Opportunity or Setback?

The notion that economic crises fan the flames of revolution is as old as the Marxist tradition itself. Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky all developed theories that saw political opportunity in capitalism’s crises.

In its better presentations, this theory was not simply that workers’ conditions would deteriorate steadily to the point where people would snap and refuse to take anymore, but instead that capitalism gives rise to cyclical crises, and that these moments of rupture — when contradictions are laid bare, consciousness surges, state institutions weaken, and the social relations that reproduce capitalism break down — are ripe for socialist advance. The Bolshevik Revolution, emerging during Russia’s economic and social collapse, seemed to validate this hypothesis.

Since then, many recessions have come and gone, and none has resulted in a breakthrough as dramatic as the Bolshevik Revolution — at least not in the advanced capitalist world. Some economic crises have, on the contrary, resulted in a relative weakening of the position of labor and the Left.

This pessimistic theory makes every bit as much sense as its optimistic counterpart. By definition, a recession is a period of economic contraction. This, in turn, typically has labor market effects, resulting in higher unemployment, which then reduces the bargaining power of labor. When multiple unemployed workers are lined up to fill every job, an employed worker has far less ability to say no to a pay cut, a speedup, or a reduction in benefits. The boss can always respond, “If you don’t like it, I’ll find someone else who will” — and often doesn’t have to, as workers instinctively know the score.

Recessions also have social effects that undercut militancy and solidarity, erecting barriers to the collective action that crises might otherwise inspire. They can produce risk aversion, since it’s much harder to risk getting fired when losing your job means being thrown into an unforgiving labor market. Meanwhile, crises can also strain relations between workers, creating an environment of scarcity, competition, and individualism. Thus, even as crises increase workers’ recognition of the necessity of transforming the system, they may also make it harder for workers to overcome fragmentation, which is necessary to take advantage of the moment.

Thus, we have two equally plausible theories of how crises affect social change, one optimistic and one pessimistic. For its part, history offers no clear verdict on which theory is correct.

Mixed Signals From History

On closer inspection, the relationship between economic crises and social change reveals frustratingly contradictory patterns, with both theories likely operating simultaneously in each instance.

The Great Depression demonstrates this ambiguity. It sparked unprecedented labor militancy and left-wing growth, with surging union membership and innovative tactics. These developments were part of the calculus of the New Deal — but so too was capital’s desire to save itself by offering manageable concessions that would neutralize more fundamental challenges, not least its own profitability. From this perspective, the Great Depression enabled both the Left’s and labor’s advances and capital’s strategic retreat to secure its long-term position.

Global responses to the Great Depression ranged from social democracy in Sweden to fascism in Germany. Some of US labor’s greatest victories occurred not during economic contraction but during the rearmament expansion and postwar boom, when union density peaked and workers secured unprecedented gains. In this case, economic security enabled confident worker militancy rather than crisis-driven desperation.

The crisis of the postwar order gave rise in the 1970s to both stagflation and working-class militancy, the “rank-and-file rebellion,” and the rise of neoliberalism. Business and the political elite deployed the Volcker Shock to effectively tame both. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker’s massive uptick in interest rates simultaneously brought price growth under control and threw the nation into recession, bringing unemployment above 10 percent by 1982.

With the full backing of government, business used worker insecurity to launch a comprehensive restructuring. This regime change into neoliberalism crushed unions, strangled what was left of the New Left, hollowed out manufacturing through deindustrialization, and replaced stable jobs with precarious “flexible” employment. Labor and the Left have been on the back foot ever since.

The Ambivalent Present

If you expected the Great Recession of 2008 to cast the tie-breaking vote, prepare to be disappointed.

Politically, the crisis sparked two competing populisms. The Left experienced its first significant revival in decades, from Occupy Wall Street through Bernie Sanders’s campaigns to the growth of Democratic Socialists of America and the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yet simultaneously, right-wing populism emerged first around the Tea Party and later around Donald Trump, who channeled similar economic grievances toward nationalist ends. Trump’s two presidential victories to Sanders’s zero suggest which variant has gained more traction so far. Sanders’s losses owe largely to anti-left obstructionism within the pro-corporate Democratic Party — further evidence that capitalists have had greater political success than socialists in the two decades since the Great Recession.

Overall, the scorecard shows increased political mobilization but divided ideology: millions have embraced antiestablishment politics without necessarily developing class consciousness. On one hand, an era of complacency has yielded to an era of outrage, a transformation that can be traced directly back to the economic crisis of 2008. On the other hand, for millions of workers, the crisis seems to have promoted vague antiestablishment sentiment without actually deepening or sharpening class consciousness.

Economically, workers have largely lost ground since 2008. Companies captured the vast majority of recovery gains while real wages stagnated. Corporate consolidation enhanced employer power, enabling them to demand more work from fewer employees while offering diminished job security. Surveillance technology tightened workplace control. Temporary, part-time, and gig work proliferated, eroding traditional worker protections. Even recent labor market tightening yielded little real improvement as inflation erased nominal wage increases.

Whether all of this would have been the case in a counterfactual world in which there existed a powerful labor movement capable of seizing the leverage afforded by low unemployment is another question. Yet Kim Moody argues in On New Terrain that postrecession restructuring also created strategic openings. Rather than dispersing workers, capital has concentrated them in urban logistics hubs and service centers — potentially facilitating organizing. Meanwhile, the modern “just-in-time” delivery system has created vulnerable points where even small groups of workers in industries resistant to outsourcing can disrupt entire supply chains. These strategic advantages emerged from the same crisis that weakened labor in other ways. It’s possible that, in conjunction with the political developments of the last fifteen years, the Great Recession has sown seeds for a future advance.

Let the Good Times Roll

It’s too early to know the full scope of what the last crisis will produce, much less what the next one will bring. With such mixed signals about whether downturns help or hurt our cause, perhaps we should leave recession-mongering to Democrats and focus instead on building worker power under any economic conditions.

If everything else is a wash, then we’re left with our moral principles. We don’t know if a crisis will break in our favor, but we are entirely certain about our opposition to economic suffering. Mass unemployment, housing insecurity, and financial distress entail real human pain — they’re not just abstract pieces on a political chessboard. Our consistency on opposing that pain becomes its own strategic advantage, a moral authority we can draw upon when new organizing opportunities emerge.

While Democrats indulge in recession-as-revenge fantasies, the Left should stake its claim on a simpler, more defensible position: Let the good times roll.