As the New Year begins Alan Woods comments on the state of world
affairs, highlighting the impasse facing humanity, a direct consequence of
capitalism in its phase of senile decay. At the root of the present world
turmoil is private property of the means of production, a system based on greed
for profit. In the next period the workers of the world are faced with the task
of removing the system.
Everywhere
the cry is: credit crunch! You can smell the sweat on the brows of bankers as
their necks are squeezed by the tightening credit noose. In all the offices of
the great investment banks of Wall Street, the City of London and gnomes of
Zurich, you can hear the hissing sound of the global financial bubble bursting
and deflating.
According
to a recent United Nations study, the richest 1% of adults in the world own 40%
of the planet's wealth. Europe, the US and some Asia Pacific nations
accounted for most of the extremely wealthy. More than one-third lives in the US, while Japan
accounts for 27%, the UK for
6% and France
for 5%. But bourgeois economists still insist Marx was wrong!