Following the collapse of the totalitarian Stalinist regimes of East Europe and the USSR we have witnessed an unraveling of the post-World War II equilibrium based on a division of the world between imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracies. Parallel to that, the economic hegemony of the United States, which emerged early in the 20th century and had served as the cornerstone of the world capitalist system, has fatally eroded and the interimperialist rivalries have sprung to the forefront of world politics.
The giant speculative bubbles of the post-World War II capitalist economy are now bursting in one country after another: Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Brazil, JapanÉ Market value deflation threatens even the older capitalist states, including the US. The advanced capitalist economies are lurching from recessions to "jobless" or "payless recoveries" and global competition is driving the wholesale destruction of their social welfare nets. The less developed countries and continents are sliding back to colonialism and barbarism, and we see the spread of social destruction, economic collapse and imperialist plunder in Africa, Asia, Latin America and now also in Eastern Europe.
At the end of 20th century the insoluble contradictions of capitalism are reasserting themselves: firstly, the contradiction between the globalization of the world economy and the system of individual nation-states; secondly, the conflict between, on the one hand, the need for a democratic plan to manage the natural resources of Earth and to develop the social resources of humanity, and, on the other hand, the system of private property with its cruel, market driven laws.
These contradictions are now pushing mankind into a convulsive era of wars and revolutions. We shall provide a Marxist analysis of the factors shaping our world and see how to resolve the crisis of revolutionary leadership in the working class.