The Specific Form of Poverty under Capitalism

POVERTY is taken to be a homogeneous phenomenon irrespective of the mode of production that is under consideration. Even reputed economists believe in this homogeneous conception of poverty. In fact, however, poverty under capitalism is entirely different from poverty in pre-capitalist times.

AI and Employment

THE fundamental issue raised by Hollywood writers when they had gone on a strike against being replaced by artificial intelligence, somehow receded to the background after the resolution of that particular conflict; but it remains a fundamental issue.

Global Diffusion of Production and the Concept of Imperialism

THERE has been a significant diffusion of production occurring in the world economy. Many call this phenomenon a shift from a US-led world economy to a “multipolar world economy”, but no matter what one thinks of this description, the fact of diffusion is indubitable.

What is To Be Done about Unemployment?

A DISTINCTION is drawn in economics between demand-constrained systems and resource-constrained systems (which for simplicity and symmetry we shall call supply-constrained systems). In the former, an increase in output can occur if there is a rise in aggregate demand without causing any scarcity-induced inflation; in the latter, output is constrained either by capacity being fully used up, or by the scarcity of some critical input or of foodgrains or of the labour force, so that a rise in aggregate demand, instead of raising output, simply causes scarcity-induced inflation.

Camouflaging a Class Agenda

AN object lesson in how fascistic outfits operate is provided by the BJP’s attitude towards an inheritance tax. The fact that there has been an immense increase in income and wealth inequality in the country during the neoliberal era is well-known. Indeed this is not a phenomenon confined to India alone; it is an international phenomenon which has been much discussed even in high-bourgeois circles for quite some time.

Neo-Liberalism Has Increased Mass Poverty

THE media has been full of claims by the World Bank and by governments that millions of people in the global South have been lifted out of poverty during the last three decades that saw neo-liberal economic policies. The Niti Aayog in a press release earlier this year claimed near zero poverty for India by 2022-23, affecting only 5 per cent of the population.

Chicanery versus Humanity

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable GingerRephraseRephrase with Ginger (Ctrl+Alt+E)THE current protests in US university campuses demanding “divestment” from firms linked to Israel’s military machine, are reminiscent of the protests that had swept these campuses in the late sixties and early seventies demanding an end to the Vietnam war. There is however a major difference: the US had then been directly involved in the war, while today it is not.

The Crisis of Liberalism

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEACH strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for, and the political praxis informed by it carries out this struggle.

On the Question of the Inheritance Tax

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceNARENDRA Modi’s pronouncements on the inheritance tax show a degree of frivolity that is quite amazing and hardly expected of a prime minister.

Rural Labour in the Modi Years

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceBY now it is well-established by several researchers that the real wage rate in rural India, whether of agricultural labour or of rural labour in general, remained virtually stagnant between 2014-15 and 2022-23 (Das and Usami in Review of Agrarian Studies, July-December 2023; Dreze and Khera’s findings reported in The Telegraph, April 21, 2024).

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Peoples Democracy

ECONOMIC NOTES