From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: M-I: The Vortex of the World Market, or Capitalism Sucks
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 20:12:46 -0600 (CST)


Doug writes,
> 
> Rakesh Bhandari forwarded this from Andrew Kliman:
> 
> >Nothing seems able to pull capitalism out of its 24-year-long slump.
> >Worldwide growth of GNP per capita, which averaged 2.8% between 1965 and
> >1973,
> >has since fallen continually to 1.3% between 1973 and 1980, 1.2% in the
> >1980s,
> >and 0.5% between 1990 and 1995.
> 
> We'll see if Anwar Shaikh is right that that crisis is now over, and we're
> in the early stages of a long upswing. I'm skeptical, but Shaikh is a smart
> guy, so I think you've got to take his argument seriously.
> 
> >When production grows only modestly, it is now typically "jobless growth,"
> >since technological revolutions are steadily lowering labor requirements.
> >Western Europe's unemployment rate, which averaged 2.7% in the decade
> >preceding 1973, has therefore risen steadily, averaging 9.6% in the first
> >half
> >of the 1990s.  That rates in the U.S. and Britain are somewhat lower is due
> >largely to policies that encourage jobless workers to drop out of the labor
> >force rather than seek work.
> 
> Rates in the U.S. are not "somewhat" lower - they're half European rates.
> Employment in the U.S. has grown steadily over the last 5 years to the
> point where the employment/population ratio is at a record high. Far from
> dropping out of the labor force, people are entering it in large numbers -
> thanks in part to welfare "reform."
> 
> Doug

Actually, contrary to Lou Godena's political analysis, I think a 
real recovery would be more conducive to a struggle for socialism
than would a plunge into immiseration. Such a plunge has (as the
events since 1974 seem to show) have a deeply individualizing impact
on workers, with consequent strengthening of all the factors that
fragment unity, in the U.S. meaning primarily racism, sexism, and
a general rise in fear of everyone and everything.

Carrol


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