A Crisis of the System Itself

Many are calling the current economic crisis a second Great Depression. While there are the similarities that exist in all crises of capitalism, where the root of the crisis is the inability of the workers to buy back what they produced, there is one overriding qualitative difference today. The depression of the early 20th century could be and was resolved within the capitalist system. It was followed by the greatest expansion of capital and US dominance of the world. Today, with the vast use of labor-replacing technology in production, a permanent economy of overproduction has been created. The Great Depression was a crisis within the capitalist system. Today it’s a crisis of the capitalist system itself. This qualitative difference prevents the resolution of the current economic crisis within capitalism and sets the conditions for revolutionary change.

It’s important to note why the economic crisis of the 1930s could be resolved within the confines of capitalism. The dominant economic force in the world at the time of the Great Depression was Anglo-American imperialism, with the US as junior partner to Great Britain. The effects of this economic crisis were staggering, especially in the northern industrialized cities of the U.S. and the industrialized centers of the world. Other areas were not pulled into the crisis at all. Most countries of Europe were engaged in agricultural production for their own internal markets. China was just escaping feudalism, and entire continents like Africa and Latin America were totally undeveloped regions of the world. While these factors are not determining elements, they are the broad social context in which the world lived during the years of the Great Depression.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal eased some of the harshest blows of the depression in the U.S., but contrary to the mantra of many economists and social activists today, the New Deal did not pull capitalism out of the Great Depression. Massive industrial war production for World War II was the engine that restarted the economy and pulled the US and eventually the world out of the economic crisis. After the war, from the Marshall Plan, through the 1970s, the world capitalist economy led by the U.S. underwent an unparalleled expansion, creating new markets by industrializing the economies of even the most remote regions of the world.

We find ourselves in a qualitatively new social context today where there is one economy covering every corner of the globe, integrated into a worldwide system of finance, production, exchange and communication. The global shift of production to offshore low-wage areas of the world has created a global workforce of poor workers who compete with labor-replacing technology on a worldwide basis. Globalization has created a tremendous increase in worldwide production while it has simultaneously thrown masses of workers around the globe into poverty. The vast majority of the global workforce is either jobless and therefore wage-less or making starvation wages. This growing class of dispossessed is unable to buy the global abundance being produced. The circuit of capital between the producer and the consumer has been severed and the global market has nowhere to expand.

We have reached the stage in human development where the production of abundance without labor requires the social distribution of that production without wages. The revolution in the production process is unleashing a revolution in social and political relations. The governing capitalist class is grappling with how to replace an outmoded capitalist system with a new system that preserves their private property, power and privilege. A growing new class of dispossessed workers is becoming aware that the government has a primary responsibility to provide for its people. Political conditions are rapidly maturing to enable a broader conscious understanding that public distribution of all social production based on human needs is the only solution for the future of humanity. With a vision of the possible, and the spirit and political will to prevail, the people of the earth can shape the future and create a society worthy of our human race and our planet Earth.

Those of us who seek fundamental social change are engaged in a battle to win the hearts and minds of the people. This can't be done without a revolutionary press. For 40 years, the People's Tribune has brought our readers the stories of those who are struggling to move forward in a world where corporate power is threatening to crush them. Along with those stories, we try to offer some strategic perspective to help put the struggle in context and point the way toward victory. We need your help to continue doing this. The People's Tribune gets no grants and has an all-volunteer staff. We rely completely on subscriptions and donations from our readers to enable us to go on telling the truth. Please donate whatever you can. See the subscription/donation form on the right. You can also donate using Pay Pal on our web site, www.peoplestribune.org.

People's Tribune Editorial Board

The People's Tribune needs your help to go on being a voice of the people. We need to raise an additional $1000 each month to continue publishing in our current form. For 40 years, the People's Tribune has brought our readers the stories of those who are struggling to move forward in a world where corporate power is threatening to crush them. Along with those stories, we try to offer some strategic perspective to help put the struggle in context and point the way toward victory. The People's Tribune gets no grants and has an all-volunteer staff. We rely completely on subscriptions and donations from our readers. We do this so that we can continue speaking the truth.

Please donate whatever you can. You can donate using Pay Pal on our web site. Just click on the (Back) button below, then click on the Donate button -- People's Tribune Editorial Board