The global capitalist economy is mutating; therefore, it is of utmost interest to discuss this ongoing transformation, to analyze the specificities of Latin America and the Caribbean in this scenario, as well as to recognize the alternatives that overcome the capitalist social order in the sense of the workers, the subaltern classes (in the words of Antonio Gramsci) and the oppressed peoples.

The great crisis of the global capitalist economy that began in 2007/2008, in its financial dimensions, is not over. It faces an extremely complex situation and unfolds within a multidimensional crisis (economic, financial, environmental, food, etc.) that has called into question the possibilities for capital to achieve a new period of stable growth.

In 2018, media monopolies and international financial institutions (IMF, WTO, World Bank, rating agencies, etc.) conveyed an optimistic scenario regarding the global synchronization of economic recovery and a return to “normal” monetary policy. However, by the end of the year, they had begun to acknowledge the prospect of a recession and/or a global slowdown.

The newspaper The New York Times He acknowledged in December 2018 that “Just a few months ago, it seemed that global wealth was becoming increasingly robust. For the first time since the global financial crisis that wiped out wealth, major economies were growing in tandem. But not anymore. Now the global economy is weakening (…) Many countries are mired in stagnation or are heading in that direction.”  (Guillén: 2019)

There is profound uncertainty surrounding the crisis and the course of the global economy. Macroeconomic difficulties are intensifying: a slowdown in production and trade; trade tensions (the US-China trade war); currency struggles (which explain the rise in US interest rates); growth in the flow of international financial capital; and exponential private and public debt worldwide.

As a consequence of these phenomena, there is talk of a “crisis of globalization” which, among other aspects, involves trade and currency wars, the race for productivity in different territories and, in general, the dispute for hegemony of the world order. The harshest consequences fall on the shoulders of the working sectors and the people: unemployment grows, job insecurity increases, poverty wages are imposed, social security is dismantled, public and private debt grows, environmental destruction occurs, migrations, and forced displacements due to hunger and wars.

Among the nation-states of the core countries, international disputes are increasing over creating better conditions for their capital through the regulation or deregulation of the global economy. But beyond the states, there is the logic of capital to extend and deepen capitalist relations to the most remote territories and incorporate new labor into the capitalist system of exploitation. (Gambina, 2019)

In this process, where the most concentrated capital intervenes to favor the mechanism of transnationalization by relying on their nation-states, phenomena such as "protectionism" reappear to restructure institutions created during the era of globalization, leading to the dismantling and reassembly of traditional organizations. Examples of this include Brexit and Trump's foreign policy in redesigning free trade agreements, such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

In this context, it is important to understand the advancement and defense of globalization by the emerging Chinese economy. This understanding can also explain the dispute between the US and China, which involves various processes related to technological development and productivity growth. This is evident in the conflict with Huawei and Chinese developments related to 5G, at a time when technology and internet companies are at the top of the global market capitalization rankings. (Gambina, 2019)

Within this context of conflict, the struggle to increase the profit rate strengthens the demand for labor, pension, and tax reforms—in short, to reinforce the permanent IMF-imposed austerity measures. All of these are reactionary proposals aimed at dismantling a system of social, union, collective, and individual rights that were won through the struggles of workers during a historical period characterized by the bipolarity of the world system between 1945 and 1991; or, if you prefer, from the crisis of the 1930s to the globalization crisis of 2007/09.

Thus, capitalism in crisis seeks to transform itself. This involves: 1) labor relations; 2) state relations, or the role to be assumed by the nation-state; and 3) international relations, or the organization of the world system.

The first point involves achieving greater wage and labor flexibility, leading to increased job insecurity and a growing economically active population without social security. The second point confirms the trend toward privatization of public companies and services, with a growing role for the state in defense and security, and a consequent increase in military spending. And third, regarding the global system, the debate centers on how best to regulate global liberalization to the benefit of capital.

In the ongoing, unresolved crisis that began more than ten years ago, capital's offensive tends toward the subsumption not only of labor, but also of nature and society itself, through exploitation and the promotion of a consumerist culture. This constitutes a set of methods for the appropriation of surplus value by concentrated transnational capital. What we intend to highlight is the irresolvable nature of the population's demands for access to dignified living conditions, in the face of the capitalist order's demand to generate profits, the consequent process of valorization, and, therefore, the domination that ensures global reproduction.

Analyzing the crisis and the unfolding of the global capitalist economy is essential to understanding the economic, political, and social context of Latin America and the Caribbean. Our region is subject to new predatory forms of global capital accumulation in crisis (the exploitation of labor, the appropriation and concentration of wealth, the fraudulent privatization of public goods and services; the renewed plundering of underdeveloped countries by imperialism, which redefines a neocolonial capitalism; the appropriation and reappropriation of rent) that have led to a rethinking of the process of primitive accumulation of capital described by Marx. David Harvey's work stands out in this regard, characterizing this stage of new imperialism as accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2007).

This phase of capitalism, with the multidimensional crisis that characterizes it, is also accompanied by regional wars and an ideological and cultural regression, with growing fanaticism and fundamentalism, as shown by the rise of the right wing in the world and in Our America, as exemplified by the rise of right-wing governments, such as Macri (2015), Bolsonaro (2018) and Bukele (2019), the so-called “soft or parliamentary” coups in Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012) and Brazil (2016) and the aggression against Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti led from the US, which has the support of the main countries of Europe, Japan and the governments of the Latin American regional right wing (Lima Group).

The working group aims to account for the socio-economic and political determinants for Our America within the framework of the global capitalist crisis and to investigate how the different hegemonic proposals for the region can impact the construction of alternative strategies and solutions from and by the diversity of exploited, oppressed and subjugated social subjects who fight for another Possible World.

The proposed topic aligns with the critical theory perspective that has underpinned the working group since its inception. This perspective forms part of a multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary approach to the global economy, enabling a complex interpretation of how the various dynamics of contemporary capitalist social order are reconstructed in Latin America and the Caribbean. The collective analysis has delved into the specific characteristics of the global economy at each historical juncture, as we understand these characteristics to define the possibilities and limitations of the region's economies. The structural conditions of subordination of our Latin American and Caribbean economies manifest themselves (either worsening or mitigating) according to the specific dynamics of growth, expansion, recession, or crisis within the global capitalist economy.

Neoclassical economics presented the 2007-2008 crisis as a passing episode and pragmatically justified all state bailouts to banks and companies (too big to fail). They attributed the crisis to government failures or the irresponsibility of debtors. In other words, they reduce all problems to individual behavior, blame the victims, and protect those responsible. (Katz, 2016).

Keynesian interpretations also explain the crisis as a result of a lack of regulation and uncontrolled risk. These perspectives propose resolving the imbalances through increased supervision of banks and financial institutions. However, controls do exist and are periodically undermined by rivalries and competition among banks, investment funds, and other entities (Katz, 2016).

In contrast to these neoclassical and Keynesian interpretations, Marxism (not without debate) links the crisis to its productive determinants, that is, to the intrinsic functioning of global capitalist development. However, no single economic process can fully explain the contemporary course of capitalism. If geopolitical changes are ignored or studied separately, it becomes difficult to understand the transformations underway. The roles of the US, China, and the attitudes of the middle powers are not simply reflections of economic demands. They unfold according to autonomous geopolitical tensions within a global landscape stratified by imperialist domination.

The current global economic crisis, which erupted in 2007-2008, is not just another crisis. Historical analysis confirms this: the present crisis is a product of the development of the global economy after thirty years of permanent IMF-imposed or neoliberal adjustment. That is to say, after thirty years of a policy by which the dominant fraction of transnational capital, primarily US financial capital, sought to resolve the valorization difficulties that had erupted in the crisis of the early 70s. This crisis, in turn, had revealed the impossibility of sustaining the exceptional framework erected by the US in the postwar period through the Bretton Woods agreements, which hierarchically established a framework of monetary stability. (Arrizabalo, 2014)

In other words, the trajectory of the global economy over the last forty years can be characterized by the sequence crisis, adjustment, crisis. The situation of the 1970s and the current one are characterized by crisis, insofar as the rate of accumulation (economic growth) has stalled. However, the period between the crisis of the 1970s and the current one was not a period of growth (compared to the glorious thirty years of the postwar period) given that growth has been very limited. Growth processes have been very specific and localized in certain countries in a singular, rather than generalized and systematic, way (China, Southeast Asia, etc.). That is to say, in terms of the rate of accumulation, the period has been marked by irregularity, instability, fluctuations, and uncertainty, as well as by the asymmetry between countries. (Arrizabalo, 2014).

The crisis is rapidly deepening the conditions of capitalist accumulation, that is, the valorization of global capital. Thus, the sustained increase in the rate of surplus value implies not only a relative impoverishment of the majority of the world's population, which entails an absolute deterioration of their living conditions, but also the plundering of common goods (environmental degradation, global warming, etc.), the commodification of the public sphere, and the increasing commodification of other areas of collective life.

The theoretical importance of critically and transdisciplinarily monitoring the deployment of the global capitalist economy and the crisis that began a decade ago, in terms of its implications for Latin America and the Caribbean, is articulated along two axes: a) the imperialist offensive, which, to counteract the effects of the crisis, attacks labor (devaluation of the workforce in our countries) and deepens the plundering/looting of common goods; and b) the strengthening of the subordination and dependence of the Latin American and Caribbean productive structure to the requirements (adjustments) of the global market.

We are witnessing the actions of capital trapped in its socially irrational, yet privately ruthless, logic. It is this contradiction between private appropriation and social production, between inclusion in exploitation and exclusion from profits, that necessitates a critical and theoretically sound reading and reflection on the development of contemporary capitalism.

A critical theoretical perspective on political economy needs to be strengthened, one that advances the analysis of the ongoing transformations of the contemporary global economy and its consequent unfolding, as dependent and neocolonial capitalism, in Our America. Further understanding of these issues will allow us to contribute to the development of alternative economic and public policies on crucial topics such as food sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and regional cooperation and integration, in order to support our peoples' political struggle for a transition toward anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-patriarchal societal models—models that transcend the capitalist horizon.

The group also provides current market analyses published in its monthly Bulletin. Our America XXI. Challenges and Alternatives These works constitute a theoretical and empirical analysis of the ongoing civilizational crisis and its implications for the region. They are framed within a critical historical perspective that examines global and Latin American capitalism, as well as alternative national experiences (Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba), providing invaluable input for the collective debate and approach to the issues raised.