All of which, if right (very arguable, I admit), suggests that the guy who argued against a very simple, algorithmic view of these things is not off base. Bad shit went down in the 30s due to capitalist excess in the previous decade, but that led to regulations, safety nets, good stuff. Yes?
—ravi
^^^^^ CB; Yes, the economic crisis of the 1930's resulted in big Left gains in the US by a zig-zag , not by a straightline or algorithm. The bourgeoisie suffered the first hit, especially concentrated in finance in the 1929 crash-panic of Wallstreet . Dialectics was drummed into the mushroom upstarts of the practical bourgeoisie, in Marx's image. These dialectics in their heads (giggles) caused them to create The Great Depression shoving the crisis off onto the working class. This is now the terrible situation for the Left as Carrol and Doug focus upon. However, in this case the working class ,especially in the trade union organization of the industrial working class, centered in the fresh and central auto industry , the hub of many other industrial sections like steel, glass, rubber, a lot more fights back across the board for the working class, not just in the narrow trade union pure and simple , "shop floor" context, but "social unionism" as the UAW's Bob King terms it today.,a certain increase in the level of working class conscious trade unionism , consciousness of the unity of interests with workers beyond one's own shop, factory , and industry. So, the negation of working class material circumstances in the form of the economic depression through the actions of the bourgeoisie, especially its new leading sector of finance capital ( See _Imperialism_ by Lenin) may have just resulted in fascism as it did in Germany and Italy. But in the US , it resulted in major progressive reforms through the New Deal and FDR Administration. The historically relatively Golden Age of the Fifties for the US working class was the fruit of this dialectic in the 30's. The socalled Golden Age in the US was also concessions by the US capitalists because of the existence and survival of the Soviet Union ,and the alliance and victory of the US and Soviet Union against fascism, the victory of the Popular and United Fronts; the world model of a rugged working class state that the US couldn't hide from US workers.