interest’. Corporate interest is thus identified with ‘national interest’. This has been the hallmark of the Narendra Modi regime, and it is symptomatic of the Corporate-Hindutva alliance of which Modi is the architect and which keeps him in power....

The patriots
Prabhat Patnaik | Indian Marxist economist and political commentator, Professor (retired) at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi (1974-2010) and formerly vice-chairman of Kerala State Planning Board (2006-2011)Originally published: Telegraph India (January 13, 2021)

Also

Peoples Dispatch
“Women will continue to lead the struggle against farm laws”