THE WORLD Trade Organisation chief Roberto Azevedo said on Wednesday that the economic collapse and job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic would be worse than the 2008 financial and industrial collapse.
‘This pandemic will inevitably have an enormous impact on the economy,’ Azevedo said. He continued: ‘Recent projections predict an economic downturn and job losses that are worse than the global financial crisis a dozen years ago.’
The world economy with its record-breaking Wall Street upswing one week, ‘greater than 1933’, then the next week crashing to the greatest fall since the 1929 depression is gearing up for a huge fall, which will bring major capitalist countries to the brink of civil war and revolution between the working class and the ruling class.
In the US, President Trump is spending trillions trying to prop up the US economy and Wall Street. He has, however, insisted that the cure for the crisis must not be worse than the cause. He is clear that he is rescuing business, and has already been accused of allowing New York to go to the wall.
The US Senate has just passed a $2 trillion coronavirus aid bill that is the largest economic stimulus in US history. However, it was delayed by Democratic and socialist senator Bernie Sanders who threatened to put a hold on the $2 trillion ‘stimulus’ measures if Trump attempted to dilute unemployment benefits.
The plan includes direct payments of $1,200 to most American adults and aid to help small businesses pay workers. However, Republican senators Tim Scott, Rick Scott, Ben Sasse and Lindsey Graham said its major expansion of unemployment benefits provided ‘a strong incentive for employees to be laid off instead of going to work’.
The bill went through. Trump is now vowing to get big business up and running again by Easter. US workers are supporting Sanders and his proposals for jobs at trade union rates of pay, and for the establishment of free medical care for all.
Another collapse bigger than 2008 will not see Trump nationalising, Ford as Obama did in 2008. It will create the conditions for the US socialist revolution.
In Europe, the deepening crisis is breaking the EU apart. Germany is committing one trillion euros to preserve its industrial core. It is tearing up the EU’s ban on state aid for industries.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is predicting that Italy’s economy hit by the coronavirus will contract by 11.6%, that its borrowing will explode with debt exceeding 150% of GDP, and that Spain, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus are all in the same boat.
This means that there will be an explosion of the class struggle throughout Europe blowing the EU apart, and creating the conditions for the Socialist United States of Europe.
In the UK, from last Wednesday evening, a government that has had Parliament vote in dictatorial powers is in charge.
Parliament when it returns on April 23rd, will not sit in a body because of its fears of the coronavirus. The government with power without limits in its hands will be running the country, with the military alerted to be ready for action by mid-April.
The government has already spent trillions on rescuing the bosses and getting the support of the TUC with its guarantee to pay the wages of organised workers by up to 80%.
The working class however will not accept 25 years of super austerity to repay all the debt that the Tories have accumulated, when the coronavirus crisis is over or the virus has been subdued.
In fact, a crash of the world economy will leave British capitalism posed with making more huge bail-outs at colossal expense for the working class. It will certainly bring the working class into conflict with the ruling class and its state apparatus, with a socialist revolution the only way out for the working class and the middle class.
The working class will not accept a return to the conditions of the 1929 crash. In fact it will seek to take the power.
This immediate revolutionary future makes it all the more necessary to build up the WRP and the YS to lead the British socialist revolution, and to build sections of the Fourth International all over Europe and in the USA to lead the world socialist revolution to its victory.
There is not a moment to lose. Join the WRP and YS today. Build sections of the Fourth International in every country.
