This is interesting, & it brings tomind on
On 7/14/2011 9:11 AM, Chris Sturr wrote:
> Carrol's remarks about whether capitalists ever fear threats to capitalism
> (see below) remind me of a debate the left political scientist Michael
> Goldfield (author of the excellent book *The Decline of Organized Labor in
> the U.S.*)* *had in the early 90s with some other scholars, including Theda
> Skocpol, about the New Deal and how it came about.
>
> Skocpol and others were advocating a "state-centered" account (vs.
> neo-Marxist class-based accounts), according to which (roughly) you can't
> understand how (e.g.) the NLRA passed without looking at the role of
> well-meaning policy-makers like Robert Wagner. (Obviously not Carrol's
> position! Skocpol's view is a kind of bland pluralism posing as something
> insightful but mostly crowding out left class analysis.)
>
> Goldfield, in defending a class analysis of the New Deal and of the passage
> of the NLRA in particular, pointed to the key role of militant, radical
> labor organizing in bringing about the NLRA (which Goldfield viewed as
> co-opting that radicalism). But what I also seem to remember is that part of
> Goldfield's evidence was letters from capitalists to FDR and maybe also to
> Wagner expressing their alarm at the labor insurgency they were seeing. As I
> remember, they were urging them to do *something *to stave off--more radical
> labor activity? serious disruption to the status quo? revolution? I can't
> remember the details. I wish I had copies of the articles in question--here
> is at least the first page of one of them that someone who has access to
> JStor could take a look at: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1961668.
>
> Since I don't remember the details of the letters Goldfield cited and quoted
> from, I don't know exactly how they bear on Carrol's point or the larger
> discussion. But I think they would bear on the question of whether, and in
> what sense, and how self-consciously, capitalists have been afraid of
> threats to capitalism itself. Maybe someone else remembers this debate or
> has access to Goldfield's articles (and maybe Goldfield follows lbo-talk!).
>
>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:34:29 -0500
>> From: "Carrol Cox"<cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How we got from there to here
>> To:<lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>> Message-ID:<B7F71742C9DB41DA85CEDCAC03DD0DEA at CarrolHPDesk>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>
>> After writing my last post (sorry about the doubling) I began to think more
>> about that paragraph I added on capitalists not fearing revolution.
>>
>> I think increasingly for several years now what almost all my posts carry
>> as
>> a sort of implicit sub-text concerns the terrible resiliency of the
>> capitalist system, its capacity to not only survive disasters to any one
>> capitalist regime, discrediting of any one capitalist class, but the very
>> vigor it derives from such disasters. That is, I think, why I have grown
>> increasingly impatient with "criticism" of capitalism. Nothing anyone can
>> say about how bad capitalism, or the u.s. capitalist class, or banks or
>> this
>> or that capitalist politician is of the slightest risk to capitalism.
>> Joanna
>> writes that WW 1 "discredited" the capitalist ruling classes. Perhaps, in
>> the eyes of a scattering of intellectuals and of various revolutionary
>> parties and movements. But it didn't make any real difference to capitalism
>> The Great Depression and WW2 really revived world capitalism and
>> established
>> it on stronger foundations than ever.
>>
>> It is really almost laughable to think that capitalists are actually afraid
>> of revolution, of communism. What they are afraid of, what makes them climb
>> the wall in a frenzy, is any interference at all with how they do business.
>> Remember the capitalist Marx refers to who would rather throw his property
>> into the English Channel that let anyone tell him how many hours a day he
>> could work children to death. That gives you the essence of capitalist
>> "fear." Marvin notes (correctly) that the reentry of the SU and China into
>> the world capitalist system gave capital much more power over labor (it
>> increased the industrial reserve army; it also increased absolute surplus
>> value, and relative surplus value can't exist except in the presence of a
>> the creation of absolute surplus value). That increase in the industrial
>> reserve army meant FREEDOM -- not from revolution but from bothersome
>> restraints on how they handled their labor force.
>>
>> Carrol
>>
>>