THE WORLD Economic Forum (WEF) opened its meeting at the Swiss resort of Davos this week under the storm clouds of an economic and political crisis that is engulfing world capitalism.
It wasn’t meant to be this dire, as the global leaders, the corporation bosses and world bankers had assured everyone beforehand that the economic crisis was being tamed, inflation across the world was falling and central banks would swiftly be cutting interest rates again.
This has been dealt a shattering blow with the WEF issuing a Global Risks Report for 2024 which warns: ‘The cascading shocks that have beset the world in recent years are proving intractable. War and conflict, polarized politics, a continuing cost-of-living crisis and the ever increasing impacts of a changing climate are destabilising the global order.’
Alongside the complete destabilisation of the world economy – resulting from the imperialist-supported war against Russia in the Ukraine – has come the inevitable spread of war throughout the Middle East as the US and UK bring their military support to Israel’s war to drive the Palestinians from their land.
The support of Yemen’s Houthi for the Palestinians has brought havoc to oil, gas and consumer supplies to Europe and beyond, while the bombing of targets in Yemen by the UK and US has served to widen the conflict.
On top of all this, the WEF is scared stiff of the increasing ‘polarisation’ of politics in the leading capitalist nations – namely the US and UK.
In the US, the presidential election will almost certainly be between Donald Trump and Joe Biden reflecting a massive split in the US ruling class as the political legitimacy bestowed on the leader by presidential elections has been publicly shredded.
Biden has publicly accused Trump of ‘supporting insurrection’ on January 6th 2021 when armed supporters of Trump stormed the US Capitol building.
Trump in turn has rampaged across America to announce that if elected he will impose a dictatorship on the US and wage war on workers at home and all the ‘enemies’ of America abroad.
In Britain, the country is witnessing the daily disintegration of the Tory Party with at least five different formations in it, each vying to outdo the other in right-wing extremism.
On Monday, the Tory-supporting Daily Telegraph published a ‘mega-poll’ that predicted the Tories would be wiped out at a general election, while a leading comment article in the same edition by Tory peer David Frost said the only way to avoid extinction is for the Tories to adopt even more right-wing policies.
This reflects the increasingly strident demands from sections of the ruling class for a new party to emerge from the ashes of the old Tories – a party prepared to wage an all-out war on workers, the NHS and asylum seekers to impose capitalist recession on the backs of the working class.
Small wonder that the WEF names ‘societal polarization’ as one of its main fears for the future of capitalism.
On Monday, OXFAM published a report that detailed the massive explosion in billionaires, with seven out of ten of the world’s biggest corporations having billionaire Chief Executives or major shareholders while the wages of workers have been systematically cut.
In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday published its latest labour market figures showing that the average wage for workers remains far below their value in 2008 while unemployment in the UK is rising.
Average pay for workers is worth £13 a week less than in 2008 – the year of the world banking collapse – and 220,000 more workers are unemployed than a year ago while job vacancies are falling for the 18th month in a row.
This crisis has increasingly revolutionised the working class across the UK, Europe and the US who are rising up and refusing to see their lives destroyed to keep the bankers and bosses in profit while these billionaires live in luxury dictating that workers must pay the full price for the capitalist crisis.
The time has come to put capitalism out of its misery and end imperialist war once and for all through the victory of the world socialist revolution.
