The Black Death:

The pandemic that

changed the world
 JOSH HOLROYD 09 OCT 2020

The Black Death of the 14th century dealt a

mortal blow to the feudal system, which
was decaying even before the plague hit.
Similarly today, the COVID-19 pandemic
has revealed the bankruptcy of capitalism
– and the need for socialism.
The present COVID-19 pandemic is a truly world-
changing event. Its rapid and deadly spread has
ruthlessly exposed governments, strained health
services to breaking point, and triggered the deepest
crisis of capitalism since the 1930s – if not ever. 

Around the world, people’s lives have been altered beyond

recognition. As the initial shock begins to subside, an
enormous wave of anger and revulsion has begun to break
against the capitalist system and its institutions.
Everywhere there is a profound sense that things will
never be the same again.

In the face of such events, commentators have naturally

sought historical analogies for the period we have entered.
For many, the closest comparison can be found not in
modern times, but in the deadly plague that swept Europe
and Asia in the 14th century, killing more than a third of
Europe’s population: the Black Death.

This analogy is highly significant – not because there is a

parallel between today’s pandemic and the plague’s
biological effects, but because of the tremendous social
consequences of the plague.

The Black Death is considered the worst natural disaster in

European history. But the impact it had on society went
far beyond the 14th century. The processes which were
unleashed or accelerated by the plague’s devastation
would in time completely change social relations,
eventually laying the foundations of modern Europe.

A closer examination of the Black Death – and the impact

it had on feudal society – is not an academic exercise. For
all the important differences between the 14th and the 21st
centuries, they have one thing in common: both are times
of transition, in which an old, rotten order begins to
crumble whilst new social forces struggle to be born.

Josh Holroyd will be speaking about the topic of the Black

Death at this year’s Revolution Festival, taking place
between 23-25 October. Get your ticket today – and join
the revolution!
What was the Black Death?
What became known as the Black Death was a pandemic
caused by deadly strains of yersinia pestis bacteria, which
live in the bellies of the fleas carried by various rodents
throughout Asia and Africa.

Between 1347 and 1351, this pandemic swept along the

trade routes of the Silk Road into China, the Middle East
and Europe, killing millions of people. It would return
periodically on a reduced scale well into the 18th century.

The most famous of these strains was the bubonic plague,

so-called because of the round, black buboes formed by
the swelling of the victim’s lymph nodes. Up to 60% of
those who contracted the disease died as a result. This
strain can still be found alive and well in parts of China to
this day, with a suspected case of bubonic plague reported
in Inner Mongolia as recently as July.

Even deadlier was pneumonic plague, which was passed

in the air from person to person and proved fatal in at least
95% of cases. Finally, septicaemic plague – caused by the
infection of the blood – was much less common, but
always fatal.

What is not so well known is that the Black Death’s

arrival in the 14th century was in fact the second time the
plague had visited Europe. The first pandemic struck the
Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th Century, as the Emperor
Justinian was trying to reconquer the West.
It is thought to have killed roughly half of Europe’s
population at the time, contributing both to the decline of
the Roman Empire in the East and the European Dark
Ages.

It is interesting to note how closely the arrival of both

pandemics coincide with two of the greatest turning points
in European history: the first with the decline and fall of
the Roman Empire; and the second with the decline of
feudalism.

Without question the death and panic wrought by the

plague would have shaken society to its very foundations,
psychologically, politically and economically.

But to understand the transformation which took place in

European society following the arrival of the Black Death,
we cannot look at this factor alone. It is necessary to
understand how society was organised in the 14th century;
and how the immense external shock of the pandemic
interacted with its internal dynamics.

Society in 1347

The first thing to bear in mind when

considering European society in 1347 is that it was
organised on a completely different basis to the urban
capitalist society of today. The overwhelming majority of
the population (up to 90% in England) lived and worked in
the countryside. The basic unit of society was not to be
found in the factory or the town – although increasingly
prosperous medieval towns certainly did exist, but in the
feudal manor. 

The manor was essentially a village, in which peasants

rented land from the ‘lord of the manor’ in return for a
portion of their product, and forced labour services on the
lord’s ‘demesne’, which was the land he held directly.
This form of exploitation, called serfdom, formed the
foundation upon which the entire feudal system rested.

Under feudalism, the most powerful class in society was

not the bankers and industrialists who rule society today.
The industrial bourgeoisie didn’t really exist at this stage.
The closest thing to it was the craftsmen of the guilds, who
lived and worked in the cities. Banking existed only in a
very primitive form. The merchants were the most
powerful and influential layer of the bourgeoisie. But the
swashbuckling Golden Age of the merchant capitalist had
yet to dawn.

The ruling class was made up of the military feudal

nobility and the church: “the ones who fight” and “the
ones who pray”. But aside from praying and fighting, the
nobility also owned almost all the land, except for the
common lands like forests, etc.

As the holders of the most important means of production

at that time – the land – the priests and nobles naturally
held a monopoly over the political, intellectual and
spiritual institutions of society.
There was no working class as we would recognise it
today. The workers either worked for themselves; or were
unfree peasants who worked for the lords, called ‘serfs’,
after the Latin ‘servus’, meaning slave.

Instead of the struggle between wage workers and their

bosses over pay, hours and conditions, the class struggle in
the feudal countryside was fought mainly by the serfs,
who were striving for freedom from forced labour and for
lower rents.

This system, as antiquated as it appears today, nonetheless

played a progressive role in the lifting of Europe out of the
Dark Ages. Between the 10th and 13th century, the
population of Europe roughly trebled to around 80 million
– the highest it had been for almost 1,000 years. 

Having almost disappeared during the Dark Ages, internal

trade within Europe had begun to re-emerge, along with
the medieval towns and the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile,
foreign trade with Africa and Asia was flourishing again.
In a bitter twist of fate, it would be this extension of trade
that caused the plague to spread so rapidly into and across
the continent.

Limits of feudalism

No social system, however, is capable

of perpetually developing society. At a certain stage,
social relations that have served to stimulate progress and
development are transformed into fetters on further
development. Feudal society had reached this point even
before the plague struck.

By the beginning of the 14th century, the feudal system

had reached its limits. The expansion of agriculture into
virgin land – which had driven production and population
growth in the previous period – had come to an end. The
food surplus thus began to shrink relative to population.
The productivity of labour could not keep up, held back by
the restricted production of the manor and the voracious
consumption of the lords. 

The peasant majority was getting poorer and poorer while

the lords were pressing harder. A terrible Europe-wide
famine – considered the worst in European history – hit in
1307, killing 10-25% of the population.

Worst still, the peasants were running out of land. With no

more virgin land, some sons were left without an
inheritance, depriving them of a livelihood and paving the
way for a deep social crisis. Robert Gottfried, in his
book, The Black Death, remarks:
“In the past, the peasant had been guaranteed the right, so to speak, to be a
peasant; after 1250, this was becoming more and more difficult. The old
manorial system was crumbling, and the lords, who seemed now to be doing
little of real benefit, were getting richer.”

These lines are reminiscent of what Marx and Engels

wrote in The Communist Manifesto: that society can no
longer live under the bourgeoisie, “because it is
incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his
slavery”. The old order was already sick. The plague gave
this sickness a tangible and horrific expression.

The plague hits

The plague is thought to have first

emerged in the Gobi desert in the 1320s. Carried by the
Mongol traders and horsemen all over Eurasia, it came to
China in the 1330s and killed roughly a quarter of the
population.

It then spread West, with one chronicler claiming: “India

was depopulated; Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia
were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to
the mountains.”

As with today’s COVID-19 pandemic, the first European

country struck was Italy. Genoese merchants – trading
along the coast of the Black Sea – unwittingly picked up
the plague and transported it home, as well as to the rest of
the Mediterranean. From here, it spread rapidly across
both Christian Europe and the Muslim world.

Cairo was one of the largest cities in the world at the time
and was hit particularly hard. At the peak of the pandemic,
the daily death toll in Cairo reached as high as 7,000. The
shortage of coffins meant that many people were buried in
mass graves, in scenes similar to those witnessed in New
York earlier this year.

The famous polymath and historian, Ibn Khaldun, who

lost both of his parents to the plague, wrote at the time:
“Civilisation both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague
which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up
many of the good things of civilisation and wiped them out…

“It was as if the voice of existence in the world had called out for oblivion and
restriction and the world responded to its call.”

By the end of the pandemic, 200,000 people had died of

the plague in Cairo alone – more than the total population
of almost every Christian city at the time. So great was the
scale of the devastation that both in the West and the East
many cities would not recover their pre-plague
populations until as late as the 16th century.

Despair

It is not difficult to imagine the

horror and despair that gripped society at the onset of such
apocalyptic scenes, which seemed to descend upon
humanity from out of nowhere. None of the usual
practices for avoiding and treating disease – such as
bathing – provided any defence against the plague. The
medical profession found itself completely impotent
against the spread of the disease.

The plague also served to expose the institutions of the

church, whose spiritual protection had proven completely
ineffective against a calamity which many took to be a
clear sign of God’s wrath.

There were many cases of local priests fleeing in order to

escape the plague, leaving their flocks untended, and
without even the solace of their last rites. This provoked a
widespread mistrust and questioning of the established
church – although not of Christianity or religion as a
whole – and gave birth to many new religious movements.

One such movement was that of the flagellant sects, which

spread across Europe and was particularly strong in the
German and Dutch speaking world.

Flagellants would roam from town to town in bands of 50

to 300 for 33-and-a-third days, symbolising Christ’s time
on Earth. During that time they were forbidden to speak,
wash, or sleep in soft beds. And upon their arrival in a
town they would kneel on the ground and whip themselves
in penance for the sins of mankind, in the hope that this
would bring an end to the plague.

In the early stages of this movement, the arrival of a band

of flagellants was often welcomed gladly by the
inhabitants, who saw them as offering a genuine spiritual
defence against the plague – as opposed to the established
church, which was widely discredited. However, as time
went on, the movement began to splinter along class lines. 
Under the influence of the poor masses who swelled its
ranks, the movement began to assume the form of a sort of
revolutionary sect. Many flagellants believed that the old
Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, would be
resurrected, drive out the clergy, and force the rich to wed
the poor, following which Christ himself would return to
the Earth.

These ideas repelled first the nobles, then the more

respectable bourgeois, and eventually even the better off
peasants. In time, the movement was reduced to the
poorest and most destitute layers of society. Once isolated,
the remaining flagellants were later crushed by the state.

Another product of the despair that arose during the

plague was the wave of pogroms against Jews throughout
Europe, which assumed horrific proportions in this period.
In many places, particularly the towns, Jews were
implausibly charged with deliberately spreading the
plague or poisoning the wells. Thousands were massacred
as a result.

The Church and feudal authorities actually took small

steps to protect Jews, dismissing the allegations against
them. But this did little to stem the tide of bloodshed.
Eventually, this provoked a large migration of Jews,
fleeing persecution to the East and Poland, in particular,
where they were invited to settle by King Casimir III.

Economic crisis
 In addition to the profound psychological
and moral crisis inflicted by the plague, the feudal
economy was brought to a standstill. This proked an
intense and long-lasting crisis for the ruling class that
would have important ramifications.

A good indicator of the scale of the crisis can be found in

England, where the plague first arrived in September
1348. At Cuxham Manor, near Oxford, owned by the
prestigious Merton College, the dramatic fall in population
left the college’s lands without anyone to work them. This
caused a widespread drop in rents, hitting the manor’s
income. At the same time, wage workers had to be brought
in to work on the demesne for high wages.

This double blow – in the context of falling demand and

prices for staple food crops such as wheat – permanently
slashed the manor’s ‘profits’. These fell from an average
of £40 per year, up to 1349, to less than £11 in 1354-55,
the first year after the Black Death in which any profits at
all were recorded.

Overall, the income of the feudal aristocracy across

England is estimated to have fallen by more than 20%
between 1347 and 1353. Along with the collapse of the
manorial system, the high death rate also left many noble
families bereft of male heirs, meaning that many formerly
great families simply dwindled away to nothing.

The deep crisis of the ruling class was accompanied by the

beginnings of what would become known as the ‘Golden
Age of the Labourers’. In 1349, wages doubled on many
estates. At Cuxham Manor, a ploughman was paid 10
shillings, 6 pence in 1350 for work that would have earned
him only 2 shillings in 1347. Lowly day labourers even
enjoyed lunches of “meat pies and golden ale” in addition
to their higher wages. 

But it was not only the labourers who gained, provided

they survived the plague; the crisis prompted drastic
changes in the conditions and rights of the peasantry as
well.

The widespread availability of land and low rents meant

that peasants were more mobile than perhaps they ever
had been. It became possible for peasants to effectively
‘shop around’, leaving their lords behind in favour of
others who offered lower rents and fewer restrictions.
Serfdom in this context was both impossible and absurd.

Reaction and revolution

Unsurprisingly, the ruling

class acted swiftly in order to try to return to the old
‘normality’. In 1349, Edward III introduced a Statute of
Labour, which purported to fix wages at their pre-1348
level, to no avail.

Knowing full well on which side its bread was buttered,

the Church joined the landlords’ crusade against the
labourers’ pies and ale. In 1350, the Archbishop of
Canterbury issued his effrenata cupiditas, denouncing the
greed of those who charged extra for ordinary services.

Such an obvious and transparent clash of interests between

the lords and the ordinary peasant masses was bound to
provoke an immense backlash. The peasants and labourers
were realising to a greater and greater extent that the lords
were little more than parasites that existed only to
consume their labour. They had no intention of
relinquishing the gains they had made in those
unspeakable plague years.

On the other hand, the ruling class could not tolerate this
state of affairs. Not only were rising wages and falling
rents leaving them out of pocket, but the lifting of many of
the restrictions and forced labour services from the
shoulders of the peasantry threatened more than just their
manor accounts – it threatened to overturn the whole
social order, at the top of which they perched.

For decades, the ruling nobility had resentfully tried to

claw back the gains won by ordinary people and resurrect
serfdom. In England, the king introduced the infamous
Poll Tax in 1377, which imposed a levy on every adult in
the kingdom.
This levy was raised two more times, in 1378 and 1381,
placing such a heavy burden on peasant families that many
accused the king of trying to restore serfdom. The radical
preacher, John Wycliffe, condemned the tax, declaring,
“In this manner, the lords eat and drink poor men's flesh
and blood.”

In 1381, peasants in Essex refused to pay the tax, thus

sparking the Peasants’ Revolt. A wealthy peasant named
Wat Tyler led an army to London declaring “kill all
lawyers and servants of the king”.

Another leader of the revolt, an unemployed priest called

John Ball called for “everything to be common, and that
we may be all united together and that the lords be no
greater masters than we be”. He preached to the rebels:
“When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who then was the gentleman?”

This egalitarian spirit would later be taken up by the

Diggers of the English Revolution, the most radical
section of Cromwell’s revolutionary forces.

When the rebels reached the Thames at Southwark, the

London masses lowered the bridge and helped them to
take the city. This was an early example of the alliance
between the bourgeoisie and peasantry that would play
such a vital role in the English and French revolutions.
Having captured the Tower of London, the rebels even
beheaded the hated Archbishop of Canterbury.

The rebels then proceeded to sack the luxurious residences

and palaces of the nobility along Fleet Street. But they
stole almost nothing from the vast wealth of their enemies,
declaring themselves to be “zealots for truth and justice,
not thieves and robbers”. Instead, the furniture and jewels
of the ruling class were cast into the river or burned to the
ground.

The young King Richard II was forced to concede to the

rebels’ demands, promising the end of serfdom, cheap
land, and free trade. But once the rebels were satisfied and
on their way home he had them slaughtered.

Despite the fact that the uprising itself was ultimately

defeated, serfdom never returned to England. And no poll
tax would be collected in England again until Thatcher’s
ill-fated experiment in 1989 – with similar results.

Transition

The significance of the Peasants’ Revolt

cannot be understated. The end of serfdom effectively
spelled the end of feudalism. The old order was dying, but
a new order had yet to be born. This was a period of
transition; a “time of monsters” as Gramsci put it. And
there have been few things in history as monstrous as the
Black Death.

The developments which had been intensified and

accelerated by the Black Death continued to transform
society throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. The late
Middle Ages became the epoch of the wealthy
independent peasant. Meanwhile, the defunct and decrepit
feudal nobility continued to exhaust itself in the Wars of
the Roses.

Gradually, the old feudal dynasties were replaced by a

new class of landlords – often merchants who had bought
their way into the nobility, who were much more focused
on making money than the farcical chivalry of their
predecessors.

At the level of the state, the various bureaucratic and

clerical functions that had largely been carried out by
priests prior to the plague were increasingly taken over by
a rising class of educated bourgeois, lawyers, etc.

This new relationship between the feudal monarchy and

the town-dwelling bourgeoisie only grew stronger as the
monarchy became more centralised and dependent on
funds from wealthy merchants, like the de la Pole family
in Hull.

These changes, which proceeded gradually, would

eventually give birth to the absolutist monarchy of the
Tudor period. This would play an important role in
the development of capitalism.

In the 16th century, the lords would get their revenge over
the free peasants and well-fed labourers of England. But
there was no return to the old order of 1347.

Rather than forcing the peasants to work for them, the new
class of landlords forced the poorer peasants off their
lands altogether, and turned their fields into pastures
worked by wage labourers for the wool market.

This violent revolution in the countryside gave birth to

capitalist farming. At the same time, it created a class of
propertyless paupers, who would eventually be driven into
the workshops and factories of the Industrial Revolution to
become the modern working class.

Today

The parallels between the Black

Death and today are striking. The deadly impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic – although still shocking – has
thankfully not been as great as that of the Black Death.
Nevertheless, both pandemics struck social systems that
had reached their limits, and opened up crises that
threatened to topple the existing order.

The Black Death did not cause the crisis of feudalism,

which had begun decades before yersinia pestis escaped
the Gobi desert. Likewise, COVID-19 has not caused the
present crisis of capitalism.

Both, however, were enormous external shocks, which

served to expose and intensify all the contradictions that
had been developing under the surface of society. They
were both historical ‘accidents’ that gave a powerful
expression to the necessary sweep of history.
But the similarities do not end there. As in the 14th
century, the ruling class will do everything it can to build
its recovery on the backs of the working class through
austerity and repression. But, as in the 14th century, mass
uprisings against this onslaught are also inevitable. 

There can be no return to ‘normal’. As before, the old

order is dying and dragging humanity down with it. But
today, a new order is ready to supplant the old, and is
struggling to be born. The struggles erupting today – like
that of Black Lives Matter – are the early tremors of the
revolutionary rising of the working class.

The workers of today are the descendents of the peasant

rebels of 1381, who won their freedom only to have it
snatched from later generations. In the fight against
capital, we inherit their struggle to fulfil the vision of John
Ball – that there be no lords or masters, and for all to live
free and equal. This time we will finish it.
Running on empty:
The demise of
Britain’s car
industry
 THOMAS SOUD, COVENTRY MARXISTS 07 OCT 2020

A perfect storm of Brexit, the pandemic,

and economic slump has accelerated the
decline and demise of UK industry. The car
manufacturing sector has been hit
particularly hard. The unions must organise
a fightback and demand nationalisation.
Coronavirus strikes the old and vulnerable the hardest.
Unfortunately this is true for both people and industry.

Whilst tech firms have enjoyed a bonanza (Apple is now

worth more than $2 trillion) the UK car industry is at
death’s door. Production in the automotive manufacturing
sector collapsed by 92% between April and May. The first
half of 2020 saw the lowest numbers of cars produced
since 1954.

In 2016, the bosses – drunk on droplets of cheary

economic news – had predicted that Britain would be
producing two million cars by 2020. The reality is that
production will remain lower than 1.2 million until 2025.
And even this is considered optimistic by most analysts, as
it would require a full trade deal with the EU – something
that is clearly not on the cards.

Who will pay for this crisis of epic proportions? Naturally,

under capitalism, it is the workers. 

Already 13,000 jobs have been lost from the automotive

industry, with thousands more already announced.
Speculating about the future of the sector, the CEO of one
car dealer group predicted: “In the best case, it’s tens of
thousands [of job losses]; in the worst case it’s more like
150,000.” 

Decay and decline

Let’s be very clear: the UK car

industry has not been defeated by a virus, but rather by the
parasitical short-termism of the capitalist class. The virus
was an ‘accident’ that laid bare the senile decline and
decay of British capitalism – a process that has been
taking place for over 100 years; and which has gutted
industries from steel to shipbuilding to car manufacturing. 

During the early 20th century, British car manufacturing

had its foot on the accelerator. Spurred on by the war,
Standard and Rootes played a transformative role. And by
1950, more than half of all car exports were British. Cities
like Coventry experienced a golden age.

Despite these immense successes, ultimately car

manufacturing was the rearguard action of a nation already
in secular decline.

The British capitalists were comfortable skimming off the

vast wealth of the colonies. Mesmerised by the speculative
movements of stocks and shares on the market, they left
the real economy behind.

When faced with a rising tide of class struggle, the bosses

prefered to mothball entire industries, rather than develop
production.

All of this manifested itself in a chronic failure to invest in

the modern technologies and factories required to remain
competitive. Germany and Japan – freed from the burden
of their arms industries by postwar arrangements that had
been forced upon them by Allied imperialism – soon
dethroned Britain. America was not far behind.

Crisis accelerates
The 1970s saw the crisis accelerate. British Leyland
dropped from 40% market share to 32% in just three
years. Coventry, the home of UK car manufacturing, lost
14,000 jobs between 1975 and 1982.

And when the Lord Mayor held a conference to discover

the cause of this decline, the answer was clear: continued
underinvestment. The 1974 government enquiry by Lord
Ryder came to the same conclusion.

By 1994, not one British-owned mass producing car

company was left. The production that continued was now
led by French, American, Japanese and German
companies. It was a damning indictment of Britain’s fall to
the rank of second-rate power.

Those who believed that handing the reins of UK car

manufacturing to a different capitalist class would lead to
respite were deeply mistaken. As Martin, an ex-convenor
and 35-year veteran of the car industry, explained to
Socialist Appeal:
“Thatcher’s counter-reforms meant it was always easier for the bosses to sack
workers than increase investment; for despite excellent technical know-how,
automation was always delayed. When the opportunity came to move the
plant to Slovakia – and in doing so cut wages by 70% – the bosses didn’t miss
a heartbeat”.

Today, cars made in Britain account for less than 2% of

worldwide production.

Nationalisation needed
 Coronavirus has now sent the
capitalists crying cap-in-hand to the government, pleading
for bailouts. 

But we must be clear: There must be no bailouts for big

business bosses. This crisis has been caused by more than
half a century of mismanagement and underinvestment by
these fat cats. The major manufacturing and industrial
monopolies must be nationalised – without compensation,
and under workers’ control and management.

Fool us once, shame on you! Fool us for 70 years, and the

shame is on anyone who believes that private enterprise
has any progressive role left to play!

“We have some of the best mechanics and highly-skilled

workers in the world!” says Martin. “For years the unions
have shown that with proper investment, Britain’s car
manufacturing could be leading the way in green vehicles.
But is the government prepared to step in where the
capitalists have failed?”

The answer is no. The Tories are the political

representatives of the British capitalist class. As long as
the economy is owned, controlled, and dominated by the
bosses, every element of the state will serve as the
handmaiden of these parasites.

Organise the fightback

We need a socialist Labour government to do away with
this wretched state of affairs. Only by nationalising car
manufacturing and placing it under democratic workers’
control can we save jobs, introduce modern technologies,
and reverse the decline of British industry.

This is what the labour movement – especially the leaders

of Unite the Union, which represents workers in the UK
car industry and other manufacturing sectors – should be
fighting for; organising industrial workers to strike and
occupy where plants and factories are threatened with
closure.

As Martin concluded, reflecting on the future of UK

industry:
“The future looks very grim. But we still have an organised labour movement.
Whereas in the recent past we have failed to harness the potential power of
our movement to fight against austerity, cuts in health care, public services,
pay and jobs, or to elect a Labour government with our values, it is now
urgent that we to learn from our failings and some modest successes to build
our movement so that we can defend and enhance the gains we have made.  

“COVID-19 is giving the bosses the excuse they need to shed labour so that
workers pay the price for the crisis in the system. A tsunami of job losses and
further public service cuts is already upon us. We have members in our
movement who have the skills, experience and ability to give hope that the
future can be different.

“All we need now is a unified movement with a programme and a leadership

that is willing to fight to defend job security, decent pay, terms and conditions
at work. We must put paid to the hand-wringing and lamentations when job
losses are announced. If we don’t begin to fight back, our own members and
our own class may lose hope in the future. That could set us back decades.”
Organismos financeiros internacionais alertam
para dívida de emergentes e polarização entre
países ricos e pobres

O Banco Mundial, o FMI e o G20 apontam cenário de

dificuldades para países em desenvolvimento. Segundo
estimativas, os países ricos sofrerão menor impacto da crise
15 de outubro de 2020, 05:08 h Atualizado em 15 de outubro de 2020, 05:34

 ...

(Foto: Reuters)
 
247 - O Banco Mundial, o Fundo Monetário Internacional e o
G20 manifestaram nesta quarta-feira (14) preocupação com os
efeitos da pandemia do coronavírus sobre os países em
desenvolvimento. Esses organismos, os mais importantes da
economia mundial preveem dificuldades ainda maiores com o
aumento do endividamento dos países emergentes.
“Nossos últimos dados econômicos e de pobreza mostram uma
desigualdade terrível causada pela pandemia e por
paralisações econômicas”, disse o presidente do Banco
Mundial, David Malpass, durante reunião de ministros de
finanças e chefes de Banco Central do G20, grupo que reúne
as maiores economias do mundo, informa reportagem dos
jornalistas Eduardo Cucolo e Thais Carrança na Folha de
S.Paulo.

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Segundo a reportagem, Malpass afirmou que o que está sendo

visto até o momento é uma recuperação em forma de “K”,
sendo que as economias avançadas são a perna de cima, que
segue em recuperação e têm conseguido dar suporte
especialmente para os seus mercados financeiros e alguns
trabalhadores. Já os países emergentes entram em recessão
mais profunda e até mesmo depressão, cujas causas, de
acordo com o presidente do Banco Mundial são a perda de
empregos, receitas e remessas de trabalhadores que estão no
exterior.

Os líderes do G20 ressaltaram a necessidade urgente de

controlar a pandemia e prometeram “fazer o que for preciso”
para apoiar a economia e a estabilidade financeira global e
lidar caso a caso com o número crescente de países de baixa
renda que enfrentam problemas de dívida, que deve ser
finalizado em uma nova reunião do grupo em novembro.
As autoridades do G20 concordaram em estender o
congelamento dos pagamentos oficiais da dívida bilateral por
seis meses. 

Crisis, Value, and Marx’s Order of Operations

Evaluating and selecting from the disparate theories of crisis circulating through the left
can seem as daunting and intimidating as buying a new car. (Yes, this analogy is
intentionally ironic.) The aim of this paper is to aid in this daunting task by encouraging
us to think critically about what different theories of crisis mean for our understanding
of capitalism as a whole and the project to overthrow it.

The theory of capital involves a logical structure of overlapping relations which must be
mapped out very specifically if we are to capture both the abstract dynamics at the heart
of capital and the concrete forms these dynamics take in real life. The presence of
different theories of crisis with their different prescriptions for the left means that there
are disagreements, some tacit and others overt, over how to best understand the logical
structure of capital. This paper hopes to illuminate some of these differences in the hope
that this may help frame these debates in a constructive way.

Brendan Cooney maintains the blog Kapitalism101.wordpress.com, an experiment in

Marxist pedagogy which uses the video-blog format to explore the contemporary
relevance of the law of value. His work can also be found
at youtube.com/brendanmcooney.