Economic crisis - urgent need for mass broad left alternative

In the article below James Cumes likens the current global economic crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930s. But he says this financial collapse is going to be worse!  

If so, it will be ordinary grassroots people in this country who'll be made to bear the horrendous fallout. But that's if we accept the political status quo. That's if we accept that the NZ Labour Party is the best we can hope for.  

The capitalists will fight to preserve their system by all the means they employed last century. The leadership of the Labour Party does not have the political will, or standing amongst grassroots people, to lead any resistance. We need to build a new mass-based broad left party that strives to give leadership to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. 

We must set out today to break the stranglehold of the Labour-National duopoly. This is an urgent task. Many grassroots activists, including Socialist Worker-New Zealand, are throwing their energy into building RAM into a truly mass-based party. A party that aims to win the respect of grassroots people by standing firmly with them on every issue. (For more info on RAM see articles on the sidebar under the heading 'Building a broad left party')  

Such a broad left party can hope to provide the leadership that mobilises people in the struggle against the corporate elites. Who, spurred by the seriousness of the looming economic crisis, will be hatching plans for preserving their domination of society.  

These are challenging times requiring major breaks from the past. To help build a mass-based alternative in Aotearoa join RAM today. Contact Grant Morgan, RAM chair. Email grantmorgan@paradise.net.nz  

The Black Death of financial collapse  

by James Cumes Asia Times 11 April 2008

The financial and economic crisis now upon us is by far the most menacing of the past century - even more so than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is not just a "subprime" crisis; it is systemic - affecting the entire financial system.

It is also global, affecting various countries in various ways but affecting them all. In achieving a certain "globalization", we have been uniquely successful in globalizing collapse, chaos and misery. It is a globalization which, in our short-sighted negligence, we never envisaged.

In this crisis, even a country such as Australia is no more than a subordinate, neo-colonial, financial and economic dependency. In essence, we have reverted to what we were before and during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when Whitehall, Westminster and the Bank of England played the tune to which we jigged.

Then, from 1945 to 1969, for the first time, we played our own tune of full employment and stable economic growth. Wild radicals such as minister Eddie Ward in the governments of John Curtin (1941-45) and Ben Chifley (1945-49) warned us to be wary of Wall Street.

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