________________________________ From: ken hanly <northsunm at yahoo.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 3:58 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Bad Times and the Left
The reason that bad times are bad for the left is that what most people call the left namely liberals and social democrats are defenders of capitalism. As a result when times are bad they give up expanding the welfare state and other progressive social policies and agree to austerity measures to please investors. Look at Greece,.Portugal and Spain. Now it would seem Obama is willing to cut social entitlement programs. If there were more leftists who rejected capitalism bad times would be the best of times because they show that capitalism is a failure and that socialism is necessary as a solution not attempts to save capitalism.
Cheers, ken
----- Original Message ---- From: Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Mon, July 11, 2011 1:21:11 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Bad Times and the Left
On 2011-07-11, at 11:26 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> Doug writes: This is related to the argument I've been making for a long
> time - that crises are not good for the left, since they make people more
> defensive, insular, competitive, and focused on survival. Climate change is
> going to add a whole new dimension to this.
>
> And Doug is totally correct. We disagree on many things but not on this.
>
> It is no accident that the most serious threat to capitalism in U.S. history
> came in a period of great and rising prosperity and increasing free time.
>
> Perhaps it is the steady downward pressure over the last 35 years on wages
> that is most responsible for left weakness during those decades.
=============================
I'm not sure there is such a clear pattern on this. Certainly, during periods of rapid growth, when there is a demand for labour, working people are inclined to be more assertive, at least in the industrial arena. They are confident they can force concessions from their employers and, where they can't, of being able to find other jobs. Conversely, when the economy is contracting or sputtering and employment is relatively high, as at present, job insecurity is rife and industrial and political action is at a low ebb. The great trade union organizing drives of the 30's did not occur in the depths of the depression, as Carrol points out, but in the latter part of the decade, during the recovery.
On the other hand, the revolutionary wave which broke out over Europe towards the end and in the immediate aftermath of the first World War was the product of increased economic hardship in all of the warring countries. And we know that many peasant and worker revolts under capitalism were desperate reactions to increasing immiseration. By contrast, the US working class became less rather than more of a threat to capitalism during the great period of rising properity which followed the Second World War. The long decline of the radical left passed both through a stage of rapidly rising wages during roughly the first 35 years of this period and then of "steady downward pressure (on them) over the past 35 years…"
So we can say that while there is a fairly strong correlation between the demand for labour, working class bargaining power, and trade union militancy, it would appear that buoyant economic conditions are only a necessary condition for militant political action, and not always or perhaps even most often a sufficient condition for the growth of the social movements and the left. There, I look to the lack of democratic rights as having been a more powerful spur for mass action, as in the case of trade unionists, blacks, women, gays, and other social forces. Both factors in combination can be explosive.
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