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Frieder Otto Wolf

Theses for NALD

The following Theses are a first attempt at sorting out the debate, as it has emerged so far.

This is not supposed to close the debate, rather it should open it to broader horizons.

1. The alternative between reformism and revolutionism has a crippling effect on theleft strategic debate.

2. The crisis opening in 2007 has been a crisis of finance driven capital accumulation,and of the world-wide hegemony of the USA, not yet an effective crisis of global

capital accumulation let alone a crisis of capitalism as a structure of domination.

3. There can be no crisis of capitalist domination without the emergence of anti-capitalistagency which is more than anti-capitalist propaganda or theory building carried out

by small circles.

4. World-wide capitalism under US-leadership has been building up a structural crisis asa world-system, which has been avoided so far by a sequence of bubbles.

5. The transition from a monopolar to a polycentric world-system, which will eventuallyresult from a deepeningcrisis of US hegemony,does not necessarily require theovercoming of capitalist domination as such. It is not clear in advance, either, thatsuch a transition will be compatible with a reproduction or renewal of this domination.

6. The crisis of US hegemony is immediately linked to an accumulation crisis of UScapital, but not to an accumulation crisis of capital on a global scale.

7. The crisis of the imperial world system under US hegemony as it has emerged afterde-colonization and after the end of the cold-war system is in crisis not only because

of economic factors, but also of political and military factors. It is not clear in advancethat a more poly-centric world-system will be imcompatible with capitalist

domination.8. The present structural crisis of US hegemony is aggravated on a global scale by a deep

crisis of human political ecology, which is taking shape in the present climate

changes and in emerging energy and resources scarcity, as well as in the still

accelerating decline of biodiversity.

9. In the background there is a latent crisis of patriarchal structures of genderdomination, expressing itself in problems of individual reproduction and unbalanced

population developments and giving a strong emotional undercurrent to problems of

migration, ethnocentrism and racism.

10.The present constellation of crises, globally, as well as within different states, is notonly determined by a capitalist crisis. It is over-determined by converging crises in

other dimensions of the life of particular societies, as well within the existing situation

of a historical world system.11.Questions of global leadership will be decided by the capability of not only facilitating

capital accumulation again, after a moment of crisisserving to re-establish profitabilityfor the remaining capital by destroying parts of it, but also by the capability of

managing the crises of the world-system of the global human political ecology of re-

stabilizing a workable world-system of states with a system of global business

regulation serving to maintain a capitalist world market.

12.Strategic debate cannot refer to the structure of capitalist domination in general, it hasto take its bearings from concrete historical situations, in which a certain degree of

development of capitalist domination is combined in unequal ways with structures of

domination not reducible to it.

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13.Anti-capitalism alone is an insufficient orientation for the left not only due to asignificant right-wing anti-capitalism, but rather because capital has allied itsdomination to other structures of domination. Anti-capitalism is, indeed, urgently

needed (against post-modern tendencies to forget about it), but it is no more sufficientto meet the challenges of the present global constellation of crises, and to build the

anti-systemic alliances so urgently needed.

14.The strategic debates of the left have to refer, at least, to a differentiated analysis ofthe global crisis constellation, as well as to the respective positions of states within it,to a careful taking stock of resistances, struggles and alternative movements, and to an

analysis of political systems and relations of forces within states and governments.

15.The US left and the German left have radically different starting points for theirstrategic debates which should first be clearly articulated, before exploring common

references and objectives, instead of indirectly falling victim to an Atlantic ideology

playing down the differences between capitalist countries of the West.

16.The USA and Germany both refer and are determined by global developments, but inspite of the global hegemony of the Wall street complex and of significant cultural

Americanization in the post-war development, the specific models of accumulation

and regimes of regulation continue to be deeply different. Likewise, elementary

ideological and political structures still differ to a degree which makes allgeneralizations and transpositions a risky enterprise. Even the very roles and functionsof social movements, political parties and cultural institutions differ to a high degree

and the apparent homogeneity of US-American and German social and politicalsciences in spite of all real transfers since German emigration to the USA in the

1930s and during the reconstruction area after the 2nd World War is more deceptivethan real. (It would certainly be interesting to analyze, in an exercise of contemporary

history, how far this also applies to Marxist lines of tradition within these sciences orwithin philosophy.)

November 10, 2010