Skip to content Skip to footer
In Economic Crisis, Capitalism Delivers the Bads

(Photo: skez)

In Economic Crisis, Capitalism Delivers the Bads

(Photo: skez)

Throughout its history, capitalism never succeeded in preventing recurring economic cycles or crises. However, they were usually contained within the system. Economic crises usually did not become social crises; the system itself was usually not called into question. Transition to a different system was then an idea kept away from public discussion, a project kept from public action. During cyclical downturns, production was reduced, unemployment and bankruptcies rose, deflation often hit and hurt,

and mass working-class suffering spread.

Downturns typically drove down wages and the prices of productive inputs. Eventually, those declines provided sufficient profit opportunities for employers to resume production. Then downturns became upturns, the unemployed (or at least some of them) were rehired and prosperity replaced depression until the next cyclical downturn (usually within a few years). Before the 1930's, government interventions to offset or manage downturns were mostly marginal, minor and sporadic. Mass resignation to endure “hard times” was the norm, although voices for fighting back were also evident.

In contrast, during and since the 1930's, crises in capitalism provoked significant government economic interventions. This happened chiefly for two reasons. First, the Great Depression of the 1930's cut so deep, lasted so long and damaged so many that resulting mass dissatisfaction extended, for growing numbers, to the capitalist system itself. Second, when labor unions and anticapitalist political movements (socialists and communists) were strong, they functioned as antidotes to resignation. Periods of mass suffering were no longer accepted quietly or fatalistically. Labor and left organizations blamed capitalists and capitalism, and they mobilized popular responses that often challenged the system and not just its latest crisis. In the 1930's, the combination of a severe crisis with fast-growing industrial unions and anticapitalist political parties forced Roosevelt's administration to undertake massive economic interventions. They aimed to prevent cyclical crises contained within capitalism from becoming social crises of capitalism bringing the system itself into question.

In the 1930's and since, governments' economic crisis interventions usually had two purposes: One, to save capitalists from the huge losses and possible collapse that the system routinely reproduced. Two, to save the system by shortening and softening mass suffering (thereby blunting the labor unions' and anticapitalists' appeals). Roosevelt's New Deal achieved bailouts for banks and corporations, regulations trying to prevent the worst capitalist abuses, and such social welfare institutions as Social Security, unemployment compensation, and direct federal hiring of the unemployed (11 million after 1933).

Governments' services to capitalism were also evident in how they financed such costly interventions. In the US, Roosevelt got capitalists to accept the new social welfare institutions by carefully NOT taxing their wealth (either corporate or personal) and limiting tax increases on their incomes. Roosevelt got workers to accept the bailouts of capitalists by NOT taxing workers to pay for those bailouts. Of course, financing very costly government interventions without taxing corporations, the rich, or the workers enough to pay for them meant that the government had to borrow what it did not raise in taxes. The federal budget had to run big deficits that rapidly increased the national debt.

Stay informed with Truthout updates delivered straight to your email inbox. Click here to sign up.

Roosevelt got corporations and the rich to lend Washington the money that they could not profitably invest during a depression without taking huge risks. Instead, they would earn interest on very low-risk loans to the Treasury. Moreover, Washington would use that borrowed money to speed recovery from depression and offset threats to capitalism. Corporations and the rich could cash in their loans to the government whenever they wanted to use their money for other purposes. Finally, capitalist enterprises and the rich understood that if they did not lend to the government, either the IRS might tax the money from them instead, or else the end of capitalism itself might loom. With mass union, socialist and communist demonstrations in the streets, Roosevelt's program won the support of the majority of capitalists and the rich. With the streets silent, Obama does not even conceive of such a program.

Since the 1930's, politicians in capitalist countries have used government deficit financing more and more, not just in cyclical downswings. Corporations and the rich – like the mass of people – always want more from government and less taxes to pay, so politicians accommodate both sides by borrowing (state deficit financing). They remind corporations and the rich that deficit finance is far preferable to their being taxed more. The last 75 years have thus yielded repeated government budget deficits and rising national debt levels. So, when the 2007 crisis cut back government tax revenues and required costly government interventions, huge additional budgetary deficits were enacted in all capitalist countries, but this time they came after a long period of rising national debts.

The most indebted capitalist economies discovered that corporations and the rich had become wary of a new risk: lending more to countries with already high debt levels meant huge interest and principle repayments that citizens there might refuse. Politicians there might be unable to devote ever more of their citizens' tax payments to pay off creditors rather than provide public services. Countries such as Greece with strong labor and left traditions became flashpoints for a Europe-wide, and indeed, a global, struggle over sacrificing mass living standards (austerity) to satisfy creditors' demands.

Capitalism's new contradiction: It can no longer easily use deficits and rising debt to prevent economic crises from becoming social crises. Yet, politicians fear to tax corporations and the rich, whose money now makes or breaks political careers. Hence, governments everywhere impose austerity on their people. Relatively weakened (compared to the 1930's) labor and left organizations cannot stop and, at best, slow the process. For the mass of people, austerity adds to the burdens that capitalism's crisis already imposes.

Capitalism is not “delivering the goods.” It is piling on the bads. These conditions do not prevent an economic crisis from becoming a social crisis. Quite the contrary. Resignation never was the only response of working people to capitalism's dysfunctions. After the initial shock – at an American Dream fast disappearing and lasting economic decline looming – rebuilding old and/or creating new labor and left organizations will resume. The old mole of real class struggles will return to the surface of contemporary politics.

We’re not going to stand for it. Are you?

You don’t bury your head in the sand. You know as well as we do what we’re facing as a country, as a people, and as a global community. Here at Truthout, we’re gearing up to meet these threats head on, but we need your support to do it: We must raise $16,000 before midnight to ensure we can keep publishing independent journalism that doesn’t shy away from difficult — and often dangerous — topics.

We can do this vital work because unlike most media, our journalism is free from government or corporate influence and censorship. But this is only sustainable if we have your support. If you like what you’re reading or just value what we do, will you take a few seconds to contribute to our work?