Addendum

The difficulty now is that national bourgeoisies simply cannot decide how the burden of adjustment is going to be redistributed among them. For twenty years, the exploitation of Chinese workers - especially their expropriation from the land and the destruction of their environment and living conditions - could bring about "the Great Moderation" that lulled global capital into a false sense of security, just as in fact domestic tensions were rising to a point where even Western "democracies" are difficult to govern (countries from Belgium and Holland to Italy and Britain, to Spain and Australia, and now even the US are governed by loose and very unstable "coalitions" when they are not in complete political paralysis!).

Brittan even foolishly invokes the help of the Chinese dictatorship, hoping that they will understand how "beneficial" it would be for them to expand domestic demand! But the obvious truth of the matter is that any such expansion would have to be achieved by raising wages and conditions for Chinese workers and by "liberalising" the economy so as to be more "responsive" to their demands! Can anyone at all in this world imagine HOW the Chinese dictatorship can achieve that and still maintain its power???

The same can be said of the German bourgeoisie, and of the Japanese. Which is why, to come back to the point we have been making again and again - "Rooseveltian resolve" is needed in the US if we do not wish for another world war!