Out of the crisis: Building a new era of justice and peace

[IndianaGreen]

Out of the crisis: Building a new era of justice and peace

A speech by Sam Webb, National Chair of the Communist Party

Saturday, March 21
9:30 am Eastern

New Model

Just as the era of finance-led globalization and rightwing ascendency stretching from 1979-2008 reconfigured the economic patterns of growth and capital accumulation — not to mention the role of the state — the current crisis and its eventual resolution will do much the same.

What their contours and content will be is unknowable at this time. What we do know is that protracted struggle involving diverse class and social forces and striking for its shifting alliances and coalitions will determine the outcome.

Implied in the above is a challenge to the notion that capitalism is a self-correcting system and that ruptures and breaks are not in its resume.

This notion has its roots in the so-called “golden age” of U.S. capitalism from 1945-1973, during which economic growth rates, investment levels and living standards steadily increased for broad sections of the American people.

But there are two problems. First, capitalism is a global system and to judge its performance by that of one state or a group of states is methodologically flawed. It has to be judged on a global level and take into account the experience of economies on the semi-periphery and periphery of world development as well as economies in the core.

Second, an era of stable and continuous growth is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future. Indeed, the conditions for U.S. capitalism’s “golden age” no longer exist. They were specific to a historical moment — not universal and timeless features of U.S capitalism.

To remind everyone, we emerged from the Great Depression and World War II a creditor nation. The economy was at near-full employment and strength. Because of war rationing, consumer demand was pent up. New industries — auto, aviation, communications and others — were taking off. Public infrastructure expansion was massive. Raw materials and oil were cheap and easily available. Political and economic competitors from other centers of capitalism were nearly nonexistent. The dollar was supreme and new international arrangements (Bretton Woods) gave stability and coherence to the world capitalist economy and system of states.

None of those conditions exist today; indeed just the opposite is the case. The economy is not poised either in the short or medium term to take off as it did in 1945; long-term stagnation is more likely.

All things being equal, the traditional Marxist method marks the different stages of capitalist development as follows: competitive capitalism, monopoly capitalism and state monopoly capitalism.

PDF version of speech:

http://www.cpusa.org/filemanager/download/98/Out_of_the_Crisis.pdf

Video version of speech:

http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/1035/1/44/

Audio version of speech:

http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/1037/1/27/