Capitalism’s Crisis of Stagnation and Austerity
Submitted by Internationalis... on Jan 30 2018 16:11
As 2018 opens economic optimism is breaking out amongst the capitalist class. Leaving aside the vainglorious boasts of the current President of the United States that unemployment in the US has reached lows only last seen in the post-war boom, or that the New York stock market is now at all time record highs, more serious economic commentators are arguing that after a decade of misery (at least for 99% of the planet) the signs of recovery from the 2007-8 banking collapse are now behind us. If this sounds familiar it is because we have heard the same tale so many times.
The pitfalls of the social economy – Miguel Amorós
The text of a 2017 presentation examining the significance of the “third sector” or “social economy”, the non-profit community development and assistance sector, its origins as a replacement for faltering government aid programs for excluded sectors of the population, its diversification and increasing economic impact on job creation, service provision and housing, its association with the “civil society” movement, its avoidance of conflict with state and private power and its reliance on parliamentary procedures and negotiations, its ideological smokescreens, and the rise of the “new commons” ideology as a delusional strategy for non-confrontational withdrawal from the system.
The veins of Latin America are more open than ever – Miguel Amorós
The text of a 2017 presentation on the key role of extractive industries in contemporary world capitalism, their effect on the “territory” and its inhabitants, the left-wing parties’ support for export-oriented capitalist development that devastates the rural areas of their countries in exchange for funds to finance social programs, the importance of the “new middle classes” in serving as mediators for the rule of multinational corporations in Latin America, the fraud of “civil society” movements and their promotion of “sustainable development”, and the crucial role of peasant and indigenous movements in complementing urban struggles for “self-governed life in common”.
The period of decline – Miguel Amorós
Notes for a presentation delivered in September 2017 at the Gijon Anarchist Book Fair on the social, psychological and moral aspects of the modern crisis of capitalism, and the proliferation of nihilism, mental illness and generalized irrationality, based on the works of Jaime Semprun, particularly his book, L'abîme se repeuple [The Abyss Repopulates Itself], first published in 1997.
The Coming Insurrection: An identity-based construction and existential alternative – Alain C.
A 2009 critique of the sensational anarchist best-seller, The Coming Insurrection, in which the author claims that it is not its “ideas” or “worldview” that are what is most important about the book, but rather the fact that it is essentially an appeal for an identity-based politics, a “permanent drunkenness of the Ego” that postulates an abstract, socially undifferentiated “being” that is supposed to find itself at home in a paradise worshiping its “fetish”, “identity”, and the author concludes that the total elimination of this harmful tendency is “one of the goals of a communist revolution”.
From the Heart of Darkness: Anatomy of a March in Poland
Submitted by Internationalis... on Dec 17 2017 17:35
The rise of so-called populism and the far right over the past few years has been a global trend. We have written about it before – "reactionary ideologies always feed on social decomposition, atomisation and growing insecurity."
Venezuela: The dead-end of the "Bolivarian Road to Socialism"
Submitted by Internationalis... on Jun 15 2017 20:46
There was no revolution in Venezuela. Being against neo-liberalism is not the same as opposing capitalism but only one form of it. However, it does feed into the social democratic narrative of Corbynism. Today, in the middle of an election campaign, the assertion that “Venezuela is socialist” is happily repeated by right wing papers and politicians to gloat over the social disaster which Venezuela has become.
Don't Vote - Prepare the Resistance
Submitted by Internationalis... on Jun 2 2017 13:36
For years the world capitalist system has been in economic crisis. No matter what policies various governments have tried (from increased spending, to privatisation and letting the banks speculate on anything and everything) this crisis has not gone away. It got worse in 2007-8 when the speculative bubble fuelled by the banks burst. We have been paying the consequences ever since. Despite talk of a recent recovery, real incomes of the majority have continued to fall.
Against Exploitation, Crisis and War - No War But the Class War!
Submitted by Internationalis... on May 4 2017 11:31
May Day Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency on the current international situation and the challenges facing the working class a century after the Russian Revolution offered so much hope and brought so much despair.
The show must go on: a modest attempt to explain a world that has gone mad - Argelaga
An editorial published in November 2016 on the website of the journal, Argelaga, on the state of the “spectacle” after Trump’s election, claiming, among other things, that although recent trends indicate that “the spectacle of decomposition is not the decomposition of the spectacle”, in part because “the masses … only want to follow the person who assures them that their addiction to abundant consumption and security can continue”, “the end of the industrial cycle that began after the Second World War” nevertheless entails “constant outbreaks of resistance [that] indicate that, without too much memory and, therefore, with little lucidity, the struggle for emancipation continues”.
