--- Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> As a result certain Marxists, including Peter
> Taaffe, Lynn Walsh, Robert
> Brenner - and now Hillel Ticktin in the Weekly
> Worker - have asserted that
> this is the deepest crisis that capitalism has faced
> in decades, one that
> poses the potential possibility of a repeat of the
> 1930s great depression.
> Ticktin says: "The question at the moment is not
> really whether there is a
> downturn. It is clear that is the case. The question
> is whether there is a
> depression - and I think there is." And he adds,
> apocalyptically, that the
> "system itself could disintegrate".
>
> Full:
> <http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/717/financial.html>
[WS:] I find it rather unconvincing. This sounds like left wing millenarism or a doomsday cult. Disintegration requires real life social forces not just theoretical contradictions or even real life economic downturn. I just do not see any of such real social forces either capable of willing to bring "the System" down. Certainly, states and capital owners have high stekes in maintaining the current system even if it experiences difficulties, becaouse any alternative is far worse.
And the working class? I think that the majority of the working class - i.e. those living in China, India and other rapidly developing countries favor the global system that brings them jobs and the vision of unprecedented prosperity. It is only the downwardly mobile and "bitter" minority living in the US rust belt or France afraid of the "Polish plumber" who oppose it.
So unless someone shows me a real social force that has both interest and capacity to bring the system down when it experiences difficuluties, I would bet on things going the way they have been for a while, even if the going got a bit tougher.
Wojtek
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