>Doug, I think this paragraph pretty much epitomizes our differences on
>these questions. You tend to view what's going on in Asia as capitalism
>functioning "normally" as if a depression is some kind of bowel movement
>that the economic body needs to exercise in order to keep in tune. This is
>exactly the way that the Economist or Forbes would look at it.
Actually the bourgeois view is that recessions and depressions are caused by exogenous factors. Marx was a great, though unacknowledged, influence on business cycle theory, showing that crises were endogenous - as much part of the system as booms. Wouldn't most Marxists agree that the post-WW II boom was based on the destruction of capital thanks to 15 years of depression and war?
>I have been trying to emphasize how recent events confirm the inability of
>capitalism to function "normally". Shocks to the system such as the Koreans
>are going through do not lead to a cheery outlook of "What a nice bowel
>movement." They instead lead Hyundai workers to make molotov cocktails and
>stack new cars in front of their plant to defend a sit-in. When this even
>occurred, you exhibited consternation.
Heavens no. I'm all for workers occupying plants. What concerned me is that the Hyundai workers had no politics behind their sit-in, other than the desire to keep their jobs. The sit-in wasn't a rehearsal for a worker takeover of production - they just wanted business as usual to carry on.
>Instead, Marxists should welcome
>signs of resistance. It is out of such resistance that a new society
>becomes objectively possible. The role of Marxists or radical economists is
>to prepare the rest of society for accepting the need for a new kind of
>society, not to accept the status quo as a state of normality.
The status quo is almost by definition a kind of normality. If you have some evidence that the Hyundai workers were talking about a new kind of society, by all means please share it.
Doug