Intellectuals and Neo-Fascism

COMMUNISTS in India often mobilised public donations and public effort to establish schools and colleges in their areas of work.

The Recent Upsurge in Military Expenditure

THERE is an upsurge in military expenditure all over the world which is spearheaded by the upsurge in Europe. Of course there are different estimates of military expenditure, depending on what one includes under this heading. We shall, in what follows, take the estimates of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) for our analysis.

An Enduring Myth About Capitalism

THERE are of course many myths about capitalism spun by economists. One of these myths spun by David Ricardo has endured for over two centuries. Ricardo had originally been an enthusiastic supporter of the introduction of machinery, dismissive of the argument by workers’ organisations of his time that it gave rise to unemployment.

Economics and the Concept of Progress

THE mercantilists had defined a nation’s prosperity in terms of the amount of precious metals it possessed and a nation’s progress in terms of the increase in its amount of precious metals.

The Havoc Caused by Say’s Law

JEAN-BAPTISTE Say, a French economist who wrote in the late eighteenth century, had formulated a law to the effect that ‘supply creates its own demand’, which meant that there could never be an inadequate demand for the aggregate of goods produced in any economy. His argument was as follows. Whatever is produced generates an equal amount of income among those associated with its production. This income is either consumed or ‘saved’ (i.e., not consumed).

Obliterating the Truth about Nazi Defeat

NAZI Germany was basically defeated by the Soviet Union. The sacrifice made by the Soviet people in defence of their country in that war was utterly unimaginable. From the very beginning however there has been an effort by the western powers to obliterate this truth and to claim instead that the defeat of Nazi Germany was the result of their endeavour.

Neo-Colonialism in West Africa

FRANCOPHONE Africa was never fully decolonised. In the name of protecting French property located in its former colonies, France insisted on, and the former colonies agreed to, the stationing of French troops in those countries. This gave France immense opportunities to intervene in the politics of its former colonies. In addition, these countries were made to adopt a currency, the CFA franc, which had a fixed exchange rate vis-à-vis the French franc. And to maintain this fixed exchange rate, the monetary policy of these countries was controlled by the French central bank.

Tariff Negotiations and the Farmers

ELEMENTARY textbooks in economics invariably begin with a completely mythical concept: the concept of “perfect competition”, which is different from the concept of “free competition” that the classical economists and Marx had used. “Free competition” was characterised by the equality of wages (for equal skills) and of profit-rates across sectors; all it required for its realisation was free mobility of labour and of capital across sectors which was by no means a far-fetched assumption in the pre-monopoly era.

Terror on the Campus

INTERNATIONAL students on US campuses are at present a terrified lot: they can be abducted, sent to some detention centre hundreds of miles from where they live, kept there for any length of time, and then deported abroad. And all this can happen to them not because they have violated any known law, but entirely at the whim of the administration.

How Countries Like India Should Not Respond to Trump’s Tariffs

DONALD Trump has put off his proposed tariffs by ninety days; but countries like India have to respond to Trump’s measures whether now or after ninety days. These measures are not just an episodic act. Trump clearly threatens with tariffs any country that dares to act in a manner not approved by him; he is weaponising tariffs to assert US hegemony, quite apart from using them for economic ends like raising domestic activity and reducing the US current account deficit.

Search form

Peoples Democracy

ECONOMIC NOTES