Patnaik The Ideological Hegemony of Finance Capital

							               THE IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY OF FINANCE CAPITAL

Comrade President,
Comrade Delegates,
Comrades, Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen


        I feel really honoured that I have been asked to deliver the inaugural address at
this National Conference of the Janwadi Lekhak Sangh, which has emerged over the
years as the foremost gathering of progressive creative writers of the country. Since I am
not a creative writer myself, I am overwhelmed by your generosity in asking me to
deliver the inaugural address at this conference. As the theme of this conference is
Ideological Hegemony, I shall devote this address to the question of the Ideological
Hegemony of Finance Capital. Like all of you here, I am primarily concerned with the
Indian situation; but since what happens in India is linked closely with the global
scenario, I shall devote my address mainly to a discussion of the question of ideological
hegemony in its global setting.
        The chief hallmark of finance capital, as Lenin had pointed out, is that it wants
domination; it represents a striving for annexations and not peaceful “business as usual”
within a given space. It is not sufficient therefore that the ideology of finance capital
should merely incapacitate the people for collective resistance, should merely reduce
them to atomized individuals withdrawn into a passive acceptance of their objective
surroundings; rather it should induce among them a “reactionary activism” (to use
Lukacs’ term) that makes them complicit in the annexationist, aggrandizing projects of
finance capital. And towards this end it must project one central grand overarching Idea
around which this exhortation for “reactionary activism” could be organized.
        The Idea of the “Nation” had formed this central Idea during the period between
the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the second world war. Rudolph
Hilferding in his magnum opus Das Finanzkapital had discussed the issue of the ideology
of finance capital in some detail, and had drawn particular attention to the glorification of
“Idea of the Nation”. This glorification which Hilferding had noted at the beginning of
the century when he wrote his book, was heightened during the first world war (captured
so evocatively in Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front)
and, of course, took its extreme form in Nazi Germany.
        The fact that finance capital glorified the Idea of the Nation as the ideological
prop for its aggrandizing project, does not of course mean that all references to the
“Nation” are ipso facto reactionary and reflective of hegemonism, as some contemporary
writers suggest. Anti-imperialist nationalism in the third world, which has nothing to do
either with the ideology of finance capital, or with communal-fascism or linguistic and
other kinds of sectional chauvinism within the third world society (since such nationalism
is necessarily inclusive), stands on a different footing altogether from the “nationalism”
that Hilferding was talking about. It is the latter that was utilized for the aggrandizing
project of finance capital during the first half of the twentieth century.
        But Hilferding’s analysis, so apt for that period, is less so for today, especially
because the inter-imperialist rivalries, which marked that conjuncture and within which




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the glorification of the Idea of the Nation played such a prominent ideological role, are
far more muted today.
         This is not to say that contemporary finance capital has done away with or does
not need the ideological prop provided by the glorification of the Idea of the Nation. In
our own country the ideological role of the “India Shining” campaign, which was started
by the BJP and has been carried forward in a subtle manner by the Congress, of the
projection of the Sensex boom as evidence that the Nation was on the move, of the
celebration of the acquisition of companies abroad by the Tatas and the Mittals as a sign
of National resurgence, all underscore both the abiding strength of the Idea of the Nation
(even when it is torn out of its anti-imperialist context), and also the blatant equation of
the interests of the “nation” with the interests of finance capital (which the dissociation of
the idea of the “nation” from its anti-imperialist connotation facilitates).
         Nonetheless as an ideological prop for contemporary finance capital, the Idea of
the Nation needs to be supplemented by and renovated into something else, especially
when inter-imperialist rivalries are muted; when the “spin” given to it has to assume more
complex forms in view of the fact that the different national finance capitals are more or
less fused into a new entity, International Finance Capital; when significant immigration
into the metropolitan countries has made the old concept of the nation a little fuzzy; and
when the third world bourgeoisies, in countries like India, are interested in getting
integrated into the imperialist order as junior partners (as shown for instance by the
proposed Indo-US Nuclear Treaty).
         What then is the new overarching ideological prop that International Finance
Capital is acquiring today, in order not only to incapacitate the people for resistance
against itself, but also to inculcate in them a “reactionary activism” so that they become
complicit in its annexationist project? This is the question to which I address myself in
this lecture. But before doing so let me briefly elaborate some features of contemporary
capitalism.

                                                I

          I shall focus on seven features, which constitute of course seven different aspects
of a single totality. First, it is characterized, as already mentioned, by the rise to
prominence of a new entity, International Finance Capital, which is not specifically
nation-based, or nation-State-aided, or linked to some specific national capitalist strategy.
It is highly mobile internationally in the quest for speculative profits and does not have
the exclusive character of being “coalesced” with industrial capital, let alone any national
industrial capital. Indeed this mobility, and the desire to keep the entire globe “open” for
it, is a powerful factor acting towards a muting of inter-imperialist rivalries. It is an entity
superimposed upon, and assimilating into its fold, the Multinational Banks and
Multinational Corporations, which, in addition to their “normal” activities, also get drawn
into the vortex of speculative activities.
          Secondly, this emergence of international finance capital brings about a
transformation in the nature of the capitalist State. The capitalist State, in the post-war
conjuncture of increased working class strength, of a serious challenge to capitalism from
the socialist forces, and of a massive onslaught from the forces of national liberation in
the third world countries, had to acquire for itself a broader base, as an entity standing



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above all classes and looking after the interests of all, in order to stabilize the system. The
visible manifestations of this alteration in the nature of the State were: decolonization, the
adoption of Keynesian demand management policies that entailed near-full employment,
and the institutionalization of a range of Welfare State measures, which, with all their
limitations, represented a new chapter in the history of capitalism. High levels of demand
sustained through Keynesian measures caused high levels of investment and
technological change, so that rates of output and productivity growth were very high; and
near-full employment gave the workers strong bargaining power because of which they
could wrest high wage increases.
         All this has changed now. The emergence of International Finance Capital has
implied a transformation in the nature of the State where it now acts exclusively to
promote financial and corporate interests, unconcerned about shedding its image of
standing above all and acting for all, under the argument that the interests of society are
best promoted through the interests of finance.
         Thirdly, this transformation in the nature of the State entails the curtailment of
public investment, welfare expenditure, and in general the adoption of expenditure-
deflation policies. Finance capital always prefers State expenditure deflation. In certain
situations, such as in the post-war conjuncture, the State can override its objections. But
when the State is a nation-State and finance capital is international and globally mobile,
the latter necessarily has its way. In the process Keynesian demand management policies
are given a quiet burial, the rate of growth in the capitalist world drops compared to the
earlier years, and lower rates of employment and social wage become perennial features
of the new situation. With lower employment rates, the workers’ bargaining strength
suffers, trade unions get weakened, and the real wage rate also stagnates, giving rise both
to a massive shift in income distribution in favour of capital and against labour, and to a
massive increase in income and wealth inequalities.
         Fourthly, with the slowing down of growth in the capitalist world there has been a
secular shift, i.e. a shift on average through fluctuations, in the terms of trade, between
primary commodities and manufactures, against the primary commodities. This has
entailed considerable peasant distress all over the world wherever peasant production
exists. Likewise the slowing down of world demand has entailed distress for a whole
range of petty producers.
         Looking at the matter differently, periods of crisis, as is well-known, invariably
give rise to centralization of capital, with the smaller and weaker producers getting
displaced by the stronger producers, who typically happen to be larger producers. This
also happens in periods of relative stagnation. Since world capitalism has been
experiencing for quite some time now a period of relative stagnation, this has brought in
its train a crisis of petty production, including of peasant production.
         Fifthly, this crisis of petty production is giving rise to an expropriation of the
means of production of such producers, especially of land. The nineteenth century
expansion of capitalism had occurred in a context in which substantial parts of the
temperate regions of the globe could be colonized by the metropolis where land was
either unoccupied or acquired by driving off the “natives” (the “Indians”). Capitalism in
short had an “open frontier” for both these reasons. In addition capitalism could also
“export domestic unemployment” to the tropical colonies by selling metropolitan
industrial products at the expense of the petty producers in these colonies and causing de-



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industrialization there. Today no such “open frontiers” in the form of unoccupied land
exist, which leaves driving off the current occupiers (with some nominal compensation)
as the only alternative. But since this driving off, which necessarily has to be of domestic
peasants rather than of far-away “Indians, is not accompanied by absorption into gainful
employment in the capitalist sector, as was the case with the domestic metropolitan
population in the nineteenth century, such expropriation of land today is both
accentuating distress and giving rise to bitter resistance, as we have seen in India.
        This difference between these two very different contexts is often missed. Thus
when even Professor Amartya Sen says that there is no alternative to driving people off
their land since that was the way that London and Manchester were built, he misses the
fact that those displaced by the building of London and Manchester either migrated to the
“new world” and occupied virgin land or the Amerindians’ land, or got absorbed into the
workforce of the capitalist London and Manchester. Neither of these options is available
to the displaced peasants today (including displaced peasants in our own country), since
no virgin land exists for them to migrate to, and labour absorption into the capitalist
sector is minuscule. Hence the displaced peasants can only constitute a vast pauperized
and acutely distressed mass. Given the fact that they have democratic rights unlike the
Amerindians of yore, they will naturally fight against this, as indeed they are doing.
        Sixthly, the expropriation of land from the peasants is only one component of a
more general feature of this phase of capitalism, namely the overwhelming tendency
towards what I would call “accumulation through encroachment”. One can distinguish
between two types of accumulation. One is where existing blocs of capital simply grow
larger and larger without impinging on each other’s growth, which I would call
“accumulation through expansion”. The other is where some blocs of capital become
bigger by expropriating or taking the space of other blocs of capital, or of pre-capitalist
producers, or of the State sector. This “accumulation through encroachment” incorporates
within itself two of Marx’s concepts, centralization of capital and primitive accumulation
of capital, including within the latter the expropriation of State sector assets. Both types
of accumulation usually occur simultaneously, though in Marx’s discussion of expanded
reproduction it is only “accumulation through expansion” that is analyzed, which may
give a false impression as if all accumulation is only of this sort. The present era of
hegemony of International Finance Capital is marked by the fact that the relative weight
of “accumulation through encroachment” increases greatly. Privatization of State sector
assets which are acquired “for a song”, expropriation of the peasantry and the taking over
of their land, displacement of petty producers and appropriating the space hitherto
occupied by them, and the displacement of smaller capitals by larger ones, are all
phenomena whose incidence increases greatly in this era.
        And finally, there is a systematic attempt at a re-colonization of the world,
especially in the quest for raw materials, and above all oil, for which wars are unleashed
on oil producing countries with devastating effects. This is needed of course to sustain
the growing levels of absorption of oil and other such crucial primary commodities
(including products of tropical agriculture) in the metropolis. But the quest for oil has an
additional reason as well. And this is for the stability of the financial system of world
capitalism, since the dominant currency in which the bulk of the world’s wealth is held,
the US dollar, would cease to command the confidence of the wealth-holders if its price
was expected to keep slipping visavis the most significant primary commodity for the



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Western world, oil; American control over the world’s oil reserves is meant to prevent
that.
        It follows from what I have said that the current epoch of capitalism witnesses as
universal phenomena significant increases in unemployment, stagnation of real wages,
decline in social wages, dispossession of peasants and petty producers, a substantial
increase in the share of economic surplus in social output, and within it of the share of the
monopoly segments, sharp increases in income and wealth inequalities, the appropriation
of public property under the guise of “privatization”, and an increase certainly in relative
poverty and possibly even in absolute poverty (whose definition of course would vary
from country to country). In addition it witnesses wars of annexation unleashed
especially by the leading capitalist country for control over the world’s natural resources,
especially oil. In short, capitalism acquires extraordinary predatoriness in the era of the
hegemony of International Finance Capital. The question that naturally arises is: how is
this hegemony preserved? Let us look first at certain “stylized facts” of history.

                                              II

        Historically, there can be little doubt that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
“rolling back” of nationalist dirigiste regimes in the third world have made the
ascendancy of this predatory capitalism possible, though this collapse and this “rolling
back” itself were engineered by this very predatory capitalism coming into ascendancy.
Of course these regimes had serious inner contradictions but these were utilized by an
increasingly predatory imperialism recovering from its post-war weakness, to roll them
back forcibly and assert its hegemony.
        The means used towards this end in the third world included the suppression of
democracy, the carrying out of CIA-sponsored coup de etats, and the unleashing of
repression against third world nationalists, and Communists. This was the pattern all over
Latin America in the sixties and seventies, and in Indonesia, Zaire, Sudan, Iran and even
Iraq (where the Baathists’ coup against General Kassem was supported by the US and
used to decimate the Communists).
        So much is being written today about the “Muslim countries” having been until
now under the permanent sway of social conservatism, and religious intolerance. Nothing
could be further from the truth. The prominent so-called “Muslim countries” had the
strongest radical secular-nationalist, and revolutionary Communist, movements in the
entire third world, until just a few years ago. It is imperialism that systematically
destroyed all these movements, either with the help of reactionary Islamic forces within
these societies, or on its own, but thereby creating the space for reactionary Islamic forces
to acquire ascendancy in these societies.
        Indonesia, one of the countries with an active Islamic movement today, had the
third largest Communist Party in the world, after the Soviet Union and China. The Party
was decimated, and an estimated half-a-million Communists killed, after a CIA-
supported coup led by Suharto. Sudan, another country with a strong Islamic movement
today, had the largest Communist Party in the whole of Africa. The Party was decimated
and its Secretary General Comrade Mahjoub was assassinated after a CIA-backed coup
led by Nimiery. Iran had a democratically-elected progressive nationalist government led
by Mossadegh, and supported by the Communist (Tudeh) Party, which had nationalized



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oil. A CIA-backed coup toppled the Mossadegh government and installed the Shah,
whose secret police decimated the Communist and radical democratic opposition, leaving
the Islamic clergy as the only significant oppositional force in the country, and hence the
natural claimants to political power after the Shah’s overthrow. Afghanistan had a
Communist-led revolution which tried to introduce an element of modernity into that
predominantly tribal society through land reforms, modern education and women’s
emancipation. It arguably came before its time and faced stiff opposition from the
entrenched vested interests. But this opposition was virtually organized as a jihad by US
imperialism which, in the process, supported the Al Qaeda and later the Taliban, against
the Communists and their supporting Soviet troops.
        In the case of Iraq, as already pointed out, the US backed the Baathist coup that
killed Kassem also ruthlessly suppressed the Communist Party, the largest in the Middle-
East. But the Baathists themselves were a secular nationalist force. They nationalized oil,
developed a close relationship with the Soviet Union, and adhered to non-alignment. The
US invasion of Iraq executed Saddam Hussain, destroyed the Baath Party, destroyed the
secular fabric of the country, refurbished patriarchy and social conservatism, and
promoted the political ascendancy of the Shia spiritual leader Ayatollah Al Sistani, which
brought in its train religious conflicts between the Shias and the Sunnis, that had
remained subdued throughout Iraq’s history, to a point where a trifurcation of the country
(with American companies grabbing the oil) is now being put on the agenda.
        Thus, throughout the third world, wherever it could, imperialism either directly
used or subtly exploited religion to destroy the nationalist, secular, radical and socialist
forces which had led the anti-colonial struggle, and set up the post-colonial State that had
nationalized mineral resources including oil, built up a State Capitalist sector as a
bulwark against metropolitan capital, and tried to introduce a degree of modernity in the
teeth of bitter opposition from feudal-patriarchal elements. Even in the case of the Soviet
Union, whose subsequent fortune cannot be de-linked from its disastrous war in
Afghanistan, its collapse too fits into this picture of imperialism using religious, in
particular Islamic, forces to great effect in its global conflict with progressive and
Communist movements.
        The irony of history however is such that elements of the same religious forces
have now turned against imperialism, becoming willy-nilly the vehicles of expression of
the same popular anger against imperialism in their respective societies, which was
earlier being expressed by the very same progressive movements which they had helped
to destroy. They are of course singularly ill-equipped to convert this anger into any
productive project that could bring in a better future for their people. They are singularly
incapable of being the harbingers of a better society. Their outlook does not encompass
the transcending of the existing order to usher in a new one; it looks backwards to install
at best a mythical order that never existed. The case of Iran where under the rule of the
clergy, the IMF and the World Bank were slowly and insidiously making their way back
into the economy, until hostilities with the US broke out with the election of President
Ahmedinejad, is a case in point. But while the Islamic forces do not represent any
system-transcending challenge to the hegemony of imperialism, they provide it a new
ideological prop for whipping up the “reactionary activism” that is essential for its
annexationist drive.




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                                              III

         The ideology of glorification of the Idea of the “Nation” is now transformed into
an ideology of “defence of civilization against the barbarians at the gate”. This ideology
projects a struggle between the forces of “civilization” and hordes of ruthless fanatics
intent on destroying “civilization”, with capitalist imperialism in the role of the defender
of “civilization”. Such an ideological projection has a number of advantages for
imperialism.
         First, it creates a perpetual state of elemental insecurity among the people which
can very easily be transformed into “reactionary activism”, but which, precisely because
there is always “little time” for an analysis of the objective basis of this insecurity, i.e.
precisely because eyes have to be shut to the objective basis for this insecurity, comes in
the way of progressive praxis. Insecurity, resting on a subsoil of despair caused by
worsening economic conditions, can make people support, even in “normal times” when
there are no “barbarians at the gate”, political forces that are inimical to their economic
interests. Thomas Frank’s book What’s the Matter with Kansas? details how radical
working class voters of Kansas came to support the Republican Right as a defender of
cultural conservatism, even though this Right was using this support blatantly for
favouring the corporate rich. The insecurity caused by the image of the “barbarians at the
gate” is far more potent a weapon in the hands of the corporate rich.
         Secondly, such an ideological projection has the “advantage” that it can use the
already existing substantial racist prejudices in the metropolitan countries. Racism has
always been a part of imperialism. Even when it has been driven underground under the
weight of democratic assertiveness in the context of substantial immigration of people of
other races into the metropolitan centres, it has nonetheless enjoyed a substantial
subterranean presence, surfacing only occasionally through the activities of fascist, neo-
fascist and ultra-Right political outfits that have come up in the context of significant
unemployment in the metropolitan countries. This entire racist legacy can now be
harnessed to the cause of “reactionary activism”, against the “fanatics” of a different
skin-colour who are supposedly out to destroy civilization, and in favour of finance
capital.
         The third “advantage” from the point of view of imperialism in projecting this
image of “civilization threatened by Islamic fanatics” is that it can easily shade into
“civilization threatened by Muslims who anyway tend to be fanatics”, and thereby appeal
to the religious prejudices of the metropolitan population. References to the “crusades”
have already figured in President Bush’s speeches and the English novelist Martin Ames
has already come out with a public attack on the “Muslims”. Altogether the religious
undertone to the conflict cannot be missed. This religious undertone can also be useful to
the US in bringing about a US-Israel-India axis by projecting an anti-Muslim agenda to
Zionism and to Hindu Communalism.
         The fourth “advantage” is that the Muslim immigrants into the metropolitan
countries from a number of ex-colonies and semi-colonies, who constitute an underclass
of unemployed, underemployed and low-paid workers can be kept suppressed in the
name of fighting Islamic forces. Since finance capital wants expenditure deflation by the
State, it can substitute the cheaper alternative of repression for the more expensive option




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of social inclusion, that requires providing this underclass with proper education, health
and other facilities.
        The fifth “advantage” is that in the name of fighting “terror”, imperialism can
abridge the democratic rights of the people at large which in any case constitute a hurdle
for the hegemony of International Finance Capital. And it is not only domestic radicals
who can be “tamed” this way, but even foreign governments. A senior trade official of
the US, after the World Trade Centre attacks, had even gone on record saying that
whoever opposed the US at the WTO was with the terrorists! Opinions such as this can
get much currency in context of the “barbarians at the gates” view of the conflict between
imperialism and the Islamic forces.
        The sixth “advantage” is that it gives the imperialist powers, led by the US the
license to attack any country they wish to. In the context especially of their attempt to
recolonize the world in the quest for oil, gas, and other valuable mineral resources, this
license they get through the projection of the image of “barbarians at the gates” is of
great value to imperialism. All annexations can be justified through invoking the “war on
terror”, as indeed the attack on Iraq was justified. It is interesting that after the World
Trade Centre attacks, the question posed by Condoleeza Rice at a meeting of top US
officials was: how do we use these attacks?
        It may be thought that the tide of public opinion against the Iraq war, and the
unwillingness of other advanced capitalist countries to endorse such wars would rob
imperialism, especially US imperialism, of this “advantage” of camouflaging
annexations pursued in the interests of finance capital as a “war on terror”. But the open
support of the French Foreign Minister to an attack on Iran suggests that dissensions
among the metropolitan countries over the recolonization project should not be
exaggerated. And the fact that, despite domestic public opinion in the US and elsewhere
being opposed to a continuation of the Iraq war, the war still goes on, suggests that the
opposition to annexations being carried out in the name of the “war on terror” still
remains weak and ineffective.
        The final “advantage” consists in the fact that the “barbarians at the gate” image
succeeds even in neutralizing, if not actually getting the support of, several sections of
secular, liberal progressive and even Left elements, both within the metropolis and also
within the third world. These elements see the struggle between the Islamic forces and
imperialism as a struggle between tradition and modernity, between forces imbued with
feudal-patriarchal attitudes and the representatives of modern bourgeois societies. The
official Iraqi Communist party’s lack of opposition to the US invasion, the fact that the
widespread opposition of the progressive radical elements within Iran to the Mullahs
could, sometime ago, even have meant their welcoming US intervention (though after
seeing what the US has done to Iraq the enthusiasm might have diminished somewhat by
now among these sections), and the hesitation even among the opponents of the Iraq war
to press for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from that country, are significant
pointers. The real triumph of the ideology of finance capital is that it hegemonizes even
those who otherwise claim to know its real character, into accepting its ideology and
endorsing its annexationism in the name of the spread of modernity.

                                             IV




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         It may of course be asked: is it not the case that fanatical terrorists, motivated by
religious bigotry, are carrying out inhuman acts of carnage of innocent people
everywhere? Is it not the case that they need to be put down with a heavy hand if people
are to live in peace? Is it not true then that the “civilized forces” of the world, all who
value human life, must unite to defend mankind from this scourge, and for that purpose
come down heavily on all States that are aiding and abetting terrorism?
         All this is true; the issue however is not the truth value of these individual
propositions but the overall problematique within which these questions are located. That
problematique concerns predatory imperialism. To see the problem of “terrorism” the
way predatory imperialism wants us to see it, to swallow the “Idea of Defence of
Civilization against the Muslim Fanatics” which has been propagated by predatory
imperialism, is not only to condone the enormous crimes of predatory imperialism, but
also to help perpetuate the “Terrorist Challenge” to it, which thrives as a consequence of
these crimes. These crimes exceed by several multiples those committed by the terrorists.
The deaths in Iraq itself have crossed a million mark, not to mention the large number of
refugees both within the country and outside, as a sequel to the US invasion of that
hapless country, which far exceeds the sum total of all the crimes perpetrated by the
terrorists. To close one’s eyes to this is to be hegemonized by the ideology of
International Finance Capital, and hence to be complicit not only in the annexationist
project of contemporary imperialism, shaped by the hegemony of such Capital, but also
in a perpetuation of the conjuncture marked by the “Annexation-Terror” dialectics.
         To eliminate terrorism we have to eliminate the conjuncture that produces it, a
conjuncture marked by the ascendancy of predatory imperialism. To be sure, we do not
have to wait till predatory imperialism has disappeared from the face of the earth before
terrorism comes to an end. The very emergence of an alternative mass resistance to
predatory imperialism will mark the beginning of the end of the “terrorist challenge”.
Terrorism in our times has come to the fore only in the interregnum before mass
movements have got built up. The decline of the Communist and progressive nationalist
challenge to imperialist hegemony has brought terrorism to the fore at present. And the
resumption of that challenge through the building up of powerful mass movements
against imperialism will entail a decline in the intensity of terrorism.
         But this resumption can occur only if the Communist and progressive nationalist
forces are not themselves ideologically hegemonized by predatory imperialism. Being
ideologically hegemonized is a precursor to collapse. Mikhail Gorbachov, as the General
Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, had lamented, even before the
Soviet collapse, that the Soviet Union had been kept out of the “mainstream of European
civilization”. This “mainstream of European civilization” he was talking about was in
fact founded upon an imperialist order, to fight against which the Communist movement
had been formed out of the Social Democratic Parties in the first place. Gorbachov had
been ideologically hegemonized even before the Soviet collapse, much the way that the
prominent leaders of the Second International had been ideologically hegemonized by the
imperialism of their time. The collapse of the Soviet Union under these circumstances
should hardly come as a surprise, since ideological hegemony is a precursor of real
hegemony.
         The real danger today comes not from the terrorist challenge to predatory
imperialism, horrendous though the form that the challenge takes from time to time. It



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does not even come from predatory imperialism itself, though the destruction caused by it
is mind-boggling. The real danger comes from the possibility that significant sections of
the progressive, secular, third world nationalist, and even residual Communist
movements, may get hegemonized by the ideology of contemporary finance capital.


                                                    Prabhat Patnaik




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