On Jul 12, 2011, at 11:20 AM, Eric Beck wrote:
> Maybe it's the unsubtlety of email, but I read statements such as
> "crises are not good for the left, since they make people more
> defensive, insular, competitive, and focused on survival" as fairly
> mechanistic in that they seem to treat all crises the same and don't
> seem to allow for any possible escape from the crises' effects. Don't
> get me wrong: Empirically speaking, I mostly agree with you that
> crises are bad for everyone except capitalists, and I certainly loathe
> "accelerationism" (to borrow a term some have used lately), but I
> think it gives Them too much credit and Us not enough to declare ahead
> of time that crises are bad. It certainly seems to rule out the
> possibility of political action that eludes or uses the crisis. And
> maybe you are right, but I don't really see what good can come of
> foreclosing possibility.
>
> Drawing lessons from events when n=a pretty small number is dangerous,
> I know, but I think in order for your thesis to have more weight it'd
> have to begin to account for the 1930s
Total outlier - 25% unemployment plus the Golden Age (ha ha) of the USSR. And the 1930s weren't so great for the European left, either.
But I'm talking general tendencies. Of course, nothing in social life is as fixed as Avogadro's number.
Doug