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EDITORIAL

Summit of sharks

Published Oct 22, 2008 5:03 PM

As the global economic crisis intensifies, leaders from some of the largest capitalist economies are trying to save the economic system that enriches them and their class by impoverishing the vast majority of the rest of the population.

President George W. Bush emerged from the compound at Camp David outside Washington, D.C., on Oct. 18 flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to announce that the U.S. will host an emergency world economic summit.

The exact date for the emergency economic summit was just announced as being Nov. 15 in Washington, D.C.  What is not known at this time is its location.  

Wherever it happens, it is sure to draw opposition from those fighting the devastating effects of the capitalist crisis on the lives of the workers and oppressed peoples.

The capitalist leaders will not be discussing how to help the millions of people who have suffered the loss of their homes, jobs and life savings in the current economic meltdown.

Instead they will be discussing how to best coordinate their criminal bailouts of a handful of the largest banks, transnational corporations, hedge funds and other financial institutions. This only accelerates the trend towards capitalist consolidation—monopoly—during this time of crisis.

Behind their facade of cooperation is the poisonous competition and jockeying for markets that is an indelible feature of imperialism and has in the past led to war among these same countries. The only thing that truly unites the guardians of these capitalist states is their fear that hard times will revive the struggles of the working class in their respective countries.

Some of the imperialist leaders appear to be lobbying for a restructuring of institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in order to make them better equipped to protect the profits of the transnational corporations and banks.

Indeed, the neoliberal economic model traditionally pushed by the IMF and World Bank has contributed to the global scope of the current meltdown.

By making aid to developing countries contingent upon financial market liberalization, among other “Washington Consensus” policy prescriptions, the IMF and the World Bank helped foster a growing cross-border interconnection between streams of finance capital. This increasing interconnectedness is one reason the crisis has spread so quickly and so thoroughly across borders.

When discussing the need for a world economic summit, Sarkozy said there needs to be “a new capitalism.” “We don’t want all this to start again; we want lessons to be learned,” he said.

But if there is any lesson to be learned, it is that economic crisis is inherent in the capitalist mode of production. There is no such thing as capitalism without crisis. Crisis is written into the very DNA of capitalism.

The anarchy of capitalist production ensures that crises of overproduction will always occur. As long as production is undertaken with the goal of obtaining profits and not with the goal of meeting actual needs, the next crisis will inevitably be right around the corner.

This crisis was not caused just by a lack of regulation in the financial markets or corruption on Wall Street. It was caused by capitalism and there is no permanent solution that doesn’t include the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of socialism.

While announcing the emergency world economic summit, Bush said,

“it is essential that we preserve the foundations of democratic capitalism.”

For billions of workers and oppressed people around the globe who are homeless, jobless and hungry, it is getting harder and harder to see what exactly about this rotten, exploitative and crisis-prone system is worth saving.

When the imperialist leaders convene to advance their ideas on how to save the capitalist system, they can be assured that militant workers and activists will be there to meet them, ready to advance ideas of their own.

For information about how to get involved in demonstrations against the bailouts on Wall Street and at the upcoming economic summit, visit www.stopforeclosuresandevictions.org.