michael perelman asks:>During most U.S. depression, capital has succeeded in
preserving part of its prior gains by bearing down harder on workers,
farmers, etc. Such was not the case during the Great Depression.
>Was there any reason, other than the existence of an alternative system,
that made these concessions possible?<
I'm not convinced that US workers, farmers, etc. did that well during the
GD. Real wages fell, while speed-up and stretch-out were the dominant theme
for those who kept their jobs. Unemployment rose, and stayed high.
Agricultural prices, which had been low in the 1920s, fell even more in the
1930s. Many went bankrupt and/or found their bank accounts to be gone.
Maybe it could have been worse. One reason why it didn't was that capital
was demoralized after the crash of 1929. Capacity utilization was way down,
causing zero or negative profit rates. This demoralization encouraged many
capitalists to embrace FDR-type policies, including the semi-fascist NRA.
On top of that, the Depression caused a lot of social disorder. The Vets
marched on Washington and Gens. MacArthur, Patton, and Eisenhower had to
chase them out of town. The CP was pretty effective at organizing, etc. This
counteracted the efforts of capitalists to cut wages.
Competition from the USSR also helped.
anzalone/starbird sugggests:
>Greater urbanization than pre WWI? Crowd density deterent to mass evictions
etc?<
urbanization probably helped make workers more powerful, though there was a
movement in the direction of deurbanization during the 1930s.
>The degree of unionization post WWI (it was an all time high, largely due
to the labor shortage created by WWI)<
I don't think so: unionization trended down steeply after 1919. Organized
labor was pretty dead in 1929.
>Some other change brought on by WWI? For example, getter military prowess
among the working classes, many now had guns from their service, and knew
how to use them. This was new for only some Americans, but could make a
difference in degree of "bearing down harder" . ("How you gonna keep them
down...after they've seen Paree?" ...and learned to shoot)<
I don't think so. The Vets who marched on Washington weren't armed. I don't
know for sure, though. Maybe there's a history of armed resistance that I
don't know about. But even that doesn't look that different from the late
19th century and the early 20th, when many folks (just a few miles from
frontier living) were armed.
> Greater liberation among women, more of them in the labor pool than previous?<
the 1920s was a period of relative liberation for women, along with
increased participation in the paid (proletarian) labor force. But it wasn't
especially organized. Men made a big effort to push women "back into the
home" during the 1930s. That effort, alas, was somewhat successful, until
the "Rosie the Riveter" era of the 1940s.
(you'll notice that my web page has changed. how often can this happen?)
Jim Devine
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"God is Elvis." -- religion for the 1990s.
