On 2010-04-22, at 2:37 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Apr 22, 2010, at 2:29 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>> Doug: "I remember that time - it was a sad thing. But my question about
>> post-1937 was real - what did happen? Anyone know?"
>>
>> [WS:] My inclination is to look into socio-demographic changes taking place
>> after WWII (that there was no left mobilization *during* the war is
>> no-brainer.) Specifically, the dismembering of working class communities
>> through suburbanization. Elaine Tyler May ('Homeward Bound") cites Nixon as
>> saying that the housing construction project would defeat communism in the
>> US.
>
> I meant in 1938, 1939, 1940 - the tail end of the depression years, before the war.
==================================
Has anyone yet mentioned the Wagner Act and other measures to institutionalize and contain "labour relations", aka. the class struggle, as an effective response to the strike wave of the 30's? The bourgeoisie had an interest in reviving mass purchasing power to lift the economy out of depression - hence the increased tolerance for unionization and social spending - but it sought and succeeded to do so in an orderly and gradual way within a tightly circumscribed regulatory framework under its control. Sanctioning the right to organize and strike also strengthened the liberals and social democrats within the trade unions against the Marxist left which was its chief political concern.
It's worth recalling that when Marx wrote, the industrial proletariat had neither the right to vote nor to form their own unions and poitical parties, so protest was by definition illegal, producing often violent state repression which in turn generated revolutionary anti-capitalist impulses within the working class by those who saw no means of improving conditions peacefully under the existing system.
The extension of the franchise and the legalization of trade unions, together with much higher levels of social spending permitted by capitalist expansion, were therefore the foremost reasons why capitalism defied classicial Marxist predictions of its imminent demise and why the revolutionary left never realized its potential. The temporary resurgence of Marxism under the impact of depression and the rise of fascism in the 30s did not counter this general trend, still less the later revolts by students, women, and national minorities which were by and large (though not wholly) peripheral to the working classes of the advanced capitalist countries.
Protests aimed at the reform rather than overthrow of capitalism have been characteristic of the system since its inception. The pattern will only be broken when the system is no longer able to recover from the cyclical and structural crises which regularly afflict it nor to provide the working class with a modicum of economic and physical security.