[was: Re: [PEN-L:5527] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the downturn]
Carrol asked:
>In the history of industrial capitalism, how many "great depressions" have
>there been?
It depends on your definition, some would say two. I would say one. The
"great depression" of the 19th century US was different from that of the
1930s. To quote the Doug Dowd who used to be at Cornell and later at San
Jose State University, "the most prominent feature of [this] earlier period
[1873 to the 1897] was pressure on profits, rather than massive
unemployment. That pressure was due to the steady and dramatic lowering of
prices through the period, which was in turn the result of great increases
in efficiency [meaning: labor productivity, which is a different thing],
combined with the inability to cut off domestic or foreign competition..."
(THE TWISTED DREAM, 1974: 64). Though this was crucial to the creation of
"monopoly capital" and the intensification of protectionism, I don't see it
as world-historical as the Depression of the 1930s was.
Some might say that the period from 1973 to 1992 or so in the US was a
"great depression" of sorts. I don't find this very useful, either. If
people want to call it a great depression, that's fine with me, but since
the three "depressions" were so different from each other, it's hard to
lump them all together. Maybe "times of troubles" is a good substitute...
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
"From the east side of Chicago/ to the down side of L.A.
There's no place that he gods/ We don't bow down to him and pray.
Yeah we follow him to the slaughter / We go through the fire and ash.
Cause he's the doll inside our dollars / Our Lord and Savior Jesus Cash
(chorus): Ah we blow him up -- inflated / and we let him down -- depressed
We play with him forever -- he's our doll / and we love him best."
-- Terry Allen.
