Brenner reply to doug henwood

joshua william mason jwm7 at midway.uchicago.edu
Thu Nov 19 08:51:02 PST 1998


On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, pms wrote:


> Greg, or anyone, please explain what the cause of the second type of crisis
> would be, if not over-production. I understand that an organized working
> class could contribute to this, and expect that to be the cause of the next
> big explosion, but not yet.

The idea is that periods of rapid accumulation strengthen the working class to the point where it is able to threaten profits--and continued accumulation--through demands for higher wages as well as resistance on the shopfloor, etc.-- what Doug glosses as "an attitude problem among the workers." One of the main exponents of the idea that this is what's responsible for the slowdown since 1973 is Andrew Glyn; if you want to get a better handle on this stuff you could do a lot worse than pick up his book Capitalism Since 1945.

Josh



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