> Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
>>Both these elements - a desperate impulse to escape from intolerable
>>conditions, coupled with hope the future will be better - are present in
>>every movement for social change, including those which arose during the
>>Depression.
>
> But the movements that arose in the 60s were the product of "good"
> times - that just weren't good enough. The best situation for the
> ruling class is when the masses are moderately nervous - when
> unemployment is high enough to assure labor discipline, but not so
> high as to risk economic or political problems, or so low as to cause
> workers to develop an attitude.
>
> Doug
----------------------------------
Seems you've fashioned a new kind of NAIRU (non-anxiety-inducing rate of
unemployment) for the ruling class to manage social stability. :) I think
you're right about where you'd generally see the crossover point of mass
insecurity spilling over into widespread social unrest.
I don't take the 60's much into account in trying to understand the phenomenon of mass protest under capitalism. That decade impresses me mostly a period of student cultural rebellion, very progressive in its own way but also very different from typical class struggles. The standards of the majority white working class were improving, not deteriorating as in the 30's, and, as you might expect, this - coupled with its fearful reaction to the new assertiveness of the black population, which was experiencing relative deprivation - was a conservatizing rather than radicalizing influence, notwithstanding the growing popular disillusionment with the Vietnam war. Even in France 68, where young workers began to spontaneously join the students in building barricades, you never saw anywhere near the same kind of organized mass working class agitation for jobs, union rights, and social benefits as you saw in the 30's, which resulted in the Popular Front government.
MG