[PEN-L:1945] Paradigms
The following was developed by a group of 11th and 12th grade high-school students from the Nez Perce, Spokane, Umatilla and Yakima nations. The Healing Generations Spirituality Service Unity SobrietyEnvironment Economy Heritage Health Sovereignty Education Family Individual Of course the concepts are laid out sideways to use the words to form a hoop. In the Indian World causality and movements are typically expressed clokwise. So that each concept is seem as a necessary--but not sufficient--condition for the next. So, for eample, sobriety is a necessary but not sufficient condtion fo full development and expression of spiirituality. Bu then vice versa, spirituality is seen as a necessary but not sufficient condtion for ongoing sobiety. Or that Spirituality is a key but not sufficient condition of building and maintaining healthy unity which is a necessary but not sufficient key to prodcutive yet sustainable integration with environments around us which is necessary for protecting the heritage which is neceesary for protecting sovereignty necessary for healthy families necessary for healthy individuals necessary for full potential and access/use of education necessary for full health in individuals and the society necessary to develop a healthy and sustainable economy necessary to encourage and reward sobriety necessary to appreciate and enhance one-s spirituality. Of course it can also be read counter-clockwise. In the middle is an eagle flying with four dimensions of the hoop delineated and forming quadrants within the hoop signifying family, tribe, nature and spirituality. Jim Craven
[PEN-L:1946] Re: Pen-l [newcomer]
Greetings, Tully. Note that I amended your hideous self-designation
"newbie," an aol-type word we don't use around here.
Well, obviously you're preaching to the choir now; have you ever given
this sermon before friends (more accurately _ex-friends_), neighbors,
co-workers, fellow students or {shudder} relatives? There's the rub!
Last year I got into a rather nasty argument with the founder of the
voluntary simplicity movement because she refused to admit - even in
a private e-discussion - that VS is inescapably a class phenomenon
that would never draw breath in a trailer park or a blue-collar bar.
VS people have already done it: they've done Shakespeare, the Acropolis,
yoga on a mountaintop, sex on Hawaiian rosewood seeds, and so on,
and this is what readies them to be marginal in the world of commodities.
In other words, VS people have been gluttons in the marketplace of
experience, and thus are more or less blind to Madison Avenue mirages.
So don't waste your time (and risk your neck) pissing off people who
rightly feel impoverished and are dead sure that a new set of wheels
or the latest doodad will make all the difference, because their
subjective reality is no less real than yours.
However, if you still feel brave enough to preach the gospel of Less Is
More, I suggest a garage sale as the best pulpit.
"Fellow bargain-hunters, all the appliances and nifty thingies around us
were once bought by someone - perhaps even the current seller - at book
price, shiny and new, promising quick release from the wheel of existence,
yet here they now are, begging for pocket change, singles, fivers at most.
Why not listen to their silent but eloquent speech and, just for once,
have your second thoughts first, then go home and meditate?!"
Once again, welcome to our virtual faculty lounge, which will be lively
enough for you in a few hours, when the other denizens have arisen from
their ponderous depths.
valis
"The more I see of humanity, the better I love my dog."
-- Some 19th century Russian, probably
Hi, I subscribed to this list an hour or two ago and have yet to see a
single post, so I figure I need to stir up some trouble. grin
Do we really want to accept an economy in the US that requires rampant
consumerism to survive? Isn't there something rotten at the core of any
economy that suffers when we save our money and instead needs us to get
heavily in debt to buy more stuff to clutter up our homes so that we think
we need larger homes and more storage space, when in reality all we need is
less stuff? Isn't the resulting rape of our planet and materialistic
spirituality destructive to us all in the end?
Can our economy survive if we refuse to believe it is our patriotic duty to
spend, and instead start dropping to one wage earner families, working
fewer hours, buying smaller homes, making our own clothes, food, and other
items, bartering, and seriously working toward real simplicity and
sustainability?
-
tully
[PEN-L:1949] Bison stampede followup from warriornet
John Shafer:
People might be interested to know that "Buffalo Jump" - a process of
harvesting by leading or running the animals over a cliff, was also the
name of a rather embarassing leaked document from the Canadian federal
government in the 1980s. In the latter case, as I recall, the document set
out a strategy for enticing Indigenous nations into termination and
extinguishment agreements with the federal and provincial governments. I
also recall that mention was made of using the "anti-Indian prejudice of
many Canadians" to the government's advantage in land-claims agreements.
It is also worth remembering that the 16 ton armoured personnel carriers
used to attack the Ts'peten Sundance Camp ("Bison hunting Indians" was how
one journalist put it.) in the summer 1995 siege of Gustafsen Lake, were
also called Bison. see: http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/gustmain.html
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1950] Clinton to Seek Defense Spending
Clinton to Seek Defense Spending Boost By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff writer Sunday, January 3, 1999; Page A12 President Clinton will propose the largest increase in defense spending since the end of the Cold War buildup of the 1980s in the budget he will send to Congress next month. Responding to demands by the nation's top military commanders, Clinton's fiscal year 2000 budget will include a boost in spending on the armed forces of $12 billion and a total increase of about $110 billion over the next six years, according to administration and Pentagon officials. If approved by Congress, the increase would fund the largest military pay increase since 1984 and a round of new, sophisticated jet fighters, attack helicopters and warships although it would be less than the $148 billion increase sought by the Defense Department. Clinton's proposal would bring defense spending in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, to $296 billion and represents the first substantial, sustained increase for the Pentagon in 15 years, defense officials said. "We must undertake this effort today so that our nation will remain strong and secure tomorrow," Clinton said yesterday in his weekly radio address. "The more we ask, the greater our responsibility to give our troops the support and training and equipment they need." The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 requires that any increase in spending in one area be offset by cuts in spending in another part of the budget. Administration officials declined yesterday to say how they would come up with the additional money, but suggested that some of it would come from programs whose costs may be less than anticipated because of low inflation and declining fuel prices. "People can be assured that we will continue to fully meet our domestic priorities," one senior administration official said. Over the last few months, the nation's military chiefs, led by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, held what one participant called an unprecedented series of meetings with Clinton to argue for the increase. In those meetings, the commanders argued that the increase was necessary to boost pay and retirement benefits to retain mid-level officers and noncommissioned officers and to maintain and improve the most sophisticated arsenal in the world. The military leaders were backed by conservative members of Congress who repeatedly attacked Clinton for giving the military a range of new missions -- including peace-keeping in Bosnia and Haiti, full-time air patrols over Iraq, and anti-drug efforts -- without the funding needed to carry them out while also maintaining a proper level of training and the equipment to fight a major conventional war. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), incoming chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said yesterday the administration proposal "falls way short" of the needs targeted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff last February and that Congress would increase the commitment. Warner said Clinton was "very clever" to unveil his plan just before a planned hearing on military readiness before Warner's committee on Tuesday. He said he expected the Joint Chiefs of Staff "will hold firm to our earlier, much higher dollar requirements." A military official said that Clinton's proposed increase would cover most of the needs the Pentagon sees as critical. But critics say the Pentagon's demands reflect a lingering and inappropriate Cold War mentality among military planners who believe it is imperative to buy and build ever more sophisticated weapons. Military spending in the United States far exceeds that of
[PEN-L:1951] Re: Clinton to Seek Defense Spending
Its payback time for the Iraq operations. Henry C.K. Liu Frank Durgin wrote: Clinton to Seek Defense Spending Boost By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff writer Sunday, January 3, 1999; Page A12 President Clinton will propose the largest increase in defense spending since the end of the Cold War buildup of the 1980s in the budget he will send to Congress next month. Responding to demands by the nation's top military commanders, Clinton's fiscal year 2000 budget will include a boost in spending on the armed forces of $12 billion and a total increase of about $110 billion over the next six years, according to administration and Pentagon officials. If approved by Congress, the increase would fund the largest military pay increase since 1984 and a round of new, sophisticated jet fighters, attack helicopters and warships although it would be less than the $148 billion increase sought by the Defense Department. Clinton's proposal would bring defense spending in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, to $296 billion and represents the first substantial, sustained increase for the Pentagon in 15 years, defense officials said. "We must undertake this effort today so that our nation will remain strong and secure tomorrow," Clinton said yesterday in his weekly radio address. "The more we ask, the greater our responsibility to give our troops the support and training and equipment they need." The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 requires that any increase in spending in one area be offset by cuts in spending in another part of the budget. Administration officials declined yesterday to say how they would come up with the additional money, but suggested that some of it would come from programs whose costs may be less than anticipated because of low inflation and declining fuel prices. "People can be assured that we will continue to fully meet our domestic priorities," one senior administration official said. Over the last few months, the nation's military chiefs, led by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, held what one participant called an unprecedented series of meetings with Clinton to argue for the increase. In those meetings, the commanders argued that the increase was necessary to boost pay and retirement benefits to retain mid-level officers and noncommissioned officers and to maintain and improve the most sophisticated arsenal in the world. The military leaders were backed by conservative members of Congress who repeatedly attacked Clinton for giving the military a range of new missions -- including peace-keeping in Bosnia and Haiti, full-time air patrols over Iraq, and anti-drug efforts -- without the funding needed to carry them out while also maintaining a proper level of training and the equipment to fight a major conventional war. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), incoming chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said yesterday the administration proposal "falls way short" of the needs targeted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff last February and that Congress would increase the commitment. Warner said Clinton was "very clever" to unveil his plan just before a planned hearing on military readiness before Warner's committee on Tuesday. He said he expected the Joint Chiefs of Staff "will hold firm to our earlier, much higher dollar requirements." A military official said that Clinton's proposed increase would cover most of the needs the Pentagon sees as critical. But critics say the Pentagon's demands reflect a lingering and inappropriate Cold War mentality among military planners who believe it is imperative to
[PEN-L:1952] Re: Re: Pen-l [newcomer]
In a message dated 1/3/1999 5:32:15 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: sex on Hawaiian rosewood seeds, Aren't they rough on the skin?
[PEN-L:1954] Re: Re: Pen-l [newcomer]
valis wrote:
Greetings, Tully. Note that I amended your hideous self-designation
"newbie," an aol-type word we don't use around here.
Ah, so does that mean I'm really not a nerd either? :)
Well, obviously you're preaching to the choir now;
I am? Great!
have you ever given
this sermon before friends (more accurately _ex-friends_), neighbors,
co-workers, fellow students or {shudder} relatives? There's the rub!
Most friends and family tolerate my sermonizing but their argument is that
it is their patriotic duty to consume, so that it will provide jobs, new
business, etc. When I argue that productivity is the problem, they claim
the former USSR fell because their system didn't worship productiivity
properly. We go round and round over it, but I'm heavily outnumbered. I
need more ammo to make up for it.
Last year I got into a rather nasty argument with the founder of the
voluntary simplicity movement because she refused to admit - even in
a private e-discussion - that VS is inescapably a class phenomenon
that would never draw breath in a trailer park or a blue-collar bar.
VS people have already done it: they've done Shakespeare, the Acropolis,
yoga on a mountaintop, sex on Hawaiian rosewood seeds, and so on,
and this is what readies them to be marginal in the world of commodities.
In other words, VS people have been gluttons in the marketplace of
experience, and thus are more or less blind to Madison Avenue mirages.
I see your point and it is well made. I've glanced at a few of the
voluntary simplicity type books and they do seem more Martha Stewart
oriented toward the living simply with "nice" things concept, mostly just
getting rid of stuff and reducing outside commitments, nothing very
significant at all.
So don't waste your time (and risk your neck) pissing off people who
rightly feel impoverished and are dead sure that a new set of wheels
or the latest doodad will make all the difference, because their
subjective reality is no less real than yours.
But I am an old hippie who never shed my disgust for Madison Ave. I've
always made it a point to live well below my means, which early on meant in
a cap on the back of an old pickup truck, living in a free mountain
campground, using the local truckstop for showers, and working for $2 an
hour when I could find work. My parents (comfortable middle class) was
aghast and didn't believe me when I told them I was quite happy, not sick
(they caught every bug going around), and that I had plenty of money for my
needs plus extra to save or spend on the occasional vice. I rented rooms
in other people's homes, and later when married, we rented an old place
with only a wood stove for heat for $150/month (1980), and within a year
saved enough for a good downpayment on our house.
I'm convinced that the problem most people have, whether they are blue
collar or white, is that they believe that they must buy the most and the
best they can possibly afford because they will feel shame otherwise
(Madison Ave. again plays that line to the hilt). Yet vast numbers of
hippies never felt that way. They took pride in shopping at Goodwill and
wouldn't have been caught dead supporting "Pepsi Stuff" like a T-shirt
(even if Pepsi gave them the shirts free). Now we pay for shirts with ads
all over them and even want our clothes to have exclusive labels showing
just to show how "classy" we are. Our homes are mortgaged (and
remortgaged) to the most we can possibly get in credit.
I bought a beatup old house that cost one fourth of what I qualified to
mortgage at the time. I've put next to nothing into it for all the 17
years I've lived here. Through all the years, I've only spent the least
amount I could. As a result, I have never been poor, even though I easily
qualified for foodstamps for many years (never took them). But if I'd
tried to afford the best I could anywhere along that line, I would have
ended up stuck right there, and living in anxiety from paycheck to
paycheck. The way I see it, the family in the trailer park may be much
less poor than the family in the $200,000 home. Where someone lives or
what they wear is no indication of their poverty level. To me, being rich
is always having enough money to play or to send to people who are doing
work I believe is important.
However, if you still feel brave enough to preach the gospel of Less Is
More, I suggest a garage sale as the best pulpit.
"Fellow bargain-hunters, all the appliances and nifty thingies around us
were once bought by someone - perhaps even the current seller - at book
price, shiny and new, promising quick release from the wheel of existence,
yet here they now are, begging for pocket change, singles, fivers at most.
Why not listen to their silent but eloquent speech and, just for once,
have your second thoughts first, then go home and meditate?!"
Seems to me that this sermon would be better delivered to the people doing
the selling at the garage sale and not to
[PEN-L:1953] Re: Re: Re: Pen-l [newcomer]
Rob Schaap wrote:
It occurs that not a lot of Indonesians are currently enjoying their sudden
involuntary simplicity.
But isn't this a matter where others are taking away people's power to
self-determine? That is something most in the US are not experiencing much
at all since their own decisions in many cases locked the key. Now I won't
deny that the inner city problems in the US are altogether different, but
trailer parks are not my idea of what constitutes real poverty. Except in
the Appalachian region, most trailer parks are in regions where there are
jobs available. Where I see the real poverty in this country is in the
cities (especially the rust belt) where the factories moved out and the
best one can hope for (legally) is a job at McDonalds and there aren't
enough of those jobs to go around.
That said, and without sinking into the quasi-malthusian asceticism
possibly evident in our new chum's musings, I would like to know why it is
I can't stop buying books I KNOW I'll never have the time to read. What is
it about BUYING, eh?
Hey, aren't books, LPs, CDs good insulation for the walls? :) I'm as
guilty of this as you Rob, but have been trying to use libraries and ebooks
more.
I reckon we (the likes of those assembled here in the faculty lounge, I
mean) do need less, and would find out quite quickly we wouldn't want this
stuff if we had to do without it for a while ('cept for ciggies, of
course).
Ah, one of those rare ones who shares one of my vices. Let me guess, you
also live on coffee...
And I also have a few traces of Hayek left in me.
Who is Hayek?
And I do reckon
socialists would have to admit the possibility of constraints on production
in a socialised economy.
Is this a heavily marxist list?
Is there any way we can continue producing like we are when industrial
nations now are using resources up so fast? What if every family in China
had a car? Even if planetary resources could support it, could we breathe?
After all, we'd be trying to service needs rather
than effective demand, and we'd still be completely dependent on myriads of
people we'll never meet for the stuff we need to lead a liveable life. I
don't care how many parallel computers we have, we'd still need (very few,
very important) humans to programme the bloody things - effectively
defining and standardising needs for us and then trying to match that with
production and distribution across all kinds of differentials, human and
natural.
I make my living nowdays as a computer programmer. But people have been
living comfortably without them for a long time. How necessary are they
really? How about the methods of productions we use to manufacture them
(or any printed circuit board assemblies) where just cleaning solder
residue from the boards creates tons of toxic waste?
So don't waste your time (and risk your neck) pissing off people who
rightly feel impoverished and are dead sure that a new set of wheels
or the latest doodad will make all the difference, because their
subjective reality is no less real than yours.
So what would you say to these people, Valis? Heaps of doodads (including,
I suspect, a great number of private cars) would disappear in a socialised
economy, wouldn't they?
To me its based on a lack of connection with our environment, the mentality
that believes that this planet is here to be exploited for its resources
and that each of us have no connection to that planet and indeed no real
connection to each other. We feel separate from our God, our planet, each
other, and all we are left with is our material things to comfort us. IMO,
its a simple lack of spirituality and awareness of heart.
And of course, all sorts of other things should theoretically pop up to
cater for whatever freer humans would find themselves wanting or needing.
But haven't most of us found that finally obtaining the big screen TV
doesn't really add any real enduring amount to our real level of happiness?
That once some material goal is accomplished, there is that letdown, like
when Christmas is over, and you end up thinking about the next goal? I
don't think that material things beyond sheer necessities like food,
shelter, and clothing, will ever really do anything to make us happy,
contrary to Madison Ave.'s assurances to the contrary. We try to fill that
longing in us with material objects and wonder why they really don't
satisfy us. Its because they never can. Its something else entirely that
our souls are searching for. And I believe that something our souls want
is connection...
-
tully
[PEN-L:1958] Art and revolution, part 1
This is the first in a series of posts that were inspired by recent threads on LBO-talk about politics and art, and music in particular. I have been preoccupied with these questions for as long as I have been a socialist, since I considered myself an aspiring writer long before I took a detour down the revolutionary road. As an undergraduate, I studied writing with Robert Kelly, a major New York poet closely associated with the beats and the Black Mountain school, and would have pursued a writing career if the Vietnam war had not so rudely interrupted. When I first encountered Marxism at the cafeteria tables of the New School in the Fall of 1965, the first question I raised was "Why does the Soviet government dictate to artists what they should paint or write?" This was a much more important matter to me than who started the Vietnam war or why it started. I didn't realize at the time how political and aesthetic questions overlapped in the cold war, which shaped my thinking as a youth. It was only when I came across Serge Guilbaut's "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War" (U. of Chicago, 1983) that I finally understood how experimental art and American imperialism became the oddest of bedfellows. What was particularly revealing was the fact that abstract expressionism--the paradigm of experimentalism--had a close association with the Trotskyist movement, where I had spent 11 years of my life. It started out as a challenge to the status-quo and ended up as one of its pillars. Experimental art, like Trotskyism itself, was a minority current in the 1930s. They were both reactions to Communist politics and culture. Against "socialism in one country," Trotskyism posited world revolution. Against "socialist realism" or the "proletarian novel," artists and intellectuals friendly to Trotskyism posited surrealism or novels like "Studs Lonigan," which depicted working-class life in unsentimental terms. Trotsky made his opposition to art as propaganda clear when he praised Céline's "Journey to the End of Night" as "great literature." As a weary bourgeois figure, Céline was "so disgusted by his own image that he smashes the glass until his hands bleed." Shortly after this review was written, Céline became a supporter of Hitler. The Communist Parties did not really make much of a point in defining artistic standards until the Popular Front was unleashed in 1935. In response to the Kremlin's shift toward alliances with the "progressive bourgeoisie," artists and writers tried to find ways to engage with their own national traditions. This meant that regionalism became much more pronounced, as writers such as Meridel Le Sueur took the proletarian northern plains as her subject matter while WPA photographers or muralists produced one portrait after another of the heroic, long-suffering masses. All of these radicals and artists pinned their hopes on FDR, who was not only fighting to end the depression, making friends with the Soviet Union, but allocating funds for Popular Front artists as well. The Trotskyists found all this unconvincing. George Novack, an SWP leader and house intellectual, remarked that Sinclair Lewis was no longer a petty-bourgeois anti-Communist in Popular Front circles, but a literary hero, all on the basis of some earnestly liberal fiction. James T. Farrell, who had applied for SWP membership, was scathing. The Popular Front cultural milieu consisted of "hastily enlisted commercial writers, high priced Hollywood scenarists, a motley assortment of mystery plot mechanics, humorists, newspaper columnists, strip teasers, band leaders, glamour girls, actors' press agents, Broadway producers, aging wives with thwarted literary ambitions, and other such ornaments of American culture." Two years later, in 1937, Novack joined with co-editors James Burnham, Lewis Corey (Fraina), Louis M. Hacker, Sidney Hook and Meyer Schapiro and launched "Marxist Quarterly" to challenge the Popular Front on politics and art alike. Schapiro was a highly respected art historian and professor at Columbia University who was almost single-handedly responsible for educating American society about the importance of abstract art. (Schapiro died several years ago in his nineties. He was an enormous influence on young radicals at Columbia University, including Whittaker Chambers. According to Sam Tannenhouse, author of the best-selling biography of the cold warrior Chambers joined the CPUSA, because it seemed like the only practical option for a revolutionary at the time, while harboring Trotskyist-influenced doubts about the party.) Schapiro was feeling pessimistic about revolutionary politics in 1937 in light of Hitler's rise to power, Franco's apparent victory in Spain, and Stalin's absolute rule in the USSR. So when he argued in "Nature of Abstract Art" that the artist was cut off from all revolutionary hope, nobody felt the need to expel him from "Marxist Quarterly" or
[PEN-L:1956] Two from India (BBC)
Saturday, January 2, 1999 Published at 18:47 GMT World: South Asia Millions strike in West Bengal Much of India's industry is unorganised By Calcutta Correspondent Subir Bhaumik Thousands of factories have been closed down by a one-day strike in the Indian state of West Bengal. Seven leftist trade unions, led by one affiliated to West Bengal's ruling Marxists, observed the stoppage to press for an eight-point charter of demands for unorganised labour in the state. Although West Bengal has been ruled by a leftist coalition for more than 20 years, the unions say labour remains to be organised in more than half the state's industries and is deprived of basic rights. The unions said nearly 5 million unorganised labourers closed down thousands of industries as they took the first step towards getting organised to secure minimum wages, medical benefits and other facilities enjoyed by organised labour. No untoward incident was reported from anywhere in the state. Essential services like hospitals and public transport were spared. Observers say that the leftist trade unions are trying to organise tens of thousands of unorganised labourers to make up for their loss of influence amongst the state's organised trade unions. Saturday, January 2,1999 Published at 14:11 GMT World: South Asia Indian communist leader dead The seventy-five year old Indian communist leader and women's rights activist, Vimla Farooqi, has died of a heart attack in Delhi. Born in Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan, Mrs Farooqi migrated with her parents to Delhi after partition. She joined the Indian Communist Party in 1948 and later became a member of its executive committee and national council. Vimla Farooqi was also a founder member of the National Federation of Indian Women, and wrote a history of the Indian women's movement. President Narayanan said that her work against violence and social oppression would always be remembered, as would her contribution to the political, social and economic empowerment of women. --- From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
[PEN-L:1955] Re: lumpenlabor
A long post, but one which contains a lot of information, which I promise to be rewarding for the diligent reader. Phil Hyde wrote, I'm off tracking down the Technocrats at the moment. They wanted 4 day workweek, 4 hrs a day, long vacation. Me: That'd be M. King Hubbert, I've got a pamphlet by him called "Man hours and production" I believe. It's a very interesting analysis. Hubbert was an oil geologist who used a similar analysis to project (in 1948!) that U.S oil production would peak around 1970 and soon after begin an inexorable decline. It did, and that's why the 1973 OPEC oil price hikes were so effective. The same analysis now projects that world oil production will peak sometime between 2010 and 2020. When that happens, no amount of bombing Baghdad will bring back cheap oil. Phil: I left a query about the lump of labour locus classicus on Samuelson's phone machine at MIT - he's the only main econ principles text that still mentions lump of labor and he's still got an office at MIT so I'll hound him after the hols. Me: I had a look at a re-issue of Samuelson's original 1948 edition of Economics and his treatment of LoL there was much more subdued than in later editions. It would be interesting to trace the evolution of LoL strictly within the successive editions of Samuelson! Speaking of textbooks, I'd also like to have a look at the 1952 _The Economic Process: Its Principles and Problems_ by Raymond T. Bye, William W. Hewett. A review article mentions that they present an exposition of the fallacy on pp. 380-383. Richard Lester's 1941 textbook, _Economics of Labor_, reportedly contains a defence of the traditional trade union position. Phil: Plus I'm minoring in marginalism. I think a lot of our problem and potential solution is in that theory. I think it's been applied very selectively to, as you point out about Marshall, justify the status quo, and yet it's very Me: Thorstein Veblen wrote an apposite essay on the limitations of marginalism in 1909. Veblen was a major influence on Technocracy. I'll send you an electronic copy. I would venture to say that much of what presents itself today as "neo-classical" or "marginalist" is simply classical political economy dogma using marginalist rules as a strategic debating weapon -- they only apply to the other guy. The supply-side orthodoxy of the last 20 years is a wholesale reversion to the doctrines of J.R. McCulloch that Charles Dickens satirized in Hard Times. I don't know if Milton Friedman acknowledges McCulloch as the source for the title of his book "Free to Choose" but there it is, Friedman's entire argument as well as the exact phrase itself in a 1826 Treatise on the Rate of Wages and the Condition of the Labouring Classes: McCulloch: "But whenever property is secure, industry free, and the public burdens moderate, the happiness or misery of the labouring classes depends almost wholly on themselves. Government has there done for them all that it should, and all in truth that it can do. It has given them security and freedom. But the use or abuse of these inestimable advantages is their own affair. They may be either provident or improvident, industrious or idle; and being FREE TO CHOOSE, they are alone responsible for the consequences of their choice.[emphasis added]" Me: The appearance of the words "free" and "freedom" in the above paragraph needs a bit of explanation. It means, explicitly, free from the interference of combinations of workers. Phil: It's interesting you found the phrase 'lump of labor' in Clark. I don't see it in Commons or Ely in a qik check of their indexes. But it's the kind of thing that might not have shown up in the index at first. Me: No, it's not the kind of thing that ordinarily shows up in indexes. Clark's book doesn't have an index. Phil: Amasa (love that!) Walker - any relation? Me: That's _Francis_ Amasa Walker (no relation) Francis' father, Amasa, was also an economist. I've gotten ahold of F.A. Walker's essay on the Eight-Hour Law Agitation in the 1890 Atlantic Monthly and he presents a very similar argument to Rae's. Phil: I sense the locus classicus is the kind of thing we're going to stumble across sometime and give a holler - "Wait a minute, this is IT!" Me: I dunno. I think I've hollered that more than a few times already during this quest. My hypothesis is, roughly, that there are two modern definitions of the "lump of labour fallacy", both of which originate from sources that didn't use the term "lump of labour". Those two definitions are mutually contradictory and internally inconsistent. Meanwhile the term itself has a more eclectic and paradoxical historical usage. The modern definitions I would trace from the Walker/Rae/Marshall arguments related to marginal productivity and from Frederick Taylor's scientific management. A trio of 1891 articles by D.F. Schloss on the "sweating system" may hold the key to the cross over of the term from "the lump" (casual workers,
[PEN-L:1957] Re: Pen-l [newcomer] III
Paul J Meyer queries in unquestionable seriousness: sex on Hawaiian rosewood seeds, Aren't they rough on the skin? Not when everything happens over the phone. The more capricious posts stemming from my reply to tully will be addressed tomorrow. (Reality calls.) valis
