>I'm afraid that if there isn't a nasty economic slide, the left is
>toast.
At least Fascism, a far more common beneficiary of socio-economic crisis, is also thus inhibited. Let's take the smooth with the rough, eh?
>Anwar Sheikh's hypothesis about a nascent rising long-wave looks
>increasingly plausible to me. U.S. manufacturing seems to be recovering
>(how the fuck did that happen, incidentally?!?)
I don't understand economic statistics very well, but would hypothesise that the US depends less on exports than do most other national economies. Generalised participation in booming stock markets and low-interest-rate fueled debt-financing in America might have a lot to do with the revival of US manufacturing. We might know more about the legs this revival really has when the Fed finds the excuse its seeking to raise interest rates. A couple of thoudans points off the Dow and a few liquidity problems may change everything. Anyway, I guess I'm implying the possibility that a sick international economy (a) would not quickly manifest amongst American producers, and (b) would help lift Wall St (with fleeing foreign money) and thus enhance US consumption. A rather fragile quasi-Keynesian moment of incidental pump-priming?
>Doug is right that a rising wave helps strengthen the class power of
>workers, but that power can only be leveraged into progressive politics
>if there is some ideological basis for opposing capitalism.
Strong labour will always apply pressure for higher wages - regardless of explicit political awareness, no? Here again, US labour is only as strong as its capacity to protect itself against more desperate, hence cheaper, labour elsewhere. The inference I get from the US steelworkers is that US labour is assuming a pro-protectionism stance. US farmers, who have admittedly been doing it tough, have managed to garner themselves some protection from the federal government for a long time now - which they need, as shrill Australian rural interests convince me that we're but one farming entity capable of competing US farming into bankruptcy - so US protectionism never really went away. Given that I'm right in discerning an alignment between Buchananesque reaction and unionist nationalism, the prospect of US politics tending against the interests of transnational capital is quite imaginable. Or not?
>The Golden
>Age at least confirmed the possibility of successfully regulating
>capitalism -- another Golden Age now would only confirm the success of
>deregulating it.
I still don't know how deregulation can do anything but render development so uneven as to retard the periphery. The experience of US labour may be quite a positive (and consequently quieting) one for some time to come, but the other side of that coin still looks capable of exacting its vengeance in the foreseeable future. A politically belligerent and volatile periphery and the spectre of global underconsumption seem pretty realistic projections, don't they?
Just guessing ...
Cheers, Rob.