>>Yes, it’s true there was all kinds of political ferment in the
>>1930s-though in places like Germany and Italy it took a rather
>>uncongenial form.
>
>whooooops! are we doing the fascism has it's roots in working class
>thang here, ignoring the research regarding the role of the landed
>elite and the rising professional/managerial classes? i'll admit
>that gunter remmling warped my brain on this topic, so pls
>enlighten.....
Not at all. This was a 1000-word newspaper column, not a scholarly analysis. The point was that a capital-D Depression could as easily have an ugly outturn as a benign one, and that it would not lead semi-automatically to a rebirth of the left, such as it is.
>i don't see how the 1950s and 1960s saw some sort of unproblematic
>set of events one way or another. that is, during the good times,
>there were a swath of people writing about America's Century and The
>End of Ideology and how we'd achieved the best of all possible
>worlds. that kind of intellectual work certainly laid the
>groundwork for the response: "america, love it or leave it" yes?
Fer sure. There's no simple relation between the business cycle and politics. Though the 50s were a time of 3 recessions, and the 60s, of almost none. I'm just following my master Kalecki on this: tight labor markets are good for the working class. Even if there's no political agitation, at least real wages rise and it's easier to find a job.
>i guess i think that the problem is that these positions, posed as
>grand/either or's, seem to view the economy and the terrain of work
>as *the* deciding factor.
You must have me confused with somebody else. Since I agree with this:
>i suspect that it's best to look at the economy as playing a role as
>catalyst in terms of whether or not it will spark greater labor
>militancy and political/cultural criticisms and demands for more
>than reformist change.
Doug