Nobody can claim that the rate of growth of agricultural production, especially of food grain production, has been higher in the neoliberal period than during the years of dirigiste development that preceded it; it may have been somewhat lower but let us agree that it is certainly no higher.

ON Friday, February 28, when U.S. President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office of the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump mused: ‘I hope I will be remembered as a peacemaker’.

The Trump strategy for the revival of imperialism amounts to having one’s cake and eating it too.

The official hope is that the workers’ bargaining strength gets sufficiently lowered by having greater unemployment so that they cannot bargain for higher money wages to compensate for the price-rise, because of which inflation would eventually peter out.

While it is certainly true that Trumpism is not identical with capitalism per se, it would be a mistake to see Trumpism as a completely separate and alien phenomenon.

A CHORUS of “establishment” voices, from consultancy firms to the financial press, has been demanding a boost to domestic consumption as a means of reviving the flagging growth rate of the Indian economy. The latest to join this chorus is the Reserve Bank of India which in its latest Bulletin has asked for a boost to consumption to “rekindle the animal spirits” of the “entrepreneurs” in the economy.

U.S. imperialism in short believes that it can do whatever it likes, that it is a law unto itself.

All this however is still in the realm of mere possibilities; what is more certain is the 10 per cent tax on global imports and the 60 per cent tax on imports from China.

The aim of all fascistic governments is to disempower the people; and the Modi government is no exception.

A fast track effort underway since 2022 aiming to forge a global Treaty to control plastic pollution by regulating all aspects of the life cycle failed at the fifth, and hoped for last, UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee Meeting (INC-5) held in Busan, South Korea, on 25 November – 1 December 2024 under the aegis of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP).

Liberal opinion holds that the international monetary and financial system is a device for promoting the interests of all participating countries by providing a convenient payments arrangement within which trade can be carried on. The reality however is altogether different: the international system is founded upon the hegemony of western imperialism, and in turn sustains this hegemony.

KARL Marx had once said that all criticism must begin with the criticism of religion.

The CJI refrained from giving “socialism” an institutional character. All over the world the term “socialism” has been taken to mean social ownership of the means of production, at least of the key means of production; but the CJI, defining “socialism” in terms of outcome rather than the institution of ownership suggested that private enterprise was not incompatible with “socialism”; what really mattered was the creation of a welfare state ensuring equality of opportunity for all citizens.

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 political philosophy of classical liberalism, which provided the basis for liberal political praxis, was sustained by a long tradition of bourgeois economic thought, straddling both classical political economy and neo-classical economics.

The general belief is that we already have or are on the cusp of creating machines that possess human-like intelligence which will be able to accomplish most tasks that humans can do, making a lot of us redundant and taking away a whole range of employment opportunities.

THIS year’s Nobel Prize in economics (the Riksbank Prize to be more precise) has been awarded to three U.S.-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.

Several international organisations are now engaged in the business of measuring what they call “poverty”.

The further development of the centralisation of capital, leading to its consolidation, has on the one hand muted inter-imperialist rivalry, since capital now wants the entire world, not broken up into spheres of influence of rival powers, as the domain for its unrestricted movement; on the other hand it has also led to an attempt on the part of now-united imperialism to reassert its hegemony over the territories that had broken off from it earlier.

The policies favoured by the ruling class in other words are being pursued despite public opinion being palpably and systematically opposed to them.