[PEN-L:28143] Re: RE: Re: do recessions have a good side?

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Devine, James" wrote:

>> I don't think that [Marx] would characterize [recessions] as good.  <

> you're right: I was using the word "good" as short-hand, to refer to having a positive side, as being a harbinger of possible revolution. If I remember correctly, there was a period where Marx & Engels spent a lot of time studying economic difficulties in different countries, in hopes that they could be the spark.
>
> JD

I'm not sure it gets us anywhere to try to decide if recessions are good
or bad. They simply _are_ and will be. And incidentally I know of no
period in the last century, recession or no recession, in which there
were not immense numbers of  desperately miserable people. It seems
equally clear that over long stretches of time capitalism creates ever
larger pools of human wretchedness.

Revolutionary (or mass reform) movements occur neither during good times
nor during particularly wretched times -- they occur during periods of
at least _some_ recovery from the latter (the particularly wretched
times).

And I don't see myself how much political hay can be made out of the
current scandals. Those who already know that capitalism sucks can
recognize the current scandals as symptoms of the illness. Those who do
not already know what capitalism is will (more or less spontaneously)
give any of a thousand new and old explanations, but _not_ including any
recognition of the historicity of capitalism or its internal
contradictions. Such recognition flows from involvement in resistance,
not from sitting at home watching a tv newscast (or even reading a
leftist letter to the editor).

I'm not being pessimistic. It's just that openings for left growth are
rather different from openigns for the "outs" to become the "ins" in the
next election.

Carrol