Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Document Notes
A look at the competing theories around positive or negative growth after any recession.
Highlights
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The notion that economic crises fan the flames of revolution is as old as the Marxist tradition itself.
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not simply that workers’ conditions would deteriorate steadily to the point where people would snap and refuse to take anymore, but instead that capitalism gives rise to cyclical crises, and that these moments of rupture — when contradictions are laid bare, consciousness surges, state institutions weaken, and the social relations that reproduce capitalism break down — are ripe for socialist advance. The Bolshevik Revolution, emerging during Russia’s economic and social collapse, seemed to validate this hypothesis.
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many recessions have come and gone, and none has resulted in a breakthrough as dramatic as the Bolshevik Revolution — at least not in the advanced capitalist world.
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pessimistic theory makes every bit as much sense as its optimistic counterpart. By definition, a recession is a period of economic contraction. This, in turn, typically has labor market effects, resulting in higher unemployment, which then reduces the bargaining power of labor. When multiple unemployed workers are lined up to fill every job, an employed worker has far less ability to say no to a pay cut, a speedup, or a reduction in benefits.
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We have two theories of how crises affect social change, one optimistic and one pessimistic. History offers no clear verdict on which is correct.
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Recessions also have social effects that undercut militancy and solidarity, erecting barriers to the collective action that crises might otherwise inspire. They can produce risk aversion, since it’s much harder to risk getting fired when losing your job means being thrown into an unforgiving labor market.
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crises can also strain relations between workers, creating an environment of scarcity, competition, and individualism.
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The Great Depression demonstrates this ambiguity. It sparked unprecedented labor militancy and left-wing growth, with surging union membership and innovative tactics. These developments were part of the calculus of the New Deal — but so too was capital’s desire to save itself by offering manageable concessions that would neutralize more fundamental challenges, not least its own profitability. From this perspective, the Great Depression enabled both the Left’s and labor’s advances and capital’s strategic retreat to secure its long-term position.
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In addition to fostering the rise of neoliberalism, the crisis of the postwar order gave rise in the 1970s to both stagflation and working-class militancy.
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Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker’s massive uptick in interest rates simultaneously brought price growth under control and threw the nation into recession, bringing unemployment above 10 percent by 1982.
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With the full backing of government, business used worker insecurity to launch a comprehensive restructuring. This regime change into neoliberalism crushed unions, strangled what was left of the New Left, hollowed out manufacturing through deindustrialization, and replaced stable jobs with precarious “flexible” employment. Labor and the Left have been on the back foot ever since.
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Economically, workers have largely lost ground since 2008. Companies captured the vast majority of recovery gains while real wages stagnated. Corporate consolidation enhanced employer power, enabling them to demand more work from fewer employees while offering diminished job security. Surveillance technology tightened workplace control. Temporary, part-time, and gig work proliferated, eroding traditional worker protections. Even recent labor market tightening yielded little real improvement as inflation erased nominal wage increases.