Re: Slaughter of dead labour (dead already but not again, yet)
Jim, Before I can answer your question, could you explain what _you_ mean by evidence. Bergson says, The beliefs to which we most strongly adhere are those of which we should find it most difficult to give an account, and the reason by which we justify them are seldom those which have led us to adopt them. Are you asking me to justify the statement (to you) or to explain why I believe it? Tom Walker wrote: As individual effort has come to play less and less of a role in social productivity, the methods of remuneration have become more and more geared to (presumably) measuring and rewarding performance. -- Jim Devine wrote, is there any evidence that individual effort has ciome to play less and less of a role in social productivity? and what, precisely does this mean?
re: interesting thought
What does a petpertuance mean?
Re: Wiseacres Anonymous
All I know is that if one dwells on the topic too long the grammar begins to look wrong. For example what is the relationship between the preposition in, the verb believe and the term God? In this context, the utility may well be reminding us not to go on at length about the ineffable. Speaking of which, the ineffable is one of those negatives for which there is no positive, isn't it? Doyle Saylor: God is a social construct hence my assertion about god being an explanation. One cannot expect that god has a grammatical role. Grammar being the division of speech into apparent parts related to human experience and habitual routines of expression. The meaning of god may fit what Tom says, but the grammatical structure does not call for a hole or null place as Tom would like to assert. Inventing such a null place grammatical structure akin to constructing a new mathematical theorem might have value if it can be shown to have practical utility. So I would ask what is the utility?
Re: Gaining on Time
My response to Max's four proposed policy changes, my own suggested changes amplify Max's fourth proposal: Lower or no taxes on the first X dollars of labor earnings, higher on the remainder (there is more than one way to do this, but the principle is the main thing). This is one I can endorse without any qualms. I've been advocating it vigourously for five years here in Canada and it seems to finally be getting some attention from an employer group, restaurant and hotel, and the federal government. Several years ago Lars Osberg (with a bit of prodding from guess who) advocated this in a federal govt. discussion paper on the changing work place. Preclude payment of health care costs by business firms. (also disability life insurance, other fringes) by establishing alternative sources. Same as above. Increase mandated overtime pay (definition of work week, etc.) This one I'm more skeptical of. I would suggest that any increase in OT premium should be in the form of a unemployment insurance surcharge and not income for the employee. There is a contradiction in giving workers incentives to over work. I'm also not convinced that 40 hours a week is onerous. I think some tinkering would be in order: such as a weekly absolute limit, say 50 hours and an annual limit on total overtime. Facilitate non-standard work arrangements that permit shorter weeks (conditional on ensuring fringes noted above) Again, total agreement. Some of the facilitation could be policy, some persuasive and some collectively bargained (not to preclude mixtures of the three). One specific suggestion would be what I call rewarding years of service with more time off and it basically has to do with extending the way service increments are structured. The established practice is for increments in vacation time and pay rate. The principle can easily be extended to reduced hours of work. Related to the above, but also distinct is to remove the financial barriers to a more gradually phased retirement. Pension plans that base benefit levels on income during the last years of service are an example of such a barrier, discouraging people from cutting back on work time late in their careers. Unions need to start servicing their members on the working time issue. One of the big problems, IMHO, is that unions have long emphasized the political aspect of the issue, while neglecting its technical subtleties. The result has been a failure on both the political and technical terrain. Similarly, there is a mythology among employers that if there was a business case for reducing work time, it would already be happening. This overlooks the extent to which it does already happen. It also sets up a prejudicial standard for innovation: if it isn't already being done, it must not be worth doing. Further it fails to recognize the extent to which a widespread change may be beneficial but isolated innovations may simply expose the innovativing firm to predatory behavior from non-innovators (something like the way Manitoba trains nurses for export to Texas and North Carolina).
RE: Gaining on Time II
A few other policy changes that should be thrown into the discussion are VASTLY improved parental leave and income replacement (the Sweden model), a similar educational leave and income replacement scheme (Norway) and some kind of basic income or citizen's income.
Reading Enron
Fifteen random theses concerning Enron and the next Marx 1. The next Marx is corporate. 2. The corporate Marx has already written its Capital and its 18th Brumaire. 3. The text inscribed by the corporate Marx is action. 4. The revolution is to read that action as text. 5. Kenneth Lay was going to call Enron Enteron until he learned it meant intestines. 6. Enron=Enteron=Entrail 7. You can shred the audit trails but you can't repack the entrails. 8. The exposed entrails of Enron disclose a mode of digestion (of value), not a mode of production. 9. The Enronist mode of digestion is exemplary of the post-welfare state state. 10. This mode of digestion is founded on terminal accumulation. 11. Terminal accumulation differs from primitive accumulation in that it starts from a condition of a fully-developed system of commodity exchange and of state crisis intervention and regulation to sustain that system of commodity exchange. 12. Deregulation is qualitatively different from pre-regulation. 13. The Enronist corporation is a form of state enterprise that most resembles the Bourbonist practice of tax farming. 14. Privatization can best be understood as the selling of franchises for tax collection. 15. The Enronist mode of digestion is self perpetuating in that each wave of privatization and deregulation begins as a crisis response and engenders a new crisis whose resolution can only be more privatization and deregulation.
Oh! Canada?
Perhaps the events of the past couple of years have just been too novel to assimilate. It strikes me that any one of the three big institutional crises would, in 'ordinary times', qualify as a historical event. For those with short memories, I am referring to the Bush/Gore deadlock, 9-11 and Enron. No conspiracy theory could possibly do justice to the cumulative momentousness of the three crises. Perhaps it would be an exaggeration to say that not even apocalypticism could grasp the portent of the present conjuncture. These are times in which the collapse of the Argentine government and economy are taken in stride. And yet we don't seem to notice that such equanimity is itself profoundly alarming. The consensus on Argentina is that the markets have already discounted the collapse. Very funny. This implies that they have already discounted the role of the IMF in the collapse. Very funny. As we know, Wall Street is just crammed full of Seattle anti-globalization protestors and disciples of Joe Stiglitz. Right, Doug? More likely the contagion model that has been discounted by Wall Street is analogous to O'Neill's paperback Schumpeterianism with regard to Enron. The geniuses of capitalism are at work sorting out the winners and losers. But it's the auditors, stupid. In Argentina's case, it isn't just Menem or de la Rua. It took two to tango. As Arthur Andersen was to Enron; the IMF was to Argentina. Argentina has thus NOT been discounted by the financial markets. The other shoe hasn't dropped yet. Tom Walker
Enron Prize?
James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy? Enron Prize? Chairman Greenspan? Ah, the cunning of reason, the genius of capitalism, the stench of sycophancy. It's enough to make you choke on your pretzels.
Re: stock market query
Maybe a better name for a spread-sheet would be a fiddle-sheet. Jim Devine wrote, I was fiddling around with my spread-sheet this morning. . . Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Airline deregulation
In Canada, airline deregulation has led to an Air Canada monopoly. Lou in particular and others in general may be interested in the expert witness evidence (including my own submission) posted online by the airline customer sales and services employees' Local 1990 of the Canadian Auto Workers at: http://www.caw1990.ca/seniorityexpert.htm Louis Proyect wrote: Looking back in retrospect, it is easy to see how deregulation would lead to new monopolies. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Java
Louis's discussion of Java reminded me of the effect of (Peter? Philip?) Ramus's 16th century "reform" of Aristotlean dialectcs, as chronicled by Walter Ong. In a nutshell, Ramus made dialectic more "teachable" by reforming it into a vast hierarchy of dichotomies. The resulting knowledge may be crap but it can be tested to make sure it's the _right_ crap and not just any old crap. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: profits and corporate speculation
Several years ago there was a spate of reporting about how employee stock option plans were essentially watering the stocks. There was an article in Forbes and one in the Wall Street Journal that I recall. Part of this had to do with the failure (much protected by the big five) of accounting standards to require a clear reserve fund to offset the anticipated cost of redeeming the options. A securities research organization in Britain ran some estimates of what the profits would like like for a number of corps if they were required to set aside a reserve -- microsoft was one example whose profits essentially disappeared with the more transparent accounting. Michael Perelman wrote, I remember reading somewhere -- maybe someone could remind me of the reference -- how companies like Microsoft and Dell were speculating on options in their own stocks and that these speculations created a significant fraction of their profits. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Economic Development
Tim, This doesn't directly answer your question, but I would call your attention to the item posted earlier today by Paul Phillips: "Complaint about violation of academic freedom in hiring by SFU." The Dean of Arts who appears to carrying the ball for the anti-Noble team, John T. Pierce is former director of the Community Economic Development program at SFU. When I've looked into CED, I've found it hard to pin down what it is, let alone any industry standard for assessing return on investment. Some of the diverse lineage would be the Tennesee Valley Authority (top down co-ptation), Saul Alinsky (bottom up confrontation) and the Industrial Areas Foundation and Kurt Lewin's work for the AJC with youth gangs, which sort of evolved into the Ford Foundation Mobilization for Youth and ultimately into the Office of Economic Oportunity (War on Poverty). Alinsky wrote an article in the 1960s about the WoP in which he used the phrase, "a prize piece of political pornography," to describe it. I haven't had a chance to read that article but perhaps the notion of "economic pornography" might capture the essence of CED. And I would be remiss if I forgot to mention Tom Wolfe's Mau-mauing the flak catchers. Tim Bousquet asked, I realize that PEN-Lers don't put much stock in the issue, but I'm trying to find some sort of industry standard in the "economic development" biz. Specifically, how do the people running these organizations, or I suppose more importantly, the people providing the funding, measure and assess the return on investment? Is there any literature on this subject? I can't find any. (Fwd) Complaint about violation of academic freedom in hiring by phillp2 03 April 2001 04:11 UTC [4] [5]Thread Index [6] I think all North American academics should be aware of this travesty of academic freedom and human rights. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Subject:Complaint about violation of academic freedom in hiring by SFU March 26, 2001 Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Economic Development
I should clarify that I didn't mean to attack all CED practitioners by my remarks -- only to highlight the nebulousness, perhaps treacherously so, of CED. Like all things that have a cachet of "alternative", CED may indeed provide a niche equally for seekers of genuine change, time-serving bureaucrats, politcal burn-outs and con artists. The same can be said for "the left" or "education" or anything I personally believe in, for that matter. I'll leave the pornography remark though. It appeals to me in the sense, without intending any disrespect, of CED being somewhat of a surrogate for the extent and kind of changes that would be needed to build, say, socialism. Besides, one could always joke about "spilling their CED." As for SFU, they settled _my_ grievance after the teaching support staff union's lawyer filed suit for "civil fraud" because of adulterations that had been made in my student evaluation files. Paul Phillips wrote: It is unfortunate that CED is carrying the ball for decades of academic repression at SFU. There is good CED stuff and teaching. Particularly here at Manitoba we have CED as an economics course dedicated to teaching aboriginals primarily, in economic development inititiatives at the local community/reserve level. I have not been involved in teaching the course but I have been supervisor of one or more theses on CED/Reserve Economic Development. The main instructor in this area here is John Loxley who has an exemplary record in fighting for social justice, economic development and heterodox economics with aboriginals, with local and provincial governments, with African countries, the ANC etc. There is nothing wrong with CED, just with some of the practitioners of it that use it as a modus of oppression. I too have had my problems with SFU. I taught there many years ago as a replacement with the promise/expectation of a tenure stream position. When it came time for renewal of my position, I was told I wasn't wanted. My students complained to the Vancouver Sun which sent a reporter to the U to find out why. The official reason was -- I am paraphrasing as I don't remember the exact quotation -- "Professor Phillips' interest is in the Canadian economy. In North America the Canadian economy is of minor importance. Therefore, we have little interest in continuing his appointment." (Tom, if you are interested, you can search the Sun's archives to find the exact quotation.) As a result, I came to Manitoba -- for which I am eternally grateful! We have a mixed heterodox department, and with a vibrant CED and development program. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: George Bush sets an example for workers
Michael Perelman wrote, the paper of record has an article entitled A Trickle-Down Theory for a Shorter Workday [5]http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/business/01BUSH.html Will the working class follow our fearless leader's example? The real question is will organized labour and left scholars and journalists seize the rhetorical opportunity and run with it? As a long time "crank" on this issue (and contributor to a scholarly volume), I think it's fair for me to comment on the volume and frequency of public attention being received by the working time issue. Folks, it IS on the agenda. The humorous vein of today's NYT article suggests that people are even becoming comfortable with the issue of overwork *as an item of personal concern and cultural critique* and with the idea that something needs to be done about it, again at the exclusively personal and cultural level. The trick now is to turn the cultural and personal focus around so that discussion begins to center on the social justice questions of working time distribution, without disgarding that cultural and personal angle. The vehicle to pull off such a trope could even be Bush's own "compassionate conservative" theme. Don't forget, ". . . the limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive." Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Law as aggressive protector of private property
Let me get this straight. Monsanto's private property is intellectual property, essentially a legal fiction on par with M.'s corporate personhood. The farmer's land is mere _real_ property, essentially also a legal fiction but having a common law history going back many, many centuries. So the court is saying that the copy of the copy takes precedence over the original copy? Jean Baudrillard take note. Court upholds the simulacrum of the simulacrum. Lends a new meaning to mock trial. See this map of the world? I drew this map and it is mine. The world is a copy of my map, so I own the world! Nyah, ah, ah! Ain't these post-modern times great? Kinda makes you want to hang around for the denouement. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: FW: Rich Leftists Bankroll John McCain's Assault on Freedom
The ACU wrote: It's fairly simple: When one considers the proposed ban against all political advertising 60 days prior to an election, who, at that critical juncture, will control the hearts and minds of Americans going into Election Day, other than the leftist press? Just for arguments sake, let's pretend the ACU is accurate in its assessment of the political leanings of the U.S. media. Then what the ACU is saying is that Americans are so sponge-like and sheep-like that this "leftist press" controls their hearts and minds. What is interesting about the ACU "analysis", then, is not their bizarre contentions about the left-wing bias of the press but their even more bizarre implicit theory of consciousness and communications. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: A Fair Deal?
That's the nicest thing anyone ever said to me. When I was around 5 or 6 I wanted to be a stand-up comedian when I grew up. I used to stand on the sofa in the living room and deliver monologues into a make-believe microphone. Rob Schaap wrote, Reckon Lenny Bruce had a bit of the lefty about him. Or didn't you think him very funny? Ben Elton works for me, too. But then ol' Reverend Tom regularly puts a smile on this dial. Mebbe I'm just easy to please. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Rich Leftists Bankroll etc.
Or, not to put too fine a point on it, the "pipeline" theory. I wonder how such a theory could conceivably comprehend the idea of fiction (other than its own, that is). ann li wrote: It's often referred to as the "hypodermic needle" theory of communication and in some ways bears similarity on the left to Chomsky et al's "levers of power" metaphor. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Leftist media bankrolling campaign finance reform, not
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 13:03:52 -0800 From: Norman Solomon [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Non-Issue of "Media Finance Reform" THE NON-ISSUE OF "MEDIA FINANCE REFORM" By Norman Solomon / Creators Syndicate WASHINGTON -- During the first days of spring, cold winds blew through the nation's capital. The weather was an apt metaphor for the chilling effects of a perennial news industry desensitized to its own numbing. Don't worry, we've been told countless times: Media outlets are diverse enough to maintain vigilance. "I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant," E.B. White observed in a 1956 essay. To that candid assessment he added a more dubious one: "The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is. This he does." I thought of such claims the other day, while passing through the National Press Building lobby. Eight networks were on eight television screens. With the possible exception of the Weather Channel, they all certainly had slants. Two eminent members of the punditocracy occupied two screens. The odious Don Imus was on another. Investor news was also profuse. Lots of slants. But not from many directions. The media industry -- no less than the campaign system -- is awash in oceans of dollars. Commercial broadcasters siphon huge profits from frequencies that theoretically belong to the public. Cable TV conglomerates expand under the protection of federal regulations placing severe limits on the power of municipalities to charge franchise fees for the use of public rights-of-way. Station owners proceed to cash in on their free portions of a digital spectrum worth billions of dollars. We're hearing a lot about the need for campaign finance reform -- but how often have we heard the phrase "media finance reform"? Assurances about the present-day media system often resemble the more complacent defenses of how politicians get elected. In late March, lauding "the classic Madisonian structure of American democracy," syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote: "Madison saw 'factions,' what we now call interests, not only as natural, but as beneficial to democracy because they inevitably check and balance each other." But the phrase "check and balance" deserves another look -- in a financial context. The big checks and big (bank) balances are hardly reassuring. Complacency rests on mythology, as when Krauthammer cites Madison: "His solution to the undue power of factions? More factions. Multiply them -- and watch them mutually dilute each other." However, when we "watch them," any such "solution" becomes implausible. Power is steadily more concentrated, not diluted. The media establishment has a hefty stake in the status quo. A curb on campaign spending would eat into profits. Last year, an estimated $1 billion in campaign-ad revenue flowed to TV stations. And during the 2000 election cycle, "soft money" campaign contributions totaled more than $5.5 million from the corporate owners of five powerhouse networks -- Time Warner (CNN), Walt Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox), Viacom (CBS) and General Electric (NBC). But even if big donors vanished from campaign financing, we'd still be left with the crying need for media finance reform. If those who pay the piper call the tune, why is that any less true in news media than in politics? Midway through the Senate debate on the McCain-Feingold bill, a Washington Post editorial declared: "The goal should be to reduce the flow of funds, the extent to which offices and policies now are all but openly bought by the interest groups that the policies affect." The newspaper added that with so much big money flowing into the coffers of senators, "There is no way they cannot be beholden." That's true. And when you consider America's major media outlets -- and the massive corporate ownership and advertising involved -- the same conclusion should be inescapable. "There is no way they cannot be beholden." Free and open discourse is essential to democracy. But no one on the Senate floor has demanded the taming of the nation's media giants. Amid all the talk about the sanctity of the First Amendment, we don't hear politicians or mainstream pundits insisting that multibillion-dollar conglomerates be pushed off its windpipe. As a practical matter, the top guarantee in the Bill of Rights is gasping for breath. Free speech is of limited value when freedom to be heard requires big bucks. ___ Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of
The Wrath of Doug
I don't get it. Every morning on the radio after the seven o'clock news Charlie Chucklehead from Swindlemore Securities comes on to tell me it's a Good Thing if the Dow is up and it's Bad Thing if the Dow is down. On the way across town, I pass half a dozen billboards telling me my future's secure if I invest in the Admiration Mutual Fund. At noon and at six o'clock a talking head comes on the screen with scrolling numbers across the bottom to reinforce the message that it's a Good Thing if NASDAQ is up and a Bad Thing if NASDAQ is down. Presidents and newsweeklies don't fail to point out that the American economy is the greatest in the world, ever, and the value of shares is proof of that. But it irks Doug if someone on the left pooh-poohs the miasma of Ponzi scheme glad tidings. I don't get it. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: The Wrath of Doug
1. Doug's "critique" came in response to no one actually doing the simpleminded leftish habit thing that it criticizes. Jim Devine wrote something about the consumer confidence bounce reminding him of the suckers' rally after 1929. Hey, today's another day. Did the bear shit in the woods again? Or is that simpleminded? 2. There is a sense in which "bad news" can appropriately be received with satisfaction, if not joy. That is when the bad news confirms our grasp on reality in the face of relentless 'optimistic' disinformation telling us we're assholes for not celebrating the official fables. 3. There's no reason to expect that a falling market will unleash a lot of good shit. They may be reason to hope that the harsh light of reality will unleash some energies to struggle against the bad shit. 4. For many people, the loss of the illusion of prosperity will be no no more of a hardship than was the illusion of prosperity, if you get my drift. On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Doug Henwood wrote: Because that's not what I'm doing. I'm criticizing the leftish habit of simplemindedly putting negative signs in front of the glad tidings, and viewing a collapsing Dow as good news. A lot of bad shit has gone on under a rising market, but that doesn't mean that a falling market will unleash lots of good shit. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: The Gripes of Wrath (was Doug)
Justin: "The only thing about the Situation that gave Stencil satisfaction was that his theory explained it." --Thomas Pynchon, V. (quoted from memory) I have to confess to feeling awful Stencil-like some of these days. Or would that be doubly redundant? Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Interesting new book?
Going only on the portion of the exchange Lou quoted, there is nothing in what Keen said that I couldn't agree with, from what I would term a "Postonian Marxian" position, namely that the LTV and Marx's analysis of the commodity in capitalism form the basis of an immanent critique of bourgeois political economy and not the foundation of some alternative, transhistorical "science". The limitation of a commodity theory of money IS precisely that it cannot envision going beyond capitalism. Louis Proyect quoted Steve Keen: ". . . there has been *no* analytic discussion on this list of how this crisis came about. This is because understanding this crisis involves an appreciation of the role of credit money and debt, and this requires a non-commodity theory of money which is antithetic to the commodity approach to money derived from a labour theory of value. So in that sense, following on from your post which inspired my somewhat flippant comment, forthcoming events may well leave this list as "kind of Marxist equivalent to Nero's playing the fiddle while Rome was burning"." Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Nader/Gore
Who is to say the IF Nader had not run, Gore wouldn't have performed even worse in the campaign? There was no major third party candidate in the 1988 election and Dukakis lost all by himself. There is every bit as much reason to believe that Nader was a burr in Gore's saddle that made him run harder as there is to believe that Nader took away the EXTRA margin of victory that Gore needed to insure against massive vote irregularities and the Supreme Court. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Goldilocks Mauled!
It's now official -- the Dow Jones Industrial Averages has fallen more than 20% from its high, making this a "bear market". Does the Pope shit in the woods? Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Amish virus
I reformatted my hard drive tuesday, which means I deleted all the files. I think its good for the computer to do that. Sort of like emptying the ashtrays. As a matter of fact, I was given this computer because the CD-Rom wasn't working. The Rom's a bit wonky but I think the main problem was software conflicts from scads of downloaded software. My friends gave away the computer because they were afraid to give it a reformat c:/ enema. Time for a new Cadillac, eh? Ashtray's full. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: NASDAQ Question
Seth Sandronsky wrote, No. Assuming the calculation is right, the $4.7 trillion would represent a value that could never be realized because if investors tried to liquidate their portfolios, prices would come down and they would "lose" the $4.7 trillion that they never had in the first place. Likewise, if everyone on pen-l promised to given everyone else a million bucks, we'd all be fabulously rich until we tried to spend it. The astonishing thing is not the "wipe out" but the illusion that there was anything there to be wiped out. A Mar. 21 MSNBC report says "Since March of 2000, when NASDAQ prices peaked, the tech sector collapse has wiped out an astonishing $4.7 trillion from investment portfolios." Is this accurate? Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
In the Defense (Department) of the American Free Enterprise System
Apparently some people can't tell the difference between laissez-faire and a lazy fairy. Military procurement is the rock upon which the American Free Enterprise System is built. All that other crap about the "private sector", "supply and demand" and "price competition" is window dressing for the benefit of the privates. Generals -- whether of the military or corporate variety -- need not encumber themselves with such minutae. I have a couple of pamphlets from a century ago that dwell lovingly on the God-given 14th amendment right of workers in private naval shipyards to work as long and as hard as their employers see fit for the defense of the nation, the progress of industry and the pursuit of happiness (the shipyard owners' happiness, of course). The issue was government regulation of the hours of work on work performed under government contract. The principle was and still is that such contracts are the private property of those with the political clout and connections to obtain them. The one great Cold War / AFL-CIO innovation was to set aside a larger portion of the spoils for the enjoyment of the unionized defense plant workers. Anyone who says otherwise is un-American. You got a problem with that, buster? Review question: "the principle was and is that government contracts are the private property of those with the political clout and connections to obtain them" Explain how this principle differs from the concept of a government chartered monopoly. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Reich in Op-Ed Overdrive
Funny, last week in his op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Reich wrote that the Democratic Party was DEAD. Maybe he's imagining that a new anti-corporate party will surge to the fore by 2002? Justin Schwartz wrote, I wish I could be so optimistic. Contrarry to the effusions of our friend Nathan Newman, there is no countervailing power in the Democratic Party; it is now clear than the if there was every any fight in the Dems, it is gone. The left to the lweft of the Dems is dispersed and lacking any institutional oomph. So I am predicting a long run of umbridled corporate capitalist power, informed by thes pirit of bipartisan cooperation. --jks It may be that the Bushies realize they will wear thin quickly, so it At some point perhaps as soon as the 2002 midterm elections, surely no later than the next presidential election the public will be aghast at what is happening. The backlash against business may be thunderous. Hence the great danger that corporate American confronts. Robert B. Reich, _ Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Monkey on a tricycle
It's amazing how it can take a "new economy" five years to learn something everyone already knew thirty years ago. Psst, wanna buy a tulip? Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Working class investors and the bear market
Over deep-fried chicken at the R D Luncheonette downtown on North Duke Street . . . Ah, the atmosphere! I'll try again to send a comment that got swallowed by the ether on Wednesday. In the summer of 1998, when the markets were falling in response to the Asian crisis some of the big name stock analysts were pointing to the still huge inflows of institutional money from retirement accounts as a bulwark against a catastrophic crash. I downloaded some demographic breakdowns of the U.S. labour force and fed them and historical participation rates into a spreadsheet to estimate when the inflows could be expected to peak. The answer was right about now. What this means is that while potential investment money is still flowing into retirement accounts, the rate of inflow is no longer increasing and may even have started to decline. A ponzi scheme requires an increasing rate of inflow of new money. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Going up?
On Thursday, a firecracker was set off at his building and someone defecated in an elevator . . . Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
DOW nine-nine-nine-nine
Back in the summer of 1998, as the U.S. stock markets were dipping precipitously, a familiar refrain of the 'optimistic' talking heads was that a huge amount of new institutional money was still flowing into the equity markets. I ran a quicky demographic analysis of the hypothetical sources of that new money (baby boomer retirement accounts), which suggested that the inflow would flatten out sometime between 2000 and 2001 (based on projections of labour force demographics and historical participation rates). Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
A short sermon on faith-based finance
Praying for salvation: The hemorrhage reverberated across the world and rang alarm bells in the White House. President George W. Bush expressed concern on Wednesday over the sharp drop in stock prices, but said he had ``great faith'' in the U.S. economy. Or divine intervention?: ``The Fed is the easiest, most handy scapegoat,'' said Bill Meehan, chief stock market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. ''Greenspan is the devil incarnate from the point of view of ordinary Americans. Some people have seen 80 percent of their pension funds wiped out.'' Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: PeopleSoft
I just got finished tangling with a telephone messaging system that undoubtedly was sold to the provincial government as a "labour saving / cost saving device." In the short term, it probably saves a few dollars on paper by concentrating workload on fewer employees. In the longer run, those employees get stressed out and go on sick leave, disability etc. and cost more than it would cost to fully staff the govt. service. Meanwhile, a heap of unpaid "self-serve" work is dumped on the hapless clients, who, if they're less educated or already overloaded with work have to simply abandon any hope of receiving the elusive govt. service at the end of the endless phone tree. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
The pen-l Challenge junta
Hey, I know I'm kind of slow on this one, but my article was mentioned in the November/December 2000 issue. In "Doing Something About Long Hours", Lonnie Golden and Deb Figart presented an overview of the analysis contained in their book, "Working Time: International Trends, Theory and Policy Perspectives." Material for my lump-of-labor chapter in the book was first run up the pen-l flag pole to see if anyone would salute it. As for copyright, I downloaded a copy for my personal use from Ebsco host, which is available through the public library here. I assume personal use includes sending a copy to anyone who personally requests it. Quoth Barkley: Well, folks, the March-April 2001 issue of Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs (vol. 44, no. 2) is now out (got ours last night), and it is a pen-l special. Rob Schaap: So what kinda copyright does C-MEA claim here, and, when can Pen-pals beyond the reach of C-MEA enjoy these wild articles in their rightful and natural habitat, ie. PEN-L? Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: A request for your critique
Whatever else, I got a kick out of Greg Clark dubbing Michael "the Chico Marx". Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Farewell to Academe
No, I counter-offered her a hair transplant and a Dale Carnegie course but it was no dice. maggie coleman wrote, Tom, don't stop at half a statement -- did you get either?? Tom Walker wrote: For the last two years before we split, my ex-wife lobbied me to get a vasectomy and a PhD. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Bankruptcy
David's "1000 flowers" bring to mind H.L. Mencken's reply when asked how much he would pay for 10,000 words on the San Francisco earthquake: "Which words?, In what order?" (leaving aside the odds that such famous quotes are likely to be misattributed). The 1000 flowers that get financed are not a random sample of the 1,000,000 flower ideas out there, but are for the most part cookie-cutter variations on what a few folks think they know in advance are _commercial_. It's the same as the 57 channels on TV -- an immense "variety" of conformism. I don't really see how a thousand permutations and combinations of metoo.com are that much different than, say 12, or maybe 57. David Shemano wrote: Second, nowhere did I say the technology mania is a "massive waste of resources." In fact, I am saying the exact opposite. If you want technological progress, there is no way for anybody to know in advance with any certainty how to effectuate "progress." The best way is to let a 1000 flowers bloom and see what people determine is useful. You cannot have progress without failure. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Farewell to Academe
For the last two years before we split, my ex-wife lobbied me to get a vasectomy and a PhD. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: White collar sweatshops
Doug Henwood wrote, $150,000/4,000 = $32.43/hr. $60,000/1,850 = $37.50/hr. You may have less stress, Justin, but you still make less. No. $37.50 an hour is more. Assuming Justin is paid for his marginal productivity, he is also more productive. Justin may also be able to work more years productively. He likely avoids the extra expenses associated with long hours of work. Curiously enough the impression of "making more money" has to do with the fiscal reference period of a year, which in turn is probably most meaningful in terms of income tax filing. Therefore, one could say that _from the perspective of the IRS_, Justin's friend makes more. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: More privatisation
Rob wrote: I see the best-cities-to-live-in poll for the year is out. If memory serves, Vancouver came top . . . And here I was thinking how glad I am to be out of Vancouver. The problem with being one of the "best cities to live in" is housing costs go up correspondingly. Thus it becomes impossible to do the living that is best in the city. That is to say one could live better in a city that is not as good to live in. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: definition of compassionate conservatism (compascism)
Jeffrey L. Beatty wrote, I'm making light of it, but the "creeping irrationalism" represented by the likes of the thinking in this essay really frightens me. Superficially, there is a lot to make light of in this creeping irrationalism. Fundamentally, though, it is frightening that the likes of the thinking in this essay at least appear as oratorically useful for the boys at the top of the pyramid. I'm toying with a titles for an engaged critique of this thinking. What do people think of: Compassion for the Hell of it. Compascism: New Whine in Old Testament Bottles Compassion Inc.: What's 'Love' Got To Do With It? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: The Problem
Rob Schaap wrote, Hope Olasky eventually gets to that bit of bible-based free market economics where his idol tips over the merchants' trading tables, or even that bit where he alludes to camels and eyes of needles ... Don't hold yer breath, Rob, that part is not in the abridged corporate public relations pancake prayer breakfast edition. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
RE: The Problem (You say Olasky, I say Alinsky. . . let's call thewhole thing off)
kelley wrote, which is all fine. but, the fact is, at least too progressive social movements were made possible by strong religious-based institutions: the civil rights struggle and the abolition movement and parts of the labor movement, especially in the south, where testifying in church--against the company that ran a town--wasn't unheard of. kelley raises important points. Reading Olasky's tributes to the faith-based welfare programs, one should recall Freirean "conscientization" and the emphasis on "empowerment" in the non-hierarchical post-1960s consciousness-raising left (not to mention the "Third Way" politics of Tony Blair, Bill Clinton etc. One could as easily call the Olasky creed "illiberation theology" as "compascism", eh? The logistics of mobilizing anti-bureaucratic, anti-statist rhetoric in the service of late state capitalism get pretty convoluted. My suspicion is that the future aparatchiki of the faith-based dole have a pretty good idea of just what _kind_ of ministry they want to subsidize and have the litmus (or urine) tests to prove it. My reference to the abridged, p.r. prayer-breakfast edition of the bible holds. That edition, by the way, is based on the Piltdown Scrolls, discovered in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1905 by the National Association of Manufacturers. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: The Problem
Michael Pugliese wrote: Long story here in the Texas Observer goes into the ideas and background of Olasky. http://www.texasobserver.org/bushfiles/ http://www.texasobserver.org/bushfiles/olasky.html Excellent introduction. PLEASE READ! As George Dubya Bush said in his election victory speech: "Together, we will address some of society's deepest problems one person at a time, by encouraging and empowering the good hearts and good works of the American people. This is the essence of compassionate conservatism, and it will be a foundation of my administration." Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: The Problem
Carrol Cox wrote, One must assume, rather, that they know what they are doing, and that they are doing it competently. Identify their motives with their actions. I take this as axiomatic. But it then raises another question: HOW DO they know what they are doing? Could they be ever so successful at managing IMPERIALISM without an explicit concept and analysis of what they were managing AS imperialism? My hunch is that the "anti-communist ideology" provides them with a pretty good approximation of a negative traditional Marxism. A couple of points about anti-communist ideology: 1. it is the intellectual product of people well versed in traditional Marxism, many of them ex-Marxists and 2. it has only become more aggressive in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The naive expectation would be that anti-communism would dry up and blow away without the focus of the Evil Empire. If the left is ever going to have a chance against the hegemon, we're going to have to look inside weird critters like Marvin Olasky and David Horowitz and see what makes them tic. Anti-communism is like one of those Russion nesting dolls, inside the last doll is an *interpretation* of historical materialism. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Gospel according to Marvin
From: "The Last Puritan: Meet Marvin Olasky, Governor Bush's Compassionate
Conservative Guru" by Michael King
For Olasky, economics (like charity) is a very personal science,
with the Bible as prescriptive authority. He refers regularly to
something he calls "Bible-based free market economics," conjuring a
somewhat puzzling vision of yeomanlike Mom-and-Pop stores along the
banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. When I asked him what he might
mean, he eagerly recommended a book, Prosperity and Poverty, by E.
Calvin Beisner, in the Olasky-edited series from Crossway Books.
Beisner, the cover proclaims, has an "M.A. in Society, with
specialization in economics ethics [sic] and has studied Christian
ethics in economics and apologetics." According to Beisner's book,
the Christian God is a sort of cosmic Landlord, Overseer, and
Investment Banker, and each person's responsibility is to "maximize
the Owner's return on His investment." Such maximization requires a
pure form of laissez-faire economics under which, Beisner
apologeticizes, "Such things as minimum wage laws, legally mandated
racial quotas in employment, legal restrictions on import and
export, laws requiring `equal pay for equal work,' and all other
regulations of economic activity other than those necessary to
prohibit, prevent, and punish fraud, theft, and violence are
therefore unjust." One imagines that Beisner is a popular
after-dinner speaker at solemn gatherings of Christian businessmen.
Such passing summations, unfortunately, are not caricatures of
Olasky's thought, but in fact the root and governing ideas of most
of his writings. Indeed, since he was gathered up by the burgeoning
network of national conservative foundations and think tanks (the
Heritage Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Capital Research
Center, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Western Journalism
Center, the Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty, etc., etc.,
etc.), his work has become even more simplistic, moralistic, and
unreflectively reactionary.
Renewing American Compassion (1996) is largely a practical
companion to Tragedy, filled with anecdotes of small-scale
Christian charity projects, and concluding with pietistic
suggestions for readers who wish to engage in conservative
compassion. ("Teach rich and poor what the Bible has to say about
wealth and poverty. Help a poor person negotiate the legal system.
Employ a jobless person. Lead a neighborhood association in a poor
part of town. Start a crisis pregnancy center. Give a pregnant
teenager a room in your home. House a homeless person. Adopt a
child.")
Tom Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant
Bowen Island
(604) 947-2213
Re: definition of compassionate conservatism
Jim Devine asked, isn't "compassionate conservatism" the same as _noblesse oblige_, i.e., that the rich and powerful are obligated to take care of their social inferiors, so that the latter won't resent the former and take care of matters themselves? Noblesse oblige would be too charitable. I forwarded some remarks on Bush's "compassionate conservatism" guru, Marvin Olasky under the subject title "Gospel according to Marvin". Below is a sample of the economic wisdom of Olasky's mentor on economic ethics, E. Calvin Beisner (I kid you not): Economics and the Image of God in Man Economics will be rescued from the malaise of socialism, bureaucratism, and econometrics only when its roots as applied moral philosophy are restored. Adam Smith, after all, was first a moral philosopher, and The Wealth of Nations (1776) was largely an empirical demonstration of claims he made about economic relationships based on his moral philosophy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). The center of economics' root system consists of our understanding of the nature of man and of sin, justice, and grace. In contrast to the materialism underlying both the Marxist and the Secular Humanist notions of economics, Christianity begins with the recognition that man is made in the image of God. That image, if we pay attention to Scripture, consists of intellectual and moral elements and works itself out in practical ways. For instance, the first thing we learn about God in Scripture is that he is a creative, productive worker: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). And He made light, and land, and sea, and sky, and fish, and plants, and birds, and beasts, and creeping things - a vast assortment of things! Starting with nothing, He made - everything. (If that is not profit, I don't know what is!) Intelligence, imagination, and power worked together in God to make everything. "Then God said, `Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth'" (Genesis 1:26). Before we've seen anything of the holiness of God, before we read anything of the spiritual aspect of man (Genesis 2:7), we learn that God made man in His image. And what was that image? The image of an intelligent, creative, productive worker. This means that intelligent, creative, productive work is an element of the image of God in man. To the extent that we develop our intelligence, creativity, and productivity, and to the extent that we exert ourselves diligently in work, we are not merely doing but also being what we are meant to do and be. We are expressing the image of God. And in so doing, we are growing in spiritual and personal maturity. Here is the fundamental reason why all poverty relief programs that create or perpetuate dependence, that reward sloth, that level those who work hard and smartly with those who work hardly or not at all, or work stupidly, must be opposed-not merely because they are economically counterproductive (they are) but because they strike at the heart of what is to be human. They rob their "beneficiaries" of their dignity as bearers of the imago Dei, thrusting them down to the level of the brute beasts. Rather than enabling recipients of "aid" to exercise a godly dominion, they dominate the recipients with a form of oppression every bit as deadly to the soul as any political tyranny. At bottom, such programs and the systems that embody them fail because they neglect the reality of sin, both in the "beneficiary" (whose propensity to sloth is catered to by the assurance of handouts) and in the "benefactor" whose propensity to abuse power feeds on the increasing dependency of his charges).[5]1 Here also is the fundamental reason why contemporary fears of resource depletion and environmental disaster are unjustified. The Malthusian theory that underlies them is precisely opposite this Christian view of man. Malthusianism sees man as primarily a consumer, not a producer; it thus, like socialism, views people as brute beasts, unable to produce more than they consume without direction from above (which is why environmentalism and socialism readily go hand in hand and environmentalism may turn out to be the last best hope of socialists to gain control over the world's economies). But true Christianity casts aside this dark and foreboding view of man and his role in the world. With all its recognition of the sinfulness of man due to the Fall, it also recognizes that God made man to be, like Him, creative and productive. To put it simply, the average mouth born into this world connected to two hands - and, more
Re: definition of compassionate conservative
Maggie Coleman wrote, A friend of mine sent this to me, thank heavens I now KNOW what compassionate conservatism is! Compassionate conservatism: It's compassionate to take in illegal immigrants. It's conservative not to pay them. That may be too true to be funny. As I understand it, the Marvin Olasky doctrine advocates "moral" discrimination among those deserving and not deserving "charity". Although "compassionate" may sound like some sort of moderation of plain old right-wing, cut-'em-off-at-the-knees meanness it's really meant as an intensification and rationale. In Dubyutopia, poor folks can look forward to relying on the kind-hearted patronage of the Linda Chavezes of the nation or face her "tough love" if they don't measure up to "christian" standards of behavior and fealty. Oops, did I say fealty? Isn't that what it's all about -- sing the christian business gospel choir theme song or die, you worthless heathen scum! Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Anti-globalization activists have their facts wrong
Robert MacDiarmid asked, can anyone with a better grasp of stats than I have help with a rebuttal to this drivel? Anti-globalization activists have their facts wrong JOCK FINLAYSON I don't have the stats but I know Jock and have debated him several times. What he does, and he's pretty good at it, is assemble bits and pieces of data that support his argument, which is really the position of the Business Council that he is employed to promote. It's just a highly selective presentation of data to uphold a pre-conceived conclusion. Rebutting this kind of drivel with another selective presentation of data, upholding the contrary point of view, is in my opinion futile. What I have done is look more closely, over the longer term, at the role these "economic arguments" play in the public relations campaigns of business organizations and the way that economists play along with the game. incidentally, I'm grateful to Jock for inadvertently turning me on to the granddaddy of all business organization public relations campaigns, the great "lump of labour fallacy" hoax. Since I've done my research he's not likely to use that one again. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Money wage cuts and employment
Unemployment develops . . . because people want the moon; -- men cannot be employed when the object of desire (i.e. money) is something which cannot be produced and the demand for which cannot be readily choked off. There is no remedy but to persuade the public that green cheese is practically the same thing and to have a green cheese factory (i.e. a central bank) under public control. -- J.M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936, p. 235 Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Sandwichman and Deconsultant
Chris Burford wrote: Doesn't a sandwichboard get in the way? I've designed a very light and comfortable one from corrugated plastic. You sound like a sort of amiable electronic sophist, enigmatically wandering from city state to city state attracting curious attention and playing with the intelligence of those who might be interested. It's interesting you should come up with this image. One of the subtexts I was trying to work into the concept was of Diogenes. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Span-ish fly
Investors added another worry to their long list of concerns after a tumultuous 2000 for the market, now fearing that major U.S. banks could be hit with losses from their lending to struggling California utilities. ``It's hard to make the case that an interest-rate cut is the solution to all problems,'' said Bill Meehan, chief market analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald Co. ``After the digestion of the news and the euphoria, what we are interpreting the rate cuts to mean is that there is more weakness and a greater slowdown in the economy than thought,'' said George Rodriguez, senior vice president at Guzman Co. ``The Bank of America scare was an excuse, but I think the amount of earnings disappointments has really spooked the market,'' said Guy Truicko, portfolio manager at Unity Management. The market is worried that ``the Fed missed it, that they didn't do enough and now they're trying to scramble to catch up,'' he added. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Keynes in the news
Jim Devine wrote, By Jessica Garrison, TIMES staff writer. economist John Maynard Keynes, father of supply-side economics..." Perhaps she means progeny conceived by antithesis? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Keynes in the news
Gene Coyle asked, Just who was the mother of supply-side economics? And what was Keynes doing in bed with her? Or was it one of those turkey-baster conceptions? Surely you've heard of "Bastered" Keynesianism? That makes Paul Samuelson the mother, doesn't it? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Economists surprised???
Michael Perelman wrote: Perhaps Bush will have the same run of luck that Clinton did. Perhaps . . . if he hangs around in the Oval Office with his fly undone. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Recession, succession and ruling class unity
Although maybe if they fed the economic data through a Florida voting machine . . . Senior Clinton administration officials angrily charged that top members of President-elect George W. Bush's team were ''talking down'' the economy in a campaign for tax cuts that could backfire by spreading self-fulfilling fears of a sharp slump. ``What you're seeing is President-elect Bush and his team actually talking down our economy, actually probably injecting more fear and anxiety into the economy than is justified,'' said Gene Sperling, a White House economic adviser. REALISM, OR SCARE-MONGERING? But Vice President-elect Dick Cheney said later the incoming Bush administration, which will take power in January, had to be realistic. Bush campaigned on a program of offering a $1.3-trillion tax cut to fuel U.S. prosperity. ``There does seem to be a lot of evidence out there that in fact the economy has slowed down some,'' Cheney said in a meeting with reporters. ``Whether or not this ultimately results in a recession, that is negative real growth, nobody knows at this time.'' Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
New direction/recession?
I'll go out on a limb with a prediction that the coming hard times will not necessarily be a recession (technically), they will be largely impervious to fed reflation or tax cut voodoo and they will be characterized most strikingly by a rolling series of supply bottlenecks and infrastructure failures. California's electricity and Florida's voting machines are the tips of the iceberg. I suspect that the technocrats' bag of quantitative tricks will prove ineffectual because the nature of the economic dislocations will be decidedly qualitative. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Kickoff the unaugural ball!
On January 20, 2001 wear black or go naked. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Question for the Lefties
David Shemano wrote: the left critiques of neoclassical economics is that neoclassical economics incorrectly assumes that markets are "natural" and not a creation of the rules of the political system, which reflect the interests of the powerful in that system. The rules of the political system may well reflect the interests of the powerful, but that doesn't mean that capitalism is a mechanism of conscious design and intent, like a watch. Your question assumes that markets are either "artificial" or "natural" and that the existence of black markets seems to be evidence for their naturalness. The duality itself is the problem. Markets are the result of social relations, which are _both_ natural and artificial. It is the nature of humans to make things. The concept of market is itself an abstraction that brings together many different complexes of interaction and calls them by the same name. Black markets may be the same as stock markets or flower markets in _some_ respects, but they are also different, as suggested by the qualifying adjectives. Actually, though, black markets don't tell us enough about markets to be able to understand a social system that appears to be centered on the market. I said "appears to be" in the last sentence because central to Marx's critique of political economy is the claim that markets *express* production relations in a mystifying way -- they are neither the basis of nor the explanation for those production relations. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Cyborg variations
"At a certain point in time, the motif of the doll acquires a sociocritical significance. For example: 'You have no idea how repulsive these automatons and dolls can become, and how one breathes at last on encountering a full-blooded being in this society.' -- Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project, (with a quote from Paul Lindau, Der Abend 1896) "Empathy with the commodity is fundamentally empathy with exchange value itself. The flaneur is the virtuoso of this empathy. He takes the concept of marketability itself for a stroll. Just as his final ambit is the department store, his last incarnation is the sandwich man." -- Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Bachelor Machines, Commodity Fetish, Cyborgfuck the Flaneur
Also (on the eve [Eve] of the millennium): Karl Marx, "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" Appendix to Capital vol. 1, 1976 translated by Ben Fowkes. (discussion of formal and real subsumption) Susan Buck-Morss, "The Flaneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering," New German Critique, Fall 1986. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 1999, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Prepared by Rolf Tiedemann. Strolling through town yesterday I dropped into a bookstore where I sold a load of books last month and thus had a credit. I was thinking of doing some Christmas shopping. The first thing I saw was Benjamin's Arcades Project. My gift buying intentions went out the window. It so happens that I undertook a PhD program at Cornell in 1987 expressly to study at the feet of Susan Buck-Morss and to read Benjamin's Passagenwerk, which at that time, of course, was not yet translated. It took about a month and a half for me to realize that the school I had enrolled in would not permit me to pursue the scholarship for which its faculty had presumably admitted me. One of the bizarre incidents that demonstrated this to me was the German class where I was progressing quite satisfactorilly according to my own assessment and purpose, which was reading German, but was "failing" because the instructor's grading system emphasized one's precision at translating English into grammatically correct German. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Bachelor Machines Commodity Fetishes
Yoshie wrote: Sexism commodity fetishism make many men unable to distinguish human beings called "women" from dolls bachelor machines. The obverse of this true observation is the emasculation of the man without money. There are no "innocent" positions outside the infernal circle of sexism and commodity fetishism, nor is it by any means a feature peculiar to heterosexual relationships. Intimate scene from a marriage: sexually unsatisfied wife complaining about condoms to unemployed husband after intercourse: "it would be more enjoyable if you got a vasectomy." husband to self: "wanna bet?" Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: The End
I thoroughly agree with and endorse Michael's ruling. I think it's time for (en)closure on this matter. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: New Quiz for Kelley
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Donna Haraway says that we are all "cyborgs." I say (taking liberties with Susan Buck-Morss and Walter Benjamin) that we are all sandwich[wo]men. Cyborgs are the fetishized manifestation of our sandwichedness. Cyborg ist mort. Viva la smo/rgasbord! Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: NASDAQ
No. NASDAQ is bouncing at a rate that should have it approaching 3000, 2000, 3500, 1500, 4000 and 1000 any day now. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: President-elect Gore
Max, Can you say le-gis-la-ture? A vote in the hand is worth two in the Bush. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Question for the Lefties
David, Your question presumes markets are anathema to socialists and I agree that is a fair assumption with regard to "traditional marxists". There are also market socialists, such as Justin Schwartz on this list. I happen to hold a third position, which is more or less agnostic toward markets. I would argue that under capitalism markets are an expression of production relations. Since production relations would be different under socialism, markets wouldn't have the same importance but they may continue to have some residual social function, such as garage sales have today. In other words, they wouldn't be a matter of life or death. I don't think that we will change production relations simply by outlawing markets. But the existence or persistance of markets is not the same as the claim that in every circumstance markets will produce a "more efficient" outcome. That claim relies on the tautology of first of all defining the market outcome as the standard for efficiency and secondly discovering (what a surprise!) that markets are best at achieving that standard. David Shemano asked: What is the implication for your various analyses from the widespread existence of black markets? Black markets have existed not only with respect to specific commodities (drugs, alcohol, etc.), but in places such as prisons, Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet Bloc. I will bet there are even black markets in North Korea, for goodness sake. Is that an interesting factual phenomena from your perspective? Is it relevant to whether markets are natural and inherent in human relations, or merely artificial creations? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: query
Rob Schaap wrote: Class Intrerview: LO, VFK, FUACV? S, IMXv N IFNNEK. URDOA! UC, VRS N URD. FIFNNEK, IFNNED! FUFNNED, VFNNEM'! S, URXK. S, VRDOA2. Isn't that a typo in the first line, or did you mean "Intrerview"? The rest is perfectly clear. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
After the bell. . . Intel
What else could one say but "the chips are down." David Shemano, you're in the right industry! Ever thought of teaming up with a sandwichman/deconsultant (it's sort of like being a bankruptcy attorney at the macro scale)? Let's do lunch. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Weber's crime punishment
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: P.P.S. I'm claiming more than you attribute to me. I'm saying that Max Weber committed an intellectual crime of anachronism, akin to an anachronistic argument that Socrates was "gay." Is an intellectual crime anything like a thought crime? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Pepys once, twice. . .
Samuel Pepys wrote, . . . and also reading a little of _L'escholle des filles_, which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world. . . . and I to my chamber, where I did read through _L'escholles des filles_, a lewd book, but what do no wrong once to read for information sake. Pepys appears to have "read" the book twice. The first time, he "read it over" a little to assure himself of its lewdness. The second time he read it through. Was he "sober" during the second reading? He mentions having "drank a mighty store of wine" with his singing buddies. Could it be that Pepys is _coquetting_ with prudishness as a way of constructing his enjoyment of the "information"? Isn't it only for the prude that the text appears lewd and thus a potential source of pleasure? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: a closer link . . .(was a dark novel. . .)
Ian Murray wrote, While Socrates may have said something like the above; he's totally wrong on the sentiment. The love of money and power are manifestations of a fear of death, the source of the idea of a duality of the "soul" and the body. The pyramids and Pharaoh's say it all i.e., the following sequence?: fear of death | / \ body/soul dualism love of money Another possibility is that all three are quasi-autonomous manifestations of objectified social relations and hence are mutually reinforcing but none is *a priori*. That second possibility avoids granting ontological status to the fear of death. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Speaking of ghosts . . .
Anybody else find it _spooky_ that James Baker III is quarterbacking the Bush manuevers? Wasn't he the guy [not some son of a guy] who received stolen Carter briefing books from William Casey in the 1980 elections? Wasn't he the guy who authorized the Glaspie wink to Saddam for the invasion of Kuwait? Is there some kind of media blackout on Baker's own past that contrasts oddly with the spotlight on Daley's patrimony? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: CounterCoup
Said Walker: it is inevitable that popular protest express itself in inarticulate and perhaps inappropriate slogans. Replied Sawicky: ok. And inappropriate personalities, like Jerry Brown, for instance. Exactly. so both sides are full of it. so what? So the "sidedness" requires that both "sides" frame the issue in oppositional terms around an agreed focal point. In this case, the focal point is choosing a winner. to situate simplistic reductions in their historical specificity . . . You lost me there. Which is to say that the right analysis at the right time doesn't necessarily carry the day, either. Timing may well be everything in politics and may even explain why a "worse" argument may, at a particular time and place, defeat a better one. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Do the right thing
Brad DeLong wrote, I've never understood the whole "things are bad, so let's make them worse!" meme... Several Democratic Senators and newspapers which had endorsed Gore are now urging Gore to not pursue a legal challenge to the Florida results to avoid a "constitutional crisis", which in their view would be worse than a Bush presidency. One more slice of the salami? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Florida Voting Rights Wrongs . . .
Nathan Newman wrote, . . . the deeper problem beyond Gore v. Bush in these elite media and politician calls to bypass recounts or the courts through a concession. There were and are serious violations of law in the election and the right to go to court is the only proper way to resolve many of them. Thanks to Nathan for circulating this. I think we need to focus the debate on Pen-l to building a movement around this issue. The elite media and politcians are calling for a backroom deal to preserve the facade of democracy while denying the fundamental substance of democracy. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Bush or Gore
Under current circumstances, a Bush election (by the electoral college, including the Fla. outcome) would be a blatant coup d'etat, even if Gore went along with it. The Florida election should be invalidated leaving no majority in the electoral college which would a vote by the house. I assume that means a Bush election by the house, although that is not written in stone. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Dubya under the influence
His car briefly went onto the shoulder of the road when he swerved to avoiding hitting the ghost of Mary Jo Kopechne. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
The Subject is Capital
Two great quotes from Time, Labor and Social Domination (p. 80). I would be more than happy to discuss, if anyone else is interested: ". . . those positions that assert the existence of a totality only to affirm it, on the one hand, and those that recognize that the realization of a social totality would be inimical to emancipation and therefore deny its very existence, on the other are antinomically related. Both sorts of positions are one-sided, for both posit, in opposed ways, a transhistorical identity between what is and what should be." "In Hegel, totality unfolds as the realization of the Subject; in traditional Marxism, this becomes the realization of the proletariat as the concrete Subject. In Marx's critique, totality is grounded as historically specific, and unfolds in a manner that points to the possibility of its abolition." Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Progressive Information Aggregation Institutions?
Hi Robin, What do progressive economists think of how well speculative markets aggregate information, relative to feasible alternatives? I would suggest looking at speculative market reactions to downsizing reports in the 1980s and 1990s. Job cuts were greeted by jumps in stock prices. Subsequent analysis, however has found no significant relationship between reductions in staffing and increases in productivity. see http://www.unites.uqam.ca/ideas/data/Papers/nbrnberwo4741.html There have also been studies that show increased labour costs from long-term disability. In this case you might say that the markets were efficient in aggregating misinformation. Bre-x was another instance where I would suggest that people were buying into a swindle largely because they felt that Bre-x was a nasty piece of business and that they were somehow in on the scam. Same with the heights of NASDAQ fever, people were buying BECAUSE the rise was not credible and they didn't want to miss out! Can progressive economists identify some other specific social institution that they believe does better at aggregating information, and which hence consistently makes more accurate timely estimates of things like who will win an election or a horse race? The library, conversation, critical reflection. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Laws of Motion: Do they exist for non-capitalist MPs?
Carroll Cox wrote, This query is based on an argument advanced some years ago by Sweezy and Magdoff. I can't remember the exact source, but I believe it was an MR Review of the Month. They were speaking specifically of socialist society, and argued that one of the mistakes of Soviet theorists was to assume that there were "laws" for a socialialist economy just as there were laws for a capitalist economy. If one characterized the U.S.S.R. as state capitalist rather than as a socialist society, then the Soviet theorists would be correct in assuming that there were laws, but wrong in assuming they would be laws of a socialist economy. But would there be an "economy" in socialism? At any rate the lawful dynamic of capitalism arises out of the contradictions of the historical specific value form, which would _disappear_ with the abolition of capitalism. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Progressive Information Aggregation Institutions?
Robin Hanson replied .. speculative market reactions to downsizing ...Subsequent analysis, .. found no significant relationship Bre-X ... buying into a swindle ... I'll accept these as specific examples of errors in market estimates. But the question is whether some other source has fewer errors on average. You know the joke about predicting market crashes being like a stopped clock -- it's right twice a day. One might say the converse for markets. They may *on average* perform the aggregation of (admittedly constrained) information relatively efficiently. But when they foul up, they really foul up. I wouldn't necessarily attribute the problem with markets to markets but to the phenomenon that where there's a system, someone will find a way to "work" the system. Markets are not immune to manipulation and may offer an unusual amount of motivation and opportunity for doing so, not to mention ideological justification. Let's say I want a probability estimate right now of the chance Bush will win. What specific library or conversation should I go to get get a better estimate than I could find at Iowa Electronic Markets? I would have to say that the Iowa "Markets" could more resemble a highly structured conversation than an actual market. Unlike stock markets, the buying and selling activity doesn't feed back into the outcome of the actual election (for now at least). Also I doubt there's enough money involved to cause some one to try to fix the election so they can clean up on the Iowa Market. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Entertainment: it was surreal
Monday October 30 5:53 PM ET L.A. Police Under Fire After Killing Actor at Party By Sarah Tippit LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The scandal-plagued Los Angeles Police Department was under fire again on Monday as angry questions swirled over an officer's shooting to death a black actor who waved a fake gun at a noisy Halloween party. Anthony Dwain Lee, 39, a practicing Buddhist who appeared in the 1997 movie ``Liar, Liar'' and on such TV shows as ``NYPD Blue,'' was shot several times early Saturday by Officer Tarriel Hopper, 27, who fired through a glass door from an exterior hallway at a mansion just north of Beverly Hills, police said. Friends of Lee reacted angrily Monday, saying police had overreacted and failed to issue any warnings before the shooting. Some questioned whether he was shot because of his skin color. But others pointed out that Hopper is also black. Hopper, who has been on the force for three years, remained on duty as police defended his action, saying he thought the actor had a real gun and was about to shoot it. Police had been called the house to investigate complaints about a noisy party. The shooting was the latest in a series of controversies to hit the Los Angeles Police Department this year. More than 30 officers have lost their jobs and more than 100 convictions have been overturned because of a corruption and brutality scandal involving officers of the police's anti-gang squad at the Rampart Division. Police there have been accused of framing and beating suspects. City leaders are now considering a proposal in which the U.S. Department of Justice ([66]news - [67]web sites) would oversee the force. The department has never fully recovered from the damage its reputation suffered when the beating of black motorist Rodney King by four white officers in 1991 was captured on videotape and became a national symbol for police brutality. ``I think this was a horrible tragedy,'' said Steve Sims, a 27-year-old nurse who attended the party dressed as a ``night stand'' and had a lampshade tied to his head as he tried to help Lee moments after he was shot. He said he had to argue with police to let him help his friend, but it was too late. GUESTS ALL IN COSTUME Police said the incident took place about 1 a.m. at a party attended by about 200 guests mostly in their 20s and 30s, all dressed in costumes. Many of the guests were actors and entertainment industry professionals, who had come to the five-story house known as ``the Castle'' for its spires and stained glass. They had been treated to music by a professional deejay and drinks from a professional bartender arranged by roommates who rented the house. The guests were preparing to board shuttle buses and depart when the police arrived. Police said Hopper and his partner, Natalie Humphreys, 25, looked for the owner of the house before heading toward the rear, where they peered through the glass door into a small room and spotted three people, including Lee, whom they thought pulled out a gun. Witnesses told reporters that people were milling about in different rooms and that Lee, who was standing in a bedroom with friends, saw a light shining through the window. Thinking it was a joke, he joked back, pointing his fake gun at the light. Police spokesman Guillermo Campos said Hopper feared for his life when he saw Lee pull what looked like a handgun and in response fired several shots from his service pistol at Lee. A coroner's spokesman said Lee had been wearing a dark hooded sweat shirt and dark slacks at the time of his death. Witnesses said he may also have been wearing a devil mask. ''SOUNDED LIKE FIRECRACKERS'' ``All of a sudden you hear what sounded like firecrackers people started yelling oh my God there's shooting! I looked and I saw bullet holes in the glass and then I smelled smoke in the air and I saw Anthony laying on the ground. He was just dead,'' said Erik Quisling, who witnessed the shooting. ``He had been shot multiple times at fairly close range. Bullets went through the glass, through him and through a back wall,'' said Quisling, a filmmaker dressed as Dracula. Another witness, Sims, said he wanted to use his nursing background to try to help Lee. ``It was surreal,'' Sims said. ``I look in there and I see a man laying on the floor, one leg up on the bed, his back on the ground, his arms kind of spread out, a gun just out of reach of his hand on the floor, and I didn't know whether this was a hoax or a grand finale to the party ... And then I realize that (it's real),'' Sims added. ``I said to the officer we've got to check to see if he's alive,'' Sims said. ``I said, 'Go in there, kick the gun out of the way, see if there's a
Re: Break Their Haughty Power
Louis Proyect wrote, (Some of you may be familiar with the name Loren Goldner. His writings have been circulated widely on the Internet. I had mistakenly assumed that he was a member of the American SWP, but he seems rather to be a "council communist" of long standing. In any case, he has set up a website called Actually, I am familiar with the name Loren Goldner from Berkeley City summer camp around 1959 or 1960 at Camp Cazadero near the Russian River. There must have been something in the camp indoctrination rituals . . . maybe it was the "folk songs" around the campfire. Loren recalls getting a bad case of poison oak and spending much of the time in the infirmary. I remember that he nicknamed me "stick". The nickname didn't (stick, that is). Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: What is a university?
Michael Perelman wrote, Regarding Martin's question about the nature of University employment. John Stuart Mill: "The proper function of an University (is) not ... to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood. . . I think it might be useful to think of the university today as a "pageant", not unlike one of those "colonial Williamsburg" re-enactments for the tourists. The success of the performance is not necessarily related to its verisimilitude -- although verisimilitude may well be one of the criteria at some of the better quality venues. The performers themselves may be professional actors or they may be amateur history buffs who make a hobby of dressing up in period costume. Ultimately, the success of the performance relies on its ability to attract tourists willing to pay the price of admission. Because the pageant has to compete with other entertainment options, it may have to adapt the production values and special effects popular in them, even if they are inappropriate to the events purportedly being re-enacted. The specific production values and special effects aimed for by the university today are more readily recognized if we also think of "business" today as more of an entertainment spectacle than a practical undertaking. The university today differs from the business enterprise in more or less the same way that colonial Williamsburg differs from Disneyland. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Where are the economists? (to the tune of where have all theflowers gone)
Brad de Long wrote, Walt Whitman Rostow is a very good development economist and economic historian. But I wouldn't call his tenure as Assistant to the President for National Security a big win... I wouldn't call Rostow's once canonical _The Stages of Economic Growth_ a big win as development economics or economic history, either. There is more of a connection between Rostow's facile take-off theory and the Westmoreland body-count logic of Viet-Nam War escalation than might appear at first sight. Compare the following quotes: " . . . one can see in the conduct of the Vietnam war how the new style of planning serves values beyond efficiency . . . McNamara, his systems analysts, and their computers are not only contributing to the practical effectiveness of U.S. action, but raising the moral level of policy to a more conscious and selective attention to the definition of its aims." (Fortune, 1967) "There is every reason to believe, looking at the sensitivity of the political process to even small pockets of unemployment in modern democratic societies, that the sluggish and timid policies of the 1920's and 1930's with respect to the level of employment will no longer be tolerated in Western societies. And now the technical tricks of that trade -- due the the Keynesian revolution -- are widely understood." (Rostow, The Stages) Or how about Rostow's "happy end": "And so, when compound interest took hold, progress was shared between capital and labor; the struggle between the classes was softened; and when maturity was reached they did not face a cataclysmic impasse. They faced, merely, a new set of choices; that is, the balance between the welfare state; high mass consumption; and a surge of assertiveness on the world scene." Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Post-retirement work boundary
In response to Peter Dorman's question, my suggestion for a solution would be to start the retirement process much earlier. Paradoxical? The point would be to introduce a phased reduction of working time, such that one would never entirely withdraw from work, it would simply become less and less central to one's life. In 1998, I outlined a proposal for "Rewarding Years of Service with More Free Time", which was commended as one of the best ideas of 1998 by the Institute for Social Inventions in London. The URL for that idea is: http://www.globalideasbank.org/wbi/WBI-43.HTML When checking the web page, I was pleased to note that 25 people have evaluated the idea with an average score of nine out of a possible ten. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant (for whom retirement has never been an option -- who ever heard of a retired sandwichman/deconsultant? I have, however moved to a mountain top on an island 'in the Pacific') Peter Dorman wrote: This is, to my mind, a classic example of the conflict between the competitive logic of capitalism and the needs of real human beings. Assuming that a significant percentage of older people are less productive (which will be the case in physical work or work requiring skills that update frequently), and that paying them proportionately less is not an acceptable option, how then do you provide fulfilling work opportunities for all the people in this survey? Peter (for whom post-retirement is no longer an abstract concept) Richardson_D wrote: BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2000 Americans are now expected to spend decades of their lives -- not years -- in retirement, and that may not be a good thing, according to a researcher at the International Longevity Center-USA, a nonprofit group in New York. "Twenty or 25 years of retirement may sound pretty good to people who have worked hard all their lives, but whether it's good for their health or the health of the nation is another matter," says Dr. Robert N. Butler, president of the group and a co-author of a book "Longevity and Quality of Life: Opportunities and Challenges". "Inactivity is one of the greatest threats to the physical and mental health of older people," Dr. Butler says. It turns out that Americans agree. Findings from a recent national survey suggest that workers want to continue to work after full-time employment -- but on their own terms. In the survey, by the John J. Heidrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers and the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut, 1,005 workers, chosen at random, were interviewed between Aug. 4 and 31. Three-fourths said they would like to retire early from their permanent, full-time jobs. But only 10 percent of those surveyed said they would stop working after leaving those positions. Nearly 70 percent said they would continue to work even if they had enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. ... (New York Times, Oct. 8, page 9, "Money Business" section).
Re: Warning Signs
Max Sawicky wrote: I suppose if others predict crisis every six months or so, and I never predict one, eventually they'll be right and I'll be wrong. What's the opposite of a broken clock that's right once a day? Maybe an electric clock that keeps the right time until the lights go out. I predicted that summer in Vancouver would last to the third week in September. And it has. From my perspective we are still "in" the last crisis, which so far has shown itself remarkably pliant to crisis management and/or the crisis management itself has been uncannily successful. I don't see anything in the current bundle of "concerns" to upset that success, so things could get messy for some folks (as they have been messy for other folks for years) without setting off a red alert. On the other hand, if there is a "soft-landing", and if the moderate slowdown persists for a few quarters more than is comfortable THEN things might start getting a bit dicey. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: the labor theory of value
In a message dated 9/23/00 8:44:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The only other relevant question is whether labor creates value. For those who think not, they do not belong on PEN-L, but that's just my opinion. One other relevant question concerns the "value of value" -- that is to say the ultimate social value of what immediately counts as value. Marx's discussion of value, surplus value and labour deviated from Ricardo's earlier analysis along lines that had already been sketched out in the 1820's by "a whole group of writings . . . which turned the Ricardian theory of value and surplus-value against capitalist production in the interest of the proletariat, and fought the bourgeoisie with its own weapons." One anonymous pamphlet, which Engels called the "most advanced outpost" of these writings, contained the following reservation in its prefatory remarks: "From all the works I have read on the subject, the richest nations in the world are those where the greatest revenue is or can be raised; as if the power of compelling or inducing men to labour twice as much at the mills of Gaza for the enjoyment of the Philistines, were proof of any thing but a tyranny or an ignorance twice as powerful." The importance of this anonymous pamphlet for Marx's own thinking about value cannot be overstated. Some sense of its importance can be gotten from notebook 7 of the Grundrisse, "The Chapter on Capital" and particularly in the section headed, "Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development, Machines etc." that begins on page 704 of the Martin Nicolaus translation (Vintage) and continues to page 711. Marx cites the pamphlet (The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties) repeatedly throughout this passage. Once again, I'll mention that I've stitched together a web relating the passages from the Grundrisse, Theories of Surplus Value and the Source and Remedy pamphlet, which can be found at: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/dispose.htm Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: Prostitution, Disease, and Race (was Fall of Communism sparksjob growth)
I wrote: There is an immaculate conception between this topic and the "Market as God" thread. Jo wrote: Yeah? And who emerges from the spotless sheets? You positing a saviour of some sort, Sandwichman? Don't you mean: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: The simple/elementary form of value . . .
Charles Brown wrote, Though most of the book "value" is used. But "value" can be used to refer to "use-value" too. Value in the sense of "wealth" is in the form of commodities, and commodities are bundles of exchange-value and use-value. Remember, though, "A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing . . . so far as it is a use-value there is nothing mysterious about it . . . [j]ust as little does [this mystical character] proceed from the nature of the determinants of value [the expenditure of labour power] . . ." "Whence, then, arises the enigmatic character of the product of labour, as soon as it assumes the form of a commodity? . . . The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists therefore simply in the fact that the commodity *reflects* the social characteristics of men's own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things." Yes, then, exchange-value expresses value but it does so in an "inverted", "mysterious" form -- as a relationship between things (e.g., linen and coats) rather than as the relationship between people -- the weaver and the tailor -- that it fundamentally is. Elsewhere (e.g. in the Grundrisse and in the Critique of Political Economy), Marx makes a fundamental distinction between "value", which is a characteristic of the commodity form and "wealth", which is not. That distinction is so crucial that I'll have to reserve comment on it until I have a bit more time to elaborate. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
RE: The simple/elementary form of value considered as a whole (wasRe: Charlie Andrew's book)
Mat Forstater wrote, I don't see either one as short-hand for the other. Exchange-value is the expression of value. Correct. However, Marx _used_ exchange-value as an abbreviation, _said_ he had used it as an abbreviation but then pointed out that, strictly speaking, it was wrong to do so. I suspect we're entering into the paradoxical aspect of Marx's rhetoric in which he allows an error to stand, provisionally, until such time as he had developed the argument far enough to enable him to "remove the scaffolding". I think I understand the reasons for doing this and would concur with Marx's rhetorical judgement, as puzzling as it may seem from OUR perspective. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: Prostitution, Disease, and Race (was Fall of Communism sparksjob growth)
There is an immaculate conception between this topic and the "Market as God" thread. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: the Market as God
Jim Devine wrote: A leftist Jesuit recommended the following to me: (For the whole thing, see http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm) The Market as God: For more variations on the theme, "the religion of the market", see: An engaged Zen Buddhist: http://www.bpf.org/loy-mkt.html A United Church of Canada Moderator: http://www.faith-and-the-economy.org/ A professor of policy studies: http://web.uvic.ca/cpss/dobell/pubs/sies.html Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: Economics and Literature
The first time I tried to read Chapter One of Volume I, I kept falling asleep. Over the years, as I have re-read the chapter and learned and experienced other things, the chapter has become much more readable and enjoyable. A distinguishing feature of literature is that it improves with experience. Brad DeLong wrote, The first few chapters of _Capital_. They *are* turgid and nearly unreadable, in the standard English translations at least... Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant 215-2273
Re: anti-Pomo babble
JKSCHW wrote, I have read and indeed taught the major pomos poststructuralists--Derrida, DeMan, Foucault, DeLeuze Guttari, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Rorty, and made an effort to get a grip on Irigaray, Kristev, Butler, and Spivak. I am pretty confident that they share a family resemblance in advocating: 1) antifoundationalism, by which they seem to mean a sort of naive realtivism, a denial of objective truth, in favor of social constructiism; [etc.] ". . . their epigones in the American academy amplify and vulgarize them to a ludicrous extent. . . " This last comment is something that I agree with. The triviality of the American epigones is certainly as much a reflection of the "higher learning in America" as it is of the errors of post-modernist thought. A typical graduate seminar might throw the above laundery list at its students, perhaps even seasoned with Gramsci, as a sort of a book-of-the-week boot camp. The point then becomes to affect a style, not to plumb any depths. One can then "apply" the style to an essay on the subversive subtext of "I Love Lucy". The earlier list, starting with antifoundationism, seems to me to be a projection -- "they _seem_ to mean a sort of naive realitivism". Kafka said (roughly) "there is hope, but not for us." Why can't one say there is objective truth, but it eludes discourse? Yoshie wrote, I've read every postmodern philosopher literary critic of importance (and then some); it's a part of the occupational hazards of grad students in English. Therefore, my view is a considered view, and if you so desire, I can quote from Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Kristeva, etc., chapter verse, and point out problems with more specificity. -snip- Should you find my criticisms unsatisfactory, take a look at Ellen Meiksins Wood, _The Retreat from Class_, for instance. Ahem. I'm not saying there are no "problems" with, for example, Derrida or Foucault. It would be a surprise if there were none. Without reading Wood, I would wager there must be "problems" with some of her criticisms. It seems to me that a lot of the misunderstanding arises from the resistance to grasping some of the paradoxes that post-modernist writers address. The distinction between object and subject is a convention of discourse that never quite means the same thing each time we use it. To contrast "objective truth" with naive relativism is to first of all assert the extra-temporal stability of the object -- that is to say, it is to pose an objective reality "outside of time". Since time is part of reality, such an assertion of objective truth is self-contradictory. That's more or less dialectics. The problem always seems to be one of distinguishing between a negative critique and a positive foundation. The latter is always an artifice, an artifact of language, while the former is not in and of itself a sufficient ground for action. Some people choose to dwell forever in the twilight zone of critique (Adorno, Horkheimer). Others build ornate castles in the air over the rubble (Hayek). Temps Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant
anti-Pomo babble
Gee, it seems that either a lot of folks have read much more post-modernist stuff than I have or maybe it's that it is easier to make sweeping generalizations about something on the basis of hearsay. There's a lot of crap that gets written under the pretension of post-modernism. The same can easily be said for "marxism" or "sociology". The "Post Modern Condition" happens to be the name of a specific book by a particular author, Lyotard. Other than that "post-modern" is a sloppy label or a reviewer's crib for "a bunch of those French guys, you know the ones I mean." Temps Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant
