[lbo-talk] Austerity In The Face Of Weakness

Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 3 14:14:04 PDT 2010


Marvin: Nonsense. No ruling class was ever overthrown without the masses considering their conditions of life were worsening and there was no longer any hope of peaceful redress of their grievances within the existing system. But this did not mean they were tired of living and devoid of all hope.

Somebody: If that's the case, then is it reasonable to foresee that there *ever* be such revolts ever again? And not only in the industrialized core, but in the semi-periphery as well? It's an obvious point, but I see no way around it: with such low rates of mortality in the modern world, what subjugated class (proletariat, lumpenproletariat, landless rural workers, whatever) would ever consider risking their lives to overthrow the existing order, when moreover, the last attempts at that failed so miserably that the socialist elites themselves dissolved their own systems?

A good example of this is the near disappearance of famine in contemporary times. Cormac O Grada documents the decline of the phenomenon in her Famine: A Short History. Both famine frequency and famine mortality fell over the course of the 20th century. We're at the point now where classical Malthusian famines are only conceivable in a mere handful of backward countries like Niger and Mali. Such countries are the last remaining regions of the world to have not undergone the demographic transition from large to small families and from high infant mortality to low. Back during the heyday of the revolutionary socialist and radical nationalist movements in the mid-20th century, most semi-colonial nations had fertility rates on the order of 7 or 8 children per woman. Now many of these same countries are approaching a mere 2 children per woman, close to the rates seen in the developed world.



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