Neither quick recovery nor crash: is prolonged "mild recession" good for the left?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I bring into focus two mainstream articles:

Against the Rise of Unrest and Extremism, the Center Holds (http://www.newsweek.com/id/188178)


It's easy to read the last few months as one vast refutation of self-regulating capitalism and the elites who nurtured it. Many observers have thus warned that Europe's voters will flock to far-left parties now loudly crowing "told you so." Or, in the opposite direction, to the populist right, whose xenophobic rants have taken aim at globalizing capitalists and immigrants.

Instead, Europe's center has held steady, and possibly even gained in strength. In Germany, where the economy is fast declining due to an export implosion, polls show a steady slide in support for the left-populist Linkspartei, down from 15 percent in August to 11 percent last week. The Allensbach Polling Institute also has found that, for the first time since the 2005 election, a majority of voters now favor a center-right coalition between Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats in the upcoming September election. In France, a new Trotskyist party has drawn much attention but has yet to translate it into electoral success. In Britain, extremists are nowhere to be seen. And in Eastern Europe, where countries like Latvia and Ukraine have seen violent street fights erupt amid rising layoffs and collapsing currencies, centrist parties have kept power even as governments fall. Across the region, communism still remains discredited and the far-right marginalized or invisible.

Why has the crisis failed to translate into a boost for the extremes? One reason may be because economic crises—like other threats to national security—tend to rally voters around their existing leadership, says Antwerp University populism expert Cas Mudde. Unpopular leaders may even win back some support, as have Britain's Gordon Brown and the Netherlands' Jan Balkenende. Rightly or wrongly, voters have greater confidence in the mainstream parties to keep the economy stable. Left-wing utopia is good for a protest vote, says Allensbach analyst Thomas Petersen, but few citizens want to be led by the untested (and often bickering) leadership of the populist fringe. Also, centrist parties like Germany's CDU have gone a long way to quiet potential protesters by issuing bailouts and stimulus programs, a signal that they're still working within Europe's social-democratic mainstream. Lastly, political extremism is as much a question of demand as of supply; at present, no charismatic populist has emerged with attractive answers to the crisis.

Of course, these are early days, and the bottom could still be a long way off. "If the crisis lasts a couple of years," says Mudde, "and none of the mainstream parties can solve it, then voters will give extremists a try." Yet another reason to hope that the center can help foster a quick recovery.

Stephen King: As capitalism stares into the abyss, was Marx right all along? (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/stephen-king/stephen-king-as-capitalism-stares-into-the-abyss-was-marx-right-all-along-1635162.html)


"Modern bourgeois society ... a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."

Those of you with revolutionary zeal will immediately recognise these words. Penned by Karl Marx in 1848, they form part of the Communist Manifesto. Marx, like Adam Smith before him, had a historical view of society's development. Capitalism, with its bourgeoisie, had replaced feudalism, but capitalism, according to Marx, would be replaced by communism. Capitalism was inherently unstable, as Marx noted later in the same paragraph:

".....the commercial crises... by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production."

Whatever else one thinks of Marx, he certainly knew a thing or two about the business cycle. Were he alive now, he would surely claim his theories were being vindicated. We are, after all, witnessing the most remarkable collapse in economic activity around the world.

[...]

The cost of avoiding depression is a heightened level of state intervention on a scale unimaginable for those who believe in the virtues of free markets. While such intervention may help prevent the worst ravages of economic collapse, it will ultimately do little to foster the entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking behaviour which have, in the past, contributed so much to rising living standards. We may avoid a 1930s Depression but, increasingly, we may find the best we can hope for is a 1990s Japan. Not quite a Marxist revolution, then, but certainly a lasting sea-change in economic performance.



Given the remarks above, is a prolonged "mild recession," as opposed to an outright economic crash or a quick recovery, a good thing for rebuilding the left?

[SEKT]

Well it depends on the "mild recession" probes to be truth which is quite a lie until this point given the recent events.

Now about the question if it is a good thing for rebuilding the left I would say that the conditions are good but as a leftist I would say that the process of rebuilding the left has to be done always, not only in certain conditions.

And finally more than tebuilding the left I would consider to be offensive as in comparison with the defensive position that was adopted internationally.

[Martin Blank]

Neither a recession nor a depression is good for workers or their class consciousness. It is not the working class that moves toward the extremes in a time of economic downfall and collapse, but the petty bourgeoisie.

Historically speaking, Mudde (in the first article) is right to point out that workers don't organize or fight as the economy is going down; they batten down the hatches and try to ride out the storm. It is when the economy begins to recover that workers begin to demand that what they gave up before is returned to them ... with interest.

If you're looking to know what would be the best for provoking working class action, it would be a short, sharp drop followed by a relatively long recovery that sees the exploiting and oppressing classes recover quickly while refusing to share those gains with workers. That is what has provoked every workers' uprising and mass movement in the last two centuries.

[Pirate turtle the 11th]

Id rather the recession ended.

[redguard2009]

I agree with Miles; when the going's getting tough, workers are more likely to act conservatively -- not politically, mind you, but to take less risks, and protect what they have. Radical worker action is a very risky thing in the eyes of most workers; going on strike to demand better conditions, wages or benefits when your employer may be at risk of bankruptcy is generally a "shoot yourself in the foot" tactic.

The real change comes when things start getting better, when workers begin emerging from their economic bomb shelters and realize that by and large, while they've been running a marathon of avoiding starvation and homelessness, the rich have barely felt a cool breeze from the economic turmoil. Coupled with the high "this is your damned fault" mentality that's already quite popular, we could see some radical worker consciousness develop. Atleast, that's what I'm hoping.

What can or should communists and anti-capitalist activists do in the time being is my question. While I think it'd be suicidal to try and provoke workers into taking radical actions that may cost them their jobs, we certainly can't sit here and wait for things to start better before we act. A lot of communist parties in the West are advocating for more liberal changes, urging patch-ups and fixes (such as revising national banks, etc). I don't particularly agree with this. First, these are the kinds of demands and advocations communists have been making for years, during economic hard times or not. Second, these demands are the same ones being made by a whole slew of democrats, liberals, and quasi-socialists. I don't think we're going to get very much attention demanding such limited actions.

[Lynx]

Until capitalism becomes as discredited as the 'extremes' currently are, there is limited hope. On that basis, a prolonged period of crisis with no recovery (or a rapid series of booms and busts).

[cyu]

Radical worker action is a very risky thing in the eyes of most workers; going on strike to demand better conditions, wages or benefits when your employer may be at risk of bankruptcy is generally a "shoot yourself in the foot" tactic.

Depends what you consider "radical" - for example, if someone is charging your girlfriend with an axe in his hand, shooting him in the head may be more "radical" than throwing tomatoes at him, but it's certainly more likely to save your girlfriend's life.

Yes, I agree the traditional "work-stoppage" strike in a company on the verge of bankruptcy is likely to push it over the edge. However, this is one of those instances where the "more radical" approach is more likely to save the company: that of assuming democratic control of the company and cutting off all the huge salaries of the executives.

If union members don't assume democratic control of their companies, then they will just die the death of a thousand cuts, regardless of whether the general economy "improves" or not. Creeping dictatorship and plutocracy is not a good situation to be in.

[peaccenicked]

The very idea of a "mild recession" is utopian. We are living in a period where it is less
viable to apply Marx to reality. It is more a period to apply reality to Marx.
What is so different?
The long wave of crisis has met with what is known in historical materialism as the role of accident in history. There is no pure accident but history has went away from Marxist
schemata. Primitive communism/slavery/feudalism/capitalism(Lenin adds in here imperialism) communism.
These were merely starting points along the process whereby nature that once mastered man would have an eventual turn around. This was evolution and revolution
summed up.
However things are never so simple. The twists and turns of human history are not easily categorized. Stages showed signs of Aufheben. Generalizations gave more room to specifics. Within Marx there was always the struggle for the "rational kernel" there was always a sense of "nous". Humanism cannot live without it.
The transition between capitalism and socialism, in total was a transition between two modes of production. Man, or to be more modern, humanity could master nature for its his/her own ends. (the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all)
This is the conclusion of the Communist Manifesto in totem.

Marx in his work on Capitalism sought to understand capitalism as movement and not as a model as such. He produced a model of its dynamism. He saw historical cycles.
There is an adequate description here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle).

Lenin quotes Saints Simon.
‘The present anarchy of production, which corresponds to the fact that economic relations are developing without uniform regulation, must make way for organisation in production. Production will no longer be directed by isolated manufacturers, independent of each other and ignorant of man’s economic needs; that will be done by a certain public institution. A central committee of management, being able to survey the large field of social economy from a more elevated point of view, will regulate it for the benefit of the whole of society, will put the means of production into suitable hands, and above all will take care that there be constant harmony between production and consumption. Institutions already exist which have assumed as part of their functions a certain organisation of economic labour, the banks.’ We are still a long way from the fulfilment of Saint-Simon’s forecast, but we are on the way towards it: Marxism, different from what Marx imagined, but different only in form.” [1]

The banks have functioned as this historical organizer of labour. They have decided by and large what form of industrial capitalism will exist and what are it may exist.

Wiki says this.

Karl Marx claimed that recurrent business cycle crises were an inevitable result of the operations of the capitalistic system. In this view, all that the government can do is to change the timing of economic crises. The crisis could also show up in a different form, for example as severe inflation or a steadily increasing government deficit. Worse, by delaying a crisis, government policy is seen as making it more dramatic and thus more painful.



Yet there is another process going on. Empires collapse (http://www.roman-empire.net/articles/article-018.html)

Despite the considerable contraction of the population and resources this was not accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the price of imperial administration. The maintenance costs of the empire were huge and continued to expand all the time. Taxes had to be collected, frontiers defended; the empire had to be policed and the imperial post had to maintained. The upholding of the Roman standard of culture meant huge amounts had to be spent to provide an adequate supply of the amenities that were considered essential to the full life or a Roman citizen. There was the cost of building, repairing and maintaining the numerous temples, public baths, municipal buildings, gymnasia, town halls, wrestling schools, market places, triumphal columns and amphitheatres (the list goes on). Civic sacrifices, religious processions, feasts and the games also drained huge amounts from the financial reserves of the empire. The cost of the dole weakened the empire’s finances. Originally this was passed out once a month but under Marcus Aurelius there was a daily distribution of pork, oil and bread to the proletariat. The alimenta (farming subsidies), put in place by Nerva also cost the empire dearly. The adverse balance of trade which grew at this time proved to be very costly. In the time of Nero, Seneca estimated that it cost Rome five million dollars a year to import its luxuries from the east. Another area in which Rome spent huge amounts of money was the army. An important implication of the Roman peace was that the army changed its economic role. Whereas previously it had been an important source of plunder it was now mainly used as a peaceful garrison force. The army became an economic liability, as there were more than 400,000 mouths to feed and nothing for them to do. Of course, even in peace the army was essential to the security of the empire but the cost of it more than doubled between 96 and 180 AD. The empire was over-spending by epic proportions yet the economic structure meant that nothing could be done to counter-act this.


Some have said that the bubble in the housing market merely staved off the recession or depression. I think the bubble as far as it expanded consumption also reduced production in the developed finance centres based in New York and London.

This laid the basis for the corruption of the financial services. Money became divorced from production. Thatcher and Reagan had presided over this part of the "business cycle"
What I am arguing is not that different from Hillel Ticktin when he was perhaps a little younger.

So the crisis we are in is a unique crisis, it's a crisis in every aspect of capitalist civilisation. It's a crisis of ideology, it's a crisis of politics, it's a crisis of the ruling class, and we've witnessed the way the ruling class cannot hold itself together whether in Japan or this country. The ruling class is now divided; it no longer has a means of keeping itself together. The former means that it used, the Cold War and stalinism, are not there. It hasn't the collectivity it had before, precisely because of the collapse of stalinism. In a certain sense when stalinism came to an end the capitalist class managed to shoot themselves in the foot. I'm not saying that the position today is wonderful; it certainly could be better. But the position is far better objectively than it has been for sixty or seventy years. The crisis is enormous. It's not a terminal crisis: tomorrow we won't have a socialist society. But it is a crisis from which the capitalist class can not recover as it were. It has no solution.


I will cut myself short.
This is why I say the very idea that it is a mild recession is utopian. It is the very dream of the capitalist class.

What does that mean for socialists.
There has been a discord between socialists and the general labour movement.
The imbalance between consumption and production has led to the atomisation of the working class perhaps moreso in the Anglosphere than anywhere else. This has everything to do with decline of empire.
Political consciousness is uneven.
Engels talks about history being a cruel goddess.
I suspect that the working class will build bridges towards the socialists than the other way around. This by no means should suppress political education.
This seeming alien product maybe our saviour. Ultimately who else has ideas on what to do?
Following the fascists historically is an act of counter revolution. I think we would need a couple of million prepared to go on the streets before they try to organize the lumpen
and the corrupt middle class. It may come again but I do hope that the liberal obsession with world war two turns out in our favour.

This place we are here is not a mild recession and if it were only that which determined working class consciousness, that may be a good thing.
Many Leninists look at "What is to be done?" and do not see the work in context, the fight against economism is at a height with Lenin at that time. Later he talks more about listening than teaching. Both are important.
Ultimately the two are inseparable.

The need for a party against a circle sect is more pertinent to tsarist Russia, and to the unique development of the RSDLP. The main principle that Lenin had was flexibility.
Before a party can be built there has to be trust and political education enough to even begin.
Here we have Lenin.

Rabocheye Dyelo, of course, mentions Liebknecht’s name in vain. The tactics of agitation in relation to some special question, or the tactics with regard to some detail of party organisation may be changed in twenty-four hours; but only people devoid of all principle are capable of changing, in twenty-four hours, or, for that matter, in twenty-four months, their view on the necessity—in general, constantly, and absolutely—of an organisation of struggle and of political agitation among the masses. It is ridiculous to plead different circumstances and a change of periods: the building of a fighting organisation and the conduct of political agitation are essential under any “drab, peaceful” circumstances, in any period, no matter how marked by a “declining revolutionary spirit”; moreover, it is precisely in such periods and under such circumstances that work of this kind is particularly necessary, since it is too late to form the organisation in times of explosion and outbursts; the party must be in a state of readiness to launch activity at a moment’s notice. “Change the tactics within twenty-four hours”! But in order to change tactics it is first necessary to have tactics; without a strong organisation skilled in waging political struggle under all circumstances and at all times, there can be no question of that systematic plan of action, illumined by firm principles and steadfastly carried out, which alone is worthy of the name of tactics. Let us, indeed, consider the matter; we are now being told that the “historic moment” has presented our Party with a “completely new” question—the question of terror. Yesterday the “completely new” question was political organisation and agitation; today it is terror. Is it not strange to hear people who have so grossly forgotten their principles holding forth on a radical change in tactics?



We don't even have a party that thinks that there is anything more than a mild recession.

[Charles Xavier]

In any crisis, there is two ways the workers go, ones who are ready to fight, or ones who panic and say its inevitable. A polarization occurs.

A recession or depression is not good for the workers but unlike what previous posters put down, it does increase class consciousness, but it also polarizes the workers struggle.

We need to convince the panickers that struggle is the only way and be the ones to fight to save our communities from the bastards who are nation wrecking in their self interest. Because it is only when we struggle for our interest can we win. If we don't fight we automatically lose.

[Pawn Power]

It seems useless to discuss how we want the "economic and financial crisis"to look like since we have no actual control over it. What we can discuss is how workers can organize now and in all economic situation.

[Charles Xavier]

by the way to answer the original question, a prolonged severe recession is the defination of a depression. There was a depression in 1873 that lasted 23 years.

[Martin Blank]

A recession or depression is not good for the workers but unlike what previous posters put down, it does increase class consciousness, but it also polarizes the workers struggle.

On what basis, and in what context, do you make this argument? Can you offer some historical examples to demonstrate your view?

[Charles Xavier]

On what basis, and in what context, do you make this argument? Can you offer some historical examples to demonstrate your view?
There is a hell of a lot more political activity among trade unions and the general population during this crisis and during previous crisises.

[Sam_b]

A recent example is the Prisme workers in Dundee who are occupying their factory.

[Martin Blank]

There is a hell of a lot more political activity among trade unions and the general population during this crisis and during previous crisises.

I asked my question because your statements were vague and unclear (in terms of the relationship between these workers' actions and when they occur).

Yes, there are elements of the working class that will move in a class-struggle direction in a period like this, but the actions are generally defensive don't involve large sections of the class itself. And it is important to keep in mind that the relationship between these militant elements and the class as a whole is vital to the development of a larger workers' movement in the period when the decline begins to even out and head toward recovery.

[Charles Xavier]

I asked my question because your statements were vague and unclear (in terms of the relationship between these workers' actions and when they occur).

Yes, there are elements of the working class that will move in a class-struggle direction in a period like this, but the actions are generally defensive don't involve large sections of the class itself. And it is important to keep in mind that the relationship between these militant elements and the class as a whole is vital to the development of a larger workers' movement in the period when the decline begins to even out and head toward recovery.


Membership requests to the communist parties have increased which is a sure sign of increased class consciousness.