Marxisms Answer to the current crisis in America and the world

[Selene]

I get this daily from Political Affairs - Marxism Fresh Daily:

This article was titled: Global Crisis and a Program for Change [maybe this is the change we can believe in!], it is by Sam Webb**

In these new conditions, simple Keynesian policies – that is, stimulus spending (pump priming) – will ease the crisis, but won't attack it in a fundamental way. Thus economic stimulus should be combined with a more ambitious program for immediate relief, jobs, equality, sustainability, and peace.

It's no wonder there is little evidence that a dynamic and broad upturn on a global level is in the making. If anything, the prognosis for the world economy in the short and long run is not promising.

The only winners so far are the wealthiest families and corporations. Out of this crisis they have emerged with their profits, power and privileges intact. A few have fallen by the wayside to be sure, but only to be swallowed by bigger rivals – as Marx predicted.

In these new conditions, simple Keynesian policies – that is, stimulus spending (pump priming) – will ease the crisis, but won't attack it in a fundamental way. Thus economic stimulus should be combined with a more ambitious program for immediate relief, jobs, equality, sustainability, and peace.

The snippets above do not due justice to the hilarity. The rhetoric under the following four (4) point program are just stunning.

We should all e-mail Mr Webb with refutations.

1. Immediate relief

2. A peacetime, green jobs economy

3. Restore civil rights, the Bill of Rights and separation of powers

4. Strength through peace

Read the full article here.

Adam

**Email Address: swebb@cpusa.org Sam Webb is the national chairperson of the Communist Party, USA, a position to which he was elected in 2000 and then reelected in 2001 and 2005. From 1977 through 1988 he was the state organizer of the Communist Party in Michigan. Earlier, he was active in the labor movement in his home state of Maine.

He is a public spokesperson for the CPUSA, and travels extensively in the U.S. and abroad, including recent trips to South Africa, China, Vietnam, and Cuba where he met with leaders of those countries.

Webb currently resides in New York City, graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and received his MA in economics from the University of Connecticut.

[Mike Hansen]

Adam:

Thanks! That's a funny one. I advise everybody to read at least the four-point program. Even a socialist would begin to think, "wait a minute, how much will this cost?!"

But of course, his program won't happen, because "the balance of class and social forces doesn't allow it."

This guy is still better than Paul Krugman, though.

Mike

[Reidy]

You'd think he'd know better in the Obama era than to say that Keynesian pump-priming will ease the crisis.