The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-10-17
BY E. BERT.

Economists 200 Year Old" Leonard
P. Ayres, economist of the Cleveland
Trust Co. and one of the leading
lights of bourgeois economists has
written an open confession of the
present futility of bourgeois econ
omists. This article published in the
Cleveland Trust Monthly is the elegy
Of the new era" economics and an
admission that bourgeois economics
was not only incapable of under
standing the development of the cap
italist economy prior to the crisis but
was incapable of understanding it
after it had occurred.
He introduced his article with the
following statement of the impotency
of bourgeois economics to even grasp
! the significance of this most serious
crisis that the capitalist world has
ever known.
Few people foresaw this depres-
sion. Among the few who gave
warning of its coming there can be
found scarcely anyone who realized
that it was likely to prove unusu-
ally severe, exceptionally widespread
and of prolonged duration. These
statements are true alike of econ
omists and business executives. of
bankers and business statisticians,
of American and Of authorities in
foreign countries. The truth Is that
two years ago the world was en-
tirely unprepared for any such per-
iod of hard times as has befallen
US.
During the past decade the econo-
mists Of the capitalists have been
collecting data in manner and to
an extent never before attempted by
the capitalist class. They have pre-
pared graphs and charts to cover
tens of acres.
They have prepared indexes OF
every conceivable series of data. They
have used every conceivable math-
ematical device to twist and turn this
data. They have derived out of this
data cycles of business activity vary
ing in length from months to years
or decades. And then they have
fought over their data, their cycles
and their indexes.
Ayres points this out for it wor-
ries him.
This nearly universal failure to
recognize the significance of the
gathering stormcIouds of business
trouble is specially disquieting In
view of the fact that more and bet
ter research work relating to the
problems Of business cycles has been
done both here and abroad during
the past ten years than in all the
previous decades"
The bourgeois economists have per-
formed all their contortions for
naught. They have collected and
collected. They have torn this data
in shreds in six different directions
and have put the puzzle together
again. But 1t makes no sense now.
It was maze and remains one.
They have hung their intellectual
gymnastics around their necks and
they have sunk deeper in the morass
Of incomprehension as the crisis of
their economy, the capitalist system,
has become more acute.
They have learned that 1t has be-
come more acute. Ayres points this
out. He writes that This is not
merely another major depression. 1t
is major secondary postwar de-
preston, which is something differ
ent and more serious"
But he hasn't learned anything.
After this statement that this crisis
is in some ways unique he fills his
articles to the extent of several hun
dred words with a rehash Of the
most superficial summary Of all bour-
geois economics has said in describ-
ing the course of crisis. He Jumps
this together under the following
heads: Price initiation, farm land
prosperity and speculation, price de-
flation and depression, city prosper
ity and speculation, secondary price
deflation and secondary depression"
1t would be rather futile to analyze
his description of crisis