THE QUESTION ISN’T whether the magnificent “Occupy” movement will continue after police action and the onset of winter have largely emptied the encampments. The righteous rage that made the movement possible, and the enormous social and economic crisis that made it necessary, are not going away anytime soon. Quite the contrary — capitalism’s inherent contradictions, made worse by economic policies in Europe and the United States that seem calculated to maximize the damage, pose the real possibility of a new global financial meltdown and potential world depression.

Let’s assume that the worst-case scenario of a collapse of the euro and widespread bank failures can be avoided. Even then, the post-2008 recovery at best will remain weak, with bitter austerity in southern Europe and too few jobs created in the U.S. economy even to accommodate the growth of the work force, let alone seriously reduce the appalling prevailing unemployment rate. Savage cuts in public employment are wiping out, in particular, much of what was called the African American “middle class.” A new generation of students, already crushed by debt, is entering a labor market without jobs to offer them.

No wonder then, as the United States becomes a more unequal, more unfair and nastier society, that the anger over corporate and banking pillage — to say nothing of the brutality of police assaults on city encampments and on college campuses — all of which fuelled Occupy Wall Street and its amazing proliferation, will grow and will find new forms of expression and mobilization.