It is appropriate while the working people of the world pay their tributes to him who changed the course of history by establishing a working class government and laying foundations for a new social order- Socialism to look at the ongoing debate on post COVID 19 world.

While the corona forced-lockdown continues in many countries including India and while agitations of hungry, homeless and jobless poor and migrant workers erupt from US to India, a debate has begun on post COVID 19 Economy and the world order.

A western scholar Neil Irwin wrote in New York Times that “it is the end of the world economy as we know it”. He further went on to say that “who would have thought a crisis that began with mortgage defaults in American Suburbs in 2007 would lead to a fiscal crisis in Greece in 2010? Or that a stock market crash in New York in 1929 would contribute to the rise of fascists in Europe in the 1930s?”

American statesman Bernie Sanders has pointed out that “in the midst of twin crises that we face –the corona virus pandemic and the melt down of our economy- it is imperative that we reexamine some of the foundations of American society, understand why they are failing us, and fights for a fairer and more just Nation”.

Obviously all the scholars while debating the pandemic crisis and its impact on economy are referring to Great Depression. The Great Depression is conventionally dated from October 28, 1929, Black Monday when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 20% in a single day. However the Depression began at the first decades of the last Century. The crisis of over production and over accumulation had led to the collapse of purchasing power and investment, creating massive unemployment and other related problems.

The Depression during 1929-32, which shook the entire Europe and the US. During this period the economy of US expanded ferociously which resulted in competitions and conflicts with Europe, generating homelessness, migration, hunger and unimaginable miseries and sufferings. The crisis of capitalism and the conflict among the capitalist countries led them to World War I.

Karl Marx analyzed the capitalist crisis in his celebrated work “Capital” and established capitalism is a crisis ridden economy. He said “the ultimate reason for all crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constitutes their limit”.

This development shook all non Marxists economists. For the first time they were compelled to acknowledge that Marx might be right. During this period we could see the emergence of under-consumptionist theories. John Maynard Keynes in particular became advocate of this theory. His “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” became acceptable to the Capitalist world. Keynes analyzed and studied the experiences of Great Depression. US, under President F. D. Rosevelt, adopted a “New Deal” and Western Europe “The Marshal Plan”. The US President Rosevelt went to the extent of saying that the economic rights of the people are the human rights.

We are now in a world almost ninety years after Great Depression. Still those experiences and lessons are relevant today. The current stage of capitalist development that is the neo-liberalism has created unprecedented income and wealth inequality with in the country and among the Nations. Capitalism is in deep crisis. The present Depression is taking place when there is a currency war. Three currencies-the dollar, the euro and the yuan - issued by three largest economies - the US, the European Union and the People’s Republic of China. The currency wars show the growing power of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the governing authority of G20 Nations.

Corona pandemic aggravated the economic recession. The world, after Corona recedes, is not going to be the same as today’s world. The economic crisis may grow at greater speed.

A deep thought during this corona days is imperative to reflect upon the economic ramifications of this tragedy in India. Even at the time of corona tragedy fear and terror are spread around among the people in the name of religion and caste. There are reports of attacks on the people who belong to Dalit and Minority communities.

When we pay tributes to Com. Lenin, on his 150th birth anniversary on April 22nd 2020, the ideologues and scholars of India should not fail to think of the ways to change the foundations of Indian society and to liberate our people from all kinds of exploitations and enslavements.

During and after the Corona Pandemic, the Communist must strengthen their work among the masses and mobilize them ideologically and politically to break the Capitalist order and to move towards a new social order that is Socialism. (IPA Service)