VHeadline commentarist, University of Los Andes political sciences professor, Dr. Franz J. T. Lee writes: Economic recession, not only threw Iceland into the throes of bankruptcy, political protests against the social crisis, now even are toppling its government. Obviously, because of structural recession, elsewhere this type of economic collapse will continue.
Will Ukraine be next? And finally, who?
According to various international press agencies, currently Carterpillar, Philips, Pfizer, Microsoft and other transnational corporations are beginning to launch massive ill-fated, gigantic, global layoffs, a disastrous shock wave for the international working classes. The capitalist owners and managers of these giant corporations are not concerned about the cost of living of hundred thousands of their wage slaves, about the lost or dwindling salaries which fling whole lower social classes into adverse poverty and dire misery.
These finance moguls are just worried about the deceleration of the accumulation of capital and profits on a world scale, stagnation of economic growth ... that is, of the merciless economic exploitation of nature and society ... which directly produces recession, depression, bankruptcy, falling rates of profits, merging, concentration, brutal genocide, labor uprisings and mass protests; in short, social, political and economic class struggles and world wars.
At the moment the metropolitan working and middle classes are feeling the brunt of world recession, of layoffs. Some individual members of the capitalist classes are becoming paupers overnight; at last, they could also enjoy bourgeois 'democracy', however, instead of experiencing labor hell on earth, by joining the starving armies of billions of 'wretched of the earth', they rather prefer to commit suicide.
Let us just mention a few examples of the economic attacks on the global working classes.
In Europe, what happened to Philips in the electrical industry? Its current account showed that it lost 1,500 million euros ($1,900 million); since 2003, this did not occur in any quarter of a year. What was the immediate reaction, to save capital and costs? 6,000 jobs were eliminated. For similar reasons, ING, also in the electrical industry, and the steel maker Corus followed suit. The former sacked 7,000 of its 130,000 workers; the latter plans to eliminate 3,500 globally, including 2,500 in Britain alone.
In the USA, the same is happening.
- Alone this week major US corporations sacked approximately 75,000 workers nationally and internationally.
This year Corning Inc. which produces fiber-optic equipment will cut 3,500 jobs, abut 13 percent of its total labor force. In the field of construction Caterpillar sacked 20,000 workers; Pfizer is absorbing its rival Wyeth, but it already announces that by 2011, 10 percent of its current labor force will be eliminated .
The rearrangement plan of Sprint Nextel eventually will cost 8,000 workers their jobs, their means of existence.
Among many others, Label maker Avery Dennison Corp., IBM, oil company Baker Hughes, Discount retailer Target Corp., Electronics retailer Best Buy and coffee giant Starbucks, all announced that they will lay off thousands of workers in the immediate future.
Similarly, the other big construction firm Home Depot will sack 7,000 of its employees by March 2009. General Motors still in a technical 'strike' also plans to get rid of 2,000 workers; even Microsoft and Harley-Davidson will sack thousands of laborers within the next months.
US President Barack Obama, more precisely, the Democratic Party can not and will not offer any viable solution to the current recession. Its $825 billion stimulus package will only serve the economic class needs and interests of the United States financial elites.
In fact, according to Robert Stevens, also the Fed cannot stop the fast economic deterioration: "Under the guise of freeing up credit for businesses and consumers, the Fed has already unilaterally committed hundreds of billions of dollars through various programs, surpassing the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) approved by Congress last year. "
Pertaining to this imperialist disaster, let us recollect some pertinent issues. After the real estate fiasco and the debacle of trillions worth of global financial speculation that hit some upper and middle classes very sensitively, now un- and sub-employment, wage slashes, layoffs, cuts of social benefits and severe supression, oppression, repression, depression and recession will now also shake the very foundations, the very existence of the global workers; if this would not wake up the metropolitan wage slaves en masse, well, then the road will be free towards Orwellian global fascism, towards inhuman barbarism.
World corporate imperialism cannot offer any real, true, lasting solution to the current global crisis without annihilating itself.
Capitalism has survived quite a few structural recessions and depressions, could adapt itself again at a cost of colossal destruction of infrastructures, capital and human lives. In mesocosm, in the past, in quantitative geographic expansion, in imperialist conquest, that is, in ransacking and plundering the whole planet, this was still possible, however, now, in its qualitative realization, in the globalization of its French Revolution (and of its Industrial Revolution), capitalism is confronting its alpha and omega.
In the last economic analysis, in micro- and macrocosm are nothing to exploit, to convert into exchange values, capital and profits; only exploited physical human labor force produces surplus value. Intellectual 'labor' or 'property' belong to another genre of galactic transcendence. In a dangerous world, the latter is a realm where without any fear and illusions only some human creators and emancipators dare to tread. However, definitely, it is also a domain that is already being abused desperately by nanotechnology, 'life sciences', cloning, genetic engineering, space colonization and militarization, by imperialism to produce mortal, lethal and fatal weapons of mass destruction.
Progressively, as it is nearing its universal, finite end, our world order, our mode of production inexorably is converting itself into a mode of self-destruction.
Just look around, this has nothing to do with 'end times'; it is very simple, if we do not stop the ominous voyage of this Titanic here and now, then soon natural and social life on planet earth will become Lilliputian, will fade away into stark, dark oblivion.
Franz J. T. Lee
franz@vheadline.com
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