Crisis opening in 2007

Eurozone crisis: for a workers' Europe!

A general strike on 5 May against planned cuts stopped Greece, and brought onto the streets of Athens the biggest demonstration there since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974. Although Greece's big union federations are closely tied to the governing party, Pasok, they plan further strikes. There is protest within Pasok. On 6 May three MPs were expelled from the Pasok parliamentary group for voting against the cuts. Panicked by the growing Greek crisis, on 10 May the eurozone governments, with the IMF, put together a 750 billion euro (about 」650 billion) rescue plan not just for...

To stop cuts, seize control of the banks!

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. The article said that the Tories are right to go for rapid, big cuts in public spending to reduce Britain's Budget deficit, rather than a slower approach which includes waiting and seeing whether future growth will erode the debt more painlessly. The European Commission gave Osborne...

The banks: compensation without nationalisation?

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. It's a pity he didn't stick to that, and that unions and others in the labour movement did not take up the call, extend it, and force the Government to nationalise the whole finance sector with minimal compensation. Instead, the Government went for pumping taxpayers' money into the banks to help them scrape through the crisis and come out of it as much as they went in - as private-profit machines...

No, the crisis isn't over

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. Almost a year ago we wrote in Solidarity: "The big nationalisations and government bail-outs of financial firms have moved the sharp end of the crisis somewhat, to point at governments rather than banks". Governments could, and chose to, bail out big banks (and manufacturing companies, like General Motors), and prevent further big collapses like that of Lehman Brothers in 2008. The question then was whether the crisis would move on to a string of...

Dick Bryan: The underlying contradictions of capitalist finance

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. For other interviews in this series, click here . In your book "Capitalism with Derivatives", you say that derivatives are a new form of money. In this crisis we have seen a flight from derivatives into cash. Doesn't that mean that the derivatives were not in fact money? It's not that derivatives are money in the sense that they are like state money, or...

Can you have more? Of course you can!

Industrial action over pay by the National Union of Teachers was one of the first casualties of the economic crisis. After winning a concrete mandate for action in a ballot, the union took a single day of action to demand the government meet a pay claim. When the union came to ballot for a second time, the turnout was lower and the majority in favour of action was paper thin. The dispute was called off. According to reports from activists, union members were expressing “reservations” — even embarrassment — about demanding higher salaries when so many others were having their pay cut and jobs...

Shaping up to face the 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. Sean Matgamna opened the conference: “We are in process of shaping up the AWL to face the biggest crisis since 1930s, a crisis that has shattered mystique of capitalism in the same way that idea of socialism seemed to have been discredited by the collapse of Stalinism in the early 90s....

Simon Mohun: The neo-liberal model is bust

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. You've argued that out of this crisis we may see capitalism move to a set-up more like 1945-73. However, though there is a lot of talk about regulation, it's all about regulation of the sort designed to stop banks taking unsustainable risks, rather than direction of investment, planning the development of a national industrial base, and so on. Governments...

"The Economy in a World of Trouble" — Robert Brenner on the Crisis

Songjin Jeong: Most media and analysts label the current crisis as a “financial crisis.” Do you agree with this characterization? Robert Brenner It’s understandable that analysts of the crisis have made the meltdown in banking and the securities markets their point of departure. But the difficulty is that they have not gone any deeper. From Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke on down, they argue that the crisis can be explained simply in terms of problems in the financial sector. At the same time, they assert that the underlying real economy is strong, the so-called...

G20 summit: whose fightback starts here?

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. Even Tory papers were full of praise: "The fightback starts here", said the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Mail had the same headline as the Guardian: "Brown's New World Order". El Mundo, in Spain, hailed a "global Marshall Plan", a new version of the huge US aid package of 1948-52 which (together with the Korean war...

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