RESPONSES TO THE CAPITALIST CRISIS: REFORMIST AND REVOLUTIONARY DEMANDS IN THE US "GREAT RECESSION"

The current economic crisis in the US has generated the greatest popular discontent with the system and from that possible potential for radical change since World War II. This article looks at the Marxist tradition for generating revolutionary demands, including the essential issue of avoiding sterile revolutionary demands, and what distinguishes revolutionary demands from the socially more common progressive reformist demands. It then considers this issue specifically in the particular context of the US today of a working class that has been almost entirely demobilized for three decades, and largely politically disarmed since World War II. It specifically considers an important progressive set of economic demands that was issued early in the crisis, and compares these with a few recently issued demands that come out of an analysis of the crisis by revolutionaries who are seeking to begin to mobilize the working class to the project of transcending capitalism. The article ends with some preliminary proposals for extending these latter demands, in the approach of Marx, Engels and Lenin, more broadly to the current crisis.