RE: Re: Oz Competition update
Doug Henwood wrote: I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Nope. Mark
Socialism in one listserv
Tim Bousquet writes: I think the difference is that I don't get paid to only sit around and think about it, and dream up theories and so forth. I very much enjoy being a lookie-loo on this list, but many of the arguments and the things people find important simply escape me. Maybe that reflects my lack of eduaction, but I think that in no small part it reflects you academics' disconnect with the real world. No offense intended; I'm learning a lot just reading through my hundreds of PEN-l messages, but I often find the list, well, arcane and obscure. I hold a broad marxist view of the world and am willing to keep it at that while trying to relate to the broad populace through my newspaper. I find discussion about 17th century Latin America interesting, but it's a long, long way from an interesting read on the Incas to encouraging Butte County workers to organize against their employers, to give just one example. snip Isn't the point to have some of real effect on the world, as opposed to being caught up in discussion group with no apparent relevance? = This is the subject of a rather well-titled (and written) Monthly Review article from April 1982 by Doug Dowd: Marxism for the few, or, let 'em eat theory. Michael K.
New Labour 20% ahead
The latest average of opinion polls in the British General Election places the Labour Party 20% ahead of the Conservative Party, at 50% and 30% respectively. The Labour Party, under Blair, has occupied almost all the political terrain, left, centre, and right. It is not clear whether the Labour Party will be able to get out its core vote as well as the Conservatives. The latter are relying increasingly on a secrecy factor: that Conservatives are unwilling to admit they are Conservative to pollsters. However the other side of the coin is that in conversation among the middle strata it is socially uncomfortable to say that you would vote Conservative. As two thirds of the manual working class in England have always voted Conservative, the attitudes of those further up the social ladder, affect them too. New Labour's policy of targeting its appeal to 90% of the population is paying off. While in the USA the chances of big tax benefits to the rich depend at best on the defection of an individual Republican politician (and I understand he has said he will not block the first round of tax cuts) in the British General Election the single biggest domestic issue on the agenda is the government standing firm against further tax cuts and pledging further expenditure on health and education, while the Conservative offer substantial tax cuts (in UK terms). This message from the Conservatives is going down to defeat, and it will be an important victory for social responsibility in European politics. The two party system always has a danger for progressives of just tailing behind the more progressive party. There is plenty that is reactionary in the Labour Party, and its intention to serve the interests of finance capital is clear. But at least it asks for some social responsibility. To be unable to distinguish between the relative advantages of different political parties in a bourgeois political system and to make this a point of principle, is not consistent with the marxist method of analyis and in fact turns it into a dogma. Chris Burford London
HMO's don't control doctors killing patients
One of the use values in increasing demand with the rise of consumer capitalism, is good health care. The battle is on over the economics and management of this rising sector of an economy. In the UK there has been a retreat from a supposedly free market economy of the USA. Now there is a dramatic report showing how the HMO system which is essentially based around the interests of finance capital in insuring risk, fails to monitor the quality of its medical labour force. As a New York Times article notes in the IHT: Discussion of the data bank is part of a larger debate over medical errors and the quality of care. In November 1999, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors, and it called for a nationwide mandatory reporting system. Modern health care is a highly social system of production. Management that treats it as a legal matter of the sale of the private labour time of a professional, combined with the management of the large sums of finance capital, presents insoluble contradictions.The answer has to be a move towards more socialised health care. Extracts follow Chris Burford London ... Under federal law, health-maintenance organizations (HMOs) and hospitals are supposed to inform the government of any disciplinary actions taken against doctors for incompetence or misconduct. But in the last decade, 84 percent of HMOs and 60 percent of hospitals never reported a single adverse action to the government, a report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services said. This low level of reporting occurred even though a government study found that tens of thousands of Americans die each year because of medical errors. Information on incompetent doctors is included in a computer system known as the National Practitioner Data Bank, created by Congress to protect patients against doctors who move from state to state without disclosing that they have been censured or disciplined. But the report, based on an 18-month study, said that from 1990 to 1999, when managed care became the dominant form of health care in the United States, health-maintenance organizations reported only 715 adverse actions. . The inspector general's explanation was stark. In a market more concerned with price than quality, the report said, HMOs have evolved into bill-paying organizations and managed care plans often have little incentive to devote many resources to quality assessment and improvement. . Sometimes, some HMO executives said, they work out quiet deals with inept doctors. Under such arrangements, a doctor resigns from a health plan, and in return the health plan promises not to file a report with the federal data bank. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and author of the 1986 law creating the National Practitioner Data Bank, said the low level of reporting was unacceptable. The inspector general's study sounds an alarm bell, he said. The data bank is for the use of hospital and other health-care providers, and federal law prohibits disclosing information on a specific doctor to the general public. Federal investigators said HMOs and hospitals frequently consulted the data bank to check on doctors' qualifications, but rarely contributed any information.
Oz Competition update
G'day all, Another beaut month in the annals of competition. Today we lost our third-biggest telecommunications company, leaving the original encumbent (the half-privatised Telstra) about 6 times as big as its closest competitor (Optus) after five years. We once had about forty telcos, but by 2000 we had about a dozen. We're down to about seven now, and definitely still counting. Three by this time next year is my call. Oh, and one of our four airlines has just gone bust, too - picked up by the larger of the two original encumbents (the market was opened less than a decade ago). As Branson's VirginBlue has just entered the market (wonder why?), we haved three airlines for the moment, but Qantas is all over the others like a rash (Ansett had to ground its 767 fleet all last week, and just as they were advertising their way out of the concomitant PR trouble, their morning Canberra flight sucked in a fox and destroyed its engine). From public monopoly to private monopoly in a decade flat, I'd say ... And everybody bloody well knew it when it counted, of course. Cheers, Rob.
New Labour 20% ahead
Chris Burford writes: The two party system always has a danger for progressives of just tailing behind the more progressive party. There is plenty that is reactionary in the Labour Party, and its intention to serve the interests of finance capital is clear. But at least it asks for some social responsibility. To be unable to distinguish between the relative advantages of different political parties in a bourgeois political system and to make this a point of principle, is not consistent with the marxist method of analyis and in fact turns it into a dogma. = I'm not exactly sure who or what you are driving at here. Probably the most critical comments I can remember you making on this list were directed at Ken Livingstone, whose victory in the London mayor election was a decisive blow against New Labour hegemony. Livingstone is interesting inasmuch as he is well aware of, and has gone on record about, the sorts of shenanigans that the British secret state has been up to during the last 30 years. That is a subject you haven't had anything to say about which is mildly surprising (especially considering the links that were made with the IMF intervention in 1976). Certainly, the irrationality of the Blairites' campaign against Livingstone was such that they lost all perspective in their efforts to marginalise him. This only gained him public support, as did the hapless performance of Frank Dobson. As far as social welfare is concerned, a New Labour victory is preferable to a Conservative victory. But it is as well to be aware of the forces working within and beyond the confines of New Labour. One reason, not necessarily majorly significant but important nonetheless, that New Labour has the blessing of the present UK power elite is that its policies are more likely to maintain order than those of the Conservatives, who are being slowly weaned off the punk Thatcherism (to adapt Denis Healey's memorable phrase) that led to the disintegration of the public infrastructure that has made the UK a European laughing stock (and has even allowed the Wall Street Journal to boast about the superiority of US public schools, for instance). The irony here is that an extended spell in opposition will more quickly cleanse the Tories of their punk Thatcherism than New Labour will be able to disentangle itself from the holdovers of the previous administration like the egregious Sir Steve Robson, whose unrepentant defence of rail privatisation (everything was pretty much ok until the Hatfield disaster) is typical of the sort of crap peddled by non-users never having been exposed to the increase of journey times, ticket prices and transaction costs typical of post-privatisation UK railways. It's this sort of cognitive dissonance that's undermining New Labour's efforts to maintain its support, as the distinctly underwhelming public response to its proposals to intensify its use of private companies in the provision of public services suggests. In fact, in one of the more notable Damascene conversions of recent times (especially since it is at least his second such), FT columnist Michael Prowse exposes the flaws in New Labour's rationale for state sector reform: Running public services in the public interest: PAUSE FOR THOUGHT: Ministers need to realise that the private sector will always put itself first, says Michael Prowse Financial Times, May 26, 2001 By MICHAEL PROWSE The squalid condition of Britain's public services has emerged as one of the defining issues of this year's election - and about time. I only wish that I felt more confidence in the proposed reforms. But I am reluctant to endorse even Tony Blair's programme, in spite of its good intentions, because Labour still seems imprisoned by the crude private-sector good, public-sector bad thinking that characterised the Thatcher and Major eras and, to a large degree, even its own first term. There seems to be a peculiarly English disease of public sector masochism that is as arresting, in its way, as the public schoolboy's well-known penchant for regular beatings. It arose during the 1980s and 1990s when civil servants could survive and prosper only by engaging in self-flagellation - by telling ministers what they wanted to hear, which is that civil servants could be trusted to do nothing right. They had not just to advocate dismemberment and privatisation, but really to believe in it. They had to think of themselves as unworthy apparatchiks and of the entrepreneur as a glorious hero. I detected a whiff of this masochism in Sir Steve Robson's article in the FT on May 17 calling for yet more radical reform of the public sector. Robson, who now holds City directorships, was, until recently, head of privatisation at the Treasury and a leading advocate of ever-greater involvement of the private sector. Civil servants, he declares in his article (flogging his former self), cannot take risks. They just cannot innovate. Therefore, they must cede yet more
True Hegelian Truth
Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K.
IMF
The Thunderer thunders: The document says that the move towards an independent intelligence-gathering operation may be a serious test of the European ambitions of the United Kingdom and of the EU's capacity for integration. It adds: Intelligence gathering may be the issue which forces the United Kingdom to decide whether its destiny is European or transatlantic. = Britain's ambiguous position here is unquestionable. But there are at least two other reasons why the formation of a pan-EU intelligence capability might be difficult. Firstly, the French are clearly having difficulties adjusting to the assertiveness of Germany, and are less able to manipulate the development of EU institutions to suit their interests (which have evolved anyway with the passing of Mitterand and his clan). Strident anti-US nationalism aligns them with those critical of Echelon, but a more general crisis afflicting the French state as regards its domestic and international roles, as evidenced by a long overdue reassessment of the Algerian war, makes French participation in further EU integration problematic. Secondly, the decisive victory of Berlusconi in Italy, and his immediate promise to become the US's strongest ally within the EU, makes Italian participation similarly problematic. As Germany assumes a more dominant position within the EU, rival powers will use their US links as counterweights to an EU apparatus that inexorably moves toward a German character, since the EU itself is becoming more of a counterweight to US power, a process accelerated by the Bush administrations pronounced unilateralism. Meanwhile Germany has adopted a much more careful stance toward the US government, which rightly sees France as the main problem EU-member given its loud defence of language, culture and economy. This makes sense for Germany, given the amount of capital investment that has been made by German companies in the US during the last 5 years. So Britain's marginal position within the EU can be tempered by a rekindling of the Blair-Schröder axis that gave us The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte (now quietly buried) which renders France's position equally marginal. This would be consistent with Blair's tactically astute (if strategically unclear) use of ad hoc alliances in the EU bargaining process (including a rather tasteless and apparently inconsistent linkage with Spain's Aznar). Spain meanwhile has dug its heels in against Germany's intentions to restructure redistributive funding in the wake of Poland's entry to the EU, since Spain anticipates (correctly) that it will be a major loser. Meanwhile Blair has very pointedly been the first EU socialist [sic] leader to welcome Berlusconi to the table, while France is engaged in battle with Berlusconi's administration as the latter continues its predecessor's attempts to block the further purchase of shares in electricity utility Montedison by Electricite de France, itself protected by legal restrictions preventing other non-French EU companies from buying in. This tends to emphasise France's marginality. However, one major player not mentioned so far is the defence industry, which, especially since the Westland affair, has a very pan-European character, and will be crucial to any further integration. The economics suggest that the bonanza awaiting arms companies as they equip the new European rapid reaction force will tilt any lingerers in the UK state-military complex toward the EU. The problem remains the punk Thatcherite Little Englanders, the Conrad Black/Rothermere press, and the poujadists who brought the country to a standstill last autumn. Hence Bob Worcester's justifiable scepticism. MI5's involvement in the UKIP as a means to split and thereby marginalise the punk Thatcherites makes sense, allowing either (1) a recapture of the Conservative Party by pro-Europe Clarke/Heseltine types, or (2) an emergent Liberal Democrat party that steals the mantle of HM Official Opposition and attracts the more libertarian Tories, while the Heathites join New Labour (following Peter Temple-Morris, Shaun Woodward, Alan Howarth), thus further marginalising Old Labour and rendering the 2 party system safe once again. Mark, does any of this make sense? Michael K.
Re: True Hegelian Truth
How do you interpret this distinction? A guess: Diesing's translation emphasizes that the truth as a static entity does not exist but is rather a constantly changing process, with which it is possible (more or less) to align the mind, but that alignment will be more or less untrued just as it occurs. Or is it nonsense to try for an interpretation of the difference? Carrol Keaney Michael wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K.
True Hegelian Truth
Carrol asks: How do you interpret this distinction? A guess: Diesing's translation emphasizes that the truth as a static entity does not exist but is rather a constantly changing process, with which it is possible (more or less) to align the mind, but that alignment will be more or less untrued just as it occurs. Or is it nonsense to try for an interpretation of the difference? = That's pretty much the sense I've got from Diesing so far, whose clarity is exemplary. The book in question is Hegel's Dialectical Political Economy (Westview Press, 1999) which, so far, looks like a very good, accessible introduction to dialectical reasoning in social research. Diesing rejects the caricature of Hegel as a determinist, and he makes use of David MacGregor's interesting work which highlights the commonalities between Hegel and Marx in their respective methods and treatments of economic development. Michael K.
The British - Reluctant Europeans
The British - Reluctant Europeans by Robert Worcester MORI The British: Reluctant Europeans was the title of an article I published in 1989, I gave a speech on the same topic just last month to a City audience gathered by Merrill Lynch, and it is the title of my essay today. I hadn't thought to return to the topic of Europe so soon, but with the election running it so strongly, and having so much experience in dealing with referendums and having written about it so often, and having so much data on it, I thought I must return to the subject once again. Opinion polls are not the same as referendums Opinion polls are not the same as referendums. I consistently and continually hear from politicians: What matters is how you ask the question (and so forth) in a referendum; it does not. Polls are top of mind. Why William Hague has taken this view is understandable, but wrong. Polls are top of mind, they are measuring something that is on going, they are not binding on the respondent, and they are relatively unimportant compared with the national circus of a referendum. They are for the most part ignored by the vast majority of the media, and nearly always downplayed on the BBC. With polls, the way the question is worded is vital, and it is possible to get the answer you want depending on how you phrase the question. That there is no incentive for pollsters to get the answer you want is often forgotten, but there you are. Referendums on the other hand are considered, they are, like elections, on a day certain, the voter gets one shot at it, and it is therefore considered by them as morally binding. A national referendum because it is a national event gets the media attention it deserves, on all the media, broadsheets and mid markets and red tops, on the Sundays and in the periodicals, on radio and on television, and therefore, the wording of the question is unimportant on the day it comes to vote. People's views can be measured on three levels: opinions, attitudes and values We can measure three things with the tools of our trade: we can measure people's behaviour, what they do; we can measure their knowledge, what they know or think they know; and we can measure their views, and I break down views into three levels. One level is opinions, the ripples on the surface of the public consciousness, easily blown about by the political winds and the media. Not things people have thought about, care about, have discussed, studied, debated or even considered. Below the surface are attitudes, which people have thought about, care about, have discussed with their families and friends, that impact on themselves and their families. Those attitudes are more strongly held and they are not easily blown about. You must have persuasion, you must have argument, and these must come from someone they respect and will listen to if they are going to change. Deeper still are the deep tides of the public's view, which we call values - things like belief in God, the death penalty, euthanasia and, for 25% of the British public, animal rights. Other people's values focus on the environment, global warming and the like. Whatever it is that people feel deeply about, their values on these things change glacially, if at all. Polls are ongoing, are not binding and the wording is vital Polls are ongoing, here today gone tomorrow. They are not binding. When an interviewer on behalf of a polling organisation asks you for your opinions, your attitudes or your values, your behaviour or your knowledge, it is not binding. You do not feel an obligation to think carefully and thoroughly about what it is that is being asked. It is relatively unimportant; it is not something you have thought about necessarily, you are just courteous enough to answer the questions. The media will not have covered the question matter in advance, for the most part, and the wording is vital. I remember doing an experiment some 20 or 25 years ago when I concluded in a poll for the Daily Express that depending on how you asked the question, you could have support for hanging running from 52% to about 90%. 90% of the British public would say: Yes, I am in favour of the death penalty for a convicted child murderer and rapist, who kills a prison guard while escaping. They will say Yes, I suppose in those conditions, I am in favour. Then on the other hand, it goes down to around 52% for an unpremeditated marital situation. Referendums are considered, morally binding...and the wording is unimportant Referenda on the other hand are considered. At the end of a three or four week campaign people know what is at issue, and the people who cast their vote have thought something about it. It is not sprung on them, nor is it a surprise to them that elicits an instant response. It is on a certain day; you know when it is. It is morally binding because you have been asked by your elected government to help them decide on an issue, normally of sovereignty, and this is why I
African intrigue
Penners Splashed across the front page of yesterday's Guardian was a large article warning of an impending military coup against Robert Mugabe, led by Air Marshal Perence Shiri, who cleaned up Matabeleland during the 1980s. Explicit links were made with Colin Powell's tour of Africa and statements re Zimbabwe becoming a totalitarian state. Meanwhile Blair declares Africa a prime policy area for his second term. Thoughts, anyone? Michael K. Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Oz Competition update
How could anyone with an ounce of intellegence not expect airlines and telecommunications industries not coalesce into a small number (1?) of corporations? Rob Schaap wrote: G'day all, Another beaut month in the annals of competition. Today we lost our third-biggest telecommunications company, leaving the original encumbent (the half-privatised Telstra) about 6 times as big as its closest competitor (Optus) after five years. We once had about forty telcos, but by 2000 we had about a dozen. We're down to about seven now, and definitely still counting. Three by this time next year is my call. Oh, and one of our four airlines has just gone bust, too - picked up by the larger of the two original encumbents (the market was opened less than a decade ago). As Branson's VirginBlue has just entered the market (wonder why?), we haved three airlines for the moment, but Qantas is all over the others like a rash (Ansett had to ground its 767 fleet all last week, and just as they were advertising their way out of the concomitant PR trouble, their morning Canberra flight sucked in a fox and destroyed its engine). From public monopoly to private monopoly in a decade flat, I'd say ... And everybody bloody well knew it when it counted, of course. Cheers, Rob. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Easing constraints through trade
Comfortable with his highly fabricated argument that western Europe could not expand its import of land-intensive goods from eastern Europe, because there were crucial built-in limits to eastern Europe's ability to absorb western imports due to its limited market, Pomeranz moves on to the last part of his argument to tell us only the New World offered the Old World the kind of trading partner able to solve its ecological limits. Lucky Europe stumbled into this New World; unfortunate though dignified China stayed home with its free laborers practicing import substitution. Strange as it may seem. it was the slaves who solved the underconsumption problem western Europe encountered in the east: exports [from the Americas] had to be high enough to cover the costs of buying slaves and much of the cost of feeding and clothing them (264). Slaves were the magical commodity which overcame the spectre of Malthus. First, they were easy to buy, the large internal slave trade in Africa [it now suits our argument to admit] made it relatively easy for Europeans to acquire slaves (265). Second, selling slaves to the West Indies equalled about one fourth of Britain's sugar export revenues between 1760 and 1810. Products from Britain itself to the Indies covered about one- half of sugar revenues; and the remaining quarter was covered with food and wood from British North America. Third, unlike eastern European peasants who practiced subsistence farming, the slaves, eventhough they were poor, constituted a significant market for imports. These imports, mostly in the form of cheap cotton, represented most of the products from Britain itself to the Indies which covered 50 percent of sugar revenues. Fourth, Britain did not need to to ship food from Europe to its sugar colonies but could rely on continental North America to do so, which in turn bought English manufactures (employing labor and capital rather than [its scarce] land (267). Fifth, this whole trade induced certain shipping changes, not technolgical, which reduced transatlantic transportation costs, unlike dignified China which saw its costs increased dramatically as the search for wood moved into the interior. To conclude, Without the peculiar conditions created in the circum- Caribbean region, the mere existence of trade between a rich, free labor core and a poorer, bound labor periphery would not have had such epochal effects; western Europe's trade with eastern Europe, for instance, was in no way more dynamic than that between the Lower Yangzi and its various peripheries...New World slavery and colonialism were different in very important ways (268). What epochal effects? So far we have cotton and sugar. He has yet to show Britain was saved from a reaching a dead end by having other lands grow her cotton and sugar.
Re: Socialism in one listserv
Tim Bousquet writes: I think the difference is that I don't get paid to only sit around and think about it, and dream up theories and so forth. I very much enjoy being a lookie-loo on this list, but many of the arguments and the things people find important simply escape me. Maybe that reflects my lack of eduaction, but I think that in no small part it reflects you academics' disconnect with the real world. No offense intended; I'm learning a lot just reading through my hundreds of PEN-l messages, but I often find the list, well, arcane and obscure. I hold a broad marxist view of the world and am willing to keep it at that while trying to relate to the broad populace through my newspaper. I find discussion about 17th century Latin America interesting, but it's a long, long way from an interesting read on the Incas to encouraging Butte County workers to organize against their employers, to give just one example. snip Isn't the point to have some of real effect on the world, as opposed to being caught up in discussion group with no apparent relevance? To my mind, both academic-theoretic stuff and journalistic stuff are needed. Since my father was in the newspaper business (on the industry self-regulation end) and I've long admired I.F. Stone, I have a lot of respect for the journalistic job (though you've got to admit that a lot of journalism is dreck, though it's often not the journalist's fault).[*] Also, my abstract theory tells me that it's absolutely necessary to be concrete, specific, and real-world oriented. But my natural personal tendency is to be abstract (I have a poor memory for details unless they make sense theoretically). Thus, a certain amount of division of labor is needed -- which in turn requires a constant dialogue between the abstract theorists and the concrete journalists. Both can criticize each other, but within the spirit of dialogue (among those with leftist goals and principles). I think it's a mistake that some -- not Tim -- use concrete and empirical references to go beyond criticism to actually try to shut down serious theoretical thinking. That's the mirror-image of those academics who want to wallow in abstract theory and never dirty their hands with the real world. Either tack prevents dialogue and the development of a greater understanding of what's going on, preventing a clarification of political principles, goals, strategy, and tactics. [*] For example, at a Black Panther Party rally that I attended in the 1970s, an Associated Press reporter explained to me that his employers weren't interested in anything but what Elaine Brown -- the Party leader at the time -- said. The number of other people, what other speakers said, etc., etc., were ruled out ahead of time from being newsworthy. Of course, it there had been violence, it would have been reported. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: True Hegelian Truth
At 11:19 AM 05/30/2001 +0300, you wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. does it truly matter? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
Die Wahrheit ist die Ganze will translate as The truth is the whole. I am pretty sure that is how Miller does it. --jks At 11:19 AM 05/30/2001 +0300, you wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. does it truly matter? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2001: Two Federal Reserve Board economists say 2.7 percent, or 4 million members, of the work force switched employers in an average month in 1999. The study, by Bruce C. Fallick and Charles A. Fleischman, using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, argues that previous measures of so-called employment-to-employment flows, which dwarf the number of people moving from employment to unemployment, were based on limited data. The study also says only one-fifth of workers look for new work while at their old jobs, though the study could miss those who begin looking just days before they jump. The two economists plan to further study whether the business cycle has an effect on the number of workers who make a switch. Agriculture, construction, retail and private household services have high switch rates, the study says (The Wall Street Journal Work Week feature, page A1). About 45 percent of the nation's 1.2 million temporary-help agency workers say they would prefer a more traditional work arrangement, says a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of about 37,500 households (The Wall Street Journal Work Week feature, page A1). In trying to figure out whether the economy will go into a recession -- or might already be in one -- there are two helpful rules. Unfortunately, they completely contradict each other. Rule no. 1: At least since 1970, the economy has never had a recession when the housing market was strong, says economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors. And despite a drop-off in sales of new and existing homes in April from near-record levels in March, housing is still quite strong by historical standards. If this rule governs, we're not in a recession yet -- nor likely to go into one anytime soon. Rule no. 2: The economy has almost never avoided a recession when the Labor Department's monthly employment report showed back-to-back net job losses. That has happened just 12 times since 1950, according to First Union economist Mark Vitner, and except for the four times when there were strikes, weather, or other anomalies were the cause, it was a signal that the nation was in, or about to be in a recession. Alas, it has just happened again. Labor Department figures showed back-to-back job losses in March and April. And it looks as if May might also show a loss, when the number is released Friday. Vitner says upcoming jobs reports will rival those seen during the last recession in 1990-91, making it likely that what we're enduring is either a full-blown recession or something just about as ugly. So far, though, the economy hasn't met the usual rough definition of a recession, which is at least two consecutive quarters of sub-zero growth (George Hager, in USA Today, page 4B). The U.S. economy grew at only a 1.3 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, substantially lower than the 2 percent rate first estimated, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. Most of the downward revision was the result of a much larger decline than previously estimated in stocks of unsold goods, a drop that clipped almost 3 percentage points off the rate of growth of the gross domestic product, after adjustment for inflation. In the fourth quarter of last year, the economy grew at a 1 percent annual rate. The largest contributor to growth in the first quarter was consumer spending, which increased at a 2.9 percent pace. Many forecasters expect economic growth in the current quarter to be no better and perhaps worse than in the first quarter. While the effect of declining inventories is likely to be much smaller, consumer spending appears to be increasing more slowly now than it did earlier this year, and an increase in the U.S. trade deficit may hurt growth as well. Separately, Commerce said yesterday that orders for long-lasting goods such as automobiles, machinery, and computers fell 5 percent in April. Analysts said the report underscored the current weakness in business spending for such equipment (John M. Berry, in The Washington Post, May 26, page E1; The New York Times, May 26, page B3). Disappointing data are undercutting the case for a rapid recovery. A key indicator of productivity slumped to its lowest level since the recent productivity boom took off in the mid-1990s. That came on the heels of a downward revision of first-quarter gross domestic product, an extremely weak durable-goods report and a substantial drop in existing-home sales. Pretax profit margins for nonfinancial corporations were squeezed to 10 percent in the first quarter from 10.5 percent in the first quarter of 2000 and a recent peak of 12.2 percent in the second quarter of last year, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. The last time margins were so narrow was the first quarter of 1994, around the time economists believe a fundamental change in the economy
Silver
P first examines how silver eased Europe's land constraints. He agrees that silver and gold were insignificant sources of capital accumulation, doing little for Europe's economic development - does anyone out there still accept Hamilton's argument? His emphasis is rather on the way silver allowed Europe, both directly and indirectly, to acquire land-saving resources from other parts of the Old World particularly India where Europe obtained cloth in exchange for silver which it then exchanged for African slaves. Indian cloth alone made up roughly one-third of all the cargo by value exchanged by English traders for African slaves in the eighteenth century... (271). But he acknowledges that the silver that went to China was not exchanged for land-saving goods...Plus, as we saw in two earlier posts, one cannot help wondering why P ignores the benefits of the enormous flow of silver to China. This time he has no qualms looking for substitutes as he states in the absence of that flow, we must imagine either other imports of monetary media or a large reallocation of China's own productive resources, perhaps in turn expanding demand for other imports (272). But if I may cite F.W. Mote, By Ming times, mines that earlier had produced larger amounts of silver and copper were difficult to work or were exhausted...Midway in the 16th century the silver of New World mines also began to flow into China in exchange for Chinese manufactures...One must speak of 'flowing in' [as opposed to Europe where it flowed in then out] because the movement of silver was one-way; it was exchanged for Chinese goods, whether through Chinese businessmen in Manila and Macao or onshore, and it remained to accumulate and be circulated in China. Chinese importers bought virtually nothing for which they spent silver. China began to be the great repository of the early modern world's newly discovered wealth in silver (767). The vast increase in the amount of silver in circulation in China...made money more readily available, lowered the value of silver in relation both to copper and cash and to commodities, and greatly stimulated certain sectors of the economy, especially those supplying and serving the export of goods for the world market (768). Before 1800, silver flowed in and China's products flowed out in a trade starkly unbalanced in China's favor [unequal exchange?] (955) The question is not whether Europe gained something but whether it gained as much or more than China.
Re: True Hegelian Truth
Well, according to Tim Horton's the hole is the Timbit. Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Oz Competition update
Rob Schaap wrote: G'day all, Another beaut month in the annals of competition. Today we lost our third-biggest telecommunications company, leaving the original encumbent (the half-privatised Telstra) about 6 times as big as its closest competitor (Optus) after five years. We once had about forty telcos, but by 2000 we had about a dozen. We're down to about seven now, and definitely still counting. Three by this time next year is my call. I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Doug
Re: Re: Socialism in one listserv
Jim Devine wrote: Tim Bousquet writes: I think the difference is that I don't get paid to only sit around and think about it, and dream up theories and so forth. I very much enjoy being a lookie-loo on this list, but many of the arguments and the things people find important simply escape me. Maybe that reflects my lack of eduaction, but I think that in no small part it reflects you academics' disconnect with the real world. The word abstract carries a number of different meanings in ordinary _and_ specialized discourse. In several of these senses, Tim's statement here is radically abstract. Real World abstracts from all human experience and cannot, in itself, carry any very definite content. And the implied content of it here -- the concrete affairs of Tim's area, is not only radically abstract but asserts a quite false abstraction. Let me try to illustrate, first in respect to my locality and secondly in respect to 19th century history. I live in McLean County Illinois (where at the height of the land boom in the '80s land sold for over $4000 an acre. How is one to understand that price? Could it conceivably be understood in terms of what Tim seems to regard as real world and concrete? And the answer is a resounding No! One could study McLean County for the next 25 years, accumulating a weight of detail to fill to overflowing the Library of Congress, and one would have no inkling of what made McLean County Land so valuable then (and, for that matter, now, though the price is 'lower'). There are a few, not many but a few, local facts that are relevant to understanding the value of the land. (1) As I sit here, I am probably sitting in the center of one of the largest piles of protein in the world (in the form of corn and soybeans). (2) McLean County could not conceivably feed its own population for more than a few days. That protein is of utterly no local use. We would starve in a few weeks if we had to depend on our own resources. Before even anyone around here can tap that protein it all has to be sent elsewhere and come back in usable form. In other words, any attempt to understand McLean County 'concretely' in Tim's terms would involve violently abstracting (separating) McLean County from the context or contexts which are necessary to make sense of it. (The only foods produced around here in anything like mass quantity are Beer Nuts and Beich Candies (the latter now owned by Nestle). Beich probably uses corn oil and corn syrup, perhaps some of it from corn grown around here, but that corn would have first to be shipped elsewhere (on iron rails made elsewhere from iron mined elsewhere etc etc etc) to have the oil and syrup extracted and shipped back here. And of course before being shipped most of that corn needs to be dried in gas-fired driers using natural gas from elsewhere. The facts (real life?) are utterly useless until they are put in a context which in terms of real life equals specific details equals non-abstract would be extremely abstract. (Incidentally, an attempt to understand Latin America through detailed studies of Latin America will lead to similar absurdities. And an attempt to understand Africa in terms of events in Africa rather than as an aspect of industrial capital will be similarly absurd. Need I develop the reasons that an attempt to understand the Confederacy without studying China and India will be hopeless? And that it is not concrete (real life) events in China, India, and the U.S. South that is necessary but rather the web of relations which constitute those three (and several other places) as a unity. And there is no way to conduct that study of relations adequately except through a direct or (more commonly) indirect understanding of Hegel? Carrol No offense intended; I'm learning a lot just reading through my hundreds of PEN-l messages, but I often find the list, well, arcane and obscure. I hold a broad marxist view of the world and am willing to keep it at that while trying to relate to the broad populace through my newspaper. I find discussion about 17th century Latin America interesting, but it's a long, long way from an interesting read on the Incas to encouraging Butte County workers to organize against their employers, to give just one example. snip Isn't the point to have some of real effect on the world, as opposed to being caught up in discussion group with no apparent relevance? To my mind, both academic-theoretic stuff and journalistic stuff are needed. Since my father was in the newspaper business (on the industry self-regulation end) and I've long admired I.F. Stone, I have a lot of respect for the journalistic job (though you've got to admit that a lot of journalism is dreck, though it's often not the journalist's fault).[*] Also, my abstract theory tells me that it's absolutely necessary to be concrete, specific, and real-world oriented. But my natural personal tendency is to be abstract (I have a poor
Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Rob Schaap wrote: G'day all, Another beaut month in the annals of competition. Today we lost our third-biggest telecommunications company, leaving the original encumbent (the half-privatised Telstra) about 6 times as big as its closest competitor (Optus) after five years. We once had about forty telcos, but by 2000 we had about a dozen. We're down to about seven now, and definitely still counting. Three by this time next year is my call. I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Doug Yes. Ian
Re: True Hegelian Truth
Keaney Michael wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. And of course Adorno said the whole is the false. Doug
True Hegelian Hortons
Tim Hortons is almost the whole truth of New Brunswick. Coming back from Quebec City and its many unique small shops and cafes, it is all the more depressing to face this Hegelian truth once again. Well, according to Tim Horton's the hole is the Timbit. Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Targeting the left in Colombia
Left Becomes Target at Colombian Universities By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, May 30, 2001; Page A01 BARRANQUILLA, Colombia- Who is sitting next to me? An abiding suspicion has infected the classrooms, corridors and faculty lounges of the University of the Atlantic. Professors who have spent decades in the gray concrete classrooms of one of Colombia's finest public universities look out over rows of students and choose their words carefully. Students considering a rally think twice. Who is my classmate? There are students here who never take a test, never write down a thing, said a 21-year-old basic sciences student from Cartagena. They are only here to identify student leaders, who the teachers are who might be from the left. I can't walk up to a student and say, 'This policy is wrong, let's do something about it.' I don't know who I am talking to. Across Colombia, the decades-old ideological battle between left and right in the classroom has changed from an intellectual debate to a violent campaign against students, professors and administrators. The country's 32 public universities have long been a recruiting pool for leftist guerrilla armies, whose rhetorical blend of class struggle and social justice has found receptive audiences in the middle- to lower-class student bodies. Colombia's public universities reflect the deep class and ideological differences that have helped perpetuate the country's civil warfare for almost four decades. Here and across Latin America the public university has traditionally been the wellhead of leftist thought and activism, a training ground for future leftist leaders who often emerge from the disenfranchised lower classes. Private universities, too expensive for most Colombians, train the children of the more conservative elite. Now, as part of their effort to seize not only territorial but ideological control from the guerrillas, the rightist paramilitary forces have arrived on the campuses of at least eight of Colombia's public universities. They are located in key geographic areas most contested by the leftist guerrillas and the rightist forces who have taken up arms on behalf of land and business owners who feel the government is not doing enough to protect them. Paid informers monitor lectures for leftist overtones and the activity of their classmates. Lists of those targeted for death surface and disappear in campus corridors. In the past two years, at least 27 professors, students and administrators have been killed, usually gunned down near their homes, according to the National Union of University Workers and Employees. The most recent student to die here was Miguel Puello Polo, a 24-year-old representative to the university's governing board. He was shot five times in front of his home by two men on a motorcycle, who called out his name before killing him. As professors censor their own lectures and students abandon organizations that could be perceived as leftist, the paramilitary campaign is choking off leftist activism. Professors and students, who rarely give their names and stop all conversation when a stranger enters a room, say the paramilitary campaign has stifled debate, changed the way they teach and learn, and undermined the universities' traditional role as a wide-open sanctuary of free expression. In class, we take so much care in trying not to be seen promoting a leftist idea. We don't know who might be the enemy in our classroom, said a professor in the language department for the past 12 years. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, as the 8,000-member paramilitary army is called, has declared many university figures military targets. More than 180 students have been threatened with death, according to the Colombian Association of University Centers. In the past two years, students, professors and university union leaders have been killed at four universities along the volatile north coast; in Bogota, the capital; and at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, where one student and six professors have been slain. Earlier this month the AUC announced its arrival, through a campaign of bathroom graffiti in student and professor lounges, at the University of Cartagena. The risk of restricting opinion is one of the greatest to the university, said Elvira Chois, vice rector for academics at the University of the Atlantic, where she was also a student. While we don't know the origins of the violence, it has led to perhaps too much prudence in expressing opinions, our fundamental right. No university has been harder hit than the University of the Atlantic in this industrial port city on Colombia's north coast. A utilitarian gray concrete block clogged with book kiosks and leftist murals, the school draws its 17,000 students from six northern provinces. Since January 2000, eight students and professors have been killed. Most of the students are the provincial poor, the target audience of
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
At 12:46 PM 5/30/01 -0400, you wrote: Keaney Michael wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. And of course Adorno said the whole is the false. I thought he said this bagel has a hole. But I could be wrong. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Russian Electricity Reform
Reform= Foreign Loans= Competition=Price Rises= Profits (or profits plus bureaucrats lined pockets) Cheers, Ken Hanly MOSCOW, May 20 (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's economic adviser has critized plans to overhaul the country's giant electricity monopoly UES, a key plank in overall economic reform. The document adopted today by the government only reflects the interests of a small minority, that of the UES management, Andrei Illarionov told RTR television. The reform of the UES monopoly and its 80 regional subsidiaries, one of the government's major economic reform tasks this year, has provoked sharp conflict at the centre of power for the past six months. A first plan, proposed by UES boss Anatoly Chubais and the economy ministry, was approved. But faced with violent criticism, the project was shelved. Under the revised, watered-down plan approved Saturday reform of the power giant would take place in three stages, over a period of eight to 10 years. The approved text, though less radical still includes much of the original overall plan, according to analysts. It still needs to be finalized in the coming weeks. The scheme still scarcely reflects the proposals and opinions of the president, said Illarionov. The government took the decision which it deemed necessary and must assume total responsibility for its actions, he added. Chubais said the plan could have been better, more dynamic and more radical, in comments broadcast on NTV television. But the important thing is that there is a decision and that the reform can start, he added. The Russian government's decision should unlock a 100-million- euro (88-million-dollar) loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for restructuring of the electricity sector. The bank said a few days ago that the credit would not be granted until the government had chosen a definitive plan. The reform aims to open up the electricity sector to competition, seen as urgent because of recurring energy crises in past years. A consensus has been reached, which has enabled the reform to be launched, Trade and Economic Development Minister German Gref said at the end of Saturday's cabinet meeting. The liberalisation of the energy market will only start in 2004 and not before, Gref said. Electricity prices could double then, he added, without giving many details of the text approved. The electricity monopoly is a vast structure inherited from the Soviet Union, with ageing infrastructure. It is owned 52.8 percent by the state and nearly 30 percent by foreign investors. *** #7 Russian minister predicts electricity price rises ITAR-TASS Moscow, 19 May: Electrical power prices will grow by 2-2.2 times from their present level as a result of power industry reform in regions where an energy market will be created in 2004, [Economic] Development and Trade Minister German Gref has said. He told a press conference on Saturday [19 May] that such an increase in prices will not be catastrophic because everything is tied with the macroeconomic forecast for the development of the country. The minister explained that in liberalizing the electrical power market, the government plans to set a ceiling for power tariffs beyond which electrical power will not be sold. He said that the liberalization of the Russian energy market may begin not earlier than the year 2004 when Unified Energy System of Russia [UES], the country's power monopoly, can be divided into two companies. UES could be divided into a holding company in charge of generation and a holding company in charge of power networks and the central control post. Gref believes that before the liberalization of the market can begin, it will be necessary to train specialists and create a proper regulatory basis, which can be done not earlier than 2004. The UES management proposed to liberalize the market sooner, in 2002, but delay the division of the company. This would have led to a considerable, by several times, increase in power tariffs, for which the macroeconomy would not have been ready -our industry is weak and consumers would not have survived such price rises, the minister explained. He said a decision on the creation of a single tariff regulation body for natural monopolies will be adopted by the government some time in October of this year.
Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Doug Henwood wrote: I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Almost always a bad thing, I should presume. The apparent evils of non-competition are actually 'evils' in the balance of class forces -- the inability to exercise sufficient political control over monopolies. But even inadequately controlled, it is something of a toss-up whether a monopoly is as undesirable in its effects as competition is. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Ian Murray wrote: I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Doug Yes. I'm afraid Ian came up with a far better answer than I gave. Carrol P.S. Or does his Yes refer to Doug's memory problems rather than to the either/or?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update
- Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 10:04 AM Subject: [PEN-L:12411] Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update Ian Murray wrote: I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Doug Yes. I'm afraid Ian came up with a far better answer than I gave. Carrol P.S. Or does his Yes refer to Doug's memory problems rather than to the either/or? == I forget Ian
RE: IMF
Michael Keaney: does any of this make sense? I find this sort of concrete detail helpful when it comes to seeing the larger picture. A forensic look at the way the secret state works and how it interfaces with publically-acknowledged discourses of power, is useful. When invited to contemplate the staggering political achievements of European social-democracy, the majesty of Blair's 20-point poll lead,etc, we are better positioned to see this pro-European posturing for the mystification and atavism it really is. This is not to argue that conspiracy theory determines everything, because it doesn't and I think it's clear from the evidence that in any case the secret services are as faction-ridden and inconsistent as everything else. They share common misconceptions and false consciousness which they exaggerate in a hallucinatory way. We do not need to indulge CIA/MI5 paranoia to agree with Lenin in 'State and Revolution': 'the state is a special organisation of force: it is an organisation of violence for the suppression of some class,' adding that parliamentary democracy is a charade, 'curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich,' in which 'the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.' This does not mean that bourgeois democracy has no meaning, or is not a dynamic source of social renewal, of vital cumulative change and of political relegitimation. But we need to seek for materialist explanations of the caravanserai they parade before us, otherwise we end up suspending disbelief and becoming incorporated into the process. As Michael Keaney quite properly says, Europe is a battleground where the status-jostling of members and aspirants takes the form of trying to combine two completely antithetical things: the creation of a European state, with its own armed forces, money etc, on one hand. And a servile, craven dependence on the US on the other. That cannot be a permanent state of affairs. They can put off the day of reckoning but they cannot cancel it, and sooner or later there will be a decision. Mark
Sugar
I personally feel that Britons could have done without sugar in their tea.But P goes to the other extreme as he sets out to measure the exact ecological relief Britain obtained from sugar and timber. He calculates the caloric contribution of sugar to Britain's diet at 14 percent, or possibly 18 percent, by 1900 (274). He reaches an estimate of 4 percent for 1800, a figure which may seem low but not if we realize that an acre of tropical sugar land yields as many calories as more than 4 acres of potatoes (which most 18th- century Europeans scorned), or 9-12 acres of wheat (275). Before I get to the sugar, did you see this? - potatoes which most 18th century Europeans scorned! This is not the first instance P uses an argument/point to work in opposite ways depending on the objective he has at hand. I pointed to the gender claim three posts ago; recall however my first post on the potato in which I cited P saying (though I may have cited instead a similar passage in p58) ...I would add the adoption of New World food crops, particularly the potato which yielded what for Europe were unprecedented amounts of calories per acre (p57). Anyways, at least now he recognizes the potato was only minimally adopted in Europe before the 19th century. This stuff about how many acreas of land it takes to produce x calories of x crop is all aimed at convincing us that the actual calories of sugar consumed in England in 1800 (which provided 4 percent of the total coloric intake) would have [nonetheless] required at least 1,300, 000 acres of average-yielding English farms and conceivably over 1,900,000; in 1831 1,900,000 to 2,600,000 acres would have been needed. And if you are already wondering that sugar is just a sweetener, well, P has an answer although today sugar is often derided as a source of 'junk' calories, it can be valuable in poorer diets, preventing scarce protein from being burned for energy. Was this the argument Nestle was making to third world mothers? Look, it doesn't work: sugar provided ZEROecological relief; the old argument re the importance of sugar profits makes more sense. How could anyone take this argument seriously? The numbers, the numbers. They just look so precise and beautiful.
Re: Re: Re: Socialism in one listserv
Carrol Cox: non-abstract would be extremely abstract. (Incidentally, an attempt to understand Latin America through detailed studies of Latin America will lead to similar absurdities. Good point. What's even worse is studying the native language. It is very likely that the most profound analysis of Latin America came from Hukalaka Meshabob, the founder of the Bulgarian Communist Party who was expelled for firing a pistol at dissenting politbureau members in 1931. His monograph on the emergence of the Valenciaguan labor movement was a classic, even though there was no such country called Valenciagua. He probably got Guatemala and Venezuela confused. Despite this pecadillo, he quoted Marx impeccably. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Sudden Origins
Here is a short review that I mentioned of J. Schwarz' Sudden Origins, a very interesting book with a new perspective on evolution in the age of the new hox genes. I cannot fully endorse this new theory in such a rapidly changing field, but the book gives a good snapshot of a changing field, and had not quotes on the back book jacket, a possible plus in my view. Now Darwinists will have to claim that natual selection works on these hox genes, or that it constructed them. I think we will see a period of 'intermediate lying' trying to 'change their story' without anyone knowing their are being rebrainwashed. This is a very important source of information both as to the history of the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis and the recent discoveries of regulatory hox genes and the light they throw on the riddles of speciation and large scale evolutionary change. The realization that major morphological changes do not in fact occur in the fashion of microevolution (as presented by traditional Darwinists), due to the effect of homeobox genes, is a revolutionary discovery and confirmation of the importance of the developmental tradition moving in parallel to standard Darwinism. This data creates a foundation for the various theories of macroevolution and punctuated equilibrium proposed almost a generation ago but still sidelined by the Darwinian mainline. The book contains an invaluable review of paleoanthropological theories, issues of neotonous evolution, and the various genetical theories of Mendelism, from de Vries and Bateson, to Haldane, Wright, and Fisher. The views of Goldschmidt, and his near miss of this new perspective, is also treated. This confusing history of Mendelism sorted out is invaluable, and shows how cogent (in part) where the intimations of Bateson and Morgan. The new perspective both confirms the concept of 'macroevolution' while suggesting this can be seen as a microevolution of regulatory genes, a point open to debate perhaps. The next mystery is the evolution of these complex sequences of development. But that does not distract from the great usefulness of this account. One can dispense with much of the erroneous literature on evolution, a great saving in brain space. The endless debate over the slow evolution of the eye, etc, that went on and on and drove all parties batty is hopefully over if we know the right combination of homeobox genes will control the development of this and other organs. Times are changing in Darwin land John Landon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website on eonic effect http://eonix.8m.com http://www.eonica.net
Re: time (was left the mita running?)
I think it is gas. Gene Coyloe It was those beans again. Speaking of beans and inevitably of bean counting, what seems important to me is the transition from a regime of calculation to first a regime of automated calculation and ultimately to a regime where the instruments of measurement construct the things being measured. This doesn't work for physical commodities like gas (the fuel) or water or sealing wax, but it does for derived categories like unemployment/employment, inflation, public opinion, entertainment, gross domestic product and . . . the wage. Wage labour is presumably something that can or could crop up ephemerally anywhere at any time historically for any number of locally significant reasons. But wage labour as we know it is something historically specific and, *whatever its origins*, it is something that is becoming increasingly incompatible with the continuation of social life. All puns aside, the meter has become the message. As Doug has correctly (if perhaps only kiddingly) perceived, this does have something to do with the length of the workday although it doesn't have to do exclusively with the length of the workday. More broadly, it has to do with the whole spectrum (or is it a lump?) of social statistics with which we intellectuals and ideologists entertain ourselves. However, the quantification of labour power in units of labour time is the point at which all this socially calculated rubber hits the road. It is consequently the point at which one may well expect the metered shit to hit the fan. Something about all that is solid melts into air; gas again -- greenhouse or beanhouse. The METER is running but the cab is parked at the curb with the engine idling. The meter is RUNNING but does it really count? Tom Walker wrote: A meter is an instrument for measuring and recording the quantity of something, as of gas, water, miles, or time. Take your pick. Doug Henwood asked, Does this have something to do with the length of the workday, or the lump of entertainment fallacy? Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Carrol Cox wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Almost always a bad thing, I should presume. The apparent evils of non-competition are actually 'evils' in the balance of class forces -- the inability to exercise sufficient political control over monopolies. But even inadequately controlled, it is something of a toss-up whether a monopoly is as undesirable in its effects as competition is. Yeah, I'm with you on this. But it's a bit odd to see competition implicitly praised on a Progressive Economists list. Doug
Capital's plans for Cuba
The Laws and Legal System of a Free-Market Cuba: A Prospectus for Business Matias F. Travieso-Diaz Format: Hardcover, 216pp. ISBN: 1567200516 Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated Pub. Date: November 1996 ABOUT THIS ITEM From the Publisher The re-entry of foreign-based businesses into Cuba will require a complete overhaul of Cuba's laws and legal institutions. It will also require enactment of major new legislation there, designed to enable and facilitate modern business transactions. Travieso-Diaz identifies these necessary legal, political, and economic changes, integrating legal and economic concepts in a way that businesspeople can understand and use in determining when it will be safe for them to reestablish business ties with Cuba. An important, readable resource for corporate management and their academic colleagues specializing in international business, trade, and investment. From the Critics From Booknews Provides a checklist of legal changes that must transpire before it is prudent for the average business person--whether based in the United States or elsewhere--to engage in significant trade or investment activities in Cuba. Travieso-Diaz assumes that a transition is taking place in Cuba that changes the country from its present economic system to one based on free-market principles, and seeks to define what actions must be taken during that transition to create a hospitable environment for business activity in the island. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. FROM THE BOOK Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Initial Conditions: A Minimum Economic and Political Transition in Cuba 1 2 Repeal of United States Legislation Imposing a Trade Embargo Against Cuba 13 3 Changes to Cuba's Legal Infrastructure 49 4 Resolution of Expropriation Claims Against Cuba 71 5 Foreign Investment Legislation 105 6 Privatization Program 137 7 Other Transition-Period Laws Relating to Foreign Investment and Privatization 165 8 Laws Regulating Cuba's International Trade Transactions 181 Afterword 193 Index 195
Re: Oz Competition update
Competition is like sex. Whether it is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing very much depends on who, what, when, where and how. Doug Henwood asked: I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Socialism in one listserv.... 1848 all over again
In a message dated 5/30/2001 3:07:25 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Isn't the point to have some of real effect on the world, as opposed to being caught up in discussion group with no apparent relevance? = This is the subject of a rather well-titled (and written) Monthly Review article from April 1982 by Doug Dowd: "Marxism for the few, or, let 'em eat theory." The bad open secret is that Marxism never had a theory that worked right, and it is my spam entry point for my 'eonic approach', which is not a marxist theory but a possible foundation for a universal history--maybe a theory, that won't turn into toast at the hands of Hayeks and Poppers. The problem, one of them, is that Marx was so brilliant we end up inhaling roadrunner dust and the progression into 'what he meant' results in 100% odds of getting it all wrong. And Marx sprang out of the immensely elusive Hegelian world, which cannot be so easily grafted onto a hodgepodge of economics. That means that Marx is not going to canonically safe either. That's because you can't stand Hegel upside down and proceed. The truth is, further, the transition from Marx to Engels was a fumbled football. What to do? My eonic approach which I won't go into too much more here can generate a pocket sized version of the crucial issues in about five pages. I am going to put the whole thing on the web very soon. Anyone interested can take it from there. It's a lot like 1848, or the period after the English civil war when the Levellers got aced out by the Glorious Whigs, 1688. Give up? No! But old mistakes won't work. Anyway, you only get one chance in life with one combination, and there are no repeats or second chances of old disasters using second international junk. Surely that should be obvious from both the external critics (and Marxists are often naive in never having read them) and the internal ones, from Levine on dialectic to Elster on, I guess, non-dialectic. The result is 'stand up and sit down, and that's a direct order!'. My eonic approach is both superhard, and supereasy, and takes away the problem rather than solving it. If you are searching for the riddle of history as the great mechanism, your ass is mine. You lose that, and get the content back, in marxism, class struggle, now no longer the Grand Mechanism but an 'eonic production', etc.. c'est la view. Press the reset button, it's 1848 all over again. John Landon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website on eonic effect http://eonix.8m.com http://www.eonica.net
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 2001: RELEASED TODAY: In April, 223 metropolitan areas recorded unemployment rates below the U.S. average (4.2 percent, not seasonally adjusted), while 99 areas registered higher rates, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Fourteen metropolitan areas had rates below 2.0 percent. Among the nine areas with jobless rates over 10.0 percent, six were in California's Central Valley and two were along the Mexican border in other states. Personal income increased 0.3 percent in April, posting its weakest increase since last autumn, according to the Commerce Department. Consumer spending, meanwhile, rose 0.4 percent, as weak auto sales were offset by solid gains in spending for nondurables and services. After adjusting for inflation, spending rose 0.2 percent. The Bureau of Economic Affairs data show private wages and salaries rose $21.7 billion in April, compared to an increase of $23.8 billion in March (Daily Labor Report, page D-1; The Washington Post, page E2). A brighter view of the future helped lift consumer confidence in May, boosting the index by 5.6 points to 115.5, despite some concern over the shrinking supply of new jobs, the Conference Board reports. The report by the New York-based business research group was taken by analysts as a sign that the downward trend in consumer confidence over the previous 6 months may have come to an end. Apparently, Americans are adopting a rosier view of the country's economic future, despite gradually worsening impressions of the job market they face. The number of consumers believing jobs are now hard to get rose in May to 14.7 percent from 14.2 percent in April, while those who consider jobs plentiful decreased to 39.5 percent from 40.1 percent (Daily Labor Report, page A-7; Associated Press, http://www.boston.com/dailyglob.../Consumer_confidence_makes_strong_gain_i n_may+.shtm). Consumer confidence rose in May as Americans refused to let an eroding job market cloud their expecations that the economy would pick up, a survey by the Conference Board indicated today. While survey participants were concerned that jobs were hard to find, they did not pull back on plans to buy appliances, cars and homes, the figures showed (Bloomberg News, The New York Times, page C9). The Conference Board's consumer confidence index rose in May, as consumers apparently shrugged off the dire predictions and looked to better times ahead. In addition, the Commerce Department reported spending rose 0.4 percent in April, following a 0.2 percent rise in March, and that personal income grew, but only 0.3 percent on the heels of a 0.5 percent increase in March. The data hinted at the renewed optimism necessary for a quick recovery, with rising confidence, income and spending. Consumer spending remains one of the crucial supports propping up the lethargic U.S. economy (The Wall Street Journal, page A2). Industrial production around the country fell or suffered a slowdown in March compared with a year earlier. Regions that rely on consumer-goods manufacturing, including Great Lakes and Southeast states, saw declines in the industrial-production index, which measures the output of manufacturers, utilities, and mines. Areas that depend more on technology-related manufacturing, including Western and New England states, fared better. But tech production has been rapidly eroding (The Wall Street Journal, page B9). In the era of the flexible work force, being laid off does not seem as though it should be as painful as it once was -- particularly for someone with experience and a willingness to learn new skills. However, a recent study by Henry S. Farber, a Princeton economist, asks workers what they earned in their old jobs and what they make in the ones they have found to replace them. The gap between the two salaries does, indeed, fluctuate with the economy. In the late 1990's, there was virtually no gap, while in the early 1990's, people who had lost their jobs had to take pay cuts of more than 10 percent in their new positions. But using the data on average wages to estimate what the displaced workers would have been making had their original jobs not been eliminated, Farber found that layoffs caused about an 11 percent pay cut for most of the last 2 decades. In good times, the displaced workers miss out on raises they would have received. Someone who was making $40,000 a year when he lost his job might find a new one that 3 years later is paying him $40,000 again. In the meantime, however, the typical person who had been making $40,000 and kept his job has received an 11 percent raise to nearly $45,000. In bad times, when most workers are receiving only slight pay increases, displaced workers actually fall behind where they had been (The New York Times, May 27, Money Business section, page 4). DUE OUT TOMORROW: Mass Layoffs in April 2001
Re: Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Yeah, I'm with you on this. But it's a bit odd to see competition implicitly praised on a Progressive Economists list. Doug Without competition (or without Kant's unsocial sociability) there would have been no history, nothingness, and certainly no pen-l.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Yeah, I'm with you on this. But it's a bit odd to see competition implicitly praised on a Progressive Economists list. Doug Without competition (or without Kant's unsocial sociability) there would have been no history, nothingness, and certainly no pen-l. Ridiculous. Read the account of the funeral games in the _Iliad_; then read (or write in your head) an account of the competition between GM and Mattel. (If a family buys an expensive car they will probably go a little easier on Xmas gifts.) Then tell me that the two kinds of competition are in any remote way similar. You are basing your whole argument on a bad metaphor. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Yeah, I'm with you on this. But it's a bit odd to see competition implicitly praised on a Progressive Economists list. Doug Without competition (or without Kant's unsocial sociability) there would have been no history, nothingness, and certainly no pen-l. God, that'd be terrible. You're right; competition is good. Doug
RE: Re: Oz Competition update
I beg to differ. One of my favorite lines in a movie by Jessica Tandy was, When sex is right it can be wonderful; but when it's wrong it can be wonderful too. mbs Competition is like sex. Whether it is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing very much depends on who, what, when, where and how. Tom Walker
Re: Oz Competition update
What is distinctly odd is the way in which monopoly is fostered in the name of competition. Neo-liberalism thus heralds a magical transition from monopoly to monopoly with the main difference that the metamorphosed monopoly is relieved of its historically accumulated burden of countervailing constraints and reciprocal obligations. I would read Rob's implicit praise of competition as ironic, in much the same vein as Marx's implicit praise of property, family and religion in the Eighteenth Brumaire. As much as one might disparage the ideals that appear as slogans on the reactionary banner, those ideals are benign compared with the crapulent social forces that march under that banner. Doug Henwood wrote, Yeah, I'm with you on this. But it's a bit odd to see competition implicitly praised on a Progressive Economists list. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Capital's plans for Cuba
Re-entry? Surely there has been considerable foreign investment in Cuba for some time. Many of the resort hotels are foreign or jointly owned are they not?. Sherrit-Gordon has extensive mining investments. In fact some time back they had a board meeting in Cuba to thumb their noses at the US as I recall. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 1:21 PM Subject: [PEN-L:12420] Capital's plans for Cuba The Laws and Legal System of a Free-Market Cuba: A Prospectus for Business Matias F. Travieso-Diaz Format: Hardcover, 216pp. ISBN: 1567200516 Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated Pub. Date: November 1996 ABOUT THIS ITEM From the Publisher The re-entry of foreign-based businesses into Cuba will require a complete overhaul of Cuba's laws and legal institutions. It will also require enactment of major new legislation there, designed to enable and facilitate modern business transactions. Travieso-Diaz identifies these necessary legal, political, and economic changes, integrating legal and economic concepts in a way that businesspeople can understand and use in determining when it will be safe for them to reestablish business ties with Cuba. An important, readable resource for corporate management and their academic colleagues specializing in international business, trade, and investment. From the Critics From Booknews Provides a checklist of legal changes that must transpire before it is prudent for the average business person--whether based in the United States or elsewhere--to engage in significant trade or investment activities in Cuba. Travieso-Diaz assumes that a transition is taking place in Cuba that changes the country from its present economic system to one based on free-market principles, and seeks to define what actions must be taken during that transition to create a hospitable environment for business activity in the island. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. FROM THE BOOK Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Initial Conditions: A Minimum Economic and Political Transition in Cuba 1 2 Repeal of United States Legislation Imposing a Trade Embargo Against Cuba 13 3 Changes to Cuba's Legal Infrastructure 49 4 Resolution of Expropriation Claims Against Cuba 71 5 Foreign Investment Legislation 105 6 Privatization Program 137 7 Other Transition-Period Laws Relating to Foreign Investment and Privatization 165 8 Laws Regulating Cuba's International Trade Transactions 181 Afterword 193 Index 195
Re: Oz Competition update
Ah, Max, you are confusing good and bad with right and wrong. Max Sawicky wrote, I beg to differ. One of my favorite lines in a movie by Jessica Tandy was, When sex is right it can be wonderful; but when it's wrong it can be wonderful too. mbs Competition is like sex. Whether it is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing very much depends on who, what, when, where and how. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
The good, the bad and the ugly
Clarification That is to say, that utility and morality BOTH depend on who, what, where, when and how but not necessarily the same who, what, where, when or how. Ah, Max, you are confusing good and bad with right and wrong. Max Sawicky wrote, I beg to differ. One of my favorite lines in a movie by Jessica Tandy was, When sex is right it can be wonderful; but when it's wrong it can be wonderful too. mbs Competition is like sex. Whether it is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing very much depends on who, what, when, where and how. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
Re: Socialism in one listserv
Carrol Cox: non-abstract would be extremely abstract. (Incidentally, an attempt to understand Latin America through detailed studies of Latin America will lead to similar absurdities. Good point. What's even worse is studying the native language. It is very likely that the most profound analysis of Latin America came from Hukalaka Meshabob, the founder of the Bulgarian Communist Party who was expelled for firing a pistol at dissenting politbureau members in 1931. His monograph on the emergence of the Valenciaguan labor movement was a classic, even though there was no such country called Valenciagua. He probably got Guatemala and Venezuela confused. Despite this pecadillo, he quoted Marx impeccably. Louis Proyect You spoke neither Albanian nor Serbo-Croatian nor any other local language spoken there when you did a fine job of analyzing the dissolution of Yugoslavia, though. If we had to learn all the languages dialects of the world, dead or alive, to speak of world history, there wouldn't be any Marxism or any other theory of historical change. Yoshie
Dollarization
more specifically addressing Yoshie's previous point, the rise of tourism and foreign investment in Cuba has encouraged the rise of the dollarized sector, which has encouraged a rise in economic inequality within Cuba. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Dollarization of Cuban economy would be an interesting important topic for dependency theorists to analyze. Yoshie
Re: Dollarization
Dollarization of Cuban economy would be an interesting important topic for dependency theorists to analyze. Yoshie There ain't no dependency theorists anymore. They all became world systems theorists. Anyhoo, if you wanna understand Cuba, read Lenin on the NEP. But only in the original Russian. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Tom wrote: What is distinctly odd is the way in which monopoly is fostered in the name of competition. I'm not sure it's all that odd. Monopoly capital is able to wipe out, first off, smaller less competitive capitals by virture of its greater use of the division of labor and use of price controls. They generate massive surpluses and economies of scale that enable it to capture critical labor markets, which further make it difficult for less competitive producers to compete in markets. Capitalist monopolies are also very able to chew apart state owned monopolies because the latter are not as competitive in capitalist markets. The Asian Financial Crisis is a great example of that. Chaebols in Korea, SOEs in Taiwan, etc. were faced with threats to their existence due to their less competitive debt/equity structures, which led to their poor evaluations from international creditors. As a result, more competitive foreign (especially) American firms secured access to greater shares of Korean domestic markets, controlled increasing amounts of equity in Korean companies,The most competitive producers are winning hands down thanks to the intensification of global competition...not the decline of competition...
Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Stephen E Philion wrote: Capitalist monopolies are also very able to chew apart state owned monopolies because the latter are not as competitive in capitalist markets. By not competitive, do you mean that state-owned monopolies must meet other criteria than profit -- that they have to provide a decent living, or health care , instead of just driving wages down as low as possible. That difference often makes contracting out more efficient. The Asian Financial Crisis is a great example of that. Chaebols in Korea, SOEs in Taiwan, etc. were faced with threats to their existence due to their less competitive debt/equity structures, which led to their poor evaluations from international creditors. Do you mean to equate the Chaebol with state-owned industries? As a result, more competitive foreign (especially) American firms secured access to greater shares of Korean domestic markets, controlled increasing amounts of equity in Korean companies,The most competitive producers are winning hands down thanks to the intensification of global competition...not the decline of competition... -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Final words on Brenner/Wood
In Ellen Meiksins Wood's defense of the Brenner thesis over the past several years, you can lose track of the issues that made it so controversial in the first place. This was not simply an analysis of how capitalism began, it was also an intervention into the debate around development strategy that was raging in the 1970s. This article will consider Wood's defense in light of scholarly material on the question of the transition to capitalism. It will also refocus the discussion on the often tortured development debate itself, which in my view has tended to reflect the class composition of the principals with all of the obvious problems. Put simply, a North American or European professor in an African university or on a United Nations assignment will be in a poor position to analyze class relations in the host country and to recommend necessary solutions. Ultimately, those sorts of solutions can only emerge from parties such as the kind that Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin sought to build. Finally, the article will show how the Brenner thesis, if applied rigorously to modern South Africa, can only lead to absurd conclusions. If you examine Ellen Meiksins Wood's polemic against the late Jim Blaut in the May-June 2001 Against the Current (A Critique of Eurocentric Eurocentrism), you will notice something very odd. Other than a citation of A.G. Frank's recently published Reorient, all of the other six footnotes refer solely to articles written by Blaut or Brenner. In contrast, Jim Blaut's chapter on Brenner in Eight Eurocentric Historians (Guilford, 2000) (about the same length as Wood's article) includes fifty-seven citations often referring to specialized, scholarly material. (1) For example, since Brenner's argument that capitalism began in the English countryside relies heavily on Eric Kitteridge's The Agricultural Revolution, Blaut offers Titow's English Rural Society, 1200-1350 as an opposing view. When David Harvey spoke at Jim Blaut's memorial meeting in NYC recently, he said that while Jim was a dedicated revolutionary, he was also a conscientious scholar. As he put it, he took all of the baggage that went along with it quite seriously, including footnotes. Either Ellen Meiksins Wood is unaware of countervailing scholarly material or, being aware of it, considers the Brenner thesis of such divine inspiration so as to be immune from counter-arguments. This, of course, is no way to deepen our understanding of capitalism's origins. Since the Brenner thesis rests on the uniquely capitalist and uniquely productive character of British agriculture from the 15th century onwards, one might expect somebody defending it to investigate alternative interpretations. One can only wonder if Wood has stumbled across Philip T. Hoffman's much-heralded Growth in a Traditional Society: the French Countryside 1450-1815 (Princeton, 1996) in her peregrinations. Sifting through village records in Bretteville-l'Orguelleuse, Roville, and Neuviller, Hoffman makes a startling discovery. While at the outset he believed the failings of French agriculture derived from the small size of peasant farms and the lack of English-style enclosures, the data gradually convinced him that sharecropping, a typical form of property relations in these villages, did not hamper productivity or innovation at all. (2) By all standard measures of labor productivity, France was the equal of Great Britain. Or has she seen Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy? Pomeranz notes that in the sixteenth to eighteenth century, China was closer to market-driven agriculture than was most of Europe, including most of western Europe. (3) He adds, much of western Europe's farmland was far harder to buy or sell than that of China. Even in the nineteenth century, about 50 percent of all land in England was covered by family settlements, which made it all but impossible to sell. 1. IBERIANTALISM As fruitful as it would be to explore France and China as counterfactuals to the Brenner thesis, my goal now is to subject Wood's rather off-the-cuff remarks on Spanish 'feudalism' to careful scrutiny. For Wood, Spain functions as an example of everything that can go wrong when you do not make the transition to capitalism. Instead of using its colonial wealth productively, Spain wasted it in essentially feudal pursuits, especially war... (An interesting perspective on war from a world-renown Marxist intellectual.) In contrast to Spain, the English were much more ruthless when it came to the exploitation of the land for farming. Concerned with commercial profit, they dedicated themselves to improvement. Meanwhile, one would surmise that the vainglorious Spanish hidalgos were happiest, when not wasting good farmland, out looking for countries to pick fights with. To put it bluntly, Wood's views on Spain and the Spanish colonies are a caricature. What is at work here is the kind of national and ethnic
Re: Re: Socialism in one listserv
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Carrol Cox: non-abstract would be extremely abstract. (Incidentally, an attempt to understand Latin America through detailed studies of Latin America will lead to similar absurdities. Good point. What's even worse is studying the native language. As a matter of fact, I would not claim to _understand_ (in the theoretical sense needed for revolutionary practice) the English language. One cannot understand a language in that sense without out knowing several other langugages. And of course Lou is contradicting the fundamentals of his own arguments here. The point of departure for ecology is precisely the argument he is mocking here: that it is impossible to understand one plant by itself, regardless of how much knowledge one acquires of the plant in itself. And it is impossible to understand a river without understanding a whole complex of biological and geological features that have nothing directly to do with the river. (In effect, Lou is taking the position of Agassiz against Darwin: The president of Standford, on dedicating memorial to Agassiz -- the memorial being of concrete -- remarked that Agassiz always was better in the concrete than in the abstract.) Lou is also taking Brenner's point against Blaut: Blaut claiming that one cannot understand English capitalism without understanding the conquest of the new world, while Brower, and Lou, claim that one can understand the rise of capitalism in England independently of events elsewhere. He also seems to be claiming that the Opium Wars were unrelated to the rise of the Confederacy. The slavedrivers, according to Lou, were only happily minding their own busines, eating the sweet potatoes and corn pone produced for them by their slaves. They had nothing to do with the cotton mills of manchester. Lou has a point about languages, however. In his articles on the origins of capitalism Brower gives special thanks to a friend who had translated various documents and scholarly sources from slavic languages. Only someone acquainted with both the primary sources and the scholarship written in Polish and Russian can understand the relations between eastern and western Europe. That is why it is impossible for me to make any judgment of Brower vs. Blaut (and also impossible for Lou to make such a judgment) based on the facts, because our mutual ignorance of Polish and Russian makes the facts unavailable to us. Carrol
Re: Dollarization
Dollarization of Cuban economy would be an interesting important topic for dependency theorists to analyze. Yoshie There ain't no dependency theorists anymore. They all became world systems theorists. Anyhoo, if you wanna understand Cuba, read Lenin on the NEP. But only in the original Russian. Louis Proyect I suppose I should simply take your post as an attempt at humor that is, but I'm interested in seeing if the framework of dependency theory can explain the dollarization of Cuba. Yoshie
Krugmania
fyi There was a Post article this a.m. about one Michael Wolff, a columnist for New York Magazine, which mentioned a column he did on PK. It was sufficiently interesting to prompt me to check it out. Wolff goes under the category of media critic and seems to be an exceptionally skilled and pitiless writer. He does a nice number on PK. The other pieces are well done too. media Leading Indicator Who is Times columnist Paul Krugman and why is he saying those terrible things about Alan Greenspan? http://www.newyorkmag.com/page.cfm?page_id=4528position=1
Re: Re: Dollarization
I suspect that dollarization of Cuba represents a much greater threat than the Miami Cubans. When I went to Cuba on a tour led by Jim Devine, I was struck by the solidarity of the people that I met -- a sense of shared hardship -- even though the times were much easier then. I would think that that sort of solidarity would be difficult to maintain in the face of a growing tourist economy. On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 06:47:00PM -0400, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Dollarization of Cuban economy would be an interesting important topic for dependency theorists to analyze. Yoshie There ain't no dependency theorists anymore. They all became world systems theorists. Anyhoo, if you wanna understand Cuba, read Lenin on the NEP. But only in the original Russian. Louis Proyect I suppose I should simply take your post as an attempt at humor that is, but I'm interested in seeing if the framework of dependency theory can explain the dollarization of Cuba. Yoshie -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Oz Competition update
On Wed, 30 May 2001, Michael Perelman wrote: Stephen E Philion wrote: Capitalist monopolies are also very able to chew apart state owned monopolies because the latter are not as competitive in capitalist markets. By not competitive, do you mean that state-owned monopolies must meet other criteria than profit -- that they have to provide a decent living, or health care , instead of just driving wages down as low as possible. That difference often makes contracting out more efficient. Sure, I would agree with that. A kind of irony, small businesses have trouble because they can't afford the higher wages of labor markets dominated by monopoly capitalists, SOEs likewise, but due to their payment of a higher social wage than the going rate in monopoly capitalist markets. In any event, note I said competitive in *capitalist* markets, which I think is something that is often misunderstood by critics of, say, globalization or monopoly capital, for 'getting rid of competition.' This leitmotif one hears from Naderites quite a bit. Here in Hawaii the greens, with their close alliance to small business, and quite a few sovereignty activists for that matter,frequently excoriate big business for destroying competition. In one breath they will condemn the ADB for forcing indigenous people to only have one option for local development and in the next one will sing the eloquent praises of recent initiatives to privatize Hawaii's public workers' health care funds and hiring of public employees... The Asian Financial Crisis is a great example of that. Chaebols in Korea, SOEs in Taiwan, etc. were faced with threats to their existence due to their less competitive debt/equity structures, which led to their poor evaluations from international creditors. Do you mean to equate the Chaebol with state-owned industries? Not to equate, no, but the overlap of problems is pretty clear I think.
Re: Final words on Brenner/Wood
Lou wrote: From the standpoint of class relations, contemporary South Africa and colonial Spain have much in common. Capitalism is not about advanced technology. Until relatively recent times, a miner worked with a pick and a shovel. Nor is capitalism about freedom. It is about producing surplus value. If a work force is not available to work for a wage, then the capitalist state will pass laws ensuring that various forms of unfree labor keep the system going. It is our job as Marxists to develop a class analysis that can maximize the power of the laboring classes politically. Quibbling over whether the worker is really a worker or not based on the peculiarities of a given country's history not only constitutes a form of pedantic quibbling, it is a detour from our task as revolutionaries. ---You've configured a classic straw man. You associate the bourgeois understanding of free labor under capitalism to Wood and Brenner, when anyone who has read Brenner and Wood know full well that both argue explicitly against a bourgeois acceptance of the term 'free labor' at face value. If it's not clear enough in Brenner, it's patently explicit in Wood's writing, especially in Origins and the set of essays in MR on the spurious notion of markets as locations of opportunities to buy and sell. You almost seemed to be making an argument in this essay and then you resort to the usual quoting out of context, which renders your essay rather unhelpful as a 'criticism' of Wood and Brenner. Steve Stephen Philion Lecturer/PhD Candidate Department of Sociology 2424 Maile Way Social Sciences Bldg. # 247 Honolulu, HI 96822
Re: Krugmania
Somehow Wolff doesn't quite get the message about the arrogance of professional economics. He sees it as a personal trait of PK (and the guy does have a sharp prickly streak), but he doesn't recognize the general disdain of most professional economists for what they see as the naive and self-serving views of other folks. In the realm of politics, this disdain can be positively endearing. PK is withering in his contempt for the idiocy and mendacity of politicians (particularly Republicans), and I must admit I get a charge from reading those columns. But he can easily turn the same guns on anti-WTO protesters. And it's ultimately the same shtick: what are these people doing, blathering about the economy, when they don't know what I do about international portfolio theory and unit root analysis? Of course, all academic specializations have their pet theories and techniques, but economics is exceptional in its dismissal of everyone else's. Peter
Re: Re: Oz Competition update
Tom Walker wrote: Competition is like sex. Whether it is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing very much depends on who, what, when, where and how. Doug Henwood asked: I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213 Well, if we're going the sex analogy, the Black Widow comes to mind. Eventually it's over, and only the big one's left. Cheers, Rob.
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Sen. Jefferts leaves Republican party
So, at the point where you earn enough life income to stop working and live off investments then you move out of the working class. I assume you don't mean the elderly who have only social security or social security and a pension? For the kind of 'front porch party' you talk about, this is probably a good, coalition type of definition which avoids the pitfalls of fingerpointing and claims of 'being more working class than thou.' So, now, how do you propose to attract the working class to involvement in or voting with this party? Or would this party focus on voting at all, or just grass roots influence? I've often thought that the emphasis of creating a party which would elect people as alternatives to the dems and reps is a mistake. Having lived through the 60s and 70s and seen the shifts in party platforms, I think bottom up pressure is more important than voting. F'rinstance, as pointed out by someone else on the list (sorry, I forget who), pressuring the democrats to take progressive stands is more realistic than expecting the polticians to come up with good, original legislation on their own. AFter all, their job is to get elected, not making things better for anyone In the 60s and early 70s some of the Republicans were more democrat than the democrats are today. And in the 60s the democrats upheld all the jim crow laws in all those southern states ... maggie coleman Max Sawicky wrote: This is in response to Max's answer about a third party -- his complete response is at the end of my comments: I like the idea of a front porch campaign -- a real time version of a list. And, I agree with most of your very broad outline. One question though, how would you define the working class? Marx's definition seems outmoded with corporate/international capitalism, especially in the computer age when so many traditional craft jobs have been mechanized (trouble shooting for all equipment in communications, robots in auto plants). I haven't been able to arrive at a satisfactory definition for myself. I don't like sociological definitions which tie class to income, because some production workers make far higher salaries than low level managers, especially where the managers are non-European background or female or both. maggie coleman I'm recycling my oldies here, but in a nutshell, I would define w.c. in terms of lifetime income (LI). LI is the present value of market-based consumption, gifts, and bequests. Those with insufficient LI to retire young or refrain from working are w.c. Where's the cutoff? It doesn't matter that much, IMO. I would include small biz, the self-employed, police. Most people have to work for their money, a few have their money work for them. It's about the Many and the Few. The fact that some low-paid schmo has a managerial hat, or that a shopkeeper has a modicum of capital, or that someone is in an occupation that obliges him to serve the political/military needs of the capitalist class is not a crucial distinction to me (as far as this exercise goes). A progressive program benefits all these types; no reason to exclude them. I think simplicity and fuzziness of definition in this context are virtues. At the very least, they save us a lot of time splitting hairs. I expect that in the context of a real political crunch, the distinctions in Marx (which may serve other purposes, in re: understanding the 'laws of motion' etc.) and academia tend to vaporize. mbs
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Sen. Jefferts leaves Republican party
I don't understand your comments Marta. I said I didn't have a clear definition of what was working class and asked Max what his definition is. So, I'll ask you too. What would your definition of working class be? maggie coleman Marta Russell wrote: And what about those who want to be workers like the 79% of working age disabled persons who say they want to work but who cannot get hired or who have been axed due to an impairment or illness? Marta Margaret Coleman wrote: This is in response to Max's answer about a third party -- his complete response is at the end of my comments: I like the idea of a front porch campaign -- a real time version of a list. And, I agree with most of your very broad outline. One question though, how would you define the working class? Marx's definition seems outmoded with corporate/international capitalism, especially in the computer age when so many traditional craft jobs have been mechanized (trouble shooting for all equipment in communications, robots in auto plants). I haven't been able to arrive at a satisfactory definition for myself. I don't like sociological definitions which tie class to income, because some production workers make far higher salaries than low level managers, especially where the managers are non-European background or female or both. maggie coleman Max Sawicky wrote: I'm not interested in galvanizing progressives. I want to galvanize the working class. My 5- point populist program would be: democratic money; fair trade; curb anti-competitive predation by corporations; labor rights, and fully fund the domestic budget. My targets, conversely, would be free trade/globalization, the Fed, monopolists, and budget balancers/tax cutters. I would run third party campaigns wherever the resources were available. I would target elections where the cause could be advanced, not necessarily those that strategically cause Dems to lose. I'll be starting my own political party shortly. There will be no membership drive. It'll be the internet equivalent of the 'front-porch campaign.' mbs What kind of 3rd party would you build? In the last couple of decades attempts have been made at several types of 3rd parties, both conservative and progressive, and they have all failed. Why do you think this is and what type of party would galvanize progressives? Of course, for conservatives, one could argue that the Right to Life Party has been successful in terms of influence, but they have not been successful in mainstreaming their party line. maggie coleman It does make a difference which party is in power. That's why we should look to third parties to build public support for progressive issues and exert pressure on the Dems. mbs -- Marta Russell author, Los Angeles, CA http://disweb.org/ Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract http://www.commoncouragepress.com/russell_ramps.html
Re: Re: Oz Competition update
I keep forgetting - is competition a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? I'm with Mark. The answer is nope. Competition is a tendency to monopoly via a series of traumatic consolidations. Especially in telecom. Competition just is. Once (1990) it wasn't. And one day, in these cases in particular, it won't be. What I was being ironic about was the policy that's taking us from a public monopoly to a private monopoly via a heap of expense and trauma. I'm still not convinced the technophiliac privateers had a point about new technologies rendering monopoly redundant. Everyone still seems to need the old backbone, few are opting for multiple sockets in their homes, and everyone wants one-stop billing. And the bind any government gets itself into when it privatises a utility and introduces competition is that it's politically obliged to minimise the regulatory risk to the sharebuyers. As the monopoly remains a natural one, Telstra wire has to be leased by the new competitors, and government is torn on what price caps to impose - enough to allow value appreciation for Telstra shareholders, but not so much as to destroy the fledgeling competitors. That, combined with Telstra's capacity to slow everything down with interminable and socially expensive legal actions and Telstra's capacity to cross-subsidise to wipe competitors out with predatory pricing (as opposed to the old idea of cross-subsidising, whereby remote subscriptions in a huge country with uneven population distribution were covered by metropolitan rates), makes the transition all but impossible, and renders universal service provision untenable. On a more general note, the asocial sociability of 'civil' competition is fine between the white lines on a Saturday afternoon; but even in football, the competition with the opposition is healthily balanced by the social sociability with your own team mates. Economics is about replacing what's left of social sociability with asocial sociability. Lovemaking doesn't add to the GDP, prostitution does. Parenting doesn't, childcare does. Friendship doesn't, professional counselling does. Species being doesn't, the exchange relation does. Monopolistically and humanistically yours, Rob.
Re: Re: True Hegelian Truth
Jim Devine wrote: At 11:19 AM 05/30/2001 +0300, you wrote: Jim Devine writes: As Baran Sweezy quote Hegel to say, the truth is the whole. = According to Paul Diesing, this should actually read the true is the whole. Michael K. does it truly matter? And if the whole (the complex of micro and macro relations that make up existence) is all that's true, we must either put all in the care of God, gods, or the Hidden Hand, or make sure we're able to act on what we do know, act accordingly, conceive of those actions as learning, and act such that we can quickly change what we do if evidence arises that something's wrong with what we're doing. We've gone the Hidden Hand route, and the signals this particular deity is sending us ain't matching those the physical and social environment are sending us. Alas, our priests are able to see only the price signal, and conceive of time as only a mathematical abstraction. If they're wrong, and there actually is a reality outside their neat little airfix models, and there actually is a temporality above and beyond their dileated little abstractions, then we shall never know more of the whole, never be able to act differently (because we can't really *act* at all), never discern fundamental dynamics, and hence never respond to them. So Hegels Absolute would be calling us, but we wouldn't be able to hear it, and we wouldn't be coming. Mebbe the cockroaches will get it right next time 'round ... Cheers, Rob.
Patrick Bond on Water in Ghana
Ghana's hydro-class struggles ACCRA -- Notwithstanding the horrific soccer stadium disaster in which at least 165 people were killed in a police-incited stampede on May 9, the past week offered signs of genuine hope in Ghana. I've been privileged to witness a careful regrouping of the country's former revolutionary student/community movement, which is strengthening its political base by addressing two key areas of economic and social strife: the legacy of structural adjustment and water privatisation. As was the case recently in Bolivia, Ecuador and South Africa, Ghana's capital city and rural areas could witness rising protest in coming months. The combination of neoliberal economic policies and the commodification of water could well drive ordinary Ghanaians to the streets. That would be bad news for a vociferous US ideologue of neoliberalism, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who visited Accra in late April and declared that Africans want free markets, penetration by multinational corporations and the Clinton Administration's African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000 (AGOA). While the protesters in Quebec were busy denouncing globalization in the name of Africans and the world's poor, wrote Friedman on April 24, Africans themselves will tell you that their problem with globalization is not that they are getting too much of it, but too little. Friedman cited just one Ghanaian, George Apenteng of the Institute for Economic Affairs, which is funded by transnational corporations, including Kaiser Aluminum and Unilever. A far better informant would have been Charles Abugre, director of ISODEC, the Integrated Social Development Centre, whose 68 staff do top-quality radical analysis, publishing, development projects, community organising, Africa-wide and international networking, and unrelenting advocacy. (http://www.isodec.org.gh will be up soon) AGOA is not having a positive effect in Ghana, says Abugre. We see it merely as an instrument for opening Ghana's markets in the name of promoting US investments. For Friedman to argue that AGOA will be the means by which we can penetrate the US market is a delusion. The main effect of AGOA is to link aid to economic reform, by which is meant the dismantling of state regulatory environment. There are no benefits, and the costs include clear manifestations of deepening structural adjustment and deregulation. ISODEC and the African Trade Network are campaigning to roll back AGOA. Abugre calls for vigilance from US-based Africa solidarity activists, many of whom backed Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr's alternative (unsuccessful) HOPE for Africa bill last year. Says Abugre, We are protesting AGOA in civil society groups across Africa and are placing it on the agenda of the Organisation of African Unity and UN Economic Commission for Africa. AGOA is simply another way of undermining Africa's ability to mobilise domestic resources for development, and of enforcing an anti- developmental trade regime. Two decades ago, Abugre and several of ISODEC's other leaders were amongst those responsible for giving Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings a social power base of enormous importance--to their great regret. For after taking control of the students' June 4 Movement and gaining state power in a December 1981 coup, Rawlings did a vicious political U-turn within months, forcing the lead activists into exile, jailing thousands, and killing hundreds. The final straw was the young leftists' defeat after a national debate in late 1982 over whether Ghana should turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a structural adjustment loan programme. Though public opinion was clearly with the student movement, conservative opportunists emerged and helped Rawlings turn right, though he retained his nationalist demagoguery. (The story of Ghana's revolutionary moment and its squashing is well told by Zaya Yeebo in his book, Ghana: The Struggle for Popular Power, published in 1991 by New Beacon Books of London.) During the 1980s-90s the IMF and World Bank ran roughshod over Ghana, helping open the country's doors to Western governments whose aid schemes nearly invariably failed. US administrations became friendlier, capped by a visit from Bill Clinton in 1998. Formal democracy was finally restored in 1992 (Rawlings was then elected twice amidst a mediocre field and boycotts by opposition parties due to blatant vote-rigging). Amidst the chaos and underdevelopment, Ghana was officially considered amongst Africa's star neoliberal pupils, boasting an average of 4.4% economic growth a year from the mid-1980s to 2000. Yet last December, after two decades in which the average annual income of the country's 18 million people never rose above $400, disgruntled voters replaced the ruling National Democratic Congress with the New Patriotic Party, led by John Kufuor. A gullible neoliberal in practice, Kufuor at least concedes the obvious when pressed. On May 7, ISODEC
Further thoughts on water
The question of water seems to be crucial. The Sacramento Bee had a recent article about Boone Pickens trying to sell Texas water. In Texas, you own water like you own oil. You can pump all you want from wherever you are. A sure recipe for depleting reservoirs. Tim wrote about the commodification of water in our region. Liberal environmentalists have long promoted this trend, hoping that higher prices will force people [you know which people] to economize. I cannot imagine a Middle East peace unless some way be found to reconcile the conflicting water demands in the region -- some hope that shipments from Turkey will remedy the shortage, but I find that hard to believe. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Final words on Brenner/Wood
I appreciate Lou's comments on the Brenner thesis, which confirm my suspicion, stated earlier, that his own concern is less about capitalism's past than imperialism's present: Lou is really mainly concerned to attack the late Bill Warren's claim that capitalist development is good for the third world. This is a view that cannot be attributed to Brenner: it does not follow from his views about early modern Europe, and he has never said any such thing in his extensive political and economic analyses of the modern world. What Ellen Wood believes I would not venture to say, not having read her stuff; I have the current issue of ATC (with the demonic Sam Farber on the editorial board!) on my desk. I will say, though, as a sometime contributor to ATC, that if Wood's footnotes are a bit thin, you can probably blame that on ATC's policies of not running a scholarly journal: the editors discourage footnotes. Lou repeats his criticism of Brenner, that Brenner's insistence on the importance of free labor in the early development of capitalism is bourgeois ideology, because the newly dispossessed proletarit was made free of means of subsistance, and not mainly empowered to pursue its individual initiative. Despite his insistence on footnotes anmd textual references, he provides none in attributing this Hayekian viewe to Brenner. And there is a reason for this: Brenner knows perfectly well, and rather better than Lou (or me), exactly how thorough and devastating the dispossession visited upon the English agrarian classes was. It is simply a misrepresentation to say that Brenner thinks otherwise. (Roemer--no historian--has sometimes said what Lou says Brenner says. But Brennr has not.) I really do think that if we want to talk about modern third world development, we should do so. Bill Warren, though dead, is a fair target. So indeed is Brenner--but only for his own views, not Warren's. Now, if Brenner is ignorant about 16th and 17th century Spanish or South AMerican economics, that is a legitimate basis for criticizing his views insofar as his ignorance, if real, undermines his claims about England, France, and Poland. But It does not advance our understanding of either development in the postwar era or of the rise of capitalsim to take a treatment of the latter to be an account of the former. --jks From: Louis Proyect In Ellen Meiksins Wood's defense of the Brenner thesis over the past several years, you can lose track of the issues that made it so controversial in the first place. This was not simply an analysis of how capitalism began, it was also an intervention into the debate around development strategy that was raging in the 1970s. . . . . Finally, the article will show how the Brenner thesis, if applied rigorously to modern South Africa, can only lead to absurd conclusions. If you examine Ellen Meiksins Wood's polemic against the late Jim Blaut in the May-June 2001 Against the Current (A Critique of Eurocentric Eurocentrism), you will notice something very odd. Other than a citation of A.G. Frank's recently published Reorient, all of the other six footnotes refer solely to articles written by Blaut or Brenner. . . . From the standpoint of class relations, contemporary South Africa and colonial Spain have much in common. Capitalism is not about advanced technology. Until relatively recent times, a miner worked with a pick and a shovel. Nor is capitalism about freedom. It is about producing surplus value. If a work force is not available to work for a wage, then the capitalist state will pass laws ensuring that various forms of unfree labor keep the system going. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: Final words on Brenner/Wood
On Wed, 30 May 2001, Justin Schwartz wrote: Lou repeats his criticism of Brenner, that Brenner's insistence on the importance of free labor in the early development of capitalism is bourgeois ideology, because the newly dispossessed proletarit was made free of means of subsistance, and not mainly empowered to pursue its individual initiative. Despite his insistence on footnotes anmd textual references, he provides none in attributing this Hayekian viewe to Brenner. And there is a reason for this: Brenner knows perfectly well, and rather better than Lou (or me), exactly how thorough and devastating the dispossession visited upon the English agrarian classes was. It is simply a misrepresentation to say that Brenner thinks otherwise. (Roemer--no historian--has sometimes said what Lou says Brenner says. But Brennr has not.) Right, if you go back to Wood's devestating critique of analytical marxism (AM, is it worth the candle? or some such title) in NLR about 15 years ago, she makes that point very clearly. She does the same in her recent writings too, especially in her essay on capitalist markets as compulsory driven institutions in MR, namely that Brenner is the best of the analytical marxists precisely because he takes seriously the problem of class struggle and its critical role in history as well as the compulsory nature of capitalist markets.
Blair promises more privatisation.....
The third way means that social democracy does the dirty work that used to be done by the right.. Cheers, Ken Hanly The Guardian May 24, 2001 TUC fears for public services By Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent Tony Blair was last night facing the first sign of a coordinated trade union backlash over his plans to expose the public services, including health and education, to private contractors if Labour win the general election. It emerged last night that the TUC executive met yesterday to express alarm at the extent of the prime minister's commitment to introduce private sector management and disciplines. The executive agreed to prepare an alternative vision for the public services to be published after the election. The 45-minute discussion at the executive meeting in London was attended by more than 20 of Britain's most senior union leaders, including figures from the GMB, Unison and the Transport and General Workers Union. They said they feared the proposals went much further than they had been told by the Labour leadership before the election. They had been alarmed at the spin being put on the proposals and the suggestion that few areas of the public services could not be put out to competition to private contractors. The mood of the TUC executive will now be relayed to the respective executives of the leading unions. Most of them are big financial backers of the Labour party and will not be keen on an open fight with Mr Blair during the election campaign. However, many of the unions are privately concerned that Mr Blair's proposals do not differ markedly from measures by the Conservative government to hand the public sector over to the private sector. Mr Blair insists they are very different. The TUC executive meets once a month, and is in effect the governing body of the TUC between each annual congress. At his party's manifesto launch, Mr Blair insisted there was no ideological bar to handing services over to private contractors so long as it could be shown they would remain publicly funded, free at the point of delivery and better for the customer. The Labour party had tried to mollify the unions in advance of the launch by promis ing to see if they could do more to protect workers' wages and conditions if they find their job contracted out to the private sector. Mr Blair also promised a review if he found his proposals were leading to a two-tier workforce. Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Blair insisted he was not seeking a confrontation with the unions, but he wanted to be honest with the electorate and win a mandate for change. He told the BBC: Anybody who comes to me after the election from the very traditional old left and says 'no you cannot involve the private sector in these things', I want to say 'no I made it clear during the election that we wanted a different partnership between the public and the private sector'.
Collusion among California Power Generators?
The Los Angeles Times May 18, 2001 PUC Chief Alleges Plot to Raise Prices Cites evidence that plants were shut down to create 'artificial shortages.' by Rich Connell and Robert Lopez State investigators have uncovered evidence that a cartel of power companies shut down plants for unnecessary maintenance to ratchet up prices, the head of the California Public Utilities Commission asserted Thursday. PUC President Loretta Lynch said her agency, working with the state attorney general's office, is probing patterns of plant outages that have created artificial shortages, particularly when the state has issued emergency alerts because of seriously low levels of electricity. There are instances where plants could have produced, and they chose not to, Lynch said in an interview at The Times. And it is clear that there are instances that plants, when called to produce, chose not to produce, even when they were obligated to do so under special contracts with the state and utility companies. Lynch said the ongoing investigation has already produced enough information for the PUC and attorney general's office to take legal action against the generators next month. The exact nature of that action, she said, is still under review. Lynch, who is an attorney, did not name specific suppliers or provide documentation of her assertions. She said that information will remain confidential until court proceedings are undertaken. Generators have long denied any attempt at manipulating the power market in any unlawful way, including orchestrating plant shutdowns. They say the facilities are so old and have been run so hard during the power crisis that breakdowns are a recurring problem. Lynch and Gov. Gray Davis, who has been particularly critical of out-of-state generators, have not suggested that every plant shutdown has been unwarranted. In fact, the governor's top advisor on power plants released a statement last week saying inspectors determined that a Bay Area plant shutdown was justified and that the company's officials were accommodating. State Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer was not available for comment on his joint investigation with the PUC. A spokesman would only confirm that Lockyer's office is investigating plant shutdowns as part of a wide-ranging probe of possible civil and criminal violations. So far, the attorney general's office has subpoenaed documents in 91 categories from generators, including records of plant operations, pricing practices and information the merchants may have shared with one another about California's power market. We're looking for behavior that would violate antitrust or unfair business practice laws, Lockyer has told The Times. Although he has not provided details of his office's findings, he recently said the inquiry is beginning to get interesting. Lynch said evidence of allegedly unnecessary plant shutdowns was amassed during interviews by investigators and in a review of the voluminous subpoenaed records, obtained after intense legal battles with the power companies. In addition, investigators have been entering plants where unplanned shutdowns have occurred to examine operations and maintenance records, Lynch said. At times, the investigators have been denied access and have had to exert legal pressure to get in, she said. The plant shutdowns are a key factor in the soaring power prices, which have gone from $200 a megawatt-hour in December to as high as $1,900 last week. I would argue it's no accident, Lynch said of the high prices. That in fact it's [due to] the coordinated behavior of a cartel. The power generators have repeatedly said they have acted within the rules of California's flawed deregulation program, which allowed them to buy power plants formerly run by the state's three largest utilities. Gary Ackerman, a spokesman for a trade association of large power producers, said Lynch's allegations were the height of idiocy. The reason many plants have been down in recent months, he said, is that power producers must perform maintenance now in anticipation of heavy summer demand. He said he doubted that state investigators could prove wrongdoing because there was no conspiracy to turn off supplies. My members do not make money by shutting down their plants so their competitors can make money, said Ackerman, executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum. State analysts have argued, however, that power traders can reap extraordinary profits by withholding power because the prices for the power that is sold are so high. According to Lynch, investigators have found that some companies were more aggressive than others in allegedly using plant shutdowns to manipulate the state's power market. She said investigators have also found a suspicious pattern: When operators of the state electricity grid declare a Stage 1 alert--meaning that electricity reserves have dropped below 7%--plants that do not need repairs suddenly are yanked
Re: Krugmania
it's a very shallow article, all about style and nothing about substance. At 06:49 PM 05/30/2001 +0100, you wrote: fyi There was a Post article this a.m. about one Michael Wolff, a columnist for New York Magazine, which mentioned a column he did on PK. It was sufficiently interesting to prompt me to check it out. Wolff goes under the category of media critic and seems to be an exceptionally skilled and pitiless writer. He does a nice number on PK. The other pieces are well done too. media Leading Indicator Who is Times columnist Paul Krugman and why is he saying those terrible things about Alan Greenspan? http://www.newyorkmag.com/page.cfm?page_id=4528position=1 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
The Socialist Alliance in the UK election.
The Guardian (London and Manchester) May 25, 2001 Why I'm voting for the Socialist Alliance This is an electoral alternative for Labour people who have had enough By Paul Foot It is not every day that I subscribe to the thoughts of Paddy Ashdown, but he got it right when he described the public mood during the general election campaign as not apathy, but antipathy. Every day there is further proof that people are disgusted not by politics but by the style and message adopted by the main party leaders (including the Liberal Democrat party, which has always strived to be the Tory party with a conscience and usually ends up without even that). Much of the disgust for the government comes from former Labour supporters. Trade unionists are outraged at the government's failure to tip the legal balance away from the old Tory bias towards the employer. Public service workers are scandalised by ministers' obsessive faith in privatisation. Oblivious to the chaos and profiteering caused by privatisation of the railways, and of Blair's own pledge to restore a publicly owned and publicly account able railway, transport ministers seem hell-bent on creating the same chaos and profiteering on the London Underground and in air traffic control. The bald facts under New Labour have, in almost every area of life in Britain, made nonsense of the arguments deployed by New Labour since Blair became leader. Private ownership and control don't work as well as public ownership and control. Tax breaks for the rich have led, after four years of a Labour government with an impregnable Commons majority, to a wider gap between rich and poor. The Socialist Alliance was formed to provide an electoral alternative for Labour people who have had enough. The Alliance has practical policies, democratically arrived at, based on socialist principles of public ownership and democratic control. Every day more and more Labour party people, shocked at what is happening to their party, come over to the Alliance. The script for the obscene charade at St Helens where, under orders from Downing Street and Millbank, the local party has chosen as its candidate a spin doctor from the Tory party and a former champion of Jeffrey Archer for mayor of London, might have been written by the Alliance. The Blair-Woodward Stitch-Up Project has driven scores of Labour activists into the Alliance (including an excellent parliamentary candidate, Neil Thompson). Neil is a fire-fighter, and last week the Fire Brigades Union conference voted, against the advice of their leaders, to change the union rules to allow donations to candidates other than Labour who support the principles and policies of the union. This historic vote shows the extent of the haemorrhage of Labour support in its affiliated unions. Two arguments against voting for the Socialist Alliance are worth addressing. The first is the risk of letting the Tories in. But the Tories, everyone agrees, are irrelevant. They are irrelevant not because of the personal qualities of their leaders, but because basic Tory policies (union bashing, privatisation, etc) have been adopted by the Labour government. The whole political map has been shifted to the right by the reactionary politics of New Labour. When people say: Blair is a winner - give him another chance to win again (the other main reason for voting Labour), they ignore the chief effect of the rightward drift of the political axis. What, after all, is the point in winning large numbers of Tory voters to the New Labour cause, if that cause is essentially a Tory one? What Labour needs is not more electoral loyalty from Labour sheep, but a sharp and painful kick up the backside from the left. Blair's cronies need to be taught a lesson: that a great army of traditional Labour voters want them to change direction, to revive faith in public enterprise and the health service, to stand up against the multinational corporations and to disengage from the plutocratic embrace of benefactors like Bernie Ecclestone, the Hinduja brothers, Geoffrey Robinson, Shaun Woodward and the Sainsbury family. One of the most depressing features of the last four years has been the abject obeisance of the vast majority of Labour MPs. A glance at the backgrounds and occupations of Socialist Alliance candidates reveals the depth of their appeal as workers and activists who are inspired not by the prospect of a parliamentary career but by a burning desire to change their country into something far more fair and decent than anything ever imagined by New Labour. Almost all the Socialist Alliance candidates are campaigners. Angela Thomson (Dudley South) took part in 150 days of strike action against privatisation plans that will transfer (sack) hundreds of jobs out of the health service. Bill Hamilton (Dagenham) a black shop steward at Ford, is fighting against the closure of his plant. Union official John Mulrenan (Peckham and
Re: Re: Re: Final words on Brenner/Wood
Steve writes: Right, if you go back to Wood's devestating critique of analytical marxism (AM, is it worth the candle? or some such title) in NLR about 15 years ago, she makes that point very clearly. She does the same in her recent writings too, especially in her essay on capitalist markets as compulsory driven institutions in MR, namely that Brenner is the best of the analytical marxists precisely because he takes seriously the problem of class struggle and its critical role in history as well as the compulsory nature of capitalist markets. and Brenner, unlike Roemer or Cohen, actually studies the world rather than simply concocting theories about it. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Eurocentrism
Having been scorched as a New Ager, I would inject a perspective nonetheless along those lines. Press the delete button, if you prefer. Thinking about Blaut's book I was reminded of the deep confusion over Eurocentric issues now engulging globalization, it would seem, with total incomprehension on all sides. Modernization, most ironically, is a two way street. Especially is that true with the ancient legacies of India and to a lesser extent the half-breed Islamic sufism, with their buried traditions that responded immediately to Western style information-transmission disgorging themselves globally in a diffusion headed in the opposite direction, starting in the nineteenth century. Nothing to sneeze at, and the attitudes of the typical member of the Skeptics movement are pygmy stuff and very insulting, if not dangerous, in their idiotic Enlightenment arrogance that considers the slightest interest in Buddhism a form of mental derangement (no kidding, it happened to me). These movements are fighting for survival and succeeding, and have to be reckoned with in a broader leftist anthropology than that current, A hard thing to do, because the whole process simply degenerates into a mess at each stage. Along these lines, cruising through Amazon's endless database I was surprised to see listed a book called "Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind" by that strange character Rajneesh some may remember from the seventies. I cannot vouch for any of that, but I do remember it vividly as it happened at the time, since I simply couldn't avoid a host of people associated with that, thousands, now with changed stories, never heard of him. He took on the USA government and got deported. His movement was a strange concotion of the good and bad, getting worse as it became a cult, not my issue, who knows, all gone now, and the remains have degenerated into a sort of Buddhist health club. But for all the vicious hatred induced against him, and not forgetting his flaws, Rajneesh was, most surprisingly, one of the rarest of the rare genuine exemplars India alone can produce of the 'Buddha phenomenon'. He induced desperation, almost panic in psychologists, deprogrammers, and the established Weberian propaganda machines (+ the Creationists,who he called retarded). He was super loud mouthed, and spent years denouncing the pope, and running off ad infinitum. Almost four hundred books. All this in passing just to note the book, now out of print, probably forever. An absolute shocker of a book for a guru. He really scared the pants off the yogi profession. It appeared as Gorbachev began to dismantle Russain society, and it was a scorching protest, DON'T. A Communist Buddha? Who will ever know. Whatever the case, I wouldn't be fooled by the floodtide of Tibetan phonies soon to crack a deal with the system, and destroy the memory, as always, of the real mcoy. Anyway, the endless struggles over materialism and idealism don't exist in that psychology, done right, and generally, in their genuine forms are superior to anything in the West, as Schopenhauer was one of the first to suspect. Anyway, a new left must get these issues straight, instead wandering around trying to cram an ultra narrow scientism down everyone's throat, in the midst of postmodernist evaporation. Anyway, Rajneesh's book is but one example of the fact that Marx has buried his seeds all over the planet, and will be taken in their own way by the next generations of resurfacing lefts, thar she blows. Communism zen fire, zen wind by Osho [Rajnesh] John Landon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website on eonic effect http://eonix.8m.com http://www.eonica.net
RE: Re: Krugmania
I disagree. Discussion of style is not necessarily shallow. It's about Krugman's conflicted mind re: celebrification and public opinion. It is not about IS-LM or 'rules vs. discretion.' If you get close to the loony machinery that conveys your utterances to millions of ears and eyeballs, you can appreciate the understanding that Wolff brings to it. mbs it's a very shallow article, all about style and nothing about substance. At 06:49 PM 05/30/2001 +0100, you wrote: fyi There was a Post article this a.m. about one Michael Wolff, a columnist for New York Magazine, which mentioned a column he did on PK. It was sufficiently interesting to prompt me to check it out. Wolff goes under the category of media critic and seems to be an exceptionally skilled and pitiless writer. He does a nice number on PK. The other pieces are well done too. media Leading Indicator Who is Times columnist Paul Krugman and why is he saying those terrible things about Alan Greenspan? http://www.newyorkmag.com/page.cfm?page_id=4528position=1 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: African intrigue
From: Keaney Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 17:37:38 +0300 Splashed across the front page of yesterday's Guardian was a large article warning of an impending military coup against Robert Mugabe, led by Air Marshal Perence Shiri, who cleaned up Matabeleland during the 1980s. Explicit links were made with Colin Powell's tour of Africa and statements re Zimbabwe becoming a totalitarian state. Meanwhile Blair declares Africa a prime policy area for his second term. Thoughts, anyone? Probably just white folks' gossip. It always gets a bit out of hand in these parts. More interesting is the overall balance of forces in Mugabe's ZanuPF, after a couple of (apparently truly accidental) car crashes the past few weeks which killed two militarist loyalists in the cabinet. ZanuPF looks like it'll lose next year's election pretty convincingly. (My book, Zimbabwe's Plunge, is out at publishers' review. A sneak preview's at http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr (this issue)) And as for Powell, here's what we think of his appearance at our uni last Friday: Date sent:Sun, 27 May 2001 11:39:20 +0200 From: Salim Vally [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: EPU To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: What the U.S. media won't tell you-Powell's visit to S.A. Send reply to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Two students, David Masondo and Nicholas Dieltins, suffered serious head and facial wounds during a protest against Colin Powell at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. They were attacked by security personnel from Powell's entourage. Hundreds of students and staff from a wide range of progressive organisations were protesting the acting vice chancellor's (Leila Patel) decision to host Powell who many consider a war criminal. Text of a pamphlet distributed at the protest is attached: A simple matter of human rights_ 25 May 2001 To members of the Wits Community, We protesters are here to provide an appropriate welcome to Colin Powell, US Secretary of State. Mr Powell is responsible for the foreign policy of the world's worst rogue nation. Powell is personally responsible for an attempted cover up of the horrific 1968 My Lai massacre of women and children by US forces in Vietnam; for participating in the mid-1980s cover-up of the Iran-contra Arms Scandal; and for covering up and downplaying 1991 Gulf War syndrome diseases as well as violations of the Geneva Convention associated with mass slaughter of retreating Iraqi troops. Powell's responsibilities for human rights violations continue through * Washington's coddling of the terrorist state of Israel, which with US financial and military support (R80 million daily) is killing hundreds of Palestinians, * the ongoing illegal blockade of Cuba, in the wake of at least 17 asssassination CIA attempts on Fidel Castro; and * a $1.5 billion escalation of an alleged drugs war in Colombia which in reality is merely another failing counterinsurgency in the tradition of Indochina, Central America, and Southern Africa. In all such cases, the US has been, and continues to be, on the side of oppressive, undemocratic regimes. The US must still apologise, and provide meaningful reparations, for CIA support to the apartheid regime, and encouragement of the apartheid invasion of Angola in 1975, from which that country has still not recovered, for promoting civil war in Mozambique which left a million people dead, and for Ronald Reagan's constructive engagement policy which prolonged apartheid's life during the 1980s. Powell, more recently, has been associated with the Bush Administration, a regime which came to power through a banana-republic election in Florida, and which shows its regard for the rest of the planet's citizens through: * a massive military boondoggle in the form of the Star Wars missile defense programme; * the refusal to honour more than $1 billion in United Nations dues; * the retreat from international efforts to curb illicit money laundering, which mainly occurs through US banks and their hot money centre subsidiaries; * the rejection of obligations to stop trashing the planet - which the US does more than any other country -- through the Kyoto Protocol on carbon dioxide emissions; *a brand new US Office of the Trade Representative attack on Brazil's ability to produce anti-retroviral generic drugs to combat HIV-AIDS (similar to the 1998-99 US attack on the South African Medicines Act); *a refusal to fund organisations that provide family planning and abortion services in the Third World; *sabotage of Korean peace talks; * nomination of men with appalling human rights records to the UN and Organisation of American States; * insistence on Third World countries' repayment of illegitimate foreign debt to the World Bank and IMF, debt whose origins in many cases (like South Africa's) can be traced to US (and IMF/Bank) support for dictators and tyrants; and * continuation
Re: Re: Re: Pearl Harbor
At 29/05/01 08:57 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: Chris Burford: But Louis Proyect's post is more than a critique of a recent melodramatic film. He is using it to argue his consistent case that any compromise internationally with some imperialist powers at the time of the Second World War, was opportunist, and that the great international united front against fascism was unprincipled. Not my position at all. I argue that the Soviet war against Nazism was progressive, as were the national liberation movements that erupted during the war. Britain and the USA's goals were no different than Hitler's or the Mikado. Despite Michael's requests not to speculate on motives (which I was not doing) Louis Proyect here sees the relevance of defining his consistent position. The only thing is that underneath the bold declaration, he is rather elusive about key features of his position. a) by saying that the goals of Britain and the USA were the same as Hitler, he precisely fails to distinguish between imperialisms, in this case between a rising fascistic imperialism and an established imperialism more ready to compromise on bourgeois democratic norms. b) despite the words above, he omits to explain that he supports the position of the small US Trotskyist organisation during the Second World war to argue for the defeat of the USA despite the fact that the USA was allied to the Soviet Union. This position would have obliged LP's sort of marxists to oppose the efforts made by communists in these imperialist powers after 1941 campaigning for their imperialist (yes!) governments to open a second front against Germany in Europe, to relieve the pressure on the Soviet Union. Whatever evidence there is of the considerable negative features of the allied imperialist powers, that cannot disguise the general argument that the fascist powers were more aggressive in their new attacks on the international settlement and on bourgeois democratic rights within countries. Actually, Chamberlain gave the green light to Hitler in 1938. This was the meaning of 'appeasement', to unleash the Nazi army on the USSR. The British ruling class and Hitler were united in their determination to wipe socialism off the face of the earth. Here LP demonstrates his determined refusal to distinguish the imperialist appeasement policies of Chamberlain and the imperialist anti-axis policies of Churchill. We still benefit today from the positive effects of the victory of this international united front against fascism. What do you mean by we, white man? I mean the international working class and the working people of the world, white man. The non-white people of the former colonial countries are among the foremost beneficiaries of the progressive policy of the international united front against fascism because its positive democratic content prepared the wave of pressure for decolonisation that followed the fall of fascism. To which the English imperialist ruling class had to bow, and here of course I write also as an English person. So long as Louis Proyect concentrates on trying to analyse history from a position he regards as completely correct, the longer will he be unable to engage in the current important issues of what compromises need to be made now, to forward a progressive agenda internationally, and within the USA . I am a stubborn soul. Analyzing history from a correct position is to me like avoiding germs was for the late Howard Hughes. Ultimately LP's soul is not very important except insofar as it relates to whether he is able to cooperate with others in clarifying a progressive line for practical advance now. Considering his elusiveness in this reply and his willingness to fabricate a letter by Marx at the beginning of the mita thread, his soul appears to be lacking in certain respects. Needless to say, although he advertises his Marxism list at the bottom of every post, I do not consider his position to be marxist in methodology. I am genuinely flattered. In fact could Michael Pearlman give some attention to the provocative nature of this continued promotion. I also invite Michael Perelman to get into the act. I am too much for one person to deal with. I require a regiment to control. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org This self referential comment again does not speak well for LP's willingness to cooperate with others. In due course the internet may control him as it gets to know his strengths and weaknesses more and more. But if he reads Michael's reply carefully, he will note the terms under which Michael would welcome both Louis and Doug promoting their lists. Chris Burford London
