me: >> But what >> about a long "disequilibrium," perhaps such as that of the 1930s?
Doug: > There was quite a boom from 1933-1937.< I guess it depends on what you mean by a "boom." As a percentage of the labor force, the unemployment rate fell from 25.2% in 1933 to 14.3% in 1937. Is that enough of a boom to say that the period of stagnation ended? > That aside, a decade is not all *that* long - unlike the claim by Alan > Freeman and others that the capitalist economy has been in crisis since the > 1960s or 1970s, I forget which.< Among others, the folks who believe in Social Structures of Accumulation theory distinguish between a cyclical crisis and a structural crisis. A cyclical crisis would be the forcible restoration of the disturbed equilibrium (that I cited Marx talking about). A structural crisis, on the other hand, would be the end of one system-stabilizing SSA not being followed immediately by the creation of a new SSA. The standard SSA story is that after WW2, the US economy enjoyed unprecedented prosperity due to the establishment of an SSA (which in some views involved a few informal "accords," including one between classes). But that SSA fell apart (for various reasons) and its not being replaced immediately by a new SSA implied a stagflationary structural crisis or a "crisis decade" from the early 1970s to (maybe) the mid-1980s. Then, a new "neoliberal" SSA was established. The new SSA (if it exists) doesn't seem as good as the post-WW2 one, at least not for working people. The period of the 1950s and 1960s seems to be the "Great Exception," as Tom Michl calls it, instead of a template for all SSAs. But at least until 2008, the system seemed to be working pretty well _for the capitalists_. And it's _their_ standards that really count in defining a "crisis." In those terms, a crisis is a situation where capitalists stop getting what they want, so they must go through a painful process of adjustment to get it back. Similarly, in those terms I don't understand how Alan can see the period after 1972 or so as one long crisis. What exactly a crisis is depends on what your crisis theory is. That in turn would depend on one's vision of what a non-crisis capitalism looks like. -- Jim Devine / "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
