The Debt Ceiling Debate, Global Crisis, and Savage Austerity

The Debt Ceiling Debate, Global Crisis, and Savage Austerity
Discussion of Revolution interview of Raymond Lotta with Larry Everest.

* "The struggle over the debt ceiling is an expression of deep problems confronting U.S. imperialism. I am speaking of the effects of the crisis in the world economy… an international economic environment in flux… and real budgetary constraints and contradictions bound up with the vast accumulation of government and private debt."

* "the tentative deal will cut three trillion dollars in domestic spending over the next ten years. This includes what's spent by federal agencies. It includes different types of social spending and its early effects will impact education, public housing, mass transit, environmental protection, and the Medicaid program. And then a new wave of cuts will be phased in after the 2012 election."

* "What kind of system puts human lives on the chopping block of fiscal austerity? This is the logic of capital. This system cannot act in the interests of the people. It can't because it operates according to the rule of profit above all else."

* "…most progressive and radical critiques are arguing that this whole debt crisis has just been manufactured as a way to push political-ideological agendas. I think this is wrong. It's more complicated than that… but more fundamentally, there IS a global economic crisis which is the larger backdrop to all this."

* "there is no permanent necessity to existing conditions. Things do not have to be this way. The Revolutionary Communist Party has recently published the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal). It sets forth an inspiring vision and concrete measures for building a new society."

* "This vision can play a tremendously powerful ideological role on the current terrain. Projecting this vision is a crucial part of building a movement for revolution that can bring such a new society into being."

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Raymond Lotta is a revolutionary communist intellectual and political economist.