The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 15 From the series The world car battle It is predicted that next year in China the sales of electrified vehicles (mainly battery-powered or hybrid) will for the first time overtake those of cars with an internal combustion engine. This development will mark a historic about turn which will put the world's biggest auto market years ahead of its Western rivals [Financial Times, December 26th]. Meanwhile, the growth in sales of electric vehicles in Europe and the United States has slowed. BYD's leap forward Another important development in 2024 was the record sales of Chinese brands in China: they rose from 38% of the total in 2020 to 56%, a sign of the maturation of the national auto industry which is now able to challenge the Japanese, American, and European manufacturers. BYD's leap forward is impressive, comparable to that of Ford Motors after the First World War, when with the Model T, introduc...

Every moment of transition presents its own complexities: for our class this means that further divisions are sown within it. Such is the present moment — one when different dynamics stack up and intertwine. Past, present and future On the one hand, there is the troubled exit from the pandemic crisis, still under the threat posed by the emergence of new Covid-19 variants. The pause on redundancies has come to an end in Italy. This, albeit partially, would have spared about 520,000 jobs in Italy up until now, according to Centro Einaudi’s estimates [ 25 th Annual Report on Global Economy and Italy , June 2021]. Company closures and staff reductions (in a mixture of arrogance and callousness) have marked the summer months, only to announce a difficult autumn, when the redundancy ban will be lifted also for small businesses and services. However, it is clear how uncertain the workers’ condition remains, regardless of any collective agreement signed, and how necessary it is always to ...