In 2020, the great crisis of the global capitalist economy intensified with the production paralysis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Three years later, as the pandemic culminates, the world economy finds itself facing stagflation and beset by escalating trade disputes, armed conflicts, and struggles for global hegemony.

Rising global inflation, the main problem for the vast majority of impoverished populations, is prompting national economic policies of monetary tightening, through the classic mechanism of raising interest rates. In this regard, the US is implementing these types of monetarist measures to accelerate the cooling of its economy.

Even before the pandemic, everything indicated that a new crisis was looming, this time due to the financial bubble linked to excessive public and private debt, coupled with the persistent decline in productivity in global capitalism, exacerbating the downward trend in the rate of profit. To the persistent indebtedness of the states of dependent countries (linked to trade deficits, capital flight, etc., and ultimately, to their subordinate position in the global economy), is added the indebtedness of the states of core countries. The real problem of debt stimulates and encourages the tendency toward the expansion of fictitious capital. Developed capitalist states used vast public resources to bail out financial institutions and big capital, which experienced liquidity or solvency problems during the 2007-08 crisis. This public financing operated through reductions in the budget allocated to social policies (pensions and employment, education, health, housing) and through the issuance of government bonds.

In this context, the situation of dependent and underdeveloped countries, burdened by public debt, worsens, as does the situation of less competitive, indebted companies, enabling further processes of capital centralization based on the bankruptcies of smaller businesses. Similarly, the plight of low-income families, heavily indebted to sustain their basic needs, is worrisome. In this regard, Smith (2021) notes that "global debt, including household, private company, and government debt, reached the staggering figure of $305 trillion (£254 trillion) in 2021, compared to $83 trillion in 2000."

This new accumulation of global debt temporarily postpones a deeper crisis. However, it is foreseeable that, sooner rather than later, small and medium-sized businesses will find it impossible to repay their loans, leading to widespread defaults that will cause the global financial system to collapse. Global debt is a financial bubble about to burst.

However, international organizations do not provide a rigorous explanation of the problems affecting the vast impoverished majorities globally. They reiterate that "the world is convulsed by a combination of crises" (World Bank, IMF, FAO, WTO, 2022). In other words, they link the causes of the global capitalist economic crisis to the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and so on.

But are these multiple crises combining? Strictly speaking, these are the symptoms (forms of manifestation) of the long-standing crisis of capitalist overaccumulation. Since the 1970s, the dominant factions of global finance capital, in order to cope with the problems of profitability (the difficulties of capital valorization in the productive sphere) and productivity, as well as the rebellions of the working and student classes in developed countries and of the peoples of dependent countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, have intensified the exploitation of labor, the plundering and looting of common goods, and the various mechanisms that reinforce the dependence of peripheral countries on the designs of the most concentrated transnational capital in the global market. The outcome of this crisis in the 1970s led to a surge in the magnitude of finance capital and a greater concentration and centralization of capital. The big winner turned out to be financial capital, the dominant fraction of world capital, which, with the help of the institutional framework at its disposal (IMF, World Bank, WTO, NATO, OECD, etc.), prevailed in the various countries.

Faced with the current global crisis, the dominant factions of financial capital are rapidly adapting and organizing to increase their profit margins by implementing measures aimed at: intensifying the concentration and centralization of capital, intensifying labor exploitation, and plundering common resources—strategic inputs for transnational capital worldwide. Currently, this is evident, among other things, in the rise of trade and currency wars, competition for productivity in different regions, and, more generally, the struggle for global hegemony.

The harshest consequences fall on the shoulders of the working classes and the people: unemployment grows, job insecurity increases, poverty wages are imposed, social security is dismantled, public and private debt grows, the environment is destroyed, migrations and forced displacements due to the expansion of extractivism, hunger and wars.

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 between different countries (core and dependent) or the reorganization of the world system. In the ongoing, unresolved crisis, 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 (Gambina, 2013). 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 accumulation, and therefore, the political domination that ensures the global reproduction of the capitalist regime.

Analyzing the crisis of the global capitalist economy is essential to understanding the current situation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our region is subject to the new predatory forms of global capital accumulation in crisis (the exploitation and overexploitation of labor, the appropriation and concentration of wealth, the fraudulent privatization of public goods and services, the plundering of common resources, etc.).

Latin American and Caribbean societies face an even bleaker future in the wake of the pandemic. Social inequality, poverty, informal employment, unemployment, the closure of small and medium-sized businesses, rising food and energy prices, currency devaluations, inflation, and capital flight are all on the rise. Alongside this, discrimination against young people, and especially against women, is increasing.

This phase of capitalism in crisis, with its multiple offshoots (food, climate, energy, health, war crises, etc.) that characterize it, is accompanied by an ideological and cultural regression, with growing fanaticism and fundamentalism, as shown by the enraged reaction of the Latin American right to the advance of governments with criticisms of the hegemonic liberalizing policy, in countries where traditionally the political regimes were aligned with the business and financial sectors, as in several countries.

The proposed topic is situated within the critical theory perspective that has underpinned the working group's formation 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 delves into the specific characteristics of the global economy at each historical moment, as we understand these 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 (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 for banks and corporations (too big to fail). They analyze the pandemic and war in Europe in a similar way. The catastrophic situation resulting from COVID-19 is, for them, an exceptional event and not just another episode in the chronic crisis of capitalism, which the members of the Working Group have been studying for several years.

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

In contrast to these neoclassical and Keynesian interpretations, Marxism (not without debate) links the crisis to its productive determinants, that is, to the intrinsic contradictions of global capitalist development. However, no single economic process can, on its own, clarify the contemporary political course. If geopolitical changes are omitted or studied separately, it becomes difficult to understand the transformations underway. The roles of the US, China, and the actions of the middle powers, as demonstrated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting energy shortages in Europe, 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 is not just another crisis. Historical analysis confirms this: the present crisis is a product of the development of the global economy after forty years of permanent IMF-imposed or neoliberal adjustment. That is to say, after forty 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 1970s. 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 thirty glorious years of the postwar period) given its very limited scope. Growth processes have been highly 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 reinforcement 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 publishes current analyses in its monthly bulletin, Nuestra América XXI: Challenges and Alternatives, which provides both theoretical and empirical monitoring of the ongoing civilizational crisis and its implications for the region. These works are framed within a critical historical perspective analyzing global and Latin American capitalism, as well as alternative national experiences (Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba), and offer invaluable input for the collective debate and approach to the issues raised.

The working group aims to identify the socioeconomic and political determinants for Our America within the context of the global capitalist crisis and to investigate how the various hegemonic proposals for the region's recovery can impact the development of alternative strategies and solutions by and from the diverse social actors who are exploited, oppressed, and subjugated and who struggle for another possible world. Within this framework, the group will analyze the prospects for the transition from capitalism to societies free from exploitation and plunder, with a focus on fostering a popular, self-managed, and/or community-based economy.