This presentation was made to the MDF meeting, which was attended by representatives of the Midlands Discussion Forum, the Exeter Discussion Group, the Commune, the ICC, the Communist Workers' Organisation, Internationalist Perspective, former members of the Communist Bulletin Group and others. An assessment of the significance of this meeting will be published at a later date.

Now the G20 London Summit is over, what is the message that the rulers of the earth is they can deal with the economic catastrophe facing the capitalist system.The present crisis of overproduction, however, has its roots not, as the economic experts claim, in any kind of temporary ‘imbalance' in the world economy, but in the basic social relations of capitalism.

No workers' job is safe; and even when they have work, wages are being cut and working conditions worsened. But workers around the world are showing their unwillingness to accept these attacks.

Faced with the avalanche of attacks now raining down on the working class - unemployment, cuts in services, police repression - we are seeing the beginnings of a very widespread response from those under attack.

The IMF has declared that, of all the most developed economies, Britain's will be hit hardest by the recession.

The bourgeoisie is afraid, very afraid. Between August and October, a real gale of panic was blowing over the world economy.

In our view, the latest phase of the crisis, summed up under the short-hand ‘credit crunch', will certainly be a factor in challenging existing views and convincing people that we are seeing the real putrefaction of capitalism as a mode of production. In this context, we welcome a recent contribution by Loren Goldner, who would describe himself as part of a "left communist mood" which has been growing in the recent period.

The article published in WR320 is section A of the Report on the British situation fo the 18th WR congress. The whole of this report (which also covers the class struggle, British imperialism and the political problems of the British ruling class) can be found here in ICC Online .

We find ourselves analysing the British situation today after a year of the developing credit crunch and at the very beginning of a recession that even the chancellor predicts will be long and deep. This poses difficult questions for the bourgeoisie as it tries to keep the banking system afloat with unprecedented rescue packages and stabilise the economy. At the same time it is totally bogged down in failing military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside the USA which continue to drain resources. In spite of a policy of trying to spend its way out of the crisis, with money it has to borrow, the working class will be made to pay for the crisis.

Since we wrote the article ‘Are we reliving a crash like 1929?', the media has already changed its tone, no longer playing down the extreme gravity of the present economic crisis or its similarities with 1929. But it is important to put all the current talk about ‘the end of capitalism' into a clear perspective.

There are still people who say that state intervention is not integral to the way capitalism functions, indeed, that the increasing role of the state is part of the move towards socialism.