Lewis Corey was a pseudonym for Louis Fraina, one of the founders of the U.S. Communist Party. In a letter to Marcuse dated August 16, 1960, Raya Dunayevskaya replied at length to his request for references to the American literature dealing with the issues of "the transformation of the laboring class under the impact of rationalization, automation and particularly, the higher standard of living." This was in connection with his research for One-Dimensional Man.
In her reply, Dunayevskaya briefly mentioned -- and dismissed -- Fraida/Corey's The Decline of American Capitalism as "so-called Marxist" and "underconsumptionist":
If you take the economists, you also have a choice of the flip side so that Louis M. Hacker now touts The Triumph of Capitalism and while everyone is ashamed of such past as The Decline of American Capitalism which, like all so-called Marxist books from Corey to that Stalinist apologist who passes for the Marxist authority (even Joseph Schumpeter's monumental but quite lopsided or, as we say more appropriate in Jewish tsidreit [confused, distorted], work, History of Economic Analysis refers to him as such) Paul Sweezy are one and all underconsumptionist so that, whether you take the period of the 1930s when "all" were Marxists to one degree or another and some serious works were done, or you take now when nearly the only works against capitalism are issued by the Stalinists, there really is no genuine Marxist analysis of the American economy either historically, sociologically or as economic works.
I suspect Marcuse accepted Dunayevskaya's evaluation and didn't bother with The Decline of American Capitalism, which is unfortunate because Corey's "so-called Marxist" critique of 'progressive obsolescence' may have led him away from Veblen-by-proxy moralism of the Vance Packard account of planned obsolescence and his own presentation of the evils of planned obsolescence as self-evident.
8 comments:
Terrific essays, just terrific.
When Franklin Roosevelt came to the Presidency in March 1933, almost immediately steps were taken to increase worker earnings. The effort would be halted by the Supreme Court, and the effort is sharply criticized by prominent economists today, but with JK Galbraith I think the effort was importantly helpful. Also, New Deal programs put some 3.5 million men and women to work. The New Deal workers were not counted as employed by many economists to the 1970s, but of course they were employed and the results were the most productive of the entire century. *
* I have all the documentation.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w0088
May, 1975
Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941
By Michael R. Darby
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1105628
November, 2003
The Most Technologically Progressive Decade of the Century
By Alexander J. Field
What I realize from these essays is that Roosevelt's New Deal fundamentally changed the nature of and rescued or saved American capitalism. We essentially became a social democracy in the 1930s, and this was a necessity for a systematic capitalism to continue.
This is what Milanovic is writing about in "Capitalism, Alone."
I really wish people posting anonymously would sign their posts -- even with a pseudonym -- so that I can know whether they are from the same or different people.
Fraina, not Fraida
I am always respectful and polite and try to be helpful, so I would expect to be welcome. However, if I am unwelcome I will no longer read the posts or respond. As it is, I foolishly worry about adding a thought too many or inadvertently unconventional though I tend to learn in doing so.
Thanks, Calgacus! Correction made.
anne, you are welcome. I assume from your response that the four comments were yours? I honestly couldn't tell. As a general rule, I would ask that you pause after three comments that have gone unanswered and wait a day or two to see if someone else has something to say.
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