Michael Perelman wrote: >I tried to tell the story of the Great Depression of the late 19th century in my >book, End of Economics. Not only did the Depression occur in the way Jim cited >Doug Dowd, but most of the leading economists of the time in the United States >explicitly recognized that reality. Right. And it's pretty much Michael's story of the late 19th century, from a piece I came across online, that I had in mind. See: Marx, Devalorization, and the Theory of Value http://www.ucm.es/wwwboard/bas/messages/223.htm also, more specifically: Devalorization, Crises, and Capital Accumulation in the Late Nineteenth Century United States http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/econ-value/files/96sessions.txt I was also thinking of an intriguing expression -- "the left-wing of devalorization" -- used by my long ago Cazadero camp-mate, Loren Goldner, to refer to proponents of Keynesian welfare state policies. Goldner used the expression polemically but his usage got me to thinking about its deeper implications for crisis theory. If we think of welfare statism as the "left-wing of devalorization", might not we think of NAIRU era labour supply-side policies as the "right-wing of 'left-wing' devalorization". In the second piece, Michael refers to the post-civil-war overinvestment in fixed capital. To me the striking parallel in the more recent period is the post-WW II overinvestment in educational credentials, which incidentally shifted from social overinvestment in the 1960-1970s ("do not fold spindle or mutilate") to competitive private overinvestment in the 1980s-1990s (the pursuit of marketable skills). And, yes, Veblen has an uncanny contemporary relevance, here. Often when people talk about the historical composition of "needs", they have in mind simply an enlarging absolute bundle of commodities. But what about the _specificity_ of many of those needs to labour market entry and participation? Are life-long learning, home offices, dressing for success, UMC (upwardly mobile copulation), and owning a car to commute to work final consumption goods or a subtle repackaging and "putting out" of the more highly competitive (and less profitable) means of production? Immiseration may thus be conceived of as not just relative to other people's consumption -- let alone some absolute standard of subsistence -- but also as relating to the mix of individually optional and objectively compulsory (conspicuous?) items of consumption. If anyone has the slightest clue what I'm rambling on about, I'd appreciate feedback. I sense that what I'm saying is at the margin of comprehensibility and hence hard to articulate. The best I can do is pile up metaphors in the hope that they come crashing down in the right direction. What I'm getting at is a sense in which "labour" in the late 20th century has come to display characteristics more or less specific to "capital" in the late 19th -- not a physical, but a social "cyborganization". Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
