Mattick: “Ups and Downs – The Economic Crisis (pt. 3)”
http://sites.google.com/site/radicalperspectivesonthecrisis/crisis-for-beginners/mattickupsanddowns%E2%80%93theeconomiccrisispt3
This articles focuses on understanding the “business cycles” of our country. The United States has been going through “Boom and Bust” cycles ever since the colonial era. Building up to a strong economy and then failing only to become stronger a certain period later was thought to have been put to an end when dramatic overhauls took place after the great depression.
Before that, of course, economic life was disrupted by a variety of disturbances: war, plague, bad harvests. But the coming of capitalism brought something new: starvation alongside good harvests and mountains of food; idle factories and unemployed workers in peacetime despite need for the goods they produced.
We find ourselves in a different place today as the economic status of the country does not become disrupted in the same ways it once was. We also find our economies acting similarly to other countries—more so than when the world was not as interdependent.
Clegg notes various issues concerning a Capitalist economy. All of these issues eventually lead back to credit, decline of profits, stagnant investments and the decline in value of capital. The article is to be followed up by one that addresses the problems proposed that cause a capitalist economy to fail.
