Re: slowing the surge to war
there are statistics on the number of royal air force weekly intervention in Iraq between 1920 and 1941, and the weekly Arial bombardment rate against the tribes was high. because the land distributionin 1917by the British gave the tribal lands to absentee landlords. funny enough in a telegraph to the foreign office from the then ambassador of Britain to Iraq, the ambassador wrote 'I am embarrassed from continuously hitting/ slapping Hikmat sulaeiman the then defense minister every time he comes to my office' when will the British stop killing the arabs see M Tarboush on the history of this period Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is arguable that the efforts of Blair and the Labour Government has facilitated a resolution in the Security Council that can give the US a pretext for war against Iraq.However, the other side of the contradiction is that it has induced the Bush administration to stop talking explicitly of regime change as a goal in itself, to delay by several months the date at which a war would be launched, and arguably making the weapons inspectors the arbitors of whether a fundamental breakdown had occurred, rather than being the sole arbitors themselves.In the absence of a massive movement in the USA against the war, I do not see any other way of slowing it down. Or would some people argue that without the UK's catalysis Bush would never have got a compromise resolution in the Security Council and therefore the American people would have ! been sufficiently cool on the war to deter the outbreak of hostilities?But the USA would have had its hangers-on for reasons of the global relationship of the superstructure to the economic base, whether Tony Blair had been born or not.So in practice the left would only ever have the chance of slowing down the progress to war. A war that could inflame hostility between working people of islamic and of christian cultural background, across the world.To slow the push to war, not only needs tactics. It needs strategy too of an alternative political and economic perspective for the middle east, and for world developmentChris BurfordLondonDo you Yahoo!? U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive medley & videos from Greatest Hits CD
shifts in the global balance of forces
At 07/11/02 22:51 -0800, soula avramidis wrote: what about the line that said that such European shift in opinion is resulting from a real concrete in the potential global balance of forces resulting from the inevitable proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. or as in the alchemist of revolution the terrorist won't be the wasp in the knights armor but the plague on the inside. structures or colonizing social formations with clearly racist undertones can only bow to the power of a super gun. Are the Americans less aware or less exposed to the potential dangers so that public opinion is not shifting. ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office / Is that what you wanted to say but hesitated probably or have misread your comments. if so i must refer back in my readings to the argument between marxists and structuralists. I am not familar with that debate and could not locate myself easily in it. about the line that said that such European shift in opinion is resulting from a real concrete in the potential global balance of forces resulting from the inevitable proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ... I would say this is an interesting angle. Do you know anything published on this? But essentially my global picture was an economic one. Finance capital interpenetrates. On the other hand its global centre is the USA and there are subtle differences between finance capital centred in the USA and finance capital centred elsewhere. (The truth is always concrete.) Thus on these lists we have been able to examine why Lord Browne head of BP, and the head of British Airways both call for a level playing field to block total US domination of a) Iraqi oil, b) transatlantic air flights. These contractions will not lead to war between the major finance imperialisms but they do create contradictions among a range of non-USA finance capitalist centres. Some like the UK bite their tongue but have long been used to having to be a subordinate ally. Others like France strive to be more independent but accept they are in the gravitational orbit of the USA. While capitalism is now too interpenetrated to lead to war between the major finance imperialist centres, it can lead to war affecting those in the pull of its orbit. Whatever the arguments about homogenising due process of law and bourgeois legality across the world, the impending war against Iraq is also an expression of the fact that the USA has emerged qualitatively far more ahead of all its rivals than appeared immediately obvious at the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It is like earthquakes arising periodically from the continual movement of tectonic plates. Revolutionary subjective idealism is IMO useless for orientating people to a concrete understanding of what can be done to change the process. It is only useful for denouncing other leftists in flame wars. Subjective idealism is not marxism. Chris Burford
US Fed's gamble
I am not aware of any discussion on this list of the Fed's extraordinary gamble - cutting the interest rate to 1.25%, within sight of Japanese levels. Proportionately on 1.75% a 0.5% reduction in one go is almost a 30% cut. It was accompanied by a warning that it would stay at that level now for some time. This was supposed to be a sign of stength, because the alternative would have looked weak - yet another .25% reduction. Yet the stock exchange was not enthused, despite also having a Republican victory which permits further cutting of taxes, and putting spending money into the pockets of consumers. CNN financial manager this morning, said hopefully that perhaps by cutting a full .5% the Fed was anxious about deflation and was trying to get ahead of the curve and avoid Japan's trouble. He did not dare to question whether it might have brought the USA closer to Japan's stagnation - Ridiculous interest rates, with resistance by consumers to increase spending, perhaps because they realise intuitively they have not got any more real exchange value to spend. Maybe part of the Fed's calculus is to get ahead of the curve relative to Europe, and again become the engine of expansion, attracting more inward investment, to subsidise an expansion of the current economy of simple reproduction (keeping sector I going at the cost of sector II). Were the Bank of England and the ECB caught by surprise? But the contradiction between the needs of capital to accumulate and the limited purchasing power of the masses, remains fundamental on a world scale. If would-be marxists could stop the temptation to flame one another, and address how the law of value operates on a world scale, they might be able to say something more meaningful about this astonishing gamble by the Fed. But many would be marxists do not agree with the law of value, or do not understand it, or think it is merely a polemical tool to show that workers are exploited by rich capitalists. What the Fed is doing is inflationary, and is desparately trying to keep the economy afloat by cutting the value of old savings. It might contribute to the world gliding more smoothly into hopeless recession, but it cannot defy the fundamental law of value, and the political consequences of the blind (or at best partially-sighted) workings of capitalism. Chris Burford London
Re: shifts in the global balance of forces
I do not mean to denounce, there was probably a bit of casuistry on my part. but the argument you are making is a sort of repetition of a first world war situation a la ultra imperialism for which the conditions are now more mature or preferable. whatever the case, the degree of the inter imperialist conflict depends on the degree of the crisis. the latter I cannot foresee but it hinges in great part on the degree of colonial exploitation. now for concrete truth, I see that it is only concrete if it is a mediation of a one sided abstract moment. so where to stop in being concrete is the question and that hinges on the correspondence of an adequate level of concreteness to its associated history/practice. these are difficult issues that i know little about. but I know that one is concrete given the test of time or practice if you like. so let us add one more event to your way of thinking and see how the results go. you have looked only at what happens in the colonizing formations let me add to that what is happening in the colonized formations and the shape of anti imperialist struggle that you have touched upon in your Muslim/Christian thing - that the dominant anti imperialist ideology now equates the common citizen with his state in the west. is this a fallacy of sorts or does it happen for a reason. I think the latter is truer if you like and ! that is where the danger lies both in theory and in practice. now that someone can appeal only the 3d world working class by fatalism is not a fluke of history my friend but the very result of this murderous international division of labor. that is not subjective go and see for yourself and it is that that is shifting the balance of power otherwise third worlders will tagged slaves in you mines with no end in sight. gn.apc.org wrote: At 07/11/02 22:51 -0800, soula avramidiswrote:what about the line that said that such European shift in opinion is resulting from a real concrete in the potential global balance of forces resulting from the inevitable proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. or as in the "alchemist of revolution" the terrorist won't be "the wasp in the knights armor" but the plague on the inside. structures or colonizing social formations with clearly racist undertones can only bow to the power of a super gun. Are the Americans less aware or less exposed to the potential dangers so that public opinion is not shifting. Is that what you wanted to say but hesitated probably or have misread your comments. if so i must refer back in my readings to the argument between marxists an! d structuralists.I am not familar with that debate and could not locate myself easily in it."about the line that said that such European shift in opinion is resulting from a real concrete in the potential global balance of forces resulting from the inevitable proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" ...I would say this is an interesting angle. Do you know anything published on this?But essentially my global picture was an economic one. Finance capital interpenetrates. On the other hand its global centre is the USA and there are subtle differences between finance capital centred in the USA and finance capital centred elsewhere.(The truth is always concrete.)Thus on these lists we have been able to examine why Lord Browne head of BP, and the head of British Airways both call for a "level playing field" to block total US domination of a) Iraqi oil, b) transatlantic air flights.These! contractions will not lead to war between the major finance imperialisms but they do create contradictions among a range of non-USA finance capitalist centres. Some like the UK bite their tongue but have long been used to having to be a subordinate ally. Others like France strive to be more independent but accept they are in the gravitational orbit of the USA.While capitalism is now too interpenetrated to lead to war between the major finance imperialist centres, it can lead to war affecting those in the pull of its orbit. Whatever the arguments about homogenising due process of law and bourgeois legality across the world, the impending war against Iraq is also an expression of the fact that the USA has emerged qualitatively far more ahead of all its rivals than appeared immediately obvious at the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It is like earthquakes arising periodically from the continual movement of tectoni! c plates.Revolutionary subjective idealism is IMO useless for orientating people to a concrete understanding of what can be done to change the process. It is only useful for denouncing other leftists in flame wars. Subjective idealism is not marxism.Chris BurfordDo you Yahoo!? U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive medley & videos from Greatest Hits CD
re: US needs 1.2 million more nurses by 2010
Chris: This is definitely not a new problem. It has been the same with 'poaching' from Canada. It is one of the reasons that the English speaking metropolitan countries have used English countries for sourcing nurses ( drs let us add) as we have discussed on the list before. It may - I grant you - be getting worse. H
India
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1923/stories/20021122004210600.htm No reprieve from slow growth C. P. CHANDRASEKHAR The Reserve Bank of India's credit policy review indicates that the emphasis on monetary measures continues, even though economic circumstances suggest that an appropriately structured fiscal stimulus is the need of the hour. OVER the last three days of October, the financial media were completely preoccupied with the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) mid-term review of credit policy for 2002-03, released on October 29. This intensive interest in the RBI Governor's twice-in-a-year reviews is a recent phenomenon. Until a few years back these statements were of interest principally to bankers and other sections of the financial community. Now the interest seems to be more widespread, judging by the extent of media coverage of the statement itself and of the responses to it. Financial sector interest in the mid-year reviews is understandable, since they include announcements or projections of changes in monetary policy. This time around, among the many changes announced by the Governor, the three that were noted most were: 1. A 25-basis points (or a quarter of a percentage point) reduction in the Bank Rate (or the rate at which the central banks loan funds to the banking system); 2. A similar cut in the repo (or repurchase option) rate, which is the implicit rate at which securities can be parked with the central bank for short periods in return for funds; and 3. A reduction in the cash reserve ratio (CRR) required to be maintained by banks from 5 to 4.75 per cent. In sum, at the core of the policy change announced by the monetary and credit policy is a continuation of the RBI's effort to reduce nominal interest rates by reducing the cost at which the commercial banking system can access funds from the central bank and to increase the ability of banks to provide credit to the corporate sector and the public at large. Lower nominal interest rates and easier liquidity conditions are the mantras. The central bank's decisions on these matters now command wider attention for the reason that in the post-liberalisation era, monetary adjustments of this kind are considered an important stimulus to higher growth. After an initial period at the start of the reforms, when in the name of stabilisation the central bank maintained an extremely high interest rate and tight control over money supply, the RBI has for more than five years now been pushing to reduce interest rates and ensure easy liquidity conditions. This shift over time from a stringent to an extremely relaxed monetary policy stance occurred because the inflation rate fell to extremely low levels, allowing the RBI to shift its attention from its declared principal concern of controlling inflation to that of facilitating growth. As the RBI makes clear, inflation is not a problem at all. Annual inflation, as measured by variations in the Wholesale Price Index (base: 1993-94=100) was on an average ruling at 2.3 per cent as on October 12, 2002 against 6.3 per cent the previous year. Measured by variations in the Consumer Price Index for industrial workers on a point-to-point basis, it was 3.9 per cent in August 2002 as against 5.2 per cent a year earlier. Inflation fell for a combination of reasons: the comfortable food stocks created by consecutive good monsoons, the availability of adequate foreign reserves that could be used at appropriate points of time to deal with severe shortages of particular commodities, the reduction in domestic demand and absorption as a result of the reform-led curtailment of government expenditures and easier access to imports as well as the fall in import prices ensured by liberalisation and the slowing of global growth. Together these developments ensured the supply at reasonable prices of most commodities, resulting in downward pressure on the price level. This encouraged a shift in focus to policies that could spur growth, especially since there was a widely held view that slow growth was the result of high interest rates. The transition to a regime of lower interest rates and easy money was also necessitated by two consequences of the financial reform process adopted since the early 1990s. First, the more conventional means of spurring growth through an increase in government expenditures were no longer seen as feasible. Tax revenues to finance such expenditures could not be mobilised by raising tax rates, it was argued, since that would generate disincentives for private sector savings and investment, which were considered the engine for growth under the new dispensation. And, deficit financing as a means to undertake such expenditures was ruled out by the fact that one of the aims of reform was to curtail the deficit on the government's budget, and prevent it from subverting the effort to control inflation through the use of the monetary levers. Thus, if growth had to be stimulated by the government at all,
little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist
Title: little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist Peter Coy/BUSINESS WEEK/NOVEMBER 18, 2002 Less Chance to Rise in Life While the U.S. prides itself on being the land of opportunity, economists have grown less optimistic about the ability of American children to leap ahead of their parents' station in life. A six-figure income remains beyond the grasp of all but 14% of American households (chart). And recent research has found a higher-than-expected correlation between people's position on the income ladder and the rung their parents once occupied. In the 1980s, studies concluded that, on average, only about 20% of the earnings gap between any two people would persist a generation later as an earnings gap between their children. That would have indicated a society with lots of mobility. However, estimates were later raised to around 40%. Now, research by Bhash Mazumder, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, concludes that fully 60% of the income gap in one generation persists into the next generation, on average. That would mean that children of poor families would tend to be poor as well. Mazumder and others reach their more pessimistic conclusions by studying longer stretches of earnings history than in previous studies, thus filtering out chance fluctuations in income that temporarily gave children much higher or lower incomes than their parents. The lower level of mobility suggests that the rise in income inequality over the past two decades may persist for several generations, says Mazumder. What's the solution? Mazumder suggests that more access to educational loans might help. He says many poor people who have children with great potential can't raise enough money to send them to good schools, so the children never take home the incomes they're capable of earning. - BTW, in case anyone is wondering about my earlier query, though Ed Nell has a great description of the surplus paradigm (as opposed to the neoclassical scarcity paradigm), the phrase seems to come from pen-l alumnus Ajit Sinha. (It's possible he got it from someone else, of course.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Bello on Brazil
[snip] The liberalisation of the foreign investment law and the privatisation of state enterprises brought in $1.8 billion in net foreign direct investment in 1994 to $30 billion in 2000. The foreign investment boom put Brazil in the sixth place among developing countries in terms of penetration by transnational corporations, with TNCs now accounting for 40 per cent of Brazilian exports. But what seemed a few years ago to be part of the solution has now become a major part of the problem, in the view of many Brazilian economic analysts. With so much of local production coming under the control of TNCs, control of decisions over national production has passed into the hands of enterprises that respond more to international conditions of profitability than to the needs of the local economy. Thus has emerged the great paradox of the Cardoso period: the dominance of foreign capital has not led to greater fixed capital investment, greater international competitiveness, and greater technological innovation. Indeed, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Commission for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Rubens Ricupero, claims that the transnationalisation of the Brazilian economy has been accompanied by deindustrialisation. The large-scale entry of foreign capital has led, according to Geisa Maria Rocha, not to a strengthening of domestic capital in association with foreign capital but to its displacement. While certain sectors of finance capital and big industrial capital benefited from association with foreign capital, the greater part of the local industrial elite and medium and small industry that have serviced principally the domestic market have seen their fortunes sink. Enter Lula, who has cleverly captured the Brazilian industrial sector's discontent by using the high interest rates as a symbol of the dire state of the sector. As the campaign hit the home stretch, Lula constantly told his audiences that it was time to lift a blind policy that foists 20 per cent interest rates that strangle the economy while benefiting only the few foreign and local interests that are the main prop of the Cardoso-Serra dispensation. Under Cardoso and the IMF's watchful eye, Serra is tongue-tied. Yet, in spite of the populist rhetoric, the Lula camp is cautious when asked about its short-term economic strategy. The reality of the crisis brought on by neoliberalism, Antonio Prado, the executive coordinator of the PT's electoral programme, tells us, is that there is little room for manoeuvre in the short-term. This means we'll have to continue some of the current administration's policies like inflation targeting, the floating exchange rate, and raising the budget surplus in the first year. Indeed, the IMF has practically imprisoned the future Lula government by warning that the remaining $24 billion of the $30 billion emergency loan negotiated with the Fund in August will not be released unless the government continues the stringent conditions agreed to by the Cardoso government. In order to prevent a massive capital flight that would destabilise the economy, Lula said he will live up to the conditions demanded by the IMF, just as earlier he had agreed to honour Brazil's foreign debt obligations. [snip] full at: http://www.flonnet.com/fl1923/stories/20021122000405800.htm
Re: little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist
What real difference would it make if there were immense mobility among the lower 80%? There would still be a lower 20%. I suspect the only measure that would be of much general social siginficance would be the gap between the bottom 10% and the top 1%. If _that_ changes, then something has happened. If it stays the same, the same cards have been reshuffled. Carrol
RE: Re: little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist
Title: RE: [PEN-L:32011] Re: little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist From: Carrol Cox [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] What real difference would it make if there were immense mobility among the lower 80%? There would still be a lower 20%. I suspect the only measure that would be of much general social siginficance would be the gap between the bottom 10% and the top 1%. If _that_ changes, then something has happened. If it stays the same, the same cards have been reshuffled. In any event, even with upward mobility, the system would be an aggressively profit-seeking and thus enormously destructive one. Upward mobility helps stabilize social relations, though. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: dem loss: analysis anyone?
Louis, In respect to Desperately afraid of putting forward oppressive metanarratives, it [the left] avoids putting forward the one solution that can solve the intractable economic and social crisis of the 21st century: socialism, I'd like to know clearly what that one solution is. Dan Scanlan
Sports
Title: New Page 1 for customer Winning Just Got Easier! If you can get to the computer, you can win with Sportsjw.com Try our free pick of the week today. Sportsjw.com 1-702-526-7686
Re: Re: Re: dem loss: analysis anyone?
Dan Scanlan wrote: Louis, In respect to Desperately afraid of putting forward oppressive metanarratives, it [the left] avoids putting forward the one solution that can solve the intractable economic and social crisis of the 21st century: socialism, I'd like to know clearly what that one solution is. I guess I wasn't clear enough. Let me reformulate the last sentence. Desperately afraid of putting forward oppressive metanarratives, it [the left] avoids putting forward the one solution that can solve the intractable economic and social crisis of the 21st century. That solution is socialism, which has raised the human development indicators of the Cuban people to G7 levels--this despite the economic blockade and the collapse of Soviet support. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: little upward mobility in the US, says Fedeconomist
Carrol Cox wrote: What real difference would it make if there were immense mobility among the lower 80%? There would still be a lower 20%. Because both professional and popular apologists for the extreme inequality found in the U.S. point to mobility as a compensating factor: the children of the poor can become rich (they rarely do), and people are poor only because they're down on their luck (a temporary misfortune that often persists for a lifetime). Americans also think U.S. society is more mobile than Europe's - and being optimists, see only upward mobility - which it isn't. Doug
Re: Re: Re: little upward mobility in the US,says Fed economist
I'm aware of the ideological importance of the fact and/or illusion of mobility, but I think leftists need in addition to have a grasp of its material reality (and/or unreality). And its ideological importance (as of any other ideological factor) can't really be estimated theoretically in any case; we don't _know_ in advance (we _can't_ know) which sectors of the working class, at any one time, are apt to move politically. That is revealed in practice. I've been puzzling over lately what topics/issues/etc can be usefully explored on mailists and which are deadends. No even tentative conclusions so far. Carrol
Frontiers of Rational Expectations
To be presented at Duke University this week V. Kerry Smith Longevity Expectations and Death: Can People Predict their Own Demise? Presentation by Phone Health Economics Workshop 3:30-5:00 pm Sheps Center, 3rd Floor Conference Room, UNC-CH Now you know what you can do with a Nobel prize! -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sports
Title: for customer for customer Looking for more players? I can help. Advertising with Sportsjw.com Sportsjw.com 1-702-526-7686 Top sliding banner $218/ month Sports Picks $249/ month Best of CasinoJW $379/ month [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Frontiers of Rational Expectations
Title: RE: [PEN-L:32019] Frontiers of Rational Expectations obviously, one's own demise can be -- and is -- predicted by rational individuals. Using all of the information available, they can predict the day and minute of death _on average_, so that the expected death-time equals the expected value of that time for a large sample, after several trials. It makes total sense that that attainment of one's final equilibrium would fit well with the theory of rational expectations. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 08, 2002 12:20 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:32019] Frontiers of Rational Expectations To be presented at Duke University this week V. Kerry Smith Longevity Expectations and Death: Can People Predict their Own Demise? Presentation by Phone Health Economics Workshop 3:30-5:00 pm Sheps Center, 3rd Floor Conference Room, UNC-CH Now you know what you can do with a Nobel prize! -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: A rapidly mutating Hitchens
Title: RE: [PEN-L:32016] A rapidly mutating Hitchens Safire writes better. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 08, 2002 10:41 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:32016] A rapidly mutating Hitchens (This is from a slate.com column titled Machiavelli in Mesopotamia. The homage to Machiavelli is probably the most self-aware words from the drunken Dubya fan in over a year. If anybody can distinguish between the Blimpish blather below and a typical William Safire column, then they have sharper eyes than I do.) Once this self-evident point has been appreciated, it becomes a matter of making a virtue of necessity. If an intervention helps rescue Iraq from mere anarchy and revenge, some of the potential virtues are measurable in advance. The recuperation of the Iraqi oil industry represents the end of the Saudi monopoly, and we know that there are many Wolfowitzians who yearn for this but cannot prudently say so in public. The mullahs in Iran hate America more than they hate Saddam, while Iranian public opinionnotice how seldom the Iranian street is mentioned by peacenikstakes a much more pro-American view. It's hard to picture the disappearance of the Saddam regime as anything but an encouragement to civil and democratic forces in Tehran, as well as in Bahrain, Qatar, and other gulf states that are experimenting with democracy and women's rights. Turkey will be wary about any increase in Kurdish autonomy (another good cause by the way), but even the Islamists in Turkey are determined to have a closer association with the European Union, and the EU has made it clear that Turkey's own Kurds must be granted more recognition before this can occur. One might hope that no American liberal would want to demand any less. full: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073634 -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
RE: Frontiers of rational expectations
What I want to know is: is there any money in a correct prediction and if there is, how does one collect if one is dead? Tom Walker 604 255 4812
Re: little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist
What's the solution? Mazumder suggests that more access to educational loans might help. He says many poor people who have children with great potential can't raise enough money to send them to good schools, so the children never take home the incomes they're capable of earning. God, I hate this kind of thinking. Hey everybody, we can't all be white collar professionals and we shouldn't reduce education to 1) a ticket to the gated middle class or 2) job training for corporations. Whay can't we proceed from the following assumptions: 1) we all have to share in doing the shit jobs 2) we all do the best we can; for some best means theoretical physics; for others, best may be farming, or being a plumber, or cutting hair. 3) an hour of my working life is worth an hour of anyone else's working life: no fucking pay differentials. Joanna
Re: Re: Re: Re: little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist
At 01:47 PM 11/08/2002 -0500, you wrote: or are idle bums, or they have a victim mentality, and have not taken the ample equal opportunity available to all, like condoleeza rice, dinesh d'souza and colin powell have. in which case they deserve to be poor. screw 'em. Yeah, like a former friend from graduate school told me one day that the reason there were bums on the street is because they could not show up on time at work and didn't have good work habits and were lazy. So I said, so, are you trying to tell me there was some epidemic of lazyness that started in 1980? And it affected only poor people? ! Joanna
Re: Re: Re: Re: little upward mobility in the US,says Fed econ...
In a message dated 11/8/02 10:53:49 AM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm aware of the ideological importance of the fact and/or illusion of mobility, but I think leftists need in addition to have a grasp of its material reality (and/or unreality). And its ideological importance (as of any other ideological factor) can't really be estimated theoretically in any case; we don't _know_ in advance (we _can't_ know) which sectors of the working class, at any one time, are apt to move politically. That is revealed in practice. I've been puzzling over lately what topics/issues/etc can be usefully explored on mailists and which are deadends. No even tentative conclusions so far. Carrol Comment "What is the difference between the President of the Garment Workers Union and the President of the America Psychiatric Association," goes an old Jewish joke. Answer: "one generation." During the various stages of the quantitative expansion of the industrial infrastructure and production process, upward mobility has been a material reality of the majority of the working class in our country. We are of course in the most imperial of all imperial centers of world capital and industrial expansion of the productive forces. The expansion of the industrial infrastructure creates new categories or class strata in the form of increased demands for doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientist, technicians, higher paid union leaders, etc. Even in respect to the slave and their descendant, the mechanization of agriculture and the wholesale destruction of the category called sharecropper - 11 million strong of which 5 million were black, meant their upward mobility as proletarians in an expanding economy. This material possibility of upward mobility for the sharecropper and the black in particular, became expressed in the ideology of the petite bourgeoisie and the striving to "have ones own thing,' - that is ones own business or "self-help" or "doing for self" or a partial independent existence as an owner of some aspect of the productive forces. Petite bourgoisie is a class category and not simply meant as an ideological category devoid of property relations. Since the Second World imperial war, a rapidly expanding economy needed managers, scientist and technicians in our country. The education system opened up and the children of many workers flooded into the universities. Many of them, or their children, went on into the bourgeoisie or at least lived a bourgeois life style. To many workers it seemed as if there was no exclusive class boundary since their experience is that class boundary could be crossed. As a former union representative my highest annual income was $150,000 and this did not include health benefits, dental and tuition refund programs. It goes without saying that I am not driven by guilt - on any significant level, but have a sense of proletarian morality. The other side of this equation was of course the indescribable poverty and destitution of the colonial and neocolonial world. To these poverty stricken masses, even the extreme poor of America seemed bourgeois. Imperial bribery has been very good to the peoples of American - including ours truely, and a point of view amongst some Marxist never developed that never really understood that the workers in the imperial centers lived at the expensive of the colonial world and this confirmed the conclusion of Marx and Lenin. This means that the American peoples enjoyed a portion of the socially necessary labor beaten out of the back of the colonials -- in the form of them being paid lower wages. The lower wages in the colonial world sustained maximum profits for the capitalist and higher wages for the workers in the imperial center. The era of the imperial bribery and upward mobility of the working class of America has ended, as it evolved on the basis of the industrial infrastructure. A certain upward mobility will persist because the technological changes in the economy calls for the creation of more categories of laborers - "new classes" or rather strata, to service the new productive forces in the shape of advanced robotics and electro-computerized production process. The character of this new upward mobility can be understood from many sides of the social equation. The social equation of interest to us is that of the increasing mass of proletarians hurled outside the production process and being unable to sell their labor power for enough value to sustain themselves and their family. There is a legitimate point of view that understands the social equation from the standpoint of academia and technicians who view the problem as a question of real democracy or "bottom-up" versus "top down" control of the productive forces. Hey, all roads lead to revolution. Polarization of the working class is the watchword. The emergence of a communist class - a grouping of people unable to sell their labor power at any price, is the salient
Re: dem loss: analysis anyone?
Mike Friedman wrote: The democratic party has been shifting to the right for three decades, now... that's not news. But, some analysis of how current hegemonic political culture played itself out in these elections would be useful. It is important to recognized that bourgeois politics in general has been shifting to the right. If a Republican Party candidate now ran for president with the same platform as Richard Nixon's in 1970, he'd be denounced as a traitor to the party. Back in the early 1960s, nobody like Reagan would have been taken seriously as a national leader but every Republican President since Reagan has followed in his footsteps. The only possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the capitalist system requires a meaner and stingier regime both domestically and internationally. What's driving this is fundamental changes in the capitalist economy that have been explained in great detail by Robert Brenner and Harry Shutt, whose Zed book The Trouble With Capitalism is indispensable. Basically you have intense competition between big blocs of capital for a dwindling market. Under these circumstances, you will find the ruling classes of the key countries whipping their country into spartan, competitive machines armed to the teeth with little room for niceties such as universal health care or a guaranteed job. The opening salvo in this war on the working class was--in my opinion--the coup against Allende in 1973. The regime that was imposed on the Chilean people became a model for the 3rd world and for the USSR as well. In short order, it also became the model for advanced capitalist countries as Thatcherism and Reaganism became the standard. The decline of manufacturing jobs--hence leading to an erosion of its traditional progressive base--and the shift to the right from its corporate benefactors transformed both the Democratic Party in the USA and European social democracies, especially the British Labor Party, into lite versions of the Thatcher-Reagan system. This dynamic is virtually identical to the one that took place in Europe during the rise of fascism. The party of the right becomes more extremist, more self-confident, more ambitious. The party of the left cowers in the presence of its opponent and urges voters to choose the lesser evil. Of course, faced with desperate conditions the voter will often choose the party that seems resolved to provide a systemic answer, especially when it is framed in populist demagoguery. We are nowhere near that level of crisis today, but we are certainly moving in that direction. We also have our lesser-evil parties and individuals today who are frozen like deer in the headlights of the reactionary car barrelling down the highway. The left intelligentsia is pathetic. With the ultraright intelligentsia becoming more and more emboldened by each victory at the ballot box, we find our spokesmen lashing out at the radical movement for being anti-American in a version of hard cop and soft cop. This is the price we have to pay for the postmodernist victory in the left academy. Desperately afraid of putting forward oppressive metanarratives, it avoids putting forward the one solution that can solve the intractable economic and social crisis of the 21st century: socialism. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
A rapidly mutating Hitchens
(This is from a slate.com column titled Machiavelli in Mesopotamia. The homage to Machiavelli is probably the most self-aware words from the drunken Dubya fan in over a year. If anybody can distinguish between the Blimpish blather below and a typical William Safire column, then they have sharper eyes than I do.) Once this self-evident point has been appreciated, it becomes a matter of making a virtue of necessity. If an intervention helps rescue Iraq from mere anarchy and revenge, some of the potential virtues are measurable in advance. The recuperation of the Iraqi oil industry represents the end of the Saudi monopoly, and we know that there are many Wolfowitzians who yearn for this but cannot prudently say so in public. The mullahs in Iran hate America more than they hate Saddam, while Iranian public opinionnotice how seldom the Iranian street is mentioned by peacenikstakes a much more pro-American view. It's hard to picture the disappearance of the Saddam regime as anything but an encouragement to civil and democratic forces in Tehran, as well as in Bahrain, Qatar, and other gulf states that are experimenting with democracy and women's rights. Turkey will be wary about any increase in Kurdish autonomy (another good cause by the way), but even the Islamists in Turkey are determined to have a closer association with the European Union, and the EU has made it clear that Turkey's own Kurds must be granted more recognition before this can occur. One might hope that no American liberal would want to demand any less. full: http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073634device -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Re: dem loss: analysis anyone?
Louis Proyect wrote, I guess I wasn't clear enough. Let me reformulate the last sentence. Desperately afraid of putting forward oppressive metanarratives, it [the left] avoids putting forward the one solution that can solve the intractable economic and social crisis of the 21st century. That solution is socialism, which has raised the human development indicators of the Cuban people to G7 levels--this despite the economic blockade and the collapse of Soviet support. Thanks
Re: re: US needs 1.2 million more nurses by 2010
At 08/11/02 07:08 -0500, you wrote: Chris: This is definitely not a new problem. It has been the same with 'poaching' from Canada. It is one of the reasons that the English speaking metropolitan countries have used English countries for sourcing nurses ( drs let us add) as we have discussed on the list before. It may - I grant you - be getting worse. H Yes it is not new, and it may be getting worse.
Re: Re: shifts in the global balance of forces
At 08/11/02 01:56 -0800, soula avrimidis wrote: I do not mean to denounce, there was probably a bit of casuistry on my part. but the argument you are making is a sort of repetition of a first world war situation a la ultra imperialism for which the conditions are now more mature or preferable. whatever the case, the degree of the inter imperialist conflict depends on the degree of the crisis. the latter I cannot foresee but it hinges in great part on the degree of colonial exploitation. ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office / now for concrete truth, I see that it is only concrete if it is a mediation of a one sided abstract moment. so where to stop in being concrete is the question and that hinges on the correspondence of an adequate level of concreteness to its associated history/practice. these are difficult issues that i know little about. but I know that one is concrete given the test of time or practice if you like. so let us add one more event to your way of thinking and see how the results go. you have looked only at what happens in the colonizing formations let me add to that what is happening in the colonized formations and the shape of anti imperialist struggle that you have touched upon in your Muslim/Christian thing - that the dominant anti imperialist ideology now equates the common citizen with his state in the west. is this a fallacy of sorts or does it happen for a reason. I think the latter is truer if you like and ! that is where the danger lies both in theory and in practice. now that someone can appeal only the 3d world working class by fatalism is not a fluke of history my friend but the very result of this murderous international division of labor. that is not subjective go and see for yourself and it is that that is shifting the balance of power otherwise third worlders will tagged slaves in you mines with no end in sight. These are difficult and important questions. I do not know whether the dominant anti-imperialist ideology equates the common citizen with his state in the west. With wages varying by a factor of up to 30 times across the world, I think we must hope that anti-imperialist forces will come together from very different constituencies, perhaps not entirely realising it. Some sort of economic paralysis on a global level might help dissatisfaction with international finance capital. Chris Burford London
new to radio archive
Just posted to my radio archive http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html: * the November 7, 2002 show: Christopher Hitchens, author of Why Orwell Matters, on his book, his bellicose turn, and what Orwell might think of the phrase non-imperial occupation * Anatol Lieven talks about what Bush really wants in Iraq * transcript of interview with Kathie Sarachild and Amy Coenen of the Redstockings (January 24, 2002) on the organization, feminism, and its relation to health care http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Redstockings.html (text only, no audio) They join interviews with Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Cynthia Enloe, Michael Hardt, Judith Levine, Sylvere Lotringer and Chris Kraus, Joseph Stiglitz... Doug
Re: Re: slowing the surge to war
Now there is a unanimous Security Council vote! It seems it was the French urging the Syrians to add their vote. The calculations may have been that this is the best way to continue to have some leverage over the USA, given that the USA has emphasised its willingness to launch war alone. I suspect English diplomacy was active. Syria may have also got some sweeteners. Meanwhile Russia France and China have come out with a statement that the resolution does not imply automatic automaticity to war. What we are seeing is endless manouevring of interests, but the resultant of forces is the outline of a global government: willing to intervene in other countries' affairs, with the USA taking the lead, and the rest trying to constrain it with some limited appeal to justice. One commentator says that if Iraq can play for time, the USA would be unable to maintain a threatening invasion force in the middle east for more than a year. We will see whether Britain puts more emphasis on some sort of due process, or emphasises the risk of an allied attack on Iraq. We do not know how the exact resultant of forces will take shape, but unwittingly a global governenace is being created. Thank you for your biting reminder of the glorious early days of the British Royal Airforce. I did not know the details about absentee landlords.but the bombing raids against tribal peoples do get into standard British history textbooks now. I cannot answer your rhetorical question. It is something like - only when Britain no longer thinks it in its interests to punch above its weight by linking itself to the USA as a peace enforcer. And only when there are no violent contradictions in the countries orbiting on the edge of the centralised masses of finance capital. Chris Burford London At 08/11/02 00:01 -0800, you wrote: there are statistics on the number of royal air force weekly intervention in Iraq between 1920 and 1941, and the weekly Arial bombardment rate against the tribes was high. because the land distribution in 1917 by the British gave the tribal lands to absentee landlords. ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office / funny enough in a telegraph to the foreign office from the then ambassador of Britain to Iraq, the ambassador wrote 'I am embarrassed from continuously hitting/ slapping Hikmat sulaeiman the then defense minister every time he comes to my office' when will the British stop killing the arabs see M Tarboush on the history of this period
Education Discounts on Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia
Adobe Photoshop at 52% OFF, Macromedia Studio MX at 76% OFF, Microsoft Visual Studio.NET at 91% OFF, Office XP Standard at 70% OFF, Adobe Design Collection at 61% OFF Dear Students, Teachers, Faculty, Staff and Schools: COMPUTER PRODUCTS FOR EDUCATION is pleased to offer to you the best prices on ACADEMIC EDITION SOFTWARE from MICROSOFT, ADOBE, MACROMEDIA, COREL, and others - AT UP TO 84% OFF STANDARD COMMERCIAL RETAIL PRICES. If you are a Qualified Education Buyer (defined below) you can purchase software products from CPE at HUGE DISCOUNTS - year-round! Qualified Education Buyers include K-12 and HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS, TEACHERS, FACULTY, STAFF, and SCHOOLS. Visit www.academic-edition-software.com or call us 800-679-7007 to order any of the products below. -- Education Standard You ADOBE (Windows Mac): PriceRetail Save! -- - -- - Acrobat 5.0$57.95$249 77% After Effects 5.5 $289.95$649 55% GoLive 6.0/LiveMotion 2.0 $84.95$399 79% Illustrator 10.0 $89.95$399 77% InDesign 2.0 $189.95$699 73% PageMaker 7.0 $279.95$499 44% PageMaker 7.0 Upgrade $89.95 - - Photoshop 7.0 $289.95$609 52% Photoshop 7.0 Upgrade $149.95 - - Premiere 6.5 $224.95$549 59% Premiere 6.5 Upgrade $149.95 - - ***Adobe Collections** Design Collection 6.0 $389.95$999 61% (InDesign 2/Photoshop 7/Illustrator 10/Acrobat 5) Digital Video Collection 8.0 $489.95 $1199 60% (Premiere 6.5/AfterEffects 5.5/Photoshop 7/Illustr 10) Publishing Collection 12.0$489.95$999 51% (PageMaker 7/Photoshop 7/Illustrator 10/Acrobat 5) Web Collection 5.0$339.95$999 65% (Photoshop 7/Illustrator 10/GoLive 6/LiveMotion 2) TO ORDER: www.academic-edition-software.com Or call 800-679-7007. -- Education Commercial You MACROMEDIA (Windows Mac):PriceRetail Save! -- - -- - Authorware 6.5 E-Doc $349.95 $2699 87% ColdFusion MX Server Pro $529.95$799 34% Director 8.5 Student Edition $189.95 $1199 84% Dreamweaver MX $98.95$299 67% eLearning Studio $489.95 $2999 84% (Authorware 6/FlashMX/DreamweaverMX) Fireworks MX $98.95$199 50% Flash MX $98.95$399 75% FreeHand 10$98.95$399 75% STUDIO MX $189.95$799 76% (Dreamweaver MX/Fireworks MX/Flash MX/Freehand 10/ColdFusion MX) TO ORDER: www.academic-edition-software.com Or call 800-679-7007. --- Education Standard You Microsoft: PriceRetail Save! --- - -- - Office XP Standard$148.95$479 70% Office XP Professional$199.95$579 66% Office 2001 Macintosh $209.95$499 60% Office Mac v.X for Mac OS X $215.95$459 53% FrontPage 2002 $79.95$169 53% Publisher 2002 $79.95$129 38% Visio Standard 2002$69.95$199 65% Visio Professional 2002 $159.95$499 69% Visual Basic.Net Standard $59.95$109 45% Visual C++.Net Standard$59.95$109 45% Visual C#(sharp).Net Standard $59.95$109 45% Visual Studio.Net Professional $98.95 $1079 91% Windows XP Professional Upg* $ 94.95$299 68% Windows 2000 Professional Upg*$129.95$319 59% * Windows XP/2000 Pro Upgrade will install on a blank hard drive. TO ORDER: www.academic-edition-software.com Or call 800-679-7007. --- Education Standard You Corel: PriceRetail Save! --- - -- - Wordperfect Office 2002 w/Voice$99.95$389 74% Corel Draw 11.0 $142.95$549 72% Procreate Painter 7.0 $229.95$549 60% -- LICENSING: -- For school purchases of five to ten (5-10) or more units, depending on the product, please call 800-679-7007 for even deeper discounts on license packs. -- For hundreds of other software products available from CPE at similar discounts, visit our website at www.academic-edition-software.com or call us at 800-679-7007. Academic Edition software is exactly the same as the Full-Retail version except that it has been deeply discounted for
Re: little upward mobility in the US, says Fed economist
--- joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Whay can't we proceed from the following assumptions: 1) we all have to share in doing the shit jobs 2) we all do the best we can; for some best means theoretical physics; for others, best may be farming, or being a plumber, or cutting hair. 3) an hour of my working life is worth an hour of anyone else's working life: no fucking pay differentials. Joanna You sound like a socialist. But come on, would you trust Bill Gates or George Bush to make your Big Mac or stay awake on a 12 hour overnight security guard shift? I've always said that if an economist (or a journalist who fancies himself one) had to live the life in the economies they write about, they would have wildly different theories about the 'real world'. Imagine if Jeffrey Sachs actually had to go live a year in Bolivia and fend for himself in that economy. C. Jannuzi __ Do you Yahoo!? U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos http://launch.yahoo.com/u2
Reply: PEN-L digest 328
I've always said that if an economist (or a journalist who fancies himself one) had to live the life in the economies they write about, they would have wildly different theories about the 'real world'. Imagine if Jeffrey Sachs actually had to go live a year in Bolivia and fend for himself in that economy. C. Jannuzi Well, here is something that might approximate what you have been looking for in the way of a real life example. How about a 3 year journey that would take you to nearly every country and city where Soros.org has operations? See http://www.jimrogers.com and check out the articles by Jim Rogers of http://www.worth.com who was a Wall Sreet legend back in the 80's as a bond trader. __ Do you Yahoo!? U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos http://launch.yahoo.com/u2
