Re: naming that system
Michael A. Lebowitz wrote: [Justin]: Well, I don't want to get into this distraction on the Russian question, but you could call the system bureaucratic collectivism (Schachtman's term) or the command-administrative system (the perestroichiki's term), or totalitarianism, or lots of things, but the fact is we don't really have a good name for it. How about the 'vanguard mode of production'? Cf. Lebowitz, 'Kornai and the Vanguard Mode of Production' in Cambridge Journal of Economics (May 2000). Nope. mode of production is an exclusively Marxist term and concept, and it signifies a whole epoch in the historical development of conscious human labor characterized by a specific set of class relations. The reason that Schachtman was dead wrong was that the Stalinist bureaucracy, which he fantasized as a historically new *ruling class*, had no ability (or desire) to inaugurate a new mode of production--its historical mission, now completed, was to make prevalent and modern the capitalist mode of production within the Great Russian Empire. Incidentally, while Stalin, alas, was alive, I never heard any of his minions within, or acolytes without, the Russian Empire dare to express anything but the greatest pride at the appellation Stalinist. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Re: NJ gov.
from what I hear, the problem was not so much the affair, as the revelation that he's a friend of Dorothy. dd Who the hell is Dorothy? -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael Perelman Sent: 12 August 2004 21:49 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: NJ gov. Why would an affair make him resign? Is the Lt. Gov. a dem? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Kerry would have gone to war
Michael Perelman writes: The foreign policy difference between Bush Kerry would probably be that Kerry would be less likely to instigate crises, such as Haiti -- maybe Venezuela, but faced with public pressure might react like Bush, or even worse in order to prove that he is STRONG. public pressure--this should be translated an orchestrated media campaign, n'est-ce-pas? Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Re: Looming natural gas shortages
Louis Proyect writes: Darley touches briefly on alternative sources of energy, such as hydrogen, solar and wind, but discounts them as full-scale replacements for oil and gas because their implementation is too expensive. Nonsense. Darley seems not to realize that hydrogen, which must be produced, is not a source but a storage medium for solar energy (of which wind is itself a natural storage medium). Much worse, by saying that harnessing solar energy by means of wind turbines or photovoltaic panels is too expensive, he denies that there exist today huge quantities of unused or misused resources that could be put to work right away--at little or no sacrifice of socially necessary consumption--to provide for all increases in electricity production while reducing steadily the proportion of electric power derived from fossile fuel and nuclear sources. And this doesn't even begin to hint at the cost reductions to be counted on from economies of mass production and from the scientific/technological progress always produced by a very rapidly expanding new sphere of production. If solar energy is too expensive for private capitalists today that is merely one (more) illustration that the capitalist mode of production has become a heavy fetter on the growth of the social forces of production. The solution is not rustication, it is economic planning in preparation for the socialist transition to communism. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Re: Economics and law
CHARLES BROWN WROTE: ...Myself, I think the benefit of reducing the speed limit substantially ( maybe not to 5 miles per hour), and more safety features of the type you mention would be worth it in the lives and injuries saved... The French have reduced highway deaths by more than 25% over the past year simply by enforcing existing speed limits (widespread use of computer camera/radar automatic ticketing for speeding-- with very substantial fines) Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory
Title: Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for Michael Perelman writes: Right wing polls show Chavez losing. Isn't that correct, Michael L? With the possibility of fraud, can we really expect a victory? Cheer up, Michael. Those polls are fixed or downright inventions. The actual news is of a massive popular mobilization for the NO. Expect squeals of fraud from the routed oligarchy. Les Gracchus du sud surgiront triomphales Au grand dépit des sbires imperiales Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory
Title: Re: Loath by the rich: Why Hugo Chavez is heading for See VHeadline.com Venezuela Right wing polls show Chavez loosing. Isn't that correct, Michael L? With the possibility of fraud, can we really expect a victory? Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Tariq Ali on the US election
Louis Proyect on Tariq Ali: this is Browderism raised to the level of art. No, its garden-variety Pabloism. war in Iraq...is very much a neocon agenda, dominated by the need to get the oil and appease the Israelis. (as if Kerry wasn't gung-ho to appease the Isrealis!)
Nostradamus predicts...
Title: Nostradamus predicts... (Rediscovered Quatrain) Les Gracchus du sud surgiront triomphales Au grand dépit des sbires imperiales Bougrelas Ubu remplacera Mais wirtschaft polnische restera Michèl de Nôtre-Dame (p.c.c. le petit poete)
Ooh! Ooh!! Helen!!!
NY POST front-page headline: PARIS: MY LOVER BEAT ME La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu
Dumbocrat tells the truth
Dumbocrat candidate JFK just slipped up and told the truth: I will double our special forces in order to conduct terrorist operations. Thats what he said. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Willy defines the difference
Tonight the most recent dumbocratic POTUS announced that there were profound differences between the two Factions: the Bushits used 9/11 to push the country too far to the right. I kid you not-- that's what the man said!!! Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Re: C.I.A. Plays It Safe by Accentuating the Negative
Jim Devine asks: ...there was an ad by the Committee on the Present Danger in the NY TIMES yesterday...some of them were called honorable as their titles. What makes someone officially honorable? When someone is introduced to me as 'the honorable' I hold fast to my wallet...Mark Twain
Re: The Future of the Green Party
Michael Hoover wrote: ...[in 1936] fdr's biggest fear (not too realistic imo) apparently was that lafollette might be able to bring together progressive/'left' elements... but until a year earlier, when the proverbial lone nut appeared, fdr's biggest, and quite realistic, fear, was that Huey Long would bring together enough left/progressive/workingclass/agrarian/Black mass support to win the election... Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus. Herakleitos of Ephesos
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
sartesian wrote: One more thing... I went back and paged through Capital, and then picked up Vol 1 of the Science of Logic, and damned if I can find anything anywhere in Capital that approaches, parallels, the language Hegel uses in the Science of Logic-- not that Hegel doesn't make sense-- but Capital, to a certain extent, is a demystification of Hegel. In the depths of WW One Lenin felt called upon to study the Science of Logic. He found it revelatory, and in his Philosophical Notebooks he wrote (I quote from memory, perhaps inexactly): It is impossible to understand Das Kapital without a thorough comprehension of Hegel's Science of Logic. That is why, after fifty years, none of the Marxists has understood Marx. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: DONKEY. ELEPHANT. CHICKEN?
Louis Proyect channels Matt Taibbi: ...For those of you who didn't follow this story, Cobb snatched the Green Party nomination away from Nader last week largely through his embrace of the so-called safe states strategy... Only those who didn't follow this story will be taken in by this lie. Cobb didn't snatch the Green Party nomination away from Nader for the simple reason that Nader didn't want the GP nomination and made it very clear that he would reject it if offered. Faced with this arrogant ultimatum, the GP did what any self-respecting party would: nominate its own candidate to campaign on its own program. And the safe state strategy, for a party that can expect no electoral college votes anywhere, makes perfect sense in this election. The great majority of the Left protest vote is to be found in places like New York and California, where the case against the *competent* Imperial candidate can be made most clearly because the fear of throwing the election to Ubu and his Bushits is such obviously hysterical nonsense in those states. Ultraleftist naderism--the ill-concealed desire to inflict another four years of Ubu as just punishment on America and the world--is just the symmetrical counterpart of the Stalino/Socialdemocratico/Liberal Popular Front effort to plebiscite Kerry and squash independent Left political action once and for all. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) Ubu is roadkill. Dick Cheney: Go Fuck Yourself. The election falls on Fortinbras.
Re: DONKEY. ELEPHANT. CHICKEN?
Louis Proyect wrote: If I could understand the above, I imagine that I'd take vigorous exception.
Re: Sowell
k hanly wrote: ... the conclusion that minimum wages necessarily lead to greater unemployment is surely not that evident... Indeed. Under rigorous neoclassical analysis it is easily demonstrated that under monopsonistic or monopsonistically competitive labor market conditions (ie., where the hiring of a marginal unit of labor-power increases total labor cost by more than the cost of that marginal unit) imposition of a minimum wage can, and a marginal increase in an existing minimum wage will, increase total employment. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: two kinds of neoclassical analysis
James Devine wrote: Shane Mage writes:Under rigorous neoclassical analysis it is easily demonstrated of course, rigorous neoclassical analysis is not the same as the Chicago-school neoclassical analysis embraced by Sowell. For the latter, rigorous refers to free market. I don't know about Sowell, but I have to give credit where credit is due. I learned the analytic demonstration I referred to in Gary Becker's Economic Theory class at Columbia U Grad School in 1959. Incidentally, all Becker's teaching consisted of reading from Milton Friedman's lecture notes--when he came to this point he had to proclaim that it had no real-world applications! Shane
Bushido: The Way of the Armchair Warrior
The New Yorker June 4, 2004 BUSHIDO:THE WAY OF THE ARMCHAIR WARRIOR by EVAN EISENBERG Issue of 2004-06-07 Posted 2004-05-31 Knowledge is not important. The armchair warrior strives to attain a state beyond knowledge, a state of deep, non-knowing connection to the universe: in particular, to that portion of the universe which is rich, powerful, or related to him by blood. The unenlightened speak of failures of intelligence. But the armchair warrior knows that intelligenceÓÑthe effort of the mind to observe facts, apply reason, and reach conclusions about what is true and what ought to be doneis a delusion, making the mind turn in circles like an ass hitched to a mill. The armchair warrior feels in his hara, or gut, what ought to be done. He is like a warhorse that races into battle, pulling behind him the chariot of logic and evidence. When the people see the magnificent heedlessness of his charge, they cannot help but be carried along. The warrior spirit resides in the hara. It is this spirit, and not any deed, that is the mark of the true warrior. Thus, a man who has avoided military service may be a greater and braver warrior than a man who has served his country in battle, sustained grave wounds, performed heroic deeds, and been honored with clanking, showy medals pinned to his garment. Because human beings are prone to illusion, the sounds and sights of battlethe groans of the wounded, the maimed bodies of ones comradesmay remain in the mind for many years, like a cloud that confuses judgment. Hence, a man who has fought on the battlefield and has later risen to high office may be fearful of leading his people to war. Such weakness does not afflict the armchair warrior, who at all times is firm in his resolve. The armchair warrior does not fear death, especially not the death of other people. The unenlightened mind is easily swayed by pictures. Since it fails to grasp that life and death are illusions, the sight of the flag-draped remains of those slain by the enemy may make it susceptible to weakness and feelings of pity. Therefore, the armchair warrior does not let the people see such images, except in settings that can be properly controlled, such as his own campaign advertisements. Luxury is the enemy of Bushido. It saps the strength of the people and makes them weak and complacent. Therefore, the armchair warrior strives to take wealth away from the poor and the middle classes and give it to the wealthy, who are already so weakened that they are beyond help. So-called wise men complain that the armchair warrior is producing deficits, emptying the coffers of the state and sinking it ever deeper into indebtedness to usurers and foreign moneylenders. In their wisdom, these so-called wise men are like the scholar who came to speak with Nan-in. Pretending to ask a question, the scholar flaunted his learning for ten minutes while Nan-in, attending politely, brewed a pot of tea. When the master filled the scholars cup, he kept pouring until the tea overflowed the cup, ran onto the table, and dripped to the floor, forming a great puddle. The scholar, astonished, asked the meaning of Nan-ins action. The mind is like this cup, said Nan-in. If you do not empty yourself, how can you expect to be filled? The coffers of the state, too, are like the cup. If they are not frequently emptied, how can they be filled? Thus, the warrior takes it upon himself to empty the coffers of the state into the pockets of his friends, his relations, and other members of his class. Knowing well the corrupting power of luxury, he distributes these treasures with reluctance. They are accepted with equal reluctance. Yet not one among his fellows shirks his duty. The goal of life is awareness; the goal of awareness is freedom. If the people of a foreign land do not wish to be free, it is the duty of the armchair warrior to force them. The warrior strengthens his resolve and that of his followers by chanting sutras, mantras, or other strings of words, such as weaponsofmassdestruction or linkstoalqaeda or bringingdemocracytotheworld. It is not important that these words bear any relation to reality or even that they have any definite meaning. All that matters is that they be chanted repeatedly and with great urgency. The Chinese word for crisis combines the characters for danger and opportunity. For the armchair warrior, the significance of this is clear. Every crisis is an opportunity, and the lack of crisis poses a grave danger. In crisis, the people turn to the warrior for guidance. Hence, if a crisis has not occurred, the warrior creates one. If a crisis is subsiding, the warrior inflames it. The seventy-third hexagram of the I Ching is interpreted as follows: Two towers fall. When smoke fills the peoples eyes, they can be led anywhere. Once, a group of travellers were on a perilous journey, in the course of which they had to cross a river. Unluckily, their guide forgot the location of the bridge, so the party had to ford the
Re: Hubbert's peak
The stone age didn't end because people ran out of rocks (Sheik Yamani)
Re: Options expensing
James Devine wrote: it seems that options expensing is easy if firms are able to count options as a cost in their taxes (if I remember what Nomi said correctly). Simply count them as an equal cost when calculating profits for the stockholders. Of course. It's reminiscent of a land reform program I heard about (perhaps a fictional one, in Galbraith's THE TRIUMPH ) in which the landowners were compensated for their expropriated land according to the value that the claimed in their tax forms. Fictionalized, but not in the least fictional. Right after the barbudos entered Havana on Jan. 1, 1959, a large number of capitalist properties were intervened and soon thereafter expropriated. The owners were offered full compensation *at the value they themselves had estimated on their tax forms*. This was the casus belli for the 45+ years of US economic, political, and covert military war against Cuba. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: The Origins of Continents
am I right to say that the division between Europe and Asia (which aren't separate continents, strictly speaking) simply reflects the us vs. them attitudes of the ancient Greeks? Jim Devine These supposed us vs. them attitudes are certainly not to be found in Homer, Herodotos, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, or Demosthenes. For the ancient Greeks it was always much more us vs. us. Nor did they consider Europe, Asia, and Libya to be continents in the sense indicated by Plato, but rather as areas within a much larger landmass whose total dimensions were only vaguely known. Shane Mage -Original Message- From: Shane Mage [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue 5/25/2004 9:23 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Origins of Continents Jayson Funke asks: Can anyone tell me of [the] origin of the term continents? The term is of Greek origin, *epeiros*. It seems to have been first used in the sense of continent by Herodotos. Plato, at Timaios 25A, speaks of the American continent: ...all that we have here, lying within the Pillars of Herakles, is evidently a bay with a narrow entrance [in Phaedo he compares the Mediterranean to a frog pond] but that yonder [the Atlantic] is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: The Origins of Continents
Jayson Funke asks: Can anyone tell me of [the] origin of the term continents? The term is of Greek origin, *epeiros*. It seems to have been first used in the sense of continent by Herodotos. Plato, at Timaios 25A, speaks of the American continent: ...all that we have here, lying within the Pillars of Herakles, is evidently a bay with a narrow entrance [in Phaedo he compares the Mediterranean to a frog pond] but that yonder [the Atlantic] is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Newsday: Iran wanted US to invade?
The Great Satan doing God's work again! Shane Mage I am part of that force which always does good by attempting to do evil. (Mephistopheles) May 21, 2004 NEW YORK NEWSDAY Chalabi aide is suspected Iranian spy BY KNUT ROYCE WASHINGTON BUREAU May 21, 2004, 7:29 PM EDT WASHINGTON -- The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources. Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein, said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents. The Information Collection Program also kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing by passing classified U.S. documents and other sensitive information, he said. The program has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government over several years. An administration official confirmed that highly classified information had been provided [to the Iranians] through that channel. The Defense Department this week halted payment of $340,000 a month to Chalabi's program. Chalabi had long been the favorite of the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Intelligence sources say Chalabi himself has passed on sensitive U.S. intelligence to the Iranians. Patrick Lang, former director of the intelligence agency's Middle East branch, said he had been told by colleagues in the intelligence community that Chalabi's U.S.-funded program to provide information about weapons of mass destruction and insurgents was effectively an Iranian intelligence operation. They [the Iranians] knew exactly what we were up to, he said. He described it as one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history. I'm a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work, he said. An intelligence agency spokesman would not discuss questions about his agency's internal conclusions about the alleged Iranian operation. But he said some of its information had been helpful to the U.S. Some of the information was great, especially as it pertained to arresting high value targets and on force protection issues, he said. And some of the information wasn't so great. At the center of the alleged Iranian intelligence operation, according to administration officials and intelligence sources, is Aras Karim Habib, a 47-year-old Shia Kurd who was named in an arrest warrant issued during a raid on Chalabi's home and offices in Baghdad Thursday. He eluded arrest. Karim, who sometimes goes by the last name of Habib, is in charge of the information collection program. The intelligence source briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions said that Karim's fingerprints are all over it. There was an ongoing intelligence relationship between Karim and the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, all funded by the U.S. government, inadvertently, he said. The Iraqi National Congress has received about $40 million in U.S. funds over the past four years, including $33 million from the State Department and $6 million from the Defense Intelligence Agency. In Baghdad after the war, Karim's operation was run out of the fourth floor of a secure intelligence headquarters building, while the intelligence agency was on the floor above, according to an Iraqi source who knows Karim well. The links between the INC and U.S. intelligence go back to at least 1992, when Karim was picked by Chalabi to run his security and military operations. Indications that Iran, which fought a bloody war against Iraq during the 1980s, was trying to lure the U.S. into action against Saddam Hussein appeared many years before the Bush administration decided in 2001 that ousting Hussein was a national priority. In 1995, for instance, Khidhir Hamza, who had once worked in Iraq's nuclear program and whose claims that Iraq had continued a massive bomb program in the 1990s are now largely discredited, gave UN nuclear inspectors what appeared to be explosive documents about Iraq's program. Hamza, who fled Iraq in 1994, teamed up with Chalabi after his escape. The documents, which referred to results of experiments on enriched uranium in the bomb's core, were almost flawless, according to Andrew Cockburn's recent account of the event in the political newsletter CounterPunch. But the inspectors were troubled by one minor matter: Some of the techinical descriptions used terms that would only be used by an Iranian. They determined that the original copy had been written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then translated into Arabic. And the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded the documents were fraudulent. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. | Article
Re: US planes attack wedding party killing 40
It was clearly a positional error. The pilot thought he was in... Massachussetts! U.S. Reportedly Kills 40 Iraqis at PartyBAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party early Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating. Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of the city of Ramadi, said between 42 and 45 people died in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said those killed included 15 children and 10 women. Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45. Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck containing bodies of those allegedly killed. About a dozen bodies, one without a head, could be clearly seen. but it appeared that bodies were piled on top of each other and a clear count was not possible. Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said partygoers had fired into the air in a traditional wedding celebration. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire. I cannot comment on this because we have not received any reports from our units that this has happened nor that any were involved in such a tragedy, Lt. Col. Dan Williams, a U.S. military spokesman, wrote in an e-mail in response to a question from The Associated Press. We take all these requests seriously and we have forwarded this inquiry to the Joint Operations Center for further review and any other information that may be available, Williams said. The video footage showed mourners with shovels digging graves. A group of men crouched and wept around one coffin. Al-Ani said people at the wedding fired weapons in the air, and that American troops came to investigate and left. However, al-Ani said, helicopters attacked the area at about 3 a.m. Two houses were destroyed, he said. U.S. troops took the bodies and the wounded in a truck to Rutba hospital, he said. This was a wedding and the (U.S.) planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that (President) Bush has brought us? said a man on the videotape, Dahham Harraj. There was no reason. Another man shown on the tape, who refused to give his name, said the victims were at a wedding party and the U.S. military planes came... and started killing everyone in the house. In July 2002, Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by the U.S. Central Command said the airstrike was justified because American planes had come under fire.
Re: The Mysterious Death of Nick Berg
Ubu to Bin Laden: Those prison photos have put me in deep doo-doo. I need your help again. My guys in Iraq have an American Jewish nogoodnik who would make a pretty picture. Bin Laden to Al Zarqawi: Our Friend needs image-assistance. His people have a package ready. Al Zarqawi to Bin Laden: Mission accomplished. Bin Laden to Ubu: Well we did it, Bushbaby. See you in October. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 I'm struck by the fact that we got to know about a few mysterious circumstances (see, for instance, Robert H. Reid's AP story Questions Surround Young American Shown Decapitated in Video, May 12, 2004) of the last days of Nick Berg only after his death: Nick Berg being held in US custody for 13 days (which the government now oddly denies), the FBI's visit to Nick's father Michael Berg, the Bergs suing the government in federal court on April 5th, Nick being released on April 6th, the Berg family losing contact with Nick on April 9th (which is more than a month ago), Nick being last in contact with U.S. officials in Baghdad on April 10 (Reid, May 12, 2004). Shouldn't we have heard about Nick Berg's disappearance about a month ago, rather than just now, when it's too late? There are so many newsworthy elements here, which the US media failed to investigate and expose in time to save Berg's life. The contrast between our lack of knowledge about Nick Berg and intensive coverage of Japanese, Korean, Italian, Russian, and other hostages (in their own national media, but also in the international media) from the beginning to the end (be it death or release) of their captivity is very striking. . . . The rest of the posting at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/mysterious-death-of-nick-berg.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: a victory of sorts in india...
Isn't there someone here who can tell us how the BJP is really the lesser of two evils? Doug No, but yesterday there would have been plenty around to tell us how voting Communist Party (of your choice) would throw the election to the BJP. Shane
Stan Goff: Falluja Lives!
The Bridge A Rant by Stan Goff WARNING: This commentary may cause anxiety. http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_22_bridge.html
Re: What the hell is Kerry doing?
Isn't it obvious? He knows, better than many Leftists, that the USA is an out-and-out plutocracy, not any sort of democracy. So he's making a direct and pointed appeal to the real electorate--guaranteeing that Imperial policy, now being impeded by the general stupidity, ignorance, and obscurantism of Ubu and his Bushits, will be pursued intelligently and competently by tested servants of Empire. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) I am waiting for Kerry to do something right. Is the idiot trying to morph into Dukakis or is he trying to be indistinguishable from Bush? Does he think that he can win as a liberal Republican? I don't want to get into a lesser evil debate, just to find out if anybody has any idea what he is trying to accomplish. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Stratfor on President Kerry's Iraq imperial strategy
THE STRATFOR WEEKLY 15 April 2004 Bush's Crisis: Articulating a Strategy in Iraq and the Wider War Summary President George W. Bush's press conference on Tuesday evening was fascinating in its generation of a new core justification for the Iraq campaign: building a democratic Iraq. It is unclear why Bush would find this a compelling justification for the invasion, but it is more unclear why the administration continues to generate unconvincing arguments for its Iraq policy, rather than putting forward a crisp, strategic and -- above all -- real justification. Analysis It is clear that the current crisis in Iraq was not expected by the Bush administration. That in itself ought not to be a problem. Even the most successful war is filled with unexpected and unpleasant surprises. D-Day in Normandy was completely fouled up; the German Ardennes offensive caught the Allies by surprise. No war goes as expected. However, in order to recover from the unexpected, it is necessary to have a clear strategic framework from which you are operating. This means a clearly understood concept of how the pieces of the war fit together -- a concept that can be clearly articulated to both the military and the public. Without a framework that defines where you are going, you can never figure out where you are. It becomes impossible to place the unexpected in an understandable context, and it becomes impossible to build trust among the political leadership, the military and the nation. This is why the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam was unmanageable -- yet the Ardennes offensive of 1944- 1945 was readily managed. In a piece entitled Smoke and Mirrors: The United States, Iraq and Deception which Stratfor published Jan. 21, 2003, we commented on the core of the coming Iraq campaign, which was that the public justification for the war (weapons of mass destruction) and the strategic purpose of the war (a step in redefining regional geopolitics) were at odds. We argued that: In a war that will last for years, maintaining one's conceptual footing is critical. If that footing cannot be maintained -- if the requirements of the war and the requirements of strategic clarity are incompatible -- there are more serious issues involved than the future of Iraq. During President George W. Bush's press conference this week, that passage came to mind again. The press conference focused on what has become the new justification for the war -- bringing Western-style democracy to Iraq. A subsidiary theme was that Iraq had been a potential threat to the United States because it coddled terrorists. Mounting a multidivisional assault on a fairly large nation for these reasons might be superficially convincing, but they could not be the main reasons for invasion - - and they weren't. We will not repeat what we regard as the main line of reasoning (War Plan: Consequences http://www.stratfor.com/story.neo) behind the invasion, because our readers are fully familiar with our read of the situation. We will merely reassert that the real reason -- the capture of the most strategic country in the region in order to exert pressure on regimes that were in some way enablers of al Qaeda -- was more plausible, persuasive and defensible than the various public explanations, from links to al Qaeda to WMD to bringing democracy to the Iraqi masses. Such logic might work when it comes to sending a few Marines on a temporary mission to Haiti, but not for sending more than 130,000 troops to Iraq for an open-ended commitment. Answers and Platitudes Bush's inability and/or unwillingness to articulate a coherent strategic justification for the Iraq campaign -- one that integrates the campaign with the general war on Islamists that began Sept. 11 -- is at the root of his political crisis right now. If the primary purpose of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to bring democracy to Iraq, then enduring the pain of the current crisis will make little sense to the American public. Taken in isolation, bringing democracy to Iraq may be a worthy goal, but not one taking moral precedence over bringing democracy to several dozen other countries -- and certainly not a project worth the sacrifices now being made necessary. If, on the other hand, the invasion was an integral part of the war that began Sept. 11, then Bush will generate public support for it. The problem that Bush has -- and it showed itself vividly in his press conference -- is that he and the rest of his administration are simply unable to embed Iraq in the general strategy of the broader war. Bush asserts that it is part of that war, but then uses the specific justification of bringing democracy to Iraq as his rationale. Unless you want to argue that democratizing Iraq -- assuming that is possible -- has strategic implications more significant than democratizing other countries, the explanation doesn't work. The explanation that does work -- that the invasion of Iraq was a stepping-stone toward changes in behavior in other
JFK's Secret Strategy revealed
The STRATWHOR INTELLIGENCE BRIEF has revealed Dumbocratic presidential candidate John F Kerry's four-step plan to take over the White House: 1.) Change his name to John F Kerredy and his campaign slogan from The Real Deal to JFK-The Real Second Coming, and nominate Senator John McCain as his Vice-President. 2.) Make an all-out effort to convince Republicon voters-but not too many of them--that A VOTE FOR NADER IS A VOTE FOR BUSH (if this strategy is too successful, switch to an effort to persuade Nader voters that A VOTE FOR BUSH IS A VOTE FOR NADER). 3.) Attack Bush for not making enough efforts to overthrow Venezuela's Marxist president Hugo Chavez. 4.) The October Surprise to end all Surprises, Operation CRapture. On Halloween 2004 a secret Dumbocratic agent, pissed at having His name repeatedly disclosed in vain by Republicons, is to translate the US Supreme Court, all Bushit electoral-college candidates, and all born-again Politicians to a specially prepared Darkside location in the Sea of Hypocrity known as Camp X-Rated (V, L, no S). but STRATWHOR has also learned that Republicon strategist Karl Rove has formulated the following counter-strategy: 1.) Dump Chaney and nominate Rudolf Giuliani for the Vice-Presidency. 2.) Make an all-out effort to convince Dumbocratic voters--but not too many of them--that A VOTE FOR NADER IS A VOTE FOR KERREDY (if this strategy is too successful, switch to an effort to persuade Nader voters that A VOTE FOR KERREDY IS A VOTE FOR NADER). 3.) Promise to extend Plan Colombia to Venezuela. 4.) Replace Kerredy's Secret-Service bodyguards with a new elite force drawn from the Dallas Police Department. STRATWHOR'S ANALYSIS: Since it is overwhelmingly likely that the Electoral College will be unable to elect a president, or even to convene, the election will be decided by the House of Representatives which, as usual, will vote with virtual unanimity to elect ARIEL SHARON as the 44th President of the USA.
Re: More on the labor theory of value
some of my best friends are Philistines. Not all Philistines are philistines. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Shane Mage [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 7:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] More on the labor theory of value JD wrote: Wagner's music is better than it sounds. -- Mark Twain (paraphrased). Mark Twain was making a perceptive comment on contemporary American standards of musical performance, not a philistine denegration of one of the greatest composers ever. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: More on the labor theory of value
Isn't this being published a week too early? We're being fiddled, say violinists AP, Berlin Wednesday March 24, 2004 The Guardian Violinists at a German orchestra are suing for a pay rise on the grounds that they play many more notes per concert than their musical colleagues - a litigation that the orchestra's director yesterday called absurd. The 16 violinists at the Beethoven Orchestra, in the former West German capital Bonn argue that they work more than their colleagues who play instruments including the flute, oboe and trombone. The violinists also say that a collective bargaining agreement that gives bonuses to performers who play solos is unjust. But the orchestra's director Laurentius Bonitz said it was unreasonable to compare playing a musical instrument with other jobs. The suit is ridiculous, Bonitz said in a telephone interview. It's absurd. He also argued that soloists and musicians in other leading roles - such as the orchestra's two oboe players - should perhaps make more money. Maybe it's an interesting legal question but musically, it's very clear to everyone, Bonitz said. The case is scheduled to go before a labour judge later this year. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Samir Amin on Paul Sweezy
PAUL SWEEZY Paul Sweezy was a great teacher with an open and inventive mind, the very example of a lucid and courageous militant life. A friend. Paul Sweezy was one of those marxists for whom marxism did not stop at Marx but started from him. In Vol. II of Das Kapital, by putting to work the key concept that total output comprises two productive sectors--investment goods (Department I) and consumption goods (Department II)--Marx began the undertaking of a rigorous analysis of the process of capital accumulation. He shone a light on the contradictions within the system forced by the class struggle, whose effects are expressed through inconsistencies in the dynamics of expanded reproduction. Marx thus offered a framework for analysis of the uneven development of global capitalism. In the years after Marx's death, these leads to continue the working out of the theoretical understanding of really existing capitalism gave rise to inventive critical conceptual work from Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Bortkiewicz, and those analysts of imperialism on whom Lenin based his own analysis. But later, the simplistic dogmatism imposed in the Third International was to call a halt to the necessary task of tirelessly continuing the work of Marx. Paul Sweezy is to be found among those exceptional thinkers who rejected that false discipline. That fact made him one of the main precursors of future social thought and renewal of marxism. By his analysis of the problem of absorption of surplus-product he began a necessary renewal of the theory of contemporary monopoly capitalism. Above and beyond that, by linking this analysis closely to that of imperialism he placed the whole theory of capitalism squarely within its real global dimensions. Paul Sweezy was a clear-sighted and brave militant. None better than he to make the whole world understand both the true nature of the American ruling class's imperialist program and those specific features of its political culture which, ever since its birth and the conquest of its West, have shaped that ruling class's mental outlook. Such a work of unsparing critique required untamable courage like that which Paul Sweezy demonstrated in McCarthyite times. The best tribute we can pay to his memory is to continue his brave and clear-sighted work with the same courage and lucidity.
Re: Employer mobilization
Mike Ballard wrote: # Kerry Campaign Has $2.4 Million on Hand # Bush Campaign Has $110 Million on Hand Seems the capitalist political bird is flying with a very large right-wing... Remember that Kerry has a family fortune worth well over a half-billion dollars. Ralph Nader has characterized the Republicon/Dumbocratic political duopoly as a single party with two right wings. Don't cry for Kerry, Australia. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Historical Accuracy
Joel Wendland completely misunderstands what Lou and Lenin were talking about. Lenin *counterposes* the differences between Lloyd George and Churchill (differences within the executive committee of British Imperialism) to the differences between Lloyd George and Henderson--the differences between the leader of the British capitalist class and the leader of the British Labor Party, representing the great majority of the British working class. Lenin is attacking the infantile leftists explicitly because they pay attention only to the size of the differences and ignore the central point, the class antagonism between capital and labor. Their counterparts today are those who ignore the class identity between Dumbocrats and Republicons and seek out differences between Ubu and Kerry in order to avoid anything smacking of independent workingclass politics. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Louis Proyect wrote: In a Nov. 9, 1912, article on the U.S. elections Lenin wrote, This so-called bipartisan system prevailing in America and Britain has been one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party. It is interesting how such words have so little importance to some self-professed Marxists today. I much prefer Marx and Lenin to Dmitroff, no matter his personal courage. Here are some other words: The differences between the Churchills and the Lloyd Georges--with insignificant national distiinctions, these political types exist in all countries--on the one hand, and between the Hendersons and the Lloyd Georges on the other, are quite minor and unimportant from the standpoint of pure (i.e. abstract) communism, i.e., communism that has not yet matured to the stage of practical political action by the masses. However, from the standpoint of this practical action by the masses, these differences are most important. To take due account of these differences, and to determine the moment when the inevitable conflicts between these friends, which weaken and enfeeble all the friends taken together, will have come to a head--that is the concern, the task, of a Communist who wants to be, not merely a class-conscious and convinced propagandist of ideas, but a practical leader of the masses in the revolution. (Lenin, Left-wing Communism an Infantile Disorder, 1920). He goes on in this vein further to argue for compromises, zig-zags, retreats in order to speed up the achievement and then loss of political power by the Hendersons. Clearly his main interest is not in making so-called principled political points about third parties participating in elections fairly, but about how to win real political power. Sounds like Lenin had an ABC (anybody but Churchill) policy in 1920 that roughly parallels current ABB arguments. Now if we compare this to the words you quoted him saying in 1912, can we conclude that like Doug Ireland, et al who refuse to support Nader this time, Lenin abandoned a more advanced position under the political pressure? Is Doug Ireland (and others) a Marxist-Leninist? Joel Wendland http://www.politicalaffairs.net _ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
Re: Historical accuracy
Doug Henwood asks: Could someone explain what Ralph Nader's candidacy has to do with the development of a socialist party in the U.S.? I could swear he was a petit bourgeois who believed in the beauties of small business and competition. Very simple. The central class issue in US politics for my entire political life has been the repeal of Taft-Hartley. In 1948 Truman, as one of his demagogic counters to the Henry Wallace third party candidacy, promised the repeal of that slave-labor law--and, once elected, dumped that as well as all his other promises. Nader has explicitly and strongly called for the repeal of Taft-Hartley. So much for any impression of him as petit-bourgeois. As for the development of a socialist party in the US--the condition sine qua non for that consumation devoutly to be wished is, and has always been, the breaking away of the US Labor Movement from its slavish subordination to the Dumbocratic faction of the US capitalist class. Any electorally meaningful progressive third-party campaign is a step in that direction. And all the hysteria about Nader--maybe--costing the Dumbocrats enough marginal votes in Florida and Missouri to return Ubu and his Bushits to the White House is proof that Nader's campaign is electorally meaningful. And this is not to express any indifference to the threat of a continuation of Ubuism. On the contrary, the more attractive and powerful is the Nader candidacy the larger the prospective turnout (Spain, last Sunday, proved how much fascistic parties are hurt by a big turnout). And the more possible is the crushing of Ubu by a tactical alliance fin Octobre between Nader and Kerry (Kerry withdraws from the race in Texas, Mississippi, Indiana, Virginia, Louisiana, and South Carolina in return for Nader withdrawing from the race in Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Michigan, Oregon, and West Virginia). You say that Kerry would rather see Ubu elected than make such a deal? My point about class politics, then, would be proven. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Historical Accuracy
Marvin Gandall writes: ...bourgeois-dominated but worker-based parties like the Democratic party in the US... If Marvin thinks the Dumbocrats are worker-based they're most welcome to his support. Shane Mage is right in noting that Lenin was talking of intervention in a class party, ie. the Labour Party, but he is wrong when he says Left-Wing Communism is concerned with the differences between the leader of the British capitalist class and the leader of the British Labor Party and that Lenin is attacking the infantile leftists explicitly because they pay attention only to the size of the differences and ignore the central point, the class antagonism between capital and labor. It makes me think he hasn't read or doesn't recall the content of Lenin's polemic. In fact, it was the so-called infantile leftists who made the class antagonism between capital and labour the central point in arguing for the need of the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to run independently in elections against what they regarded as the class-collaborationist Labour Party led by Henderson. This was the gist of their appeal to Moscow when the Communist International ordered the fledgling CPGB to instead enter the much larger Labour Party, to fold its own banner, and to support the LP electorally as a rope supports a hanged man. What Lenin meant by this latter much-quoted expression is that by encouraging the electoral efforts of the Labour Party, the LP workers -- supported by and patiently counseled by the Communist Party workers campaigning with them in the ridings -- would more quickly come to recognize the deficiencies of their own social-democratic leadership and program. When Lenin came down on the side of the entrists, this was quite a shock to the left-wing communists who wanted to hammer the LP leadership from the outside and ideologically expose them before the working class. The Labour Party, unlike the Liberals and Conservatives, was considered a class party -- that is to say, it was founded and funded by the trade unions, had substantial working class support, and was programatically commited to the public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, ie. socialism. Therefore it was regarded as an appropriate venue for socialist participation and electoral support. By these criteria, it would be impermissable to participate in or call for a vote for the Democratic party. By the same token, however, it would be equally unprincipled to call for a vote for the Green Party as Louis does, and perhaps Shane as well. The Lenin of Left-Wing Communism would have rightly characterized the Greens as a progressive petit-bourgeois party which has neither has a connection to the labour movement not a program based on public ownership. The fact that the Greens represent a break with the two party system, to which Louis attaches great importance, does not make it a working class party anymore than Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party of Lenin's time or Ross Perot's Reform party more recently -- each also representing a break with the two party system -- made them proletarian parties. So I would ask Louis on what basis he believes participation in and encouragement for the Green Party is in accordance with what he calls class criteria, while an orientation to another bourgeois party -- in this case, the Democrats, by far the much larger of the two and the one supported by the trade unions and social movements -- is denounced as a betrayal? Things, of course, have been turned on their head since Lenin wrote -- there are no longer any working class parties fitting his description -- and this necessarily affects our relationship to and social democratic parties elsewhere. But I'll wait for he and Shane to reply before taking this up. Marv Gandall - Original Message - From: Shane Mage [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 11:07 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Historical Accuracy Joel Wendland completely misunderstands what Lou and Lenin were talking about. Lenin *counterposes* the differences between Lloyd George and Churchill (differences within the executive committee of British Imperialism) to the differences between Lloyd George and Henderson--the differences between the leader of the British capitalist class and the leader of the British Labor Party, representing the great majority of the British working class. Lenin is attacking the infantile leftists explicitly because they pay attention only to the size of the differences and ignore the central point, the class antagonism between capital and labor. Their counterparts today are those who ignore the class identity between Dumbocrats and Republicons and seek out differences between Ubu and Kerry in order to avoid anything smacking of independent workingclass politics. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Louis Proyect wrote: In a Nov. 9, 1912, article on the U.S
Re: the future of social security/medicare
The social security crisis is *not* much inflated--it is pure fiction. The Trust Fund--containing only US Gov't bonds--is sufficient to pay all obligations for well over 50 years. The scarecrow is the threat that sometime before then, current social security/medicare receipts will fall below current total outlays. That would require either new borrowing or tax increases to buy back the bonds. So what!! For social security/medicare to be unable to meet expenses during our lifetime involves the US's default on its entire national debt. When that happens, social security/medicare finances will be far down on the list of national emergencies. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) The social security crisis is much inflated. As with any social inusrance system, the ratio of workers to retirees flattens as the system matures. But talk of a crisis is merely a wedge to open some political space for privatization, a scheme that would speed, rather than delay, the day of reckoning. Faster economic growth, lower unemployment, ora higher income cap, (roughly $88,000 this year) would make the crisis disappear. Joel Blau Original Message: - From: ravi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 14:16:09 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: the future of social security/medicare andie nachgeborenen wrote: I do not expect to have Social Security or Medicare, for example. what did you folks think of kuttner's piece in business week (march 2004): if you have a BW online id (i do not): http://www.businessweek.com/premium/content/04_11/b3874042_mz007.htm?se=1 essentially, if i understand him correctly, he quotes a few reports, based on which he suggests that the funds will not run out by ~ 2025 (as feared), unless bush continues his tax cut strategy including making cuts permanent. --ravi mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .
Re: Marx and the Civil War
Michael wrote: ...I recall that Senator Hoare from Mass. [might more appropriately be spelled Whore In the mid-'30s, British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare met in Paris with French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval and signed what came to be known as the Hoare-Laval agreement to appease Mussolini on the Abyssinian invasion. A pungent British response was: No more coals to Newcastle! No more Hoares to Paris! Does anyone know who should get credit for this line? Was it Churchill? Shane Mage Mortals immortals, immortals mortals, living their deaths, dying their lives Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
Haiti Coup
Eyewitnesses reported on Pacifica reveal that Aristide DID NOT RESIGN! He was kidnapped at about 5:30 AM by US Marines directly supervised by the US Ambassador. At the moment he is on a US plane somewhere, incommunicado. The State Department refuses to give any information whatsoever to Representatives Rangel and Walters. Meanwhile the US installed death squads have begun massacring Aristide's supporters. The homes of the mayors of Port Au Prince and P´etionville have been burned down. Refugees are being kidnapped on the high seas and returned to the death squads. All, as usual, in total violation of US and International law. After this, how can anyone still be so foolish as to expect that Ubu and the Bushits will permit a mere election to effect a regime change in God's Country? Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: a miracle?
An op-ed in the NY [TIMES] argues that since Israel's security barrier goes deep into the West Bank it's a less than ideal security barrier: What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. That's not an original argument but the author is: Noam Chomsky. Judging by a quickie Nexis search, it's the first time the linguist and super-critic of U.S. policy has had his byline in the paper. The NYTimes seems to have reached the entirely reasonable conclusion that Ubu and his Bushits are a vastly greater danger to essential capitalist class interests than the whole American Left could be even in its wildest dreams. Shane Mage (Not in favor of the mutual ruin of the contending classes)
Re: dems, etc
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/20/04 8:08 PM Doug lives in New York: * NEW YORK BUSH 2,403,374 (35.2%) GORE 4,107,697 (60.2%) NADER 244,030 (3.6%) OTEHRS 66,898 (1.0%) http://www.presidentelect.org/e2000.html * Joanna lives in California: * CALIFORNIA BUSH 4,567,429 (41.7%) GORE 5,861,203 (53.4%) NADER418,707 (3.8%) OTHERS 118,517 (1.1%) http://www.presidentelect.org/e2000.html * Why waste two perfectly good votes and vote for Kerry when you have no reason to? It makes much more sense if you try to double the Green Party votes in New York and California -- you'll have a more powerful and energetic Green Party _and_ a Democratic President. Yoshie above corresponds to position i've held for as long as i can remember (and, no doubt, have expressed on elists) - there is no national prez election, electoral college mean that there are 50 state prez elections (actually as many as 3000 given that county elections officers determine ballot structure, so much for equal protection, but that's another matter), my 'popular vote' has no relationship to such votes in any other state... michael hoover (who lives in florida where - for number of reasons - evil of two lessers came into play in 2000) As I've argued on another (LBO) list, this is a decisive argument against the idea that a Nader or Green campaign would help Ubu: For those of us who find it more comforting to act *as if* this was a real election (and I haven't yet excluded myself from that category) the rational course would be to promote the strongest possible alternative candidacy and then, in late October, organize a one-to-two or three trade-off of (say) Nader votes in close states (say Florida, Missouri, Ohio) for Dumbocrat votes in uncontested states like California, New York, Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, etc. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Import-led development as a source of economic growth ?
... the Chinese trade surplus from its export to the United States has a quadrupling effect on added US gross domestic product (GDP). In other words, for every dollar of US trade deficit in favor of China, the US economy registers $4 of additional GDP in value-adding services, such as marketing, distribution and retail markup, trade and consumer financing, etc. These services add to the price of products--thus they do increase the *current dollar* GDP. But they add nothing at all to the *real* quantity of produced *final* goods and services. Thus they add nothing at all to *real* GDP. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Import-led development as a source of economic growth ?
These services add to the price of products--thus they do increase the *current dollar* GDP. But they add nothing at all to the *real* quantity of produced *final* goods and services. Thus they add nothing at all to *real* GDP. But what is real GDP in that case ? The American concept is that handling the goods adds value :-). If I buy a dozen large brown eggs, the net contribution to GDP in constant (say 1990) dollars is what I would have had to pay for them in 1990. It makes no *real GDP* difference at all how much of the price I actually paid went to the farmer and how much to various middlemen and indirect taxers. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Kerry: The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America
Editors' Note: We offer this unfettered pledge of fealty to Israel by John Kerry as yet more evidence that there's scarcely a dime's worth of difference between the major political candidates of both parties on the life-and-death issues of our time. This is not the issue on which to come down hard on the Dumbocrats. Apr`es tout, Paris vaut bien une messe! Le Vert Galant
Re: patricians
Michael asks: ...Who are the last non-patrician Dems to be elected Pres? Johnson Truman both came to the job as vice presidents, usually a throw away job What was patrician about Carter, Clinton, and Gore (no, he *was* elected and no, a blind populist Senator from Oklahoma is no sort of patrician ancestor)? Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Michael Moore et al
CC wrote: George Bush is NOT a fascist (he may be worse in some ways, but he is not remotely the leader of a fascist movement) So Ubu Potus is *worse* than a fascist! And who is it who is supposed not to care whether or not he consolidates and worsens yet further his *worse than fascist* regime? Shane Mage Mortals immortals, immortals mortals, living their deaths, dying their lives Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
Re: Nixon and Labor
Michael wrote: Lakoff's framing is very important. We don't know how to do it -- at least I have not figured out how. But it's the simplest thing in the world--always has been. Just establish virtually monopoly control over all the means of mass communication. Good luck. :-)
Re: Americans best-informed people, ever
Bob Herbert was being ironic. Anyone who actually read the column knows that by best he meant most informed about trivia, and that such information is part of the process of entertaining ourselves to death. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/19/03 9:39 AM According to Bob Herbert in today's NY Times, Americans are the best-informed people in the history of the world. Bill which explains why more than 50% (according to public opinion polls anyway) of them still think that saddam hussein was responsible for 9/11... santa claus
Re: Friendly folks and U.S. taxpayers
It's very simple. Our people risked their lives. Friendly coalition folks risked their lives, and therefore the contracting is going to reflect that, and that's what the U.S. taxpayers expect, Ui said. Vino vendibili hedera non opus est. Non Ui sed Ubu
Re: On authority
Michael wrote: My friend, Aldo Matteucci, sent me this. I would like to know more. Maybe some of you have even seen the book. Frauchiger, Urs. 1982. Was zum Teufel ist mit der Musik los (Bern: Zyglogge). 69 ff: The first to conduct was Carl Maria von Weber, in 1817, at Dresden, followed by the composers Spohr and then Mendelssohn. At the time, Schumann pointed out the contradiction between the conductor's baton and republican principles -- it was perceived then as a political act. There were conductors long before the baton was introduced. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven all conducted their own works--often from the keyboard. Jean Baptiste Lully (the favorite composer of the Roi Soleil) used a wooden stave--and died from gangrene after accidentally striking his own foot. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: unproductive expenditures and surplus-value
James Devine wrote:
I don't understand this. Why should the wages salaries of
unproductive labor-power (U) be included as part of surplus-value
(S)? didn't Marx once say that S corresponded to
profits+interest+rent (with the latter being phenomenal forms of the
former)? that excludes U.
from the point of view of the capitalist class, isn't U part of
_costs_? is it possible for the capitalists to accumulate based on
U? or must they accumulate based on S, net of U? If they can't use U
for accumulation (any more than they can use the wages salaries of
productive labor-power for accumulation), why not focus on S, net of
U?
This, essentially, is exactly Marx's position:
The general law is, that all those expenses of circulation which only
arise from changes of form of commodities add no value to the latter.
They are merely expenses required for the realization of value or for
its conversion from one form into another. The capital laid out for
these expenses (including the labor employed by it) belongs to the
*faux frais* [unproductive but necessary expenses] of capitalist
production. Its replenishment must be carried out from the {gross}surplus-
product and forms, from the point of view of the entire capitalist
class, a deduction from the {gross}surplus-value or surplus-product,
just as, for a laborer, the time required for the purchase of his
means of
subsistence is lost time. (v.II, p.143)
and
These costs form additional capital, but they produce no
surplus-value. They must be made good out of the value of
the commodities. For a portion of the value of the commodities
must once more be converted into these circulation costs; and no
additional surplus-value is created thereby. So far as this concerns
the total capital of society it means that a portion of it must be
set aside for secondary operations which are no part of the process
of creating value, and that this portion of the social capital must
be continually reproduced for this purpose...the additional value,
which the merchant adds to the commodities by his expenses,
resolves itself into an addition of previously existing values.
(v.III. pp. 343-345)
Since addition of previously existing values is precisely
the way in which constant capital transfers value to the
product, it is clear that Marx regards the capital laid out
for unproductive but necessary labor as part of the circulating
portion of constant capital.
Fred Moseley has argued that the changes in the Marxian rate of
profit (measured counting U in the numerator) helps us understand
changes in the conventional rate of profit (with U as part of
costs). That makes more sense to me (on the abstract level). But, in
the end, isn't it the conventional rate of profit (CRP) that's
important to the laws of motion of capitalism? and in the
determination of the CRP, isn't the mathematical role of U _exactly
the same as_ the mathematical role of the wages salaries of
_productive_ labor-power (V)?
Put in a different way, it's often assumed that (all else constant),
surplus-value production is proportional to V, i.e., S/V = s'.
Thus, if U/V rises, all else equal, the rate of profit falls, since
S/(V + U) = s'/(1 + U/V) falls.
But why can't s' rise to accomodate the rise in U/V? In fact,
Moseley and others who measure U and count it as part of
surplus-value show that S/V does rise rather than being constant. So
the rate of profit need not fall as a result of the rising U/V. In
other words, why not assume, for example, that S/(V + U) is constant
(as a first approximation)?
Marx's answer is that fixed constant capital can and does tend
to rise without limit, but employed productive labor-power is
limited both by the available labor force and by the strength of
the working class which, by constantly pressing for a reduction
in the workday or workweek, tends historically to reduce the
total productive labor-time, from which surplus-value takes the
form of a deduction. Thus fixed capital must historically tend
to grow faster than relative surplus-value.
Shane Mage
When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all
things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even
downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that
all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N.
Weiner)
Re: Western rationality
Originally Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point - i.e. the heart has its reasons of which reason doesn't see the relevance or in which reason sees no point This is not a correct translation. The construction *ne...point* means not at all, thus much stronger than *ne...pas*, meaning not. Pascal is saying the heart has its reasons [ie., the Roman Catholic Faith] that are completely unknown to our rational faculties. accordingly, it is quite wrong to read him as saying ...the rational intellect can understand the reasons of the heart (affective impulses, inclinations, emotions welling up naturally in the body) but does not admit them as a real factor in argumentation or rational inference since our rational faculties can never understand what is completely unknown to them. Shane Mage To be Greek, one must have no clothes. To be Medieval, one must have no body. To be Modern, one must have no soul (Oscar Wilde)
Re: Hydrogen is not a fuel!
Please read the thread you were replying to before reprinting official drivel. This is what I posted yesterday: I am repeatedly surprised by the fascination many environmentalists have with the wonderful future world of hydrogen. Let's see, we build power plants to generate electricity to extract hydrogren, then ship, by pipe or other means the hydrogen to someplace else to make electricity? And so we end up with less energy than we started with. Why is this good? Because the *solar* energy we started with is mostly unusable until it is stored as hydrogen. Wind farms in North Dakota. Solar farms in Arizona-New Mexico. Enough for all our transportation uses and much more. Plus huge numbers of jobs from construction of the farms, reconfiguration of the vehicle fleet, revitalization of depressed areas, etc., etc. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Hydrogen is most definitely not a pure energy source for earth-bound inhabitants. and that is beacause most all of hydrogen is locked up with oxygen in water, for example. to be available as hydrogen, one needs to seperate the water molecule into components, and that takes -- drum roll -- ENERGY. In another scheme, hydrogen is created from mixing steam and methane. And steam comes from Hydrogen IS an energy source for inhabitants of stars, because they are lucky enough to have hydrogen in its elemental form, and also lucky enough to have it in a form dense and hot enough to support nuclear reactions. We earthlings are not so lucky. As described in Joan Ogden's Hydrogen: The Fuel of the Future? in the same issue (page 69), the centerpiece of the present US Department of Energy plan to improve vehicle technology apparently involves a fuel-cell-powered vehicle, the Freedom Car. That vehicle, which would use stored hydrogen as fuel, could ultimately reduce petroleum consumption, greenhouse gas generation, and air pollution. However, a practical, economical hydrogen source that does not generate carbon dioxide will be required to obtain those benefits. The development of such a hydrogen source is a major challenge, as are the needs for practical hydrogen distribution and storage and for fuel-cell technology. It is uncertain just when such a hydrogen-powered vehicle could have a significant effect on the total fuel consumption of the US vehicle fleet; at best, that time is several decades away. http://www.aip.org/web2/aiphome/pt/vol-55/iss-11/p12.html Similar basic issues surround the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, says Malcolm Weiss, a transportation specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Separating hydrogen from sources such as natural gas produces nearly as much greenhouse gas as petroleum fuels, he says, and hydrogen gas cannot be moved through conventional pipelines. That means that it may be necessary to produce hydrogen at the pump, perhaps through electrolysis of water. But the technologies to do this cheaply do not yet exist. http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v422/n6928/full/422104a_fs.html cf. http://www.nature.com/nsu/030609/030609-14.html http://www.nature.com/nsu/000330/000330-3.html Future fuel cells may be able to convert about 80% of the Gibb's free energy released by combining hydrogen with oxygen to make water into electrical energy (at present, this factor is around 50%). Also included in this should be the losses in both electricity conversion and electric-motor efficiency, around 20%, to 'shaft energy' to move the car. Thus the overall efficiency is 64%, much better than can be obtained from gasoline or diesel engines. So, we would need to generate around 230,000 tonnes of hydrogen daily -- enough in liquid form to fill 2,200 space-shuttle booster rockets or, as a gas, to lift a total of 13,000 Hindenburg airships. Hopefully the thirst for this enormous quantity could be quenched by a factor of two or three by employing more efficient aerodynamic and drive-train designs in future hydrogen vehicles. But then folks would probably drive that much more. Hydrogen is not a 'primal' energy source. Unlike fossil fuels or uranium, more energy is used to extract hydrogen from its source than is recovered in its end use. For simplicity, and to bypass issues of carbon and carbon dioxide sequestration, let us assume that the hydrogen is obtained by 'splitting' water with electricity -- electrolysis. Although this isn't the cheapest industrial approach to 'make' hydrogen, it illustrates the enormous production scale involved -- about 400 gigawatts of continuously available electric power generation have to be added to the grid, nearly doubling the present US national average power capacity. The number of new power plants that would need to be built -- based on presently available technologies
Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
I wouldn't take issue with the contempt displayed for the California electorate, the Lib-Dems, and Schwarzenegger personally. But. The one important progressive proposal to emerge from the entire recall circus came from... Schwarzenegger! He promised a program to provide hydrogen refueling facilities *every twenty miles* along California's major highways by 2010. How important this idea is was recognized by the NYTIMES editorially with the adjectives unrealistic and utopian. Of course, this may turn out to be campaign verbiage. But I did have an experience that reflects favorably on Schwarzenegger. In May 2001 I served on the jury in a lengthy damage trial against GM for the death of a husband in an SUV rollover. He was gruesomely crushed when the roof collapsed on his head. GM claimed that its design was not defective because reinforcing the supporting columns would do nothing for safety. We found against GM. On the next day I read in the Financial Times an article reporting that before Schwarzenegger agreed to buy a Hummer he had insisted that GM include exactly the reinforcement that had been at issue in our trial! Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Hi Pensters, My view from down here and from having known people in the rank file voting public of California is that they voted for Arnie because he promised them simple, honest good governance and a 'strong' government. The government under Davis was seen as weak, which is why so many people got screwed (the thinking goes) during the 'energy crisis (fix). The problem with the voting public is that they're, for the most part, a bunch of ignorant fools who, like the kool-aide drinkers of Jonestown, are looking for an honest guy to lead them to the simple life away from the slimy, weak polytricksters, like Davis. The ground for this kind of debacle is fertilized on a daily basis by mealy-mouthed liberals who won't stand up for what they believe--mostly because the DP is in the hands of a gang of bureaucrats beholden to various sections of the ruling class. These politicians are satisfied with playing the role of safety valve during the toboggan ride to the bottom which Capital and the Repugs are bound and determined to take the rest of us. They don't tell their constituencies that they're being ripped off royally. They tell them that businessmen and the 'free-market' can save the day, if the voters just choose to go with them on their nice toboggan ride with cushions, instead of on the 'mean old' Repugs' sled. A lot of people see through this 'propaganda'--it's all phoney--remember what Bobby D told you? But, because the major pollies in the DP, which is the only voice given credibility as an opposition by the corporate and State owned media (Camejo...who's he? Joe Shit the ragman asks as he quaffs his Bud and reads the sports section at the short bar) don't even begin to educate their constituency (because they're already bought and paid for as safety valves) the voters who vote in quantity choose Arnie because Arnie is better looking and he's like 'cool' baby. Best to all, Mike B) --- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: obviously, Cooper doesn't like Camejo, for whatever reason. I thought, however, that one of MC's points was that the progressive wing and ethnic-minority grassroots of the DP (which are not the object of MC's derision here) sat out because Gray Davis was so bad. And most of them -- and MC, I'd guess -- are wedded to the lesser of two weevils logic which says if you're not voting for Ah-nold or Bustamente, you might as well vote for Gary Coleman or Mary Carey or Larry Flynt. Davis' explanation -- right white nativist anti-immigrant uprising fueled by talk shows -- is true, but only part of the story. It's not only who voted for der Gropenfuehrer but also who didn't vote for Davis, or Bustamente. There were also a lot of people who voted for Mr. Universe for reasons besides those highlighted by Davis. btw, MC's article is from the curent L.A. WEEKLY. Jim -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 10/12/2003 2:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems As Eudora told me, the word Camejo was not found in this piece. Why, if this was a not-unadmirable uprising, as Marc Cooper argues, was there not more support for him (or Huffington)? Mike Davis' explanation - that it was a right white nativist anti-immigrant uprising fueled by talk shows - seems more compelling, given the demographics of the vote. Arnie's vote was highest in the above-$75k households. Doug = * A man's maturity consists in finding once again the seriousness he had as a child at play. Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C
Re: cooper on the Gray demise of the Lib-Dems
Eugene Coyle wrote: I am repeatedly surprised by the fascination many environmentalists have with the wonderful future world of hydrogen. Let's see, we build power plants to generate electricity to extract hydrogren, then ship, by pipe or other means the hydrogen to someplace else to make electricity? And so we end up with less energy than we started with. Why is this good? Because the *solar* energy we started with is mostly unusable until it is stored as hydrogen. Wind farms in North Dakota. Solar farms in Arizona-New Mexico. Enough for all our transportation uses and much more. Plus huge numbers of jobs from construction of the farms, reconfiguration of the vehicle fleet, revitalization of depressed areas, etc., etc. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Hydrogen is not a fuel!
Title: Re: Hydrogen is not a fuel! Eugene Coyle wrote: ...hydrogen is not a fuel. It is a storage medium for energy extracted from other fuels -- whether wind or nuclear or whatever. On the contrary, hydrogen is the energy source provided by virtually all the fuels in current use--petroleum, methane, wood, cow dung, coal. A fuel (except uranium) is nothing but a way of storing and releasing solar energy in the form of its hydrogen atoms. ...Shane Mage sees hydrogen as a way to reconfigure our vehicle fleet. Why not think a little about getting rid of the need for our vehicle fleet?... I thought about it a little, but could come up with no way to get pigs to fly. Of course if our only means of transportation were horseback and shank's mare we might have enough horse manure to do without any other source of hydrogen -:) Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Quote du Jour: Paul Bremer on economic justice
Did Chalabi oppose the war? I doubt it. Jurriaan meant Gulf War II. He was of course a warhawk for GWIII. I have no idea what his position, if any, was on GWI--except that he stayed well away from the action. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Saudis joins the privatisation push (putsch)
The Saudi economy is dominated by huge state corporations that produce about 2 thirds of GDP. http://www.idcworld.com/saudiprivate.htm Some royal family members are in fact pushing for the privatisation. Where is your evidence the royal family owns most of the economy privately? Saudi Arabia, as its name declares, is the private property of the al-Saud family. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Shane Mage [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2003 10:58 PM Subject: Re: Saudis joins the privatisation push (putsch) Privatization? Since virtually everything there is already the property of the Saudi family, new foreign investment could scarcely increase the degree of privatization. Besides, if the investment is in new projects it would no more represent privatization than did Lenin's policy of concessions in the NEP. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 http://english.aljazeera.net/Articles/Economy/Saudis+push+privatisation.htm Saudis to push privatisation Monday 29 September 2003, 3:06 Makka Time, 0:06 GMT The Saudis decided last year to open up the economy Saudi Arabia is set to embark on an ambitious privatisation drive, unveiling specifications for 21 water and power projects. Worth nearly $13 billion, details of the projects will be revealed on Monday to local and foreign investors attending a conference of the 100 top companies in the Gulf region. The Saudi Electricity Company and the Water and Electricity Company will unveil specifications for 21 projects in the fields of power general and transmission and water desalination, the kingdom's Water and Electricity Minister, Ghazi bin Abd al-Rahman al-Qusaybi said. The kingdom last November had endorsed a plan to open up 20 vital sectors for local and foreign private investors in a bid to generate tens of billions of dollars to pay for a staggering public debt. Areas opened up to the private sector include telecommunications, water desalination, air transport, airport services, construction and management of highways, seaport services and local oil refineries.
Re: Saudis joins the privatisation push (putsch)
Privatization? Since virtually everything there is already the property of the Saudi family, new foreign investment could scarcely increase the degree of privatization. Besides, if the investment is in new projects it would no more represent privatization than did Lenin's policy of concessions in the NEP. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 http://english.aljazeera.net/Articles/Economy/Saudis+push+privatisation.htm Saudis to push privatisation Monday 29 September 2003, 3:06 Makka Time, 0:06 GMT The Saudis decided last year to open up the economy Saudi Arabia is set to embark on an ambitious privatisation drive, unveiling specifications for 21 water and power projects. Worth nearly $13 billion, details of the projects will be revealed on Monday to local and foreign investors attending a conference of the 100 top companies in the Gulf region. The Saudi Electricity Company and the Water and Electricity Company will unveil specifications for 21 projects in the fields of power general and transmission and water desalination, the kingdom's Water and Electricity Minister, Ghazi bin Abd al-Rahman al-Qusaybi said. The kingdom last November had endorsed a plan to open up 20 vital sectors for local and foreign private investors in a bid to generate tens of billions of dollars to pay for a staggering public debt. Areas opened up to the private sector include telecommunications, water desalination, air transport, airport services, construction and management of highways, seaport services and local oil refineries.
Re: China, again
Elementary fallacy here: [Far Eastern Economic Review] ...The renminbi is pegged to the dollar, so the U.S. currency's slide this year has made Chinese exports even cheaper... Cheaper, yes--but not against the dollar-denominated US products! Indeed, if there is any effect at all it would be to divert Chinese exports to non-dollar areas and thereby *lessen* China's trade surplus vis-a-vis the US. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Regulation, state, economy
Title: Re: Regulation, state, economy Jurriaan wrote: ...When I read Marx's Capital in German, I never found any place in which he uses the term primitive accumulation, rather, he uses the term ursprungliche Akkumulation, that is to say, the initial or original accumulation. Do you have any source or evidence, which proves that Marx uses the specific words primitive accumulation himself, rather than original accumulation ? In English, primitive and original, in the strictest sense of both words, are synonymous. In Cassel's German-English dictionary, the preferred equivalent of ursprunglich is primitive, followed by primordial. original comes fifth. Shane
Re: Dubya and farcical Keynesianism
Jurriaan wrote: As a Phd student, I really got the impression that really neoclassical economic models boil down to a zero-sum trade-off between saving and consumption, where saving is tacitly treated as automatically implying investment. This is suggested by Keynes's formulas as well. Thus, what is not consumed, is saved, and what is saved, is invested. You seem to have forgotten that the Keynesian and [neo]classical views are totally incompatible: the latter view savings and investment as equal *ex ante* (meaning that every decision to save is necessarily accompanied by an equivalent decision to invest and vice-versa) while for Keynes investment and savings decisions are quite independent of each other. That aggregate savings and aggregate investment are equal *ex post* is merely an accounting identity. What counts is the quantity. If at a given level of income intended savings exceed investment, their identity is established by falling income and employment, and conversely if investment exceeds intended saving the identity is established at a higher level of income and employment. For Keynes, as for Marx, it is investment that is the dynamic factor--and expected profitabilty that drives investment. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: God: a socialist view
Jurriaan wrote: ...my particular view of God is...that...God refers to a universal characteristic of the human (sub-)conscious mind, which every human being gets gratis in virtue of being a member of the human species...We could be more or less aware of that transcendent human quality, the highest/deepest intentions or aspirations a human being can have, we could be aware of it or not aware of it, that awareness could take different forms, or evolve in different ways, develop in different ways, and so on. We could feel in contact with God or out of contact with God... Nothing here to trouble an atheist--or, for that matter, anyone who recognizes that Jurriaan is using the word God in a way totally incompatible with every way in which the word God has ever been used in any form of religious or antireligious discourse. To anyone who has read even a little Jung this usage is instantly recognizable. God here refers to an archetype of the collective unconscious specifiable as the ground of numinosity. Unfortunately, religious nonsense has been so deeply inculcated in everyone's personal unconscious by prevalent modes of social discourse that this usage of the word God will inevitably have anything of value it might offer drowned in a sea of purely associative feelings and emotions. Stick to The Numina. Shane Mage immortals mortals, mortals immortals, living their deaths, dying their lives Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
Re: 911 STUDY
Michael Perelman wrote: The lack of information available regarding 9-11 creates fertile ground for conspiracy theories. That is because a coverup is itself a conspiracy and is also presumptive evidence that at least one prior conspiracy is being covered up. Hence the liberal use of disinformation to obstruct effective investigation of that which is being covered up. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: EU v NA -- Hegel and frontiers
Kenneth Campbell wrote: ...BMW clearly stands ahead of NA car companies in trying to find a viable hydrogen car Daimler-Chrysler is, about half, a NA company. And it is far ahead of BMW in developing a viable hydrogen car--Daimler-Chrysler busses, powered by Ballard (another NA company) fuel cells, are already on the road in several European and North American cities and many more are on order. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Susceptibility to Marx
Barkley Rosser wrote: I'm not sure where it originates from, but I have heard it claimed that Marx and Engels said that distribution under socialism was to be from each according to his ability, to each according to his work. If I recall correctly, the phrase is Stalinist in origin and may even have been included in the 1936 Constitution. Trotsky criticized it most severely, arguing that making livelihood dependent on some measure of work is the essence of the unfreedom that makes contribution according to ability impossible as a universal rule until the abundance characteristic of the higher stage of communism had been achieved. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Skewering stilted language and theory: F. Crews
Title: Re: Skewering stilted language and theory: F. Crews Astrological theory is testable, but not in either of these modes. Predictions must be based on individual horoscopes and refer to specific dated events. The kind of test I have in mind would be based on the fact that everyday throughout the world many people win lottery jackpots and many others fall victim to violent accidents or crimes. Match pairs of lucky/unlucky events. Submit the relevant horoscopes, double blind, to a panel of competent astrologers--say twenty matchings each to fifty astrologers. Compare the total success rate to the expected random outcome. A sufficient positive outcome (say, at a 99.9% confidence level) should be enough to convince even the strictest Popperian that the hypothesis that astrology is pseudoscience had been falsified. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) DD writes: But as I have pointed out before, not, of course, to the paradigmatic example of a Popperian social science, astrology. Unlike any other social scientists, the astrologers provide me with twelve succinct, specific and easily falsifiable predictions every day with my daily newspaper. the predictions of astrology are too vague to be tested or falsified. (They're much vaguer than those of Milton Friedman's codification of monetarism, for example, which currently is seen as largely falsified by mainstream macroeconomics.) A real test would be to reverse the normal astrological process, predicting one's birthday -- or, easier, one's sign -- based on personality tests and the like. (No google searches allowed.) Jim
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: WSJ - Is This A GreatCountry?
Title: Re: [PEN-L:36417] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: WSJ - Is This A Since winning the lottery is the way people get rich (in their fantasies), why not propose exempting lottery winnings from the federal income tax (which would in fact only be fair, since such winnings are not income but transfers, and lottery losings are in practise never deductibles from pretax income)? Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) That's nuts. You know the failure rates for small business better than I do. I just know that it is veryhigh. And how amny of self-employed or entrepreneurs go into their 60s (or 70s) with enough to retire on decently? jks Max B. Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Better, I say, to have a political program that speaks to individuals' ability to take the most practical route out of wage slavery -- going into business for themselves. I presume you mean collectively, in coops and the like? jks Facilitating coops is important, but I also mean individually. mbs Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more
Re: trans-Atlantic spat
Title: Re: [PEN-L:35601] trans-Atlantic spat James Devine wrote: this story [about Richard Perle] is interesting on several levels. For example, the reference to neo-fascist Lyndon Larouche... [Perle protégé Laurent Murawiec, a former follower of Lyndon LaRouche, who made news last year when he gave a PowerPoint presentation before the Defense Policy Board that called for the invasion of Saudi Arabia and the seizure of its oil fields] By coincidence, this afternoon I was handed a leaflet written by Larouche (who, by the way, I've never regarded as any sort of fascist, despite his pet hatreds, technocratic utopianism, and bad prose). Near its start, Larouche writes: The issue of war or peace as such, is not Saddam Hussein or Iraq , but, primarily, two distinct but converging features of the current U.S. Bush administration. The first cause of that aspect of the crisis, is the influence of imperialist followers of the late fascist ideologue, Prtofessor Leo Strauss, in creating the core of those war-mongers known variously as the 'Chickenhawks' or 'neo-cons.' The second, converging cause of that critical factor, is the convergence among the pro-imperialist 'neo-cons' inside the Bush Administration, with the thoughtless and stubborn, 'barnyard-style unilateralism' expressed by President George W. Bush himself. The added feature of the crisis, on the U.S. side, is that Cheney's and Wolfowitz's lunatic tribe of neo-con 'Chickenhawk' fanatics, is reenforced, on the side of the Democratic Party, by those organized-crime-linked, pro-imperialist hard-core DLC Democrats who are typified by the circle of cronies of right-wing ideologue and war-monger Senator Joseph Lieberman. Shane Mage immortals mortals, mortals immortals, living their deaths, dying their lives Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
Re: Re: Re: Triplethink!
Joanna wrote: It only begs the question of reality if you assume reality to be real only insofar as it is immutable. However, if reality is continually changing/flowing, then mathematics might describe the relations that power that change...which wouldn't be the same thing at all as getting everything to stand still. Joanna But it only works if the [mathematical] relations themselves are immutable--the immutable part (better, ground) of reality. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Farrakhan on US and Oil
Ken Hanly reposts Farrakhan: No wonder he doesnt get much press coverage any more! ...Let's go to Nigeria. There's some sweet oil here. Do you know what America tried to do? They tried to separate the eastern region and call it Biafra, which started a civil war in Nigeria, causing thousands upon thousands of lives to be lost because of American foreign policy... Thus Farrakhan remains as contemptible a liar as he was when acting as Elijah Muhammad's hatchetman against Malcolm X. The Biafran independence struggle was set off by a massive Muslim pogrom against Igbo people throughout northern and central Nigeria. The US government, together with its British, Soviet, and Chinese Communist friends, gave full and fulsome support to the genocidal starvation siege against the Biafran people. Only deGaulle, out of all world leaders, did even a little--very inadequate--bit to help the starving Biafrans. So much for Farrakhan. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Re: RE: RE: a slip of the Fox noose
I guess I must be in the loyal opposition too. I want to understand Bin Laden the better to destroy him. I don't believe anyone here regards him as a freedom fighter. In fact, I don't think bin Laden and his gang regard themselves as freedom fighters Don't get me wrong. In my opinion Bin Laden is no longer a direct agent of the worst criminals in the CIA/NSA/NSC apparat. But if he was, what would he or they have done any differently? In my opinion, nothing. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Boot on the Table
Recalling the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, Trotsky recalled that he felt a measure of relief when, after all the Germano-Austrian diplomatic circumlocutions about self-determination for Ukraine etc., General Hoffman put his soldier's boot on the table and announced what the German Empire wanted and would take, agreement or not. In this public mailing, the ex-CIA Stratfor puts the US Empire's boot down: Here is your complimentary Stratfor Weekly, written by our Chairman and Founder, Dr. George Friedman. Please feel free to email this analysis to a friend. The Region After Iraq Summary Desert Storm was about restoring the status quo ante. The 2003 war with Iraq will be about redefining the status quo in the region. Geopolitically, it will leave countries like Syria and Saudi Arabia completely surrounded by U.S. military forces and Iran partially surrounded. It is therefore no surprise that the regional powers, regardless of their hostility to Saddam Hussein, oppose the war: They do not want to live in a post-war world in which their own power is diluted. Nor is it a surprise, after last week's events in Europe indicating that war is coming, that the regional powers -- and particularly Saudi Arabia -- are now redefining their private and public positions to the war. If the United States cannot be stopped from redefining the region, an accommodation will have to be reached. Analysis Last week, the focus was on Europe -- where heavy U.S. pressure, coupled with the internal dynamics, generated a deep division. From the U.S. point of view, regardless of what France and Germany ultimately say about the war, these two countries no longer can claim to speak for Europe. Ultimately, for the Americans, that is sufficient. This week, U.S. attention must shift to a much more difficult target -- the Islamic world. More precisely, it must shift to the countries bordering Iraq and others in the region as well. In many ways, this is a far more important issue than Europe. The Europeans, via multinational organizations, can provide diplomatic sanction for the invasion of Iraq. The countries around Iraq constitute an essential part of the theater of operations, potentially influencing the course of the war and even more certainly, the course of history after the war. What they have to say and, more important, what they will do, is of direct significance to the war. As it stands at this moment, the U.S. position in the region, at the most obvious level, is tenuous at best. Six nations border Iraq: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran. Of the six, only one -- Kuwait -- is unambiguously allied with the United States. The rest continue to behave ambiguously. All have flirted with the United States and provided varying degrees of overt and covert cooperation, but they have not made peace with the idea of invasion and U.S. occupation. Of the remaining five, Turkey is by far the most cooperative. It will permit U.S. forces to continue to fly combat missions against Iraq from bases in Turkey as well as allow them to pass through Turkey and maintain some bases there. However, there is a split between the relatively new Islamist government of Turkey, which continues to be uneasy about the war, and the secular Turkish military, which is committed to extensive cooperation. And apart from Kuwait, Turkey is the best case. Each of the other countries is even more conflicted and negative toward an invasion. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Iran are very different countries and have different reasons for arriving at their positions. They each have had very different experiences with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Iran fought a brutal war with Iraq during the 1980s -- a war initiated by the Iraqis and ruinous to Iran. Hussein is despised by Iranians, who continue to support anti-Hussein exiles. Tehran certainly is tempted by the idea of a defeated Iraq. It also is tempted by the idea of a dismembered Iraq that never again could threaten Iran, and where Iran could gain dominance over its Shiite regions. Tehran certainly has flirted with Washington and particularly with London on various levels of cooperation, and clearly has provided some covert intelligence cooperation to the United States and Britain. In the end, though -- however attractive the collapse of Iraq might be -- internal politics and strategic calculations have caused Iranian leaders to refuse to sanction the war or to fully participate. Iran might be prepared to pick up some of the spoils, but only after the war is fought. Syria stands in a similar relation to Iraq. The Assad family despises the Husseins, ideologically, politically and personally. Syria sided openly with the United States in 1991. Hussein's demise would cause no grief in Damascus. Yet, in spite of a flirtation with Britain in particular -- including a visit with both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles for Syrian President Assad -- Syria has not opted in for the war. Nor have the
Re: IRA/RothIRA
What, if anything, would be the advantage of converting an IRA to a RothIRA? Thanks, Joanna Advantage: IRA withdrawals are taxable income, Roth IRA withdrawals are tax free. Disadvantage: The entire balance transferred in the conversion counts as taxable income in the year the conversion occurs. Thus, the greater your taxable income in the year of conversion the worse are the odds of gaining by the transaction (that is, the greater the percentage of the IRA that has to be liquidated in order to pay the taxes). Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Re: Sweezy's occ
The Marxian concept Organic Composition of Capital is the ratio between the number of units of socially necessary labor time embodied in the physical capital stock owned by capitalists (as depreciated in proportion to the physical and moral wear and tear since its initial capitalization) and the number of units of socially necessary *productive* (of surplus value) labor time performed in a given accounting period (typically the time unit is the hour and the accounting period is the Gregorian calendar year). It is thus the ratio between a stock and a flow. The proper symbolic expression is C/(s+v). Simplifying for the benefit of algebraically challenged readers, Marx made (in v.I) the assumption that the entire capital stock turned over (ie., depreciated 100%) every year. This has led to much confusion among commentators. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) I thought that the c/v was a nice simplification of the concept -- even if it made the proof more difficult. It brings out a stark dead/living labor distinction. On Mon, Oct 28, 2002 at 11:32:02AM -0600, Forstater, Mathew wrote: The organic composition of capital (occ) is usually defined as c/v. With this definition, it is easy to show that the value rate of profit, s/(c+v), depends on the rate of surplus value, s/v, and the occ, because s/(c+v) = (s/v)/[(c/v) + 1]. Why does Sweezy define the occ as c/(c+v) in The Theory of Capitalist Development? This then leads him to a more complicated proof to show that s/(c+v) = s' (1 - q), where s' is the rate of surplus value and q is the occ by his definition, = c/(c+v). Thanks, mat -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RE: Sweezy's occ
Title: Re: [PEN-L:31644] RE: Sweezy's occ Jim Devine wrote: To be serious, it seems to me that how one measures the degree of capital intensity of production (the OCC) depends on one's theory and the purpose of one's research. For example, I would measure the OCC in a deliberately incorrect way. I use K/Y, the ratio of the stock of fixed capital to total output. This would measure who was winning in the race between the tendency for capital intensity (K/L, where L = labor hired) to rise and the tendency for labor productivity (Y/L) to rise. The former tendency (that Marx stressed) is only relevant to determining profit rates when the latter tendency (which is often an effect of the former) is weaker. This leaves the problem of units of measure. If K is a quantity of Marxian labor-time-units, then K/L is just Marx's Organic Composition of Capital when L is *productive* labor performed; if L is total labor (productive+unproductive) then labor productivity becomes meaningless; if K is a so-called real quantity then all the measurement problems in calculating the real capital stock--especially the totally defective price indices for capital goods and the grossly approximative allowances for depreciation and obsolescence--deprive the resulting numbers of any relevance. In addition, this approach can never give a theoretical grounding to the Law of the Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit because under it there is no necessity for the productivity of labor to tend to increase less rapidly than capital intensity. However, when the Marxian units of measure are used consistently it can be proven that, whatever rate of increase of labor productivity results on average and over time from increasing Organic Composition, the rate of profit *must* tend historically to fall (even though, for limited periods, this tendency can be denied expression by the countervailing factors discussed by Marx). Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: US, Khaddafy, and ObL
Michael Perelman asks: Does anyone know about this or is it just conspiracy fodder? http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/09/1034061258269.html The Age (Melbourne) October 10 2002 Media gag on alleged plot to kill Gaddafi By Paul Daley Mr Shayler - a 36-year-old former MI5 officer who is accused of disclosing government secrets to the media and in a book By bringing this charge, the British Government is in fact admitting the truth of the allegation London The British media have been gagged from reporting sensational courtroom evidence of former MI5 spy David Shayler, including his alleged proof that the British secret service paid $270,000 for al Qaeda terrorists to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1986. In its efforts to contain Mr Shayler's allegations to the privacy of the court, the government has even stopped the media from reporting its successful attempt to win a gag order. The decision by an Old Bailey judge to stop the media from reporting parts of Mr Shayler's evidence came on Monday after two senior ministers, David Blunkett and Jack Straw, signed Public Interest Immunity certificates. The certificates, which were submitted to the court, insisted that the media and the public leave the court if the activities of the security and intelligence agencies were raised by the defence. The then Labour opposition strenuously opposed the Tory government's use of the certificates during the arms-to-Iraq prosecution in the early '90s. Some guilty verdicts were subsequently overturned on appeal because the defence successfully argued that it had been deprived of relevant information. When such certificates are issued, it is standard practice for the judge to read the applications and publicly hear the arguments for and against a gagging order, before ruling. But in the case of Mr Shayler - a 36-year-old former MI5 officer who is accused of disclosing government secrets to the media and in a book - the government wanted the judge, Justice Alan Moses, to consider the application in private. The British media widely reported on Monday that lawyers acting for Mr Shayler had accused the government of trying to intimidate Justice Moses. But on Tuesday the newspapers - many of which had mounted their own legal case against the application of the certificates - reported simply that the court had heard legal arguments relating to Mr Shayler's trial. The judge ruled that they (the legal arguments) cannot be reported, The Guardian reported. Although Mr Shayler's jury trial is expected to begin next week in the Old Bailey, any evidence relating to sensitive security or intelligence matters will be kept private. After the judge's ruling on Monday, several articles detailing Mr Shayler's anticipated evidence - and the government's efforts to keep it secret - were withdrawn from newspaper websites across the country. It is believed the government successfully applied to have parts of the trial heard in camera. This applies to evidence on sensitive operational techniques of the security and intelligence services. It is also believed that the court agreed to keep the identities of MI5 agents secret and to allow them to give evidence from behind screens. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: Re: Re: My views on Stalin
I think that we have had enough of Stalin. As Lenin said 80 years ago... Shane Mage immortals mortals, mortals immortals, living their deaths, dying their lives Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62
Re: Re: query: George Bernard Shaw
Devine, James wrote: does anyone know where I can find G.B. Shaw's theory of exploitation (based on rent theory)? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine If you want Shaw's own words, why not try The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928). (He used the term Woman of course in a general sense to mean both women and men. There is also a Fabian pamphlet Socialism and Superior Brains which deals with this in passing, and also is an interesting anti-elitist argument from a very elitist point of view. Also, and crucially, look at the section on *Das Rheingold* in The Perfect Wagnerite. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: : Oxymoron of the Day (was Expertise)
...incompetent ones[experts]
Re: Expertise
Justin speaks of expert judges (in the legal system) who are empowered to definitively resolve disputes by entering enforceable orders. Exactly what are judges in the American plutocracy expert in outside of convincing the plutocrats and their political agents that they are reliable defenders of plutocracy in general and of their sponsors' interests in particular? In the law, as for instance William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, John Marshall, the US Supreme Court (with very few exceptions) for its entire history, the State courts in the South, etc., etc., ad nauseam? If so, then the law, sir, is an ass. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Anthrax attack in Africa
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/02/opinion/02KRIS.html The NY Times had an interesting [op]editorial blasting the FBI for not arresting the anthrax suspect, who the author seems to think is the guilty party. In the course of the story, the author asks: Have you examined whether Mr. Z has connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000 black farmers in Zimbabwe in 1978-80? There is evidence that the anthrax was released by the white Rhodesian Army fighting against black guerrillas, and Mr. Z has claimed that he participated in the white army's much-feared Selous Scouts. I don't recall this incident, but it suggests a US connection. Any comments? The article was a valiant effort to produce an unconspiracy theory for the anthrax episode--patriotic motivation plus bureaucratic FBI fumbling. Chip Berlet himself could have done no better. Totally, pathetically, unconvincing, of course. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: RE: Totalitarian (the word)
Title: Re: [PEN-L:26387] RE: Totalitarian (the word) James Devone wrote: Plato's totalitarianism really only applies --to the extent that it really does -- to the Guardians (who are brainwashed, lack individual property, control over who they marry, etc.)... So, you regard Socrates' prescriptions--equality between the sexes, abolition of private property and the patriarchal family, higher education, etc.--as prescriptions for *totalitarianism*? Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Well grubbed, old mole!
Is there any reason to think Marx ever read Toussenel? And, even if
he did, is there any reason to think more than one in a million of
his readers did? But nobody anywhere has an excuse for not remembering
Well said, old mole! Canst work i'th earth so fast? A worthy pioner!
(Hamlet, I, 5, lines 162-163).
Shane Mage
Thunderbolt steers all
things.
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Is it coincidence that on the day of the second round of the French
presidential elections I should stumble across the following quotation from
Toussenel in Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project?
The mole is... not the emblem of a single character. It is the emblem of a
whole social period: the period of industry's infancy, the Cyclopean
period... It is the... allegorical expression of the absolute predominance
of brute force over intellectual force... Many estimable analogists find a
marked resemblance between moles, which upturn the soil and pierce passages
of subterranean communication... and the monopolizers of railroads and stage
routes... The extreme nervous sensibility of the mole, which fears the
light... admirably characterizes the obstinate obscurantism of those
monopolizers of banking and of transportation, who also fear the light.
{elipses in Benjamin's citation]
Clearly, Marx's famous mole from the Eighteenth Brumaire must have been
Toussenel's. Marx also makes use of the Cyclopean image in his discussion
of modern industry in Das Kapital.
Toussenel's _L'Espirit des betes_ was published in 1847.
Tom Walker
Re: Re: The Blame Game
Michael Perelman asks: ...How much to the right of Gore is Chirac? -- By American standards, Chirac is clearly to the left of Gore. Shane Mage
Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists
Chris Burford, in the name of Stalin (aka Dimitrov) invokes a completely nonexistent fascist menace and thereby supports--Chirac! Typical. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64 Time to read Dimitrov! The danger of fascism remains everywhere under conditions of bourgeois democracy.
Disaster in France-What Must Be Done Now
The French presidential election's first round today produced a catastrophic result for the traditional parties of the Left. Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin got fewer than 16% of the vote, 1.5 points less than the fascistic nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen and 4 points behind Chirac. Eliminated from the May 5 runoff ballot (only the top two from the first round stay on the ballot), Jospin announced his withdrawal from political life. The French Communist Party's leader, Robert Hue, got a minuscule 3.5%, a fitting reward for his consistent support for Jospin's centrist policies throughout the five-year rule of the Gauche Plurielle cabinet. In contrast, the three Trotskyist candidates got more than 11% of the vote-about 6.5% for Arlette Laguiller (Lutte Ouvrière), 4.5% for Olivier Bésancenot (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire) and 0.5% for Daniel Gluckstein (Parti des Travailleurs). The other two major leftist candidates, Noel Mamere (Verts) and Jean-Pierre Chévenement (Mouvement des Citoyens) each got slightly more than 5%, while Christiane Taubira (Radicaux de Gauche) less than 2%. The lesson of this electoral disaster is clear--the immediate need for the broadest United Front of the Left on the basis of a militant, aggressive program. There must be no rallying behind Chirac to block Le Pen. That would be like supporting Hindenburg to block Hitler. The alternative is union behind a write-in candidate for the second round, whether or not French electoral law permits such votes to be counted. The indicated, indeed the only thinkable, candidate is José Bové, who is not only a principled, militant, totally independent leftist, but also, and by far, the most popular political figure in France. Bové might well win a majority on May 5, and in any case would be positioned to lead a united Left to victory over the discredited Chiraquiens in the June parliamentary elections and thus force the resignation of Chirac (whatever happens, Le Pen will certainly not be elected on May 5). But there is no time at all for delay. The French Left must pick itself up off the floor and get back in the ring within the next two or three days. Victory is more than possible, but not if *anyone's* sectarian posing gets in the way. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Nash equilibrium's relevance
James Devine quotes Hal R. Varian of the NY TIMES: What Mr. Nash recognized was that in any sort of strategic interaction, the best choice for any single player depends critically on his beliefs about what the other players might do. Mr. Nash proposed that we look for outcomes where each player is making an optimal choice, given the choices the other players are making. This is what is now known as a Nash equilibrium. 'Can this contract be made against best defense?' What a stupid question. The opponents never find the best defense. The Hideous Hog
Desperate hope based on dubious assumption
From Financial Times, 30-31/3: ...the Saudi leader [Crown Prince Abdullah], who is scheduled to meet with Mr Bush at his Texas ranch next month, insists that the US president will help. 'I have confidence that once Bush is aware of the circumstances and understands the situation, he will do something, because he is a human being.' Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Re: Re: Barcelona
At 3/17/2002, you wrote: I thought that the total size of the demonstration was more like 100,000. That is very welcome considering how mass demonstrations have fallen away in the USA. Lef of center press here (Argentina) reported that 250,000 protesters marched through Barcelona Alan This evening's report on Le Journal (France 2's evening news, carried in NYC on Channel 25) put the size of today's demo at 500,000--more than twice the turnout expected by the organizers. Shane
Re: Re: Marx vs. Roemer
Justin wrote: I just think that you can explain some profits by normal bourgeois means (buying low and selling high) or monopoly advantages, as in MArx's discussion of differential rent--which leads me to thing that even he doesn't accept thestrict version of the LTV, but only uses it as an idealizationso you have profit that is generated by possession of monoply advantages that does not represent value in Marx's sense. Note that this profit is not a result of redistribution of SV, a point that can be made if we imagine a situation with two capitalists, one of whom acquires a monopoly and behaves as monopolists due. His monopoly rent is not redistribute from the other guy, it's due rather to his possession of the monopoly (Marx's point): so, profits without value that are therefore NOT due to the expoloitation of labor--rather to the exploitation of consumers A monopolist is able to get an above-average rate of return on its capital. Nonmonopolists (except, perhaps, in Lake Woebegone..) must therefore receive a below-average return on their capital. The economic process determining these different returns to different capitals is a process of distributing the value of the total surplus product among the various claimants to that surplus value. Marx's Law Of Value applies to the aggregate surplus as produced. Because Marx defined value as a determinate quantity of labor time and capital as *capitalized* surplus value he was able to view the capitalist system as a dynamic entity subject to quantitatively determined laws of motion such as the Law of the Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit which has been shown both to be empirically true and to be a strict consequence of the fundamental social relationships defining a capitalist economic system. Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx vs. Roemer
Title: Re: [PEN-L:23827] Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx vs. Roemer When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner) Um, the GUI wasn't invented until after Weiner was dead so the above seems of dubious origin. I don't remember the origin of that quote. Ma se non e vero e ben trovato The space-time continuum? Even continuum existence itself? Except as an idealization neither the one entity nor the other can make any claim to be a primordial category in the description of nature. [John Wheeler] Ian But can nature be described without mathematics? And are any natural entities needed to describe arithmoi? If the answer to both questions is negative, which then is primordial? Shane
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx vs. Roemer
Shane writes in response to Justin: A monopolist is able to get an above-average rate of return on its capital. Nonmonopolists (except, perhaps, in Lake Woebegone..) must therefore receive a below-average return on their capital. This does not necessarily follow. Suppose, for example, that capitalists enjoy monopoly (more accurately, monopsony) wage-setting power in markets for labor power due to the empirically relevant fact that workers face significant costs of job search (this is a typical feature of search models; see for example the survey article on monopsony in labor markets by Boal and Ransom in the J. of Econ Lit, 1997). Then more monopsony power, and thus more surplus value, for one capitalist does not imply less for any other capitalist. Rather it implies that workers as a class perform more surplus labor No. If one capitalist holds monopsony power over a significant group of workers it follows that the other capitalists, dealing with a smaller labor-power market, will have to pay above-average wages and thus settle for below-average profits. The economic process determining these different returns to different capitals is a process of distributing the value of the total surplus product among the various claimants to that surplus value. Marx's Law Of Value applies to the aggregate surplus as produced. Because Marx defined value as a determinate quantity of labor time and capital as *capitalized* surplus value he was able to view the capitalist system as a dynamic entity subject to quantitatively determined laws of motion such as the Law of the Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit which has been shown both to be empirically true and to be a strict consequence of the fundamental social relationships defining a capitalist economic system. For what it's worth, I'd say the empirical relevance of this law remains an open question, as does the sense in which it is a strict conseqeuence of the fundamental social relationships defining a capitalist system. If I failed to prove both points in my 1963 dissertation, please enlighten me on any defective points in my argument. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Saving Private Taliban
from the NYTimes (website 19/11): Several hundred Pakistani fighters are also believed to have sought refuge in Kunduz, including relatives of some powerful clerics, this intelligence official said. Saving them could improve President Musharraf'S strained relations with his country's hard-line religious parties, which have opposed his assistance to the United States. Northern Alliance commanders and numerous refugees from Kunduz said in recent days that at least two airplanes landed at Kunduz airport, presumably to take away some of those who had retreated to the city. The commanders speculated that the planes were from Pakistani intelligence, but officials in Islamabad emphatically denied knowledge of the flights. Is there anyone in the world who imagines that airplanes could fly into and out of this besieged terrorist stronghold without the explicit and deliberate approval of the highest US command authorities? Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Edward Said
Title: Re: [PEN-L:18153] Edward Said Jim Devine asks: according to a SLATE summary of an article in the WEEKLY [DOUBLE] STANDARD, An article scorns Edward Said specifically and post-colonial theory in general. As Said has watched his dream of an alliance between Western liberalism and Arab nationalism crumble with the World Trade Center, he has turned to the same Orientalist language he's spent his career attacking. For example, he recently derided the terrorists for their primitive ideas, magical thinking, and lying religious claptrap. is this true? primitive ideas, magical thinking, and lying religious claptrap are certainly true descriptions of bin Laden and his fellow Islamistic Crusaders. But since Said would certainly, and precisely correctly, use the same terms for Falwell, Robertson, and the rest of their fellow-travelers in the God Bless... crew, there's obviously nothing at all Islamistic about his expressing, not for the first time, this home truth. Shane Mage Thunderbolt steers all things. Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
Re: Humid peek
[was: [PEN-L:14852] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Yet another take on Hubbert's peak] But I guess a glass at 50% capacity is always half empty. pessimist: the glass is half empty. optimist: the glass is half full. realist: it's half a glass of water. surrealist: it's a cow. engineer: the glass is badly designed, being twice as big as it needs to be. Socrates: are you in the process of filling it or of drinking from it? Shane Mage When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true. (N. Weiner)
Re: Re: ergonomics, etc.
Nathan wrote: ...It just does not cut it to argue that Nader voters did not help elect Bush We could only have "helped elect" Bush if Bush had in fact been elected. Which, of course, was the opposite of what happened... National exit polls said that half of Nader voters would have supported VicePresident Al Gore had Nader not been on the ticket. Thirty percent said they would not have voted and the rest would have gone for Bush. In Florida, that would have translated into an additional 30,000 vote margin for Gore. This counterfactual, plus rotten data (no option to vote for any other candidate?), allows no inference about the Florida vote. If I had voted in Florida, and Nader had not been on the ballot, I would most certainly have voted proudly for David McReynolds, the Socialist candidate, who *was* on the Florida ballot. Absent a Nader option, why should any voter disgusted enough with Gore and Clinton to vote instead for the leftist Nader-LaDuke ticket, *not* have voted for McReynolds? Do you know of a single Florida voter whose electoral preferences went 1) Nader, 2)Gore, 3)McReynolds? Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
