> Sorry for delay...
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>> On Jun 5, 2008, at 7:40 AM, Angelus Novus wrote:
>>
>>
>> "However the present crisis might develop - a detailed
>> observation of it is admittedly of paramount
>> importance for the investigator of capitalist
>> production and the professional theoretician - it
>> will, likes its predecessors, blow over and usher in a
>> new "industrial cycle" with all of its various phases
>> of prosperity, etc."
>>
>
> If citing this in, say, 1932, was done to pooh-pooh the Great
> Depression, it would have been just as out-of-context as it is now.
This is 1932? Really?
> But more broadly, the
> left project should also always insist that the capitalist system
> regularly brings on these terribly painful bouts of crisis, and that
> this cyclical character is one reason for the system to be done away
> with. I don't know why this simple insight from Marx gets lost in the
> happy-faced spin you keep putting on these matters, Doug.
I've said this many times, but that's never stopped me from saying it again. If the left project is so dependent on crisis to do our polemical work for us, then we're doomed. If we can't convince people that the normal operation of capitalism is unjust, violent, alienating, polarizing, etc., then we might as well give up. Because crises do resolve themselves, but the rest goes on. The "normal" should be the issue, not the extraordinary.
Doug