Reply to Utsa Patnaik: If the Cap Fits …

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Abstract
In her comments on my article, Utsa Patnaik makes a number of interrelated claims. First, that I unjustifiably characterize the “semifėdal” thesis as revisionist. Second, that my view about the existence of a link between capitalism and unfree labour is commonplace. And third, that I fail to differentiate unfreedom in terms of its implications for and effects on metropolitan capitalist countries on the one hand and developing ex-colonial countries on the other. According to her, this difference arises from a situation in which surpluses generated by Indian agriculture during the colonial era were exported to finance industrialization in metropolitan contexts, resulting in forced commercialization by landlord, trader and usurer; in short, a process which failed to eliminate semi-feudal unfree agrarian relations and consequently to develop capitalism in colonial countries, and thus promoted in these contexts not proletarianization but pauperization.