Doug Henwood wrote: > Capitalism gets in trouble now and then. Financial crises, recessions, > whatever. But it gets out of them too. It's just part of normality. I don't > see what the point of emphasizing that cyclicality is. If anything, it > supports an effort to stabilize the system, not transform it. It's the rest > of capitalist normality - polarization, alienation, environmental > destruction - that is the real problem.
I think that you're right, Doug, that most cyclical downturns simply reshuffle the deck in order to restart the capitalist game on slightly different terms. But capitalists often deal with a cyclical downturn in profit realization and/or underlying profitability is by intensifying the polarization of the income and power distributions, by tightening their control over the work process (and thus increasing alienation), or by dumping the costs on the natural environment. In turn, these bounce back to determine the exact nature of the downturn. A downturn in the era of growing income gaps (the 1920s, 2000s) is different than one during an era of relatively egalitarian growth (1950s, 1960s). > I find it interesting to study bubbles, but they do regularly expand and > pop. So? Edward Chancellor wrote a very fine book on the history of > speculation, and it's amazing how similar bubbles are across time and place. > Different instruments, different markets, different people, but pretty much > the same mass psychology. They belong more to the study of human folly than > radical politics though. methinks that these days in the US. this kind of human folly has become integral to the capitalist accumulation process. The US economy was "grown" during both the late 1990s and 2003-7 partly or mostly via the Fed pumping up speculative bubbles (lower interest rates, deregulation). Happy Father's Day! (are there any mothers on pen-l?) -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
