{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":350,"pdf_page":350,"physical_index":350,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"98ece148573da0ce4af6382e2dd166e6423e96fa43d589cb63bd2adbb81db75c"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Its very restlessness means that it cannot allow those it exploits to remain in any degree of contentment for any great length of time. As the runaway system lurches from boom to slump and tries to boost profits and write off debts in a wild attempt to lurch back again it dashes the very hopes of a secure life that it has encouraged in the past. It insists the mass of the people have to work longer for less, to accept they must lose their jobs because bankers lost their heads, to resign themselves to hardship in old age, to give up their homes to the repo men, to go hungry on peasant plots so as to pay the moneylender and the fertiliser supplier.\n\nPeople will react against this. Some were already doing so as I wrote these words. The last spurt of the mid-1 990s onwards finance-fuelled boom saw spontaneous riots against rising food and energy prices in a score of countries. The first months of its new recession saw protests, riots and strikes against its effects. It could not be otherwise. All such movements can provide people with the conditions for learning for themselves about the potentialities of class struggle against the system. And the interaction of recurrent crises-economic, military, ecological-is repeatedly going to create conditions that breed further discontent even if capitalism does somehow finally emerge from the present crisis intact.\n\nIt bears repeating again and again that the wealthiest society in human history, the United States, operated over the last three decades before the current crisis broke by pushing down the living standards of those who labour within it. That too was the pattern of Japan from the early 1990s on. They are examples which those who rule over Western Europe have set out to emulate, and any success they have will create similar pressures on those presiding over capital accumulation in the newly industrialising societies of East and South East Asia. That does not necessarily mean there might not be spells in which some parts of the system might seem better than in the recent past to many who live within them. Such was the case in the mid to late 1 980s and the mid to late 1 990s, and it may well happen again. But in the \"runaway world\" of capitalism in the 21st century they cannot last long, and the crises that bring their sudden end can raise discontent to massive levels.\n\nLenin laid out conditions that he saw as necessary for society to enter a \"pre-revolutionary crisis\" . Two are going to be fulfilled again and again in this century. The ruling class will not be able continue with things in the old way. And the mass of people will not feel able to put up with things in the old way. These two elements have produced very important social upheavals in the decades since the demise of the long boom-from Iran in 1979 and Poland in 1980-8 1 , through to Russia in 1989-91 , to Indonesia in 1998, to Argentina and then Venezuela and Bolivia in the years after 200 1 . The escalation of crisis in October 2008 led President Sarkozy of France to warn fellow rulers of the danger of \"a European 1 968\". Whether his warning was right or wrong in the short term, we will see massive social upheaval repeatedly in the decades ahead. But what has so far been lacking has been a third element Lenin focused on, the subjective one: a political current able to win people in their masses to the notion of a reorganisation of society and prepared to take decisive action at key moments in leading people to fight for it.\n\n350\n\nThe Runaway System","previous_page":349,"next_page":351}