[lbo-talk] Some lbo questions

[brad bauerly]

I guess I would like to know if the recover that does usually come after
recent downturns is the result of the improvement in productivity that
occurs?  That is to say, is the necessary destruction or devaluing of
capital which is achieved during economic crises not only of fixed capital
but also of variable capital?  If so, then we can see the unemployment
that occurs as functional to this devaluing in that it increases the
competition for jobs, creates employment insecurity and drives up
productivity.  This crisis is especially powerful in its ability to do this
because it is also undermining one of the major sources of security which
working people previously had: their homes.  It is also occurring during a
period of some of the highest debt levels any society has ever had in
history.  Therefore, the gigantic leaps in productivity gains we are seeing
is occurring because of this heightened level of insecurity and the
increased competition it is creating between workers due to very real and
growing insecurity.

Due to the above and the quote from Marx I posted yesterday I have been
doing a bit of research on unemployed movements during the great depression
and what I have found is amazing.  For anyone who doesn't know this history
and is interested, Piven and Cloward outline how this movement sprang up and
how by "March the demonstrations became a national event.  The communists
declared March 6, 1930, International Unemployment Day, and rallies and
marches took place in most major cities" (p. 50).  And they go on to
describe the process of formation of the 'Unemployed Councils': "In 1929
they (the communists) began a new campaign to form 'Unemployment Councils'.
During the winter of 1929-1930, Communist organizers worked vigorously, on
the breadlines, in the flop houses, among the men waiting at factory gates,
and in the relief offices. By mid-1930 the Unemployed had become the chief
focus of party activity...[and] the party's theoretical journal, The
Communist, asserted that those out of work were "the tactical key to the
present state of the class struggle" (p 68).  There are similar stories in
England and Australia, and probably other places.  Which led to my asking
the question yesterday as to where are the movements to organize the
unemployed today?  With what, 20 million people unemployed in the US, why is
no one working to organize them and to overcome the individualization of the
crisis?

Brad