We have not learnt from the mistakes of 1930's nationalism

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In November the G20 summit agreed not to increase barriers to trade and investment. This agreement is now beginning to crumble, Russia has announced increased car tarrifs, the US congress is demanding that any infrastructure projects paid for from the stimulus package must use only American products, French unionists are pushing for increased trade protection, as are India, Indonesia,and Argentina. the new Obama regime has just accused China of manipulating its currency which under the WTO rules will allow it to bring in a raft of tariff and other economic penalties. China and the US already have trade lawsuits against one another.

If this continues we could well see the scale of national protectionism that forced us into the great depression of the 30's the ultimate result of which was WW2.

But, I thought that the capitalist system would inevitably fail due to the inherent problems within it?

In any case, you expect humanity to learn something. That is absolutely insane! People *never* learn!

Yes and this is one of them, the major contradiction of a global system bound up with nationalism



That is horribly cynical

Capitalism is the worst form of economic system except for all the others.

ruveyn

Which the big US financial systems must agree since they are so eager to resort to the socialist bailouts now offered to them since their pure capitalist motivations to get as rich as possible and screw everybody else seems to have undermined the capitalist system.

DO you feel like justifying that comment

Yeah, protectionism is stupid, and will only make the recession worse than it has to be.

It it also true.

BTW, ape descendant, this thread makes me wonder what specific flavor of Marxism you like. I know orthodox Marxism postulates that society must go through a bourgeois capitalist phase before the socialist revolution takes place. How long would this capitalist phase have to last? When will Marxists know it is time to move to the next historical stage?

We need a revolution all right. What we need is to stop the NWO before it does any more damage. And we need to put paid to this ridiculous and obviously fabricated claim that eroding the rights of citizens is the answer to the problem society has with a small minority of extremists.

And horribly true.

Well to my mind the deficiencies in capitalism are now thoroughly transparent, I think we are heading into a time similar to the lead up to WW2, it is not so much Marxists knowing when it is time to move it is more a question of being ready when social unrest begins and trying to steer it away from nationalism and into a revolutionary movement for a change of system.

I do not want a bloody revolution, I would rather achieve my goals through education, however the Marxist understanding of events suggests that the change will come through revolution caused by the breakdown of the capitalist system. I for one do not want the world to fall into the hands of radical nationalists, the consequences of this can only be world war.

We are heading into a very dark period of history and I for one am not looking forward to it. Hopefully the end result will be to the betterment of the planet but I fear the journey is going to be nasty.

Aren't the deficiencies of socialism equally obvious, especially the kind of socialism where there no private ownership of the means of production at all? What seems to work as an admixture of market dynamics and some kind of regulation to prevent market extremes from having a bad effect on the total economy. This being said, one must wonder what the "right" proportions are. Sociaolism in its more extreme forms be it Marxist-Leninist or British type socialism lead to sub par performance and mediocrity.

Just think of what happened in Britain when the Laborites took over following WW2. It was a comedy of errors. Go and see the motion picture "I'm all right Jack" sometime to see how Laborite domination of the political economy became a sad joke.

ruveyn

I like the idea of the engine of Capitalism, as long as the brakes come from Socialism...

I sometimes wonder if the whole world is falling into some kind of emo spell. I get tired of end of the world scenerios. Despair is the greatest propaganda tool either.

Strange thing to say seeing as we have never had Marxism. In 1923 Stalin decide that capitalism was becoming too stable in Europe and the chance of continuing a Marxist revolution was unlikely, this was the major split when the Russian Communist Party turned away from Marxism and instead focused upon socialism within national boundaries, Trotsky fought this ideology to the day he died. It was this ideology that destroyed so many workers revolts. One of these betrayals was against the British working class during the general strike of 1926, facilitated by the unions and the Labour party

So if you want to have an informed debate about Marxism please do not use the labour party, or other leftist radical groups as an example of why Marxism does not work

^So you're a Trotskyist?

No I am a Marxist as was Leon Trotsky