STRATEGIC AFFAIRS
mansion has vanished and the left
Fourth Industrial Revolution
Decay of Liberalism and Withering
Away of the Left
Atul Bhardwaj
The technology-driven revolution
is fundamentally affecting the
relationship between capital and
labour. This fundamental change
is driving right-wing populism
across the globe. The left, on
the other hand, has remained a
laggard, and will have no future
if it continues to be opiated by
liberalism. While, with liberalism
as its political ally, the imperial
“gentlemanly capitalism” has
killed millions for resources
and profits in the 20th century,
the 21st-century “surveillance
capitalism” with the far right as
its political hitman is likely to be
more lethal and ruthless.
Atul Bhardwaj (atul.bhardwaj@city.ac.uk) is
Honorary Research Fellow in the Department
of International Politics at the City, University
of London.
12
T
he left is facing existential loneli-
ness. It is a political outcast, expe-
riencing a deep sense of ideo-
logical emptiness, an intellectual void.
Its spiritual connection with politics is
weakening. It had long realised that the
struggle for emancipation and equality
was a mere dream. The thought of pri-
oritising collective survival over indi-
vidual identity was a utopia. Then, why
is the left in agony again? One reason
for the left’s recurring pain is the world-
wide meteoric rise of a far right that is
turning the old-style mainstream poli-
tics and the old liberal order upside
down. More importantly, liberalism—
the left’s saviour and silent killer—is in
decay. The little left simply does not know
as to what is to be done: dance or die?
During the Cold War, when capitalist
assault on the radical left increased, lib-
eralism with its welfarist façade offered
a cozy refuge. The left gained entry into
the liberal mansion by abandoning class
war, its first love, and accepting civil
liberty as its new soulmate. This was
considered the best answer to mitigate
exploitation of humans by humans. The
left slept with the enemy, and allowed
liberalism to gnaw at its roots.
When the Berlin Wall crumbled in the
1990s, the left’s political pain worsened.
It found liberalism, its soulmate, celebrat-
ing with capitalism and jumping onto
the neo-liberal bandwagon. The left
scurried into a corner of the “liberal”
mansion, silently chanting the human
rights, “self-determination,” secularism,
and constitutionalism mantras. The con-
cerns of the poor masses and glaring
inequalities in the society, the centre of
left politics, were expediently brushed
under the carpet. The irony is that, three
decades later, the roof over the liberal
JULY 27, 2019
lies exposed.
Liberalism in Decay
The relationship between the left and
the liberals hinged on convenience. For
the former, the liberal path was less
arduous and challenging than the revo-
lutionary struggle that communism pro-
posed. For the liberals, speaking social-
ism was a part of strategy to keep com-
munist tendencies at bay. The liberal
heart, anchored in individualism, yearned
for capitalism, finding it more fulfilling
than communism.
The left–liberal merger was a by-product
of the Great Depression. The relation-
ship resulted in the emergence of a
new political species, in the capitalist
world, which identified itself as Progre-
ssives, New Dealers, or Fabians. Their
ideas were an eclectic mix of John May-
nard Keynes, Karl Marx, and Adam
Smith’s theories.
A peculiar thing about the New Dealers
and Fabians was that they avoided using
the word socialism. The “deception of
never calling socialism by its right name
was an integral part of Fabian political
ideology” (Bhardwaj 2019: 65). Jawahar-
lal Nehru, whose socialism largely
flowed from Fabianism and the New
Deal, added an “ic” to “socialist” in his
doctrine of the “socialistic pattern of
society.” Nehru successfully created the
myth that he was an ardent socialist
without giving up his allegiance to the
class that he was born in. According
to Sudipta Kaviraj (1980: 23), Nehru
excelled in political uses of ambiguity—but
curiously with uninterrupted luck. Under his
leadership the Congress declared a socialistic
pattern of society as its objective. But the
ingenuity with which it was pursued led to
actual increase in inequality.
Adding a socialist tinge to liberalism
was essential to save capitalism in times
of the growing impact of communism
in the 1930s. Capitalism could not allow
communism to be the sole torchbearer
of the masses of the world. Stuart Chase,
“an economist and member of President
Franklin D Roosevelt’s (FDR) ‘brain
trust’” (Sullivan 1985) who advocated
vol lIV no 30 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

government planning and intervention
in business, wrote in his 1932 book,
A New Deal (1932), “Why should the
Soviets have all the fun remaking a
world?” And, FDR achieved this, accord-
ing to Conrad Black’s book, Franklin D
Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (2003),
by stealing the socialist arguments and
depriving the left of the possibility of
political success.
Nehru, the father of left-liberalism in
India, was a “New Dealer.” He employed
FDR’s techniques to reform the Indian
communist movement by claiming to be
a socialist and a friend of the Soviet
Union. Explaining his policy on tackling
the Indian communists, Nehru told the
heads of India missions in 1955,
Our foreign policy has helped us internally
as well in that it has completely confused the
Communist Party of India. In view of the
appreciation shown by the Soviet leaders of
our foreign policy, Indian communists find it
difficult to criticise the government. The
stature India has gained abroad has given
the common man a certain pride in India.
CPI, therefore, finds it difficult to undermine
the reliance the common man places in gov-
ernment. (Noorani 2002)
Elaborating further on his strategy
Nehru informed the envoys:
Our intelligence services have to watch com-
munist activity, though from outside there
has been very little. In fact the Indian com-
munists have been told privately not to
embarrass our government. The publicly
expressed appreciation of the Indian govern-
ment is another way of making it difficult for
the Communist Party of India to embarrass
the government. (Noorani 2002)
The roots of Nehru’s socialism lay in
“peace and internationalism,” rather
than in anger against the exploitation of
the working classes” (Economic Weekly
1964: 1219). As E M S Namboodiripad
(1966: vii) had said,
The dominant section of the Congress lead-
ership consisted of confirmed enemies of
socialism and their acceptance of the social-
ist pattern, whatever it may mean was simply
a political manoeuvre.
On Nehru’s socialism, the Economic
Weekly (1964: 1219) had commented that
it was a “rather weak and hollow reed in
which one can blow almost any kind of
music.” Nehru was a master politician
and a myth-maker. The manner in which
he managed the left–liberal merger in
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JULY 27, 2019
India spoke about his political acumen.
The Indian left that Nehru defanged,
today, stands steadfast in protecting the
remnants of the Nehruvian myth.
A Technology-driven Revolution
All was going well for the liberals, the
believers in Francis Fukuyama’s “the
end of history” theory. Globalisation
brought fruits for the super rich and a
tiny minority composed of liberal and
right-wing middle-class families. The
calamity fell when, in 2008, the United
States (US), the Mecca of capitalism,
encountered economic meltdown and
severe depression. However, unlike in
the 1930s, capitalism did not resort to
strengthening liberalism to tackle dis-
content. In fact, it decided to jettison lib-
eralism and selected far-right populism
as its chief political ally. The inherently
conservative capitalist class has uncere-
moniously abandoned liberalism because
it faces no threat from communist or any
other ideology. Another compelling
reason is located in the dynamics that
the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR) is
unleashing both in the realm of capital
as well as labour.
At the core of the FIR lay the power
of artificial intelligence, automation, and
the internet of things (IoT). The new
technologies have opened up endless pos-
sibilities to change the way goods are
produced, consumed, and transacted.
The FIR is converting paper money into
digital money, thus changing the way
money is stored and moves. The “cash-
less economy” ensures that all money in
circulation remains within the system.
No government will ever need to resort to
demonetisation to bring the hidden
money into the system. Banks will always
be flush with funds. The big question is,
who will control these massive cash
flows in the system? Who will earn profit
from it? Will national currencies get
merged into a universal currency? These
questions are important because they
will go on to define not only the charac-
ter of the international political eco-
nomy, but the entire financial edifice on
which the international order rests.
The technology-driven revolution is
fundamentally affecting the relationship
between capital and labour, a legacy of
vol lIV no 30
STRATEGIC AFFAIRS
the first industrial revolution, when the
machine in the factory could not operate
without human intervention. It had
required both the blue-collar and the
educated white-collar manager to run the
shop floor. The latter, because of their
education, were placed in a higher wage
bracket than the former. The first indus-
trial revolution accentuated the urban–
rural divide and sharpened the divide
between manual and mental labour. The
mental labourer, who was more loyal to
the factory owner than the manual
labourer, emerged as the middle class, a
buffer between the rich and poor. The
tiny bunch of capitalist owners had no
option but to rely on the middle class to
run the show on their behalf. In return,
the middle-class worked to justify capi-
talism. The pattern was similar to what
was witnessed towards the end of the
15th century, when a new economic soci-
ety with its capitalistic motive emerged.
This society promoted the idea of liber-
alism and helped the middle class rise to
political and economic dominance,
primarily for “confiscating the wealth of
the church, open the way to the new
secular conceptions of individual free-
dom and opportunity and of scientific
control over nature” (Knickerbocker
1937: 120).
The need for liberalism increased
when capitalism, in the age of mass pro-
duction of goods, needed more workers.
Liberalism, with a communist tinge, hel-
ped in managing the politically aware,
militant working classes in factories.
However, capital continued to consider
labour as a necessary evil. In the 1970s,
the Western capitalist grabbed the
opportunity to shift production centres
to China and South East Asia, where
cheap labour was available in abundance.
This helped the capitalist circumvent
available at
Churchgate Book Stall
Churchgate Station
Opp: Indian Merchant Chamber
Mumbai 400 020
13
STRATEGIC AFFAIRS

labour laws and taxes imposed by the
liberal order to maintain tranquility
within the metropole.
The FIR by bringing in robots and 3D
printers is giving the capitalists a new
opportunity to eliminate labour as well
as the manager from the manufacturing
process, losing the chains constraining
the capitalist’s profits. The advent of
driverless cars may enable Uber, the car
hiring service company, to obliterate
human drivers from its software pro-
gramme. Similarly, the 3D printers may
bring us to a stage where Apple would
produce its mobile phones in worker-less
factories located in the US, without any
need for Indian or Chinese labour.
The right-wing intellectuals have been
quick to comprehend the emerging tech-
nological trends and identify the social
and political needs that the new econ-
omy will demand. It is well understood
that the FIR would lead to an age of job-
lessness. A jobless society would demand
subsidies to survive, which could be pro-
vided directly into the mobile wallets of
the needy through the “universal basic
income” (UBI) schemes. However, the
innate capitalist greed would limit the
number of people under UBI. The maxi-
mum reduction of social burden is what
the capitalist order demands from politics.
Liberalism with its advocacy of multi-
culturalism and extended populism
cannot meet this objective. Right-wing,
racist organisations that thrive on segre-
gation of communities are what the global
capitalist class want in order to restrict
the scope of populism. The amount of
support provided by the Indian capital-
ists to Narendra Modi’s election cam-
paign since 2012 is a case in point. It is
for this reason that US President Donald
Trump’s recent attacks on non-white
Democratic congresswomen, asking them
to go back to their home country, cannot
be analysed through liberal theories on
racism. One needs to wear a Marxist
lens to view this rampant polarisation
drama being enacted, across geogra-
phies, from New York to New Delhi. The
basic purpose of the right wing’s anti-
immigration drive is to delegitimise as
many people as possible from the “uni-
versal basic income” net.
Racism, casteism, communalism, and
nationalism are age-old ideas that capi-
talists have used as tools to garner and
hoard vast resources of the earth for a
tiny minority. With liberalism as its politi-
cal ally, the “gentlemanly capitalism”
killed millions in imperial wars waged
for resources and profits in the 20th cen-
tury. The 21st-century “surveillance
capitalism” with the far right as its polit-
ical hitman is likely to be more lethal
and ruthless.
The left is a laggard, having failed
to appreciate the speed at which the
FIR-induced changes are sweeping the
globe. The left will have a zilch future if
it continues to be opiated by liberalism.
Its fight against internet technology is
restricted to demanding “privacy,” when
it should be in the vanguard of finding
ways to appropriate the new means and
modes of production and transaction for
the larger good of the human race.
References
Bhardwaj, Atul (2019): India–America Relations
(1942–62): Rooted in the International Liberal
Order, London: Routledge.
Economic Weekly (1964): “The Socialist Legacy,”
Vol 16, Nos 29–31, pp 1219–25.
Knickerbocker, Frances W (1937): “The Decay of
Liberalism,” The Sewanee Review, Vol 45, No 1,
pp 120–22.
Kaviraj, Sudipta (1980): “Apparent Paradoxes of
Jawaharlal Nehru,” Mainstream, 15 November,
pp 23–30.
Namboodiripad, E M S (1966): Economics and Poli-
tics of India’s Socialist Pattern, New Delhi:
People’s Publishing House.
Noorani, A G (2002): “The Nehruvian Approach,”
Frontline, Vol 19, No 2, https://frontline.the-
hindu.com/static/html/fl1902/19020810.htm.
Sullivan, Ronald (1985): “Stuart Chase, 97: Coined
the Phrase ‘A New Deal,’” New York Times, 17
November, viewed on 12 March 2019, https://
www.nytimes.com/1985/11/17/nyregion/stu-
art-chase-97-coined-phrase-a-new-dea.html.

Review of Women’s Studies

December 1, 2018
Knowing in Our Own Ways: Women and Kashmir —Nitasha Kaul, Ather Zia
The New Kashmiri Woman: State-led Feminism in ‘Naya Kashmir’ —Hafsa Kanjwal
Women in Resistance: Narratives of Kashmiri Women’s Protests —Mir Fatimah Kanth
Moving from Impunity to Accountability:
Women’s Bodies, Identity, and Conflict-related Sexual Violence in Kashmir —Alliya Anjum
Home as the Frontier: Gendered Constructs of Militarised Violence in Kashmir —Samreen Mushtaq
Dimensions of Sexual Violence and Patriarchy in a Militarised State —Essar Batool
Gendered Politics of Funerary Processions: Contesting Indian Sovereignty in Kashmir —Inshah Malik
Jinn, Floods, and Resistant Ecological Imaginaries in Kashmir —Mona Bhan
The Intimate World of Vyestoan: Affective Female Alliances and Companionships of Resistance in Kashmir —Uzma Falak

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