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Hi Prof. Perelman, Thanks for your helpful comments on ground rent, hopefully I can come back to this discussion before long. I read your interesting analytical bio. Kind of reminded me of the mathematician Paul Halmos’ autobiography, which he called: an “autoMATHography” (by the way, you don’t have any relation to Grigori Perelman?, he’s one of the latest’s winner of the Fields medalists –the biggest prize in math-, but he rejected it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman), so perhaps you should call yours an autoMARXography. Anyway, as I was reading I found this remark: “The economy would eventually recover from the crises, but these downturns could be long‑lasting unless something else intervened, such as World War II. The competitive pressures brought on by the economic crises encouraged replacement investment and the search for improved techniques, which eventually helped to make the economy stronger. This process created enormous human costs, especially because recovery could many years.” From what I’ve read on the 30’s, mostly from Marxists, that seems to be the case. Yet, last week I found a new article by Anwar Shaikh, he says that “There are several lessons that can be taken from these episodes. First, cutting back government spending during a crisis would be a ‘consequential mistake’. This is Obama’s point. Second, it is absolutely clear that the economy began to recover in 1933, and except for the administration’s misstep in cutting government spending in 1937, continued to do so until the US build-up to the Second World War in 1939 and its full entry in 1942. (Pearl Harbor being December 7, 1941). >>>>>>It is therefore wrong to attribute the recovery, which had begun nine years before the war, to the war itself. The war itself further stimulated production and employment.<<<<<<< Third, it is nonetheless correct to say that (peacetime) government spending played a crucial role in speeding up the recovery. Fourth, the government spending involved did not just go towards the purchase of goods and services. It also went toward direct employment in the performance of public service. For instance, the Work Projects Administration (WPA) alone employed millions of people in public construction, in the arts, in teaching, and in support of the poor.” (http://homepage.newschool.edu/~AShaikh/Shaikh%20First%20Great%20Depression%20of%20the%2021st%20Century%208_23_10.pdf, p.13) Shaikh doesn’t provide much evidence except for a chart, but it sounds as though he’s saying that even if the war hadn’t happened, the recovery policies would have eventually worked, which sounds suspicious to me. The way I see it, the form in which the recovery took place was part of the process of development of the specific conditions for the massive destruction of capital which was WWII, it was no accident. Anyway, just wondering if you could tell us more about that. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
