The basic theme is to suggest that under neo-liberalism there has been such an acceleration of the growth rate of Gross Domestic Product that the people as a whole have become much better off, and vast masses of them have been lifted out of poverty (one particular enthusiast has even claimed that poverty now afflicts only 2 per cent of the population).

THE wisdom of pursuing a strategy of export-led growth has been discussed among development economists for at least half a century, ever since the so-called East Asian “miracle” started to be contrasted with the comparatively sluggish growth experience of countries like India that were pursuing, in the World Bank’s language, an “inward looking” development strategy.

Israel has become a classic example of settler colonialism in contemporary times, as also a model picture of apartheid.

Significant segments of the non-Communist Western Left see the developing contradiction between the United States and China in terms of an inter-imperialist rivalry.

The central government’s hounding of Newsclick reminds one of the children’s story about a tiger and a goat drinking water from the same stream.

THE Modi government, ever solicitous of corporate interests, has launched a plan whereby real estate developers and other corporates will be allowed to destroy large swathes of India’s forest cover for starting projects that rake in profits. It is amending the Forest Conservation Act to remove those forest patches that are not deemed as such by the government from protection under the Act.

THE G-20 meeting in Delhi was occurring in the midst of an acute economic crisis of the world economy.

LIBERAL bourgeois writers tend to explain the problems that arise under capitalism not by the immanent tendencies of the system but by the capriciousness of particular governments.

AT the Johannesburg summit of the BRICS countries, it was decided to expand the group beyond its original five, namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, to include six more countries.

Fascistic outfits which are themselves devoid of any serious thought, also lack respect for serious thought. It is little wonder then that the BJP government is hell-bent on systematically destroying the few spaces that exist in the country for serious thought. Its assault on universities will do incalculable damage to the country.

Of late however there has been a popular anti-imperialist upsurge in several countries of Francophone Africa. In Guinea, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso, new anti-imperialist governments have come to power in the last couple of years that want French troops out of their countries; and in Mali they have even succeeded in getting French troops out.

MANY economists have been advocating a universal basic income for India, an idea that was mooted even in the official Economic Survey for 2016-17.

ON April 3 this year, the minister of state for planning, Rao Inderjeet Singh, said in the Rajya Sabha that the government had no data after 2011-12 for estimating poverty, and therefore had no idea how many people had been lifted out of poverty since then.

SEVERAL major economists have put forward theories predicting a falling tendency of the rate of profit under capitalism; Marx had seen in this fact an awareness on their part of the essential transitoriness of the capitalist system. But while some of these theories have logical validity, others do not. Among the latter is Adam Smith’s theory.

INDIA and other third world countries can morally justify their being a part of G-20 alongside the imperialist powers, only if they raise common and pressing problems of the third world as a whole at G-20 meetings.

Under monopoly capitalism of course this relationship between monopoly capitalists and the state becomes far closer. Rudolf Hilferding in his opus Das Finanzkapital had talked of a “personal union” between banks and industrial capital and the formation on this basis of a “financial oligarchy”, and had suggested a similar “personal union” between the “financial oligarchy” and the State.

AFTER Sri Lanka and Pakistan, Bangladesh has become the third country in our neighbourhood to become afflicted by a serious economic crisis.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus had said “You cannot step into the same river twice.”

Most people, including even trained economists, fail to appreciate the fact that an exchange rate depreciation, if it is to work in reducing the trade deficit in a capitalist economy, must necessarily hurt the working class by lowering the real wage rate

A New York Times News Service report reproduced in The Telegraph of Kolkata (May 7), discusses the findings of a global public opinion survey carried out by the Bennett Institute of Public Policy of Cambridge University. These show that the Ukraine conflict had shifted public sentiment “in developed democracies in East Asia and Europe as well as the United States of America, uniting their citizens against both Russia and China and shifting mass opinion in a more pro-American direction”.