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This article is the 10th anniversary lecture of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, delivered in 2021. It provides a reflection on key issues and fallacies that lie at the origins of political economy. It is argued that, as regards the problem of knowledge production, the formulation of factually and logically incorrect theories begins with English classical political economy. Political economy as developed in England in the second half of the eighteenth century—a period which saw a rapid increase in its trade especially with its colonies of conquest, while also making the transition to factory production—proceeded on the basis of verbal and material fallacies and silences which have been reproduced in historiography and the discipline of economics to this day.

After the primary role that Gordon Childe assigned to women in prehistory in both the beginnings of agriculture and cattle-domestication, women have been placed at an inferior position in both the realms of production and consumption. Even when they were employed in factories after the Industrial Revolution, they were paid much lower wages than men workers. As Marx pointed out, however, wages have to cover the entire family expenses, and, on this count, wage-levels in colonial countries, even after 'decolonisation', have not reached appropriate levels. In colonial India, owing both to tribute and free trade, Indian labouring women, for example, spinners, suffered very grievous hardship. Today it is essential that poverty-lines should be raised and minimum wages adjusted to subsistence needs.

In 1943–44 in Bengal over three million people, all from the ranks of the poorest, perished owing to famine, caused not by drought but by high prices. The 'profit inflation' (Keynes) was generated by the British Government's printing of money to pay for the maintenance of the British and the US troops and related military expenditure in India, against which frozen 'Sterling Balances' accumulated on paper. This caused 'extreme demand compression', which could have been eased by release of some British and US funds to import foodgrains, but that did not happen. Regrettably, Keynes was throughout on the other side.

The prevalent view among many economic historians is that, given free trade and neoliberatisation, developing countries will traverse the same path of industrial development as the developed north. This article contests the view: first, the prevalent narrative of European industrial development is partial: it overstates the effect of modern agriculture in Europe as well as employment creation by industry, since it ignores (a) the factor of colonial plunder and (b) the 'white' migration out of Europe as an effect of, as well as safety-value for, the crisis created by unemployment in industrialising Europe. Neither of these supporting factors is available to the South, where, as in India, per capita growth is accompanied by growing inequality and mass impoverishment. Clearly, freewheeling capitalism is not an equitable option for India.

This article puts forward two main propositions which have been discussed at length in earlier papers and supports these with historical and current data, which have not been presented before. The first proposition is that the origins of Third World food dependence lie in the First World's dependence on developing countries for both food and non-food imports. The second is that the advanced countries' dependence has not declined, on the contrary the list of products imported from developing countries has become much longer in recent years, since air-freighting has permitted imports of highly perishable products, not possible earlier.

This article argues that the first industrializing nations like Britain historically met a large part of their food needs through tax or rent-financed imports and re-exports, from today's developing countries. It points out a fallacy in Ricardo's theory of mutual benefit for both trading partners from specialization and exchange, arising from its assumption that both countries produce both goods. Developing countries did not benefit but experienced falling per head output of basic staples, severely undermining food security for their own populations, both historically and under current trade liberalization, which has again shifted cropping patterns towards exports. The direct colonial taxation of the past to suppress domestic mass demand is replaced by income-deflating fiscal measures under the neo-liberal regime. It discusses why globally grain consumption per head is positively associated with per head income, and argues that the observed decline in India, as its income rises, can only reflect absolute decline in consumption for the already under-nourished majority.