General Asia

Since the 2008 financial crisis there has been no respite for world capitalism. Its crisis has been deepening on a daily basis. The European Union, the world second largest economy is back in recession. Stocks and bonds have fallen sharply across world capitals.

South Asian subcontinent’s iconic poet and an ardent communist, Faiz Ahmed Faiz termed the independence of the subcontinent in August 1947 as a ‘blighted dawn’ in his famous poem ‘morrow of independence’. He was revolted with the bloody massacres during the partition on religious lines. It was perhaps one of the biggest genocides in modern human history. But if it began as a blighted dawn this independence has become a harrowing nightmare for the oppressed masses of the subcontinent sixty five years on.

After the revolutionary storms of the Arab Spring and the European Summer we are witnessing a wave of militant protests of the American Fall that began with the Occupy Wall street movement in the United States. The global support with demonstrations in about nine hundred cities across the planet on all the continents shows the discontent and the seething revolt against the rotting capitalist system on a world scale.

“A middle-aged nonentity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East – died in Pakistan yesterday. And then the world went mad.” (Robert Fisk, 3 May, 2011)

The mightiest imperial power in history is in the throes of decay and degeneration. A crumbling economy, record deficits and wars they cannot win have shattered the confidence of the Unites States ruling class. Its strategists are lurching from one blunder to another. The highest ever unemployment, a jobless recovery, pessimistic economic forecasts and the ever rising debts have created uncertainty amongst the working masses and doom and gloom overshadows society.

The Summer 2010 edition of the Asian Marxist Review is soon coming out. Here we provide the Editorial, which makes a comment on the crisis affecting all Asian countries to one degree or another.