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World perspectives

Marxist Perspectives · 2020-03-18

Core Argument

The central thesis is that capitalism has entered a new historical period defined by the convergence of an inevitable, deep economic slump with a global revolutionary upsurge. The article claims that the molecular process of revolution — a gradual, subterranean accumulation of discontent — has reached a tipping point, transforming quantity into quality. The 2008 crash was the fundamental break; the decade of anaemic recovery built on mountains of debt and fictitious capital merely postponed the reckoning. The coronavirus crisis, which had just begun when this document was published, is presented not as the cause of the crisis but as the catalyst that exposes contradictions long identified. The argument insists that the working class is objectively stronger than ever — numerically, socially, and in its concentration — while the traditional instruments of bourgeois rule (reformist parties, trade union bureaucracies, the EU, US military hegemony) are in advanced decay. The conclusion is not voluntarist but strategic: Marxists must race against the clock to build organisation before events outpace them.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in the classical Marxist tradition, drawing directly on:

  • Trotsky's concept of the molecular process of revolution — the slow, invisible accumulation of mass consciousness beneath the surface, which suddenly erupts when quantitative changes become qualitative. This is deployed to explain why bourgeois empiricists are consistently astonished by events.
  • Lenin's formulation that politics is concentrated economics — the article traces the connection between debt saturation, overaccumulation, and the crisis of bourgeois democratic institutions.
  • The Marxist theory of crisis — specifically the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is implicit in the analysis of overproduction, stagnant productivity, and the shift of capital into speculation rather than productive investment. The article explicitly identifies the mountain of debt ($253 trillion globally, 322% of world GDP) as the mechanism by which the slump was postponed but made worse.
  • Trotsky's theory of fascism and Bonapartism — the article sharply distinguishes between genuine fascism (a mass petit-bourgeois movement aimed at destroying working-class organisations) and the current wave of right-wing populism and Bonapartist figures (Trump, Bolsonaro, Salvini). It argues that the social base for classical fascism has been eroded by proletarianisation.
  • The Marxist theory of reformism — betrayal is presented as immanent to reformism, not accidental. The article traces the degeneration of social democratic and Stalinist parties from mass working-class organisations into bourgeois instruments, and argues that the depth of the crisis now makes meaningful reform impossible.
  • The dialectical method — the entire structure of the argument rests on the transformation of opposites: the longest recovery is the weakest; the strongest economy (Germany) is now the epicentre of crisis; the most stable country (Britain) has become the most unstable; the period of working-class defeat has prepared the conditions for its greatest strength.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was finalised in January 2020, weeks before the global coronavirus lockdowns. Its conjunctural analysis is remarkably prescient:

  • Debt saturation: Global debt at $253 trillion (322% of GDP) is identified as the key vulnerability. Central banks had exhausted their instruments — interest rates at zero or negative, quantitative easing having pumped $3.6 trillion into the US economy alone. The article predicted that any shock would trigger a crisis that could not be contained.
  • Trade war: The US-China tariff escalation is analysed not as Trump's personal project but as a structural expression of overproduction in China and declining US hegemony. The article warns that protectionism could turn a recession into a depression, as in the 1930s.
  • European disintegration: Germany's industrial contraction, the exposure of the eurozone's internal contradictions, and the centrifugal forces of Brexit, Italian instability, and Eastern European defiance are mapped in detail. The EU is identified as the weakest link among imperialist blocs.
  • Revolutionary wave 2019: The article catalogues mass movements in France (gilets jaunes), Chile, Ecuador, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, arguing these are not isolated episodes but symptoms of a single global process. The Chilean uprising, with its cabildos (popular assemblies), is identified as having insurrectionary features.
  • Crisis of reformism: The defeat of Corbyn in the December 2019 UK election, the collapse of Podemos's radical rhetoric, the betrayal of Syriza in Greece, and the disintegration of the Five Star Movement in Italy are all presented as evidence that left reformism cannot survive contact with power.
  • US decline: The article notes that US imperialism suffered strategic defeats in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and that Trump's last-minute reversal of the order to strike Iran exposed the limits of American military power. The relative decline of the US is linked to the breakdown of the post-war world order.

Where the Argument Continues

This document functions as a strategic overview, and several threads are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus:

  • The economic analysis is elaborated in earlier IDOM documents on the world economy, particularly those from 2017-2019 that tracked the slowdown in China, the fragility of the US recovery, and the debt trap. The article references these as "previous documents."
  • The analysis of the coronavirus crisis as the catalyst for the predicted slump is developed in subsequent IDOM articles from March 2020 onwards, which apply the framework of overaccumulation and fictitious capital to the specific dynamics of lockdown-induced demand collapse.
  • The question of the Labour Party and the Corbyn defeat is taken up in detail in Socialist Appeal articles from December 2019 and early 2020, analysing the Blairite counter-offensive and the strategic lessons for the Marxist tendency.
  • The environmental question is flagged as an area where the IMT had previously paid insufficient attention. This is addressed in subsequent articles on the climate strikes, the FFF (Fridays for Future) movement, and the Left Fraction initiative mentioned in the document.
  • The analysis of China — particularly the revolutionary potential of the Chinese proletariat and the fragility of the CCP's control — is developed in IDOM articles on Hong Kong and on the contradictions of Chinese state capitalism.
  • The crisis of the sects — the collapse of the CWI and ISO — is treated as a positive development that clears the ground for the IMT. This is a recurring theme in IDOM's internal and public documents.

Connections

  • Trotsky, The Transitional Programme (1938) — The document's strategic orientation (work in mass organisations where conditions permit, independent revolutionary party building as the goal) is a direct application of the Transitional Programme's method.
  • Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution — The concept of the molecular process of revolution is drawn from this work, specifically the analysis of how mass consciousness changes beneath the surface before erupting.
  • Lenin, What Is To Be Done? — The article's insistence on the primacy of theory, the critique of economism, and the emphasis on the youth as the layer most open to revolutionary ideas all echo Lenin's polemic.
  • Engels, The Dialectics of Nature — Quoted directly on the environmental question, Engels's passage on nature's revenge is used to argue for socialist planning against capitalist extraction.
  • Trotsky, Class, Party and Leadership — Referenced in the analysis of the Trump phenomenon and the relationship between class consciousness and political leadership.
  • Marx, Capital Vol. 3 — The theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is the unspoken foundation of the economic analysis, particularly the discussion of overaccumulation and the shift from productive to fictitious capital.
  • IDOM, "World Perspectives" (1997) — The article references an earlier document on the European Union that predicted the euro would survive only until a deep slump exposed national contradictions.

Key Quotes

  1. "Trotsky once said that theory is the superiority of foresight over astonishment. The sudden, violent manifestations of popular discontent always take the bourgeoisie and its hired 'experts' by surprise. That is because the bourgeois 'experts' have no theory (except the theory that all theory is useless) and therefore are consistently astonished when events suddenly blow up in their faces."

  2. "Debt was the way that the capitalists got out of the crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, but it has now prepared the way for an even bigger crisis. The longer they postpone the slump by expanding credit (and therefore debt), the worse it will be when the evil day finally arrives — and arrive it will."

  3. "The problem with a trade war is that it's easy to start but not so easy to finish. It tends to spiral, as we see with China's retaliation. If globalisation is halted by the spread of economic nationalism and trade wars, the upward trend can easily turn into a sharp downward spiral, with catastrophic consequences for the whole world."

  4. "In the past, the bourgeoisie used to control the political game. But that is no more the case. What we see now is an unprecedented situation, where the bourgeoisie, in effect, has lost direct control of its own system."

  5. "The word fascism is frequently used incorrectly to describe any right-wing reactionary government, like that of Bolsonaro, or even that of Donald Trump. This misuse of terminology is scientifically incorrect and politically misleading. It is also dangerous, because when a real danger of fascism is posed, the working class may not be able to recognize it."

  6. "The main thing that is lacking in Russia is that the working class has not yet begun to move. Once that occurs, the whole situation will be rapidly transformed, as we saw in January 1905. The Russian workers have revolutionary traditions and their consciousness will grow by leaps and bounds once the situation changes."