On Feb 5, 2008, at 12:19 PM, shag at cleandraws.com wrote:
> ....another aspect of Doug's inchoate theory about social
> change is that it takes place while the economy is doing fairly
> well...
Just a thought: It seems that working-class upsurges historically tend to take place during the recovery phase of the capitalist economic cycle (1934-1939, for example). There seem to be good reasons for this: When the system is in recession mode workers are too threatened by unemployment; when in depression mode, they are too preoccupied with survival issues; when in prosperity mode they are distracted by pursuit of increased individual welfare. Only in the recovery mode do the objective factors (need of capitalists for rising quantities of labor power) and the subjective factors (acute grievance from the depression experience plus optimism from increasing employment) fully coincide. So perhaps we *should* wish for a severe recession so that there would be a good radicalization-inducing recovery. As I said, just a thought.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos