The Great Crash: ‘Articles encourage action’

“The Great Crash: How and Why It Happened, What Workers Can Do to Fight Back,” a compilation of articles from Workers World newspaper; $5, available from Leftbooks.com

“The Great Crash” collects 23 articles that originally appeared in Workers World weekly newspaper from 2006 to 2009. This 47-page booklet should be read by everyone grappling with the current world capitalist crisis. “The Great Crash” is no dry, opaque economic treatise. The articles are written in a plain, clear, accessible style and are free of jargon and sectarianism.

The earliest article in the collection is from the fall of 2006, entitled “As Housing Market Falls, Is $10 Trillion Bubble Ready to Burst?” The article noted, “The capitalist economy is drowning in debt, deficits, and the crisis of hyper-speculation in non-traditional mortgage lending.”

Stories that follow focus on the consequences of debt-fueled overproduction, which brought down the curtain on 20 years of Wall Street’s globalization utopia.

At every turn the articles seek to encourage independent labor and political action and resist attempts by the chieftains of U.S. finance capital to shift all costs of the crisis onto the backs of working people and the oppressed. An article from October 2008 (page 26) spells this out: “... it is vital for workers to have a clear and unambiguous program of demands that meet their own needs and put the burden on the bankers and the rich to pay. ... As the unemployment rate rises, it is urgent to demand a freeze on all workplace closings and job layoffs and an extension of unemployment benefits. There must be a freeze on utility cutoffs and a rollback in gas, food and utility prices.”

One of the first areas of resistance to the crash and crisis developed around foreclosures and evictions between 2007 and 2008. Community activists, neighbors and friends of victimized homeowners came together using militant direct-action tactics to turn back the evictions bailiffs. According to the article “The Housing Crisis and a Fightback Program” (page 31): “There must be a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions to keep people in their homes and stop the destruction of our communities by racist, predatory banks. ... The billions being given to the mortgage companies to bail out their failing loans should be used instead to train youth as plumbers and electricians and carpenters, in a city like Detroit, to repair the 18 percent of homes that are vacant due to foreclosures and turn them over to the homeless.”

Articles in“The Great Crash” combine sensible, well-proportioned Marxist journalism with a rank-and-file action program for the labor movement. From “Capitalist Bosses Plan Permanent Job Loss” (page 38): “In the present crisis the historic methods of reviving the profitability of capitalism, of restoring capitalist accumulation and prosperity, appear to have run their course, as they did during the Great Depression. This is what has the ruling class running scared.

“Working class leaders, labor leaders, community organizers and activists in all spheres must come to grips with the prospect that there is no way out of the crisis except for mass intervention and mass struggle.”

“The Great Crash” does not stop explaining and motivating at the trade union level of political activism. The articles spell out clearly that while the labor movement must start bringing its social weight to bear around specific issues today, only by connecting these fights to broader questions can the struggle for socialism be put on the agenda in the United States and around the world. To quote from the booklet’s final article (page 47): “What are we waiting for? Let’s organize ... and fight for it!”

Jay Rothermel is a Workers World subscriber in Cleveland.