Crisis of capitalism and some estimates of its impact on the subordinate class in Colombia

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the economic and political transformations experienced by world capitalist system (WCS) in the last four decades and their impacts on the subordinate classes, especially in the particular history of Colombia.

Since the seventies, the WCS fell again in crisis, and therefore searched for solutions and implemented mechanisms such as deterioration of labor conditions, financial deregulation, and changes in the technology and organization of production or the new aesthetics, all of which had major impacts on the welfare of the world’s population, such as unemployment, informality, reduced income, increased concentration of wealth, to name just a few. Of course, these changes have been implemented and regulated according to each country’s correlation of forces. In the case of Colombia, they started under President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen Administration, and gradually deepened with the measures of the Washington Consensus during each subsequent government.

Finally, the article encourages the search for solutions that help outdo this system, which has demonstrated not to respond to the complex and serious problems of a great portion of the humanity.