Beyond Liberalism

This book is a Marxist critique of liberalism. Prabhat Patnaik brings together political philosophy and political economy to offer a renewed vision of socialism.

Prabhat Patnaik has taught economics at the University of Cambridge and Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he is currently professor emeritus. His books include Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism (1997), The Value of Money (2009), A Theory of Imperialism, with Utsa Patnaik (2017), and Capital and Imperialism, with Utsa Patnaik (2021).

Robert Pollin, coauthor of Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal:
This book offers a deep analysis of the idea of individual freedom under capitalism. Patnaik first pursues this question through examining the works of major authors, including Locke, Smith, Keynes, and Marx. Within this framework, he then considers issues around colonialism, imperialism, socialism, and social democracy with insight and force.

David Leopold, author of The Young Karl Marx: German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing:
Prabhat Patnaik skillfully combines empirical evidence and philosophical reasoning to make an engaging and insightful interdisciplinary critique of liberal doctrine, questioning its account of capitalism at its avowedly strongest point: its claim to embody and promote individual freedom.

Akeel Bilgrami, author of Capital, Culture, and the Commons:
Prabhat Patnaik’s book, integrating perspectives from economics, philosophy, and politics, is a brilliant critique of the complicity of liberal doctrine with capitalism through its entire history: from its earliest formations in the seventeenth century through the extended period of European colonialism, the Keynesian caesura after the Second World War, down to the neoliberal period of globalized finance of our own time.