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1992 1992-01Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 5 →
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three increasingly other.
That is the meaning of the "free trade" agreements emerging in Europe, in North America, and around Japan.
The steps taken toward greater economic and political cooperation among the European capitalist powers aims to lower protectionism between those countries, to be sure. But it is mainly an attempt to create a powerful bloc and market to compete against the other two emerging capitalist power centers.
The German capitalists are pushing the hardest for European union because they are the strongest European economy and have everything to gain. Other European powers throw in their lot with Germany as their best bet in securing their own niche. Britain is the most reluctant, trying to maintain a special relation with the United States.
Washington has countered with the "free trade" agreement with Canada, and hopes to include Mexico and the rest of Latin America, to keep the souther continent even more a preserve for exploitation by the North Americans.
Thus the emergence of these three big blocks does not signal the amelioration of world capitalist competition, but its intensification.
The Japan-bashing that took place around ANNLAL PEFORE CHRISTMAS SALE! women, those on welfare, the unemployed, immigrants, etc.
The 1980s saw an impoverishment of whole sectors of U.S. society, especially among Blacks. Homelessness became a qualitatively more pervasive phenomenon. Diseases once thought to be licked have made a comeback. Indeed, we have had some of this decade's impoverishment of the "Third World" reproduced right here. The same developments have occurred in the European countries.
The stock market crash of 1987 did not lead to a world depression. But it did reveal the underlying shakiness of the world capitalist economy. It showed much speculative investment to be worthless—in particular much of the investment by the savings and loan sector of banking. Now we hear that the regular banking system may be in trouble.
The prospect ahead for the capitalist world is one of intensified strife, both between the capitalist countries and between the capitalist exploiters and the working people of the world. Without presenting any timetable, we are living in an economy that can slip into catastrophe. The apprehensions that most workers are reported to have about not only the immediate future but the future for their children capitalism. But this has proven to be far harder than anyone predicted. The foremost obstacle has been the resistance of the workers to give up the social gains they had won even under the hated Stalinist regimes.
Can't blame socialism
While these economies spiral downward as a result the bureaucracy's "market reforms," it becomes harder and harder to blame "socialism" for the collapse and to claim that the hardships are just a temporary phenomena. What capitalist restoration would mean for the working people of factory and field is beginning to become apparent.
In addition, the world's capitalists have resisted investing very much in these countries. First of all, they feel uneasy about investing when the workers haven't been beaten back enough yet to accept the conditions the capitalists demand. And they fear the potential for the workers to once again expropriate any investments they might make.
Moreover, with already existing overcapacity in many branches of the world capitalist economy, capitalists aren't going to rush to invest in new productive capacity in Russia or Poland.
World capitalism has proven that it cannot lift the capitalist "Third World" out of its misery to the level of the advanced capitalist countries, due to the very need of these advanced countries to continue to exploit the "Third World." What then would be in store for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics if capitalism was restored there? They would be more like the "Third World" than like the better-off parts of Sweden or the United States.
But worker resistance to capitalist restoration is proving to be deep. There is still time for the organization of the working class to throw off the bureaucracy and its restorationist plans and resume the march toward socialism.
In a nutshell, the crises of capitalism are growing sharper everywhere. The struggle between the capitalists and the workers, between capitalism and socialism, is not only not over, but is becoming ever more relevant.
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