The Problem of the Method A Critical Study of In Theory, Classes, Nations and Literatures

This structural inability of capitalism to provide for the vast majority of the population which it has sucked into its own dominion constitutes the basic, incurable flaw in the system as a whole. Such a contradiction can be overcome neither by the will of the national bourgeoisie nor by the edicts of the IMF and the World Bank, nor by all the governmental and non-governmental agencies of advanced capitalism, so long as the system itself remains. Negation of this contradiction can come only from outside the terms of this system as such, because the backwardness of the backward capitalist countries, hence the poverty of the majority of the world's population, cannot be undone except through a complete redistribution of wealth and an altogether different structuring of production and consumptions on a global scale, among classes, regions, countries and continents of the world. Socialism is the determinate name for this negation of capitalism's fundamental, systemic contradictions and cruelties, and the necessity of this negation will remain, regardless of the fate of the soviet union as such.(1) The first resource of hope is memory itself.(2)