Imperialism as an Abiding Phenomenon

THERE is a common misconception that while the immediate aftermath of political decolonisation was marked by attempts by metropolitan powers to retain control over the resources of the erstwhile colonies, for which they used all kinds of instruments from coups to armed interventions against the newly independent governments, that period got over after a time.

An Unimaginable Contrast

MUCH has been written about the immense increase in economic inequality that has occurred of late and various startling figures have been provided by bodies like Oxfam, which has just come out with a report titled Inequality Kills. This shows that the wealth of the 10 richest men has doubled since the pandemic began while the incomes of 99 per cent of the population of the world are lower today than before the pandemic.

Why Capitalist Governments Worry More about Inflation than Unemployment?

CAPITALIST governments invariably seek to control inflation by enlarging unemployment. This has nothing to do with any belief in a stable “trade-off” between the two, namely in a stable curve that links the two. Even those who attribute inflation to other causes, such as excessive money supply (“too much money chasing too few goods”) and find the solution to it in monetary stringency, are in effect seeking to control it through larger unemployment, since monetary stringency causes larger unemployment.This raises many questions. The first question is: why is this so?

A Budget Whose Silences are Ominous

NO budget in recent memory has been presented at a time when the economy is in such dire straits: unemployment is so bad that there are job riots in Bihar and UP; wealth and income inequalities are among the worst in the world; millions more have been pushed into poverty because of the pandemic and the lockdown; and inflation is accelerating even in the midst of massive unemployment. There is an urgent need for a strategy that promotes economic revival, while providing relief to the poor, and contributing to an abatement of inflation.

The Economy on the Eve of the Budget

THE Indian economy is currently caught in a vicious spiral of inflation, stagnation, and a widening of the fiscal deficit. And this spiral is set to become even more vicious because inter alia of developments in the world economy.Even before the current omicron wave, the rate of GDP growth projected by official estimates for 2021-22 over the previous year was 9.2 per cent; but the previous year itself had witnessed a 7.3 per cent contraction because of the pandemic.

Social Sciences and the Colonised Mind

A CRUCIAL component of the imperialist system is the colonisation of third world minds that helps to sustain it.

Financial Markets Under Capitalism

ONE of the most important arguments advanced by John Maynard Keynes, the renowned economist, was that the operation of financial markets under capitalism is deeply flawed.

Co-Lending: Towards Recolonising the Peasantry

IN colonial times, the peasantry had to borrow from private moneylenders. According to Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee reports, these moneylenders in turn borrowed from commercial banks. But while disbursing credit to the peasants and charging exorbitant interest rates, the money lenders at least bore the whole of the lender’s risk. The banks from whom they borrowed did not bear any risk in case the peasants could not pay back the loans they had obtained from the moneylenders.

Yet Another Contradiction of Capitalism

IN the United States there are still four million persons who remain unemployed compared to before the pandemic; and yet the Biden administration’s attempt to stimulate the economy has already run into a crisis with the re-emergence of inflation not just in that country but elsewhere in the capitalist world as well. The Federal Reserve Board (the equivalent of the US central bank) is planning soon to raise interest rates (that are currently close to zero), and even the fiscal expansion will be difficult to sustain in the face of inflation.

Privatisation and the Constitution

IN a recent report the People’s Commission on the Public Sector and Public Services has rightly drawn attention to the sheer un-constitutionality of the Modi government’s plan to privatise en masse the assets of the public sector. The constitution of the country is not just a set of procedures and rules for the governance of the polity. It expresses above all a certain social philosophy which is supposed to inform the behaviour of the various organs of the State and which constitutes the foundational beliefs around which the nation has come into being.

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Peoples Democracy

ECONOMIC NOTES