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Western capitalism is weakening.

Not capitalists. And not their banks.  In the US in 2010 the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains. In the UK 1000 'top' people gained (that's, right they added to their already vast piles of loot) £137 billion in the last two years. They could have paid off the UK's deficit just by NOT receiving their extra earnings! In the last 3 years - since the start of austerity - they added a total of £300 billion to their wealth. Banks based in Britain still lend £7 Trillion each year, five times the UK's GDP. And with this super wealth (and the power it brings) is it any wonder that the politicians who defend the market system crawl to their masters?

But the facts about the capitalist system, especially here in the west, are inexorable. 10 years ago the US accounted for just under a third of the global economy. Today it is less than a quarter. By 2020 it will be a sixth. The British economy has been in decline for a hundred years. In 2010 Britain's deficit in goods sold and bought from other countries was £100 billion, or 7% of our GDP. The City tells britons that it provides £25 billion in taxes each year. But the constant and increasing gap between goods sold and goods bought from other countries will bring the national debt to £1.4 Trillion by 2016. We will need 60 years of the City's taxes by then to pay it off.

In other words reliance on financial capital is a dead end. The fantasy of an economy driven by debt formation and, for the rest of us,  by 'adding value' through an 'educated and skilled workforce' is already dust. In fact long term living standards for both the middle classes and the working class in the west are in decline. In the US this trend is particularly marked. Even for university graduates.

A lot of noise is made about every exception that bucks the trend. Of course. But the fundamental process is clear and has been, in some cases, clear for decades. The western worker, of every type, is being reorganised around the new international price (and without a social wage) of labour. Two dollars a day. Even 'successful' countries like Germany, (who Thatcherised' their labour force in the 1990s, and whose dominance of the exchange rate of the euro secures a 'permanent' market') have only bought themselves time. And meanwhile the temporary contracts for dead-end part-time jobs (so as to avoid employer contributions) based in the service sector, grows. The US economy have added an average of 200,000 jobs a month since last October and median incomes there are still plummeting.

Two huge conclusions are drawn from this state of affairs in the popular debate in the west. Both conclusions serve the status quo. The first is that power is leaking inexorably to east. Capitalism there is roaring ahead; making many millionaires but also increasing the living standards of billions. In that sense, apparently, a massive 'equalisation' of the world is going on and the western imperialist grip is ancient history. Second; nothing radical (going to the root of the issue) to reverse the tide is possible - at least not country by country. It would be a fantasy to imagine that a small nation (say, of 60 million) could withstand the force of international capital. Any truly radical experiment would simply be washed away before it began.

Luckily, millions who fight back across the globe do not have to have advanced theories of political economy before they resist. For example for several years now China has had the largest wave of social and industrial struggle per head of population compared with any other nation on earth, according to UN figures. (Just above South Africa.) So masses of people will fight injustice but can they fight, with any realism for an alternative?

I'm going to try and answer this question in my own simple way. Something to look forward to!