Daily Times

While debates in the media and politics rage on about the issues of diplomacy, military campaigns, terrorism, fundamentalism, judiciary, constitutional complexities, etc, discussion on the crumbling economy and the aggravating suffering of the masses is being conveniently ignored. The failure and paralysis of the economic policies of the ‘experts’ of this system in decay has been starkly laid bare. With the cancerous growth of the parallel or black economy to more than two thirds of the total economy, the chances of any healthy revival of capitalism and development of society has been ruled out. In reality, capitalist crisis on a world scale has reached a juncture where it cannot improve living conditions and advance society as in the post-World War II period, anywhere.

Perspectives developed by top western economists in the 1990s, whom the Pakistani economic pundits cheaply imitate, have been shattered by the severe crisis that inflicts capitalism today. An article by the BBC’s economics correspondent, Andrew Walker, confesses the failure of the world capitalist economy to achieve recovery after its biggest financial crash in 2008. He poses the question: “Will we ever really get over the financial crisis? Six years or more since it began, the world economy is still struggling to generate a convincing recovery. Among the headwinds is debt, the factor that took us into the crisis in the first place. In the meantime, since the crisis began, global debt has actually risen. The total debt of the world economies stands at 385 percent of their collective GDP, an all-time high.” This means that the debts of these countries are almost four times the total wealth produced in all sectors of the economy. The Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman once wrote: “Families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t.” When this debt bubble bursts, the socioeconomic disaster will be unprecedented.

Since the crash in 2008, the ruling elites have stumbled from one crisis to another, flailing blindly in an attempt to paper over the gaping cracks. For years it was heralded that the contradictions within capitalism had been overcome, an end to boom and bust was declared, and we were taught to prepare for the ushering in of a new era of prosperity and advance for all. Karl Marx, in a letter to Frederick Engels, 25th of March 1868, wrote, “Human history is like palaeontology. Owing to a certain judicial blindness even the best intelligences absolutely fail to see the things, which lie in front of their noses. Later, when the moment has arrived, we are surprised to find traces everywhere of what we failed to see.”

The bourgeoisie performed a voodoo dance over the perceived final “defeat of Communism”, and declared the mantra of “end of history”. The Marxists pointed out for years that it was impossible to overcome the insoluble socioeconomic contradictions within the confines of capitalism. The exponential growth of speculation, debt, opening of new markets in East Europe and China, bringing over a billion more workers into the world market and super exploitation of the developing world whilst providing temporary relief in the short term, ended up deepening internal contradictions for a spectacular collapse in 2008.

The vast amount of wealth being produced within the world economy on the basis of fictitious capital all of a sudden glutted the market. This crisis of overproduction expressed itself initially as a crisis of the banks. The debt itself became nationalised and we have seen the transferral of the problem into a sovereign debt crisis in one country after another, leading to austerity and eroding the gains made over decades of struggle in welfare systems across Europe and other advanced countries.

Over the last period we have seen a succession of crises, fluctuations and disorder on the economic front and within wider society as a whole. Political and social events are impacting one another at a faster and faster pace as contradictions continue to mount up. Capitalism is, by its very nature, a system of chaos, conflict and anarchy of the market, whereby the ruling classes of different countries compete to undercut one another and where businesses and companies in one country after another have to look out for their own interests.

The more incisive of bourgeois economists do see — and to a certain extent agree — with the conclusions that Marx drew about the cause of crises under capitalism but these very same experts fail to see, or rather accept, the only conclusion that can be drawn from this: the need to radically change society. No prayers or their tinkering with the system will allow them to continue as before, exploiting the workers and reaping vast profits without any challenge to their system. They fail to see the underlying processes that are at work. The ruling class looks at nothing more than the surface of what is going on in an attempt to lull itself and the working population into a false sense of security that everything will be okay in the end, as long as they keep plugging away. It is this empirical method and mindless fumbling that is a sure sign of the senility of this capitalist system, which long ago ceased to play a progressive role in society. The ruling class sees no way out for themselves or society because they have nothing left to offer.

The choice that working people face in one country after another is not of this or that form of capitalism but, rather, between the road of reform or revolution or, to put it more candidly, the question is one of barbarism or socialism. This will put all political parties and tendencies to the test, most of which will be found wanting. We have to look at history, not out of abstract academic curiosity but in order to develop an understanding of those very motive forces of historical development that are taking place right now to understand how economic phenomena impact upon each other, how the class struggle is built upon the playing out of these contradictions. Yet, all of this will forever remain a book sealed by seven seals to the bourgeois economists, even the best of them, people for whom history and the development of society appears to be no more than an unending list of unfortunate events and interesting personages following one after another, for whom economic processes can appear to be simply witchcraft, a mystical process to be interpreted rather than understood.

The bourgeoisie represents a class that is at a historical dead end. Far from presenting humanity with any visions of progress or improvement, all these people can offer is death, destruction, pain and sacrifice for the working class in all countries around the world. The future of humanity lies not in the hands of Messrs bourgeois but, rather, in the hands of this very working class who produce all within society and who are suffering under the burden of the current crisis.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com