Capital production assigns everything an exchange value whether it is a commodity or love, sex, landscape or beauty, but it is the sociability of the individual, rather than possessive individuality, which enables her to have a peaceful coexistence with her surroundings, said Prof Peter Beilharz of Curtin University, Australia while delivering his address at the concluding day of the international conference on Karl Marx organised by the Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) on Wednesday.
“Marxism needs to be re-thought, re-constructed and re-imagined to suit modern times,” he said. Answering a question from the audience, Beilharz said Marxian utopia is not different from utopia that everyone seeks to achieve.
In answer to another question he said the tendency to turn Marx against Marxism, something which gained currency after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, was unnecessary and should be avoided. Commenting about ‘Marxism of Ecology’, Beilharz said public discussion should focus on the extractive form of capital accumulation so that cities continue to live with proper housing, water availability and other civic infrastructure.
Kevin M Sanders, Vice-President, People Programme International and Palmer Institute, USA, said “the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself. And this is exactly what the capital production is doing through the decades for maximisation of profit by means: ethical and unethical, legal and illegal,” he said.
“The capitalist world system is going through a significant phase through development in information and communication technologies.
This has huge implications for the way goods and services are produced across the globe. As things stand today, it can be predicted that robots would replace human beings in the production process, creating huge unemployment in its wake,” Sanders said.
Without naming any artificial intelligence companies, he said for the past three decades, the world has been witnessing the rise of “digital oligarchs” in the information and communication sector.
Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor, Oxford University, in her special address on ‘Petty Production and India’s Development’, said Petty Commodity Production was a theoretical problem for those who attempted to theorize capitalistic development.
Giving an example, she said if a weaver does not own the loom and produces for the merchant who owns the loom, he is disguised; if he owns the loom instead, he is a petty producer.
She said PCP provides the core not only in agrarian and manufacturing production processes in India but also in commercial and even rural financial sectors. She added that the contribution of agriculture in the Indian GDP has been consistently falling over the years. However, those dependent on agriculture for livelihood continue to remain disproportionately very high.
Other key speakers during the day included Prof Peter Hudis of Oakton Community College, USA, who delivered lecture on “The Intimation of a Post-Capitalist Society in Marx’s Capital”. Prof Tian Yu Cao of Boston University, USA, delivered the lecture on “Marx’s Ideas and Conceptions of Socialism in the 21st Century”.
He said the collapse of the Soviet model along with the decline of Keynesianism since the 1970s has posed a serious challenge to socialists.