Economic crisis threatens the world

We are now witnessing what we haven't seen in more than a half century: a global financial crisis. And despite a recent stock market rally, there is no reason to think that the financial shocks have run their course.
Even if they have, the damage already done to the world economy is incalculable. Ten million more workers are unemployed, goods are piling up on wharfs, and economic conditions for hundreds of millions have become near catastrophic.
From the deliberations of a recent meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the leaders of the main capitalist countries, it is evident that no one has a clue as to how to keep the financial turmoil and its ricochet effects within manageable bounds.
In fact, the only thing on which the participants could agree was that the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank should cut its prime lending rate, which it did. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, shortly after the meeting, announced an interest rate cut to 5 percent. Wall Street and other financial centers around the world, not surprisingly, greeted the announcement with delight.
But, coming on the heels of an earlier reduction in interest rates, Greenspan's decision is not a sign of the underlying strength of the global economy, nor should it be taken as an indication that the worst of the economic/financial shakeout is behind us. Rather, the rate cut reflects fundamental weaknesses of global capitalism. What effect this rate reduction will have beyond a temporary rebound in the stock market is not clear. We do know, however, that it provides no immediate relief to hundreds of millions battered by this financial hurricane. As events have made painfully clear, no country is insulated from the gale winds of the present global economic storm.
In the longer term, even with the best outcome on Nov. 3, the present moment urgently calls for new levels of militancy, new forms of struggle, new demands and new alliances on the part of the international working class. Labor cannot resolve the crises of capitalism; crises are built into the system and are inevitable. But labor can and must fight for its immediate needs. What is more, labor must also - and the sooner the better - fight for "Bill of Rights socialism" - the more basic solution to capitalist economic crises. This presents a big challenge to the international labor movement, but one that it will surely meet. Our own labor movement, especially since the change in the top leadership in 1995, is battling the transnational corporations and banks in a new way not seen for at least a half century - in some cases successfully, as evidenced by the legislative fight over Fast Track.
Similarly, labor in other corners of the globe is also fighting with a new resolve. To be sure, the process of globalization brings to the fore new difficulties for hundreds of millions of working people. But it is also enlarging the working class on a global scale, including in countries where the working class and its mass production sector formerly comprised only a small fraction of the population.
This is deepening international solidarity and setting the stage for new advances for the international working class.