The Trillion Dollar Silencer

Can It Silence Permanently?

— Manali Chakrabarti

(A review of  THE TRILLION DOLLAR SILENCER: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States, Clarity Press, 2023, 218 pp by Joan Roelofs)   

In a moment of candour, three-times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman, a poster boy for globalisation, wrote that:

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist — McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.[1]

Friedman, an avid supporter of the United States’ foreign wars, was writing in 1999 as the US air force was pulverising Yugoslavia with aerial bombing to end the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Kosovo. Friedman concludes his long and meandering article by beseeching his countrymen to bear the expense of the noble burden which history had thrust upon ‘America’: “America truly is the ultimate benign superpower and reluctant enforcer”.^[2]

The world outside the US is aware of how the monstrously large US military is utilised to shove all sorts of “McDonald’s”, i.e., US imperialist economic interests, down the throats of countries and peoples around the globe, often in the name of lofty ideals like ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, keeping the world safe from ‘weapons of mass destruction’, and so on. This has been going on for decades, but has intensified over the last three decades, starting with the Gulf War of 1991, continuing through the subsequent wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and finally the ongoing war in the East European theatre. Thus, the rest of the world is forced to accept US hegemony at the point of a gun.

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Aspects of India’s Economy, no. 80

Special Issue on India’s Telecom Sector, and What It Tells Us about Indian Monopoly Capital

India’s private corporate sector is more prominent today than at any time in the past. Its chieftains are listed among the richest persons in the world. The Indian government’s growth plans now explicitly centre on the country’s largest fi rms, with the aim of creating a few ‘national champions’ capable of competing globally. A research report regarding the house of Adani shook the Indian markets, and became a national political issue.

In this special issue (Indian Telecom’s Spectacular Rise and the Nature of Monopoly Capital in India – links to pdfs of the chapters below), Rahul Varman looks at the development of the telecom sector, with a broader question: What does it tell us about the character of India’s big capitalist class?

The first phase of the post-1991 telecom development was not one of industry-building. Rather, it was a story of resource capture and wild financial speculation. The critical natural resource (spectrum) was captured by various firms, with credit from public sector banks and speculative investment from foreign and domestic big capital. Manipulating or capturing State agencies was key to annexing resources at low prices. As is characteristic of speculation, some firms/investors struck it rich, some lost money, all in a chaotic and wasteful manner.

The second phase was of capture of market share through the use of massive financial clout. The only product differentiation was in price; hence market shares would go to the firms with largest financial clout to wage cut-throat price-wars. Once Reliance had captured the largest market share, it drew down its mammoth debt by selling off large chunks of Jio to foreign firms. While centralisation of capital in the countries of classical capitalism took place through a combination of two processes (one, the economies of large-scale production and two, the credit system, i.e., finance), in the case of India’s telecom it was solely a financial operation. International finance capital has large stakes in India’s leading telecom firms. The firms’ massive financial clout, however, was not deployed to create an independent technological base. After three decades the industry remains heavily dependent on imports of know-how, even for handsets.

The telecom industry has been reduced to just two or three firms, with hardly any competition among them. Throughout, instead of the State agencies regulating the firms, it is the firms which have regulated the State agencies according to their needs.

We hope readers take the time to read this detailed study to get a concrete sense of the character and operations of India’s monopoly capitalist class.

— The Editor, Aspects of India’s Economy

Indian Telecom’s Spectacular Rise and the Nature of Monopoly Capital in India

Table of Contents – [pdf]

I. Introduction – [pdf]

II. Motivations and Actions of Big Business in Each Phase of Telecom Development – [pdf]

III. Big Capital Allowed to Default on State Dues, Regulations – [pdf]

IV. End Result of Monopoly Capital’s Tight Control – [pdf]

V. Conclusion – [pdf]

Appendix: Roll-out of 5G and Technological Dependence – [pdf]

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Aspects of India’s Economy, no. 79

Regime of Drain – an Update

This issue carries three articles: a note on whom we are addressing in Aspects; a detailed article on foreign financial flows and the Indian economy; and a description of a village panchayat elections and its consequences. The pdfs are linked below.

The second article in this issue, regarding the Government’s attempt to attract foreign investment in Indian government bonds, was written over a year ago. It now appears that the Government’s attempt has stalled. The reason for its stalling is significant: namely, that foreign investors feel that the returns on Indian government bonds are now not attractive enough, in comparison with US government bonds, on which interest rates have recently been increased. The ‘spread’ – i.e., the difference – between interest rates on US government 10-year bonds and Indian government 10-year bonds has narrowed sharply.

From 4.94 percentage points on December 31, 2021, it has narrowed to 3.45 percentage points on December 31, 2022, which is far below the average for the previous decade. Thus, even though interest rates in India are still considerably higher than those in the US, foreign investors demand greater rewards, given what they consider to be the higher risks on Indian government bonds. This is all the more so in a situation of global turmoil and uncertainty. And so there is little prospect of their making large investments at present. It is for this reason that the proposal appears to have gone into cold storage for the moment. This underlines again how the flows of foreign financial investment into India place the country in the grip of developments outside its control.

— The Editor, Aspects of India’s Economy

1. Whom Are We Addressing? – [pdf]

2. A Regime of Drain, External Control, and Impoverishment – [pdf]

3. India’s Democracy in a Nutshell – Manali Chakrabarti – [pdf]

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Aspects of India’s Economy no. 78

Aspects no. 78 appeared in September 2022, with the following articles.

The Rural Depression  — [pdf]

1. Decline in Peasant Incomes

2. Decline in Rural Labour Incomes

3. Rural Demand Depressed

Pushed Over the Edge – [pdf]

The economy was in a depression even before March 2020. With the massive depression of demand that has taken place due to the Covid-19 lockdowns and the Government’s refusal to spend, many rural households that were earlier struggling to keep from falling would have been pushed over the edge.

Farm Households Earn More from Wages than Crops: What Does This Imply? — [pdf]

The average farm household earns a larger share of its income from wages than from growing crops. This striking finding emerged from the recently published official Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households 20191, attracting the attention of many commentators. But interpretations of this finding differ drastically depending on one’s overall class viewpoint and aims.

SBI Research Doubles Farmers’ Income  — [pdf]

A report by the State Bank of India Research Department claims that “Farmers’ income doubled in FY22 as compared to FY18 for certain crops in some states.” The SBI report is explicitly links its ‘findings’ to the Modi government’s announced goal of doubling farmers’ income by 2022-23.

However, on closer examination, it turns out that there is no SBI ‘report’ as such. The methodology, such as it is, is shrouded in mystery; amazingly, the SBI does not discount for inflation; and it makes unsubstantiated claims about the impact of Minimum Support Prices. The reality is that, income from crop cultivation has fallen in real (inflation-discounted) terms by 8.8 per cent.

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Aspects of India’s Economy no. 77

This issue appeared in June 2022.

Fall-out of the Ukraine Conflict on India’s Economy – [pdf]
The Problem Is Actually at Home

The principal responsibility for the suffering of the people thus cannot be shoved onto world events; it lies with India’s rulers themselves, who have led the country into the present abyss.

Wheat Export Debacle: Policy and Real Agenda Are Responsible, Not Mere Bungling – [pdf]
It is not the export ban, then, that deserves to be criticised, but the policy of Government withdrawal from procurement and the free hand given to private profiteers. The events leading up to the ban have offered one more vivid demonstration of the dangerous implications of this policy.

‘Informality’ and  Control in the Gig Economy: A study of cab drivers and food delivery riders in Delhi-NCR  —[pdf]
—Archana Aggarwal

Gig work, especially at the lower end, has only increased desperation in the conditions of work. Long hours, low earnings, no safety considerations, no job security, little autonomy and most importantly, not even being considered workers and not being eligible for any labour rights. Gig work adds yet another layer to the informalisation of work and retrogression of labour standards in conditions of highly organised monopoly capital.

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