Doug Dowd's birthday is later this week, December 7th. He's still turning out
books as fast as I turn out e-mails.
Gene Coyle
Jim Devine wrote:
> [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.
