ECONOMIC NOTES

The Kazan Summit of BRICS

THE Kazan summit of the BRICS countries was a historic one for several reasons: first, it created a new category called “partner nations” as a step towards full membership, and accepted 13 such new “partner” countries, among whom were Cuba and Bolivia. Second, it came out against unilateral economic sanctions that the US-led imperialist powers have been imposing on countries that dare to assert their independence from imperialist hegemony. Third, it suggested a programme of reform for the International Monetary and Financial System.

Economics and Ideology

WHAT is referred to as “mainstream economics” is a deeply ideological subject, whose objective is not to uncover the truth but to camouflage it. Karl Marx had been profoundly aware of the ideological character that economics can have, and had distinguished between classical political economy and vulgar economy.

How Not to Measure Poverty

SEVERAL international organisations are now engaged in the business of measuring what they call “poverty”. The World Bank has been in it for some time, but now we have a new measure of “Multidimensional Poverty” brought out by the UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). Neither of these measures however actually measures poverty; they typically end up “prettifying” neo-liberal capitalism.

Imperialism’s Striving for Expansion

THE “inevitable striving of finance capital”, Lenin had written in Imperialism, (is) “to enlarge its spheres of influence and even its actual territory”. He was writing of course in a world marked by inter-imperialist rivalry, where this striving took the form of a competitive struggle between rival finance capitals that speedily completed the partitioning of the world, leaving no “empty spaces”; only a repartitioning of the world was thenceforth possible, through wars among rival financial oligarchies.

The Stagnation of the World Economy

THE fact that the world economy has slowed down since the financial crisis of 2008 is beyond dispute. In fact even conservative American economists have started using the term “secular stagnation” to describe the current situation (though they have their own peculiar definition for it). The purpose of the present note is to give some growth-rate figures to establish this particular point.Calculations of GDP, which are notoriously unreliable for particular countries, are even more so for the world as a whole.

The Transient “Miracles”

A GOOD deal of analysis of the recent political upheaval in Bangladesh has focussed on the high-handedness and authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina’s government; it has either missed altogether, or generally underplayed, the change that has occurred in the economic situation in that country. A country that was being hailed as an economic “miracle” just a few months ago is now mired in an economic crisis that has suddenly worsened the living conditions of vast numbers of people.

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