PRAGOTI

The recent stock market downswing in India and the world, in the aftermath of the downgrading of US credit rating by Standard & Poor (S&P) has graphically shown the irrationality of the economic world built around finance capital led globalization.

''The brazen attempts by the champions of the “free market”, to save capitalism through state intervention and public finances, mark a gigantic failure of the finance-driven globalisation process. This spectacular failure, besides reenergizing the resistance against imperialist globalisation, will also have repercussions in terms of weakening the hegemony of the US and strengthening the trend towards multipolarity in world affairs. ''

Prasenjit Bose argues that the global financial crisis and the onset of the recession will 'drum dialectics' into the heads of the policymakers worldwide.

Lenin on imperialism at the turn of the last century seems to eerily fit the realities of the crisis-ridden world at the beginning of this century. Some excerpts from his masterpiece Imperialism.

"This is now a very dangerous moment in the life of our country, because if the financial system did collapse, it would have all kinds of repercussions all over the country, and we don't want that. On the other hand, we cannot allow Wall Street and the Bush administration to push through a bailout package which meets only their needs and takes them off the hook, and puts all that money back into their bank accounts".

Sam Webb, National Chair, Communist Party USA, speaks to Political Affairs on the US financial crisis.