Capitalism, Inequality and Labour in India


Book Description

Jan Breman analyses labour bondage in India's changing political economy from 1962 to 2017. Focusing on what has happened since Independence, he argues that colonial rule changed the country's agrarian economy. Capitalism has led to progressive inequality, lack of welfare and the exclusion of the dispossessed from mainstream society.




Mobilizing against Inequality


Book Description

Among the many challenges that global liberalization has posed for trade unions, the growth of precarious immigrant workforces lacking any collective representation stands out as both a major threat to solidarity and an organizing opportunity. Believing that collective action is critical in the struggle to lift the low wages and working conditions of immigrant workers, the contributors to Mobilizing against Inequality set out to study union strategies toward immigrant workers in four countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and United States. Their research revealed both formidable challenges and inspiring examples of immigrant mobilization that often took shape as innovative social countermovements. Using case studies from a carwash organizing campaign in the United States, a sans papiers movement in France, Justice for Cleaners in the United Kingdom, and integration approaches by the Metalworkers Union in Germany, among others, the authors look at the strategies of unions toward immigrants from a comparative perspective. Although organizers face a different set of obstacles in each country, this book points to common strategies that offer promise for a more dynamic model of unionism is the global North. Visit the website for the book, which features literature reviews, full case studies, updates, and links to related publications at www.mobilizing-against-inequality.info.




Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism


Book Description

Bringing together ethnographic case studies of industrial labor from different parts of the world, Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism explores the increasing casualization of workforces and the weakening power of organized labor. This division owes much to state policies and is reflected in local understandings of class. By exploring this relationship, these essays question the claim that neoliberal ideology has become the new ‘commonsense’ of our times and suggest various propositions about the conditions that create employment regimes based on flexible labor.




Capitalism, Alone


Book Description

For the first time in history, the globe is dominated by one economic system. Capitalism prevails because it delivers prosperity and meets desires for autonomy. But it also is unstable and morally defective. Surveying the varieties and futures of capitalism, Branko Milanovic offers creative solutions to improve a system that isn’t going anywhere.




At Work in the Informal Economy of India


Book Description

With labour being pushed out of agriculture, Jan Breman analyses why, when, and how the massive shift in production and employment came about. The book is divided into two parts. The first part discusses the past and present path of capitalism and dwells on the abominable condition of theunorganized workforce and the commodification of labour, familiarizing the reader with the concept of informality and its ramifications. The second part, a compilation of well-established, critical readings in the field by the author, elaborates on themes and issues introduced in the first part ofthe book. Drawing upon detailed field accounts and a critique of the informal sector at both analytical and empirical levels, the author examines different aspects of the labour regime that, in the past decades, has become dominant in the world at large, with serious consequences for the labouringpoor in India.




Capital in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.




Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism


Book Description

While it's easy to blame globalization for shrinking job opportunities, dangerous declines in labor standards, and a host of related discontents, the "flattening" of the world has also created unprecedented opportunities for worker organization. By expanding employment in developing countries, especially for women, globalization has formed a basis for stronger workers' rights, even in remote sites of production. Using India's labor movement as a model, Rohini Hensman charts the successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses, of the struggle for workers' rights and organization in a rich and varied nation. As Indian products gain wider acceptance in global markets, the disparities in employment conditions and union rights between such regions as the European Union and India's vast informal sector are exposed, raising the issue of globalization's implications for labor. Hensman's study examines the unique pattern of "employees' unionism," which emerged in Bombay in the 1950s, before considering union responses to recent developments, especially the drive to form a national federation of independent unions. A key issue is how far unions can resist protectionist impulses and press for stronger global standards, along with the mechanisms to enforce them. After thoroughly unpacking this example, Hensman zooms out to trace the parameters of a global labor agenda, calling for a revival of trade unionism, the elimination of informal labor, and reductions in military spending to favor funding for comprehensive welfare and social security systems.




Critical Reflections on Economy and Politics in India


Book Description

In this book, Das presents a class-based perspective on the economic and political situation in contemporary India in a globalizing world. It deals with the specificities of India’s capitalism and neoliberalism, as well as poverty/inequality, geographically uneven development, technological change, and export-oriented, nature-dependent production. The book also deals with Left-led struggles in the form of the Naxalite/Maoist movement and trade-union strikes, and presents a non-sectarian Left critique of the Left. It also discusses the politics of the Right expressed as fascistic tendencies, and the question of what is to be done. The book applies abstract theoretical ideas to the concrete situation in India, which, in turn, inspires rethinking of theory. Das unabashedly shows the relevance of class theory that takes seriously the matter of oppression/domination of religious minorities and lower castes.




Development Challenges of India After Twenty Five Years of Economic Reforms


Book Description

This book revisits some of the persisting challenges of development of India, which remain unresolved even after twenty-five years of economic reforms and almost fifteen years of high growth rate. These include defining purpose of development, inequality, labour, work, unemployment, agrarian distress and migration. The book questions the overemphasis on growth to the extent of neglecting basic issues of development. With a number of contributions re-imagining development and its political economy, the book discusses above mentioned issues in light of new data and more recent conceptions of the issues. The contributors of this volume are eminent researchers in their respective field. Presenting primary as well as secondary data, the book considers the latest advances and research and also addresses new challenges like the global reorganization of production and the consequences for labour and the world of work, along with skills question. World of work has received detailed investigation in this book. This is a timely addition in existing literature especially in context of pandemic and lockdown. Informality and un/employment question is addressed in this context. Relationship among poverty, inequality and growth is examined in light of newer understanding. Agrarian distress is looked in a broader context. A number of papers are examining migration question by expanding coverage of migration and including labour mobility as apart of migration debate. The present crisis of migrant labour and absence of social security for these workers is also discussed. This book is primarily intended for those interested in recent advances on some of the basic aspects of development, like poverty, inequality, informality, word of work, migration and labour mobility. It is also useful for researchers, policy makers, journalists and civil society organizations working on these issues.




Analyzing Oppression


Book Description

Analyzing Oppression presents a new, integrated theory of social oppression, which tackles the fundamental question that no theory of oppression has satisfactorily answered: if there is no natural hierarchy among humans, why are some cases of oppression so persistent? Cudd argues that the explanation lies in the coercive co-opting of the oppressed to join in their own oppression. This answer sets the stage for analysis throughout the book, as it explores the questions of how and why the oppressed join in their oppression. Cudd argues that oppression is an institutionally structured harm perpetrated on social groups by other groups using direct and indirect material, economic, and psychological force. Among the most important and insidious of the indirect forces is an economic force that operates through oppressed persons' own rational choices. This force constitutes the central feature of analysis, and the book argues that this force is especially insidious because it conceals the fact of oppression from the oppressed and from others who would be sympathetic to their plight. The oppressed come to believe that they suffer personal failings and this belief appears to absolve society from responsibility. While on Cudd's view oppression is grounded in material exploitation and physical deprivation, it cannot be long sustained without corresponding psychological forces. Cudd examines the direct and indirect psychological forces that generate and sustain oppression. She discusses strategies that groups have used to resist oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist in some way. In the concluding chapter Cudd proposes a concept of freedom that would be possible for humans in a world that is actively opposing oppression, arguing that freedom for each individual is only possible when we achieve freedom for all others.