"Two interpretations of this crisis were dominant at its beginning. The neoliberals emphasized the culpability of debtors, who took on loans without being able to pay them back, as well as the irresponsibility of governments, which took on unmanageable liabilities. The Keynesians, on the other hand, underlined the absence of financial regulation and the excesses of speculation. They also insisted on the fall in solvable demand because of the stagnation of wages and social polarization. The two currents also pointed to various errors of economic policy that have led to the present collapse.
This initial explanation of the origin of the crisis subsequently shifted to another problem: the differential impact of the convulsions depending on the regions of the world and consequently the geopolitical modifications, in other words the turn towards multipolarity, the loss of US hegemony, the strengthening of China and the increased role of the emerging economies.
How has the economic crisis developed in each region of the world? What are the strategies of the ruling classes? What kind of scenarios do they profile on a world level?
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On the European level Germany promotes an aggressive policy aiming at making workers pay the cost of the crisis. This attack is not just a case of one more adjustment. It is imposing the destruction of the Welfare State built after the war and the liquidation of social conquests, which the workers of other continents had never won. The European unemployment rate is already 20 per cent and under the impact of the precarisation of work, poverty affects a quarter of the population.
Budgetary tightening in order to support the euro constitutes the other pillar of German policy. Over the last few months, the existence of this currency has been on the edge of the precipice and there has been speculation about it being reorganized, breaking up or disappearing in the near future. But this is a currency which has been the key to the exporting domination of Germany, based on the unification of markets and the elimination of protectionist barriers.
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On all the continents young people are raising their heads and building movements by using the social networks to get information and to organize. The first embryo of an international movement appeared last October 15, when the world marches mobilized multitudes in 950 cities in 80 countries. A coordinated action on this scale had not taken place since the mobilizations against the war in Iraq in 2003.
If the regional and international convergence of these resistances was reinforced it would be possible to develop a response to the bourgeois attempts to confront the workers country by country. The leaders of Germany have taken the leadership of this strategy and repeat to whomever wants to hear them that German workers “have already made sacrifices” and that they “should not pick up the bill for the lazy South”. This message seeks to pit workers against each other by concealing the profits that the capitalists draw from this division. The campaigns of the Right against immigrants have the same goal.
A progressive way out of the crisis implies resisting this fracture within the world working class. The tensions between German and Greek, American and Chinese or Spanish and Moroccan workers lead to making the people pay for the consequences of the present crisis of capitalism.
Internationalist responses would neutralize this threat and would make it possible to bring together again the young people and the sectors of the working class which have not yet been able yet to get on their feet after the neoliberal attacks. The year 2012 gives us the chance to change the scenario of the crisis in favour of the workers.
Full article: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2465