The need for the working and middle classes to break with capitalism has never been more urgent. Today, corporate global capitalism or imperialism faces a totally unprecedented situation: the merging of economic, energy, ecological and political crises which it is unable to resolve.

First, capitalism worldwide faces an unfolding energy crisis, known as Peak Oil and which the eminent geologist, Colin J. Campbell, President of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, at a presentation to the Technical University of Clausthal, described as a turning point for mankind. Consumer capitalism will not be able to avoid decline due to the end of the cheap oil era.

Second, alongside this unfolding energy crisis is the capitalist crisis of overproduction, which takes the form of a credit crisis. Under consumer capitalism, the expansion of credit was the only way that capitalist production could be kept going. Thus credit allowed the capitalists to continue the production process and mitigate the crisis of overproduction, which would otherwise have resulted in mass unemployment and misery for working class and middle class people.

In other words, capitalism is the first society in history where people are periodically plunged into poverty and misery because they have produced too much wealth. This is the most absurd of the contradictions of capitalist society.

Thirdly, the ecological crisis. As more people come to recognise the dangers, capitalism is forced to wear a green mask without having any real long-term solutions to the environmental problem. Capitalism also uses people’s progressive concerns over the environment, in certain instances, as an excuse to cut back on production to maintain higher prices.

Finally the political crisis centred on the Middle East, still the most important oil region. Here, the deepening crisis between Israel and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme, together with the Arab-Israeli conflict, could serve to plunge the region and even the world into even deeper crisis.

Capitalist society cannot solve any of the problems facing humanity. The economic, energy, sociological and political problems cannot be solved by capitalism, nor can the problems of war, poverty, disease and crime be solved by this system. In fact, all these problems are getting worse and so the only solution begins with the international working class movement breaking from its pro-capitalist leadership.

See also: The imperialist Labour Party