Lessons From the Great Depression for Our Post-Pandemic Era
“…there are a million different ways things can go wrong, but only a few deceptively simple ways things can get better…”
Sadiya Shiraj is a freelance writer and content creator. She writes on politics, media, culture and philosophy.
by Sadiya Shiraj
Remember that sense of childlike bemusement we had in the first few weeks of the pandemic — when we were all baking bread, making dalgona coffee and laughing at videos of panic buyers in shops fighting over toilet paper — because we were convinced everything would blow over in a few weeks and all would be back to normal? Yeah, that was nice. It was like when you were a little kid and school got unexpectedly cancelled because of a snow day. Well, you’re likely Australian reading this, so maybe a flood, or a bushfire, or a teachers’ strike; just use your imagination.
But essentially, it was the feeling that the high tempo of life was simply on pause for a moment, and the adults in charge were still more or less in control. Which meant that you could guiltlessly indulge in the cosy worry-free liminal space that is created in the period before things had to eventually go back to normal, before the snow melted, the rains stopped, the bushfires subsided or the teachers’ unions were appeased.
The tacit faith that we all had in the system, in hindsight, I think speaks less to a naivety on our part and more to the fact that, for most of us, we had no real reason to question the decisions being made in our highest institutions. After all, this is the Lucky Country, right? How could we have known that in four short years a trip to the grocery store would become a source of genuine anxiety for so many of us.
I read a statistic the other day that really opened up my mind as to the situation we find ourselves in. As at November 2023, Australia’s Social Cohesion Index is at its lowest it’s been in the 16 years that it’s been tracked by the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute. The Institute’s 2023 report found that on each of the four measured areas of Trust in Society, Belonging and Engagement, Economics and Material Wellbeing, and Australia’s Health and Personal Wellbeing, based on thousands of surveys and numerous interviews, Australians reported back all-time low participation and confidence in society, especially among younger Australians. Meaning with each passing year this country is starting to look less and less like a country and more of some kind of nebulous economic zone with some pretty sceneries dotted here and there to lend it a bit of character.
It’s easy to get all doom and gloom about such a prospect. After all, who wants to live in Oceania-Pacific Trade and Commerce Sector B12 (formerly “Australia”)? But then I read something else, a story this time, not a statistic, that put this Index into perspective. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, when international trade fell by over 50% and the US unemployment rate rose to 23% — and in some countries as high as 33% — unemployed workers and their families were living in a state of isolation. This was largely due to the social stigma back then that was associated with being out of work.
American culture was slow to defend the jobless and the federal government was initially unwilling to fund the relief they needed. Many unemployed workers had little sense of the systemic injustices of unruly and unyielding free-market forces that were much the cause of their personal suffering. Crucially, as well as being a bane on overall social cohesion, the sense of personal shame that this lack of understanding brought, rendered many unemployed workers powerless to demand the relief and protections from their government that in today’s developed countries we often take for granted.
Abigail Trollinger, author of ‘Becoming Entitled: Relief, Unemployment and Reform During the Great Depression’, writes of how one jobless worker in Chicago described the situation:
“I was out of work two years last month. I have never gone for charity. I was ashamed to go.”
As Trollinger puts it:
In 1932, Chicago reformers rightly sensed, then, that an unemployed worker’s first step toward survival might be the small step of seeing others like them and shedding their sense of shame. Which is why, in Chicago, the newly founded Workers’ Committee on Unemployment (WCOU) hosted seven hearings across the city that allowed workers to tell their stories, and to hear the stories of their neighbours, their landlords, their grocers, and their kids’ teachers. Once workers saw themselves as part of a group, rather than part of the problem, they were able to craft solutions to the economic crisis facing them. As members of the WCOU, workers offered collective action to solve both immediate and long-term problems.
Trollinger’s ‘Becoming Entitled’ details the story of how urban centres in America’s industrial heartlands, reeling over the impacts of the economic tumult of the Great Depression, found their way through uncertain times through mutual assistance and collectivism. Neighbours supporting neighbours, unionised workers supporting each other, urban reformers organising whole populations toward causes. It is thanks to their efforts in becoming entitled as a collective during the Great Depression that many of us in the West almost exactly 100 years later were able to bake bread and make dalgona coffee and watch Netflix while our governments supported us through a pandemic that impacted our ability to work.
How can we learn from these lessons in the time of our Great Inflation? What can we do to ensure not only that the most vulnerable in our societies are being taken care of right now, but that future generations will not need to suffer from the same mistakes of our current leaders? I’m not exactly sure. But when I look at the problems unique to our post-pandemic era I can already find evidence of those already engaged in the kind of collectivist actions needed to solve them. They are the mutual aid workers helping people through the cost-of-living and housing crisis, the community organisers connecting people through a loneliness epidemic, and even some online personalities helping people to build healthier lifestyles, or creating inspiring art, or even doing hard-hitting journalism.
I never expected to find a simple solution to the myriad problems of our time. But I think these stories from the Great Depression serve as a sobering and inspiring reminder…
That there are a million different ways things can go wrong, but only a few deceptively simple ways things can get better: through mutual aid, strong communities and collective action.
In short, join your union, folks.
