Jeff Richards:There are many times when I think the Latin American preoccupations of radical left groups like the DSP and the RSP (thankfully, less so in the case of the DSP/SA) make you neglect what could be a truly historical moment in the history of late capitalism (it certainly beats the daily chronicles of the retreating horizons of the great struggles led by Chavez and Morales and Cuba's slow drift to Beijing style `socialism with Chinese characteristics'). While I have nothing but respect for those in groups like the DSP –people who put vast amounts time and effort to building a radical alternative- I have say that the amount of effort put into international economic reporting is paltry compared to Latin American politics. Where are the new generation of radical political economists? They are sadly missed.
Looking through all the messages over the last few days there was not one soul who dropped a reference to the annual report of the Bank of International Settlements, one of the most important financial institutions in the world. The BIS is warning that we might not just be facing a recession; we could be hurtling towards a depression!(In case anyone forgets, the last time we had a depression we had some rather earth shattering events e.g. world war 2). In my view, there is a pressing need to refocus on this global historical event.
Peter Boyle:Jeff, I share some of your frustration at the lack of good contemporary Marxist economic analysis on lists such as these. There has been interesting material and some debate on the Marxism List , which many on t is list follow. The fact is, that the revolutionary left has not been able to make up the loss of Ernest Mandel. There are radical political economists, many of whom working within the analytical framework of Marx but most of them lack engagement and commitment to revolutionary struggle. This was a point brought home to us by John Bellamy Foster (who is committed and involved in the struggle, through Monthly Review). He met up some of with the Sydney University Political Economy during his visit and came away with the impression that they had little or no interest in radical political struggle. Sad, if true.
What can we do about this? We can educate a generation of activists and build networks and interactions between the surviving Marxist economists. We try our best to do both, and in the DSP we are free to do more now that we are liberated from a stale internal debate that had clearly run its course. The Climate Change | Social Change conference was a fantastic example of Marxist political economy meets the climate change crisis (real radical political economy today must integrate the global environment crisis). Pity you missed this. You would have been stimulated and it would have made you less anxious about the state of the left. You would have seen the possibilities to do more in this direction. As you know we are working with others to follow up conferences around the country.
I did an interview on the global financial crisis with Foster, which you would have seen, and hope to do a follow up one soon (in the light of the new developments, including the dramatic fuel price rises).
The combination of the global financial crisis, climate change and ongoing and deepening political legitimacy crises of neo-liberalism makes for a dramatic situation today there is no doubt about it. It frames our political interventions. For example, the financial crisis has spilled over into crazy speculative activity that has accelerated the fuel price rise (by up to 60%, according to the not-uninformed Soros) with dramatic consequences for the estimated one billion people
starving or suffering malnutrition, and for several embattled political regimes around the world.
But it has to be said that the references to the "Is this the Big One?" should underline another fact that any serious Marxist should take into account. Capitalism can survive any economic crisis no matter how severe, if it can force the working classes to bear the pain of it. So we can see that recession is already underway. Which is why we are very interested in the real advances of mass revolutionary movements in Latin America (you would mistaken to see this as an exotic obsession). The revolutionary left underwent a massive retreat in the 1990s and now there is an advance (albeit uneven) so we are correvtly focusing attention on it. Without a mass revolutionary movement, capitalist crisis, no matter how severe, simply delivers more pain to the majority and more devastation to the environment.
All this said, I'd urge you or anyone else with the ability to aggregate, absorb and analyse the new economic developments to have a go at an article for Green Left Weekly of Links.
