comment
see http://www.ucomics.com/nonsequitur/2004/06/12/ jd
Re: Love Affair Update - additional comment
why send the lyrics to the list? It does not add much. Sorry. A bit of dark sarcasm. I'll try to be more constructive and observe good style. Okay then. From a linguistic point of view, in American idiom, the expression America's love affair with..., America's love of/with... etc. is in truth applied to a variety of American fascinations, real or imputed, sometimes sincerely and sometimes cynically or sarcastically (including the rebel, baseball, Israel, fresh herbs, SUVs, the community, littering etc.). In literature, for example, we have Norman Mailer writing in Marylin, chapter 1, that So we think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America. Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards. But the expression surfaces also in Britain, Ireland and Australia these days, i.e. it has become a generalised Anglo-Saxon expression gladly adopted by the car industry. Examples: As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, however, one cannot deny that the motor car has fundamentally changed our way of life. It is a vitally important part of the way in which society functions. I agree with the noble Lord's point about social attitudes towards cars. The motor industry is probably the most ultimate symbol of the love affair with the car. The car has become one's personal space and it allows personal freedom--or at least it appears to. The motor industry presents us with an object which travels at tremendous speed requiring the driver's tremendous skill and in strident competition. It is something to which people can relate. - Lord Addington, speech to the British Parliament, 24 Jan 1996 To say that the United Kingdom has had a love affair with the car is not to overstate the matter. This is particularly so in Northern Ireland, where motor sport and cars have been a big part of social life. Because of our interest and for reasons of the economy, geography and social background, th e car has been to the fore in planning. I am not saying that that is a bad thing, but it is part of a situation that has evolved: cars have become very necessary. Someone said that we have come to a defining moment. It is a defining moment for the individual, for public transport and for the rural aspect. It is a defining moment for planning issues, for the Government and for the car industry. These are all areas of great concern, as is the environment, including the quality of the air. - Mr McAlister, Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue, 14 November 1997 The year 1903 marks the beginning of Australia's love affair with the car, now a century-long romance that has fostered some remarkable engineers, entrepreneurs and trading partners, not to mention rally and racing drivers. http://www.focus.com.au/motoring/ When I was a student in Thatcherite times, I saw a political movie once called The Plowman's Lunch about Thatcherism, I think starring Jeremy Irons, a sort of British version of Sam Neill. The Plowman's Lunch was the name given to a dish marketed as an English traditional dish, even although in reality the label was just invented one day by an entrepreneur as a commercial venture. It is thus quite possible that similarly the concept of America's love affair with the car is a latter-day ascription; while it might recall James Dean and Jack Kerouac, in fact I personally cannot trace a use of this exact expression in the 1950s, and thus I venture to suggest, this idiom came into wider use only in the 1970s. The Dutch tend to talk more about our holy cows in reference to personal cars. Hope this helps :-) - Jurriaan
DeLong on Paul Sweezy - brief comment on law of value
Jim raised the question in that post Yoshie mentions: But then again, I'm not sure exactly what it means to have to have the law of value continuing to operate under socialism. Does that mean that the economy isn't totally under a plan? ^^^ And that some goods and services are traded based on the socially necessary labortime in them ? Charles Brown
Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy - brief comment on law of value
"But then again, I'm not sure exactly what it means to have to have "the law of value"continuing "to operate under socialism." Does that mean that the economyisn't totally under a plan? Comment "The Economic Development of the USSR" by Roger Munting, St. Martin Press 1982 contains enough stats to interest a professional economist and not bore a lay person. The book begins before the October Revolution and traces economic events up to 1980. Munting critically examines agriculture and industry in the Soviet Union - their relationship to one another and technological transfer from the capitalist world, which required the Soviets to purchase items on the basis of the law of value under the bourgeois property relations. The issue is not "planning" as such but the exchange of labor hours - within the borders of the Soviets and in its relations with the capitalist world (foreign exchange) based on an existing technological regime. There is an old joke that says, the Soviets would overthrow world capitalism and allow one capitalist country to exists so that they would know how to price products. Melvin P. It is sometimes asked whether the law of value exists and operates in our country, under the socialist system. Yes, it does exist and does operate. Wherever commodities and commodity production exist, there the law of value must also exist. In our country, the sphere of operation of the law of value extends, first of all, to commodity circulation, to the exchange of commodities through purchase and sale, the exchange, chiefly, of articles of personal consumption. Here, in this sphere, the law of value preserves, within certain limits, of course, the function of a regulator. But the operation of the law of value is not confined to the sphere of commodity circulation. It also extends to production. True, the law of value has no regulating function in our socialist production, but it nevertheless influences production, and this fact cannot be ignored when directing production. As a matter of fact, consumer goods, which are needed to compensate the labour power expended in the process of production, are produced and realized in our country as commodities coming under the operation of the law of value. It is precisely here that the law of value exercises its influence on production. In this connection, such things as cost accounting and profitableness, production costs, prices, etc., are of actual importance in our enterprises. Consequently, our enterprises cannot, and must not, function without taking the law of value into account. Is this a good thing? It is not a bad thing. Under present conditions, it really is not a bad thing, since it trains our business executives to conduct production on rational lines and disciplines them. It is not a bad thing because it teaches our executives to count production magnitudes, to count them accurately, and also to calculate the real things in production precisely, and not to talk nonsense about "approximate figures," spun out of thin air. It is not a bad thing because it teaches our executives to look for, find and utilize hidden reserves latent in production, and not to trample them under foot. It is not a bad thing because it teaches our executives systematically to improve methods of production, to lower production costs, to practise cost accounting, and to make their enterprises pay. It is a good practical school which accelerates the development of our executive personnel and their growth into genuine leaders of socialist production at the present stage of development. The trouble is not that production in our country is influenced by the law of value. The trouble is that our business executives and planners, with few exceptions, are poorly acquainted with the operations of the law of value, do not study them, and are unable to take account of them in their computations. This, in fact, explains the confusion that still reigns in the sphere of price-fixing policy. Here is one of many examples. (Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR - J.V. Stalin) http://www.marx2mao.org/Stalin/EPS52.html
Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy - brief comment on law of value
So, Sweezy wished to clarify the meanings of the terms socialism and communism by saying that the law of value still continues to operate under socialism to the extent that economy is capitalistic, i.e., governed by market discipline, whereas it won't under communism worth its name. As Jim Devine said four years ago, Well, this is a pretty mild and inconsequential thing to agree with Stalin [or the Soviet economist(s) who wrote the work attributed to Stalin] about Jim raised the question in that post Yoshie mentions: But then again, I'm not sure exactly what it means to have to have the law of value continuing to operate under socialism. Does that mean that the economy isn't totally under a plan? The answer to Jim's question is really that in the USSR you basically had (at the risk of simplification) a capital goods sector where the distribution of inputs and outputs were mainly regulated by the plan according to administered prices and countertrade agreements etc., and a consumer goods sector, where at least many outputs were priced either by regulating prices (controlled by the planning authorities) or by market prices. In some areas that worked very well, but in some areas it did not work much at all, in which case the result was black and grey markets, informal trading and so on. A market is not necessarily a capitalist market, since it is not necessarily dominated by the imperative of private capital accumulation. Market refers only to a regular pattern of trade involving a certain number of buyers and sellers applying to a specific supply and demand, but just exactly what the nature of that trade is, what the terms of exchange are, can vary and need not necessarily be dominated by private bourgeois accumulation. This is ABC for any economic historian or anthropologist. In a certain sense, what you had in the USSR was an extended social democracy without much popular democracy. It is amazing really how well it worked economically, relatively speaking, even in the absence of many civil liberties, popular democracy and many modern communication/information technologies - the material conditions of life could be improved very fast, for a very large number of people. To a certain extent this was of course due directly to forced labour. But forced labour by itself cannot explain the successes of Soviet economic growth, you can see this easily by looking at the quantitative proportions of labour what was truly forced. In reality, economic modernisation in the USSR wasn't simply a question of workers being forced to produce a surplus for bureaucrats. There was also genuine enthusiasm for improving the conditions of life, and improving human culture, and people felt they had a personal stake in improving their society. There was both cynicism and enthusiasm. The reason why markets weren't abolished despite state controls, is of course because you still had wage-labour, and a large portion of claims to consumer goods and services were realised through a waged income in roubles; Soviet citizens had a constitutionally guaranteed right to work, an obligation (duty) to work, and a lot of job security as well, but, those jobs took the form of wage work, and the possibilities for job mobility often wasn't very great, given the way the larbour market was organised. So even if Soviet workers couldn't buy what they wanted with their roubles, economic exchange therefore wasn't abolished at all, formally or informally, all sorts of trading (including barter) continued to occur. But the terms of exchange were drastically changed, being to a large extent controlled, regulated and limited by the authorities. The law of value states, in its most general (transhistorical) expression, that globally speaking, the value of commodities in exchange is regulated or determined by the socially necessary work-time required to produce them. This law, expresses the social necessity of a relationship between production costs and social needs, and it applies to markets, and ONLY to ma rkets, and therefore, it concerns relative price levels of goods and services, and relative exchange-ratios in trading. The word value in the exp[ression law of value applies to the value of the object of trade. It sets limits to what relative price levels can be, it sets limits to relative exchange-ratios, and it means that relative productivity levels reached in producing output, influence the direction in which relative and absolute prices move, because cost considerations will change the terms of exchange, and balance them out over time, given a relatively constant basic consumption structure. To the extent that administered prices had nothing to do anymore with real production cost or real demand for products, and competition between enterprises for sales could not level out prices, or establish regulating prices in an open market, the law of value was no longer a regulative principle for trade in the USSR; the exchange-ratios of traded
World money, countertrade and exchange relations - additional comment on services
I quoted Marx on services as follows: Thus, because the specific relation of labour and capital is not contained at all in this purchase of services; because it has either been completely extinguished or was never present, it is naturally the favourite form used by Say, Bastiat and their associates to express the relation of capital and labour. As an aside, I think it is worth mentioning that Marx was thinking here mainly about personal services, and that he modified his idea somewhat when he prepared Capital Vol. 1 for publication. Thus, his analysis of the paid work process provided there provides a much more sophisticated analysis of the real subsumption of human work by capital, and subsequently, in discussing value-augmentation through production, Marx writes e.g. that Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The worker produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce a surplus-value. That worker is productive only, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and therefore works for the valorisation of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive worker when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his schholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not change the relation. Hence the concept of productive work doesn't simply imply a relationship between work and useful effect (a service being defined as the useful effect of a use-value - JB), between the worker and the output of work, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation which has sprung up historically and stamps the worker as the direct means of creating a surplus-value. The specific investigation of services was never advanced very much in Marxian scholarship beyond generalities, verities and platitudes, in particular because most authors do not grasp that the problem is about the specifically capitalist modification of the division of human work, the restructuring of inputs and outputs to conform to the requirements of capitalistic value-accretion, and to the pattern of the real subsumption of human work by Capital. Ernest Mandel correctly noted that many activities which are called or statistically classified as production of services are really production of tangible goods, or part of the production of goods (Le troisieme age du capitalisme). That is really because in the foundational categorisation of the occupational division of work, statisticians lack a theoretical basis or scientific analysis of social relations, and hence, the categorisation made is descriptive, it is based just on the actual occupational divisions which there actually are, and which of course are modified over time, so that, over time, some additional divisions are added to the classification etc. and at some point the classification has to be drastically revised. But Ernest Mandel also likes to use the concept of veralgemeinte warenproduktion (generalised commodity production) to describe the capitalist mode of production. While this formula is useful to describe the universalisation of market relations, it does not however do real justice to Marx's contention, stated in the quote I mentioned, that Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is ESSENTIALLY the production of the Mehwert. What is essential for Marx, to be precise, is the transformation of human work into a value-accretion process, under conditions where the increment can be privately appropriated by someone else. So it is not really Marx who has a labour theory of value, it is rather capitalism itself, which transforms human work into a commercial value, as Diane Elson pointed out once. This qualification by Marx which I just stated is also the basis for Tony Cliff's idea that the USSR must have been state capitalist (a bureaucratic elite extracting a surplus from production) giving rise to a whole sectarian or apologetic dispute about the social nature of the USSR which doesn't really contribute very much to solving the problem of socialist transition and the emancipation of the working classes, i.e. the transformation of production and exchange relations to create more freedom and efficiency for all, on an egalitarian basis (and not just for some). The real problem was, that the bolsheviks came to power without having a clear understanding about the socialist transformation of Russian society, and therefore, in many ways, ended up running roughshod over the workers and peasants. Because of their sentimental attachment to an ideological doctrine, many Marxists refuse to understand this, and then you get only apologetics presenting failures as successes, rather than the development of effective
U.S.-Andean Free Trade Agreement; intent to initiate negotiations; hearing and comment request,
[Federal Register: February 17, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 31)] [Notices] [Page 7532-7534] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr17fe04-142] === --- OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES TRADE REPRESENTATIVE Request for Comments and Notice of Public Hearing Concerning Proposed United States-Andean Free Trade Agreement AGENCY: Office of the United States Trade Representative. ACTION: Notice of intent to initiate negotiations on a free trade agreement between the United States and Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia (hereinafter ``the Andean countries''), request for comments, and notice of public hearing. --- SUMMARY: The United States intends to initiate negotiations with four Andean countries on a free trade agreement. The interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC) will convene a public hearing and seek public comment to assist the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in amplifying and clarifying negotiating objectives for the proposed agreement and to provide advice on how specific goods and services and other matters should be treated under the proposed agreement. DATES: Persons wishing to testify orally at the hearing must provide written notification of their intention, as well as their testimony, by March 10, 2004. A hearing will be held in Washington, DC, beginning on March 17, 2004, and will continue as necessary on subsequent days. Written comments are due by noon, March 30, 2004. ADDRESSES: Submissions by electronic mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (notice of intent to testify and written testimony); [EMAIL PROTECTED] (written comments). Submissions by facsimile: Gloria Blue, Executive Secretary, Trade Policy Staff Committee, at (202) 395-6143. The public is strongly encouraged to submit documents electronically rather than by facsimile. (See requirements for submissions below.) FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For procedural questions concerning written comments or participation in the public hearing, contact Gloria Blue, Executive Secretary, Trade Policy Staff Committee, [[Page 7533]] at (202) 395-3475. All other questions should be directed to Bennett Harman, Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Latin America, at (202) 395-9446. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 1. Background Under section 2104 of the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act of 2002 (TPA Act) (19 U.S.C. 3804), for agreements that will be approved and implemented through TPA procedures, the President must provide the Congress with at least 90 days written notice of his intent to enter into negotiations and must identify the specific objectives for the negotiations. Before and after the submission of this notice, the President must consult with appropriate Congressional committees and the Congressional Oversight Group regarding the negotiations. Under the Trade Act of 1974, as amended, the President must (i) afford interested persons an opportunity to present their views regarding any matter relevant to any proposed agreement, (ii) designate an agency or inter-agency committee to hold a public hearing regarding any proposed agreement, and (iii) seek the advice of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) regarding the probable economic effects on U.S. industries and consumers of the removal of tariffs and non-tariff barriers on imports pursuant to any proposed agreement. On November 18, 2003, after consulting with relevant Congressional committees and the Congressional Oversight Group, the USTR notified the Congress that the President intends to initiate free trade agreement negotiations with the Andean countries and identified specific objectives for the negotiations. In addition, the USTR has requested the ITC's probable economic effects advice. This notice solicits views from the public on these negotiations and provides information on a hearing, which will be conducted pursuant to the requirements of the Trade Act of 1974. 2. Public Comments and Testimony To assist the Administration as it continues to develop its negotiating objectives for the proposed agreement, the Chairman of the TPSC invites written comments and/or oral testimony of interested persons at a public hearing. Comments and testimony may address the reduction or elimination of tariffs or non-tariff barriers on any articles provided for in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) that are products of one of the Andean countries, any concession which should be sought by the United States, or any other matter relevant to the proposed agreement. The TPSC invites comments and testimony on all of these matters and, in particular, seeks comments and testimony addressed to: (a) General and commodity-specific negotiating objectives for the proposed agreement. (b
Re: military Ricardianism redux - for scholars: a prophetic comment by Karl Marx on destructive forces
As regards military Ricardianism, for those interested in the finer points of scholarship, here's an 1845-46 comment from Karl Marx on the transformation of productive forces into destructive forces. In German, the text is: In der Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte tritt eine Stufe ein, auf welcher Produktionskräfte und Verkehrsmittel hervorgerufen werden, welche unter den bestehenden Verhältnissen nur Unheil anrichten, welche keine Produktionskräfte mehr sind, sondern Destruktionskräfte (Maschinerie und Geld) - und was damit zusammenhängt, daß eine Klasse hervorgerufen wird, welche alle Lasten der Gesellschaft zu tragen hat, ohne ihre Vorteile zu genießen, welche aus der Gesellschaft herausgedrängt, in den entschiedensten Gegensatz zu allen andern Klassen forciert wird; eine Klasse, die die Majorität aller Gesellschaftsmitglieder bildet und von der das Bewußtsein über die Notwendigkeit einer gründlichen Revolution, das kommunistische Bewußtsein, ausgeht, das sich natürlich auch unter den andern Klassen vermöge der Anschauung der Stellung dieser Klasse bilden kann. http://www.ml-werke.de/marxengels/me03_017.htm#I_I_B_3 The English translation of the passage (together with the context preceding it) is: How little highly developed productive forces are safe from complete destruction, given even a relatively very extensive commerce, is proved by the Phoenicians, whose inventions were for the most part lost for a long time to come through the ousting of this nation from commerce, its conquest by Alexander and its consequent decline. Likewise, for instance, glass-painting in the Middle Ages. Only when commerce has become world commerce, and has as its basis large-scale industry, when all nations are drawn into the competitive struggle, is the permanence of the acquired productive forces assured. (...) Competition soon compelled every country that wished to retain its historical role to protect its manufactures by renewed customs regulations (the old duties were no longer any good against big industry) and soon after to introduce big industry under protective duties. Big industry universalised competition in spite of these protective measures (it is practical free trade; the protective duty is only a palliative, a measure of defence within free trade), established means of communication and the modern world market, subordinated trade to itself, transformed all capital into industrial capital, and thus produced the rapid circulation (development of the financial system) and the centralisation of capital. By universal competition it forced all individuals to strain their energy to the utmost. It destroyed as far as possible ideology, religion, morality, etc. and where it could not do this, made them into a palpable lie. It produced world history for the first time, insofar as it made all civilised nations and every individual member of them dependent for the satisfaction of their wants on the whole world, thus destroying the former natural exclusiveness of separate nations. It made natural science subservient to capital and took from the division of labour the last semblance of its natural character. It destroyed natural growth in general, as far as this is possible while labour exists, and resolved all natural relationships into money relationships. In the place of naturally grown towns it created the modern, large industrial cities which have sprung up overnight. Wherever it penetrated, it destroyed the crafts and all earlier stages of industry. It completed the victory of the commercial town over the countryside. [Its first premise] was the automatic system. [Its development] produced a mass of productive forces, for which private [property] became just as much a fetter as the guild had been for manufacture and the small, rural workshop for the developing craft. These productive forces received under the system of private property a one-sided development only, and became for the majority destructive forces; moreover, a great multitude of such forces could find no application at all within this system. (...) from the conception of history we have sketched we obtain these further conclusions: (1) In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer forces of production but forces of destruction (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class. (...) (4) Both for the production
Estimating the surplus - a comment about the data
I wrote previously: depreciation schedules implemented are crucial for the amount of distributed and undistributed profits. Yesterday I was looking at the most recent detailed US IRD and NIPA data, which I hadn't done before, and I noticed this fact is actually acknowledged in the NIPA calculation of corporate profit income - thus, gross profits are adjusted for different methods of depreciation write-offs and the change in the value of inventory stocks. In this way, a large profit can be shrunk to a small profit by an economist, to fit his concept of national income. I mused that it's sad that, given the excellent data sets provided by organisations such as the US Department of Labour, US Bureau of the Census, Federal Reserve Board, the National Association of State Budget Officers and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, so-called Marxists in the USA often make such very paltry, trivial analyses. Because socialists could make very powerful political arguments, if they investigated the data, and don't let an urge for mathematical obscurantism, banale hedonism and theoretical orthodoxy get in the way - the crimes of the capitalists, if such they be, are recorded there for all to see. If they uses their brains, instead of collapsing in a postmodernist stupor. Just to take a very simple example that's a sign of our times - gross farm business income in 2002 is said to be $236.9 billion and net farm business income is said to be only $36.2 billion (direct government support payments constituted about 17 billion of this net income, i.e. nearly half). Farm business assets were valued at $1.29 trillion in 2002. Farm debt reached $201 billion at the end of 2002, and looks to be increasing fast. But just by examining this data, it's clear the annual gain in farm asset values actually exceeds the increase in debt levels. Now who exactly is getting rich out of all this, and who is losing money ? Actually, it turns out that farm real estate is valued at more than eighty percent of the farm sector's assets. In 2001, farm business assets were valued at $1251 billion, of which physical assets were $998.7 billion in real estate and $193.3 billion in other physical assets, and $58.9 billion financial assets. It's not just a game of monopoly or I spy with my little eye here, we're talking about the lives of around a million wage workers, of which half parttimers, around a million self-employed workers, and thirty thousand or so unpaid family workers. Surely there's a good story in that, for the motivated researcher ? On the surface, the story of America's economy seems to a high drama of daring financial speculation, but in reality it's more a case of borrow and hope for some, and grab what I can get for others. Yet the moral ideas which underly that lifestyle seems to go unquestioned, they aren't critically examined. We're all supposed to be nice and sexy, and love Unca Scrooge, is that it ? Jurriaan
Re: Estimating the surplus - a comment about the data
Well yes, there's data and then there's good data and the BEA utilizes offsets so that changes in depreciation figures triggered by tax credits are zeroed out of the profit sum. In addition, the BEA and other sub-groups of the Dept. of Commerce report corporate profits before and after taxes, with and without capital consumption and inventory adjustment, so it's possible to get a fairly accurate picture of the profit trend as well as the profit numbers. And the US Dept of Agriculture publishes a wealth of data which can be selected by the user for cross-referencing... But the capitalist economy has always been smash and grab, borrow and hope, more or less, more and less. So? So this, the critique of capital, its immanent critique is not found in the moral ideas about lifestyle, but in the conflict between the means and relations of production -- and that's where the indexes provided by the BEA show some value. dms
Re: Estimating the surplus - a comment about the data
I have not followed agriculture closely since my 1977 book on the subject. Agricultural statistics must be taken with a grain of salt. Farmers commonly will write off expenses, such as gasoline, that can be used for their own personal consumption. Also, in many branches of agriculture, farmers are more like franchisees. They have contracts to sell, which determine their inputs and their methods almost as much as a McDonald's franchisee. Because of the enormous power of the distributors and suppliers of agricultural inputs, small and midsize farmers are being squeezed. Bankruptcy and debt is rampant. Big farmers often profit by farming the government rather than the soil. The new book King of California, which I hope to get to soon covers this very well by telling the story of the Boswell operation in California. Agricultural subsidies in US are a scandal, but part of the scandal is that the bulk of the subsidies go to a handful of farmers. Note to Doug Henwood and Sacha: the authors of the book would make a good interview. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Rate of profit - comment
It seems to me that a context of rising profits (unless you believe it is over) will have strategic importance to our assessments of the medium term directions of the US economy - and the types of challenges we will face. As I explained before on PEN-L, Karl Marx believed equilbrium was established not by supply-demand factors as in bourgeois Harry Potter economics stories, but by the social relations of production; but production relations here do not just refer to class relations or private property relations, but to all kinds of proportionalities in the sphere of production. The critical variables shaping production relations in Marx's analysis are S/V, C/V, S/C+V, Cf/Cc, the rotation speed of capital (how fast you can recoup your investment), the rate of reinvestment of realised surplus value, the relative accumulation rates in different branches of production, and so on. Within a stable framework of production relations, market fluctuations can occur, but those fluctuations do not threaten the foundations of bourgeois society, and these fluctuations are contained and limited by production relations. However, Karl Marx also insisted that capitalist production was the unity of the production process and the circulation process. Therefore an analysis of the creation of wealth and the distribution of that wealth cannot be separated from each other as in Sraffa, and if you do, you still don't understand anything at all. If you abstract what happens in production from what happens in circulation, as the Marxist fundamentalists do, you also go wrong. In other words, you have to look both at the total cost structure of production (interest rates, credit facilities, debts, currency values, labour markets, and so on), you have to look as the labour process itself, and you have to look at the distribution of the new income generated by the new value product (taxation, income transfers, unequal exchange, expenditure patterns, the competitive process for the share-out of profits). When you do so, you realise that if profits rise, this doesn't really mean much on its own anyway, because then you still do not know the specific mode of private accumulation of that capital, i.e. how exactly is this new additional capital invested given current perceptions of risk ? And here a specific quantitative analysis is essential, especially because in our time the capitalist crisis is a crisis of excess capital, i.e. the underutilisation of capital such that the opportunities for making a lot of money in ordinary production stagnate, there is excess installed productive capacity, and so on, you face both stagnating profits and stagnating demand, and the new growth areas are luxury spending, military production, privatisation/rationalisation, and so on, because that reflects who has the buying power. Wolff also concurs with D L that one major cause of the profit rise was a shift in shares away from labor and to profit. This argument is deceptive, precisely because (1) real income of capital could just rise faster than real income of labour, but what can you deduce from this ? Not very much at all, because S/V must be related to the distribution of real income, and (2) Wolff mixes up bourgeois and Marxian concepts of productivity. Basically Wolff's analysis is just economics, it has nothing to do with workingclass strategy or with thje transition to socialism. Wolff does not find a significant change in the organic composition of capital for the economy as a whole over the last 50 years (i.e. no rising rate of OCC; tendency for a falling rate of profit). This analysis he does has great merit, because it at least begins to acknowledge the DYNAMIC relationships which Marx intended to reveal with the concept of the OCC rather than some inevitable law as the fake Marxists argue. But Wolff is just wrong about the rising rate of the OCC, because what we need to study is the secular trend in the magnitude of real labour costs as a proportion of total input costs (intermediate consumption, fixed capital, levies and payments) and the secular trend in the magnitude of real labour costs as a proportion of unit output values. Most Marxist and non-Marxist economists do not understand this at all, because they haven't got a clue about how a commercial business works. Wolf has tended more towards finding profit squeeze effects (now capital squeeze ?) and has tended to discount any tendency towards rising OCC's\falling rates of profit (that then meet their offsetting tendencies). If Capital can squeeze Labour, Labour also can squeeze Capital, and therefore a profit squeeze can empirically occur and there is empirical evidence for profit squeezes in various West European countries at different times. But a profit squeeze is extremely rare, because it assumes a balance of forces very favourable to the working class, and a mode of organisation which doesn't take away income gains as soon as they are conquered. I have trouble
170 billion crimes per year ? - additional comment
I wrote: By multiplying my 1:29 ratio by the world population, I arrive at the estimate that the total number of crime victim reports in 1997 in the whole world must have been 170 billion in round figures. Just imagine that eh. 170 billion crimes a year in the whole world. Hell, crime is as common as a packet of Malboro's. In case you didn't get it, one ought not to multiply the total number of the world population by 29, but divide total by 29, and then you arrive at a figure of 200 million crime victim reports in the world for 1997. Still, crime is as common as a packet of Malboro's. J.
Re: Paul Krugman on GDP surge - additional comment
Thanks. An odd feature of the U.S. housing boom is that the rental index hasn't gone up all that much - $46b gain between 2000 and 2001 (latest available). The annual GDP tables have data on imputations - specifically 8.21, at http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableViewFixed.asp?SelectedTable=185Firs tYear=1996LastYear=2001Freq=Year. The UNSNA calculation is a bit different from the BEA calculation. But anyhow the majority of the large quarterly real GDP increase of over 7 percent seems to be due to purchases goods, namely offices and office equipment, purchases of newly built houses, purchases of motor vehicles and motor vehicle repairs, increased food consumption, and increased expenditure on medical supplies. Many inventory levels actually dropped because of the existing underutilisation of a quarter of installed productive capacity. See BEA Table 8.2 at: http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableViewFixed.asp?SelectedTable=165First Year=2002LastYear=2003Freq=Qtr You can sort of imagine Bush saying, now look at this, wouldn't you like Iraq to have all this wonderful wealth as well - and they could have it, with American help. But before we get too impressed with this, we ought to establish exactly who is partaking of all this this wonderful new wealth within the USA, and that is the analytical challenge for socialists. What would be the average figures ? An average American worker would earn about US$ 54,000 gross, pay about $9700 tax, providing a take-home pay of $44,000. The total net value of family household assets would be about $42,000. According to some sources though, the real disposable income (net pay plus other sources of personal income such as investments) of the average American worker would now be as high as $50,000, suggesting about $6,000 personal non-wage income. His average total debt service ratio at the moment would be 18 percent, if he owned a home it would be 14 percent and if he rented an apartment it would be 29 percent. So he would be paying off an average of just under $8000 in debts per year, and if he he owned a home it would be just over $6000 and if he was renting it would be just under $13,000. About three quarters of white workers own a home and about half of Asian, Hispanic and black workers don't own a home. The average personal savings rate would be 3.2 percent so the average worker would save $1400-$1600 per year. Of the average worker's consumer expenditure, under 60 percent would be non-retail, and over 40 percent retail. Out of total household consumption per person, the basic structure is as follows: the big items are transportation bills (about 20 percent), rent or mortgage (about 18 percent), food and beverages purchases (about 17 percent), gas, electricity and water bills (8 percent) health care (6 percent), clothes purchases (6 percent), entertainment purchases (5 percent), furnishings and equipment purchases (4 percent). Okay, but now consider this. 1 in 5 American workers lost a job during the last three years. Two thirds of Americans say their biggest worry today is whether or not they will have a job tomorrow. Two-thirds of laid-off workers received less than 2 weeks notice and no severance pay. Three-fourths of American workers did not maintain any health benefits. A third of these workers are now underemployed. Approximately 1 out of every 100 mortgages in America is currently in foreclosure, and 1 in every 5 American mortgages is more than 30 days late. 3.3 million jobs are expected to be outsourced to India and China over the next few years. . The poverty rate was about 12.1 percent in 2002. The number of poor is 35 million, one in eight Americans is officially defined as poor. Jurriaan
Terms of exchange - additional comment on lie-ability, especially for Comrade Sabri
In my previous post on Marxmail I left out one important point. This point is, that in accounting for Iraq ONLY on the basis of assets and liabilities, which is the Colin Powell argument, it is important to understand the effects of revaluing assets in the account. The christian fundamentalist balance sheet equation formally followed in the West is, as we know: assets = liabilities + net worth, where A liability is defined as a financial obligation, debt, claim, or potential loss. An asset is defined as any item of economic value owned by an individual or organisation, convertible into cash. Net worth is defined as total assets minus total liabilities of an individual or company (for a company, this is also called owner's equity or shareholders' equity or net assets). Suppose now that assets are revalued, so that the value of the assets becomes greater. In that case, net worth will increase. But not only that, because the relationship between assets and liabilities changes as well, and on that basis, we can incur new liabilities and increase liabilities. But, now suppose that liabilities are revalued, so that the value of liabilities becomes smaller. You guessed it, net worth will also increase. But not only that, because the relationship between liabilities and assets changes as well, and on that basis, we the assets actually increase in value if they are tradeables. For this, we get a christian fundamentalist imperative for the accumulation of capital: 1) The value of assets must be raised, and the value of liabilities must be reduced 2) The value of assets must be not be reduced, and the value of liabilities must not be increased But suppose that we can change the meaning of assets and liabilities. In that case, a liability might become an asset ! So you see, it is all in the way you look at what is an asset and what is a liability. You have to BELIEVE. Jurriaan
Jesus and the Rolex: additional explanatory comment
Carl Jung has some advice for our troubled times, which consists in spiritual reform, in other words, the oppressed of this earth need a good dose of spirituality for their salvation. Thus, he said in the wake of the second world war: Everything possible has been done for the outside world: science has been refined to an unimaginable extent, technical achievement has reached an almost uncanny degree of perfection. But what of man, who is expected to administer all these blessings in a reasonable way? He has simply been taken for granted. No one has stopped to consider that neither morally nor psychologically is he in any way adapted to such changes. As blithely as any child of nature he sets about enjoying these dangerous playthings, completely oblivious of the shadow lurking behind him, ready to seize them in its greedy grasp and turn them against a still infantile and unconscious humanity. (...) The question remains: How am I to live with this shadow? What attitude is required if I am to be able to live in spite of evil? In order to find valid answers to these questions a complete spiritual renewal is needed. And this cannot be given gratis, each man must strive to achieve it for himself. Neither can old formulas which once had a value be brought into force again. The eternal truths cannot be transmitted mechanically; in every epoch they must be born anew from the human psyche. Source: http://www.cgjungpage.org/articles/wishardhist.html Notice the completely tautological reasoning in Jung's argument: human beings have to change, but, it is not explained HOW they should change, everyone has to do that for themselves, he says, and therefore, you cannot say anything more about that. Of course that is true, but then we have neatly abstracted from humans as social, cooperative beings, from social change, for social practice, from technology and science, from political power, and we wind up saying that eternal truths must be re-implemented in specific contexts. And of course eternal truths are only as good as the skills of the researcher who claims to discover them. As for myself, I would not trust Jung for a cent in that respect, and indeed I would reject eternal truths in favour of time-bound truths. The point is rather that in our search for eternal truths, we end up with a hypostatis in the present, we eternalise what exists now, the status quo, and we are effectively back to the feudal dispute between Galileo and the church. We can, of course toss around clever analogies and symbols endlessly, but that just distracts from the real problems. And that is WHY those analogies and symbols get tossed around by the ideologues. But that just makes problems even worse, because we end up not knowing what to focus on anymore. In case you didn't know, Carl Jung had a flirtation with the Nazis, although he refused to psychoanalyse Hitler when asked. Here you had an expert on the human soul, who neither clearly foresaw and analysed the Nazi phenomenon beyond a dim realisation something was going wrong, did not fight it actively, and did not realise that world war 2 would produce more psychological problems and psychiatric cases than existed ever before. That is really interesting, because that means that someone could in principle help a few hundred patients in therapy, being only vaguely aware that social, political and economic events could create millions of nutcases in the future. And then you get these people who prattle that a social science is impossible, only a social engineering. Whereas, if that was really true, we would need to invent such a science ! As regards the currently favourite expert in America - when the Republican candidates were asked to name their favorite political philosophers, Mr. George W. Bush replied: 'Christ, because he changed my heart.' Asked to elaborate, he said: 'Well, if they don't know, it's going to be hard to explain'. 'When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the Savior, it changes your heart. It changes your life. And that's what happened to me.' In other words, you can be President of the United States of America without having to explain yourself. I guess that, once again, we will have to wait for the memoirs, i.e, the explanation of why we were correct is projected into the future. I have Hilary Clinton's memoirs here, actually, and the title of the second to last chapter sums up the end of all bourgeois wisdom: DARE TO COMPETE. As for me, I'm off to have a shave. And for some old wine in a new bottle, if only I had some. Jurriaan
Sociological comment on equilibrium: the ledger concept
When we probe the concept of economic equilibrium in bourgeois economic theory deeply, I think we actually have the conclude that all bourgeois theories of equilibrium reduce finally to a company balance sheet that is in the black, rather than in the red as they say (in the blue would really be a better term). In other words, the bourgeois idea of equilibrium is, in the last analysis, a question of debits and credits, profits and losses, costs and revenues, outlays and income. Ideas of economic balancing are materialistically and objectively rooted in the idea that things are in balance when costs, sales and revenues are in balance, and I think careful historical, anthropological and etymological research will demonstrate the same thing. What this ledger concept involves, is the extrapolation of a micro-economic accounting practice to the economy as a whole, and the translation of a commercial idea into a whole social vision, a perspective on society and the world as a whole (as Marx frequently implied, people's social visions tend to be related to their own position in the division of labour). When I discussed the vaguely articulated bourgeois concept of social stability, I did not sufficiently clearly express this point, but it is important, because it means that the concept of a social (societal) equilibrium can never be theorised consistently by bourgeois theory in any other way than either in price-theoretical terms, or in terms of social institutions which already exist (the family, the state, the school, the church and so on - see Talcott Parsons), or in terms of psychological or physiological health. In the case of social institutions, however, the explanation is as tautological as the explanation of economic equilibrium (which assumed that markets are the means by which demand and supply are balanced, rather than explaining the balance), because institutions are inherently conservative. In other words, what we mean by an institution is a stable and continuous form of social organisation which helps reproduce the conditions of its own existence, and which exists as a barrier to discontinuities created by social change. If we say that institutions provide equilibrium, all we are really saying is that they conserve the status quo, maintain it, and reproduce it, that they provide social continuity. In discussing the problems of social order and social change, Prof. Perry Anderson explains in his book Arguments within English Marxism (Verso Press) why the concepts of mode production, productive forces and relations of production which Marx provided in his materialist vision of historical development are so important to understand the problem of social order and social change. Because, they enable us to specify more closely what exactly a social equilibrium means, and what a disequilibrium means, and how, through a process of social change, society might move from one sort of equilibrium to a new sort of equilibrium. So anyway the point I am trying to emphasise is that for Marx's historical materialism, equilibrium doesn't consist in economics or is not itself constituted by the economy, and if we try to reduce the problem of equilibrium to economic equilibrium, then we fall under the sway of the bourgeois ledger concept of equilibrium. None of this denies the crucial importance of micro-economic and macro-economic accounting as tools for understanding social equilibrium, for tracking economic developments and as a necessary means for a responsible, fair and just allocation of resources. Any bona fide socialist would acknowledges this, and socialism is impossible without those bourgeois intellectual achievements. It is just saying, that we shouldn't project our accounting concept on socio-economic reality, and believe that thereby, or through the prism of that concept, we have understood the problem of societal equilibrium. That is the real reason why from a Marxian point of view the obsession with GDP and so on is wrong, and not because it fetishizes economic growth. The people who make arguments about economic growth fetishism are suddenly very silent when they are made unemployed (I vividly recall how the New Zealand Values Party, the first Green Party in the world, advocated zero growth, but when zero-growth was achieved in New Zealand at the end of the 1970s, they were nop longer advocating it and the party fell apart, because most people were afraid of unemployment, and the Greens had nothing much to say about it). In this respect, the Marxian argument is different: it is saying that because of economic competition, structurally rooted in private enterprise, it is in the last instance impossible for capitalism to exist in any other way than through economic growth, accumulation must occur, and if this growth happens to stagnate, then accumulation will continue to occur by one group in society at the expense of another group in society. That is just exactly what has been happening since
New voices on PEN-L - brief comment for Sabri
Sabri, I think you raise a jolly good question. My experience with these things is that clearly conveying a sense of purpose is important, which has two parts, being clear about the aim of the list, and then conveying that clearly to users, so they know what it is for and what it is not for. Apart from that, you investigate how the list is actually utilised, what people actually do get out of it (is it a resource ? is it provocative ? is it stiimulating ? etc.), what their impression is (if you want to get really thorough about this, you can of course do a quick survey). If you want to pick up new subscribers or get into new discussions, you may need to shift your objectives, or rethink your themes (what can we talk about/what should we talk about). I have some other stuff to do now, and cannot write much more anyway, maybe if I exit, this makes room for others to enter. (As regards Ellen Wood, I am personally not anti-Wood, she is a socialist, and I think she does a lot of important and very good work defending Marx's historical approach and providing heuristics for budding scholars and activists. I just find that a lot of writing about empire and imperialism these days combines references to empirical/historical reality with literary metaphor, as a sort of response to postmodernist reflexivity, in order to provide an intellectually and artistically satisfying presentation -which is more scholastic than tied to any political project or economic/cultural reality or experience; and then the motives for imperialism research become somewhat hazy, and the monstrous effects of imperialism appear in a footnote. For the rest of it, I have not read Wood's book, and therefore cannot comment on its merits). You may find this quote by Robert Kennedy interesting, both for the sense in which it is false, and the sense in which it says something true: What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents. These days of course, the Right is in practice far more extreme than the Left, but it is just Kennedy's thought, you may wish to consider. Idealistic people often project an imagined, wished-for solidarity with other people, which doesn't appear to exist in reality when an attempt is made to establish it practically, as I discovered through great personal disappointment and in making my own mistakes in reaching out to others. People mainly want to know what you know or what your experience is, and then move on. My own heterodox socialist interests actually deviate from 99 percent of the Left that I know, in methods, concepts, personalities and language, but I have never found a group yet where I feel at home in that sense. That's also why I felt interpellated by your remarks just now. Best, J.
Excessive posting: Carrol's comment
I have to agree. The most common complaint about the list is the excessive amount of material. On Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 08:35:17PM -0500, Carrol Cox wrote: Jurriaan -- you are writing too much. I have to skip all of them because I don't have the time to select the ones which it would be worthwhile to read. Carrol -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dutch Economy out of Step: brief comment
Tuesday, 19 August, 2003 Dutch economy out of step by RN Economics editor Wendy Braanker, 18 August 2003 The Dutch economy has shrunk by nearly a full percentage point in this year's second quarter. The figure is higher than many analysts had expected. They put it down to declines in household consumption. With the economy stuck in the doldrums, consumers are keeping their hands on the purse strings. The Netherlands finds itself quite out of step when it comes to economic developments in Europe. Of course, the current malaise and its impact on world trade also affect other countries. The effects of the pneumonia-type SARS epidemic and the war in Iraq have been felt across the globe in the second quarter of this year. The Netherlands is certainly no exception. What is different is a more than average slump in consumer spending combined with a rigorous retrenchment package put forward by the new centre-right government. It's what sets the Dutch economy quite apart from other European countries. Here, the government is making great haste trying to put its financial house in order. When it comes to tax revenue, the Finance Ministry has reported one setback after another. All those problems will be dealt with as soon as possible, says Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm. But this means that the government will spend considerably less next year. And that the purchasing power of the average consumer will go down. We're in for tax hikes and lower social benefits, and that explains why the Netherlands is currently lagging behind the rest of Europe. Economy overheated Unlike consumption and foreign trade, government expenditure still made a positive contribution to the Dutch economy in this year's second quarter. But those days seem to be over now that the government has to tackle the increasing number of setbacks. Fortis bank forecasts that the Dutch economy will contract by half of one percent this year, compared to half of one percent average growth throughout Europe. The figures show that the Dutch government's austerity policies are having a negative impact on economic performance. Besides, consumers are unlikely to change their spending pattern as long as the economy falters and unemployment numbers rise. Paying a price for the boom years However, the current contraction is partly caused by past developments: the Netherlands recorded excessive growth figures in the 1990s. Aline Schuiling says the economy simply overheated, with all its consequences. In the latter half of the 1990s, the Dutch economy grew at a faster than manageable rate. That led to serious bottlenecks on the job market, rising inflation and increased wage demands. As a result of higher wages, the labour market is currently in a pretty poor state in this country, with unemployment going up sharply. Partly, this should be seen as the price we now have to pay for high growth in the second part of the previous decade. In that period, the Dutch economy recorded four or more percent economic growths for several consecutive years, outperforming its partners in the euro zone. Now, the tide has definitely turned. From: http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/dut030818.html
comment
A friend writes from Albuquerque NM.. Dan: Clearly the rules for everything are changing and I don't see a way back, for principles of any kind. Leaders have re-defined what the traffic will bear. I feel so overwhelmed by the scope of it, stymied, stupid, and spread out on a sheer rock face with nothing to grab to change the predicament. Americans, either ignorant of their own narrowness of viewpoint or jingoistically on board with any ass-kicking agenda that comes along, want to think they're getting straight stuff from their press. Local press, like their parent networks, are desperate not only to report support, but to make us all feel good and righteous about it (or shamed without it), as if unanimity equals virtue and that there's inherent glory in any aggression we perpetrate. The peace movement wants to feel good too, but the military is carpet bombing the moral high ground. I am simply distraught at the absence of debate, that an initiative of so little merit and such stupendous impact was rammed into place and cannot be turned around. Whatever occurs, we've already claimed victory and W eagerly awaits his iconic status. Will we even have an election in 2004, or shall there be continuity by acclamation (martial law) to assure homeland security? Bush has guaranteed this will become an ever more dangerous place to live. As I look at the paralysis of Congress, I begin truly to grieve the end of democracy as we knew it, and the loss of my country. How does the overt mendacity of this administration prevail? I am fearful that the citizenry is not up to this battle, because I've seen its weaknesses in the mirror. Re Arnett: I think there's got to be a dilemma for him between doing the expected award winning reportage from his head (laying out the facts he can collect, connecting the dots with his informed perspective, sending them to headquarters) and doing the right thing from his heart (framing his facts and applying his perspective free of the known biases of his employer). He is not alone. It's indicative of the collective chaos of this war -- frankly of any war -- that a news consumer has to sort among biases. The rule arrogantly prescribed for the whole world is you're either with us or against us. Therefore us is a monolith, and not in our name is denied relevance. So now, hopelessly labelled as an anti-war sympathizer, Arnett will ply his wares with heightened credibility at the Mirror and tainted or no credibility on the coalition side. The US wins, since his exposure here will be limited to those who make the extra effort to find alternative coverage. I would like to cut Arnett some slack, but he has marginalized himself more effectively than higher powers could have. But his next book should be interesting. --Pat
Bush - Hitler Comment
Question: How relevant do you all think the Bush-Hitler comment was? I think that German Chancellor was right on...the war on Iraq is a strategically timed diversion from an ailing economy prior to an important election. Hitler was known for employing political diversions. Considering Saddam has been doing what he is doing for several years it makes sense that Bush and the republicans would want to exploit this issue for the benefit of the election. Can anybody give me a synopsis of the German economy prior to the invasion of the Sudatenland? I know it was bad and there was a huge war debt being paid by the German people. How did their economy then compare or contrast with our economy now? I think it is telling that the Germans might try to warn of us fascist or protofascist tactics used by the Bush administration. Who would know better the seductive appeal of fascist rhetoric? Logged on to a site which displays old German propoganda, their version of the invasion of the Sudatenland seems pretty reasonable. The Nazis, after all, declared they were liberating oppressed German people in Austria. Interestingly, Britain and France went along on the first conquest--they were willing to give up the Sudatenland to avoid stepping to the Germans and only opposed Hitler when he moved on Poland. Also, did any of you read about Bush's family's assets being frozen in 42 because they were trading with the enemy? Also, do any of you know anything about alleged Nazis coming to the US and joining the Republican Party in the late 40s and early 50s? I had checked this out some time ago and the sources seemed to be coming from a major French paper but I can't remember the name of it. I found several references to the Moussolini quote on the net but never did find the source. Still looking. Someone asked for the source of Fascism should rightly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. If it is out there, eventually I will find it. Lisa S.
Big Income Gains? Comment?
Friday August 2, 9:11 am Eastern Time Reuters Business Report Consumer Spending Up on Big Income Gain WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumer spending rose solidly in June as income advanced at the fastest pace in nearly two years on the back of big pay gains, helping cash registers ring out the second quarter on an upbeat note, the government said on Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in June after holding steady in May, the Commerce Department said. Spending in May had originally been reported as down 0.1 percent. Personal income in June increased 0.6 percent, its biggest advance since a matching rise in July 2000. The June income gain followed a 0.4 percent May rise, a tick stronger than originally reported. The report was just a hair off Wall Street expectations. Behind the strong rise in income was a 0.6 percent increase in wages and salaries -- the largest income component. It was the strongest pay performance since an identical increase in January 2001. Disposable income, the amount left after taxes, gained a solid 0.7 percent. That helped the saving rate rise to 4.2 percent from May's 4.1 percent, despite the increase in spending. Economists have said solid income gains should help support spending, even in the face of the brutal stock market decline. Still, the report offered little new information on the economy as the data had already been incorporated in the second-quarter economic growth report released on Wednesday. U.S. gross domestic product advanced at a meager 1.1 percent annual rate in the April-June period, with consumer spending up at a 1.9 percent pace. In addition, investors were glued on Friday to the July employment report from the Labor Department, which showed a paltry gain of 6,000 jobs outside the farm sector -- fueling further fears of renewed economic weakness. Friday's income and spending report showed the rise in spending in June was concentrated on durable goods -- items intended to last three years or more. Durable goods spending rose 1.6 percent, after a 2.6 percent drop in May. Spending on nondurable goods was up 0.4 percent, while outlays on services rose 0.3 percent. The report showed inflation well contained with the price index for personal spending up a mild 0.1 percent, both overall and when volatile food and energy prices are excluded. Economists say continued tame inflation provides scope for the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady for a prolonged period, or even cut them further if needed, to ensure the economic recovery does not stall.
RE: Big Income Gains? Comment?
Title: RE: [PEN-L:29042] Big Income Gains? Comment? short comment: (1) it's a mistake to rely on one month's statistics to judge what's happening, especially when a lot of the other statistics (such as July's employment report) are not looking very good; (2) one thing that happens in a recession is that the last fired, first fired phenomenon, which tends to raise the average wage, since those with more senority are paid more. The rise in the saving rate is a bad sign during a recession, though it may not be large enough to have any effect. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: pms [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 10:20 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29042] Big Income Gains? Comment? Friday August 2, 9:11 am Eastern Time Reuters Business Report Consumer Spending Up on Big Income Gain WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumer spending rose solidly in June as income advanced at the fastest pace in nearly two years on the back of big pay gains, helping cash registers ring out the second quarter on an upbeat note, the government said on Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in June after holding steady in May, the Commerce Department said. Spending in May had originally been reported as down 0.1 percent. Personal income in June increased 0.6 percent, its biggest advance since a matching rise in July 2000. The June income gain followed a 0.4 percent May rise, a tick stronger than originally reported. The report was just a hair off Wall Street expectations. Behind the strong rise in income was a 0.6 percent increase in wages and salaries -- the largest income component. It was the strongest pay performance since an identical increase in January 2001. Disposable income, the amount left after taxes, gained a solid 0.7 percent. That helped the saving rate rise to 4.2 percent from May's 4.1 percent, despite the increase in spending. Economists have said solid income gains should help support spending, even in the face of the brutal stock market decline. Still, the report offered little new information on the economy as the data had already been incorporated in the second-quarter economic growth report released on Wednesday. U.S. gross domestic product advanced at a meager 1.1 percent annual rate in the April-June period, with consumer spending up at a 1.9 percent pace. In addition, investors were glued on Friday to the July employment report from the Labor Department, which showed a paltry gain of 6,000 jobs outside the farm sector -- fueling further fears of renewed economic weakness. Friday's income and spending report showed the rise in spending in June was concentrated on durable goods -- items intended to last three years or more. Durable goods spending rose 1.6 percent, after a 2.6 percent drop in May. Spending on nondurable goods was up 0.4 percent, while outlays on services rose 0.3 percent. The report showed inflation well contained with the price index for personal spending up a mild 0.1 percent, both overall and when volatile food and energy prices are excluded. Economists say continued tame inflation provides scope for the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady for a prolonged period, or even cut them further if needed, to ensure the economic recovery does not stall.
Re: RE: Big Income Gains? Comment?
Title: RE: [PEN-L:29042] Big Income Gains? Comment? Right. I didn't think it was a good thing. Small fodder for the perma-bulls maybe. I thought it was interesting, and probably tied up with the factor you mention, that the rise in after-tax income was higher than the general rise in income. Or maybe it has to do with benies? The spin is hot and heavy in McMarketville, believe me. BTW, Goldman just came out and predicted a .75 rate cut this year, even though they highly doubt the double-dip story and they're sure the Fed does too. Really. They said that! Coincidently, Corning is floating a convertible(mandatory) 7% for half a bil.They will use 105mil to buy Treasuries to use as collateral. Also pay off long-term 4% debt. Doesn't that sound like a good deal? I gotta wonder who's aggressively sneaking out of this bond market. Or if the announcement will soothe any GLW debt buyers who wondered if Treasuries bought in this toppy market are really good colateral? ps. pls keep in mind that I KNOW I don't understand this stuff just sorta picking up cultural echos in McMarketville and hoping for guidence for my brain roads - Original Message - From: Devine, James To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 1:23 PM Subject: [PEN-L:29044] RE: Big Income Gains? Comment? short comment: (1) it's a mistake to rely on one month's statistics to judge what's happening, especially when a lot of the other statistics (such as July's employment report) are not looking very good; (2) one thing that happens in a recession is that the "last fired, first fired" phenomenon, which tends to raise the average wage, since those with more senority are paid more. The rise in the saving rate is a bad sign during a recession, though it may not be large enough to have any effect. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Behind the strong rise in income was a 0.6 percent increase in wages and salaries -- the largest income component. It was the strongest pay performance since an identical increase in January 2001. Disposable income, the amount left after taxes, gained a solid 0.7 percent. That helped the saving rate rise to 4.2 percent from May's 4.1 percent, despite the increase in spending.
UK Business comment on Brown
Digby Jones, the CBI's [Confederation of British Industry] director general said: The chancellor has rightly invested in the future productivity of British business with funds for education and transport. But we must not waste this historic opportunity to reform public services. The devil as always will be in the detail, which we will study carefully. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,11268,756109,00.html
Stiglitz/ Comment from Rudy Fichtenbaum:
Stiglitz/ Comment from Rudy Fichtenbaum: by Stephen E Philion 29 November 2001 22:20 UTC When I was in China, the Marxist economist (and translator of the nefarious Henwood's book Wall Street I might add) Han Deqiang used quote after quote from Stiglitz in speeches he gave to university audiences to debunk the adoration of the WTO in Chinese academia. There was another person he used very effectively, Bill Clinton! He would end his lectures with a quote from Clinton in a speech to congress advising quick passage of the China's entry to WTO based on the one sided character of sacrafices called for in the deal, i.e. only China would have to make significant decreases in tarrifs, etc. Han, btw, is really the closest thing China has to a Noam Chomsky. He goes around to campuses and delivers lectures that simply use the words of mainstream economists against the mythologies of neo-liberalism... CB: From Ricardo something was gotten for the fight. Marx quotes Benjamin Franklin favoably in _Capital_. From the bourgeois economist Hobson and others like, Lenin culled the kernel of his concept of imperialism. From whathisname came creative destruction. From Eisenhower, who must have known military Keynesianism, the left got the concept of the military-industrial complex. If Stiglitz wants to show out , lets not leave him hanging.
RE: Stiglitz/ Comment from Rudy Fichtenbaum:
CB: From Ricardo something was gotten for the fight. Marx quotes Benjamin Franklin favoably in _Capital_. From the bourgeois economist Hobson and others like, Lenin culled the kernel of his concept of imperialism. From whathisname came creative destruction. From Eisenhower, who must have known military Keynesianism, the left got the concept of the military-industrial complex. right. The Akerlof/Stiglitz business about asymmetric information might be seen as trivial by some, but it is a part of real-world markets and shouldn't be ignored. Instead, such sophisticated neoclassical notions should be integrated within the totality of an alternative perspective. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti. (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Comment from Rudy Fichtenbaum:
Comment from Rudy Fichtenbaum: I just skimmed over the article outlining Stigliz and Krugman's critiques. Considering the fact that they are not Marxists I think their criticisms are pretty significant. I think that on one level it is probably worth supporting them because people will actually listen to what Stigliz has to say since he is a nobel prize winner. This gives us an opportunity to influence a lot of people including a number of mainstream economists. This doesn't mean we should accept their analysis uncritically. Where it is appropriate we can debate and criticise but at the same time support the statements that they make that we agree with.
Re: Comment from Rudy Fichtenbaum:
When I was in China, the Marxist economist (and translator of the nefarious Henwood's book Wall Street I might add) Han Deqiang used quote after quote from Stiglitz in speeches he gave to university audiences to debunk the adoration of the WTO in Chinese academia. There was another person he used very effectively, Bill Clinton! He would end his lectures with a quote from Clinton in a speech to congress advising quick passage of the China's entry to WTO based on the one sided character of sacrafices called for in the deal, i.e. only China would have to make significant decreases in tarrifs, etc. Han, btw, is really the closest thing China has to a Noam Chomsky. He goes around to campuses and delivers lectures that simply use the words of mainstream economists against the mythologies of neo-liberalism... Steve On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Charles Brown wrote: Comment from Rudy Fichtenbaum: I just skimmed over the article outlining Stigliz and Krugman's critiques. Considering the fact that they are not Marxists I think their criticisms are pretty significant. I think that on one level it is probably worth supporting them because people will actually listen to what Stigliz has to say since he is a nobel prize winner. This gives us an opportunity to influence a lot of people including a number of mainstream economists. This doesn't mean we should accept their analysis uncritically. Where it is appropriate we can debate and criticise but at the same time support the statements that they make that we agree with.
Personal comment on HM, E, and H
Personal comments on the Historical Materialism meeting with Hardt Friday 26th October In words and gestures Hardt received respect from Historical Materialism, Callinicos and Bromley, althought it was not without significant differences which they shared as part of the deal implicit in the evening. An intriguing, puzzling, and thought-promoting meeting perhaps on several levels. One was style: Hardt through protestations of modesty is skillful in disarming confrontation and finding points of collaboration and dialogue. Linked with this is to throw in a vaiety of suggestions and associated ideas that catch the curiosity of opponent and sympathiser alike. While this style could be o cover for complete opportunism, I was interested that his critical discussants had nothing to say to my assertion that the handling of the polemic between Lenin, Kautsky and Hilferding on ultra-imperialism was careful and thorough. Hardt was clearly wanting to avoid any direct and immediate prescriptions for political action, unlike many of the supporters of the SWP (UK) Callinicos seemed to me to be much better than his supporters. He was genuinely able to recognise that Hardt was promoting rather more a philosphical approach which could have implications for struggle, even if in C's opinion they were erroneous ones. Some of Hardt's approach seemed to me essentially to be a realist one which entailed contradictions (although he did not use the term contradictions) be contrast the audience seemed to be thinking on another level, of polical action, or at least gesture, in which the world was always divided into enemies and friends. While Bromley and Callinicos were much more willing to engage in the theoretical questions that Hardt posed, I think that is probably their position too. Despite superficial appearances I suspect that Hardt's perspective on imperialism and Empire is more grounded in material reality of the means of production, than the political and economic analyses of Callinicos and Bromley. That is a hunch. Both C and H are interested in the global movement that had emerged. I was puzzled by C's emphasis on inter-imperialist rivalry, which does not seem to be an issue on which the strategic orientation of E hangs or falls. Unless, it occurs to me, this is sort of code for C and the SWP arguing that the target of progressive world struggles should be US imperialism. It may therefore be signficant that Hardt did not discuss this at all - suggesting it remains an area of difference for him from the evening. He presented none of the arguments on the level of formation of political struggles, that IMO could be presented for this approach. For such a philosophical book, both about the shifts in ideas around the emergence and over-ripeness of the capitalist nation state, and which is I suggest essentially a realist, not an empirical book, nor a politcal programme, it was surprising to feel there was fundamentally some link with the fine grain of Hardt's practice, which could be seen in the meeting. Indeed Hardt radiated an amiable optimism throughout the meeting, mitigated by disarming gesutres of personal modesty. Perhaps it could be put most coherently that it is a belief in the creativity of human cooperation, which ultimately must be the anser to an economic system based on the private ownership of social economic processes. My impression was that Empire, now available in London too in paperback, will continue to attract readers through sympathetic curiosity, and help to fertilise a new range of political struggles but in an indirect way. Historical Materialism suggested they might hold some seminars on the themes. Whether they have a lightness of being remains to be seen. Chris Burford London
Late comment on Mexican truck controversy
Washington Post August 2, 2001 The Democrats' Mexican Roadblock By Ruben Navarrette Jr. -clip- Not to be outdone, the Senate yesterday approved legislation that would impose strict safety and insurance requirements on Mexican trucks bound for U.S. highways -- 22 more than are required of American or Canadian counterparts, critics contend. And this could set off a trade war. ((( Charles Brown: Could this really start a trade war ? Might such trade war be a good thing if it led to the destruction of NAFTA ? Whole article follows Washington Post August 2, 2001 The Democrats' Mexican Roadblock By Ruben Navarrette Jr. When the House of Representatives voted to ban Mexican trucks from traveling more than 20 miles north of the U.S. border, I was in Mexico. But now that the Senate is putting up its own roadblock, I feel like I'm on Mars. Suddenly, it is the Democrats who -- as Republicans are prone to do with regard to immigration and English-only laws -- are advancing their own interests by sounding racist notions of Mexican inferiority. Suddenly, it is the Republicans who defend the disparaged by calling discrimination by its proper name -- as Democrats delight in doing when the issue at hand is affirmative action or racial profiling. The House vote in June set the stage for my interviews with Mexican officials who, at the time, called the bill a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and suggested that Mexico might retaliate. After all, the arbitration panel that settles NAFTA disputes had ruled in February that any attempt to ban the trucks from the United States was a violation of the agreement. Not to be outdone, the Senate yesterday approved legislation that would impose strict safety and insurance requirements on Mexican trucks bound for U.S. highways -- 22 more than are required of American or Canadian counterparts, critics contend. And this could set off a trade war. The controversy is less about safety than about nationalism, and the first to notice it were Republicans. It is wrong for the Congress to discriminate against Mexican trucks, President Bush told reporters as the Senate was debating the issue. Our Mexican counterparts frankly should be treated just like the Canadians are treated. Yeah, that could happen -- about the time the United States returns Texas and California. Bush has threatened to veto any measure that insults our neighbors to the south and continues to deny Mexican-registered trucks the access to U.S. roadways that was called for in the free trade agreement. That access was supposed to take place in 2000; Bush has set a new target date -- Jan. 1. The latest stall tactic is an offensive amendment to a funding bill for the Transportation Department. Proposed by Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama and backed by all of the Senate's Democrats, the legislation is country-specific. It requires Mexico -- and only Mexico -- to jump through additional safety hoops; Americans and Canadians need not comply. Objecting, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi blasted Democrats for harboring an attitude that was anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic, anti-NAFTA. Wounded Democrats then demonstrated that they much prefer playing the race card to having it played against them. Murray disputed the discrimination charge, while Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said he was disappointed by Lott's remarks. The disappointing part is that not enough people saw what Daschle couldn't admit: Lott is right. Democrats, in chauffeuring unions such as the Teamsters, who are intent on running Mexican competitors off the road, employed condescending rhetoric that sounded anti-Mexican. After all, the never-say-die protectionists who want to fight the NAFTA battle all over again assume that Mexico's safety requirements are inferior to those of the United States or Canada. In fact, NAFTA rules set the standards for all three countries, and some trucking industry experts insist there is little difference between Mexican trucks and their NAFTA cohorts. The media, obsessed with an assumption that Bush is using one issue after another to win the Hispanic vote, have hardly noticed that Democrats, with regard to one issue after another, seem determined to lose it. The party of Franklin Roosevelt has recently been at odds with Hispanics on vouchers, bilingual education, redistricting and the president's faith-based initiative. That giant sucking sound is the draining of confidence among Hispanics that the modern Democratic Party has, at heart, any interests but its own. And when those interests conflict with those of Hispanics, it is hasta la vista. That was predictable. Each chess move by the Republican-controlled White House prompts an opposing move by Democrats in Congress. Unfortunately, for Democrats, Bush has been moving in sync with the
Comment on Credit Unions from Quebec...
This is from Eric Pineault in Quebec. He is not on the list so I am forwarding it on his behalf. His remarks re treatment of workers, cutbacks, etc. might apply to larger credit unions here as well but I don't know. When our local credit unions merged there was no cutback in staff but perhaps employment will dwindle by attritution. I was at a conference on ethics and globalisation a couple of years ago and a representative from one of the big banks, I forget which one, claimed the company had decided against letting anyone go while other banks were slashing staff..they cut back by attrition. She claimed this was much better for employee morale and performance and did not hurt the bottom line at all. If anything they did better than competitors... CHeers, Ken Hanly credit unions in Québec, unified in a huge federation (Desjardins) have become one of the province's largest financial institutions and were the first to integrate completely financial services, ie insurance (life, car, home), long term investment and traditionnal banking, since they were not subject to the same restrictions of "compartmentalization" as were the banks until the nineties. They also were instrumental in the development of an electronic purchase system called "direct access" which uses atm cards in reatil stores. And they are very aggressive players in the fiscally subsidized "registered retirement savings fund" boom during the nineties, they where among the first to suggest to their costumers (oops "members") that they should borrow to buy their RRSP accounts. (So they can make money on interest and on brokering fess). The money they make is ideally redistributed to all members. actually it gets sucked up in the big salaries that pay themselves the top executives of the movement's bureaucracy. Today the federation is united in a holding euphemistically called a "movement" which includes participation in a for profit bank (the laurentian) and other for profit enteprise. It has downsized and flexiblized its workers like everybody else in the financial sector and has even in the eigthies tried some union busting among some of its employees, all the while clamouring about cooperative values. Finally a more left leaning type of credit union, labour union credit unions, have tried to keep out of Desjardins's grasp but have been sucked in this year, they will most probably loose their independance and capacity to fund alternative projects. sorry about the english my first language is french. - Original Message - From: "Ken Hanly" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: mardi 5 décembre 2000 11:47 Subject: Re: Re: co-ops
Re: [Fwd: Re: on the American election - a query and a comment]
Carroll, Another way to put this is that Gore paid for Clinton's having done the right thing vis a vis Elian, despite Gore's own pathetic pander. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, November 27, 2000 6:59 PM Subject: [PEN-L:5028] [Fwd: Re: on the American election - a query and a comment] I love the growing list of betrayals of their base which led to the Democratic defeat. My favorite is the War on Crime and the denial of the vote to so many black men in Florida. But this tale runs a close second. Carrol Original Message Subject: Re: on the American election - a query and a comment Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 17:05:51 -0500 From: jonathan flanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED] I think we need to fight on THIS level also, and not REDUCE the issue to one of the undemocratic nature of the electoral college. I agree. Didn't mean to bend the stick that far. See below. Jon Flanders Gored in Miami The Elián brigade rises again and strong-arms the Miami-Dade canvassing board to halt the hand count that could put Al Gore in the White House. By Myra MacPherson Nov. 24, 2000 | Unfolding like a Greek tragedy, Al Gore's 11th-hour -- or rather, 13th-hour -- bid for the White House is not without a horrible irony for the vice president. The Gore team this week deplored the Miami mob that shouted, screamed and nearly shoved through the door of a government building -- thus succeeding by intimidation in halting the Miami-Dade County canvassing board's recount of crucial votes. Losing that recount in a county where a majority of the votes were expected to be favorable to Gore may well cost him the presidency. But guess who was among that crowd drummed up by the Republicans? The same Cuban-Americans whom Gore had tried so hard to woo by pandering to them over the fate of a little Cuban boy who washed up on Florida shores a year ago this week. Remember back that far? Rather than risk Cuban-American animus or votes -- a largely Republican vote to begin with -- Gore refused to support his own administration's position on the case. He would not say that the United States had the legal and moral authority to return Elián González to his father and, thus, Cuba, arguing instead that a state family court should make the decision. His statements backfired -- not only did they not attract the anti-Castro Cuban-American community to his banner, they alienated and enraged many members of Gore's hardcore Democratic base of non-Hispanics in bitterly divided South Florida. Some defected to Nader. Others sat out the campaign or voted halfheartedly rather than working to help elect him. Was Gore haunted by that waffling past this week when -- faster than you could say Elián -- Miami's Cuban-Americans answered the call from the right once more, this time dealing the vice president's candidacy what could be a mortal blow? They answered the call from the Republican Party, from the staunchly Republican Spanish station Radio Mambi, from U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtenin and Lincoln Diaz Balart -- the one who gave Elián a puppy, remember? They were asked to do what they do best -- protest, shout, raise a ruckus. Perhaps there were some leftover Elián signs they could have dusted off and used in the name of freedom. Though the counting officials caved, the Democrats didn't abandon their fight. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo went on CNN to say that even though the Republicans can "bring in more thugs ... frighten them into submission the way they did in Miami-Dade," the Democrats would not give up the recount battle. And they have indicated their intention to contest the final vote tally from the county after the statewide election is certified. This sort of mob rule when it comes to anything related to Cuba is not mystifying to Miamians. They witnessed it well before Elián, when Cuban-American protesters marched, shouted obscenities and threw rocks at concert-goers who were simply trying to attend a performance by musicians visiting from Cuba. They have seen it when a museum exhibiting art from Cuba was threatened by a bomb and one painting was purchased by a Cuban-American for the sole privilege of burning it. They have seen it whenever an attempt has been made to stop the embargo and normalize relations with Cuba. But to those unfamiliar with the local scene, the situation is hard to understand. "It's unusual to see Republicans out there screaming and shouting," burbled one mystified bloviator on TV. This is not genteel Republicanism but the knock-down kind, borne of a suspicion and hatred of the Democratic Party since the days of JFK and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Although moderate and even Democratic voices have been heard in the Cuban-American community of late, the majority of the ex
[Fwd: Re: on the American election - a query and a comment]
I love the growing list of betrayals of their base which led to the Democratic defeat. My favorite is the War on Crime and the denial of the vote to so many black men in Florida. But this tale runs a close second. Carrol Original Message Subject: Re: on the American election - a query and a comment Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 17:05:51 -0500 From: jonathan flanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED] I think we need to fight on THIS level also, and not REDUCE the issue to one of the undemocratic nature of the electoral college. I agree. Didn't mean to bend the stick that far. See below. Jon Flanders Gored in Miami The Elián brigade rises again and strong-arms the Miami-Dade canvassing board to halt the hand count that could put Al Gore in the White House. By Myra MacPherson Nov. 24, 2000 | Unfolding like a Greek tragedy, Al Gore's 11th-hour -- or rather, 13th-hour -- bid for the White House is not without a horrible irony for the vice president. The Gore team this week deplored the Miami mob that shouted, screamed and nearly shoved through the door of a government building -- thus succeeding by intimidation in halting the Miami-Dade County canvassing board's recount of crucial votes. Losing that recount in a county where a majority of the votes were expected to be favorable to Gore may well cost him the presidency. But guess who was among that crowd drummed up by the Republicans? The same Cuban-Americans whom Gore had tried so hard to woo by pandering to them over the fate of a little Cuban boy who washed up on Florida shores a year ago this week. Remember back that far? Rather than risk Cuban-American animus or votes -- a largely Republican vote to begin with -- Gore refused to support his own administration's position on the case. He would not say that the United States had the legal and moral authority to return Elián González to his father and, thus, Cuba, arguing instead that a state family court should make the decision. His statements backfired -- not only did they not attract the anti-Castro Cuban-American community to his banner, they alienated and enraged many members of Gore's hardcore Democratic base of non-Hispanics in bitterly divided South Florida. Some defected to Nader. Others sat out the campaign or voted halfheartedly rather than working to help elect him. Was Gore haunted by that waffling past this week when -- faster than you could say Elián -- Miami's Cuban-Americans answered the call from the right once more, this time dealing the vice president's candidacy what could be a mortal blow? They answered the call from the Republican Party, from the staunchly Republican Spanish station Radio Mambi, from U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtenin and Lincoln Diaz Balart -- the one who gave Elián a puppy, remember? They were asked to do what they do best -- protest, shout, raise a ruckus. Perhaps there were some leftover Elián signs they could have dusted off and used in the name of freedom. Though the counting officials caved, the Democrats didn't abandon their fight. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo went on CNN to say that even though the Republicans can "bring in more thugs ... frighten them into submission the way they did in Miami-Dade," the Democrats would not give up the recount battle. And they have indicated their intention to contest the final vote tally from the county after the statewide election is certified. This sort of mob rule when it comes to anything related to Cuba is not mystifying to Miamians. They witnessed it well before Elián, when Cuban-American protesters marched, shouted obscenities and threw rocks at concert-goers who were simply trying to attend a performance by musicians visiting from Cuba. They have seen it when a museum exhibiting art from Cuba was threatened by a bomb and one painting was purchased by a Cuban-American for the sole privilege of burning it. They have seen it whenever an attempt has been made to stop the embargo and normalize relations with Cuba. But to those unfamiliar with the local scene, the situation is hard to understand. "It's unusual to see Republicans out there screaming and shouting," burbled one mystified bloviator on TV. This is not genteel Republicanism but the knock-down kind, borne of a suspicion and hatred of the Democratic Party since the days of JFK and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Although moderate and even Democratic voices have been heard in the Cuban-American community of late, the majority of the exiles and their families remain, since the days of their cold warrior hero Ronald Reagan, rabidly Republican. And there are always enough to take to the streets and form an impressive crowd. The television pundit didn't get it. But then neither did Gore. Until it was too late. salon.com
a profound comment on the transformation problem
"This section solves the puzzle about value and prices of production called the transformation problem ... It is not crucial to the larger story of capitalism." -- Charles Andrews, _From Capitalism to Equality_, p. 97. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: a profound comment on the transformation problem
Jim, I don't have the book yet and will not be able to get it probably for a while, so could you please comment or reproduce Andrews' discussion (main points or how his proposed solution differ or reproduces other previous solutions) of the transformation problem. Thanks, Fabian -- On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 12:50:22 Jim Devine wrote: "This section solves the puzzle about value and prices of production called the transformation problem ... It is not crucial to the larger story of capitalism." -- Charles Andrews, _From Capitalism to Equality_, p. 97. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com
Re: Re: a profound comment on the transformation problem
At 04:37 PM 9/21/00 -0400, you wrote: Jim, I don't have the book yet and will not be able to get it probably for a while, so could you please comment or reproduce Andrews' discussion (main points or how his proposed solution differ or reproduces other previous solutions) of the transformation problem. Thanks, Fabian His main point seems to be a relatively common-sense explanation of the "solution" to the "transformation problem" that Fred Moseley advocates. See the latter's article in the current _Review of Radical Political Economics_ or in the book he edited, _Marx's Method in Capital_. It's a very simple solution, basically saying that there's no problem at all, since prices and values normally differ, but total prices = total value, while total property income = total surplus-value. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: Re: a profound comment on the transformation problem
At 04:37 PM 9/21/00 -0400, you wrote: Jim, I don't have the book yet and will not be able to get it probably for a while, so could you please comment or reproduce Andrews' discussion (main points or how his proposed solution differ or reproduces other previous solutions) of the transformation problem. Thanks, Fabian His main point seems to be a relatively common-sense explanation of the "solution" to the "transformation problem" . . . Alert. Alert. Value theory thread incoming. Take cover. mbs
Re: Re: Re: a profound comment on the transformationproblem
What about his discussion of the falling r? Does he also take a single/simulataneist system approach or he mentions temporality? -- On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 13:54:43 Jim Devine wrote: At 04:37 PM 9/21/00 -0400, you wrote: Jim, I don't have the book yet and will not be able to get it probably for a while, so could you please comment or reproduce Andrews' discussion (main points or how his proposed solution differ or reproduces other previous solutions) of the transformation problem. Thanks, Fabian His main point seems to be a relatively common-sense explanation of the "solution" to the "transformation problem" that Fred Moseley advocates. See the latter's article in the current _Review of Radical Political Economics_ or in the book he edited, _Marx's Method in Capital_. It's a very simple solution, basically saying that there's no problem at all, since prices and values normally differ, but total prices = total value, while total property income = total surplus-value. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: a profound comment on the transformationproblem
I haven't gotten to that... At 05:19 PM 9/21/00 -0400, you wrote: What about his discussion of the falling r? Does he also take a single/simulataneist system approach or he mentions temporality? -- On Thu, 21 Sep 2000 13:54:43 Jim Devine wrote: At 04:37 PM 9/21/00 -0400, you wrote: Jim, I don't have the book yet and will not be able to get it probably for a while, so could you please comment or reproduce Andrews' discussion (main points or how his proposed solution differ or reproduces other previous solutions) of the transformation problem. Thanks, Fabian His main point seems to be a relatively common-sense explanation of the "solution" to the "transformation problem" that Fred Moseley advocates. See the latter's article in the current _Review of Radical Political Economics_ or in the book he edited, _Marx's Method in Capital_. It's a very simple solution, basically saying that there's no problem at all, since prices and values normally differ, but total prices = total value, while total property income = total surplus-value. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: Re: a profound comment on thetransformation problem
Max Sawicky wrote: Alert. Alert. Value theory thread incoming. Take cover. Value theory? What's that? Doug
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: a profound comment on the transformation problem
At 07:19 PM 9/21/00 -0400, you wrote: Max Sawicky wrote: Alert. Alert. Value theory thread incoming. Take cover. Value theory? What's that? Doug economists know the price everything and the value of nothing... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: a profound comment on the transformation problem
In a message dated 9/21/00 4:58:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: His main point seems to be a relatively common-sense explanation of the "solution" to the "transformation problem" that Fred Moseley advocates. See the latter's article in the current _Review of Radical Political Economics_ or in the book he edited, _Marx's Method in Capital_. It's a very simple solution, basically saying that there's no problem at all, since prices and values normally differ, but total prices = total value, while total property income = total surplus-value. For a crisp demolition of this "solution," see M.C. Howard and J.E. King, A History of Marxian Economics, vol II., pp. 276-80. --jks
Comment # 1 on 'Postmodernist Economics' intro (from the Marxism list)
Cullenberg et al: And, again, this world structured according to the object-life of the commodity has been thought to have received an enormous recent boost by the emergence of new information technologies, especially the internet. According to this view, computers have made commodity time and space ultimately traversable in ways unthinkable for past generations of producers and consumers. In addition to the use of computer technology in such "post-Fordist" production methods as "flexible specialization," it is claimed that one need not leave one's chair (in front of one's screen, of course) to be bombarded by commodity images and the cornucopia of goods that exist and are transacted in cyberspace. This obliteration of previous constraints of time and geographical location in buying and selling (lowering considerably transactions costs and reducing to rubble other past barriers to the international flow of financial capital and goods) reconstructs all notions and experiences pertaining to community and nation, hence the idea of the "global economy" that is said to be the hallmark of the postmodern. Whoever really thinks this needs to read vol 2 of 'Capital'. Marx goes into how capital constantly revolutionises not only the means of production but also the means of distribution and payment. Since the rate of turnover of capital has a substantial affect on the rate of profit, and profit is the name of the game, how could it be otherwise? Ironically, these days it is probably the squeeze on surplus-value and the stagnation of the productive sphere that is driving globalisation and communications development. In any case, given the massive *potential* for IT, what is interesting is not the development that has taken place, but that such development is still quite slow and impaired. This is true even in the imperialist world. In the Third World, there is no sign of a mass computer culture. After decades of IT development, the vast majority of humanity is still excluded. It has always seemed to me that postmodernist intellectuals' understanding of the world is limited to what they can see in their own university departments and out their windows. Their worldview is often less broad than that of the small shopkeepers of their class. At least the shopkeepers deal in the real world. The pomo 'intellectuals' need to get out more. Philip Ferguson Louis Proyect The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
Comment #2 on 'Postmodernist Economics' intro (from the Marxism list)
Lou this was an extraordinarily interesting post for my particular purposes. Here at Queensland University of Technology, the uni plus the state govt have launched what they call the 'creative industries initiative'. It parallels similar initiatives especially in Europe. The State Govt put in a miserly $15 million (A). Such, though, is the state of funding to Higher Ed that the university almost passed out with joy. Currently we are re-organising the Arts faculty to fit in with the Creative Industries. The fact that no-one knows what these are seems a truly minor point. We have been deluged with hype about the 'new economy', the 'new media' and 'post-Fordism'. Everywhere the word 'digital' is used as a kind of talisman or charm to keep off the wary or the critical. Someone is even talking of devising a unit on the 'language of non-linear media'. The piece below from your post is in many ways typical of the sort of document that has been circulated. Though there has been nothing here with such echoes of Marxist type analysis. CULLENBERG, AMARIGLIO, RUCCIO: "Be that as it may, we note again that for many literary and cultural theorists like Jameson, the realm of the postmodern denotes rampant commodification, unchecked by oppositional forces--avant-gardes, say--that find themselves subverted or even co-opted by the very power and allure of the market. And, again, this world structured according to the object-life of the commodity has been thought to have received an enormous recent boost by the emergence of new information technologies, especially the internet. According to this view, computers have made commodity time and space ultimately traversable in ways unthinkable for past generations of producers and consumers. In addition to the use of computer technology in such "post-Fordist" production methods as "flexible specialization," it is claimed that one need not leave one's chair (in front of one's screen, of course) to be bombarded by commodity images and the cornucopia of goods that exist and are transacted in cyberspace. This obliteration of previous constraints of time and geographical location in buying and selling (lowering considerably transactions costs and reducing to rubble other past barriers to the international flow of financial capital and goods) reconstructs all notions and experiences pertaining to community and nation, hence the idea of the "global economy" that is said to be the hallmark of the postmodern. Your response, stressing the continuities of class power and the appropriation of surplus value, was wonderful in its oh so typical mordant clarity. But there are other continuities within the cultural realm which gobble de gook about 'digital' and 'virtual' tend to obscure. For a start there is no new art form. The digitalists might of course find one. Who can say? But even so, any new form will still spring from the fundamental necessity of art, that is it will seek to provide the moment of transcendence. As such it will have to spring from a philosophical and political realism about the world, even though in its presentation the art may not take a realist form. At a faculty meeting last year a student said something which was so honest and important that it was of necessity immediately ignored by the academics. She pointed out that she had gained a lot of knowledge on how to use the computer and had a range of sophisticated technical skills but she still did not know what to say. The digitalists were conspicuously silent. The reality is that they have nothing to say about reality. And now as you pointed out that the postmodernist game of denying the existence of reality has finally run out of steam, they have even less to offer but the kind of puffed up, self- generating hype about the new media that one would expect from a marketing executive. So I think we are in the middle of a new round of the old game of 'trahaison des clercs'. Instead of exploring ways in which the new media can be used to emancipate the oppressed, we are being urged to take up the new media as yet another alternative to genuinely creative and radical thought. It is as if the academics depressed by the failure of the left and the quiescence of the working class have turned to worship capital through the mediation of the computer based technologies. All of this means of course that the Creative Industries will not be so creative. Or if creativity does happen it will be despite and not because of the academy or the market which it is so anxious to serve. regards Gary Louis Proyect The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
no comment
from SLATE'S survey of what's in US magazines: Harper's, June 2000 An essay by Tom Wolfe decries the political correctness foisted on us by "Rococo Marxists" such as Judith Butler and Stanley Fish. Since World War I American intellectuals have been telling Americans their society is cancerous, and now that society is doing better than ever, they fall back on ever-more ridiculous charges. Atlantic Monthly, June 2000 The cover story asks if Harvard turned Ted Kaczynski into the Unabomber. When he arrived there in the late 1950s, he encountered an intellectual "culture of despair" in which professors taught that science would destroy civilization and that science rendered morality meaningless. Kaczynski also participated in a social experiment in which he was subjected to intense stress and criticism. His Unabomber manifesto may be the rational outgrowth of his Harvard experience. Vanity Fair, June 2000 A piece recounts the Christie's and Sotheby's auction house price-fixing scandal. Former Christie's CEO Christopher Davidge may have turned over smoking-gun evidence in order to ruin the art-collecting blue bloods who never accepted his middle-class roots. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: UE meeting and comment
On my way home I couldn't stop thinking about Dolan. I can't see how a radical movement, one aimed at worker self-emancipation could ever be led by such a person. Perhaps others can enlighten me on his good qualities, but I was very much unimpressed. Michael Yates Of course, the 1960s anti-war movement threw up people like (East Coast) Jerry Rubin of the Yippies, who was also a total self-promoter and over-simplifier. Somehow we had an effect anyway. The point is to not worry too much about the leaders but to instead focus on building the mass movement. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine/JDevine.html
Re: Re: UE meeting and comment
I suspect that it is a mistake to regard Ralph Nader as entirely good or entirely bad. He has done some excellent work. For example, I suspect -- but he should speak for himself -- that Patrick Bond appreciates Nader's work about the drug companies in South Africa. At the same time, Nader has made some questionable alliances. Unfortunately, purity is in short supply. Louis Proyect wrote: At 10:36 PM 4/3/00 -0400, Michael Yates wrote: I went to the meeting early so I could hear the other presentations. The first speaker was Mike Dolan of Seattle WTO protest fame. Mike Dolan runs an outfit called Global Trade Watch that is a wing of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen. Since Dolan's China-bashing seems suspiciously linked to the sort of advocacy found in the ranks of some of our more backward-looking unions (UNITE, United Steelworkers), I was curious to see if could find evidence of funding from these quarters on Nader's website or in Lexis-Nexis. I discovered something very interesting. Nonprofits are not required to divulge the identify of donors of more than $200. So Public Citizen (and the Sierra Club) take advantage of this. Although it seems highly dubious for groups charged with the responsibility for opening up "civil society" to hide their financing in this manner, it actually reflects their "inside the beltway" mentality and willingness to cooperate with the powers-that-be. Nader reluctance to run a high-profile campaign for President on the Green Party ticket last go-round, clearly related to an unwillingness to raise and spend money on the order of his Public Citizen, could very likely be related to his embarrassment over some of their sources. Meanwhile, I discovered that Morris Dees is the treasurer of Public Citizen, which goes a long way in explaining the rather shady attitude toward funding. Dees runs a nonprofit in the South that raises money on the basis of northern liberal hysteria about the Klan, but does very little to actually confront the Klan. Interestingly enough, Dees has gone on an ideological offensive against the Green contingent of the Seattle protestors whom he regards as romantic reactionaries in broad brushstrokes that evokes LM magazine. Alex Cockburn and his co-editor Jeff St. Clair have made an amalgam between Doug Henwood and Dees on the most flimsy grounds. Supposedly the "snooty" LBO would also find grounds to disparage the environmentalists. Obviously the evidence is just the opposite. Doug and LBO has, to its credit, identified completely with the sea turtle contingent. People like Dolan and Ralph Nader expose a problem in this emerging movement that was addressed at an interesting panel at this weekend's Socialist Scholars Conference titled "After Seattle: a New Internationalism?" Tania Noctiummes, who advises French trade unions on questions such as MAI, made some very cogent points. She said that the discourse around the Seattle protests, especially from figures like Dolan, revolves around "citizens" and "civil society". Such classless categories can obviously lead to all sorts of confusions with respect to our attitude toward the ruling class. Are Bill Clinton and the sea turtle protestors both "citizens" in pursuit of a common political goal? Given Clinton's demagogic appeals and the past record of inside-the-beltway operations like the Sierra Club and Public Citizen, one would have to say that an alternative--namely socialist--is required. She also pointed out that there has been very confused thinking about what it means to be engaged in struggle around "international" issues. After all, the main terrain is the national state even when it comes to global trade agreements such as the WTO itself. The trade unions and NGO's involved in the Seattle protests tend to sow confusion on these questions because politically they are reluctant to confront their own ruling class. It is much easier to confront the Chinese government on prison labor than our own apparently. Wouldn't it make for an interesting leap forward in the class struggle if the AFL-CIO announced that it would organize prison laborers in the USA? They haven't lifted a finger for welfare recipients, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Doug Henwood spoke on the same panel as Tania Noctiummes and made many excellent points, including the need to steer clear of China-bashing. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org) -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: UE meeting and comment
At 10:36 PM 4/3/00 -0400, Michael Yates wrote: I went to the meeting early so I could hear the other presentations. The first speaker was Mike Dolan of Seattle WTO protest fame. Mike Dolan runs an outfit called Global Trade Watch that is a wing of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen. Since Dolan's China-bashing seems suspiciously linked to the sort of advocacy found in the ranks of some of our more backward-looking unions (UNITE, United Steelworkers), I was curious to see if could find evidence of funding from these quarters on Nader's website or in Lexis-Nexis. I discovered something very interesting. Nonprofits are not required to divulge the identify of donors of more than $200. So Public Citizen (and the Sierra Club) take advantage of this. Although it seems highly dubious for groups charged with the responsibility for opening up "civil society" to hide their financing in this manner, it actually reflects their "inside the beltway" mentality and willingness to cooperate with the powers-that-be. Nader reluctance to run a high-profile campaign for President on the Green Party ticket last go-round, clearly related to an unwillingness to raise and spend money on the order of his Public Citizen, could very likely be related to his embarrassment over some of their sources. Meanwhile, I discovered that Morris Dees is the treasurer of Public Citizen, which goes a long way in explaining the rather shady attitude toward funding. Dees runs a nonprofit in the South that raises money on the basis of northern liberal hysteria about the Klan, but does very little to actually confront the Klan. Interestingly enough, Dees has gone on an ideological offensive against the Green contingent of the Seattle protestors whom he regards as romantic reactionaries in broad brushstrokes that evokes LM magazine. Alex Cockburn and his co-editor Jeff St. Clair have made an amalgam between Doug Henwood and Dees on the most flimsy grounds. Supposedly the "snooty" LBO would also find grounds to disparage the environmentalists. Obviously the evidence is just the opposite. Doug and LBO has, to its credit, identified completely with the sea turtle contingent. People like Dolan and Ralph Nader expose a problem in this emerging movement that was addressed at an interesting panel at this weekend's Socialist Scholars Conference titled "After Seattle: a New Internationalism?" Tania Noctiummes, who advises French trade unions on questions such as MAI, made some very cogent points. She said that the discourse around the Seattle protests, especially from figures like Dolan, revolves around "citizens" and "civil society". Such classless categories can obviously lead to all sorts of confusions with respect to our attitude toward the ruling class. Are Bill Clinton and the sea turtle protestors both "citizens" in pursuit of a common political goal? Given Clinton's demagogic appeals and the past record of inside-the-beltway operations like the Sierra Club and Public Citizen, one would have to say that an alternative--namely socialist--is required. She also pointed out that there has been very confused thinking about what it means to be engaged in struggle around "international" issues. After all, the main terrain is the national state even when it comes to global trade agreements such as the WTO itself. The trade unions and NGO's involved in the Seattle protests tend to sow confusion on these questions because politically they are reluctant to confront their own ruling class. It is much easier to confront the Chinese government on prison labor than our own apparently. Wouldn't it make for an interesting leap forward in the class struggle if the AFL-CIO announced that it would organize prison laborers in the USA? They haven't lifted a finger for welfare recipients, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Doug Henwood spoke on the same panel as Tania Noctiummes and made many excellent points, including the need to steer clear of China-bashing. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
UE meeting and comment
I delivered an address to the officers, staff,and organizers of the United Electrical Workers (UE) in Wilkes Barre, PA. this morning. I thank those of you who commented on a draft of my talk. Your comments were most useful to me. The talk was a great success and generated a long discussion. These brothers and sisters are about as left as you get in the US labor movement. President John Hovis and the other officers are remarkably unpretentious and down to earth. Of course, no officer earns more money than the highest paid member (today the president earns $45,000!!). They are keen on empowering the members. Not servicing them or mobilizing them, but helping them to control their own union. Most remarkable. I went to the meeting early so I could hear the other presentations. The first speaker was Mike Dolan of Seattle WTO protest fame. I must say that I have seldom seen a person so full of himself, even holding up a picture of himself in a Wall Street Journal article about him (why did he bring this with him?) and refering to his organization's website as "his" website. I shook hands with him before the meeting, but he was not at all interested in learning anything about me. He just shook hands and then went off to continue whistling the song "Union Maids." He gave a rather canned pitch complete with annoying histrionics and dumb jokes and many references to himself. Most troubling to me was the incredible China bashing spiel he gave, complete with numerous handouts.(He argued that we cannot let capital win any victoreis and this alone is reason to go all out on keeping China out of the WTO). Now I understand that the China issue is complex, but his talk verged on the worst kind of jingoism and racism. Not one mention of prison labor in the US or sweatshops here or racism here or anything like this or what his organization proposed we do about these things. Nothing about attempts at direct solidarity with Chinese workers. Nothing about what next if China is not admitted to the WTO. He had a lot of slogans but not much in the way of analysis. In addition, he seemed the kind of person not one bit interested in anyone other than himself. Fortunately the unionists seemed in agreement with me when I said in my talk that the China issue needed to be carefully considered, especially in light of the long history of absolutely horrible racism of US labor against Chinese immigrants. On my way home I couldn't stop thinking about Dolan. I can't see how a radical movement, one aimed at worker self-emancipation could ever be led by such a person. Perhaps others can enlighten me on his good qualities, but I was very much unimpressed. Michael Yates
[PEN-L:6706] No comment
USIA 10 May 1999 U.S. ENVOYS TO CASPIAN BASIN TOUT INVESTMENT PROSPECTS (Say financial payoff requires long-term commitment) (900) By Phillip Kurata USIA Staff Writer Washington -- U.S. ambassadors assigned to energy-rich countries surrounding the Caspian Sea are offering "gold key" service to U.S. businesses considering investing in Central Asia. "We offer gold key service We will help you get started. We'll help you make appointments. We'll rent you a car. We'll rent you an interpreter. We'll make hotel reservations -- all kinds of things like this," U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Stanley Escudero said at a May 7 business forum in Washington. The U.S. embassies in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan offer similar services to help U.S. companies capitalize on potentially enormous opportunities in the Caspian Basin, which has huge oil and gas reserves. The U.S. government has opened a business center in Ankara, Turkey, staffed by trade promotion officials to help U.S. business people to establish contacts in Turkey and points east. The U.S. Caspian diplomacy is pegged to two proposed pipelines. One would carry crude oil from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Georgia to Turkey's Mediterranean port at Ceyhan. The second would pump natural gas from Turkmenistan, under the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey. The United States and its NATO partner Turkey have embarked on a policy to bring democracy, stability and prosperity to the Caucasus and Central Asia by encouraging foreign investment in the region's fledgling free market economies. Ambassador Escudero said business, not aid, fosters development. "What develops a nation is business activity. What develops a nation is the new wealth which is created and the new knowledge that is created and the multiplier effect of successful activities Azerbaijan is ready for that. It's ripe for it," Escudero said. Speaking at the same forum with Escudero were U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Michael Lemmon, U.S. Ambassador to Georgia Kenneth Yalowitz, U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan Richard Jones, U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan Steve Mann, U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Joseph Presel, and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Mark Parris. With the exception of Parris, the ambassadors also spoke to business conferences in New Orleans and New York to publicize the investment opportunities in the Caucasus Basin. The three main U.S. trade agencies -- the Trade and Development Agency, the Export-Import Bank, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation -- are offering incentives and guarantees to U.S. companies willing to risk investment in the former Soviet republics. Jones, the U.S. envoy to Kazakhstan, voiced a theme common to all the ambassadors. "Kazakhstan is not a market for the faint hearted. It's a high-maintenance business environment that will require financial strength and a significant amount of executive time and energy to make your business profitable," he said. Costly customs delays, bureaucratic red tape to obtain work permits, inconsistent application of the tax code and lack of respect for contracts are a partial list of pitfalls facing U.S. businesses in Kazakhstan, Jones said. Nevertheless, more than 100 U.S. companies have opened offices in Almaty, the commercial capital of Kazakhstan, in sectors such as oil and gas, consumer goods, power generation and telecommunications, Jones said. The ambassador has a doctorate in business and said he was chosen for the Kazakhstan assignment because he could be instrumental in helping the country's conversion to a Western-style economy. "I met with President (Nursultan) Nazarbayev just prior to my departure from Kazakhstan for this tour to stress our concerns in commercial issues. In this meeting, he reiterated his strong desire for more U.S. direct investment in Kazakhstan. He also reiterated his wish to diversify Kazakhstan's economy, create more jobs and spur economic growth," Jones said. Turkmenistan, possessing the world's fourth largest proven reserves of natural gas and large oil deposits, is hampered by a lingering addiction to central planning, Ambassador Mann said. President Saparmurat Niyazov personally supervises political affairs, even at the local level, Mann said. "With Turkmenistan, the question is, When is this energy potential going to be exploited? Will it be? I think the answer is, yes, it will be. I think the time is now," Mann said. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are progressing toward a resolution of their territorial dispute over the delineation of the Caspian Sea. The ambassador said he is encouraged by the competence of Niyazov's advisers and ministers in the energy sector who have convinced the Turkmen leader to approve the construction of a trans-Caspian natural gas pipeline. Turkmen gas is a crucial element in Turkey's development plans. Within a decade, natural gas is projected to account for a quarter of Turkey's energy needs. At present, the clean-burning fuel satisfies
[PEN-L:1943] warriornet comment on stampeding bison
Louis Proyect wrote: The significance of the surround was that large numbers could be taken. An abundance and in some cases an overabundance of meat, hides, and other raw materials were essential to the Sioux, for there were those stark occasions when the buffalo would seemingly disappear and starvation and want would follow. The surround was necessary as insurance against just such emergencies, and if upon occasion some animals were wasted, that was only a natural consequence of oversupply. Even more significant, however, was the fact that the surround was a group enterprise involving a strict policing system and a communal distribution to the benefit of everyone. It makes perfect sense to me that people who needed buffalo or elk would run them over cliffs or into floundering snow, especially in the earlier times before the horse. What doesn't seem to be understood by the academics that try to promote this as waste is that all the meat that couldn't be eaten at the time could be dried (jerky) and would provide meat for many months if a large hunt was successful. The skins of course were also dried and later worked as they were necessary for clothing or housing. All other parts of the animals would also be used like stomachs and intestines for water carrying, cooking bags, or sausage type use. Bones provided marrow for sustenance and tools for skin scraping, sewing, weapons, digging, and many other uses. Brains were used in skin preservation. Virtually nothing was wasted even when hundreds of animals were killed at one time. With a few days of intense and efficient work, the people who hunted this way were guaranteed prosperity for their people for months and even years ahead. Depending on the size of the hunting band's village size, another such hunt may not be needed for a lengthy amount of time. Certainly no one would deny that when the Europeans first encountered the plains buffalo, there was no reason to believe there was any problem with overhunting as millions of buffalo roamed all over the country. Yet we know the European immigrants enjoyed target practice as they lounged on trains running through buffalo country, or massacred thousands of animals without taking meat or skins and only removing tongues for the white gourmet market, leaving the rest of the animal to rot in the fields where even the vultures couldn't keep up with the massive carcass quantity. Anyone trying to make the argument that the Indians were wasteful will only get to hear more about who is really was responsible for the waste. They only hurt their cause and create more sympathy for the peoples who have been misrepresented all along. I only wish all the genocide promoters were this stupid. - tully Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:1820] One more comment
The Columbian article failed to explicitly note that not only have I filed a
grievance, but per Clark College processes, my first level of appeal goes to
none other than Vice-president Ramsey ("please Mr. Himmler, at least fairly
consider the possibility thant anti-Semitism is evil and even
counterproductive") and then to Dr. Hasart who has already stated in the
article that: "...Craven's comments also put the College in a great deal of
liability." That means, through the representation of an attorney for Mr.
Annett (no name yet produced) and through the e-mails of Mr. Annett (without
even one example of alleged defamatory comments and none sent to the
reporter), the President knowing that truth is an absolute and complete
defense to slander or libel, has concluded--my future Stage II appeal
authority--that there is credible evidence that a) If I committed slander or
libel the College would have legal exposure; b) that there is credible
evidence that I did knowingly tell an untruth and/or told an untruth with
wreckless disregard for counter-evidence/argument that would easily expose
the untruth for what it is and, that I did so with malice and caused damages.
Because if what I said was true or asserted on the basis of good-faith
attempts for supporting and contradictory evidence--and that was attested to
by those who have direct and personal knowledge and evidence--then the College
has not potential threat of liability.
This is who I am supposed to appeal to and I have already been summarily
judged and convicted of "inappropriate use of state resources" and
"defamation." This is the level of "due process" at Clark--your appeal judges
are the ones that made the original determinations being appealed. Free speech
and academic freedom are of course "inconvenient" and bothersome--except for
themselves--for despots, megalomaniacs, narcissists and thugs.
Jim Craven
[PEN-L:561] Re: re-no comment, II (investing in defense)
Michael Perelman wrote, Somehow there has to be a logical thread here . . . "In this game (which is called 'defense') proportions are lost to the public mind (can the mind resist) An 'economy' of permanent warfare is called 'peace' and 'preparedness' -- every person and thing is upheaved in its fury and those who once were call 'Americans' are now merely tourists at or around empty sites of peace while those who are called 'the Americans' give dictation to the world." From 'Bread and Wine' Charles Watts (1947-1998) Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ #408 1035 Pacific St. Vancouver, B.C. V6E 4G7 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 669-3286 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:559] Re: re-no comment, II (investing in defense)
Let's see if I understand this correctly. The CIA fails to predict the Indian nuke test -- even though early reports of it were in the press -- so they deserve more money. The towering regime of N. Korea threatens to bomb Hawaii -- yes, I remember when Reagan spoke of the immanent danger of the Sandinistas coming to Texas. We could also throw in the destruction of the TWA flight and the Olympic bombing as a need to protect ourselves against Arab terrorism -- so we got our wonderful anti-terrorism law. By the way, is anybody suspicious that the "wayward" cruise missle landed in Pakistan. Could it have been a form of a payoff to Pakistan -- landing an unexploded missle -- so that they would not protest our bombing of their client state? Somehow there has to be a logical thread here or is logic as imaginary as the peace dividend? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:556] re-no comment, II (investing in defense)
I watched the Leher report last night. Lots of discussion about a lot of things I can't remember now, but nothing about this. My only prior awareness of it came from reading Tom Kruse's Pen-l554 message. The following report is from the English Electronic Telegraph www://telegraph.co.uk Frank US boosts defence spending by £165bn By Hugo Gurdon in Washington Other nations will come under pressure to follow Pentagon AMERICA began its biggest peacetime military build-up since 1985 yesterday after President Clinton and Congress agreed to increase its defence budget by 10 per cent to $280 billion (£165bn). The turn-round after years of cuts will include a doubling of spending on missile defence. It was welcomed by critics who believe that Washington has for too long spent "the peace dividend" on civilian programmes while turning a blind eye to national security threats left behind by the collapse of communism. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recently complained that the country was $15 billion short of appropriate defence spending. The switch from cuts to extra spending, comes amid mounting concern that American capabilities have dwindled dangerously, leaving the country ill-prepared to meet dangers posed by rogue states, weapons proliferation and rising instability in the post-Cold War era. In the $1.7 trillion (£1 trillion) overall 1999 budget settled on Thursday, Republican negotiators secured an extra $9 billion of military spending on top of the $270.5 billion agreed in negotiations with the White House a month ago, which would have increased defence spending by less that six per cent. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who once complained that military cuts meant that the Pentagon, the Defence Department's five-sided building in Virginia, should become the Triangle, welcomed the agreement to reverse the armed forces' recent decline. He said: "This is the first time since 1985 that in peacetime we have increased defence spending, because our young men and women in uniform deserve the support of the United States of America." Defence spending rose in 1991 to finance the Gulf war. Republicans want annual military spending boosted quickly above $300 billion. President Reagan's build up, which is now credited by many with winning the Cold War, reached its peak in 1985, when he spent $287 billion, which after adjusting for inflation is equivalent to $485 billion today. Of the extra money agreed on Thursday, $1 billion will be used to more than double research on a missile defence shield, a scaled down version of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars project. North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and India are acquiring sophisticated ballistic systems, and Iraq is not thought to have abandoned its hopes either. India's Agni missiles are extending their range beyond 1,250 miles, and Iran's Shahab-3 will have a range of 1,000 miles or more. North Korea's Taepo Dong-2 missile, with a range of over 3,700 miles, will allow the unstable Stalinist tyranny in Pyongyang to hit
[PEN-L:545] no comment
From a Salomon Smith Barney blurb: "Given worldwide economic turmoil and our outlook for slowing profits growth, we have been recommending that investors focus on defensive names with topline growth and strong earnings visibility. Stocks within the defense industry have typically provided a haven from such slow-downs, as government defense spending is largely immune to economic influences. If the economic situation becomes too severe, they can lead to instability and actually benefit the defense companies, as was the case in Indonesia earlier in the year. As investors remain concerned about the economic outlook, we expect the defensive nature of the defense industry to further benefit stocks within this group. Over the longerterm, we expect the group to benefit from rising defense procurement spending and continued restructuring toward higher-growth niches." Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:553] no comment, II (investing in defense)
On defense sector stocks: About $9 Billion Is Added to Pentagon Budget NYT, today By TIM WEINER WASHINGTON -- The White House agreed with congressional negotiators Thursday to add about $9 billion to the military budget, including about $2 billion for intelligence programs and about $1 billion for missile defense, congressional staff members said. Republican leaders in Congress hope to return Pentagon spending to levels approaching the historic highs of the Reagan administration, when military budgets exceeded $300 billion a year. The House and Senate agreed last month to authorize $270.5 billion for fiscal 1999. Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:547] Re: no comment
Tom Kruse wordlessly delivers this From a Salomon Smith Barney blurb: "Given worldwide economic turmoil and our outlook for slowing profits growth, we have been recommending that investors focus on defensive names with topline growth and strong earnings visibility. Stocks within the defense industry have typically provided a haven from such slow-downs, as government defense spending is largely immune to economic influences... [Etc.]..." Why be speechless, Tom; aren't they the guys who make money "...the old- fashioned way"? Well, they certainly mean it, don't they? What can have a longer track record than the commerce of war?! As for the sickeningly amoral literalism: it's good, assuring that Madame LaFarge over there won't miss a single stitch. valis
[PEN-L:251] Comment on Moby Dick
A friend of mine who teaches American studies wrote: "My only major disagreement with CLR [James]: we should be happy that the ship goes down, even if the workers mostly die and Ahab is the one that pulls it down; it was not only the first factory and the first multicultural one at that, but the first Auschwitz of the sea, and one of the most important of all. That was something that should have been seen in the 1940s and early 1950s, but the workerist perspective made the peception almost impossible. Ditto automobiles and their social role, naturally." Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
Comment on Jewish Art, Jewish Politics
(posted originally on apst newsgroup) As both a Jewish artist and communist, I wanted to throw in a few words on Proyect's comments on the Jewish cultural and political scene. My band has performed on one of John Zorn's "Radical Jewish Culture" Festivals at the Knitting Factory. And in case anyone wants to romanticize the Knit, it is run by a typically scummy club owner (Jewish to boot), who happens to be a bit more hip than many of the other club owners in town. I think what Zorn is doing, and the revival of Klezmer music is a fine thing. However, Proyect romanticizes this cultural trend and the supposed political awakening among younger Jews that goes along with it. Another element of what is going on in this current is the revival of Yiddish and Yiddish art forms. Many of my arguments are based on Isaac Deutscher, so anyone interested should read "The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays." Deutscher noted that the Yiddish cultural movement in Poland was particularly tied in with working class political currents, particularly the Bund. He argued that any attempt to transplant that movement into the US would fail because the social conditions, particularly the segregation of Jews, were completely different than in Poland. Since Deutscher's time, this is even more true. One could argue that there was a social basis for a Jewish cultural movement in the '20s and '30s, because there was in fact a mass Jewish working class. However, social mobility has erased the working class base which the Bund, Forward and other Jewish leftist organizations were based on, leaving them with merely cultural projects - Jewish cult/nats, if you will. This is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Bund, so there is quite a bit of nostalgia. But it is merely that. For all its faults, the Bund was staunchly anti-Zionist. All the present-day Bundist types criticize the Zionists for is that they don't believe that Jews of the Diaspora have any role. They hardly ever level even tepid attacks on the policies of the Zionist state. If they do, it is only to support the "Labor" Party. Proyect says: Perhaps the recent awakening in Jewish culture and the left-wing politics of previous generations will reach a whole new generation of Jews. The Israeli state has long ceased to act as a pole of attraction. He is deluding himself. Zionism is as strong as ever. Even in the supposedly "progressive" Jewish milieu, it is still taboo to be staunchly anti-Zionist. If there is hope for younger radical Jews, it is in revolutionary Trotskyism and socialist revolution, not in some warmed-over revival of Bundism/Jewish cultural nationalism. Jeffrey Schanzer Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[no comment]
Clinton Honors Chile's Restored Democracy By Thomas W. Lippman Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, April 18, 1998; Page A16 [snip] Clinton, accompanied by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and senior White House officials, was effusively welcomed by Senate President Andres Zaldivar Larrain and his applauding colleagues. "Nothing was unhappier for our people than the interruption of democracy," Zaldivar said, "and nothing more gratifying than its restoration." He thanked the United States for its "support in those difficult moments." Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Greenspan's comment
Hey, Doug -- "consulting" is an integral part of the workings of the free market, isn't it? If your clients are big enough, you needn't worry about being held accountable for the quality of your work. Sid Sid Shniad wrote: I'm surprised he's that frank. ;-) Sid 10:32 GREENSPAN: SAYS MODEL OF US SL SITUATION APPLICABLE TO ASIA. I wonder if he's including events like his letter swearing that Charles Keating was an honest guy and a good banker, for which he was reportedly paid $20,000. That's not unlike the authorities' seal of approval given Indonesia and Thailand as the foreign capital was flowing in. Doug
Greenspan's comment
I'm surprised he's that frank. ;-) Sid 10:32 GREENSPAN: SAYS MODEL OF US SL SITUATION APPLICABLE TO ASIA.
No comment
Reuters January 28, 1998 POPE HOPES FOR POLISH-STYLE CHANGE IN CUBA By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul said Wednesday he hopes his recent visit to Cuba will bear fruit similar to his 1979 trip to Poland when he helped influence events that led to the fall of communism in his homeland. "My visit to Cuba reminded me a lot of my first visit to Poland in 1979," the Pope, speaking in Polish, said at his weekly general audience. "I hope for my brothers and sisters on that beautiful island that the fruits of this pilgrimage will be similar to the fruits of that pilgrimage to Poland," he added. Historians credit the Pope's first visit home a year after his election in 1978 with injecting Poles with the courage to form the Solidarity free trade union. Nine years later, it was the Pope's homeland that began the domino effect that toppled communism in Eastern Europe. During the historic five-day trip, which ended Sunday, the Pope brought an unprecedented whiff of freedom to Cuba. He defended human rights, criticized Cuba's one-party system, called for greater freedom for the Catholic Church and drew attention to the plight of political prisoners. In his main address, read in Italian, he said the trip was a "great event" of spiritual, cultural and social reconciliation. The Pope also said the trip showed that the island's culture had remained at heart Christian despite four decades of Marxism. "The pastoral visit was a great event of spiritual, cultural and social reconciliation that will not fail to produce beneficial fruits on other levels," the 77-year-old Pope said. "It must be recognized that this visit took on an important symbolic value because of the unique position Cuba has had in this century's history," he said. The Pontiff also several times condemned the U.S. economic embargo against the island but said Cubans could not blame it for all their problems. He told the pilgrims he was happy to have been able to preach the Gospel there, giving Cubans "a message of love and true freedom," and thanked President Fidel Castro for making the trip possible. Recalling his address at Havana University, the Pope said Cuban culture had undergone many influences in the five centuries since Christopher Columbus discovered it, including four decades of "Marxist materialistic and atheist ideology." "Deep down, however, it (Cuban culture)...has remained intimately marked by Christian inspiration, as shown by the numerous men of Catholic culture throughout its history," he said. "The Papal visit gave voice to the Christian soul of the Cuban people." "I am convinced that this Christian soul is for Cubans the most precious treasure and the surest guarantee of integral development marked by authentic freedom and peace," he said. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans attended the Pope's four open-air Masses, which were transmitted live on state-run television -- a first for religious events.
Re: No comment
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Tom, there has been a lot of talk about this odd coalition against US participation in the IMF bail-out of South Korea, Indonesia, etc. Aside from labor dinosaurs and eco-freaks, so rudely brushed aside by Rubin, who are some of the powerful members this odd coalition? What are they so angry about? The "eco freaks" include quite a few mainstream organizations, who used to be pro-NAFTA. The "labor dinosaurs" probably wouldn't take this position; it's New Labor, whose days may be numbered, that's taking it. There are about 50 members of the Congressional "progressive" (or in Alex Cockburn's word, pwogwessive) caucus.And don't forget the right-wing Republican back-benchers. All of them agree that this is a bailout of irresponsible financiers at the expense of people who work for a living. Didn't Max Sawicky say the other day that only 1/3 of Congress is behind the $18 billion IMF appropriation now? Yes I said it. I was relaying the view of an authoritative source who works on the Hill. It's not a backbench thing. It's a matter of the core political leadership of the nation, or the real 'executive committee of the capitalist class' -- the Administration (as of two weeks ago, at least) and Gingrich's cabal -- having the burden of selling the bailout to a dubious Congress which has no compelling reason to support it and a good many to oppose it. I would suggest this underlines the fundamentally representative nature of U.S. democracy, deformed though it is by the inordinate influence of capital. "Labor dinosaurs" and "eco-freaks"? I don't know whether to run out of my house screaming or transmit RB's address to the Unabomber. Politics is an interesting and important subject. I would commend it to you all. The " for Dummies" books seem to be quite popular. MBS == Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions here do not necessarily represent the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===
Re: No comment
On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Tom Walker wrote: 11:18 W. HOUSE OFFICIAL DENIES MARKET RUMOR OF TREASURY'S RUBIN TO RESIGN. Tom, there has been a lot of talk about this odd coalition against US participation in the IMF bail-out of South Korea, Indonesia, etc. Aside from labor dinosaurs and eco-freaks, so rudely brushed aside by Rubin, who are some of the powerful members this odd coalition? What are they so angry about? Rakesh
Re: No comment
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Tom, there has been a lot of talk about this odd coalition against US participation in the IMF bail-out of South Korea, Indonesia, etc. Aside from labor dinosaurs and eco-freaks, so rudely brushed aside by Rubin, who are some of the powerful members this odd coalition? What are they so angry about? The "eco freaks" include quite a few mainstream organizations, who used to be pro-NAFTA. The "labor dinosaurs" probably wouldn't take this position; it's New Labor, whose days may be numbered, that's taking it. There are about 50 members of the Congressional "progressive" (or in Alex Cockburn's word, pwogwessive) caucus.And don't forget the right-wing Republican back-benchers. All of them agree that this is a bailout of irresponsible financiers at the expense of people who work for a living. Didn't Max Sawicky say the other day that only 1/3 of Congress is behind the $18 billion IMF appropriation now? Doug
No comment
11:18 W. HOUSE OFFICIAL DENIES MARKET RUMOR OF TREASURY'S RUBIN TO RESIGN. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ Know Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: Final Comment
At 03:21 PM 1/9/98 PST8PDT, Jim wrote: Surely nobody disagrees with the idea that sex-slavery or underage prostitution is wrong. The sex-workers comments were not aimed at coerced or non-consensual prostitution, but at prostitutes who bject to being criminalised in the name of saving their honour. James Heartfield [ Jim replies with examples of stupid statements by Milton Friedman ] ... Capitalism produces a whole host of slick facades to "show" that choices are indeed free choices or if they are even "constrained choices", we are all constrained and they are choices nontheless. But the reality is that what appears to be "consensual" is the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less money but rather no money; the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less comfortable shelter but rather no shelter; the "consent" given when the alternative is a slow and horrible death. Jim, in case you've forgotten what list you're on, this is the Progressive Economists list, not the NeoClassical Economists list. Nobody on this list--including the two prostitutes who chimed in--is saying or even implying that prostitution is "consensual" when the choice is turning tricks vs. starvation, or letting one's family starve. Nobody. Honest. Surely criminalization of prostitution will not solve anything and surely criminalization leads to more underground activity and makes it more difficult to control the disease trends. But the sanitized brothels of Nevada and Canberra are light years away from the brothels of Patpong, the conditions of young Indian prostitutes in Great Falls or the conditions of a highway prostitute servicing long- distance truck dirvers in India. And those, especially on the left and even call themselves leftists, and then talk about "free choice", or "free consent" or "consenual prostitution" under capitalism and based on the isolated and perhaps self-serving or perhaps even self-rationalizing rantings of a few white middle-class "high-class" hookers in Canberra, well there is a party available for your political action--the RIGHT-WING libertarian party. Again, who do you think you're arguing with? It's hard to imagine that in a country like, for ex, Thailand you could meaningfully talk about "consensual prostitution" when the alternatives to prostitution are awful, scarce, or nonexistant. But what does that have to do with prostitution in other regions of capitalism? I met a few Coyote activists when I was working at the Berkeley Free Clinic, and they really changed the way I think about prostitution. In my heart, I don't how someone can actually want to sell sex for a living if they've got any alternatives, but the women I met from Coyote said they genuinely preferred being a hooker to being a waitress, a secretary, or most of the other working class jobs that were available to them. At one point, I did ask, "would you want your daughter to become a hooker?" One said yes, the other said, "no, but I wouldn't want her to have to be a secretary or a waitress either, and I definitely wouldn't want her to be a housewife in a fucked-up marriage like I was; I want her to get an education and move up." Their goal wasn't just to legalize prostitution and improve working conditions for hookers but to improve the situation for all women, so that no women would end up becoming a prostitute because they felt they didn't have an alternative. If you want, you can treat the Coyote activists I met as suffering from false consciousness, or you can class-bait them as just speaking for 'a few white middle-class "high-class" hookers.' That seems to me like a pretty simple-minded way of dealing with a complicated issue. Like I said, I have trouble imagining turning tricks as feeling anything other than degrading, but what the hell do I know? There are lots of people who have sex lives that seem degrading to me, but they don't seem to be any less happy or more messed up than the rest of us. Would any of this still exist under Socialism? Who knows? Nobody on this side of the table is arguing in favor of putting people in situations where they choose to do things that feel completely and utterly degrading in the way that forcing someone to perform sex for money can--that amounts to contractual rape. Nobody here is saying that having the IMF include legalizing prostitution as part of their economic agenda for destabilized East Asian countries is something we should push for (although I'm sure someone will suggest it in the WSJ op-ed pages). All we're saying is, it doesn't make sense to argue that prostitution is inherently degrading when there are more than a few prostitutes who say that they don't experience it that way. Putting women in economic situations which they perceive as degrading, whether it's prostitution or marriage, is evil. But arguing that all true lefties have to see sex the same way is little more than political correctness dressed up in
Re: Final Comment
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], James Michael Craven [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Capitalism produces a whole host of slick facades to "show" that choices are indeed free choices or if they are even "constrained choices", we are all constrained and they are choices nontheless. But the reality is that what appears to be "consensual" is the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less money but rather no money; the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less comfortable shelter but rather no shelter; the "consent" given when the alternative is a slow and horrible death. This is all very well, but you seem to be arguing that there is no difference between wage slavery and slavery, or between adulthood and childhood. To argue that the power of capital is coercive surely does not mean that we might as wll be slaves, does it? -- James Heartfield
Re: Final Comment
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], James Michael Craven [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes But just as these privileged few don't speak for me (also one of the "privileged few" in relative terms) and certainly do not speak for the part-time teachers or the grounds keepers, so no hooker from Canberra can speak for all "sex workers"--like a teenage Blackfeet girl in Great Falls or a sex slave in Patpong--just because she is doing tricks and is a self-proclaimed "activist" for sex workers. Surely nobody disagrees with the idea that sex-slavery or underage prostitution is wrong. The sex-workers comments were not aimed at coerced or non-consensual prostitution, but at prostitutes who bject to being criminalised in the name of saving their honour. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Final Comment
I lived in Puerto Rico 1983-86 and worked as a Senior Planner for the Planning Board of the Office of the Governor of P.R. My original assignment was to work as a project leader restructuring and examining the input-output system used for planning and forecasting estimates. After some time I was asked to design and carry out an "inductive" (adductive) study of the linkages, leakages and dimensions of aspects of the underground economy of P.R. (Drugs, Prostitution, Bolitos (numbers rackets) with reference to the probable effects on leakages from final demand (and the interactive effects through cells of the input-output matrices). Because P.R. is relatively small in area and because the induced investment/profit imperative mechanisms of capitalism lead to spatial agglomerations of investment, jobs, incomes and also those involved in underground activities, and because the hypothetico-deductivist scenarios for estimating dimensions, linkages, leakages of underground activities yielded nothing but indeterminate scenarios (scenarios built upon/derived from other scenarios...), it was thought that some filed study (bottom-up) was needed. At the time almost 2/3 of the population of P.R. was on pagos transferencias (some form of transfer payments), there were emerging incidences of AIDS in San Juan and other factors lead to this work being commissioned. I was tasked with working with D.E.A., PR Police (Control de Vicio), FBI, Treasury, IRS and anyone else from which I could obtain informant reports, locations/agglomerations of underground activities. Before I accepted the assignment, I demanded and got assurance that I could work in the field without any police or police informants working with me and that I would not under any circumstances identify or assist in the identification/apprehension of any sources. I worked almost exclusively in Spanish language and was turned loose. Through some political contacts (I was a supporter of the Independentistas and curiously the government knew it) I progressively made more and more contacts with prostitutes (in brothels like the Black Angus--not Stewart Anderson's--in San Juan, and others in Ponce, Mayaguez, Arecibo, Aguadilla etc as well as with street prostitutes etc.) I took special care to make sure I was not followed or observed by any police informants. I was interested in such factors as national origin, length of time in P.R., plans to leave P.R., average income, rental and other expenses, living arrangements, percentage of income sent to relatives outside P.R., arrangements with pimps, buying habits, drug habits, reasons for entering prostitution, any plans to leave it, other illegal activities involved with etc. I offered to pay for time spent and on off time so that the people would not suffer loss of income; interestingly very few wanted money for interview time and more and more would come after fellow sex workers would tell them that I could be trusted, wasn't interested in laying any kind of morality trip on anyone; for many they expressed that it was a kind of catharsis talking about their lives, dreams, conditions of work etc. Some with whom I talked were indeed schooled and some were students at U.P.R. or Interamerican. I also talked with male prostitutes some of whom were 14 and 15 years old. The vast majority of sex workers with whom I dealt were poor Dominicanas, Haitians, Columbianas, Cubans (only about 20% of the prostututes in P.R. were Puerto Rican). And yes I found many who wanted it legalized but when I asked if prostitution were legalized, and if social attitudes changed such that prostitution were seen as just another kind of work, would they have any objection to their sons or daughters going into the business, not one said they would have no objection--every single one with children or plans to have children said they were working so that their children would not have to do what they were doing. I did ask if the work was seen to be degrading because of social attitudes and if producing sex services could be seen as no different than producing any other kind of service if only society's--and the individual prostitute's--attitudes toward sex and morality would change and in virtually every case, or almost every case the response was "you just don't know what it is like to have some stranger huffing and puffing over you, playing domination games, asking if you have a young daugter under 14 and offering an extra bonus to fuck her, doing you with no regard or care as to how you feel about the act itself." (Some of the types of comments I used to get). I would hear stories about being set up for gang rape, about being beat out of the meagre money and about John's who would offer extra NOT to use a condom. And this debate is not new to me. I have known about COYOTE and other such groups for a long time; I read some of their stuff. So I would ask: If prostitution were
Re: dead girls in China--comment
In a message dated 97-11-05 01:35:48 EST, you write: 4. The 'non-reporting' does not hold water, especially since the ratio of boys as a majority over girls widens with age AND, there's just all those pesky little corpses. Excellent point Amen. This whole business is psychopathic and frightening! For those of us with young daughters (born exactly during this period) it is profoundly sad and tragic. Sure "every dad wants a son," but that's not the way reproduction works! All the X-Y combinations are due to the male! Finally, having assisted in the birth of both of my children - it is beyond me to understand how a parent could their kids. Without being sappy or sentimental, the plain fact is that you've got to have a total absence of humanity to carry this out. There is something profoundly wrong in China!! Jason
Re: dead girls in China--comment
Jason Hecht wrote, Without being sappy or sentimental, the plain fact is that you've got to have a total absence of humanity to carry this out. There is something profoundly wrong in China!! The plain fact is that only a "total absence of humanity" can explain much of history. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ knoW Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
Re: dead girls in China--comment
In a message dated 97-11-04 00:21:15 EST,[ several people have self righteously said more or less the following]: I understand that most of the gap in the number of girls as opposed to boys in China is due to *under-reporting* of girls rather than female infanticide. If the first born is a girl, if she is not reported a second child may be the desired boy. China's one child rule is a reactionary measure, but one-sided reports are no better. 1. The Chinese government now admits that infanticide of girls is a problem and an unwanted side effect of the one child policy (this was in the last paragraph of the article and has been admitted officially by the Chinese for the last year or so). 2. This information came from census data collected and released by the Chinese government. 3. I fail to see why 'not admitting' that you've had a girl is any better than infanticide in the long run. Think about it for a minute, if you don't admit you have the child, she can't get medical care, can't go to school, can't be included in child benefits of any kind. But then perhaps the proponents of not admitting there are girls feel this is o.k., after all, do you also think uneducated baby makers in the kitchen are the best women? (sarcasm absolutely intended) 4. The 'non-reporting' does not hold water, especially since the ratio of boys as a majority over girls widens with age AND, there's just all those pesky little corpses. 5. If the ratios were the other way around, I'd bet you guys would be out there screaming your heads off. What a few girls amongst all you self righteous revolutionaries, eh? This is what I love about this list, paraphrasing Lenin, 'scratch a revolutionary, and you'll find a man antagonistic to women'. In fact, if I have time sometime soon, I think I find the exact quote and engrave it on my ass -- just to remind myself that I'm a fucking idiot to stay subscribed to this list anyhow. maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9645] Brief Comment on Civil Society
With respect to Mexico, newspaper columnist Luis Javier Garrido frequently poses the efforts to bring democracy to Mexico as a struggle between civil society and the PRI-government. Steven Zahniser [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8101] FAIR comment on the Contra story
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 15:59:27 -0800 (PST) From: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Recipients of fair-l [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Coverage of Contra-Crack From: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [EMAIL PROTECTED] FAIR Press Release December 18, 1996 NEW REPORT BLASTS MEDIA COVERAGE OF CONTRA-CRACK STORY A national media watch group today released a report highly critical of major media reaction to the San Jose Mercury News series linking the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras to the spread of crack cocaine in urban America. The report, to be published next month by FAIR (Fairness Accuracy In Reporting), focuses on three newspapers - the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times - which have printed lengthy articles attacking the Mercury News series. Noting that the assessments by those three newspapers are "still reverberating in the national media's echo chamber," FAIR's report faults the papers for heavy reliance on official sources inside the CIA and other agencies with vested interests in undercutting the Mercury News accounts. FAIR's report (to be published in the Jan./Feb. 1997 EXTRA!) also highlights a history of national media suppression and marginalization of the contra-cocaine story in the 1980s. * FAIR's researchers found that Mercury News reporter Gary Webb was frequently assailed for failing to prove what he had never claimed in the first place. The report points out that Webb's series did not assert the CIA was guilty of dealing crack in U.S. inner cities. Some of the attacks harped on "what Webb had already acknowledged in his articles - that while he proves contra links to major cocaine importation, he can't identify specific CIA officials who knew of or condoned the trafficking." * "Journalistic critics of the Mercury News offered little to rebut the paper's specific pieces of evidence" - including testimony and law enforcement documents and comments - indicating that a pair of Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers "may have been protected by federal agents." * Although the Washington Post in particular took issue with the Mercury News for referring to the Nicaraguan contras as "the CIA's army," the FAIR report describes use of the phrase as "solid journalism" that highlights a relationship "fundamentally relevant to the story. The army was formed at the instigation of the CIA, its leaders were selected by and received salaries from the agency, and CIA officers controlled day-to-day battlefield strategies." The report criticizes what it calls a "newsroom culture of denial" that dodged such historical realities. * The Los Angeles Times joined the other two dailies in downplaying the importance of crack dealer Ricky Ross, who was supplied by a pair of Nicaraguan cocaine smugglers linked to the Contras. Yet two years ago (12/20/94), the Los Angeles Times described Ross as the "king of crack" whose "coast-to-coast conglomerate" was responsible for "a staggering turnover that put the drug within reach of anyone with a few dollars." FAIR's report notes that the L.A. Times reversal on Ross "reads like a show-trial recantation." * Depictions of African-Americans as prone to paranoia "quickly became a stylish media fixation," the report charged. "This theme of black paranoia accompanied all three of the major papers' attacks on the Mercury News series." Ironically, FAIR concluded, top editors at the Washington Post, New York Times and L.A. Times ended up ignoring evidence that did not fit their preconceived outlook - "the true mark of the delusional mindset." * The FAIR report concludes that the high-profile attacks on the Mercury News by the New York Times, Washington Post and L.A. Times "were clearly driven by a need to defend their shoddy record on the contra-cocaine story - involving a decade-long suppression of evidence." In recent months, those papers have promoted "the notion that contra participation in drug trafficking is old news - a particularly ironic claim coming from newspapers that went out of their way to ignore or disparage key information during the 1980s." (The obstruction of a 1987 report on contra-cocaine links by Time magazine is also noted.) The full report will be available on FAIR's web page: www.fair.org/fair *** To subscribe to FAIR's magazine, EXTRA!, call 800-847-3993 during East coast business hours.
[PEN-L:3020] Silly Comment Re: Barnes, Noble consumer choice
On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Rhon Baiman wrote: It was the NY Times a while back maybe a few months I think. Isn't Literature/knowledge a business too? In academics, Knowledge is our business. Still giggly after running, Steven Zahniser [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:132] Re: comment
Treacy: "Death Ain't Got Any Mercy" an old blues song sung by J. Garcia. [EMAIL PROTECTED] COPYRIGHTED On Wed, 9 Aug 1995, James Devine wrote: "what a long, strange, trip it's been." -- J. Garcia, recently deceased. sincerely, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Los Angeles, CA (the city of your future: the modern home of slavery)
[PEN-L:125] comment
"what a long, strange, trip it's been." -- J. Garcia, recently deceased. sincerely, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Los Angeles, CA (the city of your future: the modern home of slavery)
[PEN-L:127] Meeropols comment on Venona documents
I've been asked to forward this to the list. I haven't seen it
here yet, thought it might be of interest.
Blair Sandler
PLEASE NOTE: THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT WAS ISSUED BY ROBERT
AND
MICHAEL MEEROPOL, SONS OF JULIUS AND ETHEL ROSENBERG, AS AN
INITAL
REACTION TO THE RELEASE BY THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY OF
THE
"VENONA" DOCUMENTS PURPORTING TO PROVE THAT THEIR PARENTS
WERE
INDEED SOVIET SPIES. THE STATEMENT WAS ISSUED JULY 17 and AS
FAR
AS WE KNOW, HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED BY THE MAINSTREAM PRESS.
ROSENBERG FUND FOR CHILDREN
1145 Main Street
Suite 408
Springfield, Ma. 01103
)413) 739 - 9020
FAX: (413) 746-5767
Contact numbers(s) above.
RELEASED "VENONA" DOCUMENTS DEMONSTRATE GOVERNMENT DUPLICITY.
Nothing in the 49 VENONA documents released by the
National
Security AGency and the CIA (The Agencies) on July 11 cause
us to
alter our positions that: 1. our parents Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg were not guilty as charged; 2. their conviction was
based
upon perjured testimony and fabricated evidence; 3. that
government
agents and agencies orchestrated our parents' frame-up which
resulted in their execution.
We have sought the release of these documents sicne
1975. The
Agencies explanation that they were not used at our parents'
trial
for national security reasons does not explain why they have
refused to release them to us for the last 20 years. It is
much
more plausible that the documents were only released now
because
they prove nothing and do not helpt justify our parents'
execution.
The documents' nature and contents explain why The
Agencies
kept them secret for over 40 years. The Agences have
released no
physical evidence to support their claims. The public is
asked to
accept just upon their say so that the documents really are
translations ofr encrypted Soviet diplomatic communications
that
the translations faithfull reflect those communications, and
that
the individuals referred to in code n the documents are the
people
The Agencies say they are. None of this should be taken for
granted. The Agencies are some of the major architects of
our
parents' legally sanctioned murder and so have a tremendous
stake
in justifying their execution.
The booklet The Agences released to "explain" the
documents
("Introductory History of VENONA and Guide to the
Trnaslations),
demonstrates that they have even lied about the contents of
these
documents in this carefully staged effort to misinform the
public.
For example the following statements appear on page 10 of the
Guide:
"These messages disclose some of the clandestine
activities of
Julius and _Ethel Rosenberg_ ..." and "KGB officer
Leonid
Kvasnikov ... like the Rosenberg_s_ ... had many other
high-tech
espionage targets..." (emphasis added)
Our mother is barely mentioned in the 49 documents The
Agencies claim are KGB transmissions, and nowhere in them is
it
stated that she engaged in clandestine activities. The major
reference to her states: "Knows about her husband's work and
the
role of METR and NIL. In view of delicate health does not
work.
Is characterized positively and as a devoted person."
Our father's name never appears in any of the documents.
The Agencies would have us believe that they identified
many
spies long before our parents' arrests and did nothing about
it but
give the FBI a few tips while the vast majority of them
either
disappeared or were never prosecuted. They can not explian
why
neither the CIA nor the FBI acted as if it had this
information
prior to our parents' arrests. Therefore, we suspect that
The
Agencies "cooked" whatever information they had after the
arrests
and trial to bolster the government's scenario. While we
can't
prove this, The Agencies certainly had the motive, means and
opportunity to do so. This helps explain why the "Guide" is
so
vague about the timing of the "decoding" of these
"transmissions."
The Federal Judiciary, the FBI, the Departmnet of
Justice, the
CIA and other government agencies ahve engaged in a course of
misconduct concerning our parents' case for over 40 years.
Unlike
the Agencies, we, as private citizens have not had the media
access
necessary to present our side.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact: Robert Meeropol: 413 - 739 -
9020.
--
Mike Meeropol
Economics Department
Cultures Past and Present Program
Western New England College
Springfield, Massachusetts
"Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!"
Unrepentent Leftist!!
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[if at bitnet node: in%"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" but that's fading
fast!]
[PEN-L:5565] Re: Ajit's comment to Gil
Mike Meeropol wonders: But the average student that I've taught has bought the "anyone can make it" ideology lock, stock 'n' barrel! I can't believe it's that bad at state supported institutions where there's more solidly working-class students. At least I hope not! Um... I'm afraid you're neglecting the gigantic increases in the costs of so- called 'state-supported' institutions. Maybe it's different elsewhere, but I'm not sure I'd call UMass a 'working class' anything at this point. But you're basic point is well-taken. It occurs to me that one of the un-fortunate consequences of the passing of generations who lived through the Great Depression is that Americans have forgotten what was painfully obvious in the 30s: that capitalism can't employ everybody, that left to its own devices it's prone to self-destruct, and that many people are ruined through no fault of their own by the workings of the economy. yours, --Mike Parkhurst [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:5533] Re: Ajit's comment to Gil
DOLE SAID: 1) "Politics of class war" As in, Clinton's intention to avoid [further] tax cuts for the rich to go with tax cuts for the middle class promotes the politics of class warfare, which we statespersonlike Republicans wish to avoid... GIL TRANSLATED: Translation: yeah, we know that the very richest got obscenely richer, and the poor poorer, during the Reagan-Bush era (in significant part due to Reagan's tax "reforms"), and that the US has the most unequal income and wealth distributions of all developed countries. But that's fine with us, so let's not talk about it anymore. _ AJIT OFFERS OTHER TRANSLATION!__ No Gil! I think he means "that's why we call it America", and he wants you to be proud of it. America is for the people who want to "make it" so why tax them when they make it. Tax the poor who betrayed the "American dream". There is no class war fare, life is a race in which some win and some lose. And the loser should be appropriately punished. Having taught about poverty and income redistribution for over 24 years in a college where the students are for the most part children of working class people with "climbing" aspirations (it's a private college), I can't stress enough how pervasive is the view that "you can make it if you try" and anyone who's poor is probably too lazy or too dumb to have "made it." There is a PERVERSE class consciousness that would have done any Victorian proud --- success proves worthiness!! They may grudgingly support giving money to poor people who REALLY need it (and are "trying") but for the most part they have REALLY bought the 'blaming the victim' arguments. Part of the skewed nature of my sample is that my school is virtually lilly-white. AFrican American students are much more sensitive to the possibility that some people have the cards stacked against them. But the average student that I've taught has bought the "anyone can make it" ideology lock, stock 'n' barrel! I can't believe it's that bad at state supported institutions where there's more solidly working-class students. At least I hope not! Mike -- Mike Meeropol Economics Department Cultures Past and Present Program Western New England College Springfield, Massachusetts "Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!" Unrepentent Leftist!! [EMAIL PROTECTED] [if at bitnet node: in%"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" but that's fading fast!]
[PEN-L:3938] Comment on NAFTA
Friends: I sent this to the Boston Globe which rejected it; perhaps you will find it of interest An Alternative Vision of Mexican Development David Barkin* As a Mexican academic, temporarily in Cambridge, I am gratified by the excellent coverage that the Boston Globe has been giving to crisis in Mexico. Your stories offer superb coverage of the tragic consequences of more than a decade of mistakes in management by a team of skilled economists. These highly-educated and highly-placed technocrats, as they are labeled, have fallen into the trap of transforming dogma into science, an error that others before them also committed, with similar results: Mexico's peasants and working classes endure declining real incomes and a deteriorating quality of life, while the economy is becoming less capable of supplying the basic needs of our people. Today, the purchasing power of the average wage is less than one-half what it was in 1976 and more than two-thirds of the households have incomes below the nation's poverty level. For the last few years, the pundits have been proclaiming Mexico as the great success story of globalization. Increasing exports and declining reliance on petroleum were said to be indicators of progress, while we were assured that exploding imports strengthened the nation's productive capacity. The virtual flood of foreign capital offered an opportunity for a small elite to enrich itself through speculation and manipulation of the stock market, and for the government to postpone the day of reckoning by offering juicy returns to well remunerated money managers in the world's financial centers. The pundits are now pompously asserting the inevitability of present problems. They are just as audacious in recommending caution today as they were in urging investors into the heady waters of international finance in yesterday's markets. The huge devaluation of the peso will lead to substantial inflation in Mexico, as your reporters have noted, and prices of imported goods will rise quickly and dramatically. Changes of recent years led to a massive displacement of local production by imported goods. Years ago, the technocrats decided that Mexico's peasants and indigenous population were not only too independent but also very inefficient; they had to be removed from the countryside to "free" them from their traditional communities, putting their land at the disposition of more resourceful social groups and making them available for other tasks. Today, some of the corn for our tortillas, milk products, and animal feed, to name only a few essential items, are among the imported goods that were formerly produced at home. Similarly, small and medium sized industries were squeezed and many forced to close. The widely heralded trade "opening" led to an avalanche of cheap imports, a costly and unsustainable way to fight inflation and stimulate competition at the cost of domestic industries and jobs; aggravating the problem, the banking system was too busy fueling the speculative binge in the financial markets to address the complex task of supporting and strengthening the weakening industrial and agricultural base. The bipartisan "rescue" package from the US does not address Mexico's fundamental problems. By throwing "good money after bad", the proposed bailout will only further deepen the crisis, by raising the foreign debt and the cost of debt service. It will offer a very small group of people in Mexico the opportunity to continue to engage in financial acrobatics for personal gain. It will also provide the necessary funds for important financial groups in the US and elsewhere so that they can avoid the embarrassment of paying the real cost of their ill-considered investments: the guarantees will provide funds as a temporary fillip to financial markets that will facilitate an orderly (and profitable) redeployment of foreign assets. The massive injection of new credits into Mexico will also reduce pressures to face up to the urgent task of rebuilding capacity to satisfy our basic needs. To undertake this alternative path, we must mobilize people to plant crops and raise the animals needed for work and food, while artisans and small-scale entrepreneurs are encouraged to rebuild the myriad small industries and workshops to produce other basic consumer goods. This is the only way that we can defend our standard of living: by producing products which create jobs and incomes so that people can buy these products. This alternative cannot be undertaken without a serious democratization of the political arena. In today's world, a strong domestic economy cannot be shaped in isolation; but without explicit policies and resources to define such an approach, international economic integration will surely continue to exclude people from effective participation in governance and erode their capacity to supply their own needs, condemning them to a deteriorating quality of life. This is not an option which
