KARL Marx had once said that all criticism must begin with the criticism of religion. Paraphrasing Marx one can say in the current economic context that all criticism must begin with the criticism of the GDP. This conceptually and statistically dubious measure cannot cognize the phenomenon of exploitation.

IT is common for governments these days to provide fiscal transfers to capitalists, whether through reduced corporate tax rates, or by providing direct cash subsidies, to encourage greater investment by them and thereby stimulate the economy. During Donald Trump’s first presidency there had been a cut in corporate tax rate with this objective in mind. In India the Modi government, as is well-known, has given massive tax concessions with the same objective.

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.

THIS year’s Nobel Prize in economics (the Riksbank Prize to be more precise) has been awarded to three US-based economists for their research into what promotes or hinders the growth of wealth among nations; and they assign a crucial role to institutions, arguing that western institutions like electoral democracy are conducive to growth.

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.