You write:
>1) Failure of capitalism to provide a development path for the third world.
>The depression in East Asia has destroyed the ideological underpinnings for
>opportunism. It is no longer possible for Mandela, Lula, the FSLN or any
>other quasi-revolutionary parties of the 1980's generation to make the case
>that capitalism can solve the needs of the people.
And this, if you'll pardon my new-found third-worldism, is where I think we might anticipate the most obvious political resurgence of leftist politics. The picture is as simple as you have it here, I think. Governments are simply gonna have to do things that stop people dying and suffering. And the things they're gonna have to do will have to confront capitalism head on - in ways that can't help lend profile to capitalism's complicity in the problems and incapacity to solve them.
To get a true sense of just how interesting are the times in which we live, I suggest a close eye on the 'second' and 'third' worlds is mandatory. We might even see a lovely little contradiction unfold, as the global tendrils and portals so blithely arranged by our triumphalist globalists bring all this into the loungerooms of those with most media at their reach.
The third world might have a lot to do with what people are thinking in the first from now on.
A lot more than most of the first-world's left, anyway.
Cheers, Rob.