thanks to robert for posting this response. i have some questions that i'd like to pose, based on some observations and comments apposite to what i've said earlier.
first, i can certainly understand why you would want to revise the view that it was the strength of the u.s. working class that precipitated the long downturn. that view, as i understand it, would imply some sort of justification for the new right's bringing labor to heel, its desire to dismantle america's so-called welfare state, the "common sense" of monetarism in 80-82, and so on. by shifting the explanation for the long downturn towards the realized tendency toward overcapacity and overproduction, you return to one of the essential characteristics of capital, as marx explains it, and cast doubt on the prognostications of a u.s. or world boom in the near future. more importantly, you also, implicitly at least, imply a revision of the way we view the 70's (and 80's) as well as the golden age itself. namely, instead of a period in which what's most important about the relative stability of atlantic fordism (i know you object to the term, but bear with me) is the growing strength of labor and the keynesian welfare state, the golden age appears as something else entirely: namely, a moment when the keynesian welfare state subvents the rapid growth of japanese and german exports to the u.s., while the u.s. gov't pursues policies that do more to support multinationals and financial interests (rather than manufacturing, or the working class).
my questions come not from objections to this explanation, with which i agree, so far as i think i get you (if you think i misrepresent your position, let me know how). rather, they come from the way you construct the rhetorical/ theoretical context in which you make the argument, and the way you imagine the "object" called the long downturn.
first question, oversimplified: what role do you see for the state in mitigating global crisis, or the tendency toward overcapacity and overproduction in an international scale? i ask this question because it seems to me that you misrepresent the regulationist position both here and in your very interesting article in nlr a few years back on this score. aglietta and lipietz in particular view "class struggle" as irreducibly mediated by the state during the so-called "golden age" and after: aglietta--and mike davis following both him and lipietz--makes a point of arguing that, whatever the working class might have gained via the wagner act in 35, taft hartley and the ensuing assault on the terms of bargaining left u.s. labor weakened indeed, even at the moment of their supposed triumph.(this is found especially in aglietta, pp. 190-98) davis has drawn this tendency more starkly by emphasizing the anti-union tendencies in electrical industries and their effects on u.s. political culture. but neither aglietta nor lipietz make the "supply-side" argument that you say they (or aglietta) do. in fact, it seems to me that aglietta's article from 1982, "world capitalism in the 80's" (NLR 136: 5-41) makes an argument similar to yours--namely, that the 70's crisis--and our understanding of the golden age parameters--depends on our understanding of international balance of payments situations mediated by currency valuations and productivity (labor/capital ratio). in short, i take the point that overcapacity and overproduction could be the "cause" of both 70's stagnation and the current critical situation. but do you think such competition is or was unmediated by the state (i'm thinking about the obvious: nixon's devaluation, monetarism, the second cold war, etc.)? if not, then why the rhetorical emphasis on competition, rather than the latter's role in setting up its preconditions and terms of the same?
second, i certainly can understand your construction of the last two decades as a "long downturn," given the statistics that you marshall and assuming i've got your polemical targets drawn right. but i wonder as much about this
as "golden age" pictures because they don't ask a simple question: for whom? i think this goes to doug's (and later dennis') point about economic "dynamism": whatever you might say about the reduction in u.s. industrial profitability, it's still true that vast amounts of wealth have been accumulated in the last two decades--and the distribution of wealth in the u.s. is now more disproportionate than any time since the first world war, or something like that. the "long downturn" that you explain doesn't account for that, or for any number of other of what you might call epiphenomena accompanying the downturn. it doesn't necessarily have to, of course; still, i wonder what kind of historical or policy implications you want to draw from the analysis you do give.
thanks for reading.
best christian