Mészáros and Chávez: "The Point from Which to Move the World Today"

Abstract

István Mészáros was a global thinker strongly committed to anti-imperialist struggles. In this respect, he allied himself with those fighting for socialist transformation in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere. He argued that in the descending phase of capitalism there was a "downward equalization of the rate of exploitation," by which he meant a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, enforced by a global system of monopolistic competition.