Baba Aye's

1. Introduction On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, which had held over $600 million worth of assets, collapsed, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States . This marked a turning point in world history, similar to the Wall Street Crash of October 29, 1929, that had signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. Once again the material crisis of the world capitalist economy has brought human kind to a point of transition where ideas and forces behind these engage in an attempt to forge or re-forge a new order, re-formulate policies and construct new (or re-hashed) paradigms for the disciplines and practice of economics, politics, finance and international relations. Concepts and processes of ‘financialization’, ‘corporate governance’ and ‘globalization’ which have come to assume front burner positions in the last thirty years of neo-liberal globalization of capitalism, now take on even more critical importance. The different views on what they entail and the consequence...

Introduction Brasil is a country steeped in contradictions historically and contemporaneously. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in Latin America, but with the largest population in the region. Undoubtedly the economic giant of Latin America due to the size of its market and level of industrialization, yet it has the fifth highest level of inequality in the region. Being one of the ten largest economies in the world and along with Russia, India and China considered the leading newly industrializing nations in the world, and a middle income country; it is still more often than not categorized as a developing country due to a high prevalence of poverty (Edwards, 2001: 79). Having been the site of the first of military putsches that would lead to an era of Bureaucratic Authoritarian States in Latin America , Brasil today has a model constitution and is the only country in the region with a trade union’s Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) at the helm of the state. The worke...

Capitalism in crisis A working people’s perspective Part 1 The world economy has been shaken to its very foundations in the past few weeks and capitalism faces the beginnings of its worst nightmare since the Great Depression of 1929-38. There have been hues and cries from several quarters and working people in Nigeria and across the world grope for answers and the way forward. Baba Aye of the WPV/ANSA comments on this monumental crisis of capitalism from the Global Labour University in Kassel, in the first part of a series dedicated to furthering working people’s understanding of the issues as a contribution to finding the way forward. There are times really when 200 years would seem like 200 days; in terms of those two centuries impact on the movement of human history. And there are times like now, which people living them and generations to come will never forget; when 200 days seem like 200 years! The September slump of the world economy (more like a ...