> Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> >There's no assurance all these broken eggs would result in a
> >satisfying omelette, either; there is no longer even a coherent left or
> >self-conscious working class as there was in the 30s.
>
> But the hope of many crisis fans is that the collapse will finally
> bring about that class-conscious left. That's delusional, I think,
> but it's a common belief.
>
> There are also some weird affinities between crisis Marxists and
> libertarians/Austrians. Both camps think that state bailouts just
> can't work, and the crunch has to come - someday. That position makes
> sense for the right, which sees the state as some external imposition
> on the beauties of the market. For Marxists, who presumably
> understand the role of the state as enforcing a ruling class agenda,
> it's mysterious.
>
> Doug
----------------------------
Exactly. I think Marxists and Austrians also equally fail to take into
adequate account the effect the advent of the universal franchise has had
since Marx and the classicial economists produced their great works. Both
camps see capitalist crises resulting in an inevitable wave of personal and
corporate bankruptcies and mass unemployment - a necessary cleansing and
revitalization of the system for the right, the necessary precondition to
its overthrow for the left - but in the 20th century and beyond this
economic option is now limited by the actual (and potential) political power
of the masses. The ruling class since WWI have been impressed by the
relationship between catastrophic breakdown and revolution, and politicians
since Hoover by that between unemployment and holding onto political office.
That's why they respond with bank bailouts and Keynesian fiscal solutions to
prop up zombie firms and jobs, hoping that the restoration of credit and
purchasing power will eventually put the system back on its feet, and
preferring economic stagnation as an alternative to mass social unrest until
that happens. It may not bbe enough if the crisis is deep enough, but that
hasn't happened yet. Isn't that the story of Japan most recently?
MG