IWG online meeting on state capitalism in the USSR.
DATE
April 22nd, 7 PM EST
WHERE
Online
CONTACT INFO
IG: @iwg.official | Twitter: @IWGOfficial | FB: @iwgusa | Email: us@leftcom.org
A much expanded version of this article is available here: leftcom.org
Leaving aside for a moment the issue of “fake news” conspiracy theories circulating in the ether about the origins of the virus, that whether by accident or deliberately American laboratories engineered it themselves (with all the implications this would have on international imperialist scenarios), let us confront the problem in simple terms, based on what the theorists are saying about the possibility of coming out of this latest financial-economic crisis.
The “gurus” of the international economy address the problem of the coronavirus crisis from a financial perspective, from that of the “central banks” – as they are bound to do – and commit a series of errors in evaluating the global economic system as a whole, which they are trying to dominate, without realising that they are dominated by it.
The burden will fall on the working class in the name of an emergency which demands sacrifices from us all, because we are all supposedly in the same boat, and that boat needs saving. As usual they forget to say that on this boat there are those who row and those who crack the whip. Moreover, the coronavirus crisis sheds light on just how “fruitful” the capitalist system has been for years. The dismantling of the welfare state, in particular in the health sector, reveals the whole desperate tragedy. Spain and the UK have already declared that they do not have the necessary health resources to adequately confront the emergency. In Italy, funding for the health sector has been reduced by 37 billion euros in the last ten years. Thousands of jobs (doctors, nurses, research posts) have been cut. The fateful arrival of the “coronavirus crisis” coincides with the closure of secondary care units with a loss of 70,000 beds, thus magnifying the danger to health. This is in the tragic scenario of the corona crisis lasting only six to eight months; if it goes on longer, things will be even worse. The rebound effect, which the usual “gurus” predict for the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2020, are a pious illusion. Statistics on this matter are a projection based, like the analyses of the positive tendency in the global economy before the 2008 crisis, on nothing that any analyst, save for a few exceptions, has predicted. The economic recovery, if indeed there is to be one, will need a lot of time before it can assert itself, and will only be temporary and unresolved in this decadent phase of the capitalist system. Only hypothetically, and with a great deal of luck, could everything return to normal a week after the spectre of coronavirus has passed. China is economically on its knees. The latest data have estimated the growth of GDP at merely 2.8%. The USA is overwhelmed with debt and immense deficits and can only rely on the supremacy of the dollar and the world’s most powerful army to survive. Half of Europe is in a technical recession, including Germany, and the future looks increasingly bleak.
The fresh money that the European Central Bank (750 billion euros) and the Federal Reserve (a trillion dollars) are supposed to be forking out will inflate the coffers of the banks and the speculative bubbles because of the weakness of the profits of enterprises that cannot allow new investments, except in the case of bigger enterprises, which will benefit from intervention by the state when financing from the banks does not suffice. But the rate of profit, aside from inevitable fluctuations, will not increase except at the enormous price of super-exploitation of the international proletariat. This super-exploitation will mean lengthening the working day, raising productivity, limiting wages and reducing pensions. This is already on its way, but not yet at sufficient levels.
However, for those still working in key productive structures (those that cannot be suspended or slowed down), the situation has already become untenable. The absence of adequate conditions of hygiene and sanitation, the forced proximity between workers, and the scarcity of masks and overalls, not to mention the necessity of building showers and other decontamination systems anew, may well foster the virus in workplaces. And as well as the sacrifices already made and those to come, there is now an added fear of infection, with a further risk for some of losing not just their jobs but their lives. The bourgeoisie will probably be confronted with a determined class response – consisting of strikes over economic and safety demands – which it will find difficult to manage. In this case, the “militarisation” that is now slowly appearing as a necessary aid to the management of the behaviour of the population in a regime of social emergency will immediately transform into a real militarisation against the workers’ revolts in the name of maintaining social peace. Otherwise, the solution will be a “just” war which would destroy everything in order to reconstruct it, giving the capitalist system economic room for a new cycle of accumulation. If these are the real perspectives presented to us by the capitalist crisis, in the face of the financial “solutions” of the “gurus”, only a revival in class struggle on an international scale, guided by a revolutionary party, can save us from the umpteenth onslaught of butchery being criminally prepared by imperialism.
FD
23 March 2020
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IWG online meeting on state capitalism in the USSR.
DATE
April 22nd, 7 PM EST
WHERE
Online
CONTACT INFO
IG: @iwg.official | Twitter: @IWGOfficial | FB: @iwgusa | Email: us@leftcom.org
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.