Feel Free Read Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism DOC

This volume was published in 1934. Excerpt from the Introduction: 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 ex- plosions. 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, of the necessity of government action to prop up the sagging foundations of the economic order. .............................................................................. Contents: PART ONE: THE AMERICAN CRISIS I. Ballyhoo: The New Capitalism II. The Meaning of Prosperity III. The Decline of Capitalism: General Survey PART TWO: PROSPERITY, PROFITS, AND WAGES IV. Profits and Prosperity V. The Policy of High Wages VI. Profits and Wages: State Capitalism PA RT THREE : CONTRADICTIONS OF ACCUMULATION VII. Accumulation and the Composition of Capital VIII. The Fall in the Rate of Profit IX. Multiplying Contradictions and Capitalist Decline PART FOUR: THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION X. Economic and Class Contradictions XI. Excess Capacity, Competition, and Speculation XII. The Onset of Crisis and Depression XIII. Production and Consumption: Capitalist Decline PART FIVE : UNEMPLOYMENT, TECHNOLOGY, AND CAPITALISM XIV. Prosperity and Unemployment XV. Disemployment and Surplus Population XVI. The Economics of Technology PART SIX : CONCENTRATION OF INCOME AND WEALTH XVII. Class Distribution of Income XVIII. The Multiplication of Stockholders XIX. Class Distribution of Wealth PART SEVEN MONOPOLY CAPITALISM AND IMPERIALISM XX. Trusts: Concentration and Combination XXI. Monopoly and Finance Capital XXII. The Dynamics of Imperialism PART EIGHT: THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER XXIII. Prosperity and Capitalist Decline XXIV. State Capitalism, Planning, and Fascism XXV. The Crisis of the American Dream XXVI. The American Revolution Notes: Bibliography: Index: