crisis

Section from Robert C. Tucker's Marx-Engels Reader entitled "Crisis Theory", taken from Marx's Theories of Surplus Value manuscripts, in which Marx deals with capitalist crises.

By any rational measure you might assume that a dominant sentient species when faced with global threats would pull together, pool resources and information and search for a mutual solution to the problem. But the coronavirus pandemic has confirmed what the climate change crisis already told us: that capitalism, even in its “globalised” form, is fundamentally unsuited to producing a coordinated response to tackle anything.

This short reflection is a synthesis of ideas common to various comrades, from different areas, with whom we frequently discuss. In fact, some of the considerations here are now becoming an integral and shared perspective beyond that of any one organisation. This gives us hope that in the near future the most politically aware elements will recognise that we are all travelling in the same direction.

Leaving aside for a moment the issue of “fake news” conspiracy theories circulating in the ether about the origins of the virus, that whether by accident or deliberately American laboratories engineered it themselves (with all the implications this would have on international imperialist scenarios), let us confront the problem in simple terms, based on what the theorists are saying about the possibility of coming out of this latest financial-economic crisis.