Neoliberal Dynamics Research Articles

Neoliberalism and Class Reproduction in India: The Political Economy of Privatisation in the Mineral Sector in the Indian State of Orissa

Recent years have witnessed a process of integration of the Indian Union within the new international economic order, characterised by the ascendance of neoliberalism. Orissa, historically one of the Indian states mostly affected by severe poverty and economic stagnation though richly endowed with natural resources, has enthusiastically endorsed the neo-liberal project, implementing all the relevant national policies related to it. In the last 15 years, while the economic policy of the State of Orissa has been thus increasingly shaped according to the neoliberal guidelines recommended by the Centre, the disturbing socio-economic scenario of the State has not changed significantly. This paper aims to highlight how specific power relations in the State of Orissa are reproducing themselves in the course of the transition of the Indian Union towards the neoliberal order. This paper aims to consider as an example of this process the privatisation policies in the mining sector, namely the main economic sector of Orissa. Moving from the fundamental role historically played by Orissa within the Indian Union as a supplier of raw materials to the pan-Indian market, the paper intends to highlight the rentier character of the Orissan dominant class, traditionally capable of performing a basic intermediary function in the provision of raw materials to the Indian market. Once taken into account the socio-economic role historically played by the local dominant class in Orissa within the context of the wider capitalist dynamics at work at the all-Indian level, the paper will focus on the scenario which came into being since the start of the neoliberal economic reforms in 1991. The major shifts in the mineral policy at the central level since 1991 will be taken into account and, within this context, the implementation of privatisation policy in the mineral sector in Orissa will be analysed, with special reference its socio-economic implications. The paper aims to highlight the way in which the State of Orissa has broadened its traditional role, becoming an important supplier of raw material not only to the all-Indian market, but to the international market in general. It will be argued as well that, in continuity with the past, the intermediary function of the local dominant class in this process has remained fundamental. Therefore the paper aims to argue that the current scenario supports the proposition that the unfolding of neoliberal dynamics in Orissa opened the way for the creation of new spaces of social reproduction for the local dominant class and, with them, for the reproduction of old relations of power and social domination in the State.

Global capitalism and the peasantry in Mexico: The recomposition of class struggle

Taking its cue from debates on‘the death of the peasantry’ in Latin America, this article attempts to focus on the constitution, transformation and recomposition of peasantries within the contemporary dynamics of neoliberalism. It does so by tracing the historically uneven and combined development of capital accumulation in Mexico and how this has impacted on the regional conditions of state formation in Chiapas, which has shaped the novel form of resistance articulated by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (ezln). The article explores the historical and contemporary dynamics of changes to production relations that have transformed the peasantry in Chiapas, Mexico. As a result, the thesis about the inevitable disappearance of the peasantry is challenged to assert the relevance of renewed conditions of class struggle embodied in the novel and purposeful agency of the ezln. It is argued that the recomposition of class struggle and resistance reflected in the resurgence of peasant movements such as the ezln is an essential feature of the contradictions of global capitalism within the contemporary age of neoliberalism.

COMMENTARY: NEOLIBERALISM: CONTEXT FOR A NEW WORKERS' STRUGGLE

In this essay labor historian Peter Rachleff takes a broad look at the political economy of U.S. capitalism since World War II, breaking this era into two periods: 1) the demand‐driven Keynesianism that emerged through the New Deal, the WWII economy, and the immediate postwar years; and 2) the anti‐working class neoliberalism that emerged piecemeal in the mid to late 1970s and has come to dominate the global economy. Rachleff's interest is in the impact of these political‐economic formations on working‐class struggle, in the U.S. and, increasingly, throughout the world. His argument is that, while neoliberalism has made the lives of most working people significantly worse, it has also established a common position and even experience that makes transnational solidarity more attainable in practice, thus opening out—potentially—into a new era of workers' struggles.Peter Rachleff is a Professor of History at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Over the past 25 years he has organized solidarity for a variety of workers' struggles in the upper Midwest, from the Hormel meatpackers in the mid‐1980s to the Northwest Airlines mechanics and flight attendants in the last year. In the past six years, he has made several visits to South Africa, and he credits activists there with helping him to understand the structures and dynamics of neoliberalism. Rachleff is the newly elected President of the Working Class Studies Association and is a board member of the Labor and Working Class History Association. His most recent book is an edited collection of IWW writings on the food industry, Starving Amidst Too Much (Charles H. Kerr Press, 2005).