I would like to add. This misunderstanding is closely tied up with overestimation of the achievements of the left in the 30s and gross undeerestimation of the achievement ofs of The Left in the '60s. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You would also need to throw out, or downplay, other moments when radicalization and resistance grew out of economic troubles. There's the whole 1917 thing and the last couple decades of the 19th Century. Are there other historical examples of people struggling when things are good besides the 1960s? Or is that the outlier?
It is one thing to critique those putting forward some sort of automatic understanding and quite another to argue that there is more potential radicalization in crisis than other periods. Personally I think it is the rising expectations and enhanced class consciousness coming out of crises that are potential moments of greater left possibility.
Brad