World Capitalist Economy In Grip of General Crisis

........continuation of International and National situation viewed by CWP. 

The world capitalist economy today is in the grip of an intense general crisis of market. This is the crisis of capitalist overproduction. Over production should not be understood in the sense of surplus after fulfilling the necessities of the people. The capitalist overproduction means that due to extremely low level of purchasing power of the people the scope of consumption of articles in the market, that is, their demand is also as its low ebb. This is the all embracing crisis of recession.

In the industrial sector of economy it is the adverse effect of this crisis that is finding expression in closure of industries, perpetual lay-offs, production below installed capacity in mills and factories, retrenchment of workers, squeezing of scope of employment, soaring unemployment etc. Number of people unemployed has already reached the figure of several crores and it is steadily rising in all countries of the world, backward or advanced, without exception.

In backward countries it is this crisis that stands as the most formidable obstacle on way of modernizing of agriculture by large scale introduction of machines and science in which lie the key to solution of many a social problems of those countries.

It is this crisis of capitalist economy which is at the root of the all pervading degeneration in education, culture and sense of social as well as individual morality in, generally speaking, all over the world and particularly in the backward countries where bourgeois democratic revolution could complete its turn only in a half-baked and truncated way.

The capitalist class in all countries and their governments run by parties of different hues are constantly shifting the burden of crisis of their economy on to the shoulders of the working class and the toiling masses. With the help of modern technological achievements they are replacing the old labour-intensive industries by new capital-intensive high tech industries throwing huge number of people out of employment. More and more introduction of high technology in industries has instead of giving any relief to the working people resulted in maximizing the exploitation of work-force engaged in those and the rate of profit of the capitalists, thus further sharpening the most basic contradiction of labour and capital in the society. Sharpening of this contradiction is finding expression sporadic rallies and demonstrations at different corners of the world occasionally and at regular interval. But, almost total absence of well organized revolutionary leadership to guide these movements, to give those the shape of sustained struggle of the people and more particularly due to the disarray of the communist movement these sporadic movements are ending mostly in fiasco not achieving any positive result.

As a result of this crisis of economy being in its acutest shape today the capitalists are finding it increasingly difficult to advance even for some period and to some extent in a planned way. Consequently they are taking recourse to the path of depending more on speculation as the alternative to planned way. This, in its turn, is breeding, as it is bound to breed uncertainty in the economy. Instability and uncertainty in politics is only the reflection of this uncertainty in economies of these countries. Neither there is and nor can be any solution of this crisis of its economy within the frame of capitalist economy.

To give it’s crisis-ridden economy some relief, even if temporarily, for a short period the capitalist class has the only option of taking the path of militarization of its economy, that is, to produce to feed military demands. Capitalist class is, in reality, taking the path of militarizing ever wider part of its economy. This has now become an indispensable and integral part of the national economy of almost all capitalist countries.

Militarizing of economy as a course to find relief for it from the tentacles of ever-intensifying crisis, in its turn, is bound to trigger chain of consequences. It will go on creating necessities for continually expanding the sphere of militarization. Consequent upon this there will be the necessity of continuously increasing, in volume, the Armed forces. The budgets of the countries will have to provide for higher and higher allocations to meet military expenditure. Obviously there will be the increased military might, both in volume as well as in sophistication of weaponry, which is bound to cause increase in the essential characteristic tendency of expanding the sphere of hegemony and of over-lordism on neighbouring weaker country or countries.

And, logic for building up increasingly bigger Armed forces is, in most cases found in increasing tensions in the relation of a country with other countries across its borders. For this, some countries are found to create incidents to be used as materials for fomenting tension in their relations with neighbouring countries instead of trying to lessen the same. Throughout the capitalist world today there are quite a good number of such tension-centres created planfully or are being fuelled and carried on un-diminishingly. At places now and then these tensions are pushed to hot conflicts or even to local and limited-scale wars by some capitalist countries as and when they wish. Aggression on Iraq carried out by several imperialist powers combinedly with U.S. Imperialists at their head under the banner of U.N. and subsequent imposition of embargo and other punitive measures against that country disregarding all principles and norms of civilized behaviour, the continuation of tensions in Arab-Israel relation centring Palestine question, perpetual warlike situation in India-Pakistan relation centring Kashmir generating most recent limited-scale of war of Kargil are glaring examples in this regard. The latest example of creating situation one sidedly and using that as a plea to impose war of aggression to make others submit before their over-lordism as also to find channel to drain out their increasing load of stock-pile of armaments etc, is the currently going war on Afganistan by U.S. and British Imperialists.

The ruling bourgeois class of different countries raising the bogey of danger to the security of their respective countries posed by these wars or even by some imaginary possible wars are trying to justify the so-called regulative measures they are taking against the exercise of democratic rights and movements of the toiling exploited people of their countries. In some other countries raising the same bogey the ruling bourgeois class is actually most heinously suppressing people’s legitimate democratic struggles in their internal social life.

Incidents of similar nature, taking place one after another, do suggest more and more convincingly that to give relief to their crisis ridden economy or to stave off its fast advancing death, even it for a short period, the capitalist class has today no other option than taking the course of fascisation. The great Marxist thinker, Comrade Shibdas Ghosh said correctly as early as in 1948 that Fascism has become the order of the day. Spectre of communism is still haunting imperialist-capitalists not only of Europe but of the whole world. They are continuing to be in attempts to contain the working people, to close all venues for them for ventilating their grievances and aspirations.

---------------------------will continue