Workers' Liberty

The Tory shadow Chancellor George Osborne must think he pulled off a coup on Monday 15 March. He got Jeffrey Sachs - a real economist, an architect of Russia's "shock treatment" after 1991, but who has since distanced himself from extreme free-marketism - to co-author an article with him for the Financial Times.

Back in January, John McFall, a mainstream New Labour MP and chair of Parliament's Treasury select committee, called for the complete nationalisation of Lloyds Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Is the economic crisis ending? If it is, does that mean that the threatened public service cuts won't come, or will be smaller? Probably not; and no.

This article looks beyond the rail industry and surveys the unions’ response to the crisis.

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The roots of the current economic crisis lie in the capitalist system itself.

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. In this interview: Dick Bryan.

Industrial action over pay by the National Union of Teachers was one of the first casualties of the economic crisis.

The 2009 Alliance for Workers’ Liberty conference (30-31 May) took place as we see the further development of the political crisis following on from the economic crisis of capitalism. Our debates mapped out the tasks we face in the changed political situation and how we need to improve our ability to intervene.

1. The twenty or 25 years up to 2007 were a “golden age” for capitalism. It expanded fast (though economic growth rates were lower than in 1950-73, they were high compared to all other eras).

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. In this interview: Simon Mohun.

This Alliance for Workers’ Liberty pamphlet seeks to explain the ongoing capitalist crisis from an independent working-class — socialist — viewpoint. It puts forward an action plan for the working class to defend itself against the bosses’ attempts to make us pay for their crisis, and to go on the offensive to replace capitalism with working-class power and socialism. Download pdf ("attachment", below) or buy online.

Songjin Jeong: Most media and analysts label the current crisis as a “financial crisis.” Do you agree with this characterization?

Any working-class person who looked to the capitalist world leaders for protection against the economic and social catastrophe that looms before us all will be disappointed. The G20 economic summit in London on 2 April was a triumph for the spin-doctors rather than the economists.

If you tell a man that he’s going to be hanged in the morning, then, as someone once said, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. The British National Party is expected to make serious electoral gains in a number of different elections over the coming period. It will most likely win more council seats.

We are probably in the first stages of the fourth international "great depression" in the history of capitalism.

The Bank of England’s move in early March to a new monetary tactic — “quantitative easing” — came alongside much economic-disaster news.

The banks “bailed out” so lavishly last year still need more bailing out. Lloyds TSB, which was supposed to be a “strong” bank capable of saving HBOS by buying it out with Government aid, turns out to be as much a basket case as any other.

Twenty-five activists dressed as bankers staged an occupation at the Department for Work and Pensions on Monday 9 March.

Taking over the lobby of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Adelphi House they leafleted staff throughout the building. Carrying banners saying “Target the rich not the poor” and “Stop the Welfare Abolition Bill”, sat in front of the entry barriers and refused to leave.

Food prices are still rising at a rate of 10% per year, according to official figures reported in the Financial Times on 18 February.

Government economic policy has shifted drastically. But it is not a shift to the left. Today’s capitalism is, as the Financial Times writer Martin Wolf has put it, a machine for “privatising gains and socialising losses”. The change is that, in the crisis, the focus has shifted from the private gains (currently more meagre) to socialising big losses.

What sort of new shape of capitalism do you think might emerge from the shake-out of this crisis?

Beyond boob jobs — how might the credit crunch affect women? is a recent article on The F-word (a feminist blog) by Carolyn Roberts. The writer makes an observation that I found true when researching this topic — that there is pretty much nothing written on the potential impact of the crisis on women.

First, the Government semi-nationalised the banks. Now, it is quarter-nationalising the everyday process of trade credit, with the announcement on 14 January of Government guarantees for some £20 billion on loans made by banks to firms for "working capital", i.e. the cash they need to be able to pay wages and bills before their sales income comes in.

At this writing (January 2009), firms in all sectors of the U. S. economy are cutting their payrolls; unemployment and homelessness are soaring; and the working class is taking the biggest hit to living standards in several generations, raising deep doubts about the capacity of our capitalist society in the near term to ensure overall social reproduction.

Do you think a markedly new regime of capitalism is going to emerge out of this crisis?

The Financial Times of 05/01/09 surveys the US money supply figures for 2008. The "monetary base", M0, doubled during 2008. That's the stock of notes and coins in circulation plus bank reserves held at the central bank.

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. No.3: Leo Panitch.

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. No.2: Fred Moseley.

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. No.1: Michel Husson.