<HTML> Charles : 1920's Germany also brought a mass Communist and Socialist movement, majority movement. Then, Marxist consciousness was as high as it ever was there.  Nazis were even a fake "socialist" party. In other words, three major electoral parties were socialist and "socialist" That's how much that crisis drummed dialectics into everybody's heads. Reason the bourgeoisie played the fascist card is that Germany was on the verge of workers' rev, which is obviously high level working class thinking. Crisis means danger and opportunity. As it turned out in Germany then, danger won. But that concrete circumstance is actually an empirical example of economic crisis causing greater socialist and Marxist consciousness, for purpose of the issue disputed on this thread. Marx says in one "preface" the economic crisis is approaching and will drum dialectics into the heads of the bourgeoisie. Consciousness during crisis may not mean an insurrection during the crisis, but might raise consciousness for later phases and cycles. The dictum that periods of rising expectations are more ripe for rev, is not a law. It's just a comment everybody always makes in this discussion, perhaps because of the appeal of its counterintuitiveness. There very well may come a revival of working class consciousness this time by and in a down period, as in the 1930's USA ( another big  empirical example supporting this side of the argument ). Slump doesn't necessarily cause consciousness-up, BUT it can. Especially, now as we are in a long period of low level of consciousness, a downturn probably has potential to bounce thinking up. This is the reverse context of 1974.  Presence of fascists or fascist-like whatevers can be indication that bourgeoisie are worried because of high level of wc thinking. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Carrol: > > German inflation of the '20s plus the depression gave Hitler, > not socialist revolution. The _first_ impact of a slump is to > radically individualize the work force as every one scrabbles > to survive. This is what happened in 1974. The slump of > 1974-75 was extremely severe -- and it destroyed the last > remnants of the movement of the '60s. It was all down hill from there. ></BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>