RAMZY BAROUD on how Israel’s narrative collides with military failure
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Is capitalism cyclical?
As long as we permit capitalism to exist, there will be cycles of development and decay, of gains and losses for capitalists, and of successes and failures for the working class, explains the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Regular crises typically happen every five or six years — it was this, Marx said, that proves the labour theory of value in the same way as the collapse of a badly built house proved the law of gravity.
ROGER McKENZIE explains how Ibrahim Traore has sparked the flames of hope across Africa, while the Western powers seek to extinguish all attempts to build true sovereignty in the long-exploited continent
DANIEL GOVER considers the procedural complexities awaiting a Private Member’s Bill in its passage through Commons and Lords
JAMIE TUCKNUTT reports on an initiative that brings together two epochs of the city’s anti-fascist struggles
Just as German Social Democrats joined the Nazis in singing Deutschland Uber Alles, ANDREW MURRAY observes how Starmer tries to out-Farage Farage with anti-migrant policies — but evidence shows Reform voters come from Tories, not Labour, making this ploy morally bankrupt and politically pointless
KEITH FLETT traces how the ‘world’s most successful political party’ has imploded since Thatcher’s fall, from nine leaders in 30 years to losing all 16 English councils, with Reform UK symbolically capturing Peel’s birthplace, Tamworth — but the beast is not dead yet
With turnout plummeting and faith in Parliament collapsing, BERT SCHOUWENBURG explains how radical local government reform — including devolved taxation and removal of party politics from town halls — could restore power to communities currently ignored by profit-obsessed MPs
DESPITE Gordon Brown’s boast to have ended “boom and bust” capitalism is — and has always been — cyclical. Periodic crises — cycles of growth and decay, of profit and loss for the owners of capital, of victories and defeats for the struggles of working people — are inherent in capitalism.
This was first recognised in the early 19th century by the French economic historian Jean Sismondi. Sismondi challenged earlier classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo who held that perfect competition would ensure smooth growth.
Sismondi, who coined the term “proletariat” to refer to the working class created under industrial capitalism, argued that cyclic mismatches of production and effective demand were caused by inequalities of income and wealth. He advocated modest state intervention to regulate working hours and progressive taxation to provide unemployment and sickness insurance and pensions. In England, his ideas were taken up by Robert Owen who argued for a form of paternalistic socialism.
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