Franz J.T. Lee, October, 2008

The current Wall Street crash is ushering in a new emancipatory Krakatau

Contrary to Alan Woods, in an interview of October 5, 2008, currently Bill Gates sees neither a crisis of capitalism nor any danger of a Great Depression.

It cannot be that the wealthy capitalist mogul of Microsoft and his staunch economic assessors are so badly informed about Marxist political economy, that they can not see the huge global over-production crisis, the gigantic speculation, the inexorable, murderous competition, the swift destruction of huge traditional transnational corporations and bank houses and especially the geometric progression of pauperization of many condemned social classes on a global level.

Yeah, it is again time to declare Marx 'obsolete' and stone dead for the 666th time. And yet, which specter is haunting Europe and the globe again? What really is outmoded is precisely the rotten mode of capitalist production. Those staunch believers in capitalism as an eternal and absolute reality, that it will never ever perish, one good morning will wake up and discover ... like in the cases of the Twin Towers and of the Soviet Union ... that suddenly Uncle Sam is no more. This is not wishful thinking, not an intellectual pipe-dream. Who has studied the economic works of Marxist scientists and philosophers and still can register perversion, decadence and decay knows what Hegel, the teacher of Marx, meant by: "everything that comes into existence merits to pass away." Capitalism had its turn, its hey-day, now its 'involutionary' agony is beginning -- the stock market bells of Wall Street are tolling for late capitalism.

There is no 'good' capitalism; the myth of 'moral' entrepreneurs and 'wicked' speculators has been brought to daylight long ago. In a foot note of 'Capital' (Chapter 31), Marx pointed out that, if according to Marie Augier (in "Du Credit Public," Paris, 1842) money " 'comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,' capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt."

We are now facing the globalized apex of the capitalist, imperialist 'dripping with blood and dirt." The inexorable economic world war, the brutal battle of the metropolitan titans, is being fought out in Wall Street, however, hundreds of billions of dollars as proletarian 'bail-out' cannot and will not buy the stockpiles and arsenals of over-production of expensive merchandise and bellicose arms of mass destruction.

Beware Wall Street, if we do not stop this global corporate megalomania now, also for us, every 1929 could have its 1939, and its nuclear 1945.

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were not historical accidents or the work of individual political lunatics, of Hitler or of  Mussolini; they were the political, military results of the 1929 Depression, of world capitalism in severe crisis. The current world depression, this gigantic speculative Mount Everest will let the 1939 recession look like a mole-hill. With State bail-outs we will not block its destructive imperialist, terrorist tsunamis. The hegemonic project for a 'New American Century' has just begun.

When economic exploitation and political domination remain controlled and 'peaceful', and if the working classes are at rest, at bay, then 'democracy' usually prevails. However, when over-production, the fall of the rates of profits, the tumbling of Wall Street and the maximization of capital declines, then imperialism shows its true 'neo-liberal' snarl: Orwellian world fascism.

At this moment, this is what is on the order of the day. In the past, world wars restored capitalism again; it resurrected from its grave on top of hundreds of millions of victims, accompanied with the destruction of infrastructures, capital and physical labor forces. If ever this should be the plan now, well hundreds of millions, if not billions,  of 'obsolete' labor forces will have to believe in it, including the current  'obsolete' middle classes.

Capitalism has thrown the very human species on the horns of a dilemma. With classical reforms, with traditional revolutions, we will end up with precisely the same apocalyptic disaster. It could be that with global class struggle and permanent world revolution we may save mankind from imperialist corporate annihilation. However, this sacred endeavour within the capitalist and labor system has an infinitesimal possibility of realization. If we do nothing, do not resist, do not negate capitalism, in any case, global fascism will probably destroy life on this planet.

With formal logical and even dialectical intrasystemic projects we will not get very far. Within the closed, universal, historic process mankind has no chance of survival for much longer. Homo kenyapithecus, homo australopithecus, homo pekingensis or homo neanderthal stood before this same dilemma, they all had to transcend as "homo sapiens sapiens" to survive. After less than 100 thousand years, the latter proved not to be so sapient after all. Now what is left of mankind has to transcend the formal logical and dialectical, spacetime barriers, and with a new logic, a new science, a new philosophy, and as a New Man, homo Novum has to emancipate itself.

In the year which Marx died, in 1883, he said farewell to Capital with a tremendous explosion of an island in Indonesia which  shook the very planet. Similarly, the current Wall Street Crash is ushering in a new emancipatory Krakatau, as the advent of a possible New Socialism of the 21st Century.