Re: the Clinton years
Given, then, the specifically bourgeois form of the state--and I admit to being hardly clear as to what these structural limits on real democracy are, but this is what I would like to investigate--perhaps we should not be surprised by both (a) the limits on state stabilization policy and its increasingly class biased form (predicted by Mattick Sr, Mario Cogoy, Joachim Hirsch) Ernest Mandel actually published on this as well, in fact I translated a fairly comprehensive article of his called Methodological issues in defining the class nature of the bourgeois state (written for a festschrift for Leo Kofler) which never got published however. Jurriaan, I would like to read it. There is a chapter on the state in Late Capitalism, if I remember correctly. This would have been written after that? Mandel's argument is that the state derivation school which seeks to infer state functions and forms from the logic of capital is ahistorical, and do not probe the historical origins of the bourgeois state, nor the dialectics of free wage labour. Bob Fine has some interesting discussion of the functionalism of Marxist state theory. Another important text is that of Reuten Williams, although I do not agree with some of the value-form arguments. yes I have wanted to get a copy of this apparently important book. and (b) Shaikh and Tonak's very important finding that the welfare state never redistributed income downward even in the so called Golden Age, working class taxes may have exceeded transfers even before 'social democracy' was blamed for stagflation, and the regressive nature of the so called welfare state has only since worsened with relative cuts in social expenditures and regressive increases in the payroll and sales tax paying for tax breaks not even for investment The experience in this regard is different in different countries, depending on the balance of class power. how different? that's what I would like to know. Which is not to say that since the state is always a class state that the working class need not be bothered by its principles of organization. A police state is very much a worse institution for the working class than a representative democracy. Ultra left criticism that cannot see the real danger posed by Ashcroft is delusional. The terrain of extra electoral activity has to be preserved, especially for collective worker action. Agreed. I wrote a bit about taxation recently. Maybe the orthodox Marxist would froth at the mouth at this, but the orthodox Marxist never thinks about how socialist economy is actually organised, typically he just anticipates the breakup of capitalism as the moment of asserting his power over the working class. At the root of your statement is a misconceptualisation of reformism and revolutionism. ok. What I would like to consult again is Perry Anderson's exploration of the nature of representative democracy in his essay on the antinomies of Gramsci. Perhaps it's time to return to the debates over state theory, surveyed in Martin Carnoy's and Bob Jessop's now twenty year old books? My bias is that we should sort out the issues which Marx does not sort out, principally taxation, public finance, monetary manipulations including credit, that would be the main ones. Yes public finance. Why do Asian Central Banks continue to hold US govt debt now that the devaluation has already cost them $200 bn? Must they support the dollar given export orientation? Rakesh Jurriaan
Re: the Clinton years
Hi Rakesh, Jurriaan, I would like to read it. There is a chapter on the state in Late Capitalism, if I remember correctly. This would have been written after that? Yes. Mandel was influenced considerably by Leo Kofler (1907-1995), who was a German social philosopher/historian from Cologne. Kofler became politically active as socialist when he was twenty and in the 1930s operated on the leftwing of German social democracy, working with Max Adler. During the war he was in Switzerland and studied Lukacs. In 1947 he became professor in East Germany I think, but after a while fell out with the Socialist Unity Party who called him a Trotskyist which he wasn't. He published Zur Geschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (later revised) in 1948, and Geschichte und Dialektik in 1955. In 1950 he left with his wife Ursula to live in Cologne. In 1960 he published a sociological analysis of late capitalism called Staat, Gesellschaft und Elite zwischen Humanismus und Nihilismus. After that he became very interested in Marxist ethics, aesthetics and anthropology, and published a large amount of innovative books. Not much of it has been translated though. Mandel associated with many of these people, they were Marxists of some sort but neither in the CP or in the SDP, or at best on the fringes of it. Bob Fine has some interesting discussion of the functionalism of Marxist state theory. Agreed. But my own preferred procedure in these matters is normally different from the Marxists and closer to Marx, because I prefer to study the facts and history first with a theoretical orientation, and then utilise detailed theory to explain it, or illuminate it, and establish a relationship between theory and evidence. The bad habit of Althusserian theoreticism and postmodernism is to spin theory out of nothing, they don't do much empirical or historical research. As regards Reuten's book, it is actually worth reading, it contains important ideas, particularly if you want to continue Marx's own project with the same sort of method and are interested in Hegel. A Dutch CP Marxist called Siep Stuurman wrote a good book on the state, very comprehensive in its review of the literature, but not translated. I think lateron he gave up on Marx and became some sort of liberal. how different? that's what I would like to know. I will try to think of sources, it's a long time ago now that I studied this. In the case of New Zealand, the situation changed over time. Initially, workers did get more or less what they paid in, but later it was more like the situation Shaikh Tonak describe. Initially workers would not pay income tax, only possibly some property tax, rates and so on. In settler colonies, social insurance provisions or social funds for the first wave of immigrant workers did not exist, and the state had to provide them, that is why around the 1890s for example people were talking about State Socialism in New Zealand, welfare provisions were provided by the state because there was no other way. The Webbs even went to New Zealand to investigate State Socialism there (there is also a book about it by William Pember Reeves). With social insurance-type funds you cannot really evaluate the exchange made other than over a long period of time. Very few Marxists outside of actually existing socialisms ever investigated public finance beyond a few main aggregates, but this is peculiar, because if you look at the history of it, one of the main reasons why bourgeois revolutions actually happened was to gain control over taxation, which is a critical factor for capital accumulation, and state debts were a means of exerting control over state policy. In Holland, a lot of welfare services started as workers' cooperatives (credit unions, housing, etc.) which were over time corporatised and privatised. In Europe, the Marshall Plan also boosted state expenditure. Gerd Hardach did a book on the Marshall Plan in relation to Germany, but I don't know if you read German. ok. What I would like to consult again is Perry Anderson's exploration of the nature of representative democracy in his essay on the antinomies of Gramsci. I wasn't necessarily criticising you, you know. It is just that the ultraleft debate about reform versus revolution occurs because of a lack of a political method. Yes public finance. Why do Asian Central Banks continue to hold US govt debt now that the devaluation has already cost them $200 bn? Must they support the dollar given export orientation? I don't know that, I haven't studied it yet. A lot of trade is done in US dollars, certainly, and there's a sense in which you get locked into that. The US dollar will rise in the next year somewhat, I think, the longrun historic trend is likely to be gradually downward, but the Americans have many financial levers to prop up the US dollar for quite some time if they want to. Also, I think that the euro hasn't established itself as strongly yet as a world currency as it could
Re: the Clinton years
Hi Rakesh, Jurriaan, I would like to read it. There is a chapter on the state in Late Capitalism, if I remember correctly. This would have been written after that? Yes. Mandel was influenced considerably by Leo Kofler (1907-1995), who was a German social philosopher/historian from Cologne. Kofler became politically active as socialist when he was twenty and in the 1930s operated on the leftwing of German social democracy, working with Max Adler. Now that is someone (Adler) who very much interests me. I found quite helpful Leszek Kolakowski's summary of his work (especially Adler's rethinking of the Kantian problem of transcendental subjectivity in light of a socialized and historically evolving humanity quite promising). Some of Adler's work was translated in Austro Marxism, ed. Bottomore and Goode. I have wanted to study the debate on state theory between Hans Kelsen and Max Adler in the 1920s, but I read German slowly at this point. Lúkacs and Trotsky seem to have despised Adler, but there seem to have been very sharp divisions with Austrian social democracy--Adler on the left, Bauer and Hilferding in the middle, and Renner on the right. While quite a bit has been written in English about Austrian social democracy between the wars, there seems to be nothing about the Adler-Kelsen debate which from what I was able to make out was conducted at a very high level. Adler also had great influence on Lucien Goldman. During the war he was in Switzerland and studied Lukacs. In 1947 he became professor in East Germany I think, but after a while fell out with the Socialist Unity Party who called him a Trotskyist which he wasn't. He published Zur Geschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (later revised) in 1948, and Geschichte und Dialektik in 1955. In 1950 he left with his wife Ursula to live in Cologne. In 1960 he published a sociological analysis of late capitalism called Staat, Gesellschaft und Elite zwischen Humanismus und Nihilismus. After that he became very interested in Marxist ethics, aesthetics and anthropology, and published a large amount of innovative books. Not much of it has been translated though. Mandel associated with many of these people, they were Marxists of some sort but neither in the CP or in the SDP, or at best on the fringes of it. thank you for having taken the time to write this up. Kofler seems very interesting indeed. Was Kofler's anthropological interest motivated by the desire to critique Gehlen? Bob Fine has some interesting discussion of the functionalism of Marxist state theory. Agreed. But my own preferred procedure in these matters is normally different from the Marxists and closer to Marx, because I prefer to study the facts and history first with a theoretical orientation, and then utilise detailed theory to explain it, or illuminate it, and establish a relationship between theory and evidence. The bad habit of Althusserian theoreticism and postmodernism is to spin theory out of nothing, they don't do much empirical or historical research. Fine is a political theorist, interested in the problems that Marx inherited from classical liberalism. Once reading his book, I had a better appreciation of the work done by Ahmet and others as well as why they had decided to research empirically certain questions. As regards Reuten's book, it is actually worth reading, it contains important ideas, particularly if you want to continue Marx's own project with the same sort of method and are interested in Hegel. A Dutch CP Marxist called Siep Stuurman wrote a good book on the state, very comprehensive in its review of the literature, but not translated. I think lateron he gave up on Marx and became some sort of liberal. how different? that's what I would like to know. I will try to think of sources, it's a long time ago now that I studied this. In the case of New Zealand, the situation changed over time. Initially, workers did get more or less what they paid in, but later it was more like the situation Shaikh Tonak describe. Initially workers would not pay income tax, only possibly some property tax, rates and so on. In settler colonies, social insurance provisions or social funds for the first wave of immigrant workers did not exist, and the state had to provide them, that is why around the 1890s for example people were talking about State Socialism in New Zealand, welfare provisions were provided by the state because there was no other way. The Webbs even went to New Zealand to investigate State Socialism there (there is also a book about it by William Pember Reeves). With social insurance-type funds you cannot really evaluate the exchange made other than over a long period of time. Very few Marxists outside of actually existing socialisms ever investigated public finance beyond a few main aggregates, but this is peculiar, because if you look at the history of it, one of the main reasons why bourgeois revolutions actually happened was to gain control over taxation, which
Re: the Clinton years
Hi Rakesh, You said, Now that is someone (Adler) who very much interests me. Well I don't know, in some ways Adler is a bit obscure these days. But what's interesting is that he asked all the questions that needed to be asked at the time they needed to be asked, and he didn't go along with that diamat stuff. Max Adler, as far as I know, was talking theoretically about the unconscious well before Freud and Jung did. Personally I take a heretical view, and from my point of view, Marx was buried (killed) in many ways by Marxism, as soon as you have Marxism, then most people stop thinking, or else, they get obsessed with theoretical coherence or orthodoxy. The way I solve that is to talk about socialism instead, then I have smashed the holy doctrine, and I am again able to think for myself about what it is really about, think about Marx without some Marxist Hitler telling me what to think. I'm highly skeptical of Kolakowski's descriptions of Marxism and Marxists, they are scholastic, biased, contain errors. Kolakowski is really good on some subjects, but Marxism is not one of them. Academics normally use Marxism to kill Marx with. Marxism becomes a way of denying people individual creativity, personal identity and a life, it forces people into ideological and political straightjackets. It is better to study Marx and be a socialist, and as a socialist of course, you have to study many different people, you don't have guru's, it's not a religion, you concern yourself with advances towards socialism. You said: Lúkacs and Trotsky seem to have despised Adler, but there seem to have been very sharp divisions with Austrian social democracy--Adler on the left, Bauer and Hilferding in the middle, and Renner on the right. I do not know if that is true, that Lúkacs and Trotsky despised Adler. It sounds to me more like one of those racist rumours that some petty ideological clique of Marxist sectarian epigones would spread. Nor do I know whether the line-up you suggest is really sustainable, since people shifted their position quite a bit over the years. But Adler did influence Lucien Goldmann, that's true. Trotsky wanted to live in Berlin, but the police wouldn't let him, so he went to Vienna. He had very good relations with all the people you mention, but there were several different Adlers actually. He recounts some of this, in his autobiography My Life. In those days, Marxist culture wasn't racist, banale and fascist yet, and people normally related in a respectful, friendly and cultured manner even if they didn't agree, they concentrated on the arguments much more, rather than on who was being fashionable in some bourgeois clique. This is true even of Lenin, who treated Kautsky very well personally, even though he might lambast him in a text. It is not clear to me that Lukacs despised Adler either, although both Lukacs and Trotsky had their political reservations about Austro-Marxism. It sounds like a sectarian-racist reinterpretation of history, according to which ideologically-incorrect people are held in racist contempt. But in reality, Marxist culture in those days was very different, people distinguished much more clearly between friend and foe, they knew whose side they were on, so they wouldn't slag off at other socialists in the putrid way they do now. thank you for having taken the time to write this up. Kofler seems very interesting indeed. Was Kofler's anthropological interest motivated by the desire to critique Gehlen? I do not know that. I did not read a lot of his books, I didn't have time for it. Mandel had a knack for tracking down bright Marxist or semi-Marxist thinkers who could actually think for themselves, do some work, and stay creative human beings, and then if Mandel referred to somebody, I would often check it out, and so I came across Kofler, who wrote about the formation of the bourgeois state and so on, but that's a while ago now. A German friend of mine knows much more about it than I do. I cannot read as much now, and I have to concentrate more on specific technical issues, much as though I would like to trace out all sorts of historical linkages. A lot depends on whether somebody gets translated in English, whether they get popular or have an influence, but a lot of the people I am interested in, weren't so famous or fashionable. Most of the wellknown Marxists are rather dumb, but the one's that aren't dumb, don't want to be wellknown, or at any rate aren't wellknown. You said: Fine is a political theorist, interested in the problems that Marx inherited from classical liberalism. I didn't read a lot of Bob Fine's stuff, didn't he do a book The Capitalist State ? I was more interested in Ben Fine and Andrew Gamble really. You asked: didn't Elmar Altvater and others find that the rate of exploitation was quite high in post War Germany and one of the crucial factors in its fast growth. Yes. There's various people, like Elmar Alvater, Winfried Wolf, Charles Bettelheim who
Re: the Clinton years
Interesting that while Noam Chomsky is understood to be (or understands himself as) an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist, he seems to support Robert Pollin's and Robin Hahnel's attempts to specify the essence of the rational state in terms of which the actual state is then criticized as corrupted by private interests. Given that Chomsky and Hahnel represent the far left of the American political spectrum, it just goes to show how little impact Marxian theory has had in the United States (Chomsky's anti Marxism, often peppered with quotes from Bakunin, is well known, but it has not lead him in an anarchist direction but rather into a fetishism of the state). The American left (including its vanguard publications such as Z magazine and Dollars and Sense) has never ventured in theory much beyond left Hegelianism or left Keynesianism (of course the Nation is willing to tilt in the favor of even New Keynesianism or the almost incomprehensible mismatch of reformism advocated by Greider). There are exceptions, to be sure: Paul Mattick, Sr. (limits to the mixed economy), my former teacher Paul Thomas (alien politics), and Hal Draper (KMTR, vol 1). All these theorists are interested not only in how the state arose through the execution of its main function of enforing equal rights between capital and wage labor into a new form of legal authority, a public power alienated from the people, an independent force distinct from society which acquires its own institutions and its own personnel (Robert Fine, p. 117); they are also concerned with the limits on real democracy that arise concomittantly with the state out of the enforcement of this main function (Poulantzas focused on how equal right before the law materially and coercively individualized the masses and thereby undermined class organization, creating the grounds for their regroupment as a people nation). Given, then, the specifically bourgeois form of the state--and I admit to being hardly clear as to what these structural limits on real democracy are, but this is what I would like to investigate--perhaps we should not be surprised by both (a) the limits on state stabilization policy and its increasingly class biased form (predicted by Mattick Sr, Mario Cogoy, Joachim Hirsch) and (b) Shaikh and Tonak's very important finding that the welfare state never redistributed income downward even in the so called Golden Age, working class taxes may have exceeded transfers even before 'social democracy' was blamed for stagflation, and the regressive nature of the so called welfare state has only since worsened with relative cuts in social expenditures and regressive increases in the payroll and sales tax paying for tax breaks not even for investment (as recommended by Paul O'Neill who was run out of town) but for the consumption of the rich (Bob Jessop refers to transition from Keynesian welfare state to Schumpeterian workfare state). I would imagine that for Shaikh and Tonak that this would not be evidence of the corruption of the state by private interest but rather (in a Marxian vein) evidence of the corruption of the state, given its form in a bourgeois society. But I do not think their findings are supplemented by an actual theory of the nature of the state. Which is not to say that since the state is always a class state that the working class need not be bothered by its principles of organization. A police state is very much a worse institution for the working class than a representative democracy. Ultra left criticism that cannot see the real danger posed by Ashcroft is delusional. The terrain of extra electoral activity has to be preserved, especially for collective worker action. Even Monthly Review's skepticism about whether the rational state (a state which could mediate the conflicts of civil society in an economically and normatively rational fashion) would ever become actual was based on skepticism that the state could ever achieve sufficient substantive autonomy from civil society to realize its rational essence, but there was no abandonment of the ideal of the rational state in theory. Magdoff seems to have been an exeption here to the Kalecki-inspired theses advanced by Paul Sweezy and John B. Foster. Perhaps it's time to return to the debates over state theory, surveyed in Martin Carnoy's and Bob Jessop's now twenty year old books? Rakesh
Re: the Clinton years
While Robert Pollin's writings are not explicitly Marxist, he has an uncanny ability to get a hearing among non-radicals. He is also able to influence policy in wonderful ways, for example, his work on the living wage movement. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Clinton years and Social Wage
I agree with Rakesh's main points, including his characterization of my work with Anwar (originally started with Anwar's unpublished 1987 manuscript on National Income Accounts and continued with my dissertation, an article in RRPE and later with our joint book). In my dissertation, I formulated our concern about the limits of the capitalist state within the context of marxist theories of the state (Poulantzas/Miliband/Gough/O'Connor/Bowles/Gintis and even German Capital Logic School!) and also within the so-called Plan Problem. However, even there I didn't extensively go into an actual theory of the nature of the state. Secondly, and more importantly, our goal was to understand the limitations of the capitalist state by focusing on the redistrubitive activities of the state, which in turn empirically demonstrated that first, such functions are directly determined by capital accumulation, and second, the standard of living of workers is mostly shaped by labor-capital relations rather than labor-state, at least in the case of the US. The following last paragraph of our article says this clearly. Perhaps the most important result of our study is that it yields a clear sense of the limits to the capitalist state. It is striking to note when one compares the real wage of workers adjusted for the net social wage is not very different from the unadjusted real wage, i.e. from real employee compensation per worker (Figure 4). Thus in spite of the welfare state, the real basis of the standard of living of workers remains the wage they are able to win from their employers. Its steady rise over the boom phase, followed by its stagnation and decline in the subsequent crisis phase, forcibly remind that class struggle and of the reserve army of labor continue to play a central role as ever in its determination. Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Interesting that while Noam Chomsky is understood to be (or understands himself as) an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist, he seems to support Robert Pollin's and Robin Hahnel's attempts to specify the essence of the rational state in terms of which the actual state is Given, then, the specifically bourgeois form of the state--and I admit to being hardly clear as to what these structural limits on real democracy are, but this is what I would like to investigate--perhaps we should not be surprised by both (a) the limits on state stabilization policy and its increasingly class biased form (predicted by Mattick Sr, Mario Cogoy, Joachim Hirsch) and (b) Shaikh and Tonak's very important finding that the welfare state never redistributed income downward even in the so called Golden Age, working class taxes may have exceeded transfers even before 'social democracy' was blamed for stagflation, and the regressive nature of the so called welfare state has only since worsened with relative cuts in social expenditures and regressive increases in the payroll and sales tax paying for tax breaks not even for investment (as recommended by Paul O'Neill who was run out of town) but for the consumption of the rich (Bob Jessop refers to transition from Keynesian welfare state to Schumpeterian workfare state). I would imagine that for Shaikh and Tonak that this would not be evidence of the corruption of the state by private interest but rather (in a Marxian vein) evidence of the corruption of the state, given its form in a bourgeois society. But I do not think their findings are supplemented by an actual theory of the nature of the state. E. Ahmet Tonak Professor of Economics Simon's Rock College of Bard 84 Alford Road Great Barrington, MA 01230 Tel: 413 528 7488 Fax: 413 528 7365 www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak
Re: the Clinton years and Social Wage
Typo: I meant obviously Anwar's unpublished 1978 manuscript on National Income Accounts.. Ahmet Tonak e. ahmet tonak wrote: I agree with Rakesh's main points, including his characterization of my work with Anwar (originally started with Anwar's unpublished 1987 manuscript on National Income Accounts and continued with my dissertation, an article in RRPE and later with our joint book). In my dissertation, I formulated our concern about the limits of the capitalist state within the context of marxist theories of the state (Poulantzas/Miliband/Gough/O'Connor/Bowles/Gintis and even German Capital Logic School!) and also within the so-called Plan Problem. However, even there I didn't extensively go into an actual theory of the nature of the state. Secondly, and more importantly, our goal was to understand the limitations of the capitalist state by focusing on the redistrubitive activities of the state, which in turn empirically demonstrated that first, such functions are directly determined by capital accumulation, and second, the standard of living of workers is mostly shaped by labor-capital relations rather than labor-state, at least in the case of the US. The following last paragraph of our article says this clearly. Perhaps the most important result of our study is that it yields a clear sense of the limits to the capitalist state. It is striking to note when one compares the real wage of workers adjusted for the net social wage is not very different from the unadjusted real wage, i.e. from real employee compensation per worker (Figure 4). Thus in spite of the welfare state, the real basis of the standard of living of workers remains the wage they are able to win from their employers. Its steady rise over the boom phase, followed by its stagnation and decline in the subsequent crisis phase, forcibly remind that class struggle and of the reserve army of labor continue to play a central role as ever in its determination. Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Interesting that while Noam Chomsky is understood to be (or understands himself as) an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist, he seems to support Robert Pollin's and Robin Hahnel's attempts to specify the essence of the rational state in terms of which the actual state is Given, then, the specifically bourgeois form of the state--and I admit to being hardly clear as to what these structural limits on real democracy are, but this is what I would like to investigate--perhaps we should not be surprised by both (a) the limits on state stabilization policy and its increasingly class biased form (predicted by Mattick Sr, Mario Cogoy, Joachim Hirsch) and (b) Shaikh and Tonak's very important finding that the welfare state never redistributed income downward even in the so called Golden Age, working class taxes may have exceeded transfers even before 'social democracy' was blamed for stagflation, and the regressive nature of the so called welfare state has only since worsened with relative cuts in social expenditures and regressive increases in the payroll and sales tax paying for tax breaks not even for investment (as recommended by Paul O'Neill who was run out of town) but for the consumption of the rich (Bob Jessop refers to transition from Keynesian welfare state to Schumpeterian workfare state). I would imagine that for Shaikh and Tonak that this would not be evidence of the corruption of the state by private interest but rather (in a Marxian vein) evidence of the corruption of the state, given its form in a bourgeois society. But I do not think their findings are supplemented by an actual theory of the nature of the state.
Re: the Clinton years and Social Wage
Ahmet, please don't mind my saying that while these findings are indeed presented in your co-written book, that book is difficult reading for the non economist. And it seems to me that your dissertation with even more explicit discussion of state theory in light of your very important empirical findings should be published with a diverse body of social scientists in mind (political scientists, sociologists, economists). We would then have an American contribution to the historical materialist theory of the state that rivals those of Miliband, Poulantzas, Hirsch and others of the capital logic school. I wonder where Erik Olin Wright's thinking is on these matters these days. the standard of living of workers is mostly shaped by labor-capital relations rather than labor-state, at least in the case of the US. The following last paragraph of our article says this clearly. If this is not only the case in the US, then we couldn't speak of the limits of the capitalist state. For example, many would argue that it is cross-national variation in the structure of race relations, which determines the manner and degree to which the relatively universal processes of technological change and globalization have affected the variations across the OECD in long-term trends in the distribution of income. That is, it is claimed that America's especially acute racial crisis explains why, while skill intensive technological change and globalization are relatively invariant across countries, the US suffers extreme income inequality which trade unions and the state could have otherwise reduced. The claim here is, more specifically, political: capital has been able to wean especially the white male working class from welfarism and labourism by manipulating its racialized resentments against affirmative action, crime and welfare. We have not here a theory of the limits of the capitalist state but rather a politico-cultural explanation for limits on income inequality attenuating policy in the US alone. Martin Carnoy seems to have moved in this direction. Yours, Rakesh
Re: the Clinton years and Social Wage
oops I meant to write If this the case ONLY in the US, then we couldn't speak of the limits of the capitalist state.
Re: the Clinton years
Given, then, the specifically bourgeois form of the state--and I admit to being hardly clear as to what these structural limits on real democracy are, but this is what I would like to investigate--perhaps we should not be surprised by both (a) the limits on state stabilization policy and its increasingly class biased form (predicted by Mattick Sr, Mario Cogoy, Joachim Hirsch) Ernest Mandel actually published on this as well, in fact I translated a fairly comprehensive article of his called Methodological issues in defining the class nature of the bourgeois state (written for a festschrift for Leo Kofler) which never got published however. Mandel's argument is that the state derivation school which seeks to infer state functions and forms from the logic of capital is ahistorical, and do not probe the historical origins of the bourgeois state, nor the dialectics of free wage labour. Another important text is that of Reuten Williams, although I do not agree with some of the value-form arguments. and (b) Shaikh and Tonak's very important finding that the welfare state never redistributed income downward even in the so called Golden Age, working class taxes may have exceeded transfers even before 'social democracy' was blamed for stagflation, and the regressive nature of the so called welfare state has only since worsened with relative cuts in social expenditures and regressive increases in the payroll and sales tax paying for tax breaks not even for investment The experience in this regard is different in different countries, depending on the balance of class power. Which is not to say that since the state is always a class state that the working class need not be bothered by its principles of organization. A police state is very much a worse institution for the working class than a representative democracy. Ultra left criticism that cannot see the real danger posed by Ashcroft is delusional. The terrain of extra electoral activity has to be preserved, especially for collective worker action. Agreed. I wrote a bit about taxation recently. Maybe the orthodox Marxist would froth at the mouth at this, but the orthodox Marxist never thinks about how socialist economy is actually organised, typically he just anticipates the breakup of capitalism as the moment of asserting his power over the working class. At the root of your statement is a misconceptualisation of reformism and revolutionism. Perhaps it's time to return to the debates over state theory, surveyed in Martin Carnoy's and Bob Jessop's now twenty year old books? My bias is that we should sort out the issues which Marx does not sort out, principally taxation, public finance, monetary manipulations including credit, that would be the main ones. Jurriaan
Re: the Clinton years
Across his 238 pages Pollin is unambiguous. It was under Clinton he points out, that the distribution of wealth in the US became more skewed than it had at any time in the previous forty years. Inside the US under Clinton the ratio of wages for the average worker to the pay of the average CEO rose from 113 to 1 in 1991 to 1 to 449 when he quit. In the world, exclusive of China, between 1980 and 1988 and considering the difference between the richest and poorest 10 per cent of humanity, inequality grew by 19 per cent; by 77 per cent, if you take the richest and poorest 1 per cent. I suspect this assessment is myopic at best, and largely beside the point when it comes to comparing the Clinton and Bush II regimes. In the US, the trend toward greater wealth and income inequality began in the 1970s and continued full-steam through the Reagan and Bush I years, so Clinton inherited a tendency that was already built into the economy. A significant portion of the increase in wealth inequality under Clinton was due to the stock market bubble, reflective in part of a robust economy that kept unemployment low, and since burst. And I'm not sure what Pollin expected Clinton, or any one President for that matter, to do about the widening chasm between the richest and poorest 1% or 10% of humanity--insist that the UN adopt a progressive global income tax? Force the Gingrich Congress to increase US foreign aid to poor countries a thousand fold? Also, what could Clinton have done to reverse the rising (pre-tax) ratio of CEO to average worker pay, and how much of a difference could it have made? Domestically, Clinton did manage to get through a tax increase on the wealthy and a tax decrease for the middle class. On the other hand, to his eternal discredit, he went along with eliminating welfare as we know it without extracting from the Republicans, who were desperate to gut the welfare system, significant concessions for workers, like increased support for education, training, child support, etc., in return. Clinton, in other words, was a disappointment, and certainly not a leftist. Duh. But Bush II is an unmitigated, across-the-board disaster, and I think that those who insist there is no real difference between Clinton and Bush II are missing a key point. You think wealth inequality increased under Clinton? Clinton didn't call for eliminating the inheritance tax and dividends tax or for dramatic decreases in income tax rates on the wealthy. Bush did, and got them with a sunset clause only as a political accounting shenanigan, and is now calling to make these tax decreases permanent. These regressive changes will surely lock in and further expand existing wealth inequalities. Also, the resulting massive structural deficit in the Federal budget will eventually render Medicare and Social Security infeasible; these programs would not have been seriously threatened under Clinton's budget management. And that is, of course only the beginning. Clinton favored signing the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Bush refused to sign it after saying that he would, and his administration has since censored reports on the issue by its own agencies in order to avoid dealing with it. The Clinton EPA actively pursued litigation against corporate polluters. The Bush EPA abandons much of this effort, raises nonenforcement to standard practice, leading several career EPA administrators to resign in protest, and introduces rule changes to let polluters off the hook re installing new pollution control equipment. Clinton didn't do much to reduce global income inequality? Bush shuts off medical and other aid for the poorest women in the world on the pretext of opposing abortion. Speaking of abortion, Bush has actively abetted the right's efforts to restrict abortion rights, while Clinton supported and defended these rights. And I haven't even mentioned the unfolding nightmares in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ashcroft's various incursions against personal freedoms, the Bush administration's opposition to affirmative actionthe list goes on. In sum, whatever Clinton's (considerable) failings, life is or will be worse for most people in and out of the US as a result of Dubya's policies. Gil
Re: the Clinton years
Gil seems to be saying that Clinton rode the rightward drift that had come before -- beginning I believe in the Carter years. Clinton was very smart. He knew what was happening. Instead of putting things right, he shifted the Dems. even farther to the right. Sam Smith in his Undernews a week or so ago, showed that this tactic won him reelection, but also propelled the Dems. downward. I have only gotton through the first Clinton chapter so far, but Pollin seems quite balanced. He is not blaming Clinton, only saying that things were not going well during the boom. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Clinton years
Gil Skillman wrote: Clinton, in other words, was a disappointment, and certainly not a leftist. Duh. But Bush II is an unmitigated, across-the-board disaster, and I think that those who insist there is no real difference between Clinton and Bush II are missing a key point. Actually, the system would go into a deep, if not terminal crisis, if there were not clear-cut differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. That is why they call it a two-party system. Socialists seek to change that system. In order to raise awareness about capitalist society, they participate in elections. That's what Eugene V. Debs did, despite his understanding that revolution would ultimately be required. The battle that is taking place within the Green Party and on the left in general is only partially about whether supporting a Democratic candidate is a good strategy for social change or not. Underlying the debate is the whole question of multiclass alliances that leave their mark on the class struggle in election years or not. Leaving aside the question of who gets elected in 2004, the left is struggling with a whole series of reversals that are ultimately related to being caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is Republican Party reaction. The hard place is Democratic Party subversion of the social movements. Almost every component has been tainted by deals cut with liberal Democrats and major donors to dampen their message. NOW has been turned into an ineffectual lobbying group. When it was made up by mass action oriented radicals, there never would have been a vote for eliminating partial-birth abortions. The black movement has been co-opted as well. A powerful black movement that steered clear of the Democratic Party would have fought harder to stop the elimination of ADFC that took place on Clinton's watch. Gil says that Clinton would have signed the Kyoto protocols. But Gore was coming at things from another angle, based on this interview with Mark Hertsgaard, author of a first-rate book on Global Warming. === CURWOOD: This is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. Recently the Clinton Administration announced that it wants to push back the global warming treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, until the year 2001, a move it says will give negotiators more time to develop the treaty's complicated compliance mechanisms. By then, a new President will be in office. And as the environment has become a more important issue to voters, the 2 Presidential frontrunners are finding that their positions on the issue are being watched more closely. Joining us now from the studios of member station KQED in San Francisco is Living on Earth's political observer, Mark Hertsgaard. Hi, Mark. HERTSGAARD: Hi, Steve. CURWOOD: Mark, it seems like every other country is ready for this convention to happen next year, and in fact nine countries have already ratified the treaty just as it is. Why does the US want this extra time? Do you think Vice President Gore is trying to push the big decision here past the next election? HERTSGAARD: I suspect that's part of it. But it's also important to remember that the United States has been the main foot-dragger on the global warming issue throughout the 1990s, going way back to the Earth Summit in '92, when again, a vast majority of the nations around the world signed that treaty. But our government, led by then-President George Bush, declined to sign it. So this is part of a larger pattern. CURWOOD: So, if this treaty does get pushed back, and under the rules I think the United States has the power to do this, it's going to be an issue for whoever gets sworn in as President in the year 2001. What are the politics of that? HERTSGAARD: They're very interesting politics. Of course, most people would think, well, this is Al Gore's signature issue, global warming, and we know how he'll deal with it. But to me, the most fascinating part of this, is that Governor Bush of Texas, the presumed Republican frontrunner, has recently announced that he has discovered that global warming is real after all. At a press conference on May 12th in Austin, he told reporters that, quote, I believe there is global warming, unquote. Now, this from a man who just a few weeks before had been saying that the science is still out on global warming, which was sort of the basic industry boilerplate position, marks a major shift. And I think it's something that the political reporters in this country have largely overlooked. But it shows that Governor Bush and his advisers recognize something about Presidential politics that the reporters don't. Which is that the environmental vote matters, and you cannot be elected President in this country, in this day and age, unless you at least sound like you're an environmentalist. And you cannot sound like you're an environmentalist if you're saying that global warming is not real. CURWOOD: Interesting, then. You see the Republican frontrunner moving to a harder line on climate change,
Re: the Clinton years
Michael writes: Gil seems to be saying that Clinton rode the rightward drift that had come before -- beginning I believe in the Carter years. Clinton was very smart. He knew what was happening. Instead of putting things right, he shifted the Dems. even farther to the right. Sam Smith in his Undernews a week or so ago, showed that this tactic won him reelection, but also propelled the Dems. downward. This assumes that the Dems weren't headed in a rightward direction in any case. And again, even granting this point, it remains the case that Bush II is much worse than Clinton--though perhaps less disappointing, since Dubya's policies are more or less exactly as one would have expected prior to his installation by the Supreme Court. I have only gotton through the first Clinton chapter so far, but Pollin seems quite balanced. He is not blaming Clinton, only saying that things were not going well during the boom. I don't know who you're quoting here, because I never stated that Bob Pollin blamed Clinton for the changes. Indeed, I agree with your assessment of his book. As you can see from the rest of my post, my main issue is with those who would assert that there is no important difference between Clinton and Bush II. And I agree that the economic boom of the 1990s benefited workers considerably less in relative income terms than did earlier, milder expansions--but again, more than the current almost-jobless economic upswing under Bush. Gil -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Clinton years
I don't know that I think in terms of socialist art. But I know what you're getting at. Here's a few -- off the top of my head -- there's nothing systematic about this list except that I read or saw everything on the list and thought it was great. Not all these are contemporary, but I figure 20th century is contemporary. The problems haven't really changed. In films, see The Bicycle Thief (Italy-De Sica) and, for a contrast, Beijing Bycicle (China-recent) Bitter Rice (Italy-??) The Battleship Potemkin (USSR-Eisenstein) The Apu Trilogy (India-Ray) The Middleman (India-Ray) Paths of Glory (USA-Kubrick) The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (England) In books, try Fontamara (Ignazio Silone) The Hour of the Star (Clarice Lispector) My Life, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya (Anton Chekhov) The Road (Jack London) Independent People (Harold Laxness) The Resurrection (Tolstoy) -- this is an odd one, but shows how close an aristocrat can come to something like socialist ideas. ...anyway, that's a start... Best, Joanna [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Joanna writes: That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon. Can you suggest any good socialist art? I've heard of a socialist realism movement in literature, but haven't found any specific authors. There are very few films that I know of that have a pro-worker, anti-capitalist bent, and the only one I can name off the top of my head is Wall Street. I can't think of a painter aside from Diego Rivera. Who are some contemporary artists who grapple with the issues of workers' rights, socialism, and capital? The purpose of art is to make revolution appealing. Benjamin Gramlich
Re: the Clinton years
Gil, thanks for the well informed post. You raise the level of discussion. I suspect this assessment is myopic at best, and largely beside the point when it comes to comparing the Clinton and Bush II regimes. In the US, the trend toward greater wealth and income inequality began in the 1970s and continued full-steam through the Reagan and Bush I years, so Clinton inherited a tendency that was already built into the economy. how and what exactly was built into the economy? Are you referring to the general law of accumulation as being built into the economy? A significant portion of the increase in wealth inequality under Clinton was due to the stock market bubble, reflective in part of a robust economy that kept unemployment low, and since burst. What contribution did the absence of accounting regulation play in that boom? And I'm not sure what Pollin expected Clinton, or any one President for that matter, to do about the widening chasm between the richest and poorest 1% or 10% of humanity--insist that the UN adopt a progressive global income tax? Force the Gingrich Congress to increase US foreign aid to poor countries a thousand fold? Did he try? Also, what could Clinton have done to reverse the rising (pre-tax) ratio of CEO to average worker pay, and how much of a difference could it have made? Bargain for more regressive income and capital gains taxes with promises of tax incentives for investment and R and D? Domestically, Clinton did manage to get through a tax increase on the wealthy and a tax decrease for the middle class. But didn't he also substantially reduce capital gains taxes? On the other hand, to his eternal discredit, he went along with eliminating welfare as we know it without extracting from the Republicans, who were desperate to gut the welfare system, significant concessions for workers, like increased support for education, training, child support, etc., in return. right. Clinton, in other words, was a disappointment, and certainly not a leftist. Duh. But Bush II is an unmitigated, across-the-board disaster, and I think that those who insist there is no real difference between Clinton and Bush II are missing a key point. You think wealth inequality increased under Clinton? Clinton didn't call for eliminating the inheritance tax and dividends tax or for dramatic decreases in income tax rates on the wealthy. and what did the Democrats in Congress do to oppose it? Bush did, and got them with a sunset clause only as a political accounting shenanigan, and is now calling to make these tax decreases permanent. These regressive changes will surely lock in and further expand existing wealth inequalities. ok but if you say wealth inequality is built into the economy in such a way that Clinton cannot be blamed much for its accentuation, then why blame Bush much for its accentuation. Why not just say that state can at best moderate the general tendency towards greater intra and international inequality in income and wealth? Bush may not be moderating it while Clinton would have to some extent. Then ask about the limits of the state to do more than that. Also, the resulting massive structural deficit in the Federal budget will eventually render Medicare and Social Security infeasible; these programs would not have been seriously threatened under Clinton's budget management. It depends on how deep the dowturn turns out to be. A prolonged recession could have rendered infeasible these social expenditures. There is no reason to believe that Clinton would not have responded to a prolonged downturn with profit-led demand management; that is, increasing the costs of withholding from investment through regressive tax and anti labor legislation. And that is, of course only the beginning. Clinton favored signing the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Bush refused to sign it after saying that he would, and his administration has since censored reports on the issue by its own agencies in order to avoid dealing with it. The Clinton EPA actively pursued litigation against corporate polluters. The Bush EPA abandons much of this effort, raises nonenforcement to standard practice, leading several career EPA administrators to resign in protest, and introduces rule changes to let polluters off the hook re installing new pollution control equipment. Clinton didn't do much to reduce global income inequality? Bush shuts off medical and other aid for the poorest women in the world on the pretext of opposing abortion. Deplorable. Speaking of abortion, Bush has actively abetted the right's efforts to restrict abortion rights, while Clinton supported and defended these rights. Deplorable. And I haven't even mentioned the unfolding nightmares in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ashcroft's various incursions against personal freedoms, Frightening. But the roots are there in the first Patriot Act. the Bush administration's opposition to affirmative actionthe list goes on.
Re: the Clinton years
Oh darn I get annoyed when others submit corrections to their posts. And now I'll have done it twice in a day. Shouldn't send things off immediately. Since the discussion is serious and important, I should treat these emails as attempts at communication rather than private notes. I obviously meant PROGRESSIVE Even as a business Keynesian Clinton could have bargained for more PROGRESSIVE income and capital gains taxes with promises of tax incentives for investment and R and D. RB
Re: the Clinton years
At 9:02 PM -0800 11/17/03, Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Why not just say that state can at best moderate the general tendency towards greater intra and international inequality in income and wealth? Bush may not be moderating it while Clinton would have to some extent. Then ask about the limits of the state to do more than that. The majority of PEN-l subscribers, I assume, accept that there are limits to reforms under capitalism. The problem is that social movements in the USA are so weak that we don't even get around to pushing the reforms to their limits. -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
I am just reading through this discussion. This Julio Huato seems to have a grasp of strategy and tactics... But I don't want to damn him with my praise. Michael P. (the closet horsetrader) wrote: Julio is probably right, but think of how horrible this situation is. Well... I'd say DON'T think that. You have your own self-control. You start thinking horrible things, your paralysis helps more horrible things happen. The pop psychology stuff aside, I wanted to comment on something you wrote, sir: My dream would be for us here to work on articulating a different version of the economy. Imagine that one of us were to step into a classroom, factory, or call center and say that we wanted to speak in favor of socialism. How about don't step into a classroom over all? It's not a classroom. It's life. Teaching about socialism? That would be stupid. Socialism is not a reality, it's a category. And all categories are shifting in terms of social definition. The real thing under a name can take on all kinds of names. If you want to see what people, currently, really think about power and money, take a look at the jury awards given to humans against corporations. Jury awards are HUGE. Usually shot down at the non-public appellate level. (Yanqui-Bush Tort reform is a way to shut that voice out. But that's another argument.) More faith in people and less preaching to people would help. Ken. -- I like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Re: the Clinton years
I honestly am not aware enough of Pollin's economic ideas to judge them, although I am not surprised to discover that he is some kind of left-Keynsian. FYI, http://www.umass.edu/peri/robertpwp.html. -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
At 2:55 AM -0500 11/16/03, Kenneth Campbell wrote: If you want to see what people, currently, really think about power and money, take a look at the jury awards given to humans against corporations. Jury awards are HUGE. Usually shot down at the non-public appellate level. Also, the majority of Americans are in favor of trade unions, universal health care, and so on. The question is how to create a political party -- including but not at all limited to electoral vehicles -- that is truly an effective political expression of the already left-wing sentiments of American workers. -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
The question is how to create a political party -- including but not at all limited to electoral vehicles -- that is truly an effective political expression of the already left-wing sentiments of American workers. That is just to say that party already exists, in the sense that the leaders and members already exist, it's just a question of stitching it together. For that you need a core team which solicits the cooperation of specialists in different fields, and then you gradually bring in the other people from a base in some cities. My guess is that the main problem is too many people who are too dogmatic and backward-looking, they dispute programmatically in a way which makes it too difficult for people to work together and join, they operate a language that ordinary people don't want to hear or cannot make sense out of, and they spend too much time questioning the validity of the experience of other people, rather than utilising it. J.
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
The question is how to create a political party -- including but not at all limited to electoral vehicles -- that is truly an effective political expression of the already left-wing sentiments of American workers. That is just to say that party already exists, in the sense that the leaders and members already exist, it's just a question of stitching it together. For that you need a core team which solicits the cooperation of specialists in different fields, and then you gradually bring in the other people from a base in some cities. My guess is that the main problem is too many people who are too dogmatic and backward-looking, they dispute programmatically in a way which makes it too difficult for people to work together and join, they operate a language that ordinary people don't want to hear or cannot make sense out of, and they spend too much time questioning the validity of the experience of other people, rather than utilising it. J. But how does one get the ball rolling on the practical level? In the US the system is set up to stifle any third party. The greens have gained a little ground, but for the most part nobody pays attention to the small parties. I think a better solution would be to infiltrate a larger party. Here in Minnesota, the primaries are operated under the caucus system. Only the ideologically driven show up to the caucus meetings, and thus our Republican candidates are more to the right than most Republicans, and our Democratic candidates are more to the left than most other Democrats. I think that the left could be more effective in policy change if it wasn't trying to fight the system from the outside. If more leftists showed up to Democratic caucus meetings, we could overwhelm the vote and elect a truly progressive candidate. Benjamin
Re: the Clinton years
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: I honestly am not aware enough of Pollin's economic ideas to judge them, although I am not surprised to discover that he is some kind of left-Keynsian. FYI, http://www.umass.edu/peri/robertpwp.html. When Bob was at Labyrinth Books in New York a few weeks ago, someone pressed him to label himself. He calls himself a socialist. Doug
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
But how does one get the ball rolling on the practical level? In the US the system is set up to stifle any third party. The greens have gained a little ground, but for the most part nobody pays attention to the small parties. I think a better solution would be to infiltrate a larger party. Here in Minnesota, the primaries are operated under the caucus system. Only the ideologically driven show up to the caucus meetings, and thus our Republican candidates are more to the right than most Republicans, and our Democratic candidates are more to the left than most other Democrats. I think that the left could be more effective in policy change if it wasn't trying to fight the system from the outside. If more leftists showed up to Democratic caucus meetings, we could overwhelm the vote and elect a truly progressive candidate. Benjamin The question is not coming up with truly progressive candidates. In many ways, Al Sharpton is to the left of Ralph Nader. The real issue is independence from the ruling class. The Democratic Party is a ruling class party. It got its start as a coalition between southern slave-owners, small northern farmers and an even smaller working-class in the northeast. The first Democratic Party president was Andrew Jackson who is represented in liberal history books, such as those written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., as the leader of a kind of plebian revolution. This is a mystification of the true role of the Democratic Party. For the past 175 years or so, it has the quintessential instrument of class alliance. To achieve genuine progress in the USA, it will require a break with the ruling class and its two parties. It is obvious no big deal to maintain independence from the Republicans since it has not had ties to the working class since the 1870s. The Democrats are another story altogether. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
excellent point. On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 02:55:53AM -0500, Kenneth Campbell wrote: More faith in people and less preaching to people would help. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Clinton years
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: I honestly am not aware enough of Pollin's economic ideas to judge them, although I am not surprised to discover that he is some kind of left-Keynsian. FYI, http://www.umass.edu/peri/robertpwp.html. When Bob was at Labyrinth Books in New York a few weeks ago, someone pressed him to label himself. He calls himself a socialist. Doug Is he a good public speaker? -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
Louis Proyect wrote: The question is not coming up with truly progressive candidates. In many ways, Al Sharpton is to the left of Ralph Nader. The real issue is independence from the ruling class. Yes, but isn't this independence most efficiently acheived by wresting the existing infrastructure from the hands of the ruling class. Since no third party has been widely successful in the last hundred or so years, these grass roots movements are in the end futile. Sure people like Wellstone have shown that it can work, but, call me a Fabian, if we are going to change things we have to take small steps within the structure as it is. The Democratic party, bourgeois or not, can be reformed. I understand that historically and presently it is not the bastion of the common man as it claims. But instead of trying to destroy it or replace it, why not change it? Benjamin
Re: the Clinton years
I honestly am not aware enough of Pollin's economic ideas to judge them, although I am not surprised to discover that he is some kind of left-Keynsian. What are the tenets of Keynsian economics? Benjamin
Re: the Clinton years
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: When Bob was at Labyrinth Books in New York a few weeks ago, someone pressed him to label himself. He calls himself a socialist. Doug Is he a good public speaker? Yes. His style is fairly low-key, but he's fluent and engaging. Doug
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
Benjamin: Yes, but isn't this independence most efficiently acheived by wresting the existing infrastructure from the hands of the ruling class. Since no third party has been widely successful in the last hundred or so years, these grass roots movements are in the end futile. Wresting the existing infrastructure? To do this would require seizing the assets of Goldman-Sachs, Exxon, General Motors, etc. since this is ultimately what allows the two parties to rule this country. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
Louis: Wresting the existing infrastructure? To do this would require seizing the assets of Goldman-Sachs, Exxon, General Motors, etc. since this is ultimately what allows the two parties to rule this country. And why not? They've got the guns on their side, so it'd be better to fight a non-violent war. Louis, why don't you run for office? Benjamin
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
Benjamin writes: But how does one get the ball rolling on the practical level? In the US the system is set up to stifle any third party. The greens have gained a little ground, but for the most part nobody pays attention to the small parties. I think a better solution would be to infiltrate a larger party. Here in Minnesota, the primaries are operated under the caucus system. Only the ideologically driven show up to the caucus meetings, and thus our Republican candidates are more to the right than most Republicans, and our Democratic candidates are more to the left than most other Democrats. I think that the left could be more effective in policy change if it wasn't trying to fight the system from the outside. If more leftists showed up to Democratic caucus meetings, we could overwhelm the vote and elect a truly progressive candidate. In my experience, what's needed is to develop a movement outside of the electoral/party system (to counteract the massive power of big money and other right-wing forces). If the movement is strong, the political parties will shift in the direction of the movement, just as the Dems did in 1972 when they nominated McGovern (in response to the anti-war movement) and the GOPsters did in response to the Fundamentalist Christians and the Militia folks (etc.) The key is to have a long-term perspective and to build from the ground up. Jim
Re: the Clinton years
of course Bob's a socialist. who said otherwise? Jim -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 11/16/2003 7:21 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] the Clinton years Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: I honestly am not aware enough of Pollin's economic ideas to judge them, although I am not surprised to discover that he is some kind of left-Keynsian. FYI, http://www.umass.edu/peri/robertpwp.html. When Bob was at Labyrinth Books in New York a few weeks ago, someone pressed him to label himself. He calls himself a socialist. Doug
Re: the Clinton years
Benjamin: What are the tenets of Keynsian economics? hard question! I'll keep the answer to three simple points (partly based on Bob Pollin's recent book). 1) a money-using market economy doesn't automatically move toward full employment of labor (and of productive capacity) or takes a very long time to get there. 2) financial markets are inherently unstable, producing bubbles and crashes. 3) relatively simple technocratic solutions by the government can solve these problems. For #1, fiscal and/or monetary policy can get the economy to full employment. For #2, something like a Tobin tax (and SEC-type regulation) is needed. Of course, many self-styled Keynesians would disagree. Jim
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
In a message dated 11/16/03 7:42:24 AM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes, but isn't this independence most efficiently acheived by wresting the existing infrastructure from the hands of the ruling class. Since no third party has been widely successful in the last hundred or so years, these grass roots movements are in the end futile. Sure people like Wellstone have shown that it can work, but, call me a Fabian, if we are going to change things we have to take small steps within the structure as it is. The Democratic party, bourgeois or not, can be reformed. I understand that historically and presently it is not the bastion of the common man as it claims. But instead of trying to destroy it or replace it, why not change it?Benjamin Comment The first rule of all politics is to recognize the possible and what ever local conditions one is faced with. In the historical sense the process you speak of has already taken place and reached a critical point during McGovern's run for President. Various segments of the African American Peoples Freedom Movement - going back to the early Freedom Now Party formations, then section of the Women's Movement and Trade Unions did in fact capture a significant part of the infrastructure of the Democratic Party and to a degree posed a block to the unfettered intrusions of capital. The coalition of blacks, women, Indians, trade unionists, Mexicans and ths and that and the other, did excert incredible pressure and power within the Democratic infrastructure and "the other side - attribute, of the two party system manifested itself as defection and the creation of the Republican in the South with the same reactionary program as the Democratic Party of the South. The backlash to this political motion was crowned by the Reagan Revolution. In my opinon it seems necessary for us to understand that whatever party rules this country it must be based in the South or in our case, based on an understanding that the defeat of reaction compels us to come to grips with the South. The seniority system and the historical exclusion of these voters is the basis for the longevity of the political reactionaries. This very real work and political motion during the 1960s and 1970s, led to the defection of the Democratic South and those politicians becoming Republicans over night. What you are describing has taken place in American history. The end result of Jesse Jackson's run for President drove themasses of "break away forces" back into the Democratic Party and this later became part of the political motion carrying Clinton into office, with him "moving to the right." Polarization of wealth and poverty increased dramatically during the Clinton years and his "changing welfare as we know it" set the political basis for the rapid and universal acceptance of decreased wages. This question of independence from the politics and parties of the ruling class is a historical motion not un similar to the political motions that created theRepublican Party as the antislavery Party birth in Kansas. What we are dealing with is not a theory question as such but a political motion better understood on the basis of theory proposition of Marx. Understanding this political motion does not require one once of Marx however, but rather American history and the memory of "Bloody Kansas." Independence from the ruling class means advancing a class program based on health care needs, water rights, food stamps, housing and all socially necessary subsistence items. Political independence - separation, is a historical process and political motion in our history, that becomes manifest at specific junctures or realignment of class forces. We need a government and political representatives that fight for the distribution of the necessities of life unfettered by the demand for profits. Why support a person afraid to demand that drinking water be taken out of the profit system? Melvin P.
Re: the Clinton years
My broader vision: *Social ownership of the productive apparatus *Democratic control (one person, one vote) of both the productive apparatus, the product of labour and the distribution of goods and services *Production based on use and need, not commodity production for profit *Planning based on how many goods and services are removed from the social store and how long the producers want to work doing socially necessary labour to replenish them *Principle of living in harmony with the Earth i.e. production/consumption but not to the point of environmental destruction *Equality, not only in political/economic power (which essentially destroys hierarchical power) but also under the laws which the classless society determines are necessary to enforce *All tending towards creating a society where the condition for the freedom of each is the condtion for the freedom of all That's the socialism I want. Regards, Mike B) --- Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, that is easy. The problem is to go from there to a broader vision of society. = * the Council Republic is not the culmination of everything, and even less does it stand for the most perfect form in which humans can live together. However the Council Republic is a prerequisite for the reconstruction of culture, because it makes possible the liquidation of the state. It must be the task of the revolutionary of today to work for the Council system and the Council Republic. (Der Ziegelbrenner) http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
Re: the Clinton years
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/16/03 7:40 AM I honestly am not aware enough of Pollin's economic ideas to judge them, although I am not surprised to discover that he is some kind of left-Keynsian. FYI, http://www.umass.edu/peri/robertpwp.html. -- Yoshie i've found pollin's work on living wage to be quite useful, we've engaged in a bit of e-mail correspondence as well... michael hoover
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/16/03 10:26 AM The first Democratic Party president was Andrew Jackson who is represented in liberal history books, such as those written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., as the leader of a kind of plebian revolution. Louis Proyect 'jacksonian democracy' and 'era of common man'...white male suffrage did expand (only three southern states still required property-ownership in aftermath)...of course, financial aristocracy controlled north and slavocracy controlled south (jacksonian interests represented emergent western capital)...jackson's appointments were from wealthy ranks and his finance, trade, and public lands policies reflected their concerns...meanwhile, one-third of northern population (higher in south) lived amidst poverty, overcrowding, cholera, and typhoid epidemics... michael hoover
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
Schlessinger explicitly wrote to promote Jacksonian populism as an alternative to communism. On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 05:31:48PM -0500, Michael Hoover wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/16/03 10:26 AM The first Democratic Party president was Andrew Jackson who is represented in liberal history books, such as those written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., as the leader of a kind of plebian revolution. Louis Proyect 'jacksonian democracy' and 'era of common man'...white male suffrage did expand (only three southern states still required property-ownership in aftermath)...of course, financial aristocracy controlled north and slavocracy controlled south (jacksonian interests represented emergent western capital)...jackson's appointments were from wealthy ranks and his finance, trade, and public lands policies reflected their concerns...meanwhile, one-third of northern population (higher in south) lived amidst poverty, overcrowding, cholera, and typhoid epidemics... michael hoover -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Step into a classroom [was the Clinton years]
'jacksonian democracy' and 'era of common man'...white male suffrage did expand (only three southern states still required property-ownership in aftermath)...of course, financial aristocracy controlled north and slavocracy controlled south (jacksonian interests represented emergent western capital)...jackson's appointments were from wealthy ranks and his finance, trade, and public lands policies reflected their concerns...meanwhile, one-third of northern population (higher in south) lived amidst poverty, overcrowding, cholera, and typhoid epidemics... michael hoover of course, a lot of the expansion of the Jacksonian period was at the expense of the Indians. Jim
Re: the Clinton years
Doug Henwood wrote: Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: I honestly am not aware enough of Pollin's economic ideas to judge them, although I am not surprised to discover that he is some kind of left-Keynsian. FYI, http://www.umass.edu/peri/robertpwp.html. When Bob was at Labyrinth Books in New York a few weeks ago, someone pressed him to label himself. He calls himself a socialist. These labels can mislead. Keynes's conception of the ideal community, what he called the ideal replublic of my imagination, was on the far left of celestial space. By this he meant that his ideal community was one in which every individual would have the capacity for and actually live a good life, meaning by this was a life filled with love, beauty and truth. This is very close to Marx's conception of the realm of freedom and derives, in fact, from the same tradition in ethics and aesthetics as Marx's. Capitalism, he claimed, was radically inconsistent with this ideal though justifiable (as in Marx) as a means of creating the preconditions required for its realization. Also like Marx, Keynes identified capitalism with the domination of motivation by irrational passions in Hegel's sense of motives which though irrational produce results shared in by the community at large, an idea Hegel has sublated from Adam Smith and Kant (who himself took it from Smith). Keynes adds to this an understanding of the psychology of these passions derived from psychoanalysis. Where Keynes differs radically from Marx is over how and when (if ever) this ideal can be realized. The usual usage of term left-Keynesian ignores the aspects of Keynes to which I've just pointed. On the other hand, the term socialist is frequently used in a way that ignores these same aspects in Marx, aspects which, for instance, lead Marx to endorse, as the distribution rule that would characterize an ideal republic: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! What each needs are the means required for life in the realm of freedom, means which include those that enable individuals to develop the capacity for such a life. The word fairness doesn't quite grasp the ethical principle involved since in the realm of freedom the ultimate goods are all things which when shared increase in amount. Ted
Re: the Clinton years
I sense that this Cockburn guy is important in some way to some of you Americans for some reason... And I would like to be polite and give him a wide berth... since he matters a lot to your culture. But this is lousy style: * Clichs like rubbing shoulders... that's as bad made a cool million. And he used the word despicable -- who, other than Daffy Duck, has used that word in the last 50 years? * The over-use of adjectives, in the rest of piece, is usually sign of someone with a high word count struggling to meet it. Aside from that style stuff... This American seems to be saying something interesting: He lists a bunch of authors he doesn't like and calls them a localized nasty name (liberal -- an American thing, they all ramble on about that term). How does the popularity of a series of books that lead the public in a discussion that is counter to the primary trend... the media dominated trend... and in a direction that is commonly accepted outside the U.S. ... how does it lead to this weather report? So just get a Democrat, any Democrat, back in the White House and the skies will begin to clear again. (Another clichd phrase... skies clear etc.) What a slipshod, navel gazing column... Blue pencil and return to author with the above changes. Ken. -- And in a capitalist society Crime is the last vestige of liberty -- Killdozer, 1994
Re: the Clinton years
Kenneth Campbell wrote: But this is lousy style: I wouldn't mind his style. What is unhelpful is his tactical misfiring. At this juncture, you have an administration whose policies, domestic and foreign, are exactly what the left is supposed to be against. Yet, Cockburn is busy criticizing Bill Clinton and Paul Krugman! Clinton, well, he's pretty much flying under the radar nowadays. But Krugman is the leading voice in the mainstream media against Bush's current policies. Julio _ ¿Estás buscando un auto nuevo? http://latino.msn.com/autos/
Re: the Clinton years
Julio: At this juncture, you have an administration whose policies, domestic and foreign, are exactly what the left is supposed to be against. Yet, Cockburn is busy criticizing Bill Clinton and Paul Krugman! Well, who else is supposed to criticize the Democrats? Salon.com? The Nation Magazine? Bill Moyers? Clinton, well, he's pretty much flying under the radar nowadays. But Krugman is the leading voice in the mainstream media against Bush's current policies. I think that the point of Counterpunch (and PEN-L) is to address the necessity of transforming the system. We are facing a downward spiral in bourgeois politics that has been going on for decades. Richard Nixon's domestic policies were far more liberal than either Clinton's or Dean's. Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: the Clinton years
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] My dream would be for us here to work on articulating a different version of the economy. Imagine that one of us were to step into a classroom, factory, or call center and say that we wanted to speak in favor of socialism. We would be unlikely to receive a warm reception. We would hear about Stalin, the USSR, In a better world, the hearers would expect to hear about working conditions, health care, education == Well that just goes to show that if you stepped into a classroom, factory or call center, you *start* with talking about working conditions, health care, education-skill sharing and then open up the context.. Ian
Re: the Clinton years
Yes, that is easy. The problem is to go from there to a broader vision of society. Instead, what we have is fragmentation. For example, the students may not be interested in working conditions of health care and the workers maybe not concerned about issues in higher education. The result is sort of like congress, where almost every representative is good on at least one issue, but bad on most of them. Some sort of overarching vision is, at some point, necessary. On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:02:04AM -0800, Eubulides wrote: Well that just goes to show that if you stepped into a classroom, factory or call center, you *start* with talking about working conditions, health care, education-skill sharing and then open up the context.. Ian -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Clinton years
Some sort of overarching vision is, at some point, necessary. but that would be essentialism, surrender to a Master Narrative, while denigrating the Otherness of the Other! Jim
Re: the Clinton years
oh, my god. I am in pomo hell! On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:14:33AM -0800, Devine, James wrote: Some sort of overarching vision is, at some point, necessary. but that would be essentialism, surrender to a Master Narrative, while denigrating the Otherness of the Other! Jim -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Clinton years
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 9:06 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] the Clinton years Yes, that is easy. The problem is to go from there to a broader vision of society. Instead, what we have is fragmentation. For example, the students may not be interested in working conditions of health care and the workers maybe not concerned about issues in higher education. The result is sort of like congress, where almost every representative is good on at least one issue, but bad on most of them. Some sort of overarching vision is, at some point, necessary. === Welcome to the contradictions of the division of labor and bounded rationality. Seems to me that coaxing fellow learners to 'see' connections that weren't apparent in their quest to improve the quality of their lives is a small first step creating greater public discussion whereby everyone has the opportunity to bring forth the overarching vision in solidarity rather than having it imposed on them by a different set of elites who feign a non-existent omniscience. It remains to be 'seen' if there can be no such 'thing' as an overarching vision. Ian
Re: the Clinton years
Julio: At this juncture, you have an administration whose policies, domestic and foreign, are exactly what the left is supposed to be against. Yet, Cockburn is busy criticizing Bill Clinton and Paul Krugman! Well, who else is supposed to criticize the Democrats? Salon.com? The Nation Magazine? Bill Moyers? Clinton, well, he's pretty much flying under the radar nowadays. But Krugman is the leading voice in the mainstream media against Bush's current policies. I think that the point of Counterpunch (and PEN-L) is to address the necessity of transforming the system. We are facing a downward spiral in bourgeois politics that has been going on for decades. Richard Nixon's domestic policies were far more liberal than either Clinton's or Dean's. Relying on Robert Pollin, Cockburn seems interested in the criticism of Clinton's fiscal policy, not the system. That is, Cockburn seems focused on the fact that the neo liberal Clinton's fiscal policy was contractionary. Budget surpluses were realized mostly through compressing the rise in social expenditures in relation to the rise in GDP (Greenspan rewarded Clinton with low interest rates which however seemed more than anything to fuel the bubble economy, which shows the dangers of monetary policy as principal neo liberal tool of stimulus). Now I think we can assume that Pollin is not touting Bush's fiscal policy even though it is not contractionary (and the Randian Greenspan has accomodated these deficits). I would imagine that Pollin would have wanted the tax cuts come on the payroll side and the deficit expenditures to be socially directed rather than militarily oriented. This kind of short term stimulus would have given us stronger and more sustainable recovery on the employment side. That is, from the way Cockburn summarizes Pollin there seems to be an ideal of a rational state, a social democratic one that provides a deep stimulus in downturns and raises taxes a wee bit in a progressive manner in the upturn to keep government debt sustainable and pressure on long term interest rates contained. The assumption would be that through left wing Keynesian management the economy could be set on a path of a output growth with price stability and 'acceptable' levels of income inequality. (Prabhat Patnaik argues against the ability of any kind of Keynesianism to guarantee accumulation and stability without the external props provided by imperialism--this is closer to the structural kind of criticism that you are looking for Louis, and it is conducted as an immanent critique in the sense that its theoretical base is Keyensian.) In short, Cockburn's underlying criticism seems hardly structural; it seems to retain state fetishism. Rakesh
Re: the Clinton years
The assumption would be that through left wing Keynesian management the economy could be set on a path of a output growth with price stability and 'acceptable' levels of income inequality. (Prabhat Patnaik argues against the ability of any kind of Keynesianism to guarantee accumulation and stability without the external props provided by imperialism--this is closer to the structural kind of criticism that you are looking for Louis, and it is conducted as an immanent critique in the sense that its theoretical base is Keyensian.) In short, Cockburn's underlying criticism seems hardly structural; it seems to retain state fetishism. Rakesh I honestly am not aware enough of Pollin's economic ideas to judge them, although I am not surprised to discover that he is some kind of left-Keynsian. That seems endemic among economists of a certain age who marched against the war in Vietnam, got involved in URPE, etc. Frankly, I never really understood what some people see in Keynes. A Letter to a Contributor: The Same Old State by Harry Magdoff The substance of what follows is contained in a letter to the author of an article we will be publishing in a later issue. The editors, who were shown copies of the letter, thought that the content would interest MR readers and they asked me to fix it up for publication. In doing so, some points were expanded to support the argument and footnotes were added. Dear Chris, As mentioned over the phone, we like your article very much. It needs to be shortened, and we will be suggesting some editorial changes. Meanwhile, I would like to get your thinking about my disagreement with this statement in your conclusion: Today's neo-liberal state is a different kind of capitalist class than the social-democratic, Keynesian interventionist state of the previous period. I can't see any significant difference in either the state or its relation to the ruling class, even though clearly there is a considerable difference between the functioning of the capitalist economy during the so-called golden age and the subsequent long stretch of stagnation. I do not mean the absence of any change at all in the capitalist class. Thus, the growing influence of the financial sector (not necessarily a separate sector) is noteworthy. But that is hardly a measure of a major change in the state. The term Keynesian state has become a catchword that covers a variety of concepts and is usually misleading. It may have some meaning for the Scandinavian countries and elsewhere. But the United States? Although the concept is often applied to the New Deal, the deficit spending of the New Deal had nothing to do with Keynes (nor did Hitler's recovery via military expenditures). It's true Washington economists were delighted with the appearance of Keynes's The General Theory of, Employment, Interest, and Money because it gave them theoretical handles for analysis and policy thinking (e.g.,the offset to savings concept and a framework for gross national product accounts). Nevertheless, despite a promise of heavy government spending, and Keynes's theoretical support, the New Dealers were stumped by the 1937-38 recession, which interrupted what looked like a strong recovery. There was then as there is now an underlying faith that capitalism is a self-generating mechanism. If it slowed down or got into trouble, all that was needed was a jolt to get back on track. In those days, when farm life supplied useful metaphors, the needed boost was referred to as priming the pump.The onset of a marked recession after years of pump-priming startled Washington. Questions began to be raised about the possibility of stagnation in a mature capitalism, the retarding effect of monopolistic corporations, and other possible drags on business. These concerns faded as war orders flowed in from Europe, and eventually they disappeared when the United States went to war. The notion of the Keynesian Welfare State has tended to disguise the fact that what really turned the tide was not social welfare, Keynesian or otherwise, but war. In that sense, the whole concept of Keynesianism can be mystification. full: http://www.monthlyreview.org/198hm.htm Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: the Clinton years
Eubulides wrote: - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] My dream would be for us here to work on articulating a different version of the economy. Imagine that one of us were to step into a classroom, factory, or call center and say that we wanted to speak in favor of socialism. We would be unlikely to receive a warm reception. We would hear about Stalin, the USSR, In a better world, the hearers would expect to hear about working conditions, health care, education == Well that just goes to show that if you stepped into a classroom, factory or call center, you *start* with talking about working conditions, health care, education-skill sharing and then open up the context.. Ian I agree with Ian, but he does not go far enough. You _start_ by trying to imagine the social context in which any of this might happen -- which is _not_ the social context in which we now live. Marx Engels contributed essentially _nothing_ to the movements of the 1840s; rather, those movements constituted the framework within which ME could (a) begin to work out what they wanted to say and (b) find and audience which would listen to them. Talk about socialism now, similarly, will contribute little or nothing to the appearance of a context in which anyone than other socialists will be in the least interested in hearing about socialism. A response I just made to Ian on lob-talk may be relevant here. The context was a discussion of the relevance or non-relevance of contesting state power, but I think it also applies to thinking about articulating new views of the economy. -- Ian wrote: Right now, and for a while, we need to *create* our own powers, skills etc. of self governance at a non-state level of organizing --workers have no country and all that. Of course, and we can only do that by action on the terrain of some particular state. In fact, that education and that creation can only occur within the context of struggle against state power. - No one is going to be invited into a factory to talk about socialism until _after_ a mass movement involving, among other things, factory occupations, has arisen. (Also, probably at the present time Walmart clerks, Manpower employees, systems analysts, or public school teachers are probably a more important audience than factory workers.) Further speculation: Even under the conditions I specify, the topic of a socialist vision won't be raised in meetings but in private conversations in groups of two to five _after_ the mass meetings in which the discussion will primarily have been tactical and/or of the nature of a pep rally. Discussing the future is a mug's game, but I think Ian is closer to reality than Michael, and I'm closer than Ian, but probably all three of us are all wet. Carrol
Re: the Clinton years
In a message dated 11/15/03 9:02:47 AM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - Original Message -From: "Michael Perelman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] My dream would be for us here to work on articulating a differentversion of the economy. Imagine that one of us were to step into a classroom, factory, or call center and say that we wanted to speak in favor of socialism. We would be unlikely to receive a warm reception. We would hear about Stalin, the USSR, In a better world, the hearers would expect to hear about working conditions, health care, education Comment Unlike the theory discussions on line, in the real world I speak of a society of happy people who are not longer struggling for necessities that are available. Today we have the kind of society where no one has to go to bed hungry and houses could be built in factories at a very lost cost to the environment and people. The thousands of years of struggle to reach a society with our potential and real existing capability can today, replace the age old strife and fight for food, shelter and means to have a happy family and life. The foundation for real happiness is contentment - not perfection of people, and the foundation of contentment is eliminating the strife that flowed from a society undable to meet the living needs of its members. This age old strige is a negative thing and flowed from a negative thing inhuman history. Today we have the means to end this negative part of our history but we have to reach a point in our society where water is not sold to human beings. Coca Cola can make all the Coke it wants but why is it's technology and purpose not helping to purify the earth's waters that we spoiledduring our long journey to overcome the strife of fighting for basic survival needs. Today we have plenty of plenty and if you do not believe this visit any one of the many dollars stores. Melvin P
Re: the Clinton years
you Otherf*cker! ;-) JD -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 11/15/2003 9:15 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] the Clinton years oh, my god. I am in pomo hell! On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:14:33AM -0800, Devine, James wrote: Some sort of overarching vision is, at some point, necessary. but that would be essentialism, surrender to a Master Narrative, while denigrating the Otherness of the Other! Jim -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the Clinton years
Michael Perelman wrote: Yes, that is easy. The problem is to go from there to a broader vision of society. Instead, what we have is fragmentation. For example, the students may not be interested in working conditions of health care and the workers maybe not concerned about issues in higher education. But the students _are_ workers. Are you assuming that workers = factory workers? I really don't think anyone (except professors and already-convinced socialists) will be interested in that broader vision until _after_ they find themselves already involved in struggle. Carrol
Re: the Clinton years
- Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] I agree with Ian, but he does not go far enough. You _start_ by trying to imagine the social context in which any of this might happen -- which is _not_ the social context in which we now live. Well I'd start with asking what the workers etc.want that they don't have with regards to health care, access to education and the like and aks them to imagine the kind of social institutions etc. *they* think would be needed to achieve those goals not only for themselves but for their neighbors, fellow citizens and then go into the institutional barriers, identifiable groups that have an interest in blocking such goals from being achieved and let them keep talking and asking questions. Marx Engels contributed essentially _nothing_ to the movements of the 1840s; rather, those movements constituted the framework within which ME could (a) begin to work out what they wanted to say and (b) find and audience which would listen to them. Talk about socialism now, similarly, will contribute little or nothing to the appearance of a context in which anyone than other socialists will be in the least interested in hearing about socialism. A response I just made to Ian on lob-talk may be relevant here. The context was a discussion of the relevance or non-relevance of contesting state power, but I think it also applies to thinking about articulating new views of the economy. -- Ian wrote: Right now, and for a while, we need to *create* our own powers, skills etc. of self governance at a non-state level of organizing --workers have no country and all that. Of course, and we can only do that by action on the terrain of some particular state. In fact, that education and that creation can only occur within the context of struggle against state power. == I think we need to displace state-centric discourse/analysis/communication with class-centric d/a/c. Global class compositionality has changed quite a bit in the past decade and state-centric IPE IR misses alot of those changes. Focusing on the state at this conjuncture lets a boatload of agents/institutions that are the source of many fetters we wnat to eliminate/transform off the hook. As Utah Phillips says, these people have names and addresses, let's talk about them rather than the usual suspects. At this conjunture, too many states do what they do because they've been captured by factions of classes that have rendered the party/state distinction moot. I'm not sure that creating yet more parties to contest the current parties across the globe will not recreate the very problems that we already have. On this score I don't think I'm too far from a problem James Madison was talking about a long time ago, but this may be because I've read too much into Charles Tilly for my own good. Ian
Re: the Clinton years
Ian writes Welcome to the contradictions of the division of labor and bounded rationality. Seems to me that coaxing fellow learners to 'see' connections that weren't apparent in their quest to improve the quality of their lives is a small first step creating greater public discussion whereby everyone has the opportunity to bring forth the overarching vision in solidarity rather than having it imposed on them by a different set of elites who feign a non-existent omniscience. It remains to be 'seen' if there can be no such 'thing' as an overarching vision. In speaking to Americans about socialism, worker's rights, or in formulating any criticism of business-as-usual, I have encountered the same problem as I did once attempting to teach an eleven-year old girl how to multiply by ten. The problem was that articulating/expounding the rule of adding a zero for every power of ten was, somehow, incomprehensibleno matter how many ways I explained it. This little girl was willing to memorize what each number multiplied by ten would yield, but could not countenance/understand that an abstract rule (overarching vision) could cover each and every case of multiplying by ten. In the social arena, the same debility holds: Americans react to the articulation of a general case, which necessarily depends on concepts such as class, solidarity, capitalism, relations of production, power... as fundamentally violating their concept of the free individual: I'm nothing but a worker?, I have no particular power as an individual, divorced from other human beings?, I belong to a class? This is somehow significant?, The same rules apply to me as to everyone else? etc. It is understandable that as capitalism renders people more and more interchangeable (coupled with celebratory advertisement), there should be this desparate, visceral clinging to individual identity and exceptionalism -- but can the working class be made conscious of this process, because, until they are willing to trade in their insulation, nothing can happen... That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon. Joanna
Re: the Clinton years
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: In short, Cockburn's underlying criticism seems hardly structural; it seems to retain state fetishism. It's not at all structural because he wants to annoy liberal Nation readers. It doesn't seem like the most urgent political task of the moment to me, but I'm getting soft in my old age I guess. Doug
Re: the Clinton years
Joanna writes: That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon. Can you suggest any good socialist art? I've heard of a socialist realism movement in literature, but haven't found any specific authors. There are very few films that I know of that have a pro-worker, anti-capitalist bent, and the only one I can name off the top of my head is Wall Street. I can't think of a painter aside from Diego Rivera. Who are some contemporary artists who grapple with the issues of workers' rights, socialism, and capital? The purpose of art is to make revolution appealing. Benjamin Gramlich
Re: the Clinton years
Title: Re: [PEN-L] the Clinton years Rakesh Bhandari wrote: In short, Cockburn's underlying criticism seems hardly structural; it seems to retain state fetishism. It's not at all structural because he wants to annoy liberal Nation readers. It doesn't seem like the most urgent political task of the moment to me, but I'm getting soft in my old age I guess. Doug Both Pollin and Krugman would obviously criticize Bush's actual state, but (going from Cockburn's summary) Pollin would criticize even Clinton apologist Krugman's ideal new Keynesian state from the perspective of his left Keynesian rational state (rational in that it would not only ensure output growth with price stability but also maintain a normatively sound level of income inequality). As Cockburn implies, Pollin wants to give a much more social democratic content to the rational state than given to it by new Keynesians. Pollin seems to be critical of the state's subordination to private interest and this subordination to be a corruption of the state's true essence. But Marx set off a different line of criticism; as Robert Fine shows in his important book Democracy and the Rule of Law: Marx's Critique of the Legal Form, Marx eventually abandoned in the course of his Hegel critique the ideal of the rational state. The task, as Marx put it, was no longer to find the essence of the state apart from social relations but in social relations. From the beginning, Marx was critical of the subordination of the state to private property: in his early works he regarded this as a corruption of the state's essence; in his later works he regarded it as the essence of the state's corruption. p. 87 rakesh
Re: the Clinton years
At 9:01 AM -0500 11/15/03, Julio Huato wrote: I wouldn't mind his style. What is unhelpful is his tactical misfiring. At this juncture, you have an administration whose policies, domestic and foreign, are exactly what the left is supposed to be against. Yet, Cockburn is busy criticizing Bill Clinton and Paul Krugman! First of all, Julio, we have to grasp the nature of this juncture. Barring another terrorist attack to the magnitude of 9.11.01, Bush is finished, due to the quagmire in Iraq and the worst record on jobs for any president since Herbert Hoover led at the beginning of the Great Depression (@ http://www.news-leader.com/today/1112-Jobsaffect-214755.html). And there will be no Green candidate who can attract as many votes as Nader did in 2000. The Democratic victory in the 2004 presidential election is virtually certain. The likely winning ticket is Dean/Clark. What are socialists to do, now that George W. Bush is losing the war and will be losing the election in 2004? Remind all who are active in social movements -- especially those who are active in the anti-occupation movements -- that what Democrats in the White House have and will do again to American workers, as well as to Iraqis, Palestinians, and other peoples. Just as the Labor Party in Israel built more Jewish-only settlements and stole more land from Palestinians in the occupied territories than the Likud Party, the Democratic Party in the USA is better at exploiting American workers and subjects of the US Empire than the Republican Party. Also, if the US government is to resume conscription -- the only solution to manpower shortage if the USG is to continue the occupation of Iraq -- it will do so not under Bush/Cheney, but under Dean/Clark. -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: the Clinton years
I'm no aesthete, but a lot of Russian art after the 1917 revolution was very good. (I don't know much about art, but I know the price.) Jim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 11/15/2003 10:53 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] the Clinton years Joanna writes: That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon. Can you suggest any good socialist art? I've heard of a socialist realism movement in literature, but haven't found any specific authors. There are very few films that I know of that have a pro-worker, anti-capitalist bent, and the only one I can name off the top of my head is Wall Street. I can't think of a painter aside from Diego Rivera. Who are some contemporary artists who grapple with the issues of workers' rights, socialism, and capital? The purpose of art is to make revolution appealing. Benjamin Gramlich
Re: the Clinton years
In a message dated 11/15/03 2:34:30 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I'm no aesthete, but a lot of Russian art after the 1917 revolution was very good.("I don't know much about art, but I know the price.")Jim
Did the art - culture or development, cost as much as slavery and the entire era of the primitive accumulation of capital?
I know a good bargain when I see one: the bargain today is compared to the bargain yesterday and what one has to spend today.
MP
Re: the Clinton years
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/14/03 10:14 PM November 14 / 23, 2003 CounterPunch Diary Clintontime: Was It Really a Golden Age? By ALEXANDER COCKBURN silly question, of course not...cockburn's best stuff was years ago in that belly of the beast the _wall street journal_, article such as this would have been interesting in that rag during clinton years, counterpunch readers already know the answer (or they agree with it even if they don't know it since they're part of the chorus)... michael hoover
Re: the Clinton years
Yoshie wrote: Barring another terrorist attack to the magnitude of 9.11.01, Bush is finished [clip] The Democratic victory in the 2004 presidential election is virtually certain. What are socialists to do, now that George W. Bush is losing the war and will be losing the election in 2004? Remind all who are active in social movements -- especially those who are active in the anti-occupation movements -- that what Democrats in the White House have and will do again to American workers, as well as to Iraqis, Palestinians, and other peoples. I'll chill the champagne in case you're right. But what socialists should not do is base their moves on speculation about what might happen one year from now. One year is a long time in electoral politics. More importantly, no matter how hard we try on the left, we're not entirely irrelevant politically. When a contest is tight, small groups can have a disproportionate influence. So, what if the election turns very competitive, as it usually does as we approach election day? Should we be acting now in such a way as to sabotage our own prophecy and help Bush get re-elected? The main strategic task of the socialists now is to build a robust media infrastructure to wage and win the battle of ideas (Fidel Castro's phrase recently appropriated by Donald Rumsfeld) and shift the ideological center of gravity of this country to the left. Tactically, the task is to strengthen the movements against (1) the occupation, (2) the Bush/Ashcroft's assault on the Bill of Rights, (3) wealth re-distribution in favor of the rich, and any other flank the administration may leave exposed. In all cases, the way we strengthen the movement is not through attacks, purges, and expulsion of non radicals, but by uniting people regardless of motivation. The better we do our tactical homework, the greater our influence on the coming election and its aftermath. Vigorous movements against the occupation, Big Brother, and Starving the Beast will be factors that whoever wins will not be able to easily disregard. All the tactical tasks require unity against Bush's policies. I'm willing to bet that way over fifty percent of the adults marching against the invasion/occupation voted for Clinton at least once. Furthermore, I also bet that they now have a much warmer, brighter, appreciative view of the Clinton years than just before Bill left office. For one, they had jobs back then. Those were the years, my friend... So, go ahead, remind all these people how stupid they were by voting for Clinton in the past, tell them how ashamed they should feel now, tell them that you're an activist and influential decision maker in an anti-occupation coalition, and then watch what happens. What we should not do is weaken the movement with friendly or unfriendly snipping against those now on our side on the grounds of what they thought or did in the past, because with a fragmented movement whoever wins will have it easier to push the left aside. (When I say we should not reproach people for past views or deeds, I'm of course excluding Ken Lay suddenly turning into an anti-war activist and volunteering to manage the finances of the movement.) Looking forward, our task is to shift the ideological gravity center of the country to the left. That entails dealing with issues such as the recent one that got Howard Dean in trouble: our attitude towards white workers in the south. How do we win the battle of ideas? We need a media infrastructure. In Louis' list (www.marxmail.org), I've been arguing that we need a daily, national newspaper both partisan (pro workers) and objective: http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2003w45/msg00328.htm I haven't gotten a rousing response (yet), but I frankly believe this is the way to go. Energized by the anti-invasion and anti-occupation movement, the left can tackle this task now. If we let the energy dissipate, we might regret it later. Anyways, only by taking up tasks of this sort we'll be able to get out of this less-evilistic historical trap we bitch about. We cannot get out of a trap just by closing our eyes and pretending it doesn't restrict us. Julio _ Las mejores tiendas, los precios mas bajos y las mejores ofertas en MSN Latino. http://latino.msn.com/compras
Re: the Clinton years
Not to mention the films -- a significant slice of the great art of the twentieth century. In the visual arts, they were the bomb!. And then there were the writers: Akhmatova, Yesenin, Trifonov, Bulgakov, and lots, lots more that I just don't know about ... ...and the dancers -- Galina Ulanova, Nureyev... Joanna Devine, James wrote: I'm no aesthete, but a lot of Russian art after the 1917 revolution was very good. (I don't know much about art, but I know the price.) Jim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 11/15/2003 10:53 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] the Clinton years Joanna writes: That is why, perhaps, art is the first weapon. Can you suggest any good socialist art? I've heard of a socialist realism movement in literature, but haven't found any specific authors. There are very few films that I know of that have a pro-worker, anti-capitalist bent, and the only one I can name off the top of my head is Wall Street. I can't think of a painter aside from Diego Rivera. Who are some contemporary artists who grapple with the issues of workers' rights, socialism, and capital? The purpose of art is to make revolution appealing. Benjamin Gramlich
Re: the Clinton years
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/15/03 9:24 AM I think that the point of Counterpunch (and PEN-L) is to address the necessity of transforming the system. We are facing a downward spiral in bourgeois politics that has been going on for decades. Richard Nixon's domestic policies were far more liberal than either Clinton's or Dean's. Louis Proyect part of the way with lbj...this may not be a great society but it's a darn good one...power to the people, right on...name the system...ya say you wanna a revolution...everybody's talkin bout dragism, bagism, all we are saying is...spahn and sain and pray for rain...michael hoover
Re: the Clinton years - or how Bill had something in common with Vladimir
I think Alexander Cockburn does a great job debunking myths about the Clinton area, and I would not dare to dispute his points. My small criticism about him concerns a different aspect, namely the purpose of argumentation. Debunking myths is indispensable if myth pretends to be fact or truth, on this all rational and progressive thinkers are agreed. But this is only one-half of a critique, because now it is necessary to transcend the correction of the myth, and provide an alternative, which can positively orient behaviour. Mao Tse Tung referred to this as the negation of the negation, a reference to the dialectical forms of the development of consciousness discovered by Hegel, and not just a reference to little girl lies. If I just tell somebody he is talking bullshit, or somebody else just tells me I am talking bullshit, then this does not do anything other than recommend a limit on behaviour, to the effect that we should not talk bullshit. But this doesn't of itself mean that sense will then be talked, in a way that shows what is to be done and how problems are resolved, i.e. it does not automatically enlarge a behavioural repertoire, so that constructive sense replaces bullshit. One can of course feel very desperate about the neo-conservative and neo-liberal mentality, and wish one could ram their heads into a brick wall, but if their ideas nevertheless take hold among a large population, then we have the problem of how we transform that mentality into something else, and for that purpose, we must interact with that mentality, expose its internal contradictions, show that it leads to conclusions which the people who have that mentality could not accept, and offer an alternative policy. If I simply say that Krugman is bullshit, this might be true perhaps, but it earns no political credit or mileage other than among devotees of the Left. If, on the other hand, I distinguish between the person and the behaviour, such that I respect the person, but criticise what he writes as wrong, within terms he would accept, and suggest an alternative, then that can earn a lot of political credit and mileage, even among people with whom I otherwise disagree. In politics, what people respond to best, is precisely that alternative policy, because, since the human subconscious is positively intentioned, autonomy-seeking and abhors a negative, whatever conscious deformities of this natural inclination there may be, people want to know what they should positively do, rather than just recognise the limits on their behaviour. This is so true, that when 9/11 happened, and Bush told Americans an invasion of Afghanistan was necessary, they believed him, even if this required numerous leaps in logic. For all the odes to Lenin's What is to be done, this type of insight is largely lost on the Marxist left, and this has its ultimate source in the fact that Marx and Engels never proposed a sophisticated theory of socialist morality and socialist forms of association, beyond the categorical imperative to revolt against all conditions which make humans less than human, i.e. enslaved, oppressed, humiliated, downtrodden and alienated creatures, and beyond specifying the goal of human liberation as the freedom to become all that a human can be, based on the premiss that the liberation of each is conditional on the liberation of all, and vice versa. The philosophy of dialectical materialism subsequently invented by the epigones did not fill the gap. Lenin himself insisted that in politics it was insufficient to just be correct in your assessment; one had to be correct at the correct time, and the correct view had to be asserted in the correct context, in such a way, that the audience was won over, and brought to one's own side. Bill Clinton was a master at this as well, although one might question his principles; even as the situation of the American working class deteriorated and the world situation worsened, he could be tremendously successful nevertheless. So whereas the prophets could take pride in having anticipated events ahead of time, and the minorities could say I told you so after the event, the aim, Lenin and Clinton agreed, was always to strike the iron when it was hot, and intervene in the event in order to change it, by saying those things which not just acknowledged the problem, but suggested a solution. The problem with debunking myths is not that it is useless or valueless, to the contrary, effective action cannot be based on the myth that justifies it. The problem is rather that just as you have debunked the old myth, the new myth takes its place, whereas the aim is to get social consciousness beyond myth, but in order to do that, we must appeal to that part of social consciousness which is not mythical, and doesn't drift off into religious or pre-religious metaphysics. You cannot argue with a metaphysical consciousness, because its proclaimed truths or values do not submit themselves to change through rational
the Clinton years
November 14 / 23, 2003 CounterPunch Diary Clintontime: Was It Really a Golden Age? By ALEXANDER COCKBURN To gauge the level of hatred entertained by liberals for the Bush administration take a look at the bestseller lists. Rubbing shoulders in the top tiers we find the liberal populists Michael Moore, Al Franken, Paul Krugman and Molly Ivins all pouring sarcastic rebukes on Bush2 and, categorically or by implication, suggesting that in favoring the very rich and looting the economy in their interests Bush stands in despicable contrast to his immediate predecessor in the Oval Office. So just get a Democrat, any Democrat, back in the White House and the skies will begin to clear again. But suppose a less forgiving scrutiny of the Clinton years discloses that these years did nothing to alter the rules of the neoliberal game that began in the Reagan/Thatcher era with the push to boost after-tax corporate profits, shift bargaining power to business, erode social protections for workers, make the rich richer, the middle tier at best stand still and the poor get poorer. A few weeks ago here I discussed an extremely sparing, not to say grossly flattering account of Clintonomics by the neoliberal economist Paul Krugman, aka a renowned columnist for the New York Times. Fortunately, we now have just such an unsparing scrutiny of Clintonomics in the form of Robert Pollin's Contours of Descent, subtitled U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity, published by Verso. Across his 238 pages Pollin is unambiguous. It was under Clinton he points out, that the distribution of wealth in the US became more skewed than it had at any time in the previous forty years. Inside the US under Clinton the ratio of wages for the average worker to the pay of the average CEO rose from 113 to 1 in 1991 to 1 to 449 when he quit. In the world, exclusive of China, between 1980 and 1988 and considering the difference between the richest and poorest 10 per cent of humanity, inequality grew by 19 per cent; by 77 per cent, if you take the richest and poorest 1 per cent. full: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11142003.html Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
