[lbo-talk] let's all pray for a depression

[Patrick Bond]

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> The 1930s are not a very inspiring example. Depression, fascism, and  
> world war - is that what you're looking for? 
Oh man... No, how about mass labour mobilisation and the New Deal? Best 
thing Your People have done within the US state, I reckon. The Brits got 
much of their welfare state off the ground from the rubble of weakened 
elite power following depression/war, too. What grounds are there for 
thinking a depressed and disempowered and ex-empired USA in the mid-21st 
century might see a revival of this spirit? Occasional sparks, like the 
occasional big anti-war demos or the Latino workers' protests... but 
what, similarly, was the basis of 1920s optimism? It didn't look too 
good then either, did it?


> Angus Maddison's stats  
> don't show much of a benefit for Latin America during the 1930s; the  
> region had a per capita GDP about 31% of the U.S. in 1930, and about  
> the same in 1940. Bourgeois stats, I know.
>   

Quite right. Try some Gunder Frank or ECLA classics for an antidote. 
Old, sure, but on this issue not past the sell-by date yet.