The recent discussion on pen-l about capitalism and long waves has been narrowed to whether capitalism will suffer a breakdown or major depression. One side appears to be arguing yes. The other side appears to be arguing not likely, that capitalism has and continues to prove highly flexible and able to overcome its challenges.
I want to enlarge the question to a consideration of the rhythm of capitalism and its social consequences. Would it be fair to say that both sides, and perhaps there are even more than two, agree that capitalism is becoming more crisis prone and less and less able to provide social benefits to non-elites, even in the developed capitalist countries? In the case of the currency tensions we have been talking about, it seems to me that East Asian governments and the U.S. government are locked in a type of dance in which there are no simple answers for either side. The U.S. cannot simply force China or Japan to keep buying dollars forever, but China and Japan cannot simply force the U.S. to change its current economic policies. Thus, imbalances grow. Now, sooner or later something is bound to happen. Could it be a crisis, with the dollar falling sharply and US rates soaring, causing a recession that destabilizes the rest of the world? Or might there just be a slowdown here and there, with hard times for working people but no major crisis? Either way, it seems to me that the increasingly global accumulation process will continue along lines that make it ever more vulnerable to instability. And regardless of whether elite managers manage to resolve this or future crises before they lead to breakdown, their actions are unlikely to make the system economically more stable. Moreover, the various resolutions are likely to intensify negative social trends for working people throughout the world. If this is the case, how should we reformulate our notions of social structures of accumulation? I thought that this approach was designed to help us understand the arrangements that allowed for sustained and increasingly stable growth that provided a basis for renewed political legitimacy for the system through shared benefits with at least some significant sectors of the workng class? Marty Hart-Landsberg
