World Perspectives 2021 a global epoch of revolution is being prepared

Marxist Perspectives · 2021-07-30

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the world capitalist system has entered a period of profound and protracted crisis — the most severe in three centuries — which is preparing the objective conditions for a global epoch of revolution. The argument is not that revolution is imminent everywhere, but that the underlying dynamics of overaccumulation, debt saturation, and social polarisation have reached a point where the traditional mechanisms of bourgeois rule are breaking down. The pandemic has acted as an accelerator and intensifier, not a cause. The ruling class is losing control of events, the centre is collapsing politically, and the masses — though temporarily paralysed — are undergoing a deep molecular radicalisation. The key missing element is the subjective factor: a revolutionary leadership. The task of Marxists is therefore to build that leadership before the crisis finds a reactionary resolution.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is firmly rooted in the classical Marxist tradition, drawing on Marx's theory of crisis (overproduction, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, fictitious capital), Lenin's theory of the revolutionary situation, and Trotsky's concept of the molecular process of socialist revolution — the slow, subterranean shift in consciousness that precedes explosive outbreaks. The document explicitly rejects both reformist illusions (Keynesianism, Modern Monetary Theory) and sectarian activism, positioning itself within the tradition of the Fourth International. It deploys the concept of Bonapartism to analyse regimes like Putin's, and uses the united front tactic as the strategic orientation toward left reformists. The theoretical framework is one of permanent revolution applied to the current conjuncture: the crisis is global, uneven, and cannot be resolved within the framework of capitalism.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in mid-2021, at a moment when the pandemic was still raging, vaccine rollouts were bungled, and the economic fallout was becoming clear. It cites specific data: 255 million job losses globally in 2020, 90 million pushed into extreme poverty, global debt reaching 356 percent of GDP ($281 trillion). It analyses concrete events: the storming of the US Capitol (January 6), the Black Lives Matter protests (26 million participants), the Indian farmers' uprising (5 million protesters across 20,000 locations), the military coup in Myanmar, the protests in Russia over Navalny's arrest, and the July 11 protests in Cuba. It identifies the key geopolitical tension as the US-China rivalry, arguing that trade war has replaced hot war due to the nuclear balance of forces, but that this will deepen instability. The document explicitly names the political figures and parties it analyses: Trump, Biden, Bolsonaro, Modi, Putin, Xi Jinping, Johnson, Starmer, Macron, Draghi, and the leaderships of the CPI, PT, and Labour Party.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a world perspectives document — a strategic overview — and therefore leaves many country-specific analyses underdeveloped. It points to separate articles on India, Russia, China, and Latin America that would elaborate on the national specificities. The argument about the coming explosion of class struggle is developed further in subsequent IDOM articles on strike waves, inflation, and the crisis of the trade union bureaucracy. The theoretical case against MMT and Keynesianism is taken up in more depth in articles on the debt crisis and the nature of fictitious capital. The discussion of Cuba — defending the revolution while criticising the bureaucracy — is a position that has been elaborated in subsequent Against the Stream episodes and written debates. The strategic orientation toward left reformists (critical support, united front) is a recurring theme in the tendency's internal documents and public interventions.

Connections

This document should be read alongside the 2020 world perspectives document it references, as well as Trotsky's The Transitional Program (for the strategic method), Lenin's The State and Revolution (for the model of workers' democracy invoked in the Cuba section), and Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (for the analysis of Bonapartism and the crisis of bourgeois democracy). The analysis of debt and fictitious capital connects to Marx's Capital Volume 3 (Part V on credit and fictitious capital) and to the work of Ted Grant on the long-term decline of capitalism. The discussion of the molecular process of radicalisation echoes Trotsky's writings on the period 1923-1929. The critique of sectarianism and the orientation to the youth are themes that run through the entire corpus of the International Marxist Tendency (now the Revolutionary Communist International).

Key Quotes

1. "The present crisis is therefore not like an ordinary economic crisis. This is literally a life-and-death situation for millions of people. Many of these deaths could have been avoided with proper measures early on. Capitalism cannot solve the problem: it is itself the problem."

2. "The serious strategists of Capital understand the dangerous implications in the present turbulence far more than the impressionistic and panicky petty bourgeois. ... Right-wing populism may thrive on this backlash while leaving capitalist markets in place. But as it cannot deliver on its promises to the economically frustrated, it is just a matter of time before the pitchforks come out for capitalism itself."

3. "The bourgeoisie has suddenly become drunk with its newly discovered illusions, which are merely old, discredited theories that they had previously contemptuously discarded. Ted Grant used to describe Keynesianism as voodoo economics. That is a very fair description."

4. "The development of consciousness in the working class cannot be mechanically reduced to the number of strikes and mass demonstrations. This is the false idea of the sectarians and ultra-lefts who base themselves entirely on mindless activism, and fail to see the deeper processes of radicalisation that are occurring quietly beneath the surface all the time. This is what Trotsky called the molecular process of socialist revolution."

5. "The depth of the crisis rules out any kind of meaningful and long-lasting concessions. The workers will have to fight for every demand – not to gain new concessions but to preserve the gains made in the past. But even where they succeed, their gains will be wiped out by inflation, which must re-emerge as a consequence of the vast amounts of fictitious capital that have been put in circulation."

6. "We are in a race against the clock. Our task can be simply stated: it is to make conscious the unconscious (or semi-conscious) will of the working class to change society. ... All traces of the small circle mentality and routine must be rooted out. What is needed is a professional approach to party building."