RE: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33417
Title: RE: [PEN-L:33442] Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33417 Joanna writes: But take my word for it, [in the US] there is a level of anxiety, of unrelenting fear and mistrust, the likes of which I have not encountered anywhere else on earth. Michael Moore's BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE suggests that the reason for all the gun shootings in the US is not the prevalence of guns as much as the unrelenting fear and mistrust that we all suffer from. It makes sense: we're all told -- and we all believe -- that if we fail, it's our fault and no-one else's. Each American is every other one's rival in the Great Big Market, unless of course we're uniting around the Flag to beat up some other country. It feels like it's either individual rivalry or national unity, with nothing in-between. BTW, L.A. is pretty bad (as Joanna says) but it has a lot of plays and movies and other culture if you can afford it. Jim
Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33442
At 05:27 PM 12/27/2002 -0800, you wrote: I think emotional structure is key to making left organization. There is a confusion about using text based tools to form emotional structure in left groups. In my email 'Face Blindness' I give some of the crucial elements of emotion structure that the face provides that text either poorly performs or can't do at all. Face to face organizing founders in competition with media emotion structures. Email distribution lists come closer to a model of left organizing that succeeds where face to face is not succeeding. One can belong agnostically to several lists. The group membership is loose, and relatively open to the world. Email suffers like any other text based communication tool with comparison to expressing emotion structure via the face. So for now we continue to confront what you raised as a problem in your remark. I see the problem in my way, but the commonality we share is that emotion structure is the barrier in the U.S. to an effective left. You bring up many interesting and true points. Emotion is key -- and the way in which emotion is not felt in the context of action, but passively is also true. Two variables to mention in connection with that is 1) that to feel an emotion requires time, and Americans are one of the most overworked people on earth: no time = no emotion and 2) as so much of the emotion we feel is constructed by advertising, we have come to think of emotions as things that are subjective/individual/divisive. The notion of an emotion (pride, rage, anger, love) as a binding force is uncommon in the U.S. The closest thing to it is rooting for your football/baseball/basketball team. You also leave out one important social space -- that created by religion. It seems to me that the official religion of the left is atheism and I think this is a huge loss. I think the left needs to recongize that there is a whole spectrum of religious belief in the U.S. -- ranging from the communal meditative practices of Buddhists and Quakers...to extreme Xtian fundamentalism. To put all these practices into the same basket of delusion is a big mistake. It completely shuts out many communities that do believe that the right to life is greater than the right to property, and these communities would well be worth working with. Joanna
Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33442
You also leave out one important social space -- that created by religion. It seems to me that the official religion of the left is atheism and I think this is a huge loss. I think the left needs to recongize that there is a whole spectrum of religious belief in the U.S. -- ranging from the communal meditative practices of Buddhists and Quakers...to extreme Xtian fundamentalism. To put all these practices into the same basket of delusion is a big mistake. It completely shuts out many communities that do believe that the right to life is greater than the right to property, and these communities would well be worth working with. Joanna In the USA, there is no hard dichotomy between the left and the church, unlike in nations with a history of anti-clerical radicalism due to the established church's functioning as a great land owner itself or an accomplice with fascists. There is no established church to begin with here. The USA has few secular left institutions, so most political meetings have to be and are held in private homes, union halls, college classrooms, and places of worship. In nations where left-wingers have an organized presence, they have their own party offices and buildings where they can conduct their own business and offer public spaces for allied social movement affairs. -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/
Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33417
At 10:57 PM 12/25/2002 -0800, you wrote: In regard to your remark about loneliness, the U.S. has a divided atomized people, does that make them weird? How do you measure loneliness? Some people are and some people aren't in the U.S. culture. Broad generalizations easily become a vehicle for prejudice. Is that what I use to organize someone a concern for their U.S. loneliness? Their degree of loneliness because they live here? Organizing someone is about their network of connections, their work, their social network inside and outside their jobs. And in that there are varying degrees of needs and wants that we want to overcome as reds. I came to this country in 63. I was nine. My parents acted like we were coming to heaven on earth. My own feeling was that we had landed on Mars--- otherwise known as Los Angeles. Up to that point I had lived in Bucharest and Paris. Los Angeles was a cold hell. Because I was a child, the material goods didn't impress me. What stunned me were the empty streets, the superficial make nice...underneath of which was ...nothing. You can't call it loneliness because to do that, people would have to feel lonely; but Americans don't feel lonely because they have no experience of what social warmth and social presence feels like. In the last forty years in this country, I have met some extraordinary Americans. They tended to be leftists. But take my word for it, there is a level of anxiety, of unrelenting fear and mistrust, the likes of which I have not encountered anywhere else on earth. Joanna
Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33442
Greetings Economists, Joanna remarks, In the last forty years in this country, I have met some extraordinary Americans. They tended to be leftists. But take my word for it, there is a level of anxiety, of unrelenting fear and mistrust, the likes of which I have not encountered anywhere else on earth. Doyle Michael Moore said something of the same thing about endemic U.S. fear and anxiety in his Bowling for Columbine movie. How does one link that up with understanding how to build a left movement in this country? I have suggested lately that media carries more or less 'emotion' depending upon whether it is text only, or motion pictures. That was the subject of my email on 'Face Blindness' to get some grasp of what emotion content does to communicate with other people. I also pointed out that emotions really matter in the sense we share them. Most people in the U.S. are enmeshed in U.S. media culture. This email list is just one example about how much we rely upon media to form groups with. With emotions faces carry a large amount of how we express our feelings. I think what impedes organizing people in traditional leftwing senses is that everyone so much relies upon media as a source of emotional structure to society. Face to face organizing must compete with media products. Literally influencing how we expect to emotionally connect to each other. Face to face organizing by contrast has to produce the same satisfactions as media movie. Face to face organizing of course has an action component that passive movies don't. In that case I don't need to hypothesize an excessively fearful people. The media may run fear campaigns to support the war, but the real issue is that most people rely upon their media for their emotional ties to this society. A weakness of U.S. mass media is the inability to actively share the content of what people consume in the movies with one and the other. We can share the content of email lists. There is an audience for the list, and there is the ability to write into the group. Movies on the other hand are very difficult to use in a sharing way. Movies, television is usually consumed in a passive sense as an individual. Someone could make a movie and have a more active role in the process. Shoot a home movie, but still the vast majority of what we watch is passively seen. So the emotional training for us is that we often take in emotions from a movie as a passive experience. In relating to the movie as a major source of emotional sustenance as the vast majority of people do, their everyday experience is sitting in a chair observing what enthralls their emotional system. Whereas emotions are really tied closely to activity. We are therefore stunted in emotional experience by receiving much of emotional experience sitting quietly in a chair. The emphasis to fear you give in your remark tells me how much you credit a specific state of feelings as the central core of what makes things hard in the U.S. I think you find fear as the problem because fear is what we would understand in our bodies as the reason why we 'won't' do something. I agree with the thrust of emphasizing emotions as a central issue for organizing the left now. But I don't think a part of the spectrum of emotions is the problem in the U.S. Many groups try to organize a left by creating a strong boundary round the group. Once inside the group the emotional life you had outside is cut off. There are many criticisms of that method of creating left groups. My observation is that it is hard for a group to grow if it can't be semi-open to networks of people flowing in and out. To grow rapidly a left group has to incorporate not individuals into a social group, but the branching network of relationships that most individuals have in their lives. The clash between socialist ideals of what a person ought to be, and the traditional emotional ties everyone carries with them makes a closed off group a difficult proposition to grow large. Further, the media is a very important source of emotional structure for the vast majority of people. The comparative products of face to face and media emotion can often be the center of how left groups founder. Inside the group emotional life has to be as good as or better than outside the group. If conditions in the group don't compare favorably with what one can get outside the group, the group is destabilized by the attraction to sitting and watching television over the stresses of organizing people face to face. I think emotional structure is key to making left organization. There is a confusion about using text based tools to form emotional structure in left groups. In my email 'Face Blindness' I give some of the crucial elements of emotion structure that the face provides that text either poorly performs or can't do at all. Face to face organizing founders in competition with media emotion structures. Email distribution lists come closer to a model of
Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33305
Doyle Sailor wrote: Let's talk about loose marbles. Two groups of e people were churned by economic necessity, African Americans during WWII to move to California, and from Mexico and South America Latinos also being forced to California. This is unfair. How about Turks being forced to California by economic necessity. Do I sense some racist tones here? Loose marbles is certainly a common expression for being insane in most English speaking peoples minds. Luckily, I am not an English speaking person, though I can speak some English too, so loose marbles sounds good to me. Indeed, I am proud to be one. So too those who immigrate for economic reasons are vulnerable to the charge of being of no value because they had to leave their homes to make a living elsewhere. Thanks for defending me and my likes. I tell you, I hate every second spend in this weird country of lonely people. Did you know that the very first letter I wrote to my best friend one week after I arrived in North America diagnosed the main problem of North Americans as this: These people suffer from serious loneliness. They are extremely lonely. No wonder most of them are not stable. I still hold the same view after sixteen years. Best, Sabri
Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33417
Greetings Economists, Sabri Oncu writes quoting me first, Doyle Sailor, (Sabri you misspelled my name, it is Saylor), Let's talk about loose marbles. Two groups of e people were churned by economic necessity, African Americans during WWII to move to California, and from Mexico and South America Latinos also being forced to California. Then Sabri observes, This is unfair. How about Turks being forced to California by economic necessity. Do I sense some racist tones here? Doyle, Yeah you are right, there are racist overtones in the charge that California is where the loose marbles end up. Which may not be what JKS was implying, but is what sets me off when I read about anyone accusing California as the end point for 'loose marbles'. Saying this is where the loose marbles end up is an attack on working class people of all kinds (including Turkish people) who come here. And a key component of that phrase, 'loose marbles', is the racism that shapes U.S. society which readily denigrates people who migrate to find work. And the metaphor of 'loose marbles' also implies to many people that California is where 'nuts' go. That is a very common slur against California as a location. Sabri, Luckily, I am not an English speaking person, though I can speak some English too, so loose marbles sounds good to me. Indeed, I am proud to be one. Doyle I agree I am proud to be a 'loose marble'. But I don't embrace labels that prejudice uses, to politically identify with. I don't believe appropriation of words or phrases that represent pejorative attitudes really addresses prejudice. Pejoratives are structured by the feelings of prejudice. Name calling is emotion structure in society, not words, in which feelings are used to divide people against each other. Address the causes of why people feel their hurt and pain from prejudice in a material fashion and those working people will 'feel' liberated. Sabri, Thanks for defending me and my likes. I tell you, I hate every second spend in this weird country of lonely people. Did you know that the very first letter I wrote to my best friend one week after I arrived in North America diagnosed the main problem of North Americans as this: These people suffer from serious loneliness. They are extremely lonely. No wonder most of them are not stable. Doyle The U.S. is not a weird country of lonely people. What has that got to do with a class analysis? Secondly, disability rights is about defending people who have mental disabilities against the wide spread prejudice against having depression, or obsession, or whatever. What do you mean not stable? You know Jim Devine was careful to make the point that he doesn't see a difference between loony people and genius. He understands on many levels what I am driving at, but like me will use thoughts and phrases that reflect an unexamined thought about what sounds like a disability to me. In regard to your remark about loneliness, the U.S. has a divided atomized people, does that make them weird? How do you measure loneliness? Some people are and some people aren't in the U.S. culture. Broad generalizations easily become a vehicle for prejudice. Is that what I use to organize someone a concern for their U.S. loneliness? Their degree of loneliness because they live here? Organizing someone is about their network of connections, their work, their social network inside and outside their jobs. And in that there are varying degrees of needs and wants that we want to overcome as reds. Calling somebody specific, like weird, is a personal label upon something strange seeming in your mind about them. Making them an other. Where do you find solidarity with them by understanding why they are like they are? You hate this country. I don't hate Turkey, but I make a distinction between the government or state and the people also. I hope to find solidarity with Turkish working class people. I don't see people from Turkey, or Iraq, South Africa, Ethoipia, Turkestan, Vietnam, Argentina, etc., as weird. I don't know much about them, but for example I read what you write about Turkey to learn more about what is really going on there. But finding a way to unite is no easy task either. Thanks for the thought. You know you would be welcome in my home. I hope if you hate me for being an American, that you could soften your heart toward me by personal contact. thanks, Doyle Saylor
RE: Re: RE: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Title: RE: [PEN-L:33297] Re: RE: The Economist considers Karl Marx JKS says:Well, Southern Cal, that's where all the loose marbles go anyway . . . . Haven't you read Nathaniel West's Day of the Lucust? who was it was said that it's as if the whole country had been tipped on its side, so that everything loose fell to California? N. West? I thought it was Frank Lloyd Wright. Bartlett, call your office... Jim in RI
Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx new ref # 33305
Greetings Economists, Jim Devine writes, FWIW, I wasn't knocking lunatics. I don't think the division between lunatics and normal people really exists. Further, lunacy and genius go hand in hand. Jim in RI Doyle I'm well aware you struggle with me about what you mean when you use words that sound like a disability shapes your comment. Like I wrote before I've been known to use exactly the same sort of characterizations. Something or somebody is crazy. I'm sure if given a chance in some appropriate regime you would strongly advocate for a society that represents socialist values toward health etc. You are trying as above to find a way to make clear where your real values are. Let's talk about loose marbles. Two groups of people were churned by economic necessity, African Americans during WWII to move to California, and from Mexico and South America Latinos also being forced to California. Loose marbles is certainly a common expression for being insane in most English speaking peoples minds. So too those who immigrate for economic reasons are vulnerable to the charge of being of no value because they had to leave their homes to make a living elsewhere. There is no way I disparage those peoples who work hard in severe oppressive conditions for relocating here. They are not in any way 'loose' marbles in the head, heart, feet, minds, hands, persons, etc. Socialism is for the 'whole' working class. It's power derives from unity. From the complex job of uniting everyone. I want it to be clear that we welcome disabled people into Socialism. That the left is about liberation for all the working class. Idle words that seem to make disability the problem are not what Socialism is about. Nor is being correct here what Socialism is about. Rather I am raising my understanding of what I read here to build a bridge of understanding both to you, and about Disability rights for all. Thanks, Doyle Saylor
Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
- Original Message - From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's a logical impossibility. If there's no state, there's no property or contract law, so no title to anything, and no sanctioned and enforceable exchanges, so no markets. A most rare and strange zone, where law and logic overlap, no? :-) This is a point Cass Sunstein has usefully insisted on over the years. jks === Is there a richer, non-obvious genealogy of CS' claims I can find out more about? Ian
Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Louis Proyect wrote, It is astonishing, for example, that the Economist can say: Class war is the sine qua non of Marx. But the class war, if it ever existed, is over. In western democracies today, who chooses who rules, and for how long? Who tells governments how companies will be regulated? Who in the end owns the companies? Workers for hire--the proletariat. Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to pay taxes! http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2002/12/19/boll/index.html?x Could it be that the Wall Street Journal and the Economist have been infiltrated by Onion satirists? Tom Walker
Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Peter Drucker proclaimed the United States the first truly 'Socialist' country, because workers, through their pension funds own at least 25% of its equity capital, which is more than enough for control. In Drucker's reckoning, socialism was introduced by then head of General Motors Charles Wilson in 1950 to blunt union militancy by making visible the workers' stake in company profits and company success. Drucker, Peter F. 1976. The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (NY: Harper and Row): p. 6. On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:31:41AM -0800, Tom Walker wrote: Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to pay taxes! -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
In that case, the Economist and Peter Drucker won't mind if we abolish the wage relationship and private appropriation of returns on capital, turning the factories and offices and farms over to the workers and farmers, who will manage them themselves and collective appropriate the entire fruits of their labor -- nothing left overfor the rentiers.. After all, we're already socialist, so that woukd be an inessential tweak on the fundamental underlying structure. Sheesh. Do these guys believe that shit, or do they expect anyone else to believe it, or to believe that they believe it? Why do they say it then? jks Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Drucker proclaimed the United States "the first truly'Socialist' country," because workers, through their pension funds"own at least 25% of its equity capital, which is more than enoughfor control." In Drucker's reckoning, socialism was introduced bythen head of General Motors Charles Wilson in 1950 to "blunt unionmilitancy by making visible the workers' stake in company profitsand company success." Drucker, Peter F. 1976. The UnseenRevolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (NY: Harperand Row): p. 6.On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:31:41AM -0800, Tom Walker wrote: Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to pay taxes! -- Michael PerelmanEconomics DepartmentCalifornia State Univ! ersityChico, CA 95929Tel. 530-898-5321E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
- Original Message - From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] In that case, the Economist and Peter Drucker won't mind if we abolish the wage relationship and private appropriation of returns on capital, turning the factories and offices and farms over to the workers and farmers, who will manage them themselves and collective appropriate the entire fruits of their labor -- nothing left over for the rentiers.. After all, we're already socialist, so that woukd be an inessential tweak on the fundamental underlying structure. Sheesh. Do these guys believe that shit, or do they expect anyone else to believe it, or to believe that they believe it? Why do they say it then? jks == They lurk on this list to see if we still read their drivel. Ian
RE: Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Title: RE: [PEN-L:33272] Re: Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx in common parlance, even among many economists, socialism refers to any government interference in the so-called free market. (For example, the economic historian Peter Temin referred to the rise of state intervention during the 1930s as socialism in many countries.) Even some socialists see socialism as merely referring to state ownership of the means of production, not caring who or what owns the state. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine JKS wrote: In that case, the Economist and Peter Drucker won't mind if we abolish the wage relationship and private appropriation of returns on capital, turning the factories and offices and farms over to the workers and farmers, who will manage them themselves and collective appropriate the entire fruits of their labor -- nothing left over for the rentiers.. After all, we're already socialist, so that woukd be an inessential tweak on the fundamental underlying structure. Sheesh. Do these guys believe that shit, or do they expect anyone else to believe it, or to believe that they believe it? Why do they say it then? jks Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Drucker proclaimed the United States the first truly 'Socialist' country, because workers, through their pension funds own at least 25% of its equity capital, which is more than enough for control. In Drucker's reckoning, socialism was introduced by then head of General Motors Charles Wilson in 1950 to blunt union militancy by making visible the workers' stake in company profits and company success. Drucker, Peter F. 1976. The Unseen Revolution: How Pension Fund Socialism Came to America (NY: Harper and Row): p. 6. On Fri, Dec 20, 2002 at 09:31:41AM -0800, Tom Walker wrote: Oh those proles, the lucky duckies: they own the companies, they tell the government what to do, they choose who rules... and they don't even have to pay taxes!
RE: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Title: RE: [PEN-L:33277] The Economist considers Karl Marx I wrote: in common parlance, even among many economists, socialism refers to any government interference in the so-called free market. JKS writes:Well, there's no helping the economists, they're dunderheads anyway, but that's not common parlance outside the loony right wing. The judges I clerked for were all New Deal liberals (even though one of them was/is a Repug), and all of them believe in extensive govt regulation of the economy, and would say so, and all of them would have a heart attack if you called them a socialist. but just as the lunatics have taken over the asylum, the looney right wing has taken over the conciousness of much of the US citizenry (at least here in SoCal), along with taking over more and more of the judiciary every day. Of course, in _practice_, there's an amendment that should be made: if the government intervention directly and materially helps businesses, it's not socialism but is part of laissez-faire. This amendment reflects the common contrast between laissez-faire theory (no guvmint!) and laizzez-faire practice (guvmint should help biz, in public/private partnerships). Even some socialists see socialism as merely referring to state ownership of the means of production, not caring who or what owns the state. There's a big diff between interference so called and ownership, even if the ownership is merely public and not democratic. yes, but in much of popular consciousness, state ownership is simply further down the spectrum from state intervention in the free market. It's a matter of quantitative change becoming qualitative. Jim
Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
- Original Message - From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Even some socialists see socialism as merely referring to state ownership of the means of production, not caring who or what owns the state. There's a big diff between interference so called and ownership, even if the ownership is merely public and not democratic. jks === Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classes may think the government their personal property, but don't we deride that as delusional? Non-interference in the market is a legal impossibility, no? Ian
RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Title: RE: [PEN-L:33279] Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classes may think the government their personal property, but don't we deride that as delusional? officially, the Absolutist kings owned their states (l'état c'est moi!) and appointed the boards of directors (i.e., governments). The equivalents of today's left existing at the time might have seen this claim as delusional, but it was backed by the force of arms. Might may not make right in the moral sense of the word, but it often does so in practice. Non-interference in the market is a legal impossibility, no? Markets couldn't exist without the state, but common mythology (shared by many econo-dunderheads) has it that markets are natural. Jim
Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classes may think the government their personal property, but don't we deride that as delusional? officially, the Absolutist kings owned their states (l'état c'est moi!) and appointed the boards of directors (i.e., governments). The equivalents of today's left existing at the time might have seen this claim as delusional, but it was backed by the force of arms. Might may not make right in the moral sense of the word, but it often does so in practice. = And how many absolute monarchies still exist today? Isn't that an example of a modicum of progress, a gift from the struggles of the past? Non-interference in the market is a legal impossibility, no? Markets couldn't exist without the state, but common mythology (shared by many econo-dunderheads) has it that markets are natural. Jim === Well, since we have no idea as to what is non-natural, we can chalk that up to insufficient attention to language. Ian
Re: Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Ian Murray wrote: - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] [clip] Markets couldn't exist without the state, but common mythology (shared by many econo-dunderheads) has it that markets are natural. Jim === Well, since we have no idea as to what is non-natural, we can chalk that up to insufficient attention to language. Natural takes up about 14 columns in the OED. I don't think we can ground ths argument in linguistics or semantics. I didn't pry into those 14 columns, but I bet they contain abundant (respectable) sanction for the linguistic acceptability of the proposition that Markets are natural. Carrol
RE: Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Title: RE: [PEN-L:33281] Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classes may think the government their personal property, but don't we deride that as delusional? I wrote: officially, the Absolutist kings owned their states (l'état c'est moi!) and appointed the boards of directors (i.e., governments). The equivalents of today's left existing at the time might have seen this claim as delusional, but it was backed by the force of arms. Might may not make right in the moral sense of the word, but it often does so in practice. Ian writes: And how many absolute monarchies still exist today? Isn't that an example of a modicum of progress, a gift from the struggles of the past? It's possible we could have Absolutism again. That's where the Bush admin. is heading. Non-interference in the market is a legal impossibility, no? said I: Markets couldn't exist without the state, but common mythology (shared by many econo-dunderheads) has it that markets are natural. Ian: Well, since we have no idea as to what is non-natural, we can chalk that up to insufficient attention to language. I'm only reporting the common myth. Astrology doesn't make sense either, but it's quite popular. Jim
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
- Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] Well, since we have no idea as to what is non-natural, we can chalk that up to insufficient attention to language. Natural takes up about 14 columns in the OED. I don't think we can ground ths argument in linguistics or semantics. I didn't pry into those 14 columns, but I bet they contain abundant (respectable) sanction for the linguistic acceptability of the proposition that Markets are natural. Carrol === Which renders such statements totally innocuous and beside the point. Government is natural. Space flight is natural. Bowling is natural. Ian
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
At 03:59 PM 12/20/2002 -0600, you wrote: I didn't pry into those 14 columns, but I bet they contain abundant (respectable) sanction for the linguistic acceptability of the proposition that Markets are natural. The question is though Markets are natural to what? Joanna
Re: Re: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Ian Murray Aren't governments unownable by definition? Sure some factions/classesmay think the government their personal property, but don't we deridethat as delusional? W once referred --as Dave Barry said, i am not making this up -- to his "investorsm er I mean my contributors." Non-interference in "the market" is a legalimpossibility, no? It's a logical impossibility. If there's no state, there's no property or contract law, so no title to anything, and no sanctioned and enforceable exchanges, so no markets. This is a point Cass Sunstein has usefully insisted on over the years.jksDo you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
Re: RE: The Economist considers Karl Marx
Jim D: but just as the lunatics have taken over the asylum, the looney right wing has taken over the conciousness of much of the US citizenry (at least here in SoCal), along with taking over more and more of the judiciary every day. Well, Southern Cal, that's where all the loose marbles go anyway . . . . Haven't you read Nathaniel West's Day of the Lucust? Of course, in _practice_, there's an amendment that should be made: if the government intervention directly and materially helps businesses, it's not "socialism" but is part of "laissez-faire." This amendment reflects the common contrast between laissez-faire theory (no guvmint!) and laizzez-faire practice (guvmint should help biz, in public/private partnerships). But in common parlance in places where I've lived, ordinary folk may disagree about how much the govt should regulate, etc., without starting to use the S-word. yes, but in much of popular consciousness, state ownership is simply further down the spectrum from state intervention in the "free" market. It's a matter of quantitative change becoming qualitative. There's something to that, no? If the state nationalizes the commanding heights, you might not have a worker's democracy, but you won't have capitalism anymore. jksDo you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
