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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 17, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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What comes next after capitalist stability?

[Excerpts from remarks by Sam Marcy to an Oct. 6 national leadership meeting of Workers World Party]

There are changes in mass consciousness, depending on conditions.

At the present time the economic conditions affecting the workers seem to be normal capitalist stability. But we understand that to be a precursor to capitalist economic crisis, which takes everybody by surprise. Then all the political organizations seem to hurry and scurry, not knowing where they are going, because the rules of capital accumulation have changed.

The present period is one of normal capitalist development within the framework of imperialism. What's different from earlier periods is that there's a high likelihood of sudden volatility.

If a crash does come, it takes the mass movement by surprise and shakes them up. For the moment they are defenseless unless they have a revolutionary party to guide them.

In 1928, when capitalist prosperity was at its height, the working-class parties in all the capitalist countries seemed to be making normal progress with the workers. And it is true that all the groups believed in Marx's theory of capitalist crisis. But nevertheless they didn't really think a capitalist crisis was coming, except for a few theoreticians in the Communist International.

But as it turned out, in the midst of this capitalist prosperity, the crash came. Mass layoffs came on very suddenly, even by the most stable capitalist organizations. And it is not unlikely that we are approaching such a period now.

Prosperity-but not for all

This is a period of prosperity for the ruling class, part of the middle class and a thin upper stratum of the working class. But it is not a generalized capitalist prosperity that takes in the whole population.

So even now, which from a Marxist point of view is a period of capitalist prosperity, there is so much poverty, so much hunger, so many of the evils that capitalism brings about. Yet there is not a capitalist crisis yet.

As one of the old capitalist economists once said, "The worst is yet to come."

We have to be ideologically prepared for that, because if a crash does come it temporarily disorients the masses. Even if they know what caused it, they are disoriented as their personal situations become endangered.

In the 1920s, there was a brief period of security, even for the workers who were not organized. Then came a collapse in 1929 that could not be papered over or overcome by the normal capitalist processes. They had to engage the capitalist state on a broad basis to fix it.

Capitalism did not overcome the crisis by itself. It was the capitalist government's intervention that did it.

In the present situation, the masses are still quiet. Most of them are still working. There's a tremendous amount of unemployment, but still within the framework of a period of capitalist prosperity.

But even the most optimistic capitalist economists say this can't continue, that there will be a collapse. Maybe it could have what they call a soft landing, when they try to cushion it in some way, but none of them say it can be avoided altogether. Not even the most rabid capitalist economist will say that.

We, as representatives of the working class, need to think of what we have to do, bearing in mind all the exigencies of capitalist development-prosperity, crisis and uplift again.

We are now toward the end of a period of capitalist prosperity. This also means there can be 10 million unemployed. There's never been a period when all the workers were employed. Even in the best phase of capitalist development, there are millions of unemployed.

This leaves a lot of room for our organization to organize the unemployed and unite them with the employed workers.

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