>> If you're a Flint autoworker in 1936, you may well be feeling
>> emboldened by the fact that things are starting to look less dark for
>> you personally. But you also can't help but note that capitalism is
>> discredited, the economy is in shambles, and the whole worldview that
>> your boss and the Protestant ministers on the radio used to
>> force-feed you, to explain why you should just accept things the way
>> they are (that "the American system" is the best system, it maximizes
>> the well-being of all, etc.) looks utterly ridiculous.
>
> Why'd that happen in December 1936, when the unemployment rate was
> 13%, and not 1933, when it was twice as high?
But my point is, if there hadn't first been a discrediting collapse, the rebound would have been much less likely to produce that kind of rebellion. You could find other periods of ~9% growth in the preceding decades, but they didn't produce sit-down strikes. Also, you're making it seem as if the mid-1930's had strong growth, therefore people thought the future was looking pretty bright. Not at all! People thought capitalism had reached a permanent state of fuckedness. This is when the term "secular stagnation" became vogue.
> Was capitalism more discredited in 1936, after three years of
> expansion, than in 1933, after four years of collapse?
Yes, I think so. Actually, 1933 was already seeing the early beginnings of the strike wave. But in, say, 1931 or even 1932, it was still possible to believe this was nasty but temporary. The longer the depression went on without getting back to anything like normal, the less possible it was to see it as a temporary.
> Seattle wasn't just about the "developing" countries - there was the
> Teamster part of Teamsters & turtles too.
Yeah, case in point - for the Teamsters it *was* a depression!
SA