Editorial (Our Flag, No. 226, vol. IV, 2010)
The revolutionary left in Europe, where they are both the PCE and the United Left and particularly the European Left Party (IPP) since its inception in 2004, have been warning for years now, once warned the effects of the neoliberal model globalization began in 1989 following in the Washington Consensus, on the dangers of the formula under the Maastricht Treaty (1992). An economic model based on the triad of neoliberalism: a) reducing public budgets in all its dimensions, slimming the welfare state against the market with all kinds of privatization and cuts in public services and public infrastructure, b) all costs to implement the relocation of capital in all facets, from the tax until the social dumping, and c) the deregulation of labor to lower the overall wage bill and thus increase benefits somewhat offset the general downward trend in the rate of profit.
As you can understand is difficult to reconcile the intent of lowering the wage bill while increasing the consumption to output increasing production of goods. The contraction in demand this time accentuated by the nature of neoliberal globalization to include everyone. In this way this fall in available wage bill becomes a golden opportunity for so-called emerging economies such as China, India or Brazil, with very cheap labor force and in some cases under conditions of tight authoritarian control that prevents freedom association and thus the claims and wage growth, very cheap goods flooded regions in some capacity acquisition yet as they can be the European Union and the United States. The combination is devastating consequences for the economies from the time Fordism. Mass layoffs in whole sectors of production from automotive to textiles that worsen the overall situation of each country and the effect of desperately seeking the traditional sectors. From there to the "financial bubble" is a small step that began in 1989 with spectacular results at first. Indeed in 2007-8
bursts entire economic model to show the impossibility of its maintenance, its impracticality. Besides the purely economic dimensions of a crisis of overproduction this time we add other components to the crisis of the first decade of the century that confer its specificity. On the one hand be an energy crisis depletion and limitation in the use of fossil fuels. Entering a food crisis food markets of the future in addition to competing speculative roulette with the fate of growing areas to biofuels, which are combined with the consequences of climate change on crop losses. Ecological crisis to break completely the ability of nature to absorb increased emissions and increased in all facets of nature, the atmospheric greenhouse effect and climate change, the pedological land to accommodate increasing amounts of all types of materials waste water by turning the river networks on Earth and its oceans in real sewers of these contaminants with subsequent deterioration of the oceans, as in these moments with our Mediterranean Sea. The result of all this is the end of the biodiversity on which humanity itself depends. Not surprisingly, this cluster of adverse effects the recent economic crisis become a more consequential than that of 1929, which was strictly overproduction. Becomes the current crisis of civilization, values, the entire model.
The question behind all this and totally unlike our current crisis of reference of 1929 is precisely the cultural and ideological context of those facts. At that time was relatively recent the October Revolution and therefore an alternative to the failure of capitalism was the proposal from a planned economy and public where the capital-labor conflict is resolved in favor of work, meeting the needs of the people and not for the production of surplus value. That alternative was in the consciousness of the population, workers, and thus becomes the first order factor, to the point of carrying through Maynard Keynes to a compromise proposal between the pure liberal model in the style of Adam Smith and the Soviet revolution, to avoid such a revolution: he subsequently called the Welfare State (Keynesianism) that involved the use of huge publicly controlled amounts of capital to ensure full employment and social needs, but all within the logic of the capitalist model.
This time, thanks largely to the collapse and failure of the Soviet model of 1990 does not exist in the consciousness of European workers face a clear alternative to the economic crisis. Has been occurring since the last revolutionary explosion of the twentieth century, the 1968 French May and the Prague Spring, a gradual withdrawal of class consciousness to be housed exclusively in the nuclei more aware of the proletariat, their Communist parties , while social unfolded assimilation of the values \u200b\u200bof Keynesian capitalism. This shift in the social hegemony policy toward the values \u200b\u200bof consumerism and individualism leaves at this time of crisis of the capitalist model of society that is totally defenseless, helpless and worse, no feasible alternatives, on the contrary, at the foot of all kinds of populism. Any crisis of values, of civilization. Hence the need to reset the time required. Show that there is an alternative that is feasible, which is moving towards a proposal for more democracy, more freedom and all within the road to socialism. Reset also social and recovering fighting demonstrations as an instrument of pressure.
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