Re: recession?

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sandwichman wrote:
> Is more necessarily good and less bad? Couldn't a moderate recession
> be part of a healthy adjustment process? I ask this question because
> it seems to me that the central tent pole of ideology is the supremacy
> of more. Enough has no standing and reduction is considered a
> humiliation. Once you accept that frame, it's hard to argue against
> the beneficence of compound interest.

A moderate recession _is_ part of the normal adjustment process -- and
can thus be good for capitalism's self-reproduction over time. It
restores the balance of class forces (and raw material prices), purges
old fixed capital, and restores profitability (after an initial
plunge). It moderates inflation in most cases. Of course, it is the
more vulnerable sectors of the working class, plus backward,
cash-strapped, and small capitalists, who bear the costs.

On the other hand, if the recession occurs in a period of excessive
debt, excessive unused industrial capacity, and pessimistic
expectations (and a severe recession can cause these to be excessive),
then we may see a long period of stagnation, as in Japan in the 1990s
or the US in the 1930s. This encourages businesses to shift away from
relative surplus-value extraction strategies (technical change) to
old-fashioned stretch-out and speed-up techniques (which have been
pretty important anyway since the 1990s in the US, even though we
haven't seen a true stagnation).  This kind of stagnation doesn't
promote the self-reproduction of capitalism, but doesn't automatically
lead to the demise of the system (obviously). It is accompanied by
political crises and efforts at structural reform.

(This is pretty abstract, ignoring -- among other things --
international complications.)

As for the "supremacy of more," that's what capitalism teaches us --
in the college of hard knocks. Capitalism tends to destroy all other
forms of social organization, replacing them with rampant
individualism. Non-market sources of subsistence (and luxuries) are
progressively replaced by market sources. Community is replaced by
commodities. So the need for more shows up as the need for more
marketed material goods and services rather than as one for deeper and
more fulfilling social relationships. This rise in social needs
encourages a rise in the supply of labor-power.

If people don't get "more" material goods and services than in
previous generations, that encourages discontent. (Alas that
discontent, though disfunctional, can go in the direction of drug
abuse, compulsive gambling, or Timothy McVeigh.) These days (at least
in the US) working-class people are not struggling for "more" as much
as trying to avoid getting "less" (mostly by having more paid hours of
work per year per family, due to increased women's labor force
participation). This is important when you face family
responsibilities and bills, along with soaring medical costs. Many
working people are already dealing with the fact of "enough" (or
hoping for it) or "reduction." A lot of that reduction shows up as
reduced free time, along with psychological depression and the like.

My feeling is that in order to get off this downward slide, people
have to develop non-capitalist organizations (like labor unions, but
not exclusively). Ultimately, those come in conflict with capitalism,
but we're clearly not at ultimately yet. But we have to think outside
the capitalist box.

I don't know anything about "the beneficence of compound interest." It
only seems beneficient to those who own assets that pay interest.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.