Re: Marxian theory of the state
At 11/05/01 17:28 -0700, you wrote: Jim Devine writes: -- right, the law is relatively autonomous from capitalism, i.e., what serves the long-term (class) interests of capital. A law which serves capital in one era can hurt capital in another. -- I need clarification. The argument is repeatedly made on this list that there is no such thing as a free market and private property because the market and property is defined by the laws that regulate the market and property. If so, how can capitalism be autonomous from the law? Is not capitalism, by definition, defined by the law that creates and regulates markets and property in any specific context? I mean, if there is no law defining property, how can there be capitalism? Does this make any sense? David Shemano Hang on. You do need clarification. The proposition is that the law is relatively autonomous from the capitalist base. Not that capitalism is relatively autonomous from the law. As for nonsense on stilts in the name of Marxism, the loudest self-proclaimed Marxists are the most likely to give a distorted message about what marxism is. The point that I think both I and Jim Devine are making, is that although in marxist theory the economic base largely determines the superstructure (a proposition that is pretty widely accepted by people these days who would not dream of calling themselves marxists) - phenomena in the superstructure such as the state, and the law, which forms an important part of the state, are relatively autonomous. I am arguing against dogmatic, simplistic distortions of marxism by dogmatic people who like to to talk intimidatory nonsense from an elevated position. Their Achilles heel is that they are actually lazy in analysis. The letter by Engels to Schmidt is presumably on the internet.This is one of a number of late letters by Engels often quoted about the determining nature of the economic base, but well worth reading for the subtlety of the way the argument is worked through. I would be interested if anyone could give a direct quote from this to argue that it is nonsense. Chris Burford London
Bush donates mere $200m to global AIDS fund
Bush has the effrontery to claim he is setting an example by agreeing to the US giving a mere $200m to a global AIDS fund. At 27/04/01, Louis Proyect wrote: [Re: Global AIDS war chest] With such a staggering economic/medical crisis, it is totally obscene for somebody like Clinton or Blair and their stooge Kofi Annan to be talking about AIDS warchests. Clinton was calling for a figure roughly ten times bigger than Bush's offer. The effect of Louis Proyect's position is now that no criticism can be made of Bush's offer because to do so would betray an unrevolutionary spirit. Yet this is one of the glaring issues on the world agenda now. If we cannot engage with it to demonstrate the need for production to be controlled by social foresight, what can we engage with? Chris Burford London
Re: Bush donates mere $200m to global AIDS fund
Bush has the effrontery to claim he is setting an example by agreeing to the US giving a mere $200m to a global AIDS fund. At 27/04/01, Louis Proyect wrote: [Re: Global AIDS war chest] With such a staggering economic/medical crisis, it is totally obscene for somebody like Clinton or Blair and their stooge Kofi Annan to be talking about AIDS warchests. Clinton was calling for a figure roughly ten times bigger than Bush's offer. The effect of Louis Proyect's position is now that no criticism can be made of Bush's offer because to do so would betray an unrevolutionary spirit. Yet this is one of the glaring issues on the world agenda now. If we cannot engage with it to demonstrate the need for production to be controlled by social foresight, what can we engage with? Chris Burford London There's a lot of wiggle room for the left still on this issue. We need to keep the street heat on property rights, public goods and usufruct arguments that tie in to how science flowed from government labs to the corps. There has been some leftie work on trust funds that are workable on this issue; it ain't easy to find but it's out there Ian
Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
The letter by Engels to Schmidt is presumably on the internet.This is one of a number of late letters by Engels often quoted about the determining nature of the economic base, but well worth reading for the subtlety of the way the argument is worked through. I would be interested if anyone could give a direct quote from this to argue that it is nonsense.Chris BurfordLondon== http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/engels/90_08_05-ab.htm I saw a review of Paul Barth's book [ Die Geschichtsphilosophie Hegels und der Hegelianer bis auf Marx und Hartmann ] by that bird of ill omen, Moritz Wirth, in the Vienna Deutsche Worte , and this book itself, as well. I will have a look at it, but I must say that if "little Moritz" is right when he quotes Barth as stating that the sole example of the dependence of philosophy, etc., on the material conditions of existence which he can find in all Marx's works is that Descartes declares animals to the machines, then I am sorry for the man who can write such a thing. And if this man has not yet discovered that while the material mode of existence is the primum agens [primary agent, prime cause] this does not preclude the ideological spheres from reacting upon it in their turn, though with a secondary effect, he cannot possibly have understood the subject he is writing about. However, as I said, all this is secondhand and little Moritz is a dangerous friend. The materialist conception of history has a lot of them nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French "Marxists" of the late [18]70s: "All I know is that I am not a Marxist." There has also been a discussion in the Volks-Tribune about the distribution of products in future society, whether this will take place according to the amount of work done or otherwise. The question has been approached very "materialistically" in opposition to certain idealistic phraseology about justice. But strangely enough it has not struck anyone that, after all, the method of distribution essentially depends on how much there is to distribute, and that this must surely change with the progress of production and social organization, so that the method of distribution may also change. But everyone who took part in the discussion, "socialist society" appeared not as something undergoing continuous change and progress but as a stable affair fixed once for all, which must, therefore, have a method of distribution fixed once for all. All one can reasonably do, however, is 1) to try and discover the method of distribution to be used at the beginning , and 2) to try and find the general tendency of the further development. But about this I do not find a single word in the whole debate. In general, the word "materialistic" serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce them from the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few people have got down to it seriously. In this field we can utilize heaps of help, it is immensely big, anyone who will work seriously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge for economic history is still and its swaddling clothes! constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous. And after that a Barth can come along and attack the thing itself, which in his circle has indeed been degraded to a mere phrase. However, all this will right itself. We're strong enough in Germany now to stand a lot. One of the greatest services which the Anti-Socialist Law did us was to free us from the obtuseness of the German intellectual who had got tinged with socialism. We are now strong enough to digest the German intellectual too, who is giving himself great airs again. You, who have really done something, must have noticed yourself how few of the young literary men who fasten themselves on to the party give themselves in the trouble to study economics, the history of economics, the history of trade, of industry, of
Arms race aporia
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/12/world/12MISS.html May 12, 2001 Talks Don't Calm Foes of Antimissile Plan By PATRICK E. TYLER MOSCOW, May 11 - After a week of consultations with allies and former adversaries, the Bush administration has failed to overcome deep concerns over whether its proposal to erect a broad array of missile defenses and abandon a major arms control treaty would undermine the strategic balance and promote an arms race. An American team led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was still wrapping up its meeting with top Foreign Ministry officials here today when the ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Yakovenko, announced that the American delegation had not addressed Russia's fundamental questions. The United States has been unable to give us arguments to convince us that they see clearly how to solve the problems of international security without damaging disarmament agreements which have stood for 30 years, Mr. Yakovenko said. It was a message that echoed the skepticism expressed from London to Berlin and Tokyo to Seoul. China, which regards American missile defense plans as a threat to cancel the effectiveness of its small nuclear missile force, was conspicuously absent from the list of countries consulted thus far this week. Moscow's message today included a new warning from military leaders that Russia possesses the technical, intellectual and technological potential to respond to a unilateral American deployment of missile defenses. Prominent Russian foreign policy specialists have hinted that Russia may provide China with technologies to strengthen or expand its nuclear arsenal. But there were also strong hints today that Moscow was continuing to press in private for a prominent role in a missile defense program that would bind it more closely with Europe and the United States, a strategy that might leave China more isolated. In any case, the almost unanimous chorus of alarm in Europe has allowed Moscow to appear less confrontational. Military leaders here were under strict instructions last week not to publicly criticize President Bush's May 1 speech on his missile defense plan until promised consultations took place. As three American teams fanned out across continents this week, many countries tried to convey receptivity to new ideas on how to confront the threat from rogue nations that are arming themselves with ballistic missiles. But they also emphasized that Mr. Bush continued to withhold critical details about how his missile defense proposal would be accomplished, who would participate, who would not and how nations left outside the umbrella might react. Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged this problem during his stop in Berlin. It is much too early, I think, even for us to ask people to agree with us, he said, because we have not come to firm conclusions yet ourselves. Speaking in Helsinki today, Russia's foreign minister, Igor D. Ivanov, who travels to Washington next week to meet Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said, We live in hope, and Russia will do everything it can to ensure that as a result of these talks, international security will be strengthened and no harm will be done to anyone's interests. But Mr. Ivanov added, In matters of strategic stability, it pays to act in a way that does not cause any harm. Though Russian officials made no public mention of the fact that Mr. Wolfowitz was chosen to lead the American delegation here, the diplomatic corps took note that the White House had sent to Moscow a senior official associated with formulating a harder line toward Russia. In a March interview with a British newspaper, Mr. Wolfowitz said Russia was one of the worst proliferators of missile technology, adding, these people seem to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money. It recalls Lenin's phrase that the capitalists will sell the very rope from which we will hang them, he said. Since those remarks, public comments by Mr. Wolfowitz have been more restrained and constructive. When he emerged from the Foreign Ministry today, he stood silent as Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, made a brief statement. The fact that we are meeting and opening this dialogue is a sign of progress, Mr. Hadley said. It is a first step in a consultation process which will continue over the weeks ahead and include discussions and consultations between our two presidents. This evening, after the Wolfowitz group met with top military leaders here and departed for Washington, the Russian general staff issued a harsher statement saying that Mr. Bush's initial approach to missile defense was mistaken and warned that a unilateral withdrawal by the United States from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty would incite a Russian response to ensure the interests of its security and the security of its allies. A military spokesman, Col. Gen. Valery L. Manilov, added that Russia continued to press for a joint approach to missile threats in which
Re: moralism
Ian writes to Jim: one thing would be hypocrisy. We can emphasize the contradiction between the US power elite's rhetoric and its practice. Since they have so much power, any claim that we're being moralistic is nonsense. Hypocrisy is a moral/judgmental concept. Imagine Cheney citing jobs, multipliers, stabilizing manufacturing industries, opportunity costs etc. It would be refreshing if Cheney did. While the powers that be are Machiavellian in a pejorative sense, they seldom speak as candidly as Machiavelli did. Yoshie
Re: Re: moralism
It would be refreshing if Cheney did. While the powers that be are Machiavellian in a pejorative sense, they seldom speak as candidly as Machiavelli did. Yoshie === At least not in public. Ian
Re: moralism
It would be refreshing if Cheney did. While the powers that be are Machiavellian in a pejorative sense, they seldom speak as candidly as Machiavelli did. Yoshie === At least not in public. Ian That's because they know they might face a legitimation crisis if they did so. Hence their dependence upon moralism. Yoshie
Re: Bush donates mere $200m to global AIDS fund
The effect of Louis Proyect's position is now that no criticism can be made of Bush's offer because to do so would betray an unrevolutionary spirit. Yet this is one of the glaring issues on the world agenda now. If we cannot engage with it to demonstrate the need for production to be controlled by social foresight, what can we engage with? Chris Burford London What does production to be controlled by social foresight mean? I looked this up in Tom Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxism and couldn't find a thing. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Floyd Norris: An Exaggerated Productivity Boom May Soon Be a Bust
Or, productivity is cracked up to be something that it isn't. And therein lies the one great enduring fallacy of bourgeois economics, which is concerned above all to demonstrate the contribution to production of a non-tangible essence, i.e. a contribution of capital that cannot be attributed to previous accumulation of surplus value. [P]roductivity is not what it was cracked up to be. And therein lies one of the great fallacies of the recent boom and bubble. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: RE: Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
[others have responded to this, and very well, but I feel that since it was aimed at me, I should reply too. Sorry for any repetition.] I wrote: right, the law is relatively autonomous from capitalism, i.e., what serves the long-term (class) interests of capital. A law which serves capital in one era can hurt capital in another. David Shemano writes: I need clarification. as do we all. The argument is repeatedly made on this list that there is no such thing as a free market and private property because the market and property is defined by the laws that regulate the market and property. There's no such thing as a free market or truly private property not only because of laws, but also, more importantly, because of such matters as externalities and market imperfections (monopolies). I can officially own something as my private property, but that property almost always has a societal impact outside of mere market relations, so it isn't truly private. [BTW, I reject the term market imperfections because that falsely posits that perfect markets exist in the real world.] Further, and more importantly, I wasn't talking about markets or private ownership. I was talking about capitalism. Capitalism isn't just markets: it also involves state force to maintain the artificial separation of the working class from the means of subsistence [consumer goods] and the means of production [capital goods]. Further, it involves the authoritative domination of workers in the production process by capitalists or (more likely) their agents, enforced by fears of firing and the like. Capitalism is much more than voluntary exchange. If so, how can capitalism be autonomous from the law? I said relatively autonomous. By this I meant that the law develops over time following a dynamic that does not correspond directly to the dynamics of capitalism. While capitalism is driven forward by the capitalists' effort to accumulate to survive and to take over other capitals [simplifying a bit], at least in the U.S., law follows the more sedate principle of precedent and the authority of nine old codgers appointed by our wonderful politicians. Because the two levels follow different principles, they develop unevenly and can get into conflict with each other -- even though they are united as part of a socioeconomic system. Is not capitalism, by definition, defined by the law that creates and regulates markets and property in any specific context? I mean, if there is no law defining property, how can there be capitalism? Obviously, _some_ law is needed to codify and standardize the property rights that go along with the separation of the working class from the means of production and subsistence while dealing with the problems that inevitable arise from the battle of competition. But there is some wiggle room: there are many capitalist countries, with several different types of law that are consistent with capitalism. (The Anglo-American, Napoleonic, and Moslem legal traditions spring to mind, though I'm no lawyer. Hey, I should stop bragging...) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: moralism
For a great read/tutorial on eliminativism try: http://freespace.virgin.net/richard.goode/nopermit/welcome.htm please explain using your own words. I wrote: no, I think it's worth debating power. That's what's crucial. My general point is like that of Chomsky and Herman, who distinguish between the wholesale terrorism of the powerful (the US, etc.) and the retail terrorism of the powerless (the idiots who think that shooting an Israeli settler does any good for anyone). The former is the bigger problem. Ian writes: Agree, but imagine debating Dick Cheney for an hour or seven. Think you would ever change his mind? ... no, I don't think I can change his mind. As with debates on pen-l, my argument would not be aimed at convincing _him_ as much as at convincing the audience. Which leads me to my question of how do left economists who know the military-technology sector hope to try to stop this new industrial policy? mobilize the opposition. I wrote: one thing would be hypocrisy. We can emphasize the contradiction between the US power elite's rhetoric and its practice. Since they have so much power, any claim that we're being moralistic is nonsense. Ian writes: Hypocrisy is a moral/judgmental concept. Imagine Cheney citing jobs, multipliers, stabilizing manufacturing industries, opportunity costs etc. How would the left defeat his arguments. How would we avoid exasperation at his determination to carry the argument? I didn't say I was against moral/judgmental concepts. Rather, I was _distinguishing between_ moral/judgmental concepts and moralism. It helps if we bring in the distinction between the abstract and the concrete. Moralism stays abstract, talking about what's good or bad with no reference to the concrete situation. Moral/judgmental concepts are abstract, but have to be modified in practice, when we take into account concrete conditions. I wrote: I wasn't advocating amorality. You misread what I wrote. Ian says: Apologies, but what's the difference between avoiding amorality yet wanting to avoid moralism too? see the above. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
Engels wrote: All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce them from the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few people have got down to it seriously. In this field we can utilize heaps of help, it is immensely big, anyone who will work seriously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge for economic history is still and its swaddling clothes! constructed into a neat system as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous. this is so true today. Concepts from Marx or Engels or other Marxist big names that have meaning in concrete contexts are turned into abstract formulas (phrases) that replace rather than complementing studying the world. Too often Marxists get into debating abstractions that have no obvious link to the empirical world. But this letter from Engels is not the one that discusses relative autonomy. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Floyd Norris: An Exaggerated Productivity Boom May Soon Be a Bust
Floyd Norris: An Exaggerated Productivity Boom May Soon Be a Bust By FLOYD NORRIS [P]roductivity is not what it was cracked up to be. And therein lies one of the great fallacies of the recent boom and bubble. Productivity at least as measured by the government zoomed in recent years, rising at a faster rate than at any time since the 1960's. That increase helped to persuade many economists that it was a new era, one in which old economic verities might not apply. Rising productivity meant that the economy could grow rapidly without fear of inflation while the information technology revolution, in the year-old words of John T. Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems, enabled companies to reduce costs, generate revenue in new ways, empower employees and citizens and provide the agility needed for the Internet economy's rapid pace. Now productivity is falling, and Mr. Chambers is coping with a collapse in demand that he did not see coming and still cannot quite believe. This week he was still talking of Cisco returning to a 30 percent to 50 percent annual growth rate when the economy recovers. Ellipsis Productivity booms are not permanent things. I wish people wouldn't do this. We _don't know_ whether or not the productivity boom of the late 1990s was real or not. We may not know for decades. (The productivity boom of the 1920s turned out to be permanent and real, but we couldn't be sure until the 1950s or 1960s, when it became clear that labor productivity growth had a long-lasting acceleration in about 1919.) We _do_ know that when the economy slows or recesses, realized labor productivity always falls. The latter is what Norris is referring to, but he can't generalize from that to statements about the trend of productivity growth. Nor can I. There's a kind of Say's Law mystification of productivity growth. It's assumed that when productivity trends upward (or does so at a faster rate) that's automatically a good thing. Even ignoring external costs, etc., a rise in productivity may be a disaster if demand doesn't rise in step. All else constant, rising productivity means that demand _has to rise_ in order to keep unemployment from rising (one formulation of Okun's Law). But demand doesn't always rise, especially with the way that capitalists are always striving to push wages (and thus ultimately, consumer demand) down and the way in which capitalist investment can stop on a dime causing the economy to stall. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti. (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Re: Former Yugoslavia: The name of the game is OIL! - Karen
At 07:33 PM 05/11/2001 -0500, you wrote: Former Yugoslavia: The name of the game is OIL! By Karen Talbot The Bush administration, with its spectacular connections to oil and energy corporations, is telling the U.S. people they need more oil, gas and nuclear power to meet the so-called energy crisis. It is becoming unmistakable that events in the Balkans, including the recent terrorist attacks in Macedonia, have been directly related to this drive for ever-greater sources of oil and profits. Not only do the people of the former Yugoslavia continue to pay an enormous human price, but U.S. consumers and taxpayers also are shelling out huge sums which ultimately enrich these corporations. The intensifying civil war in Macedonia is a case in point. - - - - - - Terrorist assaults in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) by the so-called National Liberation Army (NLA) have resumed and greatly escalated in recent days with major ambushes including against security forces near Kumanova. The FYROM government troops have responded with a major offensive to counter the terrorists. (1) The ethnic Albanian terrorists have been engaging in fierce attacks in the rugged mountains of Macedonia, not only targeting Serbs and Macedonians, but also Albanians who oppose them. Their actions have been criticized by Western powers as threatening to ignite a wider Balkan conflict. (2) But is there a hidden agenda? Though the U.S. administration says it opposes the recent terrorism in this region, they have not stopped these attacks which are initiated from the Serbian province of Kosovo. This is despite the overwhelming KFOR presence, including U.S. forces based at the huge military base, Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, conveniently located in this vital area. I love the conspiracy-theory tone of this article! (irony intended.) It's a mistake to assume that the US totally controls the KLA (UCK!) and especially its splinters. The terroristic KLA is clearly a US ally, but as with previous allies, that doesn't mean that it's totally under US control. (Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega were once US allies...) The US will work to exert this control, but it may not be able to deal with splinters (e.g., in Macedonia). We can't assume that all radical/terroristic Albanian Kosovars are of one mind and act in unison. The US tries to use the KLA, and is in a good position to take advantage of the results of its actions, but nothing is ever certain. Among other things, the KLA or one of its splinters may want a bigger piece of the oil action than the US wants to give it. The KLA or a splinter might hold part of the pipeline for ransom, in an effort to emulate oil millionaires around the world. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Marxian theory of the state
I haven't followed this thread closely (yet) but I have one suggestion to make: perhaps the subject line should read Marxian Theories of the State -- as the following passage from Ollman's _Dialectical Investigations_ would indicate. It begins a section entitled The Role of Abstractions in the Debates over Marxism: ` It will have become evident by now that it is largely differences of vantage point that lay behind many of the great debates in the history of Marxist scholarship. In the _New Left Review_ debate between Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas on the character of the capitalist state, for example, the former viewed the state chiefly from the vantage point of the ruling economic class, while the latter viewed what are essentially the same set of relations from the vantage point of the socio-economic structures that establish both the limits and the requirements for a community's political functions (Poulantzas, 1969; Miliband 1970). As a result, Miliband is better able to account for the traditional role of the state in serving ruling class interests, while Poulantzas has an easier time explaining the relative autonomy of the state, and why the capitalist state continues to serve the ruling class when the latter is not directly in control of state institutions. _Dialectical Investigations_ (1993), pp. 78-79. This tension between the state as autonomous and the state as ruling-class servant seems central to the present thread, and Ollman's remarks should put one on guard against turning one vantage point on the state into a metaphysical principle. Carrol
Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
At 11:08 AM 05/12/2001 -0500, you wrote: I haven't followed this thread closely (yet) but I have one suggestion to make: perhaps the subject line should read Marxian Theories of the State of course any discussion of the theory of the state should take into account the fact that there are multiple points of view (a debate) and that there always will be (until the state goes away). However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to synthesize the various theories in order to transcend the differences... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
But this letter from Engels is not the one that discusses relative autonomy. That'd be the 1890 letter to Bloch, no? The one about superstructural institutions occasionally shaping history? Rob.
Blinder's Op Ed
The Blinder Op Ed about the California electric crisis that was posted recently is amusing. It looks as if he had written it, opposing rate increases as a solution, when the Governor (his client) was strongly against rate increases. Then, oops, the Governor's position changed, so towards the end Blinder had to contradict his first position. Oh, well, for $2,000/day or whatever he gets, probably more, agility is required. His position against rate increases was interesting. He wanted to avoid them by selling bonds and spreading the pain over ten or twenty years, equating it to selling bonds for a capital improvement. But, wait, is current consumption, financed by bonds, the same as building a highway system? The part I liked best was where he attacked public-owned new power plants because that would ruin California's business climate. The business world worries about the business climate but downgrades concern about the world's climate. A little narrow-minded, I would say. Gene Coyle
from the Post-Austistic Economics newsletter
Books of Oomph Deirdre McCloskey (University of Illinois at Chicago and Erasumsuniversiteit Rotterdam) I think the best way for you to grasp what upsets me so much about modern economics is for you to read a little bit in other fields of the intellect. After looking into scientific history or paleoanthropology or literary criticism or Latin literature or astrophysics Ill bet youll join me in being upset about the scientific deadend that economics has wandered into. Seriously, stomach-wrenchingly upset. You and I can go together to the gastroenterologist and get some pills. The first indigestion-producing book I read last year is Jered Diamonds Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. Diamond is, of all things not qualifying one to write the economic history of the world since the last Ice Age, a professor of physiology at a medical school. Hes an evolutionary biologist, trained as (of all things) a botanist. The economic historian Joel Mokyr told me that he approached Diamonds book on page 1 the same way I did: Whos this fool? Hes claiming to talk about economic history. Im the expert in economic history around here. Joel says that by page 50 he was converted. It took me only 20 pages, which just shows that Joel has higher intellectual standards than I do. Diamond argues that the reason Europe ended up so powerful is that it was the inheritor of a biological accidentthat plant and animal species, only a small percentage of which prove suitable for domestication, are especially numerous in the great east-west swath of land from China to Spain. And thats why the middle of the swathMesopotamiawas the first to get socially organized in a big way. The north-south places, such as Africa and America, were broken up by ecological barriers to spread of cows, wheat, that sort of thing the Isthmus of Panama, for example, and anyway the barrier arising from varied growing conditions by latitude. Interesting. But my point here is that in making his arguments Diamond does science. He doesnt do what economists, without acquaintance with any alleged science but their own, persist in imagining is science. Diamond is not big on phony, existence-theorem math or phony, significance-testing statistics. (The temptation to be so must be considerable, since the neighboring field of population biology, like economics, is in love with the cargo-cult techniques perfected after World War II, axiomatic and significance-test game playing: autistic economics.) He is big on quantitative arguments based on factual matter, arguments that have oomph. For example in arguing the case for New Guinea as a test of how important food production is in causing societies to flourish he uses new linguistic evidence on the origins of Micronesian and Polynesian languages, such as their crop vocabularies. The philosopher of history R. G. Collingwood, himself a historian of Roman Britain, once defined scientific history (by contrast with scissors-and-paste history) as studying problems, not periods, asking questions about the world and seeing ones way to answering them. He notes that a scientist is neither a theorist-philosopher speculating about whether an endogenous-growth model has equilibrium solutions under assumptions x, y, or z nor a scissors-and-paste econometrician rummaging in bad data for significant coefficients. She is on the contrary a maker of testable arguments about real worlds, like a detective. Diamond does science, I say. Hes a detective. At a session of the Economic History Association last year in Los Angeles I heard him talk about his book. After Diamond spoke, our own Jeff Sachs gave a similar presentation of his new ideas about geography and underdevelopment. Sachs, like Diamond, is a detective, a scientist. So can we all be, if well stop spending our valuable time on the non-scientific talk about things existing. (So I commend the French students in open revolution against Cartesian- Samuelsonian-Arrovian economics; Aux barricades!) ellipsis Observe that Diamond is just a botanist and Tompkins is just an English professor. Not physicists. Not mathematicians. Not a significance test in hundreds and hundreds of well-written pages (not that physicists use those: my students and I have shown by examining the magazine Science that it is only economists and population biologists and medical scientists who misuse statistical significance). Not a theorem in sight (not that the physicists care about theorems). Yet both Diamond and Tompkins are really serious about knowing things about the world. So the issue is not science vs. the humanities or some other British simpletons philosophy of knowledge. What we seek is science in the usual French sense, inquiry. Get with it, oh my beloved fellow economists. Read, and get that queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. Read the linguist Merritt Ruhlens The
Re: Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
Good luck trying to synthesize the instrumentalists structuralists, Stamocap and German capital-logic/state derivatationists ) see the Holloway and Piccioto volume published by Univ. of Texas Press, povs in the debates. For those like Shermano, good reviews of the literature are the volumes by Bob Jessup, The Capitalist State, and Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory. Also the journal, Kapitalistate, from the 70's. Michael Pugliese - Original Message - From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 9:19 AM Subject: [PEN-L:11440] Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state At 11:08 AM 05/12/2001 -0500, you wrote: I haven't followed this thread closely (yet) but I have one suggestion to make: perhaps the subject line should read Marxian Theories of the State of course any discussion of the theory of the state should take into account the fact that there are multiple points of view (a debate) and that there always will be (until the state goes away). However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to synthesize the various theories in order to transcend the differences... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Camejo still bullish
[This is from a letter from stockbroker Peter Camejo to his customers, which can be read in its entirety at www.camejogroup.com. While Camejo apparently sold Progressive Assets Management, a so-called social investment company with branches in over 6 cities, to investors some time ago, he continues doing business from an office north of San Francisco. [Before restyling himself as a social investment broker, Camejo was an ex-Trotskyist leader trying to launch a non-sectarian left formation in the USA. Many of my ideas on the problem of democratic centralism were lifted from him. While I was working with him on this project in the early 1980s, I discovered that he was becoming more interested in the stock market than socialism. Until the mid-1990s, Camejo tried to maintain an appearance of using profits from his business ventures to further the radical movement. No such pretensions exist any longer, at least based on a cursory examination of his website. [As far as the letter is concerned, it expresses a peculiar kind of bullishness influenced by his Marxist past. It smacks of Ernest Mandel's long wave notions, in my opinion although he has enough good sense not to scare his customers away with references to the deceased Belgian Trotskyist leader, who remained a maverick to his dying days. Camejo's bullish economic views were presented in a more elaborated form in a 1999 issue of Against the Current as part of a series of responses to Robert Brenner's article predicting a global financial meltdown, a shorter version of something that had already appeared in the New Left Review. My own take on Camejo's bullish Marxism stands up pretty well, in light of the NASDAQ nosedive. It can be read at: www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/June99/peter_camejos_long_wave_l.htm ] March 18, 2001 To All Clients Dear Clients, With this letter you are receiving a newsletter written primarily in January of this year. I am enclosing this letter to bring some of the more recent market developments up to date. We are living through a rather unusual bear market. Simply put we are going through two bear markets. The first is a normal cyclical bear which appears about once every four or five year with about 20 to 30% decline (the SP 500 is down 25.9% from its high) combined with a crash in the NASDAQ composite that has dropped 62.8% from its high of 5078 on March 10, 2000 to 1890 as of today. Since the time I prepared the newsletter evidence is growing that the economy, while mixed, is slowing. Therefore for example, the semi-conductor drop is not only an inventory problem, as many originally thought, but also a product of an end user slow down. The semi-conductor index, the SOX, is down 61% from its high. In the newsletter I refer to two possible explanations. I refer to these as A or B. A being mainly an inventory issue and B being a more serious economic slow down. Greenspan is arguing for explanation A and recently stated he feels the inventory build up is starting to bum off The market is saying B is correct and Greenspan is behind in cutting interest rates. I remain in camp A but feeling less confident each day as the market continues its free fall. During this drop we focused on tiying to buy into the extremely low valuations of quality companies, primarily in the technology sector. The error in this approach is the degree of the drop we are going through. Taking advantage of this drop and buying a little Ariba (ARBA) when it went from 180 to 37 was obviously a mistake, since it is now 10. That drop is a 94% drop. The crash of 1929 was an 88% drop. For some individual technology leaders like Ariba (B2B software) this crash is similar in magnitude to 1929. What is so different from the only other two times drops of this degree have occurred (1929 and 1973-74) is the economic background. In 1929 we were at the beginning of a depression. At that time, interest rates were mistakenly raised for a period and tariffs increased. Today, the fed is lowering interest rates and the federal government has a surplus. Sooner rather than later, someone will tell President Bush to stop talking about not spending and start helping with fiscal stimulation. Unemployment is below 5% and certain sectors of the economy (e.g., housing) seem to be holding up. This is not at all a similar framework to 1929. In 1973-74, the nation was facing strong inflationary pressures and the market came off what amounted to a 40-year bull market. This bull market is only 19 years old with little inflation. THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE BULL MARKET. Even technology, now declared dead by many commentators, is quite alive. We are living through a profound technological revolution that is accelerating, in spite of short periods of slowdown in its growth rate. Nothing moves in a straight line in terms of the economy and the market. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
Michael Pugliese writes: Good luck trying to synthesize the instrumentalists structuralists, Stamocap and German capital-logic/state derivatationists ) see the Holloway and Piccioto volume published by Univ. of Texas Press, povs in the debates. I'm not going to try to develop an explicit synthesis of various state theories here. Rather, I'm going to simply state what I think is the best view of the state [see http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/2001II/msg01512.html for a start], based on the various sources that Michael cites, along with such great sources as Hal Draper's multi-volume KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION, which is nothing but a summary and analysis of Marx's and Engels' own views (which turn out to be remarkably sophisticated by today's standards). I'm going to avoid academic citation and quotes from Marx where possible, at least on pen-l, leaving that for more appropriate venues. You folks can judge the validity of my views by comparing them to perceived reality rather than to the perpetual debate amongst academics. (My views may or may not be a true synthesis, but that's really not an important issue.) One thing I do object to is that perpetual debate, which often seems as autistic (in the sense the post-autistic economics movement uses that term) as mathematical economics tends to be. I'm tired of the constant reference to the instrumentalists vs. the structuralists, etc., which often misses the fact that these different views are often not in conflict and are instead complementary. There's something about academic life that involves clinging to the debate itself rather than trying to reconcile opposing views. (Maybe the clinging promotes the chances of getting tenure while allowing the tenured to feed their egos by defending their positions. But who knows?) To my mind, that clinging is silly. Thus, I do not reject neoclassical economics _in its entirety_. Rather, I try to troll the orthodoxy for valid points concerning empirical reality. It turns out that there are some parts that make sense in the empirical world (such as the theory of externalities or that of adverse selection). Of course, our orientation should always be toward understanding the world (in order to change it) rather than understanding debates. BTW, Tony Lawson's contribution to the Post-Autistic Economics newsletter was really useful. Should I post it to pen-l? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine There are few Einsteins today. Maybe they all flunk the Graduate Record Exam or get poor grades. -- Temple Grandin, _Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports From My Life with Autism_.
Re: Blinder's Op Ed
Surely, you are joking. $2,000 per day. No way! The economists testifying for Microsoft were getting $800 per hour. I assume that the vice chair of the fed. gets more than a mortal economist. Besides, inflation plus the upward drift in the returns to superstars must have earned him $1000 per hour. I presume that he is worth it -- soft heads and hard hearts were his specialty -- or was it the other way around? On Sat, May 12, 2001 at 09:25:00AM -0700, Eugene Coyle wrote: Oh, well, for $2,000/day or whatever he gets, probably more, agility is required. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
Jim Devine: I'm not going to try to develop an explicit synthesis of various state theories here. Rather, I'm going to simply state what I think is the best view of the state [see http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/2001II/msg01512.html for a start], based on the various sources that Michael cites, along with such great sources as Hal Draper's multi-volume KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION, which is nothing but a summary and analysis of Marx's and Engels' own views (which turn out to be remarkably sophisticated by today's standards). One of the things that makes Draper so good is that he, like Timpanaro, comes from outside the academy, without the tendency to fragment the Marxist analysis into a kind of subdiscipline attuned to the requirements of a graduate faculty. The problem with Miliband and Poulantzas is that they are operating as academic political scientists and tend to engage with Marx as a theorist of the state. But if you detach Marx's writings on the Paris commune, for instance, from his economic writings or his discussion of party-building problems, you are not going to get the full picture. Unlike Miliband and Poulantzas, Marx (and Lenin and Trotsky and CLR James, et al) were concerned with specific existing states not states as an abstraction. Hardly the sort of thing that can find its way into Poli Sci 103. I am actually reading v. 4 of Draper (Critique of Other Socialisms) right now to help me prepare for a series of articles on anarchism. I started with the beginning of the book even though it deals with other currents besides the anarchists. He is particularly good at explaining the nature of the dispute with Lassalle. Lassalle promoted something called state socialism which doesn't have anything to do with the label applied to the USSR, Cuba, etc. Instead it refers to Lassalle's belief that co-ops could form the basis for a new socialist society arising in the old capitalist one, especially if they received massive funding from the state. Lassalle was particularly interested in getting Bismarck to help fund such co-ops and offered to line up working class votes in exchange. This proposed alliance meant that Lassalle would be opposed to the enemy of his friend, namely the bourgeois liberals in Germany. This spectacle led Marx to write Critique of the Gotha Program which was meant to clarify issues with his followers in Germany who did not fully understand what Lassalle stood for. Needless to say, the kind of ideological confusion Lassalle represented is still with us today. Alas. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Limits of Synthesis, was Re: Marxian theory of the state
Jim Devine wrote: [clip] However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to synthesize the various theories in order to transcend the differences... I'm not sure. Let's try a really crude example and explore whether it transfers to such complexities as theory of the state. From various Vantage Points (Ollman's phrase) Carrol Cox is a person with a particular name, Carrol Cox is a member of a species of mammal is a resident at 409 Phoenix, Bloomington, IL is a belt-wearer is a retired asst. prof. of English is a reader of Pound is a collection of electrons protons etc. and so forth. Now we would (I think) want to argue that in principle all these (and many other) Carrol Coxes could be synthsized into a unified entity -- but (a) I'm not sure they could be in practice and (b) I'm not sure that we really need to. The Capitalist State is an entity at a very high level of generality, and while we need to refer to that level for purposes of communication (keeping the discussants in the same ball partk as it were) I'm not sure that we need to synthesize all the other levels of generality in any clear cut way, or to synthesize the various vantage points in any precise way. This is all speculative. Carrol
Re: Re: Blinder's Op Ed
My first summer job, at the company my Dad spent most of his career at, for those three months, at his side at $500 an hour an was independent contractor on loan from Lockheed. What would that be in inflation adjusted dollars? That was 1978. Last time Jerry Brown ran for President, '92, saw him in S.F. at a rally. He had a line about $250 an hour lawyers. Two suits in front of me said their firm billed $500 for their services. When I temped at a downtown law firm, their clerks that did payroll and client billings, divided the hour into 10 segments not, 4. The only nice thing they did. The difference between being billed a full quarter hr. after only talking on the phone for 6 minutes, would be 125 vs. 50, for the sr. partners. Michael Pugliese - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 10:46 AM Subject: [PEN-L:11447] Re: Blinder's Op Ed Surely, you are joking. $2,000 per day. No way! The economists testifying for Microsoft were getting $800 per hour. I assume that the vice chair of the fed. gets more than a mortal economist. Besides, inflation plus the upward drift in the returns to superstars must have earned him $1000 per hour. I presume that he is worth it -- soft heads and hard hearts were his specialty -- or was it the other way around? On Sat, May 12, 2001 at 09:25:00AM -0700, Eugene Coyle wrote: Oh, well, for $2,000/day or whatever he gets, probably more, agility is required. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Blinder's Op Ed
Michael Pugliese wrote: My first summer job, at the company my Dad spent most of his career at, for those three months, at his side at $500 an hour an was independent contractor on loan from Lockheed. What would that be in inflation adjusted dollars? That was 1978. $1,366. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: moralism
For a great read/tutorial on eliminativism try: http://freespace.virgin.net/richard.goode/nopermit/welcome.htm please explain using your own words. === What do I have to write/defend a dissertation on this list? I find it ironic to say the least that you would post the following article excerpt: I think the best way for you to grasp what upsets me so much about modern economics is for you to read a little bit in other fields of the intellect. After looking into scientific history or paleoanthropology or literary criticism or Latin literature or astrophysics I'll bet you'll join me in being upset about the scientific deadend that economics has wandered into. Yet you won't even take 3 minutes to peruse an essay that would explain explain eliminativism every bit as well as I could without me having to spend 45 minutes or an hour writing up a quick synopsis for you and others. That being said.. Eliminativism is the position that folk psychology/ethics is a false theory and that corresponding notions such as belief, experience, and sensation are fundamentally mistaken. The alternative most often offered is physicalist and the position is thus often called 'eliminative materialism'. However the import of the idea is that there are lots of categories of thought that misdescribe the self/language/world triad. Ethical eliminativism turns this strategy onto moral discourse itself and picks off concepts like good, right, moral etc. and subjects their usage to rigorous analyses to see if they can hold up; it is the idea that many, if not all moral categories no more refer to human behavior than phlogiston referred in physical chemistry discourse. Eliminativists have been sometimes charged with nihilism although I think that is inaccurate. There, now my hands and wrists really hurt. JD no, I don't think I can change his mind. As with debates on pen-l, my argument would not be aimed at convincing _him_ as much as at convincing the audience. === Well then the space shield will in all probability be built because he's not going to listen to them any more than he would listen to you and he and his friends are banking on the weakness of collective action skills and fleeting attention spans and patriotism in the US populace. I didn't say I was against moral/judgmental concepts. Rather, I was _distinguishing between_ moral/judgmental concepts and moralism. It helps if we bring in the distinction between the abstract and the concrete. Moralism stays abstract, talking about what's good or bad with no reference to the concrete situation. Moral/judgmental concepts are abstract, but have to be modified in practice, when we take into account concrete conditions. = You misunderstand moralism which is why I posted the link. You may, in fact be an eliminativist and not even know it. But I don't feel like debating the various social processes whereby we construct/deconstruct/reconstruct categories that render human behavior somewhat intelligible. Would I be remiss in suggesting Marx's On the Jewish Question whereby he engages in a form of eliminativist discourse? I wrote: I wasn't advocating amorality. You misread what I wrote. Ian says: Apologies, but what's the difference between avoiding amorality yet wanting to avoid moralism too? see the above. To the extent moral discourse occurs/refers at all, some will always accuse others of moralism; that is due to the very contestability of concepts we associate with morality and the issues and contexts we debate/argue with the terms of morality. Im not sure eliminating moral concepts will improve our conflict resolution skills or even lead to any kind of wisdom whatsoever on the thorny issues of international relations, military technology and warfare. People, especially males, seem to enjoy disagreement too much and like to build stuff to defend the maintenance of disagreements. Ian
Re: Bush donates mere $200m to global AIDS fund
I agree that this needs to be fully engaged. I not interested in transferring public money to drug companies but in an alternative policy of ending monopolies protected by patents. Let's have production done in the public scientific research sector. Gene Coyle Chris Burford wrote: Bush has the effrontery to claim he is setting an example by agreeing to the US giving a mere $200m to a global AIDS fund. At 27/04/01, Louis Proyect wrote: [Re: Global AIDS war chest] With such a staggering economic/medical crisis, it is totally obscene for somebody like Clinton or Blair and their stooge Kofi Annan to be talking about AIDS warchests. Clinton was calling for a figure roughly ten times bigger than Bush's offer. The effect of Louis Proyect's position is now that no criticism can be made of Bush's offer because to do so would betray an unrevolutionary spirit. Yet this is one of the glaring issues on the world agenda now. If we cannot engage with it to demonstrate the need for production to be controlled by social foresight, what can we engage with? Chris Burford London
Query to Ian on Web site? Re: ETUR@Ît
Ian, I clicked that URL and got the top part of a page with the title and author, and I couldn't move it or find anything to click to get to the text. What gives? I tried a couple of other web sites and my browser seems to be working o.k. Carrol
Re: One H1-B victory, but thousands in slave-like state
Bill Rosenberg wrote: The glories of working in California hi-tech industries eh? Bill One H1-B victory, but thousands in slave-like state by Sukhjit Purewal, India Abroad News Service San Francisco, May 5 - Dipen Joshi may have won his case against the consultancy firm, Compubahn Inc., that tried to hold him to an illegal contract, but there are thousands of other H1-B employees languishing under onerous slave-like conditions. [...] Slavery was supposed to have been abolished in this country 200 years ago -- this is like bonded labor in India, Advani told IANS. [...] That is what makes Joshi's case a potential lightening rod for helping to improve working conditions for H1-B visa holders working for body shops. we have to be careful in accepting such hyperbole as comparing the condition of rich fat cat h-1b workers from india to slaves and sweatshop workers. most of these h-1b workers (at least from india) come from upper class indian society, and almost all of them earn incomes in the U.S that are well above the US median income. the companies that place these folks have to prove to the INS that they are paid salaries that are similar to what US citizens in similar jobs are paid. further, the process of obtaining these jobs is a cunning game of negotiation between both parties. i would agree entirely with any effort to prevent abusive or illegal practices on the part of consulting houses, but it is silly to compare the problems of these folks to slavery, sweatshop labour etc. part of the problem lies in the green card wait that used to bind a consultant to the company that sponsors his or her card, until the issue of the card. recent changes passed by congress permit a consultant to transfer companies and retain green card application status once labour certification is completed. further efforts to accelerate the green card process (which currently stands at 4-6 years for an indian h-1b holder with a bachelor's or master's degree) would be of greater help. --ravi (h-1b worker in the US with a lifestyle that is not even close to that of a slave).
Re: [PEN-L:11454] Query to Ian on Web site? Re: ETUR@Ît
Ian, I clicked that URL and got the top part of a page with the title and author, and I couldn't move it or find anything to click to get to the text. What gives? I tried a couple of other web sites and my browser seems to be working o.k. Carrol === Same thing happened to me the first time around yesterday but on the second attempt it worked. Try google.com and type in either Richard Goode or Nothing is Permitted and see what happens. Ian
U.S.S. Liberty slanders
Conspiracies take on a life of their own in spite of facts to the contrary. For the truth about the U.S.S. Liberty, go to: http://pnews.org/ I am not an academician. I was however, a security analysis and cryptologist serving the president of the United States in the White House in the late 50s and at JCS in the War Room at the Pentagon serving the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 60s. The link is there. The essay (two parts) is too long to post here. Hank Roth a/k/a TheGolem http://pnews.org/
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state
Just how does X is relatively autonomous from Y have anything to do with Y being relatively autonomous from X assuming we have some sort of inkling what relatively autonomous is supposed to mean. I understood it to mean that laws (X) were relatively independent of capitalism (Y) in at least two senses: i) specific laws may not directly relate to the interests of capital per se. For example laws concerning which side of the road to drive on, or what age a person can get married, or drive a car, etc.etc. Also, specific laws such as the right of non-property holders to vote or minimum wage laws may even be against the interests of capital. ii) laws are interpreted according to legal reasoning with no direct reference to the needs of capital. Neither of these senses of relatively autonomous has anything to do with whether law determines the nature of the market and property relationships.Does David or anyone else deny that property rights and markets are dependent on the law for their operation for the most part. The only exception seems to be informal trading and black and grey markets but even the latter two are so named because of the existence of legal markets. Surely the main Marxian thesis is that law is only relatively autonomous, relations of production and the consequent overwhelming power of capital ensure that the type of market relations that are legal and enforced and the type of property relationships that are recognised will primarily be those in the interest of capital overall. David asks how can capitalism be autonomous from the law? By determining the law, and specificiallly determing it in such a way that overall the market and property is defined in the interest of capital. This does not entail as has been shown that the law for its part cannot be relatively autonomous. When this autonomy seriously conflicts with capitalist aims there will be a struggle to change the law. Surely this has happened as the welfare state laws have been eroded or even jettisoned in the age of globalisation. Many of these changes have zilch to do with free markets, by the way, but everything to do with profit. Agreements re patent protection are a good example. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Justin Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 11:32 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11423] Re: RE: Re: Re: Marxian theory of the state I agree with your general point, David, but you can overdo it. Underlying the general thrust of the law are power relations that are if not wholly independent of the law, at least explanatorily prior to it. I am now reading Peter Linebaugh's The Many Headed Hydra, which discusses, among other things, the sort of struggle between the traditional and popular assertion of the right of the poor to the commons and the claims of the rising capitalist class to private property, expressed in enclosure laws (among other things) that privatized those commons. Those enclosure laws sprang from the political power of an economically emergent class that used the power of the state, including its power to reefine property relations, to remake what counted as property. In the New World, the expropriation of common Indian land as [private European property was much more naked and independent of prior law, at least of Indian law or custom, as could be. --jks Jim Devine writes: -- right, the law is relatively autonomous from capitalism, i.e., what serves the long-term (class) interests of capital. A law which serves capital in one era can hurt capital in another. -- I need clarification. The argument is repeatedly made on this list that there is no such thing as a free market and private property because the market and property is defined by the laws that regulate the market and property. If so, how can capitalism be autonomous from the law? Is not capitalism, by definition, defined by the law that creates and regulates markets and property in any specific context? I mean, if there is no law defining property, how can there be capitalism? Does this make any sense? David Shemano _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: [PEN-L:11454] Query to Ian on Web site? Re: ETUR@Ît
I had the same experience. There is a slogan Nothing is Permitted...I guess that includes not showing the guy's genitals or more of God than part of his hand. Anyway I would not read anything on eliminativism any more. Life is too short. If anyone still proposes it, I am sure they still engage in mistaken talk all the time like everybody else. What do these characters suggest we use instead of good bad right or talk about beliefs and desires? I always thought of the theory as primarily one that advocates the eventual reductiion of the concepts of folk-psychology i.e. desires beliefs etc. in favor of the concepts of some form of neuro-science as in the work of Paul and Patricia Churchland but I suppose it was inevitable that some one would make some academic brownies by applying it to ethics. It is fortunate that if the theory is true no one can believe it because there are no beliefs. Also, it could not be ethically wrong for me to reject the theory without having read a word about it since if the theory is true then there are no ethical wrongs. Now perhaps Ian could explain why he finds this stuff of the remotest interest or why he should be concerned that people are thankfullly too lazy to read about it. Remember dont moralise in your discourse... CHeers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 2:54 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11454] Query to Ian on Web site? Re: ETUR@Ît Ian, I clicked that URL and got the top part of a page with the title and author, and I couldn't move it or find anything to click to get to the text. What gives? I tried a couple of other web sites and my browser seems to be working o.k. Carrol
The ghost of what is [and isn't] eliminable.....
Without Prejudice Dangerous liaisons Tories claim the spirit of the Blitz as their own while also flirting with Europe's neo-fascist Right Observer Election Special Guardian Unlimited Politics Nick Cohen Sunday May 13, 2001 The Observer You can't type 'fascism' without asking for trouble. At one level, it's become a meaningless word. 'Fascism' was abused by the Left in the Sixties and is trivialised by the Right today. (The Anglo-Saxon John Townend was presenting himself victim of the 'race relations Gestapo' only last month. Did they yank his fingernails out?) When everyone from parents who tell you to tidy your bedroom to the opponents of tobacco advertising is fascist, no one is fascist. There were genuine fascists, and parties in Italy, France, Austria and Belgium still look pretty fascist to me. But the search for conceptual certainty is frustrating. Cas Mudde, a writer on the European far-Right, based at Edinburgh University, spoke for many academics when he said he preferred 'xenophobic nationalist' to 'neo- or post-fascist'. For all their viciousness, the Jorg Haiders and Jean-Marie Le Pens don't claim to be fuhrers who mystically embody the blood and soil of the nation. They don't demand Lebensraum or the overthrow of democracy. Professorial caveats must be respected. I can't help thinking, however, that if Silvio Berlusconi and the Italian Right wins power in today's elections, civilised Italians will worry about the inclusion of the neo-fascist, or xenophobic-nationalist, or whatever you want to call it, Alleanza Nazionale in the media tycoon's coalition. The grandchildren of Mussolini may wear business suits and talk in calm, low voices. They are an advance on Il Duce, but have inherited the family's ugly features. A strong strain of English self-congratulation argues that, whatever modern fascism is, it's a continental disease. The tone for succeeding generations of back-patters was set by George Orwell when he wrote The Lion and the Unicorn in 1940 as the Battle of Britain was fought over his head. Fascism could never happen here because the common sense and rude good humour of the English would kill it in seconds. 'One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is Yes, I am ugly, and you daren't laugh at me, like the bully who makes faces at his victim. Why is the goose-step not used in England? There are, heaven knows, plenty of army officers who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing. It is not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army.' You can see how Orwell can appeal to Conservatives for all his advocacy of a united socialist states of Europe to prevent Soviet and American domination of the continent. They justify themselves to each other by purring that their England is Orwell's England: a sound, empirical island in a sea of dangerous turbulence. England distrusts grand schemes and sweeping ideologies. Tories can be sure that the Utopian ideals of the creators of the single currency will fail to stir the English today as surely as messianic fascism and communism failed in the Thirties. There's a simple test English Conservatives would need to pass before we could accept their flattering self-portrait: they would need to show they had nothing in common with the heirs of fascism on the dark continent. On 10 March members of an organisation called the European Young Conservatives gathered at the Comfort Inn in Westminster for four days of networking and night-clubbing. Delegates were instructed to wear business suits for a meeting with Margaret Thatcher, who likes her fans to be well-turned out. Among them was Giampiero Cannella, of the Alleanza Nazionale's youth wing, and his supporters. The meeting with 'la Lady di ferro' was a highlight for the boys. Cannella gave her a copy of his manifesto - Rivoluzione Blu - and was photographed with his smiling heroine. On Friday, Thatcher broadcast her voting instructions to the doubtless grateful Italians. She told them to back Berlusconi and, by extension, his Alleanza Nazionale partners. She was 'impressed by his qualities'. His goals were 'very similar' to hers. Their opponents were 'reared in the stables of Marxism'. That notoriously Bolshevik periodical, the Economist, has joined Berlusconi's enemies. It said in April that 'in any self-respecting democracy' it would be unthinkable that Berlusconi would be elected Prime Minister when he had recently come under investigation for 'money laundering, complicity in
Re: [PEN-L:11459] Re: [PEN-L:11454] Query to Ian on Web site? Re: ETUR@Ît
KH I had the same experience. There is a slogan Nothing is Permitted...I guess that includes not showing the guy's genitals or more of God than part of his hand. Anyway I would not read anything on eliminativism any more. Life is too short. If anyone still proposes it, I am sure they still engage in mistaken talk all the time like everybody else. What do these characters suggest we use instead of good bad right or talk about beliefs and desires? = Precisely what the right asks for when they ask what would socialism consist of? KH I always thought of the theory as primarily one that advocates the eventual reductiion of the concepts of folk-psychology i.e. desires beliefs etc. in favor of the concepts of some form of neuro-science as in the work of Paul and Patricia Churchland but I suppose it was inevitable that some one would make some academic brownies by applying it to ethics. It is fortunate that if the theory is true no one can believe it because there are no beliefs. Also, it could not be ethically wrong for me to reject the theory without having read a word about it since if the theory is true then there are no ethical wrongs. Now perhaps Ian could explain why he finds this stuff of the remotest interest or why he should be concerned that people are thankfullly too lazy to read about it. Remember dont moralise in your discourse... CHeers, Ken Hanly == No need to; What is the quest for a post-capitalist society other than one big exercise in eliminativism with regards to categories such as capital property market usury exploitation injustice unfreedom monopoly scarcity oligarchy authoritarianism paternalism national security militarism endogenous growth residual claimant derivatives trade union class racism/sexism? I could go on if you like Ian
Re: [PEN-L:11461] Re: [PEN-L:11459] Re: [PEN-L:11454] Query to Ian on Web site? Re: ETUR@Ît
Comments after sections KH I had the same experience. There is a slogan Nothing is Permitted...I guess that includes not showing the guy's genitals or more of God than part of his hand. Anyway I would not read anything on eliminativism any more. Life is too short. If anyone still proposes it, I am sure they still engage in mistaken talk all the time like everybody else. What do these characters suggest we use instead of good bad right or talk about beliefs and desires? = Precisely what the right asks for when they ask what would socialism consist of? This remark makes absolutely no sense to me. Could you explain? KH I always thought of the theory as primarily one that advocates the eventual reductiion of the concepts of folk-psychology i.e. desires beliefs etc. in favor of the concepts of some form of neuro-science as in the work of Paul and Patricia Churchland but I suppose it was inevitable that some one would make some academic brownies by applying it to ethics. It is fortunate that if the theory is true no one can believe it because there are no beliefs. Also, it could not be ethically wrong for me to reject the theory without having read a word about it since if the theory is true then there are no ethical wrongs. Now perhaps Ian could explain why he finds this stuff of the remotest interest or why he should be concerned that people are thankfullly too lazy to read about it. Remember dont moralise in your discourse... == No need to; What is the quest for a post-capitalist society other than one big exercise in eliminativism with regards to categories such as capital property market usury exploitation injustice unfreedom monopoly scarcity oligarchy authoritarianism paternalism national security militarism endogenous growth residual claimant derivatives trade union class racism/sexism? I could go on if you like Are you serious? Eliminativism is a theory which holds that certain concepts such as belief, desire, right etc. have no referents or ultimate explanatory power. Vague as the terms you list may be, they surely are not without any signification and many have explanatory functions. You talk as if it were the same thing to show that the term dog refers to nothing (as with phlogiston) and to eliminate dogs. An eliminativist view would be that property: had no referent or explantory power. Surely a post-capitalist at most would want to eliminate certain types of property. Are there people who want to eliminate all property? Cheers, Ken Hanly
