Ebook - The decline of American capitalism

Author: Corey, Lewis Subject: Capitalism; Consumption (Economics); Unemployed -- United States; Communism -- United States 1917-; Industrial organization; Consumption (Economics) -- United States; United States -- Economic conditions 1918-1945 Publisher: New York, Covici, Friede Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT Language: English Call number: 7207 Digitizing sponsor: MSN Book contributor: Prelinger Library Collection: americana; additional_collections [Open Library icon] This book has an editable web page on Open Library. AMERICAN life moves and changes swiftly. Government and industry resort to new and desperate measures. Traditions break down. Accepted truths are challenged or repudiated. The present is dark, the future uncertain and threatening. There is an accumulating pressure of underlying ferments and forces which create social explosions. Classes mobilize: ideas clash. These are all indications of a crisis. One aspect of the American crisis arose out of the depression and the efforts to overcome it. While ballyhoo promises a new and everlasting prosperity, a new world, millions hope merely for a job, any sort of job; for an income, any sort of income to ward off charity. Millions must accept charity, whether direct or in the form of "relief work." The mobilization of government to "war upon depression" aroused hopes which were meagrely realized. Another and more fundamental aspect of the crisis involves the decline of American capitalism. It is a crisis of the economic order itself. This is evident in the inability to restore prosperity on any substantial scale. The future is one of incomplete recovery: of economic decline, mass disemployment (including millions in clerical and professional occupations), lower standards of living, and war. Every depression is in a sense a crisis of capitalism. But this depression represents the development of a fundamental, permanent crisis in the economic and social relations of American capitalism. Only a deep-going crisis could force government and industry to adopt measures which were formerly condemned as opposed to economic progress. The intervention of government in industry is, of course, nothing new: the development of capitalism has been accompanied by growing government aid to industry. But such aid was limited in scope. It was, economically, an expression of the upswing of capitalism, of the necessity of government action to "regulate" the developing relations of trustified capitalism. But to-day government intervention is on an unprecedented scale. Its economics and politics are an expression of the decline of capitalism,