Re: Lucky USA prepares for a soft landing
Thought-provoking post, Chris! (Although I doubt you'll have convinced Dennis) I've been speculating Greenspan could quite soon reach a point where cutting interest rates would not be an available option (coz he couldn't afford all those helpful foreigners getting out of dollars). That caught no-one's attention, and I'm beginning to suspect there's something about the greenback's power I don't understand. Someone wanna explain how this seignorage thing works to the dunce(s) on this list? Cheers, Rob. The first sign of a downturn in the readiness of US consumers to buy, and the probable new administration and Greenspan warn of a recession. Greenspan's modulated comment is enough to be taken as a signal that US interest rates are likely to be lowered. The stock markets rise. What is the dog that does not bark here? That this instructive round of little signals between the people who run the country, can take place without any attention having to go to the effect of a cut in interest rates on the international position of the dollar. After all if the US goes into a recession it will slow down world trade so much that all countries will have to support the US allowing the value of the dollar to fall anyway. So its position as both a national currency and world money remains secure. Self evident really isn't it? Does not even require comment. Compare the plight of a trading bloc even as powerful as that of Europe. The first sign of recession precipitates a gradually increasing vicious circle very much involving the exchange value of the currency which falls substantially against the US dollar. This will only level out when the Euro has fallen so much below a realistic level that finance starts coming in. The US loses only a few months of potential growth while Europe loses the best part of several years. These are some of the unseen effects of the massive global tendency for the uneven accumulation of capital, which the US in particular has every reason to oppose being brought under global democratic control. Meanwhile possible schemes for greater global democratic control of the world economy are criticised by ultra-leftists, some in the name of Marxism, as reformist, even though they have no strategy for precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Prepare for a soft US landing, while world inequalities widen. Chris Burford London
Re: Lucky USA prepares for a soft landing
Meanwhile possible schemes for greater global democratic control of the world economy are criticised by ultra-leftists, some in the name of Marxism, as reformist, even though they have no strategy for precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Chris Burford That's not true. I have a strategy for precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Last night when I was talking to my mom, the subject came up. Mom: Nu, Louis, how's by you? Have you met maybe a nice Jewish girl? Me: Mom, you know I have no time for romance. I am working overtime to come up with a strategy for precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Mom: But, darling, what about grandchildren? Me: There is not time for such frivolous personal goals. My life is dedicated to the steely-eyed, teeth-gnashing goal of precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Mom: Oy! Me: By the way, when I come up next weekend, try to put less salt in the chicken soup. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
RE: RE: Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
I have no problem at all w/your being here, but I have to say I am curious as to why. mbs Since you asked, I am a conservative who lurks on this list, . . .
Django + Grappelli
hey, what's wrong with Marilyn Manson? or 'N Sync? or Pauly Shore? Do you want to step _outside_ and say that? - so that the youngsters in this forum don't consider me insufferably uncool, i have plenty of "classic rock" in my CD collection. don't dig the newer stuff though; it seems more like ranting than singing! norm
Kolakowski
Good on philosophy, poor on economics and politics. His interpretations are questionable and there is a lot of cold-war style anti-communism and unfashionable British Empiricism. K discusses a lot of stuff that hasn't been translated into English such as pre-WWII Polish Marxists and figures like like Otto Bauer who tried to synthesize Kant and Marx. K in general, is very arrogant and his treatments of the Marxist tradition are unduely harsh. To take one example, Mao's writings are dismissed as "infantile" and "childlike" yet the fact that Mao led a successful revolution in the most populated and harshest (climate-wise) countries in the world and the fact that the subsequent system that was set up led to great improvements in the lives of most Chinese receives no attention let alone explanation even though the Chinese system has its intellectual foundation in the writings of Chairman Mao. Mao's military writings receive a lot of attention from a lot of people though I guess that isn't Kolakowski's area. Kolakowski let his dogmatic anti-Stalinism, anti-Marxism and anti-Socialism got in the way of his better intellectual judgement at times I think. There are some fierce criticisms of Kolakowski that contain a lot of ad hominem stuff. Jonathan Ree, Ralph Miliband and E.P Thompson to name a few. Kolakowski's reply to Miliband was "My Correct Views on Everything" (apparently he wasn't being ironic) that appeared in an early 70's Socialist Register, a pretty scathing attack on academic Marxists. Again, I think this quick assessment is fair. K is at his best dealing with Marx's philosophical background; excellent on the "Origins of Dialectic" (highly recommend this section, though he simplifies the German tradition by reading Lukacs back into it). Lukacs is not the culmination of this tradition; Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel are far greater philosophers. K may be right about Mao, but then Mao is not a philosopher and should not be judged accordingly. The exact title of K's reply to Miliband was "Miliband's anti-Kolakowski", in response to Miliband's own title "Kolakowski's anti-Marx" - which, I agree with Sam, does seem arrogant, 'cause K is no M.
Re: Weber's Genteel Racism
I probably deleted too many postings to know what the hell kelley or Carrol were arguing about re: Weber (I wouldn't be surprised if it was some stuff they read in a comic), but I need to respond to this accusation coming from Yoshie (which she did not read in a comic book, but in Blaut): May God bless Jim Blaut's soul, I have to say I strongly disagree with his argument about W's "underlying racist explanation", as I told him two years ago as he was writing *Eight Eurocentric Historians*. That certain unfortunate "racist" remarks exist in Weber is beyond dispute. Similar remarks can be found in Diderot, Kant, Hegel, and others, including Marx (beside which Weber's seem pale). But in none is racism the basis of their ideas. In W's case they are strictly speculative and marginal. Today we would not tolerate such remarks because we are more progressive and are socialized not to think that way (I repeat we are *socialized* not to think that way; it is not that, as Devine thinks, some of us are damned to be racists while others, like him, are chosen not to be). So let us not impose our own ethical standards on past thinkers. On bookkeeping practices, let me first clarify that, unlike Marx, W never hesitates to use the term "capitalist" whenever he detects some sort of monetary exchange. Yet his analysis of "modern" capitalism includes all sorts of institutional conditions, which emerge in full only in mid-19th century Europe. Now, keeping in mind that I am far from a specialist on Weber, but was led to his writings just recently after realizing that without him I will never get through Habermas, let me add this about bookkeeping: The central theme in W's entire work is the notion of rationality. Only in Western Europe did a formal rational orientation penetrate every sphere of life. The rise of this orientation is the *explanadum* of his historical analyses, the phenomenom that he thinks requires explanation if we want to understand the peculiarity of the West. Capital accounting symbolized by double entry bookkeeping is crucial to this explanation because it is this very practice which directly exhibits this orientation in the sphere of economic life. Double-entry bookkeeping, therefore, cannot be define as just another empirical-factor in the rise of modern capitalism. But neither should one pretend that a formal rational orientation exists within the economy simply because one has detected the practice of double-entry. For double-entry may be present yet capital accounting may be limited by a whole range of factors like the absence of free labor and mechanized technology.
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: needs
Hi again, Norm, please ignore what Eric and other luddites tell you about CD sound quality because it is far better than that of tapes and LPs. listening to a live performance is the only "real" sound, but that comes at the price of travel, admission, audience disturbances, etc. for some people, CDs are "too perfect" since the engineer can correct minor errors of the performers w/o retakes. (i remember (classic guitarist) Julian Bream saying, "I have a hard time keeping up to my recordings!") is that sound "bad"? the luddites will always insist that the pops, scratches and breaks "sound good". they probably still use washboards too! just ignore them. Well, it might not be the pops, scratches and breaks that appeal. Popular music is, like the ads say, a sorta soundtrack to a person's life - especially during that apprentice-snogging/leaving-home period (at least they're the bits that stand out to me). Music's job, in part at least, is to bloody well sound like it used to. The Led Zeppelin twin-set remastered CD bloody well doesn't! Bugger Jimmy Page's fingers tracing the fretboard between cords! That wasn't in the original! And what about all those bands who were engineered to sound best on car radios (a pretty sensible option in the sixties-seventies)? Didn't the Byrds like that Rickenbacker/Vox jangle precisely because it stood out on the ol' trannie? That ain't so much luddite thinking as mid-life crisis, I know, but you take my point ... Cheers, Rob.
co-ops + human behavior
thanks for the reference. i'll put the Encyclopedia of PE on my list that
seems to grow faster than my purchases. no wonder my psychiatrist daughter
calls me a "bookaholic". (so how can i refute a Board-certified shrink?)
interesting you mention the Mondragon market because Chomsky is always
singing praises to it and Orwell's "Homage to ?" - about the workers' co-op
movements in Spain prior to being crushed by Franco. that is also on my
list.
with all these persuasive co-op comments from listers, though, i'm still
missing an important ingredient on people's motivations for cooperative vs.
competitive behavior that underlies all discussions of social institutions,
including co-ops, i.e., the genetic ("nature") causes and environmental
("nurture") causes of cooperative and competitive behavior.
co-ops may be limited by people's limited motivation for cooperation with
each other. e.g, if we are 25% genetically programmed to cooperate with
people (for survival purposes) and 75%% genetically programmed to compete
with people (again, for survival purposes), then cooperative ventures will
always be subordinate to competitive ventures on the average. if this
assumption is true, then no matter how much leftists try to change the
environment ("culture") to promote more cooperation and less competition,
their efforts will always be limited by "human nature" (genetic
programming).
an extension of this assumption is that leftist ventures to make classless,
egalitarian, non-hierarchical societies are hopeless dreams.
norm
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 10:00 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:5649] Re: Re: co-ops
Norm,
If you want to study co-ops as a system, complete with their own
credit union bank and education system, have a look at the history
and success of the Mondragon co-ops in Spain. With all their
limitations, this is probably the best example of what you are
looking for. I would also refer you to the Encyclopedia of Political
Economy which has a digest not only of Mondragon, market
socialism, social ownership, Marxian political economy and just
about everything else you have asked about complete with short
bibliographies on each topic. It is an invaluable resource.
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba
RE: Re: Lucky USA prepares for a soft landing
yeah, like i asked before, "who says lefties don't have a sense of humor?" norm -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 8:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:5661] Re: Lucky USA prepares for a soft landing Meanwhile possible schemes for greater global democratic control of the world economy are criticised by ultra-leftists, some in the name of Marxism, as reformist, even though they have no strategy for precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Chris Burford That's not true. I have a strategy for precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Last night when I was talking to my mom, the subject came up. Mom: Nu, Louis, how's by you? Have you met maybe a nice Jewish girl? Me: Mom, you know I have no time for romance. I am working overtime to come up with a strategy for precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Mom: But, darling, what about grandchildren? Me: There is not time for such frivolous personal goals. My life is dedicated to the steely-eyed, teeth-gnashing goal of precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Mom: Oy! Me: By the way, when I come up next weekend, try to put less salt in the chicken soup. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2000
RELEASED TODAY: In October 2000, there were 874 mass layoff actions by
employers as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits
during the month. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single
establishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 103,755. The
number of layoff events and initial claims for unemployment insurance were
the lowest for the month of October since the series began in 1995, due, in
part, to a calendar effect. (October 2000 contained 4 weeks that ended in
the month compared with 5 weeks in each of the prior three Octobers.) From
January through October 2000, the total number of layoff events (11,364) was
slightly lower than in January-October 1999, while the total number of
initial claims (1,292,335) was somewhat higher. ...
San Jose, Calif., had the nation's highest average pay level last year, at
$61,110 a year, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics ("Work Week" feature of
Wall Street Journal, page A1).
The index of leading indicators fell 0.2 percent in October, as
manufacturers ordered fewer consumer goods and stocks tumbled, the
Conference Board says. The index now stands at 105.5, its lowest point since
the same number was recorded in October 1999. ... An economist at the
Conference Board says, "The three factors to this trend are economic
cooling, job vacancies with no one to fill them, and the continued negative
yield curve which makes the leading indicators overstate the loss of
momentum in economic activity." He added that the leading indicators index
continues to point toward a "cooling of still strong economic conditions,"
while interest rates and growth restrains will dictate the pace and timing
of how much slower the economy will be this winter. ... (Daily Labor
Report, page D-1).
New home sales moderated in October, after surging the month before, further
evidence that economic growth is slowing to a more sustainable pace.
Americans purchased new single-family homes at a seasonally adjusted annual
rate of 928,000 in October, a 2.6 percent drop from September, the Commerce
Department said (Washington Post, page E2).
Sales of new homes fell 2.6 percent in October, but were still on pace for
the second-best year on record, the Commerce Department reported. A
separate report showed a decline in the index of leading economic
indicators. ... Builders will sell 898,000 new homes this year, compared
with 907,000 sold in 1999. Low unemployment and falling mortgage rates are
giving buyers the confidence to purchase homes, even at record prices. The
nationwide median price of a new home rose 2.9 percent in October, to a
record $174,900 from the $169,900 in September. ... (New York Times, page
C12)_With mortgage rates falling and demand high, new home sales
remained strong in October, suggesting that the housing sector may provide a
cushion for the broader economy. ... So far this year, total sales are just
1 percent below last year's current level. ... These numbers mean that the
housing sector could offset difficulties elsewhere in the economy,
especially in manufacturing, says the chief economist at First Union Bank
Corp. in Charlotte, N.C. ... In a separate report, the Conference Board
said its Index of Leading Indicators, a closely watched gauge of future
economic conditions, slipped 0.2 percent in October after remaining
unchanged a month earlier. Since January, the index has declined in 5
months and remained flat in 4 others, though analysts said than the measure
is stronger than it appears. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2).
Insurers and health plan managers expect employee health benefit cost trends
to rise about 10 to 15 percent next year, depending on the type. The
projections are based on past price moves, benefits usage, and other factors
and will help set employer rates for the coming year. But if recent history
is a guide, costs could trail those projections. Segal Co., a New York
benefits consultant, compares past projections with what actually happened
and found that actual increases were usually smaller than projected
increases. ... ("Work Week" feature of Wall Street Journal, page A1).
Of about 400 employers surveyed by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, 27 percent
rewarded at least some employees with a reduced work week this year,
compared with 19 percent last year ("Work Week" feature of Wall Street
Journal, page A1).
DUE OUT TOMORROW: Productivity and Costs -- Third Quarter 2000 (Revised)
application/ms-tnef
GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
notice, david shemano (the conservative who was brave enough to comment in this nest of thieves) that the leftie cut you down quickly by not even deigning to remember your name. that's par social etiquette for lefties, but please don't be piqued by their insolence. just remember that they've been rolled so often and so long that their natural instinct is to shoot first and ask questions later. conservatives, having had the upper hand for 1000 years, can afford to magnanimously turn the other cheek. centrist -Original Message- From: Rob Schaap [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 10:53 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:5665] Re: RE: RE: Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting) Dear conservative lurker (apologies for losing your name), Since you asked, I am a conservative who lurks on this list, . . . Lurk not, brave sir! Tell us why the economy's healthy. Or why it's not. Or what, in the heady dynamics around and within us, represents the status quo to which you are committed enough to call yourself a conservative. I'm not being rhetorical (though I admit years on mailing lists has a way of making one's every word look it), I wanna know! I have it in me, too, y'see. Hate it when they move the furniture, reckon popular music just doesn't cut it these days, and am sure the only thing that has actually got better in the last thirty years is the consistency of Continental CuppaSoup ... also wary of Utopians, think Ed Burke had some good points, and share Oakeshott's fear of narrow rationalism. But I just don't see where the likes of Sowell, Rand or The Shrub offer succuour. Noblesse oblige is not even a myth any more, and neoliberalism seems a most radical programme to me (yeah, it may have been warming us towards boiling point for decades now, like that frog in the saucepan, but what dramatic changes the last three deades have wrought, eh?) Cheers, Rob.
Sale of slaves was unders the control of African states and elites
Sorry, I don't like to take prisoners when in a good mood. The left does not need a mythical (anti-Marxist) view about the "bad" Europeans and the "good" Africans: "My examination of the military and political relations between Africans and Europeans concludes that Africans controlled the nature of their interactions with Europe. Europeans did not possess the military power to force Africans to participate in any type of trade in which their leaders did not wish to engage. Therefore all African trade with the Atlantic, including the slave trade, *had to be voluntary*. Finally, a careful look at the slave trade and the process of acquisition of slaves argues that slaves *had long been used in African societies*, that African political systems placed great importance on the legal relationships of slavery for political purposes, and that relatively large numbers of people were likely to be slaves at any one time. Because so much of the process of acquisition, transfer, and sale of slaves was under the control of African states and elites, they were able to protect themselves from the demographic impact and transfer the considerable social dislocations to poorer members of their own societies" John Thornton in *Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1640*
Re: RE: (Fwd) Jesse Helms is Sparking a Real Constitutio nal Crisis - T
I guess the idea is that we are bound by treaty to respect the international courts, and Helms wants to except US troops, in effect by abrogating that part of the treaty, without actually abrogating the treaty. As a theory of constitutional crisis, it's dicy, since the legal bindingness of the treaty depends on Senate ratification,a nd waht the Senate giveth, the Senate can taketh away. --jks i don't get it: why is this a constitutional crisis? norm _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: needs
The reason music used to sound like vinyl is that it was on vinyl, pops, scratches, and all. But if you want to listen to final, feel free. Me, I am happy listening to classic jazz that was unavailable in vinyl. AND that sounds lots better than it could on dusty old '78s or LP salvaged from the 50s. Do you want to know what a Blue Note LP from 55 sounds like now, if you can find it? --jks please ignore what Eric and other luddites tell you about CD sound quality because it is far better than that of tapes and LPs. listening to a live performance is the only "real" sound, but that comes at the price of travel, admission, audience disturbances, etc. for some people, CDs are "too perfect" since the engineer can correct minor errors of the performers w/o retakes. (i remember (classic guitarist) Julian Bream saying, "I have a hard time keeping up to my recordings!") is that sound "bad"? the luddites will always insist that the pops, scratches and breaks "sound good". they probably still use washboards too! just ignore them. Well, it might not be the pops, scratches and breaks that appeal. Popular music is, like the ads say, a sorta soundtrack to a person's life - especially during that apprentice-snogging/leaving-home period (at least they're the bits that stand out to me). Music's job, in part at least, is to bloody well sound like it used to. The Led Zeppelin twin-set remastered CD bloody well doesn't! Bugger Jimmy Page's fingers tracing the fretboard between cords! That wasn't in the original! And what about all those bands who were engineered to sound best on car radios (a pretty sensible option in the sixties-seventies)? Didn't the Byrds like that Rickenbacker/Vox jangle precisely because it stood out on the ol' trannie? That ain't so much luddite thinking as mid-life crisis, I know, but you take my point ... Cheers, Rob. _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
luddites abound here
hey, if vacuum tube radios, washboards, Stanley-steamers and LPs turn you on, then go for them! "it's a democracy", the conservatives say, so no way can the technocrats spoil luddite fun except to make it expensive to buy old fashions! cutting-edge progressive technologist -Original Message- From: Rob Schaap [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 11:10 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:5668] Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: needs Hi again, Norm, please ignore what Eric and other luddites tell you about CD sound quality because it is far better than that of tapes and LPs. listening to a live performance is the only "real" sound, but that comes at the price of travel, admission, audience disturbances, etc. for some people, CDs are "too perfect" since the engineer can correct minor errors of the performers w/o retakes. (i remember (classic guitarist) Julian Bream saying, "I have a hard time keeping up to my recordings!") is that sound "bad"? the luddites will always insist that the pops, scratches and breaks "sound good". they probably still use washboards too! just ignore them. Well, it might not be the pops, scratches and breaks that appeal. Popular music is, like the ads say, a sorta soundtrack to a person's life - especially during that apprentice-snogging/leaving-home period (at least they're the bits that stand out to me). Music's job, in part at least, is to bloody well sound like it used to. The Led Zeppelin twin-set remastered CD bloody well doesn't! Bugger Jimmy Page's fingers tracing the fretboard between cords! That wasn't in the original! And what about all those bands who were engineered to sound best on car radios (a pretty sensible option in the sixties-seventies)? Didn't the Byrds like that Rickenbacker/Vox jangle precisely because it stood out on the ol' trannie? That ain't so much luddite thinking as mid-life crisis, I know, but you take my point ... Cheers, Rob.
Re: co-ops + human behavior
Oh, Norm, stop the silly bad sociobiology. Competitive behavior is
"programmed" into us, but it is triggered only in certain circumstances.
Violent behavior is likewise "programmed: into us, but we don't say, well in
that case, let's legalize assault and murder! Rather, we craete social and
legal incentives to minimize and punish the behavior where it is bad and
direct it into harmless channels where it is not, e.g., martial arts. --jks
thanks for the reference. i'll put the Encyclopedia of PE on my list that
seems to grow faster than my purchases. no wonder my psychiatrist daughter
calls me a "bookaholic". (so how can i refute a Board-certified shrink?)
interesting you mention the Mondragon market because Chomsky is always
singing praises to it and Orwell's "Homage to ?" - about the workers' co-op
movements in Spain prior to being crushed by Franco. that is also on my
list.
with all these persuasive co-op comments from listers, though, i'm still
missing an important ingredient on people's motivations for cooperative vs.
competitive behavior that underlies all discussions of social institutions,
including co-ops, i.e., the genetic ("nature") causes and environmental
("nurture") causes of cooperative and competitive behavior.
co-ops may be limited by people's limited motivation for cooperation with
each other. e.g, if we are 25% genetically programmed to cooperate with
people (for survival purposes) and 75%% genetically programmed to compete
with people (again, for survival purposes), then cooperative ventures will
always be subordinate to competitive ventures on the average. if this
assumption is true, then no matter how much leftists try to change the
environment ("culture") to promote more cooperation and less competition,
their efforts will always be limited by "human nature" (genetic
programming).
an extension of this assumption is that leftist ventures to make classless,
egalitarian, non-hierarchical societies are hopeless dreams.
norm
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 10:00 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:5649] Re: Re: co-ops
Norm,
If you want to study co-ops as a system, complete with their own
credit union bank and education system, have a look at the history
and success of the Mondragon co-ops in Spain. With all their
limitations, this is probably the best example of what you are
looking for. I would also refer you to the Encyclopedia of Political
Economy which has a digest not only of Mondragon, market
socialism, social ownership, Marxian political economy and just
about everything else you have asked about complete with short
bibliographies on each topic. It is an invaluable resource.
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba
_
Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: needs
The reason music used to sound like vinyl is that it was on vinyl, pops, scratches, and all. But if you want to listen to final, feel free. Me, I am happy listening to classic jazz that was unavailable in vinyl. AND that sounds lots better than it could on dusty old '78s or LP salvaged from the 50s. Do you want to know what a Blue Note LP from 55 sounds like now, if you can find it? --jks Actually, the problem is that the record companies have been loath to reissue classic jazz albums on CD. I had a vast collection of vinyl that I was forced to sell because of a shortage of space in my apartment. A good portion of these were African and Latin music records that will never reappear because the artists are not considered commercial. The jazz situation is even worse. One of the greatest jazz records ever made was a collection of Lionel Hampton's small group sides in the late 30s and 40s. It has never been reissued, nor have the great Decca collection of big bands from Jimmy Lunceford to Chick Webb. The record industry has tended to hew to the bottom line, just as have classical and jazz-oriented FM stations. That is the reason you will never hear Webern on WQXR, the NY Times station or old Herbie Nichols records on WBGO, the local jazz station. As far as the audio quality is concerned, I have to say that I preferred the sound of records on my old SOTA turntable with an Accuphase moving coil cartridge, but I could never get used to the ticks and pops which seemed to develop no matter how careful I was in handling the records. They seemed to materialize out of nowhere like wire hangers in my closet. (Do hangers procreate?) I also never got used to getting up and turning over a record after 20 minutes. So now I have a CD player made by Rotel, a high-end manufacturer. It replaced a Philips CD player, my first. In my bedroom I have a Marantz. All of these fucking machines are plagued with one glitch or another. Either a CD mistracks or I hear odd fadeouts for no explicable reason. In the best of all possible worlds, the Internet would supply music over cable without the need for such mechanical devices. There would be a thousand channels, each oriented to a particular niche like gypsy jazz or Congolese soukous. No advertising either. That's why we need a worldwide proletarian revolution and no messing around with markets either. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Weber's Genteel Racism
Ricardo:
But in none is racism the basis of their ideas.
I don't argue that "Weber was a racist, therefore he believed that
'European rationality' was the cause of the rise of capitalism the
'West.'" That would be putting the cart before the horse, repeating
Weber's intellectual crime. As I said in a reply to Rob a while ago,
to attribute the origin of freedom to "Europeans" "European
culture" is akin to attributing the origin of racism to "white men"
"white men's culture." Both are instances of anachronism run amok,
fundamental attributional errors.
Primitive accumulation (enclosure + enslavement) created so-called
"Europeans," of whom Weber was one. As Marx allows us to see
(especially in the _Grundrisse_ _Capital_), it was an effect of
commodity fetishism to project, ahistorically, the categories that
emerged because of the rise of capitalism ("economy," "Europe,"
"sexuality," etc.) back upon pre-capitalist societies, making the
categories seem as if they were eternal, natural kinds (or at least
coterminous with human history). Thus, in Weber's mind, Thucydides
(!) was a man of the "Occident," standing in contrast to the
"Orient": "Only in the West does science exist at a stage of
development which we recognize today as validThe highly developed
historical scholarship of China did not have the method of
Thucydides[All] Indian political thought was lacking
in...rational concepts" (Max Weber, _The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism_). This despite the fact that it could _not_
have occurred to Thucydides himself to divide the world between the
"Occident" the "Orient," the "West" the rest, "rational
Europeans" "irrational Europeans," just as it could _not_ have
occurred to Socrates -- or even to Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) --
to define himself as "gay" in contrast to "straight"!
Edward Said -- who criticizes those who think like Weber feel
racial superiority -- committed the same anachronistic error as
Weber's, falsely attributing abstractions created by capitalism to
the world before capitalism:
+ Subject: Orientalism Revisited
(was RE: G. Bush: US in Holy War Against Iraq?)
From: Yoshie Furuhashi ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Date: Sat Jan 22 2000 - 16:43:55 EST
From Steve to Daniel:
Ahmad is not actually capable of
critiquing Said on theoretical grounds,
This just seems to be assertion, any examples?
The main theoretical ground of Aijaz Ahmad's critique of Said's
_Orientalism_ is that Said, despite his nod of recognition in the
direction of Gramsci, fails to take a historical materialist approach
to the critique of Orientalism. Said writes: "Almost from earliest
times in Europe the Orient was something more than what was
empirically known about it" (55). Said goes on to produce his
"evidence" that Orientalism existed "from earliest times in Europe"
by turning to ancient Greek drama:
* Two of the most profoundly influential qualities associated
with the East appear in Aeschylus's _The Persians_, the earliest
Athenian play extant, and in _The Bacchae_ of Euripides, the very
last one extant. Aeschylus portrays the sense of disaster overcoming
the Persians when they learn that their armies, led by King Xerxes,
have been destroyed by the Greeks. The chorus sings the following
ode:
Now all Asia's land
Moans in emptiness.
Xerxes led forth, oh oh!
Xerxes' plans have all miscarried
In ships of the sea.
Why did Darius then
Bring no harm to his men
When he led them into battle,
That beloved leader of men from Susa?
What matters here is that Asia speaks through and by virtue of the
European imagination, which is depicted as victorious over Asia, that
hostile "other" world beyond the seas. To Asia are given the
feelings of emptiness, loss, and disaster that seem thereafter to
reward Oriental challenges to the West; and also, the lament that in
some glorious past Asia fared better, was itself victorious over
Europe. (Said 56) *
Now, Said's reading of _The Persians_ is patently anachronistic. The
Athenians who staged _The Persians_ did not possess what Said calls
"the European imagination." They thought of themselves in terms of
class, gender, city state, and Hellene; "Europe" as (we think) we
know it did not exist in ancient Greece, much less "the European
imagination"! _The Persians_ does express Athens's pride in its
democratic virtue (which Aeschylus credits for a victory over
Persia), but many Athenians were proud of its democracy, not because
they thought their "European" virtue made them democratic unlike the
Persians, but because they often felt, rightly or wrongly, superior
to all other peoples, including free citizens of other great Greek
city states such as Sparta, to say nothing of slaves denizens of
lesser states like Melos. In fact, _The Persians_ is remarkable in
its empathetic identification with the defeated Persians, whose
sorrows are compellingly portrayed, in
Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
At 10:46 AM 12/6/00 -0500, you wrote: notice, david shemano (the conservative who was brave enough to comment in this nest of thieves) that the leftie cut you down quickly by not even deigning to remember your name. that's par social etiquette for lefties, but please don't be piqued by their insolence. just remember that they've been rolled so often and so long that their natural instinct is to shoot first and ask questions later. conservatives, having had the upper hand for 1000 years, can afford to magnanimously turn the other cheek. norm, it's important to note that Rob apologized for losing his name. -Original Message- From: Rob Schaap [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 10:53 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:5665] Re: RE: RE: Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting) Dear conservative lurker (apologies for losing your name), Since you asked, I am a conservative who lurks on this list, . . . Lurk not, brave sir! Tell us why the economy's healthy. Or why it's not. Or what, in the heady dynamics around and within us, represents the status quo to which you are committed enough to call yourself a conservative. I'm not being rhetorical (though I admit years on mailing lists has a way of making one's every word look it), I wanna know! I have it in me, too, y'see. Hate it when they move the furniture, reckon popular music just doesn't cut it these days, and am sure the only thing that has actually got better in the last thirty years is the consistency of Continental CuppaSoup ... also wary of Utopians, think Ed Burke had some good points, and share Oakeshott's fear of narrow rationalism. But I just don't see where the likes of Sowell, Rand or The Shrub offer succuour. Noblesse oblige is not even a myth any more, and neoliberalism seems a most radical programme to me (yeah, it may have been warming us towards boiling point for decades now, like that frog in the saucepan, but what dramatic changes the last three deades have wrought, eh?) Cheers, Rob. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Energy and politics.
This I fear is going to seem doubly or triply provincial. First it is California centered, second energy centered, and third USA centered. But here goes. Wholesale electric prices in California have moved in a year from 2.5 cents to 25 cents. Sort of on a rough average, actually high at the moment but will get to that average on the current trajectory.. (Spikes have been as high as 12 dollars or more.) There is a consumer backlash and that will explode into a gigantic one as this plays out. Now natural gas prices nationally have moved from around $2.25 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) twelve to fifteen months ago to around $6.00/mcf nationally. A spot trade yesterday in the west was around 27 or 28 dollars. Gas is burned to make electricity, so electricity is inflate in price. On top of that, gas to burn under electric boilers is considered a lower priority than what is used in homes and schools, so the electric power plants get curtailed on cold days, driving electric prices even higher and also driving the gas price higher as the power plants try to buy gas out of the priority queue. Obviously this is a big consumer issue. But it seems to me bigger than that. As all of the above shows up in the monthly bills, California residents and politicians are going to want a fix. Gov. Davis is demanding that the federal regulators (FERC) force the power wholesalers to disgorge their profits of the past ten months. FERC isn't going to do that -- especially since Bush now seems elected. FERC has always been a front for the oil and gas interests and will certainly get more so as Bush appointees gradually move in. Privatization? Politicians in Calif -- including the Governor -- are speaking openly of publically-owned power plants as a way of alleviating the electric debacle. This is in good part posturing, and also used as a threat to FERC -- i. e. telling FERC that to save the free market it better give some (short-run) consumer relief. But if a fix doesn't show up, public investment in electric power could actually unfold. This California problem is showing up elsewhere in the states, of course. Prices are jumping in Massachusetts and will jump again. New York had a big price increase and was spared a worse one only by a mild summer. In the Northwest, there have been large temporary lay-offs this past year as paper mills and aluminum smelters chose to shut down rather than pay the electric price. There have been permanent lay-offs as well, as some employers couldn't find a wholesale contract at a price that would permit operation and simply closed down. Butte, Montana was hit with this. In Ohio steel plants closed briefly during the summer because of high electric prices. We can't build our way out of high electric prices because the investors aren't dumb enough to kill the goose by creating excess capacity. (Well, maybe they are, but we'll get from oligopoly to tight oligopoly soon enough to take care of that.) Down the road, energy -- especially electric and gas -- will move from the control of actual producers to international brokers -- this is already happening in a big way. So things will get worse. Enron and others will completely control electric prices and control the gas that is used to make electricity. I understand all this. We are on a path that heads over the cliff. But what I'm wondering is how will the politics of this play out over the next few years? Public ownership? Seems too much of a break with the free market for the American public. Will coal to generate electricity come back in a major way? Seems likely, but coal is much more of a climate threat than natural gas, which itself is, of course, a fossil fuel. If coal comes back, then how does the USA get anywhere near compliance with whatever finally happens post-Kyoto? And will the public in the USA, provincial as it is, allow global warming to accelerate as it watches the very concrete effects that will soon be apparent? If it doesn't, what will be the policy moves? Trains insteead of SUVs? That's one possibility, remote as Doug considers it. And remote in time, in any event. Let me conclude by saying that I think this is heralding a major political earthquake. But I have no sense of what the place will look like after the first few shock waves. Any ideas? Gene Coyle
Re: Django + Grappelli
At 09:31 AM 12/6/00 -0500, you wrote: hey, what's wrong with Marilyn Manson? or 'N Sync? or Pauly Shore? Do you want to step _outside_ and say that? - so that the youngsters in this forum don't consider me insufferably uncool, i have plenty of "classic rock" in my CD collection. don't dig the newer stuff though; it seems more like ranting than singing! I hope people know that I was joking when I acted aggrieved in the quote with the "" above. I've never heard Manson's music, but from what I've heard about it, it's dreck. Alice Cooper didn't need an imitator. give me the Clash or Bob Dylan any day! (I won't bore you with my neo-folk/countrywestern tastes. But long live Robert Earl Keen and Tom Russell!) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism (was Re: weber)
Wojtek: Kelley: Contrary to some opinions, Max Weber' theories pretty much in line with Karl Marx's view of capitalism, excpet that Weber focuses on the role of state in capitalist development, which btw latter-day-marxists also recognize. Yoshie: You do not understand, comrade. Weber was a racist pig who used the word "negro." We must condemn his blasphemous theories. The problem is that Max Weber argues that rationality peculiar to the so-called "Occident" gave rise to the modern state: "[One who is] a product of modern European civilization, studying any problem of universal history, is bound to ask himself to what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development having _universal_ significance and value[The] feudal state...has only been known to our culture...In fact the State itself...is known [in the full sense] only in the Occident. And the same is true of the most fateful force in our modern life, capitalism" (Weber, _The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism_). It is anachronistic culturalist to make capitalist rationality -- racialized into "European rationality" by Weber Co. -- the cause of capitalism. It is likewise anachronistic culturalist to make an idea -- rationality -- the cause of the modern state. The "East" used to be a career, as Disraeli said. Now, the "West" is a fetish of intellectual investors in the Blessings-of-the-Civilization Trust. Yoshie P.S. The role of the state in capitalist development is well recognized by our contemporary Marxists such as Robert Brenner (_Merchants Revolution_), Michael Perelman (_The Invention of Capitalism_), Doug Henwood (_Wall Street_) and variously studied in a non-Eurocentric fashion.
Re: co-ops + human behavior
At 10:27 AM 12/6/00 -0500, you wrote:
thanks for the reference. i'll put the Encyclopedia of PE on my list that
seems to grow faster than my purchases. no wonder my psychiatrist daughter
calls me a "bookaholic". (so how can i refute a Board-certified shrink?)
interesting you mention the Mondragon market because Chomsky is always
singing praises to it and Orwell's "Homage to ?" - about the workers' co-op...
it's "Homage to Catalonia." BTW, I wouldn't say that the Barcelonan co-ops
had stabilized to do regular production. Further, the book's more about
politics than about economics. It's a good book though.
Speaking of good books, the Encyclopedia of PE is excellent. Look for the
first article in volume I, along with two others that stand above the herd.
with all these persuasive co-op comments from listers, though, i'm still
missing an important ingredient on people's motivations for cooperative vs.
competitive behavior that underlies all discussions of social institutions,
including co-ops, i.e., the genetic ("nature") causes and environmental
("nurture") causes of cooperative and competitive behavior.
co-ops may be limited by people's limited motivation for cooperation with
each other. e.g, if we are 25% genetically programmed to cooperate with
people (for survival purposes) and 75%% genetically programmed to compete
with people (again, for survival purposes), then cooperative ventures will
always be subordinate to competitive ventures on the average.
As Stephen J. Gould points out, it's a mistake to quantify such things in
biology and I haven't the slightest idea of where you got these numbers
from. In any case, competition can take many forms. It doesn't have to be
the aggressive "take no prisoners" kind of competition encouraged by
capitalism.
if this
assumption is true, then no matter how much leftists try to change the
environment ("culture") to promote more cooperation and less competition,
their efforts will always be limited by "human nature" (genetic
programming).
even capitalists cooperate a lot when they're not directly competing. As
I've noted before, there are a lot of industry self-regulation
organizations in the US economy (which are almost entirely ignored by the
economics textbooks -- I add the "almost" because I haven't read anything
close to all of them). There are all sorts of strategic alliances. There
are all sorts of political alliances.
It's impossible for a human being to make objective generalizations about
"human nature" because each of us is constrained and shaped by the societal
environment. People in different societies make different societies make
different generalizations. People living in an individualistic society such
as the US assume that people are more competitive than people in Japan do,
for example. Also these assertions about the nature of human nature seem to
vary in history.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Weber's Genteel Racism
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: That certain unfortunate "racist" remarks exist in Weber is beyond dispute. Similar remarks can be found in Diderot, Kant, Hegel, and others, including Marx (beside which Weber's seem pale). But in none is racism the basis of their ideas. In W's case they are strictly speculative and marginal. Today we would not tolerate such remarks because we are more progressive and are socialized not to think that way (I repeat we are *socialized* not to think that way;it is not that, as Devine thinks, some of us are damned to be racists while others, like him, are chosen not to be). So let us not impose our own ethical standards on past thinkers. This is a total misrepresentation of my views. (It would be more accurate to say that I like Marilyn Manson's "music.") But I have learned not to waste any time on Ricardo, so I see no point in explaining what my views really are. But as they say in Hollywood, any publicity is good, as long as they spell your name right. So Ricardo's spelling ability should be praised. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Sapir-Whorf Redux! (was Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism)
At 10:32 PM 12/5/00 -0500, Yoshie quotes Jim Blaut. IMHO, Blaut is one of those writers who in three opening paragraphs manages to convince the readers that reading the remaining n pages is the utter waste of their time. wojtek I've had my share of disagreement with the late lamented Jim M. Blaut, for I objected to his equation of "historical priority" with "superiority," I still do. However, Jim had a virtue of _believing in neither the Sapir-Whorf thesis nor Max Weber_. Anyone who believes in the magical powers of the so-called "European civilization" -- to say nothing of the miraculous virtues of double-entry book-keeping -- is not in a position to criticize believers in the Sapir-Whorf brand of linguistic determinism. It is utterly ridiculous to think -- as Kelley does -- that one can criticize Sapir Whorf by appealing to Weber!!! Yoshie
RE: Why I am here
I have no problem at all w/your being here, but I have to say I am curious as to why. mbs I know what conservatives and libertarians think and why they think as they do. But I believe that truth and knowledge, or as close as we can get to truth and knowledge, comes from hearing both sides of the story, subjecting them both to critical examination and reaching an independent conclusion. It's my own version of the dialectical process. It's also fun watching lefties arguing with lefties. David Shemano
Re: Sale of slaves was unders the control of African states andelites
Ricardo: Sorry, I don't like to take prisoners when in a good mood. The left does not need a mythical (anti-Marxist) view about the "bad" Europeans and the "good" Africans: No one believes in "'bad' Europeans 'good' Africans." "The Negro is not. Any more than the White Man," as Frantz Fanon said in _Black Skin, White Masks_. "My examination of the military and political relations between Africans and Europeans concludes that Africans controlled the nature of their interactions with Europe. Europeans did not possess the military power to force Africans to participate in any type of trade in which their leaders did not wish to engage. Therefore all African trade with the Atlantic, including the slave trade, *had to be voluntary*. Finally, a careful look at the slave trade and the process of acquisition of slaves argues that slaves *had long been used in African societies*, that African political systems placed great importance on the legal relationships of slavery for political purposes, and that relatively large numbers of people were likely to be slaves at any one time. Because so much of the process of acquisition, transfer, and sale of slaves was under the control of African states and elites, they were able to protect themselves from the demographic impact and transfer the considerable social dislocations to poorer members of their own societies" John Thornton in *Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1640* In 1400, neither "Europeans" nor "Africans" existed. Back then, no one thought of himself or herself in such terms. It took centuries that followed the origin of capitalism before folks who lived in the areas that have come to be called "Europe" "Africa" respectively began to think of themselves as "Europeans" "Africans." And it is the growth of the Atlantic slave trade chattel slave production under the new mode of production called capitalism that gave rise to categories "Europeans" "Africans." The passage quoted from John Thornton's work is evidence that for those who lived in the area that has come to be called "Africa" between 1400 and 1640, what mattered was *classes, kins, tribes, states,* for they were innocent of such dichotomies as "Africans" "Europeans." Yoshie
Re: Brenner is simply wrong!
In place of Weber's anachronistic "theory," I recommend Robert Brenner's Ellen Wood's non-Eurocentric accounts of the origin of capitalism. Interesting that you say this considering that Blaut dedicates a whole chapter to Brenner's "eurocentrism". What matters to me, however, is that the available historical sources are flatly, indisputably against Brenner's views, particularly those on the peasantry, as I started to demonstrate here last month. Let's read what he says: * In England, as throughout most of western Europe, the peasantry were able by the mid-fifteenth century, through flight and resistance, definitively to break feudal controls over their mobility and to win full freedom. Indeed, peasant tenants at this time were striving hard for full and essentially freehold control over their customary tenements, and were not far from achieving it. The elimination of unfreedom meant the end of labour services and of arbitrary tallages. This story is misleading. What B has in mind is the change from villein tenure to copyhold and freehold tenures. Before 1400, a sizable number of peasants were villein tenants with 'unfree' tenures holding their land 'at the will of the lord', and performing labor services. By the 1500s, most cases of villein tenure had ended and almost all direct labor services and payments in kind had been commuted. But note that B says that peasants did not quite achieve freehold tenure; and if you keep reading his article, you will find that he thinks they really attained copyhold tenure, which simply means that when the land had been transferred from father to so, the son now had a copy of the transaction which was recorded in the manorial court, so the land was no longer held 'at will' but 'by copy'. But copyholders were not all alike. Some were still 'unfree' because they were subject (on alienation) to arbitrary fines 'at the will of the lord', but others were nearly free because they were subject to specific fines which were usually small. Brenner continues (thanks Yoshie for the appropriate passages): Moreover, rent _per se_ (_redditus_) was fixed by custom, and subject to declining long-term value in the face of inflation. Which brings me to the next crucial point. B gives the impression that all peasants in post-1500 England held their land 'by custom of the manor' and that their land was subject to common property rights. B continues: There were in the long run, however, two major strategies available to the landlord to prevent the loss of the land to peasant freehold. you see, they had not yet achieved full freehold tenure (freehold means land subject to private property rights, land which is not governed by custom) In the first place, the demographic collapse of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries left vacant many former customary peasant holdings. It appears often to have been possible for the landlords simply to appropriate these and add them to their demesnes. In this way a great deal of land was simply removed from the "customary sector" and added to the "leasehold sector", thus thwarting in advance a possible evolution towards freehold, and substantially reducing the area of land which potentially could be subjected to essentially peasant proprietorship I have to thank Yoshie again as this passage really clarifies Wood's strange argument that leasehold tenures were "imposed" on the peasantry. I was confused because she acknowledged it was the "yeomen" (richer peasants) who became leasehold tenants (and the yeoman, for me, were mainly freeholders outside the "customary sector") but now I know she has in mind yeomen who were part of the "customary sector". She needs to make this argument because the origin of capitalism had to be something that was imposed, and it was imposed only insofar as it came through leasehold tenures imposed against customary peasants. In the second place, one crucial loophole often remained open to those landlords who sought to undermine the freehold-tending claims of the customary tenants who still remained on their lands and clung to their holdings. They could insist on the right to charge fines at will whenever peasant land was conveyed -- that is, in sales or on inheritance. Indeed, in the end entry fines often appear to have provided the landlords with the lever they needed to dispose of customary peasant tenants, for in the long run fines could be substituted for competitive commercial rents. See what I mean; he's referring to the copyholders against whom landlords could still impose arbitrary fines. Note, too, that he thinks that competitive commercial rents (leasehold tenures) were imposed on customary peasants. This whole argument is simply wrong. In the early sixteenth century, about a quarter of all tenants were freeholders...and the argument I made using Tawney follows.
the cycle returns
LA TIMES/ December 6, 2000 Cyclically, We're Back to the Past By EDWARD E. LEAMER ellipsis -- for the whole thing, see http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20001206/t000116760.html Not so fast. The personal productivity tools and communication devices of the New Economy do seem to have magical powers, but these powers do not end the business cycle. Quite the contrary; the New Economy has experienced a classic boom-and-bust cycle that is extraordinary only in its amplitude and brevity. The vivid image of the New Economy that is etched on most of our minds is the graph of the Nasdaq, which rose from 2,000 in January 1999 to 5,000 in April 2000 and is now back to 2,500. There is a reason for this wild ride. In the Old Economy, the assets were structures and equipment, which take time to build and have substantial salvage value. The time to build slows the ride up, and the salvage value softens the landing. In the New Economy, the assets have been Internet ideas. These ideas seem to have emerged effortlessly and instantaneously from the minds of "Interpreneurs," which has made for a wild ride up. But these ideas have very little salvage value; only a mascot is left from Pets.com. This has made for a wild ride down and probably a hard landing. Last year's New Economy question was "Is the productivity real?" Today's humbled question is "How big will be the spillover?" Will the collapse of the stock markets and the bankruptcy cycle in the dot-coms create a tidal wave or only an imperceptible ripple? My view is that the wave is big enough to end the Bush-Clinton expansion in 2001. Indeed, it is the New Economy boom that kept the Bush-Clinton expansion from ending in 1996. Those five extra years of expansion have allowed more overbuilding and a more precarious situation, especially in autos and other durables. The downturn doesn't have to be very serious. The greater stability of the economy since 1982 is the primary reason to believe that the downturn will be short and shallow. Dealing with our external deficit, however, could make the downturn longer and deeper. Today, net foreign investment exceeds $400 billion, which is more than 4% of GDP. If global investors lose interest in acquiring U.S. assets, this external deficit has to close, meaning we either have to export more or import less. If global investors allow us the time, we can close the deficit by slowly expanding exports more rapidly than imports, as we did in the 1980s, without serious adjustment problems. If global investors suddenly lose interest, then the adjustment has to be more rapid, which means that it is mostly imports that have to do the job. This would require an unhappy combination of an income effect and price effect: lower GDP and more inflation from a weakening dollar. Think Mexico in 1995. This is very bad news for Greenspan. The stability of the U.S. economy since 1982 is at least partly attributable to more forward-looking Federal Reserve policy. Prior to 1982, the Fed had acted like the homeowner who constantly adjusts the thermostat based on the current temperature of the house, and the temperature is never right. Especially under Greenspan, the Fed has adjusted the thermostat in anticipation of future warming or cooling needs, and the temperature has been much more stable and comfortable. Now Greenspan, standing at the thermostat, sees a future that needs both more heating and more cooling. On Tuesday, he issued an elliptical promise to "remain alert to the possibility that weakening asset values could signal or precipitate excessive softening." Investors optimistically took that Greenspeak to mean that they were enlisted into the front lines to fight the coming recession and that they would go into that battle with lower interest rates. Though Greenspan may want to lower interest rates to fight off the looming recession, he may also want to raise interest rates to fight off the looming devaluation of the dollar and the inflation it may bring. Then again, he may want to slam the thermostat with a hammer because it doesn't seem to be working like it used to; it is mostly gyrations in equities markets, not bond markets, that are driving this cycle. Thus 2001 promises to give old meaning to the New Economy acronyms B2B and B2C: Back 2 Bankruptcies and Back 2 Cycles. - - - Edward E. Leamer Is a Professor of Management at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Anderson Business Forecast Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
further on energy
A bit more info on electric prices: There was electricity trading yesterday at the Mid-Columbia hub (Northwest USA) at $1.20 per kWh. This is up from 2.5 cents or less a year ago. That's a spot price, and a brief spike, but there is also a cold wave hitting the northwest and people in Seattle and elsewhere are going to feel this in the wallet. There is also some fear that the lights might not stay on -- i. e. there will be an absolute shortage. And that means to protect human life they'll run more water through the turbines on the big dams and doom another unknown number of salmon. Gene Coyle
RE: Why I am here
Why are there only two sides? Andrew Austin Green Bay, WI -Original Message- From: David Shemano [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 11:38 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Why I am here I have no problem at all w/your being here, but I have to say I am curious as to why. mbs I know what conservatives and libertarians think and why they think as they do. But I believe that truth and knowledge, or as close as we can get to truth and knowledge, comes from hearing both sides of the story, subjecting them both to critical examination and reaching an independent conclusion. It's my own version of the dialectical process. It's also fun watching lefties arguing with lefties. David Shemano
Re: Weber's Genteel Racism
so I see no point in explaining what my views really are. really? after 20-25 posts per day to pen-l?
Re: Sale of slaves was unders the control of African states and elites
In 1400, neither "Europeans" nor "Africans" existed. Everyone else in this list knows what Thornton means, so let's not play games.
Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism (was Re: weber)
Wojtek: But I thought this guy didn't exist in pen-l either? Wasn't he kicked out because some people here thought he was a racist pig who used the word "negro."
Re: RE: Why I am here
At 09:37 AM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: It's also fun watching lefties arguing with lefties. so we have to be on our best behavior... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism (was Re: weber)
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Wojtek: But I thought this guy didn't exist in pen-l either? Wasn't he kicked out because some people here thought he If Wojtek was booted, I'm more confused than ever about why you haven't been. Doug
Re: Cyborg variations
Ian Murray wrote: that BC weed shouldn't be given to islanders. Max Sawicky thinks my hallucinations come from eating too much beans. Seriously, though, they are not MY hallucinations. The mythological (or neurotic) cyborg represents something real but unspeakable. A search on two search engines indicates that there are a little more than one and a half times as many web pages containing the terms cyborg and manifesto as there are pages containing commodity and fetish. As an article in a recent Wired magazine noted, Donna Haraway's 1984 essay, The Cyborg Manifesto, "has become part of the undergraduate curriculum at countless universities." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffharaway.html To me, Haraway's essay appears as an untenable hash of undigested concepts, marxish/feminish gleanings, fey posturing and unmitigated hype. I suspect, however, that if I hired a hall and invited her to give a lecture, it would attract a large audience. If I invited Moishe Postone, I might be able to round up a few friends (maybe Ian would drive up from Seattle). This realization both repels me and attracts me. There is something here I think I can almost put my finger on. For all the cyber-this and cyber-that we've seen in the eternity since the internet blossomed, there doesn't seem to be a lot of clear realization that Norbert Wiener coined the term cybernetics to refer to the computer's function as a _control mechanism_. What the mechanism ultimately controls, according to Marx, is a labour process. The grotesque image of a fusion of body and machine turns out to be not a new idea at all but a clearly developed theme in Marx's discussion of the capitalist production process. It is symptomatic that Haraway "discovers" and superficially glosses something that Marx dissected thoroughly more than a hundred years earlier, just as Gary Becker churns out tomes on a fantasy of "human capital" that Marx had tossed out in two sentences. In spite of her declared intentions, Haraway's cyborg IS the heroic proletariat of traditional Marxism. So, in a perverse way, is Becker's wily accumulator of human capital. That heroic proletariat is not quite yet Marx's proletariat, though. It is, rather, an affirmation from "without" of a subjectivity that needs to be criticized from within. I showed a Ukrainian artist a Chase National Bank advertisement promoting profit sharing from a 1946 Fortune magazine and she laughed, "socialist realism!" which had been exactly my reaction and was the reason I had showed it to her. Perhaps smoking a little BC weed would make it easier to visualize the all-encompassing cultural bolshevization that presents itself as ersatz liberal capitalist restoration. What am I trying to say? It has something to do with how ripe the fruit is. We are not at the End of History as Francis Fukuyama supposed a decade ago but tantalizingly close to its beginning. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: needs
(i remember (classic guitarist) Julian Bream saying, "I have a hard time keeping up to my recordings!") Yeah, but that's because he is a notoriously erratic performer anyhow... and I bet he said that before the era of CDs.
Re: Re: Lucky USA prepares for a soft landing
Meanwhile possible schemes for greater global democratic control of the world economy are criticised by ultra-leftists, some in the name of Marxism, as reformist, even though they have no strategy for precipitating the instant definitive world revolution against capitalism. Chris Burford Ultra-left? No, mate, those of us who want to nix the embryonic world state just think you fix-it folk don't have a serious analysis of the balance of forces. Lou's mom does, at least. Where's this "greater democratic control" these days?!
RE: Microsoft
Could anyone give me in a short one or two paragraph digest a) what was Microsoft charged with; b) what was it convicted of; and c) what was the remedy proposed. i.e. what sin against neoclassical orthodoxy did it transend. Very simply, Microsoft was charged with being a monopoly and engaging in anticompetitive behavior. (Under the antitrust laws, you can be a monopoly as long as you do not engage in any anticompetitive behavior.) When it comes down to it, the alleged anticompetitive behavior they are accused of was entering into illegal "tying" arrangements. They told the computer manufacturers (Dell, IBM, Gateway, etc.) that if you want the Windows operating sytem, you have to include the Internet Explorer application with the package (i.e. they "tied" the purchase of Windows, in which they held a monopoly, to the purchase of Explorer, in which they did not have a monopoly, thereby unfairly increasing their monopoly profit). Microsoft did so because they were concerned that if Netscape became too popular, computer users could eventually run their computers straight off the internet and not require Windows. The Judge found that the requirement that Explorer be included with Windows was an illegal tying arrangment and he agreed to the remedy proposed by the Department of Justice -- the separation of Microsoft into two separate companies: (1) one that developes and markets the operating system (Windows), and (2) one that develops and markets applications (Word, Explorer, etc.). David Shemano
RE: Re: RE: Why I am here
At 09:37 AM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: It's also fun watching lefties arguing with lefties. so we have to be on our best behavior... Don't change for me. I promise not to reveal anything to the members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. David Shemano
Re: Re: Weber's Genteel Racism
work is the notion of rationality. Only in Western Europe did a formal rational orientation penetrate every sphere of life. The rise of this orientation is the *explanadum* of his historical analyses, the phenomenom that he thinks requires explanation if we want to understand the peculiarity of the West. Capital accounting symbolized by double entry bookkeeping is crucial to this explanation because it is this very practice which directly exhibits this orientation in the sphere of economic life. Double-entry bookkeeping, therefore, cannot be define as just another empirical-factor in the rise of modern capitalism. But neither should one pretend that a formal rational orientation exists within the economy simply because one has detected the practice of double-entry. For double-entry may be present yet capital accounting may be limited by a whole range of factors like the absence of free labor and mechanized technology. yeah, well, some folks would prefer to misread "rationalized accounting mechanisms" or "mechanisms of rational accounting" (words i used in another context) as reducible to double-entry bookeeping. that is not, at all, what weber was on about, as you note. it was about *rationalized* capitalism. for him that meant several things: standardization (as in mesures, times, weights), predictability, calculability, efficiency, control. good luck with hab (youagain habermas, as i call him). true, you can't get hab without getting weber. you can't get hab w/o getting a lot of other thinkers, too. but i suspect, for your purposes, weber is the one to focus on. kelley
Fwd: Job Openings
X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2000 11:09:39 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Julie Monroe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Job Openings - Out of State I. Worker Education Program Director, SEIU Local 285, Boston, MA Direct and develop cutting-edge education programs for a labor - management project of SEIU Local 285 and unionized Massachusetts healthcare employers! Current programs include a State-of-the-art Workplace Education Program (English for Speakers of Other Languages and Adult Basic Education classes), a dynamic union leadership skills development program, and a career ladders and training project for union members. General Statement of Duties: Responsibilities include seeking funding for, developing, implementing and directing workplace-based education, training and upgrading programs; supervising education staff; and overseeing all program budgets, finances and records. Outline of Duties: Oversee compliance with grants from all funding agencies. Administer budget. Direct WEP program staff and all program activities. Develop and implement fundraising plan. Establish and staff ongoing labor - management committees to oversee programs. Plan educational and training offerings. Assist in the planning, implementation and monitoring of all outreach, recruitment, counseling, assessment, enrollment and course completion activities. Develop procedures for evaluating and monitoring success of program and member progress. Serve as liaison between unions, work sites and educational providers. Develop union and work site leadership to work on WEP activities. Coordinate and chair WEP Advisory Board meetings and activities. Oversee program operations relating to record keeping of workers and students. work with union locals on long-term funding and program goals. Develop procedures and forms to assist in student career and educational plans. Provide feedback to work sites, union representatives, instructors, and union liaisons regarding success of program. Qualifications: Ability to work within a labor - management context. Commitment to education as a means to social change. Experience working with unions and commitment to union principles. 2 years administrative and/or supervisory experience. Ability to work independently within Board-established guidelines and mediate varying institutions and constituencies. Grant writing and grant management experience. Knowledge of healthcare worker training issue a plus. Experience running skills training, union training, and/or adult education programs for adult learners in non-traditional settings. Strong communication and leadership skills. Knowledge of Spanish or Hatian Creole a plus. Supervision: The Director will report to a joint labor-management advisory board and, under their policy direction, will be responsible for all the executive, administrative and financial functions of the program. Salary and Benefits: 50+ and outstanding benefits package Send resume, cover letter and 3 references ASAP to: Director, Worker Education Program, c/o SEIU Local 285, 21 Fellows St., Roxbury, MA 02119, fax (617) 541-6839. e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] No phone calls please. WE ARE AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER. Women and minority applicants are encouraged to apply. II. UNIVERSITY OF OREGON Director -Labor Education and Research Center The University of Oregon seeks a director for the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC). The Center was established in 1977 by the Oregon Legislature, on the recommendation of the Oregon State System of Higher Education. LERC¹s mission is to provide education programs and undertake research on the changing world of work and labor relations. LERC offers an extensive range of noncredit programs to labor unions and their members as well as other labor relations practitioners. LERC also conducts programs and classes on campus, including an internship program which places undergraduate students in learning experience programs with unions and community organizations. LERC conducts research and sponsored projects on labor and the work environment. Substantive areas of teaching and research include collective bargaining, occupational safety and health, dispute resolution, strategic planning, labor and politics, worker representation, and leadership skills. The main office of LERC is located on the UO campus in Eugene and LERC maintains a vigorous program at the UO Portland Center. The interdisciplinary faculty consists of the director, four full-time tenure-related faculty positions, one full-time adjunct, and numerous other adjunct instructors. There is an excellent support staff of 4.0 FTE. LERC is an autonomous department of the university, and the director reports to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. LERC is advised by a Labor Advisory Board consisting of the heads of key unions and labor organizations in Oregon. The Center enjoys an
Re: RE: Re: RE: Why I am here
At 10:58 AM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: At 09:37 AM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: It's also fun watching lefties arguing with lefties. so we have to be on our best behavior... Don't change for me. I promise not to reveal anything to the members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. actually, we all changed our behavior long ago (before you joined pen-l) in part of our nefarious plot to deceive the vast right-wing conspiracy (VRWC). So far it's been working: look who they appointed to run as their Presidential candidates in the US. No matter who wins, it's likely to undermine the power and effectiveness of the VRWC. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: NACLA and Colombia
Louis Proyect wrote: Now that many of the original founders have become responsible tenured professors with reputations to protect, the edge of some of these journals has grown dull. This is especially true of NACLA, which suffers the additional problem of identifying with a rightward drift in Latin American NACLA's Report on the Americas is now edited by the excellent Debbie Nathan, a very smart journalist who is eager to get lively writing into the pages of the magazine. Doug
Re: RE: Re: RE: Why I am here
At 10:58 AM 12/6/00 -0800, David Shemano wrote: At 09:37 AM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: It's also fun watching lefties arguing with lefties. so we have to be on our best behavior... Don't change for me. I promise not to reveal anything to the members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. David Shemano that's what we're most afraid of. kelley
Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism (was Re: weber)
If Wojtek was booted, I'm more confused than ever about why you haven't been. Doug Calm down, Doug, you have no reason to be green-eyed.
Re: Re: Re: needs
The music industry is doing far too good a job of putting out classic clazz on CD, as my wallet and what my daughter calls my wall of CDs attest. As for the Hamps sides, on which Louis and I agree, btw, suggest to Moasic that they put them out. I almost never have problems with my low end CD players: maybe you are spending too much money on equipment. --jks The reason music used to sound like vinyl is that it was on vinyl, pops, scratches, and all. But if you want to listen to final, feel free. Me, I am happy listening to classic jazz that was unavailable in vinyl. AND that sounds lots better than it could on dusty old '78s or LP salvaged from the 50s. Do you want to know what a Blue Note LP from 55 sounds like now, if you can find it? --jks Actually, the problem is that the record companies have been loath to reissue classic jazz albums on CD. I had a vast collection of vinyl that I was forced to sell because of a shortage of space in my apartment. A good portion of these were African and Latin music records that will never reappear because the artists are not considered commercial. The jazz situation is even worse. One of the greatest jazz records ever made was a collection of Lionel Hampton's small group sides in the late 30s and 40s. It has never been reissued, nor have the great Decca collection of big bands from Jimmy Lunceford to Chick Webb. The record industry has tended to hew to the bottom line, just as have classical and jazz-oriented FM stations. That is the reason you will never hear Webern on WQXR, the NY Times station or old Herbie Nichols records on WBGO, the local jazz station. As far as the audio quality is concerned, I have to say that I preferred the sound of records on my old SOTA turntable with an Accuphase moving coil cartridge, but I could never get used to the ticks and pops which seemed to develop no matter how careful I was in handling the records. They seemed to materialize out of nowhere like wire hangers in my closet. (Do hangers procreate?) I also never got used to getting up and turning over a record after 20 minutes. So now I have a CD player made by Rotel, a high-end manufacturer. It replaced a Philips CD player, my first. In my bedroom I have a Marantz. All of these fucking machines are plagued with one glitch or another. Either a CD mistracks or I hear odd fadeouts for no explicable reason. In the best of all possible worlds, the Internet would supply music over cable without the need for such mechanical devices. There would be a thousand channels, each oriented to a particular niche like gypsy jazz or Congolese soukous. No advertising either. That's why we need a worldwide proletarian revolution and no messing around with markets either. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: NACLA and Colombia
NACLA's Report on the Americas is now edited by the excellent Debbie Nathan, a very smart journalist who is eager to get lively writing into the pages of the magazine. Doug Smart and lively. That says it all. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Re: needs
The music industry is doing far too good a job of putting out classic clazz on CD, as my wallet and what my daughter calls my wall of CDs attest. As for the Hamps sides, on which Louis and I agree, btw, suggest to Moasic that they put them out. I almost never have problems with my low end CD players: maybe you are spending too much money on equipment. --jks Revisionist nonsense. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Energy and politics
Gene Coyle wrote: This I fear is going to seem doubly or triply provincial. First it is California centered, second energy centered, and third USA centered. But here goes. I wish I could do that self-effacing bit. Gene, what happens to energy prices if there is a considerable slowdown in the economy, particularly in the tech sector? Are they sensitive to relatively small changes in demand? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Re: Re: RE: Why I am here
At 09:37 AM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: It's also fun watching lefties arguing with lefties. so we have to be on our best behavior... Oh, dear. We're sunk. --jks _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: Weber and rationality
At 04:24 PM 12/6/00 -0400, Ricardo Duchesne wrote: kelly, what you say about rationality is true though I would be careful not to confuse Weber's concept of formal rational action with rationality per se. W delineates four types of rationality: formal, practical, theoretical, and substantive. Rational capital accounting, refers to formal rationality as applied to the economic sphere. This formal (economic) rationality should *not* be mistaken with the mere pursuit of gain or the calculation of one's self interest. Every human in every culture is rational in this practical sense, and some cultures did indeed develop formally rational institutions, as exemplified by the Chinese bureaucratic state and its system of examinations. W would insist however that, in the West, formal rationality came to penetrate every sphere of live, including the economy as symbolized by double-bookkeeping. i'm sorry richard, did i say anything about calculations of self interest? i was talking about the organizational/institutional form of rationality. weber operates on three levels: individual, organizational, and cultural/institutional. when i say that rationality in terms of rationalized capitalism is composed of characteristics that reveal it to be standardized, etc i'm not speaking of individual level motivations. kelley .
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: needs
maybe you are spending too much money on equipment. --jks Revisionist nonsense. --LP My speciality, as you know, Lou. --jks _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Weber and rationality
kelly, what you say about rationality is true though I would be careful not to confuse Weber's concept of formal rational action with rationality per se. W delineates four types of rationality: formal, practical, theoretical, and substantive. Rational capital accounting, refers to formal rationality as applied to the economic sphere. This formal (economic) rationality should *not* be mistaken with the mere pursuit of gain or the calculation of one's self interest. Every human in every culture is rational in this practical sense, and some cultures did indeed develop formally rational institutions, as exemplified by the Chinese bureaucratic state and its system of examinations. W would insist however that, in the West, formal rationality came to penetrate every sphere of live, including the economy as symbolized by double-bookkeeping. .
RE: Re: Re: co-ops
What I recall was a bill in Congress . CB [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 01:00PM don't understand why this is a Constitutional crisis worthy of the High-9. something in the Constitution that prevents co-ops? maybe i need a legal lesson in "legal forms of business enterprise". norm -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 4:51 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:5537] Re: Re: co-ops At 01:20 PM 12/4/00 -0800, you wrote: A case hit the Supreme Court a couple years ago in which the banks tried to curtail the credit unions. didn't they succeed? this is different though, since they were trying to squish their competitors rather than objecting to an organizational form of the potential borrowers. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
unmet needs
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 02:07PM I don't see this. Why does it diminish my quality of living as a lover of seminbars that there are opportunities as a listener to symphonies? ( CB: I didn't say it diminishes your standard of living. I said there are diminishing returns to the quality of living, a drop in the rate of increase. In other words, you claim there are ever increasing returns to the quality of living by ever increasing needs. But there are not ever increasing returns. There are diminshing returns. So, what you say is not true: It is not true that an ever increasing number of needs ( innovation as you define it) means an ever increasing standard of living. (( And while choosing may be hard, and and the hardness a disvalue, why is it an improvement to say, No More Seminars? ( CB: I didn't propose no more seminars. What I am saying is that to set up society such that we are ever trying to increase the number of needs is not the best way, because the returns from it taper off. And I didn't say anything about the hardness of choosing. I just said the fact of having a choice is not a marker of freedom, as the bourgeoisie like to push. ((( There, now you don't have to choose! I agree taht there is no single dimension on which to measure standards of living or even the overall goodness of life. (( CB: Specifically, here, the notion of constantly finding new needs through innovation is not a standard to measure the quality of life of society. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 11:07AM Jon Elster made this sort of point. It's fair enough, but it just shows that in rich society with a profusion of needs, we need to make choices. Is that so bad? (( CB: The claim is not that it is so bad. It is that there are diminishing returns to the quality of living of individuals from your standard of ever increasing the number of needs in society as a whole. If I have to choose between needs, then the total amount of needs in society being great does not benefit me. And no, I don't think of the opportunity and the REQUIREMENT that I choose as a sign of my freedom. _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 02:11PM MK: I disagree. I think most folks take the outrages of the GOP for granted. They are shameless in their shamefulness. Michael K. Yes, they are. But it doesn't seem to hurt them. Can you imagine the Democrats successfully doing to Bush what was done to Clinton? For example, a la Whitewater: Having a leftist civil servant accuse Bush of crimes while governor of Texas. Having the Democrats successfully make this a federal issue. Having the Democrats in Congress get a Democratic law firm to investigate, which clears Bush of any criminal involvement (a la Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro). Continuing the investigation regardless, getting a Democrat appointed by the GOP AG as a special prosecutor. When the special prosecutor clears Bush, successfully getting him replaced with another Democrat, and proceeding with the investigation. Keeping the investigation going for six more years. I can't. A year ago, I believed the story that the GOP's whacko behavior was leading to their political destruction. Now, I don't believe that that's so (or at least, that it will do so before they do far more damage). ( CB: Both Dems and Repubs are parties of big business, but Repubs are the favored of the two. Overall, the Repubs have more power than the Dems. Look how Wallstreet keeps signalling for Bush.
Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 02:13PM A comment - has anybody met/seen/talked with/heard or heard of a single Republican who doesn't stand solidly on Bush's side in this dispute? Why is it that the Democrats are wishy-washy on Gore, while the Republicans are hard-core for Bush? Perhaps they have a clearer vision. (( CB: Yea, Repubs are more like stormtroopers, hard-core.
Bureaucratic dictators manipulate empire
http://www.freep.com/ DaimlerChrysler installs American at Hyundai, tightens grip on global empire Wednesday, December 06, 2000 BY HANS GREIMEL FRANKFURT, Germany -- DaimlerChrysler AG tightened the reins on its far-flung auto empire Wednesday, installing a Chrysler executive on the management board of Hyundai Motor Co. and announcing a shake-out at its small network of Chrysler dealerships in Germany. Thomas Sidlik, a 51-year-old Chrysler Corp. veteran from before its 1998 merger with Daimler-Benz, will be the first American on the board of the South Korean company. DaimlerChrysler, the world's fifth-largest automaker, has increasingly installed executives at its foreign partners to keep control of a business footprint stretching from China to Brazil. This year, the Stuttgart-based firm built on the Chrysler takeover with the purchase of a 10 percent stake in Hyundai, which makes three of every four vehicles sold in South Korea, and a 34 percent stake in debt-ridden Mitsubishi Motors of Japan. "I think it's a very positive message to shareholders that we will have an impact on operational decisions" at Hyundai, said DaimlerChrysler spokesman Michael Pfister. "It shows the level of good relations between Hyundai and DaimlerChrysler." The news helped push DaimlerChrysler shares up 1.53 percent to 49.23 euros in midday Frankfurt trading. Sidlick's appointment to Hyundai follows last month's shake-up at the company's U.S.-based Chrysler division, when DaimlerChrysler Chairman Juergen Schrempp ousted Chrysler president Jim Holden for failing to give headquarters better warning about upcoming losses. Schrempp replaced him with a team of Germans led by experienced cost-cutter Dieter Zetsche, who is expected to improve trans-Atlantic communication and give Stuttgart better eyes and ears in the United States. Schrempp pulled a similar move at Mitsubishi, dispatching Rolf Eckrodt, now head of DaimlerChrysler's rail-equipment unit Adtranz, to become the Japanese automaker's chief operating officer in January. At Hyundai, Sidlik is expected to help execute a number of projects, including a 50-50 joint venture on commercial trucks and talks on helping build a four-seat version of DaimlerChrysler's micro-mini Smart car. Pfister could not say when Sidlik will take up his new duties, though he added that the truck deal is expected to be hammered out by New Year's. Sidlik, the DaimlerChrysler management board member in charge of purchasing and supply, will continue to work from his Michigan office. Separately, DaimlerChrysler confirmed a reorganization plan that could close as many as a third of its 240 Chrysler dealerships in Germany. In an interview with business daily Handelsblatt, DaimlerChrysler sales chief Eckhard Panka said many of the country's Chrysler dealerships are too small and inefficient to stay open. Under the new plan, dealerships must re-negotiate contracts to sell cars by April 2001, a process that will streamline distribution and possibly force the closure of several outlets, Panka said. The shake-up also will open the doors for Mercedes dealers to own Chrysler lots as well, although prohibit them from selling both brands under the same roof. Chrysler has sold 22,000 vehicles this year -- or only 100 per dealership, Panka said, adding that company-owned Mercedes dealerships aim to turn over 1,400 vehicles in that timeframe. Mercedes has about 1,200 dealerships in Germany.
RE: Re: RE: RE: Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
Dear conservative lurker (apologies for losing your name), Since you asked, I am a conservative who lurks on this list, . . . Lurk not, brave sir! Tell us why the economy's healthy. Or why it's not. Or what, in the heady dynamics around and within us, represents the status quo to which you are committed enough to call yourself a conservative. I'm not being rhetorical (though I admit years on mailing lists has a way of making one's every word look it), I wanna know! I have it in me, too, y'see. Hate it when they move the furniture, reckon popular music just doesn't cut it these days, and am sure the only thing that has actually got better in the last thirty years is the consistency of Continental CuppaSoup ... also wary of Utopians, think Ed Burke had some good points, and share Oakeshott's fear of narrow rationalism. But I just don't see where the likes of Sowell, Rand or The Shrub offer succuour. Noblesse oblige is not even a myth any more, and neoliberalism seems a most radical programme to me (yeah, it may have been warming us towards boiling point for decades now, like that frog in the saucepan, but what dramatic changes the last three deades have wrought, eh?) Cheers, Rob. --- I am not sure what your question is, so I will answer as follows. First, I am conservative, so I don't believe in perfection and am willing to defend and conserve imperfection -- I am not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Second, I believe, as an empirical matter, that a political-economic system that encourages and defends private property is more conducive to the achievement of individual human happiness than a system to the contrary, especially because the causes of human happiness are subjective and diverse. Third, I believe, as an empirical matter, that a political-economic system that encourages and defends private property is more conducive to the achievement of the "good life" or the "best life", as I would define it, than a system to the contrary. If you have specific questions, I would be happy to answer as best I can. David Shemano
Re: RE: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
If you have specific questions, I would be happy to answer as best I can. David Shemano How would you rank the following conservatives in terms of importance? 1. J. Edgar Hoover 2. Al Capp 3. Spiro Agnew 4. Oliver North 5. Frank Rizzo 6. Roy Innis 7. Rush Limbaugh 8. Joseph McCarthy 9. Roy Cohn 10. Hukkalaka Meshabob Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
private property?
[was: Re: [PEN-L:5724] RE: Re: RE: RE: Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting) ] At 12:46 PM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: Second, I believe, as an empirical matter, that a political-economic system that encourages and defends private property is more conducive to the achievement of individual human happiness than a system to the contrary, especially because the causes of human happiness are subjective and diverse. Third, I believe, as an empirical matter, that a political-economic system that encourages and defends private property is more conducive to the achievement of the "good life" or the "best life", as I would define it, than a system to the contrary. Do we really have "private" property under capitalism? it seems to me that there are a tremendous number of technical and pecuniary externalities, so that even if _ownership_ (and the appropriation of income from ownership) is private, the _impact_ is not. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Time for agile leftists to shift and support Gore.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 05:51PM How I love the PWW. For the 3 months leading up to the election, they did little but shill for Gore the Dems - the very people who brought us the bombing of Yugoslavia. Maybe it was *imperialism* that bombed Yugoslavia, and the Dems were just innocent bystanders. ((( CB: Yes, but now the election is over, and the best thing for clogging up the government would be if things reversed and Gore went ahead. That would probably throw it into the House of Reps, and might put a damper on the Bush administration. Criticism of the CP for supporting Gore before the quasistalemate result is kind of a stale issue. Get with what is happening now and support Gore getting the lead in Florida. That's the up to the minute left position. Pressing on against Gore now raises suspicions of too much indirect support for Bush. Need to show a little more opposition to Bush right now.
Racial Blind Spot Continues toAfflictGreens
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 09:59PM Looking from the outside, whatever the cost to Americans, getting rid of Madeline Albright has got to be a welfare gain to the rest of the world. It is surely worth 4 years of Bush to get rid of that person before she brings more disaster on the rest of the world. ( CB: Looking from the inside, nothing is worth four years of Bush.
Re: Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 04:43PM Nathan Newman wrote: One of the areas where the Democrats have clearly and demonstrably moved towards a more progressive position in the last fifteen years is on immigration. Employers love loose immigration regulations, no? Forbes and the WSJ are all in favor of pretty open borders. CB: Sort of a contradiction, because employers also liked Simpson-Mazzoli because it puts immigrant labor in such a precarious position that it is smoother exploiting immigrant laborers, harder for immigrant laborers to fight back. (( Can you come up with an example of a "progressive" move on the part of Dems that goes against the interest of employers? It was nice, however, to see organized labor drop its longstanding nativism. Doug
RE: Re: RE: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
Why mention the lumpenconservatives? In terms of importance in establishing the merits of convervatism, you are forgetting the most important conservatives: 1. Rulers of Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991. 2. Rulers of Eastern European countries from 1945 to 1989. 3. Rulers of North Korea from 194? to present. 4. Rulers of Cuba from 1959 to present. 5. Rulers of China from 1949 to present. 6. Every ruler of an African country since 1960 whoever quoted Marx. Take care, David Shemano -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Louis Proyect Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 1:15 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:5725] Re: RE: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting) If you have specific questions, I would be happy to answer as best I can. David Shemano How would you rank the following conservatives in terms of importance? 1. J. Edgar Hoover 2. Al Capp 3. Spiro Agnew 4. Oliver North 5. Frank Rizzo 6. Roy Innis 7. Rush Limbaugh 8. Joseph McCarthy 9. Roy Cohn 10. Hukkalaka Meshabob Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Time for agile leftists to shift and supportGore.
Charles Brown wrote: Criticism of the CP for supporting Gore before the quasistalemate result is kind of a stale issue. Criticizing a party that calls itself Communist for supporting a centrist bourgeois politician is stale? I feel like I'm getting way out of touch. Get with what is happening now and support Gore getting the lead in Florida. That's the up to the minute left position. Which is the losing position too, by coincidence. Doug
Re: Time for agile leftists to shift andsupportGore.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/06/00 04:53PM Charles Brown wrote: Criticism of the CP for supporting Gore before the quasistalemate result is kind of a stale issue. Criticizing a party that calls itself Communist for supporting a centrist bourgeois politician is stale? I feel like I'm getting way out of touch. ( CB: The elections over. That's what makes it stale. Well , are you a communist ? Do you support communism ? If not, you seem to be criticizing communists for not being communist enough for you, but you don't really support communism, so, you could probably be criticized for taking a number of positions that aren't good communism, like do I understand correctly that you are not quite certain that capitalism is all bad ? Hey that's just as bad as supporting a centrist bourgeois politician. Anyway, it is a projection of a sectarian position on communists to imply that communists never support centrist bourgeois politicians. It's like you apply an ultra-radical standard to communists that you don't believe yourself , or something. No need to defend communists against a non-communist's requirements of how to be a communist. Now if you want to look into being a communist... Get with what is happening now and support Gore getting the lead in Florida. That's the up to the minute left position. Which is the losing position too, by coincidence. (( CB: Oh yea, your position is with that "winner" Bush . Is that a coincidence ?
GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/06/00 04:45PM Why mention the lumpenconservatives? In terms of importance in establishing the merits of convervatism, you are forgetting the most important conservatives: 1. Rulers of Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991. 2. Rulers of Eastern European countries from 1945 to 1989. 3. Rulers of North Korea from 194? to present. 4. Rulers of Cuba from 1959 to present. 5. Rulers of China from 1949 to present. 6. Every ruler of an African country since 1960 whoever quoted Marx. Take care, David Shemano CB: Are you speaking English ? I think you wrote "conservative" when you should have written "radical".
RE: private property?
At 12:46 PM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: Second, I believe, as an empirical matter, that a political-economic system that encourages and defends private property is more conducive to the achievement of individual human happiness than a system to the contrary, especially because the causes of human happiness are subjective and diverse. Third, I believe, as an empirical matter, that a political-economic system that encourages and defends private property is more conducive to the achievement of the "good life" or the "best life", as I would define it, than a system to the contrary. Do we really have "private" property under capitalism? it seems to me that there are a tremendous number of technical and pecuniary externalities, so that even if _ownership_ (and the appropriation of income from ownership) is private, the _impact_ is not. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine *** A very crucial debate could ensue if we pursue the above themes. For Mr. Shemano, I would also ask Jim Devine's question as well as further inquire into what is private about, say, 50,000 people owning Exxon corporation? Just because the state doesn't own something it does not follow that ownership is private. Indeed in today's world, the ownership of virtually every capital yielding asset is always already socially owned and the ecological consequences of said ownership are, too, social in the extreme. A further problem for a conservative perspective on ownership concerns employment contracts in such "private property" institutions. Why must individuals [pardon the US-centric aside for the moment] alienate fundamental civil liberties as a condition of employment. Why do conservatives ignore the ideas of Frances Hutchison [Adam Smith's teacher and an enormous influence on Thomas Jefferson] specifically his arguments for inalienable "rights" to democratic self government? It would seem that if conservatives and others were to remain even remotely committed to any of the ideas of self-ownership that emerged in the "Enlightenment", then the employment contract as it exists today is really just a version of the master/slave relationship and lord/serf relationship that preceded them historically. How do conservatives explain to themselves the notion that rights can't be alienated to the state but can be alienated away for the sake of access to the means of production and [re]production of one's life chances, thus ensuring a substantive amount of unnecessary inequality in the realm of "rights", let alone the wealth that make the exercise of one's liberty possible? Further, where did the state get the "right" to delegate to some individuals the "right" to coerce others to vacate their "rights" for the sake of a job? Even a conservative such as Jeremy Bentham owned up to this paradox and concluded that ALL rights flowed from the state. Why can't conservatives today admit that to themselves so we can end the charade that the domain of commerce is a market of freedom and is, for the overwhelming majority, a realm of authoritarian coercion? Ian
Re: RE: Re: RE: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
Why mention the lumpenconservatives? In terms of importance in establishing the merits of convervatism, you are forgetting the most important conservatives: 1. Rulers of Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991. 2. Rulers of Eastern European countries from 1945 to 1989. 3. Rulers of North Korea from 194? to present. 4. Rulers of Cuba from 1959 to present. 5. Rulers of China from 1949 to present. 6. Every ruler of an African country since 1960 whoever quoted Marx. Take care, David Shemano Yes, but you neglect the anarcho-conservatives, fascist-conservatives and monarcho-conservatives: 1. Queen Mary 2. Prince Albert 3. Oswald Moseley 4. Marilyn Manson 5. Charles Manson (admittedly liberal on capital punishment, but conservative on race relations) 6. Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit lead singer) 7. David Duke 8. Herman Goering 9. Martin Heidegger 10. J. Montgomery Burns Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Lucky USA prepares for a soft landing
At 21:05 06/12/00 +0002, Patrick Bond wrote: No, mate, those of us who want to nix the embryonic world state just think you fix-it folk don't have a serious analysis of the balance of forces. Lou's mom does, at least. Just a moment. Philosphers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to ... produce grandchildren?? Do you realise what this could do to the internet as we know it? Chris Burford
NACLA and Colombia
The most recent issue (Sept-Oct. 2000) of NACLA Report on the Americas is devoted to Colombia. Since this is the most authoritative journal covering Latin America in the USA--the country now preparing a Vietnam type intervention in the region--it is necessary to review what it is saying, especially since its coverage on Colombia has been so flawed in the recent past. First a few words about the political evolution of North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), the research group that puts out the magazine. It has its roots in the student radicalization of the 1960s when graduate students and left professors established working groups on a number of questions falling within the general rubric of American imperialism. This was around the time groups like Concerned Asian Scholars were also getting started. In general these outfits were inspired by the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions. Now that many of the original founders have become responsible tenured professors with reputations to protect, the edge of some of these journals has grown dull. This is especially true of NACLA, which suffers the additional problem of identifying with a rightward drift in Latin American politics following the defeat of the Central American revolutions. The original impetus for this drift came from a layer of disillusioned Sandinistas such as Victor Tirado, who decided that the era of anti-imperialist revolutions had come to an end after the collapse of the USSR. Basically this was a form of leftwing TINA that ruled out creation of states based on the model of the October 1917 revolution. The alternative proposed by the FSLN in Nicaragua and FMLN in El Salvador was a variant on Swedish social democracy, in tune with the historical example of Costa Rica. Unfortunately, the "neoliberal" direction of world politics and economics over the past 10 years militated against such a possibility. In point of fact the model for Costa Rica in this period has been El Salvador rather than the other way around. In the USA, the academics grouped around NACLA embraced this retreat but put their own particular postmodernist spin upon it. Editorial board member Roger Burbach, who heads the Latin American studies department at U. of California at Berkeley, has been a forceful defender of this kind of postmodernist 'socialism'. In "Globalization and its Discontents" (Pluto Press, 1997) co-authored by FSLN intellectual Orlando Núñez and Boris Kargalitsky, we learn that "the Central America experience in the 1980s demonstrates even more conclusively the shortcomings of the 'actual existing' national liberation movements." (Kargalitsky repudiated this book shortly after it appeared on the shelves, claiming that he had no idea what Burbach had up his sleeve.) Not only does Burbach deny that lack of Soviet support was at fault, he also claims that dedication to "armed struggle" condemned these groups to oblivion. So what should the Latin American left try to do in the face of such insurmountable odds? Basically Burbach counsels they should join with NGO's in creating alternative, voluntary institutions in "civil society" that might be described in George Bush's terms as a "thousand points of light": "In both the developed and underdeveloped countries, a wide variety of critical needs and interests are being neglected at the local level, including the building, or rebuilding, of roads, schools and social services. A new spirit of volunteerism and community participation, backed by a campaign to secure complimentary resources from local and national governments, can open up entirely new job markets and areas of work to deal with these basic needs." (Globalization and its Discontents, p. 164) Examples of such initiatives include homeless men selling the monthly newspaper "Street Spirit" in northern California to cover the costs of a meal and a bottle of rotgut. (Globalization, ibid.) It would also include soup kitchens and slum housing squats. Nobody could ever accuse Burbach and company of raising the bar too high. Not content to propagate this new vision of a postmodernist socialism, NACLA has also gone out of its way to lecture an errant dinosaur left oblivious to new realities. This included Fidel Castro who had the nerve to crack down on NGO think-tanks in Cuba which had been advocating an end to the planned economy and which were funded by US universities. It also included the headstrong young US activist named Lorie Berenson who was jailed by Fujimori after being caught in Peru working with the now defunct Tupac Amaru guerrilla movement. A NACLA editorial lectured her the way a parent would lecture a teenaged daughter who had been caught driving drunk. It has been with respect to the guerrilla groups in Colombia that NACLA has been most ideologically strident. Either the FARC, ELN and EPL armed groups have allowed their subscription to NACLA Report to run out or are willfully unmindful of the need to sponsor soup kitchens in
Daniel Singer
Jeanne Singer(née Kérel) sa famille, ses amis font part du décès de Daniel SINGER Journaliste, écrivain, socialiste-luxemburgiste survenu le 2 décembre 2000 L inhumation aura lieu le samedi 9 décembre, au cimetière Montparnasse à 11h30, entrée principale au 3 bd Edgar Quinet cet avis tient lieu de faire-part ni fleurs, ni couronnes dons à la Daniel Singer Millenium Prize Foundation To-morrow the revolution will raise ahead again Proclaiming to your horror amid a brass of trumpets: I was, I am, I shall always be Rosa Luxemburg (trad. en anglais) 13 rue de Bièvre, Paris 75005 Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: NACLA and Colombia
I believe that Elizabeth Fransworth of McNeil-Lehrer was one of the early NACLA people. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: GOP vs Dem Behavior (e.g., voting)
David Shemano wrote: I am not sure what your question is, so I will answer as follows. First, I am conservative, so I don't believe in perfection and am willing to defend and conserve imperfection -- I am not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In this sense I am also a conservative. Over the past 20 years in North America radical policies have been introduced in the name of conservatism that have had the effect, literally, of throwing out the baby. Ten years ago, the Canadian parliament unanimously passed a resolution calling for the elimiination of child poverty by the year 2000. Of course it didn't happen. But more specifically, child poverty increased as a direct consequence of changes in government policies, many of which have been enacted in the name of conservatism and with the proclaimed purpose of encouraging and defending private initiative, etc. One can, of course, justifiably argue that there was nothing genuinely conservative about the policy changes and that in their implementation they didn't in fact pursue their proclaimed purpose, but sought instead to coerce and regulate low-income people. One rationale articulated by one of the drafters of unemployment insurance reform in Canada referred to widely-held *perceptions* that large numbers of people were abusing the system, acknowledged the lack of substance to the perception and went on to recommend sanctions against claimants as a palliative for the hostile perceptions. I've said before that one can't dance with two left feet and I can't see how the "expropriation of private property" offers more than a rhetorical solution to the achievement of the good life. Beyond that, though, I think there's an important issue of how and why it is that under capitalism -- and uniquely under capitalism -- private property comes to refer exclusively to the ownership of things and not to other traditionally established relationships and why it is that the notion of private property couldn't (or shouldn't) evolve to refer, for example, to universal entitlement to a share of social production instead of decaying to refer to the ever more exclusive ownership of an even bigger pile of things (i.e., "intellectual property"). From my perspective, it seems that a major thrust of so-called conservative initiatives over the past 20 years has been to usurp established entitlements to a share of social production in the name of promoting incentives to work and to invest. That is to say, the direction has been to expropriate one kind of private property in the name of narrowly promoting the accumulation of another kind (the ownership of things). Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Re: Re: Time for agile leftists to shift and support Gore.
At 16:53 06/12/00 -0500: Criticizing a party that calls itself Communist for supporting a centrist bourgeois politician is stale? I feel like I'm getting way out of touch. "For the good of the cause, the proletariat will always support not only the vacillating petty bourgeoisie but even the big bourgeoisie" - according to another self-styled communist - one who proposed a change in the name of their party from Social Democratic to Communist, in 1917. He made the remark in the same year. And led a successful revolution. Chris Burford
Re: co-ops + human behavior
So how do you explain suicides?Do genetic programmes crash :)
Cheers, Ken Hanly
- Original Message -
From: Mikalac Norman S NSSC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 9:27 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:5669] co-ops + human behavior
co-ops may be limited by people's limited motivation for cooperation with
each other. e.g, if we are 25% genetically programmed to cooperate with
people (for survival purposes) and 75%% genetically programmed to compete
with people (again, for survival purposes), then cooperative ventures will
always be subordinate to competitive ventures on the average. if this
assumption is true, then no matter how much leftists try to change the
environment ("culture") to promote more cooperation and less competition,
their efforts will always be limited by "human nature" (genetic
programming).
Re: Re: Re: Time for agile leftists to shift and support Gore.
"For the good of the cause, the proletariat will always support not only the vacillating petty bourgeoisie but even the big bourgeoisie" - according to another self-styled communist - one who proposed a change in the name of their party from Social Democratic to Communist, in 1917. He made the remark in the same year. And led a successful revolution. Chris Burford The only problem is that Lenin openly repudiated this formulation not long after it was written. In a report to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, he explained the change in his thinking: "Comrades, the traitorous Kautsky uses our words against us and questions why we repudiate the big bourgeoisie in 1918, when previously we announced our willingness to extend a hand for the 'good of the cause.' It is not surprising that when the vacillators who have mistaken the forward path of the masses for a sack of potatoes fallen between two stools when the suppression of the counter-revolution dictates a ruthless but cleansing stroke of the sword. We understand that the dialectical turn of the clock will always strike midnight when the wheat is being gathered. Hence we denounce the narrow-mindedness, timidity and book-keeper mentality of the Prubylzytelnayo Vgdenayaists [Kautsky's supporters]. They forget the main lessons in the struggle against Bogdanov, who also came close to infecting the party with the liberal-bourgeois infection of empirico-symbolism purchased at the price of a wholesale chicken in a country market is not necessarily the same thing as an organic bond with merciless destruction of opportunism." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 18, p 315) Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
ACLU
From the website of the American Civil Liberties Union. To send a prepared letter to President Clinton and/or your Congressional representatives, check out: http://www.aclu.org/cgi-bin/take_action2000.pl?GetDoc= 341dir=acluredirect=/act Impose A Moratorium on Federal Executions Despite its own study showing racial and geographic disparities in the use of the federal death penalty, the U.S. government is preparing to carry out the first federal execution in nearly 40 years. Juan Garza is scheduled to be executed on December 12 even though the Department of Justice itself has acknowledged that at the time Garza was sentenced in Texas, U.S. attorneys there brought death penalty cases only against Hispanic Americans. Policymakers must no longer ignore reality: the system of capital punishment in America is administered unfairly, arbitrarily and in a way that risks executing those who are undeserving of death. No execution should proceed until the systemic problems are resolved. Take Action! Urge President Clinton to recognize the flaws in the system of capital punishment and declare a moratorium on federal executions before the end of his term. Resolve Questions of Unfairness in the Death Penalty! Both the Attorney General and the President have expressed concerns about the federal death penalty and called for further studies. During a September news conference releasing the Department of Justice report, Attorney General Janet Reno stated that "an even broader analysis must be undertaken to determine if bias plays a role in the federal death system." She asked the National Institute for Justice to conduct further independent review, which have not yet been completed. It would be unconscionable to execute any federal prisoners when the government itself admits to serious questions of racial bias. The relationship between race and the death penalty is also very well documented. Recently released Justice Department data demonstrate that racial disparities permeate every level of the federal death penalty system. Hispanic and African-American defendants make up 70 percent to 80 percent of the group of defendants whom U.S. Attorneys and the Justice Department recommend for the death penalty. Of 21 federal prisoners currently facing death sentences, 17 - or 81 percent - are members of racial/ethnic minorities. Hispanics are 2.3 times more likely to be authorized for federal capital prosecution than whites. Whether someone convicted of a capital crime will receive a death sentence is highly dependent on the state or county in which that person was tried and convicted. U.S. Attorneys in 16 states, including Texas, have been authorized to seek the death penalty in at least 50 percent of the cases submitted for consideration to the Justice Department, but U.S. attorneys in 21 other states have either never requested or never obtained authorization to seek the death penalty. Of the inmates currently sitting on federal death row, almost 30 percent were prosecuted in a single state - Texas. TAKE ACTION! Email President Clinton at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax President Clinton at 202-456-2461.
Re: Cyborg variations
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/05/00 10:22PM The cyborg has nothing to add to the sandwichman, who was always already objectified, animated, redundant and in disguise. (( CB: This could be a Beatles' song.
RE: RE: private property?
Let me generally answer the questions as follows. The issue, from my perspective, is not whether property is "private" in the sense you seem to be asking, or whether rather metaphysical notions of freedom and consent can exist under capitalism. Not that those are not important issues, but I do not think they are fundamental. The issue is more utilitarian. No matter what political-economic system you can imagine, rules are going to have to be established. Somebody has to decide whether to devote resources to guns or butter. Somebody has to decide where my space ends and your space begins. "Private property" is my shorthand for saying the rules will provide that with respect to any specific resource, commodity, etc., a single individual gets to decide issues of possession, use and transfer. "Private property" can evolve to take many forms, often unpredictable and complex. To take the example of Exxon, 50,000 people each own individual shares of Exxon. At some relevant level, a single person has exclusive right to possess, use and transfer the share without the approval of any other person. Notwithstanding the diffusion of ownership, the corporation is remarkably efficient in performing its societal role. I believe, as an empirical matter, that "private property" is the most efficient means to achieve the ends that I believe are important. If you believe that there is something inherently noble in democratic decision making regardless of the results of the decision making, then you have chosen an end which I do not share. David Shemano -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Lisa Ian Murray Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 2:20 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:5734] RE: private property? At 12:46 PM 12/6/00 -0800, you wrote: Second, I believe, as an empirical matter, that a political-economic system that encourages and defends private property is more conducive to the achievement of individual human happiness than a system to the contrary, especially because the causes of human happiness are subjective and diverse. Third, I believe, as an empirical matter, that a political-economic system that encourages and defends private property is more conducive to the achievement of the "good life" or the "best life", as I would define it, than a system to the contrary. Do we really have "private" property under capitalism? it seems to me that there are a tremendous number of technical and pecuniary externalities, so that even if _ownership_ (and the appropriation of income from ownership) is private, the _impact_ is not. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine *** A very crucial debate could ensue if we pursue the above themes. For Mr. Shemano, I would also ask Jim Devine's question as well as further inquire into what is private about, say, 50,000 people owning Exxon corporation? Just because the state doesn't own something it does not follow that ownership is private. Indeed in today's world, the ownership of virtually every capital yielding asset is always already socially owned and the ecological consequences of said ownership are, too, social in the extreme. A further problem for a conservative perspective on ownership concerns employment contracts in such "private property" institutions. Why must individuals [pardon the US-centric aside for the moment] alienate fundamental civil liberties as a condition of employment. Why do conservatives ignore the ideas of Frances Hutchison [Adam Smith's teacher and an enormous influence on Thomas Jefferson] specifically his arguments for inalienable "rights" to democratic self government? It would seem that if conservatives and others were to remain even remotely committed to any of the ideas of self-ownership that emerged in the "Enlightenment", then the employment contract as it exists today is really just a version of the master/slave relationship and lord/serf relationship that preceded them historically. How do conservatives explain to themselves the notion that rights can't be alienated to the state but can be alienated away for the sake of access to the means of production and [re]production of one's life chances, thus ensuring a substantive amount of unnecessary inequality in the realm of "rights", let alone the wealth that make the exercise of one's liberty possible? Further, where did the state get the "right" to delegate to some individuals the "right" to coerce others to vacate their "rights" for the sake of a job? Even a conservative such as Jeremy Bentham owned up to this paradox and concluded that ALL rights flowed from the state. Why can't conservatives today admit that to themselves so we can end the charade that the domain of commerce is a market of freedom and is, for the overwhelming majority, a realm of authoritarian coercion? Ian
Re: Weber's Genteel Racism
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/06/00 10:07AM let me add this about bookkeeping: The central theme in W's entire work is the notion of rationality. Only in Western Europe did a formal rational orientation penetrate every sphere of life. The rise of this orientation is the *explanadum* of his historical analyses, the phenomenom that he thinks requires explanation if we want to understand the peculiarity of the West. Capital accounting symbolized by double entry bookkeeping is crucial to this explanation because it is this very practice which directly exhibits this orientation in the sphere of economic life. Double-entry bookkeeping, therefore, cannot be defined as just another empirical-factor in the rise of modern capitalism. (( CB: Is Weber saying there is some special relationship between rationality and double entry bookkeeping ? That the latter is somekind of archtypical or essential expression of the former ? (( But neither should one pretend that a formal rational orientation exists within the economy simply because one has detected the practice of double-entry. For double-entry may be present yet capital accounting may be limited by a whole range of factors like the absence of free labor and mechanized technology.
Re: Sale of slaves was unders the control of African states andelites
Ricardo: In 1400, neither "Europeans" nor "Africans" existed. Everyone else in this list knows what Thornton means, so let's not play games. So, what does "everyone else" on this list think about John Thornton's work or Africans' participation in the slave trade in the capacity other than being the enslaved? You mean to say that "everyone else" fails to notice that for those who lived between 1400 and 1640 in the area which has come to be called "Africa," what mattered was *classes, kins, tribes, states,* for they were innocent of such dichotomies as "Africans" "Europeans"? No one here believes that "Africa" before the arrival of the Portuguese was a classless stateless society. Yoshie
RE: RE: RE: private property?
Let me generally answer the questions as follows. The issue, from my perspective, is not whether property is "private" in the sense you seem to be asking, or whether rather metaphysical notions of freedom and consent can exist under capitalism. Not that those are not important issues, but I do not think they are fundamental. The issue is more utilitarian. Who stated anything metaphysical? What could be more fundamental to a society that professes to be based on liberty and property than to ensure that massive asymmetries of power do not usurp the "right" of democratic self government? Utility is meaningless in this context. No matter what political-economic system you can imagine, rules are going to have to be established. Somebody has to decide whether to devote resources to guns or butter. Somebody has to decide where my space ends and your space begins. Ah, the addiction to individualism runs deepto the point of a majority of one determining the "rules" for everyone else. How would that person be held accountable in your system? "Private property" is my shorthand for saying the rules will provide that with respect to any specific resource, commodity, etc., a single individual gets to decide issues of possession, use and transfer. Sounds like autocracy to me. "Private property" can evolve to take many forms, often unpredictable and complex. To take the example of Exxon, 50,000 people each own individual shares of Exxon. At some relevant level, a single person has exclusive right to possess, use and transfer the share without the approval of any other person. Notwithstanding the diffusion of ownership, the corporation is remarkably efficient in performing its societal role. *** Well, to stick the example at hand, shouldn't those 50K people be hauled into court to pay the 5billion$$ they owe the US citizenry for the actions of their employee? Or is liability for [other] suckers? I believe, as an empirical matter, that "private property" is the most efficient means to achieve the ends that I believe are important. *** Define efficient. Please. If you believe that there is something inherently noble in democratic decision making regardless of the results of the decision making, then you have chosen an end which I do not share. David Shemano Politics ain't noble, it's about tragedy avoidance and holding strangers accountable when they visit harms -economic physical- on others. To the extent that democratic procedures attempt to do this while mitigating the all too real paradoxes of actually existing liberty and property , then I'd say...got anything better? Anti-Hobbes, Ian
Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism (was Re: weber)
CB: I think it was use of force and violence externally that made primitive accumulation on a global scale possible. Would have been difficult to accumulate globally by only doing things internal to Europe. Enclosure + chattel slavery = primitive accumulation = the origin of capitalism. The rise development of the dominance of instrumental reason (the Benthamite part of "Freedom, Equality, Property, Bentham") are an effect, not the cause, of the capitalist ensemble of social relations. Yoshie
Marc Weisbrot on AG
full piece at: http://www.commondreams.org/views/120600-104.htm Published on Wednesday, December 6, 2000 This column is distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Media Services Bursting Greenspan's Bubble by Mark Weisbrot Alan Greenspan demonstrated his awesome powers once again on Tuesday, sending the stock markets skyward by simply admitting that the economy was slowing. The Federal Reserve Chairman's speech was widely interpreted as an indication that the Fed could lower interest rates next year. The recently battered Nasdaq jumped more than 10 percent, an all-time record increase. The signs of an economic slowdown are everywhere: third quarter GDP growth dropped to 2.4%, from 5% in the previous quarter. Auto sales, housing starts, and retail sales are also lagging. Vice Presidential candidate Dick Cheney declared this week that "we may be on the front edge of a recession." Cheney's comment was an unusual break with protocol-- presidents and their spokespersons don't normally talk up the possibility of a recession, because the talk itself is not healthy for the economy. He was trying to link the downturn, if it happens, with the Clinton-Gore administration, while it is still early enough to do so.
Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism (was Re: weber)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: CB: I think it was use of force and violence externally that made primitive accumulation on a global scale possible. Would have been difficult to accumulate globally by only doing things internal to Europe. Enclosure + chattel slavery = primitive accumulation = the origin of capitalism. The rise development of the dominance of instrumental reason (the Benthamite part of "Freedom, Equality, Property, Bentham") are an effect, not the cause, of the capitalist ensemble of social relations. But why enclosure? Why travel abroad and steal people? Why did it occur to people to enclose common land for the first time? Why didn't they think of it before? Doug
RE: RE: private property?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/06/00 08:20PM No matter what political-economic system you can imagine, rules are going to have to be established. Somebody has to decide whether to devote resources to guns or butter. Somebody has to decide where my space ends and your space begins. "Private property" is my shorthand for saying the rules will provide that with respect to any specific resource, commodity, etc., a single individual gets to decide issues of possession, use and transfer. "Private property" can evolve to take many forms, often unpredictable and complex. To take the example of Exxon, 50,000 people each own individual shares of Exxon. At some relevant level, a single person has exclusive right to possess, use and transfer the share without the approval of any other person. Notwithstanding the diffusion of ownership, the corporation is remarkably efficient in performing its societal role. (( CB: Isn't there a much smaller number of people than 50,000 who have effective control over the Exxon ? (( I believe, as an empirical matter, that "private property" is the most efficient means to achieve the ends that I believe are important. If you believe that there is something inherently noble in democratic decision making regardless of the results of the decision making, then you have chosen an end which I do not share. (( CB: I thought you thought 50,000 owners worked fine at Exxon.
[Fwd: [sixties-l] The Lesson Of Election 2000: Neo Slavery]
Original Message Subject: [sixties-l] The Lesson Of Election 2000: Neo Slavery Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2000 12:46:42 -0800 From: radman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Lesson Of Election 2000: Neo Slavery By J Tolbert Jr, When it was published in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. asked a critical question in the title of his book, 'Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?' Even before King considered it, this question was not unfamiliar to generations of Black people in America. In fact, 'Where Do We Go From Here' has always been central to our struggle. Unfortunately, this necessary cultural imperative, for any people is no longer an important consideration for many of our people. Our collective political behavior during the recent presidential election demonstrated that many of us are incapable of ever addressing 'Where Do We Go From Here' because we are satisfied being America's 'neo-slaves.' When 17th century Europeans went to Africa in search of labor to build their empires, they did not find a continent of 'slaves.' Instead, they found human beings who they (the Europeans) hoped to develop into slaves. The captured Africans eventually succumbed to servitude, but they didn't make it easy for the Europeans. Africans committed many acts of resistance and rebellion. They remained vigilant until the end of the 1960s, when someone told them they could be Democrats. Since then, the 21st century descendents of the enslavers have found a large population of 'free' and 'willing' Blacks to build the political empires of others without compensation. Touted as the best educated, wealthiest, and most sophisticated group of Africans ever produced in America, many of our people have totally abdicated their destiny to the whim of corrupt electoral politics. Consistently used by the Democrats and permanently ignored by the Republicans, we spend our time and energy narrowly fixated over which wing of the white supremacist population is going to rule us. No matter what party wins; white folks are in sole charge of determining "Where do we (Black people) go from here?" There is no better example of this 'neo-slavery' than what occurs in the 'City of Brotherly Love.' Every four years, 'Philadelphia Negroes' with money, good jobs, titles, and delusions of importance, berate the masses of the city's Black population with the slogan 'if you don't vote, you don't count.' What they might as well say is, 'if you don't vote Democratic, you don't count.' Partisan cheerleading then degenerates into a holy war against those Blacks who, critically analyze or question the sincerity of Democratic candidates. Black media people, Black politicians, and various HNICs, using the moral suasion of the civil rights movement, buttress this crusade by resorting to the 'racial guilt trip' -invoking the spirits of our ancestors and those who 'died for the vote.' When 'National Negroes,' are sometimes brought in to stir up the masses, they suffer from selective amnesia when questioned or reminded of their previously expressed doubts over their party's turn to the right. Any rational dialogue about Democratic Party's treatment of its Black constituency is dismissed as a Republican plot to send us back to Africa. Our ancestors and those who 'died for the vote' have to be spinning in their graves' seeing how we relent to 'plantation politics' and end up, once again, being the recipients of political welfare-not power sharing in the Democratic Party. In retrospect, some of us need to stop criticizing the Republicans. For all the buck-dancing and fiddling that Blacks did on the stage at the Republican convention, at least the Republicans pay their 'help.' Copyright 2000, J. Tolbert Jr., All Rights Reserved. J. Tolbert Jr. is the editor of The Digital Drum 2, an electronic newsletter which disseminates information and encourages critical thinking among people of African descent. To subscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mahmoud Dawish, Reiquiem for Mohammad Al-Dura
Requiem for Mohammad Al-Dura Mahmoud Dawish translated by Tania Tamari Nasir and Christopher Millis (LRB 30 November 2000) Nestled in his father's arms, a bird afraid of the hell above him, Mohammad prays: Father, protect me from flying. My wing is weak against the wind, and the light is black. Mohammad wants to go home, without a bicycle, without a new shirt. He wants his school desk and his book of grammar. Take me home, father, so I can finish my homework and complete my years slowly, slowly on the seashore and under the palms. Nothing further. Nothing beyond. Mohammad faces an army, without a stone, without the shrapnel of stars. He did not see the wall where he could write: "My freedom willl not die." He has, as yet, no freedom, no horizon for a single Picasso dove. He is still being born. He is still being born into the curse of his name. How often should a boy be born without a childhood or a country? And where will he dream, when the dream comes to him. Mohammad sees his death approach and remembers a moment from TV when a tiger stalking a nursing fawn shied away upon smelling the milk, as if milk tames a beast of prey. And so I am going to be saved, says the boy, and he weeps. My life is there, hidden in my mother's closet. I will be saved . . . I can see it. Mohammad, hunters are gunning down angels, and the only witness is a camera's eye watching a boy become one with his shadow. His face like the sunrise, clear. And the dew on his trousers, clear. His hunter could have thought: I'll leave him until he can spell "Palestine," I'll pawn him tomorrow, kill him when he rebels. Mohammad, small Christ, where you sleep and dream is itself an icon made of olive branches and brass and a people wh are rising up. Mohammad, blood superfluous to prohets and prophecies, so to the right side of heaven ascend, O Mohammad.
Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism (was Re: weber)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: CB: I think it was use of force and violence externally that made primitive accumulation on a global scale possible. Would have been difficult to accumulate globally by only doing things internal to Europe. Enclosure + chattel slavery = primitive accumulation = the origin of capitalism. The rise development of the dominance of instrumental reason (the Benthamite part of "Freedom, Equality, Property, Bentham") are an effect, not the cause, of the capitalist ensemble of social relations. But why enclosure? Why travel abroad and steal people? Why did it occur to people to enclose common land for the first time? Why didn't they think of it before? Doug "If successful, the peasant revolts of the sixteenth century, as one historian has put it, might have 'clipped the wings of rural capitalism'" (Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe," _The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe_, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). That's _how_, which explains the difference between England and other areas. The _timing_ is explained by prior historical development (the growth of commerce, colonialism, the discovery of the so-called new world, demographics, climate, etc.) which did _not_ distinguish England from other areas decisively (in fact, the Portuguese embarked upon the slave trade much earlier than the English). _Why_ did the species to which both of us belong emerge at all? Science answers how but not why. Those who do not understand the difference between how and why, or science's silence on why as to what _appears_ to be "crucial questions" in the untrained eyes, turn to God (or nowadays "creation science"), as Stephen Jay Gould explains. It fascinates me that contingency leaves both you Charles, Lou Ricardo, etc., unhappy unsatisfied, for all the differences in opinions on many other subjects. Yoshie
Scrubbing for Shrub
Dec. 4, 2000 | If Vice President Al Gore is wondering where his Florida votes went, rather than sift through a pile of chad, he might want to look at a "scrub list" of 173,000 names knocked off the Florida voter registry by a division of the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. A close examination suggests thousands of voters may have lost their right to vote based on a flaw-ridden list of purported "felons" provided by a private firm with tight Republican ties. Early in the year, the company, ChoicePoint, gave Florida officials a list with the names of 8,000 ex-felons to "scrub" from their list of voters. But it turns out none on the list were guilty of felonies, only misdemeanors. The company acknowledged the error, and blamed it on the original source of the list -- the state of Texas. Florida officials moved to put those falsely accused by Texas back on voter rolls before the election. Nevertheless, the large number of errors uncovered in individual counties suggests that thousands of eligible voters may have been turned away at the polls. http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/04/voter_file/index.html?CP=YA HDN=110 Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Re: Re: Re: Re: Time for agile leftists to shift and support Gore.
Actually, I think it is of historical interest only that Lenin changed his mind in changed circumstnces in 1918. The question is, does supporting the big bourgeoisie promote the cause in our circumstances? Neither Chris nor Charles have given any reason to think so. --jks "For the good of the cause, the proletariat will always support not only the vacillating petty bourgeoisie but even the big bourgeoisie" - according to another self-styled communist - one who proposed a change in the name of their party from Social Democratic to Communist, in 1917. He made the remark in the same year. And led a successful revolution. Chris Burford The only problem is that Lenin openly repudiated this formulation not long after it was written. In a report to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, he explained the change in his thinking: "Comrades, the traitorous Kautsky uses our words against us and questions why we repudiate the big bourgeoisie in 1918, when previously we announced our willingness to extend a hand for the 'good of the cause.' It is not surprising that when the vacillators who have mistaken the forward path of the masses for a sack of potatoes fallen between two stools when the suppression of the counter-revolution dictates a ruthless but cleansing stroke of the sword. We understand that the dialectical turn of the clock will always strike midnight when the wheat is being gathered. Hence we denounce the narrow-mindedness, timidity and book-keeper mentality of the Prubylzytelnayo Vgdenayaists [Kautsky's supporters]. They forget the main lessons in the struggle against Bogdanov, who also came close to infecting the party with the liberal-bourgeois infection of empirico-symbolism purchased at the price of a wholesale chicken in a country market is not necessarily the same thing as an organic bond with merciless destruction of opportunism." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 18, p 315) Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: RE: RE: private property?
If you believe that there is something inherently noble in democratic decision making regardless of the results of the decision making, then you have chosen an end which I do not share. We have a fundamental disagreement, then, david. I think that democratic decisionmaking, including wrong democratic decisionmaking, _is_ fundamentally noble; indeed; it is an essential constituent of the good life. I think this is true not just because I think democracy promotes individual happiness overall better than the alternatives, although it does because the alternative is minority rulke in the self interest of the minority; and not just because democracy is ther fairest way to make decision that affect us all, including how social resources are to be allocated, but also because the exercise of human powers in collective self government develops those powers, making us better and freer people. I would see the democratic principle enhanced in politics and extended to the economy. I regard it as incompatible with private ownership of productive assets, because that allows the private owners to unilaterally make decisions that affect us all, regardless of its effect on the welfare of others, without their having a far say in the matter; and it corrupts politics because those that have the gold, rule. I advocate markets, as is notorious on this list, but that is quite different from private property. --jks _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Private property
David Shemano wrote: The issue, from my perspective, is not whether property is "private" in the sense you seem to be asking, or whether rather metaphysical notions of freedom and consent can exist under capitalism. and "Private property" is my shorthand for saying the rules will provide that with respect to any specific resource, commodity, etc., a single individual gets to decide issues of possession, use and transfer. The problem here, David, is that private property is NOT a relationship between an individual and a thing it is a social relationship between many individuals within a definite form of society REGARDING the status of the thing as a possession. To view the relationship as being between a *single* individual and any specific resource, commodity, etc. is precisely a *metaphysical* understanding of private property -- or in other words a *fetishization* of the social relations that recognize ownership of objects. Just between me, the mountain and the sea I can proclaim myself possessor of all I behold. It's strictly a social/historical question though whether or not my ownership claim gives me any right of disposal over the mountain or the sea. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Vol. 18 of The Collected Works
Louis Proyect wrote: The only problem is that Lenin openly repudiated this formulation not long after it was written. In a report to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, he explained the change in his thinking: "Comrades, the traitorous Kautsky uses our words against us and questions why we repudiate the big bourgeoisie in 1918, when previously we announced our willingness to extend a hand for the 'good of the cause.' It is not surprising that when the vacillators who have mistaken the forward path of the masses for a sack of potatoes fallen between two stools when the suppression of the counter-revolution dictates a ruthless but cleansing stroke of the sword. We understand that the dialectical turn of the clock will always strike midnight when the wheat is being gathered. Hence we denounce the narrow-mindedness, timidity and book-keeper mentality of the Prubylzytelnayo Vgdenayaists [Kautsky's supporters]. They forget the main lessons in the struggle against Bogdanov, who also came close to infecting the party with the liberal-bourgeois infection of empirico-symbolism purchased at the price of a wholesale chicken in a country market is not necessarily the same thing as an organic bond with merciless destruction of opportunism." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol 18, p 315) Wouldn't you know it! It is precisely that page of my copy of Vol 18 of the collected works that has been ruthlessly and deceitfully torn out, presumably by some police spy or revisionist. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Re: Weber's Genteel Racism
Charles wrote: When they say "history is a history of class struggles" it is clear from what follows that they are treating the European territory as a unit for the history they refer to. It begs the question of when "the European territory" became a "unit" for the history of class struggles. Ancient Greece is not identical with capitalist Europe, but it has a historical relationship to capitalist Europe that is like a kernel to a flower. You are much more Hegelian than I am. A kernel does not necessarily flower, a fetus may become spontaneously aborted even without an intervention by an abortionist. Why should you assume that ancient Athens has a closer historical relationship with our contemporary Sweden than Egypt? Why should you believe that Thucydides has a more intimate historical relationship with Oliver Cromwell or Max Weber than Frederick Douglass or Saddam Hussein? Rome and Middle Ages are intermediate phases. Marx and Engels do recognize a connection between the class struggles of ancient Greece and the class struggles of capitalism, as all part of a history with some unity ( relative to other areas with their own histories of class struggles). A connection, yes, but of what kind? Not an unfolding of Reason, surely? "Class struggles" is not synonmous with contingent process. Marx and Engels intend to elucidate laws of historical development by this, with "laws" referring to determined, not chance, elements of history. Whether or not laws (e.g., M-C-M') emerge is a matter of chance; once emergent, laws exert their powers. I refer you to Alan Carling or Jim Farmelant. As Stephen Jay Gould notes, the emergence of the species to which both of us belong was contingent. Unless you believe in Providence, it is self-evident that the birth of human beings was not a matter of necessity. They want to indicate that there _was_ some tendency in the long term to modern European capitalism from the class struggles of ancient Greece. If Marx Engels do, they are following an irrationally teleological husk of Hegelian philosophy of history. In the main, however, the _rational kernel_ of Marx Engels does not locate a tendency to develop into "modern European capitalism" in the class struggles of ancient Greece. It was not determined during the class struggles of ancient Athens that denizens from the area which has come to be called Africa were destined to become chattel slaves toiling on the cotton plantations in the American South in order to fuel the development of industrial capitalism. When they say that history is a history of class struggles, they do not mean that history is series of accidental and unconnected events, but something of the opposite History is neither a series of accidental unconnected events nor its opposite. Yoshie
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Time for agile leftists to shift andsupport Gore.
Justin Schwartz wrote: Actually, I think it is of historical interest only that Lenin changed his mind in changed circumstnces in 1918. Actually, instances of important socialist leaders/theorists (and for that matter, of important renegades) changing their mind are among the most useful of historical events. They lead to thinking about principle/dogma and flexibility/opportunism. The question is, does supporting the big bourgeoisie promote the cause in our circumstances? Neither Chris nor Charles have given any reason to think so. --jks I doubt that there will ever again be a time when socialists can support the "big bourgeoisie" of any core imperialist nation. But I could be wrong. As Mao remarked, Marxists have no crystal balls. Carrol
