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Video Alan Woods on world perspectives clear the decks for communism

Marxist Perspectives · 2023-08-18

Core Argument

Alan Woods argues that capitalism has reached a historic turning point where all the mechanisms that sustained its expansion over the past three decades — cheap credit, globalisation, the integration of China and Russia into world markets — have turned into their opposites, producing an unprecedented and insoluble crisis. The central thesis is that the objective conditions for world revolution are now fully mature, but the missing subjective factor — a revolutionary leadership — can only be forged through a ruthless break with reformism and left reformism, which have been utterly bankrupted by events. The task of Marxists is therefore to "clear the decks for communism": to sweep away the dead weight of the reformist tradition and build a genuine revolutionary international capable of leading the working class to power.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in Marx's theory of crisis as developed in the three volumes of Capital, particularly the role of credit in temporarily suspending the contradictions of overproduction, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Woods draws on Lenin's theory of imperialism — explicitly applying Lenin's five criteria to China — and on Clausewitz's dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means, which Lenin also used. The method throughout is dialectical: the central explanatory device is the transformation of things into their opposites (credit into debt, globalisation into protectionism, the expansion of world trade into trade wars). This places the analysis firmly in the classical Marxist tradition of Trotsky, whose 1938 perspectives are cited as an example of a correct method falsified by events — a point that underscores the materialist insistence that perspectives are working hypotheses, not prophecies.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is delivered in mid-2023 and addresses a precise conjuncture. Economically, Woods highlights global debt of $300 trillion (349% of GDP), the aggressive interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve and European central banks, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse, and the slowing of the Chinese economy (0.3% growth in Q1 2023, with youth unemployment at 23-29%). Politically, he examines the French pension struggle (Macron's victory despite 75% opposition), the German austerity programme (€30 billion in cuts), the crisis of the British Labour Party under Starmer, and the polarisation in the US around Trump. Geopolitically, the analysis centres on the Ukraine war as a proxy conflict between US and Russian imperialism, the failure of Western sanctions, the collapse of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, and the tectonic shifts in world relations — the Sahel coups (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso), Saudi Arabia's defiance of the US, and the growing influence of Russia and China across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Woods argues that not a single bourgeois regime in the world is stable.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a lead-off to a World Congress and therefore opens more questions than it closes. The argument continues in several directions:

  • The economic analysis of debt, credit and the falling rate of profit is developed in greater detail in the IMT's perspectives document referenced but not reproduced here.
  • The situation in the United States — the paradox of Trump, the danger of civil war, the radicalisation of youth — is flagged as requiring separate treatment.
  • The question of tactics in Russia — how to oppose Putin while not appearing pro-NATO — is left as an open problem requiring "skillful tactics."
  • The development of the left wing inside the CGT in France is presented as a concrete example of how trade unions can be transformed, but the strategic implications for work in the unions are only sketched.
  • The "Are You a Communist?" campaign is announced as a tactical turn, but its concrete forms and methods are not elaborated.

These threads are taken up in subsequent IDOM articles, Against the Stream episodes, and internal IMT documents dealing with the French situation, the US elections, and the war in Ukraine.

Connections

The article connects to several key Marxist texts and debates:

  • Marx, Capital Volume III: The theory of credit, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the counteracting factors (expansion of world trade, cheap credit).
  • Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: The criteria for imperialism applied to China; the analysis of interimperialist rivalry.
  • Trotsky, The Transitional Program (1938): The discussion of perspectives as a working hypothesis; the method of the transitional demand.
  • Clausewitz, On War: The formulation "war is the continuation of politics by other means."
  • Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: The dialectical method of transformation into opposites.

The article should be read alongside the IMT's perspectives document from the 2023 World Congress, and against the background of the broader Marxist debate on the nature of the current crisis — particularly the question of whether the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is currently operative (Woods argues it is not, because profits are booming, but the counteracting factors have exhausted themselves).

Key Quotes

  1. "The question that Marxists must answer is not: why is there a crisis in capitalism? That's not the question. The question that must be answered for the last 150 years is: why is capital not always in a crisis?"

  2. "The total global debt at the present time... has reached the staggering level of three hundred trillion dollars... And this translates... into an average debt of 35,500 dollars for every man, woman and child on the planet."

  3. "The road to Keynesianism is blocked, even the imbecile reformists begin to understand that now... The only road open to them now, the only road, is to cut, and cut, and cut to the bone!"

  4. "There is not a single solitary stable bourgeois regime in the world at the present time, not one! Not Germany, not the United States, not Austria... There is this colossal instability."

  5. "All of these so-called lefts, without exception, really agree with the right wing on the most essential, central point. They all accept the inevitability of capitalism, they accept the existing system... betrayal is implicit in all forms of reformism, including left reformism."

  6. "What's the meaning of this period we just lived through? It's a period of preparation, and it's a period of ruthless clearing out of rubbish, and is opening the way for a genuine Marxist tendency, a genuine communist tendency."