A routine report on China's economy

By Charles Andrews

Below are excerpts from a routine report in the Western business press on China's economy. The statistics come from the PRC government.

While many U.S. congresspersons, governors, and so on denounce “communist China,” the Western business press has no problem reporting plain facts just as it does for any other capitalist country.

Communist Youth of Denmark: Socialist or Capitalist? The political character of contemporary China

Socialist or Capitalist? Is China an imperialist state? A comprehensive article by the Communist Youth of Denmark (DKU), adopted by its Third General Assembly, on the political character of contemporary China:

The question of whether or not modern China is a socialist country, is one of the most polarizing issues among self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninists today. DKU's position on this question defines our position on a wide range of theoretical, political, philosophical and economic issues that we have to deal with in our daily activities. Therefore, we must give a clear answer to our view on the political character of China.

Turkish communists lead protests over price rises: "Stand up against expensiveness"

While the Turkish Lira collapses and the cost of living is rising day by day, demonstrators are taking the streets in Turkey's major cities in order to protest Erdogan government's economic policy.

The Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) is once again on the forefront of the protests, organizing rallies in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and other cities.

 “Our labor is exploited, our country is plundered. Our lives are being stolen with prices that change every day, with increasing bills. We have to resist for our life, for our future. Now is the time to stand up!”, reads a statement by the TKP which calls the working people to mobilize against the governmental policies. 

Reaganomics Exposed: Keeping tax low for the rich doesn't boost economy, new research says

The so-called Reaganomics will be remembered by the people as a set of cruel, anti-worker economic policies in favor of the big capital, associated with supply-side theories and eliminating and restrictions on the free-market economy. 

The economic policy that U.S. President Ronald Reagan advocated for pushed for lower taxes for the wealthy and less business regulation by the government. The idea was that showering the rich with even more money would - supposedly - result in a greater supply of services and goods, at lower prices, and an increase in employment.

KKE: Greek government's 2021 state budget is a "monument of unpopularity"

The 2021 state budget submitted by the conservative New Democracy (ND) government is a "monument of unpopularity against the working people", said the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Dimitris Koutsoumbas during a speech in the Parliament. 

Koutsoumbas strongly denounced the policies of the government during the pandemic, adding that the measures announced aim at strengthening the capital at the expense of the workers and people's rights. The KKE General Secretary pointed out that ND, opposition party SYRIZA and all the other bourgeois parties in the parliament are "strategically aligned" in the same policy, despite minor differences. 

CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC REVEALS THE REAL FACE OF CAPITALISM

By Nikos Mottas.

As of this writing, there are 140,214 Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases worldwide while the number of deaths mount to 5,123. China remains at the top of the countries with the most confirmed cases and casualties, while the epidemic situation seems to be particularly intense in Italy, Iran, South Korea and Spain. 

The outbreak of Coronavirus has sparked huge uncertainty in global markets, while financial analysts are already predicting a new international economic recession. Last week, the OECD lowered its forecast for 2020 GDP growth from 2,9% to 2,4%, while the IMF warned that the disease’s spread has already pushed global growth in 2020 to below last year’s levels. The rapid outbreak of Coronavirus in Europe has pushed the eurozone’s wobbly economy toward recession, boosting fears about a severe slowdown in EU’s economic growth. 

Turkish communists respond to Donald Trump: "Loser, liar and a tyrant servant of imperialism"

"As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!)”, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter, commenting on a possible military operation of the Turkish army in northern Syria. 

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) has released a statement regarding the tweet of the President of the United States threatening Turkey. The full statement is as follows:

Turkish communist leader Kemal Okuyan talks about the economic crisis

Kemal Okuyan, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), elaborated on the ongoing economic crisis for soL news portal. 

Okuyan highlighted that crises are inevitable under capitalism, and that they result in further monopolization as well as the reallocation of funds from toiling masses to capital. 

Emphasizing that expecting the crisis to lead Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or his AKP government to a political stalemate would be too optimistic, Okuyan pointed out that the political outcomes of the crisis would be determined by the struggle of the working class.

KKE slams Tsipras over his celebrations for the supposed "end of austerity"

In a televised address from the Ionian island of Ithaca, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said that the country's emergence from nine years of crisis and international financial bailouts marks a “new day” for the country, a “day of redemption but also the dawning of a new era".

In a speech laden with classical symbolism, the Prime Minister said that Greece’s modern-day “Odyssey,” which had begun in 2010, had come to an end. “The bailouts of recession, austerity and social desertification are finally over.” 

“Our country regains its right to shape its own future,” Tsipras said from a hill overlooking a bay in the island where Odysseus returned after a 10-year voyage recounted by classical poet Homer. He also added that “we have left the Symplegades behind,” referring to the mythological rocks at the Bosporus that clashed together whenever a vessel went through.

Turkey's currency crisis: "Our country has become the playground of international monopolies" says the Communist Party

The Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) has released a statement on the current currency crisis in Turkey, declaring that Turkey "has become the playground of international monopolies, companies and banks". 

The full statement issued by the TKP is the following:

DO NOT BE DUPED ANY MORE

Our country has become the playground of international monopolies, companies and banks, the names of which we cannot even pronounce correctly.

This is Capitalism #7 - Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

According to a report published in The Guardian (7 April), the world’s richest 1% are on course to control as much as two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030. 

An alarming projection produced by the UK House of Commons library suggests that if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were to continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world’s wealth by 2030. Even taking the financial crash into account, and measuring their assets over a longer period, they would still hold more than half of all wealth.

Mikhail V. Popov - Counterrevolution in the USSR (Михаил Попов- Контрреволюция в СССР)

By Mikhail V. Popov.
Len.ru, 10 April 2017.

Karl Marx- Wage, Labour and Capital 1847 (Part II)

Wage, Labour and Capital.

By Karl Marx. 

First Published: April 1849.

Source: From the original 1891 pamphlet via Marxists Internet Archives.

(Continue from Part I)

PART II.

THE NATURE AND GROWTH OF CAPITAL 

Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of labor, and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are employed in producing new raw materials, new instruments, and new means of subsistence. All these components of capital are created by labour, products of labour, accumulated labour. Accumulated labour that serves as a means to new production is capital. 

Karl Marx- Wage, Labour and Capital 1847 (Part I)

Wage, Labour and Capital.

By Karl Marx. 

First Published: April 1849.

Source: From the original 1891 pamphlet via Marxists Internet Archives.

PART I.

INTRODUCTION.

BY FRIEDRICH ENGELS.

This pamphlet first appeared in the form of a series of leading articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, beginning on April 4th, 1849. The text is made up of from lectures delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen's Club of Brussels in 1847. The series was never completed. The promise "to be continued", at the end of the editorial in Number 269 of the newspaper, remained unfulfilled in consequence of the precipitous events of that time: the invasion of Hungary by the Russians [Tsarist troops invaded hungary in 1849 to keep the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty in power], and the uprisings in Dresden, Iserlohn, Elberfeld, the Palatinate, and in Baden [Spontaneous uprisings in Germany in May-July 1849, supporting the Imperial Constituion which were crushed in mid-July], which led to the suppression of the paper on May 19th, 1849. And among the papers left by Marx no manuscript of any continuation of these articles has been found. 

A Masterpiece of Human Intelligence: Quotes from Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" (1867)

More than 150 years since the publication of "Das Kapital" (The Capital)- the most significant book for the world's working class- we remember some basic thoughts written by Karl Marx. 

The commodity is first of all, an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind. The nature of these needs, whether they arise, for example, from the stomach, or the imagination, makes no difference. Nor does it matter here how the thing satisfies man's need, whether directly as a means of subsistence, i.e. an object of consumption, or indirectly as a means of production.

• Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 1, pg. 41.

Every commodity is compelled to chose some other commodity for its equivalent.

• Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 3, pg. 65.

New Developments in Political Economy: The Demise of “Globalization”

New Developments in Political Economy: The Demise of “Globalization”.

By Zoltan Zigedy.

“Globalization” is a slippery term: 1. Sometimes it is used as a description of the quantitative changes in the global economy that emerged in the 1980s. 2. Sometimes it is used to express a set of policy prescriptions that gained traction in that same period. 3. Sometimes it is used to name a theory positing a new era, epoch, or stage of capitalism, a qualitative change in the way that contemporary capitalism functions.

And sometimes the word is used in all three senses:

IT'S CAPITALISM, STUPID: Just eight men own same wealth as half the world

According to the latest report published by Oxfam eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity. Oxfam's report 'An economy for the 99%', shows that the gap between rich and poor is far greater than had been feared. 

More specifically:

• Eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world.

• Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.

• The incomes of the poorest 10% of people increased by less than $3 a year between 1988 and 2011, while the incomes of the richest 1% increased 182 times as much.

• A FTSE-100 CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 people in working in garment factories in Bangladesh.

• In the US, new research by economist Thomas Piketty shows that over the last 30 years the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50% has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1% have grown 300%.

• In Vietnam, the country’s richest man earns more in a day than the poorest person earns in 10 years.

Capitalism Unmasked: Numbers reveal the expansion of social inequalities in the 21st century

The poorest half of the world's population shares a bit under the 1% of the global wealth, while the richest 10% owns the 88% of the total global wealth. The 0.7% of the world's population owns 116.6 trillion dollars!

1. The richest 1% of the world's population controls half of the global wealth. Despite the economic crisis, the number of millionaires in a worldwide scale was increased during the last 12 months of 2016.

2. According to a survey by Credit Suisse, 3.4 billion people- the 71% of the world's population- share only 7.4 trillion dollars, less than the wealth of the 2,473 billionaires around the world. 

3. The total number of billionaires grew by 81% since 2009, a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, while their wealth was more than doubled. According to data provided by Wealth-X and UBS, 16.6 million people (0.334% of the global population) own 77 trillion dollars, which is almost the annual global GDP.

4. Approximately 211,275 millionaires (0.004% of the global population) own the 12.8% (29.7 trillion dollars) of the global wealth, while 2,325 billionaires own 7.3 trillion dollars.

OBAMA IN GREECE: Intensification of antipeople measures, deeper Greek involvement in NATO-EU imperialist plans

CONCLUSIONS OF A VISIT.

Comment on U.S. President Barack Obama's visit in Greece.

The bourgeois Greek media already celebrate the visit of Barack Obama in Greece, dedicating hymns to how- supposedly- valuable (for Greece) this visit was. The reality is different. The visit of Obama in Greece, during his last foreign trip as U.S. president, has two major conclusions: The first has to do about the continuation of the antipeople, antiworkers measures which the Greek government will continue imposing and the second is connected to Greece's deeper involvement in the dangerous US-NATO-EU warmongering plans in Eastern Mediterranean.

KKE: The anti-people work of the government has been acknowledged and approved via the Eurogroup agreement

Communist Party of Greece: Statement of the Press Office of the KKE on the Eurogroup Agreement, 25.5.2016 / Source: inter.kke.gr.

The anti-people work of the government has been acknowledged and approved via the Eurogroup agreement on the completion of the assessment.The agreement confirms that the downward spiral is endless, as each tranche installment has new anti-people measures as its precondition. Similarly, any "lightening" of the debt, which was not created by the people, will be accompanied by a new raft of measures in the various phases of its discussion, regardless of how the competition between the IMF and sections of the bourgeois classes of the EU will be expressed and regardless of what its result will be.

The lies of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition will unravel quickly, as the laws that have just been passed are not the last difficult measures, as the government officials pretended in the previous period.