But that's precisely the point! You've read me ass-backwards, Marvin. The fact that all these comprador regimes are in Washington's sewage backwash means we need a major shake-up of world power to cut out that hydraulic effect. It's only with a US crash that decoupling is feasible, as we learnt in the 1930s.
The reason for this, of course, is that you comrades have been so terribly weak at limiting US power from below. So a crash from above is the only thing we have left to give us some hope, if we're offshore.
I should add that there are still some silly people out there (surely not on this listserve) who hope for global governance. The Bali negotiations on climate gave them a bit of a thrill because nubile commentators set up the battle as the World v the USA. Low and behold, the world won, it appeared, as the US agreed to come to the table. What nonsense. In reality the world loses because like Gore at Kyoto, the US comes to the table only when it's corporations want some stuff, specifically the privatisation of the air, a.k.a. carbon trading.
> and that they would be the
> beneficiaries of a serious downturn in the world's largest market.
>
>
Of course it takes a couple of years for a local ruling elite to get the point under those circumstances, as we learned in the 1930s.
> The greater likelihood is for a universal contraction in growth and
> employment, and - particularly in the absence of left-wing parties - major
> social crises with potentially barbaric consequences. Marxists have never
> welcomed crises,
Oh, it depends which ones. We've just had a really wonderful crisis in the African National Congress leadership. Just brilliant to see all the awful things the ruling crew do now in full view. And in a way, that's the metaphor for a corruption-ridden, parasitical, debt-fuelled US and world economy, too.
> but framed them more objectively as presenting a choice
> between "socialism or barbarism", the outcome always dependent on the
> balance of power between the classes.
Of course that goes without saying. But if capitalism had continued to tick onwards and ever higher, as so many have drummed into their heads, there would be no *possibility* of a left project.