Empires, Famine, and the Significance of the Political Economy of Colonialism: From the Mughal Empire to British Colonial Rule in India

This chapter will discuss understandings of forms of sustainable political economy within the context of sustainability in the community. Essentially, it will examine the issues which emerge when a community favours a green economic model within the context of the now largely discredited neo-liberal framework that never valued notions of sustainability, and is now largely in crisis due to the market decline and ‘credit crunch’. In addition, the section will outline the significance of community-based political economy for the development of sustainable forms of justice. A sustainable form of political economy incorporates particular concerns, such as ‘the geographical scope of production for local needs, and the exposing and combating the institutions and power structures that lead to poverty and lack of local control’ (Kennet & Heinemann, 2006, p. 78). Under the neo-liberal system, a dichotomy existed between community development and the dominant, yet ultimately unsustainable, growth-based form of political economy.

The new political economy of colonialism is an interdisciplinary field that unites economists, political scientists, and sociologists interested in the nature and contemporary legacies of colonialism. It is distinctive in its reliance of quantitative data, its close attention to causal identification, and its focus on deriving novel theoretical insights using standard tools in positive political economy. This essay traces the development of the new political economy of colonialism over the past 20 years and identifies exciting new contributions in this rapidly developing and interdisciplinary field.

Reviewed by: Harriet Martineau's Writings on the British Empire Maria Frawley (bio) Deborah Logan , ed. Harriet Martineau's Writings on the British Empire (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2004). Five volumes, c. 2000 pp., $675.00, cloth. This edition of Harriet Martineau's writings on the British empire could not have come at a more opportune time. Thanks in part to the influence of postcolonial criticism and theory in humanities programs, scholars of nineteenth-century literature, history, and culture have engaged for a decade or two in discussion of the origins, experience, and implications of British imperialism. For Victorianists working in English Departments, scholarship by Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak has been particularly influential in creating awareness of how texts represent and deploy nationality, racial and ethnic difference, cultural authority, and how texts can be said to produce colonial knowledge. Yet given the reach and extent of the Empire by the end of the century, and the widespread assumption of British superiority that accompanied imperialism's more tangible manifestations, it is striking how relatively restricted is the canon of texts that literary scholars in particular have used to study its reverberations, particularly in the early and middle parts of the century. For this period, English students now routinely draw their evidence for an understanding of empire from a handful of novels, Austen's Mansfield Park, Brontë's Jane Eyre, and Gaskell's Cranford among them, and come to rather predictable conclusions about their orientalist assumptions. Only very recently have the limitations in our understanding of imperialism, and its presence in the literature of the period, surfaced for open and healthy discussion. Inspired in part by Bernard Porter's new book, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004) – both by his overarching argument against a pervasive, monolithic "imperial culture" and by his claim that not a single canonical novel of the nineteenth century features the Empire significantly – Victorianists have been prompted to reflect more critically not only on imperialism itself, but on imperial historiography. That Harriet Martineau had something to say about these matters will come as no surprise to Martineau scholars, long aware of the formidable range of her writing. What the Pickering Masters series has achieved, [End Page 69] though, is to group texts until now considered disparate into a unified whole that demonstrates the breadth and depth of Martineau's investment in the social, economic, and historic consequences of her country's imperial posture. Thus, Volume One includes a selection of texts originally published in Martineau's influential series Illustrations of Political Economy, as well as the 1845 tale Dawn Island. Volumes Two and Three comprise the long out-of-print travel volume and historical study, Eastern Life, Present and Past. Volume Four brings together Martineau's writings on Ireland, which stretch from Ireland, published in 1832, to Letters from Ireland (1852), to her study on the Endowed Schools of Ireland (1858). Finally, Volume 5 includes a selection of texts that address more wellknown dimensions of Britain's imperial presence: British Rule in India: A Historical Sketch (1857); Suggestions Toward the Future Government of India (1858); The East India Company Question (1857–58); and The China Question (1857–58). Although acknowledging the gaps between Martineau's stated ideals, which in many respects mimicked those of imperial administrators, and the realities of military might and economic exploitation, Patrick Brantlinger remarks in his preface to the series that "Martineau expresses 'liberal imperialism' at its best: conscientious, free of racism, clear about cultural differences, and with progress in civilization throughout the world as the ultimate goal" (1:x). Alike attuned to the fact that Martineau was "always eclectic" and "not without contradictions" in her ongoing attempt to reconcile imperialism with democratic principles (1:xlvi), Deborah Logan proves a steady and eminently capable guide through each of the five volumes in this series. Her general introduction stresses from the outset the connections between the spread of imperialism and the growth of the periodical press, which facilitated the circulation of travel writing, sociology, and political economy – genres that Martineau cultivated throughout her journalistic career. She emphasizes as well the importance of recognizing the many ways...

The colonial history of India is frequently associated with the British Empire, yet the French Empire also had a long-lasting and significant presence in India. Jessica Namakkal illuminates this important aspect of India’s colonial history and its legacy in her engaging book, which offers original insights and contributions to various disciplines, including French studies, colonial history, postcolonial studies, political science, and memory studies. Namakkal draws on a wide range of sources, perspectives, and original methodologies, including the study of archival material, the press of various nations, memoirs, interviews, visual media, and observations of the landscape and events taking place in contemporary Pondicherry, the former capital of the French Empire in India. The work highlights the complex entanglements, tensions, and rivalries between the British and French Empires that shaped India’s colonial history. The author offers detailed portraits of key figures who played important roles in defining the colonial history and the future of French India, such as Sri Aurobindo, Mira Alfassa, Édouard Goubert, and Raphael Ramanyya Dadala, tracing their actions and examining their thought. The volume also explores the complex interrelations between identity, nationality, ethnicity, and caste of residents of French India, and highlights the ways in which attitudes towards nationality shifted in tandem with the evolving policies and politics of the Empire. Namakkal casts light on the various migrant trajectories which arose as a consequence of the French Empire in India, including the experiences of those who migrated from Europe to French India, those who sought refuge from the British Empire in French Indian territories, and those who migrated from India to France after independence. Through an analysis of various case studies, Namakkal explores the plight of French nationals of Indian origin after independence, who were frequently alienated from both nations. She also provides fresh insight into the experiences and political significance of mixed-race residents of French India, offering a new perspective on the concept of ‘creolization’ in the context of Pondicherry. A particular strength of the work lies in its novel approach to the concept of decolonization. The author argues that decolonization in the context of French India is not merely to be equated with liberation and peace, but suggests that it engendered violence, and remains incomplete in various senses. Namakkal casts light on the ways in which various aspects of the colonial regime, including divisions and inequalities between local and foreign populations, and the oppression of indigenous populations, continue today in the form of the settlement of Auroville near Pondicherry, which, despite the utopian vision of its founder, Alfassa, ‘exemplifies the phenomenon of anticolonial colonialism, a key concept in understanding neocolonialism in a postcolonial world’ (p. 183). This thoroughly researched and thought-provoking book, which offers insights into a frequently neglected aspect of India’s colonial history, is ­especially valuable to scholars working in postcolonial, French, and South Asian studies.

The Marathas, now sometimes called “Maharashtrians,” are an Indic people, speakers of the Marathi language. The boundaries of the modern Indian state of Maharashtra were drawn so as to include all majority Marathi-speaking areas. The Marathi language emerged a thousand years ago, but the Maratha Empire took shape only after 1674. Its leaders contended with the Mughal Empire and contributed to its downfall. They created a loosely knit but dynamic political system that grew within the frame of Mughal imperial power while reducing it to a shadow of its former self. Maratha governors ruled the great cities of Agra and Delhi, and it was from them that the British wrested control of north India in 1803–1806. The residual Maratha states still put up a fierce resistance before succumbing to the new British Empire in 1818. British historians wrote the first draft of Indian history. The English public was uninterested in the Marathas. The Mughal dynasty and the older states of Rajasthan received far more favorable attention. The historical narrative that the British rescued India from chaos also required a depiction of the Marathas as predatory sources of disorder. This representation has resulted in minimizing the commercial dynamism and flexibility of Maratha administration. Maratha taxation was far from destructive. It operated within a dynamic political economy. While periodically affected (as Indian governments had long been) by climatic catastrophe or political breakdown, this economy could recuperate quickly in better times. The Maratha Empire also represented a unique identification between a people and an empire. Ordinary Maharashtrian farmers served in its armies, were proud of its political achievements, and identified with the Maratha patria. The empire was also marked by a continuity with the symmetrical patterns of kinship and marriage customary in Maharashtra. While sons of secondary wives could rise to high positions in the lineage, primary marriages continued to be with women of status. Affinal relatives were recognized and played a large role in governance. Also, unlike the Mughal Empire, the Marathas used their own language wherever they ruled, enriching and elaborating it all the while. This prefigured the rise of linguistic nationalisms more generally in India under British rule.

Marx's of political has itself suffered a number of critiques in this century. Since the late 1960's have seen a number of such critiques in France, no doubt in partial reaction to the rise of a revitalized marxism prior to 1968 and its subsequent decline in many intellectual circles. As a subject of analysis, discussions of political economy almost inevitably touch upon questions of an anthropological nature, this at times in their concern for a universal man, at other times simply in their effort to contrast the interplay of economy and polity in a perspective of cross-cultural breadth and historical depth. Baudrillard's Le Miroir de la production seeks to follow the latter route in its twoprong criticism of dialectical materialism and political economy. Marx makes a radical critique of political economy, are told, but he makes it still in the form of political economy; the anticipated response is thus no surprise: we must move to a radically different level, beyond its critique, to the definitive resolution of political (40).1 The argument thus develops substantially beyond marxism and political economy to a discussion of what Baudrillard entitles symbolic exchange, a concept seemingly owing much to the social exchange emphasis of French sociology from Mauss to Levi-Strauss. But as wielded by Baudrillard, the concept reveals itself as something in fact less systematic, less sociological, and considerably more radical in its opposition with the subsequently developed view of modern society. This is, as I will argue below, no doubt the concept's rhetorical function. But it is a function that achieves its goal of saving primitive society from the categories of modern political economy and marxism only at the rather dubious expense of an idealized primitivism and a denigrated modernity. It is the profundity of this break, to parody Althusser's earlier-vaunted epistemological break, that gives Baudrillard's criticism of contemporary political economy its force. But examination of the two major movements in Baudrillard's critique-the criticism of the categories of political economy and the assertion of the sociological distinctiveness of primitiveness-might suggest that here, as elsewhere, one need be cautious with analytically-acclaimed ruptures profondes.

In this paper, we trace the history of tropical architecture beyond its supposed founding moment, that is, its institutionalization and naming‐as‐such, in the mid‐twentieth century. We note that many of the planning principles, spatial configurations and environmental technologies of tropical architecture could be traced to knowledge and practices from the eighteenth century onwards, and we explore three pre‐1950s moments of ‘tropical architecture’ in the British empire through building types such as the bungalow, military barrack and labourers' housing in the tropics. Unlike the depoliticized technical discourse of tropical architecture in the mid‐twentieth century, this earlier history shows that so‐called tropical architecture was inextricably entangled with medical and racial discourses, biopolitics and the political economy of colonialism. We argue that tropical architecture should not be understood as an entity with a fixed essence that is overdetermined by a timeless and unchanging external tropical nature. Rather, tropical architecture should be understood as a set of shifting discourses that privilege tropical nature, especially climate, in various ways as the prime determinant of built form according to different constellations of sociocultural and technoscientific conditions. We thus see ‘tropical architecture’ not as a depoliticized entity but as a power‐knowledge configuration inextricably linked to asymmetrical colonial power relations.

My main point in this article is to suggest that even though the subalterns “do not speak directly in archival documents which are usually produced by the ruling classes” (Chakrabarty, “Small History” 478), they speak nonetheless in bits and traces within the elite discourses. Wherever the elite speak, the subaltern speaks as well because “supplementarity” is the condition of their possibility.1 “Man is aristocratic,” Antonio Gramsci argues, “because he is the servant of the soil” (80). Just like other structural opposites, the subaltern constitutes the elite not by being outside the domains of modern knowledge production but by inhabiting them. It is, therefore, hard to imagine the one without imagining the “other.” I do not at all mean to suggest, however, that the subalterns are able to speak for themselves or to suggest that the intellectuals’ role is now over, but to submit that there is a more complicated nexus between the rulers and the subalterns than it is often thought. In his article “The Impossibility of Subaltern History,” the critic Gyan Prakash argues that the subaltern refuses to be outside modernity, and the discourse that puts him or her outside history is indicative of the will of those who practice such exclusionary discourse. He further contends,

British Empire in India saw major transformations in the identities of its Indian subjects. The growth of the modern state, the introduction of new systems of knowledge, the expansion of capitalist modes of production, and the spread of communications of all forms—railway, telegraph, post, press—made possible the fashioning of all kinds of new identities at local, regional and supra-regional levels. One of the identities which developed most strikingly was the Muslim. Indeed, at independence in 1947 it gained the particular accolade of embracing its own modern state in the shape of Pakistan. This political outcome, however, was just part of an extraordinary series of developments in Muslim identities under British rule which shed light not just on the nature of British rule but also on major changes at work in Muslim society.

A central question in both the political and civic the discourses on national identity in Bangladesh has been 'where did the Muslim majority population of Bengal, more precisely of Bangladesh, come from?' The available answers to this question constitute the basis of various competing discourses about the national identity of Bangladeshis, especially with regard to its relation to Islam. This article recognises Richard Eaton's historical masterpiece The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (1993), which offers the most persuasive answer to the question. It demonstrates how the Muslim majority rural population in Bangladesh originated through an evolutionary process over 150 years during the beginning of Mughal rule. This essay presents a succinct account of Eaton's rebuttal to the popular explanation of the rise of Muslim population in Bangladesh, identification of the historical moments of the emergence of this population and finally a theoretical explanation of the evolutionary process of the emergence and development of Muslim populations. As Eaton deftly explores through historical documents as well as Bengali folklores, this Muslim population rose side by side the agricultural expansion in the eastern part of the Bengal delta facilitated by the east-wards movement of the main river courses, political integration of Bengal into the Indian Mughal empire and commercial linkages to long-distance foreign trade by the European seafarers. Under the Mughal empire's aggressive land reclamation policy through agrarian development, Muslim pioneers took the leading role in clearing forest-lands in the newly developing eastern deltaic Bengal for rice cultivation by mobilising indigenous semi-nomadic tribes. They would establish Mosques as the centre of these rural peasant communities for the regulation of socio-cultural affairs as well as mundane daily life. This facilitated interactions between a nebulous form of Islam and the indigenous worldview in the emergent social context whereby both co-existed side by side and intermingled in contents and forms. Over few generations, these two coalesced into an integral world view with Islamic contents and indigenous forms as reflected in the folklores of those communities. Finally, the emergent rural peasantry developed into Muslim societies through Islamic reform movements during British colonial rule. Thus, Islam is not imposed on the Bengali Muslims from above and outside, but rather it is a constituent part of their identity since the inception their communities. This explanation offers important insights for studying the politics of national identity and the rise of political Islam in contemporary Bangladesh.

This book provides an account of the size and characteristics of India’s population stretching from the arrival of modern human beings until the present day. The periods considered include those of: the millennia that were occupied by hunting and gathering; the Indus valley civilization; the opening-up of the Ganges basin; and the eras of the Delhi Sultanate, Mughal Empire, and British colonial rule. The book also devotes substantial consideration to the unprecedented changes that have occurred in India since 1947. With reference to these and other periods, key topics addressed include: the scale of the population; the levels of mortality and fertility that prevailed; regional demographic variation; the size of the main cities; the level of urbanization; patterns of migration; and the many famines, epidemics, invasions and other events which affected the population. The book is a work of synthesis—albeit one with few certainties. It draws on research of many different kinds—e.g. archaeological, climatic, cultural, economic, epidemiological, historical, linguistic, political, and demographic. The book considers the past trajectory of India’s population compared to the trends which seem to have been shared by China and Europe. In addition, it highlights some misconceptions about the history of India’s population.

Lahore, Pakistan – Urbanization challenges and opportunities

This paper foregrounds one argument in Rawls's work that is crucial to his case for one, determinate, form of political economy: a property-owning democracy.1 Section one traces the evolution of this idea from the seminal work of Cambridge economist James Meade; section two demonstrates how a commitment to a property-owning democracy flows from Rawls's own principles; section three focuses on Rawls's striking critique of orthodox welfare state capitalism. This all sets the stage for an argument, presented in section four, from the complexity of economic interactions to the strategy of making markets fair in the only feasible way that they can be made fair, namely, by "patterning" their effects. Section five concludes by asking whether any scheme of this general type is a realistic form of utopianism for a society such as ours.Many early readers of A Theory of Justice took Rawls to be advocating a form of "Keynesian capitalist liberalism."2 However, if we define a capitalist society as one where people who do not own capital work for wages paid to them by capitalists (those who exclusively hold property and other forms of capital), then Rawls's conception of a property-owning democracy would involve the rejection of capitalism. James Meade, the proximate influence on Rawls's ideas, was indeed a Keynesian. However, given the working definition of a capitalist society that I have noted, it seems that liberal Keynesianism can reasonably be characterized as anti-capitalist in both Meade's and Rawls's variants.Meade's conception of a property-owning democracy emerged when he sought new avenues for egalitarianism in Britain given that the achievements of the Attlee government of 1945 were receding into the past.3 His aim was to combine Keynesian demand management with the public ownership of natural monopolies and the institutions of a property-owning democracy. Meade further proposed educational reform, a publicly funded unit trust, and state investment funds to supply an unconditional basic income. In a break with the policies of the then Labour government, Meade believed that welfare state redistribution was a threat to overall economic efficiency. Furthermore, relying on trade unions to redress the balance between labour and capital generated constant inflationary pressure in a way that explained the perceived "failure" of post-war Keynesian demand management: [G]radually, as in our imperfectly competitive society separate groups learned to press their monopolistic bargaining powers to obtain each for itself the best possible share of the available income, the system broke down.4 Meade's new strategy for redressing the balance between labour and capital was to rely on market prices to protect individual liberties and economic efficiency, but to increase the bargaining strength of labour by giving workers capital: If private property were much more equally divided we should achieve the mixed citizen—both worker and property owner at the same time—to live in the 'mixed economy' of public and private enterprise. The ownership of private property could then fulfill its useful function of providing a basis for private enterprise and for individual security and independence without carrying with it the curse of social inequality as it now does.5 Rawls's adaptation of Meade's ideas contains a cleaner break with welfare state capitalism, particularly in his late, summative statement of his views in Justice as Fairness where welfare state capitalism is unequivocally described as unjust.6 In the first edition of A Theory of Justice Rawls stated that: The aim of the branches of government is to establish a democratic regime in which land and capital are widely though not presumably equally held. Society is not so divided that one small sector controls the preponderance of productive resources.7 The branches of government dealing with the economy are the Allocative branch that deals with externalities, competition, and anti-trust. The Stabilisation branch is the most Keynesian branch of government, concerned with demand management and full employment. The Transfer Branch ensures the payment of a decent social minimum compatible with economic efficiency overall, via a negative income tax. Finally, the Distributive Branch raises money for transfer and for the regulation of the top end of distributions via a flat rate expenditure tax and the imposition of inheritance tax.The upshot, then, is this: in Rawls's ideal property-owning democracy, markets operate in a context structured pervasively by fairness. The state intervenes not only to supply public goods and to counter negative externalities, but also to impose that which Rawls called "adjusted procedural justice." Some effects are the unintended outcomes of intended behaviour; the "invisible hand" part of Rawls's view is that the market, of its nature, decentralises economic power and protects freedom of occupational choice. It does the former by protecting free association and free equality of opportunity and does the latter by giving rise to differential earnings.8The main difference between Rawls's and Meade's version of property-owning democracy, then, concerns the strategic role of progressive taxation. In the first edition of A Theory of Justice, Rawls states that steeply progressive taxes may very well be justified "given the injustice of existing institutions."9 But in ideal theory the role of progressive taxation is minimal. Equally striking is the residual "invisible hand" role, in both Meade's and Rawls's ideal, played by markets. This is an important point to which I will return below. In order to explain why progressive taxation plays such a marginal role in the ideally just society we need a better grasp on how a property-owning democracy is justified by Rawls's principles interpreted as working together as an interlocking group.Which of Rawls's principles make the case for a property-owning democracy? All of them, but in different ways. One of the most interesting aspects of Justice as Fairness is that in his comparison of a property-owning democracy and welfare state capitalism, to the detriment of the latter, Rawls interprets the build up of private concentrations of wealth permitted in welfare state capitalism as a potential threat to basic liberty. In his earlier work, Rawls had indeed conceded that on any view that has permissible inequality, the equal basic liberties would be of different worth to different people. But that thought was not troubling if people had a broadly comparable fair value in their political liberties: their ability to hold office and to participate, broadly, in the political determination of office. The political liberties, here, are the gatekeeper for the liberties as a whole.10 Martin O'Neill has objected that this argument is overdone: there are a variety of insulation strategies that a liberal democracy can pursue that can prevent accumulations of private wealth influencing the political process. So if Rawls objects to welfare state capitalism not because of bad effects that it brings about directly, but on the grounds of a general exposure to a political risk that it does not prevent, that part of his argument is implausible.11This is not the place to discuss my disagreement with O'Neill in any detail, but in fact I think that Rawls was not only right to emphasise this argument, but also that he needed to do more within the ambit of his own theory to address it.12 The measures he actually suggests to protect the fair value of the political liberties are disappointingly thin. My answer, unsurprisingly, is that Rawls is here demonstrating that his first principle of equal basic liberty, if it is to be implemented in conjunction with the fair value proviso for the political liberties, demands implementation in a property-owning democracy. The latter is the only way to prevent the concentration of private wealth that will lead to illegitimate interference with the political process.13What of the first part of the second principle, governing equality of opportunity? Here the case for a property-owning democracy is even clearer when one notes that "property" in this phrase is standing in for capital as a whole, and human capital counts as a form of capital. Fair equality of opportunity requires an adequately funded and free public education system that brings everyone's marketable talents up to their full potential, given that education is a public good not likely to be promoted in an unconstrained capitalist market. This measure, if fully implemented, would have a transformatory effect on the labour market by substantially increasing the supply of qualified labour, thus reducing the unearned rents currently accruing to the limited supply of labour for particular occupations.14I think it is important to bear in mind that this restructuring of the labour market by the full implementation of measures genuinely designed to protect the fair value of the political liberties, liberty as a whole, and the fair equality of opportunity forms the context for the introduction of the difference principle.15 The distinctive way in which Rawls makes the labour market fair, namely, by structuring the context in which it operates in order to pattern its effects has been very insightfully highlighted by Paul Smith: The idea that the equalization of property ownership would transform the labour market, by equalizing bargaining power and eliminating the economic coercion to accept drudge jobs at low pay and thus forcing employers to make all jobs attractive, all things considered, is crucial to Rawls's idea that, in a competitive labour market located in a just basic structure, income inequalities would tend just to compensate the costs of different jobs, that is, tend to equality, all things considered.16 Smith believes that this explains some of the distinctive features of Rawls's egalitarian strategy: Economic equalization is more likely and reliably to be effected, as Rawls thinks, by institutions and policies that equalize bargaining power than by an egalitarian ethos restraining the exercise of unequal bargaining power (and egalitarian institutions and their distributional results are what, if anything, could produce an egalitarian ethos).17 I will say more about this Rawlsian strategy and its underlying rationale below. But the basic idea is to structure the labour market so that what looks like the introduction of special incentives under the difference principle works under a set of macro-economic arrangements that make such incentives tend to be merely compensatory.18 This is crucial to any response to the concern that introducing such incentives encourages motivations within individuals that run counter to justice and lead to Rawls's theory as a whole becoming unstable.19This takes me back to my original point about the lexical ordering of Rawls's principles; the case for a property-owning democracy is over-determined. I would argue that it is required directly by the first principle, but, even if it were not and it only arrived on the scene with the principle of fair equality of opportunity, these two prior principles would be threatened by an unconstrained difference principle that did not operate in a context structured by the dispersion of capital implemented by a property-owning democracy. That is why, in spite of G. A. Cohen's disdain for the traditional Marxist argument that liberalism guarantees only a formal equality that is then undermined by substantial material inequalities, his own critique of Rawlsian incentives can naturally be extended in that way.20 The introduction of the difference principle would rebound to undermine the first principle and the complementary "fair value proviso" for the basic liberties. That is why, in order to resist Cohen's well-known critique of Rawls, we ought to see all three principles as operating as a connected package, as being mutually reinforcing, and making an over-determined case for a property-owning democracy.So much, then, for the positive case for a property-owning democracy from within Rawls's own ideas. But was he right? Was Rawls right, in particular, about the normative superiority of a property-owning democracy to the welfare state capitalism with which we are most familiar?Rawls's critique of welfare state capitalism runs as follows: Welfare-state capitalism … rejects the fair value of the political liberties, and while it has some concern for equality of opportunity, the policies necessary to achieve that are not followed. It permits very large inequalities in the ownership of real property (productive assets and natural resources) so that the control of the economy and much of political life rests in few hands. And although, as the name "welfare-state capitalism" suggests, welfare provisions may be quite generous and guarantee a decent social minimum covering the basic needs, a principle of reciprocity to regulate economic and social inequalities is not recognized.21 I think this passage contains an interesting mix of normative claims and a critique of existing social arrangements. The normative issue highlights the ambivalence of the republican values that underpin the idea of a property-owning democracy which have, surprisingly, made it attractive across the whole range of the political spectrum from conservatism to socialism.22Underpinning the idea of a property-owning democracy is a republican connection between the holding of private property, in the specific form of capital, and virtue. Because the connection here is vague, it has been left open to various different interpretations, and these help to classify the "Left wing" and "Right wing" appropriations of the ideal of property-owning discourse. Aristotle's view was that the secure holding of private property underpinned the virtue of self-sufficiency. Throughout the history of political philosophy some traditions have justified private property via its connection to personal flourishing, but in the specific case of holdings of capital the connection is, rather, with security of status and the qualities of mind that that security of status, in turn, permits. That aspect of the ideal clearly extends through to Meade and to Rawls. One aspect of "security" that is particularly worthy of note is not simply the positive benefit to the worst off involved in holding property, but also the security that it affords them in protection from the debt that is a standing risk for those wholly dependent on income. In our own, far from Rawlsian, societies it is the worst off who are disproportionately vulnerable to chronic debt at punitive interest rates. The worst off, here, include not just those receiving welfare payments, but also the "working poor." As James Baldwin famously remarked, "anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor."This is a case where the difference between actual world and ideal world theorizing is salient. One line of of welfare state capitalism is that it encourages welfare and the of a welfare That critique seems in a currently society where those who are worst off, and receiving are in that through of their that these people are without it is to impose justified by the fact that welfare to and social However, those to Rawls's views it that the of comparison is a just society that has implemented his principles in the form of a property-owning democracy. the of the payment of the social minimum required to make a a of justice at what role is there for welfare state in such an Rawls other than social security in its of providing believed that there was good to welfare state arrangements as such and that the context in which they operate is because it permits concentrations of wealth in private hands. A property-owning democracy, on the other in the of such concentrations of wealth just as republican political aim to state capitalism permits an context I would a are clearly in which a society to make a democratic to a society that is just by Rawls's But I think Rawls is right to about a society an between the very and a of the well off, who their to be by the of and even well welfare state Rawls's ideal of a society of free and equal is not compatible with the of a of and who are not of any scheme for likely ever to be even if they are of a decent social This is Rawls's that welfare state capitalism the of a principle of The worst off under welfare state capitalism live in a society that is both and ever to just via any feasible democratic would like to one back from Rawls's specific to on an issue of argument is a very interesting strategy in Rawls that does not on a property-owning democracy in particular, but on a general way of justice that is to lead to a property-owning democracy, very much like I have in mind are those Rawlsian that from the and complexity of a economy that the implementation of principles of justice can work only by structuring the context in which market so as to impose a pattern on their Justice As Fairness Rawls his own with a of the latter general set up fair and for fair individual and that all outcomes the run are made Rawls that this view the to individual that may fair, but which are actually undermined by concentrations of wealth that are to undermine "fair equality of opportunity, the fair value of the political liberties, and so That is why, in order to these we to procedural This an of which Rawls claims justice as is one Justice as focuses first on the basic structure and on the required to justice for all equally … we rely on an of between principles required to justice and principles that directly to particular between individuals and this of is set individuals and are then left free to their within the of the basic structure, secure in the that in the social system the necessary to justice are in is a point about complexity this I it Rawls is we do not a realistic on the one the context in which a market operates in order to make its effects fair, and the of each in a market one at a to the same is a an has that Smith was right to the value by as generated by the underlying of economic in society that makes This any individual in a of Smith the of in which a in economic society as all Economic a for is best explained as in the of that both to and in progressive to Smith also takes the differential talents and involved in this system as of education and normative that from ideas are that it is to individual productive The income that from talents is an from a of social that of the economy is by working The for an that are through the of involved in a that is simply a in a of This line of argument seems to me of the particular form that Rawls's egalitarian strategy it is simply not feasible to regulate individual market because the very idea of an individual market is a That is why Rawls believed that the only way to make a market fair is to make its effects achieve that by structuring the context in which that market operates to pattern its That is how a property-owning democracy think a of this aspect of Rawls's overall strategy G. A. Cohen's critique of Rawlsian special incentives to which I have takes this strategy to make Rawls a latter in his of to that a society that the benefit to all would do so as the unintended effect of by individuals that was and I think that is a if as an of the point is that if this restructuring of the market is the only feasible way to be an egalitarian then there is feasible way to a conception of justice as fairness. in a political economy structured in this way and their motivations in their labour this commitment to justice and do not That is in the phrase in the from Rawls where he notes that individuals are left free to pursue their permissible within a just also on to point of between Rawls and namely, their of can have positive that are not intended by any in the market. I the phrase "invisible hand" with given of of this phrase that is of But Rawls, like clearly believes that markets involve a mix of externalities, positive and some some In particular Rawls a connection between his first principle the basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and the of a think this point is important as it has a on the between a property-owning democracy and a market Rawls his own interest in ideas about political economy in particular, an economy of One of the in Rawls's between property-owning democracy and liberal is whether the latter is to a property-owning democracy as it democratic control of Rawls's for a property-owning democracy on this point as a liberal Rawls was to idea that there was an function to virtue in the and the of the democratic ideal into a place for good we most of our line of argument seems to me Rawls is quite right to the of why, if was right, an economy ought not to be made up of such given that they are such attractive to The is to be in the connection that Rawls makes between the regime of liberty by his first principle and market It seems to me that and are also that, if worker have positive for society as a whole, there is a rationale for giving them tax to their further and the of a they were equally to emphasise that given competitive and a regime of liberty, we can that some people will trade democratic control of their for other that Rawls is a political liberal with for the of Rawls then he is to the idea that political is itself a part of the good do not have to lead in which political is one of their they simply have to their role as a of when it to of public this it does not then, if a works in a that does not democratic there is in the context of society as a the republican the political liberal people to work in that their for but it is not that a mixed economy of both worker and need have this Furthermore, there is unintended in a property-owning democracy by Paul namely, that employers are to have to more for given the supply of labour and the of in a property-owning democracy will not be on to the market by drudge jobs, and as part of making jobs attractive will have to increase for making at work make if they do connection that Rawls makes between a regime of liberty and the market via explains why, as and we can a property-owning democracy to a of of both I not here to competitive as Rawls argument that a society as a whole could a and not concerned with of capital a regime of liberty we can people to trade other values for the value of democratic control of his so does in my any of the of political liberalism do not political all of the even democratic control of where they If they to trade this value this is not to say that it is not a but that the regime of liberty by Rawls's first principle permits them to do need be overall of the of virtue if it is in and life more only is this issue of worker ownership not a point between a property-owning democracy and market it also seems to me a point in of property-owning democracy. This is because the secure control capital given to each in the latter people to more in where they to work with their on income from labour more likely to to work in a that them democratic would like to by one important to the idea of property-owning democracy and a positive as a for The is that all that can be by an property-owning democracy is giving people a in their own more we are simply to the of the It is to note that the in to ownership to those with in other a at The then, is this: simply everyone's exposure to the of the first point to make is that this view the role played in a property-owning democracy by human capital. It the way in which the of the principle of equality of opportunity requires the of of So a property-owning democracy is not just about ownership and share even if it there is the of whether the to a property-owning democracy just all to risk to the of of the in that very Rawls's is in the we are working here in ideal it will be free from the generated on the of regulation from the very concentrations of wealth that a property democracy to The role played by a of regulation in the is a The response to this concern is that part of Meade's was a publicly unit that share ownership across the whole of the market thus a of protection from its However, my main response is simply that it is not who is to do any better in capital and that most of are in this notes the large of of the public funds in the and Meade's a striking to how the capital assets of some of are being and In I think on is the most realistic way to to make a property-owning democracy a would like to with a positive very much at the real world that would the first a property-owning democracy. The some in this with the introduction of the and the but both of these were in My is much more and comparable to and for a payment of to My is but in one way more and in way more A in the is a way of people to by their with a from a of government, and private when the its are to a first a small for a capital holding that is I think a good place to is with the in most that do not to on the open market The first is to make a state for of hold an capital for by various unit by This capital is, up My is simply to the as part of a to the potential of a property-owning democracy for at the state would a capital on their state to and This capital like a would the form of only for limited for education enterprise the of a first property as a back in a The is that while and simply to the money at this up on a will see that by an In my are being up part of own underlying in the that will be adequately by the security and it brings the of to The can simply their capital back in to an investment in The will have all the of a capital holding at a when it can make a difference to whether they ever a own will also them a of protection from In with the full implementation of Rawls's this will both make a property-owning democracy a and also address the of how a like this is to be

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Nabobs Revisited: A Cultural History of British Imperialism and the Indian Question in Late‐Eighteenth‐Century Britain

J.S. Mill is considered one of the most influential figures of the classical political economy. In attempting to reconcile Ricardian and non-Ricardian political economy, Mill developed radical views on various matters, including the distribution of wealth and his political economy of small proprietorships. Mill, as an Examiner of the East India Company, was inclined towards defending imperialism and British rule in India. His support for British imperialism aimed at promoting the material and moral improvement of British colonies while, at the same time, he believed that the harm principle sets limits to coercion, as people in India were not savages but enslaved people to despots. This article points out that the Indian land case provides a crucial link to connect Mill’s political economy of small proprietorships with his tolerant imperial political thought. It is argued that this conjunction is necessary to our understanding of Mill’s political economy and political theory.