Changes in estimation methods have of late made statistics on the Indian economy increasingly bewildering; besides, whenever the statistics show the performance of the economy in a poor light, the BJP government simply suppresses them. Nothing however can suppress the…
Class struggle occurs in the realm of concepts too. The World Bank for instance systematically counters Left concepts by employing a novel tactic: it uses the very same concepts as are used by the Left, but gives them a wholly…
These notes are meant to clarify a point made earlier (Peoples’ Democracy, June 30, 2018) about the erstwhile socialist economies not having over-production crises as capitalist economies do. It is in the nature of capitalism to have “over-production crises”, i.e.…
The budget figures these days mean very little. The difference between what the budget provides and what actually happens does not come to light even after a time- lag of two years, while earlier two years were the limit. And…
Marxism teaches us that every totality is composed of elements which are different and hence among whom there are contradictions. Even when the totality is conceptualized as a totality, there must be an implicit awareness of these contradictions. This injunction…
Wealth data are quite unreliable; and wealth distribution data even more so. Not much faith can be reposed on the absolute figures; but cross-country comparisons, and also movements in the shares of the top decile or percentile of the population…
If a head-load worker were to ask a bourgeois economist “Why does Ambani have so much wealth but I do not?”, that economist’s answer would be that Ambani has certain “special qualities” which the headload worker lacks. Bourgeois economists however…
“Mainstream” economics does not appear to understand the functioning of the bourgeois economic order; and nowhere is this more evident than in matters relating to fiscal policy. It holds to this day that a fiscal deficit “crowds” out private investment…
The idea is an old one, but the Hungarian economist Janos Kornai clearly conceptualized it, by drawing a distinction between a “demand-constrained system” and a “resource-constrained system”. A demand-constrained system is one where employment and output in the system are…
Even as the growth rate of the Indian economy is slowing down, and the index of industrial production actually showing negative growth for three consecutive months, August to October (over the corresponding months a year ago), the inflation rate in…
