Kriisin laajentuminen poliittiselle tasolle sai aikaan kaksi ilmiötä. Kriisi saavutti vaiheen, jossa romahtaa kokonaisia valtioita ja valtiokomplekseja. Konkurssin makuun pääsi ensin Islanti ja sitten samaan pöytään istahtivat Latvia, Unkari, Dubai ja nyt Kreikka. Vuoroaan jonottavat muut PIIGS –maat, Portugali, Espanja, Irlanti ja Italia. Lista ei suinkaan lopu tähän. Euroalue murtui heikoimmasta lenkistä, Kreikasta. Kuolinvuoteella ei silti makaa vain Kreikka, vaan kaikki euromaat. Kreikan talous on alle kolme prosenttia EU:n talouksista. Kreikan pelastaminen olisi lasten leikkiä, jos muut kansantaloudet olisi rakennettu terveellä pohjalla. Se voitaisiin sanoa toisellakin tavalla. Muulloin Kreikan hylkääminen ei aiheuttaisi niin paljon harmia kuin nyt. Nyt on yhtäältä pakko ”pelastaa”, jotta pankkijärjestelmä ei kokonaisuudessa romahtaisi yleiseurooppalaisella tasolla. Toisaalta Kreikkaa on mahdotonta pelastaa, jos –tai paremmin kun– kriisi leviää dominon tavoin, koska muut maat ovat liian suuria pelastettavaksi.

Talouspolitiikan teko ei ole poliitikkojen, vaan markkinoiden käsissä, se on fakta. Markkinat saavat sijoittaa tai olla sijoittamatta, siirtyä reaaliajassa paikasta toiseen, päättää tietyn maan luottoluokituksista, ostaa tietyn maan velkakirjoja tai ei, määrittää korkotasoa, hyökätä räikeästi valuuttoihin, lyödä vetoa kokonaisten maiden vararikkoon. Sen lisäksi nämä näkymättömät haamudiktaattorit määräävät IMF:n kautta ”lääkekuuria” ja lakia sekä kuria niin, että tietyt maat yksityistävät yhteistä omaisuutta. ”Markkinat” tulevat sen jälkeen puoli-ilmaiseksi ostamaan lentoyhtiöitä, satamia, rautateitä tai kokonaisia saaria. Sen jälkeen kun kaikki on takavarikoitu, markkinoiden luottamus näiden maiden kansantalouksiin saattaa taas nousta.

Niin sanotut markkinavoimat eivät kuitenkaan niin näkymättömiä ole. Toimiessaan ne ovat yhtenäiset ja hyvin koordinoidut. Ne eivät kommunikoi keskenään muuten, vaan niitä yhdistää joukkopsykoosin massapsykologia. Siksi psykologia on tärkeä tekijä nykykapitalismissa. Pari väärää lausetta väärään aikaan voi heilauttaa järjestelmää maailmanlaajuisesti. ”Markkinavoimilla” on hyvin näkyviä työkaluja. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley ja kumppanit peukaloivat Kreikan ja muiden valtioiden puolesta tilastoja. Uusi taloustiede kastettiin ”luovaksi kirjanpidoksi”. Saatuaan Kreikan kansantalouden umpikujaan Goldman Sachs neuvoi omia sijoittajiaan siitä, miten tulisi investoida Credit Default Swaps –johdannaisiin, eli Kreikan vararikkoon ja rikastua siitä. ”Markkinoita” palvelevat IMF:n ja muiden instituutioiden lisäksi myös Moodys, Fitch ja muut luottoluokituslaitokset sekä Financial Times, Wall Street Journal ja muut sorosten asialla olevat mediat. Yhdysvaltain ja muiden suurtalouksien hallitukset ovat tiukassa puristuksessa, mutta silti tekevät ainoastaan ”markkinoita” miellyttäviä päätöksiä. USA:n kahdessa hallituksessa on istunut talousministeri, joka on tullut Goldman Sachin riveistä.

Kreikan tilannetta on verrattu Argentiinan tilanteeseen vuonna 2001. Argentiinassa haaksirikkoutui kapitalismi Kaukoidän taloustiikereiden romahduksen taudin tartuttamana. Maa meni maksukyvyttömäksi, peso devalvoitiin 300 prosenttia, velkaa saneerattiin ja koko talous oli selvitystilassa. Työväenluokka tuli kolme kertaa köyhemmäksi yhdessä yössä, ja maa meni IMF:n holhouksen alle. Argentinazonakin tunnettu kansannousu kaatoi viisi presidenttiä ja luokkataistelu synnytti kaksoisvallan tilannetta. Kreikassa prosessi kehittyi toiseen suuntaan. Vuoden 2008 joulukuun kapina kärjisti ristiriidat, jotka pakottivat porvaristoa nurkkaan ja talouden konkurssiin vuoden sisällä. Tämä tauti taasen on leviämässä yleiseurooppalaiselle tasolle paljon nopeammin kuin argentinazo. Tilanne Argentiinassa saatiin suhteellisesti rauhoittumaan yhden seikan avulla. Kiina –ilmiö tuli antamaan kapitalismille lisää hengitysaikaa.

Kiinan rooli kapitalismin tilapäisessä vakauttamisessa 2000-luvulla on suuri. Sykli kuitenkin sulkeutui ja nyt eletään sen ilmiön loppuvaihetta. Nyt kun EU tarvitsisi omaa kiinaansa, USA:n ja Kiinan suhde on päättymässä omaan mahdottomuuteensa. Riita yanin arvosta on vain jäävuoren huippu. USA etsii syntipukkeja vientinsä romahtamiselle. Sormet osoittavat Kiinan vientiä, ja siinä kaikkien asiantuntijoiden mukaan on kauppasodan näkymiä. Kiinan menestyminen USA:n markkinoilla oli hinta siitä, että maa ylläpiti USA:n kansantaloutta rahoittamalla sen vajeita. Avioliitto USA:n ja Kiinan välillä on kestänyt uskomattoman pitkään. Avioero aiheuttaa ketjureaktioita ympäri maailmaa tavalla, jossa protektionismi vahvistuu. Avioero ei myöskään voi olla rauhanomainen. Financial Times -lehden mukaan avioero tule olemaan vaarallisempi kuin kylmä sota konsanaan. Sen lisäksi Kiinalla on omatkin USA:n avioliitosta riippumattomat ongelmat. Kansantalous on täynnä puhkeamattomia kuplia, erityisesti asuntomarkkinoilla. Edellisen kriisivaiheen aikana Kiinassa elvytettiin tähtitieteellisillä summilla. Tällä hetkellä Kiinan kansantaloudessa piilee kolme aikapommia. a) Se joka johtuu kapitalismin kriisistä sinällään. b) Velan kasvu, mieletön seteleiden painattaminen yms. ovat elvyttämisestä johtuva pommi. c) Elvytys ei kohdistunut reaalitalouteen. Näiden lisäksi avioero USA:sta sinällään on omaa luokkaansa, joka on verrattavissa loppuräjähdykseen.

Yleisesti ottaen kapitalismin jättiläismäinen elvytys ei tuottanut odotettuja tuloksia. Korko on edelleen nollatasolla ja ”markkinat” vaativat lisää miljardeja. Nyt kuitenkin eletään aikaa, jolloin viimein pitäisi kerätä aikaisemmin jaetut miljardit. Exit strategy –politiikka on kauan ollut edessäpäin kaikkialla. Tilanne on kestämätön, eikä tunnelin päässä ole valoa näkyvissä. Nyt on luokkataistelun vuoro sanoa oma sanansa.

BARBARIA HÄÄMÖTTÄÄ

Kriisin ytimessä on ns. kapitalismin globalisaatio. Ei siis vain finanssiglobalisaatio ja uusliberalismi, vaan kaikki kapitalismin rakenteet ja sitä ylläpitäneet poliittiset tasapainot kuten esim. Maastrichtin sopimus. Näin ollen, päättymässä on Neuvostoliiton romahtamisen jälkeinen aikakausi.

Käynnistymässä on prosesseja, mihin EU ei voi vaikuttaa. Siinä jokainen EU:n maa pyrkii auttamaan vain itseänsä. Saksan rooli orastavassa tilanteessa on ratkaiseva. Merkelin Saksa ei ole sama maa kuin Kohlin Saksa. Euroopan integraatio oli Kohlin tarjous muille eurooppalaisille Saksojen yhdentymisen hyväksymiseksi. Vastaavasti Maastricht oli muiden tarjous Saksalle, joka vaati sen, että rahaunioni tapahtuisi Saksan ehdoin. Muita EU:n maita ei ole helppo erottaa euroalueesta. Tilanne muuttuu vaikeammaksi sitten kun ns. Kreikan kriisi leviää. Siksi monet tahot, jopa Merkelin puolueen sisällä vaativat, että Saksa eroaa itse vapaaehtoisesti eurosta, ja siirtyy taas vanhaan markkaan. Morgan Stanley näytti melko varmalta väittäessään, että ”Saksa jättää euron”. Soros oli samalla aallonpituudella: ”EU on hajoamisen partaalla” (25.3.)

Enää ei ole epäilystä siitä, että keskipakovoimat ovat ottamassa voiton kädenväännössä integraatiovoimien kanssa. Yhtenäisyys on vaarassa, ei vain EU:ssa, vaan myös Saksan ja jokaisen maan sisällä. Yhteiskunnallisen kudoksen ehjyyttä uhkaa yksi toinenkin seikka. Kehityskulkua yhteiskunnassa ei määrää vain hallitsevan luokan järjestelyt, sovittelut tai vastakkainasettelut. Historian kulkuun vaikuttaa myös luokkataistelu kokonaisuudessaan. Se, että miten helposti proletariaatti tulee alistumaan kohtaloonsa esim. Kreikassa, Ranskassa, Italiassa tai muualla ei ole lainkaan kirkossa kuulutettu.

Yhteiskunta esittää vastarintansa luokkataistelun kautta. Siihen tarvitaan kokonaisohjelmaa siitä, miten kriisi on hoidettava. Ei riitä se, että porvariston hyökkäyksiä vain vastustetaan ja/tai väliaikaisesti mahdollisesti jopa estetään. Jos vastarinta jää vain protestoinnin tasolle proletariaatti väsyy tuloksettomista taisteluista, ja näköalojen puutteesta johtuen se ennen pitkää passivoituu. Silloin vasemmistolle on myöhäistä puuttua asiaan. Tänä päivänä edessämme avautuu kaksi barbarianvaaraa. Ensimmäisen skenaarion mukaan proletariaattia käännetään toisen maan proletariaattia vastaan. Saksassa kriisistä syypäinä ovat Kreikan työläiset ja Kreikassa romahtamisesta syytellään saksalaisia, jotka eivät ole halukkaita auttamaan. Kurjuudesta Yhdysvalloissa sormi nousee osoittamaan kiinalaisia, jotka ovat vallanneet markkinat halvalla valuutallaan. Protektionismin ainekset yhdessä syntipukkien etsimisen kanssa muodostavat sodalle haisevaa seosta. Toinen suuri vaara avautuu jokaisen maan sisällä. Pikkuporvariston vararikosta syypääksi nimitetään työväenluokkaa, joka lakkoilee tms. Kun vanhan yhteiskunnan tasapainot järkkyvät, vanhoista puolueista tulee epäluotettavia. Siihen vaikuttavat myös lisääntyneet skandaalit. Jollei vasemmisto esitä NYT HETI omaa itsenäistä poliittista vaihtoehtoaan, lähitulevaisuudessa äärioikeisto tulee todenteolla jyräämään.

RATKAISUNA MAAILMAN SOSIALISMI – MAAILMAN VALLANKUMOUS

Marxin Pääomassa on diagnoosi, että maailmanlaajentumisen tendenssi (universalizing) syöksee kapitalistisen järjestelmän kriisiin, kumoukseen ja siirtymiseen uudenlaiseen tuotantotapaan ja luokattomaan yhteiskuntaan. Nykyinen kriisi ei sisällä vain vanhan yhteiskunnan hajoamisen elementtejä, vaan tulevan yhteiskunnan siemenet.

Yhteiskunnan sosialistinen reformaatio tarjoutuu nykyisessä kriisissä koko sivilisaation pelastajaksi. Tämä ei ole propagandaa, vaan välttämättömyys. Reformaation alullepano on mahdottomuus, mikäli hegemonia yhteiskunnassa säilyy porvariston käsissä. Ennen kun pakkolunastaa tuotantovoimat ja tuottaa kollektiivisesti hyväksytyn suunnitelman mukaan, porvaristo on riisuttava poliittisesta vallastaan. Se taasen tarkoittaa vallanriisumista porvaristolta niiltä vallanelimiltä osin, johon porvariston hegemonia perustuu (poliisit, armeijat, byrokratiat). Vasemmiston tukea proletariaatilta ei saisi tulevissa muutoksissa kohdistaa prosessiin, jossa vasemmisto tulisi hallinnoimaan kapitalismia joko yksin tai yhteistyössä porvareiden kanssa. Yhteiskunnan elintärkeä dilemma tänään ei ole siinä, että mikä puolue on vallassa, vaan että minkä luokan käsissä yhteiskunnalliset asiat ovat. Muutoksen prosessi on vallankumouksellinen siksi, että se kyseenalaistaa porvariston johtoa yhteiskunnassa. Samalla se kyseenalaistaa porvarillista tuotantotapaa, lainsäädäntöä, väkivallan monopolia porvariston toimesta jne.

Tällä hetkellä on mahdotonta määrittää, missä maassa vallankumouksellinen prosessi alkaisi. Se riippuu kriisin etenemisestä, imperialistien keskeisistä tappeluista, proletariaatin luokkatietoisuudesta ja luokkataistelun määrätietoisesta offensiivista. Yksi asia on varma, globalisaatio on huolehtinut siitä, että prosessi ja vallankumous eivät jää yhden valtion rajojen sisälle, vaan leviää kaikkialle raketin vauhdilla. Porvariston etu on siinä, että se suurin piirtein tietää missä mennään. Proletariaatin etu on siinä, että eri maiden työläisten välillä ei ole erilaisia saati vastakkaisia intressejä. Proletariaatti ei vielä tiedosta tilanteen vakavuutta. Porvaristo sen sijaan on jo ottanut puukot esiin ja yrittää kohdistaa ne eri maiden porvaristoja ja saman maan porvariston eri osien sekä proletariaatin selkään.

MILLAISTA JÄRJESTÖÄ SIIHEN TARVITAAN?

Reformien toteuttamiseen tarvitaan järjestöä, joka tarjoaisi proletariaatille johtoa, tieteellistä, ideologista, organisatorista ja käytännön työkalua yhteiskunnan vallankumouksellisessa muuttamisessa. Järjestön on siis oltava proletariaatin ase yhteiskunnan vallankumouksellisten muutosten aikaansaamiseksi.

Luokkataistelu on nähtävä kansainvälisenä prosessina. Kansallisella tasolla tarvittava järjestäytyminen on nähtävä kansainvälisen organisaation osana. Kansainvälinen järjestö ei koostu kansallisista jaostoista ikään kuin se olisi niiden summa. Kansalliset järjestöt ovat kansainvälisen järjestön elimellisiä osia. Kansainvälistä järjestöä ei pidä nähdä verkostona, jonka ainoana tehtävänä on vastustaa esim. imperialismia, globalisaatiota, uusliberalismia, sotia yms. Viimeksi mainitut ovat väljempiä kuvioita, jotka edistävät taktisia tavoitteita. Sitä tarvitaan aina, mutta vain niiden raamien sisällä, jossa taktiikka palvelee strategiaa. Kansainvälinen järjestö, so. Internationaali on oltava maailman vallankumouksen puolue.

HISTORIAN OPETUKSET

Edellä mainitut teesit ovat olleet marxilaisten tiedossa 1800-luvulta lähtien. Aina kun vallankumous kulki suurin harppauksin eteenpäin, samalla se koki tarvetta rakentaa Internationaalia. Sen sijaan tappioiden jälkeen, kun luokkataistelu oli perääntymässä, Internationaalien kävi huonosti. Ensimmäinen hajosi kiistoihin anarkistien kanssa. Toinen Internationaali degeneroitui kun sosialidemokratiasta tuli kapitalismin isännöitsijä. Kolmannen Internationaalin hajotti Stalin, kun NL:ssa asemansa vakiinnuttanut yhteiskunnallinen kasti ei tarvinnut enää sitä. Elettiin Hitlerin vallan ja maailmansodan aikoja.

Toisin kuin aikaisemmin Neljäs Internationaali ei perustettu luokkataistelun etenemisen prosessissa. Vallankumouksellisten oli pakko perustaa se hirvittävien tappioiden keskellä. Kiinan ja Espanjan sisällissotien tappiot, Hitlerin valtaannousu ja lopulta sodan puhkeaminen yhdessä Stalinin puhdistusten kanssa verottivat uuden Internationaalin vielä harvoja rivejä. Näin ollen, bolsevismin perinteiden jatkamien ja vaaliminen ei voinut ruumiillistua massiiviseksi Internationaaliksi.

Sodan jälkeen kapitalismin ennennäkemätön ekspansio ja taloudellinen kasvu loivat pohjaa siihen, etteivät sitä seuranneet vuosikymmenet osoittautuneet otolliseksi ajaksi vallankumouksellisille. Heistä osa toimi pienissä propagandistien ryhmissä, jotka yrittivät keskittyä teoriaan perehtymiseen ja analyysiin. Hieman isompi osa yritti sopeutua uuteen tilanteeseen, ja se harrasti soluttautumista vanhoihin työväenpuolueisiin (entrismi) itsenäisten vallankumouspuolueiden rakentamisen sijasta. Silloin liikkeessämme syntyi lukemattomia skismoja. Tähän päiväänkin asti suurimpana osana säilynyt Neljännen Internationaalin Yhdistynyt Sihteeristö Ranskassa muutti nimensä ja vallankumouksellisen luonteensa. Nykyään se esiintyy NPA:na, antikapitalistisena puolueena.

Neljäs Internationaali  perustettiin 1938, mutta sitä ei ole koskaan onnistuttu rakentamaan massiiviseksi maailmanpuolueeksi. Siinä se poikkeaa aikaisemmista Internationaaleista. Koska Neljättä Internationaalia ei ole koskaan rakennettu, niin ei silloin voida puhua viidennen, kuudennen tai kuten jotkut ensimmäisen Internationaalin rakentamisen tarpeesta. Kysymys ei ole laskutavasta tai muodollisuuksista. Jollei lähde rakentamaan Neljättä Internationaalia, vasemmisto samalla luopuu kaikesta teoreettisesta perinteestä ja historiallisesta katsomuksesta lokakuun vallankumouksen ajoista aivan tähän päivään asti. Luopuu siis jatkuvan vallankumouksen teoriasta, luopuu työläisbyrokratioiden analyysista, sekä siirtymäohjelmasta. Ennen kun Ranskan LCR, nykyinen NPA, luopui nimestä ja tavoitteistaan, se ehti katkaista välinsä vallankumouksen kanssa ja heittää teoreettisen perinnön roskakoriin.

VAARAT

Suurin työväenliikkeen edessä avautuva vaara on minimalismi, so. se, että vasemmisto ei lähde liikkeelle siitä, mikä on välttämätöntä tehdä vaan siitä, mikä on välittömästi saavutettavissa. Strategisista tavoitteista tinkiminen olisi tässä vaiheessa kriisiä taistelematta antautumisen synonyymi. Ensisijaisessa asemassa on analyysi ja sen ymmärtäminen mitä on tehtävä. Sitten vasta vuorossa on ohjelmalliset julistukset ja joukkojen sisällä toimiminen. Taktiikka, liittolaisvoimat, yhteisrintama, lyhyemmän tähtäimen tavoitteet tulevat viimeisinä ja palvelevat strategisia tavoitteita.

Anti-imperialistisia valtioita tulee puolustaa imperialismin hyökkäyssuunnitelmilta. Siinä Internationaalin jäsenet taistelevat niiden valtioiden riveissä tarvittaessa ase kädessä, riippumatta siitä, onko niiden johdossa Cháves, Ahmadinejad tai Kadaffi. Ei kuitenkaan pitäisi odottaa, että proletariaatin intressit ja vallankumouksen tehtävät tulisi hoidetuksi ko. johtajien toimesta. Tällaiset nationalistijohtajat pystyvät noudattamaan korkeintaan jotain keskustalaista linjaa, joka parhaimmassa tapauksessa saa aikaan kansansa elintason paranemista. Se ei ole kriteeri siihen, että vallankumouksen kohtalo kannattaisi luovuttaa heidän käsiinsä.

Sosialismi ei ole huonojen taikka edes hyvien johtajien, vaan massojen asiaa. Jollei porvaristoa riisuttaisi kirjaimellisesti aseista, ja jollei proletariaattia sen sijaan aseistettaisi, niin sitten nämä ehjäksi jääneet pimeät vanhan yhteiskunnan mekanismit vuorenvarmasti tulevat järjestämään vallankaappauksia ja vastavallankumouksia sitten, kun voimasuhteet ovat heille otollisia. Näin kävi mm. kerran Chávesille ja näin kävi Chilessä 1973. Meidän ei pitäisi odottaa milloin samat kuviot toistuisivat. Sama pätee taloudessa. Jollei välittömästi sosialisoitaisi suurpääoma, tuotanto ja pankit ilman kompensaatioita, jollei perustettaisi ensin kansalliselle ja sitten kansainväliselle tasolle suunnitelmatalouksia, niin sitten on pakko todeta, että proletariaatti edelleen elää kapitalismissa. Kriisin seuraamukset eivät silloin aio säästää näitä valtioita, ei ainakaan siksi, että niiden johdossa istuu joku edes pidetty tai jopa vaaleilla valittu presidentti.

__Alustus esiteltiin Suomen sosiaalifoorumissa 2010

The enemies of the people embrace!

Build solidarity between the working classes of Greece and Turkey!

Greece is in flames. The world economic crisis of the capitalist system has descended upon the country in extremely intensified form and left the economy face to face with bankruptcy.

Having presided over a system that, by its nature, creates crashes and depressions, the rulers of the capitalist European Union and the international capital’s agent of austerity for the masses, the IMF, have decided to wage a savage assault on all the gains and rights of the Greek working class. The Greek “socialist” Prime Minister George Papandreou acts as their hitman. After having been elected last November on a platform that promised exactly the opposite, he has now turned around and attacked the Greek working class and the labouring masses on behalf of the European ruling classes and the Greek bourgeoisie.  Savage cuts in wages and pensions, demolition of what remains of welfare State, of Education and health services, privatizations of public good are on the agenda.

It is right in the middle of this ferocious assault of the Greek government that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, is visiting Papandreou with a lot of ministers at his side and great fanfare. Nothing could be more fitting! Ever since he came to power at the end of 2002, Erdogan has been faithfully serving the class interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie and attacking the rights of the working class, however limited these are after three decades of the neoliberal offensive. Between 2007 and 2009 he violently repressed attempts to celebrate May Day on Taksim Square and he had the Tekel workers attacked with water cannon, teargas and clubs.

So Papadreou and Erdogan are comrades in arms! They are the enemies of the working people. It is totally appropriate for Erdogan to visit his class comrade in the midst of the fire that has set Greece ablaze. It is totally appropriate for him to have embraced the anti-working class politics of Papandreou

In return, it is incumbent on the working class and leftist movements of the two countries to reach out across the Aegean and create fraternity and solidarity between the struggles of their working classes. And struggle there surely is. These two countries, notorious for the hostility to each other created by bitter historical events and forever fanned by their respective bourgeoisies, have now been united by their working classes in their fight against the onslaught of capitalism.

With five General Strikes in five months, particularly with the General Strike of the 5^th of May, the biggest mobilization in three decades, the Greek working class demonstrated its fighting capacity and its determination to defeat the barbaric IMF/EU measures. The coming General Strike of May 20^th will be another crucial confrontation in this on-going struggle.

And Turkey has been rocked these last months by workers’ struggles as well. The Tekel workers waged a heroic battle for 78 days. One result was the impressive May Day demonstration on Taksim Square in Istanbul bringing together anywhere between 200 to 300 thousand workers and supporters. A general strike is scheduled for 26 May, though the machinations of the bureaucracy will probably reduce its importance.

Let the ruling classes fear the working classes of the two sides of the Aegean! A war has been declared by the international and Greek bourgeoisie on the Greek working class. The Greek proletariat has shown that it is resolved to respond in kind: It is the duty of proletarian internationalists to make sure that this struggle binds the workers of Turkey and Greece in their fight for a socialist world without capitalists, without generals, without bureaucrats..

For permanent revolution against the permanent war fuelled by imperialism!

Out with US, EU, and NATO imperialism and dismantlement of their military bases in Greece and Turkey!

Withdraw of all foreign troops (Turkish, Greek, British, United Nations)  and dismantlement of the imperialist bases  from Cyprus! No partition under an imperialist imposed settlement, for a united, independent, socialist Republic of Cyprus with equal rights of its Greek and Turkish citizens!

For a Balkan Socialist Federation of free and independent peoples! For the United Socialist States of Europe!

EEK and DIP are fighting to form a world party of the working class, to re-found the Fourth International, to march forward to this end. We appeal to the working class of the two countries to join hands against the common enemy, capitalism!

It is the capitalists who must pay for their own crisis!

Workers’ power with a socialist program to solve the crisis is the only solution!

May 12, 2010

The World Capitalist Bankruptcy

The world capitalist crisis, universally acknowledged as the worst in the history, has not ended; we are in the midst of its unfolding. At the end of 2009, the specter of sovereign defaults from Dubai and Greece to Ireland shaking the Euro-zone and the European Union as a whole and revealing the catastrophic impact of the mountains of debts on capitalist States all over the planet, starting from the United States themselves, belied early claims for a recovery.

The injection of an unprecedented mass of liquidity by governments and central banks, particularly after the panic produced by the Lehman Brothers debacle, in 2008-2009, to save the collapsing international financial system was a holding operation; they temporarily delayed the precipitated fall without resolving the systemic contradictions that have exploded in the crisis. These contradictions were rather exacerbated and new problems were produced.

Despite the rhetoric, there is no recovery in jobs but growth of unemployment; no recovery but contraction of credit to households and small businesses; no recovery of consumer spending but under-consumption; no de-leveraging of the overexposed and undercapitalized banks. The ocean of the derivatives has decreased only slightly. Its function, in any case, is vital for contemporary capitalism and cannot be abolished without precipitating the collapse of the entire system. New enormous bubbles of fictitious capital have been formed as the massively available liquidity was directed again on speculative activities. Particularly the carry trade on the basis of a weakening US dollar fueled speculation while undermining the effects of the stimulus package and re-directing the money flux outside the US. The financial markets are soaring although, in the sphere of production, overcapacity and a crisis of capital over-accumulation dominate, opening further the scissors between fictitious and productive capital. The bubbles have at some point, sooner rather than later, to be burst producing a double dip recession.

The State intervention through quantitative easing deliberately stimulates speculation to save finance capital, dominant in our imperialist epoch of capitalist decline, from collapse. But, in this way, public debt itself grows exponentially, without having a sustainable basis in the value producing sphere. Sovereign bonds to finance public debts and deficits have taken the space that until recently was occupied by the sub-prime mortgage market, which by its inescapable collapse has triggered the current crisis. Commenting on the case of Greece, board members at large western banks predict that “after two years of worrying about mortgage and corporate risk, sovereign risk is going to be the big debate for 2010- both for banks, and the wider investment community” (Financial Times, December 21, 2009)

Both metropolitan and peripheral countries are affected by the bankruptcy of finance globalization. The center of the world system and thus of the crisis is in the United States, the most powerful and most over-indebted country in the world, which tries to export its bankruptcy globally. Europe, Japan, Russia and China are shaken by the international hurricane, and all antagonisms are sharpening.

The European Union is particularly hit. Bankrupt capitalist Greece is not an isolated case but it heads a long series of EU countries with enormous deficits and crushing debts: Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy et al. Sovereign defaults threaten the banks that are over-exposed lenders as well as the sustainability of the European Monetary Union and the entire imperialist project of European capitalist integration. Centrifugal forces are growing, shaking the entire EU edifice.

The attempts by capitalists and capitalist governments to make the workers pay for their crisis produce social resistances and an intensification of the class struggle. Draconian measures have been imposed on Ireland and an even worse program, on the lines of that imposed on Latvia, is presented by the EU institutions as an ultimatum to Greece; the “alternative” to turn to the IMF for “help” is equally destructive for the popular masses. The December 2008 revolt in Greece and Police brutality, one year later, against demonstrators commemorating that event, including the murderous attack by the Special Force Delta against the Trotskyists of EEK, the mass arrests and impending trials manifest the growing social unrest, especially among the rebelled youth, overwhelmingly jobless or over-exploited in flexible labor. These battles are the first manifestations of a political revolutionary process, which could and should expand on a European continental, and international scale. Greece is mirroring world historical developments.

Despite the illusions spread by mainstream economists and mass media, China is not the solution for the world crisis but a crucial part of the problem.

The tremendous growth of the Chinese economy and the acceleration of capitalist restoration were fuelled by the US expansion of cheap money supply, a boom in US consumption and in Chinese exports based on an unprecedented overproduction of fictitious capital.

The injection in the economy by the Chinese State authorities last year of a huge 4 trillion yuans stimulus package did not overcome the crisis of over-capacity (for example, excess capacity in steel was already in 2005 120 million tons-more than the annual production of Japan, the world’s second largest producer. It led to the formation of new bubbles in the stock market prices and real estate speculation. The reasons are structural. The gigantic disproportion between a predominantly export-led economy and an inadequate, underdeveloped internal market in a still hybrid social economic formation, now facing an international plunge in depression, destroys any attempt by the leading wing of the Chinese State-Party restorationist bureaucracy to establish a temporary social equilibrium between classes and between the countryside and the industrial centers. The social tensions and struggles are growing, exposing the fallacy of a so-called “harmonious society in a market Socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

At the same time pressures are growing from international capital, seeking to find a way out for its bankruptcy, in China. Demands for a re-evaluation of the renmimbi have as an ultimate goal the opening of the Chinese financial markets, the expansion of an internal market dominated by foreign capital, and, finally the transformation of this vast country into a semi-colony of US, European, and Japanese capital. Obviously, such a goal could never been achieved without a protracted violent process of imperialist interventions, economic pressures and wars – and without producing fierce resistance and revolutionary upheavals inside China itself.

Russia too is under enormous pressures by the current world crisis that led to its first serious recession in a decade, a 30 per cent devaluation of the ruble, the bankruptcy of a number of companies, the fall of oligarchs bailed out by the Kremlin and an important decrease in State reserves. After the Yeltsin era, with the IMF “shock therapy”, the mass looting of public property in the ’90s and the centralization of wealth at the hands of the oligarchs, which ended in the 1998 default, the current international hurricane dealt a lethal blow to the Putin era of stabilization and renewed State control. The ruling elite are divided and a sizeable section under the president Medvedev turns again in a new round of privatizations and openings to the foreign capital.

US and EU imperialisms in crisis are driven in a renewed re-colonization effort in the vast space from Eastern Europe to Russia and China seeking a way out for the systemic crisis. Humanity has entered into a period of violent convulsions, with an unknown outcome to be decided by the living struggle of living forces on a world scale.

The Obama War

The United States are occupying the center not only of the world economic crisis but of the political crisis as well.

The escalation of the war effort in Afghanistan decided by the Obama Administration manifests both the continuation and the utter failure of the so-called “war on terror” started by the Bush Administration, against which Obama was elected in the first place. “Obamania” and all the illusions spread about the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and warlord in Afghanistan received a deadly blow. It is absolutely necessary and urgent for the American and world working class to draw a balance sheet of this political bankruptcy.

Obama was presented as an opponent of Bush’s foreign war policies, although keeping upfront the darling of the Zionist lobby Hilary Clinton, and the bellicose tones and imperialist ideology of the Democratic Party. Now, he resurrects the imperial Augustinian fallacy of a “just war” to justify the continuing crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

The new President was advertised as a new Roosevelt who would introduce a new Keynesian New Deal. In today’s conditions where not only neo-liberalism but also Keynesianism that preceded it have failed this is impossible; a new Roosevelt cannot be re-incarnated into Obama in the White House. The mass impoverishment of the American households after the housing market disaster, mass unemployment, and the ill fated Health Care reform show that the Obama Administration faces disasters not only on the war fronts in Central Asia but on the social front back at home.

US imperialism, driven by the collapse of its own internal equilibrium, cannot but strive to war and for the re-establishment on a new basis for its world supremacy, and imperial “mission”. That leads to more barbaric wars and convulsions, particularly in Central Asia, Iran and the Middle East.

Turkey plays an important role in the schemes of imperialism in that region. We resolutely have to fight this role as well as the oppression of the Kurdish people. The CRFI condemns the dictatorial verdict of the Supreme Court and of the “deep State” in Turkey to outlaw the Kurdish DTP.

The scheme for an imperialist phony solution of the Palestinian problem has collapsed. The most right wing government in Israel’s history continues its savage oppression of the dispossessed Palestinian people, the blockade of Gaza, the installment of new settlements in the West Bank. Despite the treachery of the Abbas- PLO leadership, the Palestinian people, although leaderless, did not stop its resistance to occupation.

The war threats by Israel and US on Iran intensify, under the pretext of the Iranian nuclear program. Developments in that country that knew the biggest popular revolution in the Middle East in 1979 have reached a crucial point. The impasse and disintegration of the clerical regime, the mobilizations after the June 2008 election, the role of bourgeois pro-imperialist forces in the leadership of the opposition but also the legitimate grievances of students and women against an oppressive obscurantist regime have changed dramatically the political landscape in Iran. The CRFI has to follow carefully and analyze in every step of development that process to draw a revolutionary understanding and line of intervention.

Pacifism in the center and bourgeois nationalism and/or religious fundamentalism in the periphery is totally unable to confront the dangers  of war and all the challenges of the current world historical situation. An international mobilization of working class and anti-imperialist popular forces is needed with the perspective of Permanent Revolution against permanent war.

Trends within the working class and its political tasks

Europe presents in a condensed form all the main trends developing inside the working class in struggle.

Mass strikes, mass demonstrations, factory occupations, sequestration of bosses by workers, youth and workers’ revolts in a number of countries in Europe (France, Italy, Greece, Ireland but also Romania, Serbia etc.) demonstrate the growing anger and combativeness of the proletariat under the pressure of mass unemployment, flexibility of labor, wages cuts, destruction of pension rights, State repression etc.

This development of struggles and social consciousness is non linear, uneven from country to country, contradictory. Revolutionary Parties should carefully follow every step and study their internal trends and development by intervening in the struggles with a program of transitional demands connecting the present moment with the struggle for workers power, preparing thus its victory.

We have entered a stage of careful, methodical, systematic organization and preparation for the coming revolutionary situations.

Any “anti-capitalist” front or party formation (the perspective supported by the NPA in France; the Bloc of the Left in Portugal, SYRIZA; and in a more leftist version ANTARSYA in Greece; the British SWP and their co-thinkers internationally), which pretends to fight capitalism within the capitalist system’s framework, “to defeat the anti-working class, anti-popular policies of its governments and of the EU” without overthrowing them, is a reactionary fraud.

We fight for the overthrow of all capitalist governments and of the imperialist EU that has declared class war with draconian austerity measures against all the exploited and transformed the Continent into “Fortress Europe” against immigrants; to defeat the drive of the European imperialists to re-colonize Eastern Europe, the Balkans and, furthermore Russia itself; to unify on a socialist basis all the European peoples from the Atlantic to the Pacific into a United Socialist States of Europe.

Climate Change

The UN sponsored Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change was a total and inescapable fiasco. The capitalist leaders of the world demonstrated that they are totally unwilling to take the smallest step towards a reduction of the danger of ecological catastrophe but ready to unleash a barbaric police repression against those fighting this danger by direct action in the streets like the demonstrators protesting in the Danish capital.

The final phony “agreement” cobbled together by the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa is merely a hollow expression of vague aims, without any commitment, apart from the illicit commitment to defend corporate profits. But even this worthless piece of paper was torn apart immediately after by Brazil and South Africa, two of the “co-signatories”.

Decayed world capitalism in crisis, greedy for profits now more than ever before, threatens with ecological catastrophe humankind, all living beings, Nature as the “inorganic body” of the human beings. It is not the productive forces themselves- i.e. the developing material and mental capacity of humanity to overcome natural-social constraints- that cause climate change and environmental disasters but their misuse, strangulation and distortion by the historically outdated capitalist social relations of production. The so-called “green development” under capitalism is a demagogic, misleading way to find new outlets for their surplus capital, without really caring about the environment  or the survival of the entire planet. This survival and human civilization as a whole depends now upon the reorganization of the world economy on new social bases according to the needs of life, and not the profits of a few magnates.

We demand the expropriation of all contaminating industries without compensation under workers control!

We demand our right to our living space, against the metropolitan monstrosities.

We fight to re-appropriate our life against the vampires of capital, for the expropriation of the capitalist expropriators and for world Socialism!

Against women oppression

Despite all the claims to the contrary, the oppression of women has increased in the last two decades, both in metropolitan and peripheral countries. The decline and crisis of capitalism is insolubly connected with the crisis of patriarchy, sexism, trafficking, and all the forms of violence inflicted on women.

The measure for the self-emancipation of all toilers is the emancipation of women. Universal human emancipation, communism, through the world socialist revolution, cannot be achieved without the abolition of all forms of gender oppression.

Which International?

The world capitalist bankruptcy and its social and political implications pose as never before the urgent necessity of a revolutionary International of the proletariat and all oppressed to overthrow capitalism and re-organize society on socialist bases on a planetary scale.

But this workers’ revolutionary International cannot be born by the Presidential decree or call by a military populist Bonaparte, even less by a Bonaparte of a bourgeois State. The call for a Fifth International by Chavez, is addressed without any programmatic basis to a heterogeneous audience covering a broad political spectrum representing various and opposed class forces, including bourgeois liberal parties. As foreign polices are the continuation of home policies, the 5th Socialist International of Chavez appears as the international extension of the chavist PSUV, a party to regiment, keep in check and control every and any political expression of the working class.

The reference to a “5th” International and thus the recognition of the tradition of the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky and his comrades-in arms has as its aim to attract and trap revolutionary forces coming from that tradition.

François Sabado, one of the main leaders of the former United Secretariat of the FI , has already replied positively to the call, although posing some points for discussion related to the “left” liberal views prevailing in Europe, particularly in France, in the former LCR now liquidated into the NPA. In fact he accepts that a head of a bourgeois State can launch the initiative for an international organization of the working class. The entire Marxist theory of the State, of the classes, of the class struggle and of the transition to communism through a dictatorship of the proletariat, a withering away State of the Paris Commune type is rejected. The coming World Congress of the international current to which Sabado is associated is inscribed in that liquidationist perspective to liquidate the remnants of the Fourth International tradition in that current.

A similar path is followed by other tendencies with a Trotskyist reference (the Alan Woods “International Marxist Tendency” e tutti quanti).

The Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International stresses that in today’s conditions above all the conquest, preservation, and development of the political independence of the working class, of its program, of its organizations, political parties and trade unions is a condition sine qua non for its struggle against capital, for a workers socialist way out from the crisis, for workers power and world Socialism.

Athens, 12/12/2009

CRFI Statements

]]> http://mtl-fi.org/2010/01/08/in-the-midst-of-a-deepening-crisis-crfin-kannanotto/feed/ 0 http://mtl-fi.org/2009/06/19/the-capitalists-must-pay-for-the-crisis-the-workers-must-take-power-2/ http://mtl-fi.org/2009/06/19/the-capitalists-must-pay-for-the-crisis-the-workers-must-take-power-2/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:43:04 +0000 MTL http://mtl-fi.org/2009/06/19/the-capitalists-must-pay-for-the-crisis-the-workers-must-take-power-2/ Declaration of the Executive Counsil of the CRFI

1. The proletariat and the popular masses of the world are facing an unprecedented crisis and a unique historical situation, in this Mayday 2009, the Day of the international working class.

The world capitalist crisis destroys the lives of millions of people all over the planet condemning them to expropriation, unemployment, destitution, misery, and furthermore, wars and State repression. But at the same time, although the weight of the crisis is bitterly felt, resistance to capitalist barbarism is growing. There is an ascending wave of social struggles, mass strikes, occupations, and popular rebellions such as in Greece or Guadeloupe.

The Coordinating Committee for the Re-foundation of the Fourth International (CRFI) calls the international working class and all oppressed and exploited to mobilize to put an end to that social catastrophe, to refuse to be buried under the ruins of the world capitalist bankruptcy. The capitalists must pay for the crisis of their system! The capital expropriates our lives, let us expropriate capital and open a socialist way out from the current devastation!

2. The capitalists themselves had to admit that the current crisis that erupted in 2007 with the burst of the US sub-prime mortgage market bubble and the international credit crunch is not simply a cyclical one or a conjectural disturbance. It is the worst crisis from the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression. It has historical dimensions in scope and depth; it affects globally the world economy, while its end is unseen in the horizon.

It is clear now that it does not affects only the financial sector but the entire capitalist economy dominated by a decades long over-expansion of finance capital invading, interconnecting and controlling all aspects of economic life globally.

The crisis that manifested itself in 2007-2008 first in the financial sphere driving the international banking system to bankruptcy now is driving a ‘Great Recession’ (the term is forged by Martin Wolf of Financial Times) engulfing the entire so-called “developed” capitalist world and bringing big industries, such as General Motors and the car industries in the US, Europe and Asia, into the abyss. It is only the unprecedented State interventions, bail outs, and packages of the last period that prevented, so far, according to Martin Wolf, the Great Recession to turn into a Great Depression.

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook, in April 2009, predicts a contraction of world economy by a 1. 3%, revising downwards its previous prediction of 0.5% made in January 2009. A year before, in 2008, the IMF was predicting a 3.8% growth of world’s GDP in 2009… More than 60 million new jobless will be added.

The Organization for the Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in its recent interim Economic Outlook stresses that “the world economy is in the midst of its deepest and most synchronized recession in our lifetimes, caused by a global financial crisis and deepened by a collapse in world trade”. As the Financial Times reports, “in the US, the rate of decline of manufactured output compares of that of the Great Depression. Japan’s output of manufactures has already fallen by almost as much as in the US in the 1930s” (FT 21/4/09). Britain and the Euro-zone countries are already in recession. The IMF current predictions for the Euro-zone economy expect a 4.2 % contraction in 2009 and a worst recession in 2010, while unemployment will jump to 10.1% this year and 11.5% in the next. The OECD predicts that the German economy might shrink by as much as 5.3% in 2009. “The 5.3 contraction would represent the biggest decline for Germany-excluding the immediate post-World War II devastation of 1945 and 1948-since the depths of the Great Depression in 1932, when the economy shrank by roughly 7.5% Considering that Germany’s GDP equals three times the combined output of its central European neighbors, the slump is certain to have immense effects on the rest of Europe” (Stratfor, 21/4/09)

The world recession expresses not solely a crisis of capital over-production but also the fact that the basis upon which the world process of capital accumulation was structured in the last historical period has collapsed.

It is not just a failure of the so-called “neo-liberal model” of the “excesses of finance speculation. Finance capital globalization itself was the outcome of a long historical process of development of all the contradictions of capitalism during the imperialist epoch of capitalist decline, of wars and revolutions, from the Great War, the October Revolution and the 1929 Crash to the post -world war two period and the crisis following the collapse of the Bretton Woods framework in the early ’70s.

3. The shift to finance capital from the ’80s and its globalization in the last decades, marked by successive shocks and crashes (1984, 1987, 1989, 1997), produced a gigantic fictitious capital pyramid to sustain the reproduction of the system. This process reached its climax in the 2002-2007 periods, after the 1997-2001 international turmoil, with the production of all sorts of bubbles and exotic (now “toxic”) financial instruments. The derivatives market reached the mythical proportions of a 550 trillion dollars ocean while, comparatively, the world GDP is about 60 trillion. The disproportion between this parasitic, non value-producing Leviathan of fictitious capital that exacerbated the crisis of over-accumulation of productive capital on the one side, and on the other side, the available global surplus value to be pumped out from the exploitation of direct producers put enormous obstacle to the valorization process. Capital finds its historical limits to itself.

Although the crisis is driving the tendency to raise enormously the rate of exploitation (the rate of relative and absolute surplus value) with every old and new means of “flexible” labor relations etc., the disproportion is such that makes it unable to overcome the crisis. It is not the established techniques of pumping out of surplus value that have reached their limits; it is surplus value itself as social form of the surplus product, and with it the law of value as regulative principle of economic life, that demonstrates its historic limits, its outmoded character.

For capital, crisis is the only way out from crisis. It has to destroy the gigantic accumulated sums of capital to restore the rate of profit and re-start the accumulation process. The catastrophic process has already started: in its latest Global Financial Stability Report, the IM estimates that capital of 4.1 trillion US dollars has been lost so far in the financial sector and losses are mounting. This sum, although huge, represents an infinitesimal part of fictitious (and productive) capital that has to be destroyed according to the laws of capital accumulation.

The catastrophe in progress means the massive destruction of surplus capital, of the world productive forces, and first of all of the most important social force of production, the working class itself.

It is by its own nature a protracted process, not an instantaneous, automatic collapse, nor an eternal fall in an endless abyss. The current world crisis marks a period of historic upheavals; it involves not simply economic- technical re-arrangements and adjustments, control of “financial excesses” and “off shore fiscal havens” etc. but a vast process of de-stabilization, disintegration and re-organization of all social relations through sharp political conflicts and violent clashes nationally and internationally.

Transition is not a linear series of successive points but a dialectical development of all contradictions with sharp conflicts, zigzags, continuities and breaks in continuity, leaps.

The current crisis becomes an unresolved riddle if its is separated from the transitional character of our epoch of capitalism in decline

The huge Tower of Babel of fictitious capital, the global credit structure that was erected the last decades, has been transformed from an instrument of global expansion into a dominant factor of global disintegration and crisis. It is the highest manifestation of transition in history, from capitalism to world Socialism and communism as Marx had foreseen:

“The credit system appears as the main lever of over-production and over-accumulation in commerce solely because the reproduction process, which is elastic by nature, is here forced to its extreme limits [...] the self-expansion of capital based on the contradictory nature of capitalist production permits an actual free development only up to a certain point, so that in fact it constitutes an immanent fetter and barrier to production, which are continually broken through by the credit system. Hence, the credit system accelerates the material development of the productive forces and the establishment of the world market. It is the historical mission of the capitalist system of production to raise the material foundations of the new mode of production to a certain degree of perfection. At the same time credit accelerates the violent eruptions of this contradiction-crises- and thereby the elements of disintegration of the old mode of production.

The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incentive of capitalist production, enrichment through exploitation of the labor of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling, and to reduce more and more the number of the few who exploit the social wealth; on the other hand, to constitute the form of transition to a new mode of production” (K. Marx, Capital, vol. III p. 441 Progress, Moscow 1977)

4. After the irruption of the current world capitalist crisis, particularly after its acceleration in September 2008, the capitalists and their governments tried to find a way out in three directions:

a. By searching to establish new international regulations, a “new financial architecture” or a “Bretton Woods II”

b. Looking to China whose impressive growth rate of the last years made her appear as a possible “locomotive” to take the world economy out of the slump

c. Above al , by intense State intervention, injecting huge “rescue” packages to the crumbling banking system and industry, introducing nationalizations etc.

The results so far are disappointing for capitalism.

Hopes for a new Bretton Woods to establish a new world economic order out of the present chaos proved to be chimerical. The first G20 meeting in November 2008 in Washington DC ended as a fiasco. The recent G20 summit in London avoided an open shipwreck but it did not achieve any of its desired goals (new international financial regulations, stimulus packages in Europe). The most significant achievement was only the G20 pledge to increase the IMF reserves by $500 billion up to 1.1 trillion dollars, including $250 billion of credit lines in Special Drowning Rights to help it in a more active role in “rescuing” countries under the immediate threat of default, first of all the Eastern European countries. The European banks have already an exposure of 1.6 trillion dollars to that countries and Turkey. Not only the sums are insufficient but provided by the IMF are always tied to draconian measures that will exacerbate social suffering and mass unrest.

Centrifugal forces, protectionist tendencies, and imperialist antagonisms are far to be dissipated undermining any attempt for a new international regulation.

The US definitely uses its historically established hegemony in world capitalism and the role of the US dollar as international reserve currency to print huge amounts of dollars to sustain its packages like the previous Paulson Plan or the current Obama plan. But the ocean of “toxic assets” is so limitless, unpredictable and poisoning that the entire endeavor becomes Sisyphean.

The US has up to now injected about 1.2 trillion dollars in its economy. US over-indebtedness and deficits took astronomic dimensions and pressures are building up threatening with collapse not only the US currency but all the international monetary relations. The European Union blames the US that by depleting world resources to bail out its own bankruptcy builds up unbearable pressures threatening the EU and the European Monetary Union with dislocation.

5. China, from the other side, has proven to be much more part of the problem than a solution.

World recession has hit hard the Chinese economy. January 2009 showed the worst drops in import (-41.3 % on year) and foreign direct investment (-32.7%), as well as a fall in exports of -17.5%.

Despite a bold and much publicized $500 billion stimulus plan, the Chinese Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2009 fell to 6.1 %, half of 2007’s 13% and smaller than 2008 fourth quarter numbers. The days of double digit, 12% and 13 % annual growth rate look to be over. The fall of the GDP is reaching levels considered already by the Chinese CP -State authorities as dangerous for igniting social unrest and upheavals both in the urban centers and the countryside.

Their worries are shared by analysts in the imperialist West seeing the danger of “growing dissent that can erupt into protests and riots” (Stratfor April 15, 2009). The reasons for a social explosion are routed in the social economic structure itself: “At the most basic level, China’ economy has been structured over the past three decades to be fuelled by exports and inputs of foreign investment. Together, these remain the backbone of the Chinese economy. They are strength in times of global economic activity, but a lead weight in times of global slowdown. Domestically only about a quarter of China’s 1.3 billion are really in the economically active” middle class” and above/ While that still is a massive number, it leaves nearly a billion people on the receiving end…”( Stratfor 15/4/09).

The fall of world demand for Chinese exports because of the contraction of world trade, the flight of foreign capital because of the progressing world bankruptcy and the lack of a developed capitalist domestic market make China vulnerable to the pressures of the world crisis. A turn to develop a domestic market cannot be effectuated without exacerbating all the contradictions between the country side and the cities leading to mass unrest and social explosions. The capitalist restoration process produced super-profits for foreign capital and for the rising local middle class, and the illusion of a China rising to world hegemony later in the 21st century. As the social structure of China is succumbing to the pressures of world crisis, not only past illusions are now has been shattered but also the prospect of a new social revolution in this vast country re-appears in the horizon.

The capitalist restoration process in China played a key role for US imperialism to finance its gigantic deficits and sustain the weak upturn of the world economy in the period 2002-2007. Now the crisis is shattering this US-Chinese economic interconnection with enormous implications both internationally and in China.

Russia has entered also in its worst crisis from the times of the 1998 default, shaken by the fall of the oil price, the collapse of the rubble and the bankruptcy of most of its oligarchs under the pressure of world finance capital. Eastern Europe has been transformed into a black hole threatening to shallow the European banking system. The euphoria in the imperialist West following the collapse of the former bureaucratized workers states in 1989-91 and the opening of the road to the integration of the vast former Soviet space into the world capitalist market has been transformed from the historic dream of capitalism into a nightmare in early 21st century.

5. After decades of neoliberal “deregulation” and privatization, State intervention occupies again the center of the stage, starting from the unprecedented capital injections, interest rate cuts, bail outs and State intervention nationalizations in 2007-2008 in the US and Britain and then extended in one country after another all over the world.

There is no a return to the post-war Keynesianism nor a revival of the Welfare State in the developed capitalist countries ; the State does not “expand” but destroys public services (hospitals, education, etc) by privatizing them and accumulates deficits and public debt to secure resources to bail out the bankers and other capitalists. In fact, there is a strengthening of the role of the capitalist State as the “savior of last resort” of capitalism in bankruptcy. The success of its regulatory intervention in the economy is more than doubtful. “The market may be bust but so is the state”, wrote Philip Stephens in Financial Times (6/4/09).

Capitalist nationalizations, “the negation of capitalism within the capitalist system itself”, are an extreme action to rescue capital from bankruptcy. Within the framework of the actual social regime, nationalization puts the charge of the crisis on the shoulders of the working people through the increase of the public debt, unemployment, inflation etc. From the other side, it’s an objective manifestation of the process of preparation and transition to the collective property of the producers under the control and management of the direct producers themselves.

The fetish of the State, supreme expression of the commodity and capital fetishism, creates illusions to the capitalists themselves. For them the State, an expression of social relation, is transformed into a thing or a supreme power able to absorb all the debts and sustain all the capitals in bankruptcy: the bankruptcy of the State (the liquidation of public credit, the default of the public debt, the sinking of the monetary system, the disruption of all inter-state relations) is now in progress as a condensation of the crisis. For the working humanity, the crisis put objectively the question of the State i. e. the question of political power itself.

The State, coming forward as the mediator of the systemic contradictions, becomes the center of intense political conflict both between and with different competing groups of private capitalist interests as well as with the workers and popular masses. The question “who will pay for the crisis?” becomes the most central and disputed political question. At the same time, the question “who rules society?” and thus the centrality of state power itself becomes the apple of discord.

Clashes between the State, the capitalist group interests and the masses fuel political instability and regime crisis. Repressive Bonapartist tendencies are growing; at the same time, all sorts of bourgeois democratic maneuvers, like those introduced by the new Obama Administration, are made to deflect and neutralize popular discontent, rising social movements and anti-imperialist resistances.

6. World capitalism has entered in this new explosive stage of crisis having already behind it a decade of imperialist wars that devasted the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia without making possible to imperialism to achieve its goals.

The imperialist war drive, an expression itself of the unresolved and sharpening contradictions of the system in the post-Cold War period, produced new impasses. The “war on terror” terrorist Crusade launched by the Bush Administration led to the swamp in Iraq and to a dead end in Afghanistan that destabilized completely Pakistan and the entire Indian sub-continent. The US war strategy under the Obama Administration shifts its focus to Central Asia not solely by a surge of US and NATO troops but also by building new diplomatic bridges and uplifting a strong network of alliances, which encompasses Turkey, Russia, and Iran.

The position of US imperialism is undermined both by the world capitalist crisis, whose center is located precisely in the US, as well as by the military reverses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imperialist antagonisms and rivalries are intensifying. But this does not imply that a new capitalist superpower could replace US as world hegemon: American capitalism represents the highest point of the historical development of world capitalism and of its decline. Humanity is still confronted with the volcanic eruptions of a declining US capitalism which cannot find any internal equilibrium without establishing a new world equilibrium under its supremacy.

The new US strategic shift finds acute problems with the emergence of the most extreme right wing, racist, obscurantist Zionist government in Israel, in February 2009, three years after the defeat of the Zionist Army in Lebanon in 2006 and in the aftermath the genocidal massacre of the Palestinian civilians in Gaza at the end of December 2008-early January 2009. The election of an extreme reactionary Zionist coalition government is an expression of the crisis and impasses of the Zionist and imperialist colonial project itself. Together with it, the so-called “two states solution” of a Palestinian statelet of impotent Bantustans surrounded by the Zionist settlers and Army has been buried.

The Palestinian national movement has to be emancipated from the collaborators of Zionism and imperialism in the so-called Palestinian Authority, as well as from the religious fundamentalist leadership of Hamas, to be re-armed with a revolutionary strategy and tactics, fighting for freedom to all political prisoners, the demolition of the apartheid Wall and the dismantlement of the settlements, for the right of the return of all Palestinian refugees to their lands, for the right of self determination and for a secular, socialist Republic in the entire territory of Palestine, in the framework of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.

The revival of the Arab workers movement as it was seen in the mass strike movement in Egypt with the presence of secular and socialist forces is a positive sign that the conditions develop for an overcoming not only of the bankrupt bourgeois secular nationalist leaderships but also of the reactionary Islamist groups that occupied so far the scene.

The new stage of the world capitalist crisis re-shapes the social landscape providing new possibilities for revolutionaries in Palestine and the Middle East to unite beyond religious and ethnic divisions, and fight imperialism and Zionism under the banner of the Permanent Revolution.

7. In Latin America, the world crisis has had repercussions in a continent already immersed un profound mobilizations and political crises, linked to the world economic crises of the last decades of the twentieth century, culminating in the “Argentinazo” of 2001. The traditional bourgeois parties were in complete bankruptcy.

The nationalist/indigenist regimes of the Andes region were the expresion of the profundity of the crisis, and not its solution. Their policy of partial (and compensated) nationalizations of big capital, and of limited mobilization of the masses against the traditional right and against imperialism, is failing in the historic task of structuring an independent national State, and is now seen to be affected by the vertiginous fall in the world prices of raw materials, which questions the basis of the “social policies” taken up to conquier the support of the poor masses of the city and the countryside and at the same time discipline them.

Being obliged to establish a line of contention based on alliances with governments originating on the left (as in the case of Brazil, or Michelle Bachelet in Chile) was the expression of the political retreat of imperialism, as a complement to, and not as a source of contradiction, with the support of right-wing and paramilitary regimes (Mexico, Colombia), and the reactivation the Third Fleet of the US Navy, patrolling the eastern coast of the continent. Obama not only lends continuity, but deepens Bush’s policy, when he takes the “Great International Agreement” to the point of initiating the dissolution of the blockade against Cuba, which constitutes, apart from the attempt to preserve imperialist dominion in conditions of exceptional crisis, a historic defeat of half a century of agression and provocations by the US against the Caribbean island. With the bilateral commercial treaties, the U.S. also gave continuity to the economic colonization of the continent, destroying the local bourgeois nationalist attempts of “integration”.

This line of precarious co-existence with governments previously denouced as being part of the “evil axis” had hardly been drawn when the world crisis dealt it a tremendous blow. The crisis not only affects the economic basis of the nationalist petite-bourgeois regimes, but also that of the “left-wing firefighter” governments (Lula, Kirchner, Bachelet) giving them the perspective of a gigantic crisis, and even that of a situation of political disolution (Argentina).

Since the world bankruptcy now in course errupted in Latin America after a series of capitalist bankruptcies, political crises and uprisings during the last decade, all social classes and all states have received it in an extraordinary state of tension. The nationalist experiences (including their “radical” versions: Chávez, Evo Morales, Correa) have once again failed in their attempt at structuring a national independent State and at initiating a process of autonomous capitalist industrialization, let alone destroying the supremacy of finance capital and placing the workers and peasants as political power. Not only have they failed to create, and neither have they had the capacity to create, a national bourgeoisie, but neither have their nationalizations been able to structure a period of transition towards that objective, under the hegemony of the State. The nationalizations will only take on a revolutionary character if they transfer capital accumulated by the finance oligarchy to the nation and if they place the exploited in political power. The utilization of state funds to compensate nationalized capital, on the other hand, blocks all possibility for independent development and obliges the nation to make greater sacrifices; foreign capital, forced out of the sphere of industry, returns under the form of finance capital, bailing out the purchase of public debt.

Nationalism has used the nationalizations, not to convert the workers into the ruling class, but rather to impede their independent organization and to subjugate their leaders to the tutelage of the State, availing themselves of nationalist demagoguery as well as repression. The “nationalist” bureaucracies have hardly waited an instant in order to line their pockets, falling into frequent scandals of corruption, as denounced in Venezuela and Bolivia, where the nationalizations of Evo Morales have not been an act of sovreignty against imperialist penetration; on the contrary, they have eased it. According to Evo Morales the oil conglomerates “are now our partners”. But this, far from opening a period of prosperity and peaceful cooperation, deepens the integration of Latin America into the world economy, and its crisis. The world capitalist crisis, which in the 20th century spurred the emergence of nationalist movements and governments, now, in this new period of generalized international bankruptcy, threatens to become their tomb. The failure of nationalism returns all timeliness to the demand for the United Socialist States of Latin America – a federation of worker and peasant governments.

8. The lifting of the blockade against Cuba would be a historic victory for that country, for having overcome imperialist sabotage, even occasioning a very high price for it. But this lifting forms part of an international accord aimed at solving the contradictions in the development of Cuba by means of a restoration of dominion of capital. The question is, who orients the interchange with the world economy needed by Cuba’s economy, the bureaucracy or the workers of the cities and the countryside? Which leads to an even more decisive question: Que should decide in the historic crisis of the oppressive relations between the United States and Latin America: the petite-bourgeois governments of capital, or the alliance of workers and peasants? The world crisis has placed squarely upon the table all the historic relations between Yanqui Imperialism and Latin America. The historic conditions for the abolition of semi-colonial submission are at hand. But this abolition affects the interests of the native capitalist classes and a fraction of the petite-bourgeoisie, that takes it for granted that it has already attained its social aspirations. The Latin American bourgeoisies have placed themselves at the head of a rescue operation for this semi-colonial relationship, by means of their center-left governments. In a relatively short time this operation is bound to fail: the minimal national autonomy aimed at by Latin American governments will be swept away by the world crisis or by the attempts by Yanqui imperialism to reconvert itself into the counter-revolutionary axis of a solution to the crisis. The destiny of the Cuban Revolution is in the hands of the Latin American socialist revolution.
But the political crisis also drags the center-left governments into the wake of its continental (and world-wide) standard bearer, the government of Lula in Brazil. While the northern ex-worker travels all over the world as the solver of all problems, he has a time bomb planted in the politics of his own country. The enormous trade surpluses are a thing of the past, in the next few months the country has registered tax revenue shortfalls. The subsidies given to big industrial and finance capital by Lula’s government amount to billions of dollars in “tax revenue cancelations” and are eating into foreign currency reserves. This points to a perspective of financial crisis (cessation of payments) and social catastrophe. A monumental political crisis is in the works for the 2010 presidential succession. Lula and his apparatus (including his pre-candidate Dilma Roussef), are confronting it by putting forward a popular front coalition extending rightwards without limit, with which to face the bourgeois candidates.

One expression of that crisis are the percentages of over 10% attributed by the public opinion election polls to the PSOL – with it candidate Heloísa Helena – a label holding together a coalition of left-wing and movementist tendencies , which has even served as a model for political adventures on other continents (inside the NPA of France, first of all). This transitory phenomena may, however, create a political earthquake, and can be explained by the brutal gutting of the PT (and the bureaucratization of the CUT) rather than by the intrinsic virtues of the “party-front” model of the PSOL, with no program and based on accords between small left-wing apparatus and parliamentary groups. This position, actually, hides a perspective which seeks to close the crisis with a bourgeois program (in Brazil, the reduction of the interest rates, a demand of a whole sector of the bourgeoisie, and monetary devaluation), a party with a bureaucratic and personalist internal regime, and the sacrifice of any vestige of class independence, in open alliance with the bourgeois and pro-Church parties (Heloísa Helena, for example, repudiates the right to abortion). This right-wing alliance-ism is the natural consequence for a “party of tendencies” which repudiates the revolutionary organization of the workers and the struggle for the socialist consciousness of the working class to replace accords between chieftans. Facing the PSTU of Brazil is a choice between defending class independence or sacrificing it in the name of the “left-wing front” headed by the PSOL – and dominated by the alliance with the shadow of the bourgeoisie. The revolutionary and workers international vanguard must combat the refloating of the idea of a “party bus” (an anti-party having the form of a party), and even harder that of the International, classless and lacking a program, the World Social Forum (WSF), which ended up fully integrated into the bourgeois and imperialist policies of its principal example, the PT of Brazil, cheerleader and host of the WSF in its various editions.

A new stage in the mobilization of the exploited in Latin America can be seen on the horizon. The struggle for their most basic needs (wages, defense of jobs, access to land, and the most basic natural resources) comes to the fore under the imperious necessity for the conquest of their political independence from bourgeois and petite-bourgeois nationalism, for an independent (revolutionary) worker’s party, and for the social reorganization upon new (socialist) foundations, by means of the power of the exploited themselves.

The recovery of all of the natural and economic resources, continental unity in order to value them – time and again put forward and then destroyed by nationalism – will be achieved by means of their socialist unity, the bridge over which the struggle of the Latin American masses will join together with the anti-Capitalist fight of the exploited of the whole world. La preparación de la revolución socialista en América Latina ha recorrido un largo proceso histórico, con experiencias antiimperialistas profundas, como la revolución cubana. El entrelazamiento entre la bancarrota mundial y el agotamiento de las experiencias nacionalistas permitirá culminar esta etapa histórica. Es de este modo que el socialismo revolucionario delimita sus posiciones con el imperialismo y sus agentes, de un lado, y con las tentativas nacionalistas, del otro, y se propone como candidato a la lucha por el poder político. La tarea más urgente en América Latina es producir un reagrupamiento socialista de fuerzas en el cuadro de la crisis mundial].

9. The CRFI had pointed out the development of a process of “latinoamericanization” of Europe itself, not only in the sense of a rapid deterioration of social conditions and the existence of ghettoes and Third World zones of misery and police repression within the metropolis itself but also by a growing tendency to rebellion of the oppressed masses, particularly by a new generation of workers with precarious, low-paid work, was manifested, from the revolt in the “banlieue” in 2005 and the combative mobilization against the CPE in France in 2006 to the youth mobilization against the privatization of the universities according to the EU directives in Greece in 2006-2007 to the December 2008 revolt.

The new, contradictory but ascending wave of radicalization clashes with the old bureaucratic apparatuses of Social democracy and the recycled Stalinist CPs. The disastrous experiences of the social-liberal, third way¨, center left or “plural left” governments in Britain, Italy, France, Greece etc. have discredited the traditional reformist Left and their satellites in the so-called radical Left. A new political space has been formed for revolutionary politics.

But as the masses are moving to the left, centrist forces that have exhausted their historical potential in the past by tail ending the bureaucracies, try to meet these radicalized strata by moving themselves further to the right. A number of ‘broad anti-capitalist parties or fronts’ were formed the last period: the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), Respect in Britain, Red-Green Alliance in Danemark, Bloc of the Left in Portugal, and lately the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France. The parliamentary reformist parties of Rifondazione Comunista in Italy and of SYRIZA in Greece are usually included in that list. Most of these “anti-capitalist” parties or fronts of far left origins turned openly to reformism becoming parts of the European Left Party (Bloc of the Left, Respect). Some already knew devastating crises and splits. It is the case of Respect, of the SSP, and of the Rifondazione Comunista in Italy, considered for a long time as the leading force of the radical anti-capitalist left in Europe before collapsing after its treacherous collaboration in the Prodi government.

Olivier Besancenot´s NPA in France, founded formally in February 2009 after an initiative taken by the self-dissolved LCR, advocates a regroupment of various left forces and traditions superseding the old, historical divisions between opposite currents in the workers movement. Avoiding carefully the demarcation line between revolution and reform, it speaks about a “revolutionary transformation of society” and it proclaims as its strategic goal “socialism of the 21st century”. It is not just a flattering reference to Chavez but a conscious break from any continuity with the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolshevik communist tradition, and Trotskyism. The rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat, already done by the LCR years ago, is now completed. While that rejection was done under the pretext that the dictatorship of the proletariat was discredited by Stalinism, now it becomes crystal clear that this rejection is motivated mainly by an adaptation to bourgeois parliamentary democracy, which they try to extend and improve by a combination of renewed parliamentary institutions of a representative democracy based on general elections and the direct democracy of social movements from below.

The problems of the current explosive situation in France and in Europe are approached from the standpoint of this vague left democracy. Support to social struggles and movements has to be reflected into an electoral ascent of the anticapitalist vote and a good electoral result has to lead to new social struggles and movements. A combination and alternation of electoralism and movimentism is proposed as a political strategy for social emancipation!

As far as the European Union is concerned, in sharp contrast to its crisis and the centrifugal forces that threaten to disintegrate it, the NPA rejects the revolutionary program for the socialist unification of the Continent by a social revolution and the formation of a United Socialist States of Europe; it substitutes it with a call for “a social and democratic Europe” advancing a series of anti-neoliberal demands, which leave the capitalist framework intact, and postponing the demand for a socialist Europe as a proposal to a future “democratically elected by universal suffrage” European Constituent Assembly…

No revolutionary transformation of society in France, in Europe or in any part of the world could ever be achieved with such a fetishism of democratic rhetoric.

10. The explosive impact of the world crisis on the life and the struggle of the exploited and oppressed produces rapid, often unexpected changes in the movement and the consciousness of the masses. There is a non linear process of radicalization.

Mass sackings, factory closures, and unemployment create initially confusion, frustration and a defensive attitude. The trade union bureaucracies are entirely incapable and unwilling to confront the capitalist debacle or even to organize a partial mobilization against it. They lean to the capitalists and the State for an impossible compromise through concessions and retreat, abandoning many of the gains and positions won though struggle by the workers’ movement. Trotsky has analyzed that “exceptional circumstances, independent from the will of individuals and parties are needed for the discontent to break from the chains of conservative spirit and for the masses to erupt into rebellion. Consequently, the rapid changes in the opinion and mood of the masses in time of revolution have their origin not in the elasticity and flexibility of the human psyche but, on the contrary, in its deep conservativism. Ideas and social relations are in a chronic delay in relation to the new objective conditions until the moment when they are collapsing as in a cataclysm[...] the class acquires consciousness of the problems posed by the crisis and the masses are orientated into action by the method of successive approximations”( History of the Russian revolution). This movement of radicalization can be reversed when “this impetus is broken on objective obstacles”.

We are in a stage of radicalization which has not been defeated by reaction or unsurpassable obstacles; in a transition where it is absolutely necessary for the revolutionary parties to study in detail every particular moment of development of the economic and political crisis, every manifestation of workers’ and popular resistance, from the smallest defensive struggle to mass mobilizations, general strikes and rebellions like that in Greece or Guadeloupe, by a systematic intervention in the movement, establishing a constant dialogue with the masses and their demands, old and new, advancing the program needed for the development and victory of the struggle, and preparing by the methods of propaganda, agitation and organization the revolutionary struggle for workers’ power and Socialism.

The world crisis is increasing the tendency to social explosions posing on the agenda the open question of a transition to social revolution and revolutionary transformation of society- or to barbarism.

The Greek revolt summarizes many of the problems to be resolved in that transition. It is clear that the revolt was not directed by any political party, or organized force on the basis of a political project and program. It is false to see just an expression of spontaneity of a youth rebelling against police repression. There were conscious attempts by vanguard forces to advance into a general political strike. Many experiences of past struggles were revived and superseded; the bureaucracies were challenged and ousted from the local offices in many occasions. Together with the monopoly of the violence by the State, it was challenged the control of the ruling class on information, mass media, and culture. For the first time, demands for a re-organization of the social relations on new socialist bases, for the re-appropriation of life in all its manifestations were expressed in many occupied sites, open general assemblies and centers of action.

But the limits of the December revolt became very soon visible: there was no a unifying political revolutionary organization of the masses and of its vanguard to channeling the energy of the rebellion into a revolutionary “assault to heaven”. PASOK, the official center left bourgeois opposition was naturally hostile to the rebellion, being sometimes on the right of the right wing government blaming it as “incapable” to impose effective police state measures. The PASOK trade union bureaucracy of GSEE (the General Confederation of Labor) boycotted the general strike and opposed the rebellion. The Stalinist KKE stood on the sides of the bourgeois State as a Party of Order. The rebelled masses left far behind the other left forces, including the anarchist networks. Conservative tendencies appeared within the far left, which turned from direct action to the formation of electoral blocs for the next elections. While the class conscious bourgeois newspaper Le Monde wrote with fear that ¨Greece is without a State” (10/12/08), the working class was not politically and organizationally prepared or ready for the overthrow of a shaken bourgeois regime by seizing political power and its fate in its hands.

Nevertheless, the December rebellion in Greece remains undefeated, a dress rehearsal for the next stage of confrontation in Greece, in Europe and internationally, and a source of inspiration for revolutionaries all over the world for the coming historic confrontations.

The world crisis has put the questions ¨who will pay for the crisis?” and “who rules society?” on the agenda. The answer can be given only by starting from a world point of departure. Now more than ever the task is posed clearly: we need a revolutionary workers International, the re-founded Fourth International!

Buenos Aires, April 14, 2009

2/2/2009

The Initiative for the Revolutionary Workers’ Party considers fully warranted the response by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan to the attitude of Shimon Peres, the president of Israel, and David Ignatius, US journalist and moderator of the panel discussion. It was correct to criticise sharply Peres’ manner of speaking, to respond in kind to the moderator, who kept patting the prime minister of a foreign country on the shoulder, displaying the arrogance of a person close to the establishment circles of an imperialist country, to remind him of the unfair allotment of time to the different speakers, thereby privileging Peres, and in the end to abandon the panel. Those who criticise Erdoğan for using the bullying style he resorts to back home are thereby promoting the idea that he should have acted meekly when confronted with such effrontery from imperialists and Zionists. They have thus also been admitted that they cannot defend the idea of equality among nations even for their own people, let alone for those nations whom they oppress. Erdoğan’s behaviour is so abominable domestically because he unjustly attacks oppressed people. It is exactly for the symmetric reason why his behaviour at Davos is to be commended. There is no basis for comparing the two, as Erdoğan is the oppressor in the domestic cases while he represents the underdog in the Davos case. Erdoğan has displayed a more honourable attitude vis-à-vis the representatives of imperialism and Zionism than his detractors.

But all of this was confined to the duration of a panel discussion. As soon as he left the hall where the panel discussion was held, he changed his attitude to Israel. The fact that his press conference was based on a text formulated with carefully selected phrases was the first sign that he had returned to the diplomatic track. The fact that, in this statement, he asserted that his rage was directed against the moderator showed clearly that he was already trying to mend fences with Israel. The reaction shown to Peres had, thereby, evaporated once he was out of the hall. And during the telephone conversation he had with Peres a bit later, it was not only Peres but also Erdoğan who adopted a conciliatory tone.

Even of greater importance is the policy adopted by the Erdoğan government toward Israel. It is true that the condemnation of the crimes committed by Israel since the war on Gaza started on 27 December 2008 was a constant in the policy pursued by this government. In this sense, the row that erupted at Davos was only the high point of previously existing tension. However, while on the one hand the Erdoğan government was condemning the assault waged by the Israeli government on the civilian people of Gaza, on the other hand it played the diplomatic game of Israel, the aggressor in this unjust war. The ultimate goal of the war was to bring about regime change by toppling Hamas. For the short run, Israel aimed at preventing the smuggling of arms for Hamas through the underground tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Hence, it was one of the major objectives of the war to disarm Hamas. By proposing that the United Nations place a force of observers at the borders of Gaza, the Turkish government was thereby providing support for Israel’s aims, whatever the tenor of the statements by the prime minister. Moreover, by skirting the idea (Washington Post, 31 January 2009) that Turkey should take part in this observer force, Erdoğan was thereby asserting that he was ready to serve as the overseer of Israel’s disarming of Hamas.

In effect, all this is the result of the fact that, while protesting the atrocities committed by Israel, the AKP government has, throughout the years, continued to pursue the policies of previous Turkish governments. Starting with the 1980s, Turkey has entered strategic relations with the state of Israel, the big impetus being provided by the military agreements of the 1990s (signed ironically under Erbakan, the historic leader of Turkey’s Islamist movement!). It is this policy that the Erdoğan government has embraced lock, stock and barrel. Here lies its capital crime. And now, unless it revamps this orientation after all that he has said during the last month and a half and in the aftermath of his theatrics at Davos, his words will remain what they are—empty words used for electoral purposes (as local elections will be held in two months’ time).

Erdoğan claims that Gaza has been converted into an “outdoor prison”. If that is the case, then let him take concrete steps to change this situation. Let him withdraw his ambassador to Israel, declare the Israeli ambassador to Ankara persona non grata, and immediately terminate all military contracts placed with Israel! Erdoğan stresses that during the war Israel killed 1300 Palestinians, most of them children, non-combatant women and the elderly and injured another 6000. Then let him cancel the order that has been placed by Turkey for the Herons, the unmanned planes used to bomb the people of Gaza, and thus stop assisting the financing of these death machines of Israel! Addressing Peres at the end of the panel discussion, Erdoğan said, “You know very well how to kill. I know how you killed children on the beach”. Let him cancel all the bilateral agreements with Israel, not forgetting that the pilots who killed those children receive their training flying over the vast Konya plain in central Anatolia! The whole world knows that the US is the major benefactor of Israel. At Davos, Erdoğan made an appeal to Obama on behalf of the people of Gaza. The very same Obama who did not open his mouth for the first ten days of the war on Gaza and who, when he did, enounced platitudes! Joseph Biden, Obama’s vice-president, is a loyal friend of Israel and Emmanuel Rahm, the White House chief-of-staff, a long-time Zionist himself! He who dares not upset his relations with the US should not challenge Zionist Israel! If Erdoğan wants to be consistent with his words, then let him pass to deeds! Or else his words will be just words and nothing else.

Those who dispute Erdoğan’s attitude at Davos have thereby laid bare the hypocrisy of the so-called “nationalist” camp and revealed who the real friends of Zionism in Turkey are. The Turkish armed forces (TSK) have declared, “national interest comes before all else” and insisted that the Heron deal be preserved, thus making it clear that the military are the defenders of the status quo in Turkish-Israeli relations. Deniz Baykal, the leader of the self-styled “social democratic” People’s Republican Party,
remained speechless for 72 hours! The expert of the party in foreign affairs, Onur Öymen, also the vice-chairman, had the rashness to say “Erdoğan has been struck out by the civilised world”, basing himself on the alleged support extended by Erdoğan to Hamas. That the People’s Republican Party and, more generally, the pro-Western, secular wing of the bourgeoisie reduce the “civilised world” to imperialism, which, incidentally, looked on as hundreds were being murdered in Gaza, is obvious! The real friends of Zionism, more loyal to it than Erdoğan, and the real flock of imperialism are the so-called “nationalist” forces posturing as anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist! A small minority among these may have a different stance, but they themselves have become the stooges of the pro-imperialist forces of the pro-Western, secular camp of the bourgeoisie.

The Revolutionary Workers’ Party resolutely stands by the people of Palestine and defends its freedom, its right to self-determination and its right to return to its homeland. For us, there will be no peace in the Middle East, nor can imperialism be evicted from this region unless and until the Zionist state of Israel, erected on racist and fundamentalist bases, has been dismantled. The question of Palestine will only have been solved when, on the entire historic territory of Palestine, a secular, democratic and socialist state of Palestine, bringing together Arab and Jew, has been established. But the real emancipation will only come with the Socialist Federation of the Middle East, making possible the brotherhood of all the peoples of this region.

Declare the Israeli ambassador persona non grata! Withdraw Turkey’s ambassador to Israel!

Disclose and repeal all bilateral agreements and military pacts with Israel and suspend relations! Cancel all military contracts placed with Israel!

US imperialism and all imperialist forces out of the Middle East!

Freedom to Palestine! Down with the Zionist state of Israel!

For a secular, democratic and socialist state of Palestine, bringing together Arab and Jew, on the entire historic territory of Palestine!

For a Socialist Federation of the Middle East!

We appeal to the workers’ movement and the left in the three countries, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, to work for the establishment of a tripartite Workers’ Tribunal to look into the atrocities committed by all sides during the period 1963-1974. This Tribunal should consist of reputed defenders of human rights in the three countries, with both communities of Cyprus being represented, and should be authorised to access all necessary documents and examine all witnesses deemed relevant to the issue.

An internationalist stance on this issue may contribute immensely to a new kind of relationship between the two communities of Cyprus based on a refusal of chauvinism, in counterposition to the current so-called “solutions” proposed to the question of Cyprus under the aegis of imperialist circles.

_EEK (Revolutionary Workers’ Party) Grece

_DİP (Initiative for the Revolutionary Workers’ Party) Turkey

Koko historiallinen maisema on muuttunut. Viime vuonna räjähtänyt kapitalismin kriisi, joka kärjistyi syys-lokakuussa 2008, on saanut ennalta arvaamattomat mittasuhteet ja uhkaa romahduttaa maailman pörssimarkkinat, kansainvälisen pankkitoiminnan, teollisuusjätit, sekä ajaa lukuisia valtioita konkurssin partaalle.

Maailmanlaajuinen romahdus on jo tapahtunut. Pörssien pääomitus on puolittunut, tappiot ovat nyt lähes 3000 miljardia dollaria velassa mitattuna ja velkaantuminen jatkuu väistämättä; läntisen maailman pankkijärjestelmä on lähes hajoamassa (Financial Times 28/10/08), huolimatta ennenäkemättömistä valtioiden väliintuloista.

Maailmantalous on supistumassa. IMF arvelee talouden taantuman leviävän koko kehittyneessä maailmassa, seurauksena yli 20 miljoonan työpaikan menetys. Nälänhätä aiheuttaa jo mellakoita ns. kolmannen maailman maissa ja tuotteiden hintojen putoaminen nopeuttaa vararikkoa raaka-aineita tuovissa maissa. Mikään ei ole enää samaa.

Lähes kaksi vuosikymmentä sitten kapitalistit juhlivat Neuvostoliiton hajoamista kommunismin ja itse historian loppuna. Nyt kapitalismi kohtaa oman luhistumisensa USA:n, Euroopan ja Japanin suurkaupungeissa. 1989-91 jälkeinen myytti selvästi voittoisasta liberaalikapitalistisesta järjestelmästä, sekä fantasia ”yksinapaisesta maailmasta”, joka ”kiistattomasti” keskittyy Yhdysvaltain Imperiumiin, on tuhoutunut.

Maailman vahvin kapitalistinen supervalta, Amerikka kokonaisuudessaan, eikä Yhdysvaltojen ‘’sub-prime kiinnelainojen markkinat” pelkästään, on muuttumassa globaalin järjestelmän pahimmaksi myrkylliseksi velkakirjaksi (toxic asset (1)). Trotski ennusti että Amerikan nousu maailmanvaltiaaksi, kasaa maailman kaikki ristiriidat dynamiitiksi sen perustuksiin. Tämä dynamiitti, joka kasautui laajenemisen ja kriisien, sotien ja vallankumouksien vuosisadalla, on nyt räjähtämässä muuttaen koko 2000-luvun maailman.

Tämänhetkinen kriisi johtuu kaikkien aikaisempien, talouden globalisoinnin vuosikymmenten suurten kriisien kulminoitumisesta ja syrjäyttämisestä; Bretton Woods-kehyksen, jolla yritettiin estää laman uusiutuminen, hajoamisesta 1971, 80- ja 90- lukujen taloudellisien shokkien (1984 Latinalaisen Amerikan ‘tequila-kriisi’, 1987 romahdus, 1997 romahdus Aasiassa jota seurasi Venäjän vararikko 1998 sekä USA:n ‘dot.com’-talous 2000-luvulla, 2001-2002 lama, Enronin romahdus, Argentiinan vararikko jne.) kautta finanssiglobalisaation vuosikymmenten.

Aikavälillä 2002-2006, kriisien spiraali poikkesi suunnasta ja maailmantalous ajautui käännekohtaan, USA:n lainojen sekä Kiinan teollisen kasvun toimiessa moottoreina. Nyt nämä moottorit ovat pysähtymässä. Maailmantalouden supistuminen yrittää eliminoida valtavan määrän ylijäämäpääomaa, sekä kuvitteellista että tuottavaa, joka on pääoman lisääntymisen esteenä.

Pääomassa on kyse ainoastaan sosiaalisista suhteista. Räjähdys systeemin perustassa liikuttaa yhteiskunnan ‘mannerlaattoja’, muuttaen kaikki sosiaaliset ja kansainväliset suhteet. Tie ulos umpikujasta avautuu ainoastaan sarjalla historiallisia yhteenottoja kiistelevien yhteiskunnallisten voimien välillä, ensisijaisesti pääoman ja työvoiman välillä. Toisin sanoen kriisin ratkaisu riippuu viime kädessä selkkauksista yhteiskunnallisen vallankumouksen ja vastavallankumouksen välillä kansainvälisellä tasolla. Kansainvälisen työväenluokan ja sen etujoukon keskeinen tehtävä on pikainen poliittinen, ohjelmallinen, ja järjestäytynyt, teoreettinen ja käytännön valmistautuminen näihin yhteenottoihin.

Uusi historiallinen tilanne 2000-luvun ensimmäisellä vuosikymmenellä vaatii alistettujen ja sorrettujen väkijoukkojen liikekannallepanoa jälleenperustettavan Neljännen Internationaalin vallankumouksellisen lipun alla!

KRIISISTÄ ROMAHDUKSEEN JA LAMAAN

2. Amerikka, historiallisesti kapitalistisen kehityksen korkein kohta, on muuttunut kapitalismin keskuksesta syvenevän kriisin keskukseksi.

USA:n sub-prime lainojen markkinoiden romahdus käynnisti kansainvälisen konkurssien vyöryn ja maailmanlaajuisen luottokriisin, joita seurasi räjähdysmäinen nousu ja dramaattinen lasku öljyn ja raaka-aineiden hinnoissa, mutta ennen kaikkea yhtäaikainen maailmantalouden laskukausi ja lama.

Kolme vuosikymmentä kestänyt pääoman globalisointi, shokkien sarjan (1984,1987,1997) seurauksena päättyi katastrofiin.

Ns. uusliberalismin, tuon taloudellisen opinkappaleen, jota seurasi melkein jokainen kapitalistinen hallitus, välitön epäonnistuminen ilmeni dramaattisissa toimissa, reaganismissa (reaganomics=Reagan+economics) ja thatcherismissa, joita yksityistämisen mestarit suorittivat nopeasti USA:ssa ja Isossa Britanniassa.

Kasvava valtion pelastusoperaatioiden prosessi alkoi Northern Rock Bankin kansallistamisesta Englannissa, syyskuussa 2007, Bear Sternsin, yhden ‘Neljän Suuren’ investointipankin, kansallistamisesta USA:ssa maaliskuussa 2008 ja eteni sitten lopulliseen käännekohtaansa, joka nopeutti syys-lokakuun kurimusta: Fanny Maen ja Freddie Macin, jotka hallitsevat neljää viidesosaa USA:n luhistuvista kiinnelainamarkkinoista, kansallistamiseen syyskuussa 2008.

USA:n hallituksella ei ollut muuta vaihtoehtoa, kuin rikkoa sen omia, kapitalismin keskeisiä lakeja. Se ei voinut sallia, että kaksi valtion rahoittamaa yritystä, joiden velka vastaa 40%:a USA:n bruttokansantuotteesta, vain romahtisivat ‘näkymättömän käden’ iskuista. Kyseistä romahdusta seurasi kansainvälisen talousjärjestelmän kaaos, dollarin alasajo ja Yhdysvaltojen hiljainen vararikko.

Ei ole epäilystäkään siitä, että tämä pelastautuminen pystytti hautakiven, ei ainoastaan sille, joka virheellisesti oli nimetty uusliberalismiksi, vaan myös kokonaiselle aikakaudelle, jota hallitsi kapitalismin keskeinen illuusio ‘näkymättömän käden’ itseohjautuvasta markkinataloudesta. Se osoittaa, että arvonlaki on ammennettu tyhjiin taloutta säätelevänä periaatteena. Abstrakti työ on liian rajoittava mitta yhteiskunnan materiaaliselle hyvinvoinnille ja täten kapitalismi, edistyksellisellä imperialistisella tasolla, on jo kauan elänyt historiallista rappeutumisen aikaansa.

Vaikka USA:n hallituksella ei ollut muuta vaihtoehtoa kuin kansallistaa Fannie ja Freddie, tämä pelastusoperaatio synnytti uusia ongelmia. Varat jotka siihen käytettiin (n.200-300 miljardia dollaria), estivät sen toistamisen muiden taloudellisten instituutioiden pelastamiseksi. Suurin uhri oli 158-vuotias jättiläinen, investointipankki  Lehman Brothers jonka annettiin romahtaa.

Lehman Brothersin konkurssi käynnisti konkurssien vyöryn ja vaikeutti globaalia luottokriisiä sekä maailmanlaajuista paniikkia.  Samaan aikaan Merrill Lynchin pakkomyyntiä 13.-14. syyskuuta 2008, seurasi suuren AIG-vakuutusyhtiön pelastaminen USA:n keskuspankin toimesta, joka osoitti selvästi, ettei Amerikan johtama globaalin talouden romahdus ollut pysähtynyt.

Kuudessa kuukaudessa, Wall Streetin koko investiontipankkijärjestelmä oli purettu. Bear Sterns oli puilla paljailla, Lehman Brothers konkurssissa ja Goldman Sachs ja Morgan Stanley täytyi luokitella uudelleen ja laittaa USA:n keskuspankin, Fedin valvontaan.

Sarja dramaattisia valtion väliintuloja seurasi, sekä Amerikassa, että Euroopassa, korvaten sen, mitä oli tapahtunut vuoden 2007 kriisin purkautumisen jälkeen.

Vuosien 2007-2008 aikana maailma oli jo todistanut jatkuvia, laajuudeltaan ja luonteeltaan ennennäkemättömiä, mutta taloudellisesti epäonnistuneita, maailman suurimpien kapitalististen talouksien ja imperialististen maiden hallitusten ja keskuspankkien väliintuloja Pohjois-Amerikassa, Euroopassa ja Aasiassa. Yrityksenä oli estää laajeneva kriisi ja sen systemaattiset vaikutukset. Satoja miljardeja dollareita, euroja ja jenejä syötettiin pankkijärjestelmään ja laajenevaa korkotasoa leikkaavaa rahapolitiikkaa seurasi veroviranomaisten innostus, toisin sanoen rikkaita suosivia veronkevennyksiä esitettiin, mutta kriisi jatkoi laajenemistaan, uhaten nyt koko systeemiä.

Lehman Brothersin romahduksen jälkeen esiteltiin kiireesti ‘Paulsonin 700 miljardin dollarin suunnitelma’, jonka tarkoituksena oli ostaa ‘myrkyllisiä velkakirjoja’ ja näin lievittää talousjärjestelmien murskaavaa taakkaa. Kongressi äänesti sen puolesta, ilman todisteita suunnitelman tehokkuudesta, eikä näin voinut välttää poliittista kriisiä. Jopa tästä summasta 250 miljardia dollaria piti uudelleen ohjata pääomittamaan yhdeksää USA:n suurinta pankkia. ‘Paulsonin Suunnitelma’ korjasi maksuvalmiusongelman, kun todellinen ongelma oli varattomuus. Takausten asettaminen maailmanlaajuisesti tekee riskit ja konkurssivaaran vaikeasti nähtäviksi, tuhoten vähänkin luottokelpoisuuden ja jäädyttäen lainojen takaukset. Pankkien myöntämät lainat ovat olleet ylisuuria, joskus jopa 60 kertaa suurempia kuin niiden varat, ja nyt niistä on tullut konkurssin hakijoita.’Paulsonin Sopimus’ antaa hetkellistä helpotusta Wall Streetin porhoille, kun veronmaksajat maksavat laskun. Se siirtää suuren yksityisen lainan julkiseksi jo ylivelkaantuneessa Amerikassa.

Samalla, kun USA:n alijäämä kasvaa, tarve ulkomaisille sijoittajille kasvaa ja USA:n luottokelpoisuus heikentyy. USA:n velka, suhteessa bruttokansantuotteeseen, oli 163% vuonna 1980, 240% vuonna 1990 ja nousi 346%:n vuonna 2007. Sitä pahentaa vuosien 2007-2008 dramaattinen kehitys, mukaanlukien Fannien ja Freddien julkinen 6 biljoonan (6000 miljardin) dollarin velka sekä ‘Paulsonin Suunnitelman’ 700 miljardia dollaria. Amerikka on muuttunut super-Argentiinaksi hiljaisen vararikkonsa myötä. Ylivelkaantuminen siirretään seuraavan hallituksen ongelmaksi.

Barak Obaman vaalivoitto ilmaisee, sekä hallitsevien, että hallittujen tarvetta päästä Bushin hallitukselta perityn sietämättömän tilanteen ylitse: elinolojen huonontuminen, kasvava työttömyys, paisuva kulutus, yrityksien ja yksityisten velat, jättimäinen alijäämä, katastrofaalinen umpikuja kansainvälisessä sodassa terrorismia vastaan Lähi-idässä sekä Keski- ja Etelä-Aasiassa. Obaman uusi hallitus on työkalu USA:n imperialismin käsissä, jolla se voi selvitä kriisistä. Sen politiikka tulee kuitenkin väistämättä ottamaan väkivaltaisesti yhteen suurten odotusten kanssa joilla työläiset ja sorretut vähemmistöt auttoivat sen voittoon.

Englannin hallitus esitteli Gordon Brownin suunnitelman lokakuun 8. päivä, jolloin se osittain kansallisti kahdeksan isoa pankkia. Lokakuun 13. päivä, Englanti, Saksa ja Ranska ilmoittivat yhdessä yli 222 miljardin dollarin maksuvalmiudesta ja lähes 1000 miljardin dollarin pankkienvälisestä lainatakuusta. Nämä ennennäkemättömät toimet eivät kuitenkaan hävitä kriisiä. Taloudellinen taantuma leviää USA:ssa, Englannissa, euro-alueella ja Japanissa. Osake- ja valuuttamarkkinat, pankit ja yritykset kuohuvat jatkuvasti laman varjossa, tai meneillään olevan kansainvälisen pysähtyneisyyden ja hintojen laskun kourissa (global stag-deflation = stagnation plus deflation ks. RGE Monitor 25.10.08).

Sillä, että USA:n keskuspankki leikkasi korkotasoa, kahdesti lokakuussa 2008, ja se putosi alimmilleen 11.9. ( ja muilla liikkeillä, joita seurasi Euroopan, Englannin, Japanin ja muiden Aasian maiden keskuspankkien toimesta), voi olla vain hyvin lyhytaikainen vaikutus epävakaisiin osakemarkkinoihin, mutta ei mitään vaikutusta maailmantalouden suunnan kääntämiseen. Kuten analyytikot osoittavat, nämä leikkaukset ovat vain merkkejä epätoivosta.

VALTION VÄLIINTULO

3. Mikä tahansa valtion väliintulo on riittämätön, kun se kohtaa fiktiivisen pääoman kasaantumisesta aiheutuneen suunnattoman ongelman.
Johdannaisten markkinat kasvoivat vuoden 2002 100:sta biljoonasta dollarista, vuoden 2007 516:een biljoonaan dollariin Kansainvälisen järjestelypankin (BIS) arvion mukaan ja joidenkin arvioiden mukaan, jopa 585:een biljoonaan dollariin. Vertaukseksi: kaikkien maiden talouksien tuottamat tavarat ja palvelut muutettuna bruttokansantuotteeksi ovat vuosittain 50 biljoonaa dollaria ja USA:n vuosittainen BKT on noin 13 biljoonaa dollaria. Tästä käy hyvin selvästi ilmi, ettei mikään valtion, keskuspankin tai edes kaikkien yhteinen väliintulo voi kontrolloida tätä myrskyä johdannaismarkkinoiden valtamerellä.

Kun oikeisto, liberaalit tai ”vasemmistoekspertit” esittävät valtion viimeisenä keinona systeemin pelastamiseksi, valtio toisensa jälkeen siirtyy jonottamaan vararikkolistalle: Islanti, Unkari, Ukraina, Valko-Venäjä, Kazakstan, Romania, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Indonesia, Filippiinit ja muut. Valtio toisensa jälkeen kutsuu taas hädissään Kansainvälistä valuuttarahastoa. IMF on jo vastannut Unkarin ja Ukrainan kutsuihin ja luultavasti puuttuu asiaan muissakin tapauksissa. IMF:n panos on kuitenkin hyvin rajallinen, noin 250 miljardia dollaria. Se ei voi toimia pelastajan roolissa, vaan pikemminkin kärjistää sosiaalipoliittisia ongelmia määräämällä sen hyvin tunnetut, erittäin ankarat ehdot maille joita se ”auttaa”.

Kapitalistinen kansallisvaltio on täysin kyvytön kohtaamaan maailmanlaajuisen kriisin, jonka kapitalistinen globalisaatio on aiheuttanut ja joka on viime vuosikymmeninä liittänyt maailmantalouden kansalliset osat toisiinsa syvemmin kuin koskaan aikaisemmin imperialistisella aikakaudella.

Vuoden 1929 romahduksen jälkeen kultakanta toimi linkkinä, joka muutti kriisin kansainväliseksi ja samasta syystä kesti vuosiin 1932-33 saakka, ennen kuin 1930-luvun lama paljastui kaikessa tuhovoimassaan. Tällä kertaa, kiitos talouden globalisaatiolle, kaaos johti välittömästi pankkikriisiin, nopeuttaen lamaa ja valtioiden konkursseja, alkaen Islannista.

Kansallisvaltio ei voi viime kädessä uudelleenjärjestää taloutta niin, että pelastaisi globaalin pääoman systeemin. Päinvastoin, globaalin kapitalismin kriisistä johtuen, se antaa periksi ylivelkaantumisen murskaavan painon alla, tuhoaa julkisen talouden ja kyvyttömyys velkojen maksuun johtaa vararikkoon.

Parhaillaan julkituleva kapitalismin kriisi osoittaa anti-keynesiläisen uusliberalismin, sekä uuskeynesiläisen interventiopolitiikan täydellisen epäonnistumisen.

Mutta, vaikka valtio ei voi toimia taloudellisen uudelleenjärjestelijän tehtävässä, se on kuitenkin porvareiden viimeinen poliittinen keino, johtuen sen auktoriteetista ja yksinoikeudesta voimankäyttöön.  Sen kasvava rooli kapitalistien eturistiriidoissa, pääoman ja työvoiman välissä, voimistaa sen taipumuksia voimankäyttöön ja pakkotoimenpiteisiin, kuten on jo nähty kapitalistisen globalisaation kriisissä, joka tuli esille vuosisadan vaihteessa ”terrorisminvastaisen sodan” kiihkon alkaessa.

Kun Valtio tunkeutuu ristiriitojen sekaan, siitä tulee kaikkien yhteiskunnallisten jännitteiden keskipiste, sovittelija, joka muuttaa taloudellisen kriisin sosiaaliseksi kriisiksi, vaikuttaen kaikkiin yhteiskuntaluokkiin ja levittäen epätoivoa suurimpiin massoihin, syventäen poliittisen vallan kriisiä.

Sekä sosiaaliset, että taloudelliset strategiat, joita pääoma on käyttänyt viime vuosisadan aikana estääkseen historiallisen alamäkensä ja työväenluokan uhan, valtion interventiopoilitiikka ja uusliberalismi ovat molemmat epäonnistuneet pitkällä aikavälillä, aiheuttaen näin hallitsemisen kriisin: ne ketkä hallitsevat, eivät voi hallita vanhoin menetelmin ja niillä, keitä hallitaan, ei ole varaa tulla hallituiksi ja elää surkeassa nykyhetkessä ilman tulevaisuutta. Näin olosuhteet tuovat esiin vallankumouksellisia tilanteita.

Hallitsevan luokan ”aivoriihi” tunnistaa uhan. Martin Wolf puhuu Financial Timesissa (28.10.08) maailmanlaajuisen laman synnyttämistä poliittisista vaaroista, mainiten ”ksenofobian, nationalismin ja vallankumouksen”. Näistä viimeinen ajaa maailman kapitalistiset johtajat ennenaikaiseen G20-kokoukseen USA:n vaalien jälkeen ja painostaa Sarkozya sekä muita Europan johtajia vaatimaan ”Bretton Woods 2:ta”.

Bretton Woodsissa, vuonna 1944, uusi maailmanvaltias USA, kaksi kolmasosaa maailman kullasta aarreaitassaan, otti vahvalla kultaan sidotulla valuutallaan maailman valuuttakassan roolin, jolloin sen oli mahdollista pitää voimassa kansainvälinen ‘keynesiäläinen New Deal’, jälleenrakentaa raunioitunut Eurooppa ja torjua vallankumouksellinen uhka stalinismin poliittisella avulla.

Nyt koko maailmantila on muuttunut. Amerikka, ei ole ainoastaan Euroopan ja kapitalistisen maailman vakauttajan asemassa, vaan se ajaa ne pohjattomaan kuiluun. Toisen Maailmansodan jälkeen ei ole varaa minkäänlaisiin myönnytyksiin työnväenluokalle, toisaalta ”anteliaisuus” pankkeja ja rahoittajia kohtaan kompensoidaan tuhoamalla jäljellä olevat sosiaaliset palvelut (koulutus, terveydenhuolto, eläkkeet jne.) ja köyhdytetyn väestön elintaso. Nyt on huono aika luokkien yhteistyölle, sosiaalidemokratia on asetettu kyseenalaiseksi ja stalinismi, vahvoine byrokratiakoneistoineen, ei ole enää auttamassa pitämään työläisiä kurissa.

”Bretton Woods 2” on vain Sarkozyn ja muiden euroopan johtajien haihattelua yhteiskunnallisten räjähdysten pelossa, illuusio joka vasemmistossa ja ”ääri”vasemmistossa jaetaan uuskeynesilaisten kesken.

EUROOPPA MYRSKYN KESKELLÄ

4. Maailman tämänhetkinen kapitalismin kriisi osoitti kapitalistisen järjestelmän haavoittuvuuden sen synnyinsijoilla Euroopassa ja EU:n heikkouden, voimistaen keskipakoisvoimia, jotka repivät sitä hajalle.

Kun kriisi yltyi syys-lokakuussa 2008, Euroopan hallitusten täytyi peräkkäin puuttua asioihin ennennäkemättömin toimin estääkseen suurimpien pankkien ja yritysten luhistumisen ja pysäyttääkseen romahduksen. 28. syyskuuta, Belgia, Hollanti ja Luxemburg kansallistivat Fortis-pankin, suurimman yksityisen työnantajan Belgiassa. 29. syyskuuta kansallistettiin englantilainen Bradford and Bingley, joka hallitsi suurinta osaa vuokra-asuntomarkkinoista. 5. lokakuuta Saksan hallitus pakkolunasti kaupallisen kiinteistölainajätin Hypo Real Estaten ja julisti, että se takaa kaikkien säästäjien talletukset (edellisenä päivänä se kritisoi Irlannin hallitusta, sen tehdessä täsmälleen samoin). 8. lokakuuta Englannin hallitus jälleenrahoitti ja osittain kansallisti kahdeksan maan suurinta pakkia, ostamalla suurimman osan niiden osakkeista.

Näin tuli selväksi, että huolimatta kaikista Euroopan yhtenäisyyttä koskevista väitteistä, Euroopan kapitalistit reagoivat globaaliin kriisiin kansallisilla linjauksilla. Kävi myös ilmi USA:n keskuspankin vastineen puuttuminen EU:sta, joka voisi määrätä Euroalueen suunnitelmia. Huolimatta kriitikoista ja puolestapuhujista, jotka kutsuvat EU:ta ‘’supervallaksi”, tällä Euroopan imperialistien liitossa 15:llä jäsenellä 27:stä on yhteinen valuutta, mutta siltä puuttuu Euroopan budjetti ja verotusjärjestelmä. Euroopan Keskuspankin tehtävä on ainoastaan pitää inflaatio Maastrichtin sopimuksen määräämässä 2%:ssa, vaikka tällä hetkellä inflaatio nousee yli 3,6%:in. Toinen rajoitus, jonka ko. sopimus asetti, oli pitää julkinen alijäämä alle 2%:ssa, joka sekin on nyt hylätty, syvenevästä lamasta johtuen. Euroopan kapitalistiset johtajat vaativat uusien kansainvälisten säännösten asettamista, uutta ”Bretton Woodsia”, omista eurooppalaisista säännöksistään välittämättä.

Euroalueen johtajien ja Englannin tapaamisessa 12.-13. lokakuuta, sovittiin yleisten linjausten seuraamisesta, varojen pumppaamisesta pankkeihin ja/tai pankkienvälisten lainatakuiden asettamisesta. Saksa, Ranska ja Englanti tiedottivat yhteensä 163 miljardin euron uudesta maksuvalmiudesta ja 700 miljardin euron pankkienvälisistä laintakuista. Esitetyt toimet olivat kuitenkin vain linjauksia ja jokaisen jäsenvaltion täytyy kehittää oma, itsenäinen, kansallinen ”ratkaisu”. Maailman kriisin totuuden hetkellä, EU osoittaa rakenteellista heikkoutta ja jatkuvaa Euroopan hajottamista kansallisilla kapitalistisilla linjoilla. Esimerkiksi Saksan hallitus kieltäytyy antamasta euroakaan toiselle eurooppalaiselle, ei-Saksalaiselle pankille tai yritykselle, niin kuin Ranskan presidentti Sarkozy pyysi.

Erimielisyydet kolmessa avainkysymyksessä hallituksen osuudesta talouteen, hallituksen budjettialijäämästä ja kansallisen velkaantumisen tasosta, vahvistavat hajoittavia voimia. Vakavimmin uhattuina Euroopan valtiona ovat Ranska, Italia, Kreikka ja Unkari.

Unkarin vararikkojulistusta lykättiin ottamalla kiireesti 25,1 miljardin dollarin pelastuspaketti IMF:lta, Euroopan Keskuspankilta ja Maailmanpankilta.

Euroopan neljänneksi suurin talous, Italia, kantaa maailman kolmanneksi suurinta velkataakkaa, järisyttävää 1000 miljardia dollaria, joka on suurempi kuin Ranskan velka. Korkea julkinen velka, suuri budjettialijäämä ja hallituksen kulut, jotka ovat melkein puolet bruttokansantuotteesta sekä maailman korkeimpiin kuuluva tuloverotus (43% BKT:sta) estävät Italiaa suorittamasta merkittäviä pakkolunastuksia Italian jättipankeille, Intesalle ja Unicreditille, jotka ovat vahvasti esillä Keski-euroopassa ja Balkanilla. ”Siksi Italia saattaa olla ensimmäinen suuri euroalueen talous, jonka globaali talouskriisi moukaroi… Italian vaihtoehdot ovat alentua kestämään kriisin läpi ulkopuolisen avun turvin (ja mahdollisesti kohdata pitkittynyt lama), tai harkita uudelleen sen roolia euroalueen maana” (Stratfor 28. lokakuuta 2008). Ylilaajentuneen EU:n joka kolkasta EMU:un kohdistuvat paineet kasautuvat vaarallisesti, uhaten EU:n yhtenäisyyttä ja euron tulevaisuutta.

Kreikalla, jolla on paljon heikompi talous, julkinen alijäämä on noin 3,5% BKT:sta, tämänhetkisten maksujen vaje enemmän kuin 15% BKT:sta sekä julkista ja yksityistä velkaa yhteensä 500 miljardia dollaria, on sen pankkijärjestelmä yliedustettuna Balkanilla, etenkin Bulgariassa ja Romaniassa. Kreikan valtion obligaatioiden joukkolikvidointi jatkuu (yli 3 miljoonaa euroa kymmenenä viimeisenä päivänä lokakuussa 2008). Viimeisessä Euroopan raportissaan Merril Lynch halvensi suurimpia kreikkalaisia pankkeja (Alpha Bank, National Bank, Eurobank ja Bank of Piraeus) Balkanilla kohdattujen vaarojen takia.

Bulgaria ja Romania ovat lähes konkurssissa ja dominoefekti uhkaa Kreikan, Italian ja Ranskan pankkeja. Baltian maihin yhteydessä olevat Itävallan pankit kohtaavat samanlaisia vaaroja Keski-Euroopassa ja jopa Ruotsissa. Kaikki nämä pankit kävivät laajamittaista kauppaa alhaisen korkotason lainoilla, jeneissä ja Sveitsin frangeissa, investoidakseen Itä-Eurooppaan, paikallisten valuuttojen korkeampien korkojen perässä. Kun alijäämä Itä-Euroopan maissa kasvoi ja heikot kansalliset valuutat alkoivat romahtaa, EU:n pankit huomasivat istuvansa juoksuhiekassa.

Stalinististen hallitusten romahdus Itä-Euroopassa nähtiin alunperin suurena historiallisena tilaisuutena Euroopan imperialismille, ennen kaikkea yhdistymisen moottorina, Saksa-Ranska-akselilla. Vuoden 1992 Maastrichtin sopimusta, joka oli EU:n perusta ja lanseerasi Euro-valuutan sekä myöhemmin laajensi EU:ta Venäjän rajalle, seurasi lainojen tulva ja Länsi-Euroopan yritysten uudelleensijoittuminen Keski-Eurooppaan ja Balkanille, ruokkien Euroopan imperialistien unelmia kylmän sodan jälkeisten olosuhteiden paranemisesta. Tämänhetkinen kriisi tuhoaa koko rakennelman: Maastrichtin sopimuksen rajoituksia ylenkatsotaan, euro on valtavien paineiden alla sekä tuottavat olosuhteet Itä-Euroopan maissa ja niitä säätelevät kapitalistiset hallitukset, ovat muuttuneet painajaiseksi Euroopan pankeille ja vastaaville maille. Itä muuttui mustaksi aukoksi uhaten imaista koko lännen tyhjiöön, George Sorosin metaforaa lainaten.

Yhteiskunnallinen maisema on muokkautunut koko maanosassa uudeksi areenaksi luokkataistelulle, uusin aalloin ja keinoin. Parhaillaan joukkolakot, yleislakot ja nuorten massojen liikehdintä Belgiassa, Kreikassa, Italiassa ja Saksassa ovat vasta alkua.

KAPITALISMIN KRIISI JA RESTAURAATIO

5. Lokakuun vallankumouksen jälkeisestä imperialistien sotilaallisesta väliintulosta, natsien Barbarossa-operaatioon Neuvostoliittoa vastaan ja aina kylmään sotaan asti, maailman kapitalismilla on aina ollut selvä pyrkimys ja tarve selvitä heikentymisestään valloittamalla uudelleen laajoja alueita, joilla pääoma pakkolunastettiin vuoden 1917 ja toisen maailmansodan jälkeen.

Kolmekymmentä vuotta sen jälkeen kun Kiina siirtyi vapaaseen markkinatalouteen Dengin johdolla, ja ennen kaikkea lähes kaksikymmentä vuotta Itä-Euroopan Stalinismin romahtamisen, Neuvostoliiton hajoamisen ja kapitalistisen restauraation jälkeen, tuli selväksi, että maailman kapitalismi ei ainoastaan löytänyt uudestaan nuoruuttaan, vaan etenkin nyt, kohtaa pahimman kriisinsä.

Huolimatta ulkomaisen lainan tulvasta Itään ja tuhoisasta NATO-sodasta joka hävitti entisen Jugoslavian, kapitalistinen restauraatio Keski-Euroopassa ja Balkanilla osoittaa nyt haurauttaan, johtuen pääasiallisesti ulkomaisen pääoman maahantulosta, eikä syvään juurtuneista paikallisista kapitalistisista rakenteista.

Odotukset siitä, että Kiinan talouskasvu tarjoaa ulospääsyn tämänhetkisestä putoamisesta maailmanlaajuiseen lamaan, ovat täysin kuvitteellisia. Päinvastoin, se on siirtymä kansainvälisestä taloudellisesta kaaoksesta ja luottokriisistä romahdukseen ja lamaan, joka kärjistää kaikki Kiinaan kasautuneet taloudelliset ja yhteiskunnalliset ristiriidat maailmalla, arvaamattomin seurauksin.

Kiinan talouskasvu johtuu viennistä. Se ei voi laukaista nousua muualla; kun maailman talouskasvu hidastuu, kiinalaisten tuotteiden kysyntä putoaa tai seisahtuu. Suurin osa Kiinan viennistä kohdistuu USA:n kulutusmarkkinoille, jotka ovat nyt romahtamassa, ensimmäistä kertaa kahteenkymmeneen vuoteen.

Kasvun on jo arvioitu laskevan 11%:sta 9:ään tai jopa 7%:n vuonna 2009. Leikkauksista alumiinin ja nikkelin tuotannossa ilmoitettin heti, kun kriisi maailmalla kiihtyi. The People’s Bank of China arvioi lokakuun 31. päivä, että kahtena seuraavana vuonna asuntojen hinnat putoavat 10-30%, puhkaisten kiinteistökuplan ja vielä tärkeämpänä se paljasti huolensa maksukyvyn heikkenemisestä huonoin seurauksin, ei vain kiinteistökauppiaille vaan myös kaupallisille pankeille, jotka ovat omistaneet 20-40% lainoistaan kiinteistökaupan sektorille. Leikkaukset pankkien korkotasoissa ovat myös merkki Kiinan talouden nopeasta hiipumisesta, maailman uusien olosuhteiden alla. Länsimaiset analyytikot, kuten R. Roubini, arvioivat kovaa laskua Kiinan taloudelle ensi vuonna.

Kiinan talouskasvu, joka teki siitä kuluneina vuosina ”maailman työpajan”, perustuu Kiinan vallankumouksen pakkolunastamien pääomasektorien kannibalisointiin (valtion yritykset ja pankkijärjestelmä), jolla viedään eteenpäin vientiin perustuvaa taloutta, välittämättä paikallisista tarpeista tai kotimaantalouden voitoista. Vahvaa kapitalistista kehitystä ajetaan eteenpäin ei-kapitalistisin perustein (esim. Valtion pankit tarjoavat lainoja ilman kapitalistisia kriteereitä) ja lopulta stalinistisen hallituksen kurinalaista, halpaa ja laajaa työvoimaa riistämällä, globaalin pääoman nimissä.

Yhteiskunnallinen eriarvoisuus maailmanmarkkinoille avoimien rannikon teollisuuskaupunkien ja sisämaan maaseudun välillä, ruokkii pysäyttämätöntä muuttoliikkeen tulvaa kaupunkeihin, maaseudun levottomuutta, jatkuvia maanviljelijöiden kapinoita sekä työläisten raivoisia lakkoja.

Kiina tarvitsee 9-10% kasvutahdin vastaanottaakseen vuosittaisen n. 24 miljoonan ihmisen liittymisen työtätekevään väestöön ja 12-14 miljoonan köyhän maanviljelijän muuton teollisuuskaupunkien alueelle. Kasvutahdin laskeminen tämän tason alle, synnyttää miljoonia työttömiä ja lisää räjähtävää  materiaalia tulevissa mullistuksissa. Kiinan talouden kova lasku 12%:sta 6%:n kriittiselle tasolle (joka on hyvin mahdollista maailman tämänhetkisissä kriisioloissa), tarkoittaa kuoliniskua Kiinan kommunistisen puolueen byrokraattisen hallinnon tasapainolle ja laillisuudelle.

KKP:n johto on jakautunut kahteen ääripäähän: joko se yrittää ylläpitää korkeaa kasvutasoa, keskittymällä rannikkoalueiden pyrkimyksiin, kohdaten USA:n ja maailmanmarkkinoiden ristiriidat ulkomailla ja sisämaan maatalousalueiden hajoamisen kotimaassa; tai se katkaisee kaikki linkit maailmanmarkkinoille ja kääntyy sisäänpäin, luodakseen omat sisäiset (kapitalistiset) markkinat. Molemmat vaihtoehdot kärjistävät erimielisyydet räjähdyspisteeseen.

Putinin Venäjään maailman kärjistyvä kriisi, lainansaannin vaikeutuminen sekä öljyn ja raaka-aineiden hintojen putoaminen iskee armottomasti. Se kohtaa pahimman kriisinsä elokuun 1998 vararikon jälkeen.

Kun Venäjän valtio elokuussa vuonna 1998, Aasian pörssiromahdusta seuranneen kansainvälisen kurimuksen aikana ja Jeltsinin alaisen valtaeliitin suorittaman julkisen omaisuuden ”vuosisadan varkauden” jälkeen, oli kyvytön maksamaan lainojaan ja julisti vararikon, tilanne on nyt päinvastainen: kun Valtion pääomavarat ovat melko suuret, maailman kolmanneksi suurimmat (johtuen pääosin nopeasta noususta öljyn hinnassa, heinäkuuta 2008 edeltäneenä seitsemänä vuotena), kansainvälisen luottokriisin paheneminen antoi kovia iskuja valtaeliitille (oligarkit) ja yksityiselle sektorille, jotka olivat yhtäkkiä kyvyttömiä vastaamaan vaatimuksiin, joita asetettiin kunnianhimoisia projekteja varten haetuille lainoille, etenkin energia- ja raaka-aineteollisuudessa.

Syys- lokakuussa 2008 kaksi Venäjän pörssiä olivat menettäneet 75% pääomituksestaan, toukokuun korkeista luvuista ja ovat toistuvasti pakotettuja sulkemaan muutamaksi päiväksi. Ulkomaisen pääoman poistuminen maasta, joka alkoi ennen Georgian sotaa, nopeutui jälkeenpäin.

Valtion täytyi lisätä likviditeettiä suuresti (arviolta 90 miljardia dollaria) Venäjän osakemarkkinoiden syyskuun 16. ja lokakuun 6. päivän romahduksien jälkeen, vastauksena epäilyihin Venäjän pankkien tasapainosta.

Kreml kääntyi ensimmäisenä valtaeliitin puoleen, pakottaen sen ohjaamaan takaisin kotimaan markkinoille ja pankkeihin 10-30% varoistaan, tukemaan talousjärjestelmää. Valtio vahvisti kontrolliaan valtaeliitin varoihin, mutta se ei riittänyt pysäyttämään kriisiä. Joidenkin suurimpien oligarkkien, joilla oli paljon omaisuutta, mutta vähän rahaa, kuten Venäjän rikkaimman miehen Oleg Deripaskan, täytyi varallisuutensa säilyttääkseen muuttaa rahaksi imperiumiensa osia.

90-luvun näytelmä esitetään uudelleen takaperin: nyt Valtio ohjaa ja laajentaa valtaansa kotimaahan sekä kontrolliaan valtaeliittiin ja yksityiseen sektoriin, samalla kun kapitalismin restauraatiolle välttämätön keskiluokka köyhtyy nopeasti.

Nyt liikakasvuinen, Putinin bonapartismin valvonnassa rakennettu valtio huomaa perustustensa horjuvan. Pakotettuaan valtaeliitin maksamaan kriisi, sen täytyi poistaa yleinen velttous omin apukeinoin, etenkin käteisvarojensa avulla, jotka ovat pudonneet elokuun 600-650 miljardista dollarista, lokakuun 17. päivän 515 miljardiin dollariin. Pääoma pakenee 12-16 miljardia dollaria viikossa.

Venäjän ulkomaan velat olivat kesäkuussa 527,1 miljardia dollaria, joista pankkien, yksityisten ja valtionomistamien, osuus oli 228,9 miljardia dollaria. Venäläiset pankit tarvitsevat ulkomaista pääomaa rahoittamaan kaiken autolainoista Venäjän energia- ja raaka-aineyhtiöiden pääomakuluihin. Kun rupla heikkenee suhteessa dollariin, dollareissa myönnetyt ulkomaanlainat nostavat arvoaan. Syyskuun jälkeen rupla oli pudonnut neljänneksellä, nostaen reilusti dollareissa ilmoitetun velan summaa. Tästä syystä Kremlin täytyi puuttua nopeasti asiaan.

Koko Venäjän talouden tasapainottaminen Putinin hallituksen valvonnassa nojasi yhteen tukipilariin: energiaan. Öljyn ja raaka-aineiden hintojen pudotessa pilari on murtumassa. Raakaöljyn hinnan pudotessa n. 65 dollariin tynnyriltä, Venäjän budjetti vuodelle 2009 jää hädin tuskin plussan puolelle. Ja maailman lamassa, pahin on vielä edessä.

Kasvava inflaatio ruokkii jo massojen tyytymättömyyttä. Vuosina 2000-2008 kasatun hallituksen suosio on jo hiipunut. Kysymys työväenluokan itsenäisestä liikekannallepanosta yhteiskunnallisessa taistelussa on jo esitetty. Erityisesti ulkomaiselle pääomalle avoimet sektorit kärsivät pahoin; lakot Fordin ja muissa Leningradin alueen tehtaissa viime vuonna, ovat vain edelläkävijöitä uuden aikakauden konflikteille, jotka tulevat pitämään sisällään runsaampia kerroksia.

Avainkysymys on työväenliikkeen poliittinen itsenäisyys ja johtajuus. Stalinismi on horjuttanut uskoa sosialismiin ja ajanut sen rakentumisen umpikujaan ja romahdukseen. Työläisten on päästävä yli aiemmista hajoamisista, mukaan lukien vuoden 1991 jälkeinen aika ja rakennettava uusia organisaatiota. Suurin osa vasemmistosta, Stalinistisesta tai ei, mukautui Putinin/Medvedevin hallitukseen ja sen ”vahvan valtion patriotismiin”, tai liberaaleihin. Liberalismi ajautui konkurssiin jo 90-luvulla ja maailman tämänhetkinen kriisi tuhoaa sen rippeetkin. Sama kriisi antaa kuoleman suudelman Putinin aikakaudelle. Työväen etujoukon täytyy raivata uusi Sosialistinen tie ulos kriisistä, suorittaa valtaeliitin ja sen Kremlin suojelijoiden pääoman pakkolunastus, luoda kansainvälinen sosialististen keinojen hätätilaohjelma ja jälleenrakentaa Neuvostoliitto uudistetuista lähtökohdista, etenkin uuden sukupolven taistelijoiden avulla, vaikka vain pienten hajanaisten maneerien pohjalta, anti-byrokraattisen, kansainvälisen kommunismin lipun alla.

KRIISI JA MASSOJEN RADIKALISOINTI

6. Tämänhetkinen kehitys on antanut tuhoavan ideologisen iskun kaikille puolestapuhujille ja skeptikoille, etenkin vasemmistossa, jotka ovat aina liian itsevarmoja systeemin tasapainosta ja kyvystä voittaa sen kohtaamat kriisit. Nyt kun he eivät voi kieltää kriisin todellisuutta, he kieltävät sen vallankumoukselliset seuraukset.

Taloudellisen kriisin ja massojen vallankumouksellisen mobilisoinnin suhde ei tietenkään ole lineaarinen, vaan dialektinen, ristiriitojensa takia. Marx ja Marxilaisuus ovat kuitenkin osoittaneet kuinka sisäiset ristiriidat pääoman kasvaessa räjähdysmäisesti, johtavat uusiutuviin aina pahempiin kriiseihin ja luovat olosuhteet niiden kumoamiseen: ”Nämä räjähdysmäiseen kasvuun, mullistuksiin ja kriiseihin johtavat ristiriidat, äkillinen työvoiman syrjäyttäminen ja suurten pääomaosuuksien hävittäminen, johtavat edellisen väkivaltaiseen palaamisen pisteeseen, jossa se voi jatkaa työllistäen täysin sen tuottavat osat tekemättä itsemurhaa. Silti nämä säännöllisesti uusiutuvat katastrofit johtavat niiden toistumiseen suuremassa mittakaavassa ja viimein niiden väkivaltaiseen kumoamiseen” (Grundisse, in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Progress-Moscow 1987, vol.29 p.134).

”Suurten pääomaosuuksien hävittäminen” tapahtuu parhaillaan pankkien, yritysten ja valtioiden konkurssien ja velkataakkojen alla ja ”työvoiman syrjäyttäminen” tuottaa jatkuvasti legioonittain työttömiä, kun maailmantalouden rajut ristiriidat kehittyvät, sekä viimeisenä, muttei vähäisimpänä, kapitalismin ”väkivaltaisen kumoamisen” haamu kummittelee kaikissa pääoman turvapaikoissa. Jopa Financial Timesin toimittaja M. Wolf (28/10/08), mainitsee maailmanlaajuisen laman poliittisten seurausten listassaan, ksenofobian ja nationalismin rinnalla vallankumouksen.

Ksenofobia  on ollut täällä jo vuosikymmeniä ja muuttuu epäilemättä yhä barbaarisemmaksi, etenkin ”kolonialismin jälkeisessä” Euroopassa. Taloudellisen nationalismin nousu pahentaa entisestään kansalaisuuteen, etnisyyteen ja rotuun kohdistuvaa vihaa. Kukaan ei voi aliarvioida barbariaa, joka kohoaa historian järjestelmien kriiseistä. Mutta myös sosialistisen vallankumouksen mahdollisuus on tulossa takaisin.

Kriisin vaikutus ei ole irrallaan poliittisesta tilanteesta kokonaisuudessaan, tilanteista jotka edeltävät tai seuraavat sitä ja itse joukkoliikkeestä ennen kriisin purkautumista ja samanaikaisesti sen kanssa.

Viime vuosikymmeninä selvästi ilmennyt työväenliikkeen ja luokkatietoisuuden takaisinvirtaus on toiminut porvareiden ideologista valtaa voimistavana tekijänä, etenkin Neuvostoliiton hajoamisen jälkeen. Historiallisia tappioita, kuten 20- ja 30-lukujen Saksan ja Italian kaltaisten fasististen ja imperialististen valtioiden riemuvoitot, ei ole kuitenkaan tapahtunut. Päinvastoin, mikä on tullut esiin on hallitsevan luokan kasvava kyvyttömyys hallita sen omien ratkaisemattomien taloudellisten ja sosiaalipoliittisten ristiriitojen keskellä, kun taas proletariaatin taistelukapasiteetti ja vallankumouksellinen potentiaali ei ole tuhoutunut. Jo 90-luvun puolivälissä ja loppupuolella alkanut kasvava radikalisoituminen alkoi näyttäytyä vuoden 1995 Ranskan joukkolakoissa, kapitalistisen globalisaation vastaisissa mellakoissa Seattlesta Geneveen, palestiinalaisten toisessa kansannousussa, 2001 joulukuun mellakoissa Argentiinassa, imperialistisen Irakin sodan vastaisissa joukkomielenosoituksissa 2003, Irakin ja Afganistanin imperialistisen ”terrorisminvastaisen sodan” epäonnistumisessa ja sionistisen invaasion tappiossa Libanonissa 2006. Koko Latinalainen Amerikka on vallankumousta edeltävässä tilassa, jonka merkkinä ovat kapinoiden sarja Caracasin protesteista (Caracazo) ja mellakoista Venezuelassa 1989, Argentiinan mellakoihin 2001 (Argentinazo), kansannousut Boliviassa ja Ecuadorissa 2000-2003 sekä USA:n johtama sotilasvallankaappaus ja pomojen uloslukitseminen Venezuelassa 2002. Esiin tuleva vallankumous ei rajoitu yhteen maanosaan, vaan muuttuu keskeiseksi tekijäksi maailman tämänhetkisen kriisin hajottamisessa. Kansallisen itsehallinnon imperialisminvastaisella prosessilla ei ole huomattavaa esitaistelijaa valtakunnallisessa porvaristossa eikä kansallisen tai sotilaallisen pikkuporvariston ylemmissä kerroksissa, eivätkä ne ole löytäneet sopivaa ilmaisua historialliselle liikkeelle joka on edustettuna. Latinalainen Amerikka muuttuu historiassaan ainutlaatuisen poliittisen tapahtuman näyttämöksi, yhdistäen militaristisia tai syntyperäisiä nationalistisia hallituksia, kuten Hugo Chavesin, Evo Moralesin ja Correan hallitukset Venezuelassa, Boliviassa ja Ecuadorissa, keskustavasemmistolaisten, kuten Lulan Brasiliassa ja Frente Amplion Uruguayssa, hallitusten kanssa. Kun kaikenlaiset opportunistit sopeuttavat itsensä nykyiseen Chavistiseen hallintoon ja jopa imperialismin hyväksi toimivaan keskustavasemmistoon, lahkolaiset kerääntyvät yhteen paheksumaan molempia hallituksia, säilyttäen kuitenkin nationalistiset näkemyksensä (esim. Morenoistinen PSTU Brasiliassa). Vallankumouksellinen suuntautumisemme on päinvastoin taistelu Jenkkien imperialismia vastaan sekä Latinalaisen Amerikan yhtenäisyys, joka perustuu vallankumoukselliseen sosialismiin, vastakohtanaan porvarillinen ja pikkuporvarillinen nationalismi.

Euroopassa, etenkin Ranskassa, yhteiskunnallinen kriisi, porvarillisen parlamenttijärjestelmän epäoikeudenmukaisuus, byrokraattisen vasemmiston liittyminen keskustavasemmistoon sekä massojen radikalisoituminen ovat tuoneet esityslistalle uuden, kapitalismia vastaan taistelevan puolueen perustamisen ja rakentamisen. Ranskassa kokemuksen riittämättömyys Sosialistisen puolueen (SP) ja ”moniarvoisen vasemmiston” sosiaali-liberaalisten hallitusten sarjassa, huonoon valoon joutunut ja sisäisesti jakautunut SP  ja lähes tuhoutunut Kommunistinen Puolue ovat aiheuttaneet uusia radikalisoituneita kerroksia sekä kysynnän ja tarpeen Puolueelle, joka on valmis kohtaamaan uusia haasteita. Trotskilaisen perinteen historiallisten organisaatioden, Lutte Ouvrieren (LO) ja Ligue Communiste Revolitionnairen (LCR) kohdalla ympyrä on sulkeutumassa. LCR hylkäsi sen historialliset viittaukset trotskilaisuuteen ja Neljänteen Internationaaliin ja laukaisi New Anti-Capitalist Partyn (NPA) kampanjan. Vaikka uuden kapitalismia vastaan taistelevan puolueen tarve ja sille asetetut vaatimukset kohdistuvat NPA:han, ehdotettu ohjelma ja näkökulmat eivät ole vallankumouksellinen vaihtoehto, vaan uusi paketti vanhalle reformistiselle sisällölle joka on jo epäonnistunut.

Työväenluokka, nuoriso ja kaikki sorretut kapinoitsijat, Ranskassa ja muualla, tarvitsevat uudentyyppisen taistelupuolueen, joka pystyy avaamaan taisteleville joukoille sosialistisen tien ulos maailman kapitalismin kriisistä.

Kuten Trotski on painottanut, voitto ei ole ennalta määrätty automaattisella tapahtumienkululla. Vallankumouksellisen johdon vastuu kyseisissä olosuhteissa on valtava.

Keskustelu systemaattisesti liikkeellepanevasta ja vallankumouksellisessa taistelussa massat yhdistävästä siirtymävaiheen ohjelmasta on tällä hetkellä tärkeämpää kuin koskaan. Keskeiset vaatimukset, jotka voidaan esittää kansainvälisessä taistelussa ovat:

-    Pankkien pakkolunastaminen ilman hyvityksiä ja niiden asettaminen työläisten kontrolliin
-    Työntekijöiden erottaminen ja työpaikkojen tuhoaminen täytyy kieltää; sulkeutuvien toimitilojen valtaus ja kirjanpidon asettaminen työläisten hallintaan, suurten yritysten pakkolunastaminen ilman hyvityksiä
-    Välittömät korotukset palkoissa ja ansiotuloissa, liukuva palkka- ja työaika-asteikko; vähemmän työtä ja työtä kaikille! Täydet palkat työttömille! Täydellinen tasa-arvo paikallisten ja siirtolaistyöläisten välille!
-    Alas kapitalistihallitukset! Ei luokkayhteistyölle ja kriisinhoidolle yhdessä pääoman edustajien kanssa, työläisten vallan, proletariaatin diktatuurin ja sosialistisen ulos kriisistä johtavan tien saavuttamiseksi
-    Alas imperialismi, sotiensa ja toimiensa kanssa! Imperialistien joukot pois Irakista ja Afganistanista! NATO:n ja imperialistien tukikohtien purkaminen! Alas imperialistinen Euroopan Unioni, tilalle Euroopan Yhdistyneet Sosialistivaltiot! Latinalaisen Amerikan sosialistinen yhtenäisyys! Maailman Sosialistinen Tasavalta!

Toisen Maailmansodan aattona perustettu Neljäs Internationaali asetti kyseisen ohjelman perustavanlaatuiset linjat, yhdistäen kaikki Lokakuun Vallankumouksen ja sen jälkeiset historialliset kokemukset. Ne ovat korvaamaton linkki kaikkien 20. vuosisadan vallankumousten ja vastavallankumousten yhteenottojen ja uusien 21. vuosisadan näyttämöllä nousevien vallankumousten välillä. Neljännen Internationaalin uudelleen perustaminen ja vallankumouksellisten puolueiden rakentaminen sen osiksi ovat tärkeimmät tulevat tehtävämme.

__Milano,  8.11.2008

(1)  toxic asset = toksiset velkakirjat = kaikki omistuskirjat, jotka sisältävät sub-prime mortgage market assets, eli sopimuksia ja lainoja liittyen korkean riskin luottovaroihin asuntomarkkinoilla

1.     The entire world historic landscape has changed. The exacerbation in September-October 2008 of the world capitalist crisis that exploded last year takes unprecedented dimensions driving to collapse the world stock markets, the international banking system, gigantic industries and a growing number of States on the edge of default.

The global crash has already taken place. The capitalization of world stock markets has halved; losses on debt instruments now amount nearly $3 trillion, and debt destruction inexorably continues; there is a “near-disintegration of the western world’s banking system” (Financial Times, 28/10/08) despite unprecedented State interventions.

World economy is contracting; The IMF predicts for 2009 a generalized recession in the developed world as a whole and more than 20 million new losses of jobs. Conditions of starvation produce already hunger riots in the so-called “Third World” countries, and the falling of commodity prices will accelerate the bankruptcy of raw material exporting countries. Nothing can be the same anymore.

Nearly two decades ago the disintegration of the USSR was celebrated by capitalism as “the end of communism” and of History itself; now capitalism itself faces its own implosion in its metropolitan centers, in the United States, Europe and Japan. The post 1989/91 myth of an apparently triumphant liberal capitalist system, including the fantasy of a “uni-polar world” centered in the “unchallenged” American Empire has collapsed.
The strongest capitalist superpower on the planet, capitalist America as a whole, not solely the evaporated US “sub-prime mortgage market”, is transformed into the most “toxic asset” of the global system. Trotsky had predicted that America rising to world hegemony accumulates all the world contradictions as dynamite in its foundations. This dynamite, accumulated during a century of expansions and crises, of wars and revolutions, is now exploding changing the shape of the world in the 21st century.

The current crisis is the culmination and supersession of all previous major systemic crises from the break up in 1971 of the Bretton Woods framework that attempted to avoid a relapse to the Great Depression pre-war years, to the financial shocks of the ’80s and ’90s (the 1984 Latin American ‘tequila crisis’, the 1987 Crash, the 1997 Crash, centered in Asia and followed by Russia’s default in 1998, the burst of the US ‘dot.com economy’ in 2000, the recession of 2001-2002, Enron’s debacle, Argentina’s default etc) throughout the decades of finance globalization.
In the period 2002-2006, the spiral of the crisis was deflected and the two interconnected engines of US credit expansion and China’s industrial growth drove a relative upturn of world economy. But now, the two engines are stalling. The contraction of world economy tries to eliminate the enormous amounts of surplus capital both fictitious and productive that obstruct the process of capital accumulation.

Capital is not a thing but a social relation. The explosion in the foundations of the system is driving the tectonic plates of society changing all social relations and international relations. A way out from the impasse can be opened only through a series of historic confrontations between the conflicting social forces, first of all, between capital and labor. In other words, the solution of the crisis depends, at the last instance, from the confrontation between social revolution and counter-revolution on an international scale.  The central task of the international working class and of its vanguard is the urgent political, programmatic, organizational preparation by all theoretical and practical means for this confrontation.

The new historical situation at the end of the first decade of the 21st century demands the mobilization of the oppressed and exploited masses under the banner of a revolutionary International of the 21st century- the refounded Fourth International!

From crisis to crash and slump

2. America, the historically highest point of development of world capitalism, has been transformed into the center of world capitalism has become the center of its deepening crisis.

The collapse of the US sub-prime market in 2007 unleashed an international financial avalanche of bankruptcies and a global credit crunch, followed by a skyrocketing rise and then a dramatic fall in oil and commodity prices, but, above all, an unstoppable slide to a synchronized world economic downturn and recession.

The three decades-long finance capital globalization, after a series of shocks (1984, 1987, and 1997) ended into a catastrophe.

The outright failure of so-called ‘neo-liberalism’, the economic dogma followed by almost every capitalist government, was epitomized by the dramatic actions taken urgently by the champions of privatizations, of Reaganomics and Thatcherism in the US and UK, themselves.

The process of increasing State rescue operations started from the nationalization of Northern Rock Bank in Britain in September 2007, of Bear Sterns, one of the ‘Big Four’ investment banks in the United States, in March 2008, and then reached a decisive turning point that precipitated the September-October maelstrom: the nationalization of the twin giants Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac controlling the four fifths of the collapsing US mortgage market, in September 2008.

The US Administration, of course, had no other alternative but to transgress its own founding principles of capitalist fundamentalism. It could not allow two Government Sponsored Enterprises with a debt equal to 40% of the US GDP just to collapse by the blows of the ‘invisible hand”. Such collapse meant chaos in the international financial system, a run on the dollar- and a declaration of default by the United States.

There is no doubt that this gigantic bail-out put a tombstone not only to what misleadingly was named ‘neo-liberalism’ but to an entire era dominated by the central capitalist illusion of a market economy self-regulated by an “invisible hand”. It demonstrates that the law of value is exhausted as a regulative principle of the economy; abstract labor is too restricted as a measure of material social wealth; world capitalism, thus, in its advanced imperialist stage, has entered long ago an historical epoch of decline.

Although the US government had no other alternative but to nationalize Fannie and Freddie, this rescue operation produced new problems. The funds expended for the rescue operation (about $200-300 billion) prevented its repetition to other financial institutions in distress. The biggest first casualty was the 158 years old, gigantic investment banks Lehman Brothers, which was left to collapse.

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers became the catalyst for an avalanche of bankruptcies, an intensification of global credit crunch, and worldwide panic. Coinciding with the forced sale of Merrill Lynch, in the weekend of 13-14 September 2008, followed by the last minute rescue by Fed of the huge AIG insurance company showed clearly that the American-led global financial meltdown has not stopped.

In six months the entire investment bank Wall Street establishment was dismantled: Bear Sterns was broken, Lehman Brothers was bankrupt, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had to be re-categorized and put under the authority of the Fed.

A series of dramatic State interventions followed both in America and Europe superseding what happened after the eruption of the crisis in 2007.

During 2007-2008, the world had became already witness of continuous, unprecedented in scale and in nature but finally unsuccessful interventions by the State authorities and central banks of the most powerful capitalist economies and imperialist countries in the world, in North America, Europe and Asia, to halt the unfolding crisis and its systemic dangers. Hundreds of billions of dollars, euros and yens were injected in the banking system, an expansionary monetary policy of interest rates cuts was followed by the US Fed and other central banks, fiscal stimulus, i.e. tax cuts favoring the rich in trouble, were introduced but the spiral of the world crisis continued to unfold threatening the entire system.

After the Lehman Brothers debacle, the Paulson $700 billion plan was urgently introduced to buy “toxic assets» relieves the financial system from their destructive burden. It was finally voted in Congress without avoiding a political crisis- and without convincing that the plan will be ultimately effective. Even from this sum, $250 billion had urgently to be re-directed to re-capitalize and partially nationalize the 9 strongest US banks. The Paulson Plan attacks as the main problem illiquidity while the true core problem is insolvency. Securitization dispersed globally the risks and made bankruptcy dangers opaque, destroying thus any creditworthiness and freezing the credit lines. Lending by banks was over-extended, sometimes 60 times more than their assets, making them now candidates to file for bankruptcy. The Paulson Plan gives some temporary relief to the Wall Street magnates while the taxpayer ‘Main Street’ has to pay the bill. It transfers another part of the huge private debt to the public debt of an already over-indebted America.

While, with the growth of US deficits, the need for foreign investors for financing it grows, US creditworthiness is rapidly deteriorating. The ratio of total US debt to GDP from 163 % in 1980 became 240% in 1990 and jumped to 346% in 2007.It is enormously aggravated with the dramatic developments of 2007-2008, including the addition to the public debt of $6 trillion liabilities of Fannie and Freddie and the $700 billion of the Paulson Plan. America has been transformed into a super-Argentina in a non-declared default. The problem of US over-indebtedness is transferred to the next Administration.

Barak Obama’s electoral victory expresses the need both of the rulers and the ruled to overcome an unbearable situation, inherited from the Bush Administrations years: deterioration of living conditions, growing unemployment, a ballooning consumer, corporate, and public debt, gigantic deficits, recession and a financial catastrophe – together with an equally catastrophic impasse in the international “war on terror” in the Middle East and Central/ South Asia.

The new Obama Administration is an instrument at the hands of US imperialism to manage its crisis; its policies inescapably at some point will clash violently with the great expectations risen in the masses of workers and oppressed minorities mobilized for its victory.

The UK government introduced the Gordon Brown plan on October 8 by nearly nationalizing eight big banks. Together UK, Germany and France announced on October 13 more than $ 222 billion of new bank liquidity and nearly $1 trillion in interbank loan guarantees.

But these unprecedented measures did not dissipate the crisis. Recession expands in the US, in UK, in the Euro-zone and Japan. Stock markets, currency markets, banks and industries are in continuous turmoil under the shadow of a slump or of global stag-deflation (stagnation plus deflation) which is underway (See http://www.rgemonitor.com October 25, 2008).

The interest rates cut by the Fed, twice in October 2008, to the lowest level reached after 9/11(and similar moves that followed by the ECB, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and other central banks in Asia) could have a very ephemeral effect in the volatile stock markets but are totally unable to reverse the contraction of world economy. As many analysts pointed out, these cuts are just a sign of desperation.

Enters the State

3. Any State intervention is totally inadequate to face the enormity of the problem produced by the over-accumulation of fictitious capital.

The derivatives market expanded from a $100 trillion in 2002 to $516 trillion in BIS’s estimation in 2007 or $585 trillion in other estimations!  Comparatively all the real goods and services produced by all economies in the world annually, the global annual gross domestic product is less than $50 trillion, and the US annual GDP of approximately $13 trillion. It becomes crystal clear that no intervention by the State, by a central bank or by all of them in the world put together could ever control the tempest of this ocean of derivatives.

While the State is presented by right wing, liberal or left “experts” as the last resort to save the system, one State after another is queuing in the list of countries in default: Iceland, Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Romania, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines et al. One State after another address desperate calls to the IMF, again. The IMF already has answered the calls of Hungary and Ukraine, and probably will intervene in other cases. But the ammunition of this institution is very limited, about $250 billion. It cannot play the role of the savior; rather it will exacerbate the social political problems by imposing its well-known draconian conditions to the countries that it “helps”.

The capitalist Nation/State is totally unable to face a globalized crisis, made possible by the capitalist globalization, which, in the last decades, has interconnected the national parts of world economy much deeper than ever before in the imperialist epoch.

After the 1929 Crash, it was the link to the Gold Standard monetary system that internationalized the crisis, for this reason also it took some time, up to 1932-33, for the Great Depression to unfold all its destructive power; now, on the contrary, thanks to finance globalization, the financial turmoil immediately led into a banking crisis and precipitated a recession and State bankruptcies starting of Iceland’s.

The Nation/State is not the custodian of last economic resort that will save the global system of capital. On the contrary, because of the crisis of the global capitalist system, it succumbs under the crushing weight of over-indebtedness, the ruin of public finances and an inability to pay the debt leading to default.

The currently unfolding world capitalist crisis demonstrated not solely the total failure of anti-Keynesian neo-liberalism but of any neo-Keynesian State interventionism as well.

But although the State cannot co-op with the task of the economic last resort, it remains the last political resort of the bourgeoisie, the site of its political power with the monopoly of force. Its growing role among conflicting capitalist interests and between capital as a whole and labor strengthens the tendency to take exceptional powers and rule by emergency measures, already seen as the crisis of capitalist globalization emerged in the turn of the century and the frenzy of the “war on terror” had started.

As the State intrudes among conflicting interests, it becomes a focus of all social tensions, a mediator transforming the economic into a social crisis affecting all classes and spreading misery to the broadest masses, deepening a political crisis around the central question of political power itself.

Both social economic strategies used by capital the last century to repel its historic decline and the threat of the working class- State interventionism and neo-liberalism- have both failed in the long run producing a crisis of governance: those on the top cannot any more govern in the old ways, those on below cannot afford to be governed and live in a miserable present without future. Thus, conditions are building up to the emergence of revolutionary situations.

The “think tanks” of the ruling class recognize the threat. Martin Wolf in Financial Times (October 28, 2008) speaks about the political dangers arising by a global slump mentioning “xenophobia, nationalism and revolution” (emphasis added). It is the last one that drives the world capitalist leaders to an early G20 world summit after the US elections and it pushes Sarkozy and other European leaders to call for a “Bretton Woods II”.

In Bretton Woods in 1944, it was the new world hegemon, the United States, with two thirds of the world gold reserves in its Treasury and its powerful national currency taking the role of the world reserve currency in a fixed parity to gold, that it was able to sustain an international Keynesian New Deal, to reconstruct the ruined Europe and repel the revolutionary threat, with the crucial political help of Stalinism.

Now, the world situation is entirely changed. America, not only is not in a position to re-stabilize Europe, and the capitalist world but it drives them into the abyss; there is no room to any historic concessions to the working class as after World War II, on the contrary  “generosity” to the bankers and financiers is compensated by the destruction of the remaining social services (in Education, Health, pensions etc.) and of the living standards of the impoverished population; and its is a bad time for class collaborators: social democracy is discredited and Stalinism, with its powerful bureaucratic  apparatuses, is no more here to help discipline the workers.

A “Bretton Woods II” is a pipedream of Sarkozy and of other European leaders frightened by the coming social explosions, an illusion shared by the “neo-Keynesians” in the left and the so-called “far” left.

Europe in the zone of storms

4. The current world capitalist crisis revealed the vulnerability of the system in its birthplace, the Old Continent, as well as the fragility of the European Union fuelling all the centrifugal forces turning it apart.

As the crisis escalated in September-October 2008, one European government after another had to intervene with unprecedented measures to prevent the collapse of the biggest banks and companies and stop the financial meltdown. On 28 September the Belgian, Dutch and Luxemburg governments nationalized the bank Fortis, the biggest private employer in Belgium. On 29 September, the British Bradford and Bingley, which had the largest share of the buy-to-let market, was nationalized. On 5 October the German government bailed out the commercial property loan giant Hypo Real Estate and declared that it guarantee the deposits of all savers (the previous day it criticized the Irish government to do exactly the same). On 8 October, the British government re-capitalized and partially nationalized the 8 biggest banks of the country by buying preference shares.

It became clear that despite all claims about European unity, the European capitalists reacted to the global crisis on national lines. It became obvious the absence in the EU of the equivalent of the US Fed able to impose an Eurozone plan. Despite the critics or the apologists that called the EU a “super-state”, this union of European imperialists has a common currency among 15 from its 27members but lacks a European budget or taxation system. The European Central Bank is pre-occupied exclusively to keep inflation rate within the Maastricht treaty limits of 2%- although currently inflation runs more than 3, 6%. Another limit put by the same Treaty, to keep public deficit lower than 2%, is also abandoned for the time being because of the deepening recession. European capitalist leaders call for the imposition of new international regulations- a new “Bretton Woods”- and at the same time they totally ignore their own European regulations!

On October 12-13, the meeting of the Eurozone leaders plus Britain agreed to follow general guidelines by infusing liquidity directly into banks and/or setting up interbank loan guarantees. Germany, France, and Britain together announced more than 163 billion euros ($222 billion) of new bank liquidity and 700 billion euros (nearly $1 trillion) in interbank loan guarantees. But the proposed measures were simply guidelines and each member state has to develop its own independent, national “solution”. The EU, in the moment of truth of a world crisis, demonstrates its structural weakness and the continuing fragmentation of Europe on national capitalist lines. Germany’s government, for example refuses to give one euro for the sake of another European- but non German- bank or company, as the French President Sarkozy asks.

Centrifugal forces are strengthened by differences on three key questions the government’s share of the economy, the government budget deficit and the level of national indebtedness. The most seriously threatened European states are France, Italy, Greece and Hungary.

Hungary’s declaration of default was postponed by getting urgently a $25.1 billion rescue package by the IMF, the European Central Bank and World Bank.

Italy, the fourth biggest economy in Europe, bears the weight of the world’s third largest public debt toppling $ 1trillion, which surpasses Frances’ debt. High public debt, a big budget deficit and government expenditures that total almost 50% of GDP, one of the highest in the world revenue from taxes (43% of GDP) prevent the Italian government to provide any significant bailout to the Italian banking giants Intesa and UniCredit which have a huge exposure in Central Europe and the Balkans. “ Italy therefore, could be the first major eurozone economy to get hammered by the global financial crisis…Italy’s choice will come down to sticking it out through the crisis with outside help (and possibly facing a prolonged recession), or reconsidering its role as a eurozone country”(Stratfor, 28 October 2008). Pressures on the European Monetary Union are building up dangerously from every corner of the over-expanded EU threatening its integrity and the future of the euro itself.

Greece, with a much weaker economy, a public deficit about 3,5% of GDP, a growing current payments deficit bigger than 15% of GDP, and a total public and private debt of half a trillion dollars, has its banking system overexposed in the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria and Romania. Mass liquidation of Greek State bonds (more than 3 billion euros the last 10 days of October 2008) is continuing. Merrill Lynch in its last European report downgraded some of the biggest Greek banks (Alpha Bank, National Bank, Eurobank, and Bank of Piraeus) because the dangers facing in the Balkans.

Bulgaria and Romania are virtually bankrupt threatening a domino effect on Greek, Italian, and French banks. Similar dangers face Austrian banks in Central Europe, and even Sweden in relation to the Baltic countries. All these banks used extensively carry trade with the low interest rate loans in yen and Swiss franc to invest in the East in local currencies with higher interest rates. As the deficits in the Eastern countries were growing and the weak national currents started to fall, EU banks found themselves sitting on moving sand.

The collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe was initially seen as the great historic opportunity for European imperialism, first of all for the engine of its integration, the German-French axis. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992, as the basis of the European Union and the launching of the euro-currency, and latter on, for the expansion of the EU to the borders of Russia, was accompanied by a flood of credit and re-location of West European industries in Central Europe and the Balkans, nurturing the dreams of a European imperialist ascent in the post-Cold War conditions. The current world crisis demolishes the entire edifice: the Maastricht Treaty restrictions are overlooked, the euro is under enormous pressures, and the bonanza in the countries of the East under capitalist restorationist regimes turned into a nightmare for the European banks and their respective countries. East turned into a black hole threatening to absorb the West into its vacuum, to use George Soros’s metaphor.

A new social landscape is shaped in the entire Continent- a new arena for the class struggle, which is rising in new waves and ways. The current mass strikes, General Strikes, or mass youth mobilizations in Belgium, Greece, France, Italy and Germany are just a beginning.

Capitalist Crisis and Restoration

5. From the war of imperialist intervention after the October Revolution to the Nazi Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union to the Cold War, world capitalism had always the clear aim and expectation to overcome its decline by re-conquering the vast spaces, where capital was expropriated after 1917 and the Second World War.

Thirty years after the turn to pro-market policies by China under Deng and, above all, nearly twenty years after the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe, the implosion of the Soviet Union and the turn to capitalist restoration, it is more than obvious that world capitalism not only did not find a new youth but it faces, particularly now, its worst crisis.

Despite a flood of foreign credit to the East- and a devastating NATO war that destroyed former Yugoslavia-capitalist restoration in Central Europe and the Balkans shows now its fragility, depending principally from the inflow of foreign capital than in locally deeply rooted capitalist structures.

Expectations that China’s growth could provide a way out from the current slide to world recession are totally illusory. On the contrary, it is the transition from the international financial turmoil and credit crunch to recession or depression that exacerbate all accumulated contradictions in the Chinese economy and society with incalculable world implications.

Chinese growth is export-led. It cannot trigger resurgences elsewhere; as global growth slows, demand for Chinese goods will tend to stagnate or fall. The main outlet of Chinese exports is the US consumer and now it is collapsing for the first time in two decades.

Already the growth rate is revised downwards from 11% to 9% or 7%, or even lower for 2009. Output cuts in aluminum and nickel production are announced after the escalation of the world crisis. The People’s Bank of China predicted on October 31st that in the coming two years housing prices would slide by 10 to 30% marking the bursting of the real estate bubble; even more important the Bank revealed its worries about a liquidity crunch affecting severely not only real estate companies but also the commercial banks that have devoted from 20% to 40% of their total loans to the real estate sector. Cuts in the banking interest rates are also an indication of a rather rapid cooling of the Chinese growth rate under the new world conditions. Western analysts like N. Roubini predict the high possibility of a hard landing of the Chinese economy next year.

The Chinese growth, which made it in the previous years “the workshop of the world”, is based on the cannibalization of the sectors where the Chinese revolution had expropriated capital (State enterprises, state banking system) to propel an economy led by exports in the world market, not local demand or profit in the domestic market. Strong capitalist development is driven forward on non-capitalist premises (for ex. loans are provided by the State banks without capitalist criteria), and, at the last instance, on over-exploitation of a cheap and vast labor force, disciplined under a Stalinist regime, on behalf of global capital.

Social inequalities between the industrial coastal zones open to the world market and the rural inlands, feed unstoppable waves of inner migration to the cities, rural unrest and continuous peasant rebellions, workers’ wild strikes.

China needs a growth rate of 9-10% to absorb every year about 24 million people joining the labor force, and 12-14 million poor rural farmers moving to the industrial urban sector. Any lowering of the growth rate below this mark adds millions of new unemployed and more explosive material for coming upheavals. In a hard landing of the Chinese economy from 12% down to the critical level of 6% (quite possible in the current conditions of the world crisis) amounts to a death blow to any legitimacy, and stability of the CPC bureaucratic restorationist regime.

The CPC leadership is split by a kind of double bound: either they try to keep a high growth rate by concentrating their efforts to the coastal zones and facing all the consequences abroad of the contraction in the US and world market and at home of the disintegration of the inner agrarian heartland; or they cut their links to the world market and turn inwards to build an internal (capitalist) market. Both processes cannot but exacerbate the contradictions to the point of explosion.

Putin’s Russia is severely hit by the escalation of the world crisis, the credit crunch and the fall of oil and other commodity prices. Russia is facing its worst crisis since the August 1998 default.

While in August 1998, during the international maelstrom after the Asian Crash, it was the Russian State after the “theft of the century” of the public property by the oligarchs in the ’90s under Yeltsin, which was unable to face its debt obligations and declared default, now the situation is the opposite: while the capital reserves of the State are quite strong- the third in the world (because mainly of the skyrocketing rise of the oil price in the previous seven years up to July 2008)- the international credit crunch gave devastative blows to the oligarchs and the private sector, found suddenly unable to meet the margin calls for the loans taken for the ambitious projects, particularly in energy and raw materials.

In September –October 2008 the two Russian stock markets have lost more than 75% of their capitalization from its high in May, and have to repetitively close for two or three days. The exodus of foreign capital, which had started before the Georgian war was, accelerates afterwards.

The State had to make huge liquidity injections (to the tune of roughly $90 billion since the crashes of the Russian stock markets on September 16 and October 6 and in response to concerns about the stability of Russian banks.

The Kremlin turned, first to the oligarchs forcing them to repatriate and inject between 10% and 30% of their total wealth into the markets and banks to shore up the financial system. The State consolidated further its control over the oligarchs’ assets but this was far from enough to stop the crisis. The oligarchs, who are still very rich in assets, they are poor in cash; some of the most powerful of them, like Oleg Deripaska, the wealthiest man in Russia, had to liquidate parts of their empires to remain liquid.

The film of the ’90s is re-played in reverse: now it is the State that extends and consolidates its control over the oligarchs and over the private sector, while a middle class created the last decades and absolutely necessary for the restoration of capitalism is rapidly ruined.

But the hypertrophic State builds up under Putin’s Bonapartism finds its material bases shaken. After forcing the oligarchs to pay for the crisis, now has to pick up the slack with its own resources, namely, its cash reserves, which already have dropped from $ 600-650 billion in August to $ 515 billion on October 17, 2008. Capital flight is running at $12-$16 billion a week.

Total Russian external debt as of June stood at $527.1 billion, of which banks, private or government owned owed $ 228.9 billion. Russian banks are relying upon access to foreign capital to fund everything, from car loans to Russian energy and mineral companies’ capital expenditures. While the ruble depreciates against the US dollar, foreign debts made out in dollars begin to appreciate in value. Since September, the ruble has already dropped by a quarter, increasing the cost of servicing dollar-denominated debt by a like amount. For this reason, the Kremlin has to intervene fast.

But the entire Russian economic re-stabilization under Putin’s regime stood on one pillar: energy. With the fall of the oil and commodity prices the pillar is crumbling.  With crude prices down to around $65 a barrel, the Russian budget for 2009 barely breaks even.  And the worst with a world depression is not yet come.

Growing inflation already fuels mass discontent. The popularity of the regime built up in the years 2000-2008 is undermined. The question for an independent mobilization of the working class in social struggle is on the agenda. Particularly those modernized sectors open to foreign capital are severely hit; strikes such as in Ford and other factories in Leningrad area, last year, are only the forerunners for new conflicts in the next period, and which will involve broader strata.

The key question is the political independence and political leadership of the workers’ movement. Stalinism had discredited Socialism and led its construction into a dead end and collapse. The workers have to overcome the atomization of the past, including of the period after 1991, and build new organizations. Most of the existing Left, Stalinist or not, either adapt itself to Putin /Medvedev’s regime and its “Strong State patriotism” or to the liberals. Liberalism is bankrupt already from the ’90s and the current world crisis will destroy even its remnants. The same crisis gives the kiss of death to Putin’s era. A new, independent road for a socialist way out from the crisis, the expropriation of the oligarchs and their protectors in Kremlin, a national emergency program of socialist measures and for the re-birth of the USSR on renewed bases, ahs to be opened by the workers’ vanguard, particularly by a new generation of fighters that comes forward, even in a small and dispersed manner, under the banner of an anti-bureaucratic and internationalist Communism.

Crisis and mass radicalization

6. Current developments have given a devastative ideological blow to all apologists and skeptics, particularly on the Left, being always over-confident about the stability and the ability of the system to overcome its crises. Now, as they cannot deny the reality of the world crisis, they reject its revolutionary implications.

The relation between the economic crisis and a revolutionary mobilization of the masses is, of course, not a linear but a dialectical one, through contradictions. Nevertheless, Marx and Marxism have demonstrated how the inner contradictions of capital exploding into recurrent, ever more catastrophic crises, create the conditions for its overthrow: “These contradictions lead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which by momentaneous suspension of labour and annihilation of a great portion of capital the latter is violently reduced to the point where it can go on fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide. Yet, these regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale, and finally to its violent overthrow” (Grundrisse, in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Progress-Moscow 1987, vol. 29 p. 134).

The “annihilation of great portion of capital” is going on with a tremendous destruction of mountains of debt, and bankruptcies of banks, companies, and states; “suspension of labour” produces already new legions of unemployed as the violent contraction of world economy develops; and last but not at all least, the specter of a ‘violent overthrow” of capitalism is haunting all the citadels of capital. Even the editorialist of Financial Times M. Wolf (28/10/08), in the list of the political consequences of a developing world slump, alongside with xenophobia and nationalism put revolution.

Xenophobia is here many decades now and undoubtedly it will become even more barbaric, particularly in “post-colonial” Europe. The rise of economic nationalism exacerbates all kinds of national, ethnic and racial hatred. Nobody can underestimate the dangers of barbarism arising from an historic systemic crisis. But the prospect of social revolution is powerfully coming back as well.

The impact of the crisis is not independent from the political situation as a whole, from the events that preceded it or accompany it, and the actual movement of the masses before and at the moment of the eruption of the crisis.

In the last decades, there was certainly a reflux of the workers movement, and of class-consciousness, a strengthening of bourgeois ideological domination, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But no historic defeat, in the scale of the ’20s and ’30s, with the triumphs of fascism in imperialist countries like Germany or Italy, has occurred. On the contrary, what came to surface is the growing inability of the ruling class to rule amidst its insoluble economic and social political contradictions while the fighting capacity, the revolutionary potential of the proletariat is not destroyed. Already from the mid and late ’90s a new, growing radicalization started to manifest itself from the 1995 mass strikes in France to the revolts against capitalist globalization from Seattle to Genoa, the second Palestinian Intifada, the Argentinazo, the mass demonstrations against the imperialist war in Iraq in 2003, the fiasco of the imperialist “war on terror” in Iraq and in Afghanistan, the defeat of the Zionist invasion in Lebanon in 2006.

Latin America as a whole is in a pre- revolutionary situation, marked by a series of rebellions, from the Caracazo in 1989 to the 2001 Argentinazo, the insurrections in Bolivia and Ecuador in 2000-2003, and the defeat of the US led military coup and of the lock out of the bosses in Venezuela in 2002. The emerging revolution is not limited in the frontiers of the Continent but becomes a fundamental historic factor of the current world crisis. The processes of national autonomy against imperialism do not have a prominent protagonist in the national bourgeoisie or the upper strata of the civil or military petty bourgeoisie nor they have found a political expression adequate to the historical movement that represents. Latin America becomes the scene of a political experience unique in its history combining military or indigenous nationalist governments such as those in Venezuela of Hugo Chavez, in Bolivia of Evo Morales and up to a certain point in Ecuador of Correa, and from the other side, center left governments such as Lula’s in Brazil and Frente Amplio’s in Uruguay. While all kinds of opportunists adapt themselves to the actual Chavist regime and even to the pro-imperialist center left, sectarians lump together and condemn abstractly both categories of governments, while keeping the nationalist outlook (for example, the Morenoite PSTU in Brazil). Our revolutionary orientation, on the contrary, is the struggle against Yankee imperialism and for the unity of Latin America on the basis of revolutionary socialism counter-posed to bourgeois and petty bourgeois nationalism.

In Europe, particularly in France, the social crisis, the growing de-legitimacy of the bourgeois parliamentary system and of the official bureaucratic Left joining center left governments, and the radicalization of the masses have put on the agenda the founding and building of a new Party combating capitalism. In France, the exhaustion of the experience of a series of the social-liberal governments of the Socialist Party (SP) and of the “plural Left”, the crisis of the discredited and internally split SP and the near collapse of the Communist Party has posed to the new radicalized strata the question and the need of the Party to confront the new challenges. Lutte Ouvriere (LO) and the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR), the historic organizations coming from the Trotskyist tradition, have coming to the point to close their circle. The LCR abandons its historic references to Trotskyism and the Fourth International and launched a campaign for a New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). Although there is a real need and demand for a new combat Party by the fighters against capitalism turning to the NPA, the program and the perspectives advanced are not a real revolutionary alternative but a new envelop for the old reformist content that already failed.

The working class, the youth and all oppressed in rebellion, in France and everywhere need a combat Party of a new type able to open the road to the fighting masses for a socialist way out from the world capitalist crisis.

Victory is not predetermined by the automatic evolution of events; it is a strategic task, as Trotsky rightly had emphasized. The responsibility of revolutionary leadership in such conditions becomes immense.

The question of the Program of transitional demands systematically mobilizing and uniting the masses in a revolutionary struggle for the seizure of power is crucial today more than ever. Central demands that can articulate internationally the struggle are
* For the expropriation of the banks without compensation and under workers control
* Sacking of workers and destruction of jobs have to been forbidden; occupations of the sites of work that close, opening of the books to workers control, for expropriation of the big companies, without compensation under workers control

* For immediate increases of wages and salaries, for a sliding scale of wages and working hours; less work, work for all! Full wages for the unemployed! Full equality for immigrant and native workers!

* Down with the capitalist governments! No to class collaboration or participation in managing the crisis together with the representatives of capital, for workers power- the dictatorship of the proletariat- and a socialist way out from the crisis!

* Down with imperialism, its wars and occupation! Imperialist troops out from Iraq and Afghanistan! Dismantle NATO and all imperialist bases!  Down with the imperialist European Union, for the United Socialist States of Europe! For the socialist unity of Latin America! For the World Socialist Republic!

The Fourth International, founded on the eve of the Second World War, advanced the fundamental lines of such a program, incorporating all the historical experiences of the October Revolution and after. It is the indispensable mediation between all the experiences of  confrontation of revolution and counter-revolution in the 20th century and the new stage of revolutionary upheavals of the 21st century. Its re-foundation and the building of revolutionary parties as its sections are the most urgent tasks in front.

__Milan, 8 / 11 / 08