The Phases of the Industrial Cycle (pt. 2)

How recessions end

During recessions, inventories—commodity capital—are run down as production declines faster than sales. At some point, therefore, industrial production will begin to rise, because the industrial capitalists have to rebuild their inventories. This is why all recessions eventually end.

The recovery begins first in Department II—the department that produces the means of personal consumption. The contraction in industrial employment more or less comes to a halt once rising industrial production caused by the need to rebuild inventories begins.

However, industrial employment rises very little during the first phase of the upturn. Many factories during the recession were forced to operate at levels far below their optimum level of productivity. As inventory rebuilding proceeds, more factories come closer to their optimum utilization levels. The resulting surge in productivity enables the bosses to increase production considerably while adding few, if any, workers. Therefore, for a considerable period of time after the recession proper ends, labor market conditions continue to favor the industrial capitalists over the workers. This remains true after the rise in the rate of unemployment begins to taper off.

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The Phases of the Industrial Cycle

The crisis, sometimes called the “recession,” marks the end of one industrial cycle and the beginning of the next one. Recession is characterized by a decline in industrial production and employment. The decline in employment is most severe in the industrial sector but affects many other sectors of the economy as well. The recession, or industrial crisis, ends when industrial production reaches its lowest point.

The period between the lowest point of industrial production and when industrial production again reaches the highest point of the preceding cycle is known as the “depression,” or sometimes the phase of “stagnation.”

The phase of the industrial cycle that follows the end of the depression, or stagnation stage, is called the period of “average prosperity.” There is still considerable unemployment of both workers and machines, and capital investment is still weak. Stagnation and depression conditions therefore linger longest in the industries of Department I, the sector that produces the means of production.

After the period of average prosperity comes the boom. Industry is operating as close to “full capacity” as it ever does—outside of all-out war—under the capitalist mode of production. Unemployment sinks to its lowest level of the cycle. Conditions become more favorable to the sellers of labor power. This is the most favorable point in the industrial cycle for union organization and strikes.

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