The Crisis of Liberalism

EACH strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for, and the political praxis informed by it carries out this struggle.

On the Question of the Inheritance Tax

NARENDRA Modi’s pronouncements on the inheritance tax show a degree of frivolity that is quite amazing and hardly expected of a prime minister. The Congress Party’s Sam Pitroda had mentioned the possibility of an inheritance tax, to which Modi’s response was not a reasoned argument (and there are a few he could have mentioned) but a set of deliberate and banal misinterpretations that make the proposal appear ridiculous; what should have been a serious debate became just maliciously farcical.

Rural Labour in the Modi Years

BY now it is well-established by several researchers that the real wage rate in rural India, whether of agricultural labour or of rural labour in general, remained virtually stagnant between 2014-15 and 2022-23 (Das and Usami in Review of Agrarian Studies, July-December 2023; Dreze and Khera’s findings reported in The Telegraph, April 21, 2024).

Fetishising the Growth Rate of GDP

JOHN Stuart Mill was among the foremost liberal thinkers of modern times who wrote extensively on economics and philosophy. Though under the influence of his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, he came closer towards socialism late in his life, it was a kind of cooperative socialism that attracted him; he continues to be regarded primarily as a pre-eminent liberal thinker. Economists of Mill’s time were haunted by the fear of the imminence of a stationary state, that is, a state of simple reproduction or zero growth-rate, in which there would be no further capital accumulation.

A Striking Contrast

THE Reichstag Fire was a crucial event in the conversion of Germany from a liberal democracy into a fascist dictatorship in 1933.

The Anatomy of A ‘Hindu Rashtra’

THE Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded with the objective of establishing a Hindu rashtra, or a Hindu State. The question immediately arises: what is a Hindu State? There are several countries in the world that give primacy to one religion above all others, or are theocratic, but that makes not an iota of difference to the class nature of their states.

Working Class and the Ascendancy of Neo-Fascism

WALTER Benjamin, the German philosopher who was himself a victim of fascism, had linked the ascendancy of fascism to the failed proletarian revolutions that had preceded it. He had of course Germany in mind, where, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, there had been several attempts to effect a similar revolution.

Once More on Poverty Figures of India

THE other day the chief executive officer of Niti Aayog made a fantastic claim, that the poverty ratio in India had fallen below 5 per cent according to the 2022-23 consumption expenditure survey data.

Capitalist Trap for Scientific Advances

THERE is a paradox at the core of the efflorescence of science that has occurred over the last millennium. In essence this efflorescence has the potential to increase human freedom immensely. It increases the capacity of man within the man-nature dialectic; scientific practice aims to go beyond the “given” not just in a once-for-all sense but as a perpetual movement through incessant self-questioning, so that this practice is potentially a collective act of liberation.

The Descent into Barbarism

IN The Junius Pamphlet written from jail in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg had said that the choice before mankind was between barbarism and socialism. Liberal opinion would contest this, arguing thatthe barbarism that marked the two world wars and the period in between was unrelated to capitalism; indeed the liberal tendency that comes to the fore under capitalism, it would claim, fought against the barbarism of that period.

Search form

Peoples Democracy

ECONOMIC NOTES