THE Industrial Revolution which inaugurated industrial capitalism in the world had occurred in Britain in cotton textiles; but neither Britain nor other North European countries could grow any raw cotton at all. The very coming into being of industrial capitalism in short was dependent upon the metropolis obtaining a steady supply of raw materials from wherever they happened to be produced. This situation has not changed one iota in all these years.

IMMEDIATELY after the war when capitalism had faced a serious existential crisis, it had adopted a dual strategy to cope with it. First, it whipped up the “red scare” which was absolutely without any justification, in order to terrorise the domestic working class into acquiescing with the system.

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

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.

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).