The world economy has gyrated wildly since 2019, verging from imminent deep recession on the eve of the pandemic to a burst of sugar-fuelled growth in 2020-21 and surging inflation in 2022 to fears of a new recession this year.
Governments and central banks in the advanced economies are now doing their best to force the burden of economic adjustment onto the working class, jacking up interest rates and pushing unemployment up in a bid to tame inflation. Alongside all this, rising imperialist tensions between the US, Russia and China are encouraging governments to renounce much of their neoliberal rhetoric about free trade and globalisation in favour of military preparations.
This talk will review the global economy in 2023 and the political battlegrounds that are now emerging.
Introduced by Tom Bramble, author of “Introducing Marxism” and, with Mick Armstrong, “The Fight for Workers’ Power: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the 20th Century”.