Lenin, Moribund Capitalism and the Global Crisis of Labor Movements

Abstract In the first decades after 1914, capitalism went through a deep crisis while labor movements actually gained strength. This was the time when Lenin and others developed the theory of an irreversible decline of world capitalism. From the 1950s onward, the crisis of capitalism appeared to be over and the labor movements seemed to become even stronger. In recent decades, however, we have seen a return of capitalist crises, but this time it has been accompanied by a second deep international crisis – that of the labor movements. We are therefore now confronted with a double crisis, of which the outcome is still unclear.