A New Look at the Left Wing

The historical geography of capitalist development is at a key inflexion point in which the geographical configurations of power are rapidly shifting at the very moment when the temporal dynamic is facing very serious constraints.  Three percent compound growth (generally considered the minimum satisfactory growth rate for a healthy capitalist economy) is becoming less and less feasible to sustain without resort to all manner of fictions (such as those that have characterized asset markets and financial affairs over the last two decades). There are good reasons to believe that there is no alternative to a new global order of governance that will eventually have to manage the transition to a zero growth economy.  If that is to be done in an equitable way, then there is no alternative to socialism or communism.  Since the late 1990s, the World Social Forum became the center for articulating the theme “another world is possible.”  It must now take up the task of defining how another socialism or communism is possible and how the transition to these alternatives are to be accomplished.  The current crisis offers a window of opportunity to reflect on what might be involved.