Socialist Appeal

Economy

By Michael Roberts
Thursday, 01 March 2007
China hints at a tax on capital gains and the Shanghai stock exchange falls by 10%, but then the fall affects all the other major stock exchanges. What does all this indicate? Michael Roberts gives his view on the question.

The Great Divide

By Socialist Appeal
Monday, 19 February 2007
The World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University has carried out what it declares the 'most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken'. Unsurprisingly it concludes that the wealthy few are getting richer and richer at our expense.

Gordon's year

By Michael Roberts
Friday, 16 February 2007
All the figures on the British economy reveal the underlying sickness of the whole system. The indebtedness of the population has reached record levels. Now all the signs are there of a coming serious slowdown. This is what Gordon Brown will inherit as he prepares to become the next Labour Prime Minister.

Letter and reply on Michael Roberts’ review of Glyn's Capitalism unleashed

By Chris Kaihatsu
Monday, 29 January 2007
A reader has objected to some of Michael Roberts' criticisms of Andrew Glyn's latest book. Among others it deals with the question of whether profit rates in the post-war period were affected by wage increases. Roberts replies showing that the fundamental reason for the decline was the same as that stated by Marx.

“Capitalism unleashed – finance, globalisation and welfare”

By Michael Roberts
Friday, 12 January 2007
Andrew Glyn is an economist at Oxford University. In his new book, Capitalism Unleashed, Glyn attempts to explain how capitalism moved from the crisis of the 1970s to recovery in the 1980s and 1990s. However, although full of interesting information, the book fails to provide an overall analysis and misses some essential aspects of Marxist theory.

Terrorism, Security Business and Britain

Monday, 18 December 2006
While no money is available for spending on healthcare, education, pensions, etc., billions of dollars are spent on building up massive security systems. Each terror scare adds to the profit margins of the big security companies. It is an indication of the sickness of the society we live in.

British bosses wail about taxes

By Socialist Appeal
Friday, 01 December 2006
The annual conference of the bosses' organisation the CBI is usually marked by a series of complaints about wages (too high), regulation (too much) and taxes (too unavoidable) - just like a trade union conference but in reverse. This year's conference is no exception.

Milton Friedman – economic witch-doctor of capitalism

By Michael Roberts
Friday, 01 December 2006
Milton Friedman died on 16 November aged 94 years. He was one of the foremost bourgeois economists of the 20th century. His reputation among the right-wing capitalist leaders, especially those who drove the policies of reaction and counter-revolution against the gains of the post-war labour movement in the 1980s was second to none.

Dr Pangloss rules?

Friday, 06 October 2006

In October's Socialist Appeal our Economics Correspondent, Michael Roberts, examines the claims of the Financial Times (and others) that the British economy is in rude health. In reality, he argues, Britain’s capitalist survival has increasingly been built on becoming a rentier economy, relying on providing financial and ‘professional’ services to other capitalist nations, while the "City of London is a huge aircraft carrier parked in the Thames, where world money flows in and out, with little touching the sides, except fro those working on the carrier and living in London and the south-east. The rest of Britain is a just a dark shadow to these people."

Supermarkets and the Food We Eat

Monday, 11 September 2006
We buy 95% of the food we eat in supermarkets. Tesco alone, the market leader, gets 30% of all food sales. Competition between supermarket chains is based on a systematic ratcheting down of standards across the board, forcing down the standard of living of workers and poor farmers; wrecking the environment and local communities; and poisoning the consumers.

The Bankruptcy of Capitalism in Britain or How to Get Rich without Creating Wealth.

Tuesday, 22 August 2006

Within the space of two days the vast inequalities in the UK in remuneration for “work” done have been exposed to public gaze. On the one hand it was announced on August 18th that public sector workers are to be limited to a 2% pay increase this year, whilst the day before the press reported on the bonuses paid at the start of the year to those who inhabit the boardrooms of big companies and the dealing rooms in the City.

Bank of England Governor to bosses 'Wage cuts now possible'

Thursday, 01 September 2005

Several months ago there was a report in some British papers of an unusual speech by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King. The speech gives a glimpse of a discussion that must have recently taken place amongst the British capitalists, and which the Gate Gourmet dispute is a direct consequence of. It is about the use of cheap immigrant labour to drive down wages and worsen working conditions.

Britain's House of Cards Wobbles

Thursday, 30 June 2005
House price increases are slowing down in Britain. In June in London prices actually fell. This is the beginning of the end of the house price bubble and it will be very painful for many families who have borrowed on the basis of the increased equity in their property. It will have a knock-on effect on the whole economy as spending is already slowing.

UK Budget 2005: Never Had It So Good?

Friday, 04 March 2005

Way back in 1959, the then Tory prime minister, Harold Macmillan, went into an election with the slogan that Britain has “never had it so good.” Now, according to Gordon Brown, the UK has enjoyed, under his stewardship, the longest period of sustained economic growth since 1701! However, it does not say much for capitalism and the British variety of it that the longest period of economic growth in its history is just seven years.

How healthy is the British economy?

Monday, 29 March 2004
Has British capitalism finally overcome what used to be called the British disease: slower growth, higher inflation, continual currency crises and a falling behind in living standards compared with the US, Europe and Japan? Growth figures actually disguise a far more diseased system that the media would like us to see.