WHEN industrial capitalism was developing in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the new machine-made goods had displaced many artisan producers, giving rise to the Luddite movement against the introduction of machines. With increased unemployment, there was an increase in the relative magnitude of poverty, as Eric Hobsbawm had argued in a debate with another historian R.M. Hartwell. But then things improved later on in the course of the nineteenth century.

PROGRESSIVE Liberals, and Social Democrats in general, have this common belief that capitalism can be “reformed” to become more humane and acceptable to society, and that this can be done by the use of state power which can be acquired through elections in a political democracy; this state of reformed capitalism can be institutionalized for ever, which makes any struggle for socialism unnecessary.

THE West Asian war has pushed world oil prices well beyond $100 per barrel. The Indian government, which had kept domestic prices of oil products unchanged until the elections to several state legislatures had been completed, has now started raising their prices; it has already raised prices in three rounds and is no doubt going to raise them further. And a large number of economists, not all belonging to the Bhartiya Janata Party stable, have seen such “passing on” of higher world oil prices to domestic consumers as the obvious and natural thing to do.

THE Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was perhaps the most consequential legislation enacted in post-independence India.

Technological development and innovation have been the driving force of human civilisation. With change in technologies, the production process, labour process and measurement of human contribution to social product undergoes change. The current phase of digital technology with AI as the emerging general-purpose technology is also going to radically alter the production process.