ALL over the capitalist world, governments and administrations of all kinds are crumbling, as the deepening of the world crisis of capitalism sharpens the class struggle, making the continuation of bourgeois democratic government impossible.
The strongest capitalist power, the USA, is now gripped by a situation where the rival political parties of the bourgeoisie, the Democrats and the Republicans, have been reduced to playing chicken with each other, by hanging over the edge of a huge economic precipice and daring each other to let go and take the plunge.
The US government has less than 24 hours to avert a shutdown of government services with the Republicans stating that they will not lift the USA’s credit limit, unless Obama abandons his health care plans, the so-called Obamacare programme.
The Republicans have been emboldened by the fact that the people of the USA have already humbled Obama by refusing to allow him to attack Syria, to the point where he had to be thrown a lifeline by Russia’s Stalinist President, Vladimir Putin.
The US government needs to agree a new policy-wide spending bill before the US fiscal year ends at midnight tonight.
If it fails, non-essential federal services face closure, with employees sidelined or left working without pay. About 800,000 federal workers could be placed on unpaid leave, with much worse to come as the US dollar sinks without trace.
Even a last-minute deal will not save US capitalism, which has already printed up to a trillion dollars in quantitative easing paper, since the US working class, the majority of the middle class and the US youth, have begun to mobilise against capitalism. The mass opposition to a war with Syria was just the start of the process, not its end.
Workers are determined not to go under like the city of Detroit, and hundreds of thousands of youth are mobilising in the unions and taking action to win a living wage minimum of $15 an hour. In fact, the trade union movement of the AFL-CIO has been forced by the crisis to unite with the mass student movement, to do battle against US capitalism for a future, which can only be socialism.
This is the situation of the major capitalist power – facing a huge revolutionary movement from the working class and the poor, which makes any major compromise deal between the Republicans and Democrats to impose a new programme of savage cuts extremely difficult.
The rest of the capitalist world is gripped by the same historical crisis, and is suffering the same death agony as US capitalism.
In Italy the coalition government has just collapsed, with the IMF warning that the economic and political consequences will be enormous. President Napolitano hinted that he will try to oversee the formation of a new coalition without calling elections.
The Italian bourgeoisie, already weak, unstable and discredited, is determined to avoid a general election, out of fear of what will emerge out of it. It is now considering attempting to impose a government using the power of the military police establishment to do so. Such an attempt to by-pass a general election will run head-on into the massive power of the working class, and put a general strike and a socialist revolution right at the top of the agenda of the working class.
Next door, in Greece, the labour movement is now so threatening as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, that the ruling class has had to lock up the fascist leadership of the Golden Dawn movement to try and preserve it for future action, since millions of workers are now determined to destroy it because of its assassinations of workers and youth.
Meanwhile, the Greek working class is driving forward with more and more workers convinced that a socialist revolution is the only way out of the Greek and world crisis of capitalism.
This same process is taking place in every capitalist country. In the UK, the drive of the Cameron regime to smash the NHS and the Welfare State has run into mass opposition on every front, to the point where Tory leaders doubt that they will win a majority at the next general election. They are now fearful that a Miliband government will see the masses getting completely out of control and imposing their will on society via a socialist revolution.
This world crisis of capitalism is dictating the message of the hour – that sections of the Fourth International must be built in every country to lead the developing world socialist revolution to its victory.
