Translated "Avante" article by Jorge Cadima, Member of the PCP International Department
The financial giant, Lehman Brothers, collapsed in September 2008.
During these last five years, the great capital received thousand of millions in public funds, transferring unto the state a great part of their debts and losses. But the capitalism crisis carries on, endlessly. Martin Wolf, the main Financial Times commentator and a member of the Bilderberg Group, questions himself about the reasons, why, upon so many years during which “ Japan, USA, UK and the Euro zone[…] not only offer costless money, but create great amounts of money [ Quantitative Easing-NA kind of programmes], and economies carry on being weak”. And answers, stating one lives “ in an exceeding potential supply world”. In other words, he confesses one is before a deep capitalist overproduction crisis. Evans-Pritchard, another system journalist, in The Telegraph (2013.09.18) writes about “ exceeding capital”, “ lack of consumption” and “ chronic absence of demand within the USA”. But they do not suggest, than instead of handing over money to the banks, money should go to those who work, in order to increase demand.
Wolf represents the capitalists, which are effectively receiving “costless money”. But if for the great capital times are for free, for workers and the peoples, the capitalism crisis reality is sour. The everlasting announced “ economic changes” turn into “ new bailouts”, in other words, peoples’ money plunder to be handed over to the great ( and ravenous) capital. And meanwhile, poverty, salary cuts and unemployment, spread. The Dutch government has just announced the end of the “Social State”(in Financial Times, 2013.09.17). The USA are in the eve of dramatic social cuttings, together with the impoverishment of the working class, during these last 40 years, with the existence of “ a record number of 20,2% families, depending on food aid, currently within the USA and “the North-American economy loosing 347 thousand jobs, in the last two months, which is comparable to the loss rhythm registered during the Great Recession, in 1929,( in The Telegraph, 2013.09.18). The offensive against workers and peoples is not a question of the “ South periphery” or the “PIGS”, but a capitalist system violent expression and its exploiter and parasite nature.
The system is not prepared to survive without “injecting in its vein” fictitious money , but each new “shot“, but prepares ulterior crisis which, sooner or later, will explode. It is incapable of surpassing the overproduction problem, and its social offensive only but turns the situation worse. The incapacity of resolving the crisis incites rivalries among imperialist groups and powers. But it also makes many sectors belonging to the great capital, have the temptation of practising, once again - as in the first half of the 20th century - authoritarianism and violence, in order to impose their domain. A J.P. Morgan financial colossus’ report, from May last, complained about the “deep political problems” which disturbed the “adjustment problems” within the Euro zone. Particularly what concerns the “ periphery political systems established over the dictatorship aftermath and defined by those experiences”. As an example, the “ obstructions” which say the “periphery political systems […] offer constitutional protection to labour rights[…] and the right to protest if undesirable alterations to the political status quo are carried out”. Nostalgic of Fascist constitutions, the great financial capital considers the right to protest ought to be swept away, in order to slowly destroy labour rights. The report mentions Portugal and considers our Constitution as an example of the “obstructions” which “hand tie governments”. With that one agrees. But, on the other side of the class struggle barricade. And which, far from being dead, sweeps our planet, violently.
