Revolution#136, July 20, 2008

Important new series begins in Revolution!

Get this Analysis Out Far & Wide… Organize Discussions

This issue of Revolution includes the special supplement, “SHIFTS AND FAULTLINES IN THE WORLD ECONOMY AND GREAT POWER RIVALRY: What Is Happening and What It Might Mean,” by Raymond Lotta. This is the first of a series identifying and analyzing major changes in global economic, political, and strategic relations in the world.

We are encouraging readers to get this supplement (and the entire issue) out far and wide, in print and online. And we are encouraging discussions of this series, starting with this first installment, among circles of readers, and at Revolution Books outlets and stores.

The following points can help guide discussions of this first installment of this series:

1. The article speaks of a “new economic geography of the planet.” What are some key manifestations of this, especially in the relations among the great powers?
2. The article says that “globalization is having contradictory effects” in the Third World. How so?
3. How, underneath all this, is the nature and logic of the capitalist system being expressed? Discuss this from the article: “[T]he compulsion to expand and maximize profit to gain competitive edge; the blind, anarchic growth and the short-term horizons of capitalism; and the inherent tension of a system in which production is highly socialized and globally interconnected, involving the interlinked and collective efforts of thousands and millions of wage-laborers, while the means of producing wealth, the wealth that is socially produced, and even knowledge itself are privately controlled and deployed by a small capitalist class.”

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