Economy

As the recent Rome summit of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) fades from the headlines (as few as they were in the U.S.), the workers and peasants of the world, and particularly those of the so-called Third World, are once again left to fend for themselves. No concrete measures were taken to put an end to the global food crisis. Prices of basic staple foods continue to rise in all countries and the talk shop of the imperialists, the UN, has taken no firm steps to stave off starvation and hunger. Their document, which pledges to cut the number of undernourished people in “developing” countries in half by the year 2015, outlines no plan by which to do so. Once again, the world’s powers attempt to don a mask of humanitarianism, but deliver only empty rhetoric.

The rising cost of oil, and gasoline in particular, is having an effect on everything, further stretching the limits of our already strained wallets. From simply getting to and from work every day, to the cost of food which is also soaring due to increased transportation costs.

Oil prices are six times higher now than in 2002 and are up 40 percent since January. Gasoline prices are up almost $1 from a year ago. The average price at the pump, as tracked by the Energy Information Administration, has risen above $4 a gallon. Prices in California averaged $4.43 a gallon. And the trend is for price climbs to continue. Jet fuel has risen 66 percent in a year and several carriers have already gone bust. American Airlines is now passing on more costs to passengers while cutting jobs and routes.

Inflation is rising across the board. In other words, today’s dollar just doesn’t buy as much as it did a few months ago. And it’s not just housing, gasoline, heating, transportation, health care and education. The cost of that most basic of all necessities – food – is now also quickly rising for American workers and their families.

By now every driver is well aware of the rising cost of gas. And many are uneasily looking ahead to the spring and summer months when gas prices historically rise even further. According to the Energy Department’s latest prediction, gasoline prices will peak near $3.40 a gallon this spring, and many other analysts expect the cost to go above the government’s conservative estimate, perhaps as high as $4.00 per gallon or more.

It is now taken for granted that social services in the U.S. will be under-funded – if they are funded at all.  This isn’t because average people think that such things are unimportant, but because we’ve been taught by “our” representatives in government that even a miniscule social safety net is economically impossible (it is never explained why – it just is).  As this approach continues to dominate mainstream political life, the living standards of working people everywhere are being destroyed, and the meager reforms politicians have always promised us have devolved into even tinier crumbs and counter-reforms. Indeed, reforms that benefit the working class seem to be impossible in Washington now-a-days, precisely at a time when the wealth of the country has never been greater. To make sense out of such irrationality, one has to consider that this issue isn’t limited to the 50 states of the U.S. – it’s an international problem, and its cause is no accident. 

Marx’s analysis of capitalism, unlike bourgeois accounts, is conducted from a historical perspective.  In other words, Marx was keenly aware that during the march of history, one economic system, because of internal, irreconcilable contradictions, has been replaced by another until it too falls victim to similar contradictions.  Of course, when one is born and matures within a single economy and lacks knowledge of any other system, one tends to take one’s own for granted, believing that it will persevere forever.  A historical perspective has the advantage of forcing us to rise above the provincial perspective that assumes economic systems are eternal.  We survey from above the vast array of systems that have played their fleeting role on history’s stage.  For this reason, Marx’s analysis of capitalism is specifically written with the purpose of unveiling its inner contradictions so that the possibility of its demise stands boldly in relief.  This runs directly opposed to bourgeois portrayals of capitalism as “natural” and hence as unalterable as the law of gravity itself.

Poor and working people’s debt has spawned an explosion in get-rich-off-the-poor industries for capitalists across the U.S. For instance, payday lenders, who provide expensive short-term cash loans, have grown from 300 in the early 1990s, to more than 25,000 today. Subprime loans to people with poor credit ballooned to $1.3 trillion in 2006. These loans entice borrowers with low starting rates, then rocket higher, trapping the unwary in even worse debt.  As many as a million working families will have their homes repossessed as a result.

Since the 1970s, the social consequences of the current period of capitalism (commonly referred to as globalization) have primarily affected the working class, especially those in manufacturing jobs.  Despite the consequential deterioration of large cities and countless smaller towns — not to mention the pauperization of large segments of the population — the effects were dismissed by politicians and the mainstream media as necessary evils. The victims of this process were told to pick themselves up by their boot-straps, go back to school, and learn to integrate into the new, technology-driven global economy.