Louis Proyect wrote:
>What is the point of this, Doug? The article I posted was actually very
>much in the spirit of what you have been saying and writing over the years
>as in the sentence: "In certain respects, the controls over todayís market
>are stronger than those of the twenties. Curbs on margin buying, while they
>may not slow down a rise in the market, help to slow down a falling market,
>because shareholders will not be wiped out as quickly if they have more
>cash behind their holdings." I guess you are so used to thinking of
>Marxists as "catastrophists" that when they say something that doesn't jibe
>with your expectations, you can't even recognize it.
But after the bit you quote, they say:
<quote>
And now the fly-by-night uranium and oil stocks that are
beginning to appear, the competition among brokerage houses for customers,
the growing volume of credit issued by brokers to their customers—all of
these features are beginning to sound the more hysterical notes of the
twenties. Nothing like a comparable pitch has been reached, but the
characteristics are all present, including even the mass tipsters like
Winchell.
[...]
These special factors make a
cataclysmic and dramatic bust like that of 1929 unlikely. It is more
probable that the inner diseases of the system will continue to eat away at
its core in the form of an extended stagnation, lack of growth, gradual
swelling of unemployment, slow attrition against the living standards of
the people, etc. In other words, the war ‘budget and the other governmental
measures may subdue the more volcanic manifestations of capitalism’s fatal
disease, but cannot alter the basic trend of decline.
The stock market boom may itself very well reflect that basic disease.
Competitive bidding for shares in the nation's industry such as has pushed
the price of stocks up during the past year can reflect a plethora of
capital looking for fields for investment; this at the very moment when the
expansion of the nation’s industry is running up against barriers in the
form of limited consumer purchasing power. If that turns out to be the
significance of the present bull market, it can have the gravest import for
the prospects of the American capitalist system.
[...]
this is a line
which rivals the celebrated Hooverian "the economy is sound" prologues to
the plunge of 1929.
[...]
This lack of confidence in the economy contrasts so sharply with official
and semi-official propaganda with which the ruling coterie bombards the
country that it should make those who have been impressed by the propaganda
sit up and take The present worried consideration which the stock market
has bee getting in the committee hearings and in the press is more
important than a thousand glowing predictions from Eisenhower, from the
Join Congressional Committee on the Economy Report, or from Fortune
magazine. It has momentarily stripped away the pretentious and boastful
facade and shown the cankers of fear and insecurity behind it.
</quote>
...that being the conclusion of the article. So the "special factors"
of a larger government budget can blunt the disastrous tendencies,
but in the end the cankers win out.
Doug
